The Man Who Fell Into the Storm

Mere seconds after the Boeing 727 had made an effortless landing in Reno, Nevada, a group of men, fitted with black blazers, button-ups, and fedoras, approached the trijet airliner. The air tugged against their gabardine trench coats with every step they took. The commander, following them with a collected strut, wrapped his coat around his shoulder, flicking cold rain across my face and into my eyes. I let out a wince, and his head snapped towards me. As it moved, I first noticed his jet-black moustache, then his close-cropped noir hair, and finally his bellowing shout.

“Shall we make haste, rookie?” Though he phrased it like a question, from the look in his eyes, it was more of an order.

“Uhh-yes, sir!” I hesitantly responded, looking into his perfectly still, polished obsidian pupils that tracked me, and he turned back without another word. I slowly shuffled behind him, the rain masking the nervousness of my first investigation. I gripped the company standard Smith & Wesson Model 10 tightly to prevent it from slipping out of my hand and walked carefully to reduce the squelchy sound of my loafers.

As I neared the red carpet formed by nameless agents, a path leading the commander and me toward the cabin door, I wondered: What if I mess up? What if I’m not cut out for this? My mind conjured so many thoughts about how this could end, none of them good. Fortunately, my mental crisis was interrupted by the commander’s clamour as he approached the cabin door.

“Federal Agents! Open up!” he enunciated into the unsettlingly quiet cabin. I followed behind the commander, cautiously walking inside, aiming my iron sight at every creak and shadow. The fuselage was narrow, barely allowing two men to pass at once. The abundance of cigarette smoke had stained the previously white roof, so that it now showed a pale yellow.

I saw a stewardess sitting alone at the front of the plane; her mascara had streaked down her cheeks. I crouched beside her, adopting a timid voice.

“Ma’am, where was he sitting?” She hesitated, took a deep breath, and replied to me without meeting my eyes.

“In the back row, seat 18E, I believe.” I thanked her, and the commander was already on the move.

“Investigate the seat while I check out the aft,” he said, without turning around. I gripped my revolver and kept walking forward, each step taking me further away from somewhere I couldn’t return to.

Seat 18E was placed at the back of the plane with the bathroom behind it. The seat itself was empty, but the man’s figure was freshly imprinted into its cushions. Its tray was out, there on it lay a used ashtray and an empty airline-sized glass of bourbon. Near the seat was a single black clip-on tie and two of the four parachutes he had demanded at Seattle Tacoma.

I turned every corner, looked under every cushion, and inspected every crevice of the plane, but nothing new appeared. The commander said,

“The rear stairs are deployed.” In that moment, I looked back at the parachutes and counted again. One, two. There had been four. I counted again, still two. There had been four. Now there were only two.

The realisation hit before the commander could even speak. I froze, my mind went quiet, and I tried to move my hand to pick up my radio, but it wouldn’t move. The commander, walking back to me, took one look at my petrified state and pulled out his own radio to confirm what I already knew.

“We believe that the hijacker has jumped. Commence a search over southwest Washington, find him before he gets too far away.” A muffled yell came through his speaker,

“In this weather? It’s coming down buckets, jumping would be insane!”

“Are you saying that someone who hijacked a plane is sane?”

“Sir, I have just gotten word that the fighter pilots haven’t spotted anything.”

“Well, expand the perimeter!” “We already have.” The commander’s colour drained from his face. “I’m sorry, sir, but all you can do now-”

“-Is wait.”

The commander lowered his receiver slowly, staring through the rain-streaked oval window into the endless storm. Around us, agents and witnesses scrambled through the cabin, shouting orders and theories over one another, but their voices dissolved into unintelligible noises. The tie rested flat on the ground; it looked like it hadn’t even been worn. The tiny droplets of bourbon still trembled slightly from the landing, and the ashtray’s smoke faintly curled upward as if the man had only just stood to leave. The three objects had told us everything about the man, but nothing about where he had gone. Somehow, that was the only thing that made sense.