Chapter Four

Irene felt madly insane, performing as she was, in front of a nineteen-year-old boy. What she was doing was vile. And she shamelessly savored it. She jammed fingers back inside her vagina just as the contraction arched her spine and with her head thrown back, a second, more powerful orgasm squeezed her crotch like a vise.

“Oh Christ, Adam,” Irene wheezed with clamped jaws. “You’re doing it to me. Fucking me with your eyes.”

“I don’t mean to.”

“Shut up Adam. Come here and masturbate for me.”

Irene reached for the tube of hand cream, unscrewed the top and placed it in his trembling grasp. “Here. Use this.”

Adam had to relent, he had never seen anything like what Irene was doing to herself, ever before. And she was wonderful. Her hair was black, forgiving the odd strand of gray. There were a few lines about her eyes and at the corners of her mouth, but that lent an air of maturity that of-itself, was dauntingly sexy for a nineteen-year-old. Her neck was long and her melon-sized breasts were unlikely to ever droop. They sustained sporty brown nipples that stood up and begged. And lower, between open hips, the hairy cone of her sex gaped: dark, mysterious and moist. Why couldn’t Pamela be so easy?

His cock was throbbing.

“Undo your jeans,” he heard Irene’s breathy sigh and she leaned forward and squeezed the end of his cock beneath the denim. His buttocks pinched and instinctively he reached to hold her by the back of her neck. He couldn’t help but want to rub her face in it.

“Mmm,” Irene cooed, the hardness pressing now, into her fingers. “Undo your jeans and cum for me.”

Adam was lost to it. Nothing mattered now but the release. He tugged at his belt, twisted open the button and worked the zipper down. Irene watched as he smeared on vasoline and, gripping himself, he worked the foreskin.

He closed his eyes. Tried to ignore the whisper of her breath tickling his neck. Tried to ignore the fact that she was watching. Tried to ignore the fact that when he ejaculated he would splatter his cum across her belly.

There was only him and the slippery feeling of his cock. He tried to think of Pamela. Imagined her standing before him, the blonde curls and tiny tits. What would she look like with her legs open? What would she feel like in his hands? What would she taste like?

“Oh– oh,” he groaned.

“Don’t waste it,” he heard Irene and was barely aware of being pulled toward the stool. And then he felt himself being drawn in. The tight warmth. “No. I shouldn’t. I promised Pamela.”

“Pamela’s not here,” Irene said, “I am. And besides, we’re not really doing it. You’re not all the way in. It’s like you’re doing it on a magazine.”

“But...”

Irene held the head of his cock between the vaginal lips. “Masturbate into me.” Adam was still working himself. “Or if you want,” Irene whispered, “you can cum in my mouth.”

Irene felt him jolt and she laughed inside herself. Young boys were so easy; so predictable.

“Oh God,” Adam stiffened and he came in her pubic hair.

Irene reached down and furiously rolled her clitoris under her fingertips and by the time Adam erupted a second time, she had forced him all the way in and they were cumming together.

The next morning, Irene began the unenviable task of reading her emails. There were two more rejections. Even airlines who she knew were actively trying to attract new pilots, wrote to say that their rosters were full. She had written all the major carriers without success, lowered her sights to the regional airlines, and now was working her way down a list of cargo carriers. No one was hiring pilots.

Irene pulled up the number for the personnel department at American. “Matty?”

“Oh, Irene. It’s you.”

Irene exhaled loudly through her nose. “I can tell by the sound of your voice that you’re thrilled to hear from me.”

“I’m sorry, Irene. But I haven’t heard anything back. I made a few calls but no one’s interested.”

“But someone must be hiring pilots. I have the experience, the papers and over 20,000 hours.”

“Look. No one is disputing the fact that you’re qualified. Hell, you’re cleared to fly anything out there. But the fact is, you’re bad news, Irene. No one wants to take the public relations risk.”

“Risk?”

“The bad publicity, Irene. When they put that expert on the stand and when they played the cockpit voice tapes. It made the news; the television and the papers. Everyone heard.”

Irene fell back in her chair, the shame and embarrassment still burning. “It was that insurance company and the plane’s manufacturer; they hired that snotty prosecutor and the bunch of them ganged up on me.”

Irene closed her eyes, the courtroom fiasco still fresh in her mind.

She saw the skinny woman, in baggy skirt and jacket, rise from the prosecution table to cross-examine the metallurgist; a row of young male lawyers seated behind her, all eager and panting to lick her ass. “Did you determine the cause of the crash?” she asked the witness, her voice resonating in her nose.

“Yes ma’am. The turbofan in the tail engine exploded. Shrapnel tore through the fuselage and ruptured all three hydraulic lines. The lines come together there, where the plane narrows at the tail. With no hydraulics, all flight controls were made inoperable.”

The lady prosecutor made a great show of studying her legal pad. “And did you recover the turbofan?”

“Three large pieces were recovered from a farmer’s field. The pieces represent about eighty percent of the fan.”

“And the rest of it?”

“Blown into smithereens would be my guess.”

The lady prosecutor walked back and forth on skinny straight legs, sensible shoes and baggy pantyhose. “I see. And you tested the pieces of the fan you recovered?” she drawled on in a voice that would give a hard-on to a foghorn manufacturer; stretching out her questioning and thoroughly enjoying the sound of her own voice.

“Yes. We analyzed the titanium alloy and found nothing unusual. And the aircraft maintenance records were in order and show that procedures were followed in strict accordance to the builder’s specification.”

The reps from General Electric, manufacturer of the jet turbine, sat back, relaxed; they were off the hook.

The lady prosecutor sighed loudly, like the case was so elementary, it was hardly worth her time. Or the million dollar retainer she was getting. “Your witness.”

Irene’s attorney stood. A bright young man who was clearly out of his depth and knew it. “Sir. I’m sure the court would like to hear your explanation of how a perfectly sound turbofan, one that was maintained in accordance to the manufacturer’s specification, suddenly blew apart at forty-thousand feet?”

The metallurgist shifted uneasily in his chair. He had been paid by the prosecutor as an expert witness and was clearly on her side. He didn’t want to say anything to damage the case.

“Sir?” Irene’s lawyer pressed. “The court is waiting.”

“Well it could have been a small weakness in the casting. A small crack.”

“A small crack.” Irene’s lawyer tried to pry the information from the metallurgist.

“Yes, from mishandling the turbofan. It wouldn’t take much: A small nick from a mechanic’s chisel would do it.”

Irene’s defense lawyer jumped: “Are you suggesting sabotage?”

There was a ripple throughout the courtroom. All eyes pinned on the expert witness who was going pale about the cheeks.

“Objection!” The lady prosecutor bounded up from her chair. “Defense is putting words into the mouth of the witness.”

“Sustained. Defense council will refrain from prompting the witness.”

And right there, Irene’s defense lawyer lost his credibility. And to make it worse, he sheepishly apologized. “So you’re not suggesting sabotage?”

The expert witness straightened his tie. “Of course not. How could you possibly suggest such a thing. And besides, there are easier ways to bring down an aircraft.”

The courtroom relaxed and the thought of sabotage was instantly dismissed. But Irene had immediately thought of Hanz Skorjas. Was someone trying to kill her?

“Are you still there?” It was her friend in the personnel department, hanging on the line.

“Yes. Yes, just had a thought is all.”

“C’mon,” her friend continued, “you have to look at this thing from the airlines’ point of view: Would you want to board an aircraft knowing the pilot had just crashed; killing a hundred and eleven paying customers?”

Irene could see the logic in it but that didn’t make it any easier. “No, I suppose not.”

“None of the airlines wants to take the chance. You’re a liability, Irene. In a year or so, people will have forgotten and you’ll be back in the pilot’s seat, but it’s going to take some time.”

“But I need a job now. I’ve gone through my savings, cashed in all my retirement funds and borrowed against my house and the car. All to cover legal expenses. I’m broke, Matty. Soon I’ll be living on the street.”

“I don’t know what to say, Irene. You’re just going to have to tough it out. Sorry, I have another call waiting. If I hear of anything, I’ll ring you. But for now, maybe you can get a job with a travel agency or something. With somebody where you won’t be considered a public risk. We’ll talk later. Okay?” And her friend Matty hurried to hang up the phone.

A public risk. So that was it.

Her mind drifted back to the courtroom: Irene was on the stand and the lady prosecutor could smell blood. “I direct the court’s attention to the television monitors located around the room,” the lady prosecutor said. “Roll the video.”

Irene stared at the screen. It was amateur footage shot with a cell phone and Irene saw her DC-10 dropping toward the runway. She saw and felt the sickening yawing as her right wing dipped, skewing the plane around just before she crashed onto the blacktop. The landing gear collapsed and Irene, playing the scene over again in her head, saw the plane crumple just behind the cockpit bulkhead where the two forward doors opened.

The nose of the airplane broke free with her and her crew inside and spun crazily out of the camera’s view. The right wing folded and its internal fuel tank exploded engulfing her aircraft in burning jet fuel. A moment later, the left tank went up.

There was a gasp from the gallery as they watched a huge fireball, spewing clouds of oily black smoke, slide down the runway at three-hundred miles per hour. The image on the screen flickered, went black. A stunned silence settled over the room. How could anyone have survived that flaming purgatory?