“Okay, okay.” He returns the coffee to the cupholder, stuffing the last of his breakfast sandwich into his mouth.
Moments later, we’ve parked at the airport’s Marine Air Terminal, where he makes a beeline for the men’s room. Lucy is waiting in the lounge area, and I’ve not seen her in a flight suit in a while. She has on a baseball cap, sunglasses, her favorite flying boots, and there’s an energy, a lightness of spirit that’s been absent for too long.
“How’s he doing this morning?” She’s well aware of how much bourbon he threw back last night.
She also knows that he doesn’t like riding in the back of anything, getting far more anxious than he lets on.
“Other than drinking too much coffee?” I look around, seeing a lot of Transportation Security Agency （TSA） officers, and few other passengers or pilots inside the spacious old terminal.
“That wasn’t very smart,” she says as we watch him emerge from the bathroom, looking ominous in jeans and a tactical jacket.
“He’s worried about flying with you. Thinks you’re rusty,” I tell Lucy.
“Good,” she replies with a sly smile.
“What’s good?” Marino says, reaching us.
“It’s a good day for flying but we won’t be able to talk much as busy as the airspace is around here,” she starts in for his benefit. “I mean, one false move?” She shakes her head, whistling under her breath. “Next thing, F-sixteens are coming after you.”
“You’re being funny, right?” It’s his first time flying in a restricted airspace.
“They’ll shoot you right out of the sky.”
“You’re a real comedian,” scowling as his face turns red.
“There’s nothing funny about it.” She eggs him on some more as two TSA agents approach with all seriousness.
They escort us into a private room to be searched, our carry-on bags rifled through. We’re scanned with a wand up one side and down the other, and all the while a man is watching. He looks familiar at first in a gray suit that hangs shapelessly on his slight frame, his gray hair and mustache shaggy.
“I’m Bob,” he introduces himself, and I realize he reminds me a bit of Captain Kangaroo. “I’ll be flying with you today.”
“Thanks for keeping everybody safe.” I say what I always do to the TSA.
“Looks like a good one for it.” He holds a tote bag that most likely has his gun in it.
We’re escorted to Lucy’s Bell 407 GXP, white with a blue stripe, and her copilot Clare is opening the back doors for us.
“If the winds don’t flip around, we’ll be there in no time,” she lets us know.
A little older than Lucy, she’s petite with short dark hair and smiling eyes. The two of them climb up front, Marino, Bob and I in back, and soon enough we’re swooping toward the Potomac River.
“Everybody all right back there?” Clare’s voice in our headsets. “Our ETA is thirty-five minutes.”
WE HAVE A FEROCIOUS tailwind, our airspeed a blistering 165 knots. We fly high and fast, hugging the river until we reach Quantico. Then we cut inland, following I-95 to Richmond.
I go hollow inside as I look out at a view I’ve not seen in five years. That’s the last time I was here, and since then the city has been ravaged by another civil war. The destruction is clearly visible as we chopper through the polished blue sky at an altitude of six hundred feet.
Some businesses have remained boarded up while others never reopened after they were vandalized, looted and burned down during protests and riots. That and the pandemic, and many places don’t exist anymore, including favorite haunts of mine, landmarks to my earlier life.
“It looks like a damn third-world country.” Marino’s voice through our headsets, and I can sense his mood as he sits next to me, staring out at the depressing view.
“You should have seen it earlier in the year,” Clare says, and we’ve flown with her before when she ferries Lucy’s bird wherever needed.
“A miracle nobody was killed,” says our TSA escort Bob, sitting in the leather seat across from me.
“It’s sure as heck not the city I used to know.” Marino stares down at East Broad Street where the damage is particularly bad. “I’m not sure I’d want to be a cop here anymore.”
Graffiti has been spray-painted everywhere, and I can’t read what it says from the air. But I don’t need to, the images have been all over the news, the usual hateful vulgarities about killing police, eating the rich. For a while, people went to bed hearing gunfire and Confederate flag–waving trucks in their once-civilized downtown neighborhoods.