The Sound of Silence

The flight was going beautifully. Jim's Bonanza was at nine thousand feet; the air was crystal clear and smooth as velvet, with only occasional wisps of clouds. His beautiful wife Allie was doing her normal copilot duties-she was sleeping.

The whole airplane shuddered. When the engine catastrophically destroyed itself, oil started to coat the windshield. Jim reached down and turned off all fuel tanks. He secured the airplane, and then keyed his mike, "May Day! May Day! Bonanza seventeen miles west of the Macomb VOR, has catastrophic engine failure. We're going down." Then he realized that silence is a terrifying sound.

Jim wasn't going to just lie down and accept defeat without a fight. That engine failure took away his precious Allie. He was going to find out why. If it turned out to be an act of God, he would live with it. But if it turned out to be negligence or carelessness on someone's part, they're in for a fight, and a fight's one thing he's good at.