Roseanne's Summer Vacation- Chapter 42
The bullet grazed Tae-jun’s cheek and pierced through the front windshield of the cockpit. The entire machine swayed as Tae-jun shook the control stick in terror. He turned, and his eyes almost jumped out of the sockets at the sight of Roseanne Juzynski. The gun was now aiming at him.
“YOU AGAIN!”
“I always latch on to thieves with sticky fingers,” she said sarcastically.
Tae-jun grunted through the closed mouth. He couldn’t believe this was happening to him.
“Land this piece of shit and give back Mr Orville’s money,” she ordered.
Tae-jun was motionless in his seat.
“If you don’t do it,” Roseanne said, “I will throw your precious treasure away.” She pointed at the laptop.
The Korean boy grunted again. Was this really the end of the line? All his effort for the glory of the fatherland was to wither away because of a teenager with a moral compass equivalent to Superman.
There’s no way he’s going to give up now. Not a chance. He will die trying if he must.
Tae-jun looked at Roseanne. “You can’t pilot the chopper if you shoot me. But the thing is, I’m ready to sacrifice myself for the cause.”
He pushed away the control stick. The helicopter nosedived in an instant. The world swirled in front of Roseanne while the gun fell out of her hands. She and the laptop flew forward.
As she hit the front windshield, Tae-jun unbuckled himself and began to blindly throw punches. Roseanne struggled to avoid them, but she lost all sense of which way was up and down. One of the bloodied fists hit her left cheek. She returned the punch.
The helicopter was sounding a multitude of alarms, which only furthered chaos in the spinning machine. Even a layman would figure they were heading straight to the ground.
Suddenly, a silvery plate flashed past Roseanne. But it wasn’t a plate at all. Roseanne got hold of the flying laptop and she smashed it hard against Tae-jun’s head. The computer instantly fell apart, whereas Roseanne delivered one punch after another at her opponent.
“You greedy bastard! That’s for ruining my afternoon! And the evening too! I wish I had never come down to that bloody kitchen and met you!”
Tae-jun attempted to defend himself from the rain of fury, but he only managed to mutter, “My bitcoins”. Roseanne snatched the envelope with the trip money out of his hoodie. She would have continued the fatal beating if the helicopter hadn’t rollbarreled.
Tae-jun completely lost consciousness at this point. The force of gravity pulled his body out of the cockpit into the dark abyss…
***
“The AirTag is gone!” Nika remarked, following the laptop location from her phone. The group was on Washington Street, tending to their fair share of wounds.
“What do you mean it’s gone?” Natasha looks at the screen. “So where’s Roseanne?”
“The device was moving extremely fast over the Southern Pier, and then it just disappeared.”
“Show me where.” Mr Orville stepped forward.
Nika pointed to the exact location with her index finger.
“We’re going. It’s not far from here,” the teacher said.
***
“Shit! What to do now?”
Half-supporting herself against the windshield, Roseanne got a hold of the control stick. She tried to steady it, but it was a fool’s errand since the girl had no idea how to level the machine to the horizontal position. If she continued to grapple with the stick, death would be the certain outcome.
Instead, in an act of desperation, she jumped to the backseats, hoping to find something useful, something that would save her, but there were only a couple of bags fastened to the seats with belts, and a large surfboard hung on the cabin’s ceiling.
“Do something. There’s no time to think!” she told herself. Her body sensed there were only seconds away from the inevitable crash.
Unaware of the mayhem coming from above, the evening tourists were chilling in bars across the Southern Pier. All of a sudden, their rest was disturbed by the clanking noise of the Huey helicopter hitting the surface of the sea.
Everybody ran to the edge of the pier to have a better look, but the aircraft quickly disappeared into the Baltic depths. There wasn’t even an explosion. It just sank like a rock.
***
Mr Orville and the other students got to the Southern Pier just in time to notice the American helicopter shooting down from the sky. There wasn’t any light to illuminate the black surface of the sea after the crash. Only the moon allowed them to see anything.
“Roseanne!” the teacher began screaming.
“Rosie, where are you!” Natasha cried after him.
“Come on up now! This cannot end like The Poseidon Adventure!” Thally screamed.
“Oh god. She drowned!” Milena went into panic, but Nika hugged her.
They were calling and calling, but there was no movement in the sea. Not even a single bubble that would indicate somebody was below the surface. Eventually, the gathered tourists started looking at the group as if they were a bunch of lunatics. Nobody even bothered to call the emergency services.
Of all people on the pier, it was Milena who finally noticed a movement on the far left, next to the Black Pearl knockoff ship. The movement in distance produced one bubble, then a second one followed, and a third one after that. “Over there!” she yelled.
Roseanne emerged on the surface, lying on the surfboard she got a hold of in the helicopter. She jumped out with it moments before the crash.
“I’m coming to get you, Roseanne. Hold on!” Mr Orville jumped into the water and reached her.
“I’m fine, sir. The surfboard is keeping me afloat,” Roseanne explained.
“Well, it’s a great solution because I don’t know how to swim at all,” the teacher wriggled in the water.
“Then why did you jump in the first place?”
The two of them were resting on the board when Natasha jumped as well. “Come on, let me tow you to the shore.” The friend offered.
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