Darren forced his aching eyes open, and leaning his head heavily on the acrylic tripple  glazed port-hole.  “Frankfurt airport”, he mused.  His tired eyes closed as he drifted into semi-unconciousness.  As the powerful jet engines revved, ready for the drag down the runway, Darren compulsively jerked his head up.  “Right.  Well, that's that out of the way...  ...goodbye Deutschland”.  As the 747's back wheels left the German runway, Darren's tense face relaxed.  The grim, somewhat lopsided and barely noticable grin dissapeared, and his set jaw relaxed.  Shutting his eyes, Darren ignored the sick feeling in his stomach.  The relationship between the aeroplane and himself had always been somewhat strained, and he always dreaded the take-off.  In contrast however, Darren always enjoyed landing.  When your stomach is for such a short time no longer subject to the law of gravity.  

From the back pocket of his worn (post production wear), and respectably baggy jeans, Darren would pull out a Sudoku puzzle that he'd ripped out of the back page of a newspaper, and settle down.  Loathing any difficuilty level lower, or less hardcore than “devillish”, “diabolical” or “feindish”, Darren would traditionally cut these out in under 10 minutes.  The bic pen that he always kept in the pocket of his checkered shirt was, apart from computers was the single link between his thoughts and paper.  Darren's checkered shirt also deserves a description.  He'd had it since he was about 17 years old, and it had served him well.  When he wasn't wearing it, it was either because it was in the wash, or it wasn't quite suited to the situation.  It was a black and “off-white” checkered shirt, buttons all the way up to the collar, which itself had lost all of it's “starchiness”.  Made of soft fabric,  the white squares were more brown than anything else, from sheer use and age.  As always, his sleeves were loosely and roughly rolled up to his elbows.  His two brothers, and his Mum whenever she was around were always having a go at him and his shirt.  “It's so old”, or “put it in the wash – it stinks”.  Granted, Darren only very rarely washed his most prized piece of clothing.

While the majority of the rest of the passengers frantically sucked “aeroplane lollies” and made ready the “sick bags”, Darren was deep in concentration.  All of a sudden, Darren pulled spat the pen out from between his front teeth, aptly caught it with his left hand.  He quickly slammed the back of the pen into his chest, and tossed the pen into his right hand.  “Gotcha”.  Darren started rapidly filling in the few empty squares of his sudoku puzzle.  As the number of empty squares was diminished, Darren got faster.  Suddenly, with only two squares to go, Darren looked in dumbfounded amazement.  He brought his teeth together into the shape necessary to say “d”.  But nothing came out; only a long sigh of exasperation.  “Wrecked” Darren scrawled in his messy handwriting above the puzzle.  “Drat”, he thought.

Just then the plane touched down.  “Another beautiful landing”, mused Darren, wishing he could have an opportunity to fly a plane like this.  Screwing up the scrap of newspaper and stuffing it into the back of the chair in front of him, Darren slid the bic backwards between his front teeth, pushing the “button-thingy” in, and stuck his pen in his pocket.  He patted his side, just under his left arm, gave a serious grin, assuming a meditatory attitude.  Yes, his gun was there.  His trusted .15 pistol.