Operation Southern Cross - 02
Page 25
Inside of twenty minutes though, he was showering at the visiting pilots’ billet, ready to step into a new set of casual officer threads—dark green slacks and a white shirt. He dressed without underwear and socks, borrowing a pair of fresh pilot boots. He was also able to borrow $100 from the VPB’s bar fund.
By the time he was clean and clothed, his two-faced watch had ticked down to less than an hour. It was now 6 P.M. E.S.T. He had to meet his wife at seven. And Atlanta was more than 200 miles away.
But Autry had been in Army Air for twenty-five years, a lot of it spent right here at Hunter Airfield, and he had a lot of friends here. Plus, he was a colonel in the famous Nightstalkers, and that carried a little weight. He rushed over to the small TF-160 training squadron that was based here and spoke to the CO. Inside a minute he’d made arrangements to accompany two of the Green Squadron’s newest pilots on a training mission, which just happened to include a flight up to Atlanta.
Ten minutes later, Autry was strapped into the back of an elderly UH-1 Huey copter—with two rookies doing the flying. The top speed of the Huey was supposed to be about 130 knots, but at times Autry glanced down at Route 16, the major highway going to Atlanta, and he swore that the cars were moving faster than he was.
They finally reached their destination, though: Atlanta International Airport, or more specifically, the small Georgia Air National Guard base located in one corner of the huge airport.
It was now 6:35 P.M. He had twenty-five minutes to get to the restaurant.
He ran across the tarmac and entered one of the terminals, intent on getting out to the curb to grab a taxi. The crowd in the terminal was enormous, and all going in the opposite direction as he. It took him five precious minutes to get to the taxi area—only to find several hundred people waiting in line in front of him.
His heart plunged to his feet. He now had just twenty minutes to get to the restaurant, which wasn’t that far from the airport.
But with no taxis, what could he do?
He looked off the side of the overpass where the taxi line originated from and saw, on the roadway below, several taxis with their drivers obviously taking smoke breaks. Autry was back inside the terminal and down the escalator in a flash. He had the $100 in his hand, five crushed $20 bills. There were six cabbies in all—none of them appeared American. Five weren’t interested in interrupting their coffee break.
The sixth man agreed to drive him to the restaurant, though—ten miles, for $60.
Autry dove in the back of the cab, urging the man to hurry. The driver—his name was Saheeb—moved very slowly, however. It seemed to take him forever to say goodbye to his friends, to extinguish his cigarette, to get in the cab, to start the cab, to adjust the air-conditioning, to write the fare in his destination book and finally to put the vehicle in gear.
Once they started moving though, the guy drove like a bat out of hell. They roared down the access ramp and out into the flow of cars leaving the airport. He began weaving in and out of the traffic, moving at 70 mph while everyone else was crawling along at less than half that.
On the one hand, Autry appreciated the man’s fearlessness—on the other, he really didn’t want to have come all this way just to be killed by a crazy cabbie.
They went up another access ramp that twisted like an amusement ride toward the main exit of the airport. Autry looked at his watch. He had about eight miles to go and eight minutes to get there. With this driver, that didn’t seem to be a problem. So, for the first time since receiving his wife’s letter weeks ago, Autry actually felt confident that he would make the meeting.
That was a mistake.
Because after going over the hill, they happened upon a crowd of police cars waiting at the airport’s main exit. They had a number of cars pulled over and were searching their insides. Autry’s cab was traveling so fast, there was no way the cops could let it go by. They motioned to his driver, ordering him to pull over.
The cop came up to the window, took one look at the foreign cabbie and said, “Random security check. Could you both please step out of the car?”
AUTRY HAD NO IDEA HOW LONG THE COPS KEPT them there, at the side of the road, flashing their badges and parading around in their polished black boots.
His driver didn’t have the right ID, didn’t have a taxi license, didn’t have a green card. The cops searched the cab, not once but twice. They questioned Autry, who had even less ID on him than the cabbie, but clearly they were more interested in Saheeb.
Autry was tempted, for a few moments anyway, to tell the cops exactly what he’d been doing for the past week. How’d he’d prevented the country from being flooded with supercrack, how’d he’d help fix the country’s gazillion-dollar eavesdropping system, how he and his men had fought a war against a corrupt, immoral, ICBM-armed South American country—and won, single-handedly.
But what was the point? They wouldn’t have believed him anyway, plus all those activities, in this, his personal Hell Week, were totally classified. Even if the cops had the ambition to contact Higher Authority in Washington, they would have denied everything Autry told them.
So, he didn’t even get into it. Instead he just sat on the curb, head in hands, while the cops grilled his driver and the minutes ticked by.
Through it all, Autry never looked at his watch.
WHEN THEY WERE FINALLY LET GO—DESPITE ALL HIS infractions Saheeb’s taxi wasn’t packed with bombs—the cabbie decide it was wise to stick to the speed limit. They hit every red light between the airport and the restaurant, and every old lady out for a 20-mph drive that evening got in front of them.
They finally reached the restaurant, though, a place close to the Red Point section of town. Autry jumped from the taxi, and as promised, threw the driver the three $20 bills.
Then he looked at the place his wife had selected for their meeting. The restaurant had changed in the years since he’d been there last. What was a simple family burger joint back then had been turned into a foo-fee fern bar. Autry froze in his tracks. He was horribly underdressed; no tie, no socks, the cuts and bruises on his arms and face subtracting from any panache he might have had.
Still, he pressed on. He made his way up to the front door, past the candlelit entranceway, past the long line of people waiting for tables. Back when the restaurant was just a burger place, there was a small outdoor patio that overlooked a small lake in the rear. That patio was supposed to be their meeting place.
Autry looked over the sea of diners and was heartened to see that, yes, the patio was still out there. Of course now it was a deck with flaming Tiki torches and lots of people wearing J. Crew milling about. He barged through the dining room, taking the shortest route to the deck. He finally looked down at his watch. The minus time readout he’d consulted for the past seven days was now reading in the plus mode.
He was more than an hour late.
He burst out onto the deck. The table they’d shared on their first date had been in the far corner. Autry tried to straighten himself out—hard to do—and walked across the expanded patio, which was a sea of gin and tonics and designer beer. Every table was occupied out here—except one. The one in the corner, closest to the lake.
Their table.
And it was empty.
Autry felt all the life just go out of him. It began to rain—strange, as the night had been so clear up to this point. There was a stampede of boat shoes and flip-flops as the patrons tried to get out of the shower, but Autry stayed, just staring at the empty table.
He caught a young waiter hurrying by, a menu covering his head.
“Was anyone sitting at that table recently?”
The kid stopped and thought a moment, then said, “Yes, an older lady,” quickly adding, “but a fox…”
Autry brightened a bit.
“That’s her,” he said. “Is she still here?”
The waiter shook his head, and started to move out of the rain.
“No, sir,” he called over his shoulder
to Autry. “She left a long time ago.”
About the Author
Jack Shane lives in Boston.
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Books by Jack Shane
Sky Hunters
OPERATION SOUTHERN CROSS
X-BATTALION
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
SKY HUNTERS OPERATION SOUTHERN CROSS. Copyright © 2006 by Jack Shane. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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