Mote in Andrea's Eye

by Wilson, David

  “Sierra Papa One, this is Norfolk Naval Air Station, do you copy, over?”

  He stared at the radio in disbelief. Why would the air station be calling him? Where was Andrea, and how in hell did they know his call sign?

  The call was repeated, and this time he picked up his microphone, keyed it with his thumb, and replied. “This is Sierra Papa One, en route to North Carolina. Read you five by five, over.”

  There was a momentary silence, and then another voice came on line, masculine, and tinged with—what, anger? “Sierra Papa One, this is Norfolk Naval Air Station Tower. Request you abandon course. Re route to our position and remain on frequency. We will talk you in.”

  Phil stared at the radio. He glanced at his fuel gauge. He had plenty to make Norfolk, but he had the image of Andrea’s face clearly planted in his mind, and it was the force that kept him alert and moving. He was so weary he didn’t think he could fly an extra mile.

  “Norfolk Naval Air Station, this is Sierra Papa One, not sure I can comply, over. I’m—ill—very weak. I have enough fuel, but request permission to continue on course to North Carolina. I need to set this bird down, over.”

  “Sierra Papa One,” the radio crackled back, “that is negative. There is nowhere to land on your current course. Weather is too violent. Your people contacted us and advised us you needed to be brought in. Repeat, re route to Norfolk.”

  Phil shrugged, though there was no one to see the gesture. If he had to make it to Norfolk to see Andrea, at least the fact that she’d contacted Norfolk meant they were probably okay.

  “Roger, Norfolk,” he repeated. “Send me the coordinates, and I will comply. Repeat, I will comply.”

  “Roger, Sierra Papa One, we’ll be waiting for you. You might want to hurry—there’s one hell of a storm riding your tail. Norfolk Naval Air Station, out.”

  Phil chuckled. If they only knew. He blinked into the bright sun one last time and banked to his right. He skimmed far above clouds and coast alike. It would take about twenty minutes to reach Norfolk Naval, and he’d made that approach so many times before that he could do it in his sleep. He thought that was a very good thing, because he had an idea if he didn’t hurry, that was exactly what he’d be doing.

  As he soared over the Great Dismal Swamp, Phil dipped through the clouds and banked in over Virginia. His suddenly dimmed eyes did not immediately notice anything different, but the bright lights of Hampton Roads stretched out beneath him like a glowing carpet, too blurred to be anything but some sort of fever.

  ~ * ~

  The shifts should have changed over, but not all personnel were available, and when the late afternoon sun started to dip beyond the horizon, dripping lavender and gold onto the waves, Lieutenant Mariner still stood watch at the big plate glass window of the tower. The flights had slowed some. Most of those that were trying to get out ahead of the storm had already pulled out. They had two squadrons fueling and in final maintenance checks. These would be the last before they began the meticulous evacuation of the base, locking things down as tightly as possible, getting final computer system backup tapes into lock boxes and dragging them to waiting trucks. It was going to be a very long night for a great many people, but Lieutenant Mariner wasn’t thinking about any of it.

  About a mile out he could make out the lights of the approaching plane. The pilot, Wicks was his name—he’d learned that over the course of the past few hours—was all but asleep at the wheel. They had controllers taking turns chattering in the man’s ear, keeping the radio live so that he wouldn’t just pass out and drop out of the sky on them, and it was nerve-wracking.

  They had cleared off one runway, and the few inbound and outbound flights that were scheduled adjacent to that runway had been put on hold. All of the emergency equipment they had the manpower to put on the field had been activated and was standing by, just in case. This could be extremely ugly, he knew, but he was hoping this pilot would surprise him and hold it together.

  Lieutenant Mariner had great respect for anyone who could still get a plane like the one incoming up in the air, and he figured that should count for something. The guy was no amateur, but something was wrong. Something was very wrong indeed. The voice of the man they’d been communicating with had changed slowly over the course of the conversation. It was probably just that the man was sick, but if Mariner had been asked and not given time to think about it, he’d have to have said it sounded as if they were talking to an old man.

  “Lieutenant?”

  He turned and saw that it was Petty Officer Hill. Her shift was also over, but she’d chosen to stay with them to the last. The Navy was providing a truck to get them out, and her belongings had been packed that morning. It was an advantage to living in the barracks—you could travel light. She held a small sheaf of papers in her hands.

  “What is it?” he asked her, turning reluctantly from the window.

  “We just got this in,” she replied. Her voice had a tentative quality, as if she wasn’t sure she should even speak the words. He held out his hand impatiently and took the papers.

  “It seems, sir,” she said, “that the last time there was a flight plan filed for this aircraft was thirty years ago. It was on a flight near Bermuda, dropping silver iodide crystals into a hurricane.”

  Lieutenant Mariner glanced up at her sharply, and she finished in a flurry of words.

  “The plane never returned, sir. It’s been missing ever since. The pilot, Phillip Wicks, retired Navy, would be eighty-four years old.”

  He stared at her. His hands gripped the papers so tightly that they crumbled, but he paid no attention to them. He whirled to the window and called out. “Get this damned plane down, and do it now. I’ve had enough of this. We have an evacuation to complete, and this . . .” He shook the papers in the air, then tossed them over his shoulder and stalked to the window.

  No one spoke, but the radio squawked, and Phil Wicks’ voice crackled weakly over the speaker.

  “This is Sierra Papa One on final approach. Landing gear is down. Coming in low. The wind is starting to pick up and I’ll be damned if I can make out the numbers on the runway from higher up. I . . .”

  Silence followed, and they all stared out the large window into the gathering gloom. The lights on the wings of Phil’s plane glimmered. They watched, horrified, as the wings dipped, first one way, then the other. The aircraft settled, and just at the last moment, it leveled out. The wheels touched, bounced roughly, touched again and held. The plane barreled down the runway, and then it began to slow. The left wing dipped and the craft skidded, shifting onto one side and coming down hard on the opposite wing, but it was nearly stopped, and a few moments later it halted with bright flashing lights and sirens all around. The wind had picked up, but the skies were still clear.

  Lieutenant Mariner stared out at the plane for a moment longer, then shook his head as if clearing it of unwanted thoughts, or a tangle of cobwebs. He turned to his right and issued orders rapidly, working to clear that plane off his runway and get standard traffic patterns rolling. They didn’t have a lot of time left to get this place cleared, and he’d spent all the time he could spare plus quite a bit extra on this oddball plane and whatever sort of game or hoax it entailed.

  ~ * ~

  Phil grew more and more confused as he neared the ground. The voices of those he’d been speaking with were cheerful and full of confidence, but he knew what they were doing. They were trying to talk him down with a minimum of damage to their airfield, their schedule, and himself—in that order. The storm couldn’t be more than a couple of days behind him, unless it hit down south and worked its way north, and they must have plenty to keep them busy without talking in a civilian craft with a sick pilot.

  There was no time left to think, or worry over it. He held the controls so tightly in his hands that he was afraid his fingers would snap. Despite this, he barely had the strength to keep the craft level, or the wits to keep the nose up and to work the flaps. He knew he wa
s still moving too fast when he bounced the first time, and when he dropped again, he reached for the throttle and backed it off more quickly than he should have. He wanted to get the speed down quickly, forget the rules. He didn’t know if he could keep the damned thing on the runway, slow or fast, but if he could reduce the speed enough he might minimize the damage to himself and the plane. He didn’t know what was wrong with him, but he knew that if he didn’t concentrate, he’d never find out.

  And that wasn’t all he would lose. He wanted to see Andrea. He wanted to know what happened to Dan Satalino, Vance Richards, and Mike Pooler in the other seed planes, and the pilots of the cargo planes. He wanted to know what happened with the storm, if they’d stopped it, angered it, whatever. What he knew was that it couldn’t end in the plane, bouncing down the runway and out of control because he was too feeble to bring it to a stop.

  As the engines throttled back, groaning, he stomped the brakes. The plane lurched, and with his one hand on the throttle, the other could not maintain control. The plane slipped to the side, skidded, and then slowed. He saw the lights of the tower pass in front of him as the plane spun to the side, felt the controls yanked from his hand and the whole world shift to the right, and then, blessedly, he sank into darkness, and it was no longer his concern. His last vision was of flashing lights, and he thought he heard a loud, distant siren, lulling him to sleep.

  ~ * ~

  The emergency vehicles surrounded the plane quickly. Fire equipment was ready, their foam nozzles aimed at the old aircraft. A man in a protective suit approached slowly. The engines had stalled, and one of the wings had dug itself into the edge of the runway, not causing a lot of damage to the tarmac, but cutting into the grass alongside. The lights still flashed, but on close examination, the hull of the aircraft was pocked and corroded. It looked like it should have been in a junk heap somewhere, not flying seventeen thousand feet above the ocean, and the closer the man got, the slower he walked.

  “Be careful in there,” a voice squawked unnecessarily through his headset. Petty Officer Bob Barnett didn’t have to be told twice. Not this time. The closer he got to the old aircraft, the less he wanted to climb up on that wing and open the cockpit.

  In the background, Barnett heard more sirens. The ambulance was approaching, and this got him moving again. Whatever the condition of the plane, it had been up there, and now it was here, and it was his job to get it open, check on the pilot, and get him out of there. Any further questions or concerns would have to wait. He heard boots scrape on tarmac behind him and knew that Bill Purvis was moving in behind, backing him up.

  Barnett clambered up on the wing of the old plane, fighting for a moment to keep his balance. It was tilted toward the far side at a good angle. He took the three steps up the wing quickly and went to work on the catches that would allow him to flip up the glass and get to the man inside. There was no movement, and there was no way to tell from out where he stood just how badly injured the pilot might be.

  He worked for a few moments, and just as Purvis stepped closer, as if he was going to hop up on the wing and help, the last catch sprang free, and he lifted the window up and away. Barnett stumbled back in surprise, nearly tumbling off the wing.

  “What is it?” Purvis called up. “What’s wrong?”

  When Barnett didn’t answer, Bill Purvis clambered up past him and looked into the pilot’s seat.

  Behind the controls, his head lolling to the side and his eyes closed, whether dead or passed out, Purvis couldn’t tell, was an old man. The pilot had a shock of white hair and looked to be in his late seventies, or even older. He was slumped in the seat. On the other seat was an antique Thermos of some sort. The upholstery of the seats was ragged, like you’d see in a very old car, or a theater seat in a movie house past its prime. The control panels had paint chipped off of them, more of it flaking away as Purvis watched. The man’s flight suit might have come out of a closet where they forgot to include mothballs.

  Then the man let out a snort, a very loud snoring sound, and Purvis turned to Barnett.

  “Christ,” he said. “The old bastard scared me half to death.”

  Behind them the ambulance pulled up, and without another word the two reached in and un-strapped Phil from his seat. They gripped him under his arms and lifted, and he woke then, startled and very groggy. A moment later they were able to help him out of the plane and onto the wing.

  As he stepped down, the ambulance attendants took charge of him, and the rest of the crew began righting the plane and hooking it up for tow.

  They didn’t say much—but there would be plenty said later. As they started away, it rocked and nearly teetered again. One of the tires on the right side went flat. The rubber flapped as the wheel turned, and tore away as they dragged it free of the flight path. The tire had rotted off, and they scurried about picking up the debris.

  Standing at his window and overlooking the mess, Lieutenant Mariner could not begin to guess what he’d just witnessed. He saw the ambulance roar off into the distance, and considered, just for a moment, trying to reach their dispatch on the phone and find out what the hell they’d learned. The moment passed as the radios came to life. He had two squadrons to get into the air, and personnel to get the hell out of Dodge.

  Phil’s plane was towed off the main part of the runway and tied down on the main airfield. There was no place for it currently in the hangars, and there had been no orders on how to handle it, so they did the simplest and least intrusive thing they could do. They parked it, secured it against the storm, and ignored it.

  ~ * ~

  In a car, rushing up Highway 17 from the complex, Keith Scharf’s mind raced. He wanted to be at the complex, monitoring the calls coming in from Andrea and the other crews, but there had been no one else he could send on this trip. No one with the connections or authority that might get him in and out of the Naval Base with the proper answers, and no one who could have answered the questions he was sure he was about to face in any way that would be taken seriously. Keith intended to get in, get Phil, and lie as thoroughly as he needed to to make it happen. He intended to call in every remaining favor he had in Washington. Whatever it took.

  If Phil Wicks was sitting somewhere in Norfolk, Virginia, thirty years after his plane disappeared over Bermuda, confused and trying to get back to Andrea, well, Keith was going to make sure he made it.

  He only hoped that Phil was okay, that he’d be on time, that Andrea would return safely, and that he could make it all happen before that damned storm made it all a ridiculous waste of time. He needed a miracle, and as he roared out the end of the swamp road and rolled up the entrance ramp onto Interstate 64, he gave a silent prayer to whatever god rules hurricanes that just this once, it wasn’t too much to ask.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Phil was aware when they lifted him from the aircraft, but only peripherally. He couldn’t seem to focus. He was very tired, and, he suddenly realized he was hungry as hell. They were fairly gentle with him, and he did his best to help them when he was on the ground, sort of tottering along between two of the ambulance attendants toward the strangest medical vehicle he had ever seen, but he knew he was likely hindering as much as aiding their progress.

  It didn’t help that everything looked wrong. The tower was a sleek, glass-fronted building with gleaming walls. The emergency vehicles and equipment were unfamiliar to him. The ambulance itself looked like something Captain Kirk might have driven out of his shuttle bay.

  He tried to make sense of it all. He listened to the voices of those around him. He answered the questions they asked him. His name. What day it was, and several more. Phil was mildly irritated when they repeated several of these, and snapped his answers when he was forced to repeat himself. He understood the worry over concussion or dementia of some sort, but he knew perfectly well what the date was, and he hadn’t yet forgotten his name.

  They half led, half carried him to a gurney that had been rolled out of the space-age
looking ambulance, and despite his mild protests, they had him laid back on the soft, padded surface and strapped into place in moments. The efficiency of it made him slightly dizzy, and the feeling of disorientation deepened the murk surrounding his thoughts.

  He tried to ask about the storm, and about Andrea, but they shushed him gently and closed the doors behind him. A young attendant sat in back with him, her hand resting on his arm.

  The vehicle was moving in what seemed only seconds, and the siren’s wail prevented Phil from trying again to voice his questions and concerns. He laid back, smiled weakly at the girl beside him, and closed his eyes. If he couldn’t talk, then he would sleep. Surely they’d answer his questions when he woke up—and God he hoped they’d have food.

  ~ * ~

  Keith wasted fifteen minutes he didn’t have with the guards at the gate, only to learn that Phil had already been moved. It took a call straight to the commander of the base to get him past the front desk of the Sewell’s Point Medical Clinic.

  The clinic was just outside the fence surrounding the Naval Station itself, and it was to here, according to the last call he’d gotten through, that Phil Wicks—if it was, in fact, Phil Wicks who had landed that plane (Keith knew it must be, but it was easier for his already over-worked mind to keep the impossible stuff buried as deeply as possible until it was absolutely necessary to deal with it)—had been brought. He fumed as the hospital corpsman at the check-in desk made the calls, watched the young man’s face shift and the color drain.

  “This way,” he said quickly, after placing the receiver back on its hook. “We have him mildly sedated. At his age, he shouldn’t have been flying anything but Delta, you know?”

  Keith didn’t say anything. He was thinking about the last time he’d seen Phil Wicks, the day they’d sent the pilot and the others out to do battle with a hurricane. All of the other pilots had made it back. They’d lost no one else in the storm, which was a miracle, but the search for Phil or evidence of his aircraft had been long, painful, and futile. Nothing had ever turned up.