by Stan Hayes
“You loved that, didn’t you, honey, when I laid that on ol’ Burke? Set that little Princeton pissant back on his heels for a change.”
“Yeah, I did. Tell you something else I’d love.”
“What?”
“Would you say it with a mouthful of daiquiri… and dick?”
Taking the fast-rising member in both hands, she moved to reverse her position on the bed. “Would you hand me one of those daiquiris, sweetie? Oh, by the way...”
“Hm?”
“Pay attention to the courtesan clit, diplomat. You can say what you want!”
They slept late, giving Jack’s roommate Roy Green, who had to relieve the Station’s off-going Officer of the Day at 0645, an open shot at the bathroom. He had made the customary large pot of coffee, and Lulu and Jack sat on the living room’s tired rattan sofa with cups that Jack had recently refilled. “So,” Lulu asked him, “are you guys going to give speeches tonight, or what?”
“Hell, no. Guess one or another of the brass’ll ask us for a few words after they have their say. I’ll be happy to oblige in that case, if I’m drunk enough.”
“Well, going by what the guys at the bar said last night, y’all are lucky to have gotten back. Those pictures in the San Juan Star were really something; those big ol’ tanks on the ends of the wing just flat blown off? The paper said each one was as heavy as a Volkswagen!”
“Hm. 600 gallons at 6 pounds a gallon; that’s more like two Volkswagens.”
“Must’ve scared the shit out of you, flying so low in that god-awful wind.”
“Bet your young ass it did. Damn thing had no eye.”
“No eye? I thought they all had that nice big eye in the middle.”
A short, sardonic laugh opened Jack’s lips for an instant. “That’s what we all thought, baby. But we wuz wrong.”
“So y’all had no idea what you were flying into, just business as usual?
“Right. Commander Frick, the Executive Officer, was subbing for the Skipper as Plane Commander on this flight. I was listed as Third Pilot, and was first in the rotation for the left seat, but he preempted me and made the takeoff. Pretty much a normal takeoff, if you can call any takeoff in a full-tanks Connie normal. You’re always concerned about losing an engine on takeoff with full tanks, because at that weight three-engine climb performance’s more of a dream than a reality. Anyway, we didn’t lose an engine and everything else looked normal, so he leveled off at 1000 feet, OK’d CIC to fire the radar, and we were off on what looked like a normal storm recon flight. By the time we took off, hurricane Flora was just a little over an hour away, and by the time we reached her we were still a bit heavy to go in. I relieved Commander Frick, and he went back to CIC for a look at the storm on one of their big scopes; it looked sufficiently hairy that he had us head south for a few miles and orbit there until we’d burned some more fuel out of the tip tanks before going in. He surprised me by relieving me in the left seat after a little more than half an hour, ordering the crew to fasten seatbelts and check our Mae Wests. Then he called CIC and asked for a heading into the storm.”
Lulu frowned. “Was that enough time to burn much of the fuel in the tip tanks?”
“No. Not even 25%. That’s what surprised me, but I figured that what Commander Frick’d seen on the scope satisfied him that radar vectoring could get us into the eye without any unusual stress on the wing. Wrong again, as we were soon to find out.”
“So you were out of the cockpit when the plane headed into the storm?”
“Yeah. Ray Browning, the Second Pilot, stayed in the right seat, and I strapped myself into one of the four airliner-type seats just aft of the bunks.”
“Hey! Y’all have bunks in there?”
“Yeah; two on each side. Our flights generally go 14-15 hours. Little naps help a lot.”
“Be a great way to join the mile-high club,” she said with a contemplative smile.
“Oh. You’re not a member?”
“No, goddammit, and neither are you. Are you?”
“Just kiddin’, baby,” Jack said, grinning. “I’ve been savin’ it for you. Here to god-knows-where on a night flight in a Pan Am Clipper.”
“Anyway, you’re strapped in your seat and y’all are heading into the storm.”
“Right. Just a minute or two past 1230 when we hit the wall cloud. Felt like a million firehoses. I felt it when Commander Frick called for METO power; man, those engines were growling. Browning told me later that it was all they could do to hold the aircraft somewhere near straight and level. They managed to do it until we reached the area where the radar indicated the eye was, but it just wasn’t there. What was there was more wind, coming from different directions at the same time, and turbulence. We were getting bounced around like a cat’s toy, and it didn’t take Frick long to decide that we needed to get out of there. CIC gave him a heading out to the southeast, and we got the ride of our lives, pulling G’s that only a fighter pilot ought to be dealing with. Several people’s seatbelts gave way, and they were all over the aircraft, first on the overhead, then on the deck. Ray looked over at Frick, and he told me later that he just didn’t like what he saw, that he seemed to be falling behind the aircraft. Ray told him, ‘I’ve got it.’
It was just about then that I looked out the window and saw the port tip tank starting to tear loose. I got out of my seat and staggered up to the flight deck to tell them, and as we looked out the port side cockpit window it was gone. It didn’t take much more than a minute for it to be torn away from the aircraft. When it went, both pilots had all they could do to get the starboard wing up. There wasn’t a damn thing I could do to help them; I had to hang on to anything I could find to keep from getting bounced around the flight deck, so I made my way back to my seat as quickly as I could and strapped in again.”
“That had to be a helpless feeling.”
“Damn right it was! We were going in, I was certain, and there wasn’t a thing that I could do about it, except to stay out of the way and try not to get hit by any of the shit that was flying around the cabin. Not long after I was back in my seat, we took the hardest hit yet, and shortly after that the starboard tip tank tore off, taking a piece of the wing with it. That at least got us level, giving Ray the opportunity to get out a MAYDAY transmission on guard channel. The Coast Guard launched an Albatross amphibian to provide assistance, and they got to us in a little over an hour, during which time Commander Frick took up a heading due west to get us out of the heavy weather area as quickly as possible.
We still had four engines, but they were laboring to keep us above the wave tops. When things settled down a little, Frick sent word to me to come up and relieve Ray while he went back aft to check on the injured crew members, of which there were several. Meanwhile, I had to figure out how to fly this chopped and channeled bird and get us back home. We stayed under 500 feet, avoiding the worst of the weather, and there turned out to be exactly one speed where I could hold altitude: 170 knots.”
“Y’all are lucky nobody got killed! How bad were the injuries?”
“Not as bad as they could’ve been; two or three broken bones and a mild concussion. We still had to get the poor old bird, and ourselves, on the ground in one piece. Commander Frick replaced me in the left seat, Ray returned to the right seat, and I got in the jump seat to help with the landing checklist. We requested a GCA- ground controlled approach- so the controller could monitor our glide slope. Since the hydraulic system had taken damage, we went in with the flaps up. And unbelievably, the landing gear dropped into place just as though nothing had happened.”
Lulu exhaled as though she’d been holding their breath the entire time Jack had spoken. “Phew! And so ends another run-of-the-mill day at work for the Hurricane Hunters. Think that plane’ll ever fly again?”
“I wouldn’t bet on it, sweetie,” he said as he got to his feet and extended a hand to her. “Brunch at the Bundy Bar?”
Lulu stretched, hands above her head. “First, c
ome back to bed and still my palpitatin’ heart, Smilin’ Jack.”
27 TIME & PLACE
“Jack.”
“Jack.”
“JACK!”
Rolling onto his stomach, Jack groped beside the bed for one of his ankle-high “boondocker” flight shoes. He swung it in a sort of hook-shot, over his head and behind him, at the offending voice. It returned in a split-second, striking the left cheek of his ass as though inhabited by a foot.
“Ow!” Jack scrambled to his feet, shoe in hand, and saw Nick sitting on the foot of the bed. Exhaling, he sat down beside him. “Oh. What?”
“Sorry to roust you on Sunday morning, bub, but time is the essence of this wake-up call. I waited until Lulu was in the shower.”
“ ’S OK. Anyone who doesn’t say “time is of the essence” gets my immediate attention. What’s up?”
“Linda and Pete’ve been shanghaied to fly a pickup out of Dallas next month. It’s gonna be hairy, and they’ll definitely need your help back at home base. Bisque, that is. Put in for a couple weeks’ leave, beginning on Sunday the 17th. If for any reason you run into a problem with those dates, let me know and I’ll change whomever’s mind needs changing. You flying tomorrow?”
“Nope.”
“Drive over to Luquillo for lunch. Park at the beach. I’ll give you the details then, but get that leave request in first thing in the morning.” Looking over Jack’s shoulder, he said, “Here comes Lulu; looks like she wants you to dry her off. See you tomorrow, Studley.”
Jack pulled out of the parking lot just past 11:30, not because he expected any sort of crowd at the beach in late October. Native Puerto Ricans observe the seasons of the higher latitudes, a quirk Jack guessed might be due to the native Europeaness of Catholicism, which had a supernatural stranglehold on the majority of them. Stopping at the first lechón asado wagon on the right side of the highway, he bought a pound of roast pork, cut while he waited from the loin of the spitted hog inside the wagon’s glass windows. That, plus two cylindrical rolls of fresh-baked bread and three frosty India beers drawn from the corrugated steel tub that sat beside the wagon, went into a Kraft-paper bag that Jack sat carefully down in the Cunningham’s passenger-side foot well. Extracting one of the Indias from the bag, he opened it with the small “church key” on his key chain and took a first sip before climbing back under the wheel. Thus fortified, he settled down for the remainder of the thirty-mile run to Playa de Luquillo.
Pulling into the broad, well-kept public beach’s almost-deserted parking lot, Jack parked the car in a front-ranked spot that offered a nice view of the beach. He’d just pulled the lunch bag out of its footwell niche when Nick appeared, his Bermuda shorts complemented by an off-white guayabera that looked like raw silk. Jack pried open an India and handed it to him. “Thanks,” he said. “Go ahead and make a sandwich while I bring you up to speed.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” Jack said, a note of grimness in his voice. “After what you told me yesterday, I didn’t get to sleep until sometime after three this morning, and woke up too late to get breakfast. But I did get the leave request in.” Splitting a roll with his Case knife as he spoke, he squeezed mustard from four small foil packages on the bread, then piled on a generous half of the aromatic sliced pork. Taking an immediate large bite, he turned slightly to look more directly at Nick. “So what manner of derring-do’s been foisted on our pals this time? Up to now, seems like they’ve been pretty ready to volunteer.” Taking a second large chunk out of his sandwich, Jack looked speculatively at Nick, whose grave expression belied his tourist togs.
“Couple of classic adrenaline junkies,” Nick agreed. “This time, though, it’s different. They’re being pulled into the crime of the millennium, something heretofore unheard of and deservedly infamous. It’s still studied by scholars in my time, though any residual mystery about it’s long been put to rest. I’ll give you some background while you finish your sandwich. To begin with, let’s touch on Howard Hughes for a minute. You know a thing or two about him, don’t you?”
Jack laughed. “You kidding? I, the movie maven? Rich beyond belief, connoisseur of women, creator of Jane Russell’s cantilever bra for The Outlaw, producer of Wings, aviator extraordinaire and the mastermind behind the bird I fly? Yeah, a little.”
“Well, the reason I asked you corresponds to your first descriptive term, i.e. ‘Rich beyond belief.’ You’ve had occasion to experience the difference between the lives of people of limited means and those of people with a few million in the bank, like you. I daresay that you wouldn’t like to revert to your pre-inheritance status.”
“Who the hell would?” asked Jack, chewing.
“No one in his right mind, unless there were some mighty unusual circumstances involved. So imagine people like Howard Hughes, not just multi-millionaires but multi-billionaires, might feel about just losing a fraction of their net worth.”
Just before pushing the last bite of his sandwich into his mouth, Jack shook his head. “They’d be pissed, even at the thought.”
“They would indeed,” Nick agreed, “and that’s not the half of it. Now, do you know anything about the basis for Howard Hughes’s fortune?”
“Sump’m about oil drilling, wasn’t it?”
“A very important ‘something.’ A two-cone rotary drill bit that penetrates rock with ten times the speed of any former bit. It revolutionized oil well drilling. The patents for that bit, and the royalties and license fees Hughes Tool Company received from virtually every company in the oil drilling business for the last 50 years or so, are the golden egg-laying goose. But even after they paid their royalties and license fees, lots of people made lots of money drilling for, and refining, crude oil, a lot of them in Texas. You’ve run across some of their names- Byrd, Hunt, Richardson- they, and others like them, virtually made the state of Texas as it is today. And one of the main reasons they were able to do it was by getting a federal law passed in 1926, establishing something called the oil depletion allowance. I’ll spare you the details; what it amounted to was letting oil companies deduct 27.5% of their profits from the sale of crude oil, on the theory that the companies had invested heavily in a commodity that would, at one time or another, disappear.”
“Makes sense,” Jack allowed, “if the numbers back it up.”
“Exactly. But by the time Kennedy was elected, the prevailing opinion, in Democratic party circles at least, was that the numbers didn’t back it up, and never had. They’d been trying to wipe it out since Roosevelt’s day, with no success. Texas Congressman Sam Rayburn, as Speaker of the House, never let any aspirant who wouldn’t swear to support the depletion allowance join the Ways and Means Committee. A simple but effective means of keeping the lid on; if a bill can’t get out of committee onto the House floor for a vote, it won’t become law. But Kennedy, with a two to one membership advantage in the House, has a good chance of making it happen, and it’s one of his major objectives. But it’s not just that he’s earned the enmity of Texas oilmen; there are two other major factions in American society who don’t want him in the White House.”
“And they are...” Jack interposed.
“Organized crime and defense contractors. Both with the money to make things happen. JFK’s turned his brother loose on Marcello, Giancana, Hoffa and numerous smaller fry, this after Giancana assured his election by swinging sufficient votes in Chicago to guarantee him victory in Illinois. He also intends to pull all US troops out of Vietnam, which will put a major crimp in the revenues, and in some cases endanger the existence of, defense contractors who’re counting on billions of government dollars from years of fighting out there. So where would you imagine that these groups want to see JFK?”
“Out of office, naturally.”
“But can you imagine them waiting until ’64, and counting on the electorate to vote their way, after losing in 1960? These people aren’t crap shooters, buddy; they want him out, really out, and now.”
“Uh-oh. Nick, you’r
e not suggesting...”
“Nope. I’m telling you. JFK’ll draw his last breath next month.”
Looking at Nick in disbelief, Jack said, “You’re telling me that these people you’re talking about are going to have him killed?”
“Bingo.”
“In Dallas.”
“Doctor IQ awards 14 silver dollars and a box of Mars Bars to the young man in the balcony! You were listening yesterday.”
Jack’s face darkened. “Don’t play with me, Nick. This is serious shit we’re talking about, even if Linda and Pete weren’t involved in it. You’re telling me that the President of the United States is going to be assassinated, and nothing can be done about it?”
Nick’s ironic smile faded. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you, Jackie. Absolutely nothing. That’s the reality that’ll first be hinted at early in the 21st century, arising out of work done in Geneva on a massive particle accelerator called the Large Hadron Collider. When the universe got started, things went from zero to infinity pretty damn quickly, including all of human experience. Inhuman, too, for that matter. Everything’s in the spacetime envelope; said another way, buddy, life’s a cosmic surfboard. Some call it determinism. Our fate’s not up to us. It just is.”
Jack pondered Nick’s words for several seconds. “Then why the hell are you telling me that we have to help Linda and Pete, if everything’s just gonna happen?”
“Because it’s part of what’s gonna happen. Try to get comfortable with that thought. Just think how much more enjoyable life’ll be without having to allocate brain cycles to that nonexistent entity, ‘free will.’”