by Laer Carroll
"Before you know it you're adding style, a little hip action, looking sexy."
Nicole sighed, took a tiny sip of her wine. She'd barely finished a full glass during the meal and afterward.
"Sounds like fun. I wonder if there's anything close."
"Do what you're good at. Open your tablet and do a search."
Jane could have done that but Nicole would feel better about taking action if she researched matters herself.
"Here's something that might be good. It's close by, too."
She showed Jane the web site for the ON-CALL Room. It was in a big building with two levels of dance venue. The lower had a high ceiling, was dimly lit, had flashing round disco balls, and scantily clad female dancers writhing in cages well above the floor. They advertised "cheap hard liquor that you love." Right there she despised the venue.
The second floor was more promising. It was as big as the first in square footage but had only a modest ceiling. The photos showed a well-lit dance floor, a long bar on one side, a large number of tables all around the dance floor, and people dancing in attractive wear. There was a salsa lesson just before the dance music began to play.
"Sounds like a winner. Let's hurry so we can take in the free class. That'll get you up to speed on basics, and we'll just let the guys do all the hard work."
At their hotel Jane freshened up and put on a sexy red dress which showed her slim femininity to good advantage, slipped modest-heeled red dance shoes into a bag, and made up her face carefully.
Not well enough for Nicole when the woman knocked on the adjoining hotel room door and came in.
"Girl, you've got to go for a little drama. Here, put down that brush and sit. Let a pro do you."
Jane submitted and was happy to see that she'd not have to scrub her face and redo Nicole's efforts. Nicole had emphasized her big eyes and subtly enlarged her lip line and applied a more vivid red lipstick. Otherwise she'd let Jane's naturally pretty face alone.
A taxi took them the half mile away and they entered the club. Thumping music greeted them in the foyer and they escaped it in an elevator to the second floor.
The promo photos on the web site had not lied. Jane and Nicole quickly picked out a tiny table near the dance floor and hurriedly joined the class of maybe fifty people. They'd only missed about five minutes of instruction.
This was on the very basics of salsa dance. Nicole, a quick study anyway as most Academy cadets were, was soon happily being led into a few fancy evolutions by the men in the class. After the half hour the teachers, a woman and her assistant male partner, taught a couple of fancy moves for the more advanced members of their class.
They retired to their table, ordered drinks (a soft drink for Jane), and got ready to dance.
Getting ready for Jane including introducing herself and Nicole to the dancers in the nearby tables. She'd found this was a good way to get invitations. The men were readier to ask, and the women introduced you to the men they knew.
The recorded music was good, to Jane's sensibilities at least. There also was a salsa band which swapped half-hour sessions with the DJ.
Perhaps an hour into the evening she noticed that in several tables around her there were a few other dancers from the Laughlin entourage. She waved at them but made no attempt to approach them, or they to her. She suspected her Exec's hand in the situation but didn't care to pursue the matter.
She had a good time, enjoyed the music, was asked by plenty of men to dance. She had to fend off a few attempts to get her to leave with them. However, most of the men seemed to just want to dance with someone new they could show off their moves to.
She left at midnight. Nicole stayed and had hooked up with Ricky and Kate and Klaus. She blew a kiss to Jane and turned back to her companions.
<>
The next morning Jane slept in, something she rarely did, and woke to stretch luxuriously and take a leisurely shower, then descend to the first floor for a light breakfast at the hotel's buffet.
Most of the Laughlin entourage was at the buffet ahead of her. They were all ready to leave. Kate did her Exec thing and made sure everyone was present and accounted for when they got in their transportation.
There was little talk on the two-hour ride home. There Jane retired to her room to lay out the clothing for her gig, then study the T-2C, the smallest of a popular line of bizjets which she'd be introduced to the next day. It had been modified for training military pilots. It could safely take off and land more often and had improved bird-strike protection, a greater danger for training aircraft who flew low much more often.
At 5:00 she showed up at Lorena's Cantina. There she met Julio, the slender white-haired pianist she'd be subbing for. After chatting and playing together he pronounced her a fit band member and left. Jane did notice that he showed no signs of the problems of age. The band leader had said those were his reasons for opting out of playing with the band. Maybe he just did not want to spend all the time needed for the job.
The evening went well. There was one interesting development.
Late in the evening a young Latina and an Anglo man in the audience asked for an Argentine tango. Jane said she had a good arrangement for a group of their makeup and showed it to the band leader on his vear. He approved and the band played the piece to decent applause.
At 11:00 the cantina closed. The singer and the violinist left and the guitarist, the band leader, ask Jane if she felt liking filling for the next few Sundays. She said Yes but that she only had three weeks left for her current work assignment.
"We'll be sad to miss you but even three weeks is a big help.
"On another topic. We've been getting more requests for tangos. And asked if we know some tango teachers who could teach before our Sunday show. Do you know anything about the music? The arrangement you showed me shows you know quite a lot."
She told him she was an expert on tango music and also could teach simple salon tango dancing. They agreed to talk more about the possibilities of some kind of partnership.
<>
Monday morning at 8:00 Jane presented herself to the captain commanding the logistical training group at Laughlin. They prepared pilots to fly transports, do aerial refueling, and the like.
The captain was a woman as was her First. They looked like an older soccer mom and a kindly grandmother. And they might be, for all Jane knew. But they were also smart tough military. She would not underestimate them for a second.
"At ease. Light and set, Cadet." She had a faint Texas accent.
"Thank you, Sir"
"Ma'am, if you please. I detest the use of Sir as an honorific for women, as if Ma'am wasn't good enough for a hired killer in service to her country."
"An interesting viewpoint. I find I share it and will adopt its use."
"You're interesting yourself, Cadet." The First's accent was what Jane judged from Nicole's Louisiana accent was pure "Naw Leans."
"We've been following your progress here at Laughlin. You say you want to be a fighter pilot. But you keep asking for non-fighter duty. Explain."
Jane had learned the simplest explanations worked best. "Once the Open House visitors who aren't suited for fighter duty are weeded out you'll have more time and fuel expenditures for those of who are left. Meanwhile I can learn something that will be useful for my career."
"Good enough," said the Captain. "Forthwith, my little lecture on military reality. 'Tactics win battles. Logistics wins wars.'"
"Did you know--" said the First, in what was obviously a well-practiced duet, "--that in World War II Rommel got ten miles from a military objective in North Africa with a huge caravan of tanks? Had he reached it Germany might very well have won the war. But he ran out of fuel because the logistic pipeline had been miscalculated and badly managed. The monster machines in Rommel's train became just ugly landmarks."
"Lesson," finished the Captain. "'Tactics win battles. Logistics win wars.' Over-simplified, but rock-bottom truth. What we do in transport trainin
g and transport around the world is a lot more important than what the pointy-nose high flyers do."
The First said, "Avgas and boots and toilet paper and so on are a lot more important than most people realize."
"What we'll do for the week you're stuck with us is use you as a gofer. You'll learn a Helluva lot doing a little bit of service. And in between we'll teach you to fly cargo. Sound OK?"
"Sounds GOOD. When do we start?"
The First Sergeant simply stood up and left the Captain's office. Jane hastily stood, braced, exchanged courtesies with her temporary commanding officer, and followed the First.
<>
When the day was over and Jane had left for home the Captain, her First, and Juan Lopez met in the Officer's Club for dinner before the three of them returned to yet another day of overwork.
Lopez was a big sturdy Texican whose family's history in the US was older than the country's. He looked like what Central Casting would have sent over to a movie in production to play a cartel hit man. He was also a fond grandfather who liked to spoil all his grandkids. And one of the best pilots the two women had ever met.
"So Juanito," the First said after finishing the latest bite of her pastrami on rye and washing it down with beer. "What's the skinny on the kid?"
"She's a natural, all right." As was he. Jane was the first he'd ever met and he was still a bit bemused at what he'd learned about himself from watching another natural from the outside.
"I grilled her about the T-2s' specs and she had them down cold. But not like those guys with perfect memories who can read off the data from the book in their heads. She knew what the numbers meant and how they related to each other."
He took a sip of his diet Coke.
"Then I lead her around the one we'd prepped for the Commander's tour of the other learning centers to familiarize her with the bird first-hand instead of just reading the online manual. I said, 'It has a serious fault. Tell me what it is.'"
"She did a walk-around, went inside, inspected it physically, went to the cockpit, turned on all the electronics, ran the standard diagnostics. She frowned, looked at the general display and somehow bypassed security--"
The Captain said, "She accessed the secure database? How is that possible? Not even our tame hackers here on base could do that."
He shrugged. "Just tapped a few virtual buttons. She quickly found and inspected the log of Friday's inspection to make sure nothing soured the Commander's trip. Then she turned to me."
He grinned, reminiscing. "She said 'There are no faults in this vehicle, serious or otherwise.' I loomed over her and stuck my face in hers and gave her my most scary scowl.
"'Are you calling me a liar, Cadet?' And she said cool as you please, 'Yes, I am, Lieutenant Lopez.' Then she said, 'Don't you ever lie to me about mission-critical information again.'"
The First patted his nearest hand, her most grandmotherly expression on her face. She said in a super sweet voice, "Now, now, we know you have a good scary scowl, Juanito. Don't feel bad."
He grinned, sobered.
"The expression on her face frankly near scared the shit out of me. You know the first Terminator movie when Schwartzenegger spoke? You know, 'I'll be bock'? It was like that without the accent.
"For a second there I KNEW I was looking at a real terminator, a killing machine that could chop up half the base and feel no emotion because it was little more than a fancy lawn mower."
He looked back on his memory, a look on his face which could only be described as haunted. Then his expression changed back to matter of fact.
"Then she smiled at me and said, 'I know you must have thought you had a good reason. But please never do it.' I felt so grateful. It was as if my own mother spoke to me."
The First looked at their captain. "Maybe she's a sociopath. Feeling no emotion but very good at mimicking it."
Lopez shook his head. "I may be wrong, God knows I am often enough, but I don't think so. I was with her all day, with most of our people, and I never saw her slip once or get something wrong. I think she's genuine. Or if not we'll never see her break her act. She really is at the same time a stone cold bitch and a warm caring person."
He looked at the ceiling with a look on his face of great innocence. "I've met the type."
He took a last sip of his Coke and got up to replenish it from the nearby drink machine.
When he returned he was back to being matter of fact.
"We saw the warm side of her the rest of the day. She was interested in everything and everyone and not shy about pulling it out of people. By the time I took her up for a ride mid-afternoon most of our crew were acting as if she were one of us.
"And here it gets even more interesting. We suited up and went over to our second-best bird. Normally I wouldn't let a new pilot near any of our birds until they'd crashed a dozen times in our simulators. But I figured that wouldn't give us the info we needed. Up in the air I'd be right beside her and could take over in an emergency.
"I put her in the pilot's seat and had her power up the electronics. We don't notice it when we do that because it happens so fast. But it does take a bit of time even though electrons are moving at near light speed. The paths inside the instruments are looped back and around and forwards millions times. Even at light speed that takes time.
"In our craft the instruments came online so close to instantly I couldn't notice it.
"She wiggled the foot pedals and control yoke to feel out the control surfaces, pulled out of the hangar onto the nearest apron, and contacted the control tower. She has the comm protocol down pat but ended with, 'Thanks George.' Meaning she knows the tower personnel by voice despite our less-than-perfect sound systems AND that she's on personal terms with them.
"Now most supervisors would be on your ass if you did that for breaking protocol and delaying communications. And on an aircraft carrier or at a forward base under attack he'd be quite right. But here in the boondocks with our routine air traffic our tower folks lose their edge. That one little personal touch woke our controller up a bit and made him more efficient.
"Here it gets more interesting. Given the go ahead she moved onto the approach path to Lane 3, the one assigned to her. Now you may not notice but the surface on the runways and the approaches aren't absolutely flat. The unevenness is less than an inch and doesn't noticeably affect travel on it. Unless you're her. It was as if our tires were her bare feet, and she right down at the surface and could see ahead of us those tiny bumps and cracks. She steered minute corrections to our takeoff lane.
"There she rotated us into the down-lane direction, waited for tower to give us a Go, and began her run. Most pilots, even me, wait for the moment we go light on our feet then lean us back and get the Hell off the ground.
"If you're her, what you do is feel tiny differences in how and when we go light, then tilt us back at the exact instant a takeoff is exactly optimum. It's not much of a difference plus or minus, but it's there. She nails it. I saw this several times."
His Coke was empty and he refilled it again. Meanwhile the two other officers had a waiter give them a refill too. They were listening carefully to him. They were experienced pilots themselves though nowhere near his virtuosity. They knew vaguely what he was talking but had never understood the specifics of what he was describing.
"We were on a milk run to San Antone. I saw no reason not to take some cargo to and from there. Normally we'd go to the optimal height for our lane and stay there until time to descend. Instead I had her go to about 5000 feet. There's a thermocline there that you can see when little fluffy cumulous clouds form. That's where they float. You can see it best in stormy weather and cumulous clouds become cumulo-nimbus towers. The bottoms of the clouds become noticeably flat.
"Right around that height are small air bubbles and whirlpools of air and various cross winds. I don't know if the meteorologists know about these micro-disturbances, but they're real. We here on the ground don't see them because, hey, air.
"Our girl sees them, or feels them, or something. Like taxiing on the ground she makes micro-corrections to optimize her flight."
He finished his drink in one long final swallow.
"Ladies, if I'm a natural our girl is a super-natural. She's never going to be a trash-hauler. She's going to be a fighter pilot. For all our joking about them for flying the pointy nosers and being the knights of the air those boys and girls are our sharp edge. We need them. And they need someone like our girl."
He set his glass down and left for yet more overtime work.
<>
The week was a happy one for Jane. On Monday and Tuesday she got to fly to and from Randolph Air Force Base just outside San Antonio several times as the pilot of record with Juan Lopez supervising.
The rest of the week she again flew as pilot of record, this time chauffeuring the Laughlin base commander on some sort of tour, again with Lopez supervising. On Wednesday this was northeast to Vance Air Force Base in Oklahoma. On Thursday it was east to Columbus AFB in Mississippi. On Friday they returned to Laughlin.
On each of the two bases after they landed Lopez disappeared with the rest of the commander's entourage, but not before speaking to the pilot trainers and crews at each of the bases. Each time he said almost the same line.
"Guys and girls this is Jane Kuznetsov. She's helping us out for a week. Keep her busy doing the same. Make sure she learns the nitty-gritty the rest of the world never sees us trash-haulers do. Right, Jane?"
He smacked her on a shoulder and hurriedly left.
Neither group of personnel was happy to be burdened with her at first. But her friendly interest soon thawed them. By the end of each day they let her come along to their after-work pizza or hot dog night and regaled her with tales of their experiences in the Air Force. Some of the stories were even true.
<>
Friday morning after the leisurely hour and a half flight back home Jane was told to get lunch then a shower and a change to clean camos. At 2:00 she was to return for a brief group photo session for some PR task.