Flying to Pieces

by Dean Ing

  he said, with a vague wave of a hand.

  "We all will," the Brit promised, and helped load the rest of what they would come to call the Myles piles. It weighed over six hundred pounds including the parachute and inflatable life raft that Myles hauled from one of his duffel bags after they were once again in the air, flying toward the faint remnants of sunset.

  That equipment marked Vic Myles in several ways. First because no one else had brought such stuff as personal equipment. Second, because, while the pl@me's emergency equipment included a big inflatable raft, it contained no other chutes and Myles was not the man to trust anyone else's equipment. Third, nvither was he the sort to offer his stuff to the only woman aboard. Well, she wants to be one of the guys, Lovett thought, and fluffed out his bedroll so that he could sleep on the metal floor, a tiedown across his torso. Summer or no summer, you could frost your buns off at ten thousand feet.

  He awoke to the tang of coffee, and to a faint scent of orange blossoms.

  Because dawn had overtaken them he could see that Mel Benteen had copied him, snuggled on the floor plates in her mununy bag nearby. So near, in fact, he was inhaling the scent of her hair. He chalked up his budding erection to his need to urinate-or maybe it was just the coffee-and wriggled from his bag. He put on his Nikes and moved forward toward Reventlo who sat on one of the forward seats of the main cabin with a hamper at his feet, sipping from-a mug and regarding him with amusement.

  Lovett yawned and scratched himself, ready to be irritable on short notice. "What's so damn' funny? And who's watching the store up there?"

  "To question one, no comment. As for question two, Gunther's checking Myles out on the instruments. Nothing like playing flight instructor to rebuild a man's confidence, eh?"

  "You noticed, then."

  Reventlo pulled a plastic mug from his hamper, filled it by pumping the top of a gallon-sized thermos, handed it over with a waggle of eyebrows.

  "You could say that. I do not believe that man breathed until we reached cruise altitude. I saw only the whites of his eyes for three hours. He was trembling like a hound passing peac, hpits, old man."

  "You know how he feels about his luck," Lovett said, and grimaced at the hot stuff coursing down his throat.

  "Stalwart lad, our Coop Gunther," said Reventio, making a gesture with his mug as if making a toast. "If I were in that deep a funk, with ears that aren't. that keen in detecting the odd noise, you could not pay me enough to climb aboard this thing. Incidentally, I found out that the control cables here," he tapped lightly on the floor plates covering cables that operated the tail surfaces, "were all retensioned. Again."

  "Twice? What for?"

  Reventlo smiled to himself and sipped. "Because, as if you didn't know, on its first checkout flight last week, every time this wallowing sow nosed up or down, something toured its underbelly rumbling like a bowling ball. No telling what it was, so they had to scope it out. You wouldn't know anything about that, I suppose."

  "Nope." Lovett realized that, to find what was rolling loose in the plane's belly, they'd had to disconnect the. maze of cables, find the problem by hauling the big plane's nose up and down with jacks, then carefully retension every blessed cable before the plane could be pronounced airworthy. "What was it?"

  "A ball bearing. A one-ounce steel ball that any idiot could have inserted into one of the aluminum channels. Two days, Wade. I hope you're proud of yourseil"

  Lovett sipped and sighed, and tried not to look guilty. "We're here, aren't we?"

  Now Reventio chuckled broadly. "Oh yes, we are indeed. Every mother's son of us, thanks to you." He saw that his mug was empty, got up, and toed the hamper. "La Benteen will want some of this. I'll go and see if Coop's sweat has unfrozen from his forehead."

  "He seems to be managing." 'A child could do it," Reventlo said, and disappeared forward through the bulkhead door into the forward cabin, known to air crews as the flight deck.

  Lovett went aft, used the toilet, and found Mel Benteen waiting when he emerged. She brushed past without a word. Bitchy before her @offee, he decided, and took flight attendant duty, going forward with three of the meal cartons. The bulkhead door was locked.

  It was Myles who opened it in good time, having left the controls to Gunther. Reventlo sat behind them, kibitzing from the radioman's seat, a Dick Francis paperback in his hands' The Brit saw Lovett's questioning glance around. It said ' "Something wrong here?" Reventlo gave a faint headshake and wink, jerking his thumb toward the aft cabin. "Checkouts can be irksome; we've got enough strange egos up here as it is. But thanks for the rations, mate."

  With a sigh, Lovett went aft, reflecting on Revendo's weird speech patterns after a proper Brit childhood, his teens in a Japanese prison, and later years among Aussies. His "myte" for "mate" had sounded pure Strine.

  Lovett inunersed himself in a Micronesia guidebook until he fell asleep, which was very easy to-do in the thin air. Mel Benteen shook him awake in time for him to see the big number 35 painted at the end of the runway at Lihue, Kauai. He set his watch back two hours and rubbed the stiffness from his neck, welcoming the dense warmer air.

  Myles fairly bubbled with good cheer after landing the "CFORT" with reasonable ease. In fact, everyone seemed in high spirits, laughing easily, elbows prodding ribs, and Lovett put it down to the excitement of this last, resounding geriatric hurrah by men who had thought they were past such things.

  During their refueling only Reventlo left the plane, making a call to his Aussie client. With a combined total of over two hundred years'

  flying experience, the group simply knew too many people in the flying business and contrived to avoid chance meetings. It was agreed that Lovett would take copilot duties on the next leg to Mejit in the Marshall Islands, but they elected to wait and catnap until evening for their takeoff. That way, they would arrive at Mejit with the early light. At nightfall, the C-47 lumbered aloft under Re@entlo's control for that 2,200-mile jaunt.

  The third time Reventlo excused himself to leave the flight deck, turning the controls over to Lovett, the American eyed his friend closely. "What're you guys doing back there, smoking dope?"

  Reventlo paused in the aisle. "Whatever can you mean?"

  "I mean the way you're acting, and don't try to deny it. You're laughing at my feeblest jokes, which is not your style. You look out at two thousand miles of blackness ahead of us and you grin like a gremlin. And every half-hour, you jump up and leave me here."

  "Just keeping abreast of the card game," said the Brit, and closed the door behind him. He returned in a half hour, and in the same mysterious high spirits.

  Much later, Gunther came forward to sit behind them. Now and then he irritated Lovett with a chuckle that was practically a demand for attention. Presently he said, "Past the point of no return?"

  "Well past," Reventlo said.

  "Maybe I can take Wade's seat awhile. You play poker don't you, Wade?"

  "Used to. Boring," Lovett said.

  "I promise this won't bore you," said Reventio. Gunther snickered like a truant.

  Lovett discarded his instant vision of busty Melanie Benteen losing'at strip poker, removed his headset, moved into the aisle. "Okay, but this had better be good," he warned.

  "We think so," said the Brit. Lovett moved aft toward the dim cabin lights, closing the door, peering toward the group that sat draped in sleeping bags.

  Gunther eased himself into the right-hand seat. "Think we'll need earplugs?"

  "Absolutely. I'm not at all sure," the Brit replied, "that we won't need to lock that door against a mutiny."

  Over the numbing drone of Pratt & Whitneys, they heard Lovett's despairing wail of, "Jumping Jesus Christ on crutches," and then they both began to laugh.

  4 --------------------------------------------

  As Lovett's cry resounded in the cargo cabin, a tall figure scrambled to its feet, passing a book-sized computer to Mel Benteen. Judging by the screen, they had been playing poker using a
game program in the little gadget. "It's okay, Pop," said Chip, backing up against their cargo.

  Lovett put hands to his temples, still aghast. "Okay that you're a stowaway? Okay that your mother will call for U.N. troops? Okay that you've popped up twice among my friends who wonder why the hell I let you do it, and never mind the fact that I didn't? Which okay is it that I've missed?"

  "Relax," Vic Myles drawled. "The kid's okay. It's you that we should have doubts about."

  Moving his hands down to his hips, Lovett stared at his old colleague.

  "And what's going through your mind, Vic, besides the usual jet stream?"

  "He didn't exactly stow aboard, I kinda stowed him in a duffel bag; if he was any huskier or less flexible it wouldn't've worked. Everybody knew it but you. When we spent the night at your place, the kid blew us away with this little computer. He made a pitch I couldn't refuse that night.

  Hell, we need somebody who can do that stuff, Wade!"

  "Plain old playing cards aren't good enough," Lovett marveled.

  "Keeping track of expenses," Benteen said quietly. "Listing our needs.

  Making notes, dossiers on officials. Composing a few contracts. And Myles can't mark cards on a computer screen," she added slyly.

  "Nothin' to do with cards," Myles burst out. "The kid promised to let me dictate my manuscript if I'd get him awexd."

  Lovett trembled with quiet fury. "You were bribed by a seventeen-year-old. A new low. Congratulations."

  Myles glanced at the other conspirators. "The kid is underage?"

  "He said he was of age," Benteen accused, with a glance toward Chip.

  "I didn't say what age," Chip replied, but had the decency to look sheepish. "I'll be eighteen in a couple of weeks.',' "A technicality,"

  Gunther shrugged. "He's acting more like an adult than some folks I could name. What were we s'posed to do? Card him?"

  Lovett ignored that. "You're flying back from Mejit," he said to the youth. "I can't be responsible for you, Chip. For one thing, you're not eighteen yet. You don't have a pass port-"

  "Yes I do. Just because you don't have to doesn't mean you can't, and Mom got me one when we went to Mexico last year," said Chip, producing the little blue booklet from his jacket. "I even got my shots. You don't have to be responsible for me. In fact," his smile was poised halfway between ingratiating and impudent, "Mom wants me to be responsible for you."

  Lovett digested this in silence for a long moment. Then, "You're telling me she knows you're here?"

  "Well... not here, as in here, exactly," Chip said, pointing at his feet. "She kept on at me to find out what you were up to, so I gave her the line that's worked so well for you."

  Lovett: "Namely?"

  "It's a mining venture."

  "On bleeding Fundabora?"

  "No way," the youth said hotly. "I did say we'd probably be camping out, uh, somewhere in the Southwest."

  "You just didn't bother telling her it was eight thousand miles to the southwest," Lovett said, outraged.

  Chip toed a nonexistent rock. "Well-she didn't exactly ask that exact question. Not exactly."

  "I can't imagine why, exactly," Lovett said, with furious mimicry. He thought for a moment. "Benteen, Myles: you all knew about this but me.

  That explains why everybody's been snickering at me as if my fly was at half-mast. Thanks a load, Chip. But you're going to be the load, back from Mejit on the next commercial flight to the States."

  Chip could not meet his grandfather's gaze but Mel Benteen had no such problem. "I doubt it. Chip, here, entertained us the other night with his account of your famous mental breakdown. All right then, your supposed breakdown," she amended to head off his objection. "Point is, I'm on the boy's side in this. You try shipping him back and I swear I'll tell the authorities on Mejit you're wanted back in the States as a man who's about three rowboats shy of a navy. A couple of calls to Wichita should verify that, I imagine."

  "It occurs to me that 'fair young maid' is an oxymoron," Lovett told her.

  "If you expect me to curtsy, dream on," she said. "Don't forget, this youngster got my dad to the hospital, trying to save his life; I owe him. And I know damned well Myles was tickled over the idea that he can double his writing output once he learns to use that computer."

  "So that's your angle, Vic? You wanted a free secretary to take dictation and you elected Chip as a basket to hold your trash." Lovett did not seem to realize he was balling his fists.

  Myles saw it, though. "I wouldn't, old son. I've got twenty pounds on you."

  "More like fifty," Lovett snarled, "all of it suet. I won't hit a woman but I can kick a pig's butt."

  "I don't have to take that," Myles growled slowly, with a great show of getting up the way John Wayne might have gotten up.

  "Yes you do, you ponderous piece of shit," said Lovett, stepping forward.

  Myles took a step back then, his bluff called, and looked past the others. "Cris, we have a problem here," he said.

  "Told you so," said the Brit, who had left Gunther at the controls.

  "Wade, if you're going to set about punishing us, you really should begin with me. And then Coop, and so on. And after that, always assuming you manage it because I used to be a fair dinkum scuffier too, you can bring the plane into Mejit by yourself "Look here, the lad has earned his wings, wouldn't you say?" He waited for Lovett to answer and, without one, went on: "So say all of us, Wade. Every one. Young Chip damned near suffocated in that bloody seabag, because his mother wanted him to take care of you and, for reasons that totally mystify me, he wants to stick by you. We had to smuggle him up to the flight deck while you slept. He hid in the flight engineer's cubicle when you came forward. We thought our little show was up the spout for a moment there."

  Lovett stood indecisive, looking from one to another of them. Then he fixed his grandson with an angry gaze. "Chip, did you tell these-faithful houseguests of mine-that I was going loopy?"

  Chip took a long dry swallow and a longer time before saying, "No sir.

  But I might have let them think so if they wanted to."

  "You might have," Lovett prompted. 'Yes, sir, possibly I might have," in a voice so small it was nearly lost in the drone of engines. "Just possibly. If they really, really wanted to think so."

  "And when we get to Mejit and I haul your gangly rump to Air Micronesia and aim you toward the States, and my great and good friends here all tell the authorities I'm a candidate for a very large canvas overcoat, what will you tell them?"

  The last vestige of Chip's smile was gone now, but somehow he stood taller. "That they're all full of shit, Pop. You're sharp enough to slit a razor, edgewise. But I still think you're making a mistake."

  "But you'll abide by it," Lovett persisted.

  A three-beat pause. Then Chip dropped his eyes and said, "Yes, sir."

  "Well, I'm almost sorry, because that's the right answer; and you're right, I am making a mistake, sure as hell. You remember that when you reach Fundabora."

  It took Chip Mason a second or so for that to sink in, and as it did, he lifted both fists aloft with a "Yessss!" before stumbling forward to embrace his grandfather. Lovett could feel the youth's arms trembling with relief, and fought to keep moisture from his own eyes.

  A hand clapped Lovett's shoulder as he heard Coop Gunther say, "Takes a good man to know when his kids are men, too."

  "Well hello there, Coop," said Reventio in niild surprise. "And who, may I ask, is flying this thing?"

  "The autopilot," Gunther rumbled. "Won't hurt none, and I didn't wanta miss this."

  "Interesting," the Brit said, still calm, "considering that the autopilot's been out of commission since San Diego."

  Gunther said only, "Whoa," very quietly, then scuttled forward, limping as hard as he could go.

  "That's not true and you know it," Lovett said softly.

  "Ilie occasionally," Reventlo agreed with perfect equanimity,

  "especially if it helps convince a
n old comrade that lady luck isn't a vengeful bitch. Even though any sensible man knows she is."

  "I won't let you down, Pop," Chip said into Lovett's ear, moving away to recapture the sleeping bag that he had worn like a comforter.

  "Yeah, right," Lovett answered, with a headshake 'toward the rest of the group. "I suppose it'll be useful, having somebody to record our last words."

  "It's gonna be history, Wade," said Myles. "And I' in gonna write it from a whatchacallit. "Database," Chip supplied. 'Yeah. Strict accuracy," Myles boasted.

  "That'll be a welcome change," Lovett rejoined, and followed Reventlo back to the flight deck. He said little to the men at the controls, musing on his decision as the C-47 made its stolid way toward the Marshall Islands through a limbo as dark as the inside of a boa constrictor.

  The plain truth, he knew, was not so much that he feared Chip would let him @own. What bothered him most was that, if Lovett himself should prove unequal to this mission in some way, his gra I ndson would know il It didn't improve his mood to know that histories are written by the winners, that Victor Myles had a contract to write this particular history, and that Myles needed a win of his own so much he would need to create a few losers as counterbalance. It wouldn't be the first time; Lovett had read some of Myles's stuff and thought of it as wannabe nonfiction. On paper at. least, the hero with a Victor Myles byline was recognizably Victor Myles.

  On one count, at any rate, he could rest easily for a while. Roxanne Mason was used to Chip's camping out and, by now, probably imagined her son settled in a tent somewhere in Arizona where roughing it meant his portable TV couldn't get the public access channel. The instant she suspected the truth, large satellites could ride Roxy into orbit. There had to be some way to forward little bogus "all's well" messages to her from stateside. I guess that's one thing we can use Quinn for, thought Lovett, drifting into a nap, hands under his armpits to avoid the chill.

  He awoke in time to relieve Gunther, and banked the big plane around for a landing precisely on the 7 of Mejit's single three-thousand-foot runway in early morning. It had been a while since he'd greased such a big hunk of metal onto a strip this short, but Reventlo talked him through it with only a few choice phrases. Their old transport was just the kind of aircraft that runway had been built to accept, and Mejit still stocked the aviation gasoline needed by rehabs, old airplanes that plied Third World airways.