Flying to Pieces

by Dean Ing

  It would be nice, Lovett thought, if people could be refitted and renewed so well. But wasn't that exactly what this little cadre of B.O.F.s had determined to do? A renewal of sorts, yes; that might be possible. They'd staked their piddling fortunes on it, perhaps their lives as well. But for most of us, pushing seventy or thereabouts, our personal engines are pretty much worn out, our control cables frayed, can't always trust our instruments-and Lovett sighed to think that, if they were airplanes, the FAA would've grounded them on sight.

  Lovett's subconscious longed to swoop and glide with gulls to better enjoy the tiny coral island, the airport terminal building its largest structure. Dugout canoes, dark splinters on the beaches, waited below for occupants; near a tiny lake, neatly kept gardens welcomed an early sun. God, please keep Your Pacific pacified, Lovett prayed silently.

  When your runway was short, cracked, and five feet above high tide, you didn't need a typhoon to keep life interesting.

  Rota lies near Guam but without its crowding, especially with faces that might be familiar to Reventlo. Once a pilot for Air Micronesia, or Air Mike in local jargon, the Brit could easily have found overnight lodging for his passengers. Instead, he organized the refueling and postflight routines at a time when most of the island life was at ebb tide, and they all prepared to sleep on the plane.

  The night air was warm and so humid that, Lovett said, Rota's mosquitoes would be doing the backstroke. "This may be a preview of coming unattractions on Fundabora," Reventlo grumped as he opened the forward and aft doors to promote some kind of ventilation down the plane's length. "Break out your mosquito nets and don't, whatever you do, leave anything dangling to the ground. And spare us the Texan ripostes if you please, Myles."

  Chip saw the others nod and frowned his puzzlement. Mel Benteen noticed.

  "Rats," she shrugged, and went on fluffing out her pallet. ' 'Tell me you mean, pshaw, pshoot, pshucks," Chip said, with a shudder.

  "I mean rats," she insisted. "Bigger than a breadbox, hungry as a bear."

  "Don't forget the upside," Myles leered. "If one of 'em bites you, you can ride him to the hospital."

  "You guys are putting me on," Chip complained.

  Benteen smiled. "Only a little. As for their getting into everything, Prince Charming wasn't kidding, and we don't need rodents in here with us. Mosquitoes aren't quite that big but they'll off-load you, given half a chance."

  "I brought mosquito netting," Chip said. He did not react to her deft characterization of Reventlo, but it was clear she was not one of the charmed.

  Myles saw an opportunity to expound on survival lore. "You don't want thin netting," he said," 'cause it won't stay fluffed out without some kinda support. You need the newest stuff, like mine. I call this my safety net," he said, unfolding a seven-foot sack sewn from nylon netting, stiff enough to be crinkly. He got inside it, forcing it to a tentlike shape. "If the net touches you, the little bastards can nail you through the holes. Gotta learn to sleep without moving around."

  Lovett studied the gossamer stuff he had brought. "You wouldn't have an extra, I suppose."

  "Several," Myles said, grinning from inside his nylon cocoon. "Hundred bucks apiece. Don't look at me like that, Wade, the price is the same for everybody. You folks are flush." He shucked his netting to stir around in his backpack.

  "Several," Gunther repeated, looking at his own net, comparing it to that of Myles. "Let me guess. You brought exactly six."

  "I believe I did," said Myles.

  "But you want us to buy them," Gunther went on.

  "Personal property. Had 'em made up special," Myles said. "Nobody's twisting your arm, Coop. With all your experience, seems like you people would've learned about hightech nets by..."

  "Forget it, Coop," said Lovett, peeling off five big bills from his pocket roll, dropping them in Myles's lap. "You'll want to count it, Vic. You'll need all the fingers on one hand," he advised, plucking the big wad of nets from Myles.

  "Count this," said Gunther, with a matching gesture. "I dr uther use my own net."

  Lovett tossed a wad of the netting to each of them, Gunther included, and sat near Chip as the others found comfortable places to sleep, distancing themselves from Myles in unspoken rejection. A tiny convenience light threw hard shadows on the cabin walls as Chip consulted the glowing screen of his computer.

  Lovett watched for a moment as Chip silently typed, I Do NOT BELIEVE

  WHAT JUST HAPPENED, POP.

  Lovett took the machine and typed, EVERYONE TO HIS MINOR VICES. LEARN

  NOT TO SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF.

  HE'S THE SMALL STUFF. MICROSCOPIC, Chip typed.

  Lovett typed, HE KNOWS STUFF WE MAY NEED.

  Chip typed, HE SAYS HE KNOWS STUFF WE MAY NEED.

  Lovett's final entry was, YOU GET SMARTER EVERY DAY. IN SOME WAYS I'M

  GLAD YOU'RE ALONG, KID. Aloud he said, "I'm packing it in for the night, Chip. Either the mosquitoes have found their way in here, or we're being strafed by a squadron of Zeroes."

  From nearby, a chuckle from Reventlo and, "Hold that thought, lads. We may find a squadron of our own."

  But Lovett didn't think about Japanese aircraft. He fell asleep wondering how long Roxanne would assume her only son was somewhere in Arizona and imagining a headline, something along the lines Of INSANE

  DOTARD KIDNAPS GRANDSON.

  The last of the in-flight meals got their share of suspicious sniffing but everyone consumed parts of it while the group considered a landing on Fundabora. Because the plane was so lightly loaded, they followed Gunther's recommendation: let some of the air out of the tires if you expect to land on stones, brush, and on a long-disused strip, God alone knows what else. A good pilot could cope with gooshy shoes, he said, as long as he knew they were only half-inflated; and the Brit answered Coop's challenging glance with a wink. It was Coop himself who partially deflated the big balloon tires, having done it many times in Alaska.

  Then Reventlo, with Gunther beside him, fired up the Pratt Whitneys.

  Lovett saw that Chip removed their external control locks, waved him aboard, and stood near the engine nacelles with a big fire extinguisher for the wan-n-ups. Big radial engines tended to make hellacious threats on starting, with fuel-rich puffs of smoke and a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang imitation. Brief fires from overpricing these old brutes were not rare, as Lovett knew, so he. took his job seriously. And if you got a fire, the best way to put it out was to blow it out using the propeller. The fire extinguisher was for those times when you needed a next-best way.

  Lovett had seen a P-47 Thunderbolt bum to ashes once, after a crew chief saw that his cowl was afire and simply throttled back in panic.

  Sometimes intuition told you what to do. But with aircraft, sometimes intuition lied like a congressman.

  With the engines muttering smoothly and his extinguisher stowed, Lovett buckled himself in and looked forward to see Coop Gunther peering back down the long tubular fuselage, then jerked his thumb upward. Moments later they swung onto Runway 9 and used only a third of the long asphalt strip before that familiar dump-your-innards sensation of takeoff.

  Receding below in full daylight, Rota made Lovett wish he had stayed to enjoy it. Supple palms leaned like rows of beautiful women, fronds flexed in unison with a morning breeze. Lovett was willing to overlook the fact that these particular women had armies of rats in their hair.

  Ten miles long and three wide, the island had good beaches and some of its roads were flanked by flowering trees. He saw a golf course under development and spotted a sunken ship in the shallows of a bay. Reventio had said Rota's wild deer were hunted in season, which meant that even a pinpoint of land this small could retain some primitive areas.

  Bicyclists dwindled to antlike proportions as the transport gained altitude; it occurred to Lovett that Fundabora was more than twice the size of this island, and that bikes might be the best way to get around.

  Well, they hadn't thought to bring any bikes. No doubt Fundabo
ra, like Rota, would look better from aloft than from some dusty hillside trail on its flanks. He knew from Benteen's research that Fundabora was no flat coral islet but, like Rota, had its own little highlands.

  He watched Chip, in the seat beside him, gaze back toward the island.

  "Wish you'd stayed here?"

  Chip flashed him a grin. "Bitchin' curl out past the shallows," he murmured. "Miz Benteen says it's just a short hop now. Too bad a guy can't surf from here to," and now his eyes danced as he rolled it off his tongue: "Funnndabora."

  "Long and short are relative out here. It's over six hundred miles, four hours," Lovett 'said, and remembered that he needed to reset his watch again.

  Presently Myles ambled back from hii flight deck kibitzing. "Too bad about the weather," he said easily. "Reventlo's elected to go around it.

  Hell of a local front building to the southwest; happens sometim6s," he shrugged.

  Chip scanned the bright blue heavens and the steely ocean, crystalline in their clarity. "Shouldn't I be able to see it?"

  "You could if it were real," Lovett told him.

  "Then why are we-oh, it's not real," said the youth.

  "For Reventio's client, who's upwards of three thousand miles from here, it's real enough. It's forcing us almost due west. Wouldn't be a bit surprised if we developed engine trouble after a while," Myles said, and clucked his tongue in mock dismay.

  "Somewhere around Fundabora, for example," Chip said.

  "For example," Myles agreed sagely. "Reminds me, I gotta break out my scope. C'mon, kid," he said, and jerked his head toward their cargo..

  Lovett saw indecision on the youth's face. "Why not? We'll need a monocular to check out the landing stfip."

  "It weighs fifty pounds, solid brass, that's why not," Chip said, unbuckling. "He showed it to me. Artillery spotting scope, he said."

  Putting some of the Myles gravel in his voice: "Back when they built things right, he said. Jeez Louise I bet he expects me to lug it around for him."

  "Probably." Lovett's gaze at his grandson was placid. If Chip expected special catering from his grandfather after sneaking aboard, it was time he learned to fend for himself Chip had not exaggerated, and Lovett wandered back to look over the instrument. Mounted on plywood but meant to stand on a hefty tripod, the spotting scope was machined from heavy bronze castings, not brass, with a hooded objective lens that must have spanned three inches. Its eyepiece was an inch across, and it had ten-and twenty-power settings. With all its hand cranks and adjustments, the thing was as dated as-as as a C-47, Lovett concluded. And you could probably dunk it into the Pacific without doing it much damage. Again, like a C-47.

  No sooner had Lovett grasped the thought when a sharp icicle of awareness plunged into his stomach. The engine note had changed suddenly, and they were still hours from Fundabora. His companions did not seem to notice. He fought a powerful temptation to go forward, but Reventlo knew his aircraft.

  The portside engine surged, then relapsed; the port wing dipped, recovered as the starboard engine revved to maximum power. A moment later both engines returned to normal, but' not for long, because moments later the starboard engine developed its own gren-din.

  It had to be a fuel problem, Lovett hazarded. But no, it might be-and now he scuttled forward. "Uh," was all he could say, because the starboard engine was, snapping like a bag of bad popcorn.

  "Come in, Wade." Reventlo looked back and grinned. "Thought that'd bring you forward. Like to play with Number Two?, I

  "I just did number two," Lovett said. "I am not known for my long-distance swimming, Cris. Do, we have a problem here, or what?"

  Reventlo magicked his controls and, in seconds, all was serene again.

  "If it's got you convinced, it should play to the Fundaborans," he said.

  "Thought I should have a go at a dry run."

  "It wasn't that dry a run for me," Lovett said wryly. "One more little surprise like that and you're looking at a major laundry bill." He glanced at Gunther, whose smile lacked conviction. He knew this was bogus but it wasn't that much fun for him, he thought. "Okay, you've had your fun, and fuck you very much. Satisfied now?"

  "Quite," said the Brit, craning his neck back. "Our other passengers don't seem all that exercised."

  "They wouldn't be," Lovett rejoined. "They don't know about the other minor sabotages I called for in Portland. Enjoy," he said, and saw a look of dark surmise drift across Reventlo's face before returning to his seat. He had, of course, called for nothing of the sort. Still, he felt a petty childish joy knowing that a cold pang of uncertainty about his aircraft had gone through Reventlo's guts, too, for just a moment.

  Crispin Reventlo was, above all, a career flight captain; and few sensations are less welcome to the breed.

  Bored with the guidebook and half-convinced it had been a waste of time since it didn't so much as mention Fundabora, Lovett let the steady throb of engines lull him into napping. He popped into full alertness, however, the next time an engine faltered.

  His watch said the nap had been longer than expected. Shadows defined by the windows suggested early afternoon, and he could see his companions peering hard through their windows as one engine snorted while the other snarled harder to compensate. A mile below and perhaps ten miles ahead, underlined by a scrawl of white surf, lay an uneven dark mass. As they drew nearer it separated into a rich green with brown protrusions poking skyward, one of them almost to their present altitude. Though Wade Lovett had spent years in the tropics, something in his breast tripped his heart.

  Twice, Lovett had visited Tahiti; had seen nearby Bora Bora and Moorea.

  Fundabora-for it could be no other island-had the same sort of breathtakingly raw volcanic pinnacles thrusting up from a tumbled carpet of greenery, the southern tors spearing higher, another to the north longer and more saw toothed, reminding him of a High Sierra feature that climbers called The Minarets. Lovett watched the spectacle develop finer details, stunned by its matchless loveliness, until he realized two things. One, he saw no sign of any landing strip, new or old.

  And two, they were descending below the height of that southern claw of stone. "Ohhh, shiiiiit," he muttered, and was not surprised to see Victor Myles scramble to retrieve his chest-pack chute.

  Because a lower spine of stone ran between pinnacles that were several miles apart, Crispin Reventio would gay later that he thought he "had it all well in hand." But a sudden buffet of bad air lurked in that saddle back ridge, and before the pilot could coax both engines back to full power, the plane had dropped within yards of lush tropical foliage, a thin skin that covered vertebrae of solid rock.

  Palms roiled in their wake. The saddle back, fell away again immediately to lowlands. Lovett had a brief impression of thatched roofs and, nearer, swampy mangroves beyond the spine, and then Reventlo had the C-47 banking to the left, now with a thousand feet of air below them, following a narrow swath of. beach with more primitive dwellings and outer canoes. Slowly he regained altitude in an arc around rigg the island's southern curve, one engine harrumphing and spitting again. If that was all for show, Lovett decided, he should vote the Brit an Oscar.

  Right after strangling him barehanded.

  Reveiitlo maintained his arc until they were perhaps a mile off the southern shore, and Lovett had the presence of mind to move in a squat across the sloped floor panels, buckling up again as he scanned the island. Still no landing strip to be seen but they had already passed a finger of lagoon, too regular to be natural, inserting a tongue of the sea into Fundabora's southwest tip. Cupped around the end of the lagoon lay a long white building in colonial style with small thatched cabanas trailing away from it like tacky little goslings from MOM a mother goose. He could see tiny figures near the building, hands semaphoring.

  Myles stormed past him, scrambling on the tilted floor. "Which door you want me to go out," he screamed into the flight deck. Only then did Lovett see that the survivalist had fully strapped on his chute. 11
<
br />   Victor, Victor," the Brit chided with exaggerated calm, you skydivers appall me. I could never see why anyone would want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane." Pop, whuff, whappity barn, said the port engine.

  Myles wasn't all that reassured. "This isn't a perfectly good airplane, it's a big aluminum potholder flown into a mountain by a maniac, and it looks like you're gonna try it again. You're not getting' another chance at Vic Myles, pal."

  "Nobody on Fundabora answered our distress call," Gunther called back to the Texan. "We hadda get their attention, right?"

  "Well, you got mine, goddammit," Myles fumed. "And'i don't see any airstrip and I want outa here. Somebody oughta live to tell about it."

  "Take the rear cargo door then," Reventlo called. "But remember: that chute won't have time to open if you're nearer ground level than this.

  And ground level's going up again. Work it out for yourself, Victor," he finished, his attention still focused ahead.

  Myles scurried back and Lovett went forward. "He's not trying the door,"

  he told the Brit.

  "I knew he wouldn't." Now they were making a wider circuit around the island, staying below its pinnacles. At some points the beach disappeared so that cliffs tumbled vertically to the sea. "Frankly, lads, I don't think we have a usable strip to land on."

  "Sure we do," Gunther put in manfully. "Beach is plenty wide near those buildings."

  "And it slopes," said Reventlo. "Sand is shifty, Coop."

  "Not when it's wet, which it is," said Gunther. "Perfect for a landing with soft squishy tires. Big footprint. We used to FLYING TS PIECES ill Lovett broke in. "You think maybe we should get a committee decision on this before you do it?"

  "Point taken," Reventlo called back, tickling his Pratt & VVHITNEYS into still more hiccups. "We can fly on to Leyte and charter a boat, I suppose."