by Randy Moffat
Bear smiled fully and she responded. Each was very pleased with the other at that moment.
“Man! After last night I thought I couldn’t be more impressed and you go and show me you have a brain too!”
She smacked his arm playfully again.
He looked up at the big airplane.
“So why a B-52 again?”
She pursed her lips and looked up with him seriously.
“Well . . . for one thing it is military and we can get it for free rather than say acquiring one of the commercial airliners they got over in the equivalent commercial bone-yard in the Mojave. That we would have to pay money to buy—whereas “Free” looks really good on our balance sheet and as your accountant I thought it was the right thing to do. Second, these planes were designed in 1954 and the last ones will go out of service in 2040. That is a 90 year lifespan which is an incredibly long time for an airplane so they must have built them tough, Bear. I figured super tough is a good thing in an experimental aircraft using bizarre new technology. Tough and reliable cannot be bad in our Q-kink airframe. Third, I know you wanted a spacecraft, but figured what you really wanted during testing was to be high up and as far away as possible from damaging something when you test our gizmo, so a Stratofortress will get you pretty close to space without actually going up into it, the service ceiling is around 50,000 feet. There is lots of empty space up that high, though I admit it isn’t outer space proper I figured it would do. Fourthly, the thing can be made serviceable super fast because the rebuild shops around here and in Kansas have done lots and lots of them for the air force and let’s face it . . .” She waved her arm in a broad circle at rank upon rank of similar planes “There are plenty of spare parts to be had to bring her up to conventional snuff quickly. This one actually supposed to be pretty close to serviceable just as she is.” She patted the fuselage in a motherly way.
“How do you know what condition this particular one was in?” Bear asked curiously. She looked smug.
“A little bird told me.”
“Lucky little bird; whispering away in your beautiful ear.” Bear said absently. “These are pressurized are they?”
Maureen wrinkled her forehead.
“The cockpit was. I think also the gunner station in the tail for the G model . . . the rest is not.”
“We’ll need a pilot though—To fly her to your theoretical testing altitude at 50,000 feet.” Bear said obliquely.
Maureen smiled.
“Highly skilled personnel are your problem . . . I’m logistics.” She said smugly “From that statement we are taking possession of her I presume?”
“As long as we can somehow engineer it to the purpose of testing the darn gadget—You bet! Power on board is our main problem . . . but we will let Johnson tinker around with it . . . and thank you, Maureen.” He said sincerely. “You really are brilliant.”
She smiled happily able to please her boss, her friend, and her lover all at once.
They talked to some people about getting the plane signed over to them, and then some more people about fixing it. Maureen was setting the heady pace of events here and Bear went along for the ride as an exhibit in agreeable leadership. They still had a little time left to them before their return flight and hustled back to the motel room to let O’Hara take Bear along on quite another ride . . . again. Success was heady stuff for a woman as well as a man.
No Pants Po hiccupped deep in the Michigan woods. He was drinking with two other men. One was named John Christianson, a Yankee. The other man was a Vietnamese mongrel named Fuk Bao Nyon; child of a running dog who got out of South Vietnam in 1972 a block or two ahead of communist tanks. Both had several merits to Po. Both liked to drink. Both were willing to drink with Po as long as he brought the booze despite his personality. A third merit was that Christianson had a trailer on fifteen acres at the end of a sandy track in the middle of the empty Michigan woods where they could drink and plink without John Law looking in or caring. Another side benefit was that Nyon actually spoke Chinese though with an atrocious accent. Po, who’s English remained very lean even after more than a decade and a half in the US, used Fuk Bao to translate to Christianson and vice versa. The Anglo and the Southeast Asian were both huge lushs very much like Po so they lived through their drinking sessions in a kind of loose alcoholic association that hovered at times on the edge of unconsciousness and violence. Politically, of course they were mismatched and formed a sort of international conference of Rednecks. Each despised the others like the good racist bigots they were, but the booze leveled all things into a perverse love fest. There was a bonus benefit for Po in the association too. Fuk Bao was a link to Washington and the United States Armed Forces. He had a cousin in each place with e-mail who would communicate daily. Fuk Bao would often gossip about what his cousins said in the E-mail and texts. He was pleased as punch to pass on their trivia as if they were tidbits from power brokers to show his worldliness. By the time Nyon had started talking today about his messages, Christianson was a sheet beyond three sheets to the wind. He did not speak a single word of Chinese and had gotten bored early by their titter-tatter so that he had drunk twice what the others had managed with their lips moving. By this point the Anglo’s usual responses to Po and Nyon, ranged from “Fuckin A’ to ‘Fucking Bastard.’ Both responses were delivered with passion at random intervals depending on whether he had his lips on the mouth of a bottle or not. Po on the other hand was sober enough to have actually pulled out a notebook and he would write things in it from time to time which pleased Nyon who was not used to others thinking his words worthy of recording. Unknown to the unimaginative Nyon, Po often inserted these notes into his intelligence report summary and compilation of information from the agents in “his” organization. Their sublime ordinariness gave his reports a personal touch whose mundane nature Po thought added an air of authenticity and artistic verisimilitude.
Fuk Bao was polite once removed. He was not polite himself, but his parents had been and they had beaten him as a boy so that he understood the concept of politeness, hated it, but acted politely sometimes to avoid unpleasant memories or open conflict at moments it did not suit him. He was politely showing away to No Pants Po about his favorite cousin in Washington, who was worldly because he read lots of the trash in the Government office buildings he cleaned.
“Cousin Van says they will raise our taxes again in the spring. He learned it from a senator.” He made it sound as if Van and the Senator were pals, wandering the links together at some country club instead of Van rooting through the Senator’s wastebasket.
“Fuckin A!” Christianson said. Glug went his bottle.
Po made a note on a tattered piece of paper with his stub of pencil looking pleased. Economic predictions showed breadth in his knowledge.
“The congressmen will hold off making the taxes higher until spring to get past the elections, but will raise them then. It is certain.” Van went on.
“Fuckin Bastard!” Christianson yelled. Blam! The report was sharp as the Anglo snatched up and fired an automatic that was lying on the table at a squirrel which was clambering along a limb across from the porch that leaned brokenly out from the run down trailer. A pine cone shattered in the animal’s vicinity and the unsuspecting rodent scuttled for cover. His companions were not sure if Christianson’s epithet was referring to the rodent here or the senatorial rodent in Washington.
Fuk Bao nodded sagely as if in agreement with the gun shot. He was unfazed; gunshots were common here. Both Po and Bao were used to Christianson’s random shots.
“Cousin Van was also working in the building of the FBI . . .” Fuk Bao paused expectantly—the acronym for the Federal Bureau of Investigation was the same in Chinese as in English. Fuk Bao was well aware that Christianson hated all branches of the Federal Government ever since a series of FBI and ATF raids on Waco, various other polygamist compounds an
d two or three ditzy splinter groups over a several year period. The FBI was anathema. Worse than anything except the IRS of course. He did not simply hate the IRS. To Christianson, FBI personnel were mere demons while the IRS was the actual face of Satan and he usually spit superstitiously on the ground between a V of his fingers at the dread initials. Christianson would almost certainly have instantly joined a militia whose goal was to overthrow all legal entities of the Feds, but no militia would have him. It was easy to understand. Personally, he was nearly as disgusting as Po. Toilet paper was a reviled invention of liberals to him and his left hand usually wafted a nasty tang. He took a bath once a year whether he needed it or not and he scratched . . . a lot. Still, though Christianson was clearly poised near the absolute bottom rung of the human ladder everyone at the table knew he was tempted to take the final step down to murder each time they met. His eyes held a glitter in them whenever he gripped a gun that bespoke his desire to shift the pistol’s aim a foot, kill and bury Po in the woods. It was something he would have done long since based on the ever loose general principals of Caucasian racial purity; except that the ancient kept bringing free booze with him. Even a drunken survivalist would not kill a gook goose that laid such a golden egg and they all knew it. In a strange way it pleased Po. It made him feel at home where everyone hated him too.
Fuk Bao gave it another moment, but the mention of the FBI did not elicit the usual emotional explosion as it so often had in the past. Christianson simply sat shaking his head emphatically as if to clear it and muttering under his breath.
Having waited politely for another insane diatribe and not receiving it, Fuk Bao continued casually.
“Cousin Van says that there was a part of a paper there about a new project to make things that talk across great distances.”
“Radio?” Po asked uncharacteristically curious. “Telephone?”
Fuk Bao shook his head.
“No! Cousin Van says something else. Something that talks around the world and all over and no noise like radio. Perhaps something like that . . . only he thinks perhaps through the earth. It is very strange.”
Po nodded and belched.
“Tell your cousin to tell me more.”
Fuk Bao looked apologetic.
“I cannot tell if he can find out more.” He said politely. “The paper he read it on was only a part of a document that had fallen behind a shredder.”
“Fucking A.” Christianson mumbled.
Po wrote in his book, cocking his head to angle his single eye for forming the symbols.
“Tell him.” He said peremptorily as if talking to a servant.
“Fucking A.” Christianson echoed a mantra rocking back and forth.
Fuk Bao took a swig of Jack Daniel’s black label—good stuff. He swallowed. Po had deep pockets today. If he kept the quality like this it made bothering Cousin Van for more information worthwhile. He continued politely.
“I am not certain that . . .”
Po’s single eye flicked to Fuk Bao and he suddenly stood, yanked a gun from his own pants beltline and fired his revolver five times at the annoying reactionary squirrel even though it jerked itself behind the bole of tree and the bullets simply kept embedding and splintering the wood where it once had been.
“Fucking Bastard!” Shouted the son of a Christian, waved his fists in the air and then exhausted by the outburst crossed his arms on the table, lay his forehead on them, and went to sleep.
“Fucking A” Said Po in a precise imitation of English and then winced slightly as he half burned himself by shoving the hot barrel into the waistband of his pants against his belly.
Fuk Bao swallowed and nodded to himself—understanding the threat implicit in the demonstration—he would contact Van for certain or the crazy old man might shoot him. He did not doubt it for a moment.
Hedrick Jeeter was a retired Air Force old school who lived in Manhattan, Kansas. His tough, weathered hide, thinning white hair, and spare frame were bent over some zinnias in his garden pulling weeds when Bear walked up to him. He looked about 65, but was 74 years and suddenly single . . . his wife had died seven months before.
He stood and looked suspiciously at Bear.
“If you are selling you can turn around right now . . . I ain’t buying shit on a pension.”
Bear smiled and held out his hand for shaking.
Jeeter did not take it and Bear smiled even wider and parked it in lonely splendor back at his side.
“Bear MacMoran, Mr. Jeeter.” Bear made the introduction quietly, avoiding anything that sounded like salesmanship. “I talked to some guys at the American Legion to see if they knew of any good B-52 Pilots . . . three out of five said you were the best they ever heard of.”
Jeeter’s brow furrowed.
“The other two were lying. Probably one of them was Turnipseed. That bastard actually thinks he could out-fly me! He’s far gone. It’s one of the big three—dementia, senility or cocaine . . . I ain’t figured out which yet . . . probably all three.”
Bear laughed.
“Now that you mention it, one of them was a retired Lieutenant Colonel named Turnipseed. It’s a cool name though; I almost picked him based on that alone.”
Jeeter snorted then got slightly thoughtful.
“Picked him for what?” He finally asked, swallowing the bait and the hook.
Bear looked him up and down slowly and deliberately, making sure Jeeter saw it.
“I need a pilot to fly a G model B-52 on a series of . . . uh . . . experimental missions to test some equipment.”
“How experimental?” Jeeter asked.
“Really experimental! Experimental with a capital ‘E!’ The kind of experimental where we forego naming the aircraft and call it ‘The thingamajig . . .” Bear pulled an ear, and hit the honesty button judging it to be what would work with such a man. “So experimental that I am looking for someone who is over sixty because I figure they have already had a good life and don’t have as much life left to lose. Of course, most of the G model pilots are of a certain delicate age anyway.”
Jeeter grinned at that.
“Well . . . you don’t pull you punches do you? I kinda like that.”
“Then you will like it even more if you come on board with my team because I will be beating the hell out of you with all kinds of honesty just like it.”
Jeeter scratched his head and rubbed the stubble of white beard on his chin.
Reluctantly he made the admission he had avoided until now.
“I’m not current in the airframe. I flew them in the Air Force. My later FAA certificate doesn’t cover that particular multiengine.”
“I kinda thought we would leave the FAA out of this one.” Bear said carefully. “What they do not know won’t hurt them.”
That caused Jeeter to finally smile fully—a toothsome grin.
“Like that, huh?”
Bear nodded.
“Yeah. Like that . . . especially like that. Of course the beautiful part is that you may not live long enough for them to pull your license . . . or give you a chance to make me your girlfriend in jail.”
Jeeter scratched his scalp again.
“Pay any good?”
“The best—you can put away a nice nest egg for you next of kin—for as long as you live.”
Jeeter laughed like the boy he had once been then got serious.
“Is it American? I only work for America.” He asked clearly meaning it.
“Like apple pie and those damned broke dick cellar huggin’ Cubbies up in Fenway Park.”
“I think that’s the Red Socks.”
“It was a test. I wanted to see if you were American enough to know that. Your security clearance was up to this project’s level a few years ago. I figure you are still secure enough unl
ess you defected to Haiti in the meantime or something. You in?”
Bear was pleased to see Jeeter wipe his palm on his pant leg and hold out his hand.
“Think I’ll shake that hand now Mr. MacMoran.”
Bear returned the firm shake, reached in his pocket, pulled out an envelope containing ten thousand dollar bills and pressed it firmly into Jeeter’s palm.
“This is a down payment, Mr. Jeeter. If only to show how much we look forward to working with you. We will need you soon. Someone will be by with a contract in the next three days. Be sober by then.”
He walked away, certain he had chosen wisely.
It took them just under three months to get the new airplane ready. Two months of it were spent in an aircraft rebuild plant with shifts working on it 24X7 at huge expense—upgrading her cockpit, avionics and radar roughly into the 21st century and gutting her gunner’s cockpit in the tail as well as the space below the cockpit including removing the old ‘black hole’ where navigator and bombardier had sat in the old days. Jeeter danced around the rebuild crews like a choreographer around a gaggle of ballerinas, demanding perfection at every turn and getting crap instead because they were in such a hurry.
The plane had a big ugly pipe with odd looking bulbs on the ends running out of her nose and another out of her tail. The rebuild plant in Arizona was really curious what they were for. Bear told them it was a new firefighting system for the forestry service. He might have fooled a halfwit with the story, but mostly they quit asking; partially because he had demonstrated himself to be mentally unstable, but primarily because he was loaded with dough and kept on paying their overtime without comment. It did not pay to piss off a sugar daddy with a fat checkbook actually in his hand. The main line aircraft rebuilders had then delivered her in record time to the Boeing-Wichita plant where she had been built originally with Jeeter as co-pilot to work the controls. They informed him that she was FAA airworthy with the modified proboscis while handing him the keys. It was said with a wink and a nudge since a single flight from hanger to hanger hardly constituted a rigorous flight testing regimen but cash was flowing. Bear shoved her quickly in a Wichita hanger he had leased where local talent hand gutted and repaired one engine and further stripped the interior to a shell.