Operation Assassination

by Anne Fox

  Doc Andy’s eyes narrowed. “The two of you are insane,” he said in measured tones.

  “You’re the one who’d know!” Spud said, bursting out laughing again. “Oh, we got him good,” he said to Hank, hugging and kissing her.

  Hank walked up to Doc Andy. “All of you who are in Medical A,” she began, “are privy to the biometric readouts when we’re in quarters. Are we having any problems?”

  Doc Andy just looked at her.

  “Give that back,” she said, grabbing the dildo. “We need it. We have too much fun with it.” She turned and walked out of the office, the dildo in her hand, Spud on her heels.

  Doc Andy stewed a moment, then got thoughtful. I wonder what varieties of fun they’re talking about?

  Hank and Spud walked into the cafeteria, where the rest of the Field Team sat drinking coffee at the team table. She sat, and dropping the sex toy in front of her said, “Someone pass me a cup of coffee.”

  “Uh,” Edge started, staring at the object. “Hank?”

  “Oh, sorry,” she said. She took the dildo and stuffed it into one of her own cargo pockets.

  “I gotta ask what that’s all about,” Voice said.

  “I bet I know,” Amigo said. “They just spoofed Doc Andy.”

  “You’re kidding!” Voice said. “You should have let me know! I would have sent one of the mouse drones in there to record it!”

  Spud put a cup of coffee in front of Hank and they both started laughing again. “You should have seen how red he got,” Spud said.

  “Spud tossed it to him. You should have seen how he bobbled it when he tried to catch it!” Hank erupted in laughter, and Spud involuntarily spit a mouthful of coffee, spraying the table.

  “Oh my God... and the look on his face when I had it in my pants and asked him if he could lube it for us...” This time Spud’s laughter took him off his chair, and he laid on the floor, laughing and pounding his fist on the floor while Hank broke out in renewed laughter, rocking back in her chair and causing Cloud to catch her before she fell backwards.

  “I think we’d all just better watch out for these two,” Cloud remarked. Then he, too, broke out laughing, joined by the rest of the team.

  Hearing the laughter, Doc Rich walked out of her office and peered into the cafeteria. Spud was still lying face down on the floor, his face on his crossed arms, shoulders heaving with laughter, while the others all laughed and slapped the table. Making her way over to Doc Andy’s office, she asked, “What’s going on?”

  “Psychologically, they’re fine,” Doc Andy said, trying not to sound embarrassed, but turning red nonetheless.

  Doc Rich looked at him knowingly. Looks like the children had some fun with the doctor, she thought as she turned to leave.

  For his part, Doc Andy thought, I’ll have a hard time having a serious conversation with any of them from now on.

  2

  Spud sat finishing his breakfast coffee, watching the news on his tablet. The news anchor was reporting on a press conference held by the President the evening before. Spud’s forehead was furrowed while he listened to the President speak. “What the hell did he just say?” he asked to no one in particular.

  “I gather you’re watching our illustrious Chief Executive’s press conference from last night,” Crow remarked.

  “He got just a little off the teleprompter again, didn’t he?” Cloud said.

  “I’ll say,” Spud replied. “I saw a lot of odd things when I was in the Secret Service, even given my time with the Presidential Protective Division. Most of it occurred in the White House residence, though – not in front of cameras.”

  “I’ll bet it was interesting being a fly on the wall in the White House residence,” Edge said.

  “Fishing for a good story?” Spud asked.

  Edge shrugged. “When you live in a hole and don’t get out much, anything can be interesting.”

  Hank laughed. “In other words, yes. He’s fishing for a good story.” She mused a bit. “I’ve got to admit: this President is odd. One moment, he’s perfectly coherent, the next he’s babbling like a drunk with the DTs.” She downed the rest of her coffee. “Well. Odd as he may seem, he still has a popular following. And politics aside, this isn’t getting Edge and I up in the air for flight training. Am I with you today, Crow, or with Cloud?”

  Crow produced a quarter and turned to Cloud. “Call it,” he said, flipping it in the air with his thumb.

  “Heads.”

  Crow slapped the quarter down on the table. “Tails. Looks like you’re with me today, Hank.”

  “Let me grab my logbook and student pilot certificate and I’ll be right with you.”

  Once Hank was out of earshot, Spud asked Crow, “Is today going to be the big day?”

  “Never can tell, Spud,” Crow said. “If the weather doesn’t suddenly turn to crap, which it isn’t forecast to do, and she doesn’t get a case of the heebie jeebies, then there’s a good possibility she’ll solo today. But,” he continued, “I don’t want you anywhere she can see you. That would likely be a sure-fire way to get the heebie jeebies going.”

  Spud smiled. “She hasn’t seen me hiding out there yet.”

  “Ready to go,” Hank announced, returning to the cafeteria.

  She stood while Crow finished his coffee and joined her. “It still seems weird to travel in a sedan without six guys and a bunch of mission gear,” she said.

  Crow laughed. “Sometimes you just have to blend in. It’s hard to do that with a sniper rifle case along with you.”

  “I’ve never asked you what your pilot’s license looks like.”

  He laughed again as they left the BEQ that sits atop the unit’s underground complex and climbed into a car. “Ok, I’ll show it to you as long as you don’t laugh too hard.” He pulled out his wallet and extracted the document.

  “Steven Crow? That’s the name they put on your certificate?”

  “Did you look at your student pilot certificate?”

  “Not really,” she said, handing his pilot’s license back to him. “I didn’t want to get all starry-eyed over it before it was endorsed and became worthy of attention.”

  He started the car and began to drive off. “Why don’t you take a look?”

  She opened her pilot log book and took the certificate out from the envelope she’d pasted inside a cover to hold it. She laughed. “Katie Hank? Really?”

  “You make a fine flight attendant when we’re recruiting, Katie.” Crow shrugged. “It’s as good a name as any, isn’t it?”

  “So, what happens if and when I retire and I get a different name?”

  “You file a change of name document, and they issue you a new pilot’s license with the new name, I guess.”

  “And my excuse for doing this is?”

  “You just hate ‘Katie Hank.’” He turned and smiled. “Anyone can change their name to anything, you know. As long as the government knows what to put on your income tax bill, they don’t care.” He gave her a nudge. “Besides, you’ll change your name anyway, won’t you? I mean, aren’t you and Spud planning on getting married for real when you retire from the unit?”

  “I never even thought about it,” she said. “I guess I just figured that after a fancy Marine Corps wedding, complete with rings,” she said, holding up her left hand displaying the mokume engagement and wedding band on her ring finger, “that we were already married enough.”

  “I’m making a bet that Spud will decide you need to get married again.”

  “So, it’s not enough that I agreed to being a ‘spousal unit’ with him to the extent of even being surgically sterilized for the privilege and then getting smacked on the ass with a sword by Edge in a Marine Corps wedding, I have to make three times the charm.”

  “He did go through the same process, right down to the surgical sterilization,” Crow observed. “Well, minus the smack on the ass with the broad side of a sword. I’m still guessing that he’s going to want to make it official with
a piece of paper, though.”

  He parked the car next to a hangar at the Stafford Regional Airport and the two of them got out. “Ok, let’s get eight zero Quebec out of the hangar. We’ll head out to the southwest the way we usually do, and then back for some touch-and-goes. I’d like to get a look at your slow flight and stalls today. Winds are two two zero at six knots.”

  “Runway 15 will give me a headwind.”

  “Do your preflight check and let’s get airborne.”

  Hank grabbed the checklist and began to check the aircraft for everything from the condition of the tires to oil levels in the engine and fuel levels in the wing tanks, following the checklist to ensure each applicable item was checked. Leaning down to check the blade that possessed openings for the pitot/static system, she found a small bit of clear tape covering the static port.

  “I’m gathering you left this for me?” she asked.

  Crow smiled.

  “It’s always something. Do you have a screw for the one that’s missing off the tail faring as well?”

  “You got both of them.”

  “Assuming you only left me two surprises,” she said.

  “Trust me. I only left two surprises.”

  “I don’t trust you for one second,” she said, continuing with the checklist.

  After replacing the missing fastener and satisfied that the plane was in condition for flight, she cleared the area and started the engine, then made a call to announce to other traffic that she was taxiing out to runway 15. Calling on the radio again, she advised other aircraft that she was departing.

  Watching the plane climb and the ground seemingly fall away beneath her, she marveled once again at the physics that keeps an airplane aloft and did a little mental shudder at the thought that even something seemingly minor going wrong could take an airplane uncontrolled to the ground. Aside from learning the mechanics of what to do to get the airplane to fly as she wanted it to, a good portion of the training had also covered what to do when the plane wasn’t doing what you wanted it to. Both Crow and Cloud made it a regular habit to throw some sort of surmountable monkey wrench into a flight: everything from simulating an engine failure by pulling the throttle to idle to simulating control failures and instrument malfunctions. She now felt confident that if something went wrong and it could be resolved, she could resolve it. And her knowledge of the rigorous inspection procedures required of aircraft, both prior to each flight by a pilot and at least annually by a qualified mechanic, gave her confidence in Crow’s Piper Archer that she would not have in a road vehicle on the ground. But then, you don’t just roll to the side of the road when things go tits up in a plane, she thought.

  “You know how I like to see slow flight,” Crow told her. “The new standards say to keep the airspeed so the stall warning doesn’t go off, and we’ll practice that for your checkride, but eight zero Quebec is perfectly controllable when the stall warning is blaring. So slow ‘er down for me.” As she slowed the aircraft, he added, “You know, this used to be the standard. I’m still not quite sure why they changed it.”

  She went through the paces he outlined for her, maintaining altitude at minimal airspeed as well as doing the same in turns to both left and right.

  “Good job,” he announced, satisfied with her performance. “Now let me see some stalls and stall recoveries.”

  Again, she went through the maneuvers he outlined for her, and she was again rewarded for successfully completing each task.

  “Do you have an idea why I wanted to see slow flight and stalls today?”

  “It might have something to do with my being able to kick your ass out of this plane and go do a few landings on my own,” she said.

  “Do you feel ready?”

  “I’ve felt ready for the past three flights. You’re the one who hasn’t been ready.”

  “Well... it is my airplane,” he said, smiling at her.

  She made her radio calls to return to the airport, landed, and then taxied back to the run-up area at the end of runway 15.

  “Hand me your logbook and student pilot certificate,” Crow said. Doing so, he took both documents and made the endorsement in each that would grant her the ability to conduct solo flights as a student pilot. Handing them back, he opened the door, stepped out on the wing, and dropping his headset in the seat he’d been sitting in, shouted over the sound of the engine, “Two touch and goes and a full stop landing. And don’t make me walk back to the hangar. I’ll be walking down the runway so you won’t have to taxi back to pick me up.”

  ‘Bout time. And I ought to make you walk in.

  Looking to make sure Crow had walked to the side of the runway, she took off and climbed to pattern altitude. Turning downwind in the traffic pattern, she looked down and forward into the hangar area and saw what she expected to see: Spud sitting on the hood of a car he’d driven in, with a pair of binoculars, watching. I wonder if he knows I’ve seen him down there the last five times I’ve been out to fly? She was actually pleased that he’d taken an interest in her flight training, and was determined to show off her newly-acquired skills. The happiness she felt had her both mentally excited and physically relaxed as she flew the pattern, made her radio calls, landed and took off again for another trip around the pattern, landed and took off, then around again to come in to land. Seeing Crow waiting at the side of the runway ahead of her, she briefly considered just taxiing on past him and returning to the hangar, but thought better of it and brought the plane to a stop so he could get back aboard.

  “Nice job, Hank. How did it feel to you?”

  “Felt great.” She grinned at him. Then she said, initiating a communication link with Spud through her earpiece and bum ticker, “Spud, we’re going to hangar A3 if you’d like to join us.”

  “You saw him?”

  Pfft! “I’ve seen him down there for the last five flights, for Chrissake.”

  “And here I thought he’d make you nervous.”

  After shutting down the airplane and putting it back into its hangar, Crow turned to Hank and said, “There’s a little tradition we need to go through right now.” He pulled out a pair of scissors. “Turn around.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I need to cut off the back of your shirt.”

  “The fuck you say.”

  “I have another shirt for you. But this is a tradition, and as someone with a flight instructor’s certificate, it’s a tradition I uphold.” Crow took the scissors and cut a rectangular piece out of the back of Hank’s shirt from the shirt tail to her shoulders. Laying it out on the hood of the car they’d driven to the airport in, he took a marker and wrote on it: ‘First Solo, Katie Hank, Stafford Regional Airport, N4380Q’ and dated it. Then he handed her a new shirt. She unabashedly shucked off the one with the back missing and replaced it with the shirt Crow handed her.

  “So, why is cutting the back off a student’s shirt on the day of their solo a tradition?” she asked.

  “It goes back to the days of planes with no intercoms and open cockpits. The student would sit in the front of the plane, and the instructor would sit behind them. When the instructor wanted to say something to the student, he’d yank on the back of their shirt to get their attention and holler over the engine noise so the student could hear them. When the student soloed, it was considered that they no longer needed the back of the shirt because there’d be no instructor behind them to yank it.”

  She smiled. “Kind-of a neat tradition.”

  Spud walked up and said, “What’s this? Cutting off my wife’s clothes?”

  Hank went to explain, but Spud held up a hand. “Crow told me about the tradition and where it comes from.” He gave her a hug and a kiss. “Congratulations, Love. How did you know I was here?”

  “The same way I’ve known you were here for the last five flights,” she said.

  “I’m telling you, Crow: she’s got spidie sense.”

  “How did it go today, Hank?” Edge asked during din
ner.

  She grinned and showed off the shirt Crow had given her. It was emblazoned with the words “First Solo” and had a visual flight rules map of the area around the Stafford Regional Airport printed on it upside-down.

  “It’s nice that you soloed,” Edge said, “but the map is upside-down.”

  “Not really,” Hank said. “Crow had it printed that way on purpose.” She stretched the shirt out and observed, “If I get lost and hold it like this, I see the map as right side up.”

  “That’s cleaver. I’m going to steal that idea,” Cloud said.

  “How’s your training going?”

  “Still playing catch-up,” Edge replied to Hank.

  “I had flight hours before I got bumped off to join the unit,” Hank said. “You don’t get a lot of time to get out and fly when you work for the FBI, though. Unless you’re in the flight wing, of course.”

  “I didn’t realize the FBI had a flight wing,” Cloud said.

  “I don’t know why you didn’t,” Hank said. “The flight school I was going to had their office between our flight wing and DEAs.”

  “The FBI doesn’t train their pilots?”

  “I wasn’t trying for flight wing. I was just wanting to learn how to fly because I thought it would be a neat challenge,” Hank replied. “I was interested in drug cartel taskforce and was actually trying to get transferred to El Paso to be a part of it when I fell from a helicopter here at Quantico.”

  “Messy.”

  “Yup. Probably why all they put in the casket was bags of gravel.”

  The rest of the group chuckled, remembering their own “deaths” and the actual funerals held for them by those who believed the contrived demises were real.

  “What name ended up on your student pilot certificate?” Edge asked.

  “Katie Hank.”

  “They put Edward Gearing on mine. Get it? E-D-ward G-E-aring?”

  “Then we retire, and we have to get new certificates with our new names on them. Even ‘Steven Crow’ over there has to do it.”