She heard them rush past the door and continue down the hall.
“They’re not men,” the woman whispered desperately, as if Cricket had never believed her in the first place.
Cricket somehow knew that the woman wouldn’t yell. Her lucidity had attached to some greater fear, or perhaps a new belief that people were no longer human but devils. Perhaps dementia had accosted the silver-haired lady, but Cricket had witnessed evil on parade many times over the summer and fall. She couldn’t discount the woman’s fears. Maybe the woman was the last patient being moved to a lower floor?
She heard the men at the end of the hall talking excitedly again, and heard “every room!”
Holding the woman in her arms, she peered around the door’s corner and saw their flashlights searching the rooms. She ran to the exit and was through the door when they spotted her. Cricket flew down the steps, stumbling on the first landing when the door above crashed open, a mad timpani roll announcing the next movement of war and anarchy. Her heart beating fast, she burst into the first-floor hallway to a well-lighted, normal-looking hospital scene of staff in lab coats and patients being gently wheeled on gurneys. In flight, carrying a whisper of an old lady, her Colt drawn, she yelled for the hospital staff.
“Cricket,” Sister Marie cried out, the rest of her sentence covered up by all the yelling.
The exit door exploded open and Cricket, still holding her patient, aimed the Colt at the nearest sweat-faced man in hospital blues, yo-yoing on the balls of his feet, caught between lunge and retreat.
“Nobody move,” a woman shouted. It was Becca. “Cricket, put away the gun. You’re really going to shoot our hospital staff who were bringing a woman to the first floor for treatment?”
The three hospital guys looked at each other, still unsure of their next move. The man closest to Cricket—still in some kind of rock and-hard-place region—held Becca in an agonizing gaze.
“Turn around, take a few deep breaths. I’ll handle this,” was all Becca offered the three men, who slinked off in the opposite direction.
“Cricket, really, you’re busting these fools for doing their job?”
“I had no idea,” Cricket holstered the .45, and a nearby nurse whose mouth was still hanging open closed it and mentally programed herself to go back to work, or at least that was how Cricket read it. “Becca, it was dark. They seemed to be toying with this lady,” who was taken from Cricket’s arms and placed on the clean sheets of a nearby gurney.
“It was all very strange,” Sister added. “Cricket knew I wasn’t happy with her taking off like that. But it worked out well.”
“How’s that?” Becca said, the prosecutor interrogating a witness. “How did it work out well? That Cricket terrified a woman who was simply being moved to a floor where she would receive greater care?”
“She was following her instinct,” Sister maintained. “Let’s ask the patient what happened.”
The woman had already been wheeled into a room midway down the hall. The nurse, who had regained her composure, spoke before Becca did.
“Dementia,” the nurse said.
“I believe you,” Sister Marie said calmly. “But maybe there’s something else she saw or heard, something to help us understand how she misread her treatment. It would be a help to the other patients and to the professional staff.”
Cricket smiled at Becca. “I agree. But why was she in the dark?”
“She wasn’t,” the nurse offered. “There are portable lights, and the orderlies were cleaning her up. She was the last patient to be moved tonight.”
Predator walked out in a hospital gown, thermometer dangling like a cigarette from his mouth. He stood and just surveyed the scene, before removing the thermometer and addressing Becca.
“I’m getting the willies about staying in your fine facility.”
“Nobody is forcing you to stay.” Becca turned away from Predator and started talking with the nurse. She was finished with him.
Sister walked over to the gnarly old mechanic and gently took the thermometer from him. It was an ancient mercury one, and she shook it hard to get it ready for the next check.
Predator said, “Maybe I’ll leave the decision up to this wonderful nun here.”
39
The Devil Walks the Streets
Unlike Predator with his potential heart problems, Fritz awoke the next morning run over by the flu. He had promised PJ Bob he would perform an engine run-up after replacing the spark plugs. Cricket found Lee Ann still sick and Sister Marie in the kitchen making tea for those under the weather.
“We need to go looking for mullein,” Sister said. “I know where to find it, and it’s way better than the tea I’m steeping right now.”
“I’ll go when I get back from the airport. I’ll be back by lunchtime.”
She checked on Fritz before leaving.
“Why don’t you take the bird flying?” He was covered by a blue quilt that Elaine had found in a spare bedroom closet. Her husband pulled the heavy quilt up to his neck and had his finger marking his place in a novel he was reading.
“Not interested,” she said, plopping down next to him, combing his hair back. “You get better and we’ll go up together. I need more instruction. It seems I have trouble distinguishing between the good guys and the bad guys.”
“Stop it,” Fritz said without much energy. “We were following our instincts.”
“I was following something, and it led me over a cliff.”
Fritz reached for her hand, lost his place in the book, and it fell off the bed. Cricket picked it up off the carpet: “Tarzan and the Golden Lion…”
“I found it in Mrs. Givens’ library.”
She smiled. “Tarzan lives in a black-and-white world.”
“Tarzan is a little more complex than you might think. He’d probably agree with me, air power isn’t always the answer.”
“Tempting to think otherwise”—she sighed—“when you’re taking in everything from God’s perspective.”
PJ Bob picked up Cricket from the mayor’s house to have her preflighting the Mustang by midmorning. The mechanic could have performed the run-up, but the guardsmen left the airport at random times for other duties and left most of the airport unprotected, except for two guards at the main entrance. PJ Bob would be standing by listening to the engine and maintaining vigilance with his shotgun and sidearm and Cricket would taxi and test the brakes.
Cricket was climbing into the cockpit when several vehicles came speeding onto the tarmac. She reached for her Colt and then stopped. Sergeant Wills.
Men and women jumped from the cars and flanked the sergeant, guns out, facing all directions.
“Is that two-way radio still working in the Mustang?” Sergeant Wills called to them when he was still some distance away.
“Yeah, fresh batteries,” PJ Bob announced.
“Cricket, we need you and the Mustang to back up our guys fighting at the Holiday Inn, three miles east of here.”
“Sergeant, my husband’s sick.”
“Then you fly the bird.”
“We work as a team… especially going after a target.”
“I can’t do much, but I can ride along, another pair of eyes,” PJ Bob said, walking over to Sergeant Wills. “I just need someone here to guard this hangar and Predator’s Cub.”
“You got it,” the sergeant said.
“Wait, you guys. No one is flying this bird unless Fritz is here.”
Both men looked at her and Wills said, “Cricket, our men surprised a convoy of slave trucks just leaving the hotel. We believe we have all the captives, but the slavers retreated to the hotel. Lots of firepower stored there. They want to make their escape, but we’ve got them surrounded. We need that extra firepower of the P-51.”
“I can’t take the chance of hurting someone innocent.”
Wills said, “If they had innocent people, we’d see them at the windows being used as shields. Not happening. Once it gets dark, they�
��ll sneak away. Get into firefights with my people and more people die, especially those in the surrounding neighborhoods. We can’t have that.”
Cricket climbed down from the cockpit and started walking into the hangar. Since her first solo, she had never again piloted the Mustang by herself, let alone in combat. On that first adventure, in midsummer, she had landed in a strange meadow, where she found the emptiness of the field unsettling. Soon after, Cricket encountered a young girl being attacked by yellow jackets. She rescued Grace and flew her to a new home, only to lose her weeks later.
Wills followed Cricket, and PJ Bob followed the sergeant toward the back of the hangar, where the sunny day vanished among the shadows. Atop a metal bench, lanterns of all sizes were extinguished. In the safety of the semidarkness, Cricket turned to the two men.
“Even if Fritz were here… I don’t think I’d go.” Her loss of nerve was complete. She thought of her first kill. Two young men she had killed as though she were hunting. Jumping out of the Barracuda, she had felt the excitement of the hunt, the adventure unfolding as she saw her attackers through the Remington’s powerful sight. But shortly afterward she witnessed the slow suffering of one man and the quick, strange end of the other, who died with his forehead touching the forest floor, on his knees, searching for that very precious thing he had just lost. And these were people who deserved to be shot.
Wills was in her face. “Cricket, we all screw up, but we can’t be frozen in fear and let really bad people get away with this terrible crime. For goodness’ sake, they’ve brought back slavery. Lights out for less than a year, and the devil’s walking the streets again.” Wills put out his hand, an offering from a brotherhood of imperfect souls. “You’ve shown amazing courage, many times over. But was it messy, and did the innocent sometimes die? Yes, tragically so. I know you carry in your pocket our Declaration, our Constitution. Draw on that. My people were slaves at the time of its writing. But I know that it heralded our freedom and so did the man who wrote it, a slave owner himself. Think of the loss, the horror of the Civil War, what it took as a nation to throw off the chains of not only the slave but the slave owner.”
Cricket feared killing someone innocent, adding to the chaos. Worse, she feared her own death and that of her unborn child. Standing behind all her fears was her abortion, once again hollowing out every good feeling she had toward the people she loved. She stood in the shadows of the hangar—the sergeant quiet, the strength in her arms erased. How could she control the airplane with arms so weak?
Decades earlier, the P-51 Mustang had stood as a symbol of good against evil, doing the right thing, knowing what the right thing was. Only days ago, from her righteous perch in the P-51, she had opened fire, bringing only misery. That was not the right thing.
Directly from God: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. She thought she heard the sergeant recite those words, but it wasn’t him; it was her uncle Tommy, who had landed on Omaha Beach, years ago. She turned her head left, sensing that he was at the back of the hangar conversing with her and the sergeant. He’d once told her that the night before the invasion, after he had prayed intensely and finished with “God’s will be done,” another prayer surfaced, one inspired by the Declaration of Independence.
Uncle Tommy knew that in order to face all the dangers from the landing craft to shore and beyond, he had to feel in his bones his love of life; recall the precious store of happiness he possessed at nineteen years old. A voice told him that a long life wasn’t key to attaining these amazing gifts from his Creator. Before entering the water with his fellow soldiers, their dreams achieved, unachieved, a silent prayer was sung full of remembrances, heartache for a girlfriend, a backyard, and a holy promise streaming in from the undiscovered country.
Cricket started walking toward the door that led to empty offices and the pilots’ lounge. She pulled a pack of matches from her jacket pocket and lit a small lantern at the end of the metal workbench.
“Give me a few minutes, Sergeant.”
The sergeant nodded his head and walked toward the front of the hangar.
She pulled the pamphlet from her back pocket and read the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence. She stopped at the list of grievances. She knew them well. She knew even better the ones of the present moment. She turned the wick down and watched the flame sputter and become extinguished, and walked toward the light at the front of the hangar.
40
Airborne
Strapped in the front seat, engine rumbling slightly above idle, Cricket cranked the canopy shut and tested the two-radio and the headphones Predator had acquired for her. She then loosened her seatbelt. “You’re getting big, my love,” she addressed her belly, and affectionately rubbed it. “Mom’s got a mission, but we’re going to be home for dinner.” She was literally minutes away from the target, and both she and Wills expected to be in range the entire mission.
He waved from an old army jeep and left the tarmac, followed by two more vehicles loaded with officers. He needed a few minutes at the hotel to determine Cricket’s best use of the Mustang. She planned on initially climbing to five thousand and remaining a few miles west of the Holiday Inn Express.
PJ Bob wanted to fly along, another pair of eyes, but she had never flown with him and there was no time to break in someone new. Besides, other than communications with the ground, she wanted no distractions. Strength returned to her arms, and Cricket increased power to check the engine instruments and magnetos. An expected drop in rpm and a slight roughness were all normal. The wind favored the south runway, so she taxied north, aiming the sleek beast for the departure end of the runway.
Wills broke in with a call. “A few survivors escaped from the rear of the hotel. We’re debriefing them. Get airborne and I’ll let you know what we find out.”
“Are they shooting?”
“They stopped. For the moment. My antenna is up. Something’s being decided, discussed. From their coordinated fire from all sides of the hotel, someone in there is leading them, thinking things through.”
“I’ll be in position in five minutes.”
“Good.”
Cricket held the brakes, facing the approach end of the runway. She didn’t expect to be surprised by another aircraft on final approach, but anything was possible. Flying was all about the unexpected even though in the “old days,” thousands of hours could pass with a pilot never experiencing so much as the engine hiccupping. In this brave new world, she and Fritz rarely had five minutes of normalcy while flying.
Cricket welcomed the overcast. No glare for spotting the target, or direct sunlight to interfere with her strafing run and climb-out.
She checked her directional gyro against the known runway heading. She brought the power in smoothly and confidently, and the Mustang responded with a deep growl, quickly accelerated, and was soon flying, crossing the river in a right bank.
Cricket wasted no time climbing. Rocket ship time! The modern city, beautiful Mount Adams, sports stadiums along the river belied the fact that the old institution of slavery was making its comeback.
She estimated that the overcast extended a couple of thousand feet above her. Leveling off and reducing power, she looked out over the long fuselage and felt her connection with those other horses she had grown up riding, losing that desire and finally longing to get back in the saddle, thanks to Lee Ann’s wise words.
Without Fritz, her concentration would be intense for the descent, firing, and climb-out. She’d have very little time to breathe and start the next run, let alone take another radio call.
The call from Wills startled her. “Attack from the north. They started firing again at us on the south side. That means they’re beefing up the north side. We have all the hostages.”
Damn, another first solo. Though her limbs remained strong, her movements smooth, butterflies took up residence.
“What about innocent bystanders?” Cricket asked herself, leveling the wings after unexpected turbulen
ce rocked the Mustang. Instinctively she glanced at her belly.
Hand on the control stick and the other on her baby, she listened to Wills’ reply.
“The last group we rescued said all the floors were armed with fighters. No talk of hostages.”
Cricket agreed to contact Sergeant Wills before landing.
41
Checking Out at the Holiday Inn
Lucy’s first major fight had quickly turned into failure. Her light at the end of the tunnel rested in the fact that she had already shipped three-quarters of their catch to the stadium on the river. But the current failure was a loss of “good skin,” being that most of the Holiday Inn catch was young and attractive.
Before her stood the two slow-witted clowns who had lost the entire catch destined for a slave ship in forty-eight hours. Hands on her narrow hips, the diminutive leader focused on the two slavers in disbelief, chin tucked in, eyes ablaze, aiming upward. The “Lucy look” usually preceded a bloody mess. The shorter of the two slavers pissed his pants, and his taller partner pushed him away as if to say, “This is the loser.” Lucy’s bodyguard, Mr. Randy, raised his machete ready to finish them off but she made him stop, which drew a look of surprise from the thuggish bodyguard, who had never witnessed a moment of mercy.
The antislavers had caught the two captains off-guard. As their men were being slaughtered, “Mutt and Jeff” had abandoned them and their catch before escaping as far as the river.
Both men squealed their promises and “sorrys,” and Lucy told them to shut up. She instructed the shorter captain to stand in front of the window. He was handed a broom and told to hold it like a rifle. When the man didn’t move, Mr. Randy shoved the captain toward the window and convinced the man to pantomime being a shooter by poking him with the tip of his machete. At first nothing happened, other than the man’s legs shaking like the scarecrow’s in The Wizard of Oz. Then Lucy nodded, and Mr. Randy moved alongside the doomed captain and fired his AR-15 for several seconds. He quickly stepped back, and the slaver had wished to do the same, but the raised machete said otherwise.
American Blackout (Book 3): Gangster Town Page 13