By Air Mail Ch.06

"I've had it translated by Madame Montclair, your tutor," he smiled, "though your lessons will no doubt stand you in good stead as you read your mother' own words, if you wish.

What I've found was that Chantale LaFayette was not related at all to any of the LaFayettes around here and though she could carry herself in a French conversation if she had to hereabout with any of the few who can speak a word or two of it, she came from France, having been born there."

He held up a third book. "This isn't a book of her memoirs. It's her teachings - as they were intended to be given to her daughter one day. They're quite detailed and I couldn't even begin to do one of the exercises that she outlines here."

It's my personal belief after all this time that your mother was a spy of some kind, though not employed in that sort of thing here. I believe that this is just where she chose to leave her craft in trade to hide and make herself a new life with the man who she'd come to love. It makes me wonder now if their being run off the road just when they happened to be traversing that bridge was really the accident that it had been made out to be. I doubt that we'd be able to find out the truth now."

He leaned down and kissed her forehead, "But after puzzling over it all for these past years, I've decided to give these things to you so that you might know a little about your mother anyhow. No matter what she might have been in her past, there was no hiding the love that she had for you.

Now, in exchange for my giving you these things, I want you to keep them safe and out of the hands of anyone else - anyone. Learn what you wish and what you can from it. I've come to the end of the road that I was following. To go one step further would be most unwise. If someone wanted your mother dead, then it is perhaps best that this be left as it is - a mystery - so that whomever it was who brought her doom to her - and my son, believes that there is no daughter.

Now, do you understand?"

Ruthie stood there, uncertain for a time, but at last she nodded and thanked Tom.

She took everything home and whenever she could, she learned what secrets and treasures that her mother had left for her.

Eunice found the money somehow to have her brood tutored along with Terry "so that you don't all sound like you fell off the back end of a mule. I won't have any of you going to any school where the teachers don't know any more about diction and pronunciation than the custodians. It costs me the dickens to have to pay school taxes as well as what the tutor costs, but you'll thank me for it when you're all grown, you'll see."

As he drove on, Terry recalled the moment when how he was going to move what family that he had forward became clear to him, thanks to his friend, Hunter.

He remembered that it began as he stood out in the late afternoon sunshine surrounded by what looked like miles of flat concrete as he sucked on a cigarette. Of course, that was only from standing the way that he was. Behind him, there were a few buildings and aircraft hangars. Being a Saturday and at that time of day, there was little to nothing going on.

Actually, it was nothing at all that was visible, but he was the officer on duty so he had to be there - even though he was really a warrant officer, standing out in the Oklahoma sunshine, watching as the shadows grew longer.

He was restless and that was an understatement. Restless, wanting something to happen in his otherwise plain and ordinary existence and bored almost to tears looking out at the featureless panorama which surrounded him.

Worse, there was an aircraft overdue now by well over an hour.

He took another puff and looked at the horizon. It happened sometimes.

The only issue was the health and condition of the pilot and the present state of the machine. He sighed to himself. Like a lot of training facilities, where he was tended to get men from everywhere and anywhere - and some of them had no business being even close to moving machinery.

Looking out toward the sun to gauge the distance to the horizon, Terry figured that if nobody heard anything in the next minute and a half until the time that he ground out the smoke, he'd have to act and that meant chasing up people to get a proper search started.

From what he knew, it was Peterssen again. Terry just couldn't understand why the army didn't just cut it's losses and make the kid into something useful like a potato peeler in the mess kitchen instead of waiting until he totaled what was at that time a rather limited training resource.

Then he remembered that peeling potatoes involved the use of a sharp implement, so that eliminated the only use that Terry could imagine for the guy.

He shook his head. They'd even given Peterssen a sunny afternoon to fly a simple navigational exercise on a fucking Saturday so that the air around Fort Sill wasn't as full of aircraft as it normally was. That guy could fuck up the Lord's Prayer, Terry thought.

It was just a standard solo mission, part of the curriculum, because the graduates of that school tended to be assigned to postings where you had to be able to know the terrain you were over and where you were and the relationship between where you were, where the enemy was, and where the artillery assets that you'd be directing were located. And that meant that you had to be able to think, fly, use a radio, and work a map with no spare hands.

If you even had a map.

Most half-assed talented guys took to that flight like a duck to water. To most, once you knew what you were doing, it was piece of cake and you could enjoy the flight without an instructor pilot droning in your ear and without his weight influencing things as well.

But not Peterssen, he thought. If there was a way to fuck up something simple, he'd manage it.

Terry ground out his butt, annoyed now that he'd have to act and commit resources to finding an idiot.

As far as he was concerned, his goal was to hopefully find an undamaged aircraft which had managed the impossible - to toss out it's witless pilot and crush him under a main landing gear over being annoyed.

That was what Terry wanted to see.

He knew the aircraft involved and it was 380, the hangar queen. There were more numbers to it's identification, but like many personnel there, he tended to know the aircraft by the last three digits most of the time.

That one was reviled for being the one used uncommonly often by chance or coincidence when a pilot trainee washed out. Early in it's career, it had been damaged in the hard landing of a fool. Even though it had been repaired, ever since, it had been the scapegoat, the one that everybody said wasn't right.

Terry chuckled, he'd even heard one waste of skin tell him that it was haunted.

To his face. He still couldn't believe it.

The truth was that 380 happened to be his personal favorite, though he knew that the army was about done with it, out of tracking how much idle time it spent in the maintenance hangar. What usually happened was that a pilot would find that he'd been assigned to 380 and then he'd make up something - anything which was good enough to get 380 off the flightline as U/S - unserviceable.

She'd get hauled into maintenance once again and eventually, no one would find anything wrong with her. But she'd look bad on her preparedness evaluations all the same.

As Terry was turning around, he heard a truck coming along the back side of the nearest hangar and as it rounded the corner to come toward him, Terry saw that it was Hunter driving a recovery panel truck and he smiled.

Hunter Youngblood was a civilian who worked at Henry Post Army Airfield as a sort of everything - though he was an aircraft mechanic by trade, sometimes pitching in when the enlisted guys were swamped. Henry Post field was a part of Fort Sill and it was located right next to the town of Lawton, Oklahoma. There were many Comanche people living and working all around and there were more than a few who worked as Hunter did on the base. More importantly to Terry, he and Hunter were friends who liked to hike and fish whenever they had the chance and their days off coincided on rare occasions, once Hunter had managed to pry Terry loose from spending his infrequent free time being a quiet loner.

Being that Terry was from Alabama, he tended to get kidded about his accent being damn-near indecipherable at times whenever he needed to speak quickly. It wasn't actually true, but was just something with which others tried to annoy him with at times. When he wasn't speaking quickly, they all told him that he spoke too slowly - though in fact, that tendency had proven useful many, many times in his role as a flight instructor.

Hunter would listen whenever Terry groused about it.

"You don't seem to have any trouble understanding me at all," Terry said to Hunter once and it had been a bit of a moment as Hunter had looked down at his workboots with a grin.

"Terry," he'd said, "I'm Comanche - and you know they use us as code-talkers, right?"

They'd stared at each other and laughed their asses off that time.

Hunter pulled up next to Terry with a wide grin, "They've gone to get Peterssen. The CO sent me to get you."

"What the hell happened?" Terry asked as he got in on the passenger side.

"Well it's Peterssen," Hunter sighed dramatically, "You're not honestly expecting anything simple are ya? I'm not even in the army and even I've heard about that guy. He called in over a telephone line from the first farm that he came to walking back here."

Terry groaned, "Don't tell me that he actually hurt that bird that he was in. Christ, I'll fucking kill him myself. There's not a thing wrong with that one."

But Hunter was shaking his head, "No, not at all. I didn't talk to him, but they told me that he said that he lost power and had to set it down, out by Lake Lawtonka."

Terry grimaced, "So he's proven once again that he shouldn't be trusted with something more complicated than a butter knife. The first waypoint in his mission was to fly to Lake Waurika. From here that's pretty much in the opposite direction. Nothing like making the oldest goof in the book by not knowing how to read a compass.

Fuck, his flightplan has the headings to fly for every leg anyway. I made him write it all out himself to let me check it. There were no errors in the headings. I guess he can read a map, but can't get it right with the engine running."

"Or," Hunter offered hopefully, "he was holding the map upside-down when he tried to check his position."

Terry nodded sadly, "Could be you're right. I wouldn't put anything past him."

He looked over, "You said he called on a telephone. The radio was out?"

Hunter shrugged, "Damned if I know. I've just got a feeling that the CO wants us to go get the bird, so it can't be too busted or anything."

When they walked into the orderly room, they found the unit's commanding officer, a full bird colonel fit to be tied and looking like he wanted to shoot somebody.

"He left the aircraft," the colonel sputtered, in a state of near-apoplexy, "He left the GOD-damned aircraft and walked away from it out in the middle of nowhere. A full tank of fuel and a working helicopter and he walked away. When I get done with him, I'll have him saluting his own balls before dark.

Because they'll be up on the flagpole out by the parade square - right up there underneath the Stars and Stripes.

How the Sam Hill am I going to explain this when I write my report? Those things are still rated as military secrets - even though probably every little baby in Lawton has seen them flying around since we have to train pilots SOME damn place."

Peterssen walked in looking very uncomfortable a few minutes later. "I've tried to tell these MPs that I can manage to report to my own commanding officer, but they insisted on coming with me."

"Those were their orders and they came directly from me," the colonel barked, "I told them to bring you - by the hair if necessary - right to me. Explain yourself and your actions - briefly if you like breathing, Peterssen. All I want to hear about is what happened in concise English. Save the horseshit for your fitness hearing."

Peterssen turned white but then he began.

When all of the things which the man said had happened had been stripped away by two bird colonels - one of them an infantry type with even less patience and understanding, since the base commander was in attendance by that time - Terry and the others were standing in some amazement. It sounded, no matter how Peterssen tried to make mountains out of nothing, as though he'd compounded one simple thing and turned it into what might have easily ended in a near-fatality or worse, a bent airframe.

"You're off flight status as of now," the CO growled in disgust, "There'll be a hearing and if I have my way - unless you come up with something definite that says otherwise - I'll see to it that this man's army puts you into the infantry where you'll be of some use - out front attracting bullets."

He turned to the meatheads, "He's confined to quarters, but I want him kept under some kind of supervision. If he can walk away from an aircraft with a perfectly good radio in it because he's a little 'shaken up' as he says, then I sure don't want him wandering with idiotic thoughts about running away. Christ, he'd probably get run over by a bus and I'd have to write something in my report that sounds like I'm saddened.

Get him out of my sight."

He turned to Hunter and Terry, "I've brought in Harrington to take over your officer of the day duties, since it's almost that time anyway. What I need you to do - if Peterssen's directions make any sense to you - is to go find that bird.

I need you to make an assessment to determine if it's flyable and if it is, then I want you to bring it back to the barn for the night. I'm not holding out any hope that you can fly it back here though, given the time of day. The final decision is yours, Hatchett.

If you find that you can't fly it - or in your opinion it would be more prudent to wait til morning, then you are to remain there and do that. That's a sensitive piece of government property sitting intact - I'd hope - on open land, so I expect you to keep it safe. You ought to maybe take a sidearm with you as well as a portable radio in case the one in the bird is inoperable in spite of what that fool said. Be prepared to need to spend the night, but if you can get it going and back here before dark, I'd appreciate it.

No matter what happens, I want you to call in to let me know your assessment. Get going. You're wasting daylight."

They drove out and by Peterssen's description, it wasn't all that difficult to find 380 sitting on it's wheels, thankfully. Where it was sitting made it hard to spot from the road unless you were on the other side of the lake and they wondered if they could get the truck in close enough to use the start cart that Hunter had mounted in the back, a gas-powered one. There were two issues that they could see as Hunter idled in between the trees as best he could.

One was if Hunter could get close enough to allow him to hook up and the other was how he was going to back out of there once they'd managed it. Terry thought that he'd have to climb out of the window to walk the last little bit to the edge of the trees, but there turned out to be enough space right at the end.

"How did he get it in here, if he auto-rotated down like he said?" Hunter asked.

Terry shook his head, "He didn't.

He figured out that he was going the wrong way and turned around before he got to the Canadian border. But I'll just bet that he flew further out than this. Knowing that he wasted time, I'll bet he chose to have one of his emergencies, hoping that it would divert everybody from making the obvious deduction - that he doesn't know what he's doing.

Most of what he said was a fairy-tale, the way that it sounded to me, and now that I'm looking right at everything, he couldn't have auto-rotated in here. This bit of muddy beach isn't wide enough to have screwed down and then flared. He came in from the water side and turned it around."

He pointed down, "Look at the marks that the gear left. He was moving forward the last foot or so." He turned around and pointed to the trees, "No way he came over those trees engine-out and set it down as neat as that. It's not that easy to manage the last of the kinetic energy you'd have left for any fancy footwork. You just try to gauge the last couple of feet of air that you've got and hope like hell that the controlled crash doesn't bust something - like the pilot. He must have come in from over the lake and stopped to turn around and set her down. From what I see, he came in here under power and landed."

He looked out over the water, "Still, I guess that we're lucky that he didn't set it down in the water."

He walked over, careful not to make too many tracks as he looked up, "I just need to be sure that he didn't actually do as he said. There's not enough light to be able to tell if he clipped anything with the main rotors. If he did, she'll try to shake herself apart when I try to get up to a hover."

He inspected the tail rotor blades for a moment, "He didn't have a tail strike as far as I can tell. What's the ground look like to you, Hunter? Think she'll sink into this any further if we leave her here for the night?"

Hunter shook his head, "It's a little soft, but I think she'll stay put."

Terry pointed to the nose gear. "She's sitting too heavy on the nose wheel in the sand because of the slope toward the water. That's gonna make it a bitch to get loose in the morning." He looked around for a moment, "'Cause it's too dark to even start much now."

Hunter trotted off to the truck and came back with a coil of rope. "I'll tie this to the tailboom and then to a tree back there." He pointed, "Then we'll lay that log on the rope and that'll pull the tail downward so she sits on her tail wheel the way she's supposed to."

With that done, Terry opened the door and climbed inside. "There's lots of juice left in the battery," he said, "probably more than I'd need for a start just as she is.

And right here's the rest of the story," he nodded before he turned the power off again, "He used up over half of his fuel. So that means that he flew about thirty - forty miles going in the wrong direction before he turned around to come back. Christ, we're lucky that he even got this close before he -"

He sighed, "I just wish that I could understand that guy. Most people, when they get something wrong, just see if they can still pull it off. He might have gotten a bit of a blast for wasting fuel, but I've never liked how he tries to make everything other than himself the cause for his troubles. Most of all, I hate how he lies like a dog to cover his goof-ups. Everybody makes mistakes. I just have no time and little patience for the ones who try to look perfect by getting it wrong and then covering their tracks every time."

He got out and checked the switches on everything before he closed the door. "Let's see if we can raise the base with the small radio."

After making contact and telling them to get a message to the CO that they were spending the night in place and would make an attempt to start in the morning, Terry signed off and joined Hunter in looking for a little firewood while they still had the chance without resorting to needing to use flashlights in the quickly darkening gloom.

"I've still got my sandwiches from lunch and I grabbed us a few things from the mess before they turned everybody loose for supper," Hunter smiled, "Told them all that we were going on safari or whatever it's called. Now I'm glad that I told you to draw a sleeping bag out of Stores. I keep one in the truck for times like -"