Dean Ing - Flying To Pieces

FLYING TO PIECES [066-066-4.7]

By: Dean Ing

Synopsis:

Two floors up, Lovett was ushered into a room where he found Elmo

Benteen behind a curtain, with tubes in both arms and another taped

below his nostrils. "Aw Jesus, Elmo," was all Lovett could say.

The parchment eyelids fluttered open..Turning his head seemed to require

heroic effort from Benteen, whose lips formed the faintest of smiles.

"Just cut it too close with the sour mash," he said, so low that Lovett

moved nearer. "Well, they warned me. Call it pilot error."

"They'll have you up and around again, nice as you please, if you just

behave."

"You don't get it, Wade. Listen up, 'cause this is what they call a

death or death situation." A long breath, as if marshaling energy. Then:

"Early in '45, back when your fist was still a virgin, the Japs hid away

a fleet of planes for an all-out suicide war when we invaded Japan."-

Another pause, as Benteen's eyes closed. "Hundreds of planes, maybe

thousands, stashed everywhere. More than they had pilots to fly 'em.

They were recruiting high school kids as pilots near the end, and we

were finding late-model aircraft hid away for years afterward, regular

aerial armada."

He fell silent for a long moment, and Lovett touched the thin wrist

nearest him. The eyes opened. "Wade?" The hand groped for Lovett's,

gripped with surprising strength. "But they didn't find 'em all. I found

a half-dozen, maybe the last on earth in mint condition, in a cave

twenty years later, after my forced landing. I believe they're still

waitin' for the day that didn't come. It's a fuckin' bonanza, kid."

ALSO BY

DEAN ING

The Big Lifters Blood of Eagles Butcher Bird The Nemesis Mission The

Ransom of Black Stealth One Silent Thunder Single Combat The Skins of

Dead Men*

Spooker Systemic Shock Wild Country A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK

NEW YORK

NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware

that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and

destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher

has received any payment for this "stripped link."

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in

this book are either products of the author's imagination or are used

fictitiously.

FLYING TO PIECES

reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

Map by Mark Stein Studios.

A Tor Book Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc. 175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

Tor Books on the World Wide Web: http://www.tor.com Tore is a registered

trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

ISBN: 0-812-54841-8

Library of Congress Card Catalog Number. 97-6275

First edition: August 1997 First mass market edition: September 1998

Printed in the United States of America 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Rob and David, who helped wrangle the little winged beast

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

my brain trust of vintage throttle jockeys, especially Ted Voulgaris,

contributed much with hair-raising accounts of the propeller era. This

time, they were aided in some areas by airmen Bill Knowles, Dan Denney,

David Guerriero, Wayne Reavis, Smithsonian aircraft wizards Tom Alison

and Rich Horigan, music maven Karen Kammerer, the lovely and radiant

Peter Sage, marine engineer Mark McAdams, and our family Alaskans, Glenn

and Valerie Ing-Miller. Though the following tale is-like

Fundabora-chiefly fictional, I learned that its central wild-hare idea

is rooted in fact; more than one stash of "pickled" Japanese treasures

have actually been found hidden in the manner, and for the purpose,

described here.

For background lore on the Nippon of the 1930s I am indebted to author

John Patric, whose wanderings through Japan yielded, in 1943, the

wonderfully readable Why Japan Was Strong. Scholars of that period, and

of strategic warfare, will find this book brimful of astonishing

insight.

PROLOGUE.

If Elmo Benteen hadn't raised so much hell at his last B.O.F. party, he

might have lived to throw another one. Or maybe not; Elmo was loopy as a

bedspring, having fought off half the tropical diseases known to medical

science and too much of the VD. By now, Elmo's organs had become stony

where they should be soft and, he admitted on his deathbed, soft when

they ought to be hard. Every surviving member of the Boring Old Farts

agreed he was past due; Elmo was a legend, but it had taken him more

than eighty years and damned near that many airplane crashes. The only

surprise was, it was finally his innards that crashed.

That's not strictly true. Elmo had a second surprise for his B.O.F.

buddies, and at first they thought it was just the stuff running through

tubes into his arms that was doing the talking. Some of them figured he

hadn't converted all those smuggled Cambodian rubies to money, and maybe

that was what he meant by a huge stash. But after a little judicious

illegal entry, when the last words of the late Elmo Benteen finally

became clear, most of the B.O.F.s emitted variations of, "I don't

believe a word of it," or, "This gives a whole new meaning to 'risk

capital,' " or, more succinctly, "At my age? No dice."

But there are a few old pilots like Wade Lovett who, smart enough to

survive to retirement age, are still dumb enough to sucker themselves

into a box canyon or beneath an anvil cloud, if the reason seems good

enough to risk flying to pieces. When the reasons include several

millions in cash and a paragraph in aviation history, these few will

step forward, betting that experience will bring them through. Amelia

Earhart had lost that bet and Fred Noonan with her, two generations

before, in the same comer of the world where Elmo Benteen later recorded

his great stash. But most of the B.O.F.s remembered Earhart as a pilot

of great courage and indifferent skills, and themselves as "good

sticks"-superior pilots. They also figured that, if ol' Elmo had got in

and out again with a whole skin, the risks would be chiefly financial.

So much for the wisdom of Boring Old Farts.

Actually, the trouble didn't start at Elmo's deathbed; it all began when

he declared a National Emergency...

Even though the city reached out westward toward Rolling Hills, Kansas,

the air traffic from Wichita's Mid-Continent Airport kept Wade Lovett's

condo affordable because some folks don't like to live under an aerial

on-ramp. Still, for each housewife who wakes up fearful whenever a

Boeing's low pass shakes dust motes into her moonlit bedroom, some

solitary wing nut like Lovett smiles without waking.

No mystery about that. For many years Wichita has been home to half the

aircraft constructors in the country, and the area boasts more aircraft

freaks than farmers. When a bug decorates his windshield Re a Jackson

Pollock, the driver twangs, "Wow, must've been a twin Piper." That's how

many airplanes infest Wichita, and their thunder roars a duet of future

money and past adventures to old guys like Lovett. No wonder they smile

in their sleep.

But Lovett hadn't done much smiling when awake lately, though the

business of trading used aircraft was going well at his hangar. When he

padlocked the big multifold hangar doors, that cloudy afternoon in late

April and climbed into his sporty silver Mazda coupe, Lovett tried to

avoid replaying the litany of downers that, he felt, would've had the

prophet Job dancing with fury.

He knew he should've kept his Ford pickup with the winch and lift gate,

because you can't shoehorn a goddamn crate full of Lycoming engine into

the trunk of a goddamn racy foreign coupe. But he'd traded up to

surprise his seventeen-year-old grandson, give the beloved elitist twirp

more reason to enjoy his summer visit, and three days ago Chip had

provided his own surprise, writing to say he wouldn't be coming after

all.

Downers Number One and Two. of Mayday, who had Number Three

was the defection checked out, "gone west" in pilot's parlance, augured

in, all right then goddamn it, died, with what the vet said was a full

cargo of kidney stones. He had raised that fool from a kitten the size

of a flea's hood ornament, a fiffiedi birthday present from a woman

whose name he'd now forgotten. That made Mayday, what was it, nearly

thirteen when he bought the farm. It had taken Wade Lovett longer to get

over Mayday, his only housemate, than seemed possible. You wouldn't

think a satisfied loner in his sixties would go all mi sly-eyed over

something with a brain the general size and usefulness of a mildewed

walnut, Lovett told himself, squirting the Mazda north on Tyler Road,

ignoring the towers of cloud to his left that were backlit by God's own

rosy runway light. And suddenly he felt guilty. it was one thing to

verbally abuse the talkative black tom to his whiskers, so to speak;

tell him that any cat who would stand meowing before a closed door for

an hour when an open one was in plain sight ten feet away, well, such a

cat was dumb as a radish and deserved his imprisonment. Mayday's gaze

had always said he understood those jibes were just male-bonding

bullshit by a man who had nobody else-barring visits by Chip and an

occasional pretty lady, needed no one else-to talk to, evenings in the

condo.

It was something else, though, to debase Mayday's currency when he was

no longer current. it wasn't fair, it was mean-spirited.

"I'm sorry, Mayday," Lovett said aloud, easing from the flow of traffic,

then toward parking slot #16.

What was worse, Wade Lovett was chiefly sorry for himself, and knew it.

He turned off the ignition and sat blinking at his windshield for a long

moment and someone pulled into slot #15, doubtless the new neighbor he

hadn't met. He didn't care to meet him now, either. Was this how you

felt when old age crept up on you? Maybe he should get another kitten,

and as soon as possible.

He got out of the car, shaking his head, and muttered, "One Mayday was

enough."

"Isn't that a cry for help?"

Lovett turned and saw, over the top of the adjacent classic Porthole

Thunderbird, big brown eyes regarding him with honest interest. They

belonged to a woman who could hardly see over her little T-Bird, perky

side of fifty, and he realized he had spoken aloud. "Sometimes it is."

He smiled by reflex. "Looks like you could use some help yourself."

She let him take one of her bulging grocery sacks and, sure enough, she

was the new tenant next 'door, and by the time Lovett sat alone in his

kitchen to sort his mail he had agreed to a martini later in the

evening. He still got invitations like that because his thick graying

hair was still unruly and his dimpled killer smile apparently ageless.

He still accepted the invitations if the lady seemed mature enough to

take little disappointments in stride. All his life, one way or another,

Wade Lovett had eventually disappointed women.

He tossed the junk mail to one side and used the blade of his Swiss Army

knife, the one that would fillet a bass, to slit the single personal

letter. The return address was Irvine, California, so he figured in

advance it would be from old Elmo Benteen.

It was a single photocopied page declaring a National Emergency at the

offices of Bentwing Associates-Elmo went through associates like a dose

of salts through a fasting guru--on a Friday evening two weeks hence.

Lovett knew there would be maybe forty copies of the B.O.F. letter,

because more than half of the hundred-odd Boring Old Farts had already

cashed in their short snorters; and of that forty perhaps half of them

would be able to make it to the boozy reunion known to them all as a

National Emergency.

The B.O.F.s had no officials and only two requirements: you had flown

military missions around the Pacific or Chinaburma-India-Korea and

Southeast Asia counted, too-and in the process you'd got your

tail feathers caught in a crack by some desk dildo, maybe a general. A

court-martial helped you in, but one "no" vote by any member kept you

out, so the really bad bastards never qualified. Garden-variety bastards

were common, though; and if you didn't consume alcohol, why the hell

would you attend a National Emergency anyhow?

The B.O.F. title had emerged from a Carews booze-scented blowout in

Darwin, Australia, back in '42 when the Japanese Navy was practically in

the harbor. Some transport pilot, scheduled for the duration to fly many

tons of explosive cargo very slowly and unarmed through a sky full of

Mitsubishi Zeroes, said his only remaining ambition was to live long

enough that his war stories would qualify him as a boring old fart. That

became a toast, and the toast became a rallying cry, and when some

smartass dreamed up an unofficial patch the Boring Old Farts got a

slogan, too; stolen, naturally, from the First Troop Carrier Command.

The patch showed two winged purple shafts crossed over a pipe and

slippers, with a legend beneath: vincrr QLTI PRIMUM GERIT; He Conquers

Who First Grows Old, or, The Old Fart Wins.

It was understood that the member who called an emergency footed its

bills except for breakage and, now and then, bail; those blowouts were

not exactly formal affairs and you didn't bring your wife because she

might get into a dustup with one of the strippers. It had been nearly a

year since the last bash and Lovett smiled to reflect that old Elmo, now

in his eighties, was still kicking. Lovett was pleased to see that the

emergency was to be held in the Bentwing offices, which meant Elmo's

hangar at John Wayne Airport in Orange County, with the planes booted

outside and a bunch of tables for the girls to strut on. He'd done that

once before.

started flying in formation, they wouldn't hit anything beyond "Wise

move, Elmo," Lovett muttered. When the bottles the hangar. The B.O.F.s

had tried hiring American Legion halls, private clubs, and in one case,

a country club. The tabs for wear and tear had proven greater than those

for food, booze, and entertainment combined. Actually, they had it down

to a science by now. You put your keys, along with everybody else's, in

the same box with a combination lock when you came in. If you couldn't

work the combination a few hours later and then find your way out of a

hangar, you had no business operating a vehicle. Some people said, those

weren't just awfully exacting standards. The hell with them.

Lovett toyed with the idea of passing on this one. It would be a long

cross-country alone to Southern California in his Varieze, a swept-wing

little two-holer he had built from Rutan plans when plastic airplanes

were still exotic. He would hear the same stories again, tell some of

them himself, like the time over Korea when one of the Mighty Mouse

rockets fire. d from his own F-84 started doing slow rolls until he

passed it, and his slipstream sucked it toward him like a big explosive

bullet with his name on it. The Mighty Mouse wasn't a smart munition,

but neither were you if you trusted it. This one was so dumb it

sideswiped his wing without taking half of it off.

Yeah, stories like that, some of them embellished with each retelling.

The problem, he realized, was that the B.O.F.s really were boring old

farts now to most outsiders. And it would be a long flight back, nursing

a hangover. On the other hand, he could spend a night or two with his

daughter, Roxanne, and more to the point, Chip would be there. Lovett's

hesitation was more bullshit, and it didn't take him in. scraw

"Hold a tiedown space for my Varieze," on the Xerox/and, sought an

envelope for it. With all the oddball aircraft Elmo rented out to the

more adventurous of the Hollywood crowd, surely there would be room.

And this time, with most of his fellow Farts pushing seventy or more,

maybe it would end without major trouble for somebody. Yeah; right.

Lovett inverted his schedule at the last minute after calling Roxanne,

and flew first to Santa Cruz. It seemed that Chip had a piano recital on

Wednesday night and Roxy hinted that, first, the kid would appreciate

his granddad's putting in an appearance, and second, a little culture

wouldn't hurt her father any. Lovett sighed and complied. Sure, it might

cost him a sale in Wichita, but you couldn't expect Roxy to think along

those lines. Unlike her father, Roxanne needed more money like Manuel

Noriega needed more zits.

Moving to Santa Cruz with Tess after the divorce, Roxanne Lovett had

grown tall and comely like her mo on Tess's schedule

Roxy had married Tom Mason, a regular guy, the only son in a "good,"

meaning flush with real estate, Santa Cruz family. Tom had lived long

enough to influence his son Childress-Chip-and, thank God, Tom had hit

it off right away with Wade Lovett in spite of Mason family reservations

about a clapped-out old test pilot who traded noisy little airplanes for

a living.

Tom Mason had reared Chip to the age of ten, cheered him at Little

League and steered him toward respect for Lovett, before a zonked

trucker hunted Tom off the Coast Highway one night. Along that cliff

side stretch, a man who leaves the macadam doesn't need an airbag; he

needs an ejection seat with chute attached.

After that, Roxanne Lovett-Mason raised Chip. With Mason money and a

full-time maid in her yuppie Santa Cruz chalet, Roxy had plenty of

time to redirect her son in genteel ways. She remained her mother's kid

but she still loved Wade, wrote him faithfully three times a year, and

had no objection to letting Chip spend a few weeks in Wichita every

summer as a birthday present.

"He thinks you're from the Planet Gosh," she once told Lovett, then gave

her other reason with'an ominous murmur;

and there is very little surfing in Kansas." The surfing off Santa Cruz

was, she felt, an altogether too-seductive competitor to Chip's piano

lessons.

So when Wade Lovett greased his Varieze onto the runway at Watsonville

Municipal, ten miles from Roxy's Santa Cruz place, Chip was waiting with

his mom's mud-brown Mercedes.

Chip offered a hand. as Lovett clambered down, and they traded

boisterous hugs. "Jeez, when are you gonna quit growing." Lovett grinned

up at his grandson who now towered several inches over Lovett's

five-eight.

"Don't blame me for my genes, Pop. Sure you haven't Shrunk in the rain?

Here, let me roust your duds," Chip said, scrambling up to retrieve

Lovett's soft luggage. The two had agreed, back when the boy had begun

his summer visits and Lovett was still shaving ten years off his age to

women who asked, that Chip would call him "Pop." Now the kid was

man-sized, and if the term no longer fitted as well it was still an

agreement. In the Mason family, agreements could be hard-won.

Lovett watched the youth's lithe motions with critical approval; surfing

kept his slender body fit. Chip's hands and feet remained smallish, too

small for a pianist really, his blond hair long and straight, his eyes

the deep turquoise of Tess above a straight patrician nose-. Though his

voice had changed, it kept a light timbre, equally adept at quick-paced

surfer patter and foreign music terms. Lovett hoped Roxy still bought

the boy's clothes because they were elitist as hell. The shoes were Air

Jordans, his black jeans had a designer label, and his blue silk shirt

said the rest.

When they had the Varieze properly kneeling on its nose-wheel and

secured, Chip helped with the postflight inspection. Lots of guys didn't

bother but, as Lovett had told him years ago, lots of guys found loose

fittings or surface cracks later during preflights just when they were

anxious to launch on time. Or they didn't find them, and paid the price

in midair. A good habit, Lovett said, was easy to break. And so was your

neck.

"Yo I u test any experimentals. lately?" Chip asked as they finished the

job.

"Not for a while now," Lovett said, a vast understatement. It was Chip's

proudest boast that his granddad had been a test pilot, though he hadn't

done it for many years. It suited Lovett just fine that Chip knew so

little about his time as Cessna's man in Southeast Asia back in the

sixties. He' )een a civilian then, illegally flying ground support

missions in an 0-2A, a very special type of twin-engined Cessna. The

0-2A was the Rambo of light aircraft, and it wouldn't get arrested for

loitering with its retractable gear and rocket rails. If Chip ever met

any of the other B.O.F.s and heard some of those stories about him, the

kid wouldn't trust him on a tandem bicycle.

During the drive into Santa Cruz when Chip asked what else his pop was

up to on the Coast, Lovett confessed. The kid knew better than to tell

his mom too much about Lovett's present life. He hadn't told her when

they spent a week in Wisconsin at the Oshkosh Fly-in, or about his

discovery that two Heinekens had been one too many for a

fifteen-year-old. "Some kind of fly-in this weekend," Chip guessed.

"Just a geezer patrol reunion at John Wayne Airport on Saturday," Lovett

said. "Bunch of old farts telling lies, mostly."

Chip's grin and quick glance were too knowing. "The B.O.F.s, right?"

"Who's the satchel mouth told you about that?"

"You are. Bad company, you said, but some of their names? Bitchin', Pop.

Who'll be there?"

Shrug. "At the rate they're corking off, maybe nobody but me and

Benteen. It's his bash."

"Elmo Benteen? Jesus Christ and Rachmaninoff! Or did he have a son?"

Chip's enthusiasm waned as fast as it had peaked..

"I believe he does-Del, or Mel, something like that. Elmo probably has

fifty sons schlumping around the South Pacific. They aren't his primary

topics." Chip: "What is?" Lovett: "He is. Elmo's your basic autistic

adult."

"So he's still alive. Jeez, that's rad. You really know him?"

Lovett chuckled at this. "Maybe I should ask what you know about him."

"More than you think, Pop. I had this teacher that kept on about how

spies changed history, so I started a term paper to get him cranked and

ran across this unbelievable dude around World War Two who flew his

black Catalina flying -boat for Naval Intelligence."

"Elmo and his Black Cat. You did your homework, kid."

"Hey, I was stoked. And over twenty years later, Benteen disappeared in

the Pacific, and turned up alive in, I think it was sixty-nine. The

headlines called him, um, I forget," Chip said, and laughed. "Something

gnarly."

"The Phantom of Shangri-La," Lovett supplied. "And don't think he'll

ever let us forget it, either."

"Did you know he sold his story to the tabloids?"

"Never read 'em. But I know he'd sell his eyes if he got the right

price," Lovett said.

Chip tooled the Mercedes down Capitola Road, shaking his head and

uttering little bursts of merriment. "Oh, man. There I s this book with

a whole chapter on Benteen. Really neat shit. According to him, he'd

been working undercover for the British for years, keeping tabs on

French interests in the Pacific; and when he got famous again, they

dropped him. Too much exposure. So he really gave them exposure.

Bitchin'," he said again, and laughed. "Only 'A' I ever got on a history

paper. And Elmo Benteen is a friend of yours," he marveled. "That is so

cool."

"Elmo's like the Brits," Lovett said. "He doesn't have friends exactly,

he has associates. Big sign on his hangar: BENTWING ASSOCIATES. Believe

it."

Chip turned up the long, curving drive past Monterey cypress and

flowering ground cover that, Lovett thought, must require a lot of

upkeep. "Huh." Chip shook his head. "If he doesn't have friends, why is

he throwing a party?" And there, at the back of the house, was Roxy

waiting with pruning shears in one hand and an armload of flowers, and

in medium heels she was as tall as her father and as splendid as Tess

had ever been, kissing Lovett with genuine warmth. "Let's get you out of

this breeze," she said, taking his arm protectively. "That must be quite

a trip alone for a man your age. How are you feeling?"

Abruptly, Lovett realized that she was equating his physical condition

with that of his ex-wife Tess who, he'd been told, hadn't aged well. By

now Tess was in stationary orbit around Jupiter in a region called

Alzheimer Land.

He realized suddenly that Roxy had asked him how he felt for the second

time. "Never ask an old guy how he feels, honey. Because he might tell

you. He will give you details until you wish he were dead and in hell.

Thank your lucky stars I'm not quite an old guy just yet. Tomorrow for

sure, but not quite yet."

He was happy to have his daughter on his arm on any pretext, though, and

they strolled into the solarium while Chip toted his luggage. "... so

even if Chip won't visit this summer, I knew he'd enjoy nothing more

than showing you off here. You're," she paused to find a metaphor her

son would like, but it crashed and burned: "the Mark Foo of the air."

"Bummer," Chip said, aghast. "Mom, Mark got the liquid hammer awhile

back. Must'a tried to ride a real whale-choker. Augered," he added with

an eyebrow lift toward Lovett.

"I can never keep it all straight," Roxy said with a helpless smile. "My

son lives a double life-triple, if you count those little airplanes.

Domenica?" She hardly raised her voice at all. "We'll have tea out

here."

Lovett's glance swept past Roxy to Chip and he saw the youth's quick

gesture, forefinger aimed into his mouth in a comic display of distaste.

Chip might sip Herbal Heaven for his mom but he shared Lovett's

preference for beer.

Their long-time maid, Domenica Sotomayor, sailed into the fern-hung

solarium with the tea tray moments later and beamed at Lovett, who gave

her a hug. "Guapa as ever," Lovett winked, and Domenica flushed with

pleasure. She could never fit her rump into a washtub but she might fit

nicely into a registry of great chefs.

Roxy poured, making a ceremony of it, and made polite enquiry about

business in Kansas. "Okay, I suppose," Lovett replied, hoping to avoid

shop talk. "I don't worry about it much so long as I can pay the bills."

Her glance sharpened. "Is it, um, becoming much of a bother, Dad?"

Unspoken but hanging there: at your advancing age.

Dean Ing - Flying To Pieces

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: