From alt.sex.stories.tg Wed Jul 24 10:35:16 1996
Path: nienor!mordred.cc.jyu.fi!forwiss.uni-passau.de!suelmann
~From: suelmann@forwiss.uni-passau.de (Michael Suelmann)
~Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.tg,alt.sex.stories
~Subject: TG: ABFH - complete
~Date: 22 Jul 1996 22:33:35 GMT
Organization: University of Jyvaskyla, Finland
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~Xref: nienor alt.sex.stories.tg:2062 alt.sex.stories:61518
TG, sex-change (chem,surgery), plot (aviation, partly violent) §§§§§§§§
There was an incomplete repost of this story recently.
Here is all the authour wrote until now.
There probably won't come any new parts.
This is the start of the series "Assault Bitches From Hell"
Copyright Stephanie M. Belser. Her E-mail address is
73020.2405@compuserve.com
Assault Bitches From Hell
Lieutenant Anderson waited outside of the office of the
Chief of Staff for Destroyer Squadron Two. He had no idea what
the COS wanted, but he really didn't care very much. In ten
days, very much against his will, he was going to be a civilian.
He planned to burn his uniforms as soon as he could.
Captain Williams opened the door and said: "Come on in, Mr.
Anderson." Anderson did so, he found an Army Colonel sitting in
a chair next to a table. A file folder lay on the table.
"Anderson, this is Col. Hampton. He wants to discuss some
matters with you."
Col. Hampton stood up and shook hands. "Nice to meet you,
Lieutenant." He turned his head and said: "Thanks, Pete" to
Capt. Williams, who left the office. "Have a seat, son."
Anderson sat down. He wanted to ask what this was all
about, but he kept quiet. Hampton looked at him and nodded.
"All right. I've got something I'd like to discuss with
you, Sam, if you don't mind."
Anderson shrugged. "Talk all you want, Colonel, but why
should I listen?"
Hampton pulled a sheet of paper from the file. "You're due
to be discharged on an `Other than Honorable' basis late next
week. Your service record is an exemplary one. After your first
year, your fitness reports have been straight `A's, consistent
recommendations for early promotion. You went to Department Head
School early, did well. You've been the Engineer of a frigate
for the last sixteen months, your captain thought very highly of
you.
"Then a security officer at the bank was matching up ATM
transactions with photographs. He saw that a woman was using
your card. Upon further investigation, it was learned that you
were the woman. You're a transvestite, so now you're being
discharged. Is that about it?"
Anderson had sat quietly throughout the entire recitation.
"Correct, sir. So what?"
"So this." He handed the sheet of paper to Anderson.
Anderson read it. It was a standard Bureau of Naval
Personnel set of message orders, addressed to him, discharging
him on honorable conditions. Without a word, Anderson stood up,
went over to the desk and dialed the AUTOVON number the officers'
order section of BuPers in Washington. (It was a number all
naval officers know by heart.) In a few minutes, Anderson
learned that the orders were genuine, but not yet active. They
would be released when verified by an army colonel named Hampton.
Anderson hung up the phone and returned to his seat. he
handed the orders back to Hampton and said: "Okay, Colonel, I'm
all ears."
"First, I want you to read and sign this." Hampton handed a
another piece of paper to Anderson. It was a disclosure
agreement; by signing it he agreed to keep whatever was discussed
to himself for the next 75 years. The US Government was
authorized to use any method they deemed fit, not limited to
legal methods, to make him keep quiet.
Anderson looked up. "This could be interpreted to mean you
could have me shot if I talked."
"That's right. You won't be able to discuss whatever we
talk about. Is it worth an honorable discharge to listen?"
Anderson signed it. "You're on, sir."
Col. Hampton settled back in his seat. "I'm sure you're
aware of the restrictions we have on assigning women to combat
duty. Most of the time, that's not a problem. We have assigned
women to combat areas, even areas so hot that they have to carry
full combat gear. We can assign them there because their weapons
would be used for defense. But we cannot assign them to any job
where they would have to use their weapons offensively. There
are some times when we need that capability. Then we run smack
up against the law.
"Now, I'm not talking about full-blown battlefield missions.
I'm referring to unconventional mission, `covert action' if you
will, where a woman would have a distinct advantage. But we
can't use them."
"So why not turn the job over to the CIA? Surely they
aren't constrained by the same law," Anderson pointed out.
"No, they're not. But we like to have our own capability to
mount such operations. The law doesn't prohibit us from using
men, though."
"Which is where I come in?"
"Exactly. We screen everyone being discharged for being a
transvestite or a transsexual. Those who have some abilities
suitable to our needs are approached for further consideration.
In other words, we still have a place for you in the military if
you want it."
Anderson looked directly at Hampton. "I was outed six weeks
ago. They couldn't get me off the ship fast enough. Now you say
you want me. Fine. What's in it for me?"
"A lot. You'll be transferred to an army unit. While
there, you'll receive your base pay plus a number of special
pays. If you stay in, you'll be promoted at the same rate you
would have been before. If you decide to leave before completion
of the training program or are found to be not what we need,
you'll get the honorable. If you complete the training, then
should you leave, you will be treated like a reservist who did
the full 20 years of drilling: At 62, you become a retiree with
full benefits."
Anderson thought it over. "What's the first step?"
"Go home right now. Do not return to this office, ever.
Pack an overnight bag with one change of clothing, your pilot's
logbook, and a pair of sunglasses. You won't need anything else.
Be at the general aviation terminal at the Norfolk airport at
0700. A man will meet you and put you on a flight. He'll also
take care of your car."
"Sounds interesting. But why me?"
Hampton shrugged. "You have some abilities we need,
especially your flying experience."
"Don't you get pilots, too?"
"Not really. The Government has so much invested in their
training that they are quietly told to keep it cool until their
EAOS. Besides, they're not into the low, slow stuff." Hampton
stood up. "Thanks for listening, Lieutenant."
Anderson shook his hand and said nothing.
He was at the general aviation terminal at 6:45 the next
morning. Right on time, a man came up and asked if he was Sam
Anderson. When Anderson nodded, he motioned him to follow. The
man led him out to the ramp and pointed to a Piper Navajo. "Get
in that plane. Don't talk to the pilot. Let me have your keys."
Anderson separated the keys for his car from his key ring
and handed them to him, then he walked to the airplane. He
climbed into the Piper and sat down in the right-hand seat. The
twin was configured to carry cargo, there were only two seats.
The pilot went back, shut the door, took his seat, and started
the engines. After a few minutes to warm up the oil, they were
soon climbing into the sky over Tidewater Virginia.
The pilot leveled off at 8,500 feet, heading southwest.
Without a chart, Anderson had no way to know where they were
going. He did know they had flown for almost four hours when the
pilot started a descent into a small airport. The field was
located in a pine forest; it had one runway that looked narrow
and short. When they landed, the pilot shut down both engines
and pointed at a car parked by a small line shack.
The inference was obvious, Anderson got out of the seat.
picked up his bag, and went over to the line shack. He found a
rest room, drained his bladder, then went out to the car. A
nice-looking woman was sitting behind the wheel. She looked at
him with mild interest and nodded towards the passenger's side
door. Anderson opened the back door, put his bag in, and got
into the front. He buckled up and they drove off.
She said nothing, and Anderson was damned if he was going to
say anything. He could figure out that they were somewhere in
Arkansas from the license plates on the cars, but he didn't
recognize anything. He had never been there before.
They pulled up in the parking lot of a small professional
building forty minutes later. The woman pointed to the front
door. Anderson got out. They want to play it cool, he thought,
so would I. He grabbed his bag and went in without a word or a
backwards glance.
There was another woman sitting at the reception desk in the
building. "Are you Sam Anderson," she asked.
Finally, a voice. "Yes."
"May I see your ID, please?" She held out her hand.
Anderson dug out his wallet and handed her his military ID card.
She glanced at it and handed it back. "Please have a seat, the
Doctor will be with you shortly." She turned away from him in
dismissal.
Anderson went to the waiting area and soon found a
"Newsweek" that was current according to the AMA guidelines-- it
was only seven months old. He leafed through the magazine and
some others for about a half-hour, then the receptionist told him
to go to Room Five. He did so, then waited for another ten
minutes.
A man in a white coat who appeared to be in his mid-40s came
into the room. "Sam Anderson? I'm Dr. McHenry. I'll be giving
you your inprocess physical this afternoon."
"WHAT physical?"
"Oh, they didn't tell you," Dr. McHenry remarked. "The
first thing we do is give you a complete physical. Some of it
involves blood work, which is why we haven't fed you lunch. That
and a few other tests are first up, then you'll get something to
eat, followed by a lot of other tests, then a dental exam. "
"How long will this last?" Clearly Anderson was not at all
pleased about going through a physical. "I had one two weeks
ago."
"That was, correct me if I'm wrong, a pre-separation exam.
That just makes sure all your major body parts are attached.
This one's a little more intensive. We should be done by nine or
so."
Nine tonight? Goddamn it, cursed Anderson to himself.
"Well, let's get on with it."
"All right. Strip to the waist and then come with me."
Anderson did that. The doctor led him to a room where he turned
him over to a nurse.
"Lie down here, please," the nurse said. Anderson did so.
The nurse drew blood, filling several vials. Then she smeared
some clear goo on his chest ant attached the sensor cups for an
electrocardiogram. "Not bad," she pronounced as the strip
unrolled from the machine. Looks like you try to stay in shape."
The rest of the exam was a forgettable ordeal of tests;
urine, stool, hand-eye coordination, a stress test, and even a
proctological exam. They took a break around four and gave
Anderson a bag of McJunk food from the Golden Arches.
Afterwards, he had to fill out an extremely detailed medical and
psychological history. That was hard; the questionnaire mainly
concerned transvestism and transsexualism. It asked a lot of
questions that he hadn't even thought of before.
The last ordeal was a dental exam. It was given by a
dentist who made the dentist Steve Martin played in "The Little
Shop of Horrors" seem like a compassionate soul.
The day ended at ten that night. A different nurse drove
him to a small motel. "There's a restaurant across the street.
Tell them to put your meal on Peterboro, inc. Don't worry about
the motel bill. Be ready to leave with your gear at six-thirty."
Anderson nodded and got out of the car. The clerk gave him
a key without asking any questions or giving him a registration
form. The room was a standard cheapie motel room; two double
beds, a telephone without a dial, towels one could see through, a
shower, and a TV set bolted to the floor.
The restaurant wasn't bad, but Anderson was too tired to
care much. He had a salad and soup, then went back to the room.
He called the desk and asked them to wake him at 5:45.
It seemed as if the telephone rang fifteen minutes later,
but when Anderson looked at his watch, it was quarter till six.
Goddamn, this is like standing he evening watch and then getting
up at reveille, he thought. He shaved, showered, and got
dressed, then went across to the restaurant for breakfast. The
service was quick, he was able to eat and get back to the motel
parking lot three minutes early. The same nurse who had driven
him to the motel drove him back to the clinic.
This time the receptionist directed him to another room. It
was brightly lit with a large mirror on one side. Anderson had
read enough mystery and espionage novels to guess that the mirror
was of the one-way kind. A fairly comfortable chair faced the
mirror. Next to the chair was a stand with a speakerphone on
top. He sat down in the chair and waited.
He didn't have to wait long. "Good morning, Lieutenant
Anderson," said an electronically-disguised voice. "We are going
to ask you a series of questions this morning. Please answer
them as honestly as you can. Ready?"
"No. Who are you, and why this set-up?"
"There are four of us. We are going to talk with you about
a number of subjects. The reason for this setting is so that you
cannot tailor your responses to our reactions. You can't see us
and the computer interface will make all our voices sound the
same with no inflection. Ready?"
"Shoot."
"When did you first crossdress?"
"When I was four or five." And it went on from there. What
he had worn, what was his reactions, where did he obtain feminine
attire, reactions of family, girlfriends. What was his feeling
towards women. Each response generated more questions. Anderson
felt like a limp rag by the time they took a break at nine. They
started up after twenty minutes and went to eleven-thirty,
punctuated by one head call. It was tough as hell. He had to
talk to a group of strangers about a part of his life he had
never shown anyone.
The session ended when another nurse came in and told him to
follow her. They left the building and got into a car. The
nurse swung through a fast-food's drive-in lane, she told
Anderson to order his lunch. When they drove off, she instructed
him to eat it as they drove. He just went with the flow.
They arrived at another airport twenty minutes later. The
nurse told him to go inside and ask for Carol. Anderson got out
and did that. Carol appeared to be in her late 20s with brunette
hair. She had on jeans, Reeboks, and a t-shirt.
"You're Sam Anderson, eh. Let me see your logbook."
Anderson handed it over. She leafed through it, then handed him
a key on a keyring. "Go out and preflight the blue Citabria, 64
echo."
Anderson smiled at that, he went out and checked the
airplane over. It had been a while since he had flown a 7ECA,
but he was current in Super Cubs, so he felt confident. Carol
came out when he finished and got into the back seat, Anderson
climbed into the front. They put on headsets. "Can you hear
me," Carol asked.
"Yes."
"Good. Start her up and let's go. Unicom's 122.7, head out
on 240 and climb to four thousand."
Anderson pumped the throttle twice, cleared the prop, and
engaged the starter. The four-banger caught and started, he held
about 1,000 rpms while the oil warmed up. When it was warm, he
added power and taxied to the runway. The taxiway was grass, he
didn't go very fast. The runup was normal.
Time to go. Nobody was coming, so he swung onto the runway,
lined the nose up, and added power, feeding in right rudder to
counteract the engine's torque. He held a little forward stick
to lift the tailwheel, then held the tail low and let the
airplane fly when she was ready to.
The day was warm, the Citabria didn't climb very rapidly,
but they soon were at 4,000 feet. "Do some dutch rolls," Carol
said. Anderson banked the plane left-right-left-right, using the
rudder to keep it on a straight course.
"Slow flight." Anderson took the power off, slowed down,
then added power while holding the nose up. He was mushing
around on the edge of a stall.
"Turn 90 degrees to the left." Anderson slowly turned.
"Now the right." He was back on his original course.
"Power-off stall." Anderson turned to ensure the area was
clear, then chopped the power and held the nose up. He used
rudder to keep the wings level, the airplane shuddered and
stalled. He lowered the nose, added full power, and established
a climb.
"Power-on stall." He cleared the area, ensuring nobody else
was around. He cut the engine, slowed to 65, then raised the
nose and added full power. He brought the nose up more and more
until the airplane stalled, dropping the nose. Anderson brought
the nose down below the horizon, built up airspeed, then
established a climb.
"Take us back." Anderson turned around and flew back the
way he came, establishing a shallow descent. He found the
airport and entered the pattern. "Do some full-stall touch and
goes." He flew the airplane around the pattern, doing about four
full-stall landings.
"Show me some wheel landings." Those are harder, Anderson
had to flare out just above the runway and touch the main wheels
to the pavement, adding in forward stick when the wheels touched.
He bounced a couple, a couple were greasers. After the fourth
one, Carol told him to taxi back in and shut down. They went
into the building, the nurse who had driven him there was
waiting. Carol wrote in his logbook that he had been
satisfactorily checked out in a 7ECA in 1.5 hours of flying time.
She handed him the logbook back without comment, then Anderson
followed the nurse back to the car.
She drove him to the clinic again. This time, Col. Hampton
was in the office, dressed in civilian clothes. He stood up and
shook hands with Anderson. "Congratulations, son. You passed
the screening process. Do you want in?"
"Sure."
Hampton handed him a book of names for girl babies. "First,
you pick a name for yourself. It'd be easier if you choose one
that starts with an `S'."
Anderson looked at the selection, sounding them in his head.
"How about `Sherry?'"
Hampton nodded. "Fine. Welcome aboard, Sherry."
Anderson asked the logical question: "Now what?"
"We'll handle this just like a standard set of permanent
orders," the Colonel replied. He pulled the desk drawer open and
handed Anderson a piece of paper, it was another set of BuPers
message orders. When the standard wording was translated, it read
that Lt Anderson was to be detached from his current duty station,
take 30 days' leave (known as "delrep" for "delay in reporting")
and report to the military air terminal at McGuire Air Force Base
in civilian clothes; he was not to use his own vehicle to get
there. His personal effects (known as "household goods" or "HHG")
were to be put in storage at government expense for the duration of
the orders. "You won't be stationed at McGuire," Col. Hampton
explained, "That's where we'll be picking you up. Bring three
days' worth of clothes. The Commodore of DesRon 2 has already
written a detaching fitness report, you'll sign it when you get to
where you're going after your leave.
"So go home and get your personal life in order. Make sure
you're parents know that you're going to be out of touch for a long
time, it may be a few years before they get to see you." He handed
Anderson a card. "They can call this number in case of an
emergency, but make damn sure they understand that doesn't include
anything less than imminent death. And make sure they know that
you may not be able to come back for any kind of emergency. You
can use the address on the card as a forwarding address for your
mail."
"Where am I going?"
"You'll know when you get there, Sherry. The same lady who
drove you here will take you back to your transportation. See you
in a month."
Anderson left the room. Hampton watched him go and sighed.
He was getting to have too much time in this assignment, he told
himself. At first, he thought of the program as a way to gain some
use from worthless deviates. But now, he knew that the men he
recruited were fine people, they simply had a different
orientation. Hampton now though that tossing them out was a waste;
now at least he could do something with some of them.
The woman drove Anderson to a third airport, this one was
considerably larger than the other two and had a control tower.
This time, he was shown to a Sabrejet bizjet that was painted in
USAF colors. The jet took him to Langely AFB. The same man who
had taken his car keys at the Norfolk airport handed them back to
him. Anderson found his car and went home.
It took four days to arrange for the movers to come and take
everything he couldn't fit into his car. Then he went home. The
leave was less than satisfying; neither one of his parents were
supportive of his desire to stay on active duty. Anderson visited
his brother and left him the car and his personal gear (including
a fair number of firearms). He did a little bit of traveling, and
presented himself to the military air terminal at McGuire with two
weeks' worth of leave remaining.
The Air Force sergeant who was at the receiving desk read
Anderson's orders and then checked a file. She told Anderson to go
check into the transient BOQ and stay there; he'd be notified when
his flight was called. Anderson had taken MAC flights before, one
normally has to wait at the terminal for one's name to move up the
waiting list. This treatment mystified him, but he just did as she
told him to.
The phone in his room rang a day and a half later. Anderson
switched on a light, picked it up and muttered his name into the
handset.
"Lieutenant Anderson? Master Sergeant Wilkes at the MAC desk.
Your flight leaves at 0430. A car will be at the Q at 0410 to pick
you up."
"What time is it now?"
"A little after three, sir."
"All right, thanks." Anderson set the handset back into the
cradle. Fucking zoomies, scheduling a flight on the rev watch.
Oh, well. He rolled out of bed, shaved and showered. The desk was
open 24 hours, he was checked out by four and waiting for his ride.
An airman came over to him. "Are you LT Anderson?"
"Yes."
"May I see your ID, sir?" Anderson handed it to him. The
airman looked it over and handed it back. "Come with me, sir." He
led the way to a "blue steelie," Air Force lingo for an issue
sedan. Anderson got into the right-side seat. He was a little
surprised when the airman passed by the MAC terminal and drove to
a hangar after passing a security check from the APs, who were
wearing woodland camo uniforms and carrying M-16A2s. The airman
drove out onto the ramp and up to an Air Force C-12, their version
of the Beech King Air. This one had seen better days, it was set
up as a cargo carrier (or "trash hauler"), complete with a load of
cargo. The pilot, a woman in a USAF pilot's jumpsuit with
captain's bars waved him on board. Anderson stowed his bag between
two crates and settled into the right seat.
"You might want to put on that headset," she said. "This old
beast can get pretty loud."
Anderson did so, adjusting the headset to fit and the boom
mike to almost touch his mouth. "Can you hear me?"
"Sure can." The pilot ran through the starting procedure with
the economy of motion born of great amounts of practice. She soon
had both PT-6 engines turning. She received her IFR and taxi
clearances, then taxied out to the runway. They had to wait for
the wake of a departing C-5 to dissipate, then they were on their
way.
The flight went to Wisconsin, Anderson guessed. He could
recognize Lake Michigan and he did his best to follow along with
the air traffic controllers working the airplane. Dawn was
breaking when the pilot started her descent. There was nothing but
woods, then he saw a small town next to an airport. When they
landed, he looked with surprise at the collection of airplanes on
the ramp. He hadn't seen so many tailwheel airplanes in one place
outside of an EAA fly-in; everything from a few J-3s up to three
Twin Beeches, a C-46 and two DC-3s. There were a few tricycle-
geared airplanes, but damn few-- a couple Cessna 172s, a Mooney,
three Bonanzas and a King Air. Everyhting was painted in civilian
schemes, complete with N-numbers.
It looked like a civil airport in Alaska, except the man
coming out to greet them had an assault rifle slung over his
shoulder. He told Anderson to go to the line shack, then he
started talking to the pilot about refueling the C-12 and unloading
the cargo. Anderson trudged over to the shack. A woman with a no-
nonsense demeanor asked for his ID. She compared the card to a
list, then handed it over. She stuck out her hand and said:
"Welcome to school, Sherry. I'm Doris Stackpole. I'll be your
training coordinator while you're here at the school. Let's get
you situated. Come with me." Doris led the way out of the other
end of the building.
"What is this place?"
"It's a training facility for all sorts of students. Some of
the students are training for covert ops, some are here above
board. First rule is: Don't talk to anybody about who or what you
are or what you are here for. Everything around here runs on a
`need-to-know' basis. Understand?"
"Sure do." They had walked across the road to a small area of
townhouses. Doris led the way to one of them and opened the door
with a key, which she gave Anderson.
"This is yours for the duration of your stay." She showed
Anderson around. The townhouse was on two levels; upstairs were
two bedrooms and a bathroom, downstairs was a kitchen, dining area,
living room, a study (complete with a computer with a 19" screen)
and a half-bath. "You're getting this place because it's so close
to the field, most of your training is going to be in flying."
"Which of those planes will I be flying?"
Doris shrugged. "If you complete the course, all of them."
"Even the DC-3?"
"Yes, but you'll have a few other things to worry about."
Anderson didn't like her grin, but he'd do a lot to get a DC-3 type
rating. Doris went to the door. "You have an appointment. Bring
your stuff, they'll take it and issue you what you need."
Anderson followed along. They walked to a building almost a
half-mile away. There they went into a room where Doris told him
to strip to his underwear. Anderson did, two women came in and
started measuring his body; one measured, the other recorded. They
traced the outlines of his hands and feet. The real surprise was
when they measured penis size, both flaccid and erect. Anderson
was embarrassed at that, but the two were just doing their job and
did it. Afterwards, Doris gave him a pink terry-cloth robe and
told him to take his underwear off. She collected all of his
things and marched out of the room.
For the first time, Anderson was scared. He had no idea where
he was, had no money, no ID, and all he had was a pink bathrobe.
Doris returned about forty minutes later with some clothes.
She handed him a pair of white cotton panties, "I think you know
how to wear them," she said. Next was a yellow and black t-shirt,
a pair of white socks, women's blue jeans and a pair of Reebocks
that were white with pink trim. "Other clothes will be sent to
your apartment. Now, let's go to medical."
"Another physical?"
"Not like one you've ever had before." This time, they drove.
Doris had the keys to a jeep-like vehicle that ran on batteries.
She drove to a hospital that was a couple of miles away by road,
although it was right across the airfield.
Doris was somewhat right. It was a thorough physical; but the
difference came when they had Anderson lie down for a whole-body
CAT-scan. He almost freaked out; he had to lie on a very small
white tunnel while the machine hammered and whirred. He could have
sworn the thing was going to grind him up. After the scan, Doris
took him to the cafeteria for lunch. The food was about the same
as any other hospital, barely edible.
The PA system paged Doris when they had almost finished. She
left the table to answer it, then returned. "C'mon, Dr. Trotti
will see you now. We'll find out what he can do for you."
They finished quickly and left the cafeteria. Anderson wanted
to ask what was going to happen, but there were other people
around.
Dr. Trotti was in his late 40s. He shook hands and led them
into a darkened room. There was a screen on the wall and an
overhead projector that could project computer images. "Sherry, my
field is reconstructive surgery, though maybe we should say
constructive surgery. Take a look at this." He turned the screen
on.
Anderson looked closely. The image was of a woman wearing a
tank top and a skirt that came to just above the knee. Her breasts
swelled the top and showed a little cleavage. The skirt clung to
nice hips. Her face was not that of a raving beauty, but she had
nice cheekbones and didn't look bad at all. "Who is she?"
"That's you."
"What?"
"Yes." Dr. Trotti shifted to another screen. "This is your
skeletal structure.." He went into a lengthy discussion of how they
could modify Anderson's skeletal structure to make him look like a
woman, followed by a discourse of what plastic surgery techniques
they could use. Anderson felt the MEGO (for "Mine Eyes Glaze
Over") factor kicking in. Adding pieces here, taking pieces out
there. It wasn't his body, it was a biological erector set.
After Trotti said his piece, Anderson asked the key question:
"How much of this is reversible?"
Dr. Trotti considered that. "Most of it is. We can change
everything back that required surgical techiques. You are going to
need a fair amount of electrolysis for us to be able to
accomplish what we need to do. That isn't reversible." The doctor
just smiled. Almost everyone he had worked on asked that question.
He had done the reversal surgery on about five percent of those he
had worked on. But he didn't say anything.
"All right. When does the electrolysis start?"
"Right now," Doris said. They said goodbye to the doctor and
went to another part of the hospital. There a nurse injected a
painkiller similar to novocaine inside his mouth. She had him lie
on a table, then after several minutes, she started to work.
Another nurse came in and started on the other side of his face.
Anderson could hear the humming of the machines and the occaisional
`zap' as a needle vaporized an oil pocket. The nurses would wipe
his face with an antiseptic every so often. He was very tired and
since he was feeling no pain, he fell asleep.
They woke him up four hours later. His lower face was wrapped
in a cold mask, it had tubing through which a chilled solution was
circulating. When they took the mask off, one of the nurses
closely inspected his face. "Not bad." She gave him a tube of
antiseptic ointment and a small bottle of pain pills. "See you
tomorrow," she said.
Anderson wanted to say something, but his face was numb.
Doris took him back to his townhouse. She showed him the clothes
hanging in the closet, mostly variations of what he was wearing:
jeans, different tops, several pairs of running and aerobics shoes.
There was an assortment of unisex-athletic gear.
"You can get food by placing an order through your computer,
though you'll have to cook it yourself unless you order the
microwavable dinners; I recommend them as you won't have a lot of
time. The instructions are next to it, it's fairly self-evident.
You can order any books, tapes, CDs or videos the same way. The
computer also ties into the training database for unclassified
material; you'll be taught how that works starting tomorrow.
Anything you order will be placed on the living-room table, except
for perishables which will be put into your refridgerator or
freezer. There are some tapes by the VCR to start you off. I'll
be by tomorrow at 0730. Any questions?"
Anderson made writing motions. Doris found a tablet and a
pen. "Toothbrush? Razor," he wrote.
"Toothbrush is upstairs in the bathroom. No razor, it's
easier to work with longish hair. See you in the morning."
Anderson half-heartedly watched a video, then found a chicken
dinner in the freezer after his face denumbed enough to eat it. He
took a shower and rubbed the ointment over the areas where the
eletrolygists had worked. He soon fell asleep wondering waht
tomorrow would bring.
Tomorrow brought a lot of swelling. His upper lip was so
swollen that he had trouble drinking. The side of his face where
one of the electrolygists had worked was swollen, too. This time
they had him strip to his underwear and four people were working on
him; two on the face and one on his legs. The worst part of the
procedure was when a doctor would come in and inject lidocaine so
the electrolygists could proceed. Most of the time he could see a
TV, so they let him watch VCR movies or cable.
This went on for almost two weeks, but by the time they were
done, he had no body hair other than that that a woman had. They
told him that they'd have to do it all again in six weeks, but it
would take less time then. Well, he thought, maybe by six weeks
the swelling would go down.
They gave him a day off, then they started flight training.
Doris took him to a classroom next to the airport. She turned him
over to an instructor named Craig, who proceeded to start teaching
him how to fly by instruments. Classroom work was in the morning,
simulator work in the afternoon.
This routine went on for three weeks. As Doris had promised,
all the course work was on a computer database, so Anderson was
able to work on the ratings in the evening. The simulator gave way
to an IFR-capable Cessna 180; Anderson became able to fly an
approach to minimums and follow up with a good landing. "It's a
lot harder in a taildragger," Craig explained.
By the end of the month, Anderson had an instrument airplane
rating and had passed the written exam for a commercial pilot.
Things began to change a little in the second month. Doris
took Anderson to a hairdresser. Terri clucked with disapproval at
the military haircut. Anderson thought his hair was long; it was
longer than the uniform regs allowed, but still short. Terri recut
it into a hairstyle that was short but fairly feminine. He looked
in the mirror, he thought he looked like a big dyke. She looked at
his nails. "Your nails are a mess. You need to stop chewing
them." She painted them with a clear liquid, then waited for the
coating to dry. "Now chew on them," she said.
Anderson tried, the stuff tasted horrible. He spit out a
fragment of nail and said as much.
"That's just the point. Take the bottle with you and put a
coat on your nails each morning. After a while, you won't even
think of biting them." Terri then pierced his ears. "You're about
what, 26," she asked.
Anderson nodded.
She pierced them twice more, so he had three gold studs in
each ear. "You're young enough so that looks about right," she
concluded. After a lecture on how to care for the piercings, she
took him over to a vanity table and began showing him how to apply
cosmetics, indoctrinating him in the mysteries of foundations,
bases, power, lipstick, gloss, mascara, eyeshadow, and cold cream.
After she was done, she scrubbed it all off and had him apply it,
correcting him as he made mistakes.
"That's sort of the `full formal' look," she explained. "It's
good for an evening out. But for daytime, it's a bit much..." She
then showed him how to lightly apply makeup for a look that was
both enhanced and natural. "You don't want to wind up looking like
the daughter of Bozo the Clown and Tammy Faye Bakker." Anderson
left the salon with that coating still applied.
That took the entire morning and then some. Anderson was
getting very hungry, so Doris dropped him back at the townhouse.
"See you in an hour," she said. Anderson made a couple of
sandwiches and leafed through two aviation magazines that had been
dropped off. He also noticed that "Cosmopolitan," "Redbook," and
"YM" had been added to the selection. He repaired the damage to
his lipstick by the time Doris returned.
Doris showed up carrying two purses, one of them was for
Anderson. She showed him what cosmetics to carry, enough for field
repairs. He looked at the wallet, it had a Wisconsin driver's
license in the name of Sherry Anderson, complete with photograph
and signature. There was also a VISA and American Express credit
cards, a pilot's license (private, instrument airplane), medical
certificate and a radiotelephone permit in Sherry's name. There
was also $52.47 in cash.
"All those are legal," Doris said. "Anyone who checks with
the DMV or the FAA will find Sherry Anderson listed. Give me your
logbooks."
Anderson went to find them and handed them over.
"You'll get these back in a while. Now we have an appointment
with a voice coach. You really need help there, Sherry."
"I know I sound like a man, but why do you say that?"
They left the townhouse as Doris explained: "Appearances are
very important for a man who is passing himself off as a woman.
What someone first perceives is the way they are going to think of
you, 99% of the time. If they see a woman, then they are going to
think `woman' even if your voice is a tad low. But in your case,
the first contact a lot of people are going to have with you is
over an airplane's radio. So your voice has to convey that you are
a woman.
"You might say we are going into phase two of your training
here."
"Which is?"
"Female training. You're going to take deportment lessons.
We aren't going to teach you how to act like a woman. An act can
fail under stress. So we are going to teach you to BE a woman.
There will be sessions with image consultants, the voice coach, and
some time out in the real world. You're going to start spending
some time with a therapist to ensure that we aren't overloading
you. She'll also help you sort out your feelings about who you are
and what we are training you. Feel free to talk with her about
anything, ok?"
"Sure. Will I still be flying?"
"Oh, yes. You have a *lot* more training to go through."
The voice coaching was simple. The first session took just
fifteen minutes. The coach showed Anderson how to raise his voice
slightly through humming and gave him a tape-recorder to practice
with.
The therapist was next. Her name was Janet, she explained
that the process was to talk things out. She would have him
explain his life to her. The process was like peeling an onion,
one removes one layer at a time.
Anderson digested that. "But there's nothing distinct about
the center of an onion," he remarked. "How do you know when you
get there?"
"When there's nothing else left. You'll know it, and so will
I. We'll start on your next visit."
Doris was waiting in the therapist's outer office. "What's
next on the schedule," Anderson asked.
"We're going to get you some new clothes." They rode the
electric jeep to a clothing store. There the saleslady first
fitted Anderson with a bra and a set of breast prothesis. She had
him try on a number of different bras, then camesoles and slips.
After that, she brought in a navy houndstooth suit with a white
blouse which she had him try on. Then she fitted him with a pair
of black leather pumps with 3" heels. Finally, she led him over to
a three-sided mirror.
Anderson's jaw dropped. Gazing back at him in the mirror was
an attractive young businesswoman. He ran his hands down the side
of the skirt, feeling the smooth material. He smiled and the woman
in the mirror smiled back. What he didn't see was the satisfied
grins Doris and the saleslady gave each other. He wasn't sure how
long he stood there, entranced at his image in the mirror. He felt
something click inside himself, and from then on knew that the
female pronouns were the right ones. It just felt right. It was
a moment that Sherry would remember as long as she lived. She
would later say it felt like she had been reborn.
They spent a lot of time assembling a wardrobe; dresses,
skirts, tops, casual wear, coats, shoes, and a couple of pairs of
boots. Doris picked out a few things to take back with them, the
saleslady promised the rest would be delivered.
Doris helped Sherry put her clothes away when they returned to
the townhouse. "Tomorrow you start on your commercial pilot's
license," she said. "Just be at the flight school by 0730. You'll
do your training in the Bonanza, since you'll need to use a complex
airplane for the exam. Wear the jeans and the sneaks for your
flight training. I'll let you know each afternoon what is planned
for the next day so you can choose the proper attire. If I don't
see you, I'll leave a note in your email.
"The other thing is, you need to start on a physical training
program. Some of that will come later, but I want you to start
running each afternoon. That is to be the only activity where you
aren't to wear the artificial breasts. Start today."
"Okay." Sherry changed into a t-shirt and shorts, then went
out for a run. It was a brief run, she hadn't been running for a
few months. But she knew from past experience that the wind would
come back quickly.
Sherry was at the flight school on time. If Craig had any
thoughts about her changed appearance, he kept them to himself.
The instructor thought she was a little weak on slow flight
and stalls. "I think you're afraid of them, so let's change the
syllabus a bit," he said. Sherry found herself in the front seat
of a Bellanca Decathalon; they went through stalls, spins, and some
basic aerobatics. She had to use a Sic-Sack on a couple of
occaisions, but soon she was doing loops, rolls, and inverted
flight. Craig had her do inverted stalls and spins, then he let
her take the Decathalon up when she had some free time.
Sherry had the time of her life in the Decathalon. Craig
chewed her ass out for making a low inverted pass down the runway
one afternoon, but she didn't mind.
For most of the non-flying days, Doris had her wear more lady-
like attire. She got used to moving around in dresses, skirts, and
high heels. She lost her purse a few times the first week, but
soon carrying one became automatic.
The therapy was easier than she thought it would be. Sherry
trusted Janet and opened up to her completely. They met three
times a week, then scaled back to twice a week. Janet wanted to
make sure that the training wasn't taking Sherry down a road she
didn't want to go. But what she saw was a young woman who was full
of life. Sherry was finally doing everything she had wanted to do.
The deportment classes (to use Doris's term) were more like
aerobics. The instructor's name was Sharon, she worked to teach
Sherry to loosen up and move more fluidly, not to shamble along
like a male. They were tiring at first, but also fun. Sherry was
keeping up her running, she was now doing over four miles a day.
The town (she thought of it as that) has several running courses
laid out along the roads, complete with mileage markers. Sherry's
goal was to run three laps around the airport, a distance of over
eight miles.
The coursework was changing constantly. After a series of
lessons on clothing and accessories, Sherry started a basic cooking
course. Doris pointed out that most women knew how to do more than
fry hamburgers and eggs, which about the extent of Sherry's kitchen
skills. So she learned how to cook and how to select items from
the supermarket. Sherry privately didn't think much of this phase
of her training. It seemed like a lot of effort to spend so much
time preparing a meal that normally didn't take anywhere near as
long to eat. Lord Sandwich knew what he was doing, she concluded.
The big treat came after Sherry passed her commercial pilot's
check ride. Doris and Janet treated her to a trip to Chicago for
three days of R&R. They took the Bonanza, Sherry flew them to
Meig's Field right downtown. They went shopping on Michigan Avenue
and in Watertower Place. The highpoint was a theatre night,
including a fantastic dinner afterwards. Sherry was sorry to leave
Chicago, even though she logged some good instrument time,
including a NDB approach to their home base.
Sherry started working with Craig on her multi-engine rating
in the Twin Beech the next day, including a session on the care and
feeding of radial engines. "You can't overprime a radial," Craig
admonished. She learned about engines that measured their oil
levens in gallons, not quarts. Learning to taxi a multi-engined
taildragger was a little bit of a challenge.
While Sherry was being introduced to the fun of engine-out
drills, a conference was underway concerning her progress. Col.
Hampton had flown in, he met with Janet, Doris, and Dr. Trotti.
"How's our boy doing," was his first question.
Janet smiled. "She's a woman, Colonel, and she's doing fine."
"Explain."
"Frankly, I don't think Sherry's a transvestite. I think
she's a transsexual, although she really hasn't admitted it to
herself. The majority of TVs we get here aren't content to go
full-time dressed up. They find some way of visibly asserting
their masculinity. The TSs assimilate completely. Sherry has
shown no signs of not wanting to be a woman. No covert strength
exercises, or anything like that.
"Her adjustment to female living has been remarkable, although
I don't think she should consider making a living as a chef." That
comment earned a laugh from Doris.
Col. Hampton mulled that over. "How's the flying coming?"
Doris fielded that. "Craig says she's doing well. She may
not be a natural at it, but she is working very hard at it."
"So what's the next step in her training?"
"She's started multi-engine work. Once she gets her multi
ticket, then we are going to get her rated in DC-3s and C-46s,
along with turboprops so she has some turbine time. After that,
then it may be time to send her out living full-time as a pilot to
build up her flight time."
"What about tradecraft?"
"We'll start weapons training next week, along with escape and
evasion, surveillance and counter-surveillance techniques, and the
usual stuff," Doris said.
"What about her femininity?"
"I think it's time to see if she wants to start hormones,"
Janet replied. If she agrees and sticks with it for the next few
months, then it may be advisable to consider some non-genital
reassignment surgery."
"Face and voice," he asked
"Yes. I'd say if she is to go that route, we do the surgery
before she goes out for learning how to live on her own as a
woman."
"All right," Col Hampton concluded. "Call the airport and
have Sherry brought here for a discussion about hormones with you
and you alone. We'll wait up in Trotti's office."
Sherry came to Janet's office looking an absolute mess. She
was sweating from the effort of conducting the dead engine
exercises. "This is a little out of the ordinary," Sherry said.
"What's up?"
"I've been reviewing your progress here, Sherry. You are
turning out to be a fine young woman. When I or anyone else looks
at you, we'd be hard-pressed to believe that you are really a man.
How do you feel about it?"
Sherry was taken a little aback. "I guess I feel good about
it. When I get dressed and look in the mirror, I see me. It's
hard for me to realize that I am a man, too."
"Do you want to go back to being Sam?"
"What? But Colonel Hampton said-"
I know what he said," Janet interrupted. "What has been done
is easily changable. Even if you have no facial hair, all you'd
need to do is get a crewcut, change clothes, take out your
earrings, and everyone would assume you are a man. But now you're
at a decision point.
"For what I am going to say now, I do not want an answer.
Promise me you won't say a word to me until tomorrow morning or
later if you need the time. All right?"
Sherry nodded.
"This is the choice: You can go down the impersonation road
with facial surgery and breast implants. It'll fool most of the
people. When you're done, Dr. Trotti can make you look almost the
way you look now. Not quite, but almost.
"The other option is more permanent. Instead of implants,
you'd start hormones. We'll schedule you for voice surgery, your
voice will be higher forever. The facial surgery will be more
extensive. And finally, if you make it that far, you'd go through
sexual reassignment surgery. At that point, you'd be as female as
chemistry, training, and surgery can make you.
"It's your choice. Go home and think it over."
Sherry nodded solemnly and left. She thought about it quite
a lot. She thought about how she had never quite fit in as a man
and how everything felt so right now. She had a few drinks in
thinking it over, too.
Sherry was wearing a pink suit and was waiting in Janet's
outer office when Janet came to work the next day. "Come on in,
Sherry," Janet said. They sat down and Janet didn't say anything.
Sherry took a deep breath and smiled. "I want it to be
permanent. When can we start?"
Janet looked solemn. Inside she felt joyous, but kept a
professional demeanor. She opened a drawer and handed her a piece
of paper. "Take this to the pharmacy, they'll fill the order.
Follow the instructions exactly, Sherry. Ok?"
"Sure, Janet."
Janet stood up and hugged Sherry. "Welcome to the other side,
Sherry."
Sherry went to the pharmacy and had the prescription filled.
The prescription called for taking Premarin and Aldactone. The
pills had to be taken with food and had to be taken at
approximately the same time each day. The pharmacist gave her a
lengthy brochure about what to expect while taking hormones.
She read that once she got back to the townhouse. Mood
swings, weepiness, long-term risks of cancer; it was heartening to
realize that no women in her family had ever developed breast
cancer. No time like the present, so she fixed a sandwich and took
her first pills. It was almost a disappointment that nothing
happened right away. She logged onto a commercial database and
read the information files about the drugs. Aldactone, an anti-
androgen, was widely used in the rest of the world but was not
approved for use by the FDA. Must be one of the benenfits of the
Feds, they can get away with ignoring their own rules.
The ringing of the telephone startled her. In over two
months, she hadn't had one incoming phone call. She picked up the
handset and said hello.
"Sherry, it's Doris. Change into jeans, a sweatshirt, and
sneakers. I'll be over in twenty minutes to pick you up." The
line went dead as Doris hung up without awaiting a reply.
`Christ, what a bitch!' Sherry thought as she went upstairs to
change. It can't be a flying day, there's no need to drive to the
field. Well, going with the flow has worked so far. She was ready
at the appointed time.
Doris drove up in a Jeep, a real gasoline-powered one. Sherry
hopped in and asked what's up.
"Another phase of your training," she replied. "You start gun
class today." Doris drove to a site several miles away, it was a
rectangular building with a large earthen berm behind it. Doris
handed Sherry the keys to the Jeep. "I'll catch a ride back, drive
back when you're done. Go to the office and tell them your name,
they'll take it from there."
Sherry did as Doris told her to. The office had three men
lounging around who looked like midwestern "good-ole boys,"
complete with flannel shirts and yellow work boots. When she said
her name, a tall man in his late 40s stood up and said: "Yeah,
I've been waiting for you. My name's Keith. Let's go." Sherry
followed him out of the office. He led the way down the corridor
to a set of stairs, then dwon a flight to the basement. They went
to a heavy door, he opened it and threw a set of wall switches.
The front of the room lit up and the whine of a powerful
ventilation fan started. They were in an indoor pistol range. It
had three firing points and appeared to be a 25-yard range. Each
firing point had a target holder that moved back and forth by an
electric motor.
"You ever do any handgun shooting," Keith asked.
"Some."
"What do you shoot?"
".45 Colt auto."
Keith grunted, then went to a wall cabinet. He pulled out
some targets, tape, shooting glasses, and two pairs of large ear
protectors. Then he unlocked another cabinet and handed Sherry a
Colt Gold Cup .45. Sherry immediately pulled the slide back and
locked it. "Ok, so you may know what you're doing," Keith
admitted. He hung a 25-yard rapid-fire target on the frame and ran
it down to the far end of the range. Then he handed Sherry a box
of cartridges, two empty magazines, and waved her to the firing
point.
Sherry stepped up to the position. She dry-fired the pistol
several times to get a feel for the trigger; it was a lot lighter
and crisper than an issue service weapon. She locked the slide
back, set the pistol on the counter, and loaded five rounds into a
magazine.
Sherry said: "Put on your hearing protection, please." She
then put the glasses on and the earmuffs over them. She shifted
her body as she picked up the pistol and magazine so her left foot
was ahead of her right one. She inserted the magazine into the
well of the pistol and slipped off the slide release, which allowed
the slide to run forward and chamber a round.
She held the pistol in her right hand with her left hand
forming a cup in which the right hand rested as if she was catching
it. Her left elbow was bent almost 90 degrees, the right elbow was
straight. Breath deep, let a little out, squeeeeezeee...BLAM!
Sherry fired four more times, then Keith stepped up and brought the
target up.
"Not bad," he said. Sherry had hit the x-ring once, the ten
ring twice, the nine once, and the seven ring. 46x1. She felt
pretty good about it.
Keith poured cold water all over her joy. "But that means
nothing. Nobody's going to allow you to settle into a Weaver
stance and calmly snap off five rounds at them. And for damn sure
you won't find a Gold Cup lying around. But at least you know
which end of a pistol does what."
So Sherry started practical pistol training. That was a nice
euphemism for learning how to kill someone with a pistol. "First
thing is this," Keith said: "A pistol's a defensive weapon. It's
what you use to stop someone from doing harm to you or someone
else. If you're going to set out to kill someone, then use a
better weapon with more killing power and range."
Over the next few weeks, Sherry learned how to shoot
competently with almost every conceivable handgun. The training
took place on a firing range that was a mock-town with pop-up or
swinging targets. She had to learn to shoot with one hand, the
wrong hand, and both hands. Keith taught her how to draw from
waist, shoulder, and leg holsters. For one phase of the schooling,
she had to wear a suit, heels, and draw from a purse. It sure felt
strange to Sherry to walk though the training range in a navy
pinstripe "dress for success" suit, career pumps, and whip out a
.380 automatic to drill a imitation scumbag.
Combat training was held using guns firing paintballs. These
were often painful as the paint pellets were fired from regular
firearms (rather than the paintball guns), but the training impact
of being shot was of value.
The flying continues as before. Sherry passed her multi-
engine flight test. She was put on the roster for the air-charter
outfit based at the airport; soon she was flying the Twin Beech and
the Navajo on cargo runs. To her amusement, she even flew some men
to the same southern airport where she had been taken for her
medical examination. When the schedule called for her to make a
night run, her other training was adjusted to accomodate the
flight. She was building time in the classic method used by
aspiring commercial pilots.
The therapy continued, too. Janet acted more like a close
confidant than a distant professional, which resulted in Sherry's
opening up completely. Janet also reviewed the surveillance
reports on Sherry for any discrepancies, including the tapes made
by the microcameras in Sherry's townhouse. She was coming along
fine.
Sherry had continuing appointments with the electrolysis team,
normally every six weeks. They went after follicles that were
dormant during the initial process along with the ones that had
survived. The first repeat session took four days, then the time
dwindled after that. They were nothing that she regarded as fun.
The ground training shifted focus somewhat. The curriculum
moved from handguns to shoulder weapons: rifles and shotguns.
Sherry found she had a talent with a rifle, she could "dope" the
wind and normally hit a target at six hundred yards. The shotgun
was easy for her, it was a reactive weapon where the rifle was
normally a deliberate one. Sherry really didn't like the high-
powered rifles too much, they kicked fiercely. But anything
smaller than a .30-06 was almost fun.
As firearms training tapered off, they started her on unarmed
training. This had little in common with the theology of martial
arts, it was raw street survival training. A few sessions were
held with Sherry wearing "street clothes," dresses, skirts, heels.
Those sessions often resulted in the clothes being totalled, but
they were replaceable.
One session was nighttime training. Sherry had to walk down
the street. Most of the people would pass her by, but one was
supposed to attack. When the attack came, Sherry spun out of the
attacker's grip and pulled a snub-nosed .38 from under her jacket.
She levelled the pistol at the attacker and fired three times, the
instructor staggered back in shock as three paint pellets smashed
into his chest. The lights came on as the two looked at each
other, the other people on the street had all dived for cover when
the shots rang out. The trainer rubbed the impact sites and said:
"Very good. If you have a weapon, the hand-to-hand moves are for
fools. But that's not the goal of this training, so don't bring it
again." His voice sounded harsh, but he was trying hard not to
smile.
Sherry had a medical appoinment the next day. Dr Trotti and
one of his parters, Dr. Pamela Levinson, gave her another complete
physical. It lasted most of the day, Sherry just put up with the
routine. She hated being poked and prodded, but that was the way
the medical profession worked, especially if one was in the service
of Uncle Sam.
The two doctors saw her after the exam. "How are you doing,
my dear," Trotti asked.
"Fine."
"Any complaints?"
"No."
"Are you noticing any soreness around your nipples," asked
Levinson.
"Some," admitted Sherry. "The literature the pharmacy gave me
said to expect that."
Both doctors nodded, then Trotti shifted gears. "I want you
to go to the blood bank and have them extract a pint of blood, then
another one in four weeks. That will provide a ready source in
case we need it."
"For what?"
"Surgery," he said. "In two months, we're going to take you
in and reshape your face to a more feminine appearance. At the
same time, the day before actually, Dr. Levinson will do the vocal
surgery. You'll be out of action for a while after that, but we'll
make sure you're still learning something."
Sherry nodded, not wanting to speak. Her mind was filled with
a conflict; she wanted to have the facial surgery, but she also
didn't want anybody cutting her with a sharp object. The doctors
asked some other questions, but Sherry answered them rather
abruptly. When the interview ended, she went to the blood bank and
they drew a pint for deposit on her account. They told her to
drink plenty of fluids and not to fly for 24 hours. She called the
field and had them take her off the schedule.
Janet had noticed Sherry's hesitancy at the pre-surgery
meeting, she dropped by after work with a bottle of white wine and
some munchies. Sherry was a little amazed and a little peeved that
Janet hadn't called; the townhouse looked like an exercise in
"Living With Chaos." But she found a couple of semi-clean glasses
and a plate for the food. After the bottle was opened, Sherry
opened the discussion: "I assume you didn't stop by just for a
visit."
"Why do you say that?"
"Oh, I don't know," Sherry said with sarcasm dripping like
molten steel. "You've never said anything like `let's do lunch,'
but two hours after a discussion about surgery, here you are, booze
in hand."
"In some way's you're still a man," Janet said with a wry
smile. "Most women wouldn't go that quickly to the heart of the
matter. They'd have opened with some pleasantries and eventually
worked around to the point."
"Or they might try altering the subject. Answer the damn
question."
"All right," Janet sighed. "You seemed uncomfortable with the
idea of surgery. What bothers you, the idea of changing your
appearance?"
"No," Sherry said emphatically. "Nothing like that. It's
more like I don't like the idea of being operated on."
"Have you ever had an operation?"
"Nope, nothing more serious than removing wisdom teeth. I've
never been knocked out, not even accidentally."
"And the idea bothers you," Janet probed.
"People sometimes don't wake up afterwards."
Janet smiled. At least it wasn't a matter of Sherry not being
convinced that the operation wasn't necessary. She spent a lot of
time trying to calm Sherry's jitters.
Sherry wasn't too convinced, but she was reassured that there
were other things in life more risky that she had done. Then
Sherry asked a question Janet wasn't prepared for: "When are you
going to remove my testicles?"
"Why?"
"I did some reading on hormones in the database. The writers
all seem to believe that female hormones work better if they're not
fighting male hormones. You could also lower the dosage level of
both drugs and reduce the risks from side effects."
Janet looked very serious. "But if that's done, you'd never
be able to father a child. And there is no way to reverse that
operation, even superglue wouldn't work."
Sherry stood up and stripped to the waist. "Do I look like a
man? I am a woman-" she said that with considerable emphasis "-but
I still have some extra parts. I want that taken care of as soon
as I can."
Janet motioned to Sherry to put her clothes back on; Sherry
complied. Sherry's breasts were starting to bud, her body looked
like one that might belong to a six-foot tall twelve year old. "We
can't do all that, not right away."
"Why not?"
"You know about the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care?" Sherry
nodded. "Well," Janet continued, "we are really violating them
somewhat in your case. There is an overriding interest that
classifies as `national security,' we've compressed a lot of the
time factors. But we still won't do the final reassignment surgery
without some form of Real Life Test.
"You are going to have to live and work as a woman for a while
before we consider you for final surgery. When it comes time, we
will have you operated on by the best there is."
"You mean-" Sherry held her tongue when Janet held her finger
to her lips.
"I think we know who that is. There are people who help out
the Government on a volunteer basis, but under the strictest
security. You won't meet the surgeon, at least not when you're
concious. But we have to satisfy a minimum of the Standards before
you can undergo SRS."
"Hmm. And I don't suppose you have any specifics in mind for
a Real Life Test?"
"As a matter of fact, yes. You'll get a job with an air cargo
service, flying night runs for a check-delivery service. That'll
also build your logbook up. It's really a double-barreled test:
we'll see if you can survive on your own as a woman and if you can
be a competent professional pilot."
Sherry nodded. By this time the wine was gone and they both
were feeling tired. Janet made her exit, Sherry washed up and went
to bed.
Doris called Sherry at 5am and told her to be ready for flying
at six and to bring changes of clothing for three days. Sherry
grunted something unintelligible into the phone and got up. She
went over to the field at six; to her surprise she was handed a
completed flight plan to Mojave, California and the keys to the
Twin Beech. Go with the flow, she figured, she was airborne by
6:30.
The plan had her overnighting in Cheyenne, then on to
California. The FBO at the Cheyenne airport gave her a ride to a
local Holiday Inn. Sherry had dinner in the restaurant and went to
bed. She grabbed a cab to the airport the next morning and
completed the trip to Mojave.
Of all the possibilities that she anticipated, what happened
didn't occur to her. She was met at the airport and immediately
loaded onto a Marine C-12 en route to the Twenty-Nine Palms Marine
base. Four instructors met her for a course in desert survival.
Over the next seven days, they showed her how to survive in the
desert with the materials and equipment she'd likely have if she
had to crash-land in one. Water was the key, they emphasised.
without water, you die. With water, then one might survive.
The detail that convinced her that sopmeone was really
planning her training ahead was that the instructors had a week's
supply of her hormone pills.
Sherry really enjoyed the hot shower she took after the week
was over. But they didn't keep her at 29 Palms; she was flown to
San Diego and put onto a C-141 to Panama. Once there, she got to
repeat the whole process in a jungle. The struggle there was
almost the opposite; too much water and trying to keep dry. There
were more poisonous snakes in the jungle than she ever dreamed of,
and bugs galore. Sherry wasn't too sure which she hated more, bugs
or snakes.
Week three found her in Colorado, this time the focus was on
mountain survival. By this time Sherry was wondering if she'd
survive survival training. The survival trainig was followed up by
a cram course in land navigation; the final exam was a three-day
trek to a pickup point. They made it clear to her that they would
only look for her at the pickup point, she had to get there or
reach civilization on her own. She made it to the pickup point
with three hours to spare.
After she showered and changed into a fresh set of clothes,
one of the instructors took her to a restaurant for a graduation
dinner. Sherry had no trouble finishing a 16-oz prime rib, the
largest steak she had eaten in years. It was about the best she
ever remembered, too. The night was memorable if only for the fact
that it was the first time since she passed through Cheyenne that
she slept indoors in a bed with clean sheets.
Sherry caught a commercial flight to Madison, Wisconsin the
next day. Craig met her at the airport, the two flew back to the
home base in the Bonanza. The Twin Beech was on the field when
they arrived. She had no idea who retrieved it, but she knew
better than to ask.
Doris had left a note on her door; Sherry was glad to learn
she had the next two days off. She slept for most of it. When
she stepped on the bathroom scale, she was shocked to learn that
she had lost 25 pounds during the rigourous training. None of her
new wardrobe fit, she wore sweats and pulled the drawstring tight.
It would probably be a temporary loss.
Doris had left a note in Sherry's mailbox that told her to
report to the airport after her two days' off. When Sherry did,
she found herself sitting through a ground school for a DC-3 type
rating. The school took three days (a DC-3's not very
complicated). After that, it was time to fly. Sherry had to
adjust to the height of the -3's flight deck, everything else she
had flown before would have crashed if flared at the height of the
old Douglas airliner. Flying the plane took some work, powered
controls hadn't been in use when Charles Lindberg wrote the
requirements that the airplane was designed to meet.
It took about ten hours of flight time for Sherry to feel
comfortable in both the left and right seats of the DC-3. The
flight test was routine, she soon had a new license with a DC-3
type rating.
Then they did it all over agin, but this time for a DC-3T; a
DC-3 that has had the piston radial engines removed and modified
for PT6 turboprops. That training went fairly rapidly since Sherry
was already familiar with PT6 engines.
After three weeks, Sherry had regained ten pounds. She had
obtained some new clothes that fit her smaller body, but not many
as she figured she'd eventually regain the weight. They scheduled
a few brush-up training sessions in unarmed and armed defense to
break up the routine of flying. Then Doris told her to pack a few
bags, she was moving away for awhile. Sherry wondered what had
happened to the planned surgery, but she didn't ask.
The two of them drove a late model Honda Civic to Chicago.
Doris explained on the way down that they had to reschedule the
operations for three or four weeks later, so they were taking the
extra time to put Sherry to work. Some of her stuff was already in
an apartment not very far from Midway Airport. Sherry was about to
fly as a "freight dog" for the next month. Doris handed over her
logs. Sherry looked at them, all her logbooks had been rewritten
so that every entry was for Sherry Anderson. The signatures of all
the flight instructors looked genuine, the older logbooks looked as
worn as the originals had.
They drove right to Midway, where they found the offices of
BryanAir. Doris gave her the keys to the Honda, kissed her
goodbye, and caught a cab for O'Hare. Out of curiosity, Sherry
opened the glove box and looked at the car's registration. She
wasn't surprised to see it was registered in her name.
Sherry went into the offices and asked for the chief pilot.
The chief pilot, Sheila Mueller, looked over Sherry's logs and
asked her some technical questions about various aircraft, mostly
twins. After the interview, she said: "Let's go. There's a Beech
out there, 7DR, preflight it."
Sherry went out and checked the airplane over. 7DR was a
working cargo airplane, but she noticed that the engines appeared
to be in fine shape. All the fluid levels were right, As she
finished, Sheila came out with two headsets and a portable
intercom. She waved Sherry into the left seat and Sheila took the
right. After they wired the intercom, push-to-talk switches, and
the headsets, Sherry asked: "Where to?"
"Get her started, then tell Clearance Delivery that we are
going VFR to the lake practice area."
Sherry started the engines, then obtained departure
instructions and a transponder squawk from Clearance Delivery.
When the oil was warm enough for taxiing, she called Ground Control
and was cleared to taxi to the active runway. At takeoff, the
tower had her fly the runway heading to 2,000 feet before turning
towards Lake Michigan. Once there, Sheila ran her through some
engine-out drills, including an engine-out ILS approach to Midway.
It took almost an hour before Sheila was satisfied and they landed.
They removed the headphones with a contented sigh, accompanied
by the whining of the gyros spinning down. "Be here at nine
tomorrow night," Sheila said. "You'll be flying a load of checks
between here and Minneapolis. The flight planning's already done,
we've been on this route for years. So just show up then, you'll
check the weather and go."
"Ok," Sherry said. Inwardly she was thrilled. It was what
she had wanted ever since she was a boy, to work as a pilot.
After a few weeks of constant night flying, the thrill wore
off. A couple of men in some of the airports she had stopped at
had made passes at her. One rough jerk had even grabbed her by the
shoulder. He had taken his hand away when Sherry coldy advised him
to do so "if you want to retain the use of it." Most of the flying
was in Twin Beeches, the rest of the time was spent in Piper
Navajos. None of them had weather radar or flight directors, but
all had enough avionics so that the flights could be made if
something broke. The only reason the airplanes had autopilots was
because it saved fuel to use them.
Sherry noticed that a fair number of the freight pilots for
the different carriers were women. All of them (male and female)
wore fairly grubby clothes, normally blue jeans and heavy shirts to
keep the chill out when the heaters failed to operate. Only a few
of the women wore any hint of cosmetics. Their favorite scent was
100LL aviation fuel, seasoned with Phillips 20W-50 oil and a dash
of hydraulic fluid. Flying was the favorite topic, though the
women often moaned about how hard it was to have a relationship
with a man when the women worked nights. They confined such
complaints to times when no men were present. Sherry was logging
over 30 hours of flying each week, all night cross-country multi
time.
She didn't learn much about the area around her apartment, for
all she wanted to do when she was there was sleep. Some of it she
saw when she went out for a run, it didn't impress her any. The
skirts, dresses, and heels in the closet stayed there.
It was supposed to be for a few weeks, but Doris called and
told Sherry to stay put. Sherry flew night freight for three
months. Her pay from the freight line was deposited into her
savings account, she was also still receiving her pay as a
Lieutenant (O-3) with eight years' seniority. The apartment was
paid for by her government living allowance, Sherry figured she was
socking away a mint. As it stood with the hours she was working,
she didn't come close to spending her flying pay, much less her
military pay. If this kept up for awhile, she could pay for SRS
herself.
Shery consoled herself that when the time came to leave, she
had just as much notice as she'd been getting all along. Doris
showed up and had her pack two suitcases. The rest, Doris said,
would be taken care of. They drove the little Honda to a major
hospital in Chicago, where Doris checked Sherry in. After dropping
the bags in a room, they went to an office. Sherry wasn't the
least bit surprised to find Dr. Trotti there. "You ready," he
asked.
"For what?"
"We're going to do a makeover on you. But instead of
cosmetics, we'll do it beneath your skin. I've scheduled you for
tomorrow. We have some tests to run."
Sherry put her foot down. "I've had it." She turned and
glared at Doris. "I'm tired of being treated as a piece of meat
who just does as she's told. It stops now, damn it. I want to
know what is going to happen now, and what is going to happen next.
Or the deal is off."
Doris started to say "You can't mean--" when Trotti waved her
to silence.
Trotti and Sherry stared at each other. "I think she means
that, Doris."
Sherry nodded her head.
"All right. All right," Dr Trotti sighed. He pulled a group
of photographs from an envelope on the desk. "This is what we're
going to do--" he outlined a procedure that focused mainly on the
face. They wanted to reshape her jaw, trim her nose, pare down
her adam's apple, and tighten her vocal chords. "We'll do the
vocal chord work first, because we need you alert. You have to
speak while it's going on so we can tune your voice. Then after
that, we'll give you a general anasthesia and do the rest of the
procedure."
Sherry frowned. "I've been on hormones all this time. Isn't
it good practice to stop taking them prior to surgery?"
Trotti smiled with a little embarrassment. "Actually, you've
been off them for the last three weeks--"
"`Three weeks'?!" Sherry yelled the question. "You bastards
have known this all along and haven't bothered to tell me?" Her
hands raised slightly and she clenched her fists as if she wanted
to rip Trotti's throat out. Trotti saw her rage and took a half-
step backwards without even realizing he had done so. Sherry
pivoted, seeing some movement from the corner of her eye. Doris
had opened her purse and had her hand inside. Sherry stared at
her. The stare said `go ahead, make a move,' but Doris, her face
white, slowly pulled her empty hand out of the bag.
Doris slowly unslung the purse and placed it on a table, then
took two steps away from it. Doris was good, she thought she'd be
able to take Sherry, but that wasn't the object of the exercise.
They had a lot of time and money invested in Sherry Anderson.
Doris wasn't willing to toss that away, nor did she want to have to
explain to her superiors why she had killed Sherry. The thought
that Sherry just might have taken her didn't even enter her mind.
Sherry breathed deeply and relaxed. She knew how close she
had been to going over the edge. "So, what happens afterwards?"
Doris also let out a sigh. "After the operations, you'll
recuperate here for a week. Then we'll take you back to the base.
You won't be ready for flying or anything else for at least six
weeks, maybe twice that. So we'll teach you other things,
classroom work."
"Such as?"
"Languages. You have to learn the language of the area you'll
be operating in."
"What language?"
Doris smiled and shook her head. "Not everyone you'll come in
contact with here is cleared to know. We don't need you babbling
about it under anesthesia."
Sherry nodded. "I can live with that. So let's get started."
Trotti called an orderly who showed Sherry to a hospital room.
Sherry dumped her gear and then followed the orderly for an
examination. Blood tests, X-rays, dental exams, EKG; it all was a
familiar bore. The voice surgeon peered down her throat, but his
manner was abstract. She knew a lot of doctors acted this way, so
she didn't take it personally.
That evening they gave her an enema and restricted her diet.
The orderlies woke her at five the next morning for a shower, then
gave her breakfast and a sedative. Sherry was awake but foggy when
they wheeled her up for the voice surgery. She vaguely remembered
being given a lot of local anasthetic before the surgery. It was
not as comfortable as a dental exam, what with the doctor sticking
a bunch of hardware down her throat. But it didn't hurt.
After that little ordeal, a nurse gave her another shot and
Sherry went into dreamland. When she woke up, her throat and face
hurt. A big sign in front of her ordered her not to talk, but to
push the button if she felt in pain. A nurse came in and showed
her how to use the self-medication machine to obtain painkillers.
Sherry did that and fell back asleep.
The next time she woke up, she noticed the IV drip and felt
the catheter. Oh, well, she thought. The sign was still there.
She pushed the button. A floor nurse came by with a menu and a
pencil; Sherry circled her choices. `Oh boy, hospital food,' she
thought.
A doctor came in to check vital signs; Sherry knew she was a
doctor because the doctors all wore business clothing under their
white coats. The doctor explained that Sherry had to be silent as
much as possible for the next two weeks. Then she told her how
that the operations appeared to be successful. The doctor held up
a mirror. Sherry thought she looked as if she had just gone ten
rounds with Evander Holyfield, but the doctor explained the
swelling was normal.
The IV was removed that afternoon, the catheter the next
morning. Three days later, Doris, Janet and a third woman showed
up to take Sherry back home. They had a small RV so Sherry could
lie down for the trip if she wanted to. She wanted to.
Sherry got two weeks' off. She felt she didn't need that much
time, but Doris explained that she would need her voice for the
language training. Sherry spent the time catching up on her
pleasure reading, watching movies she had missed and playing with
the computer. She tried running after a week and could barely go
two blocks. The surgery and the long hours of flying had taken a
lot out of her, she realized. She also tried out her new voice.
It was still a little low, but it was a feminine lowness. Twice
she relaxed by taking a Jeep to the firing range and shooting a few
weapons. One of the instructors gave her a treat and let her fire
a M2 .50 caliber heavy machine gun, the good old "Ma Deuce." 65
years old and still the best HMG in the world, he said.
Dr. Trotti and a throat specialist (who pointedly was not
introduced) gave her a medical exam before permitting her to start
classes. The verdict was good, so Sherry started language courses
the next week (and also resumed taking the hormones). The course
work was a twelve hour immersion, with little homework at first.
Sherry was learning two languages at once, Spanish and Portugese.
She didn't think she was being prepped for a mission in the Iberian
Peninsula, so that meant she was going to go to South America.
They told her that they weren't concerned about making her appear
to be a native, that she was going as an American. But it always
helps to know the language. Sherry concluded that the mission
wasn't set so deep in the bush that she needed to know any of the
local Indian dialects.
The language training lasted for three months. Sherry might
not have been able to discuss quarks and other sub-atomic particles
in the two languages, but she knew enough to get around and
survive. They taught her a lot of aircraft-nomenclature in both
languages (which made sense).
She resumed flying six weeks after the surgery. It felt good
to fling the Decathalon around the sky, then she settled down and
became current again in the cargo aircraft. The self-defense and
weapons training started up again as the language instruction
petered out. Some of the sessions were taught in the two
languages, so Sherry learned how to discuss weapons in the tongues.
Doris dropped by one afternoon. She told Sherry that after
the training had ended, that she'd be going to another freight line
to build up more flight time, but this time she'd be flying a DC-3.
Sherry looked forward to that.
But what Sherry loved best was what she saw when she looked in
the mirror and what she heard when she spoke. What she saw and
what she heard was a woman. She told Janet that more and more, she
wanted to finish the course and get rid of the last vestiges of
maleness hanging between her legs. Janet just smiled and counseled
patience. Sherry was patient, but she wanted to finish the course
and resume the rest of her life.
She overlooked that "Payback Time" was coming, too.
Sherry found herself in La Crosse, Wisconsin. The routine was
similicity itself: She would fly as co-pilot for a DC-3 to
Madison, Janesville, Rockford, IL and into Midway, . At each
point, part of the cargo would be loaded on so that when they
arrived in Chicago they normally had a full load. The cargo (which
was in containers) would be transferred to a cargo jet and taken to
the national sorting center. Christa Welles (the DC-3's Captain)
and Sherry would try to catch a few winks in the female bunkroom
until the outbound cargo was delivered. Then they would fly the
DC-3 back to La Crosse.
Sherry, who had grown up reading the stories of Ernest Gann,
was in high heaven. Ok, so they were using VORs and loran, not
low-freqency ranges, but it didn't take much imagination on her
part to believe they were flying AM-21. She could see why the old
airline pilots loved the DC-3; easy to fly, easy to land, and about
as forgiving a taildragger as was ever made.
Christa didn't see it that way, but she was a short-timer. In
three weeks she would be going to United's new pilot school. In
baseball terms, she had made it to "the show." United had sent her
some advance course material and she was spending every bit of free
time studying it.
Sherry's other studies weren't neglected. She had a
subscription to two weekly newsmagazines in Portugese and Spanish.
The school called her twice a week for progress reports and to
gently quiz her on current events. The calls were made in one or
the other languages. A case officer dropped by every three weeks;
again the discussions weren't in English.
When Christa left, Sherry was promoted to the left seat of the
DC-3. Another woman took over the co-pilot slot. Sherry flew as
a DC-3 captain for six months. It seemed to her as if things were
going very slowly, but there was a reason to it. The program that
was training her incurred no major costs while Sherry was flying
the cargo planes. While her military pay was continuing, the money
for that came from the Navy. As far as they were concerned, Sherry
was an asset that was in safe-keeping. Sherry was living on her
flying pay. Her military pay kept accumulating in a combination
money market and mutual fund account.
Doris called her one morning and told her to stop taking the
hormones, that there would be more surgery in three weeks. Sherry
asked what surgery, but Doris wouldn't tell her. Sherry sighed at
all the "need to know" bullshit, but that's the way they did
things.
Right on time, Doris showed up three weeks later at the La
Crosse airport as Sherry came back from a cargo run. There was a
new pilot for the -3, Doris led Sherry to a Gulfstream III that had
its cabin windows covered over.
"Where are we going," Sherry asked.
Doris led the way onto the jet and closed the door. She
knocked on the cockpit door (also shut) and then sat down. Janet
was there, too. "We are going for the final surgery," Doris said.
She nodded to Janet.
Janet pulled out a briefcase as the jet taxiied to the active
runway. "We have a lot of material to go over, first. Read these,
and sign at the bottom where the `x' is if you agree. We'll
countersign."
Sherry started to read. Most of it was legalese about the
risks of sexual reassignment surgery. There was a lengthy consent
form and a very stark explaination that the surgery was not
reversible with any current or foreseen technique. She barely
noticed the takeoff roll and climbout as she waded through the
forms. There were a few she had to reread to make sure she
understood them. But there was no question in her mind that this
was what she wanted. Each time she signed a document, Doris and
Janet would countersign it and Doris would notarize it.
Finally, she finished the last form. She handed it to Janet,
who signed it. Doris used the embossing stamp and signed it. "Now
what," Sherry asked.
"Any last minute qualms," inquired Janet.
"About being operated on? Yes. About why? No."
"All right," Janet sighed. "Just sit back and enjoy the ride.
You'll find some books in the bin next to your right knee." Janet
was relieved. She had to ask Sherry that question out of
professional duty, but nobody wanted her to back out. A likely
mission was on the planning table and there was no one better
qyalified than Sherry for it.
Sherry found a Portugese version of Louis L'amour's "The
Sacketts." It was easy reading.
The jet landed and taxiied into a hangar. Sherry wasn't
allowed to leave the airplane until the hangar doors were shut.
The three women then got into a limosine with blackened windows
that was in the hangar. Even the license plate was covered up.
The limo went to a hospital; they got out in an empty parking
garage. Two orderlies waited with a gurney. They had Sherry lie
on it, then they strapped her in. One orderly covered her to the
neck with a blanket, the other wrapped a bandage around her eyes.
They wheeled her up to a private room. As she expected, the
windows were opaque. Doris showed her that the TV set worked,
although it only had generic cable stations on it, nothing that
would identify the city or state they were in. Sherry unpacked and
settled in.
What Sherry wanted to do now was sleep, but that was not to
be. Two different doctors came by to do a physical examination,
followed by another doctor who identified himself as the
anesthesiologist. All three wore surgical greens and masks,
presumably to minimize any chances of Sherry identifying them.
The dinner was light, it was followed by one nurse who gave
Sherry an enema (which was no fun as Sherry wasn't into water
sports), and another who shaved her pubic area. Finally a third
nurse came by, woke her up, and gave her a sleeping pill.
An orderly woke her up early the next morning and gave her a
shot to make her drowsy. "Great, just what I needed," Sherry
thought and she went to sleep again. She thought she remembered
somebody talking to her in the OR, but she wasn't sure.
The next thing she knew is that she woke up with a burning
sensation in her groin. Sherry groped for the call button, a nurse
came in and gave her a shot. She went back to sleep.
Sherry was confined to bed for five days, although she felt
strong enough to get up after three. One of the doctors told her
it was "because you're in great shape, young lady" and ordered her
to stay in bed anyway. Sherry whiled away the time watching CNN
and HBO. Doris and Janet visited every day, they brought her
copies of the NY Times. That meant nothing, as Sherry knew the
paper was distributed nationally.
When they let her out of bed, Sherry started to get some
exercise walking up and down the hall. She was surprised to see
that most of the rooms were empty. The others had closed doors,
they only let her go out when the other patients were out of sight.
She was in the hospital for ten days. The return trip was
made the same way, except this time the airplane was a Lear 31 and
the flight ended at the training base. There Sherry recuperated
for a few weeks and did whatever she felt like. To her joy, one of
the airplanes on the flight line was a Stearman; she arranged for
a checkout and flew the big biplane as much as she could. There
was a T-28 on the line; Sherry checked out in it but didn't fly it
very much. To her, it wasn't as much fun as the biplane.
They ran her through a series of refresher courses-- language,
defense, and flying. The emphasis in the flying was in terrain
folowing and rough-field operations. Sherry was also given
extensive training in loran, omega, and GPS navigation systems.
Loran was familiar, but they ran her through it anyway. Omega sets
in aircraft were rare to start with and hardly anyone still used
them, but on the off-chance that one would be there, she had to
learn it. GPS (Global Positioning Satellites) was the lastest
system, supposedly accurate to less than 50 meters in three
dimensions.
After Sherry was checked by a team of doctors and judged to
have recovered, she went back to La Crosse and resumed flying the
DC-3 on the cargo runs. Doris told her that "completely recovered"
didn't mean that all the scars had healed. They wanted time for
the scars from the surgery to fade before making a final evaluation
of Sherry's fitness for a mission.
Her co-pilot was an average-sized woman named Julia Waldowski.
Julia and Sherry became pretty good friends, hard to avoid when one
spends five days a week flying together. After verifying that
Julia knew what she was about, Sherry let her fly the alternate
legs of the runs. There wasn't much to it. If the weather was
good enough, they'd fly VFR to avoid the delays caused by the ATC
system.
Julia was a bit of an exercise nut. While most of the other
pilots were trying to catch a little sleep between the inbound and
outbound legs, she would go for a run around the cargo area. One
night she forgot to pack any deoderant, so she asked Sherry if
there was any in her bag (almost all the pilots had a small bag
with a change of clothing and toiletries in case they were
weathered in). Sherry was asleep and mumbled something like "sure"
and went back to sleep.
The return flight was in good weather; they cancelled IFR and
flew out of Midway VFR. Sherry flew the leg and noticed that Julia
was being really quiet.
"Did you hurt yourself running tonight," she asked.
"No, it was a good five miles."
"Then what's wrong?" Sherry glanced over, although it wasn't
necessary to look with the headests and the intercom.
Julia was silent for a minute, then said: "When I borrowed
your deodorant, I found a dialator in your bag."
That rang a few bells in Sherry's mind. Most people would
have called it a `dildo,' but she called it a `dialator.' "Okay.
So?"
"`So?' We've been flying together for a few months now. I
mean," Julia stopped, at a loss for words. She reached for her
purse and took her wallet out. She drew a photo from one of the
plastic pockets and handed it to Sherry. She then put her hand on
the control wheel. "I have the airplane."
"Your airplane," Sherry replied. She pulled a small
flashlight out and shielded the light, then she looked at the
photo. The picture showed Julia standing next to a taller woman,
one who was almost half a foot taller. She was pretty good
looking, though, and appeared to be about the same age as Julia.
There was some slight resemblance between the two women, especially
in the way a slight smile was on their lips. Sherry put away the
flashlight, handed the photo back, and said: "I have the
airplane."
"Your airplane."
"Who is she?"
Julia was putting the photo back into her wallet. "That's
Michelle, my big sister."
In more ways than one, Sherry thought. "How much older is
she?"
"Depends on how you look at it. She's either three years
older than I am or she's 23 years younger."
Sherry did some quick figuring; she knew Julia was 25, so
Michelle was 28..uh, oh. "Spell it out."
"She was born as Michael. She had a sexual reassignment
operation two years ago. Most people wouldn't know it to look at
her. But when she travels, she had a dialator in her suitcase; she
uses it to make sure her vagina stays open. Her dialator looks
just like yours."
Sherry made a note of that; she'd better replace the damn
thing with a regular dildo. It'd be better to have someone assume
she was just weird. "How do you feel about having a sister who's
a transsexual?"
Julia made a noncommittal gesture in the dim red light of the
Doug's cockpit. She looked out to the right, where the headlights
of the cars on I-90 were visible. "Michael never fit in as a boy.
I think I knew he wanted to be a girl a long time ago. She's a big
woman, now, but she's very happy. Michelle has a sort of inner
peace that most people don't. I think it comes from knowing that
she has done what she needed to do.
"I don't know, it's strange sometimes. But when I'm around
her, I forget sometimes that she used to be a he. My parents
aren't very happy, but they've realized that it was the best
thing."
Sherry tuned the number 1 navcom to the Rockford tower
frequency, 118.3 mHz. The tower was closed, so she listened to see
if anyone else was in the area. Nobody was there, so she tried
calling Hartzog on their frequency to find which way the windsock
was pointing. The lineman looked out the door and let her know.
She pulled back on the throttles lsightly and started a shallow
descent, then switched back to the tower frequency.
Julia didn't let it drop. "When did you have your surgery?"
"You're making a pretty big assumption, aren't you?"
"No, I don't think so. Even for a tall woman, you have large
hands and feet. Whoever worked on you did an excellent job;
there's no scarring from the tracheal shave. I can see a few
pockmarks that probably came from electrolysis, but everyone else
is going to assume they're acne scars."
Sherry sighed. "A few months ago. I came back from recovery
when we started flying together."
"Does the line know?" Julia was referring to the cargo
airline.
"No. How would they? They don't do physicals, my paperwork
all says `female.'"
"How did you get the time off?"
"I put in for a leave of absence without pay."
"Does the FAA know? How did you get a medical?"
Sherry smiled slightly. She announced her position over the
radio, then answered Julia. "There are ways. The FAA knows all
about me. It's not exactly an unknown thing for them to see.
Karen Ulane did us a big favor."
"I guess so. That was too bad, though," Julia commented,
referring to the crash that killed Ulane.
"Yeah. Gear down."
Julia pushed the lever down. "Coming down...down and locked."
"Tailwheel locked."
"Tailwheel locked."
Sherry pulled the throttles back. "Flaps ten."
"Flaps ten. Mixture to full rich."
"Full rich." She pushed the prop controls forward, ensuring
they'd be set if she had to go-around. Nobody else was in the
pattern, Sherry flew a tight approach with minimal power. When she
knew she had the field made, she called for full flaps. She landed
the DC-3 a little tail low, then let the tail settle. One the tail
was down, Sherry moved the control column all the way back to hold
it. She unlocked the tailwheel once they had slowed to taxi speed.
Julia commented. "Michelle'll be so thrilled to know."
"Julia, don't tell her. Please."
Julia looked over. "You're on of the ones who want to
disappear afterwards, then."
"Yes. Please don't tell anyone."
"Okay, Sherry."
They didn't talk much for the rest of the flight.
Julia did ask Sherry a couple days later if she wanted to get
together for dinner and some drinks on Saturday night. Sherry
didn't have any plans, so she agreed. "You have any ideas," she
asked.
Julia shrugged. "There's a decent Chinese place not too far
away from the field. We can go there."
"Sounds good. What should we wear?"
"I'm tired of wearing pants all the time," Julia declared.
"I'm going to dress up a little."
"Ok by me. Where should we meet?"
"We both live near the field, so let's meet in the line
parking lot at seven."
"Sure. See you then."
They were both there at seven. That may have been a little
surprising to a casual observer, but both women were pilots and
were used to showing up on time. Julia was wearing a dark floral
print dress that was flowing and came to just below the knee. The
dress apparently was made of rayon, tan hose, and black pumps with
3" heels. Sherry had a black knee-length dress with a polo shirt
type of collar. She also had on black pumps but with a little
lower heel. They decided to take Sherry's Honda; that way Julia
didn't have to clean off the passenger seat of her Tercel.
There was a wait for the restuarant, but not much of one.
They shared food, like most peole do when they're eating Chinese,
and giggled over the fortune cookies. Sherry's said "You are about
to take a long journey."
Julia knew a nice lounge not very far away. Over a couple
drinks, the two women talked; mainly about flying. Like most
pilots, they used their hands a lot. The bartender listened in as
much as he could, he seemed fascinated by two women discussing
aviation in a way that only pilots could. They did switch to diet
soda after the second drink; neither one wanted to risk a drunken-
driving beef. (The FAA's been going after pilots who drink and
drive.)
The crowd had lessed out, it was getting late, so they left
the bar. Two men followed them out, ambling behind them as their
heels clicked faster across the parking lot. Sherry fished her
keys out and had them in her hand when the two men caught up to
them.
One of them grabbed Sherry by the right wrist from behind.
"What's your hurry, little lady," he asked in a tone that chilled
Sherry to the core.
The other one had grabbed Julia. "We only want to party a
little. Come with us, you won't get hurt and we'll show you a real
good time." Both men laughed.
Sherry exploded into motion. She pivoted and drove her left
fist into the man's midsection with all the power she could muster.
The breath whooshed out of his lungs, he let go of her wrist and
started to double over. Sherry pulled back, then swung the edge of
her right fist into his nose, smashing it to a bloody ruin. She
wasn't finished, but he was when she kicked his left kneecap out of
alighnment. He fell to the pavement a bleeding groaning ruin.
The goon holding Julia was frozen in shock as he gaped at his
devastated friend. He came alert when he heard a metallic
clicking; he looked up and saw Sherry pointing a small black
automatic pistol at his head. From her stance and her expression,
he knew he was very close to dying.
"Let her go," Sherry commanded. The man did so instantly.
"Put your hands on top of your head. You move without me telling
you to and you're a dead man. Julia, get the phone from my car."
Julia did. "Dial this number-" Sherry told her what number "-
come around on my left side and hand it to me."
Julia did as she was told; she was almost as stunned as the
man who Sherry had the gun on. Sherry took the phone and when it
was answered, explained the situation. She was told to stay where
she was. She handed the phone back to Julia, who took it and stood
there uncertainly.
A police car with no lights drove up three minutes later. It
stopped so that the headlights illuminated the scene. The cop got
out and came over. His pistol was drawn, but wasn't aimed at
anyone. "You Anderson," he asked.
"Yes."
"Ok." He holstered the gun, grabbed the guy standing up and
tossed him against the Honda. "Assume the position, asshole." The
man did. The cop frisked and cuffed him, then he marched him over
to the cruiser and threw him in the back seat. Sherry put her
pistol away, the cop came back and frisked and cuffed the guy on
the ground with a heavy-duty cable tie. Sherry helped him drag the
man to the cruiser and stuffed him in next to his buddy. The cop
siad: "We'll be in touch" to Sherry and drove away with the two
would-be rapists.
Julia was still a little dazed. Sherry walked her over to the
passenger's side of the car and helped her get in. Sherry walked
back around and got in. She looked over at Julia. "Are you all
right?"
"I've never seen anything like that. It was so quick. All of
a sudden he was on the ground and you had a gun."
Sherry nodded, but didn't say anything.
"Where did you learn do do that?"
"I was taught. Where and why, I can't tell you."
"Were you in the service before-"
"Yes." Sherry let Julia draw her own conclusions, even though
she knew they'd be the wrong ones.
"And the gun. I grew up in Chicago. The only guns I've ever
seen belonged to the cops. Is it yours?"
"Yes."
"Do you have a permit for it?"
Sherry nodded.
"Do you carry it wtih you all the time?"
"I can't answer that. I will say I carry it when I need to."
Julia looked over at her. "Why did you have it tonight?"
"I needed to, evidently."
Julia sighed. "I think I want to go home." Sherry drove her
back to the airport and parked next to Julia's car. Julia got out
without saying a word; Sherry stayed there until Julia had started
to drive away.
Sherry sighed. She didn't know what would happen now, but
there wasn't much she could do about it.
Sherry was not very surprised when she reported for work on
Monday afternoon and found a new copilot assigned to her run. She
went over to the desk and asked where Julia was.
The dispatcher shrugged. "She called in sick, said she wasn't
feeling very well."
"Any idea when she'll be back," Sherry asked.
No, but I wouldn't worry about it if I was you," he replied.
"She also asked to be assigned to another run."
"She say why?"
"`Personal reasons' she said. Your new guy is Jeff McCreary.
His last job was working as a CFI."
"Has he had much taildragger time?"
Pete rummaged through his desk and found a folder. "Let's see
here.. he instructed in Citabrias and did some banner towing with
them. He has a fresh type rating in the -3. 800 hours total, 75
multi. This is his second flying job."
Sherry didn't complain. She didn't have a lot more hours than
that, although she did have considerably more multi-engine time.
The thought of looking up Julia came to her, but she discarded it.
If that's what she wanted, then Sherry would honor it.
Jeff wasn't the best looking guy Sherry had ever seen; his
nose looked as if he had used it to stop a few fast-moving objects.
He didn't talk much, either. But he knew how to fly and Sherry was
soon swapping legs with him.
This went on for a few weeks. Jeff was nothing if not correct
with Sherry; no conversation beyond the business at hand, not even
an invitation to eat together on the turn-around. Sherry wondered
what was wrong, but she suspected that Julia had talked and the
word had spread.
In a way, she was relieved when an envelope came from Doris.
Inside was a clipping from "Flight Careers Digest" for an airline
and charter outfit that operated in Central and northern South
America. They were looking for pilots with experience in heavy
piston-engined cargo airplanes; the smallest airplane type listed
was the DC-3. Pilots with time in C-46s, DC-4s, -6s, -7s and C-97s
were highly desireable, as were ones with competency in Spanish
and/or Portuguese. Since the line operated aircraft with U.S.
registration, only pilots with FAA issued licenses would be
considered.
There was no note included with the clipping, but one didn't
need to be a rocket scientist to figure out what had to be done.
Sherry sent her resume off the next day.
The airline sent a letter back asking her to come to Miami for
an interview. She got some time off, then set up an appointment.
Getting there was tiring, but it didn't cost anything. She rode
the jumpseat of the DC-3 to Chicago, then she rode a 727 to
Memphis. They offered her a tour of the sorting facility, Sherry
asked for a raincheck for her return trip.
The final leg was a DC-10 direct to Miami. The crew was a
mixed one in that the pilot and flight engineer were from the cargo
carrier, while the co-pilot came from Flying Lion; an international
air-cargo company that had been swallowed up. They had some idea
why Sherry would be nutty enough to go to Miami in July, but they
didn't ask.
The interview was scheduled for 4pm at AirSouth's offices at
Miami International. Sherry had learned from the cargo crew of a
motel that offered day rates for flight crews. She checked into
the Motel at six and left a two o'clock wakeup call.
It was hot when the call came. Sherry took a shower and got
dressed, with the sound of the TV set for background noise. At one
point she heard the sound of a large radial-engined aircraft taking
off and went to the wind; she saw a Boeing C-97 climbing out. She
had never seen one before. Oh, well.
She got dressed in a pink suit with a white short-sleeved top,
white hose and white pumps. Since she was leaving the room, she
took her luggage with her. Sherry had lunch in the motel
restaurant before calling a cab to the interview. She was at the
offices fifteen minutes early.
AirSouth didn't look like it spent much money on office
furnishings. The place had linoleum floors that were probably old
when C-97s were being made. The lighting was industrial-strength
fluorescent bulbs. The offices were in a very large room, privacy
was obtained by green metal partitions with wavy glass translucent
panels. The receptionist was a girl in her late teens who was
wearing a sundress and had reddish heavily-permed hair set off by
large gold hoop earrings. She told Sherry to take a seat. Sherry
found one that didn't look to be too filthy and waited.
The girl sent her on back twenty minutes later to meet Phil,
the Chief Pilot. Phil appeared to be in his late fifties. He had
an office that was in the open area, though he had more space than
the other areas she saw. On the way back, Sherry didn't see any
enclosed offices. The place was exactly what it looked like, a
converted aircraft hangar. Noise coming from the back showed that
not all of the hangar had been converted, she could hear air tools
and a clang as something metallic hit the concrete floor. Phil's
office (not too surprisingly) was decorated with photos of Phil and
airplanes. In one photo, he was standing in front of a C-119 that
had Air America lettering.
Sherry saw that Phil had seen her looking at the photos.
"I've never heard anybody say anything good about the -119."
Phil gestured her to a seat by the desk. "You won't from me,
either. So you think you want to fly for us."
"Yes."
He shook his head. "It's not a job for a nice lady."
"Hardly anybody calls me a `lady,' let alone `nice.' I can
take care of myself."
Phil seemed to be amused at that. He rummaged in his top
right desk drawer, pulled out a pistol and tossed it on the desk.
"Recognize that?"
Sherry glanced at it, then looked back at Phil. "Taurus 9mm."
"Know how to strip it?"
"Yep."
Phil waved his hand at it. Sherry picked it up, dropped the
magazine out, and cleared the chamber. "Silvertips," she muttered.
In a matter of seconds she had the pistol stripped. She held the
barrel up to the light. "You could clean it once in a while." she
then reassembled the weapon.
"Think you put it back together right," Phil asked.
Sherry glared at him. She picked up the magazine, slammed it
home, racked the slide and aimed the pistol towards the roof.
"No, I believe you," he yelled. Sherry lowered the hammer,
then she dropped the magazine out and slid the round that had been
in the chamber into the magazine. "Let me see your logbooks."
Sherry handed him the logs and the interview went fairly
normally after that. Phil would occasionally switch into Spanish,
continue the conversation for a few minutes, then abruptly shift
back to English. After about fifteen minutes he said: "Contingent
on a flight test, you're hired. Starting pay is 35K, including
full medical with furnished housing provided and meal allowances.
You'll be working out of Rio, so your pay is exempt from Federal
taxes. We'll set up a bank account for you in Grand Cayman so the
Brazilians won't tax you, either. How does that sound?"
"Sounds good to me. When's the test?"
"I'd do it now, but I don't think you'd want to do it in that
nice suit."
"I've got other clothes in my bag out front."
Phil stood up. "In that case, let's do it." He pointed back
towards a door in the rear. "Just go out that door after you've
changed. Paula will show you where the ladies' room is." Phil
turned and headed out towards the rear door.
Sherry retrieved her stuff and changed into jeans, Reeboks,
and a black t-shirt. Phil was standing next to an AirSouth DC-3.
He told her to start a pre-flight, then stopped her after five
minutes when he saw she knew what she was doing. They climbed into
the airplane, shut the door, and went to the cockpit. Phil waved
Sherry to the left seat, he sat in the right. The two soon had the
engines warming up. Sherry was glad to see that AirSouth had an
intercom system and headsets.
"Okay, what we'll do is go to Taimiami and shoot some
landings," Phil said. He left it up to Sherry to talk to Clearance
Delivery, Ground Control and the tower, though he did help her
navigate around the taxiways. Taimiami (also known as Kendall to
avoid confusion with Miami International) is about ten miles from
Miami, so it was a quick hop.
The flight test was more fun than work. Phil did pull the
power back at one point and had Sherry do a power-off landing from
the downwind. She touched the mains down just beyond the numbers
and tried not to show her pleasure. They then went out over the
Everglades for some engine-out work. Phil then told her to contact
approach and they went back to Miami International.
After the engines were shut down, they removed their headsets.
Phil rubbed the top of his scalp and remarked: "You can fly her,
all right. Be back here at nine four weeks from Friday. I'd
suggest you put most of your stuff in storage. Paula will give you
a list of what we recommend you bring with you. Most everything
else you'll need you can get there. All right?" He stuck out his
hand.
Sherry shook it. "Sure." She followed Phil out of the
airplane and back into the offices. He led the way back to the
front.
Phil rapped on Paula's desk to attract her attention from the
magazine she was engrossed in. "Sherry's hired. Have her fill out
the personnel forms and give her the orientation package." He
turned to Sherry. "See you in a month."
"I'll be here. Thanks for the job."
Phil smiled. "Hold off on the thanks until you've been here
awhile. Have a good flight back."
Paula pulled out a file drawer and handed Sherry some papers.
One was a fairly standard employment application, there was an I-9
form, and a designation for a life insurance beneficiary. Sherry
took a pen from her bag and started filling out the forms. Paula
was a little surprised when Sherry produced her passport to satisfy
the I-9 form. The life insurance policy was for one hundred
thousand. Sherry split the designation between her parents and
IFGE. Paula didn't ask who IFGE was. Sherry had never been a
member of IFGE, but she had heard of them and she almost grinned
when she thought of the reaction they would have. The last thing
Paula handed her was the orientation package.
Sherry read though some of it while waiting to hop the cargo
flight to Memphis. The listing of what to bring was fairly
comprehensive: six pairs of lightweight long-sleeved trousers
(khaki preferred), four pairs of tropical/jungle boots (broken in),
two pairs of heavy insulated trousers that would fit over the khaki
ones, two pairs of winter hiking boots, six short-sleeved shirts,
three heavy long-sleeved shirts (flannel recommended), a dark-
colored sweatshirt, utility knife (sheath-type), three pairs of
sunglasses, lightweight and winter gloves suitable for flying.
They would furnish winter parkas.
They also recommended three pairs of jeans, six light blouses,
a few lightweight skirts, two dresses (knee-length or lower), and
two pairs of black pumps. That was followed by a recommendation to
bring a "suitable sidearm," one capable of stopping an adversary.
They strongly recommended automatic pistols that were corrosion
resistant. She had some ideas, but planned to bounce them off
Keith before she chose a weapon to bring.
It was after seven when Sherry got out of the AirSouth hangar.
Phil was leaving and he gave her a ride to the ramp area for the
overnight package lines. Sherry's luck held, the flight to Memphis
was still loading, or more accurately, the Caravan from Key West
was still unloading. There was room on the DC-10, too.
This time she took them up on the tour of the sorting
facility. It was an amazing sight, packages being transported at
high speed along a vast network of conveyor belts. Laser barcode
readers scanned each package, which was shifted from conveyor to
conveyor as the code and flight routing demanded. There was a
full-time PR staffer whose job it was to show VIPs around. Since
there weren't any such august visitors that night, she was showing
Sherry and a few new freight dogs the operation. Sherry asked her
if the routing computer could handle flight delays and equipment
breakdowns.
"Absolutely," the lady said. "The schedule is uploaded into
the computers each day and updated as need be. We also have
scanners that compute the cube of each package and record its
weight, that feeds into the flight planning for each plane. We
have weight-and-balance data for every plane we regularly use,
along with sample data for any planes we may lease or rent."
"So if somebody shows up with a Martin 404 for the Christmas
rush," asked a female pilot.
"Then we pull the data file for the 404s. Watch," the tour
guide said. She used a terminal to call up the sample sheet for a
Martin 404. "We have a data form that all our subcontractors have
to fill out so we get the specific information on their aircraft.
Once that's in, then we only update it if needed. As you can see
here, we've had 16 Martin 404s on file besides the generic one.
Sherry took another look at the pilot who asked the question.
She was about 6'3" and had a fairly heavy build. Her features and
voice were feminine, but her hands were large enough to easily wrap
around a heavy pistol's stock. Her feet were at a minimum 12WW.
She caught Sherry looking, her slight smile said "I know what I am
and I know what you are." Neither one of them exchanged a word the
entire time.
The guide continued her spiel from the point where she was
interrupted: "Now the computer data from the packages is used to
compute each aircraft's loading. If we either go over wight or
`cube out' in that we have more packages than will fit in the
aircraft, the computer makes any alternate routes that it can or
alerts the dispatchers. Depending on the time of the year and
volume, we have backup aircraft available at various points in the
system."
There was enough time to grab a quick snack after the tour
before the airplane to Chicago was ready to leave. The departure
itself was something to watch, dozens of airplanes leaving just
minutes apart. The controllers had it down to a science, the
lighter aircraft left before the heaviest ones so that nobody had
to wait for a wake turbulence hold. A handful of Caravans and Twin
Beeches left first, followed by Falcon 20s, DC-9s, 727s, a DC-8,
the DC-10s, and finally the 747s working the international routes.
Rush hour at two am.
Sherry was back at her home airport at the time she was
accustomed to arriving. Pete greeted her as she walked though the
door from the flight line: "Did you get the job?"
Sherry tried not to show her surprise. "And what makes you
think I went looking for a job?"
Pete smiled and spread his hands wide. "There are some pilots
who like the life of a small charter outfit, but not many. Most
want the big bucks and prestige of airline flying. Besides, you
went to Miami for one day. That's a long trip for a day trip. So,
did you get the job and with whom?"
"Yep, with AirSouth."
"AirSouth?" Pete's eyebrows rose at that.
"You know them?"
"Rumors, only rumors. They do a lot of Central and South
American charter work for the Feds, especially DoD and some other
lesser known outfits." He paused for a second. "You might
consider them a successor to Air America. You'll do some hard
flying with them. You can use my typewriter over there if you want
to type up a resignation letter. Two weeks is standard, we can get
someone in here by then."
Sherry just laughed and went behind the desk. The letter
didn't take very long to write. She gave it to Pete, who slotted
it in the Chief Pilot's box. Then she went home to take a long
shower and get some sleep. When she woke in the afternoon, she
called Doris to report on her new job. Doris asked her to stop by
on her way to Miami if she had the time. The conversation could
have been that of two women who've known each other for years.
Pete handed her a note when she checked in for work. The note
was from the Chief Pilot and all it said was "See me when you
report in." That was now, so she tossed the note and went to his
office. Sherry knocked on the door and opened it.
John Schiff was the Chief Pilot, and he was a good one. The
company had hired him away from American. He, like Sherry, loved
the DC-3. His salary wasn't as high as American had paid him, but
it wasn't shabby, either. He got to fly as much as he wanted to
(40-60hrs a month) and when he went to sleep each day, it was in
his own bed. He looked up at the knock. "Come on in, Sherry.
Have a seat."
"You wanted to see me, boss?"
He held up her resignation letter. "Kind of bare-bones. I
haven't lost another good pilot to the majors?"
Sherry shook her head. "Not hardly. AirSouth."
John sat back in surprise. "You're going to work for Phil
MacDonough? That old bastard." He shook his head and almost
laughed.
"You know him?"
"Yeah. He and I flew for Air America in the early `60s. I
got out of that sort of flying, he never did. It can get into your
blood if you let it.
"Sherry, the hardest and most satisfying flying I ever did was
for them. We used to fly instrument approaches to villages just by
time and distance. What we would do is fly alongside a mountain
and set the altimeter, then we'd drop into the clouds and break out
over a village in a valley. We'd drop the cargo, then climb back
out though the cloud layer. No beacons, let alone an ILS. No
rules, either. All that counted was if you got the job done
safely. If you didn't," he shrugged a shrug that any pilot would
have understood.
He looked out the window and watched a Cessna 421 taxi by.
"It was a different kind of flying. If Mac's involved with it
now, then it still is. There's a certain high from adrenaline, of
sticking your head in a dangerous place and coming out alive. It's
almost a macho thing. A lot of men go through it, I suppose, which
is why a lot of us get killed doing stupid things like BASE
jumping. I don't know if I'm making sense to you, or even to
myself.
"Few women get caught up in that sort of thing, but some do.
Maybe you're one, Sherry. Damn few women go around armed, either,
for that matter."
Sherry froze when he said that. "What do you know about
that?"
John shrugged. "Julia told me about your dinner together when
she requested another captain. We've done a lot of work over the
years for the cops at all levels. I was able to verify that the
incident happened and that you have a legal right to carry that
pistol anywhere except maybe the Oval Office."
"And now," Sherry asked.
John shrugged. "Now, nothing. Somebody went to a lot of
trouble to get that permit for you. Someone with that much pull
might also be able to make some trouble for me, which is why I
didn't ask you not to carry the piece." He sighed, and looked out
the window again. He must have made a decision, because he swung
back and looked squarely at Sherry. "Do you know why I hired you?"
"No."
"I was sort of asked to by the FAA. Your resume was in a pile
on my desk one day when a Flight Standards inspector came by for a
chat about a problem with the maintenance paperwork. While we were
talking and I was trying to figure out how much the penalty was
going to cost me, he asked if I had any interesting resumes; he
gave me some line about they were looking for a couple of check
pilots and had a hard time finding ones who were interested in
applying to work for the government.
"So I said sure and handed him the stack. He read through
them and then handed me yours. He said `You shouldn't let this one
get away from you.' You were qualified for the job, Sherry, but so
were a lot of other pilots. I told him I'd call you in for an
interview. He said good, and then told me he didn't see a problem
with the paperwork that couldn't be fixed and he'd let me know if
any action would be taken. After I offered you the job, I called
him up and told him I had hired you. He said fine and in an `oh,
by the way' tone of voice told me no enforcement action was going
to be taken against us."
"I don't expect you to confirm any of this, but like I said,
I've been around the covert action game. I suspect they're
grooming you for something down in Central or South America. Just
take one piece of advice from me and watch your back. I saw them
spend a lot of resources to train people for missions that while
successful, got almost everyone killed. As long as the mission is
a success, they don't care about the people involved. I'm sure
they've spent a lot of time and money training you, but don't be
surprised if they try to sacrifice you for something you don't want
to die for."
John stood up and stuck his hand out. "You're a good pilot,
Sherry. When whatever you're doing down there ends, if you want
to, you can come back here with no questions asked."
Sherry almost broke down over that unexpected bit of kindness.
She managed to choke out a "thank you," shook hands, and made it to
her car before she started to cry. After she had her cry, she went
back into the freight terminal and washed her face in the ladies'
room. Then she went back to the dispatcher's office and started
reviewing the weather and flight plan for the evening's run.
John's caution stuck with her. She visited a lawyer and
updated her will. She also purchased a small back-up pistol in a
private sale (so it couldn't be traced to her easily) and practiced
with it at a range in a forest preserve until she felt somewhat
comfortable with it.
She bought a Glock .45 though a regular dealer after she found
one who was willing to let her test-fire different weapons. Sherry
was a fan of the old GI .45, but she was willing to recognize a
better weapon when one came along. The dealer first tried to
persuade her to buy a 9mm, but he stopped when he realized that she
knew what she was about. Sherry purchased five spare magazines.
She intended to take her Government Model Colt along as a backup
weapon in case something happened to the Glock.
After some thought, Sherry sat down and wrote out everything
that had happened to her since the day she was called into the
Chief of Staff's office at Destroyer Squadron Two. She had a
photographer take some pictures of her, both portrait and full
length. She then used a Polaroid camera with a self-timer to take
some nude shots, those went into a special envelope.
Sherry found some old photographs of her before all this
started; photos of her on a deployment to the Mediterranian and
some that were taken at Suffolk Airport when she had taken a few
skydiving lessons. She laughed at the thought of using a female
pronoun for the male photos, but the English language was never set
up to deal with changing one's gender. When she looked at the
photos, she knew they were of her, but it was also like looking at
the photos of a relative. It was getting harder to realize that
she was once a man, even harder to understand how she could have
survived for so long as one. Sherry knew she'd rather die than
have to go back to living as a man.
Sherry then went to a private investigative service. She had
them fingerprint her and draw up a notarized statement that siad
that the fingerprints belonged to one Sherry Anderson and listed
her passport number, Wisconsin driver's license number, Social
Security card and pilot's license as supporting documents.
All the mysteries and espionage novels she had read now came
to good use. Sherry knew that sometimes bodies can be identified
by dental remains only. She went to a dentist for a checkup, which
included a full set of bitewing X-rays. Sherry put the name and
address of the dentist into the package she was drawing up.
Once the package was done, she went to the lawyer and made
arrangements for the package to be sent to her parents by a bonded
courier if she didn't make contact with the lawyer for a period of
two years. Sherry knew she was violating every rule in the book,
but she also wanted somebody to know she had existed. The lawyer
scrupulously avoided asking any questions concerning the contents
of the package.
Putting everything down on paper had made her think. She had
obeyed her orders not to have any contact with her relatives. Her
parents must still be under the impression that their son Sam was
on a special mission for the government. That was true, but how
would they react when the mission was over and they found out that
their son was now their daughter? Her father was very well-
connected politically, would he raise a big stink? Sherry couldn't
believe that this line of reasoning hadn't occurred to someone.
She didn't want to back out of the mission, but she wanted to be
reasonably sure that if someone tried to cross her that they
wouldn't get away with it.
Sherry also got her affairs in order; she made sure her shots
were up to date and arranged to put what she didn't need to take
with her into storage. Since the car was titled to her, she sold
it with the new owner taking delivery at the airport the day she
left. Doris was pissed at first, they had paid for the car, but
she realised that the more Sherry did that was above-board, the
better it was. Doris didn't ask for the money from the sale and
Sherry didn't offer to give it to her.
She also had a lot of reading to do, AirSouth had sent her
their operations manual, along with their flight manuals for the
DC-3 and DC-4. The DC-3 was was familiar. The DC-4 wasn't too
bad, it was more complex than the -3, especially the hydraulic
systems. Unlike the airlines in the US and Europe, AirSouth used
mechanics as flight engineers rather than junior pilots. Sherry
guessed they did that because their cargo planes often flew into
fields where mechanics qualified to work on them were unavailable.
Partial confirmation came from the list of required tools and spare
parts; the -3 had two complete cylinder assembiles, the -4 carried
three.
There were a few airports that the line required armed guards
to be part of the crew, that idea filled Sherry with some qualms.
There were procedures for carrying dangerous cargo, including
explosives. Much of the area wasn't well served (if at all) by
roads or railroads; the choices were mules, boats (if near a
navigable river) or air. If one needed a shipment in less than a
few weeks, air was the only choice.
Many of the airports had little or no equipment for instrument
approaches. Control towers were nonexistent, except in the
airports that served major cities. Most of the communication was
carried out on the company high-frequency bands. Navigation was by
dead reckoning, although Loran and GPS sets were being installed on
most of the line's airplanes.
There were even procedures for carrying large amounts of
currency if bribes were foreseen, and for obtaining reimbursement
for any emergency bribes. There was a list of highly placed
civilian, police, and military officials at each airport (or the
local town) to contact in case of any problems, the implication was
that they were on some sort of retainer. There was a list of bank
officials in each city that would advance cash to the crew captains
who were on their authorization list. There were listings of
doctors, pharmacists, hospitals, and lawyers who were known to be
competent.
The overall picture was that AirSouth was a professional
operation that operated in far less than ideal situations. It was
comforting for Sherry to know that they seemed to have their act
together.
Sherry flew for the cargo line for three more weeks. Most of
that time was spent with a new-hire copilot who would son fly with
Sherry's replacement. Sherry didn't talk very much with him, she
spent most of her free time studying the Airsouth manuals. At one
point she remembered her first days with the carrier and tht the
captain she first flew with, Christa Welles, spent her free time
reading United Airlines manuals.
Her last day was uneventful. She flew her run, then turned in
her charts and approach plates, flight planning stuff, security
pass and the keys to her locker and the terminal door. Then she
just went home.
Two days later, the movers showed up and packed her
furnishings and extra clothes for storage. Sherry forestalled any
raiding of her stuff by giving the movers her liquor. She took the
four pistols and their accoutrements. The telephone company had
showed some unusual efficiency and shut her phone off that morning,
she called the man who had agreed to buy her car. Then she went by
his house, picked him up, and drove to the airport. At the
passenger terminal she signed the title over to him and he gave her
the money in cash. They both made sure she hadn't left anything in
the car, then she handed over the keys and carried her bags into
the terminal.
She had to check her luggage because of the pistols. The
agent shrugged when she told her of the weapons, apparently armed
people going to Miami wasn't an unusual occurrance. The routing
was a slow one: a Short 360 to O'Hare, a 727 to Atlanta and a MD-
80 to Miami International.
There was nothing special about the flights. Sherry did
discover that the flight attendants ignored her (and the other
female passengers). The female FAs gave most of their attention to
the businessmen, as did the male FAs. It didn't bother her, she
wanted to be fairly anonymous. She bought the latest "November
Man" paperback in O'Hare and read that. After so many hours in the
left seat of a DC-3, Sherry found that flying as a passenger was a
little unsettling.
She checked into the same motel at Miami that she had used
when she came down for the interview. AirSouth had some permanent
rooms at another motel that they would put her up in when she
reported in the next day, they used them for flight crews that were
laying over. The major maintenance checks were done at Miami, the
lesser ones were done in the bases in Central and South America.
Sometimes the crews had to wait awhile for a plane to be ready to
take back. They did fly cargo to Miami, so the run wasn't a non-
revenue one. And, as Sherry was soon to find out, some of the
flights that were planned into and out of Miami diverted to
Homestead AFB to pick up and discharge cargo that the government
didn't want inspected by Customs.
All Sherry did that night was watch a forgettable movie on the
in-room cable channel and get some sleep. In the morning, she went
for a brief run (it was still fairly cool) and get dressed in a
pair of the khaki trousers, a white long-sleeved shirt and jungle
boots that AirSouth used as a quasi-uniform. A taxi dropped her
off at the offices ten minutes before her scheduled show time.
Paula gave her a set of keys for a motel room that was a five-
minute walk from the offices and told her she could leave her
luggage behind the desk for the day. Phil welcomed her and a male
pilot to the line, then sat them down for some written exams
covering the operations manual and the flight manuals for the
aircraft they were going to fly. He explained that the tests were
pre-school tests to see how much they knew and what they would need
to brush up on. Sherry had the most trouble with the weather
sections (as usual).
Phil graded the tests, then called Sherry in for an oral exam
on the DC-3. He and another pilot quizzed her for an hour until
they were satisfied that she knew the airplane. Phil told her she
had passed the -3 section, but she had to go to school for the -4
since she had no time in the airplane. The school took a week, she
was the only student. The course skipped over the areas that the
testing showed she knew and concentrated on the areas she was weak
on.
Unlike jets, there are no -4 simulators, so Sherry did her
flight training in the air. Engine-out drills required a lot of
rudder at first, she quickly learned to be aggressive with the trim
knobs if she wanted to avoid becoming exhausted. The DC-4 showed
its parentage, it was a ponderous beast that was actually easy to
fly. Sherry learned quickly and had an oral exam and a checkride
with a designated examiner, she passed and became the proud owner
of a DC-4 type rating.
That was followed by a brush-up session on AirSouth's flight
procedures, paperwork procedures, and security. Phil had a pistol
instructor take her over to range to check her skills with a
handgun. It didn't take too long for the instructor ("call me
Sam") to see she knew how to punch holes in paper, then they went
next door to a combat simulation range. It was a standard pop-up
target range, followed by a house-clearing drill.
Afterwards, the instructor came over to Sherry, who had
stripped the Glock and was cleaning it. "You're pretty good with
a handgun."
"Thanks."
"How are you with long guns?"
Sherry glanced at him. "As good as I need to be."
"Ever shoot in competition?"
"No, never had time for those games."
Sam saw that Sherry had no intention of giving him any
information, so he just said: "If you ever have the time, you
ought to consider it" and left her alone to finish cleaning the
Glock.
That, as it turned out, was the last step in the training
program. Two days later, Sherry was in the right seat of a DC-4 on
a cargo run to El Salvador. They dropped off a load of something
that was picked up by army trucks, refueled the airplane and caught
some sleep.
"Always refuel as soon as you can," advised Captain O'Keene.
"That lessens the chance of somebody doing something to your fuel
system. I like to leave with full tanks from places like this."
The next morning the DC-4 was loaded with cargo manifested to
San Paulo, Brazil. The manifest read "miscellaneous machine
parts." Sherry figured that it was in her best interest to accept
the manifest on face value and not to ask too many questions. The
Captain let her shooot the landing into San Paulo. She didn't
botch it, but it wasn't as good as she knew she'd be able to do
with more time in the type. Nobody was surprised when they were
directed to taxi to a remote corner of the airport. An armed
platoon of soldiers surrounded the caro plane, they had two jeeps
with .50cal machine guns for fire support. Thirty minutes later,
a convoy of Brazilian Army trucks showed up to unload the cargo,
the convoy also had an armed escort. They insisted that the crew
stay on the flight deck until the convoy had departed. Only then
did O'Keene tell the flight engineer to start the two inboard
engines. He taxiied over to the AirSouth base. The engineer shut
the engines down, O'Keene and Sherry sat there for a minute as the
gyros spun down.
O'Keene turned in his seat and smiled at Sherry. "Welcome to
the line," he said.
They went into the terminal where O'Keene introduced Sherry
to everyone. Bill Trudeau was the local agent, he told Sherry
that she would continue to fly with O'Keene for the present time.
"That way you'll learn both our procedures and the DC-4," he
explained. "Now grab your gear, a van is outside waiting to take
you and the others to the compound."
Sherry got her stuff and went outside. There were five
flight crewmen sitting in a van along with a driver. Sherry
humped her luggage into the back, then climbed in. Her butt was
barely in the seat next to O'Keene when the driver threw the van
into gear and roared off. "When did Emerson Fittipaldi start
driving vans," she muttered.
O'Keene laughed. "Get used to it. You're in `macho land'
now. They all drive like that."
Sherry snorted. Terrific. Life among the macho. She
remembered reading somewhere that Brazilian husbands who killed
unfaithful wives weren't prosecuted for the killing. The traffic
was heavy, people seemed to drive based on a mixture of bravery
and the Law of the Bigger Vehicle. The van driver efficiently
pushed his way into a lane thronged with small cars, only giving
way to a large truck.
The compound was three miles or so from the field. It was a
series of two-story buildings surrounded by a high wall that was
apparently sheathed in stucco. The top of the wall was rounded,
Sherry could see light glinting from it. They had set glass
fragments into the top to deter intruders. The gate was a heavy
iron one, protected by concrete barriers that forced any vehicle
to slow down. Just before the gate was a large metal plate, it
could either be a rising barricade or a dropping one. Two men
were on guard duty, both were toting Uzi submachine guns. Sherry
looked at the men critically, they appeared to be somewhat
sloppy-looking. She didn't take that to be a good sign.
When the van stopped, O'Keene told her to grab her stuff and
follow him. He didn't offer to help, he had his own gear to lug.
A woman in her early 20s was at a desk in the entry hall. She
gave Sherry a key without comment.
Sherry looked at the key and O'Keene. "What is this place?"
"It used to be a resort, it went under some years back.
There're four airlines that use this for their crews. The other
three use it as a transient base. We're the only ones who live
here full-time. C'mon."
Sherry followed O'Keene to a corridor that branched from the
main hall. He showed her where her room was and told her he'd
meet her in the entry hall in ten minutes for a tour. Sherry
dumped her bags next to the bed and found the john. It was
clean, at least. The place gave an air of genteel shabbiness,
something like old money which had run out. A loud rumble of a
jet taking off showed why the place didn't make it as a
commercial establishment. It was too noisy.
O'Keene was waiting in the hall. "Ok, let's show you
around." The tour didn't take too long. The dining hall was a
24-hour operation. Meals were served at scheduled times, but
there was a cook on duty continuously for late arrivals and early
departures. "You might have to wake her up at 3am," O'Keene
said, "And don't be surprised if she's got one of the guards in
the sack with her." There was an entertainment room that had a
large TV and a VCR with a lot of tapes. "You can borrow the
tapes to run in your room, if you want, but please try to bring
them back." Sherry noted that there was a selection of porno
tapes in the lot. Great, stuck in a guarded hotel with a bunch
of horny pilots. O'Keene showed her a workout room that had two
Universal machines, three stationary bikes, and a large selection
of free weights. The last thing he showed her was the bar, also
open 24hrs. "Sometimes when you get back from a flight you need
a drink. And it doesn't matter if it's 7:30am." They ended up
back in the entry hall. O'Keene showed her a small store that
sold toiletries, candy bars, tobacco products, music tapes and
books. Something like a ship's store, Sherry thought.
The final stop was a garage with a dozen cars. "We use them
more than the other lines," O'Keene explained. He showed her
the procedures for signing out and returning the cars. The cost
of running the cars was shared by the airlines. They paid for
any gas pumped at the complex, the user paid for any bought on
the road. The trick was to bring it back with just enough gas to
make it into the garage, O'Keene told her. The cars were elderly
Opels and VWs, cars least likely to be stolen. There were two
armored and polished BMWs that were used to go to places where
arriving in style was important. These cars used men from the
guard force as drivers.
O'Keene invited Sherry to join him for dinner. While she
felt a little funny about that, she saw no graceful way to
decline. They went to the dining hall. The food was served
cafeteria-style. Sherry realized that elegance and cargo flying
were oxymorons. This wasn't United Airlines or even UPS. From
what she could see, the pilots were a mixture of men who liked
this kind of flying and would do it as long as they good,
adventurers looking for some excitement, and those who wanted to
fly for a major airline and were trying to get some significant
experience.
Sherry had a salad, O'Keene had a steak. He ate with decent
manners, some others in the room could have made a living doing
animal impersonations. O'Keene had a funny sense of humor,
though she realized that he was trying to impart some wisdom to
her. He was at home in a DC-4 and, like most conversations when
pilots are talking, the discussion shifted to flying. O'Keene
had a lot of time in Douglas piston-engined airplanes, as well as
the Curtiss Commando.
They went to the bar after dinner. Neither one had anything
alcoholic to drink, they had a flight scheduled for the next day.
The bar was a little rowdy, some of the men were well on the way
to being fully liquored up. O'Keene shook his head ruefully.
"Some of these guys fly for lines that don't fall under FAA
jurisdiction. They don't follow the `no drinking 8 hours before
a flight' rule."
"More like `no drinking within 8 feet of an airplane?"
"That's about it," he nodded. "It doesn't happen too often,
but there has been some trouble in here. There was a shooting a
few years ago. When it starts to get loud, I'll leave."
Some yelling made Sherry wince. "Like now?"
"Like now." They got up and started going towards the door.
A group of four men near the bar turned around. They eyed Sherry
and one of the men moved to block their path.
"You're new here, ain'tcha," he asked.
Great opening line. "Mister, you're in my way," Sherry
said. She sensed that O'Keene was going to say something, she
turned her head slightly and shot him a glance-- stay clear.
"Aw, I just want to have a drink with you. Maybe we can go
somewhere." His buddies snickered at that.
"Please move," Sherry said emphatically. She noticed the
bartender had slid down along the bar so he was behind the other
three. His hands were out of sight.
She moved forward to go by the drunk. He grabbed her by the
arm. "What's your hurry?"
Sherry looked at him coldly. "Let go of my arm or I'll
break yours."
He laughed. She broke his arm. He slid to the floor and
cradled his broken forearm. One of his buddies tried to pull a
weapon, the bartender smashed a black truncheon into his upper
arm. The pistol dropped to the floor from his nerveless fingers.
Sherry picked the gun up and handed it to the bartender.
"Nice move," she said in Portuguese.
He smiled. "You did that nicely. Always a pleasure to
watch a pro at work," he replied. The two other men saw to their
injured friend.
O'Keene was silent until he and Sherry had left the bar.
Then he laughed a little. "And to think I was worried about
having to watch out for you."
Sherry was a little worried. "Is there going to be any
problems from this?"
O'Keene considered that, then shook his head. "I don't
think so. There were plenty of witnesses. But it wouldn't hurt
to watch your back for the next few days."
Sherry nodded. She planned to do that anyway. They said
good night and went to their rooms. Sherry took a close look at
the door of her room. There was no safety chain to prevent
anyone with a key from entering, but she was able to prop a chair
under the doorknob. Even if that didn't stop somebody from
entering, the noise of the chair sliding or falling would wake
her up. That and having a loaded .45 made her first night's
sleep in Brazil restful.
The morning's wakeup call was at 5:15. She showered and
made her way down to the cafeteria with a bag containing three
days' worth of clothes, the Glock, and her backup gun. O'Keene
introduced her to the flight engineer, an wiry mechanic named
Peter Schiff. Schiff didn't say much, he seemed to be more
interested in his plate of scrambled eggs and has browns. Sherry
found some warm oatmeal, toast and fruit. O'Keene was devouring
a breakfast similar to Schiff's. She though it would be a minor
miracle if neither one died of a heart attack on the ride to the
base.
The ride to the cargo base was uneventful. Apparently
hardly anyone was awake at 6:30. Once there, Schiff went to the
DC-4 assigned to the trip and started a pre-flight. Sherry and
O'Keene went into the office and began their preparations;
checking the weather, reading any new Notices to Airmen, and
checking the route. One part of the trip skirted a military
operational area, O'Keene told her to watch for funny stuff from
the Air Force jets. They liked to run intercepts on the cargo
planes. A C-46 had crashed a few years ago when it collided with
a F-5, only the fighter pilot survived.
Bill Trudeau sent word that he wanted to see Sherry. He
welcomed her to the line, and asked some questions about her
prior experience. Sherry answered them, figuring he wanted to
get to know a new pilot assigned to his base. When he picked up
a pen from his desk and started fiddling with it, she knew there
was another reason for the discussion.
Trudeau finally looked up. "What happened at the Q bar last
night? I heard you had a little trouble."
Sherry looked back at him. "No trouble."
"That's not what I heard. I heard you broke some guy's
arm."
Sherry felt a surge of anger. "He grabbed me and wouldn't
let go. I told him to let go or I'd break his arm."
Trudeau sighed. Why do I always get the nut cases here, he
mused. Aloud he said: "There wasn't another way to handle it, a
less-" he cast about for words.
"-masculine way?" Sherry finished the question.
"If you like."
"No, there wasn't. I'm here to fly, not to be a sex toy for
a bunch of horny freight dogs. I don't want to spend my off-duty
time fending off pilots looking for some stray pussy." Sherry
saw Trudeau was discomfited by her choice of words, she thought
so much the better. "I saw it as an opportunity to send a very
strong message that they'd better not fuck around with me."
"I see. And suppose somebody tries to be a little more
persistent?"
"You mean if someone tries to rape me?"
Trudeau nodded. He did seem to prefer to put things in an
oblique manner.
Sherry shrugged. "Then somebody's going to die, and I'll do
my damnedest to make sure it's him. Or them."
Trudeau didn't bat an eye, but inside he recoiled. She was
very serious, he realized. The way she said it, so matter-of-
factly, made him wonder who she had killed before. She didn't
say it as speculation, she said it as an established fact. He
thought he'd better get the word out for everyone to stay away
from this broad. "Well, I don't think you have much to worry
about," he said with a smile on his face. "Welcome to Brazil."
He stood up and stuck his hand out.
Sherry took it. "Thank you for the nice welcome," she said.
She left and found O'Keene looking over some weather reports.
"What did Trudeau want?"
"He just wanted to say hello."
He grunted in contempt. "Don't worry about him. He's the
idiot cousin of one of the principal stockholders. Phil's the
guy you work for. If he's happy with your flying, that's all
that counts around here.
"Now today's run is a shipment of drilling parts to Caracas.
You've ever been there?"
"No."
"Okay.." O'Keene then filled her in on the procedures they
followed for a flight to Caracas. It was fairly straight-
forward, with much of the flight being flown according to GPS
waypoints. There wasn't much in the way of instrument navaids
outside of the approach into the airport. After they double-
checked the manifest, weight-and-balance figures, and the fuel
load, they went outside for a walk-around the DC-4. O'Keene
showed her things to look for, mostly to keep the FE honest.
"Schiff expects you to check his work, and he'll be mortified if
you find something amiss, but we'll all be dead if you miss
something he did."
They went to the flight deck and settled in. "Ok, Pete,
start them up," O'Keene said.
"Starting one." Schiff primed number one engine (the one
furthest out on the left wing), hit the starter, and turned the
magnetos on after the fourth blade had swung past. Blue smoke
poured out of the exhaust and the engine coughed into life, then
settled down into a dull roar. He went though the same procedure
until all four engines were running. Sherry then turned on the
radios and warmed them up. She took a sheet with the GPS
waypoints and punched them into the GPS set. The GPS readout
checked with the sign posted on the cargo terminal's wall. There
was a slight difference that was due to the airplane being a
hundred feet away from the building.
O'Keene contacted Clearance Delivery and received their
flight clearance and permission to contact Ground Control. He
didn't do that until Schiff indicated that the engines were warm
enough for taxiing. The DC-4 taxied to the active runway,
following well behind a 747. A DC-4 isn't a small airplane, but
it's dwarfed by a jumbo. Schiff checked the magnetos of each
engine during the trip to the runway. He was soon satisfied with
the engines and so informed O'Keene.
They had to wait for the wake turbulence of the departing
747 to dissipate before they were allowed to roll onto the
runway. O'Keene made sure the propeller controls were all the
way forward, then he smoothly brought the throttles up. Schiff
watched the engine gauges for any sign of problems, Sherry called
out the airspeed numbers. When she called "V1," they were
committed to the takeoff even if an engine failed. "VR," O'Keene
eased the wheel back and rotated the nose of the airplane.
Sherry called "V2," the airplane left the ground.
"Gear up," O'Keene ordered.
"Gear up," repeated Sherry as she moved the selector lever
up. "Coming up...three green, gear is up." O'Keene then ordered
the flaps up, Sherry complied as she switched from the tower
frequency to departure control. Schiff set the engines for climb
power, he would work the engine controls until the airplane was
on approach to Caracas when the pilot flying the approach would
take over. He had to keep the engine logs and manage the fuel
system, tasks performed by computer on the latest jetliners.
O'Keene satisfied himself that everything was operating
normally, then he set the autopilot and linked it to the
navigation system. He wouldn't touch the wheel again until they
were approaching Caracas.
The DC-4 had a minimum crew of three; pilot, co-pilot and
flight engineer. That was down from the five man crew in the
`40s, when they also carried a radio operator who had to be
proficient at Morse code and a navigator who had to shoot sun or
star fixes to navigate across the oceans. The navigator's
position was made obsolete by advances in both aircraft and
ground-based navigation systems, let alone the satellites used by
the GPS and GLONASS systems. The radio operator's job was made
redundant when tunable radios were replaced by crystal-controlled
sets, now the radios are digital readout and microchip-
controlled. Morse code is only used to identify navigation
aids, the only people who transmit Morse code from aircraft are
ham radio operators and some special military uses.
The latest airliners have only two pilots and the second one
is there for safety and relief for food and head calls. Many of
them have an "autothrottles" and "autoland," all the pilot has to
do after takeoff is taxi the airplane after it lands, which is
why the "terror in the sky" novels have virtually disappeared.
The trip itself was nothing special. Sherry kept track of
their position on her charts to guard against a failure of the
navigation systems. She couldn't see any reliable features to
use for part of the trip, but O'Keene pointed out landmarks he
was familiar with. Sherry would learn them as well in time.
As things would have it, the two-day out-and-back trip to
Caracas developed into a ten-day multi-leg flight covering a
good deal of Central and South America. That was a little
unusual, but not unknown in the freight business. Sherry washed
out her underwear each night in the sink of whatever hotel they
were staying at (often one that was one step above a fleabag in
status). The standard drill was to wash clothes in the hotel and
take the damp stuff (since it rarely dried overnight) aboard the
airplane and hang it from a line in the back of the cockpit or
the front of the cargo cabin. O'Keene did most of the flying,
but he did let Sherry have a couple legs into airports he felt
comfortable letting someone who had never seen them land the
airplane.
They had three days off upon their return. All Sherry
wanted to do for the first two days was sleep in the same bed for
two nights in a row and wear clothes that hadn't been washed in a
sink. But her logbook was getting filled. She tried not to
wonder when she would really have to earn her pay.
Sherry spent the next few months flying cargo runs all over
the region. She normally flew as co-pilot on DC-4s, most of the
time O'Keene was the pilot. There were times she flew with other
captains and there were some memorable trips in DC-3s into
airfields that at first glance were too short. The runs, as far as
she could tell, were always legitimate, or at least had the backing
of the local authorities. Sometimes she saw smaller twin-engined
airplanes that had obviously had new registration numbers applied.
It was rare to see the same airplane more than twice. It didn't
take a rocket scientist to figure out that those airplanes were
being used to support the drug trade.
The weather changes were atrocious. One day they would be
flying into a jungle strip; the heat and humidity were so bad that
takeoffs and landings were done at dawn before the temperature
robbed much of the lift from the wings. Another day they would be
at an airport in the high mountains were the crews used oxygen
before takeoff and the nights were bitterly cold. Many of the
pilots took massive doses of vitamin C, along with the anti-
malarial pills.
The living in some of the villages alongside the airports and
landing strips was hard. Life was cheap. Sherry saw two men in a
bar draw their pistols and shoot at each other, it was a lot like
a movie western except for the facts that the guns were automatics
and the ammunition was real. The winner resumed his drinking while
the loser was dragged outside, leaving a smear of blood on the
rough wood floor from his wounds and the gunsmoke drifted out of
the windows. Nobody seemed to know why the fight occurred or care
very much. No police ever showed up.
Sherry tried to see what sights she could in the little time
she could get away. Often all she saw of famous tourist
attractions were the views from the windows of the cargo planes.
And there was little of that to see as she was busy during
departures and arrivals. O'Keene did swing by the famous statue of
Jesus overlooking Rio de Janeiro so Sherry could see it. She was
a little more successful in getting to know a little about San
Paulo when there was time after resting from a cargo run.
Sherry lived that way until one evening when a stranger sat
down next to her in the BOQ bar. He seemed pleasant enough and
Sherry and he were soon talking about flying. Then he said: "Can
you tell me about flying into VT41?"
Inwardly Sherry stiffened up. "Yeah, you make your downwind
over the river and watch the hill and the powerlines if you're
landing to the north."
The stranger nodded, then resumed the small talk. After a few
minutes he paid for his drinks and left. Sherry gave him five
minutes and then left. He was hanging around in the lobby, Sherry
followed him at a distance to the garage. It was a little dark,
her right hand was resting on her waist close to her .380. He had
lit a cigarette, Sherry could see the glow of the coal as he drew
on it. There didn't seem to be anyone else around, but Sherry kept
her eyes open.
"I always thought the `sign and countersign' stuff was a
crock," Sherry commented.
"You mean like `the raven croaks at dawn,'" he replied with a
touch of amusement.
"Yeah."
"It has its uses. You have a flight in two days that's
supposed to RON in San Salvador."
Sherry nodded.
"There's a bar not too far from the airport called `The Busted
Prop.' Your run should arrive at 1900. Be at the bar by 0630 the
next morning with your passport and in clothing suitable for flying
a bush plane."
Sherry repeated it back. "And then what?"
"Order a ginger ale. A white man in his early `40s will sit
down two seats away. He'll ask you if you're a pilot and where
you're from. You'll know it's your man when he comments about the
steep hills around Montpelier's airport."
Sherry shook her head. "They aren't that bad."
"That's how you'll know. He'll take you to a small strip
outside of the city. Your passenger will be there. You're flying
a Maule with long-range tanks to the east coast of Honduras. The
Maule has a programmable GPS that can run an autopilot. Your
contact will have a cassette for the GPS with the nav program and
the charts you'll need in case the GPS or the autopilot goes down.
But if they don't, all you do is fly to the first waypoint and
engage the autopilot. It's a three-axis job, so this'll be a piece
of cake.
"The weather should be lots of low clouds. The GPS course is
a low one, below radar coverage and in the clouds. Neither the
Salvadorans nor the Hondurans have the stuff to track you assuming
you don't turn your transponder on. You have a gun?"
"Yes."
The man shook his head. "You won't need one, so don't bring
it."
Sherry absorbed that instruction without comment. "Anything
else?"
"No."
Sherry said nothing else, she just drifted out of the garage.
Her thoughts were in a whirl. She wanted to know why she had to
fly this man, but she figured she might be able to find out later.
The no-gun instruction bothered her. She might be a greenhorn at
this, but she thought that if someone insisted that she should go
unarmed, that was a damn good reason to pack one along.
Two days later, she was in the bar at the appointed time,
drinking a ginger ale. She had on a light khaki jacket that went
down to the wide part of her hips, khaki trousers and jungle boots.
Like a lot of people there, she had a wide-brimmed hat. No purse,
her effects were in the jacket pockets. She figured they knew
about her Glock .45, it was back in her room in San Paulo. The
little .380 was in a holster on her lower leg and the Government
.45 rested in a shoulder holster under her left arm, two spare
magazines were under her right arm. She also carried her passport,
a small folding knife, a waterproof match case that also had a
small compass, some loose cartridges for both pistols, a bottle of
DEET bug repellent, and a supply of her hormone pills.
The contact man did his job and soon they were in an old Ford
sedan heading out of town. The Maule was resting as promised on a
grass strip hacked out of the jungle. The contact man gave her a
folder containing a cassette of the type used to update GPS and
Loran sets and a bunch of VFR charts. The folder also held three
flashlights with red lenses, one of them had a cord so the
flashlight could be strung around the neck. he dropped her off at
the airplane and took off back for town.
Sherry, not knowing what else to do, pre-flighted the Maule.
With the long-range tanks, Sherry estimated they had 700 miles of
range. She turned the master switch on, turned on the GPS set, and
loaded the cassette. The program was there, just as he had said.
She shut the GPS down and killed the master.
The back of the Maule had a survival kit containing a lot of
water, very useful for these climes. There was food, a first-aid
kit, and some medical supplies. What she was most worried about
was whether or not somebody would show up. It must have been at
least ten miles back to town.
Two hours later a woman showed up. She was Latino looking,
about 5'6" and dressed very much like Sherry. They went through
the sign-countersign stuff, then the woman looked up and down
Sherry. "They didn't tell me you're a woman," she said.
Sherry shrugged. "They didn't tell me anything about you.
Shall we go?"
The woman's reply was interrupted by a Jeep driving onto the
airstrip at high speed. There were two men in the jeep, the one in
the passenger's side was standing up and waving a rifle around.
The woman glanced at Sherry. Sherry shook her head: "We'd never
get it started in time."
The jeep pulled up in front of the Maule. The passenger
covered the two women with his M-16, the driver got out, looking
very angry. He came over to the smaller woman. "Ah, Angel, you
left without saying goodbye. I wanted so much to say goodbye."
She didn't say anything, he slapped her and grabbed her by the
wrist and started to drag her back towards the jeep. Sherry
remained motionless. As they neared the jeep, Angel fell sobbing
to the ground. The man let go of her wrist and stood over her,
laughing. "One last time, eh?" he sneered and started to unbelt
his trousers.
He got his pants down and Angel kicked him in the groin as if
the Superbowl depended on it. The guard, who was watching anyway,
swung his rifle around. He dropped the weapon as a .45 slug tore
into his chest and exited next to his spine, Sherry had moved very
quickly when she saw the chance. The would-be rapist was trying to
get up, Angel moved behind him and efficiently slit his throat, she
then did the same to the guard who was dying anyway.
Sherry stood there in shock, holding the pistol. Angel looked
up. "First time?"
Sherry nodded.
"Ok, start the jeep and move it out of the way." Sherry still
stood there. "NOW, BITCH," she yelled.
Sherry unfroze, applied the safety, holstered the pistol, and
moved the jeep. Angel dragged the dead man away, took a gunbelt
from him that held a 9mm and magazines, then the two of them got
into the Maule. Sherry moved the mixture control to "rich," pumped
the throttle, turned on the master switch, magnetos, and engaged
the starter. The engine caught, Sherry switched on the GPS set and
the autopilot. Within a minute, the set had a fix and Sherry
taxied to the end of the strip.
Sherry flew to the first waypoint and engaged the autopilot.
Now all she had to do was manage the fuel and work the throttle and
prop controls for climbs and descents. They were soon in the
clouds. The charts didn't have a course line on them, so she gave
up trying to keep track of their position.
Angel leaned over and said loudly: "You moved very well for
a newbie."
Sherry passed on the comment. "What was that all about?"
Angel shrugged. "You ever heard of the Arena Party?" When
she saw Sherry nod, she continued. "I was the mistress of one of
the top lieutenants. I was passing information about the party to
the CIA."
"I thought the CIA was cooperating with Arena."
"So did a lot of people, and they did to some extent. But
Arena never trusted the CIA, or vice versa. Arena had some plans
to derail the peace talks and the accord, but the Salvadoran
government always foiled them. Or the guerrillas did."
"And they isolated it to you?"
Angel nodded. "They watched a number of people, I fucked up
and they caught me. The only thing that kept me alive was that my
boyfriend refused to believe it."
"Does he believe it now?"
"He did, that was him back at the airport."
Sherry nodded. Maules are loud without an intercom and
headsets, neither of which this one had. The autopilot made some
turns and a couple altitude changes. They were still in the
clouds.
The clouds started to lift, Sherry could see a mountain range
ahead. The autopilot flew the Maule towards the hills. It didn't
command a climb.
"Oh, shit," yelled Sherry.
"What's wrong?"
"They're trying to kill us. Hang on." Sherry let the
autopilot fly as close as she dared, then she hit the kill switch
for the autopilot, switched the master off, and wrenched the Maule
around in a high-G turn.
Angel's eyes were wide as she stared at the rocks. "What the
fuck is going on?"
Sherry got the airplane leveled out. "The autopilot was
programmed to fly into the mountains. I shut the electrical system
off in case they have a transponder beacon wired in." She paused
for a few seconds. "I was told not to bring a gun with me."
Angel nodded. "So if they didn't get me before I got to the
strip or at the airplane, then the crash would kill me. Real
cute."
Cute wasn't the word for it. Twenty miles away a King Air
with a modified collision avoidance system was flying circles at
11,000 feet. The TCAS worked by interrogating transponder beacons.
Two men behind the pilot watched the display intently. When the
contact warning light went out, one of them picked up a microphone
and said: "Angels fly in heaven." The two men looked at each other
and smiled. The one on the left told the pilot to take the
airplane back to San Salvador.
"What do we do now," Angel asked.
"Let me figure out where we are," replied Sherry. She trimmed
the Maule so it would hold altitude in a turn, then banked it about
15 degrees. Every so often she brought the bank back as the
airplane tried to level itself. Behind their route of flight she
could see just flatlands, so they were at the first significant
range of hills. It was a work of a couple minutes to draw a rough
course line on the chart. "We're about here," Sherry said, showing
Angel the chart. "You have any ideas where we should go?"
Angel studied the chart, then pointed at a river. "Can you
take us there? There's an airstrip that was used by the Contras
and the smugglers."
Sherry looked at it. "It'd be easy with the GPS, harder
without it. What the hell." She turned the airplane south to
follow along the ridge line. It took a couple of missteps, but
Sherry found the strip. Sherry made a low pass to check the
conditions, the strip was rough but appeared to be all right. The
length seemed good, she climbed up and executed a standard
approach. The landing wasn't very smooth, but neither was the
strip. Angel directed her to taxi over to one side. There some
small openings were carved out of the surrounding jungle, but the
interlocking limbs of the trees created some hangars that made the
spot almost invisible from the air. A Cessna 170 was there,
apparently unattended. Sherry taxied as close as she could to the
brush hangars, then pulled the mixture out and shut the magnetos
off.
The two women got out and managed to push the Maule into one
of the openings. Sherry sat down on one of the mainwheel tires and
looked at Angel. "Now what?"
"Now we wait. Some people should be along soon."
Sherry nodded. She fished out the .45 and removed the
magazine. She took a loose round from her pocket and slid it into
the magazine to replace the one she had fired in San Salvador, then
she put the magazine back into the pistol and the pistol back into
the holster. "These people who are going to come, are they friends
of yours?"
Angel smiled. "Let's hope so."
"Sure," Sherry said sourly. She got up and went over to the
trees. Peeing in the woods was the only time Sherry wished she had
the plumbing she had been born with. When she came back, she
asked: "You know if there's any water or food around here?"
Angel shrugged. "I'm not sure. Anyway, we won't be here
long."
Sherry tried relaxing, but she couldn't sit still. There were
some bugs around, she shared the repellent with Angel. she kept
replaying the scene at San Salvador in her mind. Of one thing she
was sure, she had been used as a way to kill Angel. They didn't
want her to bring a gun, she was sure that if she hadn't the two of
them would have been killed by Angel's ex-lover. "Kill or be
killed" was more than a phrase to Sherry now.
If the clouds hadn't lifted enough, they'd have hit the
mountainside. Even if someone had found the wreckage, it would
have been classified as an accident: "Pilot continued VFR flight
into adverse weather conditions." Somebody went to a lot of
trouble to do this. If she got out of this alive, she was going to
do her damnedest to make sure somebody paid for it.
They waited about two hours. Sherry at one point went over
and inspected the Cessna 170. It was an old airplane (they went
out of production in 1955), and the paint and interior were both
ratty. The engine appeared to be sound and the tires were good.
What grease points she could see showed evidence of lubrication.
She almost suggested that they steal the 170 and go somewhere, but
this was Angel's turf. Besides, she had no idea where to go.
Six men came out of the jungle on the far side of the
airstrip. They were dressed in green fatigues and carrying Eastern
Bloc variants of AK rifles, Sherry wasn't familiar enough with the
different AK producers to tell which nation had made them. Their
rifles were slung in "patrol style," across the body at waist
level. Sherry drew her pistol and held it down along her leg. She
knew her chances with a handgun against half a dozen men with
automatic rifles were poor, but that's better than no chance at
all. Angel had shortened the pistol belt she had taken from her
dead lover and was wearing it. She didn't draw her weapon.
The leading man stopped about twenty feet away. He smiled
slightly and spoke in Spanish. "Hello, Angel. It appears that the
reports of your death have been greatly exaggerated." He grinned
like someone who had been waiting years to use that phrase.
"Hello, Marco. News travels fast," Angel observed.
He nodded. "The Arena pigs are upset that you killed Julio,
but not too much. I think they might have executed him anyway for
poor judgment. Your North American friends are saying you died in
a plane crash in the mountains."
Angel grinned. "That's the airplane and this is the pilot."
Marco looked at Sherry and then at the Maule. "They set it up
to destroy a beautiful airplane like that and even one of their own
women. Such a waste. How did they intend for it to kill you?"
Angel raised her hands slightly, palms up. "I don't really
understand it. You'd have to ask her."
Marco looked at Sherry and spoke in English. "I understand
they set you up to die with Angel in a crash. How did they intend
for this to work?"
"Do you fly?"
"Yes. I fly the Cessna."
"They installed a GPS set in the Maule that fed inputs to a
three-axis autopilot. What they intended to happen was that we
would fly in the clouds and right into a mountain. The clouds
lifted and I saw the mountains coming. I killed the autopilot and
the master switch."
"How did you know to land here?"
"Angel did."
"I see." He switched back to Spanish. "Luck rides with you
still. What is it you want from me?"
"Transportation out of here, and some supplies."
"I see." He thought about it. "What do you have to offer in
return?"
Angel gestured towards the Maule. "An airplane that's a lot
newer than yours. I understand they can carry more cargo and even
use shorter runways than that Cessna."
One of the other men spat. "That's no bargain," he objected.
Marco glanced over at him. "You have something to say,
Jesus?"
"I say we have them and their airplane already. That gringa
may have a pistol, but she can't shoot all six of us."
Sherry whipped up the .45 and fired, shooting Jesus in the
sternum. He was on his way to see his namesake before his body
stopped twitching. "Anybody want to say `she can't shoot all five
of us?'" She spoke in Spanish. Nobody moved besides some
involuntary flinching at the sound of the shot.
Marco knelt down to check the body. He touched his fingers to
Jesus's neck and then shook his head. "Dead. He fought the
rightists for nine years and dies because he can't keep his stupid
mouth under control." He stood up and looked at one of the others.
"Strip his gear. We'll send some others back to bury him." The
man removed the combat harness and the rifle from Jesus's corpse.
The harness held a six-magazine pouch, a first aid kit, and three
canteens of water. When the man finished stripping the body, Marco
said: "Give them to the woman. She killed him, she can at least
carry his equipment."
Sherry took the gear, then laid the rifle down while she
donned the harness. The straps and the belt didn't need too much
adjusting. It didn't ride comfortably against her chest, whoever
had designed the harness had not envisioned it being worn by a
woman. There was little likelihood that she could draw her pistol
with the harness on, but she didn't think she'd need a pistol if
she had an AK. She checked the weapon, it was loaded. She slung
the rifle in the same manner as the others.
Marco looked at her solemnly. "I see you know the AKM. Very
well. Let's go. Hernandez, take the point. Chico, second; the
North American, third; Angel, you're fourth; then me, Roberto and
Francisco, you bring up the rear. You understand five meter
spacing, Gringa?"
"My name is Sherry, not Gringa."
"All right, Cheri," he pronounced it in the French manner,
"Try not to kill everything you see. It's an hour and a half to
the base. Hernandez, move out."
Hernandez set a fairly quick pace. From his speed, it was
clear that the guerrillas didn't expect any government forces to be
in the area. Sherry knew under the terms of the accord that they
were in guerilla-controlled territory. The spacing was more out of
habit, Marco appeared to be a disciplined commander. There were
some questions she wanted to ask, but she suspected that Marco
would be fairly strict on noise discipline. Every combat harness
appeared to be worn in such a way that metal-on-metal contact was
prevented. Sherry and Angel made the most noise of any of them
while walking, but not much more than the men.
It was a hard trek, mostly uphill. The camp was well-hidden
with rude structures concealed under large trees. Sherry suspected
she could fly right over it and not see it unless she knew it was
there. It probably was well-visible to special optics and
surveillance films, but those aren't used in an attack. The siting
made an air assault impractical, the only way to attack it (other
than bombing) would be uphill through the heavily- forested
terrain. It would not be a low-casualty endeavor for an attacker.
Marco called over a man as soon as they entered the camp, he
told him to take a full patrol and go to the airstrip to bury
Jesus. The man didn't ask what had happened, he rounded up twenty
guerrillas and left in fifteen minutes. There were over two
hundred people in the camp, most of them men. The women appeared
to be evenly divided between support personnel (they called them
"camp followers" in earlier eras) and fighters. A dozen
children, maybe more, were running around.
Angel saw Sherry looking at the children, three of whom had
come over and were checking Sherry out. "This was an advance camp
for the FNLN during the war," Angel explained in English. "There
weren't any children here the last time I visited. They stayed in
the bases closer to the border."
Sherry unslung the AK and found a tree to sit against. "You
really were feeding information to both the Americans and the
guerrillas. How did you manage to stay alive?"
Angel sat down next to her. "It was a balancing act. The
Americans didn't want the FNLN to come to power, but they didn't
want D'Aubisson's people in even more. They wanted enough
information to get to the FNLN to ensure the rightists couldn't
come to power, but not enough so the leftists would win."
"And how did the FNLN take all this?"
"They saw things in a similar vein. They wanted more
information, but they didn't want the rightists in either."
Sherry looked puzzled. "Correct me if I'm wrong here, but
didn't Christiani, an Arena candidate, win the elections in `89?"
"Arena did, but not the ultra-right faction. By then even the
leadership of Arena had realized that they couldn't kill everybody
who disagreed with them. The American Congress was fed up with the
war and Reagan wasn't there to make them approve the aid. Besides,
the Soviets were obviously in collapse, the Nicaraguans were too,
so there was little support on the other side for supporting the
war."
"Yet an Arena president successfully concluded peace talks."
Angel nodded. "Just as it took Nixon to open China."
Sherry smiled. "Old Vulcan proverb."
"What?"
"Never mind. So now what happens?"
"I'll try to convince Marco to give us some transportation out
of the country. What you need to do is to keep quiet and not start
any trouble for us."
"And if trouble finds us?"
Angel grinned. "We've done all right so far."
They sat there for a while. Angel was happy to, her feet
hurt. Sherry's did too, but she was more exhausted by the events
of the day. She wondered how angry O'Keene was when she didn't
show for the afternoon flight, or if she'd ever be able to resume
working as a pilot again. Then she laughed to herself, the first
thing was to make it out of here alive and intact. after that, she
could worry about the rest of her life.
A man in fatigues came by thirty minutes later. "Marco wants
to see you two," he said.
They stood up, Sherry re-slung the AK, and they followed him
to a tent. Marco was sitting in a four-sided tent with the sides
rolled up for ventilation. He sat behind a table that was serving
as a desk, it was well-laden with papers. A high-frequency radio
with a cassette deck was sitting on another table. Sherry guessed
it was a compression system, where the messages are recorded and
then transmitted in a very high-speed burst.
Marco gestured towards a corner of the tent with a pen. "You
can take off the rifle and the harness and leave it there." Sherry
did so gratefully. As she did, Marco talked to Angel. "I've
talked to my commander, he is inclined to assist you. Your motives
for helping us in the past may not have been the same as ours, but
the results were beneficial to our cause. We are not ungrateful
and don't seek to kill our friends," he added pointedly.
Angel nodded in thanks. "I am grateful for your help,
Commander."
Marco nodded. "Cheri, you've helped a valued friend, so we
will help you to escape with her. We will not seek retribution for
the death of Jesus. You did not know him, and he didn't know you.
It was an unfortunate incident. While you are here with Angel, you
are under the protection of the FNLN. However, Jesus had many
friends. They have been ordered not to seek revenge. I cannot
guarantee your safety should you return to El Salvador.
Understand?"
"Understood, and you have my thanks, sir," Sherry replied.
"Good. Now, as to your departure, the arrangements are being
made. As you suggested, Angel, we will accept the Maule in
payment."
Sherry spoke up: "If I were you, I'd check it for a
transponder bug."
Marco looked puzzled. "What is that?"
"It's a transponder that has been secretly wired into an
airplane. When the master is on, it's on. It has it's own code,
so anybody with a radar or a transponder interrogator can track
it."
"You think one was installed in the Maule?"
Sherry shrugged. "I don't know, but it makes sense to me. If
the transponder return ceased at the place we were supposed to hit
the mountain, that'd be a pretty good indicator of a crash, don't
you think?
"And I'd like to remove the programming card from the GPS
before we go."
Marco smiled. "So if you get the chance for some payback, you
will take it."
Sherry's face took on a hard set. "Somebody's going to pay
for this."
Marco looked thoughtful. He thought that he didn't want to
have this gringa mad at him. She looked capable of doing some
serious damage to anyone who made her mad. "I'm sure we can
arrange that." He looked outside of the tent and called to a woman
out there. "Eva, take our guests to a spare tent. Arrange for
them to have food, some clean clothes and to wash up."
Both women thanked him for his courtesy and followed Eva to a
tent. Eva told them to wait there, she'd return as soon as things
were arranged. She was back promptly and led them to the cook
tent. Lunch was some form of stew and tortillas washed down with
a local beer. It was very good, and Sherry said as much. After
they ate (Sherry ate more than Angel), Eva took them to a tent that
was a supply issue point. Another woman looked them over
critically and gave them each two sets of fatigues, four sets of OD
t-shirts, white cotton underwear, and socks. They took the clothes
with them to a tent that had three large tubs of hot water.
The two women were left alone to disrobe and take a bath.
Angel looked at Sherry when she saw her take the .380 from her left
leg, but she didn't comment. Both women kept their pistols nearby
when they were soaking in the tubs. Angel told Sherry that the
third tub was for rinsing after washing, so there would not be a
soap film in their bodies. She also said that it was essential to
be completely dry before dressing in order to prevent a fungal
attack. There was even a box of bath powder. Luxuries start
creeping in once the fighting stops. Sherry put the shoulder
holster on under the fatigue shirt. Angel wore her pistol belt.
Eva took their dirty clothes from them once they left the
tent. She told them that they'd be washed so they'd have them to
wear when they left. While in the camp, they'd have the issue
fatigues.
After that, they were left to their own devices. they walked
around the camp. Sherry noted they had a hospital, a school, an
armory with a repair shop and a small firing range behind it. All
the comforts of home. Nobody hindered them or asked what they were
doing. Angel was greeted by a number of the guerrillas as a
friend, they were far more reserved with Sherry. Sherry realized
that there was most likely some resentment over the death of Jesus.
One boy who was about age six came up and stared at Sherry.
Sherry squatted down and said hello.
The boy continued to stare at her. "Did you really shoot
Jesus with a pistol?"
"Yes."
"He had a Kalashnikov. He was very good with it. The others
had them, too."
Sherry nodded. She felt a little uncomfortable in the boy's
frank stare. If she was from Mars that there would be less
amazement.
"You must be very brave for a woman," the boy said and then
ran off.
"Or very stupid," Sherry muttered to herself as she stood up.
Angel had heard her. "You may be right. Marco said there'd
be no trouble, but don't count on it. I'd stay away from the rifle
range if I was you."
Sherry nodded. It sounded like good advice to her. They
wandered around some more and found a tent that was a small
library. Most of the books available ran to marxist-Leninist
propaganda, but there were some newer works about the principles of
democracy and about capitalism and market economies. The books
that were the most used were romance-type fiction. Romance works
were popular among men, too. They each took a book and went back
to their tent. Sherry laid down on the cot to read and was soon
asleep. The day's tension had finally caught up with her.
At the evening meal, Sherry noticed that the guerrillas were
very friendly towards Angel, but treated her with a reserve
bordering on hostility. She mentally shrugged and accepted it.
Marco had said that Jesus had fought for nine years. He had to
have had many friends among these people. It was expecting too
much that they welcome the person who had killed him with open
arms.
Sherry spent her time perusing the books in the library,
including some of the political propaganda. She thought it'd make
sense to try and understand the viewpoints of her hosts. Angel did
some reading, but she spent most of her time visiting friends and
catching up on old times. Sherry overheard some of the
conversations, it seemed that a lot of the mutual friends were
dead. The war must have taken a horrific toll on the country.
Marco summoned them two days later. "Good news, we have
arranged for you to leave," he greeted them.
Angel smiled widely. "When do we leave, and how?"
"You're going to fly to San Jose. The Cessna is legally based
there, so you'll fly it there for maintenance. The cover story is
that Cheri is a ferry pilot. You do have the right licenses for
doing that sort of work, I assume?" When he saw Sherry nod, he
continued: "Once there, you take a commercial flight to Los
Angeles. You have passports?"
Sherry said yes, Angel said no. Marco thought for a minute,
then summoned one of his assistants. He told her to take Angel and
get a Canadian passport for her. "We have the blanks for it, you
see."
Sherry watched them leave, then turned to Marco. "Do you mind
if I ask a question?"
"I'll answer if I can," he said with some caution.
"How does a FNLN officer come to have his own airplane?"
"It was originally my father's. He taught me to fly it when
I was fourteen. When he died, it was left to my brother and me.
My brother joined the FNLN very early. The rightists confiscated
our land in retaliation. I flew the Cessna to San Jose before
those pigs could get their hands on it. Now that the war is over,
I've flown it back."
Sherry mulled that over for a few seconds. "But you're going
to let me take it? There's a good chance that if something goes
wrong with your plan that it might be destroyed."
Marco sighed. "I know. It's the only thing left I have that
belonged to my father, but there comes a time to let go, I think.
I'll give you a number in San Jose to call if you have to land it
somewhere else. If you do crash it, I'll just have to console
myself with that fine Maule." He smiled at the thought.
"And what of your brother?"
"He was killed six years ago."
Sherry didn't say anything, she couldn't thing of what words
would be good ones. So she asked simply: "When do we leave?"
"Tomorrow morning."
"How were the arrangements made?"
Marco pointed to the HF radio in the corner. Sherry nodded
and inside started to worry. She didn't know where the encryption
equipment came from, but she doubted very much if it was
unbreakable by somebody who wanted to. Furthermore, she had no
idea what the internal security of the FNLN was like. Those who
had tried to kill her and Angel might now know they had failed and
that the two knew that their deaths were desireable. This was not
a good situation.
Marco pointedly picked up some papers. Sherry took the hint
and left, lost in thought. Angel trusted these people, so Sherry
wasn't sure she could confide in her. Flying into the San Jose
airport might very well be as foolish as sticking one's neck into
a noose.
The one thing Sherry was sure of as the day dragged on was
that there was something in the wind. If the camp's population was
reserved towards her before, they were downright icy now. At one
point she ducked into the ladies' latrine and pulled her .45 from
its holster. Sherry normally carried the weapon with a round in
the chamber and the hammer down. She eased the hammer back and
slipped the safety on. She'd feel better either with a shotgun or
when she was gone from the camp.
Her instincts weren't failing her. An hour after supper a
group of men approached her. Two of them had AKs in their hands.
Sherry started to draw her pistol, both men put the rifles to their
shoulders and aimed them at her, she could clearly hear the loud
metallic sound of the two selector levers going into the "full
auto" notch. She let her hand fall empty to her side, the two men
warily lowered their weapons.
They stopped about ten meters away. One of them said loudly:
"We want to talk with you, Gringa."
Sherry stood up. "I can hear you."
"You killed our friend, we have come to exact a price for your
deed."
Sherry sized them up. A dozen men, two with AKs, five were
carrying what looked like long nightsticks. "I see. It takes a
dozen men with two Kalashnikovs to handle one woman. What big
strong men your mothers raised. I'll wager they must be very proud
of your courage," she said with considerable sarcasm.
The sarcasm wasn't lost on the men. The leader took one of
the nightsticks and tossed it so it landed at Sherry's feet. "You
can have a chance, Gringa. Pick up the stick."
Sherry did so. She felt its balance and mentally shrugged.
Sometimes there's no way out. "All right. Which one of you
illegitimate offspring of a diseased whore has the balls to fight
a woman? Who wants to try first?" She held the stick in a two-
handed grip as if it was a broadsword (or a tennis racket).
The speaker's face darkened with rage and he charged, holding
his stick raised high over his head in a two-handed grip. His
intention was obvious, he intended to try an overhand smash and
crush her skull. As he swung the stick, Sherry raised hers so it
was angled across her body to the left and she stepped quickly to
the left. His stick hit hers and she swept the blow aside. He had
put too much energy into the attack, she rammed the end of her
stick into his midsection, then swept it against his head as he
folded up. He dropped to the ground, stunned. The entire fight
had taken a few seconds.
Sherry rolled her shoulders. "I think I am warmed up, now.
Which one of you pig-fuckers wants to go next?"
"`Pig-fuckers,'" one of the men exclaimed.
Sherry nodded. "Surely that's all you can have, for there
isn't a woman on the planet who would go to bed with any of you of
her free will."
The next man came forward with a warier attack. He slashed at
her face, Sherry blocked it and countered with a strike at his head
which he blocked. They rapidly exchanged blows, all of them were
blocked or diverted by the other. Sherry swung one and changed her
aim point at the last moment, he was not able to lower his guard
quickly enough and her stick smashed into the side of his knee. He
knew he was at a disadvantage, he dropped his stick and retreated.
Sherry's breathing was coming at a faster rate. The man had
had a lot of power behind his attack and she wasn't as strong as
she had been back when testosterone coursed through her endocrine
system. By now a crowd had gathered, attracted by the sounds of
the fighting. Money was changing hands as bets were placed. This
fight was turning into a public amusement in a place where any
entertainment was a rare event.
Now two men stepped in to attack. Sherry moved to the left
and attacked that man. She squatted beneath his blow and rammed
the end of her stick into his groin, then swept the stick up to
block a vertical strike from the other man. She shifted position,
then had her legs knocked out from under her by the man she had hit
in the groin, for her blow hadn't hit where she wanted it to. The
other man stepped up and raised his stick to strike as if he was
splitting a log.
Sherry tried to scramble out of the way and guard herself, but
she knew there wasn't much hope of making it. The man was about to
bring his stick down on her when he (and most of the others) hit
the ground as an AK was fired in full-auto. They looked up after
the burst and saw Marco standing there, holding a smoking rifle.
He was not in the least bit amused.
"I gave orders that the Gringa was not to be harmed. Now I
see several of my soldiers trying to beat her with sticks." He
looked over the crowd, most of whom refused to meet his glare. He
focused on one man. "Carlo! You knew my orders. Why did you not
stop this?"
Carlo looked down at his feet, then met Marco's accusing eyes.
"I have no excuse, sir. She seemed to be doing very well at
defending herself."
"For which you had better count yourself lucky. If she had
been injured by this, I would have shot the senior man here. Which
would have been you."
One of the men with a stick, who had not stepped into the
fray, challenged Marco: "She killed one of our comrades. We have
never let something like this go unanswered until now."
Marco shifted his glare to him. "And what do you have to say
about this, Frederico?"
Frederico met his stare. "I say the prospect of peace has
made you soft. You are not tough enough to be a fighting leader
anymore. I say you hide behind the orders of the high command and
are more interested in saving your worthless hide."
The rage in Marco's face was obvious, but his voice was
controlled. "You think I'm soft? We shall see." He grabbed a
soldier standing near him and whispered in his ear. The man ran
off and came back two minutes later with two machetes. Marco took
the machetes from the man and handed him the rifle. "Soft, you
say. I say you are a gutless slug." Marco tossed the machete at
the man's feet. "Pick it up, let us see the color of your
intestines."
Frederico picked up the machete, the crowd moved back to give
the two men plenty of room. By now virtually every soul in the
camp was watching the fight. The two circled each other, holding
the long knives in a guard position and looking for any apparent
weaknesses. Fencing with a machete was a dangerous game, for if
the opponents blade slid down there was no guard on the handle to
prevent one's hand from being cut. They exchanged three blows, the
metallic ringing of the machetes filled the air. Nobody uttered
any cheers for either man, it could be dangerous to voice support
for the loser.
Sherry squatted down, obviously tired. Her hand was near her
leg where the .380 was concealed. She figured her life was forfeit
if Marco lost, so she'd at least pay him back for his hospitality
by killing Frederico if he won.
There was another series of exchanges, Marco had a thin
trickle of blood down his left forearm. Frederico saw the blood
and redoubled his attack. He made two serious errors, he stepped
in too closely and swung his blade back too far for a blow. Marco
swept his knife across Frederico's stomach. The slash wasn't too
deep, but Frederico lowered his arm from the pain and the surprise.
Marco didn't miss his chance, he swung his machete at Frederico's
neck and connected with a meaty chunk. The blade stuck in the
vertebrae and Marco let go of the handle, but it didn't matter very
much. Frederico sank to the ground and died as his blood stained
the jungle ground.
Marco strode over to the soldier he had handed his rifle to
and snatched it back. He spun around and surveyed the crowd.
"Does anybody else here want to question my orders."
Sounds of "No, sir" and "No, Commander" were heard.
"Good. Disperse and go about your business. Lieutenant
Braga!"
"Sir!" The man who Marco had upbraided snapped to attention.
"Take a dozen men. You and a sergeant of your choosing will
each command six of them. You will provide security for the
Gringa. She will leave here unharmed and unmolested or I will bury
you and the sergeant. Is that clear?"
"Yes, Sir!" The fear in the man's face was clear. He knew
that if any harm came to Sherry, Marco would carry out his threat.
He quickly found a sergeant and ordered him to gather a detail. In
fifteen minutes the sergeant had a dozen armed soldiers, including
three women. The sergeant divided them up into two shifts and left
with his six to get some rest.
Braga came over to Sherry. "Miss, it would make security
easier if you stayed in your quarters as much as possible. I have
no authority to restrict your movements, but please consider my
difficulties in keeping you safe."
Sherry agreed. The only times she left the tent for the rest
of the day were to go to the latrine. Braga provided some extra
candles so she'd have enough light to read, but she wasn't used to
reading by candlelight and turned in fairly early. Angel was not
considered to be at risk so she wasn't provided with an escort.
A messenger woke them at four am. She gave them the clothes
that they had been wearing when they arrived and told them to get
dressed, have breakfast, and meet Marco at his tent by five.
Sherry was still tired from the festivities of the night before.
Angel apparently had gotten in late and was barely awake when they
went to see Marco.
He was waiting for them. A Coleman lantern illuminated his
tent, he had a air navigation chart spread out on the table.
Sherry noted that Marco was carrying a pistol now. "It's time for
you to go, and I won't be sorry." He handed her the chart and a
flight-plan form. "The courses are plotted, the compass courses and
times are on the flight plan. I have no way to verify winds aloft
for you."
Sherry took the papers and looked them over. Better to be ask
now than in the air. "It seems straight-forward enough. Thank
you, Commander."
Marco bowed his head slightly. "You're welcome. Keep in
mind what I told you when you arrived. Have a good flight." He
looked at Braga. "Take them to the airstrip, stay there until they
depart in the Cessna."
Braga nodded and led them out. The walk was easier this time.
It was mostly downhill and Sherry wasn't carrying a combat load and
a rifle. There was just enough light to walk by at the start of
the trip. This time it took a little over an hour to walk to the
airstrip.
The wind was calm. Sherry found a rag to wipe the dew from
the Cessna's windshield and began her pre-flight. She was very
careful to look for contaminants in the fuel. In a shack she found
some cases of aircraft engine oil and some tools. Braga was
impatient, but Sherry ignored him. She drained the oil out of the
engine, safety-wired the drain shut, and refilled the crankcase
with fresh oil. The written words of an ancient aviator sounded in
her head, one who almost came to grief while flying in this part of
the world.
The control cables all worked the way they were supposed to.
She opened a few inspection ports and found nothing, It took her
an hour before she was satisfied that the airplane was indeed safe
to fly. Whoever had stocked the parts shack had thoughtfully
supplied some waterless cleaner which Sherry used to remove the
grease and oil from her hands. Checking to see the magnetos were
off, she pulled the propeller though six blades, then she gestured
to Angel to get in.
The drill was the same: mixture full rich, mags on, pump the
throttle twice, and engage the starter. The Continental O-300
caught on the second blade. Sherry idled the engine at 900 rpm
until the new oil was warm. Then she applied power and taxied to
the end of the strip. A quick mag check at low power, one notch of
flaps, and she applied power, not rapidly to avoid sucking debris
into the propeller blades, but not slowly either as there wasn't a
lot of room on this runway. The Cessna bounced on the rough ground
and then slipped into the air. Sherry climbed to about 500 feet
and retracted the flaps. She turned the airplane to a little west
of south and took up her first course to San Jose.
Sherry stayed as low as she dared to. The 170 had barely
enough instruments to be considered airworthy, just a wet compass,
an altimeter, and an airspeed indicator. There was a
communications radio but no navigation gear besides the compass.
The compass at least had a valid compensation card. Lindberg had
better equipment over sixty years ago.
The plotted course was fairly direct. That was a good thing,
because Sherry was a little concerned if they had enough fuel to
make it to San Jose. She wasn't too concerned about being spotted,
the air defense system commanders in El Salvador weren't too
concerned about unknown aircraft leaving and they didn't have a
very good system, either. Picking up a small Cessna flying low was
not a simple task. Nicaragua's military was in shambles and Costa
Rica didn't have an air force. Others weren't likely to interfere;
they might be drug smugglers and people who bothered smugglers
tended to contract bad cases of bullet wounds.
Angel tried talking over the noise of the O-300, but she soon
gave it up. If anything, this airplane was noisier than the Maule
for much of the interior insulation had been removed. Then she
started to turn green from the turbulence as the ground warmed up.
Sherry knew they could find smoother air if she climbed, but that
didn't seem to be a good idea. Somebody had thoughtfully left some
plastic bags in the chart pockets. Angel used one of those to
upload her breakfast. After she tied the neck of the bag shut,
Sherry opened a window and threw the bag out over the jungle below.
Sherry was feeling a little uncomfortable, but it had nothing
to do with the turbulence. She turned left 90 degrees, held it for
a minute and turned back on course. Ten minutes later she repeated
the maneuver to the right. Ah, she thought.
"I think we have a slight problem," she yelled in Angel's ear.
Angel instantly had a worried expression. "We're not going to
crash?"
"Probably not. But I think somebody's following us."
"You sure?"
"Hard to say. There is another aircraft behind us, seven or
ten miles back."
"What kind? Is it the military?"
"Can't say. Might be."
"Can we outrun them?"
Sherry shook her head. "Not unless they're in a smaller
airplane than this one, which isn't too likely." She looked at the
chart, then found a valley that might work not too far off her
course. She turned slightly to intercept the valley. Once over
it, she descended sharply and flew down it very low. After a few
minutes, she turned sharply and headed back up the valley, again at
a low level. If she was right, they should be there right
about....now.
Seconds later a Cessna O-2 spotter plane came into the valley.
The pilot had to pull up abruptly to avoid hitting the 170. Sherry
turned in his blind spot and flew out of the valley to the west.
She had no hope of outrunning an O-2 (the military version of a
Cessna Skymaster, the twin with fore and aft propellers), but at
least she could make it harder for him. She hoped he wasn't armed
as some nations had fitted machineguns to their O-2s.
The O-2 took up position off Sherry's left quarter at about
five hundred yards. The pilot knew that there was no point in
trying to stay hidden and Sherry knew she couldn't shake the O-2.
So they flew off towards San Jose in loose formation. Sherry
thought that the O-2 couldn't have come from Nicaragua, they had
mainly ComBloc equipment. That left El Salvador, Honduras, Costa
Rica and Panama. She wished somebody had given her some
information on who had what.
Angel leaned over. "What are we going to do? When we land,
they'll have us."
"Maybe not. Keep your seatbelt pulled tight. If I see a
place to land, I'm going to."
They were coming up on the outskirts of San Jose. They flew
over farms and industrial areas. None of it appealed to Sherry,
she needed an open area close enough in so they could stand a
chance of disappearing before whoever was working with the O-2
could react.
There! Sherry saw a park that had several soccer fields next
to one another. There didn't seem to be anyone on the fields. It
was just big enough to land in. Whether or not the Cessna could be
flown out was not her problem. They came up abreast of the park,
Sherry chopped the power and dropped the flaps. She flew a tight
pattern and had full flaps dropped on final. She landed the Cessna
right at the edge of the park and held the wheel all the way back
as she pushed on the brakes as hard as she dared. It still looked
like she was going to run out of room, she pushed the left brake
and executed a controlled ground-loop. The landing gear held and
the wingtip didn't dig in, but it wasn't her idea of fun.
"Let's go," she yelled to Angel. Sherry yanked the mixture
control back, shut the mags and master off and had her door open
before the prop stopped spinning. There was a loud roar as the O-2
buzzed the field, Sherry was betting the pilot wouldn't try to
land. Several cars had stopped alongside the road, Angel and
Sherry ran up to one and asked the driver to take them into the
city for a very generous fee. Once in town, they had the driver
stop and switched to a cab after the car was out of sight. They
did that three times.
Neither one of them said anything in the cabs. Angel led the
way to a safe-house she knew about that was run by some people she
trusted. The couple who lived there let them in without comment.
Once they had sat down and relaxed with a cold beer, the woman
opened the discussion. Nobody used any names. "You are in serious
trouble, my friend. A squad from El Salvador is here, looking for
you. We heard they were waiting at the airport."
Angel smiled. "We landed somewhere else. Maybe Marco can get
his airplane back. How long has the squad been here?"
"Two days."
"What kind of squad," asked Sherry.
"A death squad," the man said. "They aren't here for a
pleasure visit."
"And if they keep the airport covered, we are in trouble,"
Angel mused. "There's no easy way out other than flying."
"Can't we take a bus," asked Sherry.
The woman frowned. "How hard do you think it's going to be to
find you? You must be 180cm tall, all they have to do is put the
word out and everyone will be looking for a tall Gringa trying to
leave the country."
"So we don't give them what they're looking for," Sherry said.
"I don't understand," Angel and the woman said almost
simultaneously.
"You have a pen and paper," Sherry asked. The woman gave her
a pad and a pen. Sherry rapidly wrote down a shopping list and
handed it to the woman. "Can you get this stuff?"
The woman looked at the list and smiled. "Very good. It'll
take me two hours. What size shoes do you wear?"
Sherry said a 43, Angel said she took a 36.
"Two hours. I'll be back." She grabbed her handbag and left.
Sherry looked at the man. "While she's gone, do you have a
place where we can get cleaned up?"
"Certainly." He showed them to a bedroom that had an attached
bath. Angel went first, then Sherry. It was a real luxury to be
able to take a normal bath after the makeshift ones at the FNLN
camp.
Sherry was soaking when Angel came into the bathroom. Nice
bod, Sherry thought. "So, you want to tell me what you have in
mind," Angel asked.
"Easy enough. They're looking for two women, one latino and
one anglo who look like they came in from the jungle. So let them
look. If they see us, that's not what they'll see. The woman's
buying some clothes and some grooming stuff. We're going to change
the way we look."
Angel nodded. "All right, what is she getting me?"
"A nice full skirt, so you can move if you need to, a decent
blouse, and some low-heeled pumps."
"And what is she getting you?"
"Jeans, a work shirt, and a hat if she can find them used,
along with some Ace bandages and a hair clipper."
"What?" Angel looked confused.
Sherry sat up in the tub. "Look, she said that they're
looking for a 180cm tall woman. So we let them. I'll wrap the
bandages around my chest and cut my hair back. With any luck, I'll
look somewhat like a man. They won't be looking for a couple.
Then we try and find a way out of here."
Angel looked a little shocked. "You'd cut your hair really
short?"
Sherry stood up and reached for a towel. "It'll grow back if
we make it. If we don't make it, it won't matter very much." She
looked at Angel. Her hair was waist-length. "It'd help if you cut
your hair, too."
Angel's eyes grew wide. She was proud of her hair. "How
short?"
Sherry shrugged. "To your shoulders, maybe a bit shorter."
"No!"
"Do it. It'll add to our chances of surviving. Like I said,
if we live, it will grow back," Sherry urged.
"And if we don't, so what," sighed Angel. "All right."
The woman soon returned with the stuff. She and Angel cut
Sherry's hair so that it was just longer than military length, then
the woman trimmed Angel's locks to her shoulder. Sherry used baby
powder on her chest to cut down on the chafing, then wound the
bandages as tight as she could. She then put on the clothes, and
stuffed a sock into her underwear to create a bulge. She looked in
the mirror, with the hat it just might work. The shirt was loose
enough to cover the .45, too.
Angel got dressed in a flowing cotton skirt and a white frilly
blouse with black leather low heels. The woman gave Angel a
handbag that swallowed up her 9mm quite nicely. Then the woman and
the man drove Angel and Sherry around the city. As he explained,
the big problem was going to be going though emigration at the
airport. He had no fake passports to give them to get past that
point and both Angel and Sherry assumed that the death squad was
monitoring passport control.
"Let's drive around the airport," Sherry suggested.
The man looked over his shoulder. "Why?"
"I don't know, I'm just making this up as I go along. Maybe
something will occur to me."
He turned the car at the next street.
"I don't think we are going to find an airplane we can steal
that will reach the States," Angel said.
Sherry shrugged. "Never know until we check it out."
They did. Sherry saw a DC-7 that might work, but that's a
damn hard airplane to even try to fly single-pilot and she had no
inkling how the fuel system worked. It'd be embarrassing to crash
in the hills with a bunch of full tanks, if even the tanks were
full She looked up as a helicopter passed overhead. It was a US
Navy SH-3.
"Where did that helicopter come from?"
The woman replied: "Your navy is trying to track the cocaine
smugglers, there is a bunch of ships about fifty miles out to sea."
"Including an aircraft carrier?"
"I am not sure."
Sherry was thinking hard. "Can you find out? Also try to
find out if the helicopters come at a certain time."
"Okay, I'll see what I can do."
Sherry nodded. "Good. Let's go back to where the small
airplanes are parked." They did. This time Sherry got out of the
car and walked around. Nobody challenged her. She checked out the
hangars and came back to the car almost an hour later. She got in
smiling.
Angel looked at her. "You have a way?"
Sherry kept smiling. "I think so. There's an airplane in one
of the hangars that can be landed on an aircraft carrier. If the
helicopters keep a schedule, then we just borrow the airplane and
follow the helicopter back to the carrier and then land."
Angle looked aghast. "Simple plan. And what of the fighter
jets on the carrier? Surely you don't think they might object to
your landing a strange airplane on their ship? You just think
they'll let you fly up and land? And how are you going to take off
from here? You think the control tower's going to let you just
steal somebody else's airplane like that?" She snapped her fingers
for emphasis. "Such a plan."
Sherry held her hands palms up. "So it's not perfect. But
once we get out to the carrier, we are on American territory. The
death squads can't touch us."
"And if they don't let us land?"
"Then we'll ditch the airplane next to one of the ships.
They'll rescue us with a boat or a helicopter. Either way, once
we're aboard we're safe."
Angel looked at her as if she was crazy. The couple drove
them back to the safe house.
Some discreet questioning yielded a lot of information. The
helicopters, usually SH-3s, but sometimes CH-46s came very day,
often two or three. They arrived at 1300 and left at 1630. The
times were set to allow them to offload cargo, mail and passengers
for a flight to Los Angeles and to pick up any of the items being
sent to the fleet offshore. The ships were 50 to 100 nautical
miles offshore, they were using the E-2 radar airplanes to track
air traffic over Central America. Occasionally an escort ship
would pull into San Jose for a brief visit, but there wasn't one
due for over a week. Sherry preferred the idea of trying to board
a ship in port, but the time they'd have to wait was too long and
the pier would probably be watched very closely by the death squad.
They also learned that another team was due in the next day to
look for them. Nobody liked that idea very much. So if the
weather was good, they would go for getting out tomorrow afternoon.
The woman cooked up dinner. While she was doing so, the man
asked: "What kind of pistols are you carrying?"
"She has a .45 and I have a 9mm," Angel answered.
He shrugged. "I think I can do better than that for you.
We'll check out my stock after dinner."
They did. He had a wide selection of special-purpose weapons
in a hidden room in the basement. "These might be of some use," he
said and pulled out a box. He handed a pistol to Sherry. The
weapon was a GI Colt .45 with a suppressor mounted. The sights on
the slide had been built up so they could be of some use. He
handed another one to Angel. "If you have to deal with the death
squads, it might help you if there was less noise around." He led
them into an adjoining room where there was a target set up twenty
feet away. He gave them some ear plugs. "The silencers don't kill
all the sound, they'll still be pretty loud in a room this size.
But outdoors, they won't attract any attention."
He gave them some ammunition, they both fired a few shots to
get the feel. Nobody wanted to do more, the room wasn't well
ventilated and the fumes from the shots were pretty bad. As the
man had predicted, the guns were loud in the room, but nowhere near
as loud as an unsuppressed shot.
"Thank you," Sherry said formally. "Can I offer you my weapon
in exchange?"
"Is it traceable to you?"
Sherry nodded. "Then keep it."
Angel offered hers. "This one was Julio's. I assume it can
be traced to him."
The man took it and smiled. "I think we can have some fun
with it. Why don't you go get some sleep? I'll clean up the guns
and we can make any further plans we need to in the morning."
"Sounds like a good idea to me," Sherry said.
It would be an understatement to say that Sherry was glad to
unwrap the Ace bandages that were restraining her breasts. Those
who complained about a tight girdle had nothing on her. The safe
house had an old bathtub, which meant it was big enough to
accommodate her large frame. For many years she had taken showers,
baths now seemed luxurious. Her skin was red from the wrappings.
She hoped that tomorrow would be the last day she'd have to endure
wearing them.
As Sherry soaked, she had to admit there were a couple things
about being a man that she missed. Nobody had paid any attention
to her when she had poked around the hangars that afternoon. She
doubted if a woman would have been unnoticed. She didn't think
about somebody trying to violate her, make a pass, or voice lewd
suggestions. But no way did she want to go back.
The man dropped the pistols off about an hour later. Sherry
stripped hers to check it out. She was most interested in seeing
that the firing pin hadn't been altered in any way. When she
pushed on the back of the pin, it protruded from the slide the
proper amount. She couldn't figure out how to check the ammunition
just yet. Everybody seemed to be on the level, but she'd sure hate
to draw down on somebody and hear the dull click of a misfire.
Angel seemed somewhat antsy, but Sherry didn't feel like
talking. So much depended on the airplane she had scouted out. It
appeared to be airworthy, but if it wasn't, they might not get a
second chance. It was the only way she could think of to get out
of the country and into another one without having to show a
passport.
Neither one of them slept very well that night. They were
both awake by six the next morning, even though there was little
they could do until that afternoon. The woman of the safehouse had
purchased some newspapers which both Sherry and Angel read from
beginning to end. The TV set was droning in the corner of the
living room and nobody was paying attention to it.
Sherry asked for a box of ammunition and went into the
basement. There she fired the silenced .45 and reassured herself
that the pistol still worked and that the cartridges hadn't been
tampered with. The man offered to clean it, but she declined. One
way or another, she didn't plan on having the weapon much longer
than the length of the day.
Noon was approaching. Sherry went upstairs and wound the Ace
bandages around her breasts, wincing at the squashed feeling they
gave her. The woman had some dark theatrical makeup which
Sherry used to create a beard shadow. If her life didn't depend so
much on the illusion she was trying to project, she'd think this
was really funny in an ironic way. `Well, Sam,' she thought, `it's
time to do your stuff one last time.' As she prepared herself,
Angel was getting dressed in her outfit. Sherry sighed. It's
showtime.
The woman stayed behind this time. The man drove them to a
cafe near the airport. Two SH-3s arrived right on time. Good old
Naval Air. Near 2pm, Sherry nodded slightly to the man. he paid
the bill and they went to the car. He drove them down to the
field.
Security at this end of the airport was almost nonexistent,
they drove right onto the airport and down the rows of hangars.
The man pulled in behind one three hangars down. Sherry and Angel
sat there for a few minutes as they watched for any movement.
Things looked good. Sherry and Angel got out of the car and moved
down the back of the hangars. Sherry winced at the sound of
Angel's shoes on the pavement.
The hangar door was unlocked. They went in, Sherry closed the
door behind them. It was fairly dark inside. Angel looked around.
"So where is the airplane that you will fly us to the carrier in,"
she asked.
"The big one with the round engine," Sherry replied. The "big
airplane with the round engine" was a T-28 that had fairly faded
paint. What it had that had attracted Sherry's interest was a
tailhook. Sherry planned to land the airplane on the carrier
rather than try jumping out or ditching. She hadn't done any of
the three, but landing on a carrier seemed the best bet. At least
the risk of drowning was less.
Sherry's pre-flight inspection was as thorough as she dared to
make it. The T-28 thankfully had an intercom and headsets. Sherry
seated Angel in the back and showed her how the seatbelts worked
and how the canopy worked if they had to ditch. The T-28 didn't
have any life vests, she found some in an Aero Commander that was
also in the hangar. The one fortunate thing here was that the T-28
was at the front of the hangar, they wouldn't have to move other
airplanes to get it out.
Time was slipping by. They wrestled the hangar doors opened,
then used an old converted garden tractor to tug the T-28 out onto
the taxiway. They had just finished putting the tug back when
Sherry saw some movement out of the corner of her eye. A man had
a gun out and was aiming it at her. Sherry went for her silenced
.45 and knew in her soul she'd never make it. There was no cover
to duck behind, either. A muffled bark came from behind her, the
man fell backwards. Angel had gotten her gun out first.
"Let's go now," Angel screeched. Sherry turned to run for the
airplane when two more men came from around the hangar. Angel
nailed one, the second one fired a shot that seemed very loud
compared to Angel's shots. Sherry gasped and fell in pain as the
bullet hit her in the side. She retained her hold on the pistol
and rolled, then fired from the ground at her attacker. She shot
him four times.
Nobody else showed up. Angel helped Sherry up. "How badly
are you hurt," she asked.
"I don't know," Sherry said, feeling the pain lance through
her. "Help me get my shirt off." Angel did so. The bullet had
cut a deep groove in her left side about an inch below her breasts
and apparently smashed at least one rib. It was bleeding freely.
Sherry had Angel remove the ace bandage from her breasts and wrap
it around her torso ove the bullet wound. "Help me get into the
cockpit," Sherry said.
Angel looked at her. "Can you fly like this?"
Sherry gestured at the three bodies lying on the taxiway.
"You want to stay around and explain to the police what happened
here?"
Angel shook her head and helped Sherry get into the front
cockpit, then she got into the back. Sherry experimented, it hurt
to move her left arm but most of the time she wouldn't have to, the
T-28 was flown with a military stick used by the right hand. Out
of habit, she turned on the master switch and then turned on the
pre-oiler. After five minutes of running the electric oil pump,
she primed the hell out of the engine and hit the starter. One,
two, three, four, she switched the magnetos on and the big radial
rumbled into life. She found the avionics master and turned the
radio on to ground control to monitor what was going on.
When the SH-3s called in for their clearances, Sherry taxied
the T-28 down the row of hangars to the far end of the taxiway.
She listened on the radio, switching frequencies with the SH-3s.
She couldn't hear their side of the conversations as they had
military VHF radios, but she could hear the controllers talking to
them as their radios transmitted on both VHF and UHF channels.
The SH-3s passed overhead. Sherry said "Here we go" into the
intercom and pushed the propeller control forward, then the
throttle. The roar of the radial echoed from the hangars as the T-
28 thundered down the taxiway. The first sight the tower had was
the T-28 rising over the roofline of the hangars. Sherry raised
the landing gear and the flaps and turned to angle away from the
SH-3s. The tower crew called frantically on the radio, Sherry
ignored them. She wanted to laugh, but it hurt to even think about
it.
Sherry stayed low for several miles, keeping her eye on the
helicopters. When they were almost too far to see, she advanced
the throttle and flew an intercepting course. The angle was
shallow enough that they shouldn't see her. She flew a curved path
at the end to bring the T-28 behind the SH-3s at about one hundred
feet. With any luck the men on the air-search radars would have
their primary target gain a little low and they might not pick her
up until she was a lot closer. She set a radio to the emergency
(or guard) frequency of 121.5 mHz. Sherry knew the standard drill
was to try to establish contact on that frequency.
What Sherry didn't know was that she had been tracked almost
from takeoff by an E-2C Hawkeye, the naval version of AWACS. That
caused a quick rush on the carrier to launch the Combat Air Patrol
fighters, they had been sitting in Alert-15 as no real need for
them was foreseen. The flight deck crews ran through the drill at
a fast speed and both F-14s were launched in just over ten minutes.
Sherry did see the F-14s coming her way, though. As she
watched, their wings swept forward and the flaps and slats deployed
to enable the fighters to slow to her speed. She pressed the push-
to-talk button and said: "Good afternoon, boys."
"Tango Two Eight, identify yourself and state your
intentions."
Sherry read the registration number of the T-28 and added:
"Pilot is Anderson, Lieutenant, US Navy, Sierra Sierra November
[she read her social security number], state approximately three
plus zero zero, two souls on board, one wounded. Intentions are to
land your home plate."
To say her transmission raised a fuss on the carrier was an
understatement. The carrier group commander, Rear Admiral Carter,
turned to his Chief of Staff, he ordered a secure radio link to the
Commander of the Bureau of Personnel, priority flash. He then took
command of the air warfare picture away from the cruiser who was
running it. He ordered the F-14s to escort the T-28 and have it
circle around the carrier at a ten mile radius. The lead F-14
relayed the command on 121.5, RADM Carter heard Sherry reply:
"Roger, but don't fuck around too much. I took a round back there
and I'm bleeding." By now every ship and its captain in the battle
group had 121.5 turned up.
The COS handed Admiral Carter the satellite secure radio
handset. He keyed the set and said "BuPers, this is ComCarGru
Seven, over." (ComCarGru Seven = Commander, Carrier Group Seven)
The admiral at BuPers didn't have a radio set. He had to use
a secure telephone to a communications station. To let the tech at
the commsta know he wanted to talk, he would start his transmission
by saying "one two three, three two one." What Carter heard was
"Two one, ComCarGru Seven, this is BuPers himself, over." The
`himself' let Carter know that the admiral in charge was on the
line. They weren't used to getting such high-priority calls and
the admiral was very curious what was going on.
Carter keyed the handset and waited for the synchronization
tone to stop. "This is ComCarGru Seven himself. We have an
interesting situation developing." He relayed a quick sketch of
the situation and Anderson's service number. "Request you verify
such an officer's existence, over."
"Three two one, this is Bupers. Roger, wait, out." It took
five minutes to pull a microfiche copy of Anderson's service record
and rush it up to the boss. His aide pooped it in a viewer, the
admiral quickly read it. He picked up the telephone: "One two
three, three two one, Comcargru Seven, this is Bupers, over."
Carter had bet his COS a coke it would take fifteen minutes to
get an answer. The COS didn't bother to hide his grin. "ComCarGru
Seven, roger, over." Everybody in flag plot gathered around to
hear the information.
"Two one, this is BuPers. Name and number are verified.
Officer is Samuel Anderson, surface warfare. Did his first tour on
Dahlgren, boiler officer and gunnery officer. Fitreps top 1%.
Graduated destroyer school (he gave a date and class number).
Assigned to Alwyn as Engineer. How copy so far, over"
"Copy all, continue, over."
"Three two one. Here's where it gets strange. Anderson
served fifteen months on Alwyn, then abruptly transferred to DIA.."
(Defense Intelligence Agency) "..classified program. Cover fitreps
state `performing duties assigned' and give top marks. Anderson
selected to lieutenant commander, promoted two months ago. No
information on DIA work available, over."
"Roger, copy all. If I can, will send `personal for' to you
when I get this sorted out. No further traffic, over."
"Two one, BuPers, roger, out."
Carter put the headset down, then looked at the carrier's
captain, who had come into flag plot when he was told what was
going on. "Captain, please get on the 1MC.." (shipwide PA system)
"..and see if there's anybody on board who served with Anderson."
The captain nodded and did so. In a few minutes, the
carrier's Main Propulsion Assistant, Lieutenant Dumphrey, was
standing in flag plot as the admiral told him what was going on.
"I want you to ask this person some questions and try to determine
if that's Anderson up there."
"Aye aye, sir." The Admiral handed him a handset. "Tango Two
Eight, this is ComCarGru Seven."
"Tango Two Eight."
"Anderson, this is Bill Dumphrey. How're you doing?"
"Been a long time, Bill. I've been better. Caught a round
back in San Jose. They going to let me land this beast?" Sherry
let go of the mike button and spit in her hand. The saliva was
tinged with blood.
"I need to ask a few questions, first."
"Don't stretch it out. I'm coughing up blood."
"How do you light a torch?"
"With a Zippo lighter."
"Which safety do you set first?"
"Superheater."
"What's a Jones class frigate?"
"No such thing. Jones was that jackass who sat behind you at
Destroyer School."
Dumphrey ran through about a dozen more questions, then turned
to Admiral Carter. "That doesn't sound like Anderson, Admiral, but
he sure knows enough about Anderson to be him."
Carter nodded. "Did you know Anderson could fly?"
"Yes, sir. He was in the base flying club. He seemed to be
pretty good."
"Ok, son, thanks." He picked up the handset. "Two eight,
ComCargru Seven."
"Two eight."
"You carrier qualified in T-28s?"
"No, don't have much choice, though."
"Can you bail out or ditch?"
"Negative. No parachutes. Life jackets of unknown quality.
Passenger unfamiliar with emergency egress, not too sure I can
survive a ditching, either."
"Landing on a carrier isn't a piece of cake, either."
"Maybe not, but it's the best choice I have. Request
permission to come aboard, sir."
"Roger, permission granted. Stand by." Carter said to no one
in particular: "Set flight quarters, prepare to recover a T-28.
And make damn sure the crash crews and the corpsmen are ready."
Sherry looked down at the carrier and saw it turn to align the
wind with the angle deck. About fucking time, she thought.
"Two eight, this is Paddles." (Paddles was the term for the
Landing Signals Officer, the one who had final control of the
landing of all airplanes. The term derived from the old days when
the LSO used hand paddles to signal the landing airplanes.)
"Two eight."
"I want you to fly an upwind over me at one thousand. Slow,
drop your gear and hook, and fly a standard pattern. Don't think
of the deck as moving, think of it as being stationary with a
strong headwind. Keep the meatball in the center of the mirror.
When you land, go to full power in case you miss a wire. Got
that?"
"Roger." Sherry told Angel: "They're going to let us land.
Make sure your harness is as tight as you can make it, you'll hit
it hard when we land."
"Ok, all set." Angel was terrified, but she kept quiet.
Sherry broke away from the F-14s and turned towards the carrier.
She throttled back somewhat and pushed the nose down. She flew
over the carrier, pulled the throttle back, pushed the propeller
control to the stops, and dropped the landing gear and the
tailhook. Three green for the gear and one for the hook. She
turned to a crosswind, then to a downwind. When the carrier looked
right, she throttled back more and started the approach. The flaps
went down on the base leg.
She almost turned final astern of the carrier, then realized
that she had to turn for the angle of the flight deck, not the
stern of the ship.
"A little low, add power, bring her up onto the glide slope,"
Paddles commanded.
Sherry did that and quickly adjusted to the guidance of the
mirror landing system. She had to keep the ball in the center of
the mirror.
"On slope, looking good. Keep her coming."
Sherry didn't acknowledge the advice, she flew the airplane.
A little high, reduce power and ease the nose down. She was
approaching the deck, she flared but didn't try to kill all of the
sink rate. The landing gear slammed into the deck, Sherry rammed
the throttle forward as she was thrown against the harness when the
tailhook caught the number four wire. She screamed in pain and
greyed out, but retained enough composure to pull the throttle
back. Her vision returned, she saw people gesturing madly for her
to raise the tailhook and taxi away from the landing area. Sherry
followed the directions of the plane director. When he motioned
for her to cut the engine, she pulled the mixture out, shut off the
master and flicked the mag switches off when the prop stopped
turning. She remembered popping the canopy latch, but nothing
after that.
There was a large group of people out on the observation areas
when Sherry made her approach. Word had gotten out that somebody
who was not carrier-qualified was going to try to land a T-28. Her
approach was a little unsteady, but nothing really unusual. The T-
28 slammed into the deck in the "controlled crash" that was a
carrier landing. Admiral Carter muttered "Not bad, son" when he
saw the hook grab the number four wire. The prop blades were still
spinning to a stop when the medical team climbed onto the wing.
They lifted Sherry out of the cockpit and laid her in a Stokes
litter. A doctor quickly checked her over and then they lifted the
litter and hustled her to sickbay. Other flight deck crewmen
helped Angel out of the rear seat. She was taken to a stateroom
and initially held incommunicado, although she was given magazines
to read. Lunch was brought to her.
The hospital crew had been told their patient was a wounded
man, they were a little surprised to find he was a she, but figured
that the staff had screwed up again. They prepped Sherry for
surgery and ran her into the OR. The carrier had a Naval
Investigative Service agent embarked, he went through the pockets
of Sherry's clothes and brought the contents up to flag country.
Admiral Carter was having lunch with his COS, the ship's
captain, and the commander of the air wing. The NIS agent handed
him Sherry's passport without comment. Carter took it and opened
it to the photo. "What the Christ is going on," he said and handed
the passport to the COS, who looked at it and passed it to the
other two officers. BuPers had faxed Anderson's service record,
which included a photo. Carter took the photo and compared it to
the passport. He noted that the birthdays were identical.
The COS was looking over his shoulder. "Could it be his twin
sister?"
Carter shrugged. "No mention of a sister on his Page Two."
(A "page two" is the record of emergency information.) He looked
at the agent. "As soon as she's out of surgery, pull a set of
prints and fax them to NIS, op immediate priority."
"Yes, sir," the agent replied. "She was also heavily armed.
She had three pistols on her person, one of them is a silenced .45
that has been fired very recently. Her passenger has a Canadian
passport that identifies her as Angel Henandez. she also had a
silenced .45 that was recently fired."
Carter rolled his eyes. "This smells like the sort of covert
crap that North was up to his ears in. Get the prints off as soon
as you can."
The agent nodded and left. Carter took a message blank and
rapidly wrote a message, pausing a few times to refer to different
pieces of paper, then handed it to his COS. "What do you think of
this, Ray?"
The COS took the message. It was an update to the oprep
(operational report) the admiral had sent off when Sherry first
asked to land. The update gave more details, such that the pilot
was a woman, her passport number, and that both occupants of the
airplane were armed. It listed the registration and serial number
of the T-28. What caught the COS's attention was the
classification: SECRET SI NOFORN WINTEL (SI = special intelligence
NOFORN = do not distribute to foreign nationals WINTEL= warning,
intelligence sources and methods). "Why the classification,
Admiral?"
"I don't want this one being handed about to everyone in the
offices. Something funny is going on here and we had best keep a
lid on until we figure out just what the story is."
The COS called radio central for a messenger. When the sailor
arrived, he handed over the message form and ordered that the typed
copy be brought back for proofreading.
Things got going ashore once the messages arrived. NIS agents
checked the FBI files and found only a card for Sherry Anderson.
No card existed for Samuel Anderson, even though he had to have
been fingerprinted several times. Another agent went to the Bureau
of Vital Statistics in Sherry's home state and found a birth
certificate for her in the files. Though the old registers listed
Sam's birth, no birth certificate existed for him. The old
registers didn't have a listing for Sherry.
One of the senior agents in Suitland, MD (NIS HQ) noted that
one of Sam's hobbies was shooting. He also noted that Sam had been
stationed in South Carolina. Since the agent knew that SC required
fingerprinting of out-of-state military who buy pistols, he
dispatched an agent to check with South Carolina's Law Enforcement
Division (what they call the state cops). Sure enough, there were
two fingerprint cards in SLED's files. The agent faxed one of the
cards to Suitland.
When the agent there compared the two, he smiled with some
satisfaction. Whoever had done all this work was smart, but
nothing beats legwork.
Bureaucracy can move very quickly when there is a need to.
Admiral Carter had a summary of the findings so far in his hand
when Sherry regained consciousness in sick bay. While he wanted to
start asking questions, he waited until the doctor said it was ok
to go and talk to her.
Like most post-surgical patients, Sherry looked awful. She
had a catheter and a drain from the surgical site and two IV
bottles going into one drip. Her eyes were open and registering
her surroundings. Her first thought was "I can't be dead, I hurt
too damn much."
Carter came into sick bay. Sherry saw him and instinctively
tried to come to attention. "At ease, Anderson," Carter said. he
had his doubts about everything until he saw her try to snap to.
That told him she had been in the service for a long time. "How're
you feeling, Commander?"
"I've been better, sir. Did you say `commander?'"
Carter nodded. "You were promoted to lieutenant commander
effective two months ago. If you are feeling up to it, I have some
questions to ask."
Sherry smiled weakly. "I'll bet you do, Admiral."
Carter turned his head slightly and motioned. Sailors brought
in recording gear, both audio and a video camera and set them up.
A stenographer brought a chair in and sat down. Sherry had closed
her eyes while the preps were going on. Microphones were placed to
pick up their words. Both Sherry and the admiral spoke for a sound
level check.
Carter started the recording. "This recording was made on (he
gave the date) in the sick bay of the USS Ranger. I am Rear
Admiral Thomas Carter, United States Navy. I am interrogating,
please state your name, rank, social security number and
designator."
"Anderson, Sherry P. Lieutenant Commander, United States
Navy. (She cited a social security number) with a designator of
1110."
"Are you the same officer who is known to the Bureau of Naval
Personnel as Samuel P. Anderson with the same social security
number and designator?"
"Yes, sir, I am."
"The last official knowledge the Navy has of you was that you
were abruptly transferred from the Alwyn. Yesterday you landed
aboard the USS Ranger in a T-28 registered in Costa Rica that was
presumably stolen. You were flying the aircraft and had a
passenger identified as Angel Hernandez who was carrying a stolen
Canadian passport. Both of you were armed; among the weapons were
two suppressed .45 automatics that had been recently fired. Is
this a true summation?"
"Yes, sir, it is."
Carter nodded. "Let's go back to the Alwyn. I want you to
tell me in as much detail as you can what transpired from then
until now. As you are recovering from surgery, we will recess and
reconvene as you desire."
Over the next four days, Sherry did just that. The sessions
were first fairly short, then lengthened as she regained her
stamina. As much as she could, she named every name she could and
gave details of places. Each day a copy of the tapes was sent to
Washington. To preclude any problems in customs, they were flown
directly from the carrier to San Diego by C-3s. Couriers then took
military flights to Andrews Air Force Base. Suitland was a short
drive from Andrews.
The GPS cassette was taken to the manufacturer. They had no
difficulty in extracting the course programmed in. A check with
the Defense Mapping Agency confirmed that the course and altitude
would have resulted in a crash.
NIS agents fanned out over the country to verify her story.
The survival training, the training base, employment records, all
were as Sherry said. There were some discrepancies in the details,
but nobody can remember everything perfectly. Sherry had carried
her latest pilot's logbook with her, the entries were verified at
the airports where it was possible to do so.
One of the return flights to the Ranger brought some agents
who wanted to ask more questions. When they showed some of
Sherry's testimony to Angel, she told her story and her view of
what had happened. The same flight brought some uniforms for
Sherry, wash khakis and underwear. In five days she was starting
to move around the ship a little. The steepness of the ladders
were tough, yet she kept at it.
By now the investigation was being run by the Navy's Inspector
General and the chief of Naval Intelligence. They took a very dim
view of someone sending one of their people on what amounted to an
unknown suicide mission. The NIS found a lot of resistance to
their inquiries at the training base, until they showed up with
some subpoenas and a US Marshal. The first person who refused them
access was arrested by the Marshal; everyone else fell into line
and showed the agents what they wanted to see.
It was like unravelling a sweater. Each lead led to others.
By the time Sherry had been on the Ranger for two weeks, the NIS
had found that a group of DIA people were recruiting TVs and TSs
for clandestine missions that had a very low survival rate. Eighty
had been recruited before Sherry, of whom only nine were either
alive or not in a foreign prison. The six who were in prison were
released by paying substantial bribes (not all of which involved
money).
Bureaucracies never learn a simple lesson: destroy the files.
The other intelligence agencies seized on the case as a way to shut
down the operations of a group of cowboys they had long despised.
Six people were in the training pipeline, two of whom had completed
SRS. They were all offered discharges with considerable severance
pay. The four who hadn't had surgery were given enough money to
easily complete the process if they chose to.
While the other agencies were able to shut the operation down,
nobody ever proved any significant illegal activities on the part
of those running it. All the funds were accounted for. They had
forged a lot of official records, but every intelligence agency
does that at one time or another. Nobody was interested in making
that a crime.
Sherry didn't see Angel again. She was quietly loaded onto a
C-3 one night and flown to San Diego. Once there, she was
debriefed by a team of agents. When the briefing was done, she was
placed in the Witness Protection Program and was never heard from
again.
Sherry rapidly gained her strength back. The carrier's
engineer wanted her to grade some training exercises, but Admiral
Carter vetoed that proposal. So she spent her time roaming around
the ship, and found that wherever she went she was welcome. Part
of her welcome was because she was friendly, part of it was because
she was the only woman on a ship of six thousand men. She made a
point of visiting the main machinery spaces as the engineers on a
carrier are rarely recognized by outsiders for the hard work they
do.
Admiral Carter called Sherry to his cabin the night before the
Ranger returned to San Diego. He offered her coffee, then asked
the steward to leave.
"Sherry, we have a slight problem," the admiral said.
"How so, sir?"
"As you know, the law prohibits women serving on warships.
But what we have in you is a woman who has served on two
combatants. There's no way to disguise that in your service
record. We can change the names on the fitreps (fitness reports,
the grading form for officer evaluations), but we can't change the
duty assignments you've had. Anybody who looks at your record will
know that something's seriously wrong.
"Now you may not know this, but under OPNAVINST (Chief of
Naval Operations Instruction) 1630 transsexualism is a cause for
immediate discharge."
Sherry interrupted. "I'm aware of that regulation, sir."
Carter nodded. "However, you weren't discharged when it
became known you were a transsexual. You were allowed to stay in
and the surgery was performed at government expense. A barely
competent lawyer could argue that such funding meant that your
transsexualism was acceptable to the service.
"On the other hand, we have the matter of the stolen T-28 and
the killings at the San Jose airport. We could link you to the
shootings and the theft of the airplane, but that could create some
real embarrassment for the government. So what I'm offering you is
a three-part deal. Are you interested?"
"I'm listening, Admiral."
"First we deal with the criminal charges. I'll hold Admiral's
Mast and find you not guilty of theft, possession of various
weapons without proper authorization, and murder. Once I clear you
of those charges, you can't be tried again.
"Second, if you'll resign your commission, I am authorized to
offer you a severance bonus of one hundred thousand dollars, tax
free.
"Third, we have been in contact with the cargo carrier you
flew for in Wisconsin. They are willing to take you back if you
can show them an honorable discharge, which you will be given as
part of the deal. That's the package." He sat back in his chair
and waited for her response.
It took Sherry three seconds to say yes. Admiral's Mast was
held in thirty minutes, with her being cleared of all the charges.
Sherry was given a military ID card so she could check into the BOQ
upon arrival at San Diego. The arrangement was that she had three
days to buy a small wardrobe of clothes, then she would be
discharged.
The T-28 was unloaded under cover of darkness at San Diego.
The elderly radios in the T-28 were replaced with top of the line
ones with a selection of avionics from drug-smuggler's airplanes.
The engine was overhauled, hydraulic systems refurbished, and the
airplane was repainted. The T-28's owner had lost a tired
airplane, what he got back was one that was in show condition, so
he was very happy.
Sherry made her way back to Madison, Wisconsin, and resumed
flying DC-3s on night cargo runs. As for what happened after that,
well, that's the subject of another story.
Part 2
He was smiling as always. The grin was a superior one, of a
man who knew he had the advantage and wasn't hesitant in letting
you know.
He was fast, very fast. He had his pistol out and aimed
before she had hers clear of the holster. She tried to bring the
nose of the .45 to bear, but her brain was screaming that it was
too late, way too late. He shook his head slightly and squeezed
the trigger....
The alarm woke her bolt upright. In spite of the heat of the
midsummer day, Sherry was shivering. The dream was coming more
frequently. She thought it was some delayed reaction to her
Central American adventure, but who knew for sure?
One thing was certain, there was nobody she could talk to
about it. The repercussions from her unexpected survival had torn
part of the DIA apart. Nothing ever hit the papers, except a brief
mention of a drug-related shootout at the San Jose airport. The
training center had been shaken up, a lot of the people in the
clandestine section that had recruited Sherry were shunted off to
dead-end jobs to await retirement or were forcibly retired. The
psychologists who were in the section certainly wouldn't want to
see her again. Any other shrink would probably think she was crazy
when she told the story. Best to just hope the dreams go away.
Whatever a shrink might think, it had all happened. She knew
that every month when $1,500 (adjusted periodically for inflation)
was deposited in her investment account. If that wasn't enough,
there was the Colt Commander that was in her handbag or on her
body, along with the credentials that allowed her to carry it
anywhere she desired.
Sherry threw the sheet off her body and went to the bathroom
to take a shower and relieve herself. While she showered, she
thought about the reunion with her parents. They weren't exactly
overjoyed to find their son was now a woman. They wouldn't have
believed the story she told if it wasn't for Rear Admiral Carter.
He had an intelligence officer go with Sherry and confirm her
story. Her father hadn't said anything, he just left the room
after the explainations had been given. Her mother asked for her
address and phone number and said that they'd call, but to give
them time. That was six months ago. They hadn't called or
written, so Sherry figured that they had made their decision.
Enough. She had to be at the base in two hours to get ready
for her flight. The uniform was a lot simpler than the crews of
the major airlines had to wear, just a white shirt with epaulets
(four stripes to indicate she was a captain), black trousers and
flat lace-up shoes. She was thankful she didn't have to wear a
jacket, a stupid-looking hat or makeup. The cargo containers
wouldn't have been impressed, anyway.
She grabbed an overnight bag (in case they got stuck), her
flight bag, handbag, and she was out the door. Sherry started her
Honda and drove the fifteen miles to LaCrosse airport. It was easy
enough to live a lot closer, but Sherry relished the time it took
to drive, except in the winter. The drive was easy and there
wasn't any problem parking at the cargo terminal. Sherry clipped
on her security badge and went inside.
The flight was the same as it was yesterday and since she had
returned. Sherry and Tony, the co-pilot, would fly a DC-3 from
LaCrosse to Madison, then on to Rockford, Illinois and finally to
Midway Airport in Chicago. At each stop they'd receive a load of
cargo. The cargo would be shifted at MDW to a cargo jet and taken
to a sorting facility in Tennessee. Then the jet would return to
MDW and they'd fly the DC-3 back to RFD, MSN, and home to LSE.
They would fly IFR down to ensure sequencing into the Chicago
Terminal Control Area. If the weather was good, they'd cancel IFR
after leaving the TCA and fly VFR back. The cargo volume was
growing, there was some discussion recently of shifting the routes
around so that RFD would be picked up by another route and the
present route would start at Minneapolis. Nothing was certain so
far.
The weather wasn't unusual, a chance of scattered
thunderstorms but otherwise a fine night. The projected cargo
weight wasn't a concern to Sherry, the cargo containers generally
cubed out first (meaning they were full but not overweight).
Tony was preflighting the DC-3. After he finished, Sherry
went out and spot-checked his work. While she often varied what
she looked at, most often she inspected the exhaust stacks for
cracks as a cracked stack could cause an in-flight fire. This
particular airframe was over fifty years old. Airline captains
have to retire at age 60, it was a good bet that DC-3s would be
earning their keep well past that age.
Every manufacturer since 1946 has tried to make an "airplane
that is as good as a DC-3." While others have replaced DC-3s in
airline work, the DC-3 still flies even as the airplanes that
succeeded them have been retired to museums or scrapped. The DC-3
gave Douglas a reputation for quality that lasted until the DC-10
debased it.
Sherry was fond of the DC-3. She liked the solidity of the
airplane and flying it on the same route every time. Her recent
adventure in South America had given her her fill of excitement for
a good while. As others left the cargo airline to pursue careers
with the majors, Sherry's seniority crept up. Her life was boring,
and she liked it that way.
She clambered up into the cockpit, Tony followed immediately
afterwards. Even with the side windows open it was hot in there.
Sherry wadded up two yellow foam earplugs and inserted them. Tony
didn't use earplugs yet, but she bet he would as soon as the
hearing loss started showing up. Outside of the airplane two
mechanics were walking the propellers, turning the engines over by
hand to remove any oil from the bottom cylinders. They finished
and it was time.
Engine start: Sherry primed the right engine several times
and engaged the starter. She counted the propeller blades passing
the cockpit, when the fifteenth one appeared she switched the
magnetos on. The engine caught with the satisfying rumble of a
1,200 horsepower radial. Tony switched on the radios and set them
up while Sherry busied herself starting the left engine. They now
had their headsets on and were using the intercom for their
checklist recitations.
It took several minutes for the oil temperatures to rise
enough to permit taxiing out. Ground control had their IFR
clearance: "Cleared as filed" as usual with an expected climb to
5,000' ten minutes after takeoff.
The wind was up, a fact that made taxiing the DC-3 an art.
Sherry locked the tailwheel every time she could to help keep the
airplane on the yellow line. The tail was very susceptible to
acting as a weathervane, Sherry used differential power to counter
the wind's effects.
She ran the engines up at the end of the taxiway. That made
life a little interesting for a Piper Warrior's pilot who taxiied
a little too closely behind the DC-3. The other pilot may have
expected the DC-3 to swing across the taxiway for runup as did
smaller airplanes, but the DC-3 was too big to do that without the
risk of wiping out a taxiway light.
The tower granted takeoff clearance, Sherry taxiied out onto
the runway and rolled forward enough to ensure the tailwheel was
straight. She locked the tailwheel and added power. When the
airspeed indicator showed 40 knots, she raised the tail and brought
the airplane to a level attitude. Tony called the airpseeds, at
the V2 speed of 84 knots, Sherry rotated (bringing the nose up) and
the DC-3 stately left the runway. She called for the flaps to be
brought up before reaching the limit speed.
"Gear up." Tony reached down and unlocked the mechanical
latch, then he moved the gear handle to "up." The green light went
out, Sherry and Tony looked out their respective windows to confirm
that the gear was up. Tony moved the gear lever into the neutral
position, where hydraulic system pressure held the wheels up.
The tower handed the flight off to Minneapolis Center, all
routine. Sherry was flying the leg, Tony worked the radios.
Minneapolis handed them off to Chicago Center, who in turn passed
them along to Madison Approach Control, and then to the tower.
Somebody in a Cessna 182 was making a complete hash of an
instrument approach to Madison, the controllers kept trying to
straighten him out and meanwhile kept the scheduled flights and the
general traffic (at least the ones who did know what they were
about) flowing evenly.
The cargo container was loaded with all the efficiency that
the air freight company was richly famous for. The differences in
starting this time were that Tony only had to roll six propeller
blades before engaging the mags and that he flew to Rockford with
Sherry handling the other cockpit chores. The cargo loading drill
was completed in the usual amount of time and they taxiied out for
the leg to Midway.
There was nothing memorable about the leg into Midway. The
controllers did an efficient job sequencing the slower cargo
aircraft in amongst the passenger jets. They were parked on the
cargo line in order of departure, the slowest and smallest
airplanes would leave first so that none of them had to hold for
wake turbulence from the previous departure.
Sherry shut the engines down. It was cooler on the ramp here
now that the sun had set. She and Tony went into ops to check on
their load and to arrange fuel. It was all very routine.
Or it was until they were walking down a corridor to the
cafeteria. A man in a suit came up and said: "Captain Anderson?
His tone of voice was of one who knew who he was addressing. When
Sherry nodded, he continued: "Would you come with me, please,
there are some matters to discuss." He flashed an FBI badge in a
way that Tony couldn't see it.
"All right," Sherry said. To Tony: "I'll catch up to you
later." He shrugged and went on to find some chow. After he went
around a corner, Sherry asked to see the credentials again. The
agent showed them. Peter Garrison. "Am I under arrest, Mr.
Garrison?"
He smiled. "No, just the opposite. We may be able to help
you. Just come with me and I'll explain it all to you."
"Ok, it's your nickel." Garrison led the way to a set of
office and opened the door. He went in first, Sherry followed.
There was a man sitting in a chair in the office. It was Keith,
the firearms instructor from the training center.
Keith stood up and extended his hand. "`Lo, Sherry, it's been
awhile."
Sherry shook his hand. "Yup. I assume with the FBI agent
here that this isn't a social visit?"
Garrison indicated they should sit in a conference area. It
had four chairs around a small table. There were some file folders
lying there. "You come right to the point, Ms. Anderson. Do you
know this man?" He extracted a photo from the top file and handed
it to her.
Sherry studied it for several seconds. "He looks like someone
I've seen around the center, but I didn't have anything to do with
him."
"His name is Jack Gullenswan, and he was at the center when
you were. What he was doing is immaterial, but it was cancelled
when your case blew up. He holds you responsible for it and he's
apparently going to act on his beliefs."
Sherry looked at the agent wit some distain. "You want to
translate that into English?"
Keith answered. "Jack's going to try to kill you."
Sherry chewed on that. "What does he know?"
"Not a hell of a lot," said Garrison. "He probably knows
where you live and what you do, all of that's easy to learn. He
doesn't know your history or what skills you have."
"I see. What's his area of expertise?"
Garrison looked at Keith. Keith took the hint, he handed
Sherry a folder. "He's a sniper, a long-range rifleman. He's damn
good, capable of hitting a target on the first shot at 800 meters.
Other than that, he has some moderate skill at other weapons and
unarmed combat."
"Does he have a weapon?"
Garrison nodded. "He recently purchased a Ruger rifle,
chambered for .300 Winchester Magnum. He also bought an 8-power
scope. He had the sight mounted and he's been to a rifle range for
sighting-in and practice."
"And?"
Keith sighed. "And he's good with it. The range goes to 500
meters, he uses every damn inch. He bought some top-quality
bullets and he's making his own loads. We don't know what he's
shooting, but he is grouping sub-MOA, sometimes within .5."
Sherry was impressed. That meant Gullenswan could keep his
shot groups inside a 2-1/2" circle at a quarter-mile. It was some
shooting. "Is he still working for the government?"
"No, he resigned from the civil service two months ago,"
answered Garrison. "Before you ask, we're keeping an eye on him,
but that's all we can do. He hasn't broken any laws and if he's
careful, he won't."
Not until he actually fires at me, thought Sherry. She
gestured at the file. "Can I have a copy of this?"
Garrison nodded. "You can have most of it. I'll FedEx a
package to you."
Isn't that convenient, Sherry thought. She stood up. "Thanks
for the information, Agent Garrison." They shook hands. She
turned to Keith. "If you're up around LaCrosse anytime, stop by."
"Sure will."
Sherry left the office and went to the cafeteria. Tony was at
a table with a few other pilots, he was working at a large serving
of the "special of the night." She shuddered, how he was able to
eat as much as he did and not put on weight was a mystery. She
joined the line and picked up a bowl of soup and a salad. Tonly
looked at her with some curiosity when she sat down but he said
nothing.
Sherry mulled over the meeting all the way back to LaCrosse.
She thought a lot of her house and how to make it hard for
Gullenswan to get to her. Covering the windows was a first step,
then she'd have to figure out how to minimize her exposure to the
outside in other ways. The area across the street form her home
was open country with some hills. If she wanted to shoot someone
in her home, that'd be the place to do it. Even better, people
sometimes used the land for target shooting, a gunshot wouldn't be
a cause for alarm.
It was apparent that whatever the FBI wanted, they weren't
going to do anything to Gullenswan until he broke the law. If she
wanted to stay alive, it was up to her to think of how to do it.
Sherry found a tape measure as soon as she came home. She
measured her windows and made a run to a drapery store. The
saleslady seemed a little puzzled at Sherry's insistance that the
curtains be light-tight, but a sale's a sale. Sherry also bought
all the mounting hardware she needed to hang them on the windows
that weren't already set up for curtains. It took her two days to
hang them all. Then she turned the lights on in her house and went
outside at night. She made adjustments in different ones until she
was satisfied that nobody could see into her house.
That necessitated other changes. She had to buy grow lights
so her plants wouldn't die. The air was stuffy, so she rigged
frames to hold the curtains away from the open windows and yet not
allow them to blow open. If she didn't work at night and sleep in
the day it might have been a little too much, as it was it was like
living in a cave.
She studied the material Garrison had sent to her. Outsied of
telling in detail what a good shot Gullenswan was, it didn't help
much. The FBI had a loose surveillance on Gullenswan, so she knew
he wasn't around. That gave her a little time, she went to a
sporting goods store and bought an inexpensive 8-power riflescope.
She then started to cover the ground all around her house, looking
at the house through the `scope. What she was trying to do was to
determine where the best places to use for shooting at her house.
A noise startled her on one of her surveys, she turned around
to see a 6-point whitetail buck. She didn't move, the deer looked
her over but didn't run off. Sherry shifted, the deer ran off, his
tail up. Sherry smiled, now she knew why Gullenswan hadn't shown
up yet. He was waiting for hunting season. Nobody'd question why
someone was out with a rifle then, nobody'd think anything of a
shot or two.
It took several days, but Sherry soon had a rough map of
possible shooting positions. One of them was what she'd choose, it
had a clear view of the front and side doors from a slight rise.
The range was about 400 yards. She then walked around to find a
position that covered it and as many of the other areas as she
could. Her plan was gelling as she walked around: She would get
into position before Gullenswan did. Once he showed up and she was
satisfied that he was gunning for her, then she would follow the
old Code of the West: Do Unto Others Before They Do You.
What she needed was a sniper-grade rifle. She had the money
but didn't have the time needed to put one together and test it
out. So she called Keith and outlined her plan. He listened, said
it sounded reasonable to him, and that he'd be in LaCrosse the day
after tomorrow when she returned from her cargo run.
Keith showed up at the appointed time with a long silver rifle
case and a smaller bag. Sherry showed him to an empty office, he
laid the case on the desk and popped the latches. Sherry said
"wow" in appreciation. Keith lifted the rifle out and handed it to
her. It was an M-21 sniper rifle, a highly accurate M-14 with a
Leatherwood scope. The sight itself was the heart of the rifle, it
adjusted the elevation for the drop of the bullet. The case
contained several hundred rounds of ammunition and spare magazines.
Keith cleared his throat. "I know you won't be engaging in
any firefights, but you might want to go do some practicing."
Sherry smiled. "It's a beauty." Then she turned serious. "I
think I know what Gullenswan's plan is." She outlined her belief
that he'd be in the area during whitetail season and try to shoot
her then.
Keith listened and nodded. "It makes sense. I'm guessing
that you plan to be able to stop him?"
Sherry nodded. "From what I know the police can't do a damn
thing until he breaks the law. And if what I'm suspecting is
right, he won't until he shoots. That's too late to do my ass any
good."
"True, but don't forget that he's a better shot wih a rifle
than you are, and he has a rifle capable of longer range than
you'll be able to use the M-21 effectively. It'll shoot accurately
out to 900 yards, but you'd be kidding yourself if you try to go
much over 400. And if you miss your first shot, he might nail you.
"And one other thing: Get a good pair of binoculars for
spotting. Don't use the riflescope for anything except target
acquisition. If you use a riflescope for spotting, someone else
might see that as an unfriendly act and react accordingley."
"Good idea," Sherry said.
Sherry started spending some time at a rifle range. After she
verified the sight's settings and became familiar with the rifle,
she stopped using the bench rest and began practicing other
shooting positions, especially prone and kneeling. Standing wasn't
going to be much use to her, but she did shoot it enough to know
how. The rifle had a Harris bipod which added to the weight but
made prone shooting a lot easier.
One conclusion she reached was that estrogen had cut into her
strength quite a bit. No doubt that Sam wouldn't have had anyhwere
near as much trouble handling the weight of a loaded M-21. She
regretted briefly that Keith hadn't given her a AR-15A2HB to save
a few pounds. But she didn't expect to be humping the boonies with
the M-21 if things worked according to her plan.
The FBI watch on Gullenswan was able to tip her off when he
began his trip towards LaCrosse. Sherry then went into her plan.
She drove her car to the airport and made sure she was seen
boarding a commercial flight to Chicago. This flight stopped at
Madison (like her cargo run), where she slipped off the airplane.
a trusted friend met her at the airport and drove her back to
LaCrosse with the arrival planned for 3am. The last part of the
drive to her house and away were done with the lights off. Sherry
changed into her fighting clothes grabbed her gear: rifle,
equipment, shelter half, clothing, food, and water. She then
donned a pair of night-vision goggles and headed for her position.
It was cold at night and Sherry was thankful her gear was up
to it. She was set in a natural depression near the top of a hill
about 800 yards from her house, it covered several of the shooting
positions she had scouted out. Now it was a matter of waiting.
Whitetail season started the next day, sporatic gunfire could
he heard as soon as the sun came up and legal shooting commenced.
Sherry checked out every movement she could see, a fair number of
hunters were either stand-hunting or still-hunting. Most of them
had on blaze-orange coats and hats, which made spotting them
easier. A couple looked like Gullenswan but none of them appeared
to be doing anything else than deer hunting. She did see one
hunter shoot a 4-point buck two hours into opening day, the deer
ran about 50 yards and collapsed. It was a well-placed shot. The
hunter field-dressed the deer and dragged it out to the road.
She saw him on the third day, or thought she had. Sherry was
using the night-vision goggles and saw someone pick their way
towards one of the shooting positions at 5am. She tried to see him
through the riflescope but it was too damn dark. The man settled
in, then she couldn't see him. Damn, she thought, I'm just going
to have to wait for daylight.
Now she had to keep very quiet, for it was dead calm. If she
made any noise she'd have to assume that whoever it was there would
hear her. While the dedicated hunters tried to be in their stands
before dawn, few were in the woods this early.
Dawn brought a major disappointment, she couldn't see the man,
not very well at least. There was enough to say that someone was
there, she could occaisionally see some movement. But she couldn't
see who was there, not enough to make a positive ID. Sherry wasn't
about to shoot someone just for being in a suspicious place. She'd
just have to wait. Maybe when he left his stand.
The problem there was that he didn't leave that night. Sherry
wanted to move so she'd have a better view of the hunter, but she
didn't trust her woodsman skills enough to move and carry her gear
without making any noise, certainly not in the dark. This was
going to get old very fast, and she was playing his game.
The next morning brought no change in the situation. Any
doubts that it was Gullenswan there vanished when a ten-point buck
walked by less than 100 yards from his position. That was a large
deer, any legitimate hunter would have shot at it. But the hunter
there didn't. Now Sherry was sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that
he was her intended killer, but the same problem remained: she
couldn't see a decent target through the riflescope. If Gullenswan
was a good as they said he was, then she had to connect on the
first try.
-----------------------------------------------------
Sherry was right: It was Gullenswan down there. He had
spotted her car in the employee's parking lot at the cargo
terminal, so he figured that she was on a run. He knew that she
flew night runs and got back soon after dawn. His plan was to use
the first morning as a dry run, to make sure that the position was
a good one and he could acquire the target. But now it was the
second morning and there was no sign of the target.
Something had to be wrong, but he didn't believe that she had
been spooked. A private detective had done a bit of surveillance
a few weeks ago, nothing was unusual then. He wished that he had
the resources of the official jobs for this one, rather than the
unofficial contacts that were paying for him now.
He watched his surroundings for awhile. As far as he could
tell, there was no surveillance. Few cars drove by, but they
didn't stop or slow down. They weren't the same cars, either.
What air traffic flew overhead was clearly going to the LaCrosse
airport. He didn't see any sign of anyone around him watching, but
he kew that meant little if the watcher was good.
Maybe her airplane had broken down somewhere else. The only
DC-3s he had seen recently were in latin America and he wasn't
impressed by their reliablity. For now, he'd wait this out. He
had adequate supplies for a few days and the weather, while cold at
night, wasn't anywhere near as bad as some other jobs he had been
on. Certainly nothing like the Baltics in February.
Nothing happened for two days. Then one afternoon, both
Gullenswan's and Sherry's attention were drawn to her house. A
car slowed down and stopped at the mailbox. Two riflescopes were
trained on it. It was her car. Sherry watched as a woman got out,
pulled the mail out, and got back into the car. Sherry recognized
her, it was Marsha Frye, the maintenance librarian. What the hell
was she doing, Sherry wondered.
Gullenswan wasn't wondering. The woman was driving the
target's car. She was the right height and hair color. Marsha got
back into the car before he decided to fire. She drove into the
driveway and shut the car off. Marsha picked up the mail and
walked around the front of the car towards the back door. he had
a few seconds and he used them; he fired when she was about four
feet from the side of the house.
Sherry jumped when she heard the shot. Through the `scope on
her rifle she saw Marsha's arms go flying, scattering the
accumulated mail everywhere. Marsha collapsed, her momentum and
the bullet caused her to fall towards the house. All Sherry could
see in her `scope was Marsha's body from the waist down. She
wasn't moving.
Sherry stifled the urge to run down, all that would do is get
her killed. She cursed her lack of foresight in not bringing a
cellular phone, that way she could stay concealed and call for
help. Her only option was to wait and hope that if Marsha wasn't
dead, that she didn't die from inattention.
From Gullenswan's view, all he could see of his target was her
legs. Nothing moved for twenty minutes, so he got up and started
to make his way towards the target to verify the kill. He was very
alert for any sounds or changes. He didn't think that he was under
surveillance, the police wouldn't have let someone lie there shot.
It was more a force of habit than anything conscious.
Sherry saw him break cover. He moved through an area that was
fairly thick with trees and brush, she tracked him, adjusting her
`scope to compensate for the changes in range. There was no wind,
she was thankful for that. If he didn't come to a clear area,
she'd shoot him when he crossed the road to the house.
Gullenswan was moving slowly. Sherry kept her breathing
regular to control any excitement which could throw her shot off.
She knew that she'd only get one chance with him. If she missed,
then she'd be playing his game. And he was a master.
The cover was lessening. She took up the slack on the
trigger, adding pressure as the sight was on, holding if it wasn't
or if Gullenswan wasn't clear. Just like a range, she thought.
Keep a good sight picture....WHAM!
Gullenswan felt the bullet hit him before he heard the shot.
The impact staggered him, but he stayed on his feet and tried to
run for cover. Who the fuck could that be, a corner of his mind
wondered.
Sherry reacted and fired again. This time she saw him go
down, losing control of his rifle, which landed several feet away.
She watched for five minutes, then she broke cover. She didn't
move as slowly as Gullenswan. She checked him out from several
feet away. His eyes were open and had an opaque look to them that
she had seen on dead deer. Just to be sure she took the bolt from
his rifle and threw it as far as she could, the rifle she flung in
another direction.
Now she was running to the house. A semi blew its horn in
annoyance as she cut in front of it. She slid to a stop and
checked Marsha, she was still breathing. Sherry bolted into the
house and called Keith's emergency number. Whoever took the call
said he'd get help there, she was to sit tight.
Help came quickly, a helicopter from the local truama center
landed across the road in ten minutes. By then Sherry had taken
some Saran Wrap and used it to seal Marsha's chest wound, then she
covered her with a few blankets and held her hand.
The EMTs had Marsha on the helicopter in less than a minute.
Sherry didn't think to tell them about Gullenswan until the
helicopter was over a mile away.
She did tell the cops who showed up, one checked him and said
he was dead, but they called for an ambulance anyway. They asked
her where the man's gun was, it took them an hour to find it and
longer to find the bolt. The cops wanted to know if he had shot
marsha, but were distinctly uninterested in who had shot
Gullenswan. Her rifle was still lying on the walk next to where
Marsha had been. Nobody even picked it up to check if it had been
fired.
Somebody had things pretty well arranged.
As soon as the cops left, Sherry picked up the scattered mail
and her rifle. She went inside and took a long, luxurious bath,
enjoying the feel of the water taking away the accumulated filth
and stink of living outside for several days. When she was done,
she let the water run down the drain, then she took a shower to
remove any film that was on her body.
Next she took care of the rifle, breaking it down and cleaning
the bore and the chamber. It was indeed a fine rifle and it had
done its part. Then she got dressed to go to the hospital. She
remembered a lesson a man had once given her: the staff'll treat
you better if you look as though you're on a similar level
professionally. So she wore her navy blue suit and a white blouse,
her interview suit, along with medium-height navy pumps. Most
interview suits, however, didn't conceal a snub-nosed .38 as hers
did.
She could see some bloodstains on the sidewalk when she went
out to her car. Those would have to be cleaned, but she wasn't
relishing the job. Marsha was an innocent in the incident, it was
unfair that she had to suffer for it. Sherry had felt a little bad
about her first two kills, especially the second man, but she had
no twinge at all about killing Gullenswan. If anything, she wished
he had suffered a little more.
The drive didn't take very long, about thirty minutes. Sherry
found a space in the vistor's lot and went into the main entrance.
The volunteer on the front desk, an elderly woman in her early 70s,
used a computer terminal to ascertain that Marsha Frye was in the
operating room, she directed Sherry to the appropriate waiting
area.
Sherry didn't make it there, not just yet. A woman with an
FBI badge intercepted her and steered her to an office suite.
Sherry took Keith's presence there as validation that the people
were who they said they were.
Keith came over, touched her on the shoulder, and said: "Nice
shooting for a girl." He said it in such a way that Sherry could
take no offense. Sherry just smiled. "I'd like to introduce
Patricia Altan, the agent who brought you here, Justin Hagar of the
DIA and Terri Schiller of the CIA."
Sherry nodded. "Ok, what's up?" What now, she thought. She
found a place to sit.
Schiller took the floor. "What we need to do is several
things. First, we need to conduct a debriefing. Then we need to
go over a cover story that'll hold water. After that, we need to
discuss some other loose ends."
First, the debriefing. They had Sherry tell them the whole
chain of events, from when she left her apartment to go to Madison
until she came to the hospital. As could be expected, different
details emerged as they went over it until they were satisfied that
Sherry told everything she knew. Hagar seemed to be a little
skeptical of her unwillingness to fire until she was positive it
was Gullenswan, but Altan finally mentioned that if she had shot
the wrong person that they couldn't have covered for her.
The second issue was the cover story. Like any good lie, it
had to be as close to the truth as possible. The final version was
that Sherry had taken off for Madison on a short vacation. She had
run into a friend and since neither one was having much fun, they
came home. Her friend had dropped her off at her house and Sherry
just vegged out for a few days. Sherry had finally called Marsha
and asked her to bring her car by, Marsha did so and was hit by a
stray round from a hunter. Sherry had not heard the car arrive so
she was unaware that Marsha had been shot for at least a half-hour.
Sherry wasn't too enthusiastic about it. As she put it: "The
cops and the paramedics saw me. Most people don't wait inside
their home for a visitor wearing camouflage clothing and carrying
a sniper rifle. Hell, if they were ten feet away, they probably
could smell me."
Hagar thought about it. "Yeah, we may be getting too detailed
on the story. Let's just say she was hit by a stray bullet fired
by a hunter. That's close enough as we all know that Gullenswan
wasn't trying to kill her personally. If she survives, then there
won't be a lot of press interest anyway."
"Fine," Sherry said with little enthusiasm. It sounded weak
to her, but then again, people getting hit by stray rounds wasn't
exactly front-page news this time of year.
"Ok," Schiller said. "That takes part of the immediate
problem. Now, what do we do to preclude a repeat?"
"What are you talking about a `repeat,'" Sherry asked
somewhat stridently. "How many vengeful snipers do you have out
there, for God's sake?" She looked right at Hagar.
"I suppose I'd better explain what's going on."
"Damn right," muttered Sherry.
"What we have," he began, "is a group of people who have
manipulated the programs to benefit themselves. In plain language,
they used the system to make a lot of money. The people wo run
black programs have a wide range of latitude to get the job done.
They don't have a lot of oversight, because any outside auditor
would have to be read into the program and know the whole scope of
it. So in effect we mainly hope the people running the programs
don't get too greedy.
"That didn't happen with the program you were in. Some people
decided to steal everything they could. We were becoming
suspicious and were working to catch them when you showed up on
that aircraft carrier. Then we quickly shut everything down and
went after the profiteers."
"So where do I fit in now, and why did Gullenswan want to kill
me?"
"As I said, you were the reason we shut them down. Gullenswan
had a finger in the pie, so he wasn't too happy."
"How much did he take out of it?"
Hagar looked a little discomfited. "He was a minor player in
the different scams, we figure he netted about two-fifty over three
years."
"`Two-fifty' what?"
"Thousand."
"Not bad. I take it there were others who did far better?"
"Yes."
"Do they hold me responsible for screwing up their action?"
"Hard to say. We really don't know."
"How were they taking money out of the program?"
"I don't see where you have a need to know that."
Sherry shook her head. "You didn't answer my second question,
either: Where do I fit in. So I think you need me for something,
otherwise most of you wouldn't be here. I'm not one of your
operatives, I'm just a private citizen. If you want me in on this,
then tell me the story. Otherwise I'm out. Understand?"
Nobody said anything. Sherry nodded, stood up, and started
for the door. She didn't look back as she left the office.
The receptionist at the waiting room told Sherry that Marsha
was still in the OR. Sherry knew something about survival rates,
so she took that as a hopeful sign, she settled in for a long wait.
This is all there is of this story