In the early morning light, Bobby stretched his arms to toss off the last remnants of sleep. The flat military base opened up to a panoramic view of the cracked, dry lake bed—”beautiful downtown China Lake”—that spread out undisturbed for miles, white and dazzling. Chemical plants around nearby Trona scooped and processed the powdery wastes, but the U.S. Navy had claimed a chunk of the desolate landscape for its own use.
Bobby felt rested and ready for the cross-country mission. He had a few hours until “wheels up,” but he had errands to run before his week-long absence from the base. The scheduled time was the latest they could leave and still be cleared all the way to Corpus Christie, Texas. If they took off early, so much the better—more time for beach, surf, and babes.
Overhead, an experimental aircraft lit up its engines to break the 6 A.M. silence; flames shot out 20 feet behind the distant jet’s engines as afterburners kicked on.
A door opened down the hall. Bobby saw a head crowned with a shock of red hair. Bobby grinned. For once he wasn’t going to have trouble getting his buddy Ralph “Barfman” Petronfi out of bed. Ever since they had been roommates at the Naval Academy, Petronfi could sleep through anything—except on a flying day.
Bobby whistled. “Hey, Barfman.” Petronfi’s propensity for tossing his cookies while flying was legendary.
Barfman turned sleepy eyes to Bobby. “Hi, Rhino. Ready for the beach?”
“Soon as I clean up my jeep. Gotta grab some breakfast.”
“I’ll file a flight plan. Want to leave early?” Barfman said.
“If I can get everything done.”
“I’ll preflight us at the squadron.”
“That’s a rog.” Bobby ducked back into his quarters to pull on his gray flightsuit from the narrow closet, patting down his many pockets to check that each held its appropriate map, keys, wallet, pen, chewing gum. Bobby went out again, hiking to the Officer’s Club to gulp down a breakfast of eggs, warmed-over steak, and powdered orange drink—a breakfast high in protein so he wouldn’t need to take a crap during the day’s flight alone in a cramped cockpit. Barfman usually fasted before a long flight, which kept him from puking into his oxygen mask if they encountered any clear-air turbulence.
Bobby grabbed his nylon flight bag on the way to the mud-spattered jeep. He had packed the night before—swim trunks and two changes of jeans and cotton shirts. The Naval training base near the Texas beach was a favorite roost for cross-country crews, complete with surf and bikinis. Bobby had a nice life, flying every day, living on flight pay, no kids, no alimony. Once in a while he missed playing football, but flying made up for it.
Parked in the weedy gravel lot, his black jeep was plastered with muck from a weekend of four-wheeling around dry Owens Lake. He loved doing doughnuts out in the brackish standing water and spraying salt and powder in a rooster-tail behind him. He didn’t want to waste time washing the jeep right now, but he knew how much damage the alkali mud could do to his paint job. With a little time until the preflight briefing, Bobby decided to use the base’s self-service wash three blocks down the street.
Bouncing into the driver’s seat, he poked his keys into the ignition and tried to start the jeep. The engine barely turned over, and when it caught, the jeep rattled as if it were running low on gasoline. The gas tank read full; he had filled it up after returning late last night. Bobby frowned. He smelled a faint odor of rotten eggs.
Bobby nursed the chugging jeep along the street lined with old barracks buildings and a small BX. He parked in the service station lot crowded with the hodgepodge of other vehicles. He swung out of the jeep and jogged inside the station. A female captain and two men out of uniform stood in line at the service desk; another two women—wives of enlisted men—sat in chairs in the waiting area.
Bobby listened to the mechanic taking information from the first customer. The phone rang, but the attendant ignored it. Bobby glanced at his watch. The two women sitting in the plastic chairs looked impatient and surly, as if they had been here a long time. He sighed. He would have to leave the jeep here and walk the couple blocks to base operations for the flight. He regretted not being able to wash the mud off, but it was only a jeep, not a Jag. Jeeps were supposed to get dirty.
The service attendant looked harried. “Got five people ahead of you, Lieutenant,” he said with surprising courtesy. “Don’t know if we can get to it this morning.”
“Can I leave it? I’m gone for the week.”
The attendant shoved a triplicate repair sheet across the desk. “Sure. Fill it out on top and sign here.”
Bobby scribbled his name and details about the jeep. “Looks like you’re pretty busy. What’s up—two-for-one special?”
“You tell me. Started this morning. If I didn’t know better I’d think we got some of that bad batch of gasoline, but our gas comes from Bakersfield, not the San Francisco refineries.”
Bobby dug into his flight suit for the keys. He tossed them across the counter. “I’ll be back on the 9th.”
Outside, he retrieved his flight bag from the driver’s seat, pulled the canvas cover over the top of the jeep, and started walking down the street. The way his luck was going, Corpus Christi would probably be hit with a hurricane when he was halfway there, and he’d have to divert to Del Rio instead….
Squadron headquarters was a long one-story building painted white to reflect the sun. The squadron mascot, a Tasmanian Devil with an arrow through its head, was painted on the cinder-block outside walls. Inside, photos of old F 4s taking off from a wooden-decked aircraft carrier, a lumbering P 3 flying patrol over the ocean, a pair of F 14 Tomcats launching missiles hung on the walls. At the end of the hall a set of doors led to the ready room, weather unit, orderly room, and the CO’s office.
Entering the preflight area, he saw Barfman in a gray flight suit hunched over a chest-high table, drawing with a red magic marker. Maps, computer listings, and Notes-To-Airmen covered the bulletin boards.
“Just finishing off the flight plan, Rhino,” Barfman said. “I want to go before the hunger pains start. Ready to head out?”
“Yeah,” said Bobby. “My jeep conked out on me, had to leave it at the service station.”
“From what I heard in the ready room, you’re lucky they even put your name on the waiting list. Base motorpool is backed up, and they’re refusing to take any more vehicles.”
The memory of that guy running out of gas in the Death Valley desert raced through Bobby’s head. “Is there some sabotage going on around here or what?”
“Yeah, it’s some new Commie secret weapon. Magically exchanges the engines of American-made cars with top-of-the-line North Korean jobs. That’s why everything’s breaking down.”
Bobby swung his flight bag to the foot of the table. “Thank you for explaining. Now let’s book out of here before they cancel our flight.”
“Hey, I’ve waited three months for this cross country. No way am I going to let a bad batch of gasoline put a hold on my vacation.” Barfman pushed a sheaf of lined papers over to Bobby, folding open to the right page. “Log in the flight plan and I’ll check with Weather.”
Bobby looked over the route Barfman had outlined in marker. They were set to make the trip with an intermediate stop at Nellis AFB in Nevada, just outside of Las Vegas. They probably could have stretched the hop to El Paso, but if they broke down, spending time in Las Vegas was preferable to the Texas border town any day….
“Ah, Rhino, got a little problem here.” The sound of Barfman’s voice crackled through the white-noise roar of the jets.
It took Bobby a second to snap away from a daydream of sea breezes, warm sand, and a Gulf shrimp dinner. They were no more than an hour out of Las Vegas, heading across the blistered barren desert of central New Mexico. Cramped in the cockpit of his one-man fighter jet, Bobby bent to pick up the handset. He clicked the radio, using the frequency he and Barfman had agreed on.