.

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Extracts from Maintenon 3.









“After you.”

With a polite nod, Hubert led the way up to the third floor landing where there were exactly two chocolate brown-painted doors, one on the right and one on the left. The walls were a faded peachy colour. The steps continued switching back and forth up another two floors from the landing.

A radio played softly, but it was in the apartment behind them. The one they were interested in seemed dead silent, but then they heard a clunk and what sounded like a match striking. Someone coughed and that’s when Hubert raised his hand and knocked firmly but not overly-loud.

There came some indeterminate sounds and then footsteps falling on thin carpet over hollow boards.

With no peep-hole, the rattling of a chain—it was probably being put on rather than being taken off, was no surprise, and then one dark eye was peering at Levain and Hubert through a seventy-five millimetre gap.

“Yes?”

The man eyed them suspiciously.

“We are from the police. We would like to speak to an Aron Saunier, please.”

The man uttered a deep sigh of resignation.

“Yes, he’s home.” The door closed and then the chain came off and the gentleman let them in, where a homey smell of cooking, mostly fried meat, and tobacco, and sweat and steam quickly enveloped them in its sticky embrace.

It was the smell of bacon and tobacco, thought Hubert as he waved clouds of stale smoke aside.

The man, shuffling along a short and rather dim hallway, wore slippers, baggy pajama bottoms and a housecoat with an undershirt. Lanky white hair stuck out all round, including upper chest and no doubt the armpits. He had long sideburns and a patch of bushy grey hair that went from ear to ear and nowhere else, not even a vestige of it on top anymore. Hubert looked at his watch, briefly struggling to remember today’s date. He had at least three pens with him.

Stopping inside the front room, judging by the windows and the yellow curtains, the man turned to his right.

“Aron! Someone is here to see you.” He glanced back.

“It’s all right, sir, he’s not in any trouble.” Levain kept his hands in his pockets but Hubert looked around, taking in the seediness of the place.

The couch sagged, the arms were ripped on the armchair, the end tables were miss-matched, the one picture on the long wall was a faded print of some clipper-ship at anchor in a cove with palm trees. The picture hung crooked. The walls showed brighter patches were someone else’s pictures had hung for quite some time. 

The ashtray overflowed and there were several dirty glasses strategically placed here and there. There were no coasters, judging by the prominent rings he saw on the coffee table, mostly on one corner area. Beside the door was a crate full of empty beer bottles, with a couple of much larger ones standing beside it.

It was all very impressive.

The man nodded glumly as ashes grew on the end of his cigarette. When he took it out of his mouth, he held it so very carefully, so as not to accidentally knock it off on the rug, but the rug looked distinctly grimy, pounded black and flat in the entranceway from a thousand people over the years. When he turned, his housecoat was tattered in the area of the behind.

From somewhere off in the distance they heard a toilet flush, very reluctant it sounded, and then then they heard thumps from sock feet as the young man came down a side passage beside what was probably the kitchen.

Judging by the room they were in, someone was sleeping on the couch. The blanket was thrown hastily up over the back of the couch and there were two pillows on the right end of it. On balance, Levain thought it might be the old man, who didn’t seem all that ambitious. He looked to be about forty-five or sixty.

Then Aron was there, freezing on the spot when he got a good look at them.

They flashed their badges in perfunctory manner.

“Is there someplace we could talk, Monsieur Saunier?”

The young man looked defiant and a little bit scared.

“What’s this about?”

Hubert was bang on, again.

“It’s really nothing to worry about. We would like to ask one or two questions about a party you were at.”

The startled look on the kid’s face was priceless. Levain wondered about that as the kid actually relaxed, air coming out in a big rush for some reason.

“What—a party?”

Okay, here’s another short extract:

The boy allowed that his father was ill and had been for some time. A hunted look came over his face upon speaking the words. Nodding, Hubert could think of nothing further to say. It put the peeling paint and shabby furnishings, the smell of grease and cabbage, into a whole new light.

At least in these respects, the kid was paying his own way, or at least Hubert hoped he was.

It seemed likely, but he didn’t want to ask about the financial arrangements. The kid had his dignity and a good cop would leave him as much of it as he possibly could. Until further notice. And a horrible feeling it was sometimes, too.

Hubert put his notebook away and on some odd impulse, maybe to try and take some of the sting out of it, he stuck out his hand.

“It’s been a pleasure meeting you.”

Almost beyond his control, pure reflex, the kid’s hand came up and they shook briefly.

“Thank you, Aron.”

“Ah—you’re welcome.”

Another lost kid.

There was probably something else he should have said, but for the life of him he couldn’t think of anything good. The doorway back into his own life was just ahead.

“Hey!”

He spun.

“What’s your name?”

“Hubert.”

The kid dove into the bedroom and came out with a sheaf of pamphlets.

He thrust a small bundle of them into Hubert’s hand and then his hands dropped helplessly to his sides.

Without even looking at it, Hubert nodded in a friendly manner and then went looking for Andre, who was most likely down at curbside by this time. Aron was about four years younger than Hubert. What a gulf that was sometimes.

Another extract:

Gilles sat at his desk, waiting for a friend from another department to call on him, reading reports, going over his thoughts on several outstanding cases, and writing up a final report on an arrest he had made last week. 

He had a few files like that to do, a small stack on the left front corner of his desk. File folders held shut with rubber bands. A man’s life, summed up in an instant for judge and jury. Those people were at least safely behind bars, awaiting trial, still, one caught up when one could.

From time to time his thoughts returned to the Ducharme case. It was hard to say if they were making any real progress. Not every case got solved, admittedly. The trouble was that for some reason, without knowing her, Gilles somehow liked Muriel Ducharme. He liked her in spite of himself. It was just one of those unexplainable things. In spite of all her faults, barely hinted at by anything so far, he had a sneaking kind of affection for that certain type of battle-axe. They had their rights just like anyone else, and some of them did a lot of good in the world.

If nothing else, they weren’t wishy-washy, weak characters, they knew what they wanted and how the world should be. They needed no validation.

Sometimes the police knew who did it, but didn’t have the evidence to even lay a charge. This was not one of those times. The very class of people they were dealing with made gathering a case together more difficult, cynically it must be said, and he had often allowed that poor people were easier to convict.

But if Gilles Maintenon was to charge someone, he had bloody well better get the right guy. For one thing, he had to live with himself. It was his only proper attitude, and one he had instilled into the heads of his men with a heavy if symbolic hammer.

The case was unusual in the fact that he still had no sense of who the killer might have been. 

As usual, this revolved around the question of why.

No one ever did anything for no reason.

The fingerprint reports were conclusive: no prints that could not be accounted for by family members or household staff. And yet there were even a couple positively belonging to Philipe. For the most part, his prints were on the insides of closets, and inside some little-used drawers in his old bedroom, but there were a couple of oddballs, for example a row of four under the edge of a small brass and marble coffee table downstairs. He’d probably helped move it years before, and now it was a memento of those better times. It was a piece of evidence that meant nothing until some theory of the crime took it into account—and they still had no theory of the crime, although one or two suggested themselves well enough.

Philipe had been gone for years, by all accounts.

Gilles’ head came up and he stared into space again. He was almost certain he’d heard something, a familiar cough that could only belong to one man. His face changed, he was back in the room again, and Tailler saw it happen.

A knock came at the door. Tailler was rising when it opened. At first a head came in, looked around the door and sought out Gilles. A scruffy old man looked around, taking in Tailler as if reassuring himself that this was indeed the place. As Tailler sank down, the hunched form straightened up and entered, gripping the edge of the door with fingers like sausages. They were the hands of an old farmer, and very strong still, thought Tailler.

An unprepossessing figure shuffled in, shaking off a battered fedora and checking out Tailler and Firmin with sneaky, pale blue eyes. His eyes swept the room, taking in everything, and nodding at the open windows and fresh air.

“You guys do yourselves all right up here, eh?” He had just the voice for it, deep and tobacco-brown.

“Alphonse!” Gilles rose to greet his old friend.

“Tailler, this is Inspector Alphonse Durand, a legend in the force.”

Firmin smiled, looking up and down again quickly, intent on his paperwork. Tailler nodded dutifully, bobbing his head in acknowledgement of the gentleman’s second appraising glance.


END

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Blue, Man's Best Friend

Huh? Jason was just there a minute ago. (kjhosein. Wiki.)




Tiffany Lambert watched Jason Parker wade into the lake.

“God, they grow so fast at that age.” 

Meg Parker lay on the blanket beside her, propped up on two elbows.

She took an appraising glance at her shoulders, judging whether to apply more goop just yet.

“He won’t want to go anywhere with his mother before long.”

“No. I suppose you’re right.” Meg watched as Jason plunged into the blue sandy depths. 

The water was calm and clear as glass.

Multicoloured rocks along the shoreline, white gulls standing fifty feet away and watching them speculatively, the water, the clouds rolling past on the Michigan side, the somnolent heat of the day, it all combined to give a feeling of comfortable timelessness.

She was tempted to look at her watch, but tried to properly appreciate a pair of white sailboats cruising east a half-mile offshore. What had she been thinking of? Meg wasn’t exactly young anymore, and the beach was just plain boring. Several hours of relaxation sounded so good over the phone, unfortunately it gave a person time to think of all the important things being left undone.

Two hundred yards out, there was a lone swimmer, just a black dot for a head and an arm coming up out of the water in measured pace. Light glinted off his goggles and he was wearing some kind of wetsuit.

Jason’s older brother Tom and Tiffany's son Mark were both fifteen. Strong swimmers with years of lessons, and all the life-saving badges to prove it, they were paddling strongly for a big yellow ball in the water that she thought was for sailboats. It was one end of a triangular course. Meg had read it in the paper.

Tiffany sat up, shading her eyes and looking out at the water.

“Jason!” The boy kept stroking, head down in the water and he probably couldn’t hear his mother.

“Tell him to come back.”

Jason was trying to catch up with the older boys. Meg realized that her own limited swimming skills would be of no use in a real emergency.

“Jason!” Tiffany got up and walked down to the water’s edge as Blue, curled up in the sand with his nose stuck in his behind, lifted his big head and gave a gruff little bark as he stared at Tiffany.

“Jason!” The tone was high and strident, and for a moment, it seemed he looked back at her and waved. 

Meg couldn’t quite be sure.

Then he soldiered on, heedlessly.

“Shit!” Meg looked around.

The lifeguard was half a mile up the public beach, where the city had placed volleyball nets, and there was a chip truck and plenty of parking under the lights. This part of the beach was unpatrolled.

Lips moving silently in heartfelt prayer, Meg Parker watched as the two older boys seemed to meet up with the first swimmer. They treaded water fifty yards from the buoy, but she could catch no sound from this distance, with the waves and the light breeze and the sound of boat motors and airplanes hanging in the air.

Jason was in trouble.

Tiffany screamed and Meg leapt to her feet, running to the water’s edge and screaming and crying before thinking of her cell phone.

Meg moaned and cried and tried to dash into the lake, but Jason was too far out and she just stood there, yelling and screaming as the three swimmers already in the water remained oblivious to the fact that Jason was drowning right before his horrified mother’s eyes.

With a lunge out of nowhere, the dog raced for the water’s edge, legs a blur as it emitted one short, sharp back and Tiffany turned, tears falling down her cheeks and spit flying from her open mouth as the dog splashed into Lake Huron and struck out in a strong manner for where Jason had just gone down for the third time.

“Oh, God, oh God, oh God.” Tiffany was hysterical, shrieking at the people out there, and they just weren’t listening.

The dog left a wake behind it, head held high and eyes riveted on the widening ripples where Jason was last seen.

Meg’s shaking fingers finally managed to get her phone out of her bag, and dial 911. She shouted into the phone and the dispatcher tried to calm her down and get some sense of what was happening.

“Jason’s drowning! Jason’s drowning!” Meg yelled the name of the beach and then ran to the water’s edge. 

“Don’t go in! Don’t go in! Please, Tiff, don’t go in there!”

She put the phone up to her head again as the dog approached Jason’s watery grave.

Finally, Mark and Tom were looking this way and yet they still didn’t move or swim.

Meg waved frantically at them, trying to get the urgency across and finally one moved off and the other two began swimming back to shore.

Meg dropped to her knees in the sand and cried. From the south, behind the beach and somewhere in the city proper, the faint wail of sirens began. They gradually got louder and then the strong voice of a male in a bathing suit was right there at her shoulder.

“Jason’s drowning!” Tiffany pointed, but it was futile as there was nothing to see.

Meg didn’t even see the dog out there anymore, just the one swimmer at the buoy and the other two almost halfway back. The noise and the action on shore had caught their attention, as they put their heads down and struck out more strongly.

“Oh, please, please, please come back to me.” Meg watched her son in anguish.

They must still be in eight or ten feet of water.

The police were arriving, striding calmly through the deep sand with notebooks and radios and one hand always on their holster.

The male in the bathing suit, a muscular young fellow, was in the water, trying to pull Tiffany back in, and her hysteria was making the job very difficult as he pleaded with her.

“What’s going on here, Ma’am?” The two cops, male and female, eyed her and Tiffany.

“Her son went down and never came up.” They reached for the microphones clipped to their lapels.

“And what’s the mother’s name?”

“Tiffany.” The female cop moved to intercept her as she came up out of the water.

Tiffany threw herself into the sand and moaned in her anguish.

Meg pointed urgently. People had been resuscitated before, even after ten or fifteen minutes.

“Right out there…God, maybe two hundred yards.”

Of course the cop had no idea of just exactly what that meant, and they would need to get boats and divers and things…a sob overcame her.

That’s when she saw the dog.

Its head popped up out of the water.

“There! Right there!”

The officer’s head spun to look as he fingered his microphone and began talking into it.

Men dressed in firefighting equipment raced past, four of them carrying a rubber dingy with a motor already on the back and another man followed in scuba gear, plodding along on his huge flippers and with only the mask pushed back, revealing a face and the humanity within.

“God. God. Please. No.” The cop restrained Tiffany from tearing at her hair and two more figures, bearing a backboard, knelt down to talk to her and take charge of her as the cop straightened up.

The officer, a pleasant-looking blonde woman of no petite dimensions, turned and looked out to the water.

“He’s got him!” Meg shouted and jumped for joy, clapping her hands and trying to whistle at the dog but her mouth was all twisted up and it wouldn’t work right anymore. “Blue! Blue! Oh, fuck, what a beautiful dog! Bring him here, boy!”

The officer beside her was speechless, but then he threw his notebook down and began shouting at the dog, the men in the boat and the boys still in the water.

“You! In the water! Get out of the water!” He cupped his hands around his mouth and made it carry.

Everyone, the crowd, other bathers and people from the adjacent picnic area, were all shouting at once, rooting for the boy and his dog.

Meg and the assembled crowd watched in horror and wonder as the dog, who was making painfully slow progress as the boat raced on paddles alone to meet them.

She watched, unable to tear herself away, as Tiff, sedated quickly and strapped to the board, rolled her eyes and gnashed her teeth in low, feral, incoherent moans.

They were transferring Jason into the boat, rocking gently on its own swells.

“Yes! Yes!” Meg couldn’t stop crying and sobbing, but she got it out.

With a gargantuan effort, the dog half-jumped in and willing hands dragged him aboard.

His titanium joints, blue plastic shell and opalescent eyes gleamed in triumph even from this distance. Meg stood with her hands over her mouth and waited.

Blue sat on the prow of the boat with tongue hanging out and a canine grin that was unmistakable.

The men on board had Jason face-down and were pumping water out of him…the bow touched the shore and they leapt out. The dog raced up, tail wagging and face alight with the boundless joy of all dogs everywhere, and Meg fell to her knees and embraced him.

“Good dog! Good dog! Oh, Blue, you’re such a good dog.” His neoprene shoulder and hip pads were almost dry already and he was almost more than she could handle in his excitement.

She clung to him, giving way to her own tears again and she could barely see through the haze.

Another board was right there at the shoreline, and the attendants quickly loaded Jason up and whisked him away up the beach to the parking lot and a waiting ambulance. Other attendants picked up Tiff and in a more relaxed pace, took her off as well.

Meg followed, hoping against hope, and praying that God would intervene and give Jason a miracle.

He was a good boy and too young to die. Please, God.

***

It made all the papers and got a brief spot on the television evening news. There was a half-page photo of Jason in his hospital bed with one arm around the dog, proudly displaying the bite marks on his right bicep, the dog with front paws up on the bed and head turned towards the camera with that irrepressible grin. His mom and dad leaned in on each side of Blue and Jason, pure pride and love and heartfelt thanks just beaming out of them.

The headline was simple enough: Man’s best friend saves drowning child.


End




Monday, November 4, 2013

Writing With Confidence.

Add caption










A few successful experiments in writing breeds confidence.

Over the course of time, that confidence becomes unshakeable.

I’m just in the process of finishing up the first draft of my twelfth novel. It’s at 56,000 words and I’m shooting for 60,000+.

It’s an interesting feeling, one preggers with hope and satisfaction. At the same time, I still need a cover for the book. It will be gone through a few times, as I check for errors of time and place, making sure all the names are correct, fleshing out room descriptions, character descriptions, decribing more fully the exterior places, and all that sort of thing.

It is a process.

There is this feeling of accomplishment. I totally controlled this book from start to finish, and it will end up at the exact length I projected. It’s more linear, smoother than the first two, (certainly the first one) and it pays more attention to tropes and conventions of the genre.

My last half dozen books have been like that, in that they all had a certain pace and came in where I wanted in terms of word count.

Lately I’ve been writing clean copy. It flows well enough, with some nice cadences in places. The Maintenon mystery series books do have a unique feel and voice to them. They are different in tone from much of what is out there and available to readers, as written in English by native English speakers. I had fun writing them, and it really is a kind of parody.

Set in 1931, this particular mystery involves the murder of an old woman, not rich but well-off, and as a writer there is the pleasure of learning about the era. The research into another time and place can be fascinating and educational. I am becoming comfortable writing about it, bearing in mind no personal knowledge of France, or Paris, or anything else. I know little of police work and have never investigated a murder.

In some weird sense, to set out to write a certain kind of novel is an adventure. No adventure would be complete without some effort, some sacrifice, one where you dig down deep inside and scrape the bottom of the barrel, just to keep going sometimes. This book required some stretch on the part of the author, if only in the discipline—writing day in and day out and keeping the project alive and moving forwards is half the battle.

There is that feeling that one has overcome all obstacles, and in that sense writing a book is a character-building experience in more ways than one. Writers are creative, resilient people, with a rich stock of personal attributes, including persistence and a willingness to take a few risks.

Otherwise we could never even finish writing a book.

To me, I think, the story is everything—and throwing aside all mundane considerations of a professional, or business type nature, there is such a thing as the art of storytelling. To master than art, in the form of the written word, well, that is my goal.

To look back, is to see progress, and to look forward, is to see infinite possibilities, although time is precious.

***

For the Maintenon series, bearing in mind my ongoing program of upgrading the marketing images, now would be a good time to get new pictures for the three books and the original novella. This will cost a few bucks and I can only put it on my credit card.

One thing I know for sure, I don’t really want a skull on the cover of a series that might go to twenty books or more, assuming I live that long and one new mystery a year.

This one needs formatting, ISBN number, and all of that. New covers take time to design. Barring unforeseen computer explosions, the book will be published in a couple of weeks.

“There’s many a slip ‘tween the crouch and the leap,” as my old sabre instructor used to say; which you can find in some old George Macdonald Fraser novel.

As for Maintenon Mystery # 3, I don’t even have a title yet.

Now that’s just sad, ladies and gentlemen!

For the Maintenon # 3 book I wrote 28,869 words in thirteen days, Sept 1-13, and then set it aside while I did other things. I upgraded numerous marketing images, put together three short story collections, published a few short stories, kept up submissions and blog posts.

There is the artistic, creative side, and then there is the business side. The business side can be creative as well, it’s a matter of seeing certain opportunities and then doing the work.

An example: with my new browser showing me things I couldn’t see before, and doing things I couldn’t do before, what are the odds that now I can complete the Canadian tax information on the Omnilit book publishing platform? As an independent author, I want to be on as many platforms and in as many stores as possible. Kind of a no-brainer.

It’s like there’s never enough time in the day, and yet day by day, and in every way, we just keep getting better and better.

I suppose I have an unfair advantage. I don’t have a spouse and three kids, I’m not dragging them off to grandma’s for Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving. I’m not taking them to Mexico or Florida for a week in the winter and I don’t have to worry about summer vacation. I don’t have a big fancy house and lots of landscaping to look after, nor do I have two cars, a trailer, motorcycles, a boat and scuba or fishing equipment to look after or just move out of the way when I want something.

To those who say we are not in competition, I say, you know yourselves best. You know your own circumstances, and your own potential better than I ever could.

All of our circumstances are different, and to be jealous of someone else is a waste of my time.

To be spiteful towards them is to reveal our innermost insecurities.

Que sera, sera.

To those who say you can’t write a good novel in a weekend, I suspect you are right, but then neither one of us has ever tried.

This is why I really don’t have much of an opinion on traditional publishing: because I’ve never done it.

How could I possibly speak intelligently on the subject?

It doesn’t seem very likely, does it?

And anything they have to say about me is irrelevant, and most likely fatuous in the extreme.



Friday, November 1, 2013

The Martyr Charter.








From a thousand different backgrounds, many keeping a secret for months or even years, along a thousand different paths of enlightenment, it had finally come down to this. All of them would have the satisfaction of drawing attention to their cause and to their willingness to sacrifice for it.

It had that much going for it.

Fred closed the passenger manifest and muttered something.

“What?”

“Nicely apportioned.”

Barney snorted, having read the thing right alongside of his captain.

They had a mix of M.A.D.D. people, Right-to-Lifers, Pro-Choicers, animal-rights activists, and one or two who had steadfastly labeled themselves tourists and kept their motivations to themselves. There were quite a number of Ovaltine Party Members hoping to score some points as it was budget time again in their country. 

A small contingent of jilted lovers, with kind of a disproportionate number from Pajan, rounded out the ensemble.

The bulbous form of the Airbus 640-P for Pilgrim sat poised on the end of the runway at Brobdinak’sInternational Airport. The runway shimmered in heat haze, but the interior was cool enough.

The Pilot, Fred and his Second Officer/Copilot Barney, strictly humourous code-names but useful still, ran through the pre-take-off check-list one more time. The heavily-modified aircraft was unlike anything they had ever flown previously.

They had never seen each other before being selected for this mission, and hopefully, would never see each other again.

Yet they had grown into a strangely intimate friendship over the past few months.

With the 640-P stressed for seven golly-gees, and capable of spanning well over half a globe un-refuelled, they had spent a thousand hours in the flight simulators and hundreds of hours in real-time cockpit familiarization for this inaugural mission.

Aboard were a thousand of the faithful, each to his own persuasion, all of whom had paid a million Upottsian dollars for the privilege of this one-way flight.

“Ready.”

Fred looked over with full confidence evident in his features. That’s not to say there weren’t a few butterflies in either man’s stomach.

“Roger that.”

The copilot touched a button and spoke into his throat microphone, his features obscured by his combat helmet, flash goggles and face-mask, still hanging loose from one side as it wasn’t necessary to do it up yet. 

Not for minutes would they need it.

In the meantime, they had taken the place of a regularly scheduled flight, flight number six-seven-one, Brobdinak to Upottsia. Timing was crucial, but so far nothing had gone wrong.

“Tower, this is Pilgrim Airlines six-seven-one, requesting clearance for takeoff.”

“Roger, tower here. You have clearance for take-off. Proceed to altitude thirty-one and please do not deviate while transiting military area B-67-f-niner-smegma. Over.”

“Roger that.” Barney repeated the instructions, which were simple and familiar enough to the former airline pilots.

The men reached up and snapped on the masks.

With Fred holding the yoke, Barney began sliding the four coupled throttles and then the plane began to move…ever so slowly at first, as he stopped the throttles against the end of the gate, and then it went faster and faster until the lines, lights and markers coming up under the nose were just a blur.

The numbers on the speedometer soon cleared the safety zone, a figure calculated according to fuel load, number of passengers and their total weight, and then it was time. For this flight there was no luggage, and little in the way of disposables, just three days worth of meals and coffee for the six crew members, which included four flight officers and two stewards/bouncers. One guy had specifically asked for chocolate milk, and in fact it had been provided.

“Rotate.”

Fred pulled back on the stick, using a bit of left rudder to counteract a light crosswind, and then the big jet began to climb out, the dim shape of the city dropping away in their peripheral vision.

Barney kept an eye on the speed, angle-of-attack, engine performance and altimeter. All the radio and navigation systems were fully functional as Fred turned the yoke and the plane rolled into its first clearing turn, continuing to gain altitude all the while.

Barney glanced over, noting the sheen of sweat on the small patches of skin visible around the eyes and forehead.

“How does she handle?”

“Not bad. Pretty much the way she did in the simulator.” Actually, the controls seemed a bit heavier, but he was convinced that was just his own stress.

You could throw the ship around pretty easily in the simulator, but the price of a mistake was nil. This was different.

“Yep.” Fred turned. “God is great, my young friend.”

They were on their way and once out of Brobdinakian airspace, they would follow a Great Circle route, over the bulk of East Midwestern Eurasia and then over the vast Specific Ocean.

“Thirteen-point-one hours to first destination.” Barney checked all of his figures repeatedly, but it appeared he hadn’t missed anything.

For security reasons, if there was a problem, now was the time to turn back.

“All systems are go.”

“Thirty-one thousand…coming up. Mark.”

“Huh?” Barney looked around in confusion, but then grinned slyly. “Oh. Right.”

Fred had a small smile on his face. His young accomplice was incorrigible. Whatever the Seven Purgatories that actually meant.

Fred eased his pressure on the stick and levelled the aircraft. After a sweep of the instrument panel, he engaged the autopilot and then he could finally relax.

The men took their masks off as if by some unspoken agreement to heighten the Victorian melodramatic effect of it all.

“Ah, shit.”

“What?” The shock of adrenalin was small, the tone wasn’t all that urgent.

“Message from the Monkeyman.”

Fred grunted, albeit with a calm, neutral visage. His copilot wasn’t all that enamoured of their Fearless Leader, who, if truth be told, was more of a puppet of the corporate mullahs and conservative public opinion—the only kind there was in Brobdinak, or Upottsia either, not these days.

“Instructions?”

“We’re supposed to play it over the whole system.” This would allow passengers and crew to hear what the fellow had to say, probably something fatuous and ostensibly inspirational at the same time. “Holy crap, he’s thanking all of our sponsors.”

“Okay.”

Barney pushed the button and as the deep, sing-song, oddly nasal voice of Fearless Leader harangued them one more time, both crew settled in to try and catch some sleep. They had a long night ahead of them. The message, predictably, was a long one, and after a minute or two he turned the sound down.

He had a rough idea of what he would be saying anyways.

***

At their cruising speed of five hundred eighty-five knots, there was plenty of time for a meal and some rest, but both were in their seats, taking over from Beta Crew for the run-in to the target area.

Observing all normal flight rules, descending as if they were indeed landing at San Upottsia, when the big aircraft disappeared off radar, the well-trained Upottsian air controllers, assuming a crash in the sea, immediately declared an emergency and scrambled all available search and rescue craft to the last known point on their flight path.

If they had any inkling that the Airbus was now flying nap-of-the-earth, down to three hundred and fifty knots, and weaving its way in through the coastal mountains and then out over the desert, the reaction if anything would have been much stronger.

As it was, two pairs of fighter jets were scrambled as a precaution. The Upottsians had been taken by surprise before, but all they did was to climb and orbit in a racetrack pattern, waiting for further instructions, while ground staff tried to confirm the facts and locate the crash site.

They watched, giggling, on the radar warning sets, but their plane had been designed to absorb radar and all kinds of stuff.

Since dawn was still two hours away, and there was nothing to find, this might take some time.

The big Airbus had been designed, a one-off prototype, as a bomber, or at least that was what all of the North-Western and even the Southern-Midwestern/Eastern intelligence services thought. And it was even true and everything, but the nature of the load they carried would have surprised the most jaded and sanguine intelligence analysts. They might have figured it out all on their own, one never knew. Of course it was a question of timing and surprise. Both men had dropped hard bombs before, and Fred had once even machine-gunned a school bus full of Salivian tribes-kids, all of this earlier in their careers, but this was something just a little bit different.

By that time the Martyr Charter would be approaching the target area…at that time there was nothing that could stop or seriously interfere with the mission.

***

The aircraft streaked low over the desert, the morning sun just below the horizon but the sky lightening perceptibly. Using the terrain to mask their presence from the ever-watchful radar, jinking through valleys and scraping through the mountain passes, the golly-gee-forces were at times considerable.

In a steep, low-level turn, with the one wing pointing crazily skyward, and the other one seemingly inches from a cliff-face, Fred noted a small creak from up somewhere in the right corner of the cockpit, but with its bamboo-fibre laminate construction and considerable internal strengthening from the launch tubes, he wasn’t too worried. It was just his job to observe and make notes and so that’s what he did.

The impression of speed was magnificent, but with accurate celestial mapping, the machine knew everything that lay ahead of it, and if a little minor altitude or speed compensation was necessary, it was more than capable of doing it in good time.

A small buzzer sounded in Fred’s earphones.

“We have reached the Initial Point.” From here on in they must really keep an eye on the thing.

Fred nodded. He keyed the microphone.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please leave your seats now and enter the drop tube located directly in front of you. We have seven minutes until drop.”

The nose camera was already picking up a gleam of white far off in the distance. In all simulations, it was found that people could get into their luxuriously-padded yet easily-washable tube within two and a half minutes.

Both pilot and copilot watched the graphic display in awful suspense until all the green section lights flashed on.

The voice of the senior flight attendant came over their headphones.

“All secured. Confirm ready to drop. We are in our seats and strapped in.”

“Any problems?” Fred was concerned with this part of the mission, which was out of his control.

“Naw. Had to knock a couple on the head, but that’s about it.”

“Thank you.” Barney was feeling left out.

“All secured. Ready to drop.” Barney glanced at the chronometer and reached for the microphone button. 

“Ladies and gentleman, four and a half minutes to drop. God is watching! And thank you for flying Martyr Airways.”

They watched as the readouts on time and distance clocked downwards towards zero.

Red lights came on over the bombardier handle—there was no other way to describe it, although if things continued to go well, the drop would be fully automatic. The pilot gripped the handle firmly, just in case.

Fred marvelled at the calmness in his heart, although there was tension in his midriff, and a cold, icy feeling at the base of each kidney. He kept his left-hand fingertips lightly touching the yoke.

“I have it on visual.”

Fred sat up a little straighter, being shorter than Barney, and peered over the high dashboard.

“Ah…beautiful.” The target, Keebler Dam, was dead ahead. “If this doesn’t send a strong message to the dirty Imperialist heathen East-South-Central/Western dogs, I don’t know what will.”

“Two minutes.” It passed more quickly if you watched the numbers and forgot that your own fate was involved, Barney found.

Fred looked over quickly.

“You left out infidels.”

“Hah!” Barney spit theatrically, careful to keep it pretty dry and spotty because of all the electronics.

There was the slightest change in pitch of the background noise. Rows of yellow lights turned green.

“Drop doors open. All are green for go.”

Fred spoke without looking over. He was totally focused on the machine’s performance.

“Thank you, my friend.”

Barney nodded in a professional manner.

“Damned glad to be here, sir!”

“It don’t mean nothing.”

They loved Upottsian movies.

They grinned like idiots, and then the last thirty seconds were winding down with a strident ‘wheep-wheep-wheep’ in the headphones. Barney was thinking of saying something about just wanting to learn how to cook but thought better of it.

The plane surged upwards as a thousand pilgrims launched into heaven and found their way to fame, to forgiveness, to paradise, perhaps even to eternal bliss, for surely ignorance is a kind of bliss.

For whatever reason, they were gone.

On tactical screen one, the scene was observed by a small, pilot-less, camera-equipped aircraft, dropped immediately prior to the full passenger drop, showing a cluster of white-shrouded objects spinning and tumbling through the air…the signal was strong and clear and they were getting good pictures.

“Schmuck!” Fred looked over, a sick feeling in his guts, but what were you supposed to do?

A big gob of what looked like nothing more than strawberry jam slowly oozed down the face of the dam. 

The water at the bast of the power-house foamed red and there was gore all over both sides of the canyon, and even rolling up and over the lip of the dam. The screen went fuzzy and the picture went black.

“Nice work.”

They had just made history, and in his own case, a hundred million dollars, although the other was said to be getting somewhat less.

A beatific grin came over him.

“Let’s see that again.”

Barney’s hand obligingly reached for the controls on the recording device.

The right wing came up and the nose came down again, and then they were streaking for the Kanatski-Terra border and ultimately Humpson’s Bay and a trans-Blarctic trajectory that would bring them by a circuitous route to rendezvous with a tanker orbiting over Greeseland. With a substantially smaller load now, the speed crept up reassuringly.

From Greeseland, it would be down the Schmedlantic, around the Crape and up the Indjun Ocean, and finally home in about a day and a half. Apparently they were having noodles for dinner and Fred was really looking forward to that.

Barney looked over.

“Send data-packet?” This would include all flight and drop information, including that from their drone.

“Roger that.”

With the throttle to the stops, it looked like they would be over Kanatski-Terra before the Upottsians could figure it all out and get some fighters in the air. Surely the authorities at the dam would be screaming into their telephones by now…screaming their damn-fool heads off.

Barney had earned some unofficial recognition, at least in Fred’s eyes.

“I’ll tell you what. When we get feet wet again, I’ll let you fly it for a while.”

“Can I sit in your chair?”

Fred nodded brightly.

“Uh-huh.”

Unable to speak, eyes shiny with the suggestion of tears, all the other could do was to nod in speculative appreciation, grip Fred’s forearm strongly and bite his lip in anticipation of unforeseen eventualities.

“Thank you! I’m quite looking forward to it.”

There was still much that could go wrong. Yet Barney’s gut instinct was that they had gotten away with it so far.

END