AFTER DRIVING FOR A FEW MINUTES on the county highway, Will spotted what he was looking for. He turned off onto a side road marked by a red windsock that was billowing in the breeze. Right next to the windsock was the sign he’d remembered in his sleep.
He sped down the narrow road, kicking up gravel, until a large red arrow pointed to a turnoff on the left.
Driving into an open field, he saw several outbuildings and a large, wooden barn that had been converted into an airplane hangar. The barn had a large American flag painted on its side. Along a makeshift landing strip were two rows of bleachers—enough seating for maybe a hundred onlookers. On the landing strip there was a vintage biplane that was painted in red, white, and blue.
Will parked his car and stepped quickly through the open doors of the hangar. On a step stool, peering over the engine of a small, single-prop Cessna was a man with dirty cowboy boots, grease-stained blue jeans, and a cowboy hat.
Will shouted out, “I’m looking for Tex—Tex, ‘The Flying Cowboy.’”
The lanky man turned around and looked at Will with an amused expression on his face. He looked to be in his late 40s and had a tan, rugged face with a gray mustache.
“Well sir, seeing as I’m the only one in this place wearing a cowboy hat, I guess that would be me,” he quipped.
“Tex, I’ve got a problem,” Will said.
“That goes for just about everybody. What’s yours?”
Will launched into an abbreviated, rapid-fire explanation of Mary Sue’s case and Joshua’s medical condition. How time was of the essence because of the impending trial date and Joshua’s deteriorating health. Dr. Forrester in the Bahamas was the most qualified expert to not only diagnosis Joshua’s real medical condition but also to exonerate his client. The only problem, of course, was getting an immediate flight out to Grand Bahama island.
“I don’t think I got your full name,” the man responded. “My name is Tex Rhoady. What’s yours?” he asked, extending a callused hand in Will’s direction. The lawyer shook his hand readily.
“Will Chambers. I’m an attorney from Virginia here in Delphi on Mary Sue Fellows’ case.
“Virginia? That’s a fair distance from the Peachtree State. I suppose that means your client must have thought you were worth bringing all the way down here.”
“I guess so,” Will replied, “And while I appreciate my client’s confidence, what I need now is quick transportation down to the Bahamas to deliver this blood sample to Dr. Forrester who’s waiting for me there.”
“Well, I tell you, Will,” Tex explained. “I’ve got three planes. One is a Learjet. It’s a pretty little thing, but I’ve leased it out to some other pilots—for a fair chunk of change, I might add. You can imagine with the strike that private planes are being snatched up pretty quickly. The second plane I’ve got is this Cessna. Nice machine, but it’s got engine problems right now. And then I’ve got that old biplane, the Stearman out there, that I use for stunt flying.”
There were a few moments of silence, and then Will looked out toward the airfield. Walking out to the opening of the hangar, he took a long look at the red, white, and blue biplane. It had two open cockpits and a single propeller.
Then Will turned slowly back toward Tex.
Tex caught his glance and began to chuckle.
“I assume you are an experienced pilot?” Will asked.
“Well sir, I’ve been around planes all my life. My daddy was a pilot. I flew quite a few missions in the Gulf. I did some commercial flying after that, flew for the civil air patrol. I even did fly-throughs on forest fires for the Forest Service. Then, when the Afghan war started, I was reactivated and called up. I flew a couple recon missions, and after that I told the military I was hanging it up. Ever since I’ve been back here, stunt flying and crop dusting, just like my sign says.”
“Stunt flying?” Will asked.
“Yeah. You know—‘aeronautical high jinks that will amaze and astound you’—just like my brochure says.” Tex laughed a little at that.
Will gazed out through the open doors of the hangar.
“What about that?” he said, motioning to the biplane.
That was when Tex stopped laughing.
The pilot swept his hat off his head, wiped his brow, and hopped off the step stool. Putting his cowboy hat back on, he strode over to Will and stared him in the eye from just a foot away.
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” he asked.
“I’m afraid I am,” Will answered.
“You aren’t a pilot, are you?”
“No, I’m not. And I only have a thimble’s worth of knowledge about aeronautics. I handled a few small-airplane cases years ago in my law practice—a string of crashes involving a certain model of dual-engine plane. And, then I also fly quite a bit because my practice takes me here, there, and everywhere. So that’s all I know.”
“Well, let me give you the quick course,” Tex began somberly. “You are talking about taking a vintage biplane—single-engine—out over the Atlantic. Out to the Bahamas. Now this plane here, it’s got a nine-cylinder, 450-horsepower Pratt & Whitney power plant as a retrofit. I’ve staked my life on it doing stunt flying. It’s an absolutely reliable workhorse of an engine. But you are talking about going over the Atlantic—this time of year—with a plane like this.” With that, Tex walked outside and stared at the biplane. Then he turned around.
“You’re talking about updrafts, downdrafts, wind shear, waterspouts, hurricanes—that’s the kind of stuff you get the minute you leave land and hit ocean atmospherics.”
“Look,” Will said, “I’m not asking you to do a Lindbergh and get us to Paris. I’m only asking you to fly to Grand Bahama island. I’ve checked the map—what is it, fifty, a hundred miles off the Florida coast?”
“Yep,” Tex replied, “that’s about it, depending on where you leave land.”
“Let’s put it this way—if I’m foolish enough to be a passenger in this thing from here to the Bahamas—are you gutsy enough to be the pilot?”
“Wrong approach, counselor,” Tex replied firmly. “Don’t pull that macho stuff on me. I don’t have to take risks in an airplane to prove that I’m a he-man. Do you know how many sorties I flew in the Gulf? Have you ever flown through antiaircraft fire? Have you ever seen your squadron buddies flame out and crash right in the thick of it?”
“Tex, you do aerial stunts for a living. That’s got to be a hundred times more dangerous than taking this flight,” Will countered.
“If you’re not a flier, I guess you don’t understand. I do all of that ‘daredevil’ stuff—but I will tell you something—it’s all calculated, calibrated, and controlled. It looks real risky, but I know exactly what I’m doing up there for my audience. But flying over varying terrain and open water is a whole different thing.”
“Then let me put it to you this way—you are my last chance. If you don’t do this flight for me,” Will said, “then Mary Sue Fellows is probably going to lose custody of her child for the rest of her life. She may even go to prison for a crime she didn’t commit. And worse than that, a little boy might end up dying because we didn’t get a diagnosis in time. Can you live with that?”
Tex gave a big sigh and thrust both hands in the pockets of his blue jeans. After a period of silence, during which he appeared to be visualizing some unseen scenario, he started in.
“Man-oh-man,” he said with a rueful smile, “I sure thought my momma raised me smarter than this.”
Then the pilot ambled over to an old wooden desk in the corner that had several greasy engine parts on it. He pulled open a drawer that squeaked, and retrieved a piece of paper. Walking over to a tall tool chest, he propped his elbows on it.
“Okay, come over here, Mr. Lindbergh. You need to sign this. Agreement and Release. You being a lawyer, I’m sure you know all about these.”
Will hurried over to Tex, read the paper hastily, and scribbled his signature at the bottom.
“We leave here in one hour. I’m going to do a systems check. I’m also filing a flight plan. That way, if we go down into the water—and let me remind you, this is not a seaworthy plane—then they can look for whatever is left of us after the sharks get through.”
Will gave an uneasy smile.
“An hour is fine. I’ll go over to my car there and make a couple of calls.”
“One more thing,” Tex added. “You’re going to be charged my standard rate for a coast-to-coast charter flight. And I don’t come cheap. And I’m also adding a twenty-percent surcharge.”
“What’s the surcharge for?”
“For the additional risk factor. If we end up getting some weather,” Tex explained, “you better make sure your seatbelt’s on. Because in that case there’s going to be a whole lot of ‘bouncy-bouncy,’” and with that, he made a wild flapping motion with his hand. Then he let out a chuckle and disappeared into his office at the rear of the hangar.
Will hurried over to the car and called his office.
Hilda answered. “I’ve got some good news for you,” she said.
“I could use some.”
“Jacki said we just received a fax from the Georgia State Supreme Court. They ruled on her motion for recusal of Judge Mason.”
“And?”
“They just issued an order removing him from hearing the trial.”
“That’s terrific news,” Will exclaimed. “Have we gotten notice of who the new judge is going to be?”
“Yes,” Hilda said. “I’ve got an order from the Juda County Circuit Court right here. It reads, ‘The Honorable J. K. Trainer has been appointed to hear the trial In The Interest Of Joshua Fellows, A Minor Child.’”
“Do we know anything about this judge?” Will asked.
“We’re checking into it—we don’t have anything yet.”
“I’m going to be out of pocket for about a day or so.”
“How can I reach you?” Hilda asked.
“Actually, I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to get reception on my cell phone. I doubt it. I’m going to be…in transit.”
“That sounds rather mysterious,” Hilda commented, probing a little.
“It’s meant to. I’m trying to get this blood sample down to a Dr. Forrester from England, who is currently on Grand Bahama island.”
“Anything else you want to tell me?” Hilda inquired.
“Well,” Will said, “if things don’t go well—tell everybody they can make memorial donations to my church, and I want Fiona to sing ‘A Mighty Fortress Is Our God’ at the service.”
Hilda was quiet on the other end, struggling for a response.
“Will, I just don’t know when you are joking and when you are serious anymore.”
“Don’t ever lose your sense of humor, Hilda,” Will said with a smile.
Will then asked his secretary to go down the list of other phone calls to the office.
At the end of their conversation, Hilda remembered one more message. “Oh, I almost forgot. The attorney from the State Department. They want to talk to you again about that lawsuit against General Nuban.”
“Do me a favor, Hilda—would you call him back and ask if it’s time-critical? If not, I can just talk to him when I get back into the office after the trial.”
After hanging up with Hilda, Will gathered up his briefcase, the refrigeration unit, and his shaving kit. He locked up his car and walked over to the plane, where Tex was doing his final walk-around.
Tex opened a small door to the hold in the bottom of the plane, where they stored the briefcase and shaving kit.
“I want the case with the blood sample here in the seat with me,” Will insisted.
“Look, Will,” the pilot explained, “you know what happens to stuff on your lap when you take those really wild roller-coaster rides—you know, the ones that go upside down and around and do curlicues? I think you want that case down in the storage hold.”
“And what happens if the door flies open?”
“Never happened yet.”
“This is too important,” Will said. “It has to stay with me.”
Tex rigged up a restraining strap for the refrigeration unit. He then hooked it to a metal loop in the rear cockpit where Will’s feet would be.
The attorney climbed into his seat, and Tex showed him how to harness in. Then he gave him a pair of goggles.
“These are no joke,” he said about the goggles. “When we’re clipping along, particularly on takeoff or landing, it’s amazing the stuff that smacks you in the face. And at those speeds, a big bug, a twig dropped by a bird—something like that could take your eye out.”
As Will got settled into the rear seat, Tex took a look at the bandage on his nose and the little black, blue, and green streaks under his eyes.
“I was meaning to ask about your nose there,” Tex said, “not that it’s any of my business.”
“Let’s just say that I was handcuffed when it happened.”
Tex smiled. “They must practice law pretty rough where you come from.”
“Say,” Will interjected, “did you really mean what you said about the risks of this trip?”
“Oh, well…” Tex said, chuckling a bit, “the thing about that is this—I guess I wanted to see how serious you were about doing this, that’s all. Actually, I’ve taken this plane down off the Florida coast, and along the Keys. I was thinking about a trip down to Nassau once, but it didn’t pan out.”
“So you were exaggerating—right?” Will said.
“Let me tell you two things. First of all, this is a Boeing PT-17 Stearman. They used these to train pilots in World War II. This would have been the first plane a cadet would have learned to fly. It’s a stable aircraft—strong—reliable. I put my life on the line with this plane. I’ve done every kind of maneuver—loops, rolls, hammerheads, Cuban eights—you name it, I’ve done it in this old lady.”
“That’s good to know,” Will said. “What’s the second thing?”
“Flying over open water, out over the ocean—it’s no joke. Things whip up fast, weatherwise. So it could get rough, that’s all. You can expect a fair amount of, well—”
“‘Bouncy-bouncy’?” Will asked with a grin.
“You’re catching on,” Tex said. “About that bandage on your nose—I don’t think it will last the trip. Things might get a little sore. There’s a whole lot of wind coming at you—you’ll think you’ve gotten the world’s toughest facial…”
Then the pilot explained a few final details. He showed Will how to use the headset and mike to communicate with him in the front cockpit. He then gave him a set of earplugs.
“This Pratt & Whitney really screams,” Tex said. “Feel free to use these plugs. If I need to talk to you on the headset I will give you this signal,” and Tex pointed to his right ear.
“What happens if you’ve got the earplugs in and I want to talk to you?”
“I don’t use them.”
“Why not?”
“If the engine stalls, or changes pitch, or starts coughing a little—I want to hear it.”
“Yeah—exactly,” Will responded. “You listen for that stuff!”
Tex smiled and climbed into the plane. He punched the starter button, and a magnificent, bone-shaking roar came from the engine as the prop came up to speed in front of them.
As Tex throttled the plane down the little runway, and the tail began to come up, Will felt a mounting sense of excitement.
The Stearman lifted up into the sky, and Will could see, off in the distance, his houseboat and the water of Eden Lake glittering in the sunlight. Even farther off, there were the church steeples of Delphi and the top of the courthouse. They reminded Will a little of home—of the old buildings and church steeples of Monroeville, Virginia.
Suddenly, he was slightly homesick but also exhilarated. After all, he thought, this little adventure just might turn Mary Sue Fellows’ case around and help cure her little boy.
Will felt good as they kept climbing higher—until he looked down at the decal on the panel in front of him.
It read,
GET IN
BUCKLE UP
HANG ON FOR DEAR LIFE