Although she was offered the gift of an “only dropped once” AK-74 by Terry, Malorie thought that the stress of learning to handle, shoot, and field strip another rifle would be one stress too many to add to her already long list. (Her anxiety meter was already pegging, and her departure was in less than twenty-four hours.)
Megan assumed that seeing Malorie board the plane would be too stressful for Jean and Leo, so Malorie made her good-byes at the Gray ranch. Megan told the boys that “Auntie Malorie is going to work on a map board in Canada.” The sisters did their best to appear cheerful and upbeat. Later, Megan let Joshua know her concerns. “Mal is very important to me and the boys. I’ll be praying for her safety, several times a day.”
• • •
When Ken and Malorie arrived at the hangar in Jeff Trasel’s pickup, Jerry Hatcher was adjusting cargo tie-down straps and preflighting the plane. A year earlier, the underside of the plane had been spray-painted dark gray and the upper surfaces were painted a mottled green camouflage, giving it a very serious, warlike look. The oversize tires were specifically designed for rough field landings.
Jerry was a slender, balding man of just under average height. Ken and Malorie handed the backpack and dry bag to him. As they did, Ken said, “We were told that we needed to be precise about weight. Together, these weigh in at fifty-seven pounds.”
Jerry nodded and stowed Mal’s gear behind the passenger seat. (The rear passenger seats had been removed, and that area was already crowded with a row of ammo cans beneath duffel bags of various colors.) Jerry turned toward Mal, asking, “How much do you weigh?”
“About one twenty-two. Figure probably another five pounds for my clothes and boots, to be safe.”
Jerry punched some numbers into a JavaScript Weight and Balance calculator program on his iPad. The program was tailored specifically for the Cessna 180G model.
Mal looked interested in what he was doing, so Jerry explained the screen. “You see here that a 180G has fifty-five gallons of fuel capacity, which equates to three hundred thirty pounds. But tonight will be a short trip, so we are flying with just one hundred forty-five pounds of fuel. Here we’ve got weight, arm, and moment for each section of the aircraft. And this is the CG.”
Malorie said, “I understand center of gravity, but ‘arm’ and ‘moment’ are Greek to me.”
“It’s a little complicated and hard to explain. Moment—which is a measure of the tendency of a force to cause a body to rotate about an axis—is calculated by multiplying the weight of an object by its arm. The main thing for us to be concerned with is this little red crosshair in the fat red circle. If it goes outside of this green envelope grid, then we might fall out of the sky, which would not be good. As you can see, at two thousand five hundred forty-five, we are definitely pushing the envelope, since the maximum takeoff weight is two thousand five hundred fifty pounds. So I’ll plan on an extra-long takeoff roll. The weight also pushes our safe maneuvering speed up to one hundred and six miles per hour. With just me in the plane, that will drop to just ninety-six. The stall speed with the flaps extended is, of course, much lower.”
Malorie asked, “I’ve always wondered what ‘pushing the envelope’ meant. Now I know. Cool. And I’ll just skip on getting a grasp on arm and moment. So maneuvering speed is different than stall speed?”
“Yes, higher. But suffice it to say the heavier the plane is, the higher the stall speed, and the lighter the plane, the lower the stall speed. We’ll be staying above the stall speed, which is why we have to calculate where that is, especially during takeoff and landing. It will also vary depending on altitude, temperature, and humidity of the air. I won’t go into the difference it makes whether we are looking at true airspeed versus indicated airspeed for this explanation, but it also matters where the power levers are and how many g’s are on the aircraft. Confused? That’s why we have performance charts.”
Not noticing that Malorie’s eyes were glazing over, Jerry went on, pointing again at the screen. “Now that I’ve added in the weight of you and your gear, you can see we’re still just barely inside the envelope. We’ll drop down farther into the green once I burn off some of the fuel en route, as it will lower the weight and shift the CG in our favor. And of course my return trip will be ‘easy breezy.’”
Malorie nodded. They were scheduled to leave just after sunset.
Ken gave her a hug, and said, “Bon chance, and kick some UNPROFOR butt.”
As she was about to board the Cessna, Malorie balked for a moment. The enormity of what she was about to do struck her. She took a deep breath and whispered to herself, “I’m just going to trust God’s providence on this.”
She stepped up into her seat quickly, but then fumbled with the unfamiliar seat belt arrangement.
Jerry noticed her nervousness and asked, “So, ahh, is this your first time in a light plane, or just your first time flying into occupied territory where you’ll face summary execution, if you’re captured?”
That broke the ice, and Malorie burst out laughing. She was still chuckling when she finally got the odd seat belt buckle latched.
Jerry said, “Don’t worry, I’ll talk you through everything that I’m doing. Fact is, as a former instructor pilot, I have a tendency to talk to myself. I’ve flown this same route before, entirely on instruments, in much worse weather than this, and on softer fields. This is a very solid and trustworthy aircraft. It was built in 1964, but it’s been well maintained. As for me, my model year was 1968 and I’ve logged almost thirty-eight hundred hours of flying.”
Jerry put on a dark blue baseball cap with an Alaska Aces hockey team logo, showing a ferocious polar bear taking a swipe. He handed her a pair of pale green Clark headphones with a boom mike, and said, “You can put these on once I start the engine. Press this button here to talk. But don’t push that button, or you’ll be broadcasting on the radio. Not good, under the present circumstances.”
After strapping himself in, but before starting the engine, Jerry mounted his GPS receiver in its cradle and turned it on. He immediately dialed down the brightness of the color screen.
He explained, “This is my cheater. It’s a top-of-the-line Garmin Aera Model 795. I paid fifteen hundred dollars for it a year before the Schumer hit the fan. Now that the GPS ground stations are back online, the accuracy and full coverage of the GPS constellation has been restored, so we no longer have to fly by the seat of our pants. I’ve programmed in waypoints for our entire route—in three dimensions—plus four alternate exfiltration routes.”
He tapped the screen to give a different view and continued. “This thing is sweet. The most important thing is that it gives me pop-up alerts with plenty of warning, based on altitude and heading. Basically, it won’t let me screw up and fly into a mountain.”
Malorie laughed nervously. “That’s reassuring,” she said.
It was full dark when they took off, and they were across the Canadian border in just a few minutes.
Jerry punched the intercom button and said, “Ever since the Frogs grounded most private plane flights in Canada south of fifty-three degrees latitude, whenever someone hears a plane, people just assume that every plane they hear is a UNPROFOR flight.”
After a few minutes of maneuvering at full throttle, Jerry pulled the throttle rod back and adjusted the trim wheel.
Looking straight ahead and regularly glancing down at his instruments, he said, “Okay, the field ahead is a hay field that has had its final cutting of the season harvested and all of the bales have been hauled out. So that’s about as good a grass strip as you’re going to find anywhere. It is a one-hundred-sixty-acre field, so that’s plenty long. The nearest power line is a half mile east. To be covert, I’m going to delay turning on my landing lights until the last minute, but I’ll need them just to make sure there are no hay bales or a tractor sitting there. That could be a VBT.”
“What’s a VBT?”
“A Very Bad Thing.”
As he turned towa
rd the field and lowered the plane’s flaps fully, he started speaking more quickly. “Airspeed eighty-five, three-fifty AGL. We’re looking good, lined up on final. Now, I don’t like to dawdle once I’m on the ground. I don’t plan to be down for more than about two minutes. I won’t be shutting the engine down, so whatever you do, do not walk forward of the wing, or you’ll get the proverbial mouthful of propeller. Once you see me unbuckle, you do the same, and jump out. You can help me unload everything. We’ll unload everything on your side of the aircraft. Then sit right down on the pile of gear and close your eyes tight, because when I throttle up to turn around, the prop wash is going to kick up a lot of dust. Understood?”
“Understood.”
Jerry made adjustments to his controls as he spoke, interspersing his description of instrument readings. “There are friendlies scheduled to be waiting. Airspeed seventy, about one-ten AGL. Looking good. If someone drives up with their headlights off, then relax, that’ll be your friendlies. Airspeed fifty-eight, sixty AGL. But if you see headlights, then grab your pack and beat feet for the nearest timber.”
“Okay.”
What happened next was a blur. She felt the plane bounce and then touch down solidly. Jerry pulled back the throttle sharply, and he visibly braced his shoulders back against his seat as he stood on the brake pedals. The plane slowed very rapidly. Even before it came to a full stop, he turned off his landing lights. They were out of their doors quickly and Jerry ran behind the tail and joined Mal, who was already unloading gear. Even idling, the prop wash was strong. It felt like standing in a twenty-five-mile-per-hour wind. The pile of gear grew rapidly, ten feet to the right of Malorie’s door. Then Jerry shouted, with a wave: “Last one. God bless you!”
Jerry ran around behind the tail again and jumped back in the plane. He throttled the plane up in a roar, executed a tight 180-degree turn, and took off, this time with no landing lights. Suddenly it was quiet, except for a dog barking in the distance. The air felt chilly. Malorie pulled her backpack out of the pile and opened its top flap. She snaked out the carbine and laid it across her knees. After refastening the pack’s top flap, she reached into a cargo pocket of her pants and pulled out a fifteen-round magazine for her carbine. She slapped it in place, gave the magazine a tug to ensure that it was latched, and then chambered a round. The clank of the slide operating seemed uncomfortably loud. She reached down to confirm that the gun’s rotary safety was pointed down to the six-o’clock position. She waited. Only then did she notice that her hands were shaking. A few moments later, Malorie could hear a vehicle approaching. She was relieved to see that its headlights were off.
• • •
Malorie was sitting at the kitchen table of a farmhouse. A woman with graying wavy hair and a face ravaged by too many years in the sun sat across from her.
The woman said, “I can get you up there, and I can arrange to smuggle that carbine there, but I don’t think I can necessarily get both you and it there at exactly the same time.”
“Are you worried about checkpoints?”
The woman nodded. “Yes. There’ll be several of them. They don’t ask for ID except for whoever is driving, but they often search vehicles. We’ll have to send that gun and all the ammo, and any other items that might be hard to explain, via the courier network.”
Malorie nodded and her host continued, “It’s ten hours of driving. At the checkpoints, all you have to do is lay on the charm, and chat them up a bit in French. They love to hear anyone out west who speaks fluent French, and they always assume that French speakers are Ménard loyalists. Just don’t overdo it on the charm, or they’ll start thinking of you as a potential date rape.”
“Oh, great.”
The woman glanced at her wristwatch and carried on. “Our cover will be that we are midwives, driving a long distance to attend a twin birth.”
“So how do we carry that off?”
“I really am a midwife, so I can answer all of their questions, and I’ll have all my usual home delivery kit with me. I’ve learned to say in rudimentary French, ‘Je suis une sage-femme’ and ‘Je suis pressé.’ Saying I’m a midwife and that I’m in a hurry usually does the trick.”
“And what if they question me?”
“You’re an apprentice midwife, so you won’t be expected to know a lot. Right?”
• • •
They were stopped at seven checkpoints between Wynndel and Williams Lake, and their car was searched at two of them. At the checkpoint near Kamloops, one of the military policemen mentioned that Malorie’s olive-green Kelty backpack looked “too military.” He began unpacking it, methodically building a pile of clothes from the pack on the trunk lid of the car.
Malorie had stood silently, smiling. She now laughed disarmingly, and asked in perfect French: “And my panties? Do they also look too military?’
The soldier blushed and said, “Donc, vous parlez français!”
“Of course. As every good loyalist should.”
The soldier began repacking the clothes, looking embarrassed.
After they had driven well past the roadblock, the midwife began laughing.
Malorie kept giggling for several more minutes.
• • •
It was Claire McGregor who was waiting to meet Malorie at the Hudson’s Bay Company store parking lot. Switching Malorie’s pack and dry bag between car trunks took just a minute. The midwife left with a wave.
“How was your drive, Miss LaCroix?”
“Gorgeous scenery. It was just stunning. Lots of elk, and there were bighorn sheep. I’d never seen those in person before.”
“Any problem with the internal security checks?”
She turned to Claire, put on a smile, fluttered her eyelids, and said, “Pas de problème.”
Claire laughed and replied, “Feminine wiles beat brute force every time.” They talked nonstop all the way to the ranch. Claire reminded Malorie of her aunt Helen. Very soon, Malorie knew that she would feel comfortable at Claire’s ranch house.
40
JE NE SAIS QUOI
Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price [is] far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil. She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life. She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands.
—Proverbs 31:10–13 (KJV)
The McGregor Ranch, near Anahim Lake, British Columbia—Late September, the Fifth Year
Malorie settled in quickly at the McGregor ranch. For her privacy, she displaced Phil from his bedroom and Phil began sleeping on a folding futon on the floor of Ray’s room. Meanwhile, Malorie’s bedroom doubled as the intel analysis and translation office. A boom lamp was set up over the desk, for the days that they ran the generator. On all other days, light was provided by a pair of Aladdin mantle kerosene lamps.
On her first full day at the ranch, Malorie gave Phil a briefing on her recent intelligence analysis experience and described how she had done French technical translation.
Then Phil said, “Rather than fill you in on our operations here, first I have a mental exercise for you. I want you to watch this movie along with Ray and his parents.”
He handed her a DVD of the World War II movie Defiance with Daniel Craig, and said, “You can watch this on our laptop tonight, which we occasionally power from the McGregors’ battery bank. I want you to watch it very carefully. There will be a quiz in the morning.”
“Okay. Can I take notes?”
“No. This is a memory exercise.”
The next morning, he quizzed her in detail, for thirty-five minutes. She thought that she did fairly well in answering his questions. Then he said, “Now what I want you to do is watch the movie again—by yourself, with total concentration. This time I want you to just ignore the story, the music, and the foreground action. You are going to watch for all of the subtleties in the background: colors, shapes, sounds, vehicle types, clothing textures, type of footwea
r, body language, flora, fauna, cartridge casings, wear and tear on objects, architecture, temporal incongruities, et cetera—everything except what the characters are saying and doing.”
“Okay.”
Three hours later, over lunch, Phil quizzed her again. He started by asking, “How do you feel?”
“Exhausted!”
Phil grinned and said, “Good, very good. That means you did the viewing in the right frame of mind.”
Malorie exclaimed, “That was an amazing exercise!”
“I thought that you’d like that. By the way, you can do that watching any movie—even a romantic comedy. That was a trick taught me by a colleague from MI5, in England. Oh, and I should mention that two other variants of the exercise are to turn the sound down completely, or to flip the laptop screen nearly closed or dim the screen and concentrate on just the audio. I’ve watched the same movies four times using these exercises, and it is amazing what you learn to pick up, each way.”
• • •
Mal and Phil were always careful to pull out no more than three or four file folders at a time, just in case all of the “intel boxes” had to disappear into the closet in a hurry. (The plan was for both Phil and Malorie to hide in the closet in case of a search.)
Because of the huge backlog of captured documents, Malorie initially worked ten to eleven hours per day, sorting through documents and translating them. Phil was usually with her for most of the day, explaining the military jargon, acronyms, and intelligence terminology. The documents had already been roughly sorted by date, but beyond that they were a jumble. After they had been reorganized and sorted in neatly labeled manila folders, they filled four boxes. Each folder was labeled by subject and also had its tab color-coded blue, yellow, or red to designate low-, medium-, or high-intelligence-value material.
Most of the documents were not fully translated. With 90 percent of the documents she would simply staple on a “gist” summary page. Only the most important documents were translated word for word. Later, when she had more time, she worked back through a lot of the gisted documents and wrote more detailed summaries. As winter set in and the pace of work slowed, she shifted her attention to captured and pilfered technical manuals. The highest priorities were manuals for radios and small arms.
Liberators Page 29
