Wings of Steele - Destination Unknown (Book 1)

by Burger, Jeffrey

  "Give him a hand," Paul told Mike. "I'm going to take a look at Jack's arm." Mike and Brian headed to the cockpit and Alité sealed the Invader's exterior door.

  Lisa, silent and wide-eyed, sat opposite Jack as Paul helped him off with his bomber jacket. She watched as her brother grit his teeth and winced. Fritz climbed into the seat beside her and watched too.

  There was a temporary whine and some vibration as the generators spun up to full power to supply the anti-grav system. Lisa's eyes grew wide. "What's that?"

  "We're taking off," answered Alité. She handed a medical kit to Paul.

  Lisa glanced at her then back at Jack and Paul. "What'd she say?"

  “Taking off..." said Fritz, annunciating slowly.

  Lisa jumped and glanced at the dog. He looked back at her, his head cocked to one side in a curious fashion. "Please," she pleaded, "someone tell me what's going on..." She stared at Jack's artificial eye, as black as polished onyx.

  Jack took a deep breath as Paul cut and peeled away his bloody shirt sleeve. "Lisa, meet Commander Paul Smiley of the cruiser Freedom. Formerly of the US Navy." Paul nodded as he continued his inspection of Jack's wound. "You know Brian," continued Jack, "the other guy is Lieutenant Mike Warren, also formerly of the US Navy. He's Paul's wingman." Jack sucked air as Paul cleaned the wound.

  "Looks worse than it is," commented Paul.

  Jack's eyes watered as he nodded. "To you maybe."

  "Stop being a baby, Jack, it's just a scratch." Paul smiled. "A big scratch, but still... just a scratch."

  Jack managed a weak smile. "Ha, look, I'm laughin'. OW, take it easy will ya?" Alité sat down next to him and held his hand. Jack glanced at her and saw the worry. "I'm Ok," he told her.

  "Who is she, Jack?"

  "Sorry, sis, this is Princess Alité Steele. My wife." He turned to Alité. "Sweetheart, this is my sister, Lisa Steele."

  Alité smiled and extended her hand. "Nice to meet you."

  Lisa's eyes were wide with disbelief as she took Alité's hand. "Um, I, uh..." she closed her mouth. She didn't know what to say or who to look at. The woman's eyes kept changing colors, and Jack's artificial eye gave her chills. There were just too many things to accept and digest, and Lisa was having a difficult time wading through it all. "Ok wait..." she took a cleansing breath and continued. "Let me just take a stab at this..." She pointed at Alité. "She's not from around here. Am I right?"

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  FT. MYERS, FLORIDA: HOME AT LAST – SORT OF...

  Brian had taken the Invader up into the clouds and headed south at a leisurely pace. By the time they passed over Kentucky, they were out of the cloud cover and so was Lisa. It took Jack that long to outline the events of the past year and how things came to be. Lisa listened to most of it in intense silence, only stopping her brother on occasion to clarify something. When he finished, Lisa leaned back in her seat and looked down at Fritz who had fallen asleep across her lap. Her fingers stroked his left ear and her thumb ran back and forth along the steel skull cap that covered the right side of the Shepherd’s head. When she looked back up she was smiling. "Wow," she breathed. "It's all too weird. Like a sci-fi movie, y'know? Fact being stranger than fiction?" She shook her head, as if trying to clear away the disbelief. "Boy, I sure would've liked to have seen some of it."

  Paul had found a temporary translator disc in the medical kit and taped it behind Lisa's left ear. When Jack and Paul had returned to the cockpit, Lisa and Alité were sitting alone talking girl talk.

  Jack had pulled a fresh tunic from the crew locker and stood between Brian and Mike at the controls while he buttoned it and pinned his rank pips to its collar. "Any problems?" he asked.

  Mike shook his head. "Not really. Had a couple of nosy Air Force birds, probably from Langley, but they couldn't keep the pace."

  Jack looked out through the cockpit perspex. The Invader had flown back into cloud cover over southern Georgia, and beads of moisture raced across the windscreen. Mike and Brian were flying on imaging instruments. "We're clear of the mountains," said Jack. "Why don't we drop below the clouds..." Without answering, Mike adjusted the craft and it began a gentle descent. As they dropped free of the greyness, rain slashed across the sky, pelting the Invader and creating a familiar noise. The pilots glanced at one another and smiled little smiles, the kind one makes when remembering something pleasant.

  "Sounds nice," said Paul. It was funny about the little things. How much you could miss them.

  The heavy overcast soon gave way to broken cloud and the rain stopped abruptly. Stars were visible in the holes of the clouds, but the sky would soon begin to lighten in the east. "How do you want to do this, Jack?" asked Brian.

  Steele pinched his lower lip. "Approach low over the Gulf, drop me, Lisa and the dog on the beach and come back for us after dark."

  Paul shrugged. "A good a plan as any, what time do you want for pickup?"

  "Hmmm, how about ten o'clock?"

  "Too many people still awake," corrected Brian. "How about midnight?"

  Jack nodded. "Ok, sounds good."

  "MacDill Air Force Base just picked us up," announced Mike.

  "Swing out over the water, drop below five hundred feet," instructed Paul. The Invader banked hard and dropped four thousand feet in a matter of a few seconds, the distant lights of Tampa disappearing below the horizon. Brian followed the terrain at two hundred feet until he reached the water where he swung back south to follow the coastline.

  The Captain in the shrimp boat below almost fell overboard as the Invader passed directly overhead. "Bobby! Bobby! Get the camera! Get the camera! Quick!"

  The first mate looked up lethargically from his chores. "Why? What'd you see Jim?"

  The Captain searched the empty sky down along the coastline, the same way he would do for the rest of his life. "Nothing... forget it."

  Streetlights flickered off and winked back on along the beach as the Invader passed, but very few people were awake to notice. The sky in the east was beginning to lighten. "Slow down, Bri," coached Jack, "I can't see..." Brian eased the throttles back and cut the engines, using the anti-grav to continue cruising. "There...!" pointed Jack. "The surf shop! Slow down, the house is only a few blocks..."

  Brian eased back the power and the ship slowed, dropping to less than a hundred feet. "We've got company coming," announced Mike. "A Coast Guard boat's got us on radar and there's a couple of F16s nosing our way..."

  "Find it fast," added Paul.

  "There it is," said Brian. He angled the ship over the beach.

  "Lisa!" called Jack. "You've got about thirty seconds, we're here!"

  "Already?"

  "Yep." He slung the blaster rig over his shoulder and pulled on his uniform jacket to cover it. He decided not to wear the bomber jacket because of the bloody hole in its left sleeve. He grabbed a comm unit and clipped it on his ear.

  "They're almost on top of us, Jack..."

  "Ok, let us out..." Alité opened the door without extending the ramp and Brian dropped the ship to two feet without using the landing gear. "See ya' later..." Jack kissed Alité and jumped to the sand as two F16s whistled overhead. "Uh oh," breathed Jack, looking up. Fritz jumped, then Lisa. They ran towards the house as the door of the ship began to close and in the distance the F16s split in a Y, banking in a tight turn to make a return pass. The Invader lifted slightly and turned slowly to face the advancing fighters.

  "This is Major Sutton, United States Air Force, unidentified craft do you copy? Please identify yourself..." Sutton had already instructed his wingman to call for additional aircraft. "Unidentified aircraft, this is American airspace, please identify yourself or I will be forced to shoot you down."

  "Dr
ifter, this is Wet Willie..."

  "Go, Wet Willie..."

  "Major, there are two more birds on the way, and we are cleared to fire over water. I repeat, over water, clear to arm and fire."

  "Copy Wet Willie, clear to fire over the drink."

  "Hello, Air Force," responded Paul on their frequency. He flipped the switches for the main engine burners and adjusted the forcing cones for maximum thrust, the Invader coasted out over the water. "Commander Paul Smiley, United States Navy, don't shoot."

  "Navy? You are not displaying an IFF beacon... A full identification please," insisted the Major. "And if you don't mind me asking, what the hell is that thing?" The F16s passed overhead to the left and right of the Invader, disappearing from view over the houses. Two more F16s appeared in the broken clouds at about six thousand feet, flying a protective CAP.

  "No beacon - Black OPS exercise,” lied Pappy. “ And you wouldn't believe me if I told you, Major..."

  ■ ■ ■

  Jack, Lisa and Fritz, huddled at the foot of the steps to the sundeck of his house, watching. Jack could see the burner rings inside the Invader's engines turn from a dark cherry red to a bright pink and the tails of the forcing cones as they narrowed. "Heads down," he instructed. The trio ducked and covered themselves as the F16s passed overhead and the Invader accelerated away, first on anti-grav then igniting her main engine burners as she passed low over the first of the waves breaking on the sandbars. The water split beneath her down to the sandy bottom with a boom, sending a sheet of water and sand over a hundred feet into the air on either side of her. Thunder boomed and rolled out across the Gulf of Mexico, the Invader easily outrunning the noise.

  "Holy shit!" squeaked Lisa, peeking. In a blink, the Invader was nothing but a brilliant speck of light low on the horizon, a trail of churning water and mist the only signs of her departure. The F16s gave chase, igniting their afterburners and creating a sonic boom in the distance. They would have as much hope of catching the UFO, as a Piper Cub would of catching them.

  Lisa could barely see it now as it climbed straight up into the morning sky. "Good God," she whispered, how fast is that thing?"

  Jack shrugged. "It's supposed to do about twenty-five thousand in atmosphere."

  "Miles an hour?"

  Jack nodded casually, "Yep."

  Fritz cocked his head. "Ssshh, people," he whispered. They huddled back down as two men in business suits ran from between the houses onto the beach. "I told you!" insisted the first.

  The second was watching the F16s through a pair of binoculars. "I don't see anything but the Falcons, Tom."

  "I'm telling you, there was something else. It looked like it was on the beach..."

  "Well, look," said the second, "if there was something here, it didn't leave any marks..."

  "C'mon Frank, I saw something, maybe it was a helicopter..."

  Frank shook his head. "There's not a helicopter alive that could outrun an F16."

  "Well it was kinda' bulky." He made gestures with his hands to approximate a shape.

  "You're not trying to tell me you saw a UFO, are you, Tom?"

  "Well I..." he saw the other man's expression. "Ahem, I, well, no. No, of course not. No. Definitely not." He turned and walked back toward the street. "Let's go get some coffee." They disappeared between the houses.

  "Neighbors?" whispered Lisa.

  "Not unless some new ones moved in," said Jack. "It's Saturday, right?" His sister nodded. "Mmmm," nodded Jack, "suits before six in the morning, on a Saturday. My guess is alphabet soup..."

  “Alphabet soup...?”

  "FBI, CIA, NCIS, NSA... whatever." He stood up. "We'd better get inside." He searched his pockets as Lisa brushed herself off. "Damn," he growled, "I left my keys in my bomber jacket, guess we'll have to knock."

  "Your eye," said Lisa.

  "Oh yeah..." he paused on the bottom step. "Also in my bomber jacket. Got any sunglasses?"

  "Yeah, sure, cuz I need those all the time in the middle of winter in Chicago..."

  Jack smiled. "Yeah... Well, maybe they won't notice..."

  Lisa laughed loudly. "And pigs fly, right?"

  Jack stood ready to knock at the sliding glass door into the kitchen but froze. This was home, and for a second, it was as if the last sixteen months hadn't happened. But they had. And suddenly he felt like he didn't belong there anymore, a foreigner in his own world. A stranger at his own home. He backed away from the door.

  "What's wrong?" asked Lisa.

  "Ah, well, maybe we should wait a little bit, it's awful early..."

  "Oh sure!" she retorted. "It's Ok to wake me at some ungodly hour, but you're too chicken-shit to wake mom and dad!" She pushed him and he bumped the door, making it rattle. "Knock, you weenie!" The family dog barked from inside the house and Fritz barked back out of reflex.

  "Now look what you've done!" said Jack, backing away from the door again. He grabbed her by the arm and put her in front of the door. "You talk to them first," he told her, "my eye... you know." He moved out of view.

  She smirked. "Yeah, sure. Right. Your eye." The curtain moved and her mother peeked out. The curtain closed again. "What am I supposed to say?" hissed Lisa.

  "Break it to them gently, I'll stay out here..." He pulled the comm unit off his ear and slid it into a pocket inside his jacket.

  "Now, how am I supposed to do that...?" Lisa spun toward the door when she heard it begin to slide. "Oh, hi, mom!"

  "Lisa? What are you doing here?" Lynnette Steele slid the door wide to let her daughter into the house.

  "Funny you should ask me that," said Lisa casually as she stepped past her mother, tossing her duffel bag on the floor.

  ■ ■ ■

  Lynnette jumped up off the couch. "He's here? Why didn't you say so in the first place?!" She moved forward. "Where is he?"

  Lisa stepped in front of her mother to head her off. "Just a minute, mom. Yes, he's here. But he's changed..."

  "Changed how?" Kyle's expression was one of anticipation, but he remained calmly seated on the couch.

  “Different, maybe that's a better word, he's different...”

  "He's hurt, is that it?" said Lynnette.

  "No. No, he's not hurt... he was, but he's all healed now." Just don't squeeze his arm, she thought. "He's Ok, honest."

  Kyle rose from the couch. "Well, let him in, girl! Don't make him stand outside!"

  Lisa raised her hands. "Ok, Ok! Just don't stare at his eye..."

  “What's wrong with his eye?" Asked Lynnette, almost in tears.

  Lisa thought how she might explain it. "Well..."

  "Well what?" Her mother tried to get around her.

  Lisa held her. "Wait, mom..." She sighed, there was no easy way. "His left eye isn't real, and it might be a little scary..." Ok, a lot scary, she thought. She saw the tears rolling down her mother's cheek. Dammit, Jack, she thought, I hate when you make me do this stuff. "It's Ok, mom, he can see fine, it's just not a real eye." Lynnette pushed past her daughter and ran to the door, peering through the glass.

  Always in control, Kyle moved casually to the door and stood next to his wife. "He looks fine." said Kyle quietly, resting his hand on Lynnette's shoulder.

  Jack stood motionless on the sand halfway between the water and the house, watching Fritz splash happily at the water's edge. The dog had been eyeing the surf and Jack had decided to let him play. The water was fairly cold, and Fritz was only getting his legs wet, but he was having a terrific time. The broken clouds were giving way to clear sky, the eastern horizon behind them turning a rosy shade, casting slivers of color between the houses and across the sand. Jack drew a deep lungful of the fresh air and could almost tast
e its substance. What a beautiful morning, he thought, absolutely outstanding. How he missed this.

  But when he glanced up at the sky, he saw the three-quarter morning moon hanging there. Pale, cool, quiet. It beckoned to him like a sleeping lover. And then he knew. This would always be his home, but out there was where he belonged. Where he was destined to be.

  "Jack..." Jack spun around and the Shepherd stopped playing, turning toward the house. Kyle and Lynnette stood at the rail on the sundeck and Lisa stood in the doorway to the kitchen, waving him in.

  The greeting was full of hugs, tears... and stares. Jack had to grit his teeth and Lisa thought his eyes would pop out when their mother hugged him across the wound on his arm. But he made it through. His parents must have dismissed the tears in his eyes as the result of the emotions of the moment.

  Lynnette couldn't help herself. Lisa had said his eye looked odd, but she couldn't have imagined it like it was if she tried. And poor Fritz, he looked like a dog version of Phantom of the Opera with a small camera lens stuck to his face.

  Jack and Lisa had a few moments alone as Lynnette made breakfast and Kyle showered. "I don't get it," whispered Jack, "they haven't asked me a thing. How much did you tell them?"

  "Not much," replied Lisa.

  "So you didn't tell them about..."

  "Are you nuts?" she hissed. "I don't want to end up in a rubber room!"

  "Stop exaggerating," said Jack, "they wouldn't do that."

  "They sure as hell wouldn't believe me," she sassed.

  "Mmm, you're probably right."

  "There's no probably about it," said Lisa quietly. "If you want them to believe this story, you're gonna' have to show them concrete evidence."

  "You're just hoping to see the Freedom for yourself," said Jack sitting back on the couch and switching on the TV.

  "Damn right," confirmed Lisa. "But you know I'm right. They won't believe it unless they see it. Not with all that's happened. They'll think you were forced on drugs or something."