by Laer Carroll
"You can tell the difference in their dance styles. In International ballroom the women lean WAY back as if the men have horrible bad breath. The men stand as if they have a stick up their ass."
Everyone laughed but they had no time for further conversation. The lights in the huge room dimmed and lights near the stage brightened to show two men and a woman on the stage. The woman was young and sexy with bright red lipstick with a tight green dress in contrast to her glorious curls of red hair. The two men were dressed in short blue jackets with lots of embroidery and matching pants. One held a guitar, the other a violin.
There was tremendous applause. The cadets politely joined in.
The first piece was a popular ranchera in which the woman crooned and cried to a sad death.
The next was a change from dolor to upbeat, fast and with a beat that suggested jumping up and down and kicking your feet. Some younger couples got up do just that on the small dance floor in front of the band.
The next shifted gears once again to a mariachi piece, which a lot of Anglos thought of as restaurant Mexican music with their big hats and meandering walk through the crowd. The group made a valiant effort, the guitar playing the tenor guitar of mariachis, the singer sounding a trumpet's line, and the violin going as far in the bass as it could go.
Jane thought the group had come close to creating a new genre in their attempt to play what a very different band would play.
Some of the crowd were not purists. They got up to do a sort of cowboy-type clogging dance.
Next came a cumbia, a sort of slow salsa dance. From Colombia, it was often played at Argentine tango dance parties as a change of pace between tango pieces.
She dragged Ricky onto the dance floor. He'd once said he danced salsa. She made him prove it. He succeeded well enough once he slowed down to the leisurely rhythm. Which is why the two of them were almost the only young people among a bunch of grandparents.
The two got a round of applause when the piece was done.
The next few pieces until intermission were similar: attempts to play a large variety of Latin music in a three-person band.
The intermission lasted a half hour. Jane dared to go to the piano where she ran a finger down its 88 keys to be sure it was reasonably in tune. Hearing it was, she sat down and began to quietly play popular tunes from the Glen Miller and other orchestras, who often accompanied such artists as Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and Fred Astaire as they crooned and danced in old black and white movies.
Once a waiter came up and tried to talk to her but she made a I Don't Understand gesture and he left. No one else approached her, probably because the two male cadets came to stand on each of the piano, their eyes half-closed. Young, good looking, but obviously in tip-top physical shape.
Besides, they looked like rich paying customers.
The trio came back. Jane stood up and left the piano area, standing to look at the three, and clapping with great enthusiasm, her two men on each side of her doing the same. Then Kate got up to join the party.
Just as soon as the trio finished Jane and her party got up to leave, a big tip behind them on their table.
They had just gotten across the street when the guitar player, the older of the two male musicians, came up to them.
"Wait. Could you give me a minute of your time?"
Jane answered in Spanish, "Of course. We came tonight to listen to you."
Then in English: "You three, go sit in the car."
She went to sit on the edge of the cargo area of her van after tweeting open the rear swing-up door. She motioned the man to sit beside her on the carpeted area.
"You played so well I wondered if you were professional. Maybe open to a gig."
"On weekends. Week nights my job keeps me busy. Studying for the next day mostly. But the three-day weekend evenings I could work one night."
"We need a skilled piano player, mostly on Saturdays. We have a pianist but he has physical limitations."
She tilted her head and made motions of drinking from a bottle.
"No, health."
She put a hand over her heart. He shook his head.
"Just age. He tires easily. Could you do it?"
"Saturdays. It's a deal. UNLESS my job gets in the way. That's unlikely, but they take priority."
"Of course, of course. I'll need your contact information. And for your first gig come in Sunday afternoon at 4:00 to get acquainted and rehearse. After the first time, we only rehearse an hour and you can come in later."
She shook hands, gave him a card fished from her tiny purse, and left. He walked back across the street. On the opposite side he watched as she drove away, waving at her.
"What was that about?" they wanted to know.
"I've got a Saturday or Sunday gig for the next month."
Chapter 11 - USAF Academy - Summer 1
Helicopters
At 08:00 sharp on her second week in Laughlin Air Force Base Jane showed up at the Laughlin AFB Search and Rescue hangar. She entered the large open hangar doorway and crossed by the nearest of three large helicopters sitting in the hangar.
She went further to a door into a hallway which led, according to the base map, to the office of the commander of the 48th Rescue Squadron Flight M detached to Laughlin.
The name plate beside the door she sought read Capt. R. Pastorini. She knocked on the door jamb of the open doorway and, after being given the command to "Enter!", went in. She braced to attention before the desk of the man sitting behind it.
Staring over his head she said, "Cadet Kuznetsov reporting for duty as ordered, Sir!"
A slender dark-haired officer in a light blue short-sleeved shirt sat behind the desk. He had dark-blue shoulder tabs decorated with a captain's double silver bars. His name plate was over his right shirt pocket, wings over his left.
He stared at her and spoke up. "First, we got somebody new assigned to us?"
To her he said, "At ease." She dropped to the more informal stance, still looking over his head.
"I meant really at ease, Cadet. Slouch if that will get you comfortable. We're about to have a discussion, not an inquisition."
A sturdy black man in grey and beige camouflage uniform came in the doorway to stand by the desk looking equally at his boss and Jane. He wore the stripes of a Master Sergeant, the highest rank in the non-commissioned officer ranks. Being called First meant that he was in charge of all the enlisted in the flight and the right-hand man of the commander.
"Sorry, Boss. With all the details of getting ready for the exercise this one slipped my mind. Old Bill sent her over."
"Bill is still with us? He threatened to retire so often that I figured sooner or later he was actually going to do it."
"He did this morning. I'd have fainted if I could manage it. I was sure I'd go to my reward before he did. Just before he signed off he sent her for training as an S&R pilot."
They both stared at Jane as if she were an orc jumping out of a fantasy universe.
"'Helos-are-for-weenies Bill' sent her over," said the captain with wonder in his voice. "Cadet, sit in that chair and explain this to us."
He leaned back into a comfortable position. The sergeant put a hip on the man's desk.
"Not much to explain, Sir. I'm here as one of the Open House visitors to get a taste of flying aircraft. I worked pretty hard for him and he OK'd my request to come here."
The sergeant had slipped his vear faceplate down over his eyes and had made some gestures within the view of the device, giving commands to pull up data.
"It says here that she has a single-engine recip civilian license and a helo civilian license. AND a just-issued Air Force AT-6 license."
"Now I'm even more confused," said the captain. "Cadet, as I understand it the Open House is just to give you people a taste of flying, not to actually train here. How come he signed off on a license?"
"He worked me pretty hard and I did my best. He must have liked it."
"Bo
ss, she was certified COMBAT READY."
"What?" The captain put a vear onto his head and went through much the same actions as his First had done. He looked carefully at the results then at his First.
"Do you think he went off his rocker and this is his last FU to the Force?"
"No, Boss. That old man is as solid as they come and loves the Force too much. He has his beefs with some of the higher-ups but he'd never disrespect the Force. If he has a God, it's the Force."
The captain had been reading further. He took off his vear and said, "The record shows he authorized expenditure of munitions and that she passed with a 101% Kill Score. Can you explain the hundred and ONE percent, Cadet?"
"I took out two targets with one missile. They were so close they were touching. What destroyed one destroyed the other as well."
The sergeant removed his vear also.
"I think I understand, Boss. After years of getting students who have to get through the T-6 training he finally got one who wanted to buckle down on the craft. She also turned out to be a natural. A bifecta, so to speak. He couldn't resist passing on as much as he knew and pretty much succeeded."
"OK, that explains the licenses, basic flight qualifications and combat quals. But with those achievements the pointy-nose high flyers would have snapped her up. Why are you HERE, Cadet? Don't you want to be fighter pilot?"
"I'm going to be an astronaut pilot. That means becoming a fighter pilot."
"Why are you HERE?"
"I asked to be here."
He sighed. "Why do you WANT to be here?"
"I had an emergency with a passenger when I was taking flight training. I've always thought if I knew more about rescue operations I could have handled it better."
"Is that why you got a helo license?"
The sergeant said, "I missed that. You can fly a helo?"
"I can get one in the air, fly cross country, and set her down on a stable surface. Anything hard I'd have trouble."
The captain thought she'd said something funny. "Flying a helo is easy, is it?"
The sergeant thought she had not. "Boss, she's one of those naturals. It IS easy for her. She can't understand why it wouldn't be."
The captain stared at her. "I've heard about naturals. I never expected to meet one."
Jane felt the queasiness inside of embarrassment. SHE knew how special her talent was. But having others aware of it was as if they saw her naked.
"This could be a piece of good luck for us, First. We never have enough people to handle the trials on Wednesday. Even an extra pair of untrained hands could put us over the top.
"Cadet, how does this grab you? We get you some more training on helos and you give us a hand on some trials coming up later this week. Stick around an extra day after that and we'll give you a real treat."
"Perfect, sir! I'll do my best."
"First, take her to Basil and tell him to give her a complete briefing on the helos, as much as she can handle without overstressing her. Cadet, we want to work you hard but not to the point of exhaustion. Tired people make mistakes and you DON'T want to make mistakes with flying windmills.
"Oh, knock off the bracing and saluting. We're working dogs here, not show dogs like the pointy-nose high flyers."
<>
An hour later the First Sergeant returned to the Captain's office and sat in one of the chairs in front of the desk.
"I think we lucked out even more than we thought. We just saw the earnest natural pilot earlier. I watched her work for a little. She's smart as a--I don't know what metaphor to use. I'm sure her IQ is so high they can't even measure it. She would just look at a procedure and she knew it--better than the experts. She already made improvements. Just little ones, easy to introduce, but they add up to several percents more efficiency or something like that."
"I'm ahead of you on that. I did some background. Her father is Alexander Kuznetsov, one of the top physicists in the world. He teaches at CalTech, one of the top universities in the world. And get this, she's smarter than he is. She TAUGHT math at CalTech. Advanced math to PhDs. The Academy mathematicians are creaming their pants they've got her."
"Now I'm getting scared, Boss. I said I saw her work. Not just the job. The people. She's got charisma up the wazoo. A half hour and everyone who meets her thinks she's their old friend. Even the Turk. I've never seen her smile."
"So she's--a flatterer? A player?"
"No. I'm not sure I understand it, and I know all about social manipulation. She just FOCUSES on you and expects you to be good. And you are."
"Hmm. Maybe if we handle her right... This job is the hardest I know, even more than combat. We can never save everybody and we always have to try. If I had a heart to break, it would have broken long ago. Keep an eye on her First. Just maybe we can recruit her."
"I'll do that. But remember what she said. 'I'm going to be an astronaut.' Not 'try' to be. 'Going' to be."
<>
Jane was in heaven. She met, among others, Basil Churchill. A tough/skinny man born in England who retained a hint of a British accent, he was one of the senior pilots. Given his orders by the First Sergeant, he set out to give her some basic training on the particular helicopters Flight M used: the Sikorsky Shadow Hawk.
He led her around the craft, touching it here and there as if it were a favorite horse. As he did so he had Jane read off the machines related specifications on her vear. A big pod was a detachable/re-attachable fuel tank, and at his command she read off and memorized the amount of fuel the tank could hold and how much the onboard fuel tank held.
At one point they climbed a rolling ladder to touch and look at the housing of the four rotors and the roots of the rotors themselves. Then the ladder was rolled so they could look and feel the tail rotor.
Jane followed his example and laid her hands on the machine.
And every time she felt a faint echo as if the machine was waking in tandem with the robot inside her. For short moments the three of them were one, something greater than the sum of their parts, a powerful and capable higher being.
Having briefed Jane on the outside of the helo, Basil took her inside.
"There're two parts to learn here, the physical and the electronic."
He took her on a touchy-feely tour of the physical insides of the Shadow Hawk, among them the different features to secure evacuating patients from a disaster or war zone and the troops traveling into a zone to perform rescues.
"You'll find these all over this cargo area," laying his hands on a projecting feature like a large raised staple with smooth surfaces. "Despite all the work to make a cargo hold flexible enough to handle any situation, we're never perfect. These are to give you ways to tie down cargo that doesn't exactly fit a standard."
Here he called a break for a pit stop and to stretch, then took her back inside the huge beast.
He took her forward to the cockpit and had her join him in the pilots' seats. He flicked a couple of switches and various lights and displays lit up. Then he laid a hand on the control console.
Jane did the same and felt the beast's nervous system coming alive. Her maturing electrical field reached out and merged with its. She saw, heard, and felt two versions of the world, its and hers. The views edged toward fusion and she lifted her hand from the console.
"There's a lot here to learn and if you were stationed with us we'd lead you through all of the capabilities of our babies. They are what make these vehicles so capable, a flexible powerful artificial nervous system that helps us think about the hard, awful problems we have to deal with. This is the most important job in the world, Cadet, more even than all the fighting our boys and girls do on the ground and sea and off it."
He spoke as if he was in a church and maybe to him it was. She nodded, feeling a little of the emotion underneath his almost comic-opera exterior, the stereotypical Brit with his tiny mustache.
"This morning we're going to focus on three systems you have to know to fly this baby. Then after chow w
e'll take her up. YOU will take her up. How does that sound?"
"It sounds just fine, Lieutenant."
<>
Near official quitting time for the First Sergeant and Flight lieutenant Churchill they met, long before their usual actual quitting time. They sat in the flight briefing room, chili dogs and beer on the scarred table top between them, their legs up on chairs or the table's edge.
"How'd it go with the cadet, Basil?"
"Like a dream, First. I'm not sure if it was a wet dream or a nightmare. You literally never have to tell her anything twice. She's got some freak memory that just soaks up information and keeps it without mixing the really important stuff with the incidental stuff. That is the problem with the ones with so-called perfect memories. Everything gets mixed up."
"Can she fly the beasts?"
"Without a doubt. You told me she already has a helo license. So I let her take Betsy up." Betsy was officially Bravo but like Alpha and Charlie was never called that. Instead they were Annie, Betsy, and Charlene.
"I watched her like a hawk, ready to jerk back control in an instant. Our babies are high-strung girls who'll go crazy and kill you in an instant if you let them. I never even got close to needing to over-ride her.
"She has very delicate but firm control. Very light hands. She almost thinks them off the ground."
They ate and drank for several minutes, digesting the information they were sharing.
"We headed out to Amistad where we're going to do the Wednesday trials. All the way I was testing her on the basic electronics, adding a couple of other systems as we went along. I had her do a few high passes over the whole area, then lower down on the area we've got blocked off from the public.
"Then I took her almost to set-down, at the height where we usually do a wet extraction. She kept Betsy rock steady, and I do mean steady. We could have done a real extraction."
"Impressive." Pulling a rescuee from water was one of the most difficult helicopter operations because the prop downdraft of a heavy helicopter was fierce. It roiled the water surface and threw up a goodly amount of spray. And it was hard for a pilot to keep the helicopter exactly where it needed to be.
