Captured

Chapter 34. Buying and selling airplanes.

Both of us started browsing online for two-seat propeller airplanes. It was two weeks until our next live phone conversation but we texted several times a day. Like me Dan gets wrapped up in stuff and forgets about family. No wonder why he's single, probably will be the rest of his life. I still think he should get tested for Asperger Syndrome, he's a lot like me but he'd never admit it. Most people in the world with lesser forms of autism have never even been screened. All they know is their life is a struggle while everyone else they grew up with found a great career.

He thinks my geeky interests and hobbies are weird distractions, but his are equally strange. Dan thinks he is totally hetero normal. Dan has one major weakness: he likes getting blown so much he'll compromise nearly all his alleged values just to come in someone's mouth. Despite that I pray our relationship remains like it is today for the rest of our lives, but it's not likely. If he meets and falls in love with another woman then my importance will immediately begin to decrease, it's happened before. But finding a women willing to shack-up in a nice motorhome with no clothes washer or dryer, and no dishwasher or normal flush toilet might be difficult. Making his odds of finding a woman even worse because he lives in an area where he doesn't speak the local language, and perhaps worst of all he has commented that many of the Arab women in-town our age are often extremely good looking but he can't flirt with any of them.

One thing I think is kind of funny is when he starts dating a woman she has to give him head and do a damn good job (early on) or he'll break-up with her. So the challenge for girls is to blow him better than his one gay friend who has over thirty years of experience sucking dick. Good luck with that! Someone who has never had a dick is supposed to understand how to properly suck dick? Not too many women do it well or care to invest the time to learn. It does take instruction and practice, as well as desire and good gag reflex suppression. Most women are totally grossed out when a man comes in her mouth.

For me the key to gag reflex suppression is mental focus and relaxation. For the man whose penis is in my mouth the sensation from deep oral pleasure is truly amazing. I can do things to his erection inside my mouth that no woman can do with a vagina! Dan says in bed the only advantage a woman has is with her tits, but he's never been with a guy with woman size nips, like Luis.

And I know from experience that when it comes to giving a proper blow job success comes from being able to swallow quickly and completely, don't let semen linger in your mouth. Wash it down with any liquid, alcohol works best because it kills the tadpoles. If you leave live tadpoles in your mouth they can attack certain types of flesh and cause irritation later on. I've felt them attack the borders of my lips, but nowhere else in my mouth. My fav tadpole killer is chilled red wine, like a Merlot or Malbec, but water works too. Hot coffee also stuns tadpoles. He said mouth also has an advantage over vagina because a mouth can't get pregnant.

Six days after my last visit the Danville Airport hosted their first Dronefest, Dan said it was a big success and he totally sold out on hot dogs and pop. He did far better than he predicted. He said paid attendance was 429 adults, he said he could have sold three times as many hotdogs over two days. The organizers let kids (under 12) in free (very family friendly), and the competition was covered on the TV news for three nights because it promotes a Halal-style family activity. (Halal = permissible)

I asked why they wanted to have their meets at an airport versus an empty parking lot or school athletic field in-town and he said they had speed competitions and needed a long flat (limited access) surface to fly above. They also had four dozen families camp out overnight during the two-day event and practically nobody else would allow people to camp on their property because of the liability. But part of their deal was Dan held no liability for them or their visitors. They had to provide all their own services and security. About the only thing missing was showers.

All Dan did was sell hotdogs, soda, and keep people off the tarmac. The only piece of the money he did not get was a cut of the racing fee. He only got a piece of the general admission. Dan reported the parking area had three charter busses because groups of families got together and split the cost on a round trip bus ride from Tangier. He said the grand champion racer won $310 Euros and appeared on TV twice and also appeared in the city newspaper. Second place team won $200 Euros. He said the top speed they clocked over the runway was 46mph, which is pretty damn fast for a battery powered toy.

He said airport people aren't bothered by drone noise so an airport was an ideal place for their races and the crowds attending the show. He said quad copter racing was essentially a video game, but these folks also did it for real and turned it into a great family-friendly sport. He said it was a real money maker too since most of the racers had serious investments in their drones and they could practice at home on the computer virtually too. Having the festival on private property meant they could limit access to keep troublemakers out.

There's a game console and android app called `Air-Show' that features race scenarios very similar to the one they built behind the hangar, and the race conditions are fully customizable and allow for multi-player competitions with others around the world. In some scenarios they can fly multiple racers at the same time and they can try to nudge each other into obstacles and the steel loops.

Their race course is made of nine vertical steel pipes cemented in the ground, each one has a three foot diameter steel ring on top (they're shaped like a lollipop). None of them are at the same height, nor are they in a straight line. Basically, using the camera on the front of their drone and a video headset they fly a drone through all nine rings as quickly as possible without touching anything. The pilot who does it the fastest, in the proper sequence, without contacting anything wins that competition and the cash purse. It's a lot harder than it sounds and looks a lot like a very nice computer game in the video headset.

He said some of the teams can't afford the video headset gear so they sit on lawn chairs with a black stadium blanket over their head and watch the video camera on a tablet computer or android phone; they control their drone via wifi. Most use a regular game controller, some use the tilt sensors in their tablet computer or android phone.

On average it takes an experienced drone pilot about 4-5 minutes to complete the course. When each competitor is half way through the next team starts, the overlap saves them a lot of time because of the steadily increasing number of family teams (currently 81 teams registered). They are divided into 4 team classes based on age and level of experience. That way a 6 year old does not race against a very skilled 19 year old with a $900 home-made drone. Experience is the biggest predictor of outcomes they say, even more than money spent. So a $60 drone is just as likely to win as a $300 drone. Many drones bump into the obstacles and suffer some damage (usually broken propellers).

Teams usually start out with a store bought drone but some get more serious and build a custom unit, built for better overall performance. Another reason why they only allow 1-2 racers on the course at a time is the number of radio channels available for all the different radio signals sent to and from the drone and the pilot. The course begins on a launch pad about 60 feet from the first loop and ends once they clear the 9th loop. The competition requires judges watching each loop, timing each drone from start to finish, and one closely watching the finish line. They often have over 78 teams each weekend, but the speed competitions on the runway are a separate event. There is no fee to compete in the speed challenge because they might have five racing at the same time. During the main event if any drone hits something the nearest judge blows a loud whistle and that unit is disqualified for that race. In all these races they compete against the clock, not each other. The idea is to improve participating families and not to encourage violence.

They call their technology FPV (First Person Video). To a pilot wearing a video headset it looks like you are actually flying like Superman. On nicer units the pilot can see some of the controls on the screen below the video. All pilots must be seated while operating FPV or they'll fall over in the first turn! They have to make sharp turns and go from a full stop to full speed ahead, up-down-left-right. They add obstacles to the course, like tethered helium balloons, plastic potted trees, and sometimes they have fans blowing smoke near one of the rings. The smoke looks like heavy fog to the pilot. It's a 3D race track viewed on a 2D screen, which adds to the risk of crashing.

The competition is guaranteed to seriously raise your heart rate. Their gear is expensive too. Most of the quads are customized from drone kits. Some of the photos he showed me how younger girls are also attracted to the game, and so are the little kids. It's just like a real action video game, but for real. The controllers they use are nearly the same as they use on game counsels so FPV racing comes easily to most people.

Dan explained the most popular part of the competition were the littlest kids as drone pilots. Typical age was 5-6 years old and they moved slowly and their families shouted and cheered as the littlest pilots drove their toy drones along the course. The little kids usually did not use video gear, they walked down the course steering their drone and watching up as they flew from ring to ring, with their parents following nearby shouting advice. Almost every child fell down but none were injured. Most of them wore gloves and sunglasses. Since they moved much slower they had three on the course at a time, the next one was started when the previous drone made it to the third ring.

The boy that won that competition received fifty Morocco dollars and was so thrilled he actually cried on the first place platform and received a standing ovation! Dan said it made him cry too, it was so heartwarming. That moment was shown twice on the local TV news that night!

(Note to readers: The following terms are used in this book as interchangeable names for the same thing: Quad, quadcopter, drone, and UAV. They are basically a remotely controlled, battery powered, four-engine, propeller driven flying toy with advanced electronics, safety features, and highly restricted range. They are designed to shut off and free-fall to the ground if the controlling signal is lost for more than one second. No license or registration is required to operate them in most countries because they are just little flying toys.)

It surprised me when Dan said there are no stores in Morocco that sell drone parts! It gave me an idea for a future business opportunity. If the sport became as popular in Spain too then an online store might be the ticket to making a small fortune, maybe even more than running an airport.

Members said the little kids put on the best shows and they usually competed for fifty dollars and a large stuffed bear dressed like a WW1 combat pilot with a leather jacket, goggles, and a long scarf!

Most competitions last all day Saturday and Sunday morning. The club (now in their 5th year) hires a portable toilet service to place four units at the site for the duration (marked M and F). The race events are also like a tailgate party (outside an NFL stadium on game day) with lots of food being cooked/shared and kids running around. It's a huge family party and is growing rapidly as new families join the league. Dan said at some events in the city the Modesty Police showed up but on his airport they will be ordered to leave, or risk being pepper sprayed. Dan told me they post a members-only sign and have their own volunteer security patrol. Dan also said it is a great father-daughter team activity and he was surprised to see so many high school age girls in the competition.

Dan agreed to four Porta Potty units placed near the parking area. It gives them an area about 180 feet by 1,500 feet for their race track and additional room to park dozens of vehicles (and charter busses); they even bring their own diesel generator on wheels. They bring lighting, PA system, first aid gear and an EMT, and lots of walkie talkies. Several members volunteer to provide security patrols, especially at night. Dan said the money he made selling hot dogs, pop, and ticket sales almost covered his investment in the tons of limestone gravel they poured on the dirt driveway so everyone could get back to the parking area without getting stuck in the soft sand east of the runway. Some of the competitors put on their own fireworks show at night. And at night the place was like a giant tailgate party, since half of the teams spent the night in tents or campers. After the first event they all learned the area created for tents needed to be at least doubled in size. He promised to dig another pit, about one foot deep and 15 feet wide by 70 feet long which they filled with clean beach sand for pitching tents. He also said he would look into planting some trees for shade around the tent camping areas.

Like always Dan also sent me photos of the Citation in the hangar. I told Dan I just listed the jet for sale online (yesterday) for $1.5m Euros cash-only. I expected it would sell quickly. Dan said he was able to get the Citation charger plugged-in for ten hours, I thanked him for remembering on a day he was super busy.

Dan said the worst part for him was keeping people (mostly kids) off the tarmac. He said when a plane starts its engine the propeller becomes hard to see and its super easy to walk into one, just ask anyone who worked on a WW2 aircraft carrier. And even today in the jet age people get sucked into the jet air intake. Being near an operating airplane of any type is dangerous. And on the tarmac its practically a three dimensional danger zone with airplanes moving without warning.

Two days after Dronefest the power company ran the underground conduit and installed the meter box and a tiny breaker panel box, so very soon he will have an active 230v electrical outlet on the outside of the hangar. Dan said with the trencher it took three linemen 95 minutes to machine trench the conduit from the power pole, across the field (1400ft), under the fence, over to the hangar, and up to the meter box mounted on the outside wall of the hangar near the southwest corner. Dan said he had to cut the barbed wire fence then repair it after the crew was done on day #2.

As they trenched-in the plastic conduit they had already inserted a steel cable they would use to pull the electrical wires through the pipe. They also poured in a water-based lubricant to make pulling the wires easier.

The day after the conduit was run they pulled the power cables through the conduit. Daniel said when they first started pulling the wires and Sam was in the control tower he drove the tanker truck back to Eddalya for another load of 2900 gallons of AV-Gas, he also refilled the diesel tanks and checked air pressure in all ten tires. That was the first time Dan left his employee alone at the airport while he drove to the shipping terminal. He said he was gone for 95 minutes and raced back as fast as he could but the kid had a cell to call him if something went wrong. Dan said Samir spends most of the time in the control tower with the radio directing traffic. It's not very high stress, they seldom get more than five planes an hour, so his biggest challenge is to make sure there is never more than one airplane on the runway at a time. Samir said from up in the control tower you can hear any approaching airplane engine running within a mile or two, so there are no secret airplane movements. He pulled on a rope to ring the big brass dinner bell outside the control tower any time anyone was about to have an airplane on the runway. Dan said he used a quart of black paint and a small rolling pan to paint their control tower radio frequency on the bright white roof of the ATC building, in ten foot long numbers. Some pilots use cell phones to call Samir instead of using a VHF radio, but cell towers antennas are not designed to work with cell phones up in the air. Their antennas always tilt downward. So cell comms from an airplane are usually marginal at best.

While Dan was on the road to get the tanker refilled they got one crop duster team, so Samir rode his bike over and assigned them a pad and collected ten Euros and rode back to his `office' to watch them on the computer screen in case someone trashed the Porta-potty. Luckily it was someone with an account who knew the rules.

The first thing Dan purchased after they turned on the electricity to the hangar was a small day-night (steerable) wifi video camera he could watch the tarmac and about half the runway. Samir is the one who puts the USB video recorder into record mode when anyone is about to land or depart. Dan also has to have the Porta-Potty service guy rotate the one by the hangar so the front door is visible to the camera so each user can be identified. Dan said he purchased four of those cameras because he expects lightning will kill them because the hangar gets struck once or twice a year, but there is nothing on it to burn (yet).

They also had their first ever Friends of Bill W' meeting inside the hangar one evening. He purchased a large pedestal fan to keep everyone cool and people brought chairs and coffee stuff, now with electrical service they could plug in a Mister Coffee and make some nasty cheap drip coffee. Dan was told during the meeting that Automatic Coffee Machine' in Arabic is said: makinat alqahwat al'uwtumatikia. I don't think he really cared, he's just trying to make a few bucks and meet like-minded people. But the actual meeting was for his soul. He's not an alcoholic but he really benefits from the 12-Step guidelines. Dan said there are a lot more gays in 12-Step meetings than most people realize, but most of them are straight acting and very much in the closet. He says those meetings are a decent place to get laid if that's what you're looking for.

He said attendance was 16 people and they agreed to meet monthly in the hangar and everyone said they had a nice time. Lots of smoking was done and they were thankful there was no need to stand outside to smoke, but the seating was divided so non-smokers didn't get gassed. They passed around a hat to collect money to encourage Dan to do meetings monthly and he planned on starting some kind of web page so they could see the calendar on their cell phones with the date and time. The location would only be given out in person and they plainly said that no modesty police were allowed on the property. Anyone caught spying and posing as an attendee would be ejected from the property. Almost everyone came from Tangier and included heroin and meth addicts, not just alcoholics. The meeting was designed for addictive personalities. In Arabic, Alcoholics Anonymous is three long words: mudaminu alkuhul majhulun.

But his meeting was not a proper AA meeting, just an Open 12-Step support group that crossed all addiction lines. He said nobody there spoke English and everyone spoke Spanish. Two chairs were left behind and one old Mr. Coffee machine with a stack of filters. Someone also left a large pack of Styrofoam cups. He said the cash they collected will be spent on advertising the group in the newspaper so they can reach more people in need of help.

The first meeting was late in the day so it was lit by candles since there was no lighting in the hangar yet, but the next meeting would have electric lights.

Ten days after the Dronefest weekend I had a meeting with an airplane broker at the Hotel Continental in old Tangier, we first verified each other's license status, passports, and pilot's log book. Once we proved ourselves we took a black taxi to Danville and pre-flighted the Citation, he paid for the taxi. On the drive down I called Dan and asked him to use the skid loader to gently move the jet out of the hangar and park it sideways between the hangar and the runway for the pre-flight checks in broad daylight. When we arrived it was sitting outside as requested, after the buyer was satisfied that we were examining the jet that I held the title he closely read the maintenance log. After that we did the pre-flight checklist together. That took almost an hour. Daniel stayed away while we carefully inspected the Citation. You can tell a lot about a person as a pilot by closely watching them do those checks. I have done so many of them I don't even need the actual book.

The airplane broker spoke English quite well, I think he was born near Cairo Egypt. Other than his weird habit of rolling his tongue a lot he was easy to understand. He said he never knew there was an airport in this area, I told him the short version of its history. He said he thought Dan should start a museum on the premises. I told him a lot of people suggested the exact same thing.

Once we finished inspecting the Citation and the buyer was satisfied we belted into seats in the cockpit and I started the jets and called for clearance and taxied to the west end, turned around, called for blast-off clearance, and took-off for a leisurely flight around the Atlas Mountains (Danville to Tetouan to Bni Moussa to Jbel Lahbib and back to Danville, about a 75 mile five-sided box, at a lower speed of 280 knots, at 3,500feet) with the cabin slightly pressurized. After that trip he wanted to fly it himself so with the jet in autopilot we swapped seats and he flew it around again, a longer/higher route. He gained altitude to 29,000 feet and did the box at 80% throttle, or 490mph. I told the broker dude the Danville runway was very tricky, I had to land us. On the last leg of our flight we swapped seats again and I landed it and parked near the hangar and sat there briefly discussing the sale with the APU running so the inside was well air conditioned.

On jet aircraft the APU is a smaller (jet fuel powered) turbine engine in the very back of the aircraft that spins a generator to provide electricity to all the systems in the aircraft, like air conditioning! With the APU running we went into the passenger compartment and opened the floor hatch and looked at the machine part of the jet that sat below the floor, along with the hydraulics and the big lead acid batteries. The brains of the plane are down there. We were in the basement for about 25 minutes while he ran some self-checks on the main computer. Then we closed the floor hatch and sat in the passenger area.

The broker said he wanted to buy it and walked over to his stuff and got out a small case containing 15,000-hundred Euro bills and I signed over the title and the sale was complete. He let me count one strap of cash then I spot checked the others which took about eight minutes.

He asked me to taxi it back to the west end and get it positioned for take-off, he wanted to leave right now while the sun was up, so I re-started the jets and did what he asked. After asking Samir for permission I released the brakes and gave the jet some throttle and rolled back onto the runway and taxied to the west end and spun it around and aligned with the runway centerline and locked the brakes again. I asked if he was still ready and pointed to the fuel display and released my seatbelt and reminded him the brakes were locked. Then with the cash and a receipt in hand I exited the cockpit and shut the door, and let myself out the cabin door, then locked it from the outside. I walked around in front of the Citation and waved to him, that was when Samir transmitted that the Citation was clear for takeoff, and also advised the pilot that Tetouan was close ahead on the left, be mindful of possible passenger jets in the area, its only like 17 miles from Danville and they also always take off heading east. He told the pilot to call Tangier Center on 127.750 for departure routing to Oran (about 530 miles east), which was where I bet Samir ten bucks he was headed. Oran is the nearest commercial airport east of Tetouan. East of Tetouan they have the closest jet fuel pumps and there is a nice hotel there too. Sam thought he would fly to Tunis instead since there are better hotels there and it would give him more time in the air.

The jet had enough fuel on board for about 1400 miles so he had to fly it to a commercial airport to fill the tank. He said he was flying to Cairo tomorrow where he already had a buyer.

At that moment Dan was busy helping people service planes on the pads and he saw I had the runway tied up, the loud sound of the jet engines was clearly heard over the entire area. My biggest concern was another crop duster coming in to land and they might not see the white jet parked on the large white triangle.

Moments after Samir gave him clearance the Citation took off and everything at the airport stopped briefly because a private jet was a rare sight on the ground in Morocco, and being that close it was rather loud too. Not to mention seeing a jet land and take off on such a small runway was rare, very few pilots would do that without aircraft carrier experience. Taking off was easier than landing but I was sure his eyeballs were closely watching airspeed and that big white triangle on the east end of the runway. I think he hit rotation speed with 900 feet left and probably felt relieved when it lifted off as the hangar building whizzed by the right cockpit window.

After standing near the runway (with fingers in my ears) watching the Citation vanish in the eastern sky I went inside the motorhome and helped myself to a full wine bottle and poured myself a tall glass, with ice cubes, some crackers, and string cheese to munch on. With my glass and a plate of munchies in-hand I walked to the front end of the motorhome and sat in the driver's seat and reached forward and slid open the curtain so I could watch them service airplanes, almost 150 feet away.

It was interesting watching the crop duster teams quickly service their airplanes. You could tell which ones were more skilled by how they operated independently on the service pad. The person in the truck was usually the wife. She filled tanks while he checked the plane and inspected things like the propeller, the tires, and their next customer's location. She pulled hoses out and stuck nozzles into caps on top of the airplane then got the second hose out to fill the second tank, usually the one with fertilizer or herbicide, sometimes they sprayed something to kill grasshoppers or other crop eating bugs, like cotton weevils. Once fuel and chemical tanks were full she retracted the hoses while he climbed up and capped the tanks and shut the cover doors. It was interesting to watch them work to get the plane ready in an average time of 19 minutes, like a slow-motion pit-stop.

She'd back the truck away while he got in the cockpit and started the engine. She walked back and hand-pushed the tail sideways to aim the plane toward the runway, then she was done and with some waves and smiles he got clearance and taxied to the runway and left. She got in the truck and left too.

I started to wonder how they pumped fuel and fertilizer from sheet metal tanks in the back of the truck, up into the airplane tanks. The best I could guess was they used a small air compressor to pressurize the tanks and blow fuel up into the airplane's wing tanks. I also saw that not all airplanes had fuel tanks in the wings, on some of them the engine fuel tank sat between the engine and the front pilot's compartment. It gave them a space about 25 inches tall, 30 inches wide and four feet long in which to mount the fuel tank. And most of the newer crop dusters used fuel injection and had an electric pump and float level sensor down inside the tank, just like they put on cars. The older ones like the PO-2 the fuel tank was in the upper wing and fed by gravity. I felt safer flying with gravity feed but everyone says fuel pumps are very reliable now, especially after they started using them in all motor vehicles.

After his customers finished and left Dan walked home and waved when he saw me in the driver's seat. As Dan got closer I held up my glass of wine and saw him laugh at me. He must have suspected something was going on.

Dan walked inside and immediately asked if I sold the jet, because he saw it take off again, but there I was. I told him to open the case on the coffee table. "One and a half million Euros." He whispered "Holee fuck." I told him I thought the buyer was a Middle Eastern luxury jet broker and not the actual new owner, it was it flying to Cairo tomorrow, probably Oran or maybe Tunis today.

"He'll be low on fuel by the time he gets to Tunis because he's kind of heavy on the throttles." He started to talk in English, but we usually talk in Spanish here, even at home.

"Whyzat?"

"We met at a hotel in Old Tangier, an expensive place to stay and we exchanged log books to prove we were legit pilots and the jet wasn't stolen. And when I read his log book he had a lot of entries all around the Med and the Middle East, I think he was a part-time commercial pilot, he said he flies commercial for DHL as a back-up, mostly the Boeing 737 Cargo Stretch. And I saw he was checked out on the Citation and other small luxury jets. He seemed like a pretty smart older guy. Those jet airliner pilots are used to hitting the throttles hard at take off and yanking them back on landing, the rest of the time the jet manages the throttle for you, so he's not used to keeping one hand on them during normal flight. Studies have shown if you put two pilots in the same airplane the commercial jet pilot will use lots more fuel than the pilot who pays for it from his own wallet!" Dan and I both chuckled.

We discussed showering and I asked if `we' could use the shower in the motorhome. Dan looked at me and smiled and said there was more room next door but I insisted on the smaller space in the motorhome. The two advantages of using the tiny shower in the motorhome are there's a toilet to sit on which put my face at the best height to suck his dick. If we used the shower in the ATC building I'd have to be on my knees the entire time and there is enough room for him to step back, which ruins my body position advantage. And doing it in the shower meant I could hand clean his crotch myself, so if he stunk or tasted bad it was my own fault. I didn't want to make the total lack of privacy in the ATC building an issue. At least in the bus bathroom we don't have to worry about a visitor walking in while his dick is in my mouth.

One problem I cause Daniel is when I'm over we tend to use much more water than he uses by himself. That means that between my visits he probably has to go longer times not showering. If I don't visit he can shower every other day, but if I visit then he has to go a week without showering because we use more water. If I drove down regularly I'd bring him several five-gallon jugs of drinking water on each trip and he could pour them into his big water tank if needed. And when I asked if we' could use the shower that is also code for and I want to suck your dick.'

Dan changed the subject and told me about some of the pilots he met lately, all local flyers. And he also told me about what he's done to locate a used airplane. Crop dusters tend to be very maneuverable and nimble in the sky, like the kind of airplane you might use for an acrobatic air show, a plane capable of using short runways, very slow stall speeds, reliable, and able to do steep climbs and sharp turns. Of course neither of us wants to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, just local flights. So many pilots here like to fly around the mountains because they're beautiful and nearby (like a nature hiking trail in the sky), much of the lower Atlas Mountains are covered by thick pine forest. When his airport opened it really was the first airstrip on the north side of the mountains, not counting the big commercial airports but they don't want small plane traffic and might refuse your landing unless you are having an actual emergency. Small planes cannot move fast enough to fly in traffic patterns with commercial jets. Some commercial airports that allow small aircraft have one shorter runway just for them because it's risky having jets and propeller airplanes together on one runway and using the same flight routes.

Some larger airports (like Madrid) that allow both propeller and jet aircraft have different approach routes so the slow propeller airplanes never fly the same approach routes as the jets. The routes merge just before the outer marker then everyone uses the same runway and taxiway.

Buying a used crop duster is sort of like buying a used police car. They'll have high hours, high mileage, but usually very good mechanical care and a complete record of all work done. The good thing is they seldom come with surprises since there are so many people involved in their day to day maintenance. Since an airplane is a major safety thing their upkeep is usually a big deal. Never buy from an old farmer who did all his own work, but one that was maintained by licensed aviation mechanics in a licensed shop at an airport and one that has a complete maintenance record.

I may offer to buy-into his airplane purchase, maybe we can work out a deal like I transfer my investment in the runway into part ownership of an airplane instead. Neither of us needs a full-time airplane, we're just weekend flyers. Back in the 1960s just about anyone could afford to buy a new Cessna 150 (they cost about as much as a new car), they were actually cheap. But after lawsuits and labor unions a 172 Cessna now costs more than your house and car.

So we sat on the sofa in a heap of body parts and talked until both of us had the yawns, I surrendered first and asked him if we could shower now.

His tiny bathroom is about the size of ones in a commercial jet liner. It has a sink, crank open roof vent/skylight, toilet, and if you pull the curtain across the doorway the entire bathroom becomes a shower. You have to pull the curtain across the door or the water will leak onto the floor all over the bedroom and rots the floor boards. The water heater is small, 12 gallons, but it runs on propane or electricity. Since the tank is small it recovers from showering in about 17 minutes on electricity.

After I requested `now,' he stood up and walked to the bathroom and gestured for me to follow, so I did. The first thing he did was flip the switch to turn on the water heater, which is by the kitchen sink.

We walked back to his bedroom and sort of stripped off our clothes along the way. We hung out for 15 minutes to let the water get hot. I think it's been well over a month since our last intimacy, and I'm sure he has not had naked contact with anyone else during that time except his own right hand. It was our last time together that Daniel fucked me for the first time ever. He said he'd never in his life had butt sex before that day.

While we waited for the water heater to do its magic he paced around his bedroom with his hand down his underwear and told me he made progress on the hangar doors, he took his evidence to a local judge and asked for permission to take possession of the hangar doors and got a signed order. The current property owner never appeared on the court date so it was a default judgment. Dan has to hire a group of guys to dismantle the barn and carry the doors out to the street and stack them on a rented trailer to haul them back to the airport. He said that is planned for next week Wednesday morning.

He also told me the tanker truck was just refilled too. He said he drilled two holes through the outside wall and mounted a power outlet inside the hangar and one below the breaker panel box outside the hangar. The meter box was mounted near the southwest corner of the hangar near where he had his table set-up to sell hotdogs and pop during the last Dronefest. He ran the wire to install one mercury vapor street light fixture in the center of the hangar just below the rafters.

He told me he could easily predict in the next few years that they'd need to build another couple buildings here, maybe another hangar and he could even see a small WW2 aviation museum being built here, there is that big open area where the barracks used to stand. He said he is looking into an American Army barracks kit to house the museum with pictures, uniformed manikins, replica anti-aircraft guns, radars, and the big thing would be a JU-52 that people could walk inside.

The entire time he was rambling on about future plans he had his hand down his briefs and it was easy to see he was hard too. I don't think he really considered he was practically jerking off in front of me. But he knows he is about to come in my mouth, so why not!

He said his employee (Samir) is working okay so far and he has even run the airport alone for a few hours while he drove the tanker to Eddalya to buy another bulk load of AV-Gas. He said they told him to always call before he drives over to check that they have AV-Gas ready to pump. He said when he calls the guy says "AV-gas, yep we're good, close at 5pm, last pump at 4:45." Then they abruptly hang up the phone!

Dan paused and walked into the bathroom and let the hot water run in the sink to feel if it was hot enough. I heard him mumble "Steamin!" He walked out into the bedroom and smiled at me and took off his undies, a show I'd love to video record sometime. I love it when he first drops his pants and his dick kind of springs free, I can't stop watching when he pulls his clothes off. Daniel is well aware of that too. But I remember back when we first met I had to hide my interest. He once told me my eyes screamed desire.

We've done this many time before, once in a while if he's in a playful mood he'll walk over and smack his boner against my face while we're waiting for the water heater to do its thing.

Dan went first but we both stepped inside, he shut the door and pulled the curtain across. I sat on the toilet, he cracked open the faucet and lifted the diverter knob and waited for water to come out of the little nozzle on the ceiling, then he wet himself and started washing the upper parts. While he did his half I washed his lower half. I did from his belly button down to his feet.

After he was done we shut the faucets and swapped places. While he got in position I cranked the handle on the skylight to open it all the way up (and turned on the fan), then the shower water started again and I did my upper body while Dan did my lower half. We went fast enough for both of us to get washed on less than twelve gallons.

After my turn we quickly swapped places again and he stood facing me while I sat on the toilet and grabbed his thighs to pull him into my face. I closed my eyes and felt his rod slide smoothly into my mouth and I was instantly transported to paradise. He raised his arms to brace himself in place and sort of humped my face. I loved his hairless belly bouncing against my forehead. I never made any comments about his belly hairs starting to grow back. He had hundreds of quarter inch thick black hairs emerging across his lower belly, they grew from inside his belly button to his nut sack. I thought to myself if he kept a plastic razor in the shower I could have shaved all those off in under eight seconds.

After he came I lowered my chin, spread my legs, and opened my mouth to let his load silently drip into the toilet while he stepped out into the bedroom and dried off, I waited for the used towel. We've learned over the decades that a wet towel will dry the 2nd body just as well as the first person. He'll toss it over his clothes line outside in the next few minutes. Dan is about the only person on Earth that I routinely use his toothbrush, comb, hair brush, and razor. I've licked about every square inch of his body hundreds of times so I know there is nothing to fear from him. Although I have never wiped his ass if he asked me I would. That's why we consider ourselves to be non-identical twin brothers. It's mostly just a dumb joke. I don't even remember which one of us came up with that dumb line, probably back in college.

I think we came up with that bullshit story to explain why we were always seen together but were not gay lovers. Dan was always eager to deny anything but brotherly love between us. I would describe our relationship as unusually close considering he swears he's straight.

I went home the next day with my cash and that afternoon I bought myself a used car, an Outbacker (2014 with 58k miles, diesel engine, and new tires and a chassis lift) 4x4 SUV. It was forest green outside and mostly black and leather inside. Because of the differences in culture and religion I guess you can buy a car on Sundays in Morocco, but not Fridays. Lots of the Arab world is closed on Fridays.

There is a Volvo dealer about one block from Cafe Vintage but their showroom is tiny, barely fits two cars, and their used cars and shop is a block away, always out of sight of the public and tourists.

Since I was born and raised in Texas I always forget that most stores here are closed on Fridays, or they close early. Many never open at all on Friday.

After that visit Dan started calling me twice a week since things were happening fast down in Danville, and he really has no one else to call.

Daniel started renting tie-down spaces to local pilots with homeless airplanes. You'd be surprised how many small airplanes are in Morocco, mostly retired military, crop dusting planes, and half built kit planes. Guys buy them and say: `One of these days I'm gonna get that thing flying again,' but the day never arrives (because they got no place to store it, work on it, land or take off, and rent at a commercial airport is sky high (no pun intended)) then one day the owner dies and the airplane is the first thing the wife sells after the funeral.

He told me some of the tied down airplanes will arrive on a flat bed truck because they can't fly yet, so the owner erects a tent over the plane and repairs the fuel system and engine to get it back in condition for safe flight and let the state aviation inspector come look at it. They buy these large canvas tents like the military used and enclose the cockpit and engine but the rest of the plane sits outside. That gives them a place to work and some of them bring in these huge tool boxes and set-up a small shop on their little tie-down spot. Dan said he doesn't mind as long as they don't spill anything on the ground, and if they do they get booted from the airport immediately, ready or not. He said he may build one or two more square cement pads for people working long term on airplanes, pads that include tie down anchors and maybe even the tent and electrical service too! Maybe charge $200 a month for a workshop under a tent, including the tent and electrical service!

For airplanes stored at Danville he uses tie-down screw anchors to secure them. You set one anchor and park the plane over it then use a plumb-bob to locate the second one under the wing. The agreement was when you leave the screw anchors stay in the ground. And he charged $30E a month to park an airplane on anchors, you provide the anchors. He said he signed about two pilots a month and slowly airplanes started to appear parked in rows. Hell, thirty bucks a month is less than cable TV. Dan said by December the place will look like a used airplane dealership! And he warns renters about snakes and lizards too.

Dan said his employee Samir has improved a lot. Some of the pilots are surprised to see he's actually a teenage boy and not a lady because of his high pitched voice. The advantage it gave Dan was now they can talk (to approaching pilots) in Arabic or Spanish. So the kid mostly spends his days in the control tower with the binoculars in one hand and the microphone in the other. Dan added window tinting to the south facing plastic windows on the control tower so it's not as much of an oven in the afternoon now. He also got the toilet working downstairs after someone brought over a rotary hammer drill and bored a 4cm hole through the thick concrete wall. He ran in a plastic line from the rainwater drums outside and now there is a regular old working flush toilet in the ATC building, but it has no privacy yet. He said him and Samir are the only people who know it's there or use it, but like I said the toilet (and shower) have no privacy but he plans to re-build walls eventually. He used to have plastic tarps taped to the ceiling, those would work too. But I guess neither of them are hung up much on bathroom privacy. I usually am around strangers. The shower beside the toilet only has ambient temperature water, during the day it feels mildly warm and the water has a lot of sand and dust in it. He finally added enough screens to keep the lizards out.

Dan told me that Samir has flashed his crotch more than once but seems to have no idea he did it. He rides to work on a small kids bicycle and since he wears a Djellaba it always blows up his thighs, he doesn't appear to know he's flashing his crotch. Dan suspects he knows but doesn't care, or maybe he gets off on seeing people glance at his crotch. Dan thinks all boys wearing a Djellaba know that it happens when they ride a bicycle -- it must be a common topic of discussion in school. They have to keep it pulled up so it doesn't get snagged by the pedals or caught in the chain. Most boys press down on the cloth between their thighs but the wind still blows it open like a parachute. Some men wear underwear under the Djellaba and many do not, Samir is one of those who do not. The Djellaba can fill with air like in the famous Flying Skirt' scene in the 1954 movie The Seven Year Itch.'

Dan said Samir could physically pass for a large 13 year old but he just had his 19th birthday. He thinks his parents ordered him to find a job or else and that was why he rode over on his bicycle. He's been working for Dan for a few months now and makes great money for an uneducated boy. He is still getting paid in Euro-cash by the hour. It's possible his salary is more than his parents make working in stores in town.

Dan described Samir as 5'6" and maybe 95lbs, shaggy-curly black hair, black eyes, great teeth, and he always wears a Djellaba and a baseball cap and sunglasses. He gets to the airport on a kid's mountain bike and told him he's super happy to spend hours away from his parents. He also said he was constantly in trouble in school, but never said why. Dan suspects he might be too ADHD for public school and for his parents.

Dan said twice while he was sitting at the picnic table eating his lunch Samir rode up on his bike in his Djellaba that the wind had blown it up to his hips. Samir didn't seem to realize he fully flashed his body from above his belly button to his ankles. I asked and Dan said it was small, dark, kind of child-like cute. He said he nearly laughed when he saw it. Then to tell me how big it was he started singing the old brand song, "Oh I'd love to be an Oscar Mayer Weiner, that is what I'd truly like to be..." I laughed at his performance. So I think that meant that when limp he's rather small and cute too. Dan said the boy has no facial hair at all yet but he does have a small unshaved bush.

I asked if he ever saw Samir with no shirt on and Dan said one day he wrecked on his bike on a rock and he had to do minor first aid. When he went inside to grab the first aid kit Sam pulled off his Djellaba and folded it on his lap. Dan said the boy had a very nice round inny belly button and small dark brown nips, like the size of a nickel. And he said his upper body was totally hairless, maybe three thin hairs in each arm pit that he could braid if he wanted. He said the boy had no muscle tone and was shaped like a 5th grader. He said Samir said his family lives in something Americans would call a Mobile Home, but they have a different name for it in Arabic. After a brief pause he said Samir had faded scars across his back like he got seriously whipped at home or at school years ago. He also believed he probably gave everything he earned at work to his father which is normal for Arabic families, but since he gets paid cash.... Dan said he paid him in small bills as often as possible in case he wanted to lose one on the ride home on Payday.

He got a second cell phone and left his original cell in the control tower for airport calls and bought a comfortable swivel desk chair for the kid to sit in all day. From inside the control tower you can see the entire property except some of the area where the race track was installed because the view was blocked by the hangar. There's an old Dell laptop in the control tower so Sam can play a couple card games or listen to music when they have no airplanes coming or going. He said some days there is absolutely no business so he has Sam try to slowly teach him simple phrases in Arabic, and Sam is teaching him the alphabet and numbers too. A couple times when they had no business for hours he had Sam sweep the hangar, it tends to collect palm tree debris during storms.

As far as Dan could tell it seems to make Sam unhappy when he has him do simple tasks, like sweep the hangar or the roof of the ATC building (so the painted frequency numbers are clearly visible to airplanes). He said the boy usually works 8am to 4pm, five days a week, he wanted his weekend to be Friday and Saturday, and he goes to prayers with his family every Friday evening (or else).

I asked Dan about pilots landing for airplane service during Dronefest and he said they stretched a line of police tape across the area to confine people to the festival area and stay off the refueling tarmac, which is as dangerous as the tarmac of any airport. They had a couple kids crawl under the tape but they were quickly turned around. They said they were curious to see the real airplanes take off and land so he directed them to stand near the northeast corner of the hangar and watch from there instead. He taped off an area beside the hangar for people to watch planes take off and plans to purchase some outdoor bench seats for that area. From that corner you can see the entire runway and planes being serviced and on final approach.

Dan told me the driveway running around behind the hangar is now (16') wide and smooth packed gravel. It took a few large truck loads but when he came back from Eddalya he drove behind the hangar and never sank into the ground even with the weight of 2900 gallons of fuel (eleven tons). He said if it continues to make money he might invest in a large above ground steel fuel tank standing inside some kind of containment.

He said there were no complaints of improper behavior at Dronefest and the modesty cops never invaded. The local TV news people attended and they were on TV for three evenings with short pre-recorded reports during the news in the sports segment. The country of Morocco is well known for cracking down hard on anti-social behavior, including protesting the king in public, rape, assault, and false accusing. If you lie under oath in a court proceeding the penalty can go as high as the firing squad.

I asked if Sam prayed at work. Dan said, "I don't know because he's alone most of the day but I have my doubts, I doubt any boy who rides around in public with his dick on public display prays five times a day, but I could be very wrong. And up in the control tower you can hear the call to prayer from at least two mosques. I suspect he only goes to church on Friday because of his parents." He was quiet for a bit thinking what he wanted to say, then Dan added, "Don't get me wrong, Samir seems to be a well behaved boy, well raised, he's lazy and has a rather short attention span but otherwise he is a well behaved but shy and quiet kid, I trust him to work in the tower and do his job correctly. He's never lied or made a huge mistake. He seems to fully understand his role in protecting human lives and he has never put two planes on the runway at the same time." Then he chuckled and mumbled that he suspects Sam is extremely horny all day, every day and that he probably jerks off at least twice a day in the control tower. He said he'd prove it to me.

Dan finally changed the subject back to Dronefest and told me about his day selling hot dogs and pop. He set up a folding table and sold simple snack foods. He purchased bulk hot dogs and buns just to see how much interest there was in a 90% Muslim audience. Everything he sold was permissible (Halal) and he made a sign for that. He got a bulk box of 100 frozen all-beef (Certified Halal) hot dogs, 100 buns, and condiments and sold them for $1.50E each, but he didn't let customers apply the condiments (diced onion, mustard, ketchup, pickles, relish, diced tomato, and diced hot peppers). He said he sold out on day #1, his original plan was to make the 100 dogs last Saturday and Sunday. Dan said he made $375E from 11am to 2pm, but the last hot dog went into his tummy. So he made about $170 an hour, not counting set-up and inventory purchase time. Once all costs were figured-in he made about $92E an hour net, which ain't bad for selling dogs.

Dan said next meet he might try selling cold beer in returnable 16 ounce bottles, possibly in a retro vending machine like they had in America in the late 1950s when returnable bottles were everywhere (milk, pop, beer, and orange juice). Neither of us were alive back then but I've heard from old people that back then they always had empty pop bottle cases beside the vending machine and when you were done you put the bottle in the case and it went back to the bottler to get washed and re-used. Dan said that if you buy a bottle of Red Stripe beer anywhere in Jamaica and drop the empty bottle in the trash someone else will come along, see the bottle and set it on the ground beside the trash can so it can be recycled. In some places they may actually be washed and re-filled.

Dan said he had a big ice chest full of ice and pop bottles he was constantly refilling. Carbonated colas are not sold much in Morocco but they sold out as fast as the hotdogs, everyone knows about Coke but few have ever tasted it.

Dan said the health codes are much more relaxed in Morocco than in the USA. He got away with disposable latex gloves and hand sanitizer, and said what he sold at Dronefest was much cleaner than what he could have made in his own kitchen. He said he never touched any of the food from purchase to handing it to the customer. He was always gloved and changed gloves any time he touched something other than food or serving equipment. He had his customers dropped money in a large coffee can with a hole in the lid so he never touched money either.

After Dronefest was done I went back down to visit on Monday evening, he was full of joy and said that he'd had a successful time selling hot dogs, but they only have one more Dronefest at the airport this year. He picked me up at the bus stop and drove us down to Danville.

"So how did you sell if almost nobody spoke Spanish?" I asked.

"I made a menu sign with the help of Samir, so all toppings were shown and it was made so they could point to what they wanted on the menu, and also had scripting in Spanish for anything to leave off, otherwise they got the works. Luckily, Arabs seem to like spicy food, which is cool. He also said most everyone could say `one hot dog please' in Spanish."

"That sounds neat, and it worked, nobody got sick, and you made some easy cash and fed a lot of hungry people."

"Basically yes, I had no idea how universal the hot dog was. And almost everyone there could say `hot dog with everything please' and most could use fingers to show a quantity if it was other than one. And everything was wrapped in wax paper, so there were no fancy carry out containers and everything was truly green. When I ate the last hot dog I dumped the dog water on the ground and carried the Crockpot to my truck and scrubbed it at home. But I still have leftover diced onion and relish!"

Dan also told me he's trying to get his `instrument rating' back he earned in Wichita Kansas so it could be applied to his new license, but he might have to take a written and instrument flight test too. He said he was still looking at used airplane ads but most of them so far were worn out old planes. Every once in a while in the sale magazines one shows up that comes from an estate sale that is decently priced but you gotta be ready to travel to see it and pay right away with cash in hand because the airplane brokers do the same thing, you gotta out-maneuver them. He said there are a lot of half-built kit airplanes for sale all over Europe.

The short version was if you find a decent plane for sale you need to be ready to leave immediately with cash-in-hand or the brokers will get it first. He also said he is expanding his search to cover areas where crop dusting is common, and as far away as central Italy. He said he built search routines for the same plane Freddy owns, the Russian PO-2 Bi-plane. He is considering that because we all know repair parts are available and so are licensed mechanics that know how to work on it and do complete engine teardowns.

Dan gestured for me to follow him. We stood, he grabbed a flashlight off the kitchen counter and we walked across the open area and into the side door on the ATV building, then up the stairs and into the control tower. Dan got on his knees and gestured for me to join him on the floor, while he rolled the desk chair away. I got down near him with no clue what was happening. He started to crawl under the counter where it is wide open to the wall. Then he shone the flashlight on the floor and wall and I saw kick marks on the wall from shoes touching the wall hundreds of times, recently.

When he pointed at the concrete floor I saw what looked like hundreds of white water spots on the floor, the drops seemed to run in lines that went out like painted sun rays. Then it clicked, all those white spots were dried semen. I took the flashlight and shone it at a better angle for me and saw hundreds of them, even up on the wall under the countertop. All I could say was `Wow, he is horny and quite busy. Nice to see he can hit the wall, that's like three feet!' Dan never said a word. We stood, slid the chair back and went back to the sofa in the motorhome.

When we got back outside I gestured to him to pause briefly. I walked around behind the building and rested my palm flat on one of the water drums, it felt warm but not hot. So that was the temperature of the shower water. I think the only faucet that worked in the shower was the cold water side. The shower in the bus got much hotter.

Back inside the bus Daniel told me he was over near the barracks foundation with the weedeater whacking down weeds for an airplane storage area. He said he found lots of very old 20mm bullet casings in the rocks. They were shot from an anti-aircraft gun, probably for target practice, possibly fired at vultures circling above the desert.

"Can you imagine using a 20cal anti-aircraft machine gun to shoot at a slowly circling vulture? If you hit it the bird would suddenly explode into a bloody cloud of dust and feathers, at least it would be dead before it hit the ground. But wow! I was told that's why vultures are not very common in northern Morocco because the German soldiers shot them all for target practice, wiped `em out! And 75 years later their population still hasn't fully recovered.

"Oh yeah," Dan continued, "I got all the hangar doors back, but they're leaned against the hangar wall until I get time to set them on saw horses and service the wheels and bearings. He said he rented a flatbed trailer for one hour and hired a few local teenagers (Sam recruited them) to dismantle the A-Frame shelter and carry the panels out to the street and set them on the trailer. It took two loads to move them all, the operation actually went fast and the guy who owned the property never showed up, but his cattle did not like to see us remove their shelter. It took three guys to carry each door but they had to hand it over the wire fence so we set a ladder over it. It took almost an hour to dismantle the A-frame and carry the pieces out to the street. Someone had to stand nearby with a squirt gun filled with vinegar water to keep the cattle away. A little vinegar in the eyes and they turn around and flee the area, but they were very curious what was going on.

Before I went home we set-up three saw horses he made from scratch. He built four of them and we lifted one of the hangar doors and set it on saw horses right in front of the hangar. He said he's going to take the wheels apart, clean and grease them and clean out the tracks in the concrete slab then it will take two men to stand one upright, lift it and set the roller wheels top and bottom into place. But the first step will be to take the bearings apart and grease them and check for any damage after nearly 60 years outside in the sun and rain with no maintenance.

On the ride to the bus stop he told me him and Samir put the first door back on the tracks but Sam had to get on his hands and knees with a paint brush and hand-clean the floor tracks for the hangar doors. While Sam was on the deck Dan was on the ladder up on top to guide the wheels back on the rails, they had a pilot help them get it back in place. Once it was on all the wheels it moved easily side to side. Then they put another one on the saw horses so he could start getting it ready to go back in service.

By the end of the week he texted me a photo that he got one door fixed and mounted back on its tracks, it was at least a two-man job and could not be done if the wind was blowing!

Back at home that evening I got a horrible phone call from a police officer in Madrid. The short version was while Jen was walking home from work she was ambushed on the sidewalk and badly beat by two men wearing ski masks. They beat her with a club and kicked with their boots, they took her wallet and left her unconscious on the sidewalk with a fractured skull, a broken arm, and lots of bruises. They shouted it was revenge for firing all those women. I thought to myself when the cop told me what happened that she really only fired like two people, the rest quit when confronted about their abusive behavior toward customers.

I took the first flight to Madrid and stayed with her in the ICU, that evening her mother flew in from Texas and stayed too, but her mother doesn't like me (a common thing autistics deal with). The next morning Dan arrived but they had us leave the room while she tried to identify the perps to Madrid city cops. She was able to talk and point out mug shots of suspects. The incident happened when she stopped at a traffic light to wait for the signal to cross, the intersection had a camera that was always recorded so they had partial shots of the vehicle, the license plate, and the people, including someone driving their van.

The perps jumped out of a van and one swung a bat to hit her on the back of the head. She collapsed immediately and then they kicked the back of her head and her ribs and stomped on her arm too. One of them grabbed her wallet (she usually never carries a purse) and left her seriously injured and unconscious on the sidewalk in broad daylight.

The doctor said she would probably recover but it was going to be a few days of pain and difficulty breathing. She was getting morphine in her IV with a patient activated pump. That day I remember the look Dan gave me, he looked truly furious and shook his head No (meaning the perps must die), I looked back and shook my head Yes (meaning I would handle it) and soon after that he said he couldn't stay much longer, I told him I would keep him posted. Jen had already given the police a list of likely names, two older women she fired who stayed pissed-off and started harassing her by phone at work. She believed one of them recently tried to find out where she lived, that was how they ambushed her on the walk home. Jen was notified at work that people were calling trying to find out what neighborhood she lived in.

It took several hours but I was able to get a copy of the video of her attack which had a partial license plate photo of the van. There was a driver and two guys who jumped out of the side door when she walked by and stopped for the light to change. I could also see their clothes, but there was no sound, just color video. I saw the guy swing really hard at the back of her head, Jen never saw it coming. She told me she had no memory of the attack, suddenly she was on the sidewalk with EMS people tending to her. She assumed she was hit by a car.

I stayed with Jen and her mother for two days, Dan stayed for about six hours then flew back home. I shared contact info with the cops and showed them my State Department badge and requested copies of their reports and evidence. The day I left she was moved to a regular room but she was still using the morphine pump. Back at home I accessed cell tower records for the date and time and got lists of every phone in the area one hour before to one hour after her attack. My access also gave me the ability to see names and addresses associated with each cell unit.

Her medical report CT x-rays showed two skull bone fractures, a broken left forearm bone, and four broken ribs. The entire left side of her face was bruised and swollen. Her eye was okay but the swelling kept it shut. Her brain CT showed swelling but no actual serious injury or bleeding. She was on paid medical leave and was cooperating with the investigation.

Six days later the police had a list of suspects, two were brothers. It was their mother who got canned for poor work performance, and it was their father who supposedly drove the van. It was their van, and the partial plate photo exactly matched. Using the Interpol search feature I got their names and address in Madrid and shared it with Dan. They all lived together in the city in an apartment about four miles from the attack location.

We had a short discussion. Dan wanted to attack them immediately, I wanted to spray them without them knowing it. Since they all lived together it would be relatively easy to expose them all at the same time, depending on the HVAC system in the building. In Europe a steam heating system was likely, and room AC with an outdoor heat pump, so we had to consider some other way to expose toxins to the entire family at one time.

Anthrax is not ideal for use on food (but it does work), but botulinum works great in food. We considered a mis-delivered pizza and some kind of dessert, like chocolate drizzled ice cream. With a dessert like that the mother was likely to take some and get exposed too, but not all women eat pizza. Dan suggested breaking-in by force and holding them at gun point and beating each one with a club like they did to Jen. We decided it needed to be done soon while Jen had a perfect alibi, while she was in the hospital.

Two days before her discharge I took the train from Algeciras to Madrid and located their apartment tower, it was a 12-story high-rise in a cluster of other (rent controlled) high-rise apartments. As soon as I arrived I located the most popular local delivery pizza place and searched dumpsters for their trash to see how they boxed pizzas and desserts for delivery.

That evening I was able to locate a small hotel almost across the street from their apartment, with a room that had a view of their windows but not their door or their parking spot. The apartment complex had assigned spots with numbers on the parking blocks. I used the technology stuff I had to check for prison implants but they had nothing, which surprised me. But I hit the jackpot on cell phones, everyone in the apartment had one and they were always turned on so I had multiple live audio and video feeds from inside their apartment. Most of them had units sitting on the kitchen counter by the apartment door. The brothers shared one bedroom but both of them worked at a local factory where they made firewood pellets for wood smoker ovens. They worked with wood products all day, luckily nobody in the family worked with sheep, llamas, wool, or on a produce farm.

The super popular pizza and pasta place near their apartment complex was called: Entrega Italiana de Elsa (Elsa's Italian Delivery). I watched for their delivery cars to identify their uniform and saw they wore street clothes but they all wore red logo baseball caps and drove unmarked personal cars for delivery.

I waited until 5:30pm when their father got home from work and the boys were due home any minute on the city bus. I got my Trojan horse pizza order devised and walked to Elsa's, ordered, and paid in cash: Large (18in, 45cm) cheese and pepperoni thin crust pizza with dipping sauce cups and a large deluxe banana split. The dessert was more expensive than the pizza and it took thirty minutes to make, I also purchased one of their hats, red with a white logo on the front (total investment so far not including train fare was $197 including the small hotel room). I carefully carried both items across the street and down the block as quickly as I could. I stopped at a bus stop bench and cracked open a new can of botulinum spray and emptied the can on the pizza (it smelled wonderful) and the dessert, then dropped the can in the trash can by the bench. When I held the can ready to drop it in the trash I made sure it had the large letter B stamped on the bottom, that I used the correct spray.

I picked up the food and walked quickly to the apartment complex, up the stairs to the 2nd floor and kicked on the door and shouted the name of the pizzeria (with my best fake Madrid accent) when their mother opened the door she had a huge smile on her face. I carefully handed her the containers and told her it was the apartment number I saw on their neighbor's door, the ice cream went first, and she shoved it in their freezer immediately and took the pizza box and set it on the table and then shrugged her shoulders and said she had no tip money so I smiled and left and hoped they were really hungry. I hustled back outside and dropped the red baseball cap in the trash and stood across the street by the door of a vacant storefront and activated my cell and listened to them chow down on pizza, then the sons came home and everyone feasted (I was super hungry by then). Once the last slice was gone she got out the ice cream and scooped it into smaller bowls and shared it with the entire family. Their bonus dinner made quite a festive evening, they had no idea it would be their last meal ever.

They discussed who ordered and paid and believed it was some kind of mistake but they'd take free pizza any day from Elsa's. This was not the revenge that Dan wanted but I didn't want any connection made with Jen or her mother, so I walked back to my little hotel room and took a shower and scrubbed my hands and went to bed knowing I just planted time bombs on their entire family.

Once botulism enters your bloodstream and starts to multiply it is nearly impossible to eliminate. Slowly, you become weaker and eventually have a worsening time inhaling enough air until you are seriously short of breath and call for an ambulance. Most people actually suffocate while waiting for the rescue squad. They fall down gasping for air, wide awake, unable to move or breathe and through open eyes they'll watch each other slowly suffocate. That last 15 minutes with botulism is scary as hell, but everyone dies wide awake and paralyzed. I always get a mental image of the Soviet Political Officer in the movie `Hunt for Red October' when his neck is snapped in the captain's cabin, suddenly he is wide awake but unable to breathe or move.

I woke up at 4:25am to the sound of a fire truck and ambulance and saw the rescue squad at the apartment complex and lights on in their apartment. They had curtains closed but I saw the shadows of fire fighters and their big helmets inside the apartment and one by one they transported the entire family in body bags. They were all DOA according to the rescue squad, I saw it on the TV at the train station while I was waiting for my train to board. The news never mentioned a specific cause, just possible food poisoning but no foul play was suspected, possibly tainted olives. The TV news said every can of black olives in every restaurant in Madrid was being recalled. I laughed to myself as I walked on board the train and got ready for the trip back to Algeciras.

When you ingest that weapon like they did on pizza and ice cream they usually feel nothing for the first few hours, during that time the bacteria are moving through the digestive tract and being absorbed in the small intestine and delivered to the liver where they pass through untouched and enter the blood stream, which is like a huge moving dinner buffet to them, so they start to multiply like crazy. What starts as several dozen bacteria soon becomes several thousand and once they reach a certain population the substance they secrete starts to have an effect on the entire host body, it begins to paralyze a certain class of muscle, specifically the ones we use to breathe and contract our heart muscles. Later on skeletal muscles are paralyzed too.

Soon after ingestion, the victim might start to feel slightly sick, maybe some coughing and wheezing. Most people assume it is the onset of another normal cold and take some ibuprofen and go to bed. Hours later they will feel like their entire body suddenly weighs hundreds of pounds and moving around requires a tremendous amount of effort, then breathing starts to require more effort. About an hour after that they are barely able to breathe and they are too weak to even roll over or raise an arm. Once they are nearly paralyzed they have less than one hour left. They slowly suffocate and die, usually while still awake. After so many hours of labored breathing their faces are usually starting to turn blue as they struggle to take their last gasps of air.

Early on when the patient first feels some generalized weakness they are too far along for any life saving treatment and the only thing the hospital can do is give them a benzo drug to minimize the fear and anxiety as they become paralyzed and slowly unable to breathe. I hear the worst part is the victim is often wide awake when they can no longer breathe. Even if they are put on a breathing machine in the hospital soon their heart will stop too. Being intubated only slightly delays full cardiac arrest.

A few days later I got a call from Jen at work on my personal cell, she had some questions for me. But I played stupid and said I had no idea about those deaths, but if she needed help recovering she was welcome to come down to Tangier, I would do anything I could for her. She can stay as long as needed: days, weeks, months, or forever.

I know for a fact that Jen and her mother don't get along very well in the same room, they are too much alike to agree on stuff and her mother will always be too controlling so yes, Jen said she would be down hours after her mother left. I told her to pack lightly and then I asked how she was getting here and she said possibly by private medical helicopter. I know Jen has like the most expensive healthcare package available and she pays out the ass for that coverage so she'd probably fly down on a high-speed medical transport helicopter and they would land on the beach and wheel chair her inside my apartment and help her get in bed.

That is exactly what she did too. I laughed when she called to give me the time she would arrive. And then she explained that she had to go back to the hospital and outside to the helipad where they loaded her in the helicopter and they flew her to a beach in Tangier where I signed for her but the crew wheel-chaired her inside my apartment and helped her get into bed. She was still extremely tender in the chest from her four broken ribs, which made it very painful to breathe deeply or twist and bend. She said the helicopter ride was very bouncy and it hurt. It was one of those that flies over 200mph and has retractable landing gear.

After the transport people left and I watched their helicopter lift off Shark Beach I waited on her like a servant and got her everything she wanted, except pork and cold beer. I wondered briefly with the thumping sound the helicopter made if there were sharks in the bay watching the helicopter, curious what it was.

Luckily she brought her own narcotic pain pills because I never have any. Dan drove down that evening to see her again. All three of us sat on the bed and tried to cheer her up. Her face looked like crap. Jen had a huge bruise on the side of her face, from her ear to her nose and jaw to forehead. The skull fracture in back was healing but she still was troubled by headaches which could start simply from turning her head quickly. Her arm was casted and in a sling and she wore some kind of brace on her chest to minimize bending and movement of her ribs. She had a very large bruise from the broken ribs too. She looked sad and very uncomfortable. They gave her Fentanyl pills and morphine pills for her pain and advised she also take a laxative (colace) along with the narcs. Just like Botulinum paralyzes certain muscles, narcotics do something similar and slow down your GI tract muscles and it's an easy way to get seriously constipated, so always take a laxative when taking narcs.

Dan stayed until 9:30pm then kissed Jen and left, they both cried when he held her hand and gently kissed her on the lips. I got her to the bathroom and back then brought her stuff to brush her teeth in bed then I shut off the lights and we went to sleep, but I couldn't touch her. Jen was on her back breathing carefully and I was on my side watching her breathe. After a while she pushed down the covers and unzipped her chest brace and spread it wide so I could rub her skin and gently massage her breasts. That actually put her to sleep quickly, or maybe it was the morphine pill.

The next day I waited on her like a servant and got her everything she wanted. At 2pm she needed to use the bathroom again, so I helped her get up into her wheel chair and rolled her into the bathroom and after using the toilet we showered together. I washed her body but not her hair. She held her casted arm inside a trash bag to keep it dry. After the shower she wanted to sit in the wheelchair near the window. A few hours later she wanted food from KFC so I helped her get dressed and I pushed her to the elevator and we went downstairs and ordered food and ate it up in my apartment. Dan called to check on her, he never spoke to me.

After their conversation we had an honest discussion about the family who tried to kill her and I admitted I got even a few days ago. She sat silently stunned and had nothing to say, then about four minutes later she mumbled "Thanks for looking out for me."

I softly told her, "The lady you fired who stayed angry for months after that and got her husband and sons to try to kill you on the sidewalk, they're all dead. You can look up their obituaries when you get home."

She asked me how many people I've killed and all I could say was I had no idea but it was probably less than 50. I told her Dan wanted to kill them violently but I sent him home and did it myself without any pain or violence, but it was probably scary.

"So it was botulism but not from eating tainted olives on pizza?"

"Uh huh." I confessed.

Then she boldly asked if she was safe. I told her she was within my sphere of protection along with Dan, so if anyone fucked with you they were also messing with your brothers, Dan and me.

"You sound serious."

"I'm not kidding."

Then she told me she needed to think about it for a while. Jen has kind of always known that as FCAs Dan and I had licenses to kill and immunity from prosecution. She asked how that worked in a foreign country and I told her it was secret but I could say if I was being investigated on murder charges in a country like Morocco the USA would appear to cooperate but all the information they provided Morocco would be false or misleading. She asked about the time I was kidnapped by the cops from Rabat and I told her that was an example of what happens if they try to prosecute me. She just said, "Oh."

To lighten the mood and sort of as a joke I reminded her of our blood ceremony in third grade when I promised to be there for her forever, I meant every word of that promise, and I still do. I think Jen believes we were children then so that oath doesn't count. For me, the dude from Planet Literal I can say I surely meant it. Jen will probably always need a guardian angel, she's way too trusting with strangers.... and cats.

Jen said its weird but she still remembers that day. "It was spring break in third grade and we were in the woods playing husband and wife getting married. We built a pretend church altar and dressed up a tree branch with a white scarf to be the priest. It was like late April and it was hot out and like always we played in our gym shorts with no shirts, Jen often played with me in the woods with no shirt on, in fact that continued into 9th grade. She really loved to show her body to me and always wanted to see mine too. I've heard that's what drove her mom batshit crazy was her stubborn refusal to wear clothes and her ironclad lack of shame about it.

But on the day we pretended to get married she wore bright yellow dandelions in her hair, and we made wedding rings out of palm tree leaves and cut into narrow strips and braided into two loose rings. After the ceremony we pretended to kiss (mouths shut but lips touching), then Jen pulled out a tiny folding knife like someone would use to clean under his fingernails or scrape out the inside of his pipe. She jabbed her palm then mine and we pressed them tightly together for a few minutes to exchange blood and promised to protect and love each other forever, and here we were thirty years later still doing what we promised. Her parents finally got her to wear clothes all the time in high school. I think one thing that got her to wear clothes was her first menstrual cycle, until she learned about the shot that paused her periods and prevented pregnancy.

Back in third grade there was very little difference between the ways we looked with no shirts on, we were just little kids playing in the woods, smeared with dirt. The big differences were she had curly red hair and a huge belly button hole. I think her love of playing in the dirt with toy trucks and cap guns eventually drove her mom over the edge. Jen was not at all like how young girls normally acted. She never played with dolls (except GI Joe) or put on make-up, or wore dresses on special days. She always talked, acted, and dressed like a boy. I'm sure her mother was convinced she would grow up to be gay, but that was also incorrect. I remember in 4th grade she showed me how her father bought her a toy bulldozer and a dump truck. It really pissed off her mother but really made Jen happy. She told him she wanted a Tonka backhoe and crane for Christmas! She said her grandparents gave her a typewriter and paper for Christmas which she liked too. Her mother bought her a dress with flowers on the straps and nice shiny leather shoes but she refused to wear them and one day they disappeared from her closet. I think the dress was cut up into strips for use as first aid bandages and slings for GI Joe, sometimes she made me slings to wear when we played dirt clod wars and I was supposed to be a casualty so she could be the doctor. Of course all that was just another excuse for one of us to take off our clothes while the other one was the doctor.

She was a daddy's girl back then and she told me how she would hang out in the bathroom while he got ready for work and she loved to watch him shave. Several times he put shaving cream on her face and holding the razor backwards he shaved her face several times and Jen was so proud she boasted about it at school. In some pictures he took of her she looks like she is doing a Santa Clause routine. But it was just a normal day when she didn't have school so she hung on her father. She would sit by his bathroom sink wearing just her tiny camo panties but by then the family was used to her daily nudity. She insisted it felt so much nicer not wearing a shirt.

In our part of suburban Houston there were still a lot of houses being built and when they dug the foundation holes for the basement that gave us mounds of dirt and big foxholes, perfect for dirt clod wars. One time I threw one clod really high and it came down and smashed the top of her head, which hurt and got in her eyes and mouth so I had to hand clean her so she didn't get grounded when he mother saw the dirt in every opening on her body: ears, nostrils, mouth, eyes, her hair was full of dirt and several dead ants. It brought her to tears so I had to clean her, but I think she really liked that she found a way to force me to touch her body. I think it was that day that caused us to switch from combat to construction projects using her collection of large metal Tonka trucks.

She said she dug a hole in the woods with her Tonka backhoe and buried the girly leather shoes, but she previously busted the tiny flowers off the strap. She also took a black magic marker and darkened the brass buckles.

That's my Jen, if it wasn't for Daniel she would have become my twin brother. But between the three of us we are like non-identical twins, or triplets. Like me, she didn't get to know Daniel until 9th grade. The only time it really became obvious she wasn't a boy was when she had to pee in the woods. I could stand and pee on trees but she had to squat and not fall over in the process. I remember she always wanted me to watch but it somehow seemed like she could stand and pee like me if she really wanted and eventually I saw with my own eyes why it wouldn't work. At that age I likely knew way more than most boys my age about female anatomy.

I could go on with this subject but most people think it's too weird. I'm sure Jennifer was not the only girl in the world who liked to dress and act like a boy, even though she had no desire to be a boy.

We were still seated on the sofa with our empty boxes from lunch downstairs at KFC while we were recalling stuff we did as kids almost 30 years ago! She started to chuckle but it soon turned into tears, and then I started to cry too. We hugged and held each other then got tissues and had a few laughs at ourselves and other dumb shit we did together back then. Both of us were weird kids! And I think she feels responsible for the monster her mother turned into.

One weekend she crashed her bike on the trail through the woods, it was mostly just grass that constructions vehicles drove over, she hit a rock and got tossed and I had to render first aid, which was pouring water over her scratched knees and palms, then she laid beside me and rested her head on my lap and I stroked her hair and caressed her soft skin. That was the day we started having these times and has been our favorite activity since 3rd grade, but she still likes to have her breasts on display when we do it. Some people like to display private parts of their body, Jen is one, I am not. I do not understand the thinking behind that desire but in her it's strong. If there was a clothing optional resort or spa open nearby I'm sure she would join.

She asked me to marry her and once again I said okay (again). Then I asked her, "...how many times you gonna ask?" And she said, "It's more of a test than an actual marriage offer." I laughed and said I actually paused each time to consider the situation and each time I said `sure.' She proudly nodded yes and fell back on the pillow and went to sleep while I watched her breathe and her beautiful breasts rise and fall. I noticed the bruising on her ribs was fading and same with the side of her face, and the swelling was way down too. She told me softly she knew I was too literal to not respond honestly every time she asked. With tearful eyes I nodded yes because Jen was one of the few people who really understood my autism. Yes, I am very much Mister Literal, from Planet Literal. Then it came to me that all the times she asked me to marry her but she never did anything about it, I took her literally each time, like she was serious. So I whispered in her ear that I wanted her to find another way of testing me than asking me to marry her, especially if she didn't really mean it. With her eyes closed she nodded her head in understanding. Then she reached down with her eyes closed, took my hand and set it gently on her breast.

Four days later I took her to an ortho doc in Tangier. He took x-rays of her ribs and arm and skull and said everything was healing well, he cut off her cast and put her in a Velcro forearm brace and told her to stop wearing the sling and start exercising her fingers and wrist but she had a two pound lifting limit on the broken arm. She was to start walking daily and getting more outside time in the sun, walk the beach and raise her heart rate. Her eyes were fine and her skull fractures were also healing nicely, the bruising was fading and the swelling was nearly gone, but the skin on the back of her head where she got clubbed was still very tender over the fracture. It was scabbed over and had no signs of infection. The stitches were taken out back in Madrid.

After he removed the cast I got a chance to really see her forearm under his procedure light above the cart and that was when I saw she had a bruise on her arm at the fracture site and you could still clearly see the boot tread pattern in the bruise, it nearly sickened me that someone would do that to a woman. I had to walk away and she noticed my discomfort as he put on the black Velcro brace that ran from her knuckles to her elbow. Jen explained to the doc that the perp was in jail in Madrid, I guess he had to ask by law.

When she got clubbed on the back of the head it cracked two skull bones. Our skulls are made of several large boney plates, and where skull bones meet the zigzag joints are called Sutures. Her fractures were along the suture between the Parietal and Occipital bones, on her left side. So the breaks were low and on the back-left side of her skull. The fractures were along the suture line and caused some swelling but no internal bleeding. The impact of the wood bat cut her skin and she got ten stitches to close the wound after it was cleaned and all the CT scans were done. She still has some pain if she suddenly turned her head and sometimes she has periods of noise in her hearing (tinnitus) but overall it is slowly getting better. All four suspects involved in the attack died within six days from eating tainted black olives on a pizza but we both lied and said they were in jail awaiting trial on multiple felony accounts.

That evening she packed her morphine pills in the suitcase but kept using the Fentanyl pills but she was down to two of those a day. Four days later she was feeling much better and I helped her to the airport and she flew home commercial. Saying good bye in the airport security line got rather emotional.

Two hours after I dropped Jen off at the airport I got an urgent phone call from Daniel, he sounded like he was panting and nearly in tears, I heard him sniffle.

He told me he was just in a big argument with two men who were pissed at him because of noise from low flying airplanes over their house, they threatened to kill him. Without any pause I told Dan I'd be right down and hung up on him while he was still talking. On the drive down I called him back to get the names of the perps, but I'd get the whole story once I got there, but first I wanted names, so he read them to me over speaker phone and I wrote them down and started searching Interpol on my cell for their names. He gave me their license plate number too.

When I arrived I parked inside the hangar where the Citation used to sit and walked across the airport to the motorhome (aka: the bus). He was on the sofa when I burst in, it smelled like he was drinking. Dan said a strange truck drove over and two assholes started yelling and threatening him about the low flying airplanes over their house, they lived a few miles east-northeast of Danville. He said he later learned they were father(54) and son(24). The son has a reputation for being a hot headed bully. Dan said both men were kind of short and he thinks they left Spain to live in Morocco a couple years ago (he later told me some of the airport neighbors warned me to stay away from them). Dan asked if I'd be willing to go visit their neighborhood to watch for airplanes. But before we left I used my laptop to repeat my searches for both names of the father and son. Both of them had Interpol files and multiple arrests (in Spain) for battery, assault, and DUI. While I downloaded files I checked the bag in my car's glove box, I had two spray cans of type-A and 1 can of type-B which is 90% Botulinum. I grabbed one of each and my pistol and side holster with two mags.

Interpol files on both the guys had arrest records and histories of brawls and difficulty with other people, men and women. I checked to make sure neither of them worked in the carpet or sheep raising industries. Dan told me it was two against one and he had no idea if they were packing or what was going to happen but when they showed up in their truck near the end of the runway he was totally caught off guard and was completely unarmed and unprepared. He said air traffic was light the past few days so it probably was not an airplane that serviced at Danville, it was likely someone spraying a field near their house so they assumed it came from that new damn airport.

After a couple seconds of silence he told me the last person who threatened to kill him was one of the prison guards when he was in the slammer in Texas, but that guard died a few months later of some weird kind of pneumonia.

I responded by softly reminding Daniel, "Nobody threatens my brother." When I said that he got a smile on his face and got a tear in his eyes briefly, he reached up to wipe his eyes.

About ten minutes later we got in his truck and drove over but stopped to look at my car briefly inside the hangar. While we walked around it I took off my shirt and put my holster on, then slipped my t-shirt back on. He told me he ordered a mercury vapor light fixture to install inside the hangar, up by the roof trusses sometime soon. At Danville the nearest store similar to Home Depot is over 20 miles away.

We drove to their neighborhood and parked on the street to watch for airplanes. We sat and sat for 90 minutes just talking but no planes flew overhead. Dan said he thinks someone was treating a field for grasshoppers and that was why they got buzzed a few times in a row. The only reason why you would see one airplane flying low several times in a row would be when he was actually spraying a nearby field, possibly a neighboring property. They lived a few miles from Danville, east-north-east of the runway. At their distance any plane taking off from Danville should be over 1200 feet up and not very loud either.

While we were down the street parked about 200 feet from their driveway watching the sky the guy and his son walked out onto the street. I noticed immediately both of them were short and both of them looked pissed off. Both of them looked like their booking photos (in Spain) too. The scene kind of reminded me of the story of the shootout at the OK Corral.

We saw the older one carried what looked like a baseball bat or some kind of club. We never saw any other weapons at that distance. Dan asked me if I was loaded and I said `yup, one in the chamber.' I had two spray cans in my pocket too, one of each.

Both guys were small men but they were big hot heads, the taller one looked to be about maybe 5'7". They quickly recognized Dan and became angry, as if Dan had shot their dog. The older one shouted in Spanish the airport was a nuisance and created a lot of noise, but in all the time we were parked along the street outside his property no planes flew over. The more we talked the angrier the two men got, the more we talked the closer they moved. Then I noticed the son had brass knuckles on his left hand so I whispered that to Dan. I told Dan if he hears me cough he's too close to them, he might get exposed, so move back. Dan said he would pretend to spin around and sneeze downward at the street and take several steps back.

We got out of his truck and I walked into the weeds beside the road up to the wire fence and quickly did a wind check with one finger and told Dan I was going to stay up-wind, so he knew exactly what my plan was.

I could see Dan's initial plan was to do a Good Cop-Bad Cop number. Dan stopped when they were about 80 feet apart and the older guy gestured toward me standing in the weeds beside their fence while they talked, he asked who the dude by his fence was, and Dan laughed and said, "Oh you don't want to tangle with him, he just got out of prison in Turkey. Believe me, just keep smiling and we'll all be fine."

But that routine seemed to excite the younger one and he wanted to fight me even more. So Dan's plan backfired. I moved along the fence about twenty more feet to get more up-wind and pretended I was on a cell call while Dan listened to them describing the airplanes buzzing their house. I could see the younger guy was itching to rip his shirt off and put up his fists and start kicking some American ass, so while Dan kept them focused on him I raised one arm and sprayed half a can up into the air without them seeing what I was doing but I'm sure it looked weird with one arm held up, like `what the fuck is that stupid American doing?' I kept the other hand against the side of my face as if I was using a cell and moving left or right to get a decent signal.

Dan was super humble and apologized for the noise but didn't accept responsibility for any of it. "A lot of those farming airplanes have nothing to do with us, they were in the area because of the grasshopper invasion. Most of the flights these days were related to cotton harvesting or spraying for locusts." They obviously haven't lived in Morocco long or they'd know this happens every year near the end of cotton growing.

Dan stupidly asked them what they wanted us to do and the guy blurted out we should move back to F-ing America! The guy's son dramatically pulled off his undershirt, threw it down angrily, and put up his fists just as Dan smelled lavender and stepped backwards a few steps, but the kid advanced directly into the invisible spore cloud thinking Dan was retreating out of fear. Dan said he saw the kid's chest heaving once he ripped off his undershirt.

He suddenly charged Dan and swung at his head. Dan ducked but when he stood up he punched the kid in the stomach which knocked him backward and he landed on his butt on the dirt street in front of his father. I laughed as I put the cap on the can and slipped it in my pocket. I knew our work here was done. Both of them were exposed.

The kid was clearly not expecting Dan to fight back and it really made him mad so he got to his feet and charged at Dan again. He dove into him and both of them landed on the dirt road, so I pulled out my pistol and ran onto the street and by then everyone saw I had my pistol aimed, both father and son saw my pistol so Junior got to his feet and carefully stepped backwards closer to his father (in slow motion but stopped to reach down to pick up his shirt from the dirt road) and they backed off but shouted threats instead. The Dad shouted nobody pulls a weapon on them and lives. The kid warned me he was going to kill me too, both me and Dan, maybe tonight. Dan smiled and shrugged his shoulders, he didn't act scared or impressed like this father-son duo were probably used to people backing down. Dan smiled and walked part way to his truck and stopped. I walked over into the weeds again by the barbed wire fence, unzipped my jeans and pissed on their fence post, and then we both walked closer to his front bumper.

But Dan stopped, turned around, and walked part-way back to them and said in Spanish: "What you described, one plane flying over several times, low in the sky, a couple minutes apart. That sounds like they were spraying the property south of you, they had nothing to do with the airport." Then he turned and walked back to the truck. He stopped and shouted "You see the airport is that way and you said the planes came from that way, so it has nothing to do with the airport." He said pointing toward the runway or the next field to the south of their house. Dan said he had a hard time keeping a straight face after watching me piss on their fence, he said that was totally funny.

The two of them stood in the street for a bit and glared at us. I checked the air direction again and decided it was close enough so I pulled out the can again, removed the cap, walked back over to the wire fence and raised one hand as high as I could and sprayed the remainder straight up at the sky. The kid was busy smacking his shirt on his leg to get the dirt off because in his dramatic moment when he ripped it off he tossed it on the street and then walked on it. So while he was doing that I dosed them again with the rest of that anthrax can.

We stood by Dan's truck and I lifted my shirt and tucked the pistol back in the holster and we stood there watching them as they turned around and walked back down their driveway and inside their house (a technical retreat back to their home turf).

We stood against the front bumper of his truck for a while but they never came back out, my guess was they had no ammunition or weapons at home or they might have come right back ready for the real battle. I mumbled that as many times as both of them have been arrested for violent acts they probably can't purchase a pistol or rifle any more in any country.

While we stood there listening Dan whispered, "How much did you expose them?"

"I think both of `em got two big exposures, but I didn't get the chance to confirm the wind with cigarette smoke which is the best, so I hope I gauged it right. But I could have been off, I never saw either of them do the lavender sniff."

"Oh yah, I always forget to watch for that."

"Yah, well I can see that, considering." I couldn't think of anything intelligent to say so I just him-hawed around until Dan decided it was time to leave.

When they mess with Dan and me they have no clue they're playing with their lives. Everyone knows what a handgun looks like but nobody knows there are tiny spray cans of anthrax that will kill them just as dead as a bullet, and all they have to do is breathe to inhale death. The nice thing about anthrax exposure is nobody feels it happen and it smells nice too.

After I spray someone I always feel sad for them, they have no idea what's going to happen and all they know about is right now. It's sad, really sad to watch a dying man who doesn't know we just implanted spores in their lungs. Dan used to say, `Buddy you need to be gettin right with your family and the Lord because you got one day left. Forget about all this shit and tell them you're sorry.' The problem with anthrax exposure is they feel perfectly fine for almost 10 hours so they think we're just playing mind games. Once anthrax implants in your lungs it's almost always lethal unless your doctor knows what strain it was. I believe Dan just quoted the 9th Step from the AA Big Book.

After that encounter on the drive back to the airport from their house Dan was quiet, I watched as he looked at the dirt roads ahead of us. It's unpaved but well graded roads from their house all the way back to the airport. I leaned back against the passenger seat and the door and watched him drive. On the way back I mumbled that he should get a pack of cigarettes and a cheap lighter and put them in a baggie in the truck and leave it there for special occasions like this, he agreed. When he got to the main road (that runs to the Roundabout just west of town) he glanced at me then watched the traffic for our turn to cross the road and then we'd be in our own neighborhood. Dan looked back at me and smiled and said, "I liked the way you handled that. It was self defense. We warned `em."

"It's over now."

"Yah well that's the thing I don't like about spores, it takes too damn long. I want them to know it came from me."

I turned to look away and mumbled `Killing assholes is God's job, not ours.' He glanced at me again as he turned into the airport driveway. We parked near the motorhome and got out, Dan asked, "And spraying anthrax spores into the air isn't killing?"

"Nope." I replied. "No more so than selling cigarettes or meth."

Then we slowly walked toward the motorhome door and Dan asked "How many people did you spray that didn't die?"

"Uhhh maybe one, I don't really know. That's where God steps in and decides who's earned it and who gets another chance. On those folks the spores never implant and they go free. Or maybe fate has something worse in store for them." I knew anthrax is not a bad way to die, most of them died in their sleep and most of the time it was rather peaceful. It's like dying of the flu. Feeling sorry for someone I sprayed was usually not something that crossed my mind. But those two men, father and son hot heads were really pathetic and they had no clue. They were totally fixated on anger while life was passing them by. I said to Dan, "Hate only kills the hater, never the target of the hate. A lot of people these days are full of hate, it's a slow suicide." Dan told me I was preaching to the choir. I knew that was a frequent topic at 12-Step meetings.

That evening I asked him what the younger guy looked like with his shirt off, but Dan said, `...everything happened so fast he never paid attention. He was closely watching his body language, his hands, and his father's hands too in case one of them pulled a gun or a knife.'

I told Dan later that day since the topic came up several times that once he makes his first million from the airport property he should buy a building in Tangier and start the first weekly 12-Step meetings in Morocco. Dan said he had no way of knowing if the Muslims would attend such a thing but Christians certainly would. Dan said sometimes it was hard to predict if retail things would be popular with Muslims, it's almost the same dilemma as predicting what the Amish will purchase in stores.

Dan never had any more problems with them, and we saw two obits (father and son) online a week later. They immigrated to Morocco from Spain two years ago and always had conflicts with the neighbors over stupid shit. Local cops knew the family well and yes, they both had anger management issues and a history of encounters with the neighbors and the police. Not no more! The newspaper listing said they died suddenly and police were investigating.

I slept on his sofa that night, just in case they came over during the night, but nothing happened.

The next morning back at home I got a message from State in Washington, I had to fly-in for mandatory training ASAP. So I called my boss in Rabat and scheduled a day off, so I would try to leave Saturday afternoon and return by Monday before lunch. He told me the training was related to my work as an FCA (fugitive capture agent, with a license to kill). He said he had to go back to Washington for the same training. I never offered to travel together with him.

I posted a note on my office door that the Tangier passport office would close early on Saturday for mandatory training, it will re-open sometime Monday. I packed a backpack of clothes, my computer, cell charger, and got a taxi to the airport and took the first flight to Madrid. Then I learned I had to actually go to Paris and then to New York, there I would go by Amtrak to Washington DC. It was a process with a lot of sitting and waiting but I got to Paris by high speed train and got the first flight to Newark NJ, then by Amtrak to Washington.

I left at 2pm Saturday from work with my backpack and made it to Washington at 11am on Sunday. They had training classes starting every thirty minutes all day and night since people were flying in from around the world. I never saw anyone I knew. But I took their dumb class.

The short version is they're finding anthrax is slowly becoming less effective so they are switching to a new spore that contains a dormant virus colony (spore), the virus that typically causes pneumonia in adults (a modified adenovirus), but the viral DNA was re-engineered to make it more lethal. But the modified virus also has a shorter lifespan and each colony (and offspring) dies out after 72 hours even inside a host body. But when alive they multiply like crazy and that's what makes it deadly, that and it secrets toxins into the bloodstream that knocks down many life functions in a body.

The new pneumonia spray cans are the same as the old anthrax cans, administered exactly the same ways. Most test animals exposed died within 18 hours of exposure, so it's three times faster than anthrax. There is a vaccine for it, each of us were given two pills. One pill was swallowed in class the second pill was swallowed anytime tomorrow, that gave us aprox 99.5% immunity to the new viral spray weapon.

They said the spores can be inhaled or ingested. It could get sprayed on a steak dinner or into the air upwind from the target, or it could be sprayed in a beer and swallowed, in fact it might even work sprayed on a cigar and smoked. They said to spray it on a pillow, a face mask, a joint, a beer stein, a box of tissues, or into the steam inside the shower. Each of us were issued a small box of spray cans. The box was about 3x3x3 inches heavy cardboard tightly wrapped in plastic and marked as being illegal to search but okay to x-ray. There is a seal they put on the wrapper to tell airport security to not open the box or face severe criminal penalties.

Lastly, the new weapon was simply named: `V' as in Viral. And the conversion from Anthrax to V was called Project-A2V. We were not to discuss it with anyone, it was top secret.

I signed for my box which was about the size of a super jumbo size Rubik's Cube and I got back to the airport and bought a ticket (on the earliest departing flight back to Europe) to Rome, and then a connecting flight to Tangier. Twenty hours later I was back in my little studio apartment on the 9th floor watching tourists walk around Shark Beach. I noticed the imprints the helicopter made in the sand when they delivered Jen were no longer visible.

Just for fun I logged onto the State Dept web page and ordered another box of anthrax spray cans just in case they still had inventory because I guessed they would run out of V right away. I also ordered a box of type-B spray cans too.

Oh yah, before I forget. During her recent stay Jen spent a lot of time by the window watching that empty flat beach, she even decided to name it: Shark Beach, as a joke we gave it a designated code name: Sierra Bravo. I texted that to Dan: from now onward it's to be called Sierra Bravo for Shark Beach. Dan's reply said: Sierra Bravo is 5 syllables, Shark Beach is two syllables, how can the longer version be the code name? I forwarded those to Jen and she texted both of us that it depends on how you say it. Both of us knew right away she was kidding and so it stuck: Sierra Bravo from now on.

On Tuesday I got a hyper excited/breathless/shouting call from Dan. He located a 1939 PO-2 Russian bi-plane in mint condition for sale in Italy. It was a former crop duster but still had the wing tanks and plumbing but for the past six years it was used as a weekend flyer, owned by a licensed aviation mechanic who stored it under a carport at a commercial airport in far southern Italy. It has a detailed mechanical log book going back to 1949 and is in pristine condition, plus it has a current airworthiness certificate and passed all Italian AA inspections, and only 71 hours since the previous Annual. Dan said he wanted it but cannot leave work, he begged me to fly to Rome then take a regional jet to far southern Italy to the Aeroporto Galatina Fortunato Cesari near the city of Copertino, which is in the southern half of the boot heel of Italy. He said it's almost identical to Freddy's go there now with $95K and maybe an extra $15k for the ride home. He never mentioned sharing the costs but it was easy to see we had to literally act fast, so once again I called my boss and told him the truth, I wanted to buy a WW2 Russian bi-plane and I had to fly immediately to southern Italy and I'd be back as fast as I could fly it home. So he let me go and requested coverage out of Barcelona. He did not sound happy but wanted to help. The truth was they were not likely to find anyone to take over my office if I quit so we were stuck with each other, but decided to make the best of it. I respect that in a manager.

Every time I have to leave and they get coverage out of Barcelona they get the same guy, a former US Marine who kind of likes Tangier but feels uncomfortable in a Muslim country but he does a decent job. I think they already talked to him about being assigned to Rabat and he politely declined but offered to fill-in as needed, so replacing me for a few days is usually only one phone call away and he knows where to stay, etc. I think that guy stays in my old hotel room in the Old City, like State still rents it for the price I negotiated for visiting people from State.

I went home and put clean clothes in my backpack while I called my bank to see if they could cash a check for $115k in Euros (immediately) and they said yes but were concerned that I was being blackmailed or robbed so I told them I was flying to Italy ASAP to buy a used airplane. So I took a black taxi over with my passport and cashed a check for $115,000 Euros. Most of it was in hundred Euro dollar bills, the rest was in fifties. She ran the stack through the counter twice, and then bundled with straps labeled 10,000 Euros, and an odd one with $5kE (100 fifty-Euro bills).

The main image on the 100 Euro bill is some kind of doorway, an ancient building entrance with columns and statues into a long hallway that goes nowhere. It's actually rather disappointing looking. And now I have a ziploc bag with a thousand of `em in my backpack, and five thousand in fifty Euro notes. The fifty Euro bill has two examples of 2nd story windows, similar to the ones on the White House in Washington. It's a great example of money design by autistics. "Oh I know, let's use windows and doors on our money! Soon the rest of the world will change their money to look just like ours!" (Except nobody else is weird enough. The Euro paper bills are positively the stupidest things I have ever seen.)

Then I took a taxi to the airport and got on the first flight to Rome. It's about two hours to Rome from Tangier. At Rome I was able to get on the last daily commuter flight (270 miles) to Copertino Italy. Somewhere at that airport the PO-2 was supposedly stored in a car-port style hangar (a metal roof but no sidewalls). Dan saw the listing online, I never saw it.

I arrived (in Copertino Italy) on the last flight from Rome at 6:22pm and the airport was still open so I walked to the airport office to get help locating their repair shop and how to get there from the passenger terminal. The seller knew I was coming, which was why he stayed.

I got a ride on a luggage cart with an airport employee and was driven to the aviation shop. What I slowly learned was this airport was sort of an old military base but was still occupied by something like the Italian Air National Guard Reserve. They had a lot of Korean War era (late 1940s, early 1950s) jets on display for the public to see. It took a while until I finally was introduced to the manager, the guy actually selling the PO-2, he walked me to another golf cart and drove me halfway across the airport to a line of old hangars and there it was, nearly identical to Freddy's except the only red star it had left was on the vertical stabilizer in back, the ones on the fuselage were gone (I took about thirty cell phone shots and texted ten to Daniel). And on this one the steel cables that operate the ailerons, flaps, and rudder were fully exposed on the outside of the fuselage. The control surface cables on Freddy's PO-2 were all inside the fuselage. Putting them on the outside made it easier/faster to inspect or repair but it will be a real hassle replacing the registration numbers.

He showed me the service log book, he said his did not have the leaky head gaskets like some of them get. The service is up to date and it should be fine flying as-is back to Tangier, except he didn't recommend flying it that far all in one go but the owner said he would not hesitate to fly it on such a trip right now. I climbed up into the rear cockpit and sat down and read the last twenty entries and saw the plane was pretty much as they advertised online. They wanted $90k in cash. I told him I only had $80k with me (but I actually had $115K) and immediately accepted my offer and pulled the title from his shirt pocket so I unzipped the backpack and set $80k in Euros ($10k per strap, 8 straps counted in the bank I told him) and placed the bundles on the wing and he took one and started counting. I told the guy I just came from the bank, the count should be exactly correct, one hundred bills in each strap for 10,000 Euros per strap, eight straps equals $80k.

While he counted I finished reading the log book entries going back three years and slowly texted Daniel some of the photos I took of the PO-2 under the carport. He kept a meticulous log book of flights and maintenance. I saw no signs of major damage anywhere on the plane or the engine or the landing gear. And like Freddy's PO-2 this one also had the original tail skid plate converted to a freely turning six inch rubber tire. His plane also had a 25 watt AM transceiver mounted under the instrument panel, he swore it worked fine but all the knobs were marked in Italian. The little vertical antenna was on top of the upper wing and was barely noticeable. He said it could fly about 650 miles on a full tank of AV-Gas, but not into a headwind.

After he finished counting cash he asked me to join him at a wingtip, we had to get on our knees on the cement slab and he got out a pencil and showed me there was a small round hole in the lower wing near the wingtip, he said it was the only bullet hole he ever found in it from WW2, it would have been fired by accident by Italian troops along the coast thinking it was an allied spy plane. I saw how the wing fabric edges were bent upward on both holes, so it did come from beneath the airplane and looked like it was fired from a rifle.

The guy hand wrote me a receipt and signed the title over and said it was my airplane now. But it was too late in the day to leave, the sun would set in 90 minutes so he drove me to the only hotel near the airport and said he'd meet me there at 6am tomorrow and we could pre-flight the PO-2 together.

"I don't know what you are used to flying but this plane does not have a fancy pilot's handbook, you have to rely on your knowledge as an airman to check the plane yourself." I told him I'd have no problem, I've pre-flighted a lot of different airplanes, some jets, and several different single engine propeller aircraft.

On the way to the hotel he told me it was used for reconnaissance (over the Adriatic Sea) during WW2, it still has camera mounts below the rear cockpit. It has the machine gun mount on top and 20 pound bomb mounts under both wings, he said some of the crop dusting gear was removed and sold years ago, but the copper tubing and internal wing tanks are still in place. I think what he meant the dry powder tanks were gone but the liquid tanks and plumbing were still there. I looked in the cockpit and saw the controls to turn on and off the liquid dispersal systems had all been removed.

According to him it was not worth the cost to have the wings removed from the airplane and the tanks and plumbing removed. I think they add about 40 pounds so their removal would not make a huge difference in how it balanced or flew. But it wouldn't surprise me if Dan had it all removed so he could sell them.

I barely slept that night I was so excited. That night I even dreamed of landing at Danville and Dan was so happy he actually cried tears of joy.

Early in the morning my alarm went off and I tried really hard to poop and pee all I could because I was about to begin a long and painful flight home. The seller met me in his truck outside the hotel and drove me back to the hangar, he let me keep his maps too, which helped but I knew the route from Tunis to Tangier quite well by now. The first part of this trip would be new territory for me, across southern Italy and over to Palermo Sicily.

We pre-flighted the plane and he flew (low) around the airport (while I walked to the refueling station) then landed and taxied to the fuel station. I paid for them to top off the tank. We shook hands and I got clearance to taxi and started up my GPS and had a rather long drive to the end of their only runway, which was kind of far from the terminal. Along the way I saw lots of parking areas on the tarmac for when this place was an active duty military air base. I used a small portion of the runway and flew right over Copertino which was about three miles northwest of the airport.

The widest part of the boot heel of Italy is only like 70 miles across, so at 2000 feet I could easily see both coasts. It took me about ten minutes to reach the shore, then I followed it around to the point where you see water again in the distance, which is the Tyrrhenian Sea. That body of water sits north of Sicily and north of the boot's toes and west of the mainland of Italy. Crossing the ball of the boot the land is only about 45 miles across. This was where I changed coasts and flew along the north shore of the toe of Italy toward the waterway between the toes and Sicily, the waterway is about two miles wide.

That flight from Copertino Italy to Palermo Sicily was almost exactly 300 miles by air along the northern coast. The airport in Palermo is nowhere near Palermo, instead it's on the west coast about 30 miles away. I landed on runway 02, it sits roughly SW>NE. I stopped at the fuel station and got a full tank of AV-Gas and parked it there for the night and got a hotel room at Villa Porto for $120 Euros, which was screw-the-tourist prices in my opinion for a place not too much better than my first hotel room in Old Tangier with the shared bathroom down the hallway on the third floor, and no elevator.

I loaded up on food and wine and chilled out in bed with the AC blasting and tried to go to sleep early but I was still too excited to sleep much.

The next morning (Day #2) I got a checked out of the hotel as the sky was turning light and returned to the airport by taxi. Last night they told me to come to General Aviation and they were open 24 hours, I could walk back out to my airplane sitting near the fuel truck parking area.

It took me 20 minutes to pre-flight the PO-2 and I got clearance to take off on the same runway, but that runway ends near the shore so you have to do a U-turn over the sea and fly back toward land, and then fly around a very large bay. From there you steer toward the town of Marsala Sicily, after that its 92 miles over open ocean where there is almost no hope of rescue. And at 95mph it would take an hour to cross. Don't think for one second I wasn't scared of making that crossing, but I had no choice.

From the first point of land on Africa when crossing from Sicily it's another 50 miles across the Gulf of Tunis, they had me land on runway 29, which was the one I never used before but I knew exactly where the gas pumps were located. I think they had me land on 29 because it's a busy airport for cargo flights, so keep the slower moving prop airplanes on a different part of the airport. I crossed the Gulf and landed easily and taxied to the fuel station and shut it down. Like the mechanic said, I had no airplane problems whatsoever so far and now I was almost halfway home. My back was getting sore from the bouncy ride. So after refueling I hand-pushed the old Russian bi-plane away from the fuel truck, blocked the tires, and walked to the terminal and got a taxi to a hotel. In my head I added up the numbers, it was 188 miles from Palermo to Tunis but the route was not a straight line. By staying over land as much as possible I added about 15 miles. But this was still probably the shortest but riskiest leg of the flight home.

The taxi driver did not speak English or Spanish but using my translator app he took me to a small hotel near the waterfront and some ritzy local rowing club. But my room on the 4th floor had a nice view of the fuel storage depot tanks near the airport. $115 Euros for the night, I paid in cash and he reminded me alcohol was not allowed. I had a 500ml bottle of Merlot wine in my backpack and he had the bellboy carry my backpack to the elevator and down the hallway to the Oil Depot room (or so I named it). I took a long hot shower and chilled in bed watching the only channel on TV I could follow, it was a weather channel but it was in Arabic.

I took half a vicodin and was asleep in 50 minutes.

On Day #3 I got back to the airplane at 0600, which appeared to have been untouched all night. When I arrived at the airport I pushed open a trash can near the food court and grabbed three empty 16 ounce plastic bottles to use for pissing during the flight.

I pre-flighted it and even opened the drain on the bottom of the carburetor bowl to drain some fuel from the bottom. It flowed out in a narrow stream and collected on a part of the engine body, I thought I saw some specs of sand in the fuel, better to get it out now than plugging the jets in-flight.

Twenty minutes later I cranked the engine and called for clearance to taxi to a runway. Ten minutes later I was in line behind a cargo jet and three minutes later I did my take off roll down the same runway and headed to the west along the coast. I flew from Tunis to Algiers which is 413 miles, like four and a half hours on a roller coaster. The ride got bumpier as the flight went along.

I got back to the airport in Tunis at 6am, the sun was up and I pre-flighted it easily, maybe 15 minutes and even checked air pressure in the tires. Everything looked great, no leaks, and no signs of difficulty whatsoever, I already knew the route to Algiers and as soon as I was ready I got permission to taxi to the end of runway 29 and got clearance to take off toward the northwest. Then I flew over the coast, about 3500 ft ASL because I heard one pilot say he encountered nice winds to the west at that altitude and sure enough I gained about 15mph. But the north coast of Algeria is far from a straight line, so on this stretch I used the GPS to point me at Algiers.

Over four hundred miles at nearly 105mph watching the coastline below me, watching for other airplanes or signs of weather changing, I sat there with both hands on the stick with one eye ahead and the other on the altimeter and fuel gauges. This leg of the trip used about ¾ of a tank full, or in American terms I used about $120US in gasoline. I saw a few sightseeing airplanes way down below me and the air traffic coordinator I spoke to in Algiers was fine leaving me at 3500 feet because I was out of everyone else's way.

I listened to the airplane pilots talk on the Unicom channel. Most of what I heard was in Arabic but once in a while I heard some commercial airlines out over the Sea talk in English.

I peed twice during the flight, that was tricky to do but I've done it before. I had to slide up in the seat and open my pants and pull it out and open the bottle and with a little luck it all went in the bottle and not on the seat. I capped it and set it on the floor. I would never toss the bottle over the side but I might have to dump the urine but it would spray all over the side of the airplane, but I never had to do it.

The airport in Algeria is on the southeast side, about three miles in from the coast. This was the first airport with a nice modern hotel at the airport, a Hyatt Regency, so after landing on runway 23 and fueling up the bird I got a taxi to the hotel and took the other half of the vicodin and went to sleep until my alarm went off at 5am. When I got up I texted Daniel to update him where I was and the plane was great, skies clear, making good time. But since it was Algeria I have no idea if the text ever actually left the cell.

On Day #4 I got back to the airport at 0545 just after sunrise and flew from Algiers to Tetouan, 525miles, the single longest and most painful span of the entire trip. I honestly did not know if I was going to make it to Danville.

Anyway I left Algiers after sunrise and followed the coast for hours. I sat hunched forward and held onto the stick and sang to myself and talked out loud to myself and bounced in my seat and kept my eyes constantly on the move for other airplanes. After three hours I could barely make out what looked like The Rock far off to the right, which was my first sign of home which really perked me up and I started singing louder. An hour after sighting The Rock I started losing altitude, I went down to 2500 feet and called ATC in Tangier and they even knew about the little airport called Danville. I asked for clearance to fly west beyond Tetouan then turn around to the left and land at Danville. They cleared me for 2000 feet and advised to call Danville directly for approach information and clearance.

Thirty minutes later I was at 2000 feet and flew past Tetouan Airport to the north and saw the peninsula where I attended the twink party and thought about Patrik and Luis. I flew a large box turning course to the left and used my GPS to fly directly east to Danville but it was getting late and it might be nearly dark out when I landed (on a runway with no lights in a plane with no landing lights). The only lights the PO-2 had was a bright red halogen bulb under a glass dome on top of the vertical stabilizer in back. When I flew past Tetouan the bottom of the sun was straight ahead and just starting to settle behind the mountains west of Danville, so the countdown (to dark skies) timer was ticking loudly. It wasn't long after I started my turns that I saw my first stars appear to the east.

I followed my GPS which had Danville programmed-in as a spot which was the center of the very end of the runway. I made my turn to the left and lost altitude, Danville did not answer my call, so the tower was already closed and below me I saw streetlights turning on everywhere.

I couldn't see Danville but I barely caught a glimpse of a faint white triangle straight ahead and my GPS said I was on course. The clouds above me were already out of sunlight and turning darker by the second. Suddenly I saw a flash of green on the windshield and I knew I was aligned, then I eased the stick forward and reduced the engine RPM down to 1200 and eased it lower until I saw a flash of red on the windshield, then pulled back slightly and added some throttle, up to 1300rpm and I caught a glimpse of a while triangle and some very faint blue lights on both sides of a patch of darkness then suddenly BAM and I heard the sound of wheels on pavement and I pushed the throttle in and used the brakes and then everything looked familiar, especially the large German hangar building ahead on the left. I kept rolling for a while and rolled off the runway and came to a stop in front of the hangar and reached up and turned the magneto selector knob to off and the engine sputtered and died. I reached up and turned the fuel valve off and released my seatbelt and stood up. I was super stiff and sore.

I stood up and stretched my back and turned sideways, stepped onto the seat and threw one leg over the side and stepped onto the wing, then pulled my other leg over. Then it was two tiny steps to the edge of the wing and a hop and I landed on solid ground and turned around and patted the fuselage and said "Thanks for the ride," to the airplane and stepped away a few steps and looked around and realized my brain wasn't working. Then I heard yelling in the distance, but my eyesight was too fuzzy to see faces, but it sounded like Daniel talking in some kind of weird accent.

It turned out Dan was not expecting me until tomorrow afternoon so he thought I was Freddy (since the planes are the same), but why was I arriving too late to leave? He casually walked over in jeans and a t-shirt, Samir had already left for the day, my watch said it was 6:58pm and the sky was nearly black and full of stars. Actually the sky was deep blue to the west so there was a little ambient light still.

Daniel shouted again as he got closer, "What you up to old man?" Then he saw the big red star was missing on the fuselage and the registration numbers were different. I stood near the wing and Daniel walked up and stopped as if he didn't recognize me so I took off the goggles and he saw it was me with his airplane, a day early! I grabbed my stomach and shouted: "Ho Ho Ho, Merrrrrrrrry Christmas!!!"

Daniel ran to me and put his arms around me and lifted me off the ground and spun us around and shrieked with joy. Daniel was briefly unable to speak, and then he put me down and held up one finger and said "Just a minute." He took off running as fast as he could back to the motorhome and came back with a Ziploc bag and tossed to me, he said it contained $115,000 Euros. So as far as I was concerned he not only purchased the plane from me but paid for my half of the runway too. I handed him the goggles and said I needed water.

He spun me around and put his arm over my shoulders and walked back to the motorhome. Dan opened a bottle of wine and we passed it back and forth, drinking from the bottle, at least it was chilled. The next one was chilled too. I also drank about a half gallon of cold water and washed my hands and face in his sink and used his bathroom, then he fed me two sliced apples and slices of hard summer sausage and a bowl of something like Cheezit crackers while we stood by the counter celebrating. Moments later he moved me to the sofa and pushed me down. I guess he figured out my brain needed time to recover from five hours non-stop on a roller coaster, in a 100mph wind machine.

We sat on opposite ends of the sofa and I told him about the trip home and the seller and how my back hurt bad, but I took half a vicodin on the last two days so I could keep going and that isn't enough to make me sleepy, but it didn't matter now because I made it home! I told him his plane was wonderful, but it's no acrobat, the engine'll stall if you turn too steeply or roll it over. I also told him to look into sand and water in the bottom of the fuel tank and drain the bowl under the carb before every flight until you get to clean the bottom of the fuel tank, drain it into a glass or something to inspect for sand or water.

Then I told him I checked the grade of head bolts and they were the right ones and when I left Italy it had no leaks anywhere.

Daniel said Freddy told him when he got his serviced (2 weeks ago) he had them install a different grade, and they put in the correct ones, so maybe he'll be spending less on it now that is has the right bolts. It's hard to see the bolt heads on every cylinder head, like the numbers on a clock the cylinders face out at 8, 10, 12, 2, 4. Four and eight are really hard to see. Anyone who works on them regularly makes their own set of head bolt tools.

After my comments about leaks we grabbed flashlights and walked back outside and closely inspected the entire 5-cylinder engine and found no leaks anywhere. We also looked at the brake lines and brakes, and under the fuel tank and saw no leaks anywhere on the airplane. Dan was very pleased, I could tell by his huge smile and how he kept touching me.

He tried what I did, he opened the drain on the bottom of the carburetor and drained some fuel into a tiny cup and checked for sediment and saw one tiny spec of what was probably sand.

After our inspection he used the skid loader to pull the PO-2 into the hangar where the Citation was parked. But because it was so much smaller we actually turned it around by hand (inside the hangar) so it faced toward the runway. We blocked the tires and looked over the entire plane again and he checked the engine oil. Dan noted proudly, "No oil leaks!" and we continued closely looking at it like two excited boys on Christmas morning laying out a new electric train track. He rubbed the bottom of the oil dip stick on his fingers then rubbed them together to feel for anything like metal dust or sand and felt nothing but oil, but it needed changing now.

When we turned it around I kept one eye on Dan and saw that for the first time in years he looked extremely happy. I told him it was low on fuel too, maybe had 45 minutes of flying-time left in the tank, maybe less.

The airplane had one large lead acid 12v battery that needed water too. We found some places to look inside the wings and see the wing tanks for signs of leakage or and damage to the plywood frames inside the wings (the tanks can leak and eventually rot the wooden wing frame boards). Dan said he was going to install a key switch for master power like Freddy had. With our cell phones we took photos of the fuselage serial number and number on the engine, they matched. We also took photos inside the wings of the liquid fertilizer tanks and copper plumbing. I showed him the bullet hole on the right wing tip, Dan said it looked cool but he wasn't convinced it was a WW2 bullet hole. We took photos of that too.

I could tell Daniel was so unbelievably happy it was impossible to describe how he looked. I told him how the seller told me this PO-2 was used for photo reconnaissance over the Adriatic Sea during World War-2 and was stationed in Italy, it's been flying over Italy since the day it was born.

I showed him the camera mounts, the bomb mounts, the machine gun mount, and he immediately noticed how the control cables on this one are all on the outside of the fuselage, unlike Freddy's that are all inside.

Dan said he thought he heard that very early on during the war that Germany and Russia were allies, which made Italy and Russia allies too, which was when this plane was built and shipped by train from the factory to Rome and assembled, tested and handed over to the Italian Army. After Italy surrendered someone probably flew it to a farm in the Boot Heel and hid it in a barn until VE Day. It's been farming ever since 1945, that's 75 years of spraying fertilizer and killing swarms of grasshoppers.

With our flashlights we looked closely at the Italian registration numbers to see if it would be possible to peel them off or if they were painted on. I aimed my flashlight while Daniel used his fingernail to pick at one corner of the letters. This plane had the registration I-N2372P and he tried to pick on the corner of the hyphen between the I and N and sure enough it started to come off so he stopped and we walked back to the bus. He said a hair blow dryer would take the numbers off, they were like decal stickers held on by glue.

While he checked the registration stickers I grabbed three empty bottles of piss from the floor and dumped them outside on the ground and told Dan to throw them away without opening them.

After that stuff we walked back to the bus still talking about his new airplane. I think if he had the gear he might have considered sleeping in a sleeping bag under it tonight. Knowing Daniel as well as I do I knew sooner or later one evening he'd sit in the pilot's seat and jerk off and come on the floor and let it dry before it felt truly like it belonged to him.

While we talked, without thinking he put a sauce pan on the stove and heated it and started to strip and gave himself a sponge bath at the kitchen sink as if I wasn't even there! So I asked him to make me one too because I smelled nasty down in my crotch from all those days of sweating in a cramped airplane seat. Afterward he let me blow him anyway, I think it actually briefly slipped his mind that I was bi.

While I was sponge bathing myself he went online and transferred the aircraft registration and applied for new numbers, it took a credit card and $25 Moroccan dollars, which was something like $24 Euros.

We slept together on the sofa that night because we were too excited (and drunk) to walk back to the bedroom.

The next day Dan filled the tank and flew it around the mountains and came back with a huge smile and said he was in love. I knew whenever he falls in love that means I ain't getting dick for a while!

I went home the next day and deposited the money and called my boss that I was home safely. If you add hotel and fuel costs I made out like $75 bucks ahead on that deal, so I was happy but I was not part owner. I just hoped he'd let me fly it once or twice a month.

That night at home I slept on my back on the living room floor!

Contact the author: borischenaz mailfence com

Reminder: none of this story is real, it's all made-up, 100% fiction.

Note from author: I am planning on ending this book at chapter 39.