TG: ABFH - complete

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TG, sex-change (chem,surgery), plot (aviation, partly violent) §§§§§§§§ There was an incomplete repost of this story recently. Here is all the authour wrote until now. There probably won't come any new parts.

This is the start of the series "Assault Bitches From Hell" Copyright Stephanie M. Belser. Her E-mail address is 73020.2405@compuserve.com

Assault Bitches From Hell

Lieutenant Anderson waited outside of the office of the Chief of Staff for Destroyer Squadron Two. He had no idea what the COS wanted, but he really didn't care very much. In ten days, very much against his will, he was going to be a civilian. He planned to burn his uniforms as soon as he could.

Captain Williams opened the door and said: "Come on in, Mr. Anderson." Anderson did so, he found an Army Colonel sitting in a chair next to a table. A file folder lay on the table. "Anderson, this is Col. Hampton. He wants to discuss some matters with you."

Col. Hampton stood up and shook hands. "Nice to meet you, Lieutenant." He turned his head and said: "Thanks, Pete" to Capt. Williams, who left the office. "Have a seat, son."

Anderson sat down. He wanted to ask what this was all about, but he kept quiet. Hampton looked at him and nodded.

"All right. I've got something I'd like to discuss with you, Sam, if you don't mind."

Anderson shrugged. "Talk all you want, Colonel, but why should I listen?"

Hampton pulled a sheet of paper from the file. "You're due to be discharged on an Other than Honorable' basis late next week. Your service record is an exemplary one. After your first year, your fitness reports have been straight A's, consistent recommendations for early promotion. You went to Department Head School early, did well. You've been the Engineer of a frigate for the last sixteen months, your captain thought very highly of you.

"Then a security officer at the bank was matching up ATM transactions with photographs. He saw that a woman was using your card. Upon further investigation, it was learned that you were the woman. You're a transvestite, so now you're being discharged. Is that about it?"

Anderson had sat quietly throughout the entire recitation. "Correct, sir. So what?"

"So this." He handed the sheet of paper to Anderson.

Anderson read it. It was a standard Bureau of Naval Personnel set of message orders, addressed to him, discharging him on honorable conditions. Without a word, Anderson stood up, went over to the desk and dialed the AUTOVON number the officers' order section of BuPers in Washington. (It was a number all naval officers know by heart.) In a few minutes, Anderson learned that the orders were genuine, but not yet active. They would be released when verified by an army colonel named Hampton.

Anderson hung up the phone and returned to his seat. he handed the orders back to Hampton and said: "Okay, Colonel, I'm all ears."

"First, I want you to read and sign this." Hampton handed a another piece of paper to Anderson. It was a disclosure agreement; by signing it he agreed to keep whatever was discussed to himself for the next 75 years. The US Government was authorized to use any method they deemed fit, not limited to legal methods, to make him keep quiet.

Anderson looked up. "This could be interpreted to mean you could have me shot if I talked."

"That's right. You won't be able to discuss whatever we talk about. Is it worth an honorable discharge to listen?"

Anderson signed it. "You're on, sir."

Col. Hampton settled back in his seat. "I'm sure you're aware of the restrictions we have on assigning women to combat duty. Most of the time, that's not a problem. We have assigned women to combat areas, even areas so hot that they have to carry full combat gear. We can assign them there because their weapons would be used for defense. But we cannot assign them to any job where they would have to use their weapons offensively. There are some times when we need that capability. Then we run smack up against the law.

"Now, I'm not talking about full-blown battlefield missions. I'm referring to unconventional mission, `covert action' if you will, where a woman would have a distinct advantage. But we can't use them."

"So why not turn the job over to the CIA? Surely they aren't constrained by the same law," Anderson pointed out.

"No, they're not. But we like to have our own capability to mount such operations. The law doesn't prohibit us from using men, though."

"Which is where I come in?"

"Exactly. We screen everyone being discharged for being a transvestite or a transsexual. Those who have some abilities suitable to our needs are approached for further consideration. In other words, we still have a place for you in the military if you want it."

Anderson looked directly at Hampton. "I was outed six weeks ago. They couldn't get me off the ship fast enough. Now you say you want me. Fine. What's in it for me?"

"A lot. You'll be transferred to an army unit. While there, you'll receive your base pay plus a number of special pays. If you stay in, you'll be promoted at the same rate you would have been before. If you decide to leave before completion of the training program or are found to be not what we need, you'll get the honorable. If you complete the training, then should you leave, you will be treated like a reservist who did the full 20 years of drilling: At 62, you become a retiree with full benefits."

Anderson thought it over. "What's the first step?"

"Go home right now. Do not return to this office, ever. Pack an overnight bag with one change of clothing, your pilot's logbook, and a pair of sunglasses. You won't need anything else. Be at the general aviation terminal at the Norfolk airport at 0700. A man will meet you and put you on a flight. He'll also take care of your car."

"Sounds interesting. But why me?"

Hampton shrugged. "You have some abilities we need, especially your flying experience."

"Don't you get pilots, too?"

"Not really. The Government has so much invested in their training that they are quietly told to keep it cool until their EAOS. Besides, they're not into the low, slow stuff." Hampton stood up. "Thanks for listening, Lieutenant."

Anderson shook his hand and said nothing.

He was at the general aviation terminal at 6:45 the next morning. Right on time, a man came up and asked if he was Sam Anderson. When Anderson nodded, he motioned him to follow. The man led him out to the ramp and pointed to a Piper Navajo. "Get in that plane. Don't talk to the pilot. Let me have your keys."

Anderson separated the keys for his car from his key ring and handed them to him, then he walked to the airplane. He climbed into the Piper and sat down in the right-hand seat. The twin was configured to carry cargo, there were only two seats. The pilot went back, shut the door, took his seat, and started the engines. After a few minutes to warm up the oil, they were soon climbing into the sky over Tidewater Virginia.

The pilot leveled off at 8,500 feet, heading southwest. Without a chart, Anderson had no way to know where they were going. He did know they had flown for almost four hours when the pilot started a descent into a small airport. The field was located in a pine forest; it had one runway that looked narrow and short. When they landed, the pilot shut down both engines and pointed at a car parked by a small line shack.

The inference was obvious, Anderson got out of the seat. picked up his bag, and went over to the line shack. He found a rest room, drained his bladder, then went out to the car. A nice-looking woman was sitting behind the wheel. She looked at him with mild interest and nodded towards the passenger's side door. Anderson opened the back door, put his bag in, and got into the front. He buckled up and they drove off.

She said nothing, and Anderson was damned if he was going to say anything. He could figure out that they were somewhere in Arkansas from the license plates on the cars, but he didn't recognize anything. He had never been there before.

They pulled up in the parking lot of a small professional building forty minutes later. The woman pointed to the front door. Anderson got out. They want to play it cool, he thought, so would I. He grabbed his bag and went in without a word or a backwards glance.

There was another woman sitting at the reception desk in the building. "Are you Sam Anderson," she asked.

Finally, a voice. "Yes."

"May I see your ID, please?" She held out her hand. Anderson dug out his wallet and handed her his military ID card. She glanced at it and handed it back. "Please have a seat, the Doctor will be with you shortly." She turned away from him in dismissal.

Anderson went to the waiting area and soon found a "Newsweek" that was current according to the AMA guidelines-- it was only seven months old. He leafed through the magazine and some others for about a half-hour, then the receptionist told him to go to Room Five. He did so, then waited for another ten minutes.

A man in a white coat who appeared to be in his mid-40s came into the room. "Sam Anderson? I'm Dr. McHenry. I'll be giving you your inprocess physical this afternoon."

"WHAT physical?"

"Oh, they didn't tell you," Dr. McHenry remarked. "The first thing we do is give you a complete physical. Some of it involves blood work, which is why we haven't fed you lunch. That and a few other tests are first up, then you'll get something to eat, followed by a lot of other tests, then a dental exam. "

"How long will this last?" Clearly Anderson was not at all pleased about going through a physical. "I had one two weeks ago."

"That was, correct me if I'm wrong, a pre-separation exam. That just makes sure all your major body parts are attached. This one's a little more intensive. We should be done by nine or so."

Nine tonight? Goddamn it, cursed Anderson to himself. "Well, let's get on with it."

"All right. Strip to the waist and then come with me." Anderson did that. The doctor led him to a room where he turned him over to a nurse.

"Lie down here, please," the nurse said. Anderson did so. The nurse drew blood, filling several vials. Then she smeared some clear goo on his chest ant attached the sensor cups for an electrocardiogram. "Not bad," she pronounced as the strip unrolled from the machine. Looks like you try to stay in shape."

The rest of the exam was a forgettable ordeal of tests; urine, stool, hand-eye coordination, a stress test, and even a proctological exam. They took a break around four and gave Anderson a bag of McJunk food from the Golden Arches. Afterwards, he had to fill out an extremely detailed medical and psychological history. That was hard; the questionnaire mainly concerned transvestism and transsexualism. It asked a lot of questions that he hadn't even thought of before.

The last ordeal was a dental exam. It was given by a dentist who made the dentist Steve Martin played in "The Little Shop of Horrors" seem like a compassionate soul.

The day ended at ten that night. A different nurse drove him to a small motel. "There's a restaurant across the street. Tell them to put your meal on Peterboro, inc. Don't worry about the motel bill. Be ready to leave with your gear at six-thirty."

Anderson nodded and got out of the car. The clerk gave him a key without asking any questions or giving him a registration form. The room was a standard cheapie motel room; two double beds, a telephone without a dial, towels one could see through, a shower, and a TV set bolted to the floor.

The restaurant wasn't bad, but Anderson was too tired to care much. He had a salad and soup, then went back to the room. He called the desk and asked them to wake him at 5:45.

It seemed as if the telephone rang fifteen minutes later, but when Anderson looked at his watch, it was quarter till six. Goddamn, this is like standing he evening watch and then getting up at reveille, he thought. He shaved, showered, and got dressed, then went across to the restaurant for breakfast. The service was quick, he was able to eat and get back to the motel parking lot three minutes early. The same nurse who had driven him to the motel drove him back to the clinic.

This time the receptionist directed him to another room. It was brightly lit with a large mirror on one side. Anderson had read enough mystery and espionage novels to guess that the mirror was of the one-way kind. A fairly comfortable chair faced the mirror. Next to the chair was a stand with a speakerphone on top. He sat down in the chair and waited.

He didn't have to wait long. "Good morning, Lieutenant Anderson," said an electronically-disguised voice. "We are going to ask you a series of questions this morning. Please answer them as honestly as you can. Ready?"

"No. Who are you, and why this set-up?"

"There are four of us. We are going to talk with you about a number of subjects. The reason for this setting is so that you cannot tailor your responses to our reactions. You can't see us and the computer interface will make all our voices sound the same with no inflection. Ready?"

"Shoot."

"When did you first crossdress?"

"When I was four or five." And it went on from there. What he had worn, what was his reactions, where did he obtain feminine attire, reactions of family, girlfriends. What was his feeling towards women. Each response generated more questions. Anderson felt like a limp rag by the time they took a break at nine. They started up after twenty minutes and went to eleven-thirty, punctuated by one head call. It was tough as hell. He had to talk to a group of strangers about a part of his life he had never shown anyone.

The session ended when another nurse came in and told him to follow her. They left the building and got into a car. The nurse swung through a fast-food's drive-in lane, she told Anderson to order his lunch. When they drove off, she instructed him to eat it as they drove. He just went with the flow.

They arrived at another airport twenty minutes later. The nurse told him to go inside and ask for Carol. Anderson got out and did that. Carol appeared to be in her late 20s with brunette hair. She had on jeans, Reeboks, and a t-shirt.

"You're Sam Anderson, eh. Let me see your logbook." Anderson handed it over. She leafed through it, then handed him a key on a keyring. "Go out and preflight the blue Citabria, 64 echo."

Anderson smiled at that, he went out and checked the airplane over. It had been a while since he had flown a 7ECA, but he was current in Super Cubs, so he felt confident. Carol came out when he finished and got into the back seat, Anderson climbed into the front. They put on headsets. "Can you hear me," Carol asked.

"Yes."

"Good. Start her up and let's go. Unicom's 122.7, head out on 240 and climb to four thousand."

Anderson pumped the throttle twice, cleared the prop, and engaged the starter. The four-banger caught and started, he held about 1,000 rpms while the oil warmed up. When it was warm, he added power and taxied to the runway. The taxiway was grass, he didn't go very fast. The runup was normal.

Time to go. Nobody was coming, so he swung onto the runway, lined the nose up, and added power, feeding in right rudder to counteract the engine's torque. He held a little forward stick to lift the tailwheel, then held the tail low and let the airplane fly when she was ready to.

The day was warm, the Citabria didn't climb very rapidly, but they soon were at 4,000 feet. "Do some dutch rolls," Carol said. Anderson banked the plane left-right-left-right, using the rudder to keep it on a straight course.

"Slow flight." Anderson took the power off, slowed down, then added power while holding the nose up. He was mushing around on the edge of a stall.

"Turn 90 degrees to the left." Anderson slowly turned. "Now the right." He was back on his original course.

"Power-off stall." Anderson turned to ensure the area was clear, then chopped the power and held the nose up. He used rudder to keep the wings level, the airplane shuddered and stalled. He lowered the nose, added full power, and established a climb.

"Power-on stall." He cleared the area, ensuring nobody else was around. He cut the engine, slowed to 65, then raised the nose and added full power. He brought the nose up more and more until the airplane stalled, dropping the nose. Anderson brought the nose down below the horizon, built up airspeed, then established a climb.

"Take us back." Anderson turned around and flew back the way he came, establishing a shallow descent. He found the airport and entered the pattern. "Do some full-stall touch and goes." He flew the airplane around the pattern, doing about four full-stall landings.

"Show me some wheel landings." Those are harder, Anderson had to flare out just above the runway and touch the main wheels to the pavement, adding in forward stick when the wheels touched. He bounced a couple, a couple were greasers. After the fourth one, Carol told him to taxi back in and shut down. They went into the building, the nurse who had driven him there was waiting. Carol wrote in his logbook that he had been satisfactorily checked out in a 7ECA in 1.5 hours of flying time. She handed him the logbook back without comment, then Anderson followed the nurse back to the car.

She drove him to the clinic again. This time, Col. Hampton was in the office, dressed in civilian clothes. He stood up and shook hands with Anderson. "Congratulations, son. You passed the screening process. Do you want in?"

"Sure."

Hampton handed him a book of names for girl babies. "First, you pick a name for yourself. It'd be easier if you choose one that starts with an `S'."

Anderson looked at the selection, sounding them in his head. "How about `Sherry?'"

Hampton nodded. "Fine. Welcome aboard, Sherry."

Anderson asked the logical question: "Now what?"

"We'll handle this just like a standard set of permanent orders," the Colonel replied. He pulled the desk drawer open and handed Anderson a piece of paper, it was another set of BuPers message orders. When the standard wording was translated, it read that Lt Anderson was to be detached from his current duty station, take 30 days' leave (known as "delrep" for "delay in reporting") and report to the military air terminal at McGuire Air Force Base in civilian clothes; he was not to use his own vehicle to get there. His personal effects (known as "household goods" or "HHG") were to be put in storage at government expense for the duration of the orders. "You won't be stationed at McGuire," Col. Hampton explained, "That's where we'll be picking you up. Bring three days' worth of clothes. The Commodore of DesRon 2 has already written a detaching fitness report, you'll sign it when you get to where you're going after your leave.

"So go home and get your personal life in order. Make sure you're parents know that you're going to be out of touch for a long time, it may be a few years before they get to see you." He handed Anderson a card. "They can call this number in case of an emergency, but make damn sure they understand that doesn't include anything less than imminent death. And make sure they know that you may not be able to come back for any kind of emergency. You can use the address on the card as a forwarding address for your mail."

"Where am I going?"

"You'll know when you get there, Sherry. The same lady who drove you here will take you back to your transportation. See you in a month."

Anderson left the room. Hampton watched him go and sighed. He was getting to have too much time in this assignment, he told himself. At first, he thought of the program as a way to gain some use from worthless deviates. But now, he knew that the men he recruited were fine people, they simply had a different orientation. Hampton now though that tossing them out was a waste; now at least he could do something with some of them.

The woman drove Anderson to a third airport, this one was considerably larger than the other two and had a control tower. This time, he was shown to a Sabrejet bizjet that was painted in USAF colors. The jet took him to Langely AFB. The same man who had taken his car keys at the Norfolk airport handed them back to him. Anderson found his car and went home.

It took four days to arrange for the movers to come and take everything he couldn't fit into his car. Then he went home. The leave was less than satisfying; neither one of his parents were supportive of his desire to stay on active duty. Anderson visited his brother and left him the car and his personal gear (including a fair number of firearms). He did a little bit of traveling, and presented himself to the military air terminal at McGuire with two weeks' worth of leave remaining.

The Air Force sergeant who was at the receiving desk read Anderson's orders and then checked a file. She told Anderson to go check into the transient BOQ and stay there; he'd be notified when his flight was called. Anderson had taken MAC flights before, one normally has to wait at the terminal for one's name to move up the waiting list. This treatment mystified him, but he just did as she told him to.

The phone in his room rang a day and a half later. Anderson switched on a light, picked it up and muttered his name into the handset.

"Lieutenant Anderson? Master Sergeant Wilkes at the MAC desk. Your flight leaves at 0430. A car will be at the Q at 0410 to pick you up."

"What time is it now?"

"A little after three, sir."

"All right, thanks." Anderson set the handset back into the cradle. Fucking zoomies, scheduling a flight on the rev watch. Oh, well. He rolled out of bed, shaved and showered. The desk was open 24 hours, he was checked out by four and waiting for his ride.

An airman came over to him. "Are you LT Anderson?"

"Yes."

"May I see your ID, sir?" Anderson handed it to him. The airman looked it over and handed it back. "Come with me, sir." He led the way to a "blue steelie," Air Force lingo for an issue sedan. Anderson got into the right-side seat. He was a little surprised when the airman passed by the MAC terminal and drove to a hangar after passing a security check from the APs, who were wearing woodland camo uniforms and carrying M-16A2s. The airman drove out onto the ramp and up to an Air Force C-12, their version of the Beech King Air. This one had seen better days, it was set up as a cargo carrier (or "trash hauler"), complete with a load of cargo. The pilot, a woman in a USAF pilot's jumpsuit with captain's bars waved him on board. Anderson stowed his bag between two crates and settled into the right seat.

"You might want to put on that headset," she said. "This old beast can get pretty loud."

Anderson did so, adjusting the headset to fit and the boom mike to almost touch his mouth. "Can you hear me?"

"Sure can." The pilot ran through the starting procedure with the economy of motion born of great amounts of practice. She soon had both PT-6 engines turning. She received her IFR and taxi clearances, then taxied out to the runway. They had to wait for the wake of a departing C-5 to dissipate, then they were on their way.

The flight went to Wisconsin, Anderson guessed. He could recognize Lake Michigan and he did his best to follow along with the air traffic controllers working the airplane. Dawn was breaking when the pilot started her descent. There was nothing but woods, then he saw a small town next to an airport. When they landed, he looked with surprise at the collection of airplanes on the ramp. He hadn't seen so many tailwheel airplanes in one place outside of an EAA fly-in; everything from a few J-3s up to three Twin Beeches, a C-46 and two DC-3s. There were a few tricycle- geared airplanes, but damn few-- a couple Cessna 172s, a Mooney, three Bonanzas and a King Air. Everyhting was painted in civilian schemes, complete with N-numbers.

It looked like a civil airport in Alaska, except the man coming out to greet them had an assault rifle slung over his shoulder. He told Anderson to go to the line shack, then he started talking to the pilot about refueling the C-12 and unloading the cargo. Anderson trudged over to the shack. A woman with a no- nonsense demeanor asked for his ID. She compared the card to a list, then handed it over. She stuck out her hand and said: "Welcome to school, Sherry. I'm Doris Stackpole. I'll be your training coordinator while you're here at the school. Let's get you situated. Come with me." Doris led the way out of the other end of the building.

"What is this place?"

"It's a training facility for all sorts of students. Some of the students are training for covert ops, some are here above board. First rule is: Don't talk to anybody about who or what you are or what you are here for. Everything around here runs on a `need-to-know' basis. Understand?"

"Sure do." They had walked across the road to a small area of townhouses. Doris led the way to one of them and opened the door with a key, which she gave Anderson.

"This is yours for the duration of your stay." She showed Anderson around. The townhouse was on two levels; upstairs were two bedrooms and a bathroom, downstairs was a kitchen, dining area, living room, a study (complete with a computer with a 19" screen) and a half-bath. "You're getting this place because it's so close to the field, most of your training is going to be in flying."

"Which of those planes will I be flying?"

Doris shrugged. "If you complete the course, all of them."

"Even the DC-3?"

"Yes, but you'll have a few other things to worry about." Anderson didn't like her grin, but he'd do a lot to get a DC-3 type rating. Doris went to the door. "You have an appointment. Bring your stuff, they'll take it and issue you what you need."

Anderson followed along. They walked to a building almost a half-mile away. There they went into a room where Doris told him to strip to his underwear. Anderson did, two women came in and started measuring his body; one measured, the other recorded. They traced the outlines of his hands and feet. The real surprise was when they measured penis size, both flaccid and erect. Anderson was embarrassed at that, but the two were just doing their job and did it. Afterwards, Doris gave him a pink terry-cloth robe and told him to take his underwear off. She collected all of his things and marched out of the room.

For the first time, Anderson was scared. He had no idea where he was, had no money, no ID, and all he had was a pink bathrobe.

Doris returned about forty minutes later with some clothes. She handed him a pair of white cotton panties, "I think you know how to wear them," she said. Next was a yellow and black t-shirt, a pair of white socks, women's blue jeans and a pair of Reebocks that were white with pink trim. "Other clothes will be sent to your apartment. Now, let's go to medical."

"Another physical?"

"Not like one you've ever had before." This time, they drove. Doris had the keys to a jeep-like vehicle that ran on batteries. She drove to a hospital that was a couple of miles away by road, although it was right across the airfield.

Doris was somewhat right. It was a thorough physical; but the difference came when they had Anderson lie down for a whole-body CAT-scan. He almost freaked out; he had to lie on a very small white tunnel while the machine hammered and whirred. He could have sworn the thing was going to grind him up. After the scan, Doris took him to the cafeteria for lunch. The food was about the same as any other hospital, barely edible.

The PA system paged Doris when they had almost finished. She left the table to answer it, then returned. "C'mon, Dr. Trotti will see you now. We'll find out what he can do for you."

They finished quickly and left the cafeteria. Anderson wanted to ask what was going to happen, but there were other people around.

Dr. Trotti was in his late 40s. He shook hands and led them into a darkened room. There was a screen on the wall and an overhead projector that could project computer images. "Sherry, my field is reconstructive surgery, though maybe we should say constructive surgery. Take a look at this." He turned the screen on.

Anderson looked closely. The image was of a woman wearing a tank top and a skirt that came to just above the knee. Her breasts swelled the top and showed a little cleavage. The skirt clung to nice hips. Her face was not that of a raving beauty, but she had nice cheekbones and didn't look bad at all. "Who is she?"

"That's you."

"What?"

"Yes." Dr. Trotti shifted to another screen. "This is your skeletal structure.." He went into a lengthy discussion of how they could modify Anderson's skeletal structure to make him look like a woman, followed by a discourse of what plastic surgery techniques they could use. Anderson felt the MEGO (for "Mine Eyes Glaze Over") factor kicking in. Adding pieces here, taking pieces out there. It wasn't his body, it was a biological erector set.

After Trotti said his piece, Anderson asked the key question: "How much of this is reversible?"

Dr. Trotti considered that. "Most of it is. We can change everything back that required surgical techiques. You are going to need a fair amount of electrolysis for us to be able to accomplish what we need to do. That isn't reversible." The doctor just smiled. Almost everyone he had worked on asked that question. He had done the reversal surgery on about five percent of those he had worked on. But he didn't say anything.

"All right. When does the electrolysis start?"

"Right now," Doris said. They said goodbye to the doctor and went to another part of the hospital. There a nurse injected a painkiller similar to novocaine inside his mouth. She had him lie on a table, then after several minutes, she started to work. Another nurse came in and started on the other side of his face. Anderson could hear the humming of the machines and the occaisional `zap' as a needle vaporized an oil pocket. The nurses would wipe his face with an antiseptic every so often. He was very tired and since he was feeling no pain, he fell asleep.

They woke him up four hours later. His lower face was wrapped in a cold mask, it had tubing through which a chilled solution was circulating. When they took the mask off, one of the nurses closely inspected his face. "Not bad." She gave him a tube of antiseptic ointment and a small bottle of pain pills. "See you tomorrow," she said.

Anderson wanted to say something, but his face was numb. Doris took him back to his townhouse. She showed him the clothes hanging in the closet, mostly variations of what he was wearing: jeans, different tops, several pairs of running and aerobics shoes. There was an assortment of unisex-athletic gear.

"You can get food by placing an order through your computer, though you'll have to cook it yourself unless you order the microwavable dinners; I recommend them as you won't have a lot of time. The instructions are next to it, it's fairly self-evident. You can order any books, tapes, CDs or videos the same way. The computer also ties into the training database for unclassified material; you'll be taught how that works starting tomorrow. Anything you order will be placed on the living-room table, except for perishables which will be put into your refridgerator or freezer. There are some tapes by the VCR to start you off. I'll be by tomorrow at 0730. Any questions?"

Anderson made writing motions. Doris found a tablet and a pen. "Toothbrush? Razor," he wrote.

"Toothbrush is upstairs in the bathroom. No razor, it's easier to work with longish hair. See you in the morning."

Anderson half-heartedly watched a video, then found a chicken dinner in the freezer after his face denumbed enough to eat it. He took a shower and rubbed the ointment over the areas where the eletrolygists had worked. He soon fell asleep wondering waht tomorrow would bring.

Tomorrow brought a lot of swelling. His upper lip was so swollen that he had trouble drinking. The side of his face where one of the electrolygists had worked was swollen, too. This time they had him strip to his underwear and four people were working on him; two on the face and one on his legs. The worst part of the procedure was when a doctor would come in and inject lidocaine so the electrolygists could proceed. Most of the time he could see a TV, so they let him watch VCR movies or cable.

This went on for almost two weeks, but by the time they were done, he had no body hair other than that that a woman had. They told him that they'd have to do it all again in six weeks, but it would take less time then. Well, he thought, maybe by six weeks the swelling would go down.

They gave him a day off, then they started flight training. Doris took him to a classroom next to the airport. She turned him over to an instructor named Craig, who proceeded to start teaching him how to fly by instruments. Classroom work was in the morning, simulator work in the afternoon.

This routine went on for three weeks. As Doris had promised, all the course work was on a computer database, so Anderson was able to work on the ratings in the evening. The simulator gave way to an IFR-capable Cessna 180; Anderson became able to fly an approach to minimums and follow up with a good landing. "It's a lot harder in a taildragger," Craig explained.

By the end of the month, Anderson had an instrument airplane rating and had passed the written exam for a commercial pilot.

Things began to change a little in the second month. Doris took Anderson to a hairdresser. Terri clucked with disapproval at the military haircut. Anderson thought his hair was long; it was longer than the uniform regs allowed, but still short. Terri recut it into a hairstyle that was short but fairly feminine. He looked in the mirror, he thought he looked like a big dyke. She looked at his nails. "Your nails are a mess. You need to stop chewing them." She painted them with a clear liquid, then waited for the coating to dry. "Now chew on them," she said.

Anderson tried, the stuff tasted horrible. He spit out a fragment of nail and said as much.

"That's just the point. Take the bottle with you and put a coat on your nails each morning. After a while, you won't even think of biting them." Terri then pierced his ears. "You're about what, 26," she asked.

Anderson nodded.

She pierced them twice more, so he had three gold studs in each ear. "You're young enough so that looks about right," she concluded. After a lecture on how to care for the piercings, she took him over to a vanity table and began showing him how to apply cosmetics, indoctrinating him in the mysteries of foundations, bases, power, lipstick, gloss, mascara, eyeshadow, and cold cream. After she was done, she scrubbed it all off and had him apply it, correcting him as he made mistakes.

"That's sort of the `full formal' look," she explained. "It's good for an evening out. But for daytime, it's a bit much..." She then showed him how to lightly apply makeup for a look that was both enhanced and natural. "You don't want to wind up looking like the daughter of Bozo the Clown and Tammy Faye Bakker." Anderson left the salon with that coating still applied.

That took the entire morning and then some. Anderson was getting very hungry, so Doris dropped him back at the townhouse. "See you in an hour," she said. Anderson made a couple of sandwiches and leafed through two aviation magazines that had been dropped off. He also noticed that "Cosmopolitan," "Redbook," and "YM" had been added to the selection. He repaired the damage to his lipstick by the time Doris returned.

Doris showed up carrying two purses, one of them was for Anderson. She showed him what cosmetics to carry, enough for field repairs. He looked at the wallet, it had a Wisconsin driver's license in the name of Sherry Anderson, complete with photograph and signature. There was also a VISA and American Express credit cards, a pilot's license (private, instrument airplane), medical certificate and a radiotelephone permit in Sherry's name. There was also $52.47 in cash.

"All those are legal," Doris said. "Anyone who checks with the DMV or the FAA will find Sherry Anderson listed. Give me your logbooks."

Anderson went to find them and handed them over.

"You'll get these back in a while. Now we have an appointment with a voice coach. You really need help there, Sherry."

"I know I sound like a man, but why do you say that?"

They left the townhouse as Doris explained: "Appearances are very important for a man who is passing himself off as a woman. What someone first perceives is the way they are going to think of you, 99% of the time. If they see a woman, then they are going to think `woman' even if your voice is a tad low. But in your case, the first contact a lot of people are going to have with you is over an airplane's radio. So your voice has to convey that you are a woman.

"You might say we are going into phase two of your training here."

"Which is?"

"Female training. You're going to take deportment lessons. We aren't going to teach you how to act like a woman. An act can fail under stress. So we are going to teach you to BE a woman. There will be sessions with image consultants, the voice coach, and some time out in the real world. You're going to start spending some time with a therapist to ensure that we aren't overloading you. She'll also help you sort out your feelings about who you are and what we are training you. Feel free to talk with her about anything, ok?"

"Sure. Will I still be flying?"

"Oh, yes. You have a lot more training to go through."

The voice coaching was simple. The first session took just fifteen minutes. The coach showed Anderson how to raise his voice slightly through humming and gave him a tape-recorder to practice with.

The therapist was next. Her name was Janet, she explained that the process was to talk things out. She would have him explain his life to her. The process was like peeling an onion, one removes one layer at a time.

Anderson digested that. "But there's nothing distinct about the center of an onion," he remarked. "How do you know when you get there?"

"When there's nothing else left. You'll know it, and so will I. We'll start on your next visit."

Doris was waiting in the therapist's outer office. "What's next on the schedule," Anderson asked.

"We're going to get you some new clothes." They rode the electric jeep to a clothing store. There the saleslady first fitted Anderson with a bra and a set of breast prothesis. She had him try on a number of different bras, then camesoles and slips. After that, she brought in a navy houndstooth suit with a white blouse which she had him try on. Then she fitted him with a pair of black leather pumps with 3" heels. Finally, she led him over to a three-sided mirror.

Anderson's jaw dropped. Gazing back at him in the mirror was an attractive young businesswoman. He ran his hands down the side of the skirt, feeling the smooth material. He smiled and the woman in the mirror smiled back. What he didn't see was the satisfied grins Doris and the saleslady gave each other. He wasn't sure how long he stood there, entranced at his image in the mirror. He felt something click inside himself, and from then on knew that the female pronouns were the right ones. It just felt right. It was a moment that Sherry would remember as long as she lived. She would later say it felt like she had been reborn.

They spent a lot of time assembling a wardrobe; dresses, skirts, tops, casual wear, coats, shoes, and a couple of pairs of boots. Doris picked out a few things to take back with them, the saleslady promised the rest would be delivered.

Doris helped Sherry put her clothes away when they returned to the townhouse. "Tomorrow you start on your commercial pilot's license," she said. "Just be at the flight school by 0730. You'll do your training in the Bonanza, since you'll need to use a complex airplane for the exam. Wear the jeans and the sneaks for your flight training. I'll let you know each afternoon what is planned for the next day so you can choose the proper attire. If I don't see you, I'll leave a note in your email.

"The other thing is, you need to start on a physical training program. Some of that will come later, but I want you to start running each afternoon. That is to be the only activity where you aren't to wear the artificial breasts. Start today."

"Okay." Sherry changed into a t-shirt and shorts, then went out for a run. It was a brief run, she hadn't been running for a few months. But she knew from past experience that the wind would come back quickly.

Sherry was at the flight school on time. If Craig had any thoughts about her changed appearance, he kept them to himself.

The instructor thought she was a little weak on slow flight and stalls. "I think you're afraid of them, so let's change the syllabus a bit," he said. Sherry found herself in the front seat of a Bellanca Decathalon; they went through stalls, spins, and some basic aerobatics. She had to use a Sic-Sack on a couple of occaisions, but soon she was doing loops, rolls, and inverted flight. Craig had her do inverted stalls and spins, then he let her take the Decathalon up when she had some free time.

Sherry had the time of her life in the Decathalon. Craig chewed her ass out for making a low inverted pass down the runway one afternoon, but she didn't mind.

For most of the non-flying days, Doris had her wear more lady- like attire. She got used to moving around in dresses, skirts, and high heels. She lost her purse a few times the first week, but soon carrying one became automatic.

The therapy was easier than she thought it would be. Sherry trusted Janet and opened up to her completely. They met three times a week, then scaled back to twice a week. Janet wanted to make sure that the training wasn't taking Sherry down a road she didn't want to go. But what she saw was a young woman who was full of life. Sherry was finally doing everything she had wanted to do.

The deportment classes (to use Doris's term) were more like aerobics. The instructor's name was Sharon, she worked to teach Sherry to loosen up and move more fluidly, not to shamble along like a male. They were tiring at first, but also fun. Sherry was keeping up her running, she was now doing over four miles a day. The town (she thought of it as that) has several running courses laid out along the roads, complete with mileage markers. Sherry's goal was to run three laps around the airport, a distance of over eight miles.

The coursework was changing constantly. After a series of lessons on clothing and accessories, Sherry started a basic cooking course. Doris pointed out that most women knew how to do more than fry hamburgers and eggs, which about the extent of Sherry's kitchen skills. So she learned how to cook and how to select items from the supermarket. Sherry privately didn't think much of this phase of her training. It seemed like a lot of effort to spend so much time preparing a meal that normally didn't take anywhere near as long to eat. Lord Sandwich knew what he was doing, she concluded.

The big treat came after Sherry passed her commercial pilot's check ride. Doris and Janet treated her to a trip to Chicago for three days of R&R. They took the Bonanza, Sherry flew them to Meig's Field right downtown. They went shopping on Michigan Avenue and in Watertower Place. The highpoint was a theatre night, including a fantastic dinner afterwards. Sherry was sorry to leave Chicago, even though she logged some good instrument time, including a NDB approach to their home base.

Sherry started working with Craig on her multi-engine rating in the Twin Beech the next day, including a session on the care and feeding of radial engines. "You can't overprime a radial," Craig admonished. She learned about engines that measured their oil levens in gallons, not quarts. Learning to taxi a multi-engined taildragger was a little bit of a challenge.

While Sherry was being introduced to the fun of engine-out drills, a conference was underway concerning her progress. Col. Hampton had flown in, he met with Janet, Doris, and Dr. Trotti. "How's our boy doing," was his first question.

Janet smiled. "She's a woman, Colonel, and she's doing fine."

"Explain."

"Frankly, I don't think Sherry's a transvestite. I think she's a transsexual, although she really hasn't admitted it to herself. The majority of TVs we get here aren't content to go full-time dressed up. They find some way of visibly asserting their masculinity. The TSs assimilate completely. Sherry has shown no signs of not wanting to be a woman. No covert strength exercises, or anything like that.

"Her adjustment to female living has been remarkable, although I don't think she should consider making a living as a chef." That comment earned a laugh from Doris.

Col. Hampton mulled that over. "How's the flying coming?"

Doris fielded that. "Craig says she's doing well. She may not be a natural at it, but she is working very hard at it."

"So what's the next step in her training?"

"She's started multi-engine work. Once she gets her multi ticket, then we are going to get her rated in DC-3s and C-46s, along with turboprops so she has some turbine time. After that, then it may be time to send her out living full-time as a pilot to build up her flight time."

"What about tradecraft?"

"We'll start weapons training next week, along with escape and evasion, surveillance and counter-surveillance techniques, and the usual stuff," Doris said.

"What about her femininity?"

"I think it's time to see if she wants to start hormones," Janet replied. If she agrees and sticks with it for the next few months, then it may be advisable to consider some non-genital reassignment surgery."

"Face and voice," he asked

"Yes. I'd say if she is to go that route, we do the surgery before she goes out for learning how to live on her own as a woman."

"All right," Col Hampton concluded. "Call the airport and have Sherry brought here for a discussion about hormones with you and you alone. We'll wait up in Trotti's office."

Sherry came to Janet's office looking an absolute mess. She was sweating from the effort of conducting the dead engine exercises. "This is a little out of the ordinary," Sherry said. "What's up?"

"I've been reviewing your progress here, Sherry. You are turning out to be a fine young woman. When I or anyone else looks at you, we'd be hard-pressed to believe that you are really a man. How do you feel about it?"

Sherry was taken a little aback. "I guess I feel good about it. When I get dressed and look in the mirror, I see me. It's hard for me to realize that I am a man, too."

"Do you want to go back to being Sam?"

"What? But Colonel Hampton said-"

I know what he said," Janet interrupted. "What has been done is easily changable. Even if you have no facial hair, all you'd need to do is get a crewcut, change clothes, take out your earrings, and everyone would assume you are a man. But now you're at a decision point.

"For what I am going to say now, I do not want an answer. Promise me you won't say a word to me until tomorrow morning or later if you need the time. All right?"

Sherry nodded.

"This is the choice: You can go down the impersonation road with facial surgery and breast implants. It'll fool most of the people. When you're done, Dr. Trotti can make you look almost the way you look now. Not quite, but almost.

"The other option is more permanent. Instead of implants, you'd start hormones. We'll schedule you for voice surgery, your voice will be higher forever. The facial surgery will be more extensive. And finally, if you make it that far, you'd go through sexual reassignment surgery. At that point, you'd be as female as chemistry, training, and surgery can make you.

"It's your choice. Go home and think it over."

Sherry nodded solemnly and left. She thought about it quite a lot. She thought about how she had never quite fit in as a man and how everything felt so right now. She had a few drinks in thinking it over, too.

Sherry was wearing a pink suit and was waiting in Janet's outer office when Janet came to work the next day. "Come on in, Sherry," Janet said. They sat down and Janet didn't say anything.

Sherry took a deep breath and smiled. "I want it to be permanent. When can we start?"

Janet looked solemn. Inside she felt joyous, but kept a professional demeanor. She opened a drawer and handed her a piece of paper. "Take this to the pharmacy, they'll fill the order. Follow the instructions exactly, Sherry. Ok?"

"Sure, Janet."

Janet stood up and hugged Sherry. "Welcome to the other side, Sherry."

Sherry went to the pharmacy and had the prescription filled. The prescription called for taking Premarin and Aldactone. The pills had to be taken with food and had to be taken at approximately the same time each day. The pharmacist gave her a lengthy brochure about what to expect while taking hormones.

She read that once she got back to the townhouse. Mood swings, weepiness, long-term risks of cancer; it was heartening to realize that no women in her family had ever developed breast cancer. No time like the present, so she fixed a sandwich and took her first pills. It was almost a disappointment that nothing happened right away. She logged onto a commercial database and read the information files about the drugs. Aldactone, an anti- androgen, was widely used in the rest of the world but was not approved for use by the FDA. Must be one of the benenfits of the Feds, they can get away with ignoring their own rules.

The ringing of the telephone startled her. In over two months, she hadn't had one incoming phone call. She picked up the handset and said hello.

"Sherry, it's Doris. Change into jeans, a sweatshirt, and sneakers. I'll be over in twenty minutes to pick you up." The line went dead as Doris hung up without awaiting a reply.

`Christ, what a bitch!' Sherry thought as she went upstairs to change. It can't be a flying day, there's no need to drive to the field. Well, going with the flow has worked so far. She was ready at the appointed time.

Doris drove up in a Jeep, a real gasoline-powered one. Sherry hopped in and asked what's up.

"Another phase of your training," she replied. "You start gun class today." Doris drove to a site several miles away, it was a rectangular building with a large earthen berm behind it. Doris handed Sherry the keys to the Jeep. "I'll catch a ride back, drive back when you're done. Go to the office and tell them your name, they'll take it from there."

Sherry did as Doris told her to. The office had three men lounging around who looked like midwestern "good-ole boys," complete with flannel shirts and yellow work boots. When she said her name, a tall man in his late 40s stood up and said: "Yeah, I've been waiting for you. My name's Keith. Let's go." Sherry followed him out of the office. He led the way down the corridor to a set of stairs, then dwon a flight to the basement. They went to a heavy door, he opened it and threw a set of wall switches. The front of the room lit up and the whine of a powerful ventilation fan started. They were in an indoor pistol range. It had three firing points and appeared to be a 25-yard range. Each firing point had a target holder that moved back and forth by an electric motor.

"You ever do any handgun shooting," Keith asked.

"Some."

"What do you shoot?"

".45 Colt auto."

Keith grunted, then went to a wall cabinet. He pulled out some targets, tape, shooting glasses, and two pairs of large ear protectors. Then he unlocked another cabinet and handed Sherry a Colt Gold Cup .45. Sherry immediately pulled the slide back and locked it. "Ok, so you may know what you're doing," Keith admitted. He hung a 25-yard rapid-fire target on the frame and ran it down to the far end of the range. Then he handed Sherry a box of cartridges, two empty magazines, and waved her to the firing point.

Sherry stepped up to the position. She dry-fired the pistol several times to get a feel for the trigger; it was a lot lighter and crisper than an issue service weapon. She locked the slide back, set the pistol on the counter, and loaded five rounds into a magazine.

Sherry said: "Put on your hearing protection, please." She then put the glasses on and the earmuffs over them. She shifted her body as she picked up the pistol and magazine so her left foot was ahead of her right one. She inserted the magazine into the well of the pistol and slipped off the slide release, which allowed the slide to run forward and chamber a round.

She held the pistol in her right hand with her left hand forming a cup in which the right hand rested as if she was catching it. Her left elbow was bent almost 90 degrees, the right elbow was straight. Breath deep, let a little out, squeeeeezeee...BLAM! Sherry fired four more times, then Keith stepped up and brought the target up.

"Not bad," he said. Sherry had hit the x-ring once, the ten ring twice, the nine once, and the seven ring. 46x1. She felt pretty good about it.

Keith poured cold water all over her joy. "But that means nothing. Nobody's going to allow you to settle into a Weaver stance and calmly snap off five rounds at them. And for damn sure you won't find a Gold Cup lying around. But at least you know which end of a pistol does what."

So Sherry started practical pistol training. That was a nice euphemism for learning how to kill someone with a pistol. "First thing is this," Keith said: "A pistol's a defensive weapon. It's what you use to stop someone from doing harm to you or someone else. If you're going to set out to kill someone, then use a better weapon with more killing power and range."

Over the next few weeks, Sherry learned how to shoot competently with almost every conceivable handgun. The training took place on a firing range that was a mock-town with pop-up or swinging targets. She had to learn to shoot with one hand, the wrong hand, and both hands. Keith taught her how to draw from waist, shoulder, and leg holsters. For one phase of the schooling, she had to wear a suit, heels, and draw from a purse. It sure felt strange to Sherry to walk though the training range in a navy pinstripe "dress for success" suit, career pumps, and whip out a .380 automatic to drill a imitation scumbag.

Combat training was held using guns firing paintballs. These were often painful as the paint pellets were fired from regular firearms (rather than the paintball guns), but the training impact of being shot was of value.

The flying continues as before. Sherry passed her multi- engine flight test. She was put on the roster for the air-charter outfit based at the airport; soon she was flying the Twin Beech and the Navajo on cargo runs. To her amusement, she even flew some men to the same southern airport where she had been taken for her medical examination. When the schedule called for her to make a night run, her other training was adjusted to accomodate the flight. She was building time in the classic method used by aspiring commercial pilots.

The therapy continued, too. Janet acted more like a close confidant than a distant professional, which resulted in Sherry's opening up completely. Janet also reviewed the surveillance reports on Sherry for any discrepancies, including the tapes made by the microcameras in Sherry's townhouse. She was coming along fine.

Sherry had continuing appointments with the electrolysis team, normally every six weeks. They went after follicles that were dormant during the initial process along with the ones that had survived. The first repeat session took four days, then the time dwindled after that. They were nothing that she regarded as fun.

The ground training shifted focus somewhat. The curriculum moved from handguns to shoulder weapons: rifles and shotguns. Sherry found she had a talent with a rifle, she could "dope" the wind and normally hit a target at six hundred yards. The shotgun was easy for her, it was a reactive weapon where the rifle was normally a deliberate one. Sherry really didn't like the high- powered rifles too much, they kicked fiercely. But anything smaller than a .30-06 was almost fun.

As firearms training tapered off, they started her on unarmed training. This had little in common with the theology of martial arts, it was raw street survival training. A few sessions were held with Sherry wearing "street clothes," dresses, skirts, heels. Those sessions often resulted in the clothes being totalled, but they were replaceable.

One session was nighttime training. Sherry had to walk down the street. Most of the people would pass her by, but one was supposed to attack. When the attack came, Sherry spun out of the attacker's grip and pulled a snub-nosed .38 from under her jacket. She levelled the pistol at the attacker and fired three times, the instructor staggered back in shock as three paint pellets smashed into his chest. The lights came on as the two looked at each other, the other people on the street had all dived for cover when the shots rang out. The trainer rubbed the impact sites and said: "Very good. If you have a weapon, the hand-to-hand moves are for fools. But that's not the goal of this training, so don't bring it again." His voice sounded harsh, but he was trying hard not to smile.

Sherry had a medical appoinment the next day. Dr Trotti and one of his parters, Dr. Pamela Levinson, gave her another complete physical. It lasted most of the day, Sherry just put up with the routine. She hated being poked and prodded, but that was the way the medical profession worked, especially if one was in the service of Uncle Sam.

The two doctors saw her after the exam. "How are you doing, my dear," Trotti asked.

"Fine."

"Any complaints?"

"No."

"Are you noticing any soreness around your nipples," asked Levinson.

"Some," admitted Sherry. "The literature the pharmacy gave me said to expect that."

Both doctors nodded, then Trotti shifted gears. "I want you to go to the blood bank and have them extract a pint of blood, then another one in four weeks. That will provide a ready source in case we need it."

"For what?"

"Surgery," he said. "In two months, we're going to take you in and reshape your face to a more feminine appearance. At the same time, the day before actually, Dr. Levinson will do the vocal surgery. You'll be out of action for a while after that, but we'll make sure you're still learning something."

Sherry nodded, not wanting to speak. Her mind was filled with a conflict; she wanted to have the facial surgery, but she also didn't want anybody cutting her with a sharp object. The doctors asked some other questions, but Sherry answered them rather abruptly. When the interview ended, she went to the blood bank and they drew a pint for deposit on her account. They told her to drink plenty of fluids and not to fly for 24 hours. She called the field and had them take her off the schedule.

Janet had noticed Sherry's hesitancy at the pre-surgery meeting, she dropped by after work with a bottle of white wine and some munchies. Sherry was a little amazed and a little peeved that Janet hadn't called; the townhouse looked like an exercise in "Living With Chaos." But she found a couple of semi-clean glasses and a plate for the food. After the bottle was opened, Sherry opened the discussion: "I assume you didn't stop by just for a visit."

"Why do you say that?"

"Oh, I don't know," Sherry said with sarcasm dripping like molten steel. "You've never said anything like `let's do lunch,' but two hours after a discussion about surgery, here you are, booze in hand."

"In some way's you're still a man," Janet said with a wry smile. "Most women wouldn't go that quickly to the heart of the matter. They'd have opened with some pleasantries and eventually worked around to the point."

"Or they might try altering the subject. Answer the damn question."

"All right," Janet sighed. "You seemed uncomfortable with the idea of surgery. What bothers you, the idea of changing your appearance?"

"No," Sherry said emphatically. "Nothing like that. It's more like I don't like the idea of being operated on."

"Have you ever had an operation?"

"Nope, nothing more serious than removing wisdom teeth. I've never been knocked out, not even accidentally."

"And the idea bothers you," Janet probed.

"People sometimes don't wake up afterwards."

Janet smiled. At least it wasn't a matter of Sherry not being convinced that the operation wasn't necessary. She spent a lot of time trying to calm Sherry's jitters.

Sherry wasn't too convinced, but she was reassured that there were other things in life more risky that she had done. Then Sherry asked a question Janet wasn't prepared for: "When are you going to remove my testicles?"

"Why?"

"I did some reading on hormones in the database. The writers all seem to believe that female hormones work better if they're not fighting male hormones. You could also lower the dosage level of both drugs and reduce the risks from side effects."

Janet looked very serious. "But if that's done, you'd never be able to father a child. And there is no way to reverse that operation, even superglue wouldn't work."

Sherry stood up and stripped to the waist. "Do I look like a man? I am a woman-" she said that with considerable emphasis "-but I still have some extra parts. I want that taken care of as soon as I can."

Janet motioned to Sherry to put her clothes back on; Sherry complied. Sherry's breasts were starting to bud, her body looked like one that might belong to a six-foot tall twelve year old. "We can't do all that, not right away."

"Why not?"

"You know about the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care?" Sherry nodded. "Well," Janet continued, "we are really violating them somewhat in your case. There is an overriding interest that classifies as `national security,' we've compressed a lot of the time factors. But we still won't do the final reassignment surgery without some form of Real Life Test.

"You are going to have to live and work as a woman for a while before we consider you for final surgery. When it comes time, we will have you operated on by the best there is."

"You mean-" Sherry held her tongue when Janet held her finger to her lips.

"I think we know who that is. There are people who help out the Government on a volunteer basis, but under the strictest security. You won't meet the surgeon, at least not when you're concious. But we have to satisfy a minimum of the Standards before you can undergo SRS."

"Hmm. And I don't suppose you have any specifics in mind for a Real Life Test?"

"As a matter of fact, yes. You'll get a job with an air cargo service, flying night runs for a check-delivery service. That'll also build your logbook up. It's really a double-barreled test: we'll see if you can survive on your own as a woman and if you can be a competent professional pilot."

Sherry nodded. By this time the wine was gone and they both were feeling tired. Janet made her exit, Sherry washed up and went to bed.

Doris called Sherry at 5am and told her to be ready for flying at six and to bring changes of clothing for three days. Sherry grunted something unintelligible into the phone and got up. She went over to the field at six; to her surprise she was handed a completed flight plan to Mojave, California and the keys to the Twin Beech. Go with the flow, she figured, she was airborne by 6:30.

The plan had her overnighting in Cheyenne, then on to California. The FBO at the Cheyenne airport gave her a ride to a local Holiday Inn. Sherry had dinner in the restaurant and went to bed. She grabbed a cab to the airport the next morning and completed the trip to Mojave.

Of all the possibilities that she anticipated, what happened didn't occur to her. She was met at the airport and immediately loaded onto a Marine C-12 en route to the Twenty-Nine Palms Marine base. Four instructors met her for a course in desert survival. Over the next seven days, they showed her how to survive in the desert with the materials and equipment she'd likely have if she had to crash-land in one. Water was the key, they emphasised. without water, you die. With water, then one might survive.

The detail that convinced her that sopmeone was really planning her training ahead was that the instructors had a week's supply of her hormone pills.

Sherry really enjoyed the hot shower she took after the week was over. But they didn't keep her at 29 Palms; she was flown to San Diego and put onto a C-141 to Panama. Once there, she got to repeat the whole process in a jungle. The struggle there was almost the opposite; too much water and trying to keep dry. There were more poisonous snakes in the jungle than she ever dreamed of, and bugs galore. Sherry wasn't too sure which she hated more, bugs or snakes.

Week three found her in Colorado, this time the focus was on mountain survival. By this time Sherry was wondering if she'd survive survival training. The survival trainig was followed up by a cram course in land navigation; the final exam was a three-day trek to a pickup point. They made it clear to her that they would only look for her at the pickup point, she had to get there or reach civilization on her own. She made it to the pickup point with three hours to spare.

After she showered and changed into a fresh set of clothes, one of the instructors took her to a restaurant for a graduation dinner. Sherry had no trouble finishing a 16-oz prime rib, the largest steak she had eaten in years. It was about the best she ever remembered, too. The night was memorable if only for the fact that it was the first time since she passed through Cheyenne that she slept indoors in a bed with clean sheets.

Sherry caught a commercial flight to Madison, Wisconsin the next day. Craig met her at the airport, the two flew back to the home base in the Bonanza. The Twin Beech was on the field when they arrived. She had no idea who retrieved it, but she knew better than to ask.

Doris had left a note on her door; Sherry was glad to learn she had the next two days off. She slept for most of it. When she stepped on the bathroom scale, she was shocked to learn that she had lost 25 pounds during the rigourous training. None of her new wardrobe fit, she wore sweats and pulled the drawstring tight. It would probably be a temporary loss.

Doris had left a note in Sherry's mailbox that told her to report to the airport after her two days' off. When Sherry did, she found herself sitting through a ground school for a DC-3 type rating. The school took three days (a DC-3's not very complicated). After that, it was time to fly. Sherry had to adjust to the height of the -3's flight deck, everything else she had flown before would have crashed if flared at the height of the old Douglas airliner. Flying the plane took some work, powered controls hadn't been in use when Charles Lindberg wrote the requirements that the airplane was designed to meet.

It took about ten hours of flight time for Sherry to feel comfortable in both the left and right seats of the DC-3. The flight test was routine, she soon had a new license with a DC-3 type rating.

Then they did it all over agin, but this time for a DC-3T; a DC-3 that has had the piston radial engines removed and modified for PT6 turboprops. That training went fairly rapidly since Sherry was already familiar with PT6 engines.

After three weeks, Sherry had regained ten pounds. She had obtained some new clothes that fit her smaller body, but not many as she figured she'd eventually regain the weight. They scheduled a few brush-up training sessions in unarmed and armed defense to break up the routine of flying. Then Doris told her to pack a few bags, she was moving away for awhile. Sherry wondered what had happened to the planned surgery, but she didn't ask.

The two of them drove a late model Honda Civic to Chicago. Doris explained on the way down that they had to reschedule the operations for three or four weeks later, so they were taking the extra time to put Sherry to work. Some of her stuff was already in an apartment not very far from Midway Airport. Sherry was about to fly as a "freight dog" for the next month. Doris handed over her logs. Sherry looked at them, all her logbooks had been rewritten so that every entry was for Sherry Anderson. The signatures of all the flight instructors looked genuine, the older logbooks looked as worn as the originals had.

They drove right to Midway, where they found the offices of BryanAir. Doris gave her the keys to the Honda, kissed her goodbye, and caught a cab for O'Hare. Out of curiosity, Sherry opened the glove box and looked at the car's registration. She wasn't surprised to see it was registered in her name.

Sherry went into the offices and asked for the chief pilot. The chief pilot, Sheila Mueller, looked over Sherry's logs and asked her some technical questions about various aircraft, mostly twins. After the interview, she said: "Let's go. There's a Beech out there, 7DR, preflight it."

Sherry went out and checked the airplane over. 7DR was a working cargo airplane, but she noticed that the engines appeared to be in fine shape. All the fluid levels were right, As she finished, Sheila came out with two headsets and a portable intercom. She waved Sherry into the left seat and Sheila took the right. After they wired the intercom, push-to-talk switches, and the headsets, Sherry asked: "Where to?"

"Get her started, then tell Clearance Delivery that we are going VFR to the lake practice area."

Sherry started the engines, then obtained departure instructions and a transponder squawk from Clearance Delivery. When the oil was warm enough for taxiing, she called Ground Control and was cleared to taxi to the active runway. At takeoff, the tower had her fly the runway heading to 2,000 feet before turning towards Lake Michigan. Once there, Sheila ran her through some engine-out drills, including an engine-out ILS approach to Midway. It took almost an hour before Sheila was satisfied and they landed.

They removed the headphones with a contented sigh, accompanied by the whining of the gyros spinning down. "Be here at nine tomorrow night," Sheila said. "You'll be flying a load of checks between here and Minneapolis. The flight planning's already done, we've been on this route for years. So just show up then, you'll check the weather and go."

"Ok," Sherry said. Inwardly she was thrilled. It was what she had wanted ever since she was a boy, to work as a pilot.

After a few weeks of constant night flying, the thrill wore off. A couple of men in some of the airports she had stopped at had made passes at her. One rough jerk had even grabbed her by the shoulder. He had taken his hand away when Sherry coldy advised him to do so "if you want to retain the use of it." Most of the flying was in Twin Beeches, the rest of the time was spent in Piper Navajos. None of them had weather radar or flight directors, but all had enough avionics so that the flights could be made if something broke. The only reason the airplanes had autopilots was because it saved fuel to use them.

Sherry noticed that a fair number of the freight pilots for the different carriers were women. All of them (male and female) wore fairly grubby clothes, normally blue jeans and heavy shirts to keep the chill out when the heaters failed to operate. Only a few of the women wore any hint of cosmetics. Their favorite scent was 100LL aviation fuel, seasoned with Phillips 20W-50 oil and a dash of hydraulic fluid. Flying was the favorite topic, though the women often moaned about how hard it was to have a relationship with a man when the women worked nights. They confined such complaints to times when no men were present. Sherry was logging over 30 hours of flying each week, all night cross-country multi time.

She didn't learn much about the area around her apartment, for all she wanted to do when she was there was sleep. Some of it she saw when she went out for a run, it didn't impress her any. The skirts, dresses, and heels in the closet stayed there.

It was supposed to be for a few weeks, but Doris called and told Sherry to stay put. Sherry flew night freight for three months. Her pay from the freight line was deposited into her savings account, she was also still receiving her pay as a Lieutenant (O-3) with eight years' seniority. The apartment was paid for by her government living allowance, Sherry figured she was socking away a mint. As it stood with the hours she was working, she didn't come close to spending her flying pay, much less her military pay. If this kept up for awhile, she could pay for SRS herself.

Shery consoled herself that when the time came to leave, she had just as much notice as she'd been getting all along. Doris showed up and had her pack two suitcases. The rest, Doris said, would be taken care of. They drove the little Honda to a major hospital in Chicago, where Doris checked Sherry in. After dropping the bags in a room, they went to an office. Sherry wasn't the least bit surprised to find Dr. Trotti there. "You ready," he asked.

"For what?"

"We're going to do a makeover on you. But instead of cosmetics, we'll do it beneath your skin. I've scheduled you for tomorrow. We have some tests to run."

Sherry put her foot down. "I've had it." She turned and glared at Doris. "I'm tired of being treated as a piece of meat who just does as she's told. It stops now, damn it. I want to know what is going to happen now, and what is going to happen next. Or the deal is off."

Doris started to say "You can't mean--" when Trotti waved her to silence.

Trotti and Sherry stared at each other. "I think she means that, Doris."

Sherry nodded her head.

"All right. All right," Dr Trotti sighed. He pulled a group of photographs from an envelope on the desk. "This is what we're going to do--" he outlined a procedure that focused mainly on the face. They wanted to reshape her jaw, trim her nose, pare down her adam's apple, and tighten her vocal chords. "We'll do the vocal chord work first, because we need you alert. You have to speak while it's going on so we can tune your voice. Then after that, we'll give you a general anasthesia and do the rest of the procedure."

Sherry frowned. "I've been on hormones all this time. Isn't it good practice to stop taking them prior to surgery?"

Trotti smiled with a little embarrassment. "Actually, you've been off them for the last three weeks--"

"Three weeks'?!" Sherry yelled the question. "You bastards have known this all along and haven't bothered to tell me?" Her hands raised slightly and she clenched her fists as if she wanted to rip Trotti's throat out. Trotti saw her rage and took a half- step backwards without even realizing he had done so. Sherry pivoted, seeing some movement from the corner of her eye. Doris had opened her purse and had her hand inside. Sherry stared at her. The stare said go ahead, make a move,' but Doris, her face white, slowly pulled her empty hand out of the bag.

Doris slowly unslung the purse and placed it on a table, then took two steps away from it. Doris was good, she thought she'd be able to take Sherry, but that wasn't the object of the exercise. They had a lot of time and money invested in Sherry Anderson. Doris wasn't willing to toss that away, nor did she want to have to explain to her superiors why she had killed Sherry. The thought that Sherry just might have taken her didn't even enter her mind.

Sherry breathed deeply and relaxed. She knew how close she had been to going over the edge. "So, what happens afterwards?"

Doris also let out a sigh. "After the operations, you'll recuperate here for a week. Then we'll take you back to the base. You won't be ready for flying or anything else for at least six weeks, maybe twice that. So we'll teach you other things, classroom work."

"Such as?"

"Languages. You have to learn the language of the area you'll be operating in."

"What language?"

Doris smiled and shook her head. "Not everyone you'll come in contact with here is cleared to know. We don't need you babbling about it under anesthesia."

Sherry nodded. "I can live with that. So let's get started."

Trotti called an orderly who showed Sherry to a hospital room. Sherry dumped her gear and then followed the orderly for an examination. Blood tests, X-rays, dental exams, EKG; it all was a familiar bore. The voice surgeon peered down her throat, but his manner was abstract. She knew a lot of doctors acted this way, so she didn't take it personally.

That evening they gave her an enema and restricted her diet. The orderlies woke her at five the next morning for a shower, then gave her breakfast and a sedative. Sherry was awake but foggy when they wheeled her up for the voice surgery. She vaguely remembered being given a lot of local anasthetic before the surgery. It was not as comfortable as a dental exam, what with the doctor sticking a bunch of hardware down her throat. But it didn't hurt.

After that little ordeal, a nurse gave her another shot and Sherry went into dreamland. When she woke up, her throat and face hurt. A big sign in front of her ordered her not to talk, but to push the button if she felt in pain. A nurse came in and showed her how to use the self-medication machine to obtain painkillers. Sherry did that and fell back asleep.

The next time she woke up, she noticed the IV drip and felt the catheter. Oh, well, she thought. The sign was still there. She pushed the button. A floor nurse came by with a menu and a pencil; Sherry circled her choices. `Oh boy, hospital food,' she thought.

A doctor came in to check vital signs; Sherry knew she was a doctor because the doctors all wore business clothing under their white coats. The doctor explained that Sherry had to be silent as much as possible for the next two weeks. Then she told her how that the operations appeared to be successful. The doctor held up a mirror. Sherry thought she looked as if she had just gone ten rounds with Evander Holyfield, but the doctor explained the swelling was normal.

The IV was removed that afternoon, the catheter the next morning. Three days later, Doris, Janet and a third woman showed up to take Sherry back home. They had a small RV so Sherry could lie down for the trip if she wanted to. She wanted to.

Sherry got two weeks' off. She felt she didn't need that much time, but Doris explained that she would need her voice for the language training. Sherry spent the time catching up on her pleasure reading, watching movies she had missed and playing with the computer. She tried running after a week and could barely go two blocks. The surgery and the long hours of flying had taken a lot out of her, she realized. She also tried out her new voice. It was still a little low, but it was a feminine lowness. Twice she relaxed by taking a Jeep to the firing range and shooting a few weapons. One of the instructors gave her a treat and let her fire a M2 .50 caliber heavy machine gun, the good old "Ma Deuce." 65 years old and still the best HMG in the world, he said.

Dr. Trotti and a throat specialist (who pointedly was not introduced) gave her a medical exam before permitting her to start classes. The verdict was good, so Sherry started language courses the next week (and also resumed taking the hormones). The course work was a twelve hour immersion, with little homework at first. Sherry was learning two languages at once, Spanish and Portugese. She didn't think she was being prepped for a mission in the Iberian Peninsula, so that meant she was going to go to South America. They told her that they weren't concerned about making her appear to be a native, that she was going as an American. But it always helps to know the language. Sherry concluded that the mission wasn't set so deep in the bush that she needed to know any of the local Indian dialects.

The language training lasted for three months. Sherry might not have been able to discuss quarks and other sub-atomic particles in the two languages, but she knew enough to get around and survive. They taught her a lot of aircraft-nomenclature in both languages (which made sense).

She resumed flying six weeks after the surgery. It felt good to fling the Decathalon around the sky, then she settled down and became current again in the cargo aircraft. The self-defense and weapons training started up again as the language instruction petered out. Some of the sessions were taught in the two languages, so Sherry learned how to discuss weapons in the tongues.

Doris dropped by one afternoon. She told Sherry that after the training had ended, that she'd be going to another freight line to build up more flight time, but this time she'd be flying a DC-3. Sherry looked forward to that.

But what Sherry loved best was what she saw when she looked in the mirror and what she heard when she spoke. What she saw and what she heard was a woman. She told Janet that more and more, she wanted to finish the course and get rid of the last vestiges of maleness hanging between her legs. Janet just smiled and counseled patience. Sherry was patient, but she wanted to finish the course and resume the rest of her life.

She overlooked that "Payback Time" was coming, too.

Sherry found herself in La Crosse, Wisconsin. The routine was similicity itself: She would fly as co-pilot for a DC-3 to Madison, Janesville, Rockford, IL and into Midway, . At each point, part of the cargo would be loaded on so that when they arrived in Chicago they normally had a full load. The cargo (which was in containers) would be transferred to a cargo jet and taken to the national sorting center. Christa Welles (the DC-3's Captain) and Sherry would try to catch a few winks in the female bunkroom until the outbound cargo was delivered. Then they would fly the DC-3 back to La Crosse.

Sherry, who had grown up reading the stories of Ernest Gann, was in high heaven. Ok, so they were using VORs and loran, not low-freqency ranges, but it didn't take much imagination on her part to believe they were flying AM-21. She could see why the old airline pilots loved the DC-3; easy to fly, easy to land, and about as forgiving a taildragger as was ever made.

Christa didn't see it that way, but she was a short-timer. In three weeks she would be going to United's new pilot school. In baseball terms, she had made it to "the show." United had sent her some advance course material and she was spending every bit of free time studying it.

Sherry's other studies weren't neglected. She had a subscription to two weekly newsmagazines in Portugese and Spanish. The school called her twice a week for progress reports and to gently quiz her on current events. The calls were made in one or the other languages. A case officer dropped by every three weeks; again the discussions weren't in English.

When Christa left, Sherry was promoted to the left seat of the DC-3. Another woman took over the co-pilot slot. Sherry flew as a DC-3 captain for six months. It seemed to her as if things were going very slowly, but there was a reason to it. The program that was training her incurred no major costs while Sherry was flying the cargo planes. While her military pay was continuing, the money for that came from the Navy. As far as they were concerned, Sherry was an asset that was in safe-keeping. Sherry was living on her flying pay. Her military pay kept accumulating in a combination money market and mutual fund account.

Doris called her one morning and told her to stop taking the hormones, that there would be more surgery in three weeks. Sherry asked what surgery, but Doris wouldn't tell her. Sherry sighed at all the "need to know" bullshit, but that's the way they did things.

Right on time, Doris showed up three weeks later at the La Crosse airport as Sherry came back from a cargo run. There was a new pilot for the -3, Doris led Sherry to a Gulfstream III that had its cabin windows covered over. "Where are we going," Sherry asked.

Doris led the way onto the jet and closed the door. She knocked on the cockpit door (also shut) and then sat down. Janet was there, too. "We are going for the final surgery," Doris said. She nodded to Janet.

Janet pulled out a briefcase as the jet taxiied to the active runway. "We have a lot of material to go over, first. Read these, and sign at the bottom where the `x' is if you agree. We'll countersign."

Sherry started to read. Most of it was legalese about the risks of sexual reassignment surgery. There was a lengthy consent form and a very stark explaination that the surgery was not reversible with any current or foreseen technique. She barely noticed the takeoff roll and climbout as she waded through the forms. There were a few she had to reread to make sure she understood them. But there was no question in her mind that this was what she wanted. Each time she signed a document, Doris and Janet would countersign it and Doris would notarize it.

Finally, she finished the last form. She handed it to Janet, who signed it. Doris used the embossing stamp and signed it. "Now what," Sherry asked.

"Any last minute qualms," inquired Janet.

"About being operated on? Yes. About why? No."

"All right," Janet sighed. "Just sit back and enjoy the ride. You'll find some books in the bin next to your right knee." Janet was relieved. She had to ask Sherry that question out of professional duty, but nobody wanted her to back out. A likely mission was on the planning table and there was no one better qyalified than Sherry for it.

Sherry found a Portugese version of Louis L'amour's "The Sacketts." It was easy reading.

The jet landed and taxiied into a hangar. Sherry wasn't allowed to leave the airplane until the hangar doors were shut. The three women then got into a limosine with blackened windows that was in the hangar. Even the license plate was covered up. The limo went to a hospital; they got out in an empty parking garage. Two orderlies waited with a gurney. They had Sherry lie on it, then they strapped her in. One orderly covered her to the neck with a blanket, the other wrapped a bandage around her eyes.

They wheeled her up to a private room. As she expected, the windows were opaque. Doris showed her that the TV set worked, although it only had generic cable stations on it, nothing that would identify the city or state they were in. Sherry unpacked and settled in.

What Sherry wanted to do now was sleep, but that was not to be. Two different doctors came by to do a physical examination, followed by another doctor who identified himself as the anesthesiologist. All three wore surgical greens and masks, presumably to minimize any chances of Sherry identifying them.

The dinner was light, it was followed by one nurse who gave Sherry an enema (which was no fun as Sherry wasn't into water sports), and another who shaved her pubic area. Finally a third nurse came by, woke her up, and gave her a sleeping pill.

An orderly woke her up early the next morning and gave her a shot to make her drowsy. "Great, just what I needed," Sherry thought and she went to sleep again. She thought she remembered somebody talking to her in the OR, but she wasn't sure.

The next thing she knew is that she woke up with a burning sensation in her groin. Sherry groped for the call button, a nurse came in and gave her a shot. She went back to sleep.

Sherry was confined to bed for five days, although she felt strong enough to get up after three. One of the doctors told her it was "because you're in great shape, young lady" and ordered her to stay in bed anyway. Sherry whiled away the time watching CNN and HBO. Doris and Janet visited every day, they brought her copies of the NY Times. That meant nothing, as Sherry knew the paper was distributed nationally.

When they let her out of bed, Sherry started to get some exercise walking up and down the hall. She was surprised to see that most of the rooms were empty. The others had closed doors, they only let her go out when the other patients were out of sight.

She was in the hospital for ten days. The return trip was made the same way, except this time the airplane was a Lear 31 and the flight ended at the training base. There Sherry recuperated for a few weeks and did whatever she felt like. To her joy, one of the airplanes on the flight line was a Stearman; she arranged for a checkout and flew the big biplane as much as she could. There was a T-28 on the line; Sherry checked out in it but didn't fly it very much. To her, it wasn't as much fun as the biplane.

They ran her through a series of refresher courses-- language, defense, and flying. The emphasis in the flying was in terrain folowing and rough-field operations. Sherry was also given extensive training in loran, omega, and GPS navigation systems. Loran was familiar, but they ran her through it anyway. Omega sets in aircraft were rare to start with and hardly anyone still used them, but on the off-chance that one would be there, she had to learn it. GPS (Global Positioning Satellites) was the lastest system, supposedly accurate to less than 50 meters in three dimensions.

After Sherry was checked by a team of doctors and judged to have recovered, she went back to La Crosse and resumed flying the DC-3 on the cargo runs. Doris told her that "completely recovered" didn't mean that all the scars had healed. They wanted time for the scars from the surgery to fade before making a final evaluation of Sherry's fitness for a mission.

Her co-pilot was an average-sized woman named Julia Waldowski. Julia and Sherry became pretty good friends, hard to avoid when one spends five days a week flying together. After verifying that Julia knew what she was about, Sherry let her fly the alternate legs of the runs. There wasn't much to it. If the weather was good enough, they'd fly VFR to avoid the delays caused by the ATC system.

Julia was a bit of an exercise nut. While most of the other pilots were trying to catch a little sleep between the inbound and outbound legs, she would go for a run around the cargo area. One night she forgot to pack any deoderant, so she asked Sherry if there was any in her bag (almost all the pilots had a small bag with a change of clothing and toiletries in case they were weathered in). Sherry was asleep and mumbled something like "sure" and went back to sleep.

The return flight was in good weather; they cancelled IFR and flew out of Midway VFR. Sherry flew the leg and noticed that Julia was being really quiet.

"Did you hurt yourself running tonight," she asked.

"No, it was a good five miles."

"Then what's wrong?" Sherry glanced over, although it wasn't necessary to look with the headests and the intercom.

Julia was silent for a minute, then said: "When I borrowed your deodorant, I found a dialator in your bag."

That rang a few bells in Sherry's mind. Most people would have called it a dildo,' but she called it a dialator.' "Okay. So?"

"`So?' We've been flying together for a few months now. I mean," Julia stopped, at a loss for words. She reached for her purse and took her wallet out. She drew a photo from one of the plastic pockets and handed it to Sherry. She then put her hand on the control wheel. "I have the airplane."

"Your airplane," Sherry replied. She pulled a small flashlight out and shielded the light, then she looked at the photo. The picture showed Julia standing next to a taller woman, one who was almost half a foot taller. She was pretty good looking, though, and appeared to be about the same age as Julia. There was some slight resemblance between the two women, especially in the way a slight smile was on their lips. Sherry put away the flashlight, handed the photo back, and said: "I have the airplane."

"Your airplane."

"Who is she?"

Julia was putting the photo back into her wallet. "That's Michelle, my big sister."

In more ways than one, Sherry thought. "How much older is she?"

"Depends on how you look at it. She's either three years older than I am or she's 23 years younger."

Sherry did some quick figuring; she knew Julia was 25, so Michelle was 28..uh, oh. "Spell it out."

"She was born as Michael. She had a sexual reassignment operation two years ago. Most people wouldn't know it to look at her. But when she travels, she had a dialator in her suitcase; she uses it to make sure her vagina stays open. Her dialator looks just like yours."

Sherry made a note of that; she'd better replace the damn thing with a regular dildo. It'd be better to have someone assume she was just weird. "How do you feel about having a sister who's a transsexual?"

Julia made a noncommittal gesture in the dim red light of the Doug's cockpit. She looked out to the right, where the headlights of the cars on I-90 were visible. "Michael never fit in as a boy. I think I knew he wanted to be a girl a long time ago. She's a big woman, now, but she's very happy. Michelle has a sort of inner peace that most people don't. I think it comes from knowing that she has done what she needed to do.

"I don't know, it's strange sometimes. But when I'm around her, I forget sometimes that she used to be a he. My parents aren't very happy, but they've realized that it was the best thing."

Sherry tuned the number 1 navcom to the Rockford tower frequency, 118.3 mHz. The tower was closed, so she listened to see if anyone else was in the area. Nobody was there, so she tried calling Hartzog on their frequency to find which way the windsock was pointing. The lineman looked out the door and let her know. She pulled back on the throttles lsightly and started a shallow descent, then switched back to the tower frequency.

Julia didn't let it drop. "When did you have your surgery?"

"You're making a pretty big assumption, aren't you?"

"No, I don't think so. Even for a tall woman, you have large hands and feet. Whoever worked on you did an excellent job; there's no scarring from the tracheal shave. I can see a few pockmarks that probably came from electrolysis, but everyone else is going to assume they're acne scars."

Sherry sighed. "A few months ago. I came back from recovery when we started flying together."

"Does the line know?" Julia was referring to the cargo airline.

"No. How would they? They don't do physicals, my paperwork all says `female.'"

"How did you get the time off?"

"I put in for a leave of absence without pay."

"Does the FAA know? How did you get a medical?"

Sherry smiled slightly. She announced her position over the radio, then answered Julia. "There are ways. The FAA knows all about me. It's not exactly an unknown thing for them to see. Karen Ulane did us a big favor."

"I guess so. That was too bad, though," Julia commented, referring to the crash that killed Ulane.

"Yeah. Gear down."

Julia pushed the lever down. "Coming down...down and locked."

"Tailwheel locked."

"Tailwheel locked."

Sherry pulled the throttles back. "Flaps ten."

"Flaps ten. Mixture to full rich."

"Full rich." She pushed the prop controls forward, ensuring they'd be set if she had to go-around. Nobody else was in the pattern, Sherry flew a tight approach with minimal power. When she knew she had the field made, she called for full flaps. She landed the DC-3 a little tail low, then let the tail settle. One the tail was down, Sherry moved the control column all the way back to hold it. She unlocked the tailwheel once they had slowed to taxi speed.

Julia commented. "Michelle'll be so thrilled to know."

"Julia, don't tell her. Please."

Julia looked over. "You're on of the ones who want to disappear afterwards, then."

"Yes. Please don't tell anyone."

"Okay, Sherry."

They didn't talk much for the rest of the flight.

Julia did ask Sherry a couple days later if she wanted to get together for dinner and some drinks on Saturday night. Sherry didn't have any plans, so she agreed. "You have any ideas," she asked.

Julia shrugged. "There's a decent Chinese place not too far away from the field. We can go there."

"Sounds good. What should we wear?"

"I'm tired of wearing pants all the time," Julia declared. "I'm going to dress up a little."

"Ok by me. Where should we meet?"

"We both live near the field, so let's meet in the line parking lot at seven."

"Sure. See you then."

They were both there at seven. That may have been a little surprising to a casual observer, but both women were pilots and were used to showing up on time. Julia was wearing a dark floral print dress that was flowing and came to just below the knee. The dress apparently was made of rayon, tan hose, and black pumps with 3" heels. Sherry had a black knee-length dress with a polo shirt type of collar. She also had on black pumps but with a little lower heel. They decided to take Sherry's Honda; that way Julia didn't have to clean off the passenger seat of her Tercel.

There was a wait for the restuarant, but not much of one. They shared food, like most peole do when they're eating Chinese, and giggled over the fortune cookies. Sherry's said "You are about to take a long journey."

Julia knew a nice lounge not very far away. Over a couple drinks, the two women talked; mainly about flying. Like most pilots, they used their hands a lot. The bartender listened in as much as he could, he seemed fascinated by two women discussing aviation in a way that only pilots could. They did switch to diet soda after the second drink; neither one wanted to risk a drunken- driving beef. (The FAA's been going after pilots who drink and drive.)

The crowd had lessed out, it was getting late, so they left the bar. Two men followed them out, ambling behind them as their heels clicked faster across the parking lot. Sherry fished her keys out and had them in her hand when the two men caught up to them.

One of them grabbed Sherry by the right wrist from behind. "What's your hurry, little lady," he asked in a tone that chilled Sherry to the core.

The other one had grabbed Julia. "We only want to party a little. Come with us, you won't get hurt and we'll show you a real good time." Both men laughed.

Sherry exploded into motion. She pivoted and drove her left fist into the man's midsection with all the power she could muster. The breath whooshed out of his lungs, he let go of her wrist and started to double over. Sherry pulled back, then swung the edge of her right fist into his nose, smashing it to a bloody ruin. She wasn't finished, but he was when she kicked his left kneecap out of alighnment. He fell to the pavement a bleeding groaning ruin.

The goon holding Julia was frozen in shock as he gaped at his devastated friend. He came alert when he heard a metallic clicking; he looked up and saw Sherry pointing a small black automatic pistol at his head. From her stance and her expression, he knew he was very close to dying.

"Let her go," Sherry commanded. The man did so instantly. "Put your hands on top of your head. You move without me telling you to and you're a dead man. Julia, get the phone from my car." Julia did. "Dial this number-" Sherry told her what number "- come around on my left side and hand it to me."

Julia did as she was told; she was almost as stunned as the man who Sherry had the gun on. Sherry took the phone and when it was answered, explained the situation. She was told to stay where she was. She handed the phone back to Julia, who took it and stood there uncertainly.

A police car with no lights drove up three minutes later. It stopped so that the headlights illuminated the scene. The cop got out and came over. His pistol was drawn, but wasn't aimed at anyone. "You Anderson," he asked.

"Yes."

"Ok." He holstered the gun, grabbed the guy standing up and tossed him against the Honda. "Assume the position, asshole." The man did. The cop frisked and cuffed him, then he marched him over to the cruiser and threw him in the back seat. Sherry put her pistol away, the cop came back and frisked and cuffed the guy on the ground with a heavy-duty cable tie. Sherry helped him drag the man to the cruiser and stuffed him in next to his buddy. The cop siad: "We'll be in touch" to Sherry and drove away with the two would-be rapists.

Julia was still a little dazed. Sherry walked her over to the passenger's side of the car and helped her get in. Sherry walked back around and got in. She looked over at Julia. "Are you all right?"

"I've never seen anything like that. It was so quick. All of a sudden he was on the ground and you had a gun."

Sherry nodded, but didn't say anything.

"Where did you learn do do that?"

"I was taught. Where and why, I can't tell you."

"Were you in the service before-"

"Yes." Sherry let Julia draw her own conclusions, even though she knew they'd be the wrong ones.

"And the gun. I grew up in Chicago. The only guns I've ever seen belonged to the cops. Is it yours?"

"Yes."

"Do you have a permit for it?"

Sherry nodded.

"Do you carry it wtih you all the time?"

"I can't answer that. I will say I carry it when I need to."

Julia looked over at her. "Why did you have it tonight?"

"I needed to, evidently."

Julia sighed. "I think I want to go home." Sherry drove her back to the airport and parked next to Julia's car. Julia got out without saying a word; Sherry stayed there until Julia had started to drive away.

Sherry sighed. She didn't know what would happen now, but there wasn't much she could do about it.

Sherry was not very surprised when she reported for work on Monday afternoon and found a new copilot assigned to her run. She went over to the desk and asked where Julia was.

The dispatcher shrugged. "She called in sick, said she wasn't feeling very well."

"Any idea when she'll be back," Sherry asked.

No, but I wouldn't worry about it if I was you," he replied. "She also asked to be assigned to another run."

"She say why?"

"`Personal reasons' she said. Your new guy is Jeff McCreary. His last job was working as a CFI."

"Has he had much taildragger time?"

Pete rummaged through his desk and found a folder. "Let's see here.. he instructed in Citabrias and did some banner towing with them. He has a fresh type rating in the -3. 800 hours total, 75 multi. This is his second flying job."

Sherry didn't complain. She didn't have a lot more hours than that, although she did have considerably more multi-engine time. The thought of looking up Julia came to her, but she discarded it. If that's what she wanted, then Sherry would honor it.

Jeff wasn't the best looking guy Sherry had ever seen; his nose looked as if he had used it to stop a few fast-moving objects. He didn't talk much, either. But he knew how to fly and Sherry was soon swapping legs with him.

This went on for a few weeks. Jeff was nothing if not correct with Sherry; no conversation beyond the business at hand, not even an invitation to eat together on the turn-around. Sherry wondered what was wrong, but she suspected that Julia had talked and the word had spread.

In a way, she was relieved when an envelope came from Doris. Inside was a clipping from "Flight Careers Digest" for an airline and charter outfit that operated in Central and northern South America. They were looking for pilots with experience in heavy piston-engined cargo airplanes; the smallest airplane type listed was the DC-3. Pilots with time in C-46s, DC-4s, -6s, -7s and C-97s were highly desireable, as were ones with competency in Spanish and/or Portuguese. Since the line operated aircraft with U.S. registration, only pilots with FAA issued licenses would be considered.

There was no note included with the clipping, but one didn't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out what had to be done. Sherry sent her resume off the next day.

The airline sent a letter back asking her to come to Miami for an interview. She got some time off, then set up an appointment. Getting there was tiring, but it didn't cost anything. She rode the jumpseat of the DC-3 to Chicago, then she rode a 727 to Memphis. They offered her a tour of the sorting facility, Sherry asked for a raincheck for her return trip.

The final leg was a DC-10 direct to Miami. The crew was a mixed one in that the pilot and flight engineer were from the cargo carrier, while the co-pilot came from Flying Lion; an international air-cargo company that had been swallowed up. They had some idea why Sherry would be nutty enough to go to Miami in July, but they didn't ask.

The interview was scheduled for 4pm at AirSouth's offices at Miami International. Sherry had learned from the cargo crew of a motel that offered day rates for flight crews. She checked into the Motel at six and left a two o'clock wakeup call.

It was hot when the call came. Sherry took a shower and got dressed, with the sound of the TV set for background noise. At one point she heard the sound of a large radial-engined aircraft taking off and went to the wind; she saw a Boeing C-97 climbing out. She had never seen one before. Oh, well.

She got dressed in a pink suit with a white short-sleeved top, white hose and white pumps. Since she was leaving the room, she took her luggage with her. Sherry had lunch in the motel restaurant before calling a cab to the interview. She was at the offices fifteen minutes early.

AirSouth didn't look like it spent much money on office furnishings. The place had linoleum floors that were probably old when C-97s were being made. The lighting was industrial-strength fluorescent bulbs. The offices were in a very large room, privacy was obtained by green metal partitions with wavy glass translucent panels. The receptionist was a girl in her late teens who was wearing a sundress and had reddish heavily-permed hair set off by large gold hoop earrings. She told Sherry to take a seat. Sherry found one that didn't look to be too filthy and waited.

The girl sent her on back twenty minutes later to meet Phil, the Chief Pilot. Phil appeared to be in his late fifties. He had an office that was in the open area, though he had more space than the other areas she saw. On the way back, Sherry didn't see any enclosed offices. The place was exactly what it looked like, a converted aircraft hangar. Noise coming from the back showed that not all of the hangar had been converted, she could hear air tools and a clang as something metallic hit the concrete floor. Phil's office (not too surprisingly) was decorated with photos of Phil and airplanes. In one photo, he was standing in front of a C-119 that had Air America lettering.

Sherry saw that Phil had seen her looking at the photos. "I've never heard anybody say anything good about the -119."

Phil gestured her to a seat by the desk. "You won't from me, either. So you think you want to fly for us."

"Yes."

He shook his head. "It's not a job for a nice lady."

"Hardly anybody calls me a lady,' let alone nice.' I can take care of myself."

Phil seemed to be amused at that. He rummaged in his top right desk drawer, pulled out a pistol and tossed it on the desk. "Recognize that?"

Sherry glanced at it, then looked back at Phil. "Taurus 9mm."

"Know how to strip it?"

"Yep."

Phil waved his hand at it. Sherry picked it up, dropped the magazine out, and cleared the chamber. "Silvertips," she muttered. In a matter of seconds she had the pistol stripped. She held the barrel up to the light. "You could clean it once in a while." she then reassembled the weapon.

"Think you put it back together right," Phil asked.

Sherry glared at him. She picked up the magazine, slammed it home, racked the slide and aimed the pistol towards the roof.

"No, I believe you," he yelled. Sherry lowered the hammer, then she dropped the magazine out and slid the round that had been in the chamber into the magazine. "Let me see your logbooks."

Sherry handed him the logs and the interview went fairly normally after that. Phil would occasionally switch into Spanish, continue the conversation for a few minutes, then abruptly shift back to English. After about fifteen minutes he said: "Contingent on a flight test, you're hired. Starting pay is 35K, including full medical with furnished housing provided and meal allowances. You'll be working out of Rio, so your pay is exempt from Federal taxes. We'll set up a bank account for you in Grand Cayman so the Brazilians won't tax you, either. How does that sound?"

"Sounds good to me. When's the test?"

"I'd do it now, but I don't think you'd want to do it in that nice suit."

"I've got other clothes in my bag out front."

Phil stood up. "In that case, let's do it." He pointed back towards a door in the rear. "Just go out that door after you've changed. Paula will show you where the ladies' room is." Phil turned and headed out towards the rear door.

Sherry retrieved her stuff and changed into jeans, Reeboks, and a black t-shirt. Phil was standing next to an AirSouth DC-3. He told her to start a pre-flight, then stopped her after five minutes when he saw she knew what she was doing. They climbed into the airplane, shut the door, and went to the cockpit. Phil waved Sherry to the left seat, he sat in the right. The two soon had the engines warming up. Sherry was glad to see that AirSouth had an intercom system and headsets.

"Okay, what we'll do is go to Taimiami and shoot some landings," Phil said. He left it up to Sherry to talk to Clearance Delivery, Ground Control and the tower, though he did help her navigate around the taxiways. Taimiami (also known as Kendall to avoid confusion with Miami International) is about ten miles from Miami, so it was a quick hop.

The flight test was more fun than work. Phil did pull the power back at one point and had Sherry do a power-off landing from the downwind. She touched the mains down just beyond the numbers and tried not to show her pleasure. They then went out over the Everglades for some engine-out work. Phil then told her to contact approach and they went back to Miami International.

After the engines were shut down, they removed their headsets. Phil rubbed the top of his scalp and remarked: "You can fly her, all right. Be back here at nine four weeks from Friday. I'd suggest you put most of your stuff in storage. Paula will give you a list of what we recommend you bring with you. Most everything else you'll need you can get there. All right?" He stuck out his hand.

Sherry shook it. "Sure." She followed Phil out of the airplane and back into the offices. He led the way back to the front.

Phil rapped on Paula's desk to attract her attention from the magazine she was engrossed in. "Sherry's hired. Have her fill out the personnel forms and give her the orientation package." He turned to Sherry. "See you in a month."

"I'll be here. Thanks for the job."

Phil smiled. "Hold off on the thanks until you've been here awhile. Have a good flight back."

Paula pulled out a file drawer and handed Sherry some papers. One was a fairly standard employment application, there was an I-9 form, and a designation for a life insurance beneficiary. Sherry took a pen from her bag and started filling out the forms. Paula was a little surprised when Sherry produced her passport to satisfy the I-9 form. The life insurance policy was for one hundred thousand. Sherry split the designation between her parents and IFGE. Paula didn't ask who IFGE was. Sherry had never been a member of IFGE, but she had heard of them and she almost grinned when she thought of the reaction they would have. The last thing Paula handed her was the orientation package.

Sherry read though some of it while waiting to hop the cargo flight to Memphis. The listing of what to bring was fairly comprehensive: six pairs of lightweight long-sleeved trousers (khaki preferred), four pairs of tropical/jungle boots (broken in), two pairs of heavy insulated trousers that would fit over the khaki ones, two pairs of winter hiking boots, six short-sleeved shirts, three heavy long-sleeved shirts (flannel recommended), a dark- colored sweatshirt, utility knife (sheath-type), three pairs of sunglasses, lightweight and winter gloves suitable for flying. They would furnish winter parkas.

They also recommended three pairs of jeans, six light blouses, a few lightweight skirts, two dresses (knee-length or lower), and two pairs of black pumps. That was followed by a recommendation to bring a "suitable sidearm," one capable of stopping an adversary. They strongly recommended automatic pistols that were corrosion resistant. She had some ideas, but planned to bounce them off Keith before she chose a weapon to bring.

It was after seven when Sherry got out of the AirSouth hangar. Phil was leaving and he gave her a ride to the ramp area for the overnight package lines. Sherry's luck held, the flight to Memphis was still loading, or more accurately, the Caravan from Key West was still unloading. There was room on the DC-10, too.

This time she took them up on the tour of the sorting facility. It was an amazing sight, packages being transported at high speed along a vast network of conveyor belts. Laser barcode readers scanned each package, which was shifted from conveyor to conveyor as the code and flight routing demanded. There was a full-time PR staffer whose job it was to show VIPs around. Since there weren't any such august visitors that night, she was showing Sherry and a few new freight dogs the operation. Sherry asked her if the routing computer could handle flight delays and equipment breakdowns.

"Absolutely," the lady said. "The schedule is uploaded into the computers each day and updated as need be. We also have scanners that compute the cube of each package and record its weight, that feeds into the flight planning for each plane. We have weight-and-balance data for every plane we regularly use, along with sample data for any planes we may lease or rent."

"So if somebody shows up with a Martin 404 for the Christmas rush," asked a female pilot.

"Then we pull the data file for the 404s. Watch," the tour guide said. She used a terminal to call up the sample sheet for a Martin 404. "We have a data form that all our subcontractors have to fill out so we get the specific information on their aircraft. Once that's in, then we only update it if needed. As you can see here, we've had 16 Martin 404s on file besides the generic one.

Sherry took another look at the pilot who asked the question. She was about 6'3" and had a fairly heavy build. Her features and voice were feminine, but her hands were large enough to easily wrap around a heavy pistol's stock. Her feet were at a minimum 12WW. She caught Sherry looking, her slight smile said "I know what I am and I know what you are." Neither one of them exchanged a word the entire time.

The guide continued her spiel from the point where she was interrupted: "Now the computer data from the packages is used to compute each aircraft's loading. If we either go over wight or `cube out' in that we have more packages than will fit in the aircraft, the computer makes any alternate routes that it can or alerts the dispatchers. Depending on the time of the year and volume, we have backup aircraft available at various points in the system."

There was enough time to grab a quick snack after the tour before the airplane to Chicago was ready to leave. The departure itself was something to watch, dozens of airplanes leaving just minutes apart. The controllers had it down to a science, the lighter aircraft left before the heaviest ones so that nobody had to wait for a wake turbulence hold. A handful of Caravans and Twin Beeches left first, followed by Falcon 20s, DC-9s, 727s, a DC-8, the DC-10s, and finally the 747s working the international routes. Rush hour at two am.

Sherry was back at her home airport at the time she was accustomed to arriving. Pete greeted her as she walked though the door from the flight line: "Did you get the job?"

Sherry tried not to show her surprise. "And what makes you think I went looking for a job?"

Pete smiled and spread his hands wide. "There are some pilots who like the life of a small charter outfit, but not many. Most want the big bucks and prestige of airline flying. Besides, you went to Miami for one day. That's a long trip for a day trip. So, did you get the job and with whom?"

"Yep, with AirSouth."

"AirSouth?" Pete's eyebrows rose at that.

"You know them?"

"Rumors, only rumors. They do a lot of Central and South American charter work for the Feds, especially DoD and some other lesser known outfits." He paused for a second. "You might consider them a successor to Air America. You'll do some hard flying with them. You can use my typewriter over there if you want to type up a resignation letter. Two weeks is standard, we can get someone in here by then."

Sherry just laughed and went behind the desk. The letter didn't take very long to write. She gave it to Pete, who slotted it in the Chief Pilot's box. Then she went home to take a long shower and get some sleep. When she woke in the afternoon, she called Doris to report on her new job. Doris asked her to stop by on her way to Miami if she had the time. The conversation could have been that of two women who've known each other for years.

Pete handed her a note when she checked in for work. The note was from the Chief Pilot and all it said was "See me when you report in." That was now, so she tossed the note and went to his office. Sherry knocked on the door and opened it.

John Schiff was the Chief Pilot, and he was a good one. The company had hired him away from American. He, like Sherry, loved the DC-3. His salary wasn't as high as American had paid him, but it wasn't shabby, either. He got to fly as much as he wanted to (40-60hrs a month) and when he went to sleep each day, it was in his own bed. He looked up at the knock. "Come on in, Sherry. Have a seat."

"You wanted to see me, boss?"

He held up her resignation letter. "Kind of bare-bones. I haven't lost another good pilot to the majors?"

Sherry shook her head. "Not hardly. AirSouth."

John sat back in surprise. "You're going to work for Phil MacDonough? That old bastard." He shook his head and almost laughed.

"You know him?"

"Yeah. He and I flew for Air America in the early `60s. I got out of that sort of flying, he never did. It can get into your blood if you let it.

"Sherry, the hardest and most satisfying flying I ever did was for them. We used to fly instrument approaches to villages just by time and distance. What we would do is fly alongside a mountain and set the altimeter, then we'd drop into the clouds and break out over a village in a valley. We'd drop the cargo, then climb back out though the cloud layer. No beacons, let alone an ILS. No rules, either. All that counted was if you got the job done safely. If you didn't," he shrugged a shrug that any pilot would have understood.

He looked out the window and watched a Cessna 421 taxi by. "It was a different kind of flying. If Mac's involved with it now, then it still is. There's a certain high from adrenaline, of sticking your head in a dangerous place and coming out alive. It's almost a macho thing. A lot of men go through it, I suppose, which is why a lot of us get killed doing stupid things like BASE jumping. I don't know if I'm making sense to you, or even to myself.

"Few women get caught up in that sort of thing, but some do. Maybe you're one, Sherry. Damn few women go around armed, either, for that matter."

Sherry froze when he said that. "What do you know about that?"

John shrugged. "Julia told me about your dinner together when she requested another captain. We've done a lot of work over the years for the cops at all levels. I was able to verify that the incident happened and that you have a legal right to carry that pistol anywhere except maybe the Oval Office."

"And now," Sherry asked.

John shrugged. "Now, nothing. Somebody went to a lot of trouble to get that permit for you. Someone with that much pull might also be able to make some trouble for me, which is why I didn't ask you not to carry the piece." He sighed, and looked out the window again. He must have made a decision, because he swung back and looked squarely at Sherry. "Do you know why I hired you?"

"No."

"I was sort of asked to by the FAA. Your resume was in a pile on my desk one day when a Flight Standards inspector came by for a chat about a problem with the maintenance paperwork. While we were talking and I was trying to figure out how much the penalty was going to cost me, he asked if I had any interesting resumes; he gave me some line about they were looking for a couple of check pilots and had a hard time finding ones who were interested in applying to work for the government.

"So I said sure and handed him the stack. He read through them and then handed me yours. He said You shouldn't let this one get away from you.' You were qualified for the job, Sherry, but so were a lot of other pilots. I told him I'd call you in for an interview. He said good, and then told me he didn't see a problem with the paperwork that couldn't be fixed and he'd let me know if any action would be taken. After I offered you the job, I called him up and told him I had hired you. He said fine and in an oh, by the way' tone of voice told me no enforcement action was going to be taken against us."

"I don't expect you to confirm any of this, but like I said, I've been around the covert action game. I suspect they're grooming you for something down in Central or South America. Just take one piece of advice from me and watch your back. I saw them spend a lot of resources to train people for missions that while successful, got almost everyone killed. As long as the mission is a success, they don't care about the people involved. I'm sure they've spent a lot of time and money training you, but don't be surprised if they try to sacrifice you for something you don't want to die for."

John stood up and stuck his hand out. "You're a good pilot, Sherry. When whatever you're doing down there ends, if you want to, you can come back here with no questions asked."

Sherry almost broke down over that unexpected bit of kindness. She managed to choke out a "thank you," shook hands, and made it to her car before she started to cry. After she had her cry, she went back into the freight terminal and washed her face in the ladies' room. Then she went back to the dispatcher's office and started reviewing the weather and flight plan for the evening's run.

John's caution stuck with her. She visited a lawyer and updated her will. She also purchased a small back-up pistol in a private sale (so it couldn't be traced to her easily) and practiced with it at a range in a forest preserve until she felt somewhat comfortable with it.

She bought a Glock .45 though a regular dealer after she found one who was willing to let her test-fire different weapons. Sherry was a fan of the old GI .45, but she was willing to recognize a better weapon when one came along. The dealer first tried to persuade her to buy a 9mm, but he stopped when he realized that she knew what she was about. Sherry purchased five spare magazines. She intended to take her Government Model Colt along as a backup weapon in case something happened to the Glock.

After some thought, Sherry sat down and wrote out everything that had happened to her since the day she was called into the Chief of Staff's office at Destroyer Squadron Two. She had a photographer take some pictures of her, both portrait and full length. She then used a Polaroid camera with a self-timer to take some nude shots, those went into a special envelope.

Sherry found some old photographs of her before all this started; photos of her on a deployment to the Mediterranian and some that were taken at Suffolk Airport when she had taken a few skydiving lessons. She laughed at the thought of using a female pronoun for the male photos, but the English language was never set up to deal with changing one's gender. When she looked at the photos, she knew they were of her, but it was also like looking at the photos of a relative. It was getting harder to realize that she was once a man, even harder to understand how she could have survived for so long as one. Sherry knew she'd rather die than have to go back to living as a man.

Sherry then went to a private investigative service. She had them fingerprint her and draw up a notarized statement that siad that the fingerprints belonged to one Sherry Anderson and listed her passport number, Wisconsin driver's license number, Social Security card and pilot's license as supporting documents.

All the mysteries and espionage novels she had read now came to good use. Sherry knew that sometimes bodies can be identified by dental remains only. She went to a dentist for a checkup, which included a full set of bitewing X-rays. Sherry put the name and address of the dentist into the package she was drawing up.

Once the package was done, she went to the lawyer and made arrangements for the package to be sent to her parents by a bonded courier if she didn't make contact with the lawyer for a period of two years. Sherry knew she was violating every rule in the book, but she also wanted somebody to know she had existed. The lawyer scrupulously avoided asking any questions concerning the contents of the package.

Putting everything down on paper had made her think. She had obeyed her orders not to have any contact with her relatives. Her parents must still be under the impression that their son Sam was on a special mission for the government. That was true, but how would they react when the mission was over and they found out that their son was now their daughter? Her father was very well- connected politically, would he raise a big stink? Sherry couldn't believe that this line of reasoning hadn't occurred to someone. She didn't want to back out of the mission, but she wanted to be reasonably sure that if someone tried to cross her that they wouldn't get away with it.

Sherry also got her affairs in order; she made sure her shots were up to date and arranged to put what she didn't need to take with her into storage. Since the car was titled to her, she sold it with the new owner taking delivery at the airport the day she left. Doris was pissed at first, they had paid for the car, but she realised that the more Sherry did that was above-board, the better it was. Doris didn't ask for the money from the sale and Sherry didn't offer to give it to her.

She also had a lot of reading to do, AirSouth had sent her their operations manual, along with their flight manuals for the DC-3 and DC-4. The DC-3 was was familiar. The DC-4 wasn't too bad, it was more complex than the -3, especially the hydraulic systems. Unlike the airlines in the US and Europe, AirSouth used mechanics as flight engineers rather than junior pilots. Sherry guessed they did that because their cargo planes often flew into fields where mechanics qualified to work on them were unavailable. Partial confirmation came from the list of required tools and spare parts; the -3 had two complete cylinder assembiles, the -4 carried three.

There were a few airports that the line required armed guards to be part of the crew, that idea filled Sherry with some qualms. There were procedures for carrying dangerous cargo, including explosives. Much of the area wasn't well served (if at all) by roads or railroads; the choices were mules, boats (if near a navigable river) or air. If one needed a shipment in less than a few weeks, air was the only choice.

Many of the airports had little or no equipment for instrument approaches. Control towers were nonexistent, except in the airports that served major cities. Most of the communication was carried out on the company high-frequency bands. Navigation was by dead reckoning, although Loran and GPS sets were being installed on most of the line's airplanes.

There were even procedures for carrying large amounts of currency if bribes were foreseen, and for obtaining reimbursement for any emergency bribes. There was a list of highly placed civilian, police, and military officials at each airport (or the local town) to contact in case of any problems, the implication was that they were on some sort of retainer. There was a list of bank officials in each city that would advance cash to the crew captains who were on their authorization list. There were listings of doctors, pharmacists, hospitals, and lawyers who were known to be competent.

The overall picture was that AirSouth was a professional operation that operated in far less than ideal situations. It was comforting for Sherry to know that they seemed to have their act together.

Sherry flew for the cargo line for three more weeks. Most of that time was spent with a new-hire copilot who would son fly with Sherry's replacement. Sherry didn't talk very much with him, she spent most of her free time studying the Airsouth manuals. At one point she remembered her first days with the carrier and tht the captain she first flew with, Christa Welles, spent her free time reading United Airlines manuals.

Her last day was uneventful. She flew her run, then turned in her charts and approach plates, flight planning stuff, security pass and the keys to her locker and the terminal door. Then she just went home.

Two days later, the movers showed up and packed her furnishings and extra clothes for storage. Sherry forestalled any raiding of her stuff by giving the movers her liquor. She took the four pistols and their accoutrements. The telephone company had showed some unusual efficiency and shut her phone off that morning, she called the man who had agreed to buy her car. Then she went by his house, picked him up, and drove to the airport. At the passenger terminal she signed the title over to him and he gave her the money in cash. They both made sure she hadn't left anything in the car, then she handed over the keys and carried her bags into the terminal.

She had to check her luggage because of the pistols. The agent shrugged when she told her of the weapons, apparently armed people going to Miami wasn't an unusual occurrance. The routing was a slow one: a Short 360 to O'Hare, a 727 to Atlanta and a MD- 80 to Miami International.

There was nothing special about the flights. Sherry did discover that the flight attendants ignored her (and the other female passengers). The female FAs gave most of their attention to the businessmen, as did the male FAs. It didn't bother her, she wanted to be fairly anonymous. She bought the latest "November Man" paperback in O'Hare and read that. After so many hours in the left seat of a DC-3, Sherry found that flying as a passenger was a little unsettling.

She checked into the same motel at Miami that she had used when she came down for the interview. AirSouth had some permanent rooms at another motel that they would put her up in when she reported in the next day, they used them for flight crews that were laying over. The major maintenance checks were done at Miami, the lesser ones were done in the bases in Central and South America. Sometimes the crews had to wait awhile for a plane to be ready to take back. They did fly cargo to Miami, so the run wasn't a non- revenue one. And, as Sherry was soon to find out, some of the flights that were planned into and out of Miami diverted to Homestead AFB to pick up and discharge cargo that the government didn't want inspected by Customs.

All Sherry did that night was watch a forgettable movie on the in-room cable channel and get some sleep. In the morning, she went for a brief run (it was still fairly cool) and get dressed in a pair of the khaki trousers, a white long-sleeved shirt and jungle boots that AirSouth used as a quasi-uniform. A taxi dropped her off at the offices ten minutes before her scheduled show time.

Paula gave her a set of keys for a motel room that was a five- minute walk from the offices and told her she could leave her luggage behind the desk for the day. Phil welcomed her and a male pilot to the line, then sat them down for some written exams covering the operations manual and the flight manuals for the aircraft they were going to fly. He explained that the tests were pre-school tests to see how much they knew and what they would need to brush up on. Sherry had the most trouble with the weather sections (as usual).

Phil graded the tests, then called Sherry in for an oral exam on the DC-3. He and another pilot quizzed her for an hour until they were satisfied that she knew the airplane. Phil told her she had passed the -3 section, but she had to go to school for the -4 since she had no time in the airplane. The school took a week, she was the only student. The course skipped over the areas that the testing showed she knew and concentrated on the areas she was weak on.

Unlike jets, there are no -4 simulators, so Sherry did her flight training in the air. Engine-out drills required a lot of rudder at first, she quickly learned to be aggressive with the trim knobs if she wanted to avoid becoming exhausted. The DC-4 showed its parentage, it was a ponderous beast that was actually easy to fly. Sherry learned quickly and had an oral exam and a checkride with a designated examiner, she passed and became the proud owner of a DC-4 type rating.

That was followed by a brush-up session on AirSouth's flight procedures, paperwork procedures, and security. Phil had a pistol instructor take her over to range to check her skills with a handgun. It didn't take too long for the instructor ("call me Sam") to see she knew how to punch holes in paper, then they went next door to a combat simulation range. It was a standard pop-up target range, followed by a house-clearing drill.

Afterwards, the instructor came over to Sherry, who had stripped the Glock and was cleaning it. "You're pretty good with a handgun."

"Thanks."

"How are you with long guns?"

Sherry glanced at him. "As good as I need to be."

"Ever shoot in competition?"

"No, never had time for those games."

Sam saw that Sherry had no intention of giving him any information, so he just said: "If you ever have the time, you ought to consider it" and left her alone to finish cleaning the Glock.

That, as it turned out, was the last step in the training program. Two days later, Sherry was in the right seat of a DC-4 on a cargo run to El Salvador. They dropped off a load of something that was picked up by army trucks, refueled the airplane and caught some sleep.

"Always refuel as soon as you can," advised Captain O'Keene. "That lessens the chance of somebody doing something to your fuel system. I like to leave with full tanks from places like this."

The next morning the DC-4 was loaded with cargo manifested to San Paulo, Brazil. The manifest read "miscellaneous machine parts." Sherry figured that it was in her best interest to accept the manifest on face value and not to ask too many questions. The Captain let her shooot the landing into San Paulo. She didn't botch it, but it wasn't as good as she knew she'd be able to do with more time in the type. Nobody was surprised when they were directed to taxi to a remote corner of the airport. An armed platoon of soldiers surrounded the caro plane, they had two jeeps with .50cal machine guns for fire support. Thirty minutes later, a convoy of Brazilian Army trucks showed up to unload the cargo, the convoy also had an armed escort. They insisted that the crew stay on the flight deck until the convoy had departed. Only then did O'Keene tell the flight engineer to start the two inboard engines. He taxiied over to the AirSouth base. The engineer shut the engines down, O'Keene and Sherry sat there for a minute as the gyros spun down.

O'Keene turned in his seat and smiled at Sherry. "Welcome to the line," he said.

They went into the terminal where O'Keene introduced Sherry to everyone. Bill Trudeau was the local agent, he told Sherry that she would continue to fly with O'Keene for the present time. "That way you'll learn both our procedures and the DC-4," he explained. "Now grab your gear, a van is outside waiting to take you and the others to the compound."

Sherry got her stuff and went outside. There were five flight crewmen sitting in a van along with a driver. Sherry humped her luggage into the back, then climbed in. Her butt was barely in the seat next to O'Keene when the driver threw the van into gear and roared off. "When did Emerson Fittipaldi start driving vans," she muttered.

O'Keene laughed. "Get used to it. You're in `macho land' now. They all drive like that."

Sherry snorted. Terrific. Life among the macho. She remembered reading somewhere that Brazilian husbands who killed unfaithful wives weren't prosecuted for the killing. The traffic was heavy, people seemed to drive based on a mixture of bravery and the Law of the Bigger Vehicle. The van driver efficiently pushed his way into a lane thronged with small cars, only giving way to a large truck.

The compound was three miles or so from the field. It was a series of two-story buildings surrounded by a high wall that was apparently sheathed in stucco. The top of the wall was rounded, Sherry could see light glinting from it. They had set glass fragments into the top to deter intruders. The gate was a heavy iron one, protected by concrete barriers that forced any vehicle to slow down. Just before the gate was a large metal plate, it could either be a rising barricade or a dropping one. Two men were on guard duty, both were toting Uzi submachine guns. Sherry looked at the men critically, they appeared to be somewhat sloppy-looking. She didn't take that to be a good sign.

When the van stopped, O'Keene told her to grab her stuff and follow him. He didn't offer to help, he had his own gear to lug. A woman in her early 20s was at a desk in the entry hall. She gave Sherry a key without comment.

Sherry looked at the key and O'Keene. "What is this place?"

"It used to be a resort, it went under some years back. There're four airlines that use this for their crews. The other three use it as a transient base. We're the only ones who live here full-time. C'mon."

Sherry followed O'Keene to a corridor that branched from the main hall. He showed her where her room was and told her he'd meet her in the entry hall in ten minutes for a tour. Sherry dumped her bags next to the bed and found the john. It was clean, at least. The place gave an air of genteel shabbiness, something like old money which had run out. A loud rumble of a jet taking off showed why the place didn't make it as a commercial establishment. It was too noisy.

O'Keene was waiting in the hall. "Ok, let's show you around." The tour didn't take too long. The dining hall was a 24-hour operation. Meals were served at scheduled times, but there was a cook on duty continuously for late arrivals and early departures. "You might have to wake her up at 3am," O'Keene said, "And don't be surprised if she's got one of the guards in the sack with her." There was an entertainment room that had a large TV and a VCR with a lot of tapes. "You can borrow the tapes to run in your room, if you want, but please try to bring them back." Sherry noted that there was a selection of porno tapes in the lot. Great, stuck in a guarded hotel with a bunch of horny pilots. O'Keene showed her a workout room that had two Universal machines, three stationary bikes, and a large selection of free weights. The last thing he showed her was the bar, also open 24hrs. "Sometimes when you get back from a flight you need a drink. And it doesn't matter if it's 7:30am." They ended up back in the entry hall. O'Keene showed her a small store that sold toiletries, candy bars, tobacco products, music tapes and books. Something like a ship's store, Sherry thought.

The final stop was a garage with a dozen cars. "We use them more than the other lines," O'Keene explained. He showed her the procedures for signing out and returning the cars. The cost of running the cars was shared by the airlines. They paid for any gas pumped at the complex, the user paid for any bought on the road. The trick was to bring it back with just enough gas to make it into the garage, O'Keene told her. The cars were elderly Opels and VWs, cars least likely to be stolen. There were two armored and polished BMWs that were used to go to places where arriving in style was important. These cars used men from the guard force as drivers.

O'Keene invited Sherry to join him for dinner. While she felt a little funny about that, she saw no graceful way to decline. They went to the dining hall. The food was served cafeteria-style. Sherry realized that elegance and cargo flying were oxymorons. This wasn't United Airlines or even UPS. From what she could see, the pilots were a mixture of men who liked this kind of flying and would do it as long as they good, adventurers looking for some excitement, and those who wanted to fly for a major airline and were trying to get some significant experience.

Sherry had a salad, O'Keene had a steak. He ate with decent manners, some others in the room could have made a living doing animal impersonations. O'Keene had a funny sense of humor, though she realized that he was trying to impart some wisdom to her. He was at home in a DC-4 and, like most conversations when pilots are talking, the discussion shifted to flying. O'Keene had a lot of time in Douglas piston-engined airplanes, as well as the Curtiss Commando.

They went to the bar after dinner. Neither one had anything alcoholic to drink, they had a flight scheduled for the next day. The bar was a little rowdy, some of the men were well on the way to being fully liquored up. O'Keene shook his head ruefully. "Some of these guys fly for lines that don't fall under FAA jurisdiction. They don't follow the `no drinking 8 hours before a flight' rule."

"More like `no drinking within 8 feet of an airplane?"

"That's about it," he nodded. "It doesn't happen too often, but there has been some trouble in here. There was a shooting a few years ago. When it starts to get loud, I'll leave."

Some yelling made Sherry wince. "Like now?"

"Like now." They got up and started going towards the door. A group of four men near the bar turned around. They eyed Sherry and one of the men moved to block their path.

"You're new here, ain'tcha," he asked.

Great opening line. "Mister, you're in my way," Sherry said. She sensed that O'Keene was going to say something, she turned her head slightly and shot him a glance-- stay clear.

"Aw, I just want to have a drink with you. Maybe we can go somewhere." His buddies snickered at that.

"Please move," Sherry said emphatically. She noticed the bartender had slid down along the bar so he was behind the other three. His hands were out of sight.

She moved forward to go by the drunk. He grabbed her by the arm. "What's your hurry?"

Sherry looked at him coldly. "Let go of my arm or I'll break yours."

He laughed. She broke his arm. He slid to the floor and cradled his broken forearm. One of his buddies tried to pull a weapon, the bartender smashed a black truncheon into his upper arm. The pistol dropped to the floor from his nerveless fingers.

Sherry picked the gun up and handed it to the bartender. "Nice move," she said in Portuguese.

He smiled. "You did that nicely. Always a pleasure to watch a pro at work," he replied. The two other men saw to their injured friend.

O'Keene was silent until he and Sherry had left the bar. Then he laughed a little. "And to think I was worried about having to watch out for you."

Sherry was a little worried. "Is there going to be any problems from this?"

O'Keene considered that, then shook his head. "I don't think so. There were plenty of witnesses. But it wouldn't hurt to watch your back for the next few days."

Sherry nodded. She planned to do that anyway. They said good night and went to their rooms. Sherry took a close look at the door of her room. There was no safety chain to prevent anyone with a key from entering, but she was able to prop a chair under the doorknob. Even if that didn't stop somebody from entering, the noise of the chair sliding or falling would wake her up. That and having a loaded .45 made her first night's sleep in Brazil restful.

The morning's wakeup call was at 5:15. She showered and made her way down to the cafeteria with a bag containing three days' worth of clothes, the Glock, and her backup gun. O'Keene introduced her to the flight engineer, an wiry mechanic named Peter Schiff. Schiff didn't say much, he seemed to be more interested in his plate of scrambled eggs and has browns. Sherry found some warm oatmeal, toast and fruit. O'Keene was devouring a breakfast similar to Schiff's. She though it would be a minor miracle if neither one died of a heart attack on the ride to the base.

The ride to the cargo base was uneventful. Apparently hardly anyone was awake at 6:30. Once there, Schiff went to the DC-4 assigned to the trip and started a pre-flight. Sherry and O'Keene went into the office and began their preparations; checking the weather, reading any new Notices to Airmen, and checking the route. One part of the trip skirted a military operational area, O'Keene told her to watch for funny stuff from the Air Force jets. They liked to run intercepts on the cargo planes. A C-46 had crashed a few years ago when it collided with a F-5, only the fighter pilot survived.

Bill Trudeau sent word that he wanted to see Sherry. He welcomed her to the line, and asked some questions about her prior experience. Sherry answered them, figuring he wanted to get to know a new pilot assigned to his base. When he picked up a pen from his desk and started fiddling with it, she knew there was another reason for the discussion.

Trudeau finally looked up. "What happened at the Q bar last night? I heard you had a little trouble."

Sherry looked back at him. "No trouble."

"That's not what I heard. I heard you broke some guy's arm."

Sherry felt a surge of anger. "He grabbed me and wouldn't let go. I told him to let go or I'd break his arm."

Trudeau sighed. Why do I always get the nut cases here, he mused. Aloud he said: "There wasn't another way to handle it, a less-" he cast about for words.

"-masculine way?" Sherry finished the question.

"If you like."

"No, there wasn't. I'm here to fly, not to be a sex toy for a bunch of horny freight dogs. I don't want to spend my off-duty time fending off pilots looking for some stray pussy." Sherry saw Trudeau was discomfited by her choice of words, she thought so much the better. "I saw it as an opportunity to send a very strong message that they'd better not fuck around with me."

"I see. And suppose somebody tries to be a little more persistent?"

"You mean if someone tries to rape me?"

Trudeau nodded. He did seem to prefer to put things in an oblique manner.

Sherry shrugged. "Then somebody's going to die, and I'll do my damnedest to make sure it's him. Or them."

Trudeau didn't bat an eye, but inside he recoiled. She was very serious, he realized. The way she said it, so matter-of- factly, made him wonder who she had killed before. She didn't say it as speculation, she said it as an established fact. He thought he'd better get the word out for everyone to stay away from this broad. "Well, I don't think you have much to worry about," he said with a smile on his face. "Welcome to Brazil." He stood up and stuck his hand out.

Sherry took it. "Thank you for the nice welcome," she said. She left and found O'Keene looking over some weather reports.

"What did Trudeau want?"

"He just wanted to say hello."

He grunted in contempt. "Don't worry about him. He's the idiot cousin of one of the principal stockholders. Phil's the guy you work for. If he's happy with your flying, that's all that counts around here.

"Now today's run is a shipment of drilling parts to Caracas. You've ever been there?"

"No."

"Okay.." O'Keene then filled her in on the procedures they followed for a flight to Caracas. It was fairly straight- forward, with much of the flight being flown according to GPS waypoints. There wasn't much in the way of instrument navaids outside of the approach into the airport. After they double- checked the manifest, weight-and-balance figures, and the fuel load, they went outside for a walk-around the DC-4. O'Keene showed her things to look for, mostly to keep the FE honest. "Schiff expects you to check his work, and he'll be mortified if you find something amiss, but we'll all be dead if you miss something he did."

They went to the flight deck and settled in. "Ok, Pete, start them up," O'Keene said.

"Starting one." Schiff primed number one engine (the one furthest out on the left wing), hit the starter, and turned the magnetos on after the fourth blade had swung past. Blue smoke poured out of the exhaust and the engine coughed into life, then settled down into a dull roar. He went though the same procedure until all four engines were running. Sherry then turned on the radios and warmed them up. She took a sheet with the GPS waypoints and punched them into the GPS set. The GPS readout checked with the sign posted on the cargo terminal's wall. There was a slight difference that was due to the airplane being a hundred feet away from the building.

O'Keene contacted Clearance Delivery and received their flight clearance and permission to contact Ground Control. He didn't do that until Schiff indicated that the engines were warm enough for taxiing. The DC-4 taxied to the active runway, following well behind a 747. A DC-4 isn't a small airplane, but it's dwarfed by a jumbo. Schiff checked the magnetos of each engine during the trip to the runway. He was soon satisfied with the engines and so informed O'Keene.

They had to wait for the wake turbulence of the departing 747 to dissipate before they were allowed to roll onto the runway. O'Keene made sure the propeller controls were all the way forward, then he smoothly brought the throttles up. Schiff watched the engine gauges for any sign of problems, Sherry called out the airspeed numbers. When she called "V1," they were committed to the takeoff even if an engine failed. "VR," O'Keene eased the wheel back and rotated the nose of the airplane. Sherry called "V2," the airplane left the ground.

"Gear up," O'Keene ordered.

"Gear up," repeated Sherry as she moved the selector lever up. "Coming up...three green, gear is up." O'Keene then ordered the flaps up, Sherry complied as she switched from the tower frequency to departure control. Schiff set the engines for climb power, he would work the engine controls until the airplane was on approach to Caracas when the pilot flying the approach would take over. He had to keep the engine logs and manage the fuel system, tasks performed by computer on the latest jetliners.

O'Keene satisfied himself that everything was operating normally, then he set the autopilot and linked it to the navigation system. He wouldn't touch the wheel again until they were approaching Caracas.

The DC-4 had a minimum crew of three; pilot, co-pilot and flight engineer. That was down from the five man crew in the `40s, when they also carried a radio operator who had to be proficient at Morse code and a navigator who had to shoot sun or star fixes to navigate across the oceans. The navigator's position was made obsolete by advances in both aircraft and ground-based navigation systems, let alone the satellites used by the GPS and GLONASS systems. The radio operator's job was made redundant when tunable radios were replaced by crystal-controlled sets, now the radios are digital readout and microchip- controlled. Morse code is only used to identify navigation aids, the only people who transmit Morse code from aircraft are ham radio operators and some special military uses.

The latest airliners have only two pilots and the second one is there for safety and relief for food and head calls. Many of them have an "autothrottles" and "autoland," all the pilot has to do after takeoff is taxi the airplane after it lands, which is why the "terror in the sky" novels have virtually disappeared.

The trip itself was nothing special. Sherry kept track of their position on her charts to guard against a failure of the navigation systems. She couldn't see any reliable features to use for part of the trip, but O'Keene pointed out landmarks he was familiar with. Sherry would learn them as well in time.

As things would have it, the two-day out-and-back trip to Caracas developed into a ten-day multi-leg flight covering a good deal of Central and South America. That was a little unusual, but not unknown in the freight business. Sherry washed out her underwear each night in the sink of whatever hotel they were staying at (often one that was one step above a fleabag in status). The standard drill was to wash clothes in the hotel and take the damp stuff (since it rarely dried overnight) aboard the airplane and hang it from a line in the back of the cockpit or the front of the cargo cabin. O'Keene did most of the flying, but he did let Sherry have a couple legs into airports he felt comfortable letting someone who had never seen them land the airplane.

They had three days off upon their return. All Sherry wanted to do for the first two days was sleep in the same bed for two nights in a row and wear clothes that hadn't been washed in a sink. But her logbook was getting filled. She tried not to wonder when she would really have to earn her pay.

Sherry spent the next few months flying cargo runs all over the region. She normally flew as co-pilot on DC-4s, most of the time O'Keene was the pilot. There were times she flew with other captains and there were some memorable trips in DC-3s into airfields that at first glance were too short. The runs, as far as she could tell, were always legitimate, or at least had the backing of the local authorities. Sometimes she saw smaller twin-engined airplanes that had obviously had new registration numbers applied. It was rare to see the same airplane more than twice. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that those airplanes were being used to support the drug trade.

The weather changes were atrocious. One day they would be flying into a jungle strip; the heat and humidity were so bad that takeoffs and landings were done at dawn before the temperature robbed much of the lift from the wings. Another day they would be at an airport in the high mountains were the crews used oxygen before takeoff and the nights were bitterly cold. Many of the pilots took massive doses of vitamin C, along with the anti- malarial pills.

The living in some of the villages alongside the airports and landing strips was hard. Life was cheap. Sherry saw two men in a bar draw their pistols and shoot at each other, it was a lot like a movie western except for the facts that the guns were automatics and the ammunition was real. The winner resumed his drinking while the loser was dragged outside, leaving a smear of blood on the rough wood floor from his wounds and the gunsmoke drifted out of the windows. Nobody seemed to know why the fight occurred or care very much. No police ever showed up.

Sherry tried to see what sights she could in the little time she could get away. Often all she saw of famous tourist attractions were the views from the windows of the cargo planes. And there was little of that to see as she was busy during departures and arrivals. O'Keene did swing by the famous statue of Jesus overlooking Rio de Janeiro so Sherry could see it. She was a little more successful in getting to know a little about San Paulo when there was time after resting from a cargo run.

Sherry lived that way until one evening when a stranger sat down next to her in the BOQ bar. He seemed pleasant enough and Sherry and he were soon talking about flying. Then he said: "Can you tell me about flying into VT41?"

Inwardly Sherry stiffened up. "Yeah, you make your downwind over the river and watch the hill and the powerlines if you're landing to the north."

The stranger nodded, then resumed the small talk. After a few minutes he paid for his drinks and left. Sherry gave him five minutes and then left. He was hanging around in the lobby, Sherry followed him at a distance to the garage. It was a little dark, her right hand was resting on her waist close to her .380. He had lit a cigarette, Sherry could see the glow of the coal as he drew on it. There didn't seem to be anyone else around, but Sherry kept her eyes open.

"I always thought the `sign and countersign' stuff was a crock," Sherry commented.

"You mean like `the raven croaks at dawn,'" he replied with a touch of amusement.

"Yeah."

"It has its uses. You have a flight in two days that's supposed to RON in San Salvador."

Sherry nodded.

"There's a bar not too far from the airport called `The Busted Prop.' Your run should arrive at 1900. Be at the bar by 0630 the next morning with your passport and in clothing suitable for flying a bush plane."

Sherry repeated it back. "And then what?"

"Order a ginger ale. A white man in his early `40s will sit down two seats away. He'll ask you if you're a pilot and where you're from. You'll know it's your man when he comments about the steep hills around Montpelier's airport."

Sherry shook her head. "They aren't that bad."

"That's how you'll know. He'll take you to a small strip outside of the city. Your passenger will be there. You're flying a Maule with long-range tanks to the east coast of Honduras. The Maule has a programmable GPS that can run an autopilot. Your contact will have a cassette for the GPS with the nav program and the charts you'll need in case the GPS or the autopilot goes down. But if they don't, all you do is fly to the first waypoint and engage the autopilot. It's a three-axis job, so this'll be a piece of cake.

"The weather should be lots of low clouds. The GPS course is a low one, below radar coverage and in the clouds. Neither the Salvadorans nor the Hondurans have the stuff to track you assuming you don't turn your transponder on. You have a gun?"

"Yes."

The man shook his head. "You won't need one, so don't bring it."

Sherry absorbed that instruction without comment. "Anything else?"

"No."

Sherry said nothing else, she just drifted out of the garage. Her thoughts were in a whirl. She wanted to know why she had to fly this man, but she figured she might be able to find out later. The no-gun instruction bothered her. She might be a greenhorn at this, but she thought that if someone insisted that she should go unarmed, that was a damn good reason to pack one along.

Two days later, she was in the bar at the appointed time, drinking a ginger ale. She had on a light khaki jacket that went down to the wide part of her hips, khaki trousers and jungle boots. Like a lot of people there, she had a wide-brimmed hat. No purse, her effects were in the jacket pockets. She figured they knew about her Glock .45, it was back in her room in San Paulo. The little .380 was in a holster on her lower leg and the Government .45 rested in a shoulder holster under her left arm, two spare magazines were under her right arm. She also carried her passport, a small folding knife, a waterproof match case that also had a small compass, some loose cartridges for both pistols, a bottle of DEET bug repellent, and a supply of her hormone pills.

The contact man did his job and soon they were in an old Ford sedan heading out of town. The Maule was resting as promised on a grass strip hacked out of the jungle. The contact man gave her a folder containing a cassette of the type used to update GPS and Loran sets and a bunch of VFR charts. The folder also held three flashlights with red lenses, one of them had a cord so the flashlight could be strung around the neck. he dropped her off at the airplane and took off back for town.

Sherry, not knowing what else to do, pre-flighted the Maule. With the long-range tanks, Sherry estimated they had 700 miles of range. She turned the master switch on, turned on the GPS set, and loaded the cassette. The program was there, just as he had said. She shut the GPS down and killed the master.

The back of the Maule had a survival kit containing a lot of water, very useful for these climes. There was food, a first-aid kit, and some medical supplies. What she was most worried about was whether or not somebody would show up. It must have been at least ten miles back to town.

Two hours later a woman showed up. She was Latino looking, about 5'6" and dressed very much like Sherry. They went through the sign-countersign stuff, then the woman looked up and down Sherry. "They didn't tell me you're a woman," she said.

Sherry shrugged. "They didn't tell me anything about you. Shall we go?"

The woman's reply was interrupted by a Jeep driving onto the airstrip at high speed. There were two men in the jeep, the one in the passenger's side was standing up and waving a rifle around. The woman glanced at Sherry. Sherry shook her head: "We'd never get it started in time."

The jeep pulled up in front of the Maule. The passenger covered the two women with his M-16, the driver got out, looking very angry. He came over to the smaller woman. "Ah, Angel, you left without saying goodbye. I wanted so much to say goodbye."

She didn't say anything, he slapped her and grabbed her by the wrist and started to drag her back towards the jeep. Sherry remained motionless. As they neared the jeep, Angel fell sobbing to the ground. The man let go of her wrist and stood over her, laughing. "One last time, eh?" he sneered and started to unbelt his trousers.

He got his pants down and Angel kicked him in the groin as if the Superbowl depended on it. The guard, who was watching anyway, swung his rifle around. He dropped the weapon as a .45 slug tore into his chest and exited next to his spine, Sherry had moved very quickly when she saw the chance. The would-be rapist was trying to get up, Angel moved behind him and efficiently slit his throat, she then did the same to the guard who was dying anyway.

Sherry stood there in shock, holding the pistol. Angel looked up. "First time?"

Sherry nodded.

"Ok, start the jeep and move it out of the way." Sherry still stood there. "NOW, BITCH," she yelled.

Sherry unfroze, applied the safety, holstered the pistol, and moved the jeep. Angel dragged the dead man away, took a gunbelt from him that held a 9mm and magazines, then the two of them got into the Maule. Sherry moved the mixture control to "rich," pumped the throttle, turned on the master switch, magnetos, and engaged the starter. The engine caught, Sherry switched on the GPS set and the autopilot. Within a minute, the set had a fix and Sherry taxied to the end of the strip.

Sherry flew to the first waypoint and engaged the autopilot. Now all she had to do was manage the fuel and work the throttle and prop controls for climbs and descents. They were soon in the clouds. The charts didn't have a course line on them, so she gave up trying to keep track of their position.

Angel leaned over and said loudly: "You moved very well for a newbie."

Sherry passed on the comment. "What was that all about?"

Angel shrugged. "You ever heard of the Arena Party?" When she saw Sherry nod, she continued. "I was the mistress of one of the top lieutenants. I was passing information about the party to the CIA."

"I thought the CIA was cooperating with Arena."

"So did a lot of people, and they did to some extent. But Arena never trusted the CIA, or vice versa. Arena had some plans to derail the peace talks and the accord, but the Salvadoran government always foiled them. Or the guerrillas did."

"And they isolated it to you?"

Angel nodded. "They watched a number of people, I fucked up and they caught me. The only thing that kept me alive was that my boyfriend refused to believe it."

"Does he believe it now?"

"He did, that was him back at the airport."

Sherry nodded. Maules are loud without an intercom and headsets, neither of which this one had. The autopilot made some turns and a couple altitude changes. They were still in the clouds.

The clouds started to lift, Sherry could see a mountain range ahead. The autopilot flew the Maule towards the hills. It didn't command a climb.

"Oh, shit," yelled Sherry.

"What's wrong?"

"They're trying to kill us. Hang on." Sherry let the autopilot fly as close as she dared, then she hit the kill switch for the autopilot, switched the master off, and wrenched the Maule around in a high-G turn.

Angel's eyes were wide as she stared at the rocks. "What the fuck is going on?"

Sherry got the airplane leveled out. "The autopilot was programmed to fly into the mountains. I shut the electrical system off in case they have a transponder beacon wired in." She paused for a few seconds. "I was told not to bring a gun with me."

Angel nodded. "So if they didn't get me before I got to the strip or at the airplane, then the crash would kill me. Real cute."

Cute wasn't the word for it. Twenty miles away a King Air with a modified collision avoidance system was flying circles at 11,000 feet. The TCAS worked by interrogating transponder beacons. Two men behind the pilot watched the display intently. When the contact warning light went out, one of them picked up a microphone and said: "Angels fly in heaven." The two men looked at each other and smiled. The one on the left told the pilot to take the airplane back to San Salvador.

"What do we do now," Angel asked.

"Let me figure out where we are," replied Sherry. She trimmed the Maule so it would hold altitude in a turn, then banked it about 15 degrees. Every so often she brought the bank back as the airplane tried to level itself. Behind their route of flight she could see just flatlands, so they were at the first significant range of hills. It was a work of a couple minutes to draw a rough course line on the chart. "We're about here," Sherry said, showing Angel the chart. "You have any ideas where we should go?"

Angel studied the chart, then pointed at a river. "Can you take us there? There's an airstrip that was used by the Contras and the smugglers."

Sherry looked at it. "It'd be easy with the GPS, harder without it. What the hell." She turned the airplane south to follow along the ridge line. It took a couple of missteps, but Sherry found the strip. Sherry made a low pass to check the conditions, the strip was rough but appeared to be all right. The length seemed good, she climbed up and executed a standard approach. The landing wasn't very smooth, but neither was the strip. Angel directed her to taxi over to one side. There some small openings were carved out of the surrounding jungle, but the interlocking limbs of the trees created some hangars that made the spot almost invisible from the air. A Cessna 170 was there, apparently unattended. Sherry taxied as close as she could to the brush hangars, then pulled the mixture out and shut the magnetos off.

The two women got out and managed to push the Maule into one of the openings. Sherry sat down on one of the mainwheel tires and looked at Angel. "Now what?"

"Now we wait. Some people should be along soon."

Sherry nodded. She fished out the .45 and removed the magazine. She took a loose round from her pocket and slid it into the magazine to replace the one she had fired in San Salvador, then she put the magazine back into the pistol and the pistol back into the holster. "These people who are going to come, are they friends of yours?"

Angel smiled. "Let's hope so."

"Sure," Sherry said sourly. She got up and went over to the trees. Peeing in the woods was the only time Sherry wished she had the plumbing she had been born with. When she came back, she asked: "You know if there's any water or food around here?"

Angel shrugged. "I'm not sure. Anyway, we won't be here long."

Sherry tried relaxing, but she couldn't sit still. There were some bugs around, she shared the repellent with Angel. she kept replaying the scene at San Salvador in her mind. Of one thing she was sure, she had been used as a way to kill Angel. They didn't want her to bring a gun, she was sure that if she hadn't the two of them would have been killed by Angel's ex-lover. "Kill or be killed" was more than a phrase to Sherry now.

If the clouds hadn't lifted enough, they'd have hit the mountainside. Even if someone had found the wreckage, it would have been classified as an accident: "Pilot continued VFR flight into adverse weather conditions." Somebody went to a lot of trouble to do this. If she got out of this alive, she was going to do her damnedest to make sure somebody paid for it.

They waited about two hours. Sherry at one point went over and inspected the Cessna 170. It was an old airplane (they went out of production in 1955), and the paint and interior were both ratty. The engine appeared to be sound and the tires were good. What grease points she could see showed evidence of lubrication. She almost suggested that they steal the 170 and go somewhere, but this was Angel's turf. Besides, she had no idea where to go.

Six men came out of the jungle on the far side of the airstrip. They were dressed in green fatigues and carrying Eastern Bloc variants of AK rifles, Sherry wasn't familiar enough with the different AK producers to tell which nation had made them. Their rifles were slung in "patrol style," across the body at waist level. Sherry drew her pistol and held it down along her leg. She knew her chances with a handgun against half a dozen men with automatic rifles were poor, but that's better than no chance at all. Angel had shortened the pistol belt she had taken from her dead lover and was wearing it. She didn't draw her weapon.

The leading man stopped about twenty feet away. He smiled slightly and spoke in Spanish. "Hello, Angel. It appears that the reports of your death have been greatly exaggerated." He grinned like someone who had been waiting years to use that phrase.

"Hello, Marco. News travels fast," Angel observed.

He nodded. "The Arena pigs are upset that you killed Julio, but not too much. I think they might have executed him anyway for poor judgment. Your North American friends are saying you died in a plane crash in the mountains."

Angel grinned. "That's the airplane and this is the pilot."

Marco looked at Sherry and then at the Maule. "They set it up to destroy a beautiful airplane like that and even one of their own women. Such a waste. How did they intend for it to kill you?"

Angel raised her hands slightly, palms up. "I don't really understand it. You'd have to ask her."

Marco looked at Sherry and spoke in English. "I understand they set you up to die with Angel in a crash. How did they intend for this to work?"

"Do you fly?"

"Yes. I fly the Cessna."

"They installed a GPS set in the Maule that fed inputs to a three-axis autopilot. What they intended to happen was that we would fly in the clouds and right into a mountain. The clouds lifted and I saw the mountains coming. I killed the autopilot and the master switch."

"How did you know to land here?"

"Angel did."

"I see." He switched back to Spanish. "Luck rides with you still. What is it you want from me?"

"Transportation out of here, and some supplies."

"I see." He thought about it. "What do you have to offer in return?"

Angel gestured towards the Maule. "An airplane that's a lot newer than yours. I understand they can carry more cargo and even use shorter runways than that Cessna."

One of the other men spat. "That's no bargain," he objected.

Marco glanced over at him. "You have something to say, Jesus?"

"I say we have them and their airplane already. That gringa may have a pistol, but she can't shoot all six of us."

Sherry whipped up the .45 and fired, shooting Jesus in the sternum. He was on his way to see his namesake before his body stopped twitching. "Anybody want to say `she can't shoot all five of us?'" She spoke in Spanish. Nobody moved besides some involuntary flinching at the sound of the shot.

Marco knelt down to check the body. He touched his fingers to Jesus's neck and then shook his head. "Dead. He fought the rightists for nine years and dies because he can't keep his stupid mouth under control." He stood up and looked at one of the others. "Strip his gear. We'll send some others back to bury him." The man removed the combat harness and the rifle from Jesus's corpse. The harness held a six-magazine pouch, a first aid kit, and three canteens of water. When the man finished stripping the body, Marco said: "Give them to the woman. She killed him, she can at least carry his equipment."

Sherry took the gear, then laid the rifle down while she donned the harness. The straps and the belt didn't need too much adjusting. It didn't ride comfortably against her chest, whoever had designed the harness had not envisioned it being worn by a woman. There was little likelihood that she could draw her pistol with the harness on, but she didn't think she'd need a pistol if she had an AK. She checked the weapon, it was loaded. She slung the rifle in the same manner as the others.

Marco looked at her solemnly. "I see you know the AKM. Very well. Let's go. Hernandez, take the point. Chico, second; the North American, third; Angel, you're fourth; then me, Roberto and Francisco, you bring up the rear. You understand five meter spacing, Gringa?"

"My name is Sherry, not Gringa."

"All right, Cheri," he pronounced it in the French manner, "Try not to kill everything you see. It's an hour and a half to the base. Hernandez, move out."

Hernandez set a fairly quick pace. From his speed, it was clear that the guerrillas didn't expect any government forces to be in the area. Sherry knew under the terms of the accord that they were in guerilla-controlled territory. The spacing was more out of habit, Marco appeared to be a disciplined commander. There were some questions she wanted to ask, but she suspected that Marco would be fairly strict on noise discipline. Every combat harness appeared to be worn in such a way that metal-on-metal contact was prevented. Sherry and Angel made the most noise of any of them while walking, but not much more than the men.

It was a hard trek, mostly uphill. The camp was well-hidden with rude structures concealed under large trees. Sherry suspected she could fly right over it and not see it unless she knew it was there. It probably was well-visible to special optics and surveillance films, but those aren't used in an attack. The siting made an air assault impractical, the only way to attack it (other than bombing) would be uphill through the heavily- forested terrain. It would not be a low-casualty endeavor for an attacker.

Marco called over a man as soon as they entered the camp, he told him to take a full patrol and go to the airstrip to bury Jesus. The man didn't ask what had happened, he rounded up twenty guerrillas and left in fifteen minutes. There were over two hundred people in the camp, most of them men. The women appeared to be evenly divided between support personnel (they called them "camp followers" in earlier eras) and fighters. A dozen children, maybe more, were running around.

Angel saw Sherry looking at the children, three of whom had come over and were checking Sherry out. "This was an advance camp for the FNLN during the war," Angel explained in English. "There weren't any children here the last time I visited. They stayed in the bases closer to the border."

Sherry unslung the AK and found a tree to sit against. "You really were feeding information to both the Americans and the guerrillas. How did you manage to stay alive?"

Angel sat down next to her. "It was a balancing act. The Americans didn't want the FNLN to come to power, but they didn't want D'Aubisson's people in even more. They wanted enough information to get to the FNLN to ensure the rightists couldn't come to power, but not enough so the leftists would win."

"And how did the FNLN take all this?"

"They saw things in a similar vein. They wanted more information, but they didn't want the rightists in either."

Sherry looked puzzled. "Correct me if I'm wrong here, but didn't Christiani, an Arena candidate, win the elections in `89?"

"Arena did, but not the ultra-right faction. By then even the leadership of Arena had realized that they couldn't kill everybody who disagreed with them. The American Congress was fed up with the war and Reagan wasn't there to make them approve the aid. Besides, the Soviets were obviously in collapse, the Nicaraguans were too, so there was little support on the other side for supporting the war."

"Yet an Arena president successfully concluded peace talks."

Angel nodded. "Just as it took Nixon to open China."

Sherry smiled. "Old Vulcan proverb."

"What?"

"Never mind. So now what happens?"

"I'll try to convince Marco to give us some transportation out of the country. What you need to do is to keep quiet and not start any trouble for us."

"And if trouble finds us?"

Angel grinned. "We've done all right so far."

They sat there for a while. Angel was happy to, her feet hurt. Sherry's did too, but she was more exhausted by the events of the day. She wondered how angry O'Keene was when she didn't show for the afternoon flight, or if she'd ever be able to resume working as a pilot again. Then she laughed to herself, the first thing was to make it out of here alive and intact. after that, she could worry about the rest of her life.

A man in fatigues came by thirty minutes later. "Marco wants to see you two," he said.

They stood up, Sherry re-slung the AK, and they followed him to a tent. Marco was sitting in a four-sided tent with the sides rolled up for ventilation. He sat behind a table that was serving as a desk, it was well-laden with papers. A high-frequency radio with a cassette deck was sitting on another table. Sherry guessed it was a compression system, where the messages are recorded and then transmitted in a very high-speed burst.

Marco gestured towards a corner of the tent with a pen. "You can take off the rifle and the harness and leave it there." Sherry did so gratefully. As she did, Marco talked to Angel. "I've talked to my commander, he is inclined to assist you. Your motives for helping us in the past may not have been the same as ours, but the results were beneficial to our cause. We are not ungrateful and don't seek to kill our friends," he added pointedly.

Angel nodded in thanks. "I am grateful for your help, Commander."

Marco nodded. "Cheri, you've helped a valued friend, so we will help you to escape with her. We will not seek retribution for the death of Jesus. You did not know him, and he didn't know you. It was an unfortunate incident. While you are here with Angel, you are under the protection of the FNLN. However, Jesus had many friends. They have been ordered not to seek revenge. I cannot guarantee your safety should you return to El Salvador. Understand?"

"Understood, and you have my thanks, sir," Sherry replied.

"Good. Now, as to your departure, the arrangements are being made. As you suggested, Angel, we will accept the Maule in payment."

Sherry spoke up: "If I were you, I'd check it for a transponder bug."

Marco looked puzzled. "What is that?"

"It's a transponder that has been secretly wired into an airplane. When the master is on, it's on. It has it's own code, so anybody with a radar or a transponder interrogator can track it."

"You think one was installed in the Maule?"

Sherry shrugged. "I don't know, but it makes sense to me. If the transponder return ceased at the place we were supposed to hit the mountain, that'd be a pretty good indicator of a crash, don't you think?

"And I'd like to remove the programming card from the GPS before we go."

Marco smiled. "So if you get the chance for some payback, you will take it."

Sherry's face took on a hard set. "Somebody's going to pay for this."

Marco looked thoughtful. He thought that he didn't want to have this gringa mad at him. She looked capable of doing some serious damage to anyone who made her mad. "I'm sure we can arrange that." He looked outside of the tent and called to a woman out there. "Eva, take our guests to a spare tent. Arrange for them to have food, some clean clothes and to wash up."

Both women thanked him for his courtesy and followed Eva to a tent. Eva told them to wait there, she'd return as soon as things were arranged. She was back promptly and led them to the cook tent. Lunch was some form of stew and tortillas washed down with a local beer. It was very good, and Sherry said as much. After they ate (Sherry ate more than Angel), Eva took them to a tent that was a supply issue point. Another woman looked them over critically and gave them each two sets of fatigues, four sets of OD t-shirts, white cotton underwear, and socks. They took the clothes with them to a tent that had three large tubs of hot water.

The two women were left alone to disrobe and take a bath. Angel looked at Sherry when she saw her take the .380 from her left leg, but she didn't comment. Both women kept their pistols nearby when they were soaking in the tubs. Angel told Sherry that the third tub was for rinsing after washing, so there would not be a soap film in their bodies. She also said that it was essential to be completely dry before dressing in order to prevent a fungal attack. There was even a box of bath powder. Luxuries start creeping in once the fighting stops. Sherry put the shoulder holster on under the fatigue shirt. Angel wore her pistol belt.

Eva took their dirty clothes from them once they left the tent. She told them that they'd be washed so they'd have them to wear when they left. While in the camp, they'd have the issue fatigues.

After that, they were left to their own devices. they walked around the camp. Sherry noted they had a hospital, a school, an armory with a repair shop and a small firing range behind it. All the comforts of home. Nobody hindered them or asked what they were doing. Angel was greeted by a number of the guerrillas as a friend, they were far more reserved with Sherry. Sherry realized that there was most likely some resentment over the death of Jesus.

One boy who was about age six came up and stared at Sherry. Sherry squatted down and said hello.

The boy continued to stare at her. "Did you really shoot Jesus with a pistol?"

"Yes."

"He had a Kalashnikov. He was very good with it. The others had them, too."

Sherry nodded. She felt a little uncomfortable in the boy's frank stare. If she was from Mars that there would be less amazement.

"You must be very brave for a woman," the boy said and then ran off.

"Or very stupid," Sherry muttered to herself as she stood up.

Angel had heard her. "You may be right. Marco said there'd be no trouble, but don't count on it. I'd stay away from the rifle range if I was you."

Sherry nodded. It sounded like good advice to her. They wandered around some more and found a tent that was a small library. Most of the books available ran to marxist-Leninist propaganda, but there were some newer works about the principles of democracy and about capitalism and market economies. The books that were the most used were romance-type fiction. Romance works were popular among men, too. They each took a book and went back to their tent. Sherry laid down on the cot to read and was soon asleep. The day's tension had finally caught up with her.

At the evening meal, Sherry noticed that the guerrillas were very friendly towards Angel, but treated her with a reserve bordering on hostility. She mentally shrugged and accepted it. Marco had said that Jesus had fought for nine years. He had to have had many friends among these people. It was expecting too much that they welcome the person who had killed him with open arms.

Sherry spent her time perusing the books in the library, including some of the political propaganda. She thought it'd make sense to try and understand the viewpoints of her hosts. Angel did some reading, but she spent most of her time visiting friends and catching up on old times. Sherry overheard some of the conversations, it seemed that a lot of the mutual friends were dead. The war must have taken a horrific toll on the country.

Marco summoned them two days later. "Good news, we have arranged for you to leave," he greeted them.

Angel smiled widely. "When do we leave, and how?"

"You're going to fly to San Jose. The Cessna is legally based there, so you'll fly it there for maintenance. The cover story is that Cheri is a ferry pilot. You do have the right licenses for doing that sort of work, I assume?" When he saw Sherry nod, he continued: "Once there, you take a commercial flight to Los Angeles. You have passports?"

Sherry said yes, Angel said no. Marco thought for a minute, then summoned one of his assistants. He told her to take Angel and get a Canadian passport for her. "We have the blanks for it, you see."

Sherry watched them leave, then turned to Marco. "Do you mind if I ask a question?"

"I'll answer if I can," he said with some caution.

"How does a FNLN officer come to have his own airplane?"

"It was originally my father's. He taught me to fly it when I was fourteen. When he died, it was left to my brother and me. My brother joined the FNLN very early. The rightists confiscated our land in retaliation. I flew the Cessna to San Jose before those pigs could get their hands on it. Now that the war is over, I've flown it back."

Sherry mulled that over for a few seconds. "But you're going to let me take it? There's a good chance that if something goes wrong with your plan that it might be destroyed."

Marco sighed. "I know. It's the only thing left I have that belonged to my father, but there comes a time to let go, I think. I'll give you a number in San Jose to call if you have to land it somewhere else. If you do crash it, I'll just have to console myself with that fine Maule." He smiled at the thought.

"And what of your brother?"

"He was killed six years ago."

Sherry didn't say anything, she couldn't thing of what words would be good ones. So she asked simply: "When do we leave?"

"Tomorrow morning."

"How were the arrangements made?"

Marco pointed to the HF radio in the corner. Sherry nodded and inside started to worry. She didn't know where the encryption equipment came from, but she doubted very much if it was unbreakable by somebody who wanted to. Furthermore, she had no idea what the internal security of the FNLN was like. Those who had tried to kill her and Angel might now know they had failed and that the two knew that their deaths were desireable. This was not a good situation.

Marco pointedly picked up some papers. Sherry took the hint and left, lost in thought. Angel trusted these people, so Sherry wasn't sure she could confide in her. Flying into the San Jose airport might very well be as foolish as sticking one's neck into a noose.

The one thing Sherry was sure of as the day dragged on was that there was something in the wind. If the camp's population was reserved towards her before, they were downright icy now. At one point she ducked into the ladies' latrine and pulled her .45 from its holster. Sherry normally carried the weapon with a round in the chamber and the hammer down. She eased the hammer back and slipped the safety on. She'd feel better either with a shotgun or when she was gone from the camp.

Her instincts weren't failing her. An hour after supper a group of men approached her. Two of them had AKs in their hands. Sherry started to draw her pistol, both men put the rifles to their shoulders and aimed them at her, she could clearly hear the loud metallic sound of the two selector levers going into the "full auto" notch. She let her hand fall empty to her side, the two men warily lowered their weapons.

They stopped about ten meters away. One of them said loudly: "We want to talk with you, Gringa."

Sherry stood up. "I can hear you."

"You killed our friend, we have come to exact a price for your deed."

Sherry sized them up. A dozen men, two with AKs, five were carrying what looked like long nightsticks. "I see. It takes a dozen men with two Kalashnikovs to handle one woman. What big strong men your mothers raised. I'll wager they must be very proud of your courage," she said with considerable sarcasm.

The sarcasm wasn't lost on the men. The leader took one of the nightsticks and tossed it so it landed at Sherry's feet. "You can have a chance, Gringa. Pick up the stick."

Sherry did so. She felt its balance and mentally shrugged. Sometimes there's no way out. "All right. Which one of you illegitimate offspring of a diseased whore has the balls to fight a woman? Who wants to try first?" She held the stick in a two- handed grip as if it was a broadsword (or a tennis racket).

The speaker's face darkened with rage and he charged, holding his stick raised high over his head in a two-handed grip. His intention was obvious, he intended to try an overhand smash and crush her skull. As he swung the stick, Sherry raised hers so it was angled across her body to the left and she stepped quickly to the left. His stick hit hers and she swept the blow aside. He had put too much energy into the attack, she rammed the end of her stick into his midsection, then swept it against his head as he folded up. He dropped to the ground, stunned. The entire fight had taken a few seconds.

Sherry rolled her shoulders. "I think I am warmed up, now. Which one of you pig-fuckers wants to go next?"

"`Pig-fuckers,'" one of the men exclaimed.

Sherry nodded. "Surely that's all you can have, for there isn't a woman on the planet who would go to bed with any of you of her free will."

The next man came forward with a warier attack. He slashed at her face, Sherry blocked it and countered with a strike at his head which he blocked. They rapidly exchanged blows, all of them were blocked or diverted by the other. Sherry swung one and changed her aim point at the last moment, he was not able to lower his guard quickly enough and her stick smashed into the side of his knee. He knew he was at a disadvantage, he dropped his stick and retreated.

Sherry's breathing was coming at a faster rate. The man had had a lot of power behind his attack and she wasn't as strong as she had been back when testosterone coursed through her endocrine system. By now a crowd had gathered, attracted by the sounds of the fighting. Money was changing hands as bets were placed. This fight was turning into a public amusement in a place where any entertainment was a rare event.

Now two men stepped in to attack. Sherry moved to the left and attacked that man. She squatted beneath his blow and rammed the end of her stick into his groin, then swept the stick up to block a vertical strike from the other man. She shifted position, then had her legs knocked out from under her by the man she had hit in the groin, for her blow hadn't hit where she wanted it to. The other man stepped up and raised his stick to strike as if he was splitting a log.

Sherry tried to scramble out of the way and guard herself, but she knew there wasn't much hope of making it. The man was about to bring his stick down on her when he (and most of the others) hit the ground as an AK was fired in full-auto. They looked up after the burst and saw Marco standing there, holding a smoking rifle. He was not in the least bit amused.

"I gave orders that the Gringa was not to be harmed. Now I see several of my soldiers trying to beat her with sticks." He looked over the crowd, most of whom refused to meet his glare. He focused on one man. "Carlo! You knew my orders. Why did you not stop this?"

Carlo looked down at his feet, then met Marco's accusing eyes. "I have no excuse, sir. She seemed to be doing very well at defending herself."

"For which you had better count yourself lucky. If she had been injured by this, I would have shot the senior man here. Which would have been you."

One of the men with a stick, who had not stepped into the fray, challenged Marco: "She killed one of our comrades. We have never let something like this go unanswered until now."

Marco shifted his glare to him. "And what do you have to say about this, Frederico?"

Frederico met his stare. "I say the prospect of peace has made you soft. You are not tough enough to be a fighting leader anymore. I say you hide behind the orders of the high command and are more interested in saving your worthless hide."

The rage in Marco's face was obvious, but his voice was controlled. "You think I'm soft? We shall see." He grabbed a soldier standing near him and whispered in his ear. The man ran off and came back two minutes later with two machetes. Marco took the machetes from the man and handed him the rifle. "Soft, you say. I say you are a gutless slug." Marco tossed the machete at the man's feet. "Pick it up, let us see the color of your intestines."

Frederico picked up the machete, the crowd moved back to give the two men plenty of room. By now virtually every soul in the camp was watching the fight. The two circled each other, holding the long knives in a guard position and looking for any apparent weaknesses. Fencing with a machete was a dangerous game, for if the opponents blade slid down there was no guard on the handle to prevent one's hand from being cut. They exchanged three blows, the metallic ringing of the machetes filled the air. Nobody uttered any cheers for either man, it could be dangerous to voice support for the loser.

Sherry squatted down, obviously tired. Her hand was near her leg where the .380 was concealed. She figured her life was forfeit if Marco lost, so she'd at least pay him back for his hospitality by killing Frederico if he won.

There was another series of exchanges, Marco had a thin trickle of blood down his left forearm. Frederico saw the blood and redoubled his attack. He made two serious errors, he stepped in too closely and swung his blade back too far for a blow. Marco swept his knife across Frederico's stomach. The slash wasn't too deep, but Frederico lowered his arm from the pain and the surprise. Marco didn't miss his chance, he swung his machete at Frederico's neck and connected with a meaty chunk. The blade stuck in the vertebrae and Marco let go of the handle, but it didn't matter very much. Frederico sank to the ground and died as his blood stained the jungle ground.

Marco strode over to the soldier he had handed his rifle to and snatched it back. He spun around and surveyed the crowd. "Does anybody else here want to question my orders."

Sounds of "No, sir" and "No, Commander" were heard.

"Good. Disperse and go about your business. Lieutenant Braga!"

"Sir!" The man who Marco had upbraided snapped to attention.

"Take a dozen men. You and a sergeant of your choosing will each command six of them. You will provide security for the Gringa. She will leave here unharmed and unmolested or I will bury you and the sergeant. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Sir!" The fear in the man's face was clear. He knew that if any harm came to Sherry, Marco would carry out his threat. He quickly found a sergeant and ordered him to gather a detail. In fifteen minutes the sergeant had a dozen armed soldiers, including three women. The sergeant divided them up into two shifts and left with his six to get some rest.

Braga came over to Sherry. "Miss, it would make security easier if you stayed in your quarters as much as possible. I have no authority to restrict your movements, but please consider my difficulties in keeping you safe."

Sherry agreed. The only times she left the tent for the rest of the day were to go to the latrine. Braga provided some extra candles so she'd have enough light to read, but she wasn't used to reading by candlelight and turned in fairly early. Angel was not considered to be at risk so she wasn't provided with an escort.

A messenger woke them at four am. She gave them the clothes that they had been wearing when they arrived and told them to get dressed, have breakfast, and meet Marco at his tent by five. Sherry was still tired from the festivities of the night before. Angel apparently had gotten in late and was barely awake when they went to see Marco.

He was waiting for them. A Coleman lantern illuminated his tent, he had a air navigation chart spread out on the table. Sherry noted that Marco was carrying a pistol now. "It's time for you to go, and I won't be sorry." He handed her the chart and a flight-plan form. "The courses are plotted, the compass courses and times are on the flight plan. I have no way to verify winds aloft for you."

Sherry took the papers and looked them over. Better to be ask now than in the air. "It seems straight-forward enough. Thank you, Commander."

Marco bowed his head slightly. "You're welcome. Keep in mind what I told you when you arrived. Have a good flight." He looked at Braga. "Take them to the airstrip, stay there until they depart in the Cessna."

Braga nodded and led them out. The walk was easier this time. It was mostly downhill and Sherry wasn't carrying a combat load and a rifle. There was just enough light to walk by at the start of the trip. This time it took a little over an hour to walk to the airstrip.

The wind was calm. Sherry found a rag to wipe the dew from the Cessna's windshield and began her pre-flight. She was very careful to look for contaminants in the fuel. In a shack she found some cases of aircraft engine oil and some tools. Braga was impatient, but Sherry ignored him. She drained the oil out of the engine, safety-wired the drain shut, and refilled the crankcase with fresh oil. The written words of an ancient aviator sounded in her head, one who almost came to grief while flying in this part of the world.

The control cables all worked the way they were supposed to. She opened a few inspection ports and found nothing, It took her an hour before she was satisfied that the airplane was indeed safe to fly. Whoever had stocked the parts shack had thoughtfully supplied some waterless cleaner which Sherry used to remove the grease and oil from her hands. Checking to see the magnetos were off, she pulled the propeller though six blades, then she gestured to Angel to get in.

The drill was the same: mixture full rich, mags on, pump the throttle twice, and engage the starter. The Continental O-300 caught on the second blade. Sherry idled the engine at 900 rpm until the new oil was warm. Then she applied power and taxied to the end of the strip. A quick mag check at low power, one notch of flaps, and she applied power, not rapidly to avoid sucking debris into the propeller blades, but not slowly either as there wasn't a lot of room on this runway. The Cessna bounced on the rough ground and then slipped into the air. Sherry climbed to about 500 feet and retracted the flaps. She turned the airplane to a little west of south and took up her first course to San Jose.

Sherry stayed as low as she dared to. The 170 had barely enough instruments to be considered airworthy, just a wet compass, an altimeter, and an airspeed indicator. There was a communications radio but no navigation gear besides the compass. The compass at least had a valid compensation card. Lindberg had better equipment over sixty years ago.

The plotted course was fairly direct. That was a good thing, because Sherry was a little concerned if they had enough fuel to make it to San Jose. She wasn't too concerned about being spotted, the air defense system commanders in El Salvador weren't too concerned about unknown aircraft leaving and they didn't have a very good system, either. Picking up a small Cessna flying low was not a simple task. Nicaragua's military was in shambles and Costa Rica didn't have an air force. Others weren't likely to interfere; they might be drug smugglers and people who bothered smugglers tended to contract bad cases of bullet wounds.

Angel tried talking over the noise of the O-300, but she soon gave it up. If anything, this airplane was noisier than the Maule for much of the interior insulation had been removed. Then she started to turn green from the turbulence as the ground warmed up. Sherry knew they could find smoother air if she climbed, but that didn't seem to be a good idea. Somebody had thoughtfully left some plastic bags in the chart pockets. Angel used one of those to upload her breakfast. After she tied the neck of the bag shut, Sherry opened a window and threw the bag out over the jungle below.

Sherry was feeling a little uncomfortable, but it had nothing to do with the turbulence. She turned left 90 degrees, held it for a minute and turned back on course. Ten minutes later she repeated the maneuver to the right. Ah, she thought.

"I think we have a slight problem," she yelled in Angel's ear.

Angel instantly had a worried expression. "We're not going to crash?"

"Probably not. But I think somebody's following us."

"You sure?"

"Hard to say. There is another aircraft behind us, seven or ten miles back."

"What kind? Is it the military?"

"Can't say. Might be."

"Can we outrun them?"

Sherry shook her head. "Not unless they're in a smaller airplane than this one, which isn't too likely." She looked at the chart, then found a valley that might work not too far off her course. She turned slightly to intercept the valley. Once over it, she descended sharply and flew down it very low. After a few minutes, she turned sharply and headed back up the valley, again at a low level. If she was right, they should be there right about....now.

Seconds later a Cessna O-2 spotter plane came into the valley. The pilot had to pull up abruptly to avoid hitting the 170. Sherry turned in his blind spot and flew out of the valley to the west. She had no hope of outrunning an O-2 (the military version of a Cessna Skymaster, the twin with fore and aft propellers), but at least she could make it harder for him. She hoped he wasn't armed as some nations had fitted machineguns to their O-2s.

The O-2 took up position off Sherry's left quarter at about five hundred yards. The pilot knew that there was no point in trying to stay hidden and Sherry knew she couldn't shake the O-2. So they flew off towards San Jose in loose formation. Sherry thought that the O-2 couldn't have come from Nicaragua, they had mainly ComBloc equipment. That left El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica and Panama. She wished somebody had given her some information on who had what.

Angel leaned over. "What are we going to do? When we land, they'll have us."

"Maybe not. Keep your seatbelt pulled tight. If I see a place to land, I'm going to."

They were coming up on the outskirts of San Jose. They flew over farms and industrial areas. None of it appealed to Sherry, she needed an open area close enough in so they could stand a chance of disappearing before whoever was working with the O-2 could react.

There! Sherry saw a park that had several soccer fields next to one another. There didn't seem to be anyone on the fields. It was just big enough to land in. Whether or not the Cessna could be flown out was not her problem. They came up abreast of the park, Sherry chopped the power and dropped the flaps. She flew a tight pattern and had full flaps dropped on final. She landed the Cessna right at the edge of the park and held the wheel all the way back as she pushed on the brakes as hard as she dared. It still looked like she was going to run out of room, she pushed the left brake and executed a controlled ground-loop. The landing gear held and the wingtip didn't dig in, but it wasn't her idea of fun.

"Let's go," she yelled to Angel. Sherry yanked the mixture control back, shut the mags and master off and had her door open before the prop stopped spinning. There was a loud roar as the O-2 buzzed the field, Sherry was betting the pilot wouldn't try to land. Several cars had stopped alongside the road, Angel and Sherry ran up to one and asked the driver to take them into the city for a very generous fee. Once in town, they had the driver stop and switched to a cab after the car was out of sight. They did that three times.

Neither one of them said anything in the cabs. Angel led the way to a safe-house she knew about that was run by some people she trusted. The couple who lived there let them in without comment. Once they had sat down and relaxed with a cold beer, the woman opened the discussion. Nobody used any names. "You are in serious trouble, my friend. A squad from El Salvador is here, looking for you. We heard they were waiting at the airport."

Angel smiled. "We landed somewhere else. Maybe Marco can get his airplane back. How long has the squad been here?"

"Two days."

"What kind of squad," asked Sherry.

"A death squad," the man said. "They aren't here for a pleasure visit."

"And if they keep the airport covered, we are in trouble," Angel mused. "There's no easy way out other than flying."

"Can't we take a bus," asked Sherry.

The woman frowned. "How hard do you think it's going to be to find you? You must be 180cm tall, all they have to do is put the word out and everyone will be looking for a tall Gringa trying to leave the country."

"So we don't give them what they're looking for," Sherry said.

"I don't understand," Angel and the woman said almost simultaneously.

"You have a pen and paper," Sherry asked. The woman gave her a pad and a pen. Sherry rapidly wrote down a shopping list and handed it to the woman. "Can you get this stuff?"

The woman looked at the list and smiled. "Very good. It'll take me two hours. What size shoes do you wear?"

Sherry said a 43, Angel said she took a 36.

"Two hours. I'll be back." She grabbed her handbag and left.

Sherry looked at the man. "While she's gone, do you have a place where we can get cleaned up?"

"Certainly." He showed them to a bedroom that had an attached bath. Angel went first, then Sherry. It was a real luxury to be able to take a normal bath after the makeshift ones at the FNLN camp.

Sherry was soaking when Angel came into the bathroom. Nice bod, Sherry thought. "So, you want to tell me what you have in mind," Angel asked.

"Easy enough. They're looking for two women, one latino and one anglo who look like they came in from the jungle. So let them look. If they see us, that's not what they'll see. The woman's buying some clothes and some grooming stuff. We're going to change the way we look."

Angel nodded. "All right, what is she getting me?"

"A nice full skirt, so you can move if you need to, a decent blouse, and some low-heeled pumps."

"And what is she getting you?"

"Jeans, a work shirt, and a hat if she can find them used, along with some Ace bandages and a hair clipper."

"What?" Angel looked confused.

Sherry sat up in the tub. "Look, she said that they're looking for a 180cm tall woman. So we let them. I'll wrap the bandages around my chest and cut my hair back. With any luck, I'll look somewhat like a man. They won't be looking for a couple. Then we try and find a way out of here."

Angel looked a little shocked. "You'd cut your hair really short?"

Sherry stood up and reached for a towel. "It'll grow back if we make it. If we don't make it, it won't matter very much." She looked at Angel. Her hair was waist-length. "It'd help if you cut your hair, too."

Angel's eyes grew wide. She was proud of her hair. "How short?"

Sherry shrugged. "To your shoulders, maybe a bit shorter."

"No!"

"Do it. It'll add to our chances of surviving. Like I said, if we live, it will grow back," Sherry urged.

"And if we don't, so what," sighed Angel. "All right."

The woman soon returned with the stuff. She and Angel cut Sherry's hair so that it was just longer than military length, then the woman trimmed Angel's locks to her shoulder. Sherry used baby powder on her chest to cut down on the chafing, then wound the bandages as tight as she could. She then put on the clothes, and stuffed a sock into her underwear to create a bulge. She looked in the mirror, with the hat it just might work. The shirt was loose enough to cover the .45, too.

Angel got dressed in a flowing cotton skirt and a white frilly blouse with black leather low heels. The woman gave Angel a handbag that swallowed up her 9mm quite nicely. Then the woman and the man drove Angel and Sherry around the city. As he explained, the big problem was going to be going though emigration at the airport. He had no fake passports to give them to get past that point and both Angel and Sherry assumed that the death squad was monitoring passport control.

"Let's drive around the airport," Sherry suggested.

The man looked over his shoulder. "Why?"

"I don't know, I'm just making this up as I go along. Maybe something will occur to me."

He turned the car at the next street.

"I don't think we are going to find an airplane we can steal that will reach the States," Angel said.

Sherry shrugged. "Never know until we check it out."

They did. Sherry saw a DC-7 that might work, but that's a damn hard airplane to even try to fly single-pilot and she had no inkling how the fuel system worked. It'd be embarrassing to crash in the hills with a bunch of full tanks, if even the tanks were full She looked up as a helicopter passed overhead. It was a US Navy SH-3.

"Where did that helicopter come from?"

The woman replied: "Your navy is trying to track the cocaine smugglers, there is a bunch of ships about fifty miles out to sea."

"Including an aircraft carrier?"

"I am not sure."

Sherry was thinking hard. "Can you find out? Also try to find out if the helicopters come at a certain time."

"Okay, I'll see what I can do."

Sherry nodded. "Good. Let's go back to where the small airplanes are parked." They did. This time Sherry got out of the car and walked around. Nobody challenged her. She checked out the hangars and came back to the car almost an hour later. She got in smiling.

Angel looked at her. "You have a way?"

Sherry kept smiling. "I think so. There's an airplane in one of the hangars that can be landed on an aircraft carrier. If the helicopters keep a schedule, then we just borrow the airplane and follow the helicopter back to the carrier and then land."

Angle looked aghast. "Simple plan. And what of the fighter jets on the carrier? Surely you don't think they might object to your landing a strange airplane on their ship? You just think they'll let you fly up and land? And how are you going to take off from here? You think the control tower's going to let you just steal somebody else's airplane like that?" She snapped her fingers for emphasis. "Such a plan."

Sherry held her hands palms up. "So it's not perfect. But once we get out to the carrier, we are on American territory. The death squads can't touch us."

"And if they don't let us land?"

"Then we'll ditch the airplane next to one of the ships. They'll rescue us with a boat or a helicopter. Either way, once we're aboard we're safe."

Angel looked at her as if she was crazy. The couple drove them back to the safe house.

Some discreet questioning yielded a lot of information. The helicopters, usually SH-3s, but sometimes CH-46s came very day, often two or three. They arrived at 1300 and left at 1630. The times were set to allow them to offload cargo, mail and passengers for a flight to Los Angeles and to pick up any of the items being sent to the fleet offshore. The ships were 50 to 100 nautical miles offshore, they were using the E-2 radar airplanes to track air traffic over Central America. Occasionally an escort ship would pull into San Jose for a brief visit, but there wasn't one due for over a week. Sherry preferred the idea of trying to board a ship in port, but the time they'd have to wait was too long and the pier would probably be watched very closely by the death squad.

They also learned that another team was due in the next day to look for them. Nobody liked that idea very much. So if the weather was good, they would go for getting out tomorrow afternoon.

The woman cooked up dinner. While she was doing so, the man asked: "What kind of pistols are you carrying?"

"She has a .45 and I have a 9mm," Angel answered.

He shrugged. "I think I can do better than that for you. We'll check out my stock after dinner."

They did. He had a wide selection of special-purpose weapons in a hidden room in the basement. "These might be of some use," he said and pulled out a box. He handed a pistol to Sherry. The weapon was a GI Colt .45 with a suppressor mounted. The sights on the slide had been built up so they could be of some use. He handed another one to Angel. "If you have to deal with the death squads, it might help you if there was less noise around." He led them into an adjoining room where there was a target set up twenty feet away. He gave them some ear plugs. "The silencers don't kill all the sound, they'll still be pretty loud in a room this size. But outdoors, they won't attract any attention."

He gave them some ammunition, they both fired a few shots to get the feel. Nobody wanted to do more, the room wasn't well ventilated and the fumes from the shots were pretty bad. As the man had predicted, the guns were loud in the room, but nowhere near as loud as an unsuppressed shot.

"Thank you," Sherry said formally. "Can I offer you my weapon in exchange?"

"Is it traceable to you?"

Sherry nodded. "Then keep it."

Angel offered hers. "This one was Julio's. I assume it can be traced to him."

The man took it and smiled. "I think we can have some fun with it. Why don't you go get some sleep? I'll clean up the guns and we can make any further plans we need to in the morning."

"Sounds like a good idea to me," Sherry said.

It would be an understatement to say that Sherry was glad to unwrap the Ace bandages that were restraining her breasts. Those who complained about a tight girdle had nothing on her. The safe house had an old bathtub, which meant it was big enough to accommodate her large frame. For many years she had taken showers, baths now seemed luxurious. Her skin was red from the wrappings. She hoped that tomorrow would be the last day she'd have to endure wearing them.

As Sherry soaked, she had to admit there were a couple things about being a man that she missed. Nobody had paid any attention to her when she had poked around the hangars that afternoon. She doubted if a woman would have been unnoticed. She didn't think about somebody trying to violate her, make a pass, or voice lewd suggestions. But no way did she want to go back.

The man dropped the pistols off about an hour later. Sherry stripped hers to check it out. She was most interested in seeing that the firing pin hadn't been altered in any way. When she pushed on the back of the pin, it protruded from the slide the proper amount. She couldn't figure out how to check the ammunition just yet. Everybody seemed to be on the level, but she'd sure hate to draw down on somebody and hear the dull click of a misfire.

Angel seemed somewhat antsy, but Sherry didn't feel like talking. So much depended on the airplane she had scouted out. It appeared to be airworthy, but if it wasn't, they might not get a second chance. It was the only way she could think of to get out of the country and into another one without having to show a passport.

Neither one of them slept very well that night. They were both awake by six the next morning, even though there was little they could do until that afternoon. The woman of the safehouse had purchased some newspapers which both Sherry and Angel read from beginning to end. The TV set was droning in the corner of the living room and nobody was paying attention to it.

Sherry asked for a box of ammunition and went into the basement. There she fired the silenced .45 and reassured herself that the pistol still worked and that the cartridges hadn't been tampered with. The man offered to clean it, but she declined. One way or another, she didn't plan on having the weapon much longer than the length of the day.

Noon was approaching. Sherry went upstairs and wound the Ace bandages around her breasts, wincing at the squashed feeling they gave her. The woman had some dark theatrical makeup which Sherry used to create a beard shadow. If her life didn't depend so much on the illusion she was trying to project, she'd think this was really funny in an ironic way. Well, Sam,' she thought, it's time to do your stuff one last time.' As she prepared herself, Angel was getting dressed in her outfit. Sherry sighed. It's showtime.

The woman stayed behind this time. The man drove them to a cafe near the airport. Two SH-3s arrived right on time. Good old Naval Air. Near 2pm, Sherry nodded slightly to the man. he paid the bill and they went to the car. He drove them down to the field.

Security at this end of the airport was almost nonexistent, they drove right onto the airport and down the rows of hangars. The man pulled in behind one three hangars down. Sherry and Angel sat there for a few minutes as they watched for any movement. Things looked good. Sherry and Angel got out of the car and moved down the back of the hangars. Sherry winced at the sound of Angel's shoes on the pavement.

The hangar door was unlocked. They went in, Sherry closed the door behind them. It was fairly dark inside. Angel looked around. "So where is the airplane that you will fly us to the carrier in," she asked.

"The big one with the round engine," Sherry replied. The "big airplane with the round engine" was a T-28 that had fairly faded paint. What it had that had attracted Sherry's interest was a tailhook. Sherry planned to land the airplane on the carrier rather than try jumping out or ditching. She hadn't done any of the three, but landing on a carrier seemed the best bet. At least the risk of drowning was less.

Sherry's pre-flight inspection was as thorough as she dared to make it. The T-28 thankfully had an intercom and headsets. Sherry seated Angel in the back and showed her how the seatbelts worked and how the canopy worked if they had to ditch. The T-28 didn't have any life vests, she found some in an Aero Commander that was also in the hangar. The one fortunate thing here was that the T-28 was at the front of the hangar, they wouldn't have to move other airplanes to get it out.

Time was slipping by. They wrestled the hangar doors opened, then used an old converted garden tractor to tug the T-28 out onto the taxiway. They had just finished putting the tug back when Sherry saw some movement out of the corner of her eye. A man had a gun out and was aiming it at her. Sherry went for her silenced .45 and knew in her soul she'd never make it. There was no cover to duck behind, either. A muffled bark came from behind her, the man fell backwards. Angel had gotten her gun out first.

"Let's go now," Angel screeched. Sherry turned to run for the airplane when two more men came from around the hangar. Angel nailed one, the second one fired a shot that seemed very loud compared to Angel's shots. Sherry gasped and fell in pain as the bullet hit her in the side. She retained her hold on the pistol and rolled, then fired from the ground at her attacker. She shot him four times.

Nobody else showed up. Angel helped Sherry up. "How badly are you hurt," she asked.

"I don't know," Sherry said, feeling the pain lance through her. "Help me get my shirt off." Angel did so. The bullet had cut a deep groove in her left side about an inch below her breasts and apparently smashed at least one rib. It was bleeding freely. Sherry had Angel remove the ace bandage from her breasts and wrap it around her torso ove the bullet wound. "Help me get into the cockpit," Sherry said.

Angel looked at her. "Can you fly like this?"

Sherry gestured at the three bodies lying on the taxiway. "You want to stay around and explain to the police what happened here?"

Angel shook her head and helped Sherry get into the front cockpit, then she got into the back. Sherry experimented, it hurt to move her left arm but most of the time she wouldn't have to, the T-28 was flown with a military stick used by the right hand. Out of habit, she turned on the master switch and then turned on the pre-oiler. After five minutes of running the electric oil pump, she primed the hell out of the engine and hit the starter. One, two, three, four, she switched the magnetos on and the big radial rumbled into life. She found the avionics master and turned the radio on to ground control to monitor what was going on.

When the SH-3s called in for their clearances, Sherry taxied the T-28 down the row of hangars to the far end of the taxiway. She listened on the radio, switching frequencies with the SH-3s. She couldn't hear their side of the conversations as they had military VHF radios, but she could hear the controllers talking to them as their radios transmitted on both VHF and UHF channels.

The SH-3s passed overhead. Sherry said "Here we go" into the intercom and pushed the propeller control forward, then the throttle. The roar of the radial echoed from the hangars as the T- 28 thundered down the taxiway. The first sight the tower had was the T-28 rising over the roofline of the hangars. Sherry raised the landing gear and the flaps and turned to angle away from the SH-3s. The tower crew called frantically on the radio, Sherry ignored them. She wanted to laugh, but it hurt to even think about it.

Sherry stayed low for several miles, keeping her eye on the helicopters. When they were almost too far to see, she advanced the throttle and flew an intercepting course. The angle was shallow enough that they shouldn't see her. She flew a curved path at the end to bring the T-28 behind the SH-3s at about one hundred feet. With any luck the men on the air-search radars would have their primary target gain a little low and they might not pick her up until she was a lot closer. She set a radio to the emergency (or guard) frequency of 121.5 mHz. Sherry knew the standard drill was to try to establish contact on that frequency.

What Sherry didn't know was that she had been tracked almost from takeoff by an E-2C Hawkeye, the naval version of AWACS. That caused a quick rush on the carrier to launch the Combat Air Patrol fighters, they had been sitting in Alert-15 as no real need for them was foreseen. The flight deck crews ran through the drill at a fast speed and both F-14s were launched in just over ten minutes.

Sherry did see the F-14s coming her way, though. As she watched, their wings swept forward and the flaps and slats deployed to enable the fighters to slow to her speed. She pressed the push- to-talk button and said: "Good afternoon, boys."

"Tango Two Eight, identify yourself and state your intentions."

Sherry read the registration number of the T-28 and added: "Pilot is Anderson, Lieutenant, US Navy, Sierra Sierra November [she read her social security number], state approximately three plus zero zero, two souls on board, one wounded. Intentions are to land your home plate."

To say her transmission raised a fuss on the carrier was an understatement. The carrier group commander, Rear Admiral Carter, turned to his Chief of Staff, he ordered a secure radio link to the Commander of the Bureau of Personnel, priority flash. He then took command of the air warfare picture away from the cruiser who was running it. He ordered the F-14s to escort the T-28 and have it circle around the carrier at a ten mile radius. The lead F-14 relayed the command on 121.5, RADM Carter heard Sherry reply: "Roger, but don't fuck around too much. I took a round back there and I'm bleeding." By now every ship and its captain in the battle group had 121.5 turned up.

The COS handed Admiral Carter the satellite secure radio handset. He keyed the set and said "BuPers, this is ComCarGru Seven, over." (ComCarGru Seven = Commander, Carrier Group Seven)

The admiral at BuPers didn't have a radio set. He had to use a secure telephone to a communications station. To let the tech at the commsta know he wanted to talk, he would start his transmission by saying "one two three, three two one." What Carter heard was "Two one, ComCarGru Seven, this is BuPers himself, over." The `himself' let Carter know that the admiral in charge was on the line. They weren't used to getting such high-priority calls and the admiral was very curious what was going on.

Carter keyed the handset and waited for the synchronization tone to stop. "This is ComCarGru Seven himself. We have an interesting situation developing." He relayed a quick sketch of the situation and Anderson's service number. "Request you verify such an officer's existence, over."

"Three two one, this is Bupers. Roger, wait, out." It took five minutes to pull a microfiche copy of Anderson's service record and rush it up to the boss. His aide pooped it in a viewer, the admiral quickly read it. He picked up the telephone: "One two three, three two one, Comcargru Seven, this is Bupers, over."

Carter had bet his COS a coke it would take fifteen minutes to get an answer. The COS didn't bother to hide his grin. "ComCarGru Seven, roger, over." Everybody in flag plot gathered around to hear the information.

"Two one, this is BuPers. Name and number are verified. Officer is Samuel Anderson, surface warfare. Did his first tour on Dahlgren, boiler officer and gunnery officer. Fitreps top 1%. Graduated destroyer school (he gave a date and class number). Assigned to Alwyn as Engineer. How copy so far, over"

"Copy all, continue, over."

"Three two one. Here's where it gets strange. Anderson served fifteen months on Alwyn, then abruptly transferred to DIA.." (Defense Intelligence Agency) "..classified program. Cover fitreps state `performing duties assigned' and give top marks. Anderson selected to lieutenant commander, promoted two months ago. No information on DIA work available, over."

"Roger, copy all. If I can, will send `personal for' to you when I get this sorted out. No further traffic, over."

"Two one, BuPers, roger, out."

Carter put the headset down, then looked at the carrier's captain, who had come into flag plot when he was told what was going on. "Captain, please get on the 1MC.." (shipwide PA system) "..and see if there's anybody on board who served with Anderson."

The captain nodded and did so. In a few minutes, the carrier's Main Propulsion Assistant, Lieutenant Dumphrey, was standing in flag plot as the admiral told him what was going on. "I want you to ask this person some questions and try to determine if that's Anderson up there."

"Aye aye, sir." The Admiral handed him a handset. "Tango Two Eight, this is ComCarGru Seven."

"Tango Two Eight."

"Anderson, this is Bill Dumphrey. How're you doing?"

"Been a long time, Bill. I've been better. Caught a round back in San Jose. They going to let me land this beast?" Sherry let go of the mike button and spit in her hand. The saliva was tinged with blood.

"I need to ask a few questions, first."

"Don't stretch it out. I'm coughing up blood."

"How do you light a torch?"

"With a Zippo lighter."

"Which safety do you set first?"

"Superheater."

"What's a Jones class frigate?"

"No such thing. Jones was that jackass who sat behind you at Destroyer School."

Dumphrey ran through about a dozen more questions, then turned to Admiral Carter. "That doesn't sound like Anderson, Admiral, but he sure knows enough about Anderson to be him."

Carter nodded. "Did you know Anderson could fly?"

"Yes, sir. He was in the base flying club. He seemed to be pretty good."

"Ok, son, thanks." He picked up the handset. "Two eight, ComCargru Seven."

"Two eight."

"You carrier qualified in T-28s?"

"No, don't have much choice, though."

"Can you bail out or ditch?"

"Negative. No parachutes. Life jackets of unknown quality. Passenger unfamiliar with emergency egress, not too sure I can survive a ditching, either."

"Landing on a carrier isn't a piece of cake, either."

"Maybe not, but it's the best choice I have. Request permission to come aboard, sir."

"Roger, permission granted. Stand by." Carter said to no one in particular: "Set flight quarters, prepare to recover a T-28. And make damn sure the crash crews and the corpsmen are ready."

Sherry looked down at the carrier and saw it turn to align the wind with the angle deck. About fucking time, she thought.

"Two eight, this is Paddles." (Paddles was the term for the Landing Signals Officer, the one who had final control of the landing of all airplanes. The term derived from the old days when the LSO used hand paddles to signal the landing airplanes.)

"Two eight."

"I want you to fly an upwind over me at one thousand. Slow, drop your gear and hook, and fly a standard pattern. Don't think of the deck as moving, think of it as being stationary with a strong headwind. Keep the meatball in the center of the mirror. When you land, go to full power in case you miss a wire. Got that?"

"Roger." Sherry told Angel: "They're going to let us land. Make sure your harness is as tight as you can make it, you'll hit it hard when we land."

"Ok, all set." Angel was terrified, but she kept quiet. Sherry broke away from the F-14s and turned towards the carrier. She throttled back somewhat and pushed the nose down. She flew over the carrier, pulled the throttle back, pushed the propeller control to the stops, and dropped the landing gear and the tailhook. Three green for the gear and one for the hook. She turned to a crosswind, then to a downwind. When the carrier looked right, she throttled back more and started the approach. The flaps went down on the base leg.

She almost turned final astern of the carrier, then realized that she had to turn for the angle of the flight deck, not the stern of the ship.

"A little low, add power, bring her up onto the glide slope," Paddles commanded.

Sherry did that and quickly adjusted to the guidance of the mirror landing system. She had to keep the ball in the center of the mirror.

"On slope, looking good. Keep her coming."

Sherry didn't acknowledge the advice, she flew the airplane. A little high, reduce power and ease the nose down. She was approaching the deck, she flared but didn't try to kill all of the sink rate. The landing gear slammed into the deck, Sherry rammed the throttle forward as she was thrown against the harness when the tailhook caught the number four wire. She screamed in pain and greyed out, but retained enough composure to pull the throttle back. Her vision returned, she saw people gesturing madly for her to raise the tailhook and taxi away from the landing area. Sherry followed the directions of the plane director. When he motioned for her to cut the engine, she pulled the mixture out, shut off the master and flicked the mag switches off when the prop stopped turning. She remembered popping the canopy latch, but nothing after that.

There was a large group of people out on the observation areas when Sherry made her approach. Word had gotten out that somebody who was not carrier-qualified was going to try to land a T-28. Her approach was a little unsteady, but nothing really unusual. The T- 28 slammed into the deck in the "controlled crash" that was a carrier landing. Admiral Carter muttered "Not bad, son" when he saw the hook grab the number four wire. The prop blades were still spinning to a stop when the medical team climbed onto the wing. They lifted Sherry out of the cockpit and laid her in a Stokes litter. A doctor quickly checked her over and then they lifted the litter and hustled her to sickbay. Other flight deck crewmen helped Angel out of the rear seat. She was taken to a stateroom and initially held incommunicado, although she was given magazines to read. Lunch was brought to her.

The hospital crew had been told their patient was a wounded man, they were a little surprised to find he was a she, but figured that the staff had screwed up again. They prepped Sherry for surgery and ran her into the OR. The carrier had a Naval Investigative Service agent embarked, he went through the pockets of Sherry's clothes and brought the contents up to flag country.

Admiral Carter was having lunch with his COS, the ship's captain, and the commander of the air wing. The NIS agent handed him Sherry's passport without comment. Carter took it and opened it to the photo. "What the Christ is going on," he said and handed the passport to the COS, who looked at it and passed it to the other two officers. BuPers had faxed Anderson's service record, which included a photo. Carter took the photo and compared it to the passport. He noted that the birthdays were identical.

The COS was looking over his shoulder. "Could it be his twin sister?"

Carter shrugged. "No mention of a sister on his Page Two." (A "page two" is the record of emergency information.) He looked at the agent. "As soon as she's out of surgery, pull a set of prints and fax them to NIS, op immediate priority."

"Yes, sir," the agent replied. "She was also heavily armed. She had three pistols on her person, one of them is a silenced .45 that has been fired very recently. Her passenger has a Canadian passport that identifies her as Angel Henandez. she also had a silenced .45 that was recently fired."

Carter rolled his eyes. "This smells like the sort of covert crap that North was up to his ears in. Get the prints off as soon as you can."

The agent nodded and left. Carter took a message blank and rapidly wrote a message, pausing a few times to refer to different pieces of paper, then handed it to his COS. "What do you think of this, Ray?"

The COS took the message. It was an update to the oprep (operational report) the admiral had sent off when Sherry first asked to land. The update gave more details, such that the pilot was a woman, her passport number, and that both occupants of the airplane were armed. It listed the registration and serial number of the T-28. What caught the COS's attention was the classification: SECRET SI NOFORN WINTEL (SI = special intelligence NOFORN = do not distribute to foreign nationals WINTEL= warning, intelligence sources and methods). "Why the classification, Admiral?"

"I don't want this one being handed about to everyone in the offices. Something funny is going on here and we had best keep a lid on until we figure out just what the story is."

The COS called radio central for a messenger. When the sailor arrived, he handed over the message form and ordered that the typed copy be brought back for proofreading.

Things got going ashore once the messages arrived. NIS agents checked the FBI files and found only a card for Sherry Anderson. No card existed for Samuel Anderson, even though he had to have been fingerprinted several times. Another agent went to the Bureau of Vital Statistics in Sherry's home state and found a birth certificate for her in the files. Though the old registers listed Sam's birth, no birth certificate existed for him. The old registers didn't have a listing for Sherry.

One of the senior agents in Suitland, MD (NIS HQ) noted that one of Sam's hobbies was shooting. He also noted that Sam had been stationed in South Carolina. Since the agent knew that SC required fingerprinting of out-of-state military who buy pistols, he dispatched an agent to check with South Carolina's Law Enforcement Division (what they call the state cops). Sure enough, there were two fingerprint cards in SLED's files. The agent faxed one of the cards to Suitland.

When the agent there compared the two, he smiled with some satisfaction. Whoever had done all this work was smart, but nothing beats legwork.

Bureaucracy can move very quickly when there is a need to. Admiral Carter had a summary of the findings so far in his hand when Sherry regained consciousness in sick bay. While he wanted to start asking questions, he waited until the doctor said it was ok to go and talk to her.

Like most post-surgical patients, Sherry looked awful. She had a catheter and a drain from the surgical site and two IV bottles going into one drip. Her eyes were open and registering her surroundings. Her first thought was "I can't be dead, I hurt too damn much."

Carter came into sick bay. Sherry saw him and instinctively tried to come to attention. "At ease, Anderson," Carter said. he had his doubts about everything until he saw her try to snap to. That told him she had been in the service for a long time. "How're you feeling, Commander?"

"I've been better, sir. Did you say `commander?'"

Carter nodded. "You were promoted to lieutenant commander effective two months ago. If you are feeling up to it, I have some questions to ask."

Sherry smiled weakly. "I'll bet you do, Admiral."

Carter turned his head slightly and motioned. Sailors brought in recording gear, both audio and a video camera and set them up. A stenographer brought a chair in and sat down. Sherry had closed her eyes while the preps were going on. Microphones were placed to pick up their words. Both Sherry and the admiral spoke for a sound level check.

Carter started the recording. "This recording was made on (he gave the date) in the sick bay of the USS Ranger. I am Rear Admiral Thomas Carter, United States Navy. I am interrogating, please state your name, rank, social security number and designator."

"Anderson, Sherry P. Lieutenant Commander, United States Navy. (She cited a social security number) with a designator of 1110."

"Are you the same officer who is known to the Bureau of Naval Personnel as Samuel P. Anderson with the same social security number and designator?"

"Yes, sir, I am."

"The last official knowledge the Navy has of you was that you were abruptly transferred from the Alwyn. Yesterday you landed aboard the USS Ranger in a T-28 registered in Costa Rica that was presumably stolen. You were flying the aircraft and had a passenger identified as Angel Hernandez who was carrying a stolen Canadian passport. Both of you were armed; among the weapons were two suppressed .45 automatics that had been recently fired. Is this a true summation?"

"Yes, sir, it is."

Carter nodded. "Let's go back to the Alwyn. I want you to tell me in as much detail as you can what transpired from then until now. As you are recovering from surgery, we will recess and reconvene as you desire."

Over the next four days, Sherry did just that. The sessions were first fairly short, then lengthened as she regained her stamina. As much as she could, she named every name she could and gave details of places. Each day a copy of the tapes was sent to Washington. To preclude any problems in customs, they were flown directly from the carrier to San Diego by C-3s. Couriers then took military flights to Andrews Air Force Base. Suitland was a short drive from Andrews.

The GPS cassette was taken to the manufacturer. They had no difficulty in extracting the course programmed in. A check with the Defense Mapping Agency confirmed that the course and altitude would have resulted in a crash.

NIS agents fanned out over the country to verify her story. The survival training, the training base, employment records, all were as Sherry said. There were some discrepancies in the details, but nobody can remember everything perfectly. Sherry had carried her latest pilot's logbook with her, the entries were verified at the airports where it was possible to do so.

One of the return flights to the Ranger brought some agents who wanted to ask more questions. When they showed some of Sherry's testimony to Angel, she told her story and her view of what had happened. The same flight brought some uniforms for Sherry, wash khakis and underwear. In five days she was starting to move around the ship a little. The steepness of the ladders were tough, yet she kept at it.

By now the investigation was being run by the Navy's Inspector General and the chief of Naval Intelligence. They took a very dim view of someone sending one of their people on what amounted to an unknown suicide mission. The NIS found a lot of resistance to their inquiries at the training base, until they showed up with some subpoenas and a US Marshal. The first person who refused them access was arrested by the Marshal; everyone else fell into line and showed the agents what they wanted to see.

It was like unravelling a sweater. Each lead led to others. By the time Sherry had been on the Ranger for two weeks, the NIS had found that a group of DIA people were recruiting TVs and TSs for clandestine missions that had a very low survival rate. Eighty had been recruited before Sherry, of whom only nine were either alive or not in a foreign prison. The six who were in prison were released by paying substantial bribes (not all of which involved money).

Bureaucracies never learn a simple lesson: destroy the files. The other intelligence agencies seized on the case as a way to shut down the operations of a group of cowboys they had long despised. Six people were in the training pipeline, two of whom had completed SRS. They were all offered discharges with considerable severance pay. The four who hadn't had surgery were given enough money to easily complete the process if they chose to.

While the other agencies were able to shut the operation down, nobody ever proved any significant illegal activities on the part of those running it. All the funds were accounted for. They had forged a lot of official records, but every intelligence agency does that at one time or another. Nobody was interested in making that a crime.

Sherry didn't see Angel again. She was quietly loaded onto a C-3 one night and flown to San Diego. Once there, she was debriefed by a team of agents. When the briefing was done, she was placed in the Witness Protection Program and was never heard from again.

Sherry rapidly gained her strength back. The carrier's engineer wanted her to grade some training exercises, but Admiral Carter vetoed that proposal. So she spent her time roaming around the ship, and found that wherever she went she was welcome. Part of her welcome was because she was friendly, part of it was because she was the only woman on a ship of six thousand men. She made a point of visiting the main machinery spaces as the engineers on a carrier are rarely recognized by outsiders for the hard work they do.

Admiral Carter called Sherry to his cabin the night before the Ranger returned to San Diego. He offered her coffee, then asked the steward to leave.

"Sherry, we have a slight problem," the admiral said.

"How so, sir?"

"As you know, the law prohibits women serving on warships. But what we have in you is a woman who has served on two combatants. There's no way to disguise that in your service record. We can change the names on the fitreps (fitness reports, the grading form for officer evaluations), but we can't change the duty assignments you've had. Anybody who looks at your record will know that something's seriously wrong.

"Now you may not know this, but under OPNAVINST (Chief of Naval Operations Instruction) 1630 transsexualism is a cause for immediate discharge."

Sherry interrupted. "I'm aware of that regulation, sir."

Carter nodded. "However, you weren't discharged when it became known you were a transsexual. You were allowed to stay in and the surgery was performed at government expense. A barely competent lawyer could argue that such funding meant that your transsexualism was acceptable to the service.

"On the other hand, we have the matter of the stolen T-28 and the killings at the San Jose airport. We could link you to the shootings and the theft of the airplane, but that could create some real embarrassment for the government. So what I'm offering you is a three-part deal. Are you interested?"

"I'm listening, Admiral."

"First we deal with the criminal charges. I'll hold Admiral's Mast and find you not guilty of theft, possession of various weapons without proper authorization, and murder. Once I clear you of those charges, you can't be tried again.

"Second, if you'll resign your commission, I am authorized to offer you a severance bonus of one hundred thousand dollars, tax free.

"Third, we have been in contact with the cargo carrier you flew for in Wisconsin. They are willing to take you back if you can show them an honorable discharge, which you will be given as part of the deal. That's the package." He sat back in his chair and waited for her response.

It took Sherry three seconds to say yes. Admiral's Mast was held in thirty minutes, with her being cleared of all the charges. Sherry was given a military ID card so she could check into the BOQ upon arrival at San Diego. The arrangement was that she had three days to buy a small wardrobe of clothes, then she would be discharged.

The T-28 was unloaded under cover of darkness at San Diego. The elderly radios in the T-28 were replaced with top of the line ones with a selection of avionics from drug-smuggler's airplanes. The engine was overhauled, hydraulic systems refurbished, and the airplane was repainted. The T-28's owner had lost a tired airplane, what he got back was one that was in show condition, so he was very happy.

Sherry made her way back to Madison, Wisconsin, and resumed flying DC-3s on night cargo runs. As for what happened after that, well, that's the subject of another story.

Part 2

He was smiling as always. The grin was a superior one, of a man who knew he had the advantage and wasn't hesitant in letting you know.

He was fast, very fast. He had his pistol out and aimed before she had hers clear of the holster. She tried to bring the nose of the .45 to bear, but her brain was screaming that it was too late, way too late. He shook his head slightly and squeezed the trigger....

The alarm woke her bolt upright. In spite of the heat of the midsummer day, Sherry was shivering. The dream was coming more frequently. She thought it was some delayed reaction to her Central American adventure, but who knew for sure?

One thing was certain, there was nobody she could talk to about it. The repercussions from her unexpected survival had torn part of the DIA apart. Nothing ever hit the papers, except a brief mention of a drug-related shootout at the San Jose airport. The training center had been shaken up, a lot of the people in the clandestine section that had recruited Sherry were shunted off to dead-end jobs to await retirement or were forcibly retired. The psychologists who were in the section certainly wouldn't want to see her again. Any other shrink would probably think she was crazy when she told the story. Best to just hope the dreams go away.

Whatever a shrink might think, it had all happened. She knew that every month when $1,500 (adjusted periodically for inflation) was deposited in her investment account. If that wasn't enough, there was the Colt Commander that was in her handbag or on her body, along with the credentials that allowed her to carry it anywhere she desired.

Sherry threw the sheet off her body and went to the bathroom to take a shower and relieve herself. While she showered, she thought about the reunion with her parents. They weren't exactly overjoyed to find their son was now a woman. They wouldn't have believed the story she told if it wasn't for Rear Admiral Carter. He had an intelligence officer go with Sherry and confirm her story. Her father hadn't said anything, he just left the room after the explainations had been given. Her mother asked for her address and phone number and said that they'd call, but to give them time. That was six months ago. They hadn't called or written, so Sherry figured that they had made their decision.

Enough. She had to be at the base in two hours to get ready for her flight. The uniform was a lot simpler than the crews of the major airlines had to wear, just a white shirt with epaulets (four stripes to indicate she was a captain), black trousers and flat lace-up shoes. She was thankful she didn't have to wear a jacket, a stupid-looking hat or makeup. The cargo containers wouldn't have been impressed, anyway.

She grabbed an overnight bag (in case they got stuck), her flight bag, handbag, and she was out the door. Sherry started her Honda and drove the fifteen miles to LaCrosse airport. It was easy enough to live a lot closer, but Sherry relished the time it took to drive, except in the winter. The drive was easy and there wasn't any problem parking at the cargo terminal. Sherry clipped on her security badge and went inside.

The flight was the same as it was yesterday and since she had returned. Sherry and Tony, the co-pilot, would fly a DC-3 from LaCrosse to Madison, then on to Rockford, Illinois and finally to Midway Airport in Chicago. At each stop they'd receive a load of cargo. The cargo would be shifted at MDW to a cargo jet and taken to a sorting facility in Tennessee. Then the jet would return to MDW and they'd fly the DC-3 back to RFD, MSN, and home to LSE. They would fly IFR down to ensure sequencing into the Chicago Terminal Control Area. If the weather was good, they'd cancel IFR after leaving the TCA and fly VFR back. The cargo volume was growing, there was some discussion recently of shifting the routes around so that RFD would be picked up by another route and the present route would start at Minneapolis. Nothing was certain so far.

The weather wasn't unusual, a chance of scattered thunderstorms but otherwise a fine night. The projected cargo weight wasn't a concern to Sherry, the cargo containers generally cubed out first (meaning they were full but not overweight).

Tony was preflighting the DC-3. After he finished, Sherry went out and spot-checked his work. While she often varied what she looked at, most often she inspected the exhaust stacks for cracks as a cracked stack could cause an in-flight fire. This particular airframe was over fifty years old. Airline captains have to retire at age 60, it was a good bet that DC-3s would be earning their keep well past that age.

Every manufacturer since 1946 has tried to make an "airplane that is as good as a DC-3." While others have replaced DC-3s in airline work, the DC-3 still flies even as the airplanes that succeeded them have been retired to museums or scrapped. The DC-3 gave Douglas a reputation for quality that lasted until the DC-10 debased it.

Sherry was fond of the DC-3. She liked the solidity of the airplane and flying it on the same route every time. Her recent adventure in South America had given her her fill of excitement for a good while. As others left the cargo airline to pursue careers with the majors, Sherry's seniority crept up. Her life was boring, and she liked it that way.

She clambered up into the cockpit, Tony followed immediately afterwards. Even with the side windows open it was hot in there. Sherry wadded up two yellow foam earplugs and inserted them. Tony didn't use earplugs yet, but she bet he would as soon as the hearing loss started showing up. Outside of the airplane two mechanics were walking the propellers, turning the engines over by hand to remove any oil from the bottom cylinders. They finished and it was time.

Engine start: Sherry primed the right engine several times and engaged the starter. She counted the propeller blades passing the cockpit, when the fifteenth one appeared she switched the magnetos on. The engine caught with the satisfying rumble of a 1,200 horsepower radial. Tony switched on the radios and set them up while Sherry busied herself starting the left engine. They now had their headsets on and were using the intercom for their checklist recitations.

It took several minutes for the oil temperatures to rise enough to permit taxiing out. Ground control had their IFR clearance: "Cleared as filed" as usual with an expected climb to 5,000' ten minutes after takeoff.

The wind was up, a fact that made taxiing the DC-3 an art. Sherry locked the tailwheel every time she could to help keep the airplane on the yellow line. The tail was very susceptible to acting as a weathervane, Sherry used differential power to counter the wind's effects.

She ran the engines up at the end of the taxiway. That made life a little interesting for a Piper Warrior's pilot who taxiied a little too closely behind the DC-3. The other pilot may have expected the DC-3 to swing across the taxiway for runup as did smaller airplanes, but the DC-3 was too big to do that without the risk of wiping out a taxiway light.

The tower granted takeoff clearance, Sherry taxiied out onto the runway and rolled forward enough to ensure the tailwheel was straight. She locked the tailwheel and added power. When the airspeed indicator showed 40 knots, she raised the tail and brought the airplane to a level attitude. Tony called the airpseeds, at the V2 speed of 84 knots, Sherry rotated (bringing the nose up) and the DC-3 stately left the runway. She called for the flaps to be brought up before reaching the limit speed.

"Gear up." Tony reached down and unlocked the mechanical latch, then he moved the gear handle to "up." The green light went out, Sherry and Tony looked out their respective windows to confirm that the gear was up. Tony moved the gear lever into the neutral position, where hydraulic system pressure held the wheels up.

The tower handed the flight off to Minneapolis Center, all routine. Sherry was flying the leg, Tony worked the radios. Minneapolis handed them off to Chicago Center, who in turn passed them along to Madison Approach Control, and then to the tower. Somebody in a Cessna 182 was making a complete hash of an instrument approach to Madison, the controllers kept trying to straighten him out and meanwhile kept the scheduled flights and the general traffic (at least the ones who did know what they were about) flowing evenly.

The cargo container was loaded with all the efficiency that the air freight company was richly famous for. The differences in starting this time were that Tony only had to roll six propeller blades before engaging the mags and that he flew to Rockford with Sherry handling the other cockpit chores. The cargo loading drill was completed in the usual amount of time and they taxiied out for the leg to Midway.

There was nothing memorable about the leg into Midway. The controllers did an efficient job sequencing the slower cargo aircraft in amongst the passenger jets. They were parked on the cargo line in order of departure, the slowest and smallest airplanes would leave first so that none of them had to hold for wake turbulence from the previous departure.

Sherry shut the engines down. It was cooler on the ramp here now that the sun had set. She and Tony went into ops to check on their load and to arrange fuel. It was all very routine.

Or it was until they were walking down a corridor to the cafeteria. A man in a suit came up and said: "Captain Anderson? His tone of voice was of one who knew who he was addressing. When Sherry nodded, he continued: "Would you come with me, please, there are some matters to discuss." He flashed an FBI badge in a way that Tony couldn't see it.

"All right," Sherry said. To Tony: "I'll catch up to you later." He shrugged and went on to find some chow. After he went around a corner, Sherry asked to see the credentials again. The agent showed them. Peter Garrison. "Am I under arrest, Mr. Garrison?"

He smiled. "No, just the opposite. We may be able to help you. Just come with me and I'll explain it all to you."

"Ok, it's your nickel." Garrison led the way to a set of office and opened the door. He went in first, Sherry followed. There was a man sitting in a chair in the office. It was Keith, the firearms instructor from the training center.

Keith stood up and extended his hand. "`Lo, Sherry, it's been awhile."

Sherry shook his hand. "Yup. I assume with the FBI agent here that this isn't a social visit?"

Garrison indicated they should sit in a conference area. It had four chairs around a small table. There were some file folders lying there. "You come right to the point, Ms. Anderson. Do you know this man?" He extracted a photo from the top file and handed it to her.

Sherry studied it for several seconds. "He looks like someone I've seen around the center, but I didn't have anything to do with him."

"His name is Jack Gullenswan, and he was at the center when you were. What he was doing is immaterial, but it was cancelled when your case blew up. He holds you responsible for it and he's apparently going to act on his beliefs."

Sherry looked at the agent wit some distain. "You want to translate that into English?"

Keith answered. "Jack's going to try to kill you."

Sherry chewed on that. "What does he know?"

"Not a hell of a lot," said Garrison. "He probably knows where you live and what you do, all of that's easy to learn. He doesn't know your history or what skills you have."

"I see. What's his area of expertise?"

Garrison looked at Keith. Keith took the hint, he handed Sherry a folder. "He's a sniper, a long-range rifleman. He's damn good, capable of hitting a target on the first shot at 800 meters. Other than that, he has some moderate skill at other weapons and unarmed combat."

"Does he have a weapon?"

Garrison nodded. "He recently purchased a Ruger rifle, chambered for .300 Winchester Magnum. He also bought an 8-power scope. He had the sight mounted and he's been to a rifle range for sighting-in and practice."

"And?"

Keith sighed. "And he's good with it. The range goes to 500 meters, he uses every damn inch. He bought some top-quality bullets and he's making his own loads. We don't know what he's shooting, but he is grouping sub-MOA, sometimes within .5."

Sherry was impressed. That meant Gullenswan could keep his shot groups inside a 2-1/2" circle at a quarter-mile. It was some shooting. "Is he still working for the government?"

"No, he resigned from the civil service two months ago," answered Garrison. "Before you ask, we're keeping an eye on him, but that's all we can do. He hasn't broken any laws and if he's careful, he won't."

Not until he actually fires at me, thought Sherry. She gestured at the file. "Can I have a copy of this?"

Garrison nodded. "You can have most of it. I'll FedEx a package to you."

Isn't that convenient, Sherry thought. She stood up. "Thanks for the information, Agent Garrison." They shook hands. She turned to Keith. "If you're up around LaCrosse anytime, stop by."

"Sure will."

Sherry left the office and went to the cafeteria. Tony was at a table with a few other pilots, he was working at a large serving of the "special of the night." She shuddered, how he was able to eat as much as he did and not put on weight was a mystery. She joined the line and picked up a bowl of soup and a salad. Tonly looked at her with some curiosity when she sat down but he said nothing.

Sherry mulled over the meeting all the way back to LaCrosse. She thought a lot of her house and how to make it hard for Gullenswan to get to her. Covering the windows was a first step, then she'd have to figure out how to minimize her exposure to the outside in other ways. The area across the street form her home was open country with some hills. If she wanted to shoot someone in her home, that'd be the place to do it. Even better, people sometimes used the land for target shooting, a gunshot wouldn't be a cause for alarm.

It was apparent that whatever the FBI wanted, they weren't going to do anything to Gullenswan until he broke the law. If she wanted to stay alive, it was up to her to think of how to do it.

Sherry found a tape measure as soon as she came home. She measured her windows and made a run to a drapery store. The saleslady seemed a little puzzled at Sherry's insistance that the curtains be light-tight, but a sale's a sale. Sherry also bought all the mounting hardware she needed to hang them on the windows that weren't already set up for curtains. It took her two days to hang them all. Then she turned the lights on in her house and went outside at night. She made adjustments in different ones until she was satisfied that nobody could see into her house.

That necessitated other changes. She had to buy grow lights so her plants wouldn't die. The air was stuffy, so she rigged frames to hold the curtains away from the open windows and yet not allow them to blow open. If she didn't work at night and sleep in the day it might have been a little too much, as it was it was like living in a cave.

She studied the material Garrison had sent to her. Outsied of telling in detail what a good shot Gullenswan was, it didn't help much. The FBI had a loose surveillance on Gullenswan, so she knew he wasn't around. That gave her a little time, she went to a sporting goods store and bought an inexpensive 8-power riflescope. She then started to cover the ground all around her house, looking at the house through the `scope. What she was trying to do was to determine where the best places to use for shooting at her house.

A noise startled her on one of her surveys, she turned around to see a 6-point whitetail buck. She didn't move, the deer looked her over but didn't run off. Sherry shifted, the deer ran off, his tail up. Sherry smiled, now she knew why Gullenswan hadn't shown up yet. He was waiting for hunting season. Nobody'd question why someone was out with a rifle then, nobody'd think anything of a shot or two.

It took several days, but Sherry soon had a rough map of possible shooting positions. One of them was what she'd choose, it had a clear view of the front and side doors from a slight rise. The range was about 400 yards. She then walked around to find a position that covered it and as many of the other areas as she could. Her plan was gelling as she walked around: She would get into position before Gullenswan did. Once he showed up and she was satisfied that he was gunning for her, then she would follow the old Code of the West: Do Unto Others Before They Do You.

What she needed was a sniper-grade rifle. She had the money but didn't have the time needed to put one together and test it out. So she called Keith and outlined her plan. He listened, said it sounded reasonable to him, and that he'd be in LaCrosse the day after tomorrow when she returned from her cargo run.

Keith showed up at the appointed time with a long silver rifle case and a smaller bag. Sherry showed him to an empty office, he laid the case on the desk and popped the latches. Sherry said "wow" in appreciation. Keith lifted the rifle out and handed it to her. It was an M-21 sniper rifle, a highly accurate M-14 with a Leatherwood scope. The sight itself was the heart of the rifle, it adjusted the elevation for the drop of the bullet. The case contained several hundred rounds of ammunition and spare magazines.

Keith cleared his throat. "I know you won't be engaging in any firefights, but you might want to go do some practicing."

Sherry smiled. "It's a beauty." Then she turned serious. "I think I know what Gullenswan's plan is." She outlined her belief that he'd be in the area during whitetail season and try to shoot her then.

Keith listened and nodded. "It makes sense. I'm guessing that you plan to be able to stop him?"

Sherry nodded. "From what I know the police can't do a damn thing until he breaks the law. And if what I'm suspecting is right, he won't until he shoots. That's too late to do my ass any good."

"True, but don't forget that he's a better shot wih a rifle than you are, and he has a rifle capable of longer range than you'll be able to use the M-21 effectively. It'll shoot accurately out to 900 yards, but you'd be kidding yourself if you try to go much over 400. And if you miss your first shot, he might nail you.

"And one other thing: Get a good pair of binoculars for spotting. Don't use the riflescope for anything except target acquisition. If you use a riflescope for spotting, someone else might see that as an unfriendly act and react accordingley."

"Good idea," Sherry said.

Sherry started spending some time at a rifle range. After she verified the sight's settings and became familiar with the rifle, she stopped using the bench rest and began practicing other shooting positions, especially prone and kneeling. Standing wasn't going to be much use to her, but she did shoot it enough to know how. The rifle had a Harris bipod which added to the weight but made prone shooting a lot easier.

One conclusion she reached was that estrogen had cut into her strength quite a bit. No doubt that Sam wouldn't have had anyhwere near as much trouble handling the weight of a loaded M-21. She regretted briefly that Keith hadn't given her a AR-15A2HB to save a few pounds. But she didn't expect to be humping the boonies with the M-21 if things worked according to her plan.

The FBI watch on Gullenswan was able to tip her off when he began his trip towards LaCrosse. Sherry then went into her plan. She drove her car to the airport and made sure she was seen boarding a commercial flight to Chicago. This flight stopped at Madison (like her cargo run), where she slipped off the airplane. a trusted friend met her at the airport and drove her back to LaCrosse with the arrival planned for 3am. The last part of the drive to her house and away were done with the lights off. Sherry changed into her fighting clothes grabbed her gear: rifle, equipment, shelter half, clothing, food, and water. She then donned a pair of night-vision goggles and headed for her position.

It was cold at night and Sherry was thankful her gear was up to it. She was set in a natural depression near the top of a hill about 800 yards from her house, it covered several of the shooting positions she had scouted out. Now it was a matter of waiting.

Whitetail season started the next day, sporatic gunfire could he heard as soon as the sun came up and legal shooting commenced. Sherry checked out every movement she could see, a fair number of hunters were either stand-hunting or still-hunting. Most of them had on blaze-orange coats and hats, which made spotting them easier. A couple looked like Gullenswan but none of them appeared to be doing anything else than deer hunting. She did see one hunter shoot a 4-point buck two hours into opening day, the deer ran about 50 yards and collapsed. It was a well-placed shot. The hunter field-dressed the deer and dragged it out to the road.

She saw him on the third day, or thought she had. Sherry was using the night-vision goggles and saw someone pick their way towards one of the shooting positions at 5am. She tried to see him through the riflescope but it was too damn dark. The man settled in, then she couldn't see him. Damn, she thought, I'm just going to have to wait for daylight.

Now she had to keep very quiet, for it was dead calm. If she made any noise she'd have to assume that whoever it was there would hear her. While the dedicated hunters tried to be in their stands before dawn, few were in the woods this early.

Dawn brought a major disappointment, she couldn't see the man, not very well at least. There was enough to say that someone was there, she could occaisionally see some movement. But she couldn't see who was there, not enough to make a positive ID. Sherry wasn't about to shoot someone just for being in a suspicious place. She'd just have to wait. Maybe when he left his stand.

The problem there was that he didn't leave that night. Sherry wanted to move so she'd have a better view of the hunter, but she didn't trust her woodsman skills enough to move and carry her gear without making any noise, certainly not in the dark. This was going to get old very fast, and she was playing his game.

The next morning brought no change in the situation. Any doubts that it was Gullenswan there vanished when a ten-point buck walked by less than 100 yards from his position. That was a large deer, any legitimate hunter would have shot at it. But the hunter there didn't. Now Sherry was sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was her intended killer, but the same problem remained: she couldn't see a decent target through the riflescope. If Gullenswan was a good as they said he was, then she had to connect on the first try.

Sherry was right: It was Gullenswan down there. He had spotted her car in the employee's parking lot at the cargo terminal, so he figured that she was on a run. He knew that she flew night runs and got back soon after dawn. His plan was to use the first morning as a dry run, to make sure that the position was a good one and he could acquire the target. But now it was the second morning and there was no sign of the target.

Something had to be wrong, but he didn't believe that she had been spooked. A private detective had done a bit of surveillance a few weeks ago, nothing was unusual then. He wished that he had the resources of the official jobs for this one, rather than the unofficial contacts that were paying for him now.

He watched his surroundings for awhile. As far as he could tell, there was no surveillance. Few cars drove by, but they didn't stop or slow down. They weren't the same cars, either. What air traffic flew overhead was clearly going to the LaCrosse airport. He didn't see any sign of anyone around him watching, but he kew that meant little if the watcher was good.

Maybe her airplane had broken down somewhere else. The only DC-3s he had seen recently were in latin America and he wasn't impressed by their reliablity. For now, he'd wait this out. He had adequate supplies for a few days and the weather, while cold at night, wasn't anywhere near as bad as some other jobs he had been on. Certainly nothing like the Baltics in February.

Nothing happened for two days. Then one afternoon, both Gullenswan's and Sherry's attention were drawn to her house. A car slowed down and stopped at the mailbox. Two riflescopes were trained on it. It was her car. Sherry watched as a woman got out, pulled the mail out, and got back into the car. Sherry recognized her, it was Marsha Frye, the maintenance librarian. What the hell was she doing, Sherry wondered.

Gullenswan wasn't wondering. The woman was driving the target's car. She was the right height and hair color. Marsha got back into the car before he decided to fire. She drove into the driveway and shut the car off. Marsha picked up the mail and walked around the front of the car towards the back door. he had a few seconds and he used them; he fired when she was about four feet from the side of the house.

Sherry jumped when she heard the shot. Through the scope on her rifle she saw Marsha's arms go flying, scattering the accumulated mail everywhere. Marsha collapsed, her momentum and the bullet caused her to fall towards the house. All Sherry could see in her scope was Marsha's body from the waist down. She wasn't moving.

Sherry stifled the urge to run down, all that would do is get her killed. She cursed her lack of foresight in not bringing a cellular phone, that way she could stay concealed and call for help. Her only option was to wait and hope that if Marsha wasn't dead, that she didn't die from inattention.

From Gullenswan's view, all he could see of his target was her legs. Nothing moved for twenty minutes, so he got up and started to make his way towards the target to verify the kill. He was very alert for any sounds or changes. He didn't think that he was under surveillance, the police wouldn't have let someone lie there shot. It was more a force of habit than anything conscious.

Sherry saw him break cover. He moved through an area that was fairly thick with trees and brush, she tracked him, adjusting her `scope to compensate for the changes in range. There was no wind, she was thankful for that. If he didn't come to a clear area, she'd shoot him when he crossed the road to the house.

Gullenswan was moving slowly. Sherry kept her breathing regular to control any excitement which could throw her shot off. She knew that she'd only get one chance with him. If she missed, then she'd be playing his game. And he was a master.

The cover was lessening. She took up the slack on the trigger, adding pressure as the sight was on, holding if it wasn't or if Gullenswan wasn't clear. Just like a range, she thought. Keep a good sight picture....WHAM!

Gullenswan felt the bullet hit him before he heard the shot. The impact staggered him, but he stayed on his feet and tried to run for cover. Who the fuck could that be, a corner of his mind wondered.

Sherry reacted and fired again. This time she saw him go down, losing control of his rifle, which landed several feet away. She watched for five minutes, then she broke cover. She didn't move as slowly as Gullenswan. She checked him out from several feet away. His eyes were open and had an opaque look to them that she had seen on dead deer. Just to be sure she took the bolt from his rifle and threw it as far as she could, the rifle she flung in another direction.

Now she was running to the house. A semi blew its horn in annoyance as she cut in front of it. She slid to a stop and checked Marsha, she was still breathing. Sherry bolted into the house and called Keith's emergency number. Whoever took the call said he'd get help there, she was to sit tight.

Help came quickly, a helicopter from the local truama center landed across the road in ten minutes. By then Sherry had taken some Saran Wrap and used it to seal Marsha's chest wound, then she covered her with a few blankets and held her hand.

The EMTs had Marsha on the helicopter in less than a minute. Sherry didn't think to tell them about Gullenswan until the helicopter was over a mile away.

She did tell the cops who showed up, one checked him and said he was dead, but they called for an ambulance anyway. They asked her where the man's gun was, it took them an hour to find it and longer to find the bolt. The cops wanted to know if he had shot marsha, but were distinctly uninterested in who had shot Gullenswan. Her rifle was still lying on the walk next to where Marsha had been. Nobody even picked it up to check if it had been fired.

Somebody had things pretty well arranged.

As soon as the cops left, Sherry picked up the scattered mail and her rifle. She went inside and took a long, luxurious bath, enjoying the feel of the water taking away the accumulated filth and stink of living outside for several days. When she was done, she let the water run down the drain, then she took a shower to remove any film that was on her body.

Next she took care of the rifle, breaking it down and cleaning the bore and the chamber. It was indeed a fine rifle and it had done its part. Then she got dressed to go to the hospital. She remembered a lesson a man had once given her: the staff'll treat you better if you look as though you're on a similar level professionally. So she wore her navy blue suit and a white blouse, her interview suit, along with medium-height navy pumps. Most interview suits, however, didn't conceal a snub-nosed .38 as hers did.

She could see some bloodstains on the sidewalk when she went out to her car. Those would have to be cleaned, but she wasn't relishing the job. Marsha was an innocent in the incident, it was unfair that she had to suffer for it. Sherry had felt a little bad about her first two kills, especially the second man, but she had no twinge at all about killing Gullenswan. If anything, she wished he had suffered a little more.

The drive didn't take very long, about thirty minutes. Sherry found a space in the vistor's lot and went into the main entrance. The volunteer on the front desk, an elderly woman in her early 70s, used a computer terminal to ascertain that Marsha Frye was in the operating room, she directed Sherry to the appropriate waiting area.

Sherry didn't make it there, not just yet. A woman with an FBI badge intercepted her and steered her to an office suite. Sherry took Keith's presence there as validation that the people were who they said they were.

Keith came over, touched her on the shoulder, and said: "Nice shooting for a girl." He said it in such a way that Sherry could take no offense. Sherry just smiled. "I'd like to introduce Patricia Altan, the agent who brought you here, Justin Hagar of the DIA and Terri Schiller of the CIA."

Sherry nodded. "Ok, what's up?" What now, she thought. She found a place to sit.

Schiller took the floor. "What we need to do is several things. First, we need to conduct a debriefing. Then we need to go over a cover story that'll hold water. After that, we need to discuss some other loose ends."

First, the debriefing. They had Sherry tell them the whole chain of events, from when she left her apartment to go to Madison until she came to the hospital. As could be expected, different details emerged as they went over it until they were satisfied that Sherry told everything she knew. Hagar seemed to be a little skeptical of her unwillingness to fire until she was positive it was Gullenswan, but Altan finally mentioned that if she had shot the wrong person that they couldn't have covered for her.

The second issue was the cover story. Like any good lie, it had to be as close to the truth as possible. The final version was that Sherry had taken off for Madison on a short vacation. She had run into a friend and since neither one was having much fun, they came home. Her friend had dropped her off at her house and Sherry just vegged out for a few days. Sherry had finally called Marsha and asked her to bring her car by, Marsha did so and was hit by a stray round from a hunter. Sherry had not heard the car arrive so she was unaware that Marsha had been shot for at least a half-hour.

Sherry wasn't too enthusiastic about it. As she put it: "The cops and the paramedics saw me. Most people don't wait inside their home for a visitor wearing camouflage clothing and carrying a sniper rifle. Hell, if they were ten feet away, they probably could smell me."

Hagar thought about it. "Yeah, we may be getting too detailed on the story. Let's just say she was hit by a stray bullet fired by a hunter. That's close enough as we all know that Gullenswan wasn't trying to kill her personally. If she survives, then there won't be a lot of press interest anyway."

"Fine," Sherry said with little enthusiasm. It sounded weak to her, but then again, people getting hit by stray rounds wasn't exactly front-page news this time of year.

"Ok," Schiller said. "That takes part of the immediate problem. Now, what do we do to preclude a repeat?"

"What are you talking about a `repeat,'" Sherry asked somewhat stridently. "How many vengeful snipers do you have out there, for God's sake?" She looked right at Hagar.

"I suppose I'd better explain what's going on."

"Damn right," muttered Sherry.

"What we have," he began, "is a group of people who have manipulated the programs to benefit themselves. In plain language, they used the system to make a lot of money. The people wo run black programs have a wide range of latitude to get the job done. They don't have a lot of oversight, because any outside auditor would have to be read into the program and know the whole scope of it. So in effect we mainly hope the people running the programs don't get too greedy.

"That didn't happen with the program you were in. Some people decided to steal everything they could. We were becoming suspicious and were working to catch them when you showed up on that aircraft carrier. Then we quickly shut everything down and went after the profiteers."

"So where do I fit in now, and why did Gullenswan want to kill me?"

"As I said, you were the reason we shut them down. Gullenswan had a finger in the pie, so he wasn't too happy."

"How much did he take out of it?"

Hagar looked a little discomfited. "He was a minor player in the different scams, we figure he netted about two-fifty over three years."

"`Two-fifty' what?"

"Thousand."

"Not bad. I take it there were others who did far better?"

"Yes."

"Do they hold me responsible for screwing up their action?"

"Hard to say. We really don't know."

"How were they taking money out of the program?"

"I don't see where you have a need to know that."

Sherry shook her head. "You didn't answer my second question, either: Where do I fit in. So I think you need me for something, otherwise most of you wouldn't be here. I'm not one of your operatives, I'm just a private citizen. If you want me in on this, then tell me the story. Otherwise I'm out. Understand?"

Nobody said anything. Sherry nodded, stood up, and started for the door. She didn't look back as she left the office.

The receptionist at the waiting room told Sherry that Marsha was still in the OR. Sherry knew something about survival rates, so she took that as a hopeful sign, she settled in for a long wait.

This is all there is of this story