Joey & The Flying Machine Pt. III (2021) by Yoteicon92

Joey & The Flying Machine Pt. III (2021)

Yoteicon92, Adventure, Alaska, B-25, Boeing, C-121, C-97, Convair, DC-3, DC-6, DC-7, DOUGLAS, Doberman, Florida, Flying, Husky, L-1049, Malamute, New York, Propeller, Propliner, Wolf, accident, aircraft, arizona, aviation, constellation, friends, lockheed, michigan, ohio

Joey Paulo continues his adventures with his air cargo company. Facing a logistical exigency, and wanting to do his part in helping to end the pandemic, Freightmaster embarks on the delicate, precarious adventure in safely transporting vaccines aboard their legacy propliners~

Joey & The Flying Machine Pt. III

Prologue:

Freightmaster Systems International was the end product of the merger between elements of the Paulo Firearms Company, and Freightmaster Logistics, an Opa-Locka based air cargo service. In the nearly five years since, the company had grown to become a well known powerhouse on the eastern and southern shores of the United States, and among the many island nations that dotted the Caribbean. Their fleet of aging propeller driven airliners turned heads wherever they showed up; the hacking, droning, burble of oil spewing radial engines getting product to and from. From auto parts, to fresh produce, to medicines, and parcel overflow from the postal service, Freightmaster carried them aboard their vintage propliners from sunup to sundown.

On one end of the merger was Joey Paulo. A bit of a latecomer to the aviation field, Joey, a Brazilian born Doberman, only got his pilot's license at age 32. His entry into the aviation world was spurred by a freak accident; a semi-truck hauling ammunition from his company's Missouri based ammunition plant, exploded on the interstate, after a multi-car pileup started an uncontrolled fire. The aviation wing of the Paulo Firearms Company began with a single Super Constellation, a 1957 L-1049H. The curvaceous old Lockheed that spent years collecting dust in an obscure aviation museum in Utah. Joey got it patched up with a fresh coat of paint, and began flying company ammunition to its distribution center in Nevada. In a stroke of good luck, another company asked if they could have their ammunition and gun parts hauled aboard the Connie, christened "Clipper Alvin Paulo". It began the growth of the aviation wing. Needing more capacity, Joey sought another propliner, obtaining an ex Pan-Am DC-7C "Seven Seas". Christened "Clipper Jose Paulo" after his elderly grandfather, the two old birds began the great expansion, as more aircraft were acquired. Soon ex-military C-118A's, and more Constellations, wore the colors of the Paulo Firearms Company.

On the other side of the merger was Freightmaster Logistics, a long time "old guard" of the Opa-Locka Executive Airport. Founded in 1951 by war veteran, Harold Tanager, Freightmaster, over the course of several decades, made a name for itself with its no-frills, contract, and scheduled air cargo services. It flew all over Florida, the southeastern United States, and Caribbean, with a fleet of Douglas DC-3's, and later DHC-6 Twin Otters. The company passed hands from Harold, to his son Lloyd, and then to grandson, Kurt Tanager. In 2016, the company suffered its first fatal accident; a Twin Otter suffered an explosive engine failure on landing. Losing control, the Twin Otter struck a hangar and was destroyed, killing the flight crew. The crash revealed major structural issues with Freightmaster's fleet, caused by a third-party maintenance contractor's shoddy workmanship. At the same time, the Paulo Firearms Company was dealing with a major national scandal, after one of their rifles was used in a mass shooting that killed fifty people at a gay nightclub in Florida. Customers fled, and cargo quickly vanished.

Having met at this juncture, Joey and Kurt joined forces, and thus created "Paulo-Freightmaster". Their image improved, and customers soon flocked to putting cargo on the old piston pounders. A series of fortunate (or unfortunate) events that followed brought the ascendancy of Paulo-Freightmaster; from 2017 through 2019, there were massive destructive hurricanes that tore through the Caribbean, heavily damaging Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas. The ability to haul large amounts of cargo, using small airports, proved Freightmaster's worth with their aging propliners. Every day, critical supplies were flown in around the clock, on the wings of Freightmaster. DC-3's, DC-4's, DC-6's, DC-7's, Constellations, and Convairliners, provided a lifeline to heavily damaged island nations and their inhabitants. Money flowed, and the company invested in its own maintenance facilities and restoration shops to keep their motley fleet in the air. By 2019, Joey dropped his last name from the company, and reverted to its original 1970's name, "Freightmaster Systems International".

Despite 2020's bleakness; a global pandemic, a global economic downtown as one of the stochastic ripple effects of Coronavirus, Freightmaster chugged on. Business slowed down a bit at the beginning, but as critical medical supplies were needed in hard hit places like New York? Freightmaster came flying in, on the burbling silver wings of those old piston airliners.

Enter 2021.

Joey & The Flying Machine Pt. III

The morning sky was a blaze of orange and amber in Anchorage. Over the snowcapped, rugged peaks to the east, the brilliant sun cast its colors on the pristine white, snowy landscape. The dawn air was brisk, with a noticeable bite to it, as the fluttering wind carried glistening little crystals of powdery snow with it. On the second day of the new year, business carried on as usual at the Ted Stevens International Airport. Flights arrived and departed, with the muffled howls of turbofans piercing the morning calm. On the ramps, a few jets taxied on by, and fuel and cargo trucks rumbled about for their morning tasks.

At one end of the airport, Tharp Aviation dominated. A big time player in the Alaskan and Canadian markets, Tharp prepared for their daily cargo runs. Their sixty-five plane fleet of L-188C Electra III's, and L-382 Hercules transports, all adorned in their white, dark green, and silver markings, were prepared for their scheduled cargo runs. The ramp was bustling with activity as fuel trucks went down the line topping up tanks for the long flights ahead. A few onlookers stood and watched as Tharp's ground crew prepared an old Super Constellation they had helped restore, for its ferry flight back to its new home in Ohio.

Gleaming in the amber light stood an old 1954 Lockheed L-1049E. Her spidery, tall landing gear, curvaceous fuselage, and wide triple-finned tail, made her stand out on the flight line. The gracefully tapered wings held the tightly cowled radial engines. Four Curtiss-Wright R-3350 turbocompound radials were connected to a set of flat-tipped, three-blade Curtiss Electric propellers, polished to a mirror like shine, and sporting black deicing boots. The polished up fuselage sported an orange and beige cheatline which ran to the tail. The cowls sported a scalloped orange outlined in beige design. The name "The Paulo Firearms Company" was written above the cheatline in orange Helvetica. The nose bore a black outlined, golden yellow arrow insignia that read "WHIN" in bold black letters that spelled out "Were Here In Newark!". It bore the company's speeding bullet logo. Behind the cockpit windows bore the aircrafts nickname, "Golden Nugget". Beneath that in small black letters read "In Memoriam: Michael G. Wells 1923-1995", in dedication of the plane's former owner. Aside from a different title, it was almost the original paint scheme that the aircraft wore way back in 1963, as part of the long since extinct "Excalibur Cargo Company" that Michael Wells once operated.

The company had gone out of business in 1975, the victim of a hostile takeover. As the company fell apart, the L-1049E was left abandoned at a small airfield in the extreme north of Alaska. For forty-two years she sat with two other abandoned airframes in the Arctic, until they were happened upon in 2017. Joey Paulo, aspiring aviator looking for more rare propliners to add to his fleet of cargo planes, took it upon himself to bring the old Connie out of the cold. He got with friends and in a bold move, went to try and patch the plane up and ferry it out of the airfield. The endeavor nearly killed all of them. They had run behind schedule, and just as severe weather began to loom, their lifeline back to Anchorage, a C-130K, crashed on landing. In great desperation, as a ferocious blizzard began to set in, the old and tired Connie made her first flight in four decades, limping them back home on three engines. After three years of work conducting repairs by Tharp Aviation, "Nugget" was ready for the long flight back to her new home in Ohio, to be refitted as a plush company plane for Paulo Firearms.

Under watchful eyes, engine number three began to start. Urged by its whining starter motor, the big propeller began to turn. From the co-pilot's cockpit windows, Rob Barion poked his head out and watched as he counted the blades. After several rotations, the engine caught; with a roar of oily blue smoke, cold cylinders chugged to life as the R-3350 turned over. Smoke erupted from the exhaust stubs, with a rush of fire at the end. The engine ran at low power while it warmed up. The wolf-hybrid gave a thumbs up in the cockpit for engine four to turn over. His mechanic Vlado, at the flight engineer station, engaged the starter for engine four, and watched his gauges. It too turned over in a hacking cough of smoke.

In the captain's seat sat Joey Paulo himself. A black and tan Doberman, the thirty-eight year old Joey went through a final glance at his flight plans and paperwork. He reached over to make a few adjustments to the instrumentation on the dash, and set the GPS navigation into the new digital autopilot. He then stowed his clipboard away, in the pouch behind his seat. He had a long flight back to Ohio; from Anchorage, they'd fly down and refuel in Everett Washington, then fly non-stop to Chicago to refuel at Midway, and finally back to home base, the Newark-Heath airport.

"Alrighty! Looks good here!" Vlado spoke over the intercom. "Oil pressure is coming up- everything looking good."

Joey glanced over his shoulder at the engines idling on his port side. Those big Curtiss propellers glistened like glass as the morning sun flickered off them. The radials had warmed up and the rough chug smoothed out to a purr. The airframe felt alive as it vibrated and rumbled. "Port engines look good."

"Starboard looks good." Rob nodded. "Well, captain Joey?"

"I say we're go for flight."

Releasing the brakes, the Super Connie began to slowly taxi. The brakes squeaked as Joey gingerly taxied the old Lockheed slowly, down the flight line, following the markings on the tarmac. As he slowly began to turn, he spotted the Tharps standing and taking photos. Randy Sr., his wife Linda, and their son Randy Jr., all gray and white Alaskan malamutes, waved goodbye. Joey smiled for the camera and waved with Rob as they taxied on by. They were soon met by two other Constellations; Rob's "Thing One", and "Thing Two". Painted in their original USAF "white-top" markings, the two short-nosed C-121A's carried spare parts with them, for the journey back to Ohio. Staying in contact with each other, Joey and Rob radioed formation plans with the other Constellations, as they inched closer to the runway.

"Nugget" stopped to let traffic takeoff, giving Joey a chance for a final check through all his instrumentation with Vlado. With clearance for takeoff, Vlado inched the throttles slowly, and Joey cranked the nose wheel steering to slowly turn onto the runway. He immediately commanded maximum power. All four radials roared to life as the lightly loaded, stripped out Constellation began its takeoff roll. It rapidly gained speed and took off after a run of just two thousand feet. Joey's new L-1049E, climbed away into the brisk morning sunlight, ready to begin a very long journey back home with her primary and backup crew. "Thing One" and "Thing Two" gracefully lifted off a few minutes later to join up for the formation flight.

Climbing to eleven thousand feet, Joey engaged the autopilot and relaxed at his seat. The cockpit was quiet as everyone took in the scenery as "Nugget" traversed the rugged Alaskan and Canadian coast. Joey leaned over to admire the scenery from his window, watching as the frigid Pacific ocean lapped against the Canadian shores. In the distance, snowcapped mountains rose into the clear blue sky. Joey held his phone up and took a picture of it. He listened to the monotonous radial song and watched the Curtiss propellers etch silvery circles in the cold air outside. The exhaust stubs of the engine's turbines spewed a steady stream of cherry red flames, with a hint of blue and yellow that flickered through the red. He drifted off and watched the scenery for what felt like an eternity, until the radio crackled to life with Rob staying in touch and checking in with an ATC station in British Columbia, getting an update for the altimeter. The Doberman glanced over to Rob leaning in and making an adjustment to the instrumentation, and acknowledging the change. The radio soon went silent.

"Good to be back at the controls again, eh?" Joey smiled at his husband, who glanced over at him. Rob had spent most of 2020 grounded after a serious accident left him bedridden for months. Joey got a grunted "yeah" from Rob.

"What flying I did last year wasn't really trips of pleasure..." Rob said in a disgruntled sort of way as he glanced out his side of the cockpit, to watch one of the C-121's in formation.

"To and from Akron." Chuckled the Doberman.

"Don't remind me~"

"Heh."

Rob pursed his lips and gave them a smack. "It's just more of the same- same shit, different year, Joey."

"Sadly." Joey agreed. "The first half of the year is going to suck, that's for certain... but I have a feeling we'll see some improvements later this year."

"We'll see. Remember? Just a couple weeks with a lockdown and it'll go away..." Rob rolled his eyes. "Fucking idiots. I've never felt this disappointed in others ever before."

"Oh I know that feeling..." Joey chuckled a bit and gave his eyes a roll as well. "But you and me got a mission with getting these vaccines around!"

"If the government doesn't fuck this one up." Laughed Rob cynically. "No vaccine reserve, despite saying there was one, and flying at the seat of your pants, bullshit it out as you go, kind of leadership instills zero confidence in me that Centoh, or Freightmaster is going to pull off vaccine transportation."

"Not to mention the logistics of keeping such stuff cold. Me and Kurt are working on that as we speak."

"Dry ice is a bitch."

"But that's just part of the challenge!" Joey laughed. "And a nice chunk of change in the coffer~"

"Good point~" Rob shrugged. "Maybe if we're lucky- we'll help unfuck part of this year."

"At least the dumpster fire of the Orange Julius will be over on the twentieth..."

"Thank god. In about three weeks, this fucker goes out to pasture."

"Or to prison." Joey grinned playfully. "Do I smell tax fraud?"

"Heh~" smiled Rob.

After four hours, "Nugget" arrived to its first stop, in Everett, where she was inspected over and refueled. Taking off again, Joey handed control over to their relief crew, composed of Felix Barion and his friend Ivo Horvat, and Jordan Hoover, to pilot the Connie on her second leg of the journey, to Chicago. It gave Joey a chance to take a break.

Stepping out of the cockpit with Rob and Vlado, Joey entered the crew quarters, a space between the cockpit and what would be the cabin. The bulkhead had a couple bunks and a small desk where a navigator had once sat at. Everything looked faded and worn from years of use, the walls dingy with faded and chipping gray paint. Vlado climbed up to the top bunk to take a nap, while Rob went to use the bathroom. Joey stood in the bulkhead, glancing down the empty, spartan fuselage of the narrow Connie. The floor was made up of planks of magnesium with attachment points for tie-downs. The walls were just as faded and beat up as the crew cabin. Sunlight filtered through the windows on either side of the walls. Joey nodded and envisioned the executive cabin he planned on fitting in once further work was completed in Ohio. It would one day serve the Paulo Firearms Company for its transportation needs.

Stretching and yawning, the Doberman turned around to find his spot on the lower bunk. It was basically a cot that was attached to the wall, made of green fabric. He adjusted the fluffy pillow and laid out on his back. He was soon accompanied by Rob, who laid down beside him for a nap. Joey closed his eyes with a smile; he felt content about his newest propliner.

Rickenbacker International Airport was one of Freightmaster's two operating hubs. It served as a major distribution point, and maintenance facility for their fleet, along with their southern hub at Opa Locka. On a chilly Friday morning, with the morning sky softly tinted like pastel colors, work commenced as usual on the flight line.

Bundled against the cold, Joey stood on the flight line, observing his big C-97G. The bulbous, silver, Boeing served as the company's "parts hauler", shuttling workers, and spare parts between its operating bases. It performed valuable yeoman work behind the scenes. Christened "The Silver Bullet Express", the old Boeing was all natural metal, with its original 1960's USAF livery stenciled on its polished skin. It had a deep, almost double-lobed fuselage, with a unique "greenhouse" style set of cockpit windows, and a rounded nose that bore a faired on radome that was painted matte black. It's long, thick wings held four R-4360 Wasp Majors; with twenty-eight cylinders each, the massive radials were tightly cowled in their massive, oil and soot stained nacelles. Each radial was hooked up to a set of four-blade Hamilton Standard propellers, which were left dull and unpainted, with black deicing root cuffs. Yellow tips gave a splash of color to an otherwise drab plane. Joey watched as cargo was being loaded by a forklift, and a fuel truck pumped fresh 100LL avgas into its wing tanks.

Another forklift rumbled by Joey, carrying a crated up radial engine. His cargo load for Opa Locka were several R-1830 and R-2000 Twin Wasp radial engines, having just come from overhaul. A set of landing gear components for a DC-7C were hoisted aboard, as were a few sets of propeller blades for a C-54 brought inside the fuselage. Lastly, some overload freight, from a UPS contact, were lifted aboard. The cargo door was sealed shut, and fueling was completed shortly afterwards.

Joey met up with his flight crew, which he was borrowing from Centoh Intermodal. His friends, Vlad, and Kalash Tokarev, two gray furred Russian huskies, would be flying with him, as was his personal mechanic, Vlado Horvat, a burly gray Croatian wolf. Vlado was flying with them to monitor Kalash, who was soloing as the flight engineer, having recently gotten his type rating for the old Boeing. Lastly, arriving with his video gear, was Maverick Tokarev, the youngest brother, at thirty-six. He climbed up the wobbly airstair with his rolling suitcase full of his video gear for a promo he was shooting for Freightmaster. Everyone else followed behind, and the airstair was pulled away, and the forward hatch sealed.

"Fly me into the ground!" laughed Vlad as he took his seat to the right. Joey scooted around his seat and sat down, momentarily setting his flight checklist on the instrumental panel as he buckled himself in. The Stratofreighter's cockpit was spacious and roomy, verses the tapered, cramped cockpit of the Constellation. Joey and Vlad went through their instrumentation and powered the aircraft up, it's turbine APU in the tail whistling away. Joey went through the checklist as Vlad called out various indicator lights, and switches. Joey checked them off one by one and signed off at the bottom.

"Let's get ready for engine start."

"Gotcha!" Kalash called out as he looked over his panel, which was studded with hundreds of gauges, dials, switches, and indicator lights that glowed. He checked over the fuel system, switched the magnetos over, and engaged the starter for engine three. Vlad glanced out his cockpit windows to watch the propeller begin to turn. The starter engaged and slowly turned the prop as the motor whined with a straining sound. It took half a minute to start, as cold cylinders began to pop and register life. The big Pratt and Whitney took a bit of effort to get all twenty-eight cylinders firing. A sputtering of oily smoke was immediately followed by an eruption of white smoke as the engine finally caught. Rough, chugging cylinders coughed pulses of smoke as the radial was slowly warmed up at idle power. Engine four was soon turned over, and the process repeated. A quartette of Wasp Majors resonated off the pavement, with a deep, raspy burble. The cabin was filled with the roar of radial song. Joey adjusted his headset and microphone piece. He released the brakes and grabbed hold of the nose wheel steering unit, a wheel with a grip.

With a burst of power, the Boeing began to taxi, slowly turning to Joey's command as they taxied out for the runway. Getting in the morning queue, Joey taxied behind one of his C-118A's, enroute to New York City. Ahead of it was a Convair 340, destined for Chicago. Both planes were painted in the now obsolete "Paulo-Freightmaster scheme", designed by his nephew as "Royal Paulo Blue" back in 2016. The C-118 had a fading blue cheatline that was outlined in dark gold, with an artistic "feather wing" design that bore the company insignia on the nose. The aircraft were destined to be repainted in the new, planned scheme, once they went out of service for their scheduled IRAN. Joey also took note of a C-123K taxiing in, one of Rob's Centoh "parts-haulers". Bare metal with a dayglo orange nose, tail, and outer wings, the prop and jet equipped Provider was most likely arriving with a couple overhauled engines for Joey's Rickenbacker facility.

One by one, the propliners took off with their morning cargo load. The old Convairliner and Douglas slowly rumbled into the air, climbing away slowly to begin their journey. Turning the nose wheel steering, Joey slowly crawled onto the runway and stopped for a final check of instrumentation. Engines idled as Kalash and Vlado went through their gauges to find everything nominal for the old Boeing. With an all clear, Kalash grasped his quartette of throttles and commanded maximum power, watching as he engaged the mercury. The entire cabin was deafened by the roar of propellers as the four Wasp Majors revved up to maximum power. "The Silver Bullet Express" began its takeoff roll down the 10,000 foot runway, slowly building up speed as it raced down the centerline. Very slowly, Joey nudged back on the yoke and began to feel the nose wheel grow buoyant, then lift off the pavement, followed by the main wheels. Heavily loaded down with cargo and fuel, the C-97 slowly got off the runway and climbed away, leaving a noticeable exhaust plume behind.

"Opa Locka, here we come!" Joey called as he flipped the lever for the gear to retract. Vlad slowly retracted the flaps, and the Boeing settled down for a low altitude flight over Ohio. It would take a bit of time for enough fuel to burn off, to begin climbing for some altitude. Joey didn't want to overstrain the engines. Flying south at a few thousand feet, Joey took the time to admire the scenery, while the Boeing passed over southern Ohio. The foothills of the Appalachians were bare, the woodland naked. Joey liked winter for that reason; he could admire all the little hidden scenery that was otherwise covered by a canopy of green during the summer. He just didn't care for the cold. The morning sun that rose over the foothills cast long shadows over the farmland and little towns that passed beneath them.

Almost an hour in, they burned off enough fuel to begin climbing slowly. Joey set the autopilot for the proper heading, and climbed slowly to ten thousand feet, where they leveled off. The sky was clear and bright blue, with just some distant clouds to their west and south. Releasing the yoke, Joey leaned back in his seat and could finally relax some more.

"Controls are a little heavier than the DC-6~" Vlad pointed out.

"Yeah, this is more of a truck, like the Constellation. It's a bit of a brute on the controls." Joey nodded. He glanced back at Kalash and Vlado, taking notice of Maverick venturing into the cockpit with his 35mm camera.

"I personally think the Douglas transports handle smoother than the Lockheed or this Boeing." Kalash shrugged. "The Lockheed's aesthetics are unchallenged, but I like flying the DC-6 a lot more."

"A lot nicer engines..." Vlado chuckled cynically.

"What? I thought you liked R-4360's?" grinned the Doberman with a snort. Vlado just shook his head.

"You better start those engines right or all fifty-six spark plugs get fucked up!" the wolf exclaimed. "Then I have to bust my knuckles changing the motherfuckers out!"

"Two-hundred and twenty four spark plugs!" Joey reminded, only to be flipped off by the middle aged wolf.

"One thing I'll say is that I like the flight engineer panel on the DC's so much better than this monstrosity." Kalash commented as he watched the engine gauges. "I can barely reach the switches up here!"

"Hey Kalash, can you even touch the rudder pedals?" teased Maverick. Everyone in the cockpit laughed.

Kalash spun his head around. "At least I can actually fly! Mister I had a heart-attack!"

Maverick blankly stared at his eldest brother. "LISTEN HERE YOU LITTLE SHIT."

"Easy! Easy!" Joey exclaimed. "Jesus Christ, you guys are like my parents on steroids." The Doberman just chuckled and shook his head.

Vlad turned to look at Joey. "I've been meaning to ask you, Joey... why the fuck are you not like your parents?"

"What, an aging, loudmouth bunch of sociopaths?" Joey snorted. "I made a conscious decision when I was a teen, to NOT be anything like that. Like arguing about who invented the lawn... or the exact color of Kentucky blue grass..."

"Ah..."

"Yep!" Joey smiled.

Propellers shimmering in the brisk sunlight, the gleaming Stratofreighter burbled southbound, alone in the cyan sky, enroute to Opa Locka.

With everything down, "The Silver Bullet Express" descended in for landing at Opa Locka's Executive Airport. Lumbering in, battling a slight crosswind, Joey and Vlad kept the Boeing lined up on the runway's centerline. Flaring at the last moment, the Boeing touched down with smoke puffing off the tires as they scraped against the sun baked runway. Full reverse thrust was quickly applied, and the bulbous propliner noisily bled off speed with the roar of its propellers. It turned off the runway and made the short taxi hop to Freightmaster's oil stained ramp. As the Boeing taxied in, it passed by an idling C-54E, with a load of cargo for Nassau. The ramp of Freightmaster's Opa Locka hub, was a haven of propliners, the "corrosion corner" of greater Miami. A couple Constellations, C-118A's, and a DC-7C, shared the ramp space with a few C-47's and CV-340's, all in the various stages of loading and unloading cargo. Joey looked ahead to see Lloyd Tanager flagging them in. Joey smiled and waved as he slowly turned to park.

The outboard radials were powered off first, and the inboards run lean as they crawled to a stop at Lloyd's command. Smoke billowed from the exhaust stubs as the inboards idled for a few seconds, before Kalash cut the mixtures. The Hamilton props windmilled until they coasted down to a stop. Ground crew approach and chocked the wheels.

Joey got up from his seat and stretched. He grabbed his green cloth mask and donned it over his muzzle, making a sarcastic quip about "I'm smiling under here, trust me~" before exiting the cockpit. He opened the forward hatch up to feel a balmy breeze hit him, Joey instantly missing the warmth of summer. Ground crew approached with the airstair, which was wedged up against the fuselage. Joey climbed down first to meet with Lloyd, and Kurt, who walked up to greet him.

"Welcome to Flori-duh!" Kurt laughed as he greeted Joey. The black and rust Doberman wore a light blue surgical mask like his father as they stood at the base of the airstair.

"At least it's nice weather~" chuckled Joey.

"Seventy-five degrees, sunny!" Lloyd cackled in amusement. "How was the flight?"

"Oh, uneventful. Teaching Kalash here how to be a flight engineer for the-" Joey began to say, when a crashing sound caught his attention. He watched Maverick fall down the airstair after tripping at the top, the big Russian husky crashing down the steps to the base, where he caught himself.

"Hey way to go you fucking retard!" laughed Kalash as he made his way down.

"Jesus Christ..." Mav muttered as he got up.

"Forget your life alert?" Joey teased.

"Yeah, yeah..."

Going with Kurt, Joey walked to the office building, to talk business. It had been almost a year since he had last seen Kurt in person, right before the pandemic hit. They ventured inside where all the windows were open, and fans ran, to help keep the air circulating. It only reminded Joey further of the pandemic's zeitgeist. They went into the conference room and closed the door behind them.

"Once again, a national disaster offers us an opportunity~" Kurt said with sarcasm on his voice.

"You know what they say- never leave a tragedy unexploited." Chuckled Joey in response.

"It's a critical opportunity to help end this nightmare pandemic." Kurt said, his tone growing serious. "But there's logistical problems."

"Yeahhhhhhhh."

"I've been working with my engineers in trying to develop a shipping container that can vent the carbon dioxide. I think we have a solution."

"I've been trying to figure out how to make this work as well with Rob and Felix." Joey added.

"What was your idea?"

"Well, I had thought about building a contraption that could hold the vaccines in the bomb bay of a warbird. Since we have those two VB-25's serving as staff transports."

"That's interesting."

"It's...probably not feasible." Chuckled Joey. "That's not very much space."

"Creative though."

"I had also thought about borrowing Rob's two C-121A's and just strap a Speedpak underneath them and just haul the vaccines in that. It's isolated away from the cabin, and the planes can still carry their nominal cargo load at a slightly reduced speed."

"...what was your idea, Kurt?"

Kurt turned his phone around to reveal a photo of a heavily modified shipping container. The stainless steel container was heavily insulated, with a sealing lid that had a yellow hose attached. The hose attached to an adapter like apparatus that looked to be the size of an aircraft's square window.

"Here's a standard shipping container that we reinforced and insulated up. Vaccines go inside with blocks of dry ice, they stay nice and cold, and then the gas can safely vent out the aircraft through the hose, which would be bolted onto an aircraft window. It's a bit cumbersome, but this is what we came up with."

"Neat~" Joey nodded. "I like that idea a lot."

"I must say, the flying vaccines in a bomb bay is pretty innovative." Laughed Kurt. "My grandpa would be very proud of you."

"Oh, I'm sure." Laughed Joey, referring to the late Harold Tanager's haphazard way of doing things.

"I'll keep that in mind." The black and rust Doberman pointed out. "Hey, let's go check out the hangar."

Getting up and leaving the office, Joey and Kurt walked over to the maintenance hangar, which was a towering structure sheathed in brilliant white and blue aluminum. Inside, there were a number of aircraft under maintenance. The hangar resonated with the sound of powerful fans blowing to keep the airflow going, and high pitched whirrs of pneumatic tools. Joey stepped through the open hangar door to stare at another DC-7C that was in the process of being restored. It was a former freighter that had sat in the Dominican Republic for years, molding away until Joey purchased it in 2019. It was patched up and ferried to Opa Locka, to be rebuilt and overhauled. Beside it, a C-47A had its starboard engine changed out. Workers labored on scaffolding and ladders to perform their work in overhauling the old piston pounders. Joey looked impressed as he walked with Kurt.

On the other side of a hangar, Joey spotted another company's Convairliner being serviced, a CV-440, in orange and blue markings of Sunshine Cargo; the maintenance services of Freightmaster had matured to the point where they could offer the services to other companies that flew propliners, which generated even more revenue.

"And if you head over here, meet the Commandos we got." Kurt pointed. Exiting the other side of the massive hangar doors, on the other ramp were a total of ten Curtiss C-46 Commandos, in two staggered rows. The Commando was a big, tubby, twin-engine cargo plane, with a portly, curvaceous fuselage that had a superficial double-lobe design like the C-97. It's nose sloped together to a blunt point, it's cockpit windows superficially like the Boeing's greenhouse design on the sides. Two Pratt and Whitney Double Wasp radials drove three-blade Hamilton propellers. Five windows lined the fuselage, with a large cargo door on the back left side. A mixture of D and F models, they were rough looking, with lusterless, oxidized, duralumin skin that was dinged up from years of hard use. They had been flown in from Canada, having flown deep in the Canadian Arctic by a First Nations group, and retired for turboprops. The fleet of ten would be split up; five for Freightmaster, to help cover their new Caribbean routes, and five for Centoh Intermodal, to supplement their twins.

"Looks like you and Lloyd are running a smooth sailing machine down here." Joey nodded.

"Only been doing this for several decades." Chuckled Kurt amusingly. "Even as the world collapses around us, we keep the planes running on schedule!"

"There ya go." Laughed Joey in a jaded way.

A busy Friday awaited Joey. As the sun rose above Rickenbacker's control tower, Joey arrived on site, ready to tackle his loaded itinerary. In an hour or so, he was expecting the arrival of Kurt and his father Lloyd, flying in with their prototype vaccine transport container. From there, they would load it aboard their cargo plane and fly out to Massachusetts, to meet with the big wigs of the vaccine manufacturers, and an FDA representative, for their thoughts on it. In the meantime, while he waited for Kurt, Joey stood watching the hangar doors be opened, to unveil the newly repainted "Clipper Alvin Paulo".

The big doors slid open slowly, urged along by a set of electric motors. The shadows inside the hangar retreated to the sunlight coming in, to reveal the thimble nose of his curvaceous Constellation. Polished metal skin, and glossed up propellers sparkled as they caught the morning light. Joey took a few steps forward and watched as a tug began to slowly pull the L-1049H from the hangar.

"Clipper Alvin Paulo", named for his nephew he was raising, was the very first Constellation he ever owned himself. The L-1049H-82 "Super-H", had been built in May 1957, and was ordered by the Flying Tiger Line as a freighter. It served with the company until the mid sixties, and then went through several smaller owners, before finally laid up to rest at an aviation museum in Utah for three decades. It sat collecting dust in the museum's collection, until they sold it to Joey in 2015, to help fund the restoration of an almost extinct C-69 Constellation. Because it was the first in his eventual fleet, the Connie always held the honor of always flying the first cargo flight on a new route. It also represented the company at airshows, and in commercials. Now it was the first to be repainted in the new company scheme.

Emerging from the hangar was a beautifully polished and posh Constellation; replacing the "Royal Paulo Blue" scheme was a new color palette of red-orange, ultramarine, white, and bare metal. The upper fuselage continued to be bright white, but the cheatline was now a fiery red-orange, with a thin white stripe in the middle. The cheat tapered to a blunt point at the thimble shaped radome, which was shiny black. The anti-glare panel under the cockpit windows was matte black. The lower half of the fuselage was polished bare metal, as were the wings. The engine cowls and nacelles were painted a deep dark ultramarine, as were the wing areas immediately aft of the engines, to help conceal the staining exhaust gases. The propeller spinners and their streamlining plate aft of it were left bare metal. Overhauled Curtiss Electric propellers sparkled from a good polishing, their flat tips left unpainted. The black rubber deicing boots at the leading edge and root gave contrast. The name "Freightmaster" was written in the same deep ultramarine on the upper fuselage in a neat, closely spaced Helvetica. As the tail came out, the three fins on the tail were adorned in a red and blue stripe for effect. An American flag adorned the outer fins. The nose bore the original Freightmaster logo; "FSI" encased in a winged red and blue circle. The rear fuselage, at the cheatline, bore the "ATS" symbol for "The Air Transport Service", the group Joey had helped create. It was nothing more than a slightly modified WWII symbol for the defunct Air Transport Command, ATC.

Under his mask, Joey looked very impressed. He walked towards the plane as it was parked in front of the hangar. "Wow, that looks even better in person" he mused as he stopped before the nose and looked up. Joey took a moment to admire the new, sharp, paint scheme. He talked to some of his ground crew, and hangar director, and gave full approval to the scheme presented to him.

Stepping inside the hangar, Joey was immediately greeted by the harsh scent of solvent fumes. He wrinkled his nose to it. The large hangar was largely quiet in the morning hour. There were only two aircraft in the entire hangar undergoing maintenance, his sole L-1049G, and a C-54E, fresh in from a ferry flight from the Arizona bone yard. "Clipper Rob Barion", named for his at-times ailing husband, was a 1955 built "Super-G", and aside from the only "G" model in the fleet, also was the only one with wingtip tanks for extra range. Much like his ailing lover, "Rob Barion" sat with a broken landing gear, its left gear held up by hydraulic jacks while undergoing repairs. A harsh and sudden downdraft on landing buckled the gear beyond its rated capacity. While nothing else was damaged thankfully, the plane was out of commission while a new landing gear set was manufactured for it. It was a further reminder to Joey of a challenges of keeping the old birds up in the air long after they were phased out of production. It took would be overhauled and repainted in the new color scheme, once repairs were finished up. The latter was an ex water bomber, "Tanker 68". It was painted in a sun bleached, sand blasted paint scheme of red, white, and black, its duralumin skin dull and lusterless under the brilliant white lights above. It even still had red stains from its load of Phos-Chek. The Skymaster would need a complete overhaul, before it could join his motley fleet of Skymasters down in Florida for the Caribbean market.

Joey took a mental assessment of the hangar and gave a self-nod of approval. He turned around to leave, escaping from the heavy fumes. He stepped outside just in time to watch Kurt and his father Lloyd arrive in the company's last C-119G. "Clipper Erie Canal" rolled down the runway with her R-3350's roaring and belching flames. They turned off the runway and came taxiing onto the tarmac. The Flying Boxcar was used by Freightmaster to haul larger oversized items around the Caribbean, having originally been purchased in Alaska with another Boxcar, to haul automobiles to Cuba. "Clipper Neptune's Jalopy", its stablemate, was shot down by a Cuban MiG-23, over a dispute between Freightmaster and the Communist government.

Joey flagged them down and guided the Boxcar in. Kurt powered the big radials off, and their four-blade Hamilton props wound down to a stop. Ground crew chocked the twin-boom, twin-engine cargo plane and opened the rear cargo doors. Joey walked around to greet Kurt and his father in the cargo hold.

"Morning! How was your flight?"

"About as perfect as perfect gets~" greeted Lloyd, the seventy-three year old Doberman working to unstrapped their cargo. "Here! I want you to meet our vaccine shipment container!"

Pulling the covers off with Kurt revealed a stainless steel vessel, resembling a regular cargo container, but with a diamond patterned, reinforcement stamping. Joey walked up to examine it closer. It had a hinged top lid that was securable, and a corrugated, flexible hose, resembling the hoses used by their oil burning heaters to pump air into the radials on a cold day. Joey unlatched the lid and opened it up, revealing an extensive layer of grayish-white insulation inside. There was enough space for quite a few vials, and the dry ice blocks needed to keep them cold. Kurt pointed out the ventilation system and how it worked; when carbon dioxide pressure got too great, it would vent out through a latch and through the hose, which would dump it overboard via a window. He even showed how the adapter fitted to an aircraft window to make a good seal.

"You guys did a bang-up job with this!" Joey exclaimed. "I like it!"

"You learn a thing or two from a father like mine..." Lloyd quipped with a sarcastic roll of his eyes. "He taught me how to weld in the most haphazard way imaginable."

"I can only imagine~" chuckled Joey.

"Let's get this unloaded and loaded aboard the "Alvin Paulo"~ Kurt suggested.

Lightly loaded, "Clipper Alvin Paulo" rocketed off the runway, eastbound. The spidery landing gear was retracted and flaps raised as Joey set the plane for climb power. Kurt set the GPS inputs into the digital autopilot, to put them on course for Boston. Lloyd sat behind Joey in the radioman's jump seat, observing the activity in the cockpit. At the flight engineer station sat Joey's long serving pilot, George Najjar, a gray furred, Lebanese wolf. He monitored the engines and fuel flow at his engineer panel.

Hitting eight thousand feet, the Connie leveled off. Joey let go of the controls and sat back for the flight, as the autopilot guided the plane eastward.

"This is one sharp looking ship, Joey~" Lloyd complimented.

"My nephew did it again." Joey chuckled as he turned around to glance at Lloyd. "Another great, sharp paint scheme."

"The red and blue really pop~" George added from his seat.

"Eye catching!" Kurt laughed. "No more faded blue and gold."

"Yeah... I think there had to have been bad batches of paint, because the fleet was unevenly fading and chipping..." Joey pondered.

"They don't make paint like they used to!" Lloyd laughed. "My Dad used to love to smell a freshly opened can of paint~"

"Hey small world, so does my Dad." Joey rolled his eyes with a snort. "It explains everything. But this time around, I looked more in-depth into this brand of enamels, and it's a good brand. So we'll see!"

Taking two hours to pass across Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York, "Clipper Alvin Paulo" finally arrived at Boston, where an uneventful landing was made at Logan International Airport. The colorful Constellation chugged along on its inboard radials to the tarmac, where a small entourage awaited by a corporate jet hangar. Standing on the tarmac by a company SUV and jet were the big wigs of the vaccine company, awaiting their arrival.

Coming to park, and getting the plane chocked up, Joey and his crew descended, where a socially distant greeting between the two parties were made in the shadow of the propliner. The vaccine container was gently lowered down by a forklift, and the executives, and their engineers examined it completely. They even practiced loading empty vaccine vials and simulated dry ice blocks to see how it would all fit. While the engineers fiddled around and talked with Lloyd, Kurt and Joey gave the other execs a tour of "Alvin Paulo". They talked about the history of the old propliner, while showing all the features of the old L-1049. The executives, seemingly uninterested in the pedigree of "Alvin Paulo", were more concerned about the speed of a propeller driven propliner of the 1950's, and the reliability, as the vaccines had only a finite viability should something go wrong. Joey reassured that if the worst happened, and a mechanical mishap would happen, that spare capacity could be realized to ensure that all doses made it safely. Feeling assured, the executives accepted the deal. Joey and Kurt signed a mountain of legalese to finalize the deal and make it official. They just netted themselves a multi-million deal.

Ninety minutes later, and after posing for a distanced, and masked up group photo with the propliner, Joey and his crew were back in the air, to return to Ohio.

"Hey-ey!" cheered Kurt in the co-pilot's seat. "We did it! We just nabbed us a sweet ass deal!"

"You bet~" Joey grinned in excitement. "And we can play our part in trying to unfuck this entire train wreck of a pandemic~"

"What a fucking nightmare." Lloyd shook his head. "I had a hunch that people were just gonna fuck this whole thing up the moment they declared it a pandemic! People are so god damn stupid anymore."

"That's what happens when you have incompetent people sending mixed messages to an ignorant populace." Chuckled Joey. "Half a million dead, and people are still like 'how could we have stopped this?'"

"And our state is full of fucking dumbasses." Lloyd griped. "Lead by our wonderful governor! Duh-Santis."

"They don't call it Flori-duh for nothing!" Joey teased. "And to think in my early twenties, I loved vacationing there~"

"Damn southern state full of northerners!" Kurt joked. "I mean... I can't talk, my grandpa came from Pennsylvania."

"And thus Florida was introduced to Harold the madman Tanager." Lloyd shook his head jokingly.

"We just gotta make more of the containers." Joey added, going back to being serious. "How many do you think your guys can make? We're gonna need at least... twenty?"

"Can your guys weld this stuff if we give you a copy of the design?"

"Not sure about the maintenance guys up in Rickenbacker, but my buddy Rick at my gun shop sure can~ I'll talk to him and see if him and his buds can help us out."

"And YES Joey, my blueprints aren't some drawn on a napkin bullshit that I know you're going to tease me about!" Lloyd pointed with a laugh as Joey gave him a shit-eating-grin.

"Oh good!" Joey smiled.

Through the week, and sometimes the weekends, Joey worked at his family gun store. An accomplished gunsmith, it was Joey's main duties during the week, the mundane task of overhauling, preparing, assembling, and selling firearms and firearms accessories. For most of the week, it was Kurt's job, down in Opa Locka, to oversee the entire cargoline, with the help of their hub directors.

Tuesday morning presented Joey with a hectic commute to work. A fierce snowstorm blew through Newark, darkening the skies with a low hanging, deep slate sky. Snow blew all around, big flakes carried by a frigid northerly breeze. The roads were choked with snow, and traffic was extremely slow. Joey drove his big one-ton Sierra in four wheel drive, his tires sloshing through the snow and slush. The Doberman sipped a thermos of coffee and listened to some music as he slowly made his way down Granville Street. He sat his mug down in the cup holder and slowly exhaled. He came up to the red light at the intersection of Granville and Sharon Valley Road. His iridium gray GMC came to a stop behind a beat up Chrysler van, adorned with a plethora of various conservative, political stickers. It made Joey think.

With everything going on lately, between the bitter election, the insurrection at the Capitol, a pandemic that was killing thousands a day, and bringing the worst out in others, Joey was starting to get cold feet on staying in the firearms business. For fifteen years, he made being a gunsmith his career, after leaving behind a past career as a sex worker, stripping at a gay club in Columbus. He had been around guns almost his entire life, as his father Andrew was a gunsmith, first for another company, then his own. But times have changed, and the market of people looking for plinkers, or something to put in their gun chest, was supplemented by paranoid preppers, and conspiracy theorists clambering for guns to protect themselves from the doomsday apocalypse. He once never had thought much about the hundreds of AR-15's he had built every single day being sold, until the family business expanded to a rifle and ammunition plant that began to sell their rifles and ammunition across the country, to military, civilian, and law enforcement markets. It was the catalyst to the creation of the cargoline, but also the first mass shooting that struck close to home. Five years before, a crazed man used a Paulo Firearms AR-15 to shoot up a gay nightclub in Miami; fifty were killed, and suddenly the world saw photos of the carbine, with his family name stenciled on the receiver. It was a sad, embarrassing moment for his family, and the business took a hit for a time, before sales recovered. Fast-forward half a decade, in an even more divided nation, gripped by hyperpartisanship, Joey felt more concerned about his rifles falling into the wrong paws.

Arriving at the shop, which once a Buick dealership, Joey pulled into the snow covered lot and parked his truck. He got out and braved the cold with his coffee and a folder, marching through the thick snow, for the front entrance, where he momentarily stopped and donned his mask, before entering. The front entrance had a big sign that read "MASKS ARE MANDATORY TO ENTER THIS FACILITY!"

The storefront was large and open, with windows that were reinforced by steel lattice. T-shirts and posters that were for sale, were hung up on display. There were clothing racks with t-shirts, sweaters, jackets, that all bore the Paulo Firearms logo on them. On the opposite end were glass cases that held hundreds of rifles of all different types; AK's, AR-15's, a couple M1A Springfields, a few classics like the M1 Garand, a Mauser, and even a Russian Mosin-Nagant, were on display and for sale. They were behind the counter, where various other weapons were on display for sale. The glass cases held bottles of pepper spray, tasers, and gun cleaning supplies. Behind the counter was his father Andrew, and his friend, and fellow co-worker, Rick Bartley, a gray wolf with a Viking braid of reddish-brown hair. Andrew was cleaning the glass with a rag and some window cleaner, and Rick was checking over the rifles on the rack.

"Morning Dad! Rick!" Joey greeted, getting their attention.

"Morning!" his Dad called out. "Just in time for the rush!"

"Heh, I see~" chuckled Joey, who glanced around the empty storefront.

"Morning Joey!" came Rick's excited voice.

"Just the guy I wanted to see!" Joey chuckled. He took his jacket off and walked over to clock in at the POS terminal.

"Oh yeah?" Rick asked.

The big tattooed up wolf followed Joey into the workshop, where he greeted his other cohorts, hard at work at their stations, putting together and working on firearms. Joey sat his folder down, opened it up, and pulled out the blueprints to his vaccine transport container.

"You and your friends weld~ Think you could help me out?" Joey asked the wolf. Rick walked over and grabbed the blueprints to look at it.

"Oh it's for the vaccines!" Rick exclaimed. "You gonna help unfuck this pandemic?"

"Heh, hoping." Joey grinned with a laugh. "Now that grown-ups run the government, and there's an actual plan to distribute things."

"So we'd have to basically disassemble a standard container, weld on some components and add insulation?" Rick asked as he tilted his head examining the drawing.

"Basically, according to Lloyd~"

"Well shit, this shouldn't be too hard!"

"Good, because I need at least forty of these." Laughed Joey.

Joey made some copies of the blueprints for Rick to use, and proceeded to get on with his job back in the workshop. Sitting at his workbench, Joey resumed work on building another AR-15. It was a custom job for a regular client of his, in 6.5mm Grendel. It had their company's own designed carbon-fiber receiver, with a short barreled upper, and a standard M4 style telescoping stock. Joey took his time to assemble and check the fit and finish as it came together. He was reaching for a magazine to check the fit, when he suddenly heard yelling. It got the attention of others.

Joey got up to the sound of his father yelling at someone in the storefront. Rick and their other gunsmith Randy, a Rottweiler, came rushing through the door to find Andrew yelling at a brown furred wolf with a thick beard. Joey immediately knew who Andrew was dealing with. With his QAnon t-shirt, red Trump hat, no mask- it was another yokel that came to the store to buy a gun. His name was Jack, and Joey had seen him periodically in the store shopping; Joey thought he was a dumb, young shit, who didn't know any better. He regurgitated the typical right wing talking points and conspiracy theories, which always made the Doberman roll his eyes. In fact, they were growing more uncomfortable selling weapons to him, especially after the Capitol riot.

"Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! What is going on here!" Joey shouted.

"Your dad won't sell me the fucking AR-15 I wanted!" Jack shouted. "I got the fucking money for it!"

"I told you no!" Andrew shouted. "I am not selling it to someone who wants to take that kind of political path!"

"All I joked was about shooting Pelosi!" Jack exclaimed.

"Okay...yeah...that's it Jack. I think it's time to draw a line." Joey pointed.

"IT'S A FUCKIN' JOKE!" the wolf shouted.

"Get the fuck out!" Joey pointed.

"I WANT THAT RIFLE!"

"Get yo' paranoid Q-ass on outta here!" Rick shouted.

Jack suddenly pulled a pistol from his holster, to aim at Andrew. Joey lunged forward and practically threw himself on the counter and grabbed the gun. He threw it out of Jack's grip, and it bounced off the glass and landed behind the counter. Rick and Randy rushed forward and grabbed Jack, slamming him into the ground. Joey jumped over the counter, and in a blind fit of rage, helped beat Jack up. The brown wolf got the snot beat out of him as fists pummeled him all over.

"STOP! STOP! STOP!" Andrew shouted. "ENOUGH!"

Joey backed away to find Jack lying on the ground semi-conscious, his face bloody from all the blows.

"Oh shit we just pulled a Rob!" Randy shouted.

"What the fuck is your malfunction!?" Rick shouted to Jack. "You pull a pistol in a fucking GUN STORE!?"

"Come on, get up!" Joey shouted. He grabbed Jack by his beard and ripped him off the ground. The wolf staggered and stumbled into the counter as Andrew grabbed him. The aging Dober proceeded to punch Jack square in the face; the blow sent him flying back into the door, which opened as he fell outside, into the snow. Joey stood in the doorway, and stared down at a dazed Jack, who shook his head and shuddered.

"Don't you ever pull a gun on my Dad." Joey pointed. "How fucking entitled do you think you are!? Demanding that we sell you a gun. I don't have to sell you shit."

Joey just shook his head. "I want you to get the fuck outta here. I'm gonna call the police, file a report, and charge you with assault with a deadly weapon."

Jack staggered to his feet. "I'M GONNA TELL ALL MY FUCKING FRIENDS TO NEVER SHOP HERE!" Bloody spittle shot from his bloody mouth.

"You do that. Please! I don't want them here." Joey smiled. He closed the door and locked it, watching as Jack flipped him off and staggered away. The Doberman turned around to see Andrew on the phone with police, and Rick and Randy standing, looking dumbfounded.

"Well... looks like its statement time..." Randy frowned.

Andrew, while speaking to dispatch, knelt down and picked up Jack's gun, revealing it to be a Glock 42, in .380ACP. "Now who the fuck would pull a pistol in a gun store, and have it to be this small of a caliber?"

"Ha~" Rick grinned. "Your wife packs more heat than that motherfucker!"

"Ten millimeter!" Andrew exclaimed. He proceeded to continue talking to the police as they dispatched an officer. Andrew hung the phone up and looked dumbfounded with some of his workers. "You see! This is the shit that's making me worried."

"I know." Joey nodded. "I was just thinking about that this morning."

"I've been in this business for thirty-seven years. When I started it was just Reagan-Mondale- now we've degenerated into America verses the nuthouse!"

"All these survivalist groups, paramilitary, militias..." Randy muttered.

"And now the fucking Trumpinistas." Rick added.

"Trumpstapo." Joey rolled his eyes. "Look, I don't have a problem if people are conservative, but this recent shit is just becoming flat out paranoia, and insanity taken to the next level."

"It's not even conservative. It's just... anarchy!"

"It's a bunch of sore losers!" Rick exclaimed.

"Unbelievable." Joey concluded. "Break out your pens and paper boys! Legalese time!" There was a collective "ugh".

Rolling down the runway in Cleveland, Joey felt the wheels to his Thunderbolt leave the pavement as he began a slow climb away from Burke Lakefront. Reaching over, Joey grabbed the lever for the gear and retracted them as he passed over the shores of Lake Erie just outside of the switchback. He retracted the flaps and assumed cruise power as greater Cleveland passed beneath him. On a Friday mid-morning, Joey found himself strapped inside the spacious cockpit of "D5", his Brazilian Thunderbolt. The olive drab and neutral gray "Jug" was in the colors of his grandfather's mount, which he had flown in Italy during the Second World War. He climbed slowly and banked around, to begin flying back towards Columbus, his next destination in his itinerary.

Joey had spent the morning checking up on some parts overhaul at a prop shop in Cleveland. Prishtina's prop shop, run by John Prishtina, of an Albanian family, did all the critical piston engine and propeller maintenance and overhaul for both himself and Rob. Complex maintenance to the intricate workings of their liquid cooled, and air cooled piston engines was becoming a lost art, as engineers retired and passed away. Prishtina helped in their efforts to preserve that know-how and train a new generation of mechanics. He left Cleveland knowing that he was facing up to some looming problems with his parts supply.

The inevitable march of time took its toll on his fleet. He left Cleveland knowing that a couple sets of propeller blades were at the end of their operational lives. There was just no more material left to take off during the refurbishment process. Finding airworthy propellers were a nightmare; Joey likened it to "pulling teeth". The Constellations, which had both Curtiss and Hamilton Standard propellers were the most difficult to procure. He lucked out finding his Arctic Connies, as they came with a cache of Curtiss blades that were salvageable. The DC-6's still had plenty of Hamilton 43E60's left, but the DC-7's, his two variants using different Hamilton prop types, were getting hard to come by second hand. He was flying down to Columbus to go visit a shop that built new radial engines for him, and were working hard to create new propellers for his planes. The Centoh Aircraft Company, owned by his husband's twin brother, Jake Barion, was making a name for itself in building legacy components for out of production aircraft. It was his creation after losing his job as a nuclear engineer several years prior.

Entering the landing pattern of the John Glenn International Airport, Joey waited for traffic, before he finally got the go-ahead to come in for landing. He descended in with his Thunderbolt and flared for a smooth three-point touchdown. The P-47D rolled out and turned to taxi on the service ramp, back to Centoh's tarmac. Both Rob's Centoh Intermodal, and Jake's Centoh Aircraft, shared the same ramp space, which was near the old Port Columbus terminal, the home of Centoh Intermodal's office.

Joey found a parking space between a Centoh "red-top" DC-6B, and Centoh Aircraft's L-188C Electra. The two propliners made Joey's Thunderbolt seem compact as he parked the plane and ran the radial lean, before finally cutting the mixture. He watched the Curtiss prop windmill and coast down to a stop. Joey unstrapped himself and climbed out, just as the ground crew came up to chock his wheels. As he donned his mask, Joey took a moment to examine Jake's Electra, a rare bird he didn't see that often. Centoh Aircraft had two Electra III's, painted in a sharp white and three tone metallic gray. "CENTOH AIRCRAFT" adorned the upper fuselage in a clean, black stenciled Helvetica. They served as the company's "hotshots"- flying machined out spare parts to customers on time sensitive deliveries all over the country.

"Joey! You made it!" came Jake's voice. The Doberman turned around to be greeted by Jake Barion himself. In the polar opposite of his twin brother, Jake was a black and white furred malamute. He had a bright green mask on over his muzzle.

"How's it going?" Joey asked.

"Oh, same shit different day~"

"Tell me about it." Chuckled Joey as he followed Jake back to his factory facility.

The factory was once a former warehouse that Jake had turned into a machine shop. It was his successful fallback option, after his original endeavor in air transport fizzled. After his nuclear engineer career at the power plant came to an end, he tried his hand in air cargo with two surplus C-121A's. He found initial success carving out a niche market for the propliners, and even got a few more ex-military C-121's to fly, but just could not sustain the momentum. He ultimately stuck to his machine shop and exited that section of the aviation field in mid 2015. His departure was a boon to Joey's fledgling air group, as half of his Constellation fleet were soon in Freightmaster colors.

Inside, Joey found a bustling scene as machinery hummed along in the background. Centoh Aircraft made a particular name for itself by license building brand new radial engines and components to keep them flying. Joey watched with Jake as a new R-2800 Double Wasp came together. Brand new components, much improved metallurgy, made for a much more reliable radial than the overhauled, oldstock they had once relied upon. After observing a couple radials be manufactured and components machined and stamped, Joey finally came upon the propeller assembly shop Jake and his friend CJ had crafted for the next phase of their company projects. New equipment filled the assembly hall, that turned billets of steel into propeller blades.

"Well, tell me what you think?" Jake pointed, as Joey walked up to examine a brand new propeller blade. It was a blade designed for the DC-7C, a virtual clone of the Hamilton Standard blade. It was of medium chord, and had a rounded tip that was painted chrome yellow. The rest of the blade was polished steel, with stenciling and Centoh's logo in the center. It looked seamless next to an actual Hamilton blade. Jake mentioned about it being made from a "much stronger steel".

"Wow." Joey muttered. "That's pretty cool~"

"And we have our Curtiss replacement here." The black and white wolf-hybrid pointed. Joey walked over to look at an immaculate reproduction of a Curtiss Electric Propeller for his Constellation, the sixteen foot long C634S-C502 flat-tipped blade. Rather than being a hollow steel design, Jake pointed out that it was made solid, with a lighter and more durable steel type. Joey loved those Curtiss blades, but the hollow steel design made a nightmare for overhauling, as internal corrosion proved problematic. Jake even showed him the new electric hub, complete with its bullet shaped fairing. It had newly designed carbon brush fittings, to transfer electrical power from the spun and unspun sections. It was another weak spot in the Curtiss designed hub; any problem with the fittings, and the propeller had a nasty tendency to either overspeed, or reverse in flight, with dangerous consequences.

"I like it!" Joey exclaimed.

"I gotta submit these to the FAA to see what they have to say for a supplemental license for the old birds." Jake explained. "I'm sure they got more confidence since they approved the radial reproductions."

"It'd be handy." Joey nodded. "I'm starting to get a bit hard pressed finding good propeller blades."

"Understandable and-" Jake started to say, before grabbing his stomach and wincing in discomfort.

"You okay, Jake?"

"Fucking radiation complications..." Jake grumbled. He turned and braced himself against some of the machinery. It was an unpleasant consequence to being exposed to high levels of radiation in a major nuclear accident that ended his career as a nuclear engineer. Responding to a desperate attempt to bring the reactor under control, after its control rods were damaged in a rupture of the pressure dome, Jake had entered the hot reactor compartment to save his friend, who had ventured in to release the stuck control rods. He was exposed to over two grays of radiation, and subsequently had to be hospitalized for acute radiation poisoning. It left him with periodic bouts of pain and discomfort in his stomach and joints. Jake pushed himself off the machinery and took a slow, deep breath.

"Okay...that's better." He muttered. "Jesus fucking Christ... it ain't fun."

"I imagine..." Joey frowned beneath his mask.

"Now I feel like Rob somedays..." Jake grumbled. "I got good days... and I got bad days..."

"Gotta take it one day at a time..." Joey nodded.

"Yeah~" Jake agreed in a cynical tone. "So what do you say about the props?"

"I say let's get the FAA approving, so I can start placing some orders!" Joey chuckled. "I do need to order a couple new radials~"

"Got it!" Jake exclaimed. "Well if you come to the office, we can put a purchase order in."

"Sweet~" Joey nodded. "By the way... do you think your company could do us a favor?"

"Yeah? What's up?"

"Well...we need some vaccine transport containers built... and if you guys could help us do that...that'd be great~"

Joey handed Jake a copy of the blueprints, which he examined. "Well shit, that's a piece of cake."

"We need forty..." chuckled Joey. "We're building five, my buddy Rick is gonna get his buddies to build a couple..."

"Yeah, we can get this taken care of~"

"Perfect!"

Jake held the door open that led to the office, allowing Joey to step in before him. Jake followed his brother-in-law and closed the door behind him.

February continued the pattern of snow and cold that Joey detested so much. Between the looming pandemic always on the back of his mind, the bitter cold and snow only added another layer of annoyance to him. On the first Thursday of the month, Joey arrived at Rickenbacker in his truck, the brine coated Sierra rolling onto the plowed tarmac. The sun was just up, over the horizon, it's amber rays backlighting the flight line. He passed by a row of his propliners, all in the process of being loaded with cargo for their morning runs out of Rickenbacker.

Joey parked his truck beside his hangar and hopped out, backpack in tow. Once again, he had a busy schedule ahead of him. Working amongst the pandemic brought its hazards, and Coronavirus had struck once again; two crews were knocked out of commission, after contracting Covid-19 from a mechanic they had struck up a conversation with. He also put a quarter of the mechanics at Rickenbacker into quarantine. It was a frustrating reminder of the precarious situation everybody was in, as they learned to "live with" SARS-CoV-2. Now Joey had to fill in on the flight schedule, with his handpicked team of Vlad and Kalash Tokarev, who he was borrowing from Centoh.

Meeting up with Kalash and Vlad, the trio poured over flight plans for the day. They would depart Rickenbacker for Albany, and from Albany, a brief stop in Boston to pick up vaccines, to transport down to Opa Locka. From Opa Locka, they'd fly a single Caribbean run to Havana, and then come back to overnight at Opa Locka, before flying back to Albany, and returning home to Rickenbacker. Getting their scheduled synchronized and noted, they then went on to inspect their wings.

Sitting on the flight line was "Clipper Vlado Horvat", a C-118A. The Liftmasters were the workhorse of Freightmaster, the backbone to the mixed fleet at twenty-five. There were a mixture of ex-military C-118's, and ten civil DC-6A's. The DC-6 combined a good load carrying ability with speed, and cost. Its four R-2800 Double Wasps gave great reliability. "Vlado Horvat" was scheduled for Albany, carrying a bit of a lighter load; fifteen thousand pounds verses the more normal thirty-one thousand pounds. Some of the cargo was sacrificed to carry the new vaccine transport containers to the east coast. He had three containers spaced out amongst the aircraft, to balance out the load.

Like thunder, the flight line roared to life as radial engines turned over. Exhausts hacked and coughed oily smoke and flame, as pistons turned over. Propellers kicked up frosty snow that glittered in the morning sun's rays. From the cockpit, Joey watched as two Super Constellations, a DC-7B, and a gabble of C-47's, began to taxi out for their runs. Joey worked the controls with Vlad as they too began to taxi, forming up the rear of the lumbering formation.

"It's gonna be another fun adventure~" chuckled Joey in a cynical way, as he waited his turn.

"Yay, Covid!" Vlad snorted.

"Yeah." Snorted Joey. "I told those fucks to not congregate around and shoot the shit. And what do they do?"

"Remember...it was just a cold." Kalash chuckled.

Vlad shook his head. "What a year this has been..."

"Tell me about it..." Joey agreed. "I feel like every little thing I do is a game of Russian roulette."

"With a semi-auto pistol!" Kalash exclaimed.

"Nah. Not that far." Chuckled Joey. "Just a good ole revolver."

"Heh... yeah..." Vlad chuckled. "I tell myself everyday... this too shall pass."

"Well...at the rate people keep fucking it up, maybe not." Joey shook his head. "How hard can it be? I tell these fucks to try and avoid congregating unless needed, and if you didn't feel well? Go home!"

"Old habits die hard~"

"Apparently."

Lifting off the runway, "Vlado Horvat" climbed slowly and flew eastbound for Albany. Like almost every other flight, the propliner climbed to ten thousand feet and leveled off for the flight. Ten thousand feet was the upper limit of not needing pressurization, and was beginning to hit the upper limit of the engines, which had the high blower mode of their superchargers disabled due to the use of low octane fuel. Well above the clouds, the C-118 lumbered along, it's propellers and radials filling the cabin with "radial song". It took just a little over two hours to fly to Albany, where Joey and Vlad circled and came in for a landing at their New York hub. They parked on the flight line, where forklifts soon arrived to unload the cargo containers out of both the forward and rear cargo doors.

Taking a short break, Joey, Vlad, and Kalash got ready for their second leg of the journey, down to Opa Locka, with a stop in Boston, to pick up vaccines. Exchanging "Vlado Horvat", Joey got "Clipper Jose Paulo" ready, his first DC-7C. Much larger than the "Six", the "Seven Seas" had an extended wing, and a much longer fuselage. Four Cyclone-18's were tightly cowled, driving four blade Hamilton propellers. The "Seven Seas" usually flew the long Opa-Locka-Albany runs up and down the east coast.

Loaded with thirty-five thousand pounds of mixed cargo, including FedEx overflow, and USPS mail, the DC-7C took off, this time with Vlad commanding the captain's seat. It lifted off slowly from Albany's runway, and began a short hop eastbound to Boston, an hour away. They descended into Logan on their first attempt, and taxied up to the ramp, where a large transport vehicle from the vaccine manufacturer was waiting for them.

The two vaccine containers were off loaded, and very quickly, workers started filling the insulated containers with boxes that contained vaccine vials. The boxes were so cold that they had to be handled by thick gloves, the cardboard covered in a layer of frost that condensed the air around it. Workers quickly loaded the containers, and blocks of dry ice were sandwiched in to ensure that they stayed cold. The containers were quickly sealed up and secured. A forklift loaded them back into the DC-7, where Joey, and Vlad secured them down to the reinforced floor. As Joey tightened down the straps holding the container in place, he felt the burden of responsibility rest on him; inside those insulated steel containers were people's hopes and dreams, their health, and the quest to rid this nation of the dreadful pandemic.

The last thing Joey had to do was secure the vent hose. He walked over to one of the windows that were left on the DC-7 and popped it open. It came off as one piece, which he secured in a mesh rack against the bulkhead. The hose assembly attached to the window and was secured in. It would vent overboard the Co2 gas as the blocks of dry ice sublimed. Vlad secured the vent hose for the other container, and the straps were checked one final time to make sure they were taut.

A fuel truck gave the tanks a top up of 100LL, and "Jose Paulo" was turned over to resume its flight to Opa Locka. Lifting off Logan, the heavily loaded "Seven Seas" slowly got off the runway and climbed away into the clear sky.

It took thirty minutes for the DC-7 to climb back to ten thousand feet, to begin its steady cruise down the east coast. Joey glanced outside to watch the big radials burble, driving them along.

"I'm getting used to flying the 'sevens', and I do like these quite a bit." Vlad admitted. He leaned in to take a close look at a gauge for a moment. "I think, despite its size, the DC-7 handles smoother than the Super Constellation."

"I liken the Connie to a truck. It's controls are docile, but heavy. The Doug's have really gentle, responsive controls." Joey acknowledged. "Now the short-nosed L-749's- oh man do those have great acceleration and go-around performance."

"I got a chance to fly Rob's WV-1, and that was a rocket ship lightly loaded."

"I only used maybe fifteen hundred feet when I got Starship Connie in the air~" Kalash recalled.

"The only real ding about the Connie, in my opinion, is just the cramped cockpit~" Vlad nodded. He turned around to glare at his brother. "Perfect size for little Kalash here!"

"You calling me short?"

"Compact!" Vlad teased with a grin.

Kalash grabbed a roll of tape and threw it at Vlad. "HEY!" his younger brother protested.

"Call me short again, motherfucker!" laughed Kalash. He grabbed a pen and threw it at him, which bounced off the instrument panel.

"STOP THROWING SHIT AT ME!" Vlad yelled.

"Hey! Hey!" Joey shouted. "Don't throw shit at the guy flying the plane!"

"I can't help it!" Kalash exclaimed with a snort.

"God, you have so much evil packed into such a little body." Joey teased. "You're like a little kid!"

"You fit in little kids clothes too!" Vlad laughed, only to be hit in the head again with a roll of tape. "STOP IT! THAT'S IT!"

"Jesus Christ..." Joey laughed.

"I'mma get outta this seat and beat you like a drum! I'll hit you so hard, I'll knock a growth spurt in ya!" Vlad yelled.

"Bring it on Vlad!"

"Okay! Enough! How do you guys even function as brothers."

"Oh, this is normal." Kalash shrugged.

"And I thought my family was dysfunctional. Geesh." Laughed Joey.

Exchanging the "Seven Seas" at Opa Locka, Joey and his crew were soon back in the air, flying aboard a C-54B. Departing the Executive Airport with twenty-thousand pounds of cargo destined for Havana, "Clipper Cuyahoga" rumbled skyward, enroute to Havana. The Caribbean was predominantly served by Freightmaster's fleet of fifteen C-54's, a dozen DC-3's, and a gaggle of CV-340 Convairliners. The Skymaster was the predecessor to the DC-6 and DC-7, sharing a similar wing layout and fuselage design. It was much stubbier than its successors, with a short fuselage, oval windows, and powered by four R-2000 Twin Wasp radials. Clawing the air were a set of medium chord Hamilton propellers, etching silvery circles in the warm Floridian air. Fully loaded down, the propliner slowly climbed, holding onto its propellers as Joey climbed for altitude over greater Miami.

Joey sat in the Captain's seat, commanding the Skymaster on its ninety minute flight to Havana. The cockpit was filled with the burbling ambience of the radials, and the hum of electronics. The layout was virtually identical to its successors, but painted a very pale gray all over. The Doberman glanced out his cockpit windows at the vast expanse of ocean that was coming into view. In their climb, they passed over the sandy beaches that were packed with people. Joey shook his head at all the crowded beaches, in the midst of a pandemic. It was only a reminder to him that they would never shake the pandemic's grip at the rate people were being obtuse. The ocean was a brilliant blue, glistening from the afternoon sun. Soon that was all the Skymaster was surrounded by, just ocean. At nine thousand feet, the propliner cruised along at 200MPH, putting along amongst the puffy clouds that passed by.

"Man, I wish I could enjoy some of that sun and beach!" Vlad exclaimed with a cynical, jaded snort at the end. "Me and Nico had plans to enjoy our honeymoon on the beach last year when we tied the knot..."

"Heh, not the case." Chuckled Joey with a shake of his head. "I had hopes of dragging Rob to the beach at one point last year..."

"Well then a propeller hit him." Laughed Kalash.

"And pneumonia." Vlad added.

"Rob got the shit beat out of him last year." Joey frowned. "I felt so bad for him. Then he got really sick and was bedridden for two months, practically. And then he's forced into community service to avoid a whole legal debacle of us getting kidnapped in 2019... you know... the usual~"

Vlad chuckled. "Joey, the way you say things..."

"I know, right?" he smiled. "Welcome to my dysfunctional world!"

"Rob's had it pretty rough hasn't he..." Kalash asked.

"Yeah..." Joey admitted. "But typical Rob, he doesn't care to talk about it. It would do Rob so much good if he just talked about what ails him! But Rob thinks that's not stoic, or strong, or whatever his Nixonian mind can conjure up! Rob's biggest problem is trust. And it just snowballs from there- everyone's out to get him, assuming the worst in people, and bringing the worst out in them. He's basically a guy who's really insecure about himself, because of everything that had happened."

"Did you really just compare him to Nixon?" Kalash laughed.

"Yeah!" Joey smiled. "Rob's the lovechild of Nixon and Hitler. Prove me wrong~"

"Oh my god!" laughed Kalash. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

"Just saying~" Joey chuckled with a cheeky grin.

"What about you?" Vlad teased.

"Me?" Joey pointed. "Oh, just perfect~"

"Wow." Vlad blurted out laughing, as Joey grinned at him.

"Just saying!" Joey snorted. "When you see how dysfunctional my parents are, how useless my brother is, I think that says enough."

"Your brother has little man syndrome..." Vlad shook his head. He then cocked his head around to glare at Kalash. "I know someone else who has that problem..."

"What are you looking at me for?" Kalash snapped. The Russian husky grabbed a roll of tape and threw it at Vlad.

"ALRIGHT, THAT'S IT~" Vlad snapped as he tried to unbuckle himself.

"Whoa! Stop! Jesus Christ!" Joey laughed. "Is this what you people do all the time?"

"Yeah~" Vlad nodded.

Joey tilted his head in disbelief. "You, Vlad, Dmitry, and Mav- all of you just spend your time yelling and slapping each other around?"

"Is that like a bad thing or something?" Kalash asked.

Joey closed his eyes and just shook his head with a jaded chuckle. "What the fuck, guys~"

An hour and a half later, "Clipper Cuyahoga" arrived at Havana. Banking around to enter the landing pattern, Joey turned his head to look down at the densely packed city. Square and rectangular buildings jutting from tree lined streets, with terracotta painted roofs and adorned in soft pastel colors, passed by in the Skymaster's banking turn. Joey held in the holding pattern for two passes, before descending in a banking turn for the runway. With everything down, "Clipper Cuyahoga" descended in with a slight nose down droop. Flaring for touchdown, Joey felt the plane shudder and jolt as its tires scraped against the sun bleached pavement. Without reverse thrust, the C-54 rolled down the runway on its brakes, bleeding off speed. Kalash powered off the outboard radials, and "Cuyahoga" taxied to their ramp on the service road.

Freightmaster's hangar was a large aluminum structure, covered in faded, and chipped light green paint. Joey taxied up and turned slowly, on the oil stained, sun baked concrete. The engines were powered off, and a ladder was propped up for them to disembark from. Masked up, Joey climbed down to the pavement below to inspect his Skymaster. He took a moment to envision what it would look like in the future red and blue scheme. Turning around, Joey took a glance at the ramp, spotting two of his C-47's in the process of being unloaded, and a Convairliner being loaded up with bags of sugar. Most of the cargo Freightmaster flew into Cuba was fresh produce, chemicals, animal feed, medicine, and some machinery. Almost all of the exports were just sugar and tobacco.

Taking a nod and meeting back up with Kalash and Vlad, they went to go take a momentary break as workers began the process of unloading the C-54B. They would grab something to eat, and then fly back to Florida for the night.

Friday evening, with the western sun very low on the horizon, Joey descended into the Rickenbacker, at the end of his aviation odyssey. Coming in with everything down was his hardworking "Clipper Alvin Paulo", her new paint scheme taking on a magenta hue from the setting sun. The curvaceous Constellation descended with a nose down droop, the spidery landing gear sticking out into the slipstream. From the cockpit, the runway's colorful lights were a boost of morale to an otherwise tired looking Joey. With Vlad and Kalash, they flared for touchdown, as the engines were throttled back, with the subsequent jolt of landing as the tires touched the pavement. Reverse thrust helped taper off speed.

Under the glow of the ramp lights, the Lockheed taxied to the hangar. In the low light, the exhaust stubs of the four Cyclone's spewed a steady stream of red flames. Ground crew guided Joey in for a parking spot, as the final flights had come in for a landing at Rickenbacker. Kalash ran the engines lean and cut the mixtures. Joey watched as the big Curtiss blades coasted down with the dying whir of pistons. He took his headset off and breathed a huge sigh of relief.

"That concludes our mission~" Joey complimented. "Thank you, men!"

"You're welcome!" Vlad and Kalash chimed in. Everyone masked up and exited the propliner, climbing down the airstair to be greeted by other masked up workmen. They would unload the propliner and get the next day's cargo ready for flight. Saying goodbye, Joey got into his truck, where it had sat since Thursday morning, and departed in his brine covered Sierra. He quickly got back onto the highway, to begin the forty-five minute trek back to Newark. The Doberman sat in the darkened cab of his truck and listened to music as he drove along the interstate, looking tired and burned out. He had flown in excess of twelve thousand miles all over the east coast, and down the Caribbean to fill in. Now he had the weekend to rest.

By eight o'clock, Joey pulled back into his driveway on Karen Parkway. Seeing his home brought a huge sigh of relief as he parked his truck beside Felix's white GMC. Joey got out, noticing that the garage door was up, and heard Rob's voice inside. He walked over to find Rob inside the garage, sitting on the floor playing with his pet duck, Greenie. A young male Mallard he had rescued from drowning, Greenie quacked and flapped his wings as Rob made silly noises at him. Upon noticing Joey's presence, Rob immediately ceased the silly little sounds and grew very serious looking. He picked Greenie up and held him as he greeted Joey.

"How was your flight?" Rob asked him.

"Tiring." Joey smiled. He gave Greenie a pet on the head. "I see you're having a good time with Mister Greenie?"

"I'm keeping him company~" Rob said calmly. "Before putting him to bed."

"That sounds like a great idea." Joey chuckled.

Rob put Greenie away in his custom little duck house that Rob had built for him in the heated garage. He had an insulated house, a straw bed and a water bowl. Joey said good night to their pet Mallard and closed up the garage for the night. They went back inside where it was warm and sat at the dinner table for a late meal together and get caught up on things.

"So have you started flying the vaccine doses yet?" Joey asked Rob over their late dinner. "We've hit the ground running with our transport containers."

"Not on a large scale, no." Rob admitted. "I'm working on something with Vlado to transport vaccines aboard 'Seoul Train'."

"The Superfortress?"

"Yeah."

"That's interesting." Joey smirked. "Why a bomber?"

"I'm a little concerned over the transport containers that Lloyd designed, since they're basically insulated, reinforced standard cargo containers. I'm concerned about the weld integrity, especially with the unit being exposed to such a temperature flux and the rigors of flight. Me and Vlado were testing one out, and we found that when you have elevated humidity, the exhaust manifold can freeze up, and the pressure builds inside the container, and one of the welds ruptured, at a spot where the insulation terminates for the vent. It just couldn't take the heating and cooling of such magnitude."

"Hmm." Joey thought. "We've haven't found any issues when we've flown them."

"It's just something I'm concerned about, because of carbon dioxide poisoning. If it would fail in flight, and nobody would catch it before everyone's incapacitated. That's my biggest fear."

"That, and potentially fucking up thousands of doses."

"That too." Rob pointed out. "God forbid I get chastised on TV by our governor, Mister Magoo, Mike DeMumbles."

"Ha~" Joey laughed. "So what's your idea?"

"Vlado and his son are crafting up a container that can store several thousand doses and fit in the forward and aft bomb bays of 'Seoul Train'. We're also looking to build a container that'll fit in the bomb bay of our MATS B-25, and the incoming B-17E that I got from that museum in Missouri. That reminds me...I'm gonna need your help on that, since it's flying with the PB-1W that's coming back to Newark-Heath with it."

"Oh that's right~"

"Warbird raidin'" Rob chuckled in a jaded way. "Their loss is my gain~"

"King of the warbirds." Joey smiled.

"Eh, fuck em'" Rob shrugged.

"I'll see what I can do as always." Joey agreed. "And I will keep an eye out regarding the shipping containers."

"I don't want an accident to happen." Rob reiterated. "Be damned if another DC-7 falls from the sky."

"Indeed."

Reaching out to punch his code in, Joey watched as the gate to Newark-Heath's perimeter fence opened. Sliding open slowly, Joey popped his truck into drive and entered the backside of the local airport. The entire northern side of Newark-Heath was Rob's domain, and multiple hangars, including his two massive, reinforced concrete hangars that made up his aviation museum, dominated the landscape. A row of large aluminum and steel hangars served Joey, Felix, Vlado, their friends Mark, Tanner, and Geert, who co-owned the airport with Rob. Driving down the ramp, Joey turned and parked at his hangar, which was inconspicuously marked, nestled between Felix's, and Geert's.

Climbing out of his truck, Joey adjusted his sunglasses. It was a bright sunny day, with a cloudless cyan sky above him. The weather was mild too, in the upper forties for once, after weeks of bone chilling cold. To his right, he saw Geert and a couple of his adult kids, working on servicing a natural metal Spitfire XVI, in Dutch markings. The black and white border collies were taking advantage of the mild weather. Walking along the ramp, Joey rounded a corner of Rob's giant "Big Bird" hangar, to see the usual bustling activity on the flight line. The main ramp space on that side was a constant beehive of activity, as aircraft came out into the sunshine to get worked on.

A smile was brought to his face as he approached "Nugget", his orange and beige striped Super Connie. Work was underway in equipping the interior with an executive suite to serve the company. Behind it, Joey saw Rob's "Quimper", a "Super-G", out in the sunshine, being worked on by a gaggle of workmen scurrying around it. And behind "Quimper", he could just make out the unmistakable lines of "Seoul Train", his husband's B-29, with Rob and Vlado standing around it. Walking that way, Joey glanced up at "Nugget", and momentarily stopped to gaze at "Quimper".

Rob's L-1049G was a former Air France "Super-G" that was retired sometime in the 1970's, and put on outdoor display in Quimper, France. The years of exposure to the coastal salt air significantly damaged the airframe; by the time Rob obtained the airframe in his European trip, in 2016, the airframe was on the verge of collapsing. It's triple-tail had rotted off years before he got it. Now after almost five years of continuous work, "Quimper" not only sat on her new landing gear, but had a new tail, and wings, which were donated from a scrapped R7V-1. The fuselage was completely rebuilt, practically from the ground up. She would eventually join Barev's fleet of executive transports for "BATS", "Barev's Air Transport Service".

Finally, Joey walked over to where his husband was at. Towering over him and Vlado was "Seoul Train". Painted with a black belly and Arctic red-orange outer wings and tail, the B-29 was one of the stars to his aviation museum. Rob obtaining the Superfortress was on Joey's part; several years ago, in 2015, it had once belonged to an aviation museum in Utah, where it sat on display amongst other bomber aircraft. The museum's hangar was in dire need of replacement, and Joey worked out a deal- Rob would bankroll a new hangar, in exchange for the B-29. It was his anniversary present, for their ninth anniversary being together. After not flying for half a century, it was made airworthy, where it bellied in at Newark-Heath in 2016. Further restored, it emerged with a restored set of Curtiss Electric propellers, and its Arctic night scheme as a photographic reconnaissance plane. It belied its past life as a nuclear "Silverplate" in the Army Air Force.

"Hey what's going on here?" Joey asked as he approached. Rob turned around to immediately introduce Joey to his vaccine transport container.

"Check this out." Rob pointed. "This is what fill fit inside the bomb bays~"

Joey tilted his head to glance around Rob. Sitting on its own little wheels was a giant tank that was painted in a very dark olive drab. It's sharp angles and attachment points looked almost ominous. Everything looked reinforced- in typical Rob fashion. It had an insulated interior that could hold according to Rob, over seven thousand vials and the associated dry ice blocks. The lid had a set of vent ducting that would release the Co2 gas. It would be hoisted up into the bomb bay, and attached to the shackles to hold in flight. The flight crew were protected from any carbon dioxide poisoning, as the bomb bays were unpressurized and isolated from the rest of the plane. With such a configuration, over eighty-four thousand doses could be flown using both bays.

"Now that looks pretty awesome." Joey complimented.

"We're going to let the vaccine makers check this out and see what they have to say. I am confident with the heavy duty insulation, this baby can hold the vaccines at negative-ninety-four degrees for a day and a half."

"Neat~"

Vlado leaned in. "We're working on making one for the B-17E, when we get it."

"That'll be in a couple weeks right?"

"I'm moving the timetables up... some bad weather is supposed to hit Minnesota next week, so I'm hoping this weekend to get that Fort, and the PB-1W outta there and back here."

"Gotta love it."

"Always a headache." Chuckled Rob cynically.

"Hey, you're building one for Mitchell too right?" Joey asked.

"Yeah." Vlado nodded.

"Keep me in mind~" Joey smiled. "Maybe put our VB-25N's to use as well~ Heh, our 'hacks'~"

"Will do." The Croat agreed.

"Speaking of Mitchells..." Rob pointed.

Joey and Vlado turned to watch Rob's recently acquired Mitchell come rumbling into Newark-Heath. Painted in post war MATS markings, the TB-25J touched down smoothly after a test flight by Felix Barion. The unpainted B-25 came rumbling in on its twin R-2600's. Both engine cowls sported the post-war "Hays Mod" exhaust setup, which helped muffle the immense "radial song" that deafened pilots. The Mitchell came from a museum that had gone under in California, and Rob had snagged the bomber up "at a steal". It reminded Joey of how Freightmaster got two B-25J's as their "hacks"; two stored airframes that were awaiting further restoration in Arizona came up for sale in late 2019. Freightmaster snagged them up and finished the restoration into "VB-25N's", to proudly serve the company as a station hack, hauling small parts, and workers between hubs to free up space and scheduling conflicts with the bigger cargo planes. Plus, it was always nice to bring another warbird back into the air.

Mingling about on the flight line and soaking up some rays, Joey returned to his hangar, where he momentarily stepped inside. Flipping on the lights, Joey looked at his own, small, but slowly growing warbird collection inside his hangar. Inside were several planes, a nice blend of props and jets. Neatly parked around the open hangar was his Brazilian P-47D-40 Thunderbolt, an FG-1D Corsair, complete with red and white checkered cowl and tail, and his dayglo orange and natural metal F-86D Sabre Dog. An olive drab P-40E Warhawk, wearing a noticeable shark's mouth motif on its nose, sat towards the middle of the gaggle. Named "Bataan", it was painted in a hybrid paint scheme to commemorate the two Warhawk airframes that made up its composite frame; the fuselage and left wing were from a Philippines based Warhawk that was shot down during the Battle of Bataan, while the right wing and tail surfaces were from a Warhawk that had flown with the Flying Tigers in the CBI theatre. Towards the back sat an F6F-3 Hellcat, and an FM-1 Wildcat, their wings neatly folded. The Hellcat wore the mid-war tri-color scheme, it's cowling air intake resembling a toothy grin. The cowl had a crudely sprayed "479", to mimic the ferry numbers that new aircraft wore upon arrival. The Wildcat was painted in the early war markings of a Midway veteran, the airframe adorned in blue-gray over white.

New to his collection was a Polish Lim-5, a licensed copy of the Soviet MiG-17F. It was adorned in light brown, dark green, and gray camouflage, with a sky blue belly. A red bort number "1023" adorned the nose. The two wing drop tanks were also painted sky. Dominating the hangar were two MiG-21PF's, "Blue 66", and "White 121". Joey, who had once shunned the high speed Fishbed, found himself growing more confident in piloting the delta-wing interceptor. "Blue 66" was an all silver Fishbed-D, in VVS markings. "White 121", another PF model, was dressed in a four-tone camouflage of two shades of green, brown, with sky blue undersides. It's nose bort number was a stenciled white outline of "121", its three-letter code signaling a Soviet training squadron. Both planes were adorned the Soviet red star on the swept back tail. Soon, a P-51D would be arriving to grow his collection some more.

Joey looked satisfied by his high speed mounts and nodded in self-approval. A momentary look of thought flashed on his face, before he shut the lights off and closed the door behind him.

"479" carried Joey aloft, southbound for Opa Locka. Another beautiful morning greeted Joey through his amber tinted goggles, as he flew in formation with his mechanic Vlado. The tri-colored Hellcat flew in close formation with "The Barion", Rob's Curtiss Helldiver, that Vlado was borrowing. Somewhere high above the Appalachians, Joey watched the puffy clouds drift by his Hellcat. The morning sun colored them in brilliant pastel colors, a blaze of magentas and orange. Sunlight flickered off the yellow tips to his propeller blades. Joey turned his head to the left, to glance out of the heavily framed canopy, to see Vlado at his three o'clock, bobbing up and down in the slipstream. The SB2C-5's glossy sea blue paint took on a brilliant sheen in the sun. Joey turned his head back to momentarily stare through the reflector gun sight, then down at his instrument panel for a second or two. He cruised along at an indicated airspeed of 225MPH, aided by a tailwind. Another busy day awaited him, the itinerary running through Joey's head. His hazel eyes watched as the blunt nose of his Hellcat punched through the wispy top of a random cloud, the propeller's wake chopping at the vapors, and rain momentarily streaking against the canopy.

By mid morning, Joey and Vlado reached Opa Locka, where they descended in for landing at the Executive Airport. The Hellcat came straight in for the almost two mile long runway. Touching down and rolling out to turn onto the service road, Joey rumbled onto Freightmaster's ramp and folded the wings up to his Hellcat. He ran the Double Wasp lean, and cut the mixture. He unstrapped himself and climbed out, to be greeted by Kurt. The two stood and watched as Vlado lumbered in with the portly Helldiver.

"My plan is to take one of the Commandos up for a test flight, and then Vlado's gonna work on that hydraulic issue on the other ship." Joey explained to Kurt as they watched.

"Yeah, that C-46, me and Dad took up for a test hop, and the right gear wouldn't retract. Heh, go figure." Kurt chuckled.

"Teething troubles." Joey chuckled.

Getting with Vlado, the two walked over to meet one of Freightmaster's Commandos that sat out on the line, newly repainted in the new red and blue paint scheme. The colors accented the Commando's bulbous double-lobed fuselage. Christened "Clipper Catawba" after an Ohio town, it was about ready to enter service with Freightmaster to serve then Caribbean market. They checked the plane over, checked the fuel levels, and got the props turned over for hydraulic lock. With ground crew watching, they climbed into the cockpit for their test flight. Vlado took the captain's seat; his long experience flying in the Croatian Air Force, then his career with Raytheon, gave him the privilege to test fly it.

"It's just like riding a bike! You never forget." Vlado boasted as he went through the checklist. Dressed casually for the Florida warmth in shorts and a t-shirt, Vlado's sleeved up arms alternated between the instrument panel above their heads and on the dash, as he checked systems over. The aircraft hummed with the sound of electronics, as Joey assisted him. "Okay, let's start on two~"

Motioning from the window that he was going to start number two, Joey watched as Vlado engaged the mixture controls, and hit the starter button. Engine two engaged and groaned a bit as the prop began to turn. Joey counted the blades out for Vlado, before he engaged both magnetos. With a blast of oily blue smoke, the Double Wasp coughed to life, with the whir of its supercharger, and the clanking hack of cold pistons. Vlado watched the engine gauges for a moment, and went to start engine one. The process was repeated and engine one hacked to life with a back blast of oily smoke.

"There we go~" Joey said as he observed the oil temperature and pressure gauges. "Looks like everything's coming up fine~"

Once the engines smoothed out in their idle, Vlado released the brakes, and "Clipper Catawba" began to slowly taxi. Much like the tail-dragging DC-3, the forward view was restricted, forcing Vlado to somewhat zigzag in his taxi to maintain his forward view. Slowly, the old Curtiss taxied to the end of the runway and turned. He engaged the throttles and commanded maximum takeoff power, the twin radials immediately responding and revving up to full power. With flaps deployed, the aircraft quickly grew buoyant as the tail lifted off the runway after several hundred feet. Lightly loaded, the C-46 lifted off the runway, Joey retracting the landing gear away as Opa Locka began to pass below them in their climb. The Doberman thought the Curtiss sat between the DC-3 and Convairliners in performance; it felt more springy than the Douglas, but didn't quite have the performance of the CV's. The Commando had a thousand less horses under the cowls than the Convairs.

Flying down the coast of Florida, Joey and Vlado climbed the plane to ten thousand feet and plotted course along the clouds on their flight. It was otherwise a docile airplane, with no noticeable vices in handling. They performed an engine-out test, shutting down engine number one and feathering the propeller. The Curtiss continued to hold altitude with one engine, though its speed was impacted by that. Joey glanced out the cockpit windows and watched engine two keep them aloft; it always gave him a sinking feeling to have just one engine, holding everything up. Vlado restarted engine one via a windmill restart; slowly engaging the prop pitch to help turn the engine back over. Aside from the controls being heavier, and the plane feeling a bit more sluggish than the Convairs, Joey was impressed nonetheless. He took the controls and banked the C-46 around, feeling sound in its handling.

"What do you think Vlado?"

"It flies better than it looks." The wolf joked. "The Curtiss Calamity, pilots called it during the war."

"Heh, yeah." Chuckled Joey. "I think it's fine and dandy for the Caribbean routes."

"Good." Vlado acknowledged.

Joey had the controls on the return leg back to Opa-Locka. Flying manually and by dead reckoning on the coast, Joey put the Curtiss down uneventfully on the runway. It smoothly rolled out. They returned back to the ramp, where Joey took notice of one of the DC-7B's arriving in from New York. It's inboard radials just powered off as they came taxiing up. Joey turned and parked with the ground crew's navigation. The radials were powered off and the wheels choked.

Stepping out of the cockpit to leave, Joey and Vlado walked down the fuselage, where Joey appreciated the level cargo floor, verses the "uphill battle" loading a DC-3. They exited through the cargo door, down a step ladder that was propped up.

"Now I gotta figure out what the hell is going on with that gear..." Vlado grumbled as he walked with Joey over to the Helldiver, to fetch his tools that were stowed in the rear gunner's compartment. "Never leave home without the tools you love! I hate using other guys' tools. Need my own!"

"Yeah, I know that feeling." Joey nodded. "Hey I'll be right back~"

Feeling curious, Joey walked over to check on things. On the tarmac sat "Clipper Anton Savchenko", one of his company's thirteen DC-7BF's. Forklifts were beginning the process of unloading freight containers from the rear cargo door. "Anton Savchenko" was one of his "Mexican birds"; it had been impounded for drug smuggling, and given to his husband Rob Barion, as restitution for his kidnapping in 2015, who in turn gave it to Joey for operations. Of his thirteen, seven were ex contraband smugglers, and six were former water-bombers. They had various passenger career backgrounds; "Anton Savchenko" was flown by Eastern until 1966, while others came from Pan American, American Airlines, South African Airways.

As the fuel truck lumbered up to top off the tanks with 100LL, Joey walked towards the terminal building, where he saw the captain of the "Seven" suddenly walk out the front door, a paw clutching his forehead.

"Tybee!" Joey yelled. "You alright?"

"No, Joey. I got a bad migraine flaring up again~" the middle-aged Dober grumbled. "Thad had to do most of the flying in here."

"Ouch."

"I'm heading out of here to rest. I'm just not feeling good." Tybee grumbled.

"Rest up, man~"

"Thanks, Joey~"

The Brazilian Dober watched Tybee get in his car and depart for home. He stood there, watching Tybee leave. Joey pursed his lips and turned to look at the DC-7 being unloaded. He exhaled, making a fart sound through his lips. "Fuck me~"

At the helm of "Anton Savchenko", Joey flew as the Captain, filling in for Tybee. Enroute to Albany with thirty-five thousand pounds of cargo, the DC-7B flew northbound, with his crew; co-pilot Thad Bueller, a burly Rottweiler in his mid-thirties, and flight engineer, Kevin Rothstein, a gray wolf at forty-six. They were somewhere over North Carolina.

"I thought today was going to be a straightforward day." Joey joked with the others as he looked out the windows. "But then I forgot that life likes to throw a fast one now and again~"

"Yeah, Tybee wasn't feeling that well before we took off. Bad migraine."

"Yeah, that'll take you off your feet. For sure." Joey shuddered. "I've had a few migraines once in a blue moon, and it was terrible."

"Yeah, I had to fly basically as the defacto captain." Thad explained. "Oh well, training I guess to become a captain!"

"Heh, there ya go!" Joey chuckled. "Well, I'll try and make this easy. We load up in Albany, then swing over to Boston to grab vaccine containers, and then head back to Opa, to call it a day."

"Done deal~ I'll be out of hours by then."

"Wait, we gotta pick up the deadheaders in Albany!" Rothstein exclaimed.

"Oh shit... yeah..." Thad grunted.

"Oh, the overnight guys." Joey remembered. To keep up with the vaccine transports, a select few crews were asked to fly overnight cargo runs, a rarity for Freightmaster's operations.

"Sam, Mark, and Ryan."

"Right." Joey nodded. "We'll get em sent back down to Opa~"

"Heh, cargo." Laughed Thad and Rothstein.

"Now you're making it sound like we're canine traffickers!"

"Isn't that what this old bird did once upon a time?"

"Ha!" Joey snorted. "That's fucked up~ I shouldn't laugh because that's what happened to Rob..."

Arriving into Albany by one o'clock, the DC-7B was unloaded at the ramp, and reloaded, with space at the end to pick up more vaccines for Florida. Joey picked up his deadheading crew, who were exhausted from their overnight flights. Lifting off, they made the eastward flight to Boston, where the vaccines awaited shipment at Logan.

Climbing down, Joey watched three vaccine containers come rolling up behind a tug. There had to have been at least ninety-two thousand doses between those three containers. A forklift followed behind, ready to load it into the cargo hold. Joey watched for a moment, then turned his attention to the weather reports on his phone; it was forty-nine degrees in Boston, with a rather high humidity of eighty-five percent. To the west, Joey saw the sky was getting dark, a rainstorm expected. He wanted to get out of Boston before the rain. The containers were loaded up into the fuselage and strapped down. Joey attached the vents to a window and carried the popped out window panels to the rear bulkhead to stow them. He proceeded to climb down one ladder, go under the fuselage, to climb up the ladder propped up by the forward fuselage door, to assume his spot in the cockpit.

The clock struck three-thirty in the afternoon, when "Anton Savchenko" lifted off from Logan. It banked around and began flying southbound for Florida. Joey kept the throttles open to climb up to ten thousand feet, where he backed the mercury back into cruise power. Four R-3350's released their radial song for all to hear as they flew away from the weather front impacting the east coast.

"When I get back to Opa, I'm gonna have to take off with Vlado. Hopefully he's got the hydraulic issue fixed on one of the Commandos..." Joey explained to Thad over the intercom.

"A little tender loving care." Chuckled Thad.

"Yeah. More like a pain in the fucking ass." Laughed Joey. "Certain aircraft are just easier to maintain. The Convairs and the DC-3's are just so wonderful to maintain since they don't demand much. The Connies? You gotta treat the Curtiss props with a lot of respect- you mess up the electrical brushes in the hub and you're gonna have a bad day."

"I always keep my paws on the prop override on takeoff..." Rothstein pursed his lips. "Just in case."

"The only thing I don't like about Hamiltons are the fucking oil sludge that can build up in the prop boss. Curtiss props are clean since everything's electric. It's just the brushings you have to be so careful and meticulous about."

"Yeah~"

"And they're hollow steel, so corrosion problems can creep up. But then again, when you designed something for immediacy verses long term... nobody cared in the forties. I doubt anyone alive back them would think a group of guys in the twenty-teens would be scrounging for radials and propellers to keep those piston pounders flying!" Joey snorted. "Little did they know!"

Settling down for the cruise to Florida, "Anton Savchenko" flew over Virginia, nearing the border to North Carolina. At 350 miles per hour indicated airspeed, aided by a nice tailwind, the DC-7B flew through the cloudless cyan sky alone. At the helm, Joey communicated with Washington DC's ATC station, requesting an altimeter update, which he adjusted by turning a small dial next to it. He glanced at the digital GPS, which displayed a radar display from the plane's upgraded pulse-Doppler radar that was installed on the nose.

Sitting back in his chair, Joey did a slow, deep inhale, and a slow exhale. He felt a slight headache coming on. The air he breathed felt a bit "off", like it felt a bit heavier than normal. Joey fumbled his brow about his suspicions; was he just imagining this?

Thad twisted and cracked his neck. He grunted. "Ugh, I got a damn headache coming on~"

"Apparently headaches are contagious now?" Rothstein joked.

"Yeah... I got a headache as well..." Joey muttered. "Is it just me? Or does the air feel a bit heavier?"

"It feels...gassy?" Rothstein thought.

"Roth, go check on the guys back there." Joey suggested.

The gray wolf unbuckled himself from his jump seat, and got up to open the cockpit door, which lead to a small baggage, navigator's compartment. There he found Mark and Ryan slumped in their seats, and Mark lying on the floor face down. Rothstein sensed that the air was really gassy.

"Oh fuck!" Rothstein yelled. "JOEY! We got a problem!"

"What- what?" Joey shouted.

"I think we got a carbon dioxide leak in one of the containers!"

Rothstein turned to close the door, and stumbled into the instrumentation rack. He blinked and shook his head, appearing to be dizzy as he returned to his seat. Joey immediately thought about the warning Rob had given him.

"...when you have elevated humidity, the exhaust manifold can freeze up, and the pressure builds inside the container, and one of the welds ruptured, at a spot where the insulation terminates for the vent. It just couldn't take the heating and cooling of such magnitude. ... It's just something I'm concerned about, because of carbon dioxide poisoning. If it would fail in flight, and nobody would catch it before everyone's incapacitated. That's my biggest fear."

Immediately grabbing the oxygen mask, Joey donned it and strapped it to his face. He ordered the others to immediately grab oxygen. "Open the windows!" he demanded. As Thad opened the side windows to the cockpit, Joey slammed his open, which immediately filled the cockpit with the roar of the slipstream rushing in. Joey switched the radio to the emergency band, and declared an emergency.

"Pan-Pan, Pan-Pan, Pan-Pan. Freightmaster seven-twenty-one, declaring an emergency over. Repeat. Freightmaster seven-twenty-one, declaring an emergency over."

"Freightmaster seven-twenty-one, Washington ATC, you are declaring an emergency. Over."

"I have a carbon dioxide leak, request vector to immediate over." Joey radioed. "I need medical teams, multiple crew down."

"Acknowledge your emergency, head heading ninety-one for immediate, over."

"Heading ninety-one, copy that. Over." Thad acknowledged as he adjusted the autopilot.

Banking around, Joey and Thad turned around to head to Pitt-Greenville, in a race against time. Joey knew exactly what was going on, and requested dry ice to be brought to keep the vaccines cold. Something ruptured and was rapidly subliming the dry ice into gas, that was overwhelming the ventilation. The fifteen minute descending light to Pitt-Greenville was agonizing as Joey felt each second painfully tick away. People's lives were in great danger.

At the airport, emergency services awaited on the access ramp, awaiting the arrival of the emergency bound DC-7. Firefighters and paramedics watched as the DC-7 banked around and began a rapid descent. It flared in and touched down a bit hard, the propliner jolting on impact and bouncing two times. Full reverse thrust was applied and the plane was stopped on the runway, the engines quickly powered off.

"Alright! Get the doors opened! Vent it out!" Joey shouted. Removing his oxygen mask, the air felt so heavy, so full of carbon dioxide gas. He opened the cockpit door and rushed out to get the main cabin door opened.

"SAM! RYAN! MARK!" Joey shouted. He grabbed Sam, a brown wolf and found a weak pulse. He had spittle covering his muzzle, and his eyes were glassed over. He found the same symptoms with the other two. There was so much gas in the air that he felt his strength weaken in real time; he tried to pick Sam up, and stumbled into the wall, and down onto the floor. Everything seemed to go quiet, his vision fading in and out. Then everything went to just mumbles, blackness. Joey and the others were overcome by the gas.

One Week Later

The slight turbulence gave Joey's handwriting a jagged look on his sheet of paper. Sitting at the disused navigator's desk of his friends Hercules transport, under the soft glow of the table lamp, Joey wrote another statement, explaining the situation he had encountered on his ill-fated flight. It fulfilled not only a legal requirement, but it also was an attempt to play damage control; his company was once again embroiled in a scandal.

Joey had a brush with death with his ill-fated flight. All he remembered before passing out was trying to pick one of his deadheading crewmember's up, and then everything went to black. He awoke in an ambulance, enroute to the hospital, where he was treated for carbon dioxide poisoning. True to Rob's forewarning, one of the vaccine containers suffered a failure. It's vent got choked up with ice from the above average humidity, and the pressure inside built up until a critical weld broke. Right where Rob predicted. It was a single weld that wasn't insulated well, because of a gap that was needed for the vent. The heating and cooling cycles, combined with the weld, broke it. It did not help that the container was exposed to direct sunlight from one of the aircraft's windows, which only served to help sublime the dry ice faster, once the container had ruptured. The three deadheading crewmembers were all taken to the hospital in critical condition, and had to be treated in a hyperbaric chamber to purge the Co2 from their bloodstream. Joey and the primary crew were lucky. It was a terrible situation, and to add insult to injury, a quarter of the vaccines in the container had spoiled. Several thousand doses that were critically needed were ruined and tossed out. The state of Florida was very upset, so was the FAA and FDA, and the vaccine manufacturer. Now they hounded Freightmaster for more information, statements, everything. Joey even feared that their lucrative vaccine hauling contract would be pulled. The Doberman shook his head and continued to write about what had happened.

Joey attributed the design flaw to the problem of adapting a cargo container for such a delicate mission, in the face of a national exigency. They were under tremendous pressure to come up with a solution to meet their contractual obligations, while minimizing cost and manufacturing difficulties. It was found that of the forty containers that were made, there were various build qualities; the one that failed was built by Rick Bartley and his friends in a weld shop. Only Centoh Aircraft made the most durable containers. Writing this down felt so embarrassing, so damning. Joey finished the statement with his signature and date at the bottom. He capped his pen and sat back in the chair, listening to the thump-thump of the propeller wash against the plane, and the whistling whine of the turboprops.

Turning his head, Joey saw Mark Prince at the controls of his former RAF C-130K. His husband Tanner Rodriguez flew in the right-hand seat, as they made their way to Minnesota, to pick up the two B-17's that were destined for Rob's museum. Joey was tagging along for the flight, to serve as the co-pilot on one of the Fortresses. It would help take his mind off from the stress.

Arriving into the St. Cloud Regional Airport, Mark's sand and stone camouflaged Hercules taxied up to the ramp, where the Silver Wings Aviation Museum resided at. The museum was nothing more than two wooden hangars with their name slapped on it. Outside one of the hangars sat Rob's PB-1W Fortress, in glossy sea blue. Sitting just inside the hangar that could barely contain it was the very rare B-17E. Joey climbed out after Tanner and stepped out onto the tarmac to gaze at them. Only his husband could pull something like this off.

Joey walked over, looking curious. He stood before the PB-1W, which was a B-17G turned into a Navy radar picket plane. The chin turret was removed and faired over, and a bulbous radome was installed where the bomb bay was located, housing an APS-20 radar system. The entire plane was painted glossy sea blue, with white stenciling. The paddle blade propellers were matte black with chrome yellow tips. Off the top of his head, Joey recalled Rob saying that the plane had once been a radar picket plane, before being retired in 1954. The old Fort then served as a fire bomber until 1983, where it was bought and turned back into a bomber for the warbird circuit. In 2014, it had run off the runway in an emergency landing and was heavy damaged, where Rob purchased the plane. Over several years, it was slowly transformed into its past life as a PB-1W, a very unique variant of the famous B-17. Adjacent to it was the other fortress, an olive drab and neutral gray B-17E, christened "Midway's Marauder". Joey walked over to gaze up at its multi-framed Plexiglas nose.

Of only a handful of Flying Fortresses around, a B-17E was scarcer than hen's teeth. Built in small numbers, and quickly retired as newer models came down the line, this Fortress was found in a swamp in the southwest Pacific from where it had fought at and was shot down in early 1943. It was salvaged in the 1980's, and very slowly pieced together. It was restored by a consortium of warbird groups over the course of thirty-five years; Rob had donated some money and gifted the group a set of rare medium chord Hamilton propellers, but otherwise had no involvement until the pandemic hit. Given the pandemic and economic downturn, the groups pulled out, one by one. With the museum in jeopardy, Rob came to the agreement to purchase the B-17E for twelve million dollars. The museum would stay open, at the cost of what was going to be their prized gem. To give further aid, Rob let the museum finish up restoration of his PB-1.

Joey stood with his arms crossed, lost in thought. He shuddered and jolted a bit when he felt Rob grab him, stirring him from his thoughts.

"Hey, which one do you want to fly?"

At the helm of the PB-1W, Joey flew in the right-hand seat, assisting Rob as they flew the Fortress together. Their mechanic Vlado rode along to assist as the flight engineer; he sat behind them in a jump seat to help monitor the engines on their flight back to Newark. Lightly loaded, the PB-1 bobbed up and down in the turbulence as they flew information with the B-17E, piloted by Felix Barion and Geert Apps, with their other mechanic, Pablo Hernandez. Shepherding them along was Mark and Tanner, in their RAF C-130K. Everyone stayed in radio contact as they flew in a triangular formation together.

Inside the cockpit, Joey and everyone was quiet. Joey sat looking out the window, watching the bomber be kept aloft by its quartet of Cyclone-9 radials. Compared to the immense roar that his big radials made, the Cyclone's were, subjectively speaking, rather quiet. They were really compact, single-row radials, composed of nine cylinders and a now disabled two-stage supercharger. Joey thought they ran a bit rougher than the twin-row radials. Flying the fortress was relatively straightforward; it didn't have any particular vices, and it's thick low wings gave it stability in the air. Joey sat thinking about all this while his eyes stared aimlessly off into space, watching the ground scenery slowly drift in and out of view. His mind also thought about the debacle he was facing with the vaccine accident. There were a lot of angry people at him, and the thought stabbed at him constantly.

"Hey, you alright, Joey?" came Rob's voice, burning through those thoughts of his. Joey lifted his head up a bit and shuddered slightly.

"Oh, yeah, I'm alright, well...kinda." Joey admitted.

Rob understood Joey's sentiment. "You're upset over the vaccine accident."

"Yeah."

"Fuck 'em." Rob shrugged. "It was an accident."

"A lot of people are depending on those vaccines. They're a silver bullet. But there's just no perfect way to transport stuff that has to stay at negative ninety-four degrees!"Joey explained.

"Exactly. The people doing the most hootin' and hollerin' are the empty suits who got us into this mess in the first place! I don't see them trying to find a perfect way to transport delicate medicine that has to be kept super cold and covered in frozen carbon dioxide! Fuck Flori-duh, and fuck Duh-Santis. I hate that fucking state with a passion- you know, I'd implement the final solution for that state and-"

"Whoa, Adolf, easy~" teased Joey with a smile.

"Sorry, got carried away there." Rob grimaced. "Look, it was an accident. And yeah, maybe the container had a design flaw, but sometimes shit happens- especially given the major deadlines and a critical health exigency needing rectified."

Rob took a second to clear his throat. "There's been a year to prepare for all of this and nobody did- and that's what happens when you let a bunch of fucking incompetent retards run the asylum. It's pathetic. Over half a million dead, and now that cases have come down from the holiday slaughter, states want to reopen things back up. Unbelievable. We live in a world where goodness is murdered and mediocrity thrives every single day."

"Oh I know." Joey rolled his eyes sarcastically. "I feel like me and Kurt gotta go back to square one on this..."

"Me and Vlado can offer you a couple of our vaccine transport containers, including our bomb bay pannier for the B-25? You got two VB-25N's that would fit the bill nicely."

"Heh, our station hacks for crew transfers." Chuckled Joey.

"Why don't load a few thousand doses in the bomb bay? It's isolated away, and you don't have to worry about carbon dioxide poisoning."

Vlado leaned in. "They're the typical Rob overengineered design~"

"Heh, I'm sold!" Joey laughed.

"Fits my policy perfectly! Put those warbirds back to work and make money with 'em. Not these posh museum queens."

"Heh, heh..." chuckled Joey. He reached back behind the armored seat to grab his water bottle from his backpack, to take a slow sip. He sat and watched the clouds and collected his thoughts. "...At this time last year, I could have never envisioned where we are today."

"I don't think any of us could." Vlado shook his head.

"I could." Rob admitted in his usual blunt tone. "Highly transmittable airborne coronavirus variant, globalized world, delayed response, and an inept, ethically ruinous presidential administration, and an ignorant populace that thinks angels are real. The perfect storm for a pandemic to hit right at home. 'I AIN'T WEARIN' NO MASK- I GET MUH FACTS FROM TRUMP PATRIOT DOT R-U!'" Rob ended his rant with a stereotypical redneck voice.

"...fuck 'em."

"Yeah." Joey shrugged. "Now that you mention it that way..."

"That's pretty good Rob... I like that Trump patriot dot r-u quip." Vlado laughed.

"Once in a while I can fire off something funny." Rob shrugged. "But seriously. Fuck 'em."

Continuing on their journey, the C-130 and two B-17's passed by Chicago, where they met up with Rob's twin C-121A's, "Thing One", and "Thing Two". The two short-fuselage Connies usually flew as a pair, hauling cargo, and performing yeoman duties for Barev. The two C-121A's carried Speedpaks under their fuselage, hauling vaccines on top of their usual cargo load. The large formation flew back towards Ohio, where the Hercules and two Flying Fortresses split up to begin flying towards Newark, while the Constellations continued on to New York.

In time honored tradition, Joey opened a new air route with "Challenger". The lead plane in a loose formation of three, Joey commanded his "Challenger", a 1954 WV-2 Warning Star. The radar picket Constellation served as Freightmaster's flagship; between promoting Freightmaster at airshows, it did an honorary tradition of opening new routes for the company. The curvaceous lines of the Warning Star were broken by the swollen radome between the wings, which once housed an APS-20 radar system. "Challenger" was painted in a highly contrasting Navy paint scheme; it was painted otherwise a drab seaplane gray, but had liberal applications of fluorescent dayglo orange on the nose, tail, and wingtip tanks. In formation behind the Warning Star was Freightmaster's L-1049G, "Clipper Rob Barion", and Centoh's DC-6BF, "Stanley Clarke". Both planes were allocated for the new "vaccine express" route, linking Columbus with Ypsilanti Michigan, where new vaccines would be distributed out through their hubs. It was Freightmaster's big "second chance" after their dry ice incident.

Ypsilanti's Willow Run Airport was a big cargo hub in the greater Detroit area. Standing on the tarmac next to their corporate jets were the big wigs of the three vaccine makers. Looking a bit impatient, they stood and tracked the lumbering Warning Star pass by them in the landing pattern. It banked around, gear down, and descended in for landing. The process was repeated by the L-1049G and DC-6B. Rolling up onto the tarmac, the thunderous roar of burbling pistons, and the growling of propellers filled their ears as Joey taxied up, guided by ground crew. The other two propliners came and parked behind the Warning Star, neatly arranged in a triangular formation on the faded pavement.

Joey descended from the Warning Star with his borrowed flight crew. He met up with his husband Rob, mechanics Vlado and Pablo, and their support crews as they met with the executives over matters relating to vaccine transportation. The executives examined the DC-6 and Super Constellation, examined Centoh's upgraded vaccine transport containers, and got a rundown of the specifications of the aircraft and their routes. The Doberman wanted to take this moment and play "damage control", over wary executives, after some of the vaccine load was lost in the accident.

Unloaded off "Stanley Clarke" was Centoh's vaccine container. Purpose built, it looked like a big square refrigerator, painted in bright white. The interior had sprayed-in foam insulation, and a passive gas venting system in the lid. Rob assured that gas sublimation was greatly minimized by the insulation quality. For added security, like Joey's transport containers, it had an option to attach a hose vent to the lid, to dump Co2 overboard through a window. With the third vaccine approved for use, it didn't need the extensive refrigeration, and less dry ice would be needed, only adding to the reduced risk of carbon dioxide poisoning. The executives seemed calmed by the examination, and once again, the aircraft were walked through, statistics exchanged, and pointers given.

Joey breathed a sigh of relief. He turned around and glanced up at his Constellation; the "Vaccine Express" was now a go.

On the penultimate day of February, Joey taxied "Salvaged Wonder II" to the runway threshold. The gull-winged Caribou, a Canadian twin-engine cargo plane, had a peculiar shape, with its boxy fuselage, cranked up, oversized tail, and spidery landing gear. Adorned in Vietnam camouflage of two greens and tan, over white, the CV-2A was fully loaded for a flight to Ypsilanti. Like the C-97, the CV-2 was a "parts hauler" for Freightmaster, performing behind-the-scenes yeoman duties for the company, shuttling parts around the hubs. Two R-2000 Twin Wasps powered the CV-2, burbling away with their unpainted Hamilton propellers slowly pushing the plane along. Prop wash kicked up the residual salt dust on the pavement.

In the cockpit, Joey flew with Vlado, the two of them watching a DC-7B take off for Chicago. In front of them, taxied a C-121C, "Clipper Tony Alvarez", which was Ypsilanti bound for the "Vaccine Express". Joey and the Caribou, were destined for Ypsi as well. With a load of three R-3350's and a couple boxes of instruments, Joey was padding up a temporary "base" for spare parts should a malfunction arise for any of his "Vaccine Express" flights.

Lifting off from Rickenbacker, Joey guided the lumbering, heavily loaded Caribou over greater Obetz. It climbed sluggishly, and the Doberman was very cautious about not overstraining the engines. He inched the mercury back very slowly, while Vlado turned the plane to head north. Joey could always hear Rob's voice in his head reminding him that "if both engines run, you'll be alright, but if you lose an engine? Just crash straight ahead 'cause one engine ain't gonna do it~"It was the typical Rob response.

It took a little over an hour for the Caribou to traverse Ohio into Michigan. Putting along at just 181MPH, there was just no way for Joey to catch up with the Constellation, and its 330MPH cruising speed. He passed over Toledo, and saw in the distance, greater Detroit emerge from the horizon's haze. Joey had to descend a bit and bank around to avoid Detroit Metro's air traffic. He got into the landing circle for Willow Run, and awaited his turn as he orbited. On the tarmac below, he could spot the distinctive triple-tails of multiple Constellations, with Rob's "red tops" prominently on display. To handle the "Vaccine Express" at Ypsilanti, Freightmaster provided three Connies, and Centoh, seven. At Boston, Joey had four DC-7B's, and three C-118A's allocated just for vaccine shipments to their hubs for distribution along the various feeder routes. Further down in the distance, Joey spotted Mark Prince's Precision fleet of C-130K's, which he allocated ten just for vaccine transport purposes. It felt very much like a miniature version of the Berlin Airlift of several decades prior.

Lining up for landing, Joey and Vlado battled a crosswind that rocked the Caribou about. The airframe groaned and shook to the wind, but Joey flared out for a decent touchdown on the centerline. The plane crabbed and bounced a bit, but settled down for a rollout down the runway. Joey soon turned off and rolled his way to the tarmac, where all his airplanes sat being loaded.

Climbing out, Joey stood for a moment and watched as forklifts carried the big vaccine containers to load into the Constellations. It was a methodical, well oiled sight, as planes were quickly loaded back up, refueled, and then turned over to leave. The big R-3350's hacked out a cloud of oily smoke, and a burst of flames as they turned over. Joey got help in unloading the three R-3350's, which were gingerly rolled down on their transport rack. It was a big radial engine; twin-rowed, with eighteen massive cylinders that were intricately finned for cooling. The back of the engine held a sort-of redundant single-stage supercharger, and three exhaust gas blow-down power recovery turbines ringed the rear of the engine, to scavenge energy from the exhaust flow. It was a complicated engine that could be temperamental in the wrong hands, but offered ample power. Workmen also carried out boxes of spare instrumentation, to be housed in one of the hangars, should there be a mechanical problem to one of the Constellations.

For the return flight back to Columbus, Joey received two transport containers himself, which just barely fit in the narrow fuselage of the Caribou. Joey guestimated that he had at least sixty-thousand doses aboard of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. The manifest he received that one container was destined for the Ohio Department of Health, and the other was destined for Chicago's Department of Health. Joey signed off on his load, watched the fuel truck come, so he could top up his tanks, and it was go time to return to Rickenbacker. The lighter Caribou quickly took off in less than 1,100 feet, and climbed away in a banking turn to head south back to Ohio.

Joey engaged cruise power and scanned his instrumentation. He also took a moment to glance over at a newly installed Co2 meter that was attached to the panel by a piece of Velcro. He had confidence that Rob had a competent container built that would reduce Co2 venting, but a little insurance never hurt. The Co2 level in the cockpit was negligible; Joey concluded that there was more Co2 from the engine exhaust than the containers. The cockpit always smelled like used oil and cosmoline.

"I feel good about this." Joey said to Vlado as they flew. "I think this has gone off pretty well."

"You're playing a very major part in ending this disaster." Vlado nodded.

"Rise to the occasion~" Joey chuckled a bit. "What a clusterfuck in all aspects."

"Yeah." Vlado laughed. "If it's not one thing, it's something else I've realized."

"Especially with Rob in one's life." Joey grinned.

Vlado sarcastically grimaced. "Oh Rob."

"He's a good guy... just... fickle... flawed... beautifully imperfect."

"Why does terrifying also come to mind?" Vlado teased.

"Nixonian is my choice term." Joey laughed.

"Rob's always been good to me... but you run things so much different than him in the aviation sphere?" Vlado pointed out.

"What? I don't scream and scream and scream at people until things get done?" Joey snorted. "Heh, I just do what I've always done- just accept what people can and can't do, and make the best with what I have, and just encourage people~ Bring out the best in them. I tell that to Rob and it just baffles him. He thinks you gotta instill fear in people to get respect and work done- which I mean... that'll get short term goals done... but long term? Ehh. I think he's slowly coming around to that."

"Rob lately has seemed burned out..."

"Who isn't burned out? Hundreds of thousands of people dead, millions infected by Covid, entire economic upheaval, endemic societal problems poking and prodding, incompetent government trying to be rebuilt? It would burn everyone out. Fuck, I'm burned out!"

"I feel ya there." Vlado nodded. "I get burned out when I have to change the spark plugs on your godforsaken Boeing!"

Joey just grinned.

"Don't get another R-4360 powered plane!"

"Welllllllllll~"

"Don't!"

"Can't guarantee it!" Joey teased with a playful grin.

"Fine." Vlado huffed. He grumbled something and shook his head. Joey just laughed in response.

High over northern Texas, Joey flew aboard "Nugget", his L-1049E. Gleaming in the brilliant mid-day sunshine, the orange and beige striped Constellation droned westbound, aided along by a convenient tailwind. The sun baked great-plains drifted by below as the Constellation raced to Tucson. It was the Connie's first official mission as the executive plane of the Paulo Firearms Company. Previously, Joey had stopped in Jefferson City, to visit his ammunition plant; now he was enroute to Tucson, to not only sign an agreement to purchase five hundred surplus M1 rifles from an importer, but to visit the boneyard in Kingman, in the search for more propliners.

In the tail of the plane, Joey worked in his office space. He modeled the interior of "Nugget", like his husband's transport plane, "Coneflower". The tail was an office, complete with a desk and bed. The rest of the fuselage was composed of two lounges, separated by the galley and bathrooms. The interior was adorned in light, warm colors, to give the perception of openness in the otherwise narrow fuselage. The walls and ceiling were white, and the floor was adorned with tan carpet. The furniture and lounge seating was all light tan, as was the furniture in the office. Sitting at his desk with Kurt, Joey worked on his laptop, looking over reports and production quotas from the ammunition plant, while talking to Kurt about the airline.

"It's been a few weeks, and we've already transported our seventh million dose." Kurt boasted. "I think this has become an unqualified success!"

"A little rough start, but we've smoothed out the process." Joey nodded in agreement. "No more carbon dioxide poisoning."

"Yeah..." Kurt pursed his lips. "I guess our original design wasn't as up to par as I had thought."

"Eh, it happens." Joey shrugged. "Now we got better containers..."

"...and a lot of vaccines that don't need extreme temperatures."

"That too~" smiled Joey. "Crazy~"

"Heh."

"I would like to propose about turning Jefferson City into a fourth hub?" Joey suggested. "Since the ammo plant is there, and we have a flight always going there, and onwards to Carson City Nevada."

"Hmm. Well, it would serve linking our southern routes, to the few great-plains runs." Kurt responded while he sat and thought. "And we could expand that way too."

"True."

"We just need a few more aircraft to meet that expansion."

"Ugh, don't remind me." Laughed Joey. "Well... my understanding is, the boneyard has two more DC-7C's... and Carson Union retired their DC-7B water bombers... so there's a few more airframes we can snag up."

"Those 'sevens' are gonna need a lot of spar remediation. I can just feel it."

"Yeah. But that's why we got our maintenance team!"

"True!"

"Rob has secured the last ex-military Liftmasters and Convairs outta Davis-Monthan, so that's like thirty airframes, and he's willing to give us a dozen Convairs, and ten C-118's."

"Oh that would be lovely." Kurt nodded. "And I'm on the hunt down in the Caribbean for a few more C-47 airframes..."

"We can make it work~ And my brother-in-law is making the critical spare parts for us."

"Thank god..." Kurt breathed a sigh of relief. "For a few years before you came into Freightmaster's canon, me and Dad were biting our teeth a bit getting spare parts for the C-47's... the little cottage industry before Centoh Aircraft was just a pain in the ass."

"I can imagine. It was...precarious the first couple years with our Connies, before Jake really got things up to snuff."

"We're the last with our piston pounders!" Kurt laughed.

"I like it just like that." Joey chuckled.

"I think we'll do okay expanding slowly, over the next couple years." Kurt suggested.

"Yeah, I hope so, because I'm starting to get a little nervous about what the future will bring to our firearms business."

"Oh yeah, Joey?"

Joey pursed his lips and sighed a bit. "The whole gun debate is bullshit on both sides, I'll admit. One side wants ten year olds with fifty cal M2's, and the other side thinks if you just ban guns, rainbows will fill the skies, and there will be world peace." Joey chuckled and rolled his eyes. "There's a lot of weird gray areas, and nuance in the world of firearms. And I don't think there's really any one size fits all answer to resolve gun violence in this nation. We're a violent nation, a violent species, with huge inequalities, and combined with a still taboo, underfunded mental health services? You get Jimmy deciding he's going to blow his boss who stiffed him away with a AR-15. I'm the one who believes that a gun is morally neutral. It's piece of steel, milled and stamped. What people do with it- it can be moral or immoral."

"Obviously." Kurt nodded. "I was taught gun safety by my grandpa, and despite all the terrifying things he did otherwise, that was one thing he never fucked around with."

"Well yeah. I've heard too many stories of people shooting their friends, or shooting themselves like an idiot. But sadly, it happens." Joey rolled his eyes. "I'm just getting more and more nervous about selling firearms to just any Tom, Dick, and Harry that comes bebopping their way into the shop. Especially after four years of Donald Dump, Il-Douche, and the Trumpinistas insurrection. It's really making me and Dad more and more nervous about one of our rifles ending up shooting a Senator or something."

"Understandable." Kurt replied. "Ugh, me and Dad are just burned out from the four years of political bullshit, and the constant riff-raff. Both sides are getting more and more extreme in their beliefs."

"Yeah..." Joey grimaced. "Now you gotta be neighbors with ole forty-five!"

"No I am not!" laughed Kurt. "Just when Florida couldn't get anymore Flori-duh."

"Trump is the ultimate Florida Man." Joey snorted with Kurt, as they shared a hearty laugh together.

"Fuck that guy." Kurt concluded.

"I agree." Joey laughed. "And you just watch, Democrats will once again take this opportunity, and just fuck it all over because the progressives don't get along with the centrists, or they'll ram shit through, like gun control, or some kind of unpopular socialist program, and blow themselves outta the water."

"Gun control is amusing."

"Gun control's when you have both hands on the gun." Chuckled Joey.

"I remember being told that I shouldn't own an AR-15 because I have no purpose for it~ But that person had zero problem with my large caliber hunting rifle that's basically built around an AR-15 gas system!"

"See, that's the thing. Everyone's all freaking out about the AR-15, when I think it's a plinker... I cannot stand an AR-15- the only reason why they're used in mass shootings so much is because they're ubiquitous, relatively cheap, and somewhat lightweight, and use a small caliber bullet that you can carry more of. Now if I wanna do a mass shooting? Browning Automatic Rifle, or my G3, would be my taste~"

Kurt tipped his head back and laughed. "I'm gonna start calling you Rob~"

"Whoaaaa, motherfucker, hold up!" Joey laughed in return.

The sun began to set over the craggy hills off in the distance. Shadows were cast long on the sun baked desert floor of Kingman Airport. Backlit by the sun, "Nugget" sat, parked for the night, while Joey explored the boneyard with Kurt, Lloyd, and Vlado.

Sitting all lonesome amongst the scrub was the carcass of a DC-7C. Picked pretty well clean of parts, the airframe consisted of just its fuselage and wings. The cargo doors and forward baggage door were missing, as were the engines and cowls, leaving just the firewall remaining on the nacelle. The aircraft wore the remains of a former cargo company, apparently from Guatemala. It was bleached by the sun, and sandblasted by the desert's dust. The nose was held down by a set of cables attached to giant cement cylinders.

"Well the cockpit is pretty well picked clean..." Vlado admitted as he knelt by where the captain's seat was. The instrument panel was almost devoid of all instruments, and old wiring was strewn everywhere.

"I have spare instrumentation, that's not an issue." Joey nodded as he made visual notes on what he saw.

"Getting new wiring and gauges is tedious, but not impossible." Vlado explained as he picked up and examined one of the dangling wiring harnesses. "I mean, in general, this airframe looks okay."

"I didn't see any major corrosion, or buckling." Lloyd spoke up. "If there was a more intact Seven Seas? I'd snag it up before this one, but now you're gettin' down to slim pickins', and this is pretty damn acceptable if you ask me."

"I agree." Kurt nodded. "I think, give it a couple years give or take, and she'd be a perfect flyer."

"Let's go through with it." Joey accepted.

"Gotcha~" Kurt nodded.

Gingerly climbing down to the hard baked earth, Joey took a few steps back and lifted his camera up to take a couple photos. He got an artsy shot; the setting sun slowly sinking in the background behind the aircraft, with its metal skin taking on a brilliant amber hue. They walked a few hundred feet over to where another DC-7C sat at, in almost similar shape. It was unpainted, and its skin was dulled by the years of dust and sand beating against it. It had only one engine attached, without its cowl, and when Joey attempted to turn the feathered propeller attached, it would not budge. The engine was completely seized. They examined the plane, and found that despite missing control surfaces, a little corrosion here and there, and the cockpit completely gutted, it was an otherwise intact airframe, worthy of overhaul. Joey and Kurt accepted it in their purchase plans, before going on to accept the newly arrived DC-7B tankers.

The sun grew lower in the sky as it began to retreat behind the mountains, the sky turning into brilliant shades of orange to purple as the shadows grew longer on the warm desert floor. Joey walked with Kurt, discussing their plans, after examining the parted out remains of a Convair 440.

"I like em, and I think they're gonna allow us to expand out more." Kurt nodded as he kicked a rock away.

"A little bit of blood, sweat, and tears." Chuckled Joey. "As long as the airframe is good, the other bits and pieces can be fabricated."

"Oh yeah. It'll be great. And you said Rob is gonna transfer the C-118B's and C-131's outta Davis?"

"Yeah, that's the plan. Rob worked out some deal with the military to obtain the last mothballed propliners sitting there to free up space."

"Ah."

"Only Rob is what I say." Smiled Joey, who brushed some dust off his "Brasil" tanktop. "We have all these aircraft? We're gonna be good to meet the demand since things are gonna pick up steam once the pandemic lifts."

"Hopefully by the end of this year. You know my Dad still cannot get a vaccine shot? He's been trying and trying and trying, and typical Florida, it's a fucking mess!" Kurt exclaimed.

"Must not have donated enough to DeSantis." Laughed Joey with a grin.

"Ha~ Apparently so." Kurt chuckled. "I'm still not eligible. I'm too young they say, but I don't feel young! Almost forty-six! Hell, I get out of bed wrong, and it's like my whole day's ruined."

"Hey don't speak like that...I'm gonna be thirty-nine this October..." Joey grimaced. "Old!"

"Ha!" laughed Kurt. "Back to business... let's get the ball going about opening a fourth hub at Jefferson City. That way it helps your ammo plant, and it allows us easier access to interconnecting our southern runs, so we can send some of the twins along the route more cost effectively."

"I like that." Joey nodded. "Opens up new markets in Texas and whatnot."

"Columbus, Albany, Opa-Locka, and Jefferson City. I like that!" Kurt exclaimed.

"I agree."

"Now let's go grab something to eat and call it a night~ What a busy day."

"Yeah I agree." Joey huffed. "I never thought getting involved in business would bring such an adventure."

"Better than being home all day because of the 'Rona!"

"Heh, yeah, I agree." Chuckled Joey. "What a time to be alive!"

"I feel hopeful. I feel hopeful that maybe later this year, we'll see the pandemic begin to recede."

"I hope so too, Kurt. For us, everyone." Joey nodded. The two stopped to watch the sun finally slip behind the hills.

Hard at work in the gun store's workshop, the guys went about their business cleaning and overhauling rifles. Joey stood at his work area, wiggling a M1 Garand out of its shipping crate. Wearing black nitrile gloves, he took some wax paper off the receiver to examine the cosmoline soaked firearm. It was one of the rifles he got from his recent trip to Arizona, an important Garand that had come from the Philippine Army storage. One of thousands of M1's granted to other countries during the Cold War, Joey admired the history of the rifle; it bore not only its US stampings, but also the stampings of the Philippine government. It was an International Harvester built M1, with a date stamp of 1954. The receiver had a little bit of pitting and wear, but it still looked good, and the action cycled with no hesitation. He would just have to inspect the barrel for wear, but felt confident that it would be fired again, and fetch a premium. The Doberman began the tedious process of tearing the gun apart into its major components, to soak it all in some stripper to get the cosmoline out.

Carrying another M1, Rick approached Joey, getting his attention.

"Hey, what's up?" Joey asked the tall red haired wolf.

"Hey, Joey, I wanted to apologize over the container bursting on you..." Rick said in a quiet voice. "I just found out that it was our container we built that broke... and I'm sorry that we almost killed all of you."

"Hey, it's no problem. It's an accident~" Joey shrugged. "What uhh, M1 you got there?"

"You're not bothered by it?" Rick asked him.

"Why would I?"

"Well we fucked up the weld and it broke."

"Heh, it's an accident." Smiled Joey. "Shit happens."

"Oh...well... okay~" Rick smiled back. "Oh, this one's a unique one... it's a Harrington M1."

"Oh neat~ I saw one M1 come out of the crate being a Beretta built one. That one Dad's keeping for himself."

"Cool~"

"Tell the others if they find an M1 they like out of the batch, it's theirs to keep~"

"Really?"

"Yeah~" Joey shrugged. "Me and Dad are feeling generous."

"Sweet!" Rick grinned. "Thanks Joey!

"Not a problem~"

"Hey! Randy! Clyde! Don! Check this out!~" Rick shouted as he ran off. Joey chuckled and walked over to grab a bottle of stripper, to pour into a big tray. As he did so, he thought about all the recent adventures and all the places he had been at. He thought about what the future would bring, as the pandemic would eventually subside. There were talks about another potential surge, brought on by spring break, the more contagious variants that loomed, and all the doom and gloom that the news sensationalized. Joey just concluded that he would just continue doing what he was doing; taking things one day at a time. He sat his gun components into the stripper, and watched the chemicals immediately go to work to strip the cosmoline.

Walking over to the steel latticed window, Joey glanced out at the nice March sunshine. It brought a smile to his face as he saw the grass turn a brilliant shade of emerald in the lot. He turned around and walked back to the bench to fetch and examine another M1 rifle from the cache, this one a 1957 Springfield built Garand. He sat it on the bench and examined it for damage or obvious defects. As he did so, he thought about his growing jadedness about the whole topic of guns. He felt torn about the way things were going in the country; he felt uncomfortable to the idea of selling a rifle to someone of the same caliber as the insurrectionists back in January, but he also felt uncomfortable to the idea of gun control; where would it end? What would be the unintended consequences of an unarmed society?

Joey just shrugged his thoughts off and continued to do what he did best. He felt happy being surrounded by his buddies in the workshop, surrounded by the sounds of machinery and the smells of grease and cosmoline. He wouldn't have it any other way. Much like his propliners he saved with Kurt, he felt responsible for preserving these historic artifacts, saving them from the ash heap of history.

Stanley Clarke is property of Hawkwolf

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