Highball (2021) by Yoteicon92

Highball (2021)

Yoteicon92, B-24, C-87, California, Cargo plane, Colorado, Consolidated, DC-6, DC-7, DOUGLAS, Doberman, Flying, Husky, Malamute, Propliner, Restoration, Warbird, Warbirds, Wolf, Wolf-hybrid, aviation, ohio

After reeling from setbacks and a tragic accident in his aviation exploits,a more doubtful Felix continues on, as he embarks on a project to bring a rare aircraft, back into the skies~

Part of my Series on FA: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/2143509/

Highball

High noon, high above the sun baked landscape of the southwest, lumbered an old DC-6, westbound, alone in the empty, cyan sky. Four radial engines burbled, driving the gleaming propellers that clawed the thinning air at ten thousand feet. At that altitude, it was a compromise for the old plane; high enough to where the air was less dense, reducing fatigue on the airframe, and increasing speed, but dense enough to prevent the need for supplemental oxygen to the pilots. It was also near the upper limit to the plane's ceiling, on account of limitations to its engine superchargers and pressurization systems.

Inconspicuously marked, the old Cloudmaster had a white upper fuselage, and an unpainted, polished metal belly, separated by a blue, white, and red cheatline. The small nose radome was matte black, and the wings, nacelles, and propeller spinners all were polished up bare metal, the wings sporting stenciled on registration code. "UNITED BAREV INDUSTRIES LTD." was written on the upper fuselage in black stenciling that was italicized. The name "Gulliver" was written in small, black cursive, immediately aft of the radome, right below the cheatline.

Sitting at the helm as pilot-in-command, was Felix Barion. At age twenty-five, the fawn furred Doberman sat back watching the gauges as the autopilot followed the heading. Felix looked unconventional as a pilot; he sat in the left hand seat in a pair of faded jeans, and a light blue t-shirt, with a backwards baseball cap resting atop his head, between his pointy, cropped ears. Both his arms were adorned in black and gray tattoo sleeves that ran to his wrists, and dark tinted aviators shielded his green eyes. A thick black goatee jutted from his chin. Flying with him was his friends Ivo Horvat, and Ivo's boyfriend, Jordan Hoover. Ivo was a gray and white furred Croatian wolf, who had reddish-brown hair and goatee. The twenty-seven year old had similar tattoo sleeves like Felix, and was the eldest son to their head mechanic back home, Vlado Horvat. Jordan was Ivo's boyfriend of almost six years. A German Shepherd who had originally hailed from a little Kansas town, who was picked up as a homeless man in New York City, he served as the flight engineer. Both Ivo and Jordan flew for a living, being pilots for Centoh Intermodal.

Felix was an ambitious young man. After being disowned by his family for being gay, and taken under the wing of Rob Barion, Felix learned how to fly, and got his pilot's license at seventeen. Over the years, he had worked very hard to amass his type ratings for all kinds of high performance warbird aircraft. Everything from a mach two MiG-21 interceptor, to the rare A6M Zero, Felix could fly it with ease. He was a talented learner, with a knack for flying. At one point, he had big plans to do something with his aviation interests; at twenty-one, he obtained three surplus DC-3's, and began a shuttle service connecting Ohio's "Big C's" together- Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati. It was a quick success, and its successes brought further growth, and more vintage aircraft. Ohaero Flying Services offered the public a chance to once again relive the golden age of aviation, aboard a fleet of restored DC-3's, DC-6's, DC-7's, and Lockheed's Constellation. It became successful enough that it drove an Ohio based regional carrier, into financial ruin. But success quickly turned into tragedy.

The success of Ohaero drove regional carrier, Conwest into the ground. Felix soon found himself in a bitter rivalry with Conwest, and its unscrupulous CEO, Bernard Conway. An arrogant and mercurial German Shepherd, the rich son of the company's founder, the prototypical yuppie, he sought revenge on Ohaero's success. Intending to scare passengers, Bernard had hidden a chemical oxygen generator in a backpack, with the intent that it would create enough smoke to force an emergency landing, a situation he could exploit over the age of the planes. But instead, he set the whole plane on fire, which exploded over Pennsylvania. The DC-7B, "Clipper Findlay Ohio" broke apart and fell onto a school, where in total, 122 people lost their lives. All souls aboard the "Seven", and twenty school children on the ground. The crash ruined Ohaero, it was the death knell to Conwest. It sparked millions of dollars in lawsuits, and put Felix in major legal and financial jeopardy. Conway, facing federal indictment for an unintended bombing, committed suicide. To save himself from financial ruin, Felix joined forces with some of Conwest's remaining assets, to create "Great Lakes Airlines". It struggled at first, until an emergency hurricane evacuation that saved hundreds of lives, brought market attention back. It brought some hope to Felix, who got to see the business thrive for a little while, until the pandemic spelled the death knell once again. Like Ohaero, Great Lakes was left on the ash heap of history. It's pristine propliners went back to their glamorless lives as box haulers, performing yeoman duties for Barev's Centoh Intermodal division. Coupled with the crash of his first DC-6, which occurred right after the bombing, and nearly killed him and his friends, these wounding incidents took a toll to his confidence. Felix felt more reserved and uncertain to his aviation hobby. He suffered from bouts of depression and guilt over what had happened.

"Albuquerque Center, this is Buckeye seven o' one, requesting altimeter update over." Felix radioed out to the ARTCC. He got a response, and reached in to adjust his altimeter setting by a dozen feet, and acknowledged before closing out the mic.

He leaned back into his seat, to admire the well used cockpit of his latest DC-6. "Gulliver" was a sixty-eight year old DC-6BF, and its instrument panel and yoke showed the years of hard work. Faded, chipped, and scratched gray paint adorned the instrument panel, fitted with new, overhauled, and modern instrumentation. The shiny black control yokes were faded in the spot where pilot's had gripped the controls. Hundreds of pilots over the course of half a century, left their mark in the faded, chipped paint. Felix always appreciated that. The old propliner rolled off the Santa Monica assembly line in 1953, and was a Pan American bird for many years. Much like his immaculate Cloudmaster back home, "Clipper Black Viking", it flew tourist class across the Atlantic for years, and ended its career at Pan American as a "Internal German Services" plane, flying in and out of West Berlin. While his DC-6B back home was spared the inglorious job of "box hauling", "Gulliver" was sent back to Douglas, who converted it into a DC-6BF freighter, adding cargo doors to its fuselage. From there, it bounced between seventeen owners for half a century. It flew cargo in Asia, in Europe, the Caribbean. It was briefly a transport plane for a shoe company, and an executive plane for two banking companies in the US and Canada, and served a few stints doing more illicit activities under the cover of darkness. "Gulliver" ended its days at the bone yard, having been picked clean of parts.

Felix had purchased the plane at a knockdown price, and "Gulliver" was restored and brought back to flight over the course of 2019 and 2020. He was unsure of who and when the Cloudmaster was christened "Gulliver", but he liked the name and it stuck. Now it served him for his various ad hoc cargo duties, flying everything from aircraft parts to and from his and Rob Barion's aviation project sites, to overflow cargo to help with Centoh and Freightmaster. Today's flight across the US was in support of bringing home a rare B-24 bomber that Rob had purchased from an aviation museum in San Diego California. With his relief crew in the back, Felix would ferry the old Liberator back to Newark, with the DC-6 flying back all the spare parts and providing escort. Once again, his knack of flying would be put to the test, to bring another rare warbird back home to Rob's aviation museum.

Morning in San Diego was already warm, at eighty-one degrees. The amber sun rose from the east at San Diego's International airport. Connected to the airport's single runway via a long access taxiway was the Van Ross Air Command, a medium sized military aviation museum. It was the home to "Bolivar's Reply", a Ford built B-24J, that had rolled off the Willow Run assembly line in 1944. The museum was home to several vintage planes with checkered military careers, but the B-24 was the crown jewel of the museum.

Standing on the flight line, Felix watched as the big hangar doors to the tan building were slid open, revealing the gun turret nose of "Bolivar's Reply". A tug was hooked up, and slowly, the Liberator was revealed in the morning light. "Bolivar" was natural metal, buffed and polished to a shine. It's engine cowlings and big slab-sided tail were painted red-orange, with the tail having a white stripe down the middle. "T12" was stenciled on the rear fuselage in black, and a red "Z" graced the white stripe on the double-tail. The slab-sided fuselage was connected to a shoulder mounted Davis wing; at 110 feet long, it was thick, but of narrow chord. Four R-1830 radials were hung on the wings, encased in elliptical cowlings with the supercharger and oil cooler intakes on the sides. Paddle blade Hamilton Standard propellers were hung on them, painted matte black with yellow tips and stenciling at the root.

"Well, here she is." The museum director said. Masked up behind a dust filter mask, the aging gray wolf sounded a bit melancholy at the sight of his prized bomber being readied to depart for the final time. Ray Van Ross, the son of the museum's founder, and co-pilot to the original "Bolivar's Reply", had spent twenty years of his life bringing that bomber back to flight. While depicted as a bomber from the Eighth Air Force, the B-24J had spent its combat career in the Pacific with the British Royal Air Force. After the war, it was abandoned in India, where the Indians restored it and used it for maritime reconnaissance until 1968. Van Ross and his father got their paws on it in 1978, and spent two decades getting her back to her wartime looks to fly again. It was the pride 'n joy of the museum, and flew all across the country, until an engine fire grounded the plane in 2017. Through a series of incompetent mistakes, a damaging engine occurred on takeoff. Between maintenance failing to completely check over a pickled engine that was hung as replacement, to the pilot-in-command believing that the fire would "blow itself out", and a malfunctioning Co2 bottle, "Bolivar" had its left wing damaged. Engine one's fire melted through the nacelle and had weakened the wing structure, which was being finished up when the pandemic struck. California's out of control Covid surges drove patrons away, and the museum declared bankruptcy. To save the rest of the museum's extensive military mementos, the difficult decision was made to sell the B-24 to save the rest.

Standing with his flight crew and the museum's crews, Felix signed the mountain of paperwork to finalize the deal, and transferred notarized documents to Van Ross, which bore the signature of Rob Barion. As part of the sale, it was under the condition that "Bolivar" would remain in its paint scheme for five years. Paperwork was exchanged, and a round of applause concluded the legal transfer as Felix shook paws with Van Ross. He grabbed the flight plan checklist and proceeded to go inspect the airplane with Ivo and his dad Vlado, who were going to be his flight crew. A tanker truck arrived to fill the tanks all the way up with a load of 100LL avgas. As the ground crew filled the wing tanks, Felix walked with Ivo and Vlado, inspecting every inch of the aircraft for any defects. Checking over the belly, Felix took notice of the faired over port for the ball turret, which was removed for the ferry flight. Felix needed to reduce weight for the transcontinental flight, plus it added a safety margin should he have to belly land. Ball turrets tended to be slammed up into the fuselage during crash landings, which often times broke the plane's back.

While fueling was finishing up, Felix watched as a forklift loaded "Gulliver" up. The DC-6BF got a load of crated up R-1830's, and boxes of spare parts. He watched as the ball turret, mounted in a transport frame, was loaded up as well, and rolled into position to be strapped down. The Cloudmaster would be piloted by a Centoh crew, with pilot-in-command, Kyle "Hup" Hupfner.

Everything was ready for the ferry flight. With documentation tucked under his arm, Felix climbed aboard "Bolivar" with Ivo and Vlado. To mark the occasion, the Doberman was dressed in historic flight attire, as were Ivo and Vlado. A khaki flight suit, vintage parachute, and leather helmet and headset with amber tinted wraparound goggles. Stepping into the navigator's compartment, Felix squeezed into the cockpit, which was a bit cramped, but felt open from the big canopy of framed glass that made up the windows. He took his spot in the left-hand seat, and Ivo climbed into the co-pilot's seat. Vlado took a seat behind them to serve as the flight engineer.

"Alright, here we go. Checklist~" Felix announced as he flipped through the procedures booklet. Through a modified start procedure, Felix switched on the inverter, and watched as gauges and indicator lights began to come online and glow. He switched off the autopilot, and made sure it was disengaged by pulling back on the control yoke and turning it side to side. He switched off the deicer boots, and opened the four engine's intercoolers. Ivo opened the cowl flaps and called out that he was setting the propeller controls to high RPM.

"Superchargers- off." Ivo announced. He tested the warning bell, which rang to his input of the test button. That too was checked off.

"Mixture controls?" Felix called out.

"Idle cut-off, Felix."

"Okay, fire up the booster pumps."

"Will do."

Ivo reached over to the control panel, and flipped the individual switches for the booster pumps.

"Okay, go on three." Vlado announced.

Ivo held the number three engine's energizer switch for the starter, and pressed on the switch for the primer. Ivo "counted the blades" as the starter strained to turn the propeller. After the eighth rotation, he hit the crank switch, and the engine caught on the primer charge. Felix immediately slammed the mixture control into "Auto-Lean". The engine hacked and coughed oily smoke as it fired up. The process was repeated for engine four, then engine two, and finally, engine one. Each radial started up with a backfiring cough of oily, blue smoke. The cockpit filled with the burbling "radial song", the airframe feeling energized as Felix felt the subtle vibrations in his seat. The Doberman watched the engine gauges as the cylinders came up to temperature. The rough idle smoothed itself out as the oil temperature came up to spec. Vlado checked that off the list.

"Alright, looks like you got it!" the burly Croat announced.

"Good." Felix nodded. He made a slight adjustment to the elevator trim for takeoff, with a slight bias towards the elevators pitching down a degree. He pressed his feet into the rudder pedals, and heard the spring loaded "click" of the parking brake level disengaging.

"Tower, this is Buckeye, ready to begin taxiing to active runway, over." Felix announced over the radio. "Buckeye eight-sixty, over."

As the DC-6 was slowly turned over, Felix began to taxi. The museum staff stood and watched with sad poses as their beloved B-24 began its journey to Ohio. The airport's fire crews shot water cannons in a celebratory arc by the taxiway as Felix taxied by. Felix and Ivo waved from the cockpit as they taxied, using the outboard engines to help maneuver as they went down the access road.

"See? It's just like riding a bike!" Ivo laughed.

"A very expensive one, son~" chuckled Vlado.

Felix looked serious as he watched what was ahead. His paws tightly gripped the yoke as he pushed in the rudder pedals to make the slow turn to get to the runway. They held for two minutes as a 767 rocketed off the runway. The B-24 made the slow, rumbling turn, where they held for a final check of their instrumentation.

"Here we go~" Felix announced. He grabbed a fistful of throttles and opened the mercury up to command maximum power. The four Pratt and Whitney's roared to life immediately, and the Liberator began its takeoff roll. Holding straight down the single runway of San Diego, Felix watched the speed as Vlado called out V1. He began to pull back on the yoke at ninety knots, to take pressure off the nose wheel. The plane's nose was feeling buoyant as the nose wheel began to lift off the pavement. Holding the yoke back, Felix watched as the Liberator left the runway, in a slow climb.

"There we go!" Ivo called as he grabbed the landing gear lever and threw it, the whine of the hydraulic motors pulling the gear up faintly heard in the cockpit. Felix inched the mercury back and began stowing the flaps, as downtown San Diego passed below them.

"Goodbye sunny California~" Ivo waved from the cockpit.

"Oh the days when we could wear summer clothes all year..." Vlado quipped, having once lived with his family in San Diego, when he used to be a test pilot for Raytheon, before his wife passed away.

"Back to fucking Ohio..." Ivo chuckled. The young Croat looked over at Felix, who looked serious behind the controls as he maintained his climb. "You're not very talkative today~"

"I'm concentrating."

"Come on, have some fun!" Ivo exclaimed.

"Not when I have a very expensive and complex machine in my control." Felix shook his head. "You gotta treat the Davis wing with respect..."

"Felix, is this about what happened three years ago?" Ivo asked him. Felix kept mum. "Felix that was not your fault! You didn't kill all those people when the DC-7 exploded!"

"Eh, I don't want to talk about it."

"Triumph's crash in New York wasn't your fault too! That wing spar crack was impossible to see without taking everything apart- plus that area wasn't specified in the books!" the wolf exclaimed. "You gotta let go of that incident, Felix. You're a very good pilot."

"It is what it is, ya' know?" Felix pursed his lips. "A lot of responsibility I had to bear from those accidents..."

"Gulliver" soon met up with the lumbering B-24, and both planes slowly climbed to ten thousand feet, to begin their long journey home. For hours and hours, "Bolivar" and "Gulliver" flew in formation, crossing the flat, empty desert across the southwest US. Felix flew the Liberator with some help from the autopilot, but there were long stretches where he flew it manually himself. From ten thousand feet, the desert landscape reminded Felix of the barren surface of Mars, rough and hostile far below. As the sun slowly drew behind them, as the clock ticked away, "Bolivar" continued on through the empty blue skies, its radial song mesmerizing.

Aided by a fortunate tailwind the entire way across the plains, Felix managed to bring "Bolivar" back home to Ohio, in the last light of the day. The familiar green landscape of farms and woodlands passed below the Liberator, as a tired Felix and Vlado flew the lumbering bomber. They flew low, at two thousand feet, holding at a speed of 190 miles per hour.

"Buckeye eight-sixty, this is Disco, come in Buckeye eight-sixty, this is Disco flight." Came Rob's voice over the radio.

Felix toggled the microphone switch on the yoke. "Rob, what a nice voice to hear~"

"We're closing in on you from your seven o'clock, over."

"Acknowledged."

Forming up from his seven o'clock flew Rob Barion and his husband Joey Paulo, piloting his "MATS Mitchell". The post-war marked B-25J, in the markings of a station hack for the Military Air Transport Service entered formation with the B-24J and DC-6BF. Rob made a visual inspection of the bomber, as his nephew Alvin took photos from the waist gunner's position.

"She looks great." Rob complimented.

"Heh, she flies as she looks." Chuckled Felix. "Heavy."

Arriving at Newark-Heath, Felix made a loop around the airport, as he waited for traffic to clear. For the photographers on the museum's grounds, Felix made a fast, low pass down the runway. He raced by, pulled up, and entered a shallow bank to loop back around for short final. Dropping the flaps into place, he deployed the gear. The main gear deployed by gravity, dropping into the slipstream first. Then the nose wheel deployed hydraulically. Trimming the Liberator up, it descended in for the runway with a slight nose down droop. Maintaining his glide slope, with a paw on the yoke, and a paw on the throttles, Felix began to flare as the runway threshold passed below him. Cutting the throttle, the Liberator gently sank onto the gear, with a rattle, jolt, and squeak of the tires scraping against the pavement. "Bolivar" had made the transcontinental flight flawlessly. A feeling of relief hit a tired Felix as he gently touched the nose wheel back down on the pavement. A few minutes later, "Gulliver" came descending in.

Turning onto the museum's tarmac, Felix was greeted by a handful of photographers that were allowed to visit. Camera shutters fired as Felix ran the four Twin-Wasps lean, before finally cutting the mixture controls. All four engines sputtered and coasted down.

"Another successful flight, Mister Ivo~" Felix congratulated as he shook Ivo and Vlado's paw.

"Master of pilot-in-command there!" Ivo laughed.

"Please." Laughed Felix. "Like you said...just like riding a bike~"

"A very expensive one~"

Climbing out, Felix grabbed his clipboard and made a post flight inspection of "Bolivar". He found nothing out of the ordinary as he signed off his flight manifest, and went to turn it in. The brick terminal building was the nucleus of operation at the Newark-Heath airport. The lobby had calm lighting that glowed a soft amber color. Giant tinted windows allowed guests to see all the flight activity on the flight line and runway. One wall was covered in shelving with booklets and pamphlets, while another wall sported a corkboard that was adorned with aviation ads and marketing. Felix walked by to the front desk to Geert's office, to drop off his flight paperwork.

Tapping on the partially opened door, Felix found Geert at his neatly organized desk, talking to someone on the phone. Geert Apps, a Dutch Border Collie, was the co-owner of the airport with Rob. He was almost fifty-eight, and co-owned the airport as more of a hobby; he was a quiet billionaire thanks to inheriting family assets after his parents had passed away. He had served for several years in the Royal Netherlands Air Force, flying F-104's. After that, he worked quietly in the financial industry, to help pay for his aviation hobbies. Felix tucked the paperwork in the tray bolted on the wall in his office.

The Collie put the phone back onto the receiver and looked up. "Evening, Felix~"

"Oh, evening, Geert."

"How was your flight?"

"Tiring. The Lib wears ya out."

"Yeah, I feel ya there." Geert nodded. "It's a rudder plane, the Fortress likes aileron for control."

"Yeah, I noticed that." Felix nodded. "What are you up to this late?"

"Well, I just off the phone with an interesting offer that I need to talk to Rob about." The Collie said, carrying a note with him. "Someone in Colorado is offering the museum a C-87~"

"A C-87?"

"Yeah, the cargo version of the Liberator." Chuckled Geert. "The dreaded contraption of a plane."

"Ohh, the Liberator Express." Felix acknowledged. "One of those things survived?"

"Apparently so. Sitting at an airport in storage in a little town."

"Huh, that's neat." Felix fumbled his brow.

"It would make an interesting addition in the transport category, even if its wartime service left a lot to be desired!" Geert exclaimed with a bit of a laugh. "But that's the fault of wartime exigencies, and pushing everything to the max, while flying in and out of extremely rough, poor airfields."

"Yeah."

"Before I was born, my Dad helped finance a family friend of ours, who turned two war surplus B-17's and a B-24 into cargo planes, so he could fly tulip bulbs around the low countries, and they did that for quite some time before he got an actual cargo plane."

"Tulips?" Felix asked with a smirk.

"Well yeah! It's what we Dutch are known for!" Geert quipped sarcastically as he walked by Felix. The Doberman chuckled, double checked that his paperwork was turned in and turned to leave. He was beat.

Dawn's early light was dim, and the morning sky took on a deep inky blue. Stands of clouds that slowly drifted from the west took on deep shades of orange and purple, which grew brighter slowly, as the sun began to rise in the eastern sky. On Newark-Heath's flight line, glaring white floodlights illuminated the tarmac and hangars, as Barev's morning activities began. Hangar doors were opened, and aircraft were pulled out in preparation for their itineraries. The morning air had a chilly bite to it, and Felix could see his breath waver in the beam of one of the floodlights. Toolbox carried by one arm, a rolling suitcase full of clothes in the other, Felix walked the flight line, watching all the scenery around him.

To his right were Rob's two C-121A's, "Thing One" and "Thing Two". Both dressed in their former USAF "white top" scheme, with a dayglo orange tail band, the two short-nosed Connies were assigned to support vaccine flights, with Rob's WV-1, "Starship Connie", which sported vintage high-viz FAA markings as an airport calibration aircraft. They were part of an armada of aircraft tasked with flying vaccines out and across to distribution points across the east coast of the US. Beside them, with cabin lights glowing, was Felix's own L-749, which was being prepped for a VIP flight to support Barev's new Chicago optics factory. To Felix's left sat his two DC-6's, "Gulliver", and "Tony the Third". "Gulliver" the DC-6B was Felix's flight; it was being loaded with a number of crated up radial engines and spare parts from the spare parts hangar. Forklift after forklift rumbled up and loaded the fore and aft cargo doors, where it was arranged in the fuselage and strapped down. Felix had three stops on his itinerary. A stop in Colorado, to visit the C-87 and make an assessment of it, and possibly buy it, a stop in Mesa Arizona, to drop off parts for the restoration of Rob's F4U-5NL, which had been destroyed in a 2018 mid-air collision, and finally to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, where Rob had numerous ex-Navy C-118B's and C-131F's under restoration to return in the colors of Centoh.

"Tony the Third", was a "Internal Barev Service" flight, which was carrying a cache of spare parts for Centoh's newly opened Biloxi hub, in Mississippi. Painted up like "Gulliver", with the white top and red, white, and blue cheatline, "Tony" was Felix's only surviving short-fuselage DC-6 left. One of the oldest flying DC-6's left, with an assembly line number of just seventeen, it was built in 1947, and had served with United Airlines well into the 1960's. Felix had obtained the plane in 2016, when Freightmaster had declared it surplus. With another short-fuselage DC-6-1159, which Felix had used as his former transport, christened "Triumph". "Tony" was used by Felix as a "flying bookmobile" for airshow events, until it was grounded for wing fatigue issues in 2018. "Triumph" had crashed in New York, after a third of its right wing came off in a violent storm. Unseen stress cracks in the spar gave way, and Felix, his boyfriend Tony, and Ivo, managed to just barely make it in for a hard landing, where the Douglas broke up and caught on fire. Everyone was injured in the crash. The same wing spar cracks were found in "Tony", grounding it. Felix was resigned to the plane never flying again, and had contemplated even scrapping it for its spare parts, but Rob stepped in and invested several million dollars in completely rebuilding the wings and spars, as part of an experiment for future restorations. "Tony" the DC-6 got a third chance at flight, with a brand new set of rebuilt wings. Felix stood and watched as her flight crew heaved in turning the big Hamilton propellers. Aside from the slightly shorter forward fuselage, "Tony" didn't have the conical propeller spinners of his DC-6B.

Under the glare of a floodlight, Felix met up with his flight crew. Flying with him today was his boyfriend Tony Alvarez, a thirty-one year old Doberman who superficially looked like a slightly taller version of him, with fawn tan and beige fur, tattoo sleeves, and a neatly trimmed goatee. Accompanying them on their weekend trip was Ivo Horvat and Jordan Hoover, plus Vlado and Geert. Felix wanted experienced hands onboard to look at the C-87 airframe, and see if it was something that could be a future flyer. Also tagging along was Maverick Tokarev, to do some photos and videography. Personal luggage was loaded into the forward luggage compartment and the hatch closed and secured.

"Bro, what a way to start my week off vacation!" Tony exclaimed as he climbed up the airstair to get to the cockpit. "An out of state weekend trip!"

"A first, I know!" laughed Felix as he entered the illuminated cockpit. He sat down in the captain's chair and sat his flight plan on the instrument panel. "Things are starting to look up~"

"Well I sure hope so!" Ivo exclaimed. "This has been an unmitigated disaster."

"Yeah..." Tony shook his head. "I get laid off for three months, then come back to watch people have no clue how to keep a piece of cloth over their face..."

"Well I mean, it is Newark..." Jordan quipped with a disdainful head shake.

"Yeah, and I work in the asshole of Newark- the library..." Tony chuckled.

"How many people have you revived with narcan so far?" Ivo joked with a grin on his face.

Tony had a look of thought on his face. "Only four so far this year!"

"Hey! An improvement!" Ivo laughed.

"Yeah! They're dying at home because they're afraid of getting Covid-19. But not afraid of jabbing in their arm god alone knows what... Crazy~"

"Hey that sounds like anti-vaxxers!" came the voice of Maverick as he poked his head into the cockpit to take a photo. "YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT'S INSIDE THAT THERE VACCINE! YUK! YUK! YUK! While they down a Mountain Dew or something- something that has more ingredients that are actually bad for you, verses the vaccine!"

"If only stupid hurt, huh?" Felix chuckled.

Everyone got situated aboard the fully loaded plane. With engines fired up and idling, Felix began the slow taxi to the runway, following the morning armada. "Gulliver" was fourth in line as they navigated the narrow access road for Newark-Heath's single runway. The brilliant sun emerged from the hills to the east, as one by one, the Constellations, and DC-6F rose off the runway slowly, climbing away to fulfill their itineraries. Felix turned onto the runway and immediately squinted from the brilliant sun facing them. Dropping the visor shield down and donning his sunglasses, Ivo made a final sweep of the instrumentation, before giving his approval. Felix gripped the throttle and commanded maximum power from his four Double Wasp radials. The Douglas roared to life and began its takeoff roll. Heavily loaded, the "Six" built up speed slowly, its wheels droning down the pavement as Felix slowly lifted the nose wheel off. Slowly, "Gulliver" lifted off into the air in a shallow, slow climb. The gear was retracted, and the city of Heath passed below as they began their transcontinental odyssey.

Eight hours, and almost three thousand miles later, the rugged Colorado landscape passed below. As the DC-6B descended in for a landing at Leach Airport, "Gulliver" passed above a unique landscape of irrigated farmland, which made circular patterns in the sun bleached earth. Flying manually, Felix gripped the yoke and navigated his Cloudmaster around in a slow, banking turn for the single runway at Leach. Making it look easy, Felix worked with Jordan to maintain their descent in for the runway. Ivo sat back and watched as the runway grew closer, its arrow marked threshold passing beneath as Felix flared for landing. With a rattling jolt, the Cloudmaster touched down and immediately went into reverse thrust.

Kicking up dust behind it, "Gulliver" taxied in on its inboard engines. Burbling down the access road to the ramp, Felix turned the plane using its nose wheel steering control. He straightened out to stare at the small terminal building, and a cluster of worn looking hangars, scattered in the scrubland. Coming to park on the tarmac, Felix felt the plane shudder to a stop, where the inboard engines were shut down. Felix got up, stretched, and stepped out of the cockpit first, to see Vlado opening the forward hatch.

The airport's ground crew approached with a telescoping ladder for them to disembark. Tucking his flight plan under his arm, Felix slowly descended first, so he could make a copy of his flight plan and pay the airport fee. Everyone climbed down and inspected the Cloudmaster, while Felix filed his flight paperwork and paid inside the terminal building.

Inside, Felix stood at the copier and made a photocopy of his flight plan, and the airport payment receipt. He stapled them together and went to hang it up in the incoming flight board, when he noticed someone's presence out of the corner of his eye. Turning his head, Felix saw an elderly old gray wolf standing in the lobby, with a bright blue surgical mask over his face. He wore a powder blue sweater, and gray slacks with a pair of brown loafers on his feet.

"Is that your big transport plane out there?" he asked. His voice sounded a frail, but energetic.

"Why yes it is~" Felix responded, his expression hidden behind a blue cloth mask.

"You must be Felix Barion~"

"That I am."

"John Parsley." The old wolf greeted. He extended a paw out for a friendly shake, which Felix accepted. The old man reached into his pocket and pulled out his vaccine card, which was neatly laminated. "If you find it easier to talk without a mask, I'm all vaccinated!"

"Hey, small world." Felix chuckled as he showed his own vaccine card, before tucking it away into his wallet again.

As they walked out to meet with the others, John introduced himself. He was eighty-three years old, and had originally hailed from Galveston Texas. After graduating high school, he enlisted in the Air Force, and spent several years flying C-118's around the globe for MATS. After his stint in the military, he returned home to Texas, to help his father's ad-hoc cargo business, flying fruit and other goods between the US and Mexico with a small fleet of Beechcraft 18's. He later flew commercial jets, until mandatory retirement at age sixty, in 1998. It was their ad-hoc cargo business, in the 1960's, that introduced them to their C-87.

John led everyone to the hangar's side entrance. He opened the door to the darkened hangar and felt around for the big switch on the circuit breaker. He swung the handle up to engage the lights, which began to emit a humming from their transformers trying to light the bulbs. One by one, the big metal halide lamps fired and revealed the distinctive shape of the Liberator Express. Dominating the hangar was the unmistakable C-87, which resembled almost in many respects, a B-24 bomber. It had a big slab sided fuselage that sported several windows, high-set Davis Wing, and four R-1830 radial engines, encased in their oval cowlings. Instead of a gun turret and lower Plexiglas nose for the bombardier, the Liberator Express had a solid faired nose, which was hinged on a side for loading of cargo. The plane was bare metal, its metal skin dull and lusterless. Faded red paint adorned the cowling and nose. "Parsley Enterprises" was stenciled on the lower fuselage, the black paint faded and chipped in places. The name "Galveston" was christened on the nose in black stenciling.

"My Dad always described it as an evil contraption of a plane~" John joked with a bit of a chuckle as he walked up to the airframe. "That there Davis Wing- it could barely carry enough ice to chill a highball drink!"

"Yeah, I've heard about that." Felix nodded. "We just ferried a Liberator back to Ohio, and that was something I carried out very cautiously."

"About the only thing reliable on it were the engines!" John exclaimed with a snort. "A lot of fuel and hydraulic problems, especially the long range tanks that were seemingly cobbled together! But Dad had to fly 'em, 'cause there wasn't anything else with the range and cargo capacity at that time!"

John continued to explain more about the old cargo plane. Built in December 1942, "41-11610" had spent most of its life stateside, flying transcontinental for Air Transport Command until immediately retired at the end of the war, in August 1945. Languishing briefly in Arizona in the massive boneyard, it was saved from the scrapman by a Mexican freighter, which had purchased it and a number of other converted B-24's, to fly produce and freight around central and south America. The airplane's career came to an end in 1959, and it was left to languish on an airfield until 1964, when the late Ron Parsley purchased it. Buying the C-87 was a rather reluctant choice, as Ron had never been fond of flying the "evil contraption" during the war years. But it was dirt cheap, and offered his company the load carrying ability and range that his Beechcraft fleet lacked.

Christened "Galveston" for their hometown, the Liberator Express was repainted in their company colors, and resumed cargo flights between Galveston and Mexico City. Using wartime lessons, he stripped out the overwater auxiliary tanks and their leaky, cobbled together fuel lines, and improved on the hydraulics. In the eight years of flying, the C-87 proved to be a reliable transport, and carried thousands of tons of produce between the two nations, until it was finally retired in 1972, for a Curtiss C-46D. The C-87 made its final flight in 1980, to Colorado, where it had languished since. John and his father had plans to restore it as Ron's wartime transport plane, and fly it around airshows. They had slowly worked on the plane through the 1980's to do some major overhauls, but were limited with time and money, coupled with Ron's slowly declining health in his seventies. Ron passed away in 1991 at age eighty, and John ultimately gave up on the restoration of the aging Liberator Express. He ran the engines periodically, and made sure it was protected from the elements, but was resigned to it never flying again. Now in his eighties, he had decided to offer the C-87 to someone wanting to take a whack at getting her to fly again. Plus, the airport hangar fees were getting too high.

Going to inspect the airframe, Geert and Vlado took their time to inspect the fuselage and wings for any corrosion and unseen damage, while Felix stepped inside to take a glance. Opening the rear fuselage cargo door, Felix was greeted by the musty scent of stale air. It smelled of oil and cosmoline. Using a step stool to climb inside, he stood inside the empty cargo hold. It was a very narrow cargo hold, compared to his DC-6B, and the reinforced floor was sheathed by worn looking plywood, which creaked a bit under his weight as he walked. The cargo hold terminated to a small access ladder, which took him to the cockpit, which sat slightly above, much like its bomber counterpart. Felix took the couple steps up the rung to look at the cockpit, which was virtually identical to the B-24J he had ferried. Everything was in various shades of olive drab, and all the gauges were intact. A thin coating of dust covered the seats and control yokes. To Felix, the interior looked sound, as he scrutinized the cockpit some more. He climbed in and glanced out the dusty windows, to see Vlado and Geert standing on ladders and examining the port radial engines. Maverick stood on the ground, recording their activities with his BVP-3 Betacam.

Climbing down, Felix aided Vlado and Geert in their inspection of "Galveston". There was no corrosion on the fuselage, or tail, though the fabric covered elevators and ailerons would need replacing, as the canvas had grown extremely brittle. Inspecting the wing spar for critical corrosion, Geert could only see some superficial corrosion on a couple attachment plates and bolts. Felix found that the engines weren't seized up; the propellers freely turned when rotated by hand, and upon further inspection of the GE superchargers, the impeller spun freely when turned. Going a bit deeper, Felix did find that the hydraulic and fuel systems would need extensive replacement; hoses had grown brittle, there were evidence of fuel leaks, and some of the piping was corroded. The electrical system needed replacing, and a lot of the wiring looked very old, as if it had been the same wiring installed at the Consolidated factory way back then!

As part of the inspection, the old Liberator Express was hooked up to a tug, which pulled it outside into the afternoon sunlight. The almost flat tires squished on the pavement under the weight. Felix wanted to see if the plane could start an engine. A fuel tank that could supply engine three was gingerly filled up with just enough fuel for the test, the engine topped up with a fresh load of oil, and the propeller hand turned. A power cart that Felix had brought was hooked up to the C-87 and fired up, to provide the critical electrical power. Felix climbed back into the plane with Geert, to man the cockpit.

Remembering the exact procedures for the B-24, Felix got into position for the engine test. Taking a nervous inhale and exhale, Felix grabbed the electrical switch and threw it, watching as old gauges came online. Indicator lights glowed for the first time in probably years, as he wiped the dust away. He went through the checklist and prepped the engine for startup. Geert held the primer and Felix engaged the starter, watching as the prop began to turn. Vlado stood on the ground with the airport crews holding fire extinguishers. A fire truck awaited close by. The Doberman felt tense as he watched the blades slowly rotate by the whining starter. Indicator lights flickered from the current being drawn; he was really putting the aging plane's infrastructure under a lot of stress.

Geert engaged the crank switch, and the engine immediately revved up, with a hacking cough of oily smoke. Felix slammed the mixture into "Auto-Lean", only to watch the engine immediately backfire with a loud bang and a flash of flame that momentarily startled a cautious Felix. He cut the mixture and watched the propeller come to a stop. Gray smoke filtered from the cowling.

"Try it again~" Geert motioned. He engaged the primer and starter once more and counted the blades before hitting the crank switch. Felix engaged "Auto-Lean" and watched as the Twin-Wasp ignited. It coughed to life and revved up, with the chug of cold cylinders.

"There we go!" Felix exclaimed. "She fired up!"

"Just needed to cough out some sludge." Chuckled the Collie.

Engine three, the critical engine to start because of its generator for the rest of the plane, idled smoothly after a few minutes. From the cockpit, Felix felt more confident about the condition of the plane, as he listened to the burble of the engine. It proved that the aircraft was indeed restorable, and worth the investment. With the test over, Felix cut the mixture and climbed out with Geert. He watched as Mav stepped inside to take some photos with his new Sony Alpha.

"So, what do you think?" John asked curiously.

"I think you got yourself a sale there, Mister Parsley." Felix smiled.

There was a final set of negotiations, and a mountain of paperwork that was signed. Felix, on behalf of Rob and Barev, signed for the C-87, and wrote out a check for $897,500. There was a small round of applause as the C-87 was now legally owned by Barev. Felix looked up at the plane and realized that he had a big task at hand to bring the old Liberator Express back to full flight worthiness.

"She'll fly again, I'm sure of it!" Felix patted the cargo door, only to suddenly watch it explode open as Maverick came falling out. The tall Russian husky landed on his back in a cloud of dust and a mighty "OOOOMPH!" on landing.

"Jesus Christ!" Felix muttered.

"OWW!" Mav shouted. "My back!"

"Damn son!" snorted Tony. "You're gonna need a life alert bro!"

Maverick flipped Tony off. "Life alert THAT! Ya fuck!"

Everyone had a hearty laugh at the comedy displayed.

Under a bright mid-day sun, Felix began work on "Galveston". Almost two weeks since buying the aircraft, Felix and his team set up shop at Leach, to begin work on preparing the C-87 for its ferry flight. Sitting in front of its hangar, the old Liberator Express sat outside, while work commenced to begin removing its engines, propellers, and control surfaces. Felix had hopes that he could get the plane ready for a ferry flight in a few weeks of work, given the condition of the airframe.

Standing on a ladder, Felix helped remove the propeller off engine number four. He wore a pair of blue gym shorts and a white tanktop that was stained with oil. Having already disassembled the propeller boss, which controlled propeller pitch, Felix heaved to try and break the prop free off the drive shaft. Two of the three blades were anchored by leather straps and chains to the propeller hoist. The hoist was a tubular steel structure that was hand built by Rob, based on old wartime photos of propeller hoists that were used on B-29 fields. It had wheels to move around, and an electric motor winch, that could lift engines and propellers. Felix leaned around gingerly and sprayed more WD-40 on the hub, which had seized to the driveshaft. On the ground, Ivo, and his dad Vlado heaved to shake one of the propeller blades, in an attempt with Felix to break the seizure.

"Okay, try and tug on it with the hoist." Felix called over. The winch was activated, and the airport's ground crew pushed the hoist back, as Felix shoved with Ivo, and Vlado. The prop began to wiggle loose, then suddenly pop off the driveshaft. It dangled by its chains as it was wheeled away to a canvas lined spot, where it could be sat down and disassembled. Felix breathed a sigh of relief and wiped his sweaty forehead, which left an oily streak across it.

All day, Felix labored to get the propellers removed and disassembled. It was an at-times frustrating task to accomplish. Twelve blades and their associated hardware were packaged up, and loaded aboard the DC-6, to be brought back to Ohio for overhaul. Work then commenced on beginning to take the radials off their mounts.

As the sun slowly began to set on the hills far in the west, Felix and Ivo worked to disconnect engine number four. With the cowling removed and disassembled, Felix and Ivo had their paws shoved into the tight confines, disconnecting the oil feed lines and electrical components to prepare the engine for removal. It gave the Doberman a further chance to examine the damaged wiring harness that needed replacing. It was a stark reminder of the remedial work that was needed to the aging electrical system aboard the Liberator Express. The harness was largely dry rotted, and basically disintegrated when Felix tampered around with disconnecting it. The insulation was so dry and brittle that it broke apart into dust.

"The little things..." chuckled Felix. He held up the broken wires for Ivo to see. "Maybe this is why four never wanted to fire..."

The Croatian wolf chuckled. "Yeah. I can see that. Weird!"

"Ha~ I gotta get this thing completely rewired up and the hydraulics replaced. I want this to be flawless for the ferry flight, because god help me if we fuck another plane up and it falls out of the sky..."

"That wasn't your fault, Felix." Ivo chimed in. "That DC-7 exploding over Pennsylvania wasn't your fault, and neither was the wing partially tearing off on us!"

"No shit it wasn't my fault." Felix shook his head. "But whose name was that plane under? Felix Miguel Barion, of Ohaero Flying Services. What's it going to say to my name when planes keep falling out of the sky and that's my name attached to them? Oh wow, look, Felix ejected from a Fishbed, he broke that plane too! Look at that DC-6 come crashing on in! Hey look! People falling out of the sky!"

"Look how many airplanes you can fly~" the wolf pointed out.

"And look how many damn newspapers had my name and photos of that burning wreckage all over? I was in newspapers in London! Tokyo! Berlin! Everywhere! Hell, in Pravda!" Felix exclaimed. "Little Felix Barion, in way over his head trying to play with the big boys."

"Pfft, c'mon on now~" Ivo shook his head. "You're a skilled aviator who had an accident or two. Look at how much you've accomplished since you were seventeen~"

"Yeah." Felix pursed his lips. "But I've realized I got too cocky."

"Nah."

Felix fiddled around disconnecting another fitting. "Yes, I had. I look back and thought I was unstoppable because I got my type ratings on all those aircraft. And I thought I could make a difference trying to help people's transportation needs, while keeping these old aircraft preserved. Sometimes good intentions have bad consequences. Like pissing off the spoiled rotten kid turned CEO of a shitty airline."

"What's done is done, and you can't go back in time to stop it, so why worry? You were legally exonerated of wrongdoing multiple times, and you got a nice hefty check I do recall you saying?"

"Heh, money's okay, but it doesn't bring all those people back." Felix rolled his eyes. "That still haunts me, ya know, Ivo? Sometimes I still have terrible nightmares about Findlay blowing up. People screaming in terror, the flames, and then a terrific explosion and people flying through the air to their deaths. And then I think about all those kids, whose last thing they saw was flaming debris smashing on top of them at their school. Lord... I can't fuck this up."

"You're not gonna fuck this up, Felix."

"And here's the other thing... warbird operations are fucking up lately." Felix added. "That's what I'm worried about. All it takes is one major accident, or some incompetent fuckup somewhere, and the FAA steps in and says 'no more vintage aircraft'."

"There's been some stupid accidents lately..." the wolf fumbled his brow. "The B-17 in Connecticut... and then recently that Avenger ditching."

"The latter is fucking stupid. Fly for twenty minutes with a smoking engine..."

"Lack of common sense!" Ivo exclaimed. "An American specialty!"

"Heh..." the Doberman chuckled cynically. "A universal trait... as this pandemic has shown."

"Yeah..."

"That's the thing... I don't want to be part of that problem... cutting corners, getting skimpy on shit... I just feel like... I gotta get this right..."

"You will~" smiled Ivo. "You got me! My brother Tito and my Dad helping you, you got Geert, and my financial sugar daddy... Rob." Ivo had a playful grin on his face at the end.

"Oh my god..." Felix burst out laughing. "Rob is not your sugar daddy!"

"Got that Corsair for nothin', bitch!" the wolf grinned.

"Rob likes you, that's why." Chuckled Felix.

"What's not to like?" Ivo laughed. "Outgoing personality! Great taste in fashion and tats!"

Felix laughed and shook his head.

"See? Made ya laugh, Felix."

"You did, Ivo."

"Let's get this stupid engine off the mount, TITO!" Ivo shouted for his brother.

Tito came over with the propeller hoist, which was adjusted and brought up to mount the engine to. The engine was secured by a set of chains, attaching to the driveshaft, and an attachment point towards the back of the engine. One secured, Felix and Ivo could proceed to unbolt the engine off the nacelle. Gingerly, engine four was detached and backed away from the nacelle, and lowered to the ground. Felix then turned his attention to detaching the GE supercharger from the bottom of the nacelle. The supercharger and its ductwork came off, and was neatly disassembled for shipping back for overhaul. The first engine was a cinch to Felix; three more engines to go, and a bunch other tasks at hand for the week.

Paperwork strewn Felix's walnut lacquered desk. Looking like an organized chaos, of paper stacks that were clipped together, the Doberman poured over his usual itinerary at work. Work for Felix was a subjective matter; while his official job was with Barev, with the title of "Video Production Co-Manager" for Barev Video Services, he also held the title of "Aviation Services Manager", to oversee Barev's aviation assets that fell outside of Centoh's jurisdiction. This involved Centopax, which was the legal name for Barev's executive propliner fleet, the Newark Museum of Aviation, and all matters pertaining to "Internal Barev Service Flights", or "IBSF". After his flirtation with entrepreneurship and the embarrassing failure of Ohaero and Great Lakes, Felix resumed his role at Barev, but in a more subdued, behind-the-scenes role as "just another bean counter", and videographer.

Juggling with the phone in his grip, Felix reached over to engage the speakerphone, as he spoke to one of the mechanics in Colorado, regarding the C-87's electrical overhauls. He hung up the handset and looked through his paperwork, while he discussed the electrical and hydraulic systems replacement that were ongoing throughout the week. On top of the C-87 restoration, Felix was overseeing some of the museum's latest acquisitions. If there was any silver lining to 2020, it was that Rob had a banner year in acquiring rare aircraft to fly and restore. As the discussion went on about what was found and what was repaired, or in progress, Felix went over his paperwork, concerning transfer of ownership, and insurance. Armed with his pen, he signed off on the paperwork, flipping through the stacks and initialing, and signing on behalf of Barev. He stacked the signed paperwork and placed it in a large binder, so Rob could make a final review.

"If all goes according to plan, we should have the electrics all replaced by the end of this week, and the hydraulics next week."

"Great. That's what I like to hear."

"What's your status on the engines and propellers?"

"Two weeks, according to Prishtina in Cleveland."

"Ah. Gotcha."

Felix finished up the call feeling good about the project. He sat back in his chair for a moment and glanced around at his neatly decorated office. It had a homely feel, just like the rest of their office building, which was a converted old farm house, adjacent to the main building. The walls to his office were painted a dark slate color, with hung photos, and ample bookshelves that held everything from some books, to videotapes, a vintage cine camera, and some aircraft models. The Doberman just started to lean back in his seat, when he heard an email notification sound.

Leaning forward to click on the notification, he saw an e-mail from Kurt Tanager, the co-owner of Freightmaster Systems International, about an aircraft sale offer. Freightmaster was Joey Paulo's air freight line with his friend down in Opa-Locka; not only had they made a name for themselves in air cargo, they were starting to get well known for their maintenance services and aircraft brokering.

"Felix,

Joey had mentioned that you were talking about

obtaining another cargo plane to support your

IBSF mission; I have to offer a surplus DC-7BF!

It's an ex-firebomber that came from

Chandler. Former Delta aircraft, and ex

water bomber from Chandler. Aircraft is in

the process of being refurbished with a fmr

hangar mate. Centoh wants only one, and

me and Joey want to offer this to you.

$550,500.

Best,

Kurt Tanager

Co-Owner/ FSI"

Felix looked at the pictures that Kurt provided in an attachment. Of the three angles Kurt provided, Felix was presented with a rather tired looking propliner. It's duralumin skin was lusterless, and the plane was painted in a very boring paint scheme of just an unpainted belly and wings, and a dull white top. The nacelles, where the engine exhaust usually stained, was painted black, which was faded and chipped. Four blade propellers were just as dull, with the squared off tips painted white. Engine two's propeller was feathered.

Looking at the time, Felix decided to think some more about it, as he got up to go have lunch with his boyfriend Tony.

Following lunch downtown with his lover, Felix ventured over to the airport. Arriving in his white GMC truck, he pulled directly onto the tarmac and parked, where he saw all the usual activity going on at Rob's side of the airport. The big tarmac space was dominated by the usual work on Rob's Super Constellation, "Quimper", and the arrival of his massive C-124C, which was just in from a long flight from Washington state. Rob had acquired a couple restoration projects that had come from a recently closed museum, owned by a former software executive. It was another well known aviation group that had closed their doors from the pandemic's stochastic effects. Walking over, Felix watched "Ole Shaky's" nose doors be slowly opened by their ground crew. Inside the cavernous cargo bay of the Globemaster II, Felix spotted a disassembled Il-10 Sturmovik, and an La-9 "Fritz". Both were very rare airframes that were in the process of restoration. The Doberman stood and watched as ground crewmen, and the flight crew, gingerly unloaded the Sturmovik, which slowly rolled down the ramps. The aircraft was mostly finished, its fuselage painted in a medium green camouflage, with Polish markings. The La-9 was painted light gray, in communist Chinese markings. Felix looked impressed at the sight of the very rare warbirds, as they were overlooked by Geert and Pablo.

Felix soon turned his attention to his test flight, regarding another new arrival. Felix walked over to the museum's reinforced concrete hangar to see his whip awaiting him on the tarmac. Vlado worked to hand-turn the big paddle blade propeller to Rob's new FW-190A-8. Painted as a "Wild Sau" night fighter of JG300, the Wurger was something of a hybrid machine. It was an authentic Focke-Wulf airframe that had a wartime service record with the Luftwaffe, but was powered by a Russian Shvetsov ASh-82 radial engine. The lack of a cooling fan behind the spinner gave it away. The original BMW 801 was not only hard to come by, and maintenance prone, but had a mercurial "Kommandogerät", an engine management system that was difficult to setup and maintain. It was the reason why Rob's authentic FW-190A-5, which had a BMW 801, was rarely flown. The Soviet radial engine greatly simplified maintenance, and offered similar power output and configuration for the tight cowling space.

Painted in dark grays and greens, with mottled splotching on the fuselage, "White 9" wore its original wartime colors for Nazi Germany, complete with swastika on the tail, and Balkenkreuz stenciled on the fuselage and wings. The three-blade Hoffmann propeller had big, wide-chord paddle blades, made of compressed wood and painted matte black. The spinner was black with a white "spiralschnauze" on it.

"She looks like a million bucks!" Felix sarcastically quipped to Vlado. He adjusted his leather flying helmet and microphone piece.

"A couple million bucks~" Vlado chuckled as he wiped his paws on a rag. "She's gassed and oiled up for ya. I did a high power run and the engine runs great."

"Awesome."

"What's the status on the eighty-seven?" the Croatian wolf asked.

"They've made great progress on the electrics, and next week, they should have the hydraulics all replaced."

"Oh good."

"Moving along! Slowly." Felix added. He climbed up onto the wing to step into the cockpit. "By the way, I may need you to help me look at a DC-7 that Freightmaster wants to sell to me."

"The Chandler one?"

"Yeah."

"Well, when I saw it out in Arizona with Joey, it looked alright, just needs some TLC." Vlado pointed out. "But I can look at it again and look a bit deeper."

"I need another freighter to keep up with all the bullshit." Laughed Felix. "Between IBSF's, vaccine transport flights, shuttling spare parts around to all these warbird projects, and god alone knows what else, I need to take some pressure of my DC-6's, Convair, and DC-3."

"Working your way back up." Vlado grinned.

"Well, let's not get that far ahead." Felix admitted with a snort. "More behind the scenes work this time."

"Nothing wrong with that~"

Vlado stepped back and held close to the cart mounted fire extinguisher, as Felix strapped himself in the cockpit and focused his attention on the Focke-Wulf. Going through the modified checklist, he powered up the plane and checked the controls over. Without the "brain-box", Felix had to adjust the prop pitch and mixture separately. He switched the magnetos over and hit the inertia starter. There was a subtle whine as the motor gained momentum for the flywheel, before Felix engaged the starter. There was a louder whine, and the prop began to turn. It took four blades before the engine caught. With a chug of cylinders firing to life, the Shvetsov belched a cloud of oily blue smoke out of the ejector stubs. The Russian radial had a bit of a rougher sound to it, compared to the original BMW. It took a few minutes for the engine to smooth out and come up to temperature, as Felix monitored the gauges.

Strapped into his seat, Felix gave a thumbs up. Vlado walked over and yanked the chocks away and backed up with a thumbs up in return. Releasing the brakes, Felix began to taxi, rolling forward in a slow zigzag pattern to maintain his forward view towards the runway.

As he approached the threshold, Felix stopped and waited for runway traffic. He watched as Rob and Maverick returned from Chicago, aboard "Coneflower", his polished silver L-1049E. The curvaceous Lockheed Super Constellation roared on by and flared for a smooth touchdown on the centerline. The Doberman sat back and watched it roll to a crawl and turn off the runway, for the tarmac. Turning the plane onto the runway and holding for a final sweep of his instrumentation, Felix advanced the throttle and pushed his feet into the rudder pedals, for opposite rudder to counter the torque.

Lightly loaded, the 190 immediately built up speed and galloped down the runway. The tail lifted, and Felix rode on the main gear, until he could pull himself off the runway. The Wurger climbed away, a faint exhaust plume emitted behind him as he banked slowly and continued his climb for altitude. Flying north, he began his trek to Cleveland; deciding to kill two-birds with one stone, Felix would conduct a standard test hop while making his way to Burke Lakefront, to inspect the overhaul of the C-87's propellers and engines at a family run propeller shop.

Climbing up to four thousand feet, Felix took a moment to see how the Focke-Wulf handled. Building up speed in a shallow dive, he skimmed the top of a cloud, and pulled himself into a climb with a roll at the top. He then went inverted and dove, watching the horizon spin around and the ground fill his cockpit view. He pulled out of the dive and rolled again, noting the Wurger's sharp roll rate. The plane's controls were sharp and responsive; he recalled a few years ago, getting a chance to fly Rob's original FW-190, a replica built by Flug Werke. He thought the controls were a bit sloppy and sluggish, as a result of the replica's modifications to its control surfaces, and the use of wires and pulleys to manipulate them. The wartime Wurger's used direct metal linkage for the controls. The replica, inherited by Rob from a late friend of his, had a fiery end, when it crashed in flames following a massive engine failure. Rob had attempted to create a hybrid Wurger by grafting an authentic BMW-801 to it, to replace the Chinese copy of an ASh-82. The engine exploded in flight, forcing Rob to bail out. The Wurger ended its life by crashing into an abandoned home and exploding.

Looking around outside the cockpit, his green eyes momentarily locked onto the stenciled Balkenkreuz on the gray and green camouflaged wing. It made Felix realize how lucky he was to sit in the cockpit of an almost extinct warbird, plotting along the empty skies. He had been flying warbirds now for almost eight years, since he was eighteen, and it felt so commonplace to him. It was a reminder to the Dober to the history that he was helping to maintain.

Skimming along the tops of clouds, the paddle blades to his propeller created a chopping wake through the wispy tops, as Felix flew north to Cleveland.

Rolling out in a slow arc, Felix came to park at the tarmac of Prishtina Aircraft Motors. The Wurger came to a stop in front of awaiting ground crew, who chocked the wheels once the engine was cut. Climbing out, Felix jumped down to the pavement. He signed off on his flight paperwork, and tucked it under his arm to go turn it into the terminal. With his face covered by a cloth mask, he walked down the long hallway, seeing a few people mingling about. Burke Lakefront was the regional airport of Cleveland, and got very few passengers. It was mostly a charter and cargo airport.

Taking a moment, the Doberman stopped and stared at what used to be the ticket counter for Ohaero and then Great Lakes. Closed up, it sat empty, along with most of the other ticket stands. He even spotted the former ticket counter for Conwest; only its signage remained for whatever reason. It brought a stab of sadness briefly to Felix, who remembered all those lives that were lost, all over his rivalry between himself and Bernard Conway.

Getting his paperwork turned in, and airport fees paid, Felix ventured back out to walk across the tarmac. Prishtina Aircraft Motors was a hangar like building that was painted a very light tan. It was a family run business, owned by an Albanian-American family, the Prishtinas. Having once been a very small operation, catering to a specialty market in overhauling aircraft piston engines and propellers, the company became a critical lifeline once Rob and Joey got involved with the big piston pounders. It had rapidly expanded, hired on more mechanics, and serviced almost all their engines and propellers.

Stepping inside the open hangar doors, Felix was presented with a hangar full of machinery and engines in storage. The hangar smelled of burnt oil and cosmoline. Inside, Felix found John Prishtina himself, hard at work cleaning and prepping a propeller blade. The Doberman recognized it as a big Curtiss Electric blade, from Rob's Starliner, which had gone out of service for major overhaul. Prishtina was a gray wolf in his mid-sixties, wearing his usual attire of jeans and a loosely collared button up shirt. He had a head of brown hair that was almost all gray.

"John!" Felix called. He got the wolf's attention as he looked up.

"Hey Felix! You made it~" John greeted.

"Check out my new whip~" chuckled the Doberman as he pointed over his shoulder.

"Oh, test flying Rob's new Butcher Bird, eh?"

"Yeah. She flies." Felix laughed.

"I can see that! Looking sharp!" John complimented. "Where did that one come from?"

"Was for sale in Iowa- Rob got her for two and a half mil."

"Nice. Shvetsov?"

"Yeah, a hybrid machine~"

"Lordy, that last BMW Rob sent to us was a pain in the ass." John joked, breathing a sarcastic sigh of relief.

Getting down to business, John took Felix to see the four R-1830's they were overhauling. The engines sat on their mounts, with two of them completely dismantled, down to the engine's core. Other than some worn out pistons in couple of the engines, and a worn out blower on another, the engines were salvageable for overhaul and refurbishment. It would be two more weeks for the engines to be finished up.

Going to the propellers, Felix was surprised to see the blades set out for display. They had been completely cleaned up and painted. Unlike the big wide-chord Hamiltons that the B-24's used, the C-87 had medium chord Hamiltons, which tapered to a more pointed tip. They were painted matte black with yellow tips, and yellow stenciling by the root. New Hamilton Standard logos graced the blades, which were sealed with a matte coating. John mentioned that the blades were in good shape when they came in, and other than a few spots of some pitting, they were easily dressed and repainted for service.

Felix nodded in approval. Another major milestone had just been met.

With sawdust sticking to his sweaty face, Felix ran a circular saw, and cut along a curved line on a sheet of plywood. Sawdust spat and shot everywhere as the Doberman cut away a section of the plywood, for the new floor in the cargo hold of the Liberator Express. He was back again, for a week of work on the aging cargo plane.

"Man, you'd get jumped for this plywood." Ivo teased with a snort.

"Eighty bucks for this shit." Felix laughed as he checked his cut. "But we needed a new floor..."

"Yeah, after I about fucking fell through it!" Ivo exclaimed.

Picking up his cut piece, Felix carried it over and stepped inside the old plane. The old, dry rotting cargo floor, was now being fully replaced. The cabin smelled of fresh cut plywood, as Felix walked up to fit the newest piece in, in the forward corner of the hold. He had hoped that the old floor would have held for the ferry flight, but after Ivo about fell through, when a sheet of the old plywood had finally given out under his weight, Felix had to "bite the bullet". At least the new cargo floor didn't creak and sag when walked on.

The new sheet of plywood sat on the steel framing that reinforced the floor. Felix adjusted it and found that it fit snug, and conformed nicely to the taper. Grabbing a drill, he secured it down to the floor.

"There's that piece!"

"How many more?" Ivo asked.

"Two more sections."

"Sweet." Ivo breathed a sigh of relief. The Croat grabbed his bandanna and dabbed his face with it. "It's fucking hot here."

"Yeah..."

In the ensuing weeks, the aircraft slowly came back together. It's leaky hydraulic systems were replaced, and miles of new wiring was installed, replacing the almost eighty year old electrical system that connected all critical components together. New gauges were installed, and the instrument panel was modified to take a modern radio and GPS system to tie into a new digital autopilot. The landing gear got worked over, and brand new diamond tread tires were fitted, replacing the dry cracked, balding tires.

As Felix and Ivo worked on the cabin floor, Vlado stood on a ladder, installing a new oil reservoir tank in the nacelle of engine three. The bright shiny metal, contrasted to the lusterless firewall. He had spent part of the afternoon working on the nacelles, and doing some small tweaks to the wiring and replacing the oil tanks for the awaiting engines. Work went on until sundown, where everyone retreated back to their hotel room for the night.

At a small Motel 6 just outside of town, Felix and Ivo shared a room. In the walk-in shower together, the two friends carried on a conversation while they cleaned themselves up. The shower water ran brown from oil and sludge that came off their tattooed bodies.

"I think this is coming along better than expected." Felix said, as he soaked his face in the hot stream.

"Yeah, I'm impressed with the progress." Ivo nodded, as he rubbed his tattooed chest down with some soap. "God, look at all this stupid ass grease... how the hell did I get this dirty!?"

"It is an old airplane." Felix chuckled with a sly grin.

"True." Ivo chuckled. "Can you hand me that shampoo?"

Felix stepped aside and handed his friend a bottle of Suave, which he used to lather his reddish brown hair up. "Nothing like showering with your bro to have some bonding time!"

"Heh, yeah, I agree." Felix laughed. "Too bad we couldn't have Tony and Jordan here too~"

"Then it'd be an orgy." Ivo laughed.

"Ha~" Felix chuckled. "When are you two gonna tie the knot?"

"Oh soon~ Same for you, motherfucker!" Ivo snorted. "Been together almost nine years, you and Tony."

"In a few months we'll get married. I'm in no hurry!" Felix exclaimed.

"Same here!" Ivo chuckled as he rinsed his head off. "No hurries!"

"'Cause divorce is a bitch." Felix shook his head. "Rob always says to make it look like an accident~"

"Oh god." Ivo laughed. "That's Rob for ya."

"Yeah." Felix grinned. Ivo walked over, lathered his paws up and scrubbed Felix's backside down for him, his grip relaxing Felix's sore muscles as he leaned against the shower wall.

"Whoa, not gonna fuck ya, dude." Ivo laughed.

"Oh shut up~" the Doberman snorted.

"Hey, you buying that DC-7 Joey and Kurt are offering?"

"Yeah, I actually gave Joey the check for it like a couple days ago. I just gotta go down and pick it up."

"Look at you, Mister highballer!"

"Heh, payout from the Conway fiasco~"

"Need me to co-pilot?"

"Of course! You're my go-to, best friend, bro co-pilot!"

"That's right!" Ivo exclaimed. "Hey you're moving back up in the ranks there, Felix!"

"Whoa~ Gonna put a hard stop to that." Felix laughed. "This is all my behind the scenes work. No more front man, showmanship shit."

"Keeping the dream alive, regardless~"

"Yep."

After a filling breakfast, Felix and his group hit the ground running on a warm Wednesday morning. The second day of June had the humidity up at Leach, and as the sun began to climb from the east, it already felt miserable and sticky for everyone working on the tarmac.

Emerging from the hangar, Felix and Ivo carried one of the two rudder sections. Resheathed in fresh fabric, the light weight control surface was easily handled by two people. Scaffolding was set up around the tail of the Liberator Express, in preparation for its overhauled rudders to be installed. Ground crew assisted in hoisting the large rudder pieces, which were held in place while Felix bolted them in. He precariously braced himself against a studded pole that was part of the scaffolding's support. High off the ground, the Doberman attached the rudder to its control actuators, bolting them in place. First the right, then the left rudder came on. As the sun rose higher, the scaffolding was adjusted, and the elevators were reattached in the same manner. The light tan fabric contrasted to the bare metal.

"Tito, move the control surfaces." Felix called over his phone. Inside the cockpit, Ivo's brother manipulated the yoke, and true to his command, the elevators and rudder moved to his inputs. There was a collective sigh of relief and a moment of celebration.

"Now it's time for the ailerons." Vlado pointed out.

Felix walked over to the left wing, to prepare for its aileron. He stopped and checked the time on his phone, and looked out towards the eastern sky. He was expecting his DC-6 to arrive sometime in the early afternoon, with the four R-1830's and propellers. He had to let "Gulliver" return to Ohio early in the week, to meet an urgent demand back home. As Vlado and Tito carried the left aileron, Felix stuffed his phone into his shorts, and adjusted his backwards turned hat. He fetched his tools and began to help install the fabric sheathed aileron. Like the other control surfaces, it was held up, and Felix, dangling over the edge of the thin Davis wing, attached it to the control actuators with a set of bolts. Making his way to the right wing, the process was repeated, completing the control surfaces. Tito climbed into the cockpit to check the ailerons, which responded to his inputs. Everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Climbing down from the fuselage, Felix took a few steps back from "Galveston". A grin lit up his face. Another major milestone was completed, and the plane almost looked intact, aside from its anchored down nose and missing engines. It was getting closer and closer to flight.

The clock struck two-thirty when Felix finally saw "Gulliver" arrive in the landing pattern. The DC-6B, piloted by his friends Kalash and Vlad Tokarev, descended in with its usual slightly nose down droop. Felix watched it land and rollout down the runway.

Felix turned to glance at the airport director. "I'm gonna need a forklift to unload this."

The director nodded and lifted his radio up. "Vlock! We're gonna need ya- grab the lift!"

The DC-6 was parked on the ramp and chocked. Vlad opened the rear cargo door up, which was both the passenger door, and the main cargo door. The passenger door swung open, and the main cargo door was opened by a set of electric motors. Vlad then gingerly began to get the cargo unstrapped and unloaded, with the help of Geert Apps.

Rumbling across the ramp was a small forklift, a little lime green Clark that looked like it had seen better days. Sitting at the controls as a scruffy looking Golden Retriever, wearing denim bibs over a t-shirt, and a Nascar hat. Felix fumbled his brow at the sight of someone who looked like the literal epitome of a redneck.

"HUBBA HUBBA BUDDAH?" he shouted as he came rolling up to the airport director.

"Vlock! Unload the damn airplane!" the director yelled at him. "How many more times do I have to say it?"

"Alright, alwight..." the dog muttered as he backed up and turned around. The airport director, a burly brown wolf, had to dodge out of the way as Vlock abruptly swung around. Felix shook his head at the sight. Rumbling up to the rear cargo door, the forklift lifted its forks up, and the propeller blades were gingerly placed on the forks. They were wrapped up in rubber padding, paper, and tape. Three at a time were unloaded and placed at the hangar. Next came the engines.

Finagling around with a pallet jack Vlad moved one of the engine pallets to the cargo door. Felix saw that Prishtina had the engines packaged, two to a pallet. His heart began to sink when he saw the little forklift come rumbling up and grabbed the pallet. It pulled the pallet off the plane, and the forklift wobbled; it's back wheels teetered, looking as though they were barely touching the pavement. The first two engines were lowered down, and the overloaded lift carried them over to the hangar to sit next to the propeller blades. The Doberman sucked in his lower lip and watched with serious eyes as the next pallet was wheeled into place. The forklift got its forks into the pallet and began to lift it up to clear the floor. Felix saw that it was seriously wobbling. He scrutinized the pallet to realize that it not only had the two R-1830's strapped down, but the supercharger components attached and strapped. He immediately began running towards the plane to stop Vlock.

"NO! WAIT! STOP!!!" Felix started to scream, when he suddenly saw the forklift tip forward. The pallet with the two engines, and superchargers, came crashing down. The mast struck the DC-6 and knocked it sideways; Vlad nearly fell out of the cargo hold, had a quick thinking Geert and Kalash not catch him. The impact crushed in the area around the cargo door and left a gash in the lower fuselage. Everything came crashing down in a tremendous crush. Felix stopped dead in his tracks as a cloud of dust erupted up.

"OH SHIT!" Vlado yelled. He immediately ran over with everyone else. The airport director momentarily looked shocked, and just stood there, mouth agape, clutching his radio.

"God damnit, Vlock!" he yelled.

Sitting on the pavement, rubbing his forehead in frustration, Felix examined what was left of his overhauled R-1830's. The impact after an almost ten foot fall, destroyed both engines. Cylinder banks lie broken in a puddle of oil. The engines sat amongst the splintered wood of the pallet, and the bent and broken mast of the forklift. The superchargers broke loose on impact and laid where they skidded at. One had broken apart, the others were intact. There was no way of knowing how much damage the internals of the superchargers took. Everything was cordoned off by yellow caution tape. Nothing could be moved, as the FAA took photos.

"Gulliver" sat in sad shape. The Cloudmaster had taken a blow hard enough to spin it to the left by five feet. The lower fuselage, immediately below the cargo door, took a serious blow. It was crushed in and gouged; the reinforced floor of the cargo hold was bent at the edge. He wasn't even sure what the extent of the internal damage was to the aircraft's hydraulics, control cables, and electrics. He was so flabbergasted, so disgruntled, and enraged by the whole accident, that he just sat in silence. Somehow, Vlock wasn't injured, but Felix wished he had been, because he wanted to kill him, for such sheer incompetency displayed. He had found out from other airport crew members that Vlock had had a few forklift accidents from overloading them, including damaging another aircraft. All Felix could do was shake his head, and wait for Rob to arrive.

Getting up, Felix smacked his paws against his hips and walked away from his damaged Cloudmaster. He walked back to where Ivo and everyone else was at, taking shelter in the shade by the hangar. "Galveston" sat looking desolate without her engines. Naked nacelles devoid of engines and cowlings looked out of place for the old cargo plane. They would remain naked for a longer period of time with two destroyed engines lying on the tarmac.

"Well...I guess no use crying over spilled milk..." Tito grumbled.

"Oh I'd spill something over the tarmac..." Ivo grunted.

Felix just shook his head. "Unbelievable."

"Rob is going to be pissed..." Vlad shook his head. "I can already feel it."

"Pfft, when is Rob never pissed?" Kalash snorted.

"I want that motherfucker fired." Felix muttered. "How the fuck can that be the SECOND accident?"

"How can anyone be so stupid as to use such a dinky little forklift to unload something like two engines on a pallet?"

"I guess someone who's mentally retarded!" Kalash laughed.

"No shit!" Vlad exclaimed. "Now we're all stuck here until Rob comes, which will probably be by nightfall..."

"Make it look like an accident is what Rob tells me~" Felix morbidly chuckled. "Oh my god... What the fuck guys..."

"I know, I know..." Vlado said calmly. He tried to calm Felix down. "Look, it happened, and there's no point in being upset about it. You can bounce off the walls and scream for twenty minutes, and guess what? You're gonna wind up with the same problem, but with higher blood pressure~"

Felix huffed and stomped a sneaker into the concrete and ground the sole into it. He threw his arms up in disgust and had no choice but to accept it.

After spending the rest of the day dealing with insurance, the FAA, the airport management, and all the legalese, Felix found himself mentally exhausted by the time Rob arrived.

Descending in for landing was "Coneflower", the polished silver skin of the Super Constellation glistening in the airport's lights, as it rolled out for landing. Arriving onto the tarmac, the curvaceous Lockheed burbled in on its inboard radial engines. The turbocompound R-3350's spat a steady stream of flickering red and yellow flames from its exhaust stubs. The flat-tipped Curtiss Electric propellers shimmered in the bright glaring floodlights. The plane turned and parked, and the inboard engines were soon powered off, and the wheels chocked.

Rob was the first to climb down the ladder to the pavement. Felix could tell Rob was all riled up from the incident. The moment his feet touched the pavement, he turned and stormed over to immediately berate airport management over the damaged DC-6. Even on the opposite end of the tarmac, Felix could hear Rob's angry voice carry, as he got in people's faces and screamed over the incompetency displayed. The Doberman just chuckled cynically and let Rob take his anger out.

Turning his attention away from the C-87, Felix helped Rob and the others make a detailed inspection of the Cloudmaster's damage. Felix, Rob, Vlado, Geert, and their other mechanic, Pablo Hernandez, spent half the night slowly inspecting the damaged rear fuselage. Other than crush damage to the skin, and damage to the cargo floor and door latches, the critical internals of the DC-6 were intact. Rob and Vlado made the decision that the airplane could be ferried home for further repairs. To do that, it would require removal of the cargo door, as there was nothing to latch it into place for flight. The door was simply unbolted from the fuselage hinges, and stowed inside the fuselage for the flight back. Now they would need a special ferry permit from the FAA, something that would have to be done in the morning.

Over the barren scrubland flew "Gulliver" and "Coneflower" in formation. Through the empty sky at three thousand feet, the wounded DC-6B was flown by Vlado, Geert, and Rob, while being supervised by Joey, Vlad, and Kalash, aboard the Constellation. The DC-6 flew ahead and to the right of the Connie. It was a slow flight back to Ohio; "Gulliver" had its landing gear locked down in flight, and the Cloudmaster was restricted in speed, on account of the damage to the rear fuselage and open cargo door. It would be a long flight across the country, back to Ohio.

Inside the posh interior of "Coneflower", an exhausted Felix snoozed at one of the card tables in the forward lounge, next to a window. His head rested on the table that was covered in stacks of legalese, the sunlight filtering in on him. Outside his window, the Constellation's massive R-3350's burbled, the muffled radial song permeating the cabin with its mesmerizing rumble.

A thunk on the table stirred Felix awake. Bloodshot eyes opened and glanced up to see Ivo and his brother Tito. Ivo sat a glass Pepsi bottle down on the table for him. Felix smacked his lips and sat up in the leather couch seat. "I was tired..."

"A lotta bullshit~" Tito chuckled. His reddish-brown hair, usually tied back as a stubby short-cropped ponytail, was loose and tousled atop his head as he took a swig from his Pepsi.

"Yeah..." Ivo agreed, who sat down, opposite of a still groggy Felix.

"Radial song can put you to sleep."

"It's quite mesmerizing once you get used to it." Ivo acknowledged, as his blue eyes watched the propellers twirl.

Felix blinked his eyes a few times and went back to sorting through all his insurance claim paperwork. "So much bullshit... and now this set us back. This has really fucked me in the ass."

"It's fucked the whole project." Tito grunted. "Now we gotta wait until we can find that specific dash-forty-three engine!"

"What about the spares that came with the Lib we got?" Ivo asked.

"Those are dash-thirty-fives." Felix responded. "I'd have to request a supplemental type certificate from the FAA, since it's not an experimental type- it's a standard rating."

"Well shit."

"And the R-1830's that Rob and Joey have stocked up the kazoo are the S1C3G's, and they can't really take the B-2 superchargers."

"Fuck." Ivo groaned.

"Up a shit creek without a paddle!" Felix concluded with a snort. "And now I don't even have my workhorse 'Six', thanks to Ricky Retardo at Leach."

"Well he did get fired..." Tito shrugged.

"And Rob punched the fuck outta him." Felix chuckled.

"Dude... Rob punched the fucking retard outta him!" Ivo laughed.

"Lordy..." Felix laughed.

"Didn't you buy a DC-7, Felix?" Tito asked. "The Chandler one down in Opa Locka?"

"Yeah, but I don't really think it's ready..."

"It's airworthy..."

"Yeah, but it feels all tired and worn out. I wanted to take my time with that one; get it cleaned up more, replace all the control cables, hydraulics, engines, new paint- you know, first world issues~"

"Well now you gotta fly it like an African nation! Haphazard and at the seat of your pants!" Ivo grinned.

"Apparently so!"

"And I'll be there to help you not die flying it~" the Croat boasted with a laugh.

Felix got a big break, a stroke of good luck.

Palm trees swayed to the warm, marine air of Opa Locka Florida. At the Executive Airport, home of Freightmaster's operations, Felix stood on the tarmac, watching as cargo was loaded aboard his newly acquired DC-7BF. Crated spare parts, a set of "pickled" R-3350's, and other accessories, were loaded in both fore and aft cargo doors by Kurt and his father, Lloyd Tanager. The fawn Dober took a step back as he watched Kurt rumble up on his lift, and grab the palletized R-1830-43 that he lucked out in obtaining from an aviation collector further south in Miami. He had managed to obtain a set of the "dash 43's" that he desperately needed for the C-87 restoration. They were just the main core of the engine; Felix would have to salvage the exhaust cowlings and injector pumps off the damaged engines, to complete the installation. Four Twin-Wasps were loaded aboard the old Douglas, to be moved into place by Ivo and his boyfriend.

Turning his attention to his new mount, Felix took a moment to glance at the generic, white and dull metal DC-7. The sixty-eight year old "Seven" had a hardworking history; not only was it the fifth DC-7 built, it was one of the first to enter service with American Airlines in late 1953, as "Flagship Oregon". It's passenger career with American barely lasted six years, when it was retired in 1959, at the start of the jet age. Bought up by a resale company, the plane was sent back to Douglas, who overhauled and rebuilt the "Seven" as a cargo plane, bringing it up to DC-7B standard. From there it found a new life as a cargo plane, performing yeoman duties for many years, until it was retired and stored in the bone yard in 1980. Ten years later, it was resurrected back to flight by Chandler Aero, who used it at first as a bug sprayer in the Canadian west, and then a water bomber, where it was finally retired in 2020. Now it was his fifth cargo plane.

Climbing up the ladder, Felix stepped into his DC-7, to watch Ivo and Jordan secure and strap down their cargo. He looked down at the magnesium planked cargo floor, which was stained by years of oil and other sludge. The entire interior of the Douglas looked worn out and tired; the fabric covered walls of the fuselage had turned a shade or two of gray, and torn in places. The worn planks that made up the reinforced floor creaked under Felix's footsteps. Making his way into the cockpit, Felix picked up his clipboard from the captain's seat. He took a second to admire the well used "office". Like his DC-6, the instrument panel was well worn, with chipping and faded gray paint, but new gauges, a new autopilot, radio, and GPS systems were all interwoven on the panel.

Climbing back down to get his paperwork ready he met up with Kurt and Joey, who were wheeling a set of fire extinguishers in place for engine start.

"Well, she's loaded up... heh... this ole' bucket of bolts." Chuckled Felix.

"She'll fly." Kurt encouraged.

"I was hoping to maybe spend a few months having her cleaned up... but I guess that'll just have to wait for the next Iran... Thanks to someone smashing a forklift mast into Gulliver."

"When you get the 'six' back, ferry this one back down, and we'll get the stuff you want fixed on it, fixed." Joey assured.

"Where do I begin?" laughed Felix with a shit-eating grin.

Saying goodbye to Kurt and his father, Felix and Joey climbed aboard the DC-7, to begin their journey back to Ohio. In the cockpit, Felix sat in the captain's seat, watching the engine start procedure as they all went through the checklist. Jordan, flying in the right hand seat, switched over the magnetos, to get engine three started. As the APU hummed in the tail, engine three hacked to life with a chugging cough of cylinders. Engine four was started, and Felix watched from his window as engine two was started, followed by one.

Powering the DC-7 was the Wright Cyclone-18. It was a massive radial engine that dwarfed the R-1830's destined to power the C-87. A twin-row radial with eighteen cylinders, the R-3350 was unique in its turbocompound system. The radial engine was complemented with a set of three exhaust gas power recovery turbines, which scavenged energy from the exhaust system and put it back into the engine via fluid coupling. It provided an extra 500 horsepower, but it made the engine rather fickle. While the R-1830's and R-2800's that powered his DC-6 were noted for their reliability and straightforwardness, the Cyclone-18 had a bad habit of swallowing valves and burning out turbines, something that was somewhat mitigated by the de-rating of the engines over the lack of high octane avgas. Despite the mechanical shortcomings, it gave the DC-7, and its Super Constellation rival, the speed and payload capabilities.

Engine two and one burbled to life with a thick cloud of oily smoke. The turbine hoods spat red and yellow flames that belched out like an afterburner. The engines ran at low RPM, creating a chugging sound as cold cylinders were slowly warmed. The unpainted propellers etched gray disks, tipped with white.

"Engine temperature is coming up." Ivo called out through the headset.

All four engines were soon idling smoothly, and the scruffy looking DC-7 began to taxi for the runway. Brakes squeaked as Felix gently applied and released them on the slow roll down the service road. He turned onto the runway and commanded maximum power from the four Cyclone's, which revved to life. Flames roared from the turbines as they took off for home. Lumbering into the air, the Douglas climbed slowly, as Opa Locka passed beneath them.

In his seat, Felix held onto the yoke and flew the plane manually. He could sense a bit of "play" in the controls as he commanded the elevators and ailerons. It was one of the subsystems that he wanted replaced, but time constraints and other exigencies he was dealing with stood in the way. This "Seven" didn't fly as nicely as the other restored DC-7's he had flown; it felt like it had been "ridden hard and put away wet" in its past life as a fire bomber.

"Now that I got the engines, I can get this damn project back on schedule." Felix said to his entourage in the cockpit.

"Heh, heh, if it's not one thing it's something else eh?" Joey teased.

"Story of my life." Felix smirked.

"Fuck, the story of everyone's life!" Jordan exclaimed with a jaded laugh at the end.

Through the patchy cloud filled sky, Felix and his crew continued on flying northbound, beginning their long flight back to Ohio.

Back to the grind at Leach, Felix was presented with a very rainy, and gloomy, Monday morning. A low slate colored sky dumped a heavy downpour of rain at the airport. Puddles splashed from raindrops on the weathered tarmac, where Felix's DC-7 sat, the scruffy propliner looking forlorn at the quiet airport.

Rain pelted the tin roof of the hangar, where the C-87 sat sheltered inside. A cool breeze filtered in through the partially open hangar door, aided along by some big drum fans that hummed. Floodlights provided extra illumination. To start the week off, work commenced by preparing the engines for installation. The Liberator Express was just about ready, as Geert returned with them to finish up some cosmetic repairs to the interior of the old cargo plane. Felix worked with Ivo and Vlado, to service the radial engines.

His face and tanktop streaked with grease and oil, Felix helped Vlado hammer on the exhaust cowlings. The R-1830 was held up by the propeller hoist, allowing them to install the exhaust system to the back of the engine. The cowling was salvaged from the damaged Twin-Wasp, which needed to be grafted onto the new replacement engine. Felix laid on his back, using the blunt end of his screw driver to hammer away at part of a pipe, to force it to line up. He grumbled under his breath at the difficulty, having preferred to not have the engine destroyed in the first place! Vlado stood above, with a ball peen hammer, taking a whack at another area to make it line up for the bolt holes.

"Okay, there! There!" Felix exclaimed. He immediately shoved a bolt through the lined up bolt hole, and got it to dry fit.

"You got it down on that area?" Vlado asked.

"Yeah."

"Hold that there! I gotta line this up here!" the wolf called.

"Okay."

Finally, after hours of fiddling around making the exhaust cowlings fit on the two replacement engines, Vlado finished the job with a pneumatic wrench to secure the final set of bolts.

"Alright, that looks good." Felix nodded. He wiped his face with a towel, which was tossed over a chair once again as he turned his attention to the C-87. Walking over, he saw Geert climbing down the small ladder propped up to the rear cargo door.

"How goes it?"

"I got the last set of fabric blankets on the cockpit bulkhead reattached." Geert announced. "So that's ready to go."

"Excellent."

"I think really all that's left on this plane is to hang the engines and propellers, and make sure those systems work, and then proceed with a short test hop."

"I agree."

"What about the replacement engines?" the collie asked.

"Me and Vlado just finished on the exhaust cowlings. So that's set."

Felix walked over to see Tito working on engine four, which was the first engine to be hung onto the airframe. The Croatian wolf worked to install the GE B2 supercharger, which connected to the exhaust pipe work. He worked in the tight space reattaching the components and bolting pipes together.

For the rest of the week, the group's attention turned to hanging the engines and propellers. On Tuesday, engine three was installed, followed by engines one and two on Thursday, which required them to work well into the night getting engine connectors, fuel, and oil lines reattached. On Friday, starting at six in the morning, they had a marathon day to hang propellers and test the engines out.

The sun was out in an almost cloudless Friday morning sky. The air was already getting humid as everyone pushed the C-87 out of the hangar. With the engines installed, it no longer had to be anchored down, to avoid falling on its tail.

"Push!" chanted Ivo as they wheeled the propeller hoist towards engine four. Felix stood on the ladder, guiding them in and eyeballing the prop boss, to line it up with the driveshaft. He called out what direction and height they needed to go, and when the prop was close enough, he grasped onto it and guided it onto the driveshaft.

"Don't pull a Rob and have a prop fall on you!" Felix teased Vlado down below.

"That prop had my name on it had Rob not stepped in!" Vlado called back with a cynical laugh.

"Trade ya a crushed pelvis!" Tito cackled.

"So mean." Felix laughed.

Getting the prop lined up, Felix shoved it into the driveshaft, feeling immediate resistance. He slowly rocked the prop to seat it properly. Ivo climbed up on the second ladder, to begin installing the baffles and washers to secure the propeller to the engine. It was finally secured with a pneumatic wrench bolting it down, where Felix could install the prop boss, which housed the hydromatic pitch controls.

"There we go!" Felix exclaimed. The first propeller hung, on engine four. Its matte black blades, tipped with yellow, stood out from the worn and scruffy airframe.

By the end of Friday, as the sun finally slipped beneath the hills to the west, "Galveston" sat completed. Four new Pratt and Whitney's, four new sets of propellers were installed and ready for testing. Under the bright glare of the tarmac's floodlights, Ivo, and Tito climbed into the cockpit, to conduct the first engine tests. The elderly John Parsley stood with Felix and Vlado as the ground crew got into position with fire extinguishers.

"Go on three." Felix called.

Tito motioned from the cockpit, and engine three began to turn, urged by a whining starter motor. Felix counted six blades before the engine began coughing to life. With a hacking backfire, engine three started, spewing a cloud of oily smoke as it spooled to life.

"Go on four."

Engine four was started, and took half a minute for the engine to catch. It was one of the pickled engines he had got out of Florida, and it had a very hesitant start, as the preservatives in the engine core began to burn out. A dark gray smoke that smelled of cosmoline poured out as the engine chugged at low RPM. The smoke turned more white as the engine built up speed. A smile grew on Felix's face as the engine smoothed out in idle. Engine two, then one were turned over, the Liberator Express coming to life. There was a round of applause and pictures taken as the C-87 ran all four engines at idle power.

As the four engines burbled, Felix carefully examined the engines from below, being mindful of the propellers roaring just a mere couple feet away. He was checking for any oil leaks. The props blasted him with propwash, and the superchargers above his head hummed. The exhaust had an oily scent to it as he walked down the line inspecting the engines. "Galveston" was just about ready to fly.

After some final adjustments and tweaks to eliminate a couple of minor oil leaks, "Galveston" sat ready for flight. Felix went over every inch of the aircraft in preparation for its first flight in forty-one years. The sun shone brightly in the patchy blue sky, signaling high noon above Colorado.

"Alright, I walked this side, and it looks good." Felix said to Vlado, who checked the starboard side.

"I see everything looks good on starboard." Vlado acknowledged. "No fuel leaks, no oil leaks outside of what radials drip!"

"If they don't drip oil... you're out of oil!" Felix laughed. "Alrighty, tanks are topped up, and paperwork signed off for the first test flight. I'm excited!"

"She'll fly." Vlado smiled. "She looks great."

"Aside from the scruffy paint."

"That's easy stuff to fix!"

"Heh! True~"

With fuel tanks filled and oil topped off for the test hop, Felix climbed aboard "Galveston", with Geert and Vlado. He entered the cockpit and sat in the left-hand seat. Grabbing the flight plan, Felix began to go over the checklist, switching on the electrical system, and watching gauges come to life. Just like flying the B-24, the engine start procedure followed the same steps. Geert worked the primer and engaged the starter for engine three. Felix watched from the cockpit windows as the propeller began to turn. He counted the blades as Geert engaged the crank switch, which caught the engine. Felix immediately slammed the mixture to "auto-lean", and the engine coughed to life.

"There we go on three!" Felix exclaimed.

In order, Felix and Geert got engines four, then two and one, ignited. All four engines idled smoothly, and Felix saw that engine temperatures and oil pressures came up to spec. He reached down to release the brakes, his paws reaching back up to grasp the yoke. For a moment, Felix paused; this was it, the first flight in forty-one years. He took a slow inhale and exhale and regained his bearings. This almost extinct warbird was about to grace the skies once again.

"Here we go!" Felix called.

Inching the throttles forward, "Galveston" began to slowly taxi for the runway. Felix maintained a slow pace as he used the nose wheel steering column to turn the plane to follow the access road. The aircraft rumbled and vibrated across the pavement; Felix felt so excited, so anxious. His fingers nervously tapped on the yoke. This was a big moment to him, the moment of whether all their work would sink or swim. This was the only extant Liberator Express, and he felt determined to not screw it up. The painful thoughts of his DC-6 crash, the explosion of his former DC-7, momentarily crept up, only for the Doberman to forcefully remove from his thoughts, as he concentrated on turning onto the runway.

Rumbling onto the threshold, the C-87 turned and momentarily parked, for a final check of all systems.

"What do you say?" Felix asked.

"I say go." Vlado nodded.

"Go." Geert accepted.

Felix gripped his fistful of throttles. "Here we go!" he exclaimed as he opened the throttles up to command maximum power. All four radials roared to life, and the Liberator Express began its takeoff roll. Lightly loaded, it began to gain momentum down the runway rapidly. Felix began to pull the nose wheel up at the designated speed, and felt the plane grow more buoyant. The moment of truth had arrived; Felix heard the main gear leave the runway, and the plane began to climb away. For the first time in almost half a century, a Liberator Express was climbing away into the air.

"Gear up~" Geert called out. The Collie threw the lever and the hydraulics whined to pull the main gear up into the wells. Felix began inching back on the throttle as he maintained his climb. A smile began to emerge as Felix felt so jubilant. A feeling of accomplishment began to settle on him; he just began to say something when he heard a rather loud, metallic "PING!"

Suddenly he felt the yoke twitch, upon hearing the "PING!", like something under tension had suddenly snapped. The C-87 suddenly jolted and rocked forward a bit.

"Whoa..." Geert muttered.

"What the hell was that?" Vlado asked.

Felix attempted to pull back on the yoke, to correct the pitch, but found that it wouldn't budge for him. He pulled with all his might to find no response in pitch. "Geert, I have no pitch control." The Doberman's voice was cool and collected.

The Dutch Collie fumbled his brow as he attempted to yank on his control yoke, to find the same situation. "Looks like we got a jammed elevator."

"Well fuck." Felix calmly said. "Okay, uhh." He immediately hit the microphone toggle. "Pan-Pan, Pan-Pan, tower, this is Cactus, eight-forty-five heavy, declaring an emergency. Over. Repeat, declaring an emergency. Lost elevator control, returning back to airport. Over."

Felix checked his altitude, and adjusted his flaps, as he started to feel the Liberator Express enter a phugoid cycle, the plane wanting to slowly pitch up and down. Geert dropped the gear into the slipstream, which combined with the flaps, helped stabilize the plane. Holding at fifteen hundred feet, Felix carefully checked over his controls; he had his ailerons, and rudders, but no elevator control. He guessed that one of the cables, or the actuator, snapped, or malfunctioned. By careful manipulation of the throttles, using the outboard engines for speed, and all engines to maintain rough pitch adjustments, the C-87 could be crudely controlled. Felix gingerly turned the plane around with Geert, to limp it back to the runway, while they all discussed their plans for the rough emergency landing that lay ahead.

On the ground, fire crews lined up by the tarmac and waited as all hands were on deck. Standing by the tower was John Parsley, the elderly wolf watching with anticipation on his face. He heard there was a problem and nervously awaited the emergency landing. Everyone watched as the Liberator Express lined up for the runway, coming in fast. Felix and Geert maintained their rough descent using the outboard engines to mitigate speed. Crossing the threshold, Felix closed the throttles, and the Liberator Express sank onto the runway. It's nose wheel made contact, hard, with a tire screeching impact that bucked the plane onto its main gear. Smoke coughed from the tires as the C-87 bounced momentarily, and sank back onto its landing gear. Brakes screeched as Felix gave maximum braking power. The plane rolled down the runway, fire trucks soon following, before coming to a complete stop.

Felix braced himself on the yoke at the realization that the plane had stopped. Disaster had been narrowly avoided. Shutting the engines off, Felix felt the adrenaline wear off, and the shock hit him. He braced himself on the yoke and took a deep breath and a sigh. Vlado gave his shoulder a squeeze.

"You did it!" Vlado exclaimed.

"Yippee...." Was Felix's jaded reply. He forced himself up and out of his seat and rushed to exit the aircraft. Jumping out through the back hatch, he rushed by approaching firemen to look at the tail of the aircraft, finding no apparent damage on the exterior of the plane. The elevators were frozen in place, with a very subtle pitch up.

"Great." Felix muttered under his breath. What he had hoped would be a successful first flight, nearly ended in disaster.

"Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing..."

Two weeks had passed; Felix, forced to return to Ohio for other commitments, returned to Colorado a week later, to resume work on repairing the C-87. In tearing down the rear fuselage, Felix and Vlado discovered what had happened. One of the control cables had snapped, and in the process, jammed the bell crank that actuated the control surfaces. It was a close call. Felix and Vlado ran new cables, and a spare bell crank, from "Bolivar's Reply", saved the day. Attention was also given to the nose wheel, which took a very hard landing. Felix inspected the gear assembly, and could find nothing suspicious. He was careful about the nose gear, as the Liberator Express had a habit of collapsing nose gears.

Two weeks to the day after the disastrous first flight, the C-87 was prepared for a second test flight. Fuelled and oiled up, the Liberator Express taxied for the runway, again under the command of Felix. This time, Vlado flew in the co-pilot's seat, and Geert served as the flight engineer.

Lifting off the runway, Felix cautiously guided "Galveston" back into the air. Gear and flaps smoothly retracted, and Felix reduced power, inching the mercury back inch by inch as he slowed his climb rate. Making a slow descent and flying northward, he climbed up to three thousand feet, for a half hour test flight.

Flying the Liberator Express, Felix felt that it flew no different than a regular B-24, but he was mindful to remember that the plane was empty, devoid of a maximum weight payload that would degrade its handling. The high set Davis Wing gave good speed, but Felix always thought the Liberator was a bit heavy on the controls. It wasn't as pleasant to fly as the B-17, or B-29 that he was type rated on. He did like the open feeling the cockpit had, with its improved visibility. Glancing outside his window, the four R-1830's let out a continuous burble of radial song, with the reverberating drone of propellers keeping them aloft.

Sticking close to the airport, Felix made a couple large laps to test the aircraft out. The plane flew effortlessly, with the engines checking out just fine. Felix and Vlado lined up for the runway and came in for a smooth landing. The C-87 flared and touched down, with a little crabbing motion from a crosswind on short final. Rattling down the runway, Felix applied brakes and slowed to a crawl. The outboard engines were powered off, and they taxied back to the runway on their inboard engines. Felix turned and parked "Galveston", which was run lean before finally shut down. With the shutdown of the electrics, Felix got up and looked satisfied.

"I think we're ready to ferry this back next week."

"I think so too." Vlado acknowledged. "Geert?"

"I agree." The collie smiled. "You got yourself a worthy cargo plane, Felix."

"Well, I don't know about 'great', but its airworthy!"

In sunny Opa Locka, palm trees swayed in the warm coastal air at the Executive Airport. The scruffy looking DC-7 looked at home, amongst the Freightmaster propliners that lined the tarmac, in the various stages of loading and unloading. A couple Super Constellations, C-118's, and DC-7C's had cargo doors opened as forklifts rumbled in synchronized fashion with loads of palletized cargo coming and going.

Inside Freightmaster's large maintenance hangar, Felix stood, watching as Freightmaster's maintenance crew strapped down a new cargo door for his DC-6. The original doors were too warped to repair, and the replacement door that Felix had back in Ohio had stress cracks at the hinges, rendering it unairworthy. All around Felix bustled with activity; C-118A was being stripped down for its scheduled IRAN, and a C-47 got a new starboard engine installed. Far in the back of the hangar sat a well stripped down C-54E and a DC-7C. Both were destined for Felix. Under restoration, the Skymaster and Seven Seas, would eventually join Felix's growing fleet, to support IBSF missions. The forklift rattled out onto the tarmac and loaded the cargo door aboard his unnamed DC-7B.

Felix walked out of the hangar with Kurt Tanager, the two watching all the commotion on the tarmac as they walked and talked.

"If all goes according to plan, we fly the C-87 back to Ohio Saturday." Felix explained to Kurt.

"So she's all ready then?"

"As ready as she can be." The fawn Dober shrugged. "We test flew 'er for half an hour and found no issues. So I'm pretty confident she will fly well on the transcontinental run."

"Well that's good!"

Felix walked up to gaze upward at his weathered DC-7. "Just cannot wait to get my DC-6 back...so this one can enter some maintenance!"

"Heh." Chuckled Kurt in response. "She is a bit weather beaten~"

"Do a major tune-up and throw some new paint on it." Felix pointed out. "I want to use 'er for a future project that I'm actually working on with Rob right now."

"Oh yeah?"

"I propose "BATS"- Barev's Air Transport Service, so we can link all the company facilities together as the company expands. We want to keep Centoh as the air and road cargo for commercial services, and transfer IBSF and Centopax into BATS, for both passenger and cargo flying within the company."

"That's pretty nifty there, Felix."

"Heh, well, MATS inspired us." The Doberman shrugged with a laugh. "Part of Rob's vision for the future of Barev."

"You guys are a lot bigger entity than Paulo Firearms and Freightmaster."

"Well, we'll see~ This is all a long term plan, for sure, since I got ninety-nine other problems!"

"But a bitch ain't one~"

"That's right!"

Kurt gave Felix and his crew a friendly sendoff, as they all climbed aboard the white and silver propliner, for their return back to Ohio. Felix, Ivo, and Jordan lifted off from Opa Locka, and climbed away to head northbound. Reaching 12,000 feet, they leveled off and plotted course among the patchy clouds.

Settling down for the cruise back to Ohio, the cockpit was quiet, outside of the usual droning of the piston engines. The Wright Cyclone's had a deep throaty roar, the synchronized propellers adding to its mesmerizing burble. Ivo and Jordan had a conversation about his older brother and their adopted friend Brad, while Felix messed around on his phone, examining some saved photos of C-87 paint schemes. Felix intended to have the Liberator Express painted in an early war olive drab scheme, with the early war roundel, and ATC insignia. He would keep the name "Galveston", as homage to its past life as a fruit hauler. It would be a unique contribution to their museum's early war aircraft.

Felix flipped a photo was examining another image up close, when he suddenly felt a jolt rattle the cockpit. There was a loud backfire, followed by a faint grinding sound, another backfire, and the shrill of the fire alarm. Felix dropped his phone from the jolt.

"Fire on four!" Ivo shouted. "Fire light on four!"

Jordan turned his head to look out the cockpit window, to see smoke coming out from under the cowl flaps. "Yeah, there's a lotta smoke comin' outta four~"

Felix sat up in his seat and immediately focused his attention to resolving the problem. "Cut the throttle, cut mixture, and pull the halon extinguisher~"

Ivo pulled the throttle back to idle, as Felix put opposing rudder in to compensate for the lack of outboard power creating a yaw. The Croat cut the mixture, and hit the feathering button on the instrument panel above him. Jordan watched as the propeller lost momentum, and feathered, windmilling to a stop. "Here we go!" Ivo called, "Halon activated!"

Felix watched the fire light as Ivo deployed the fire extinguisher. The light came on that the bottle fired, but the light remained glowing red. "Bottle fired." Felix felt his heart sink that the fire light continued to glow.

"Jordan?"

Jordan glanced momentarily at Felix and glanced back out the cockpit window. "I'm still seeing smoke coming out from the gills." Ivo looked at Jordan and at Felix.

"Atlanta center, this is Cactus nine-oh-one, declaring an emergency, over. Atlanta center, this is Cactus nine-oh-one, declaring an emergency. Over. We have an engine fire, request vector to immediate, over."

Cactus nine-oh-one, this is Atlanta center, we acknowledge your emergency, over, turn right, heading ninety-two."

"Copy. Acknowledged." Felix accepted. He began turning the plane in a rightward turn to head for their immediate airport. The Doberman glanced at the German Shepherd. "Keep an eye on that fire, Jordan~"

"Yeah, it's smokin' pretty bad."

"God damnit." Felix muttered. He remained calm as he manually took over from the autopilot.

"I don't understand it- that Halon puts almost anything out!" Ivo exclaimed.

"There was a grinding sound I heard after the backfire." Jordan exclaimed.

"I bet the blower went out, or one of the turbines, and it fucked the whole fluid coupling up." Ivo suggested. "Or just the classic swallow a valve!"

"Great..." Jordan grunted.

"I don't worry about the engines- I gotta get this down on the ground." Felix shook his head.

Crossing the border into Georgia, Felix stayed in contact with the air traffic control, and coordinated his landing plans at the Valdosta Regional Airport. He dumped some fuel to lighten the load, and banked around to try and begin descent.

"Ah shit, Felix~ We got a fire starting..." Jordan announced. He watched as flames licked from under the cowling gills, as the smoke grew heavier. "I bet we got a fuel leak!"

"We gotta put that fire out."

"I'm outta halon on that bottle."

"Then dive the plane it is~ Everyone strap yourself in!"

Felix took a deep breath, and tightened the straps to his seat harness. He made sure everyone was strapped in. This was a last ditch effort; if he couldn't put the fire out this way, they very well could lose the wing; the magnesium in the R-3350's was combustible at a high enough temperature, and could very well start an inferno that would threaten the integrity of the spars. "Here we go!"

Felix pushed the yoke forward, and the DC-7 immediately began to dive. The wind began to growl against the windows as they maintained a steep dive. Jordan watched the fire from his right-hand seat as they built up speed rapidly.

"Watch my speed!" Felix called to Ivo.

"You want me to call it out?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. Three-fifty, three-sixty..."

As their speed increased, Jordan watched the flames be fanned by the roaring air through the burning engine. Bright yellow flames spat from under the cowling, and some of the gills were beginning to melt and turn a dull cherry red. Little flecks of melted steel flung over the wing, from the gills slowly melting. Jordan held his breath at the sight. But as the speed increased further, the plane buffeting more and more violently, the fire began to be snuffed out. The dark smoke and flame died away, and the white smoke gradually grew fainted and more wispy.

"Fire's out!" Jordan shouted.

"Four hundred!" Ivo shouted.

"Outta the dive! Outta the dive!" Felix shouted over the wind noise. He grabbed the yoke with Jordan and used all his strength to pull back on it. The elevators fought him as they struggled to pull out of their dive. The altimeter needle swung past three thousand feet. The plane groaned to the forces subjected to it, and the wings noticeably flexed. Very slowly, Felix could see them coming out of the dive, as the altitude indicator decreased past five degrees nose down. The altimeter read below a thousand feet, when they finally leveled off, the plane stabilizing at four hundred feet. Racing over fields, the DC-7 limped on three engines.

"Wow. Holy fuck." Jordan and Ivo muttered. Felix held on with white knuckle intensity as he flew the Douglas.

"Atlanta center, this is Cactus. Fire is out."

Having returned to terra firma safely, Felix stood with a frustrated, burned out look on his face. In front of him was the distorted, twisted nacelle of his DC-7's number four engine. Between the damaging engine fire, which weakened the motor mounts, the force of pulling out of the emergency dive bent the whole cowling and part of the nacelle ten degrees down. The whole thing looked precariously held on. Felix bitterly ground the sole of his shoe into the pavement at the airport, while he waited for Rob and Joey to fly down to pick him up. Now he was down two cargo planes. There was a feeling of fate to Felix; that this was bound to happen, sooner or later. He had intended to buy the plane and have it more deeply overhauled and restored- he wanted new engines, propellers, control cables, the whole nine yards, completely redone. It seemed like the inevitable had finally happened.

"Hey, I got this for you." Came Jordan's voice, as he walked up with a cold bottle of water for the Doberman. Felix thanked him and took the condensation dripping bottle, to take a slow, long swig of it to quench his thirst. Jordan and Felix stood looking at the broken engine in silence for a while.

"I knew this was going to happen... I just knew it..." Felix shook his head.

"It was an accident~" Jordan said in a calm tone. "We worked the problem as best we could and resolved it, and all of us are okay, and for the most part...so is the plane."

Felix let out a disgusted sigh. "Why bother?"

"Why what?"

"Why bother doing what I fucking do, because all the time this stupid shit happens!" Felix shouted. He bitterly pointed to the broken engine. "What does this say? 'Oh look, another accident from accident prone Felix!' 'Hey look, Felix broke another airplane!' 'Felix, didn't you eject from a Fishbed? Didn't you crash a DC-6? Didn't you indirectly involve yourself in a dispute that blew an airliner up and killed everyone aboard and get yourself in a whole mess of legal trouble?' YEAH!"

"Felix, that was not your fault!" Jordan exclaimed. "You didn't kill all those people aboard the 'Findlay'..."

Felix turned around and walked away from the Shepherd. "I don't know..." was his bitter response.

With no other option, Felix had to leave the DC-7 at the airport. He did his best to wrap the damaged engine up with tarps, and secure it with some bungee cords wrapped around the damaged cowling. In the early evening, his ride arrived to pick him and his crew up. Arriving into Valdosta was Rob Barion's "Vanguard", a short-fuselage Constellation. Ivo, Jordan, and Felix boarded the silver Barev executive, which departed Georgia with them and the cargo door for the DC-6 loaded aboard.

Cruising home at twelve thousand feet, the setting sun turned the polished aluminum skin a brilliant, sparkling orange. Polished Curtiss propellers flickered sunlight. The orange light of the fading sun filtered through the round portholes of the Constellation, casting long shadows inside the regal interior. Sitting alone in the tail of the Constellation, Felix sat isolated away in Rob's personal quarters of the aircraft. The drone of the Wright radials was more subdued in the cabin, mixing with some classical music that Felix played to calm his rattled mind. "Fur Elise" played on a laptop as Felix worked at Rob's desk, writing out a detailed statement to the FAA, explaining the engine fire. A bitter look was on his face as he jotted down the incident with a black rollerball pen. Even his cursive took to looking like his mood; it came out jagged, pointy, sloppy in places.

A knock at the bulkhead door got his attention. Felix looked up, his eyes bloodshot from focusing so hard. He had to set his pen down and rub his exhausted eyes. "Come in~" he called.

The narrow door opened to reveal Rob. The always gruff looking wolf-malamute stepped in and closed the door behind him. "Are you okay, Felix?"

"Yeah, I'm fine...well...I mean... I...well...no." Felix muttered, stumbling over his own words. He looked frustrated to Rob.

"I can see that." Rob said. "You shouldn't beat yourself up, Felix."

"Yeah. I know. But there's a lot on my mind."

"Okay. Do tell."

"That engine fire could have took the whole wing with it. I did everything right and the engine still got substantial damage, and so did the nacelle. This is just another accident that has to reside on my flying record with the FAA. I get my pilot's license, and then months later, eject from a MiG-21 that caught alight. Then the DC-6 crash in Lainsville, and all the legal fallout from the DC-7 explosion that killed all those people."

"And yet, none of those were directly attributed to anything you did." Rob pointed out. "Look, I know you're frustrated about it, but none of that was your fault in any way."

"I let a feud get out of control."

"Did you put that chemical oxygen generator in the cargo hold with combustible material?"

"No."

"Then it's not your fault." Rob reiterated. "Look. I know where you're coming from, Felix. You feel this way because you have empathy- you're not a cold blooded sociopath. You're a very talented twenty-five year old. How many twenty-five year olds can say that they got their pilot's license at seventeen, and almost right away, got to fly very high performance aircraft? That they got twenty type ratings for everything from a biplane Stearman, to a mach-two Flanker? That you've flown bi-planes, straight wings, swept wings, delta wings? Single to quad engine aircraft? I can't really think of too many. Everyone is bound to have an accident because nobody is perfect, and neither is complex mechanical devices. You are not flying generic general aviation airplanes like a Cessna, or a Beechcraft. You are flying very complex, high performance aircraft, that have grown fickle with age. They're designs that pushed the state of the art in their time, sometimes under wartime exigency. And you're not the only one to crash here and there. I destroyed that Flug Werke, and took out a couple fences with my Thunderbolt that had the toothpick propellers. The late Bob had his Phantom hit by an air to air missile by mistake, and Geert crashed two F-104's and broke a Spitfire's tail. But we all carried on. So don't worry about the FAA- fuck 'em. They allow incompetent boobs to fly all the time. Look at some of the warbird operators and their fuck ups."

"Yeah..." Felix shook his head. "That's the thing! These airplanes are not getting younger, and we're basically supporting the maintenance now on our own without manufacturer support."

"That's 'cause a lot of the manufacturers are gone now!"

"Pfft, yeah. So every time shit hits the fan, it looks so bad! 'Oh look, an old airplane having problems? Let's ban it!' 'Incompetent pilots not knowing what the fuck they're doing in an emergency? Let's ban it!' I don't want to be 'that guy' and ruin it."

"And you won't. Not on my watch..." Rob assured. "You did a great job handling that emergency. And that you didn't panic, and you made it down on the ground- and that's what matters! What do they say?"

"Any landing is a good landing if you walk away from it~"

"Exactly." Rob said, clapping his paws together. "We'll fix the DC-6. We'll fix the DC-7. So let me handle that, and you focus your attention on that C-87. That is your project- that is your bird. You're right at the cusp. Bring 'er home."

"Alrighty, Rob." Felix mustered a smile for him.

"And tell 'em what a bunch of incompetent boobs that they are, the FAA~" Rob joked as he got up. "I do it all the time. Fucking idiots..."

"Heh, will do." Felix cynically chuckled.

As Rob left, he closed the bulkhead door behind him. Felix resumed his classical music, and with a calmer mind, resumed writing his statement.

After taking a week off to rest, Felix and his flight crew returned to Colorado, enroute aboard Freightmaster's C-97G. The double-lobed Stratofreighter, a bulbous looking Boeing, burbled along with Felix, Jordan, and Ivo aboard. They would be dropped off in Leach, before "The Silver Bullet Express" would continue on to Arizona.

Inside the double-decker Boeing, Felix and his entourage sat inside the lower lounge that Joey Paulo had installed for his company's "parts-hauler". It was a holdover from the earliest days of Freightmaster, when there was no dedicated VIP plane, which was now served by "Nugget", a restored L-1049E. The lounge, a unique feature of the civil 377 Stratocruiser, sat below the cargo hold, connected by a small staircase. Joey had it equipped with a small table, a bed, and a mini fridge. Everything was painted in very light colors, to help make the cramped space seem more roomy. Felix sat back eating lunch with Ivo and Jordan, the trio conversing over sandwiches, some fruit.

"Typical R-3350 fashion... the engine fire started with a swallowed valve and went from there." Felix said with a sarcastic tone, as he read the results on his phone. "Fuel pump got damaged from the explosion inside the engine, and leaked fuel, which fanned the flames."

"Oh nice." Ivo nodded. "Comforting to know!"

"Well...it could be worse." Felix fumbled his brow.

"Yeah, dead." Jordan snorted.

"Yep!" Ivo agreed.

"Thankfully, the aircraft will be repaired. They're gonna take the damaged nacelle off, fair over the wing section, and limp it back to Opa Locka, where Freightmaster's gonna do the nacelle repair and replacement."

"Oh nice, Felix. That's great news."

"Well...sort of..." Felix laughed. "No cargo plane to haul the shit back that we brought~"

"Sure we do! The C-87." Jordan pointed out.

"Yeah, I'm not looking forward to this." Chuckled the Doberman. "Loading our gear and equipment into a plane that really was not a good cargo plane."

"YOLO!" Ivo shouted mockingly.

"Eww, keep your stupid yolo, 2013 shit to yourself." Felix laughed.

"Remember! The engines were reliable!" Jordan chimed in.

"That was about it!" Felix exclaimed.

Dawn, on the twenty-sixth day of June, was vivid. Blue, faded to silver, to gold, to a deep reddish-orange, right on the horizon. Fog clung close to the ground. The airport's morning calm was broken by the rumbling of a forklift rolling across the pavement, the burble of the fuel truck running to fill the C-87's fuel tanks up.

On the wing sat Ivo, holding the fuel nozzle as he filled the wing tanks up. Felix stood on the ground, heaving his body against the propeller blades to hand turn the props, checking for hydraulic lock. Jordan assisted the loading of all their gear into the C-87's narrow fuselage. Compared to loading a DC-6, or Constellation, the C-87 was something close to a nightmare to load, as scaffolding, ladders, and their broken down propeller hoist were brought aboard. In the forward half of the cargo hold dominated a couple R-1830's and boxes of spare cylinders and other powerplant accessories. Jordan had the heaviest cargo placed where the bomb bay was; loading the Liberator Express properly was critical, as the airframe did not tolerate any deviance of center of gravity. If it was too tail heavy, it would stand up on its tail and crash. Too nose heavy, and it would never get off the runway. There was little space left around the Twin Wasp radials, which followed by all their scaffolding, and the propeller hoist. Finally, more boxes of goods were brought aboard, and Jordan carefully strapped everything down.

Wiping sweat off his brow, Felix turned the last propeller, to engine one. His muscles ached as he heaved and turned the big blades a few times, ensuring that the engine's cylinders were free of any oil that may have seeped in. It was a crucial step; trapped oil in the cylinders could very easily destroy a radial engine by hydraulic lock. He stopped to catch his breath, and looked up to see Ivo above him, checking the oil quantity for the engines.

"How we doing?" Felix called to Ivo.

"Oil is good!" Ivo yelled back, giving a thumbs up.

"Props are turned- no hydraulic lock." Felix pointed.

"Good! I think we're set."

Jordan hopped down and closed the cargo door shut as Felix approached. "All cargo is secured."

"And here we go..." Felix said, a bit of hesitation on his voice. "Let's see if this bucket of bolts will carry us~"

"Yeah, let's hope~" Jordan pursed his lips.

Felix took a moment to say goodbye to Mr. Parsley, who had come to watch his family's cargo plane leave for the last time. With everything ready to go, the Doberman climbed aboard "Galveston", and strapped himself into the cockpit, which had all its instruments glowing, as Ivo finished up the checklist. Felix reviewed it over, calling out "go-no go" over all the systems. Engines were turned over one by one, and the cockpit was soon filled with the burble of four rumbling Twin Wasp radial engines, chugging away at idle power.

"Alrighty, here we go." Felix called out, as he gripped the throttles. Opening the throttles up slowly, he began taxiing for the runway, the Liberator Express slowly rolling in a wide turn for the access road. Loaded down with cargo and fuel, Felix could definitely sense it as it took more power to move on the access road, and turning felt a bit more sluggish. Getting onto the runway, a final scan of their instruments confirmed that all systems were working well. With a fistful of throttles, Felix commanded maximum power from the four R-1830's, which immediately revved up. "Galveston" began its takeoff roll.

"Flaps fifteen." Ivo called out as he watched them slowly build up speed. The cockpit was full of vibrations, things rattling and shaking from the raw power of the engines, and the ruts in the runway. Felix held onto the controls as he watched the speedometer. The airplane wasn't gathering speed as quickly as when it was empty, and a look of concern slowly grew on his face as they ate up runway.

"She's pretty weighed down~" Jordan shouted over the engine noise.

"I can see that!" Felix responded. He began pulling back on the yoke, to pull the nose wheel off first. The nose wheel lifted slowly, and the plane seemed hesitant to take off. Felix bit his lower lip at the sight of the threshold in the distance. Tugging harder at the yoke, the Liberator Express began to slowly lift off the runway.

"This thing has no balls with a load~!" Ivo exclaimed. He peered out the cockpit windows. "Jesus Christ~"

"Yeah, welcome to the C-87." Felix laughed cynically. "Gear up!"

Struggling off the runway, the heavily loaded C-87 slowly took the air, to begin its eastbound journey back to Ohio. On the tarmac, John Parsley stood with his family, watching as their family cargo plane began its journey to its new life. The elderly wolf looked relieved to see it climb away, and he breathed a slow sigh of relief.

From twelve thousand feet, the farmland of the great plains spanned for miles and miles around, until being lost in the horizon's haze. Golden wheat fields were hemmed by fields of sunflowers, corn, and soybeans as "Galveston" flew east, aided by a tailwind. The sky had patchy clouds that passed by the Liberator Express, as it droned along by its quartet of engines. They were two hours into the flight, and passing over Kansas, Jordan's home state.

Inside the cockpit, Felix, Jordan, and Ivo sat gazing out the cockpit windows at the sights as they flew east. The autopilot controlled the aircraft, giving Felix a break from the very heavy controls. As expected, the C-87 did not fly gracefully with a full load of cargo. Everyone agreed that with twelve thousand pounds of gear stowed in the fuselage, it felt unbalanced and tipsy, especially when the elevators were used.

"I don't see this plane being used for much once we get it back..." Jordan shook his head. "At least, I wouldn't."

"Nah." Felix agreed. "It's too unstable in pitch. Again, why you don't turn bombers into cargo planes~ I can't believe people actually flew cargo, over the ocean in these things."

"Yeah..." Jordan pursed his lips. "I wonder what Rob plans on doing with this old bird?"

"We're gonna repaint it in olive drab and neutral gray, keep the name, and it'll probably be used as a crew trainer for multiengine practice."

"Ah."

"Well that makes sense. It flies alright unloaded!"

"Heh, yeah, exactly." Felix chuckled. "So it'll help train Centoh pilots multiengine practice."

"Put her to work again."

"That's Rob's idea always with warbirds. Put em' back to work for something."

"Lost art!" Ivo exclaimed. "How many people do you know outside of our gaggle that regularly fly radial powered aircraft?"

"Not many..." Jordan smiled.

"It's a great thing. Hey Felix! Dad said something about you and Rob coming up with a Barev specific internal transport thingy?"

"Yeah, we call it Bats... Barev's Air Transport Service. Modeled after Air Transport Command, and MATS."

"Oh neat."

"Yeah, since we already are up to our eyeballs with Internal Barev Service Flights... we thought about combining both cargo and passenger services for the company and our allies as a combi operation. Especially as Barev looks to expand over the next couple of years..."

"You guys got the new Chicago optics plants~" Jordan nodded.

Felix shuddered. "Don't fucking remind me. That's been an unmitigated disaster in terms of a merger and a vastly different workplace culture."

"Lackadaisical meets authoritarian Rob." Chuckled Ivo with a grin.

"Basically." The Doberman laughed. "Rob's gonna shut that shit down and iron out the issues."

"I'm sure Rob could make the Nazis blush..." Jordan grimaced.

"No comment." Laughed Felix. "Rob's just Rob."

"So basically just a small fleet of aircraft to connect all the factories and other operations around multiple states?" Ivo asked.

"Yeah, basically. My fleet, Rob's two Connies, the C-124~"

"Half your fleet's outta service." Ivo teased with a grin.

"Shut up." Felix blurted out with a snort. "Yeah, if the Six didn't get slammed by a forklift, and I didn't melt an engine on the Seven!"

"Just saying!"

"BATS will probably be a bit bigger- I don't know yet. We're still ironing out details."

"Understandable."

"You should totally fly cargo on this, Felix." Jordan teased with a smile.

"Yeah, no." Felix smiled back. "This thing flies like a lead balloon."

Departing Kansas, the hours ticked slowly along. The landscape of the great plains passed on below, as some pictures were taken from the cockpit. Switching places, Jordan took over for Felix, as he sat back in the jump seat, feeling tired. The mesmerizing drone of synchronized propellers made his eyes grow even heavier.

"I think I'm gonna close my eyes for a bit."

"Sure, go ahead." Jordan said in response. "We got it under control!"

"Alrighty~"

Felix crossed his arms and closed his heavy eyes. The drone of the engines faded slowly as he dozed off into a nap.

Nearing the border of Missouri and Illinois, a mountain of ominous storm clouds loomed. Thunderheads towered into the heavens, flattening at the top with some wisps of clouds. A large squall line was pummeling the area around eastern Missouri and western Illinois.

"Oh shit...." Ivo and Jordan groaned.

"I don't want to fly through that, not in this..." Jordan shook his head.

Ivo toggled the radio. "Kansas City, this is Cactus seven-oh-nine, requesting a weather report. Over."

Felix slowly awoke from his nap and rubbed his groggy green eyes. "What's going on?"

"Bad weather front... seeing what we can do." Jordan announced. That quickly awoke Felix.

The Doberman looked ahead at the mountain of clouds that made up the storm front. "Oh fuck~"

"I don't think it would be a good idea to punch through at twelve thousand feet..." Ivo cringed a bit. "I can't go over it- no oxygen system aboard this old plane... let's see if we can divert around."

"We don't have the fuel range." Jordan shook his head. "We'll have to refuel somewhere if we go around."

"Eh, it won't matter... you'll get caught in the storm anyways." Felix shook his head. "Look at the structure of the storm... we'll just fly around the thunderheads."

"That's gonna be tricky..."

"Better than getting enveloped in the squall line." Felix pointed.

Trading places, Felix took the helm once again, as Jordan strapped himself into the jump seat.

"Make sure you're all strapped in! This is gonna be bumpy..." Felix said as he disengaged the autopilot to fly manually. He took control and began guiding the plane in a clear spot between two towering thunderheads. Flying manually once again, he was immediately reminded to the sense of pitch instability with the heavily loaded plane.

Entering the storm front, Felix flew between two massive thunderheads, which towered for miles above them, pancaking out into an anvil shape with wispy ends. Continuing further in, Felix began to feel the up and downdrafts rock and buck the Liberator Express. Turbulence shook everything in the cockpit as Felix used his rudders and ailerons to maintain control. Despite the rough ride, it was a very beautiful sight around them.

The thunderheads towered like billowing mountains of white and gray. In the darker shadows, lightning flashed, illuminating the clouds. Sometimes forks of lightning darted between clouds. Jordan aimed his camera and took pictures of the sights outside the cockpit.

"Wow, that is beautiful." Ivo muttered.

"Yeah." Felix said in a more serious voice. "I gotta navigate this..."

Banking around thunderhead after thunderhead, Felix maneuvered the Liberator Express like a big, slow fighter plane. Battling the unstable controls from the slightly aft cargo loading, he leveled off to find that his pathway through the clouds ended with a wall of dark slate colored clouds that flashed with lightning.

"Oh shit." Felix and Ivo muttered together.

"Climb power!" Ivo called. He pushed the throttles forward and began to climb.

"Watch your altitude!"

Climbing to thirteen thousand feet, Felix watched the altitude carefully; the air was starting to get thin, and the C-87's oxygen system had been long ripped out. At thirteen thousand feet, they just at cloud top height, the propellers hitting the wisps of the storm clouds and creating a chopping wake in their path. Rain splattered against the windshield as they were buffeted flying in and out of the wave like tops of the cloud deck.

Looking out on his left side, Felix glanced back at the engines. He noticed that suddenly that the rain that was streaking against the glass was starting to freeze. He looked ahead to see that the rain was starting to free against the glass.

"Oh no..."

"Felix, we got icing conditions!" Ivo shouted. "I'm turning on carb heat!"

Looking out to his left side again, Felix felt bitter about having no deicer boots on the wing leading edge. The rubber deicing boots were removed as they had grown so brittle. He wasn't expecting to run into icing conditions in the middle of summer. "Ah, fuck." Was all Felix could say.

"What if we descend in?" Jordan asked.

"I really don't want to lug this thing around in the middle of a squall line..."

"I really don't want to be in icing conditions either..." Ivo bit his lower lip.

"Maybe this won't last long. Oh boy..."

Felix and Ivo found themselves flying into an impossible situation; descend into the clouds, and risk being violently thrown about by the storm, or risk further icing with an aircraft that did not tolerate icing. Rain pelted the plane harder, and the icing grew worse. Felix had to fly on instrumentation as he lost his view through a glaze of opaque ice. Just as he was making up his mind on the next move, the aircraft made the decision for him.

Felix suddenly felt the Liberator Express tip back. He slammed the yoke forward, but there was no response. The plane tipped onto its tail, and immediately stalled. Felix was then slammed around with Ivo and Jordan as its right wing then stalled, knocking them to the right, into a spin. The C-87 rotated around in a corkscrew like fashion as it fell into the cloud deck.

"WHOA!" everyone shouted. "STALL! STALL! STALL!"

"Stall recovery!" Ivo shouted. "Throttles to idle!"

"Yeah!" Felix called back. "Controls to neutral... and..." Felix hesitated as he tried to read his artificial horizon. It spun around helplessly like the plane. They were in a rightward spin, and he pushed in opposing rudder to counter it. Pushing the elevators forward, Felix could sense the spin being blunted by his control inputs. Descending past five thousand feet, Ivo began applying power as they flew through the clouds, nose down. Building up speed rapidly, Felix and Ivo heaved to pull out of the dive. The heavy controls slowly responded as the nose burst through the storm clouds. Lighting flashed brilliantly, and Felix watched in real time as the warm, muggy weather, melted the ice that had accumulated. They were violently buffeted by the storm's straight line winds. Finally, after a harrowing minute, the Liberator Express leveled off at five hundred feet.

"Holy fuck!" Ivo shouted.

"We did it!" Jordan exclaimed.

Felix breathed a sigh of relief. "Well, I'll be damned fellas."

"Where we at? Where we at?" Ivo said out loud as he looked at the display on their GPS. "Way off course..."

"Yeah..." Felix muttered, his lips pursed. "Let's pull ahead of this storm..."

Escaping away from the squall line, they were rocketed by turbulence for almost half an hour. The plane shook and bucked to the rough air outside, making for an uncomfortable ride in the cockpit while they escaped ahead and to the northeast.

Crossing into Ohio, Felix began to feel relieved that their long flight was about over. They would have another forty minutes to go until they reached Newark. Flying at nine thousand feet, they crossed over the Ohio countryside, which was farmland dotted by small towns and woodland, crisscrossed by roads. The storms that almost crashed them were long since behind, passing to the southeast. The evening sky was clear, with some wispy cirrus clouds high above them.

"Cactus, seven-oh-nine, this is Disco flight, come in, over." Came Rob's voice over their headsets.

"Disco flight! Cactus seven-oh-nine hearing you loud and clear! Over." Ivo exclaimed in response. "What's your position, Rob? Over."

"Ivo, I'm banking around, planning to form up on your nine o'clock. Look for the Helldiver~"

"Affirmative!" Felix called out.

A few minutes later, Felix glanced out to see Rob forming up in "The Barion", an SB2C-5. The big, lumbering divebomber slowly closed in at their three o'clock. Rob flew the plane, and in the rear gunner's hatch, sat his nephew Alvin, armed with his camera.

"Felix, are you aware that your rudders have taken some serious damage?" Rob said, his voice sounding even more serious than normal.

Felix fumbled his brow; since coming out of the spin in the turbulent storm, he had noticed that his rudders felt somewhat sluggish. Even the elevator felt like there was less effect on it when he manipulated the yoke. "How bad is it?"

Ivo toggled his microphone. "We flew through one hell of a storm that sent us on a spin out of thirteen thousand feet."

"You got big chunks taken out on both rudder units, and the right elevator is missing some fabric."

"Well shit..."

"I don't see any other evidence of damage on the airframe..."

"Good..."

As they approached Newark, Felix, Ivo, and Jordan worked out their plans for landing. Felix decided that it would have to be done a bit faster, to maintain the effectiveness of the damaged control surfaces. They relayed their plan to Rob, and to the airport, to prepare for their arrival.

Felix and Ivo banked around, and the gear was dropped into place. Flaps were placed at a shallower angle, and they began to descend in, about thirty miles per hour faster. Jordan controlled the throttles, allowing Felix and Ivo to concentrate on their glide slope. The C-87 crossed the threshold, and power was reduced at the last second; "Galveston" after a long ten hour flight, touched down on all three gear. The plane jolted harshly on landing, and the tires really squealed on the pavement.

"Whoa, whoa... okay there we go." Felix muttered as he corrected a slight skid to the left. Applying the brakes, he began to bleed off speed down the runway, eventually slowing to a crawl. Taking the nose wheel steering column, he turned off onto the access road. The outboard radial engines were powered off, and they returned to the "Big Bird" hangar tarmac, to turn and park. Jordan cut the mixtures for the remaining two engines, and they too powered down, the propellers coasting to a stop.

"And that's that." Felix said. He tossed his headset off and breathed a huge sigh of relief.

"Felix, we did it!" Jordan exclaimed. They all gave each other an exhausted, but happy hug.

Climbing out to stretch stiff legs, Felix walked over to examine the damage to "Galveston's" control surfaces. Sure enough, he immediately spotted two large chunks missing in the rudder fabric. The metal skeleton of the rudders were evident, with ragged tufts of fabric clinging to them. Walking around, the right elevator had a nasty tear in it. Felix looked a bit surprised at the damage sustained, but that was a very violent storm they had fallen into after encountering icing. The fawn Doberman walked around the entire plane, and thankfully no further damage. "Galveston" had made it home. When it finally dawned on him that he safely got the C-87 back to Newark, after a difficult time getting it prepared for flight, and their near pancaking into the ground, Felix sat down under the wing and breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Puffy clouds that took on the morning sun, drifted by the cockpit of "Galveston". Felix sat at the helm of the now fully restored Liberator Express, which flew in formation with "Gulliver", his now fully repaired DC-6BF. They were both on a vaccine flight for Centoh, a "Corona Express" flight as Rob had called it. Felix's flight itinerary was to pick up a full payload of vaccines from their manufacturer in Detroit, and ferry them to their Lainsville hub, to be shipped out abroad. Between that, he was to do a fly over of a small airshow in Pennsylvania, to introduce the world to the only flying C-87.

After spending a month undergoing some further remedial repair work, the old Liberator Express looked brand new in a clean coat of paint. The scruffy dull metal gave way to a paint scheme of olive drab and neutral gray, with early war USAAF roundels on the wings and fuselage. The Air Transport Command insignia graced the rear fuselage, and "Galveston" was stenciled on the solid nose, in yellow Futura.

Arriving into Detroit, the C-87 sat on the tarmac as Felix watched insulated packages of vaccines be loaded into the narrow fuselage. His boyfriend Tony assisted with the loading while Felix stood and observed. In the distance, he watched two of Freightmaster's DC-7C's take a full load of vaccines, enroute to their home base at Opa Locka. Centoh covered the "Corona Express" with two C-121C Super Constellations, on top of the DC-6B and C-87. They were all doing their part to try and help end the pandemic that continued to recede, at least close to home.

Refueled, "Galveston" lifted off the runway, to begin flying southeast. With a lighter load of vaccines, the C-87, with its clumsy handling with heavy cargo, flew more gracefully for Felix and Tony. They shared the cockpit with Tito, who was serving as their flight engineer.

"Reading here we come~" Tony exclaimed over the engine noise.

"Make it quick, we got perishables on board!" Felix laughed.

Forty minutes later, the C-87 arrived at the Reading airshow. Felix made his first pass fast, down the runway, where he gracefully pulled up and climbed into a gentle, baking turn. As he turned around, he spotted "Bolivar's Reply" at the airshow, their B-24J sharing ramp space with the museum's Avro Lancaster, in post-war Canadian markings. Flying in the loop, he flew slower for the cameras on his second pass, giving spectators their chance to view the only existing C-87. Felix made one final pass before continuing on to New York.

Tony glanced over at Felix as he set up the autopilot for their flight. The young Doberman looked confident as he punched in their heading and got it configured. He didn't look as serious or sullen like before.

"You look like you're having a good time there Felix~" Tony said with a smirk.

"Yeah...I am." He admitted. He looked up at smiled at his boyfriend. "I, uhh, for the first time in a couple years... feel really good behind the controls."

"Well that's good." Tony smiled in return.

"I got this ole bucket of bolts back into the air- and that helped...shake some of the negative feelings of doubt I had." Felix admitted.

"You gotta put that past behind ya, yo~"

"Yeah. I know~"

"He's right." Tito suggested.

Felix shrugged. "Mind over matter I guess."

"Don't let what happened in the past ruin what you love!" Tito added, with Tony agreeing.

Felix nodded and sat back in his seat, with a look of introspection on his face.

Volunteering for an evening test flight, Felix walked across the tarmac with his clipboard tucked under his arm. Sitting with its wings neatly folded up was Joey's "Ole' 479", a mid-war F6F-3 Hellcat. Painted in a tri-color Navy scheme, its cowling gave a toothy grin from its air intake. "479" was crudely sprayed onto the cowling, mimicking the crudely done ferry numbers that were sprayed on when flown to the warfront. It was a minimally marked plane, with its prop boss painted medium blue, like the fuselage sides. Felix walked up and did a walk-around inspection of the airframe as part of his pre-flight checks. The aircraft had a rough running engine, and Vlado had changed out the spark plugs on the Double Wasp, that Felix would be testing out.

"Evening, Felix!" greeted Vlado.

"Gee, don't you ever take a break?"

"Pfft. C'mon." laughed the burly Croat. "Not with Rob! I'm always here! Playing damage control!"

"Ha~" Felix laughed. "Let's see how she does?"

"I ground ran the engine, and there's no more roughness. A couple spark plugs acting up, that's all." The wolf pointed out, as Felix signed off on his checklist.

"Now we'll see how she does up in the air for a short hop!" Felix grinned.

Vlado chuckled, "I see we've got our confidence improved, eh?"

"Well, yeah." Felix admitted. "I think I can put behind all the shit that happened over the past couple of years."

"Sometimes you win some, sometimes you lose some~" Vlado pointed out. "But think about where are you, compared to your peers?"

"True~ I'm not eating tide pods, or snorting condoms through my nose~"

"That's true."

"Well, I best get this up in the air while I still have light~"

"Let's go!" Vlado exclaimed.

Double checking the prop for hydraulic lock, Felix climbed aboard and got strapped in, to go over his checklist. Vlado stood back with a fire extinguisher as the engine was turned over. The R-2800 ignited with a usual cloud of oily smoke, and once hydraulic pressure built up, the wings were unfolded and locked into place. Felix gave a wave off and began to taxi, rolling by Vlado who observed.

Getting onto the runway, Felix commanded maximum power, and began his takeoff roll. Lightly loaded, "479" quickly climbed into the evening sky. As Felix brought the gear up and adjusted his flaps, he thought about everything that had happened over the past couple of years. Now it seemed like such a long time ago, verses before, when the DC-7 fire haunted him like it had happened the day before. The confidence in his flying acumen, was no longer self-doubted.

Feeling much better about his future in aviation exploits, a smile softened his youthful face. Turning around to fly westward, the Hellcat carried Felix skyward, into the amber sunset.

Back to search