Launch

LAUNCH

By

Richard Perth

To Diana and to hope for the future
.

Copyright © 2013 Richard Perth

All Rights Reserved

The cougar cub could not turn as fast as the ground
beetle he was chasing across a ledge, and he fell into the Grand Canyon.
He landed uninjured on an outcropping about six feet down and cried piteously.

An adult cougar appeared on the ledge and paced, but her cub’s rock was
too small, too far away, and almost straight down. There was no way she could
rescue him and no escape. His bones would be bleached by the sun on the canyon
wall or be shattered on rocks a mile and an eternity below.

Among the three dozen tourists watching and taking pictures of the scene
from a viewpoint above the cougars was Claire Sommer. While she carefully
studied the surface of the canyon wall between her and the cub, she silenced
her cellphone, dropped it into a jacket pocket, and zipped it shut. Then she
vaulted the safety fence, held on to guide her landing on the other side, and used
a fence post for handholds to begin descending into the canyon.

A woman screamed. The adult cougar answered with a spine-tingling shriek
that made Claire shiver. The hush that followed was broken only by the crying cub
and an ominous, rising moan from the wind as it tore at her jacket and hair.

An Arizona bark scorpion, the only North American scorpion with venom
known to have killed people, was blown from its daytime resting place. Landing
on Claire’s right thigh, it used eight barbed legs to climb up her jeans and
onto her jacket. Its lethal stinger was curled over its back and ready to
strike the exposed skin on Claire’s neck.

She looked down to see what she had felt. Without hesitation, she clung
to the cliff with her left hand and swiftly brought her right hand up from
below and behind. Locking the deadly stinger between her thumb and index finger,
she flicked the scorpion into a rocky niche.

It whirled as if to attack, but she was too far away.

The tourists at the viewpoint watched as Claire descended and traversed
the canyon wall. Her every move was captured by two dozen cameras.

Raised hackles, flattened ears, and a snarl clearly said attack as Claire
carefully approached below and just out of reach of the cougar. If it leaped,
both it and Claire would fall. She knew the mother would give its life to
protect its young, but she did not believe it would leave its cub to face
certain death alone.

Claire reached carefully chosen handholds and footholds near the cub.
Then she stayed still as she looked steadily at the big cat’s golden eyes and purred:
something she had taught herself when she was eight years old.

When she felt the time was right, Claire clung to the canyon wall with
one hand. Then she reached down, caught the cub under its chest, and lifted it
over her head as she stood up and stepped close to the cougar.

It snatched its cub from her hand, wheeled, and vanished behind boulders,
leaving saliva where its fangs had grazed Claire’s thumb and forefinger.

As if the wind was determined to have a victim, a savage gust ripped between
Claire and the canyon wall. Her right foot began to slide. She quickly grabbed
the cougar’s ledge with her right hand to stop a terrifying plunge to the
bottom of the Grand Canyon.

After closing her eyes and resting for a minute, Claire began a nearly
direct climb to the viewpoint, bypassing the scorpion’s niche. Just before she
reached the top, a bird dropping hit a rock near her. She looked up to see
vultures circling overhead and a line of cameras along the safety fence, all
pointing at her. With dismay, she realized that a slip of a finger could allow a
camera to fall and hit her.

She would have been even more dismayed if she had known that several of
the cell phone cameras were connected to television stations. Live images of
her, with the depths of the Grand Canyon in the background, were being broadcast
around the world. Pictures from two cameras were electronically linked at a
television network to produce 3-D images in breathtaking detail.

Claire reached the top and grabbed the bottom of a fence post. Several arms
and hands reached over the fence toward her, as if to help. She paused and
looked at them warily.

“Please step back and give me room,” she said.

Her request was repeated by several people in the crowd: “Give her room!”
A semicircle was formed around the fence post so she could climb over to safety.

As soon as her feet reached solid ground, watching tourists applauded and
crowded around to congratulate her. Several asked for her autograph. Some, who
had been on her charter flight, bowed and gushed in what she thought was
Japanese. Many took pictures of her and had their picture taken with her.

Claire was embarrassed by the attention and well aware that her face,
faded jeans, and old, worn jacket were dirty. Her natural auburn hair was in a
tornado aftermath style and was full of dirt and debris. Stoically, she stood
still for pictures and hoped that nobody she knew would ever see them.

▼

The tour bus continued along the road on the south rim of the Grand
Canyon with Claire sitting in the back, brushing her hair. She was glad the cub
was back with its mother. With a wry grin, she thought that facing the crowd
and their congratulations may have been more stressful than the rescue.

At a rest stop on the way to the airport, she shook and brushed dirt out
of her jacket and clothes and washed her face and hands. Refreshed, she
re-boarded the bus, looking forward to seeing the handsome pilot again. Despite
his stunning, pale-blue eyes, she remembered that his masculinity was palpable.
She thought of his infectious smile, and she smiled. Unconsciously, she ran her
fingers through her hair and thought of his light brown hair.

I wonder how it feels.

He was standing beside the door of the ten-seat jet as she, eight
Japanese tourists, and a tour guide approached the plane.

When he instructed her to sit in the copilot’s seat, she hesitated.

“Captain, I sat there on the flight from Burbank. Shouldn’t one of the
other passengers get a turn?”

He shook his head. “No, for three reasons: the other passengers are a
group who want to sit together; anyone who sits that close to the controls must
be able to understand instructions in English; and the Archer amendment to the
Federal Aviation Regulations requires that you sit there.”

Claire did not understand the third reason. But the other two made sense,
so she dutifully buckled herself into the right-front seat. The other
passengers took their seats, and the tour guide cheerfully said goodbye in
Japanese and English.

After takeoff, the plane flew low over the Grand Canyon toward Las Vegas.
Claire and the other passengers had a spectacular view of the magnificent abyss
below.

“Did the company explain about the stop in Vegas?” he asked.

She nodded. “They said the other passengers are on a deluxe tour. We’re
stopping in Las Vegas so they can have dinner and see a show.”

“Yes,” he said. “Since it’s a layover for the convenience of the company,
they authorized me to buy your dinner at their expense.”

“That’s kind of them. I’ll enjoy that, Captain.”

He says come hither, and I happily come hither.

“When I hear Captain, I feel the urge to return a salute,” he said. “Make
it David, please.”

She smiled. “Okay, David. I’m Claire.”

From the cockpit, she enjoyed a panoramic view of the Grand Canyon’s
astonishing variety and majesty. At one point, bright sunlight reflected
David’s name tag onto the instrument panel. Claire mentally reversed the
letters:
Archer!
Her eyes widened.

She asked, “What’s that Archer amendment you mentioned?”

He shrugged. “It’s flying jargon.”

She took her commercial pilot certificate out of her wallet and handed it
to him. His eyes flicked down to it briefly, and then he did a double take.

“You got all of this on your eighteenth birthday!”

Claire shook her head. “Just my single and multi-engine commercial. I got
my instrument rating when I was a private pilot.”

“How did you do that?”

“My mother was my flight instructor, my instrument instructor, and the
payer of the bills. She wanted me to go to the Air Force Academy.”

“Did you go?”

“Yes.” After a pause, she said, “I was lucky enough to be in the part of
my graduating class selected for medical school.”

“You didn’t want to fly?”

“I love to fly, but I want to help people, too. I’ll be able to do both
as a flight surgeon.”

“So you’re an Air Force lieutenant. You’ll be promoted to captain and be
on active duty for the remainder of the millennium after you get your MD. Is
that right?”

She laughed. “That’s a slight exaggeration of time, but yes.”

He gave her license back and turned his attention to the plane.

Claire reminded him, “The Archer amendment?”

“Oh, that’s an amendment to Federal Aviation Regulations Part One
Thirty-Five, the regulation under which this flight operates.”

After a minute of listening to the muted sound of air rushing by the
cockpit, she asked, “What does the Archer amendment say?”

He looked at her with a smile crinkling his pale-blue eyes and said,
“Pretty girls
always
ride up front.”

She laughed again.

The nose of the plane dropped gently as they approached the western end
of the Grand Canyon. They seemed to be flying directly at a mountain peak. Claire
waited several heartbeats before she nodded at the mountain and asked, “What’s
with that?”

“There’s something on the other side I want to show you and the other
passengers.”

They flew over the peak and descended following the slope of the mountain
toward the Colorado River in its gorge below the Hoover Dam: a man-made
structure as magnificent as many of the natural structures in the Grand Canyon.
Behind the dam, Lake Mead’s deep-blue water reached to the band of purple
mountains on the distant horizon under a clear blue sky. David put a wing down
in a turn over the gorge, so the dam and the lake were clearly visible.

Claire said, “That’s a fantastic view. Thank you.”

They landed nine minutes later at Las Vegas’ McCarran International
airport. Another tour guide met the Japanese passengers and escorted them to
their bus.

David asked Claire. “Where would you like to eat?”

She shook her head. “I’m not familiar with Las Vegas.”

“There’s a lot of choice: Italian, French, Chinese, Indian, prime rib,
steak, barbecue . . .”

“Is the barbecue good?”

“Keith’s has the best West Texas barbecue I’ve ever tasted.”

“When my mother was based at Holloman Air Force Base, we liked to finish
shopping trips in El Paso with barbecue. Keith’s it is.”

They caught a taxi. Claire sat beside a window and marveled at the
architecture in Las Vegas. When the taxi took a shortcut through a more mundane
part of town, David asked, “What did your mother do in the Air Force?”

“She was a fighter pilot.”

“Your last name on the manifest is Sommer. Was she Lieutenant Colonel
Kathryn Sommer?”

She looked at him hopefully. “Did you know her?”

“No,” he said, “She was before my time, but I saw her picture on a memorial
plaque in the Holloman Officers Club. She was beautiful. The inscription said,
‘Kitty was a tiger in the air and every inch a lady on the ground.’”

Claire turned back to the window and remembered: hours of terror waiting
outside the emergency room, the exhausted trauma surgeon crying and kneeling in
front of her. She blinked back tears.

David said softly, “I’m sorry. Losing her must have been very hard for
you.”

Several minutes later, Claire said, “She was leading a night training
mission when a meteorite hit her plane. It exploded soon after she ejected. When
they found her, she was unconscious, and the wind in her parachute was dragging
her across the desert. Trauma surgeons fought hard to save her life.”

“You started at the Academy soon after she died?

She nodded.

“You’re a very strong person.”

After a pause, she said, “It’s what she wanted. The challenge distracted
me, kept me from falling apart.”

She was quiet until they were seated in the restaurant and their waitress
asked for their order. Claire nodded to David and said, “You first.”

He said, “I’ll have the sausage and marbled brisket combo dry with beans,
corn on the cob, and iced tea.”

“If you like it without extra sauce, it must be good. I’ll have the same
with a Bud.”

After their dinners were served, he said, “The other passengers seem to
like you a lot. Do you speak Japanese?”

She looked down at her plate as she cut off a bite of brisket and said,
“No. They’re friendly people. We enjoyed our tour together.”

“I’ve never seen a girl alone on a canyon charter before.”

“It was a gift from a friend at school. She won it in a charity raffle,
but she doesn’t like to fly.”

He cocked his head, and she said, “I’m a senior at UCLA School of
Medicine.”

“There’s a coincidence. I’m at UCLA, too. I fly these trips part time.”

“Did you fly in the Air Force?”

He nodded. “Wraith fighters, same as your mother. Same squadron, too.”

“When did you get out?”

“I’m still in.”

With a quizzical expression, she asked, “How’d you manage that?”

“I shot down some fighter-bombers en route to bomb a refugee camp during
the war in Africa. The Air Force gave me a promotion and my choice of duty
assignments. I’m working on a Ph.D. in astrophysics.”

“How will that help you as a fighter pilot?”

He shook his head. “I want to apply for NASA’s Quad Fusion Thunder
Program and fly the first starship.”

“You mean like Starship
Enterprise
.”

He shook his head and grinned. “Not that advanced. It’ll clatter along at
just below the speed of light.”

He has to be sane or he wouldn’t be a pilot . . . I hope. It’s still a
long way to LA
.

She changed the subject back to something less fantastic. “I never
understood what the war in Africa was about.

“Same old thing: A warlord tried to grab power and land by slaughtering
people, genocide.”

“How many planes have you shot down?” she asked.

“Nineteen.”

Claire was astonished. “You’re a triple ace! Almost quadruple! How did
you get so many and live to tell about it?”

David shrugged. “Luck: being in the right place at the right time with better
training and a better plane. The Wraith may be the best jet fighter in the
world.”

She grinned. “I don’t suppose courage and skill had anything to do with
it.”

He looked down and shrugged.

“How many planes have you shot down in one day?

“Seventeen”

Claire’s eyes widened, and she said, “Oh my! You’re a real tiger. How
many missions did you fly that day?”

“One.”

“One? A Wraith only has ten missiles and 600 rounds for the canon. How
did you do that?”

“I surprised sixteen enemy fighter-bombers trying to sneak up on a
refugee camp carrying a heavy load of bombs at low altitude over the jungle. A
supersonic shock wave from my plane knocked five out of control, and they were
too low and heavy to recover. My missiles took out ten more. That left one for
my cannon.”

“What about number seventeen?”

“I was jumped by an enemy fighter. He missed. I didn’t.”

Claire studied his face to see if he was pulling her leg. Then she asked,
“What’s your call sign?”

“Bunny.”

She managed not to laugh. “Was Tiger taken?”

Claire was amazed to see a full blush. “No fighter pilot would want to be
called Tiger,” he said. “It’s embarrassing.”

“How’d you get a handle like Bunny?”

“We were escorting Air Force One when I was a newbie, and a
surface-to-air missile was fired at the President’s plane. I managed to decoy
the missile away and into the ground. A senior pilot in the squadron’s bar that
night said I flew like a scared bunny rabbit with that missile on my tail.
Everybody laughed, and ‘Bunny’ stuck. The spelling was shortened to BUNI so
bigger letters would fit on my helmet.”

It was a bit hard for Claire to believe, but he sounded like he was
telling the truth. She concentrated on her dinner, and they ate quietly for a
few minutes before she asked, “Where did you get your Master’s?”

“UCLA, mostly part time and online.”

“Getting your Master’s and working full time must have been hard. Did you
have time for fun? A social life?”

“No, but that’s okay,” he said with a slight grin. “I’m saving myself for
Miss Right.”

She responded with her own mischievous grin.
“And how would you describe Ms. Right?”

With a deadpan expression, he said, “She has the heart of a tiger and the
touch of a feather. Her voice is an enchanting melody. Her laugh makes my heart
sing with joy. Her smiles pull her Cupid’s bow and shoot arrows of love into my
heart.”

Claire laughed at his hyperbole. “She sounds absolutely magical. What
does she look like?”

He leaned forward, looked into her eyes, and said in a compelling voice,
“Magical is appropriate to describe her gorgeous grey eyes. Auburn is the color
of her hair, and you are far and away the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.”

She could not tear her eyes away from his or think of anything to say to
that. After a pause that was far too long, she asked, “Isn’t it time to go back
to the airport?”

David glanced at his watch. “It’s a little early. Would you like to see
some Las Vegas sights on the way back?”

That sounded safe enough.

▼

The lights of Las Vegas were blazing against a clear night sky when they
came out of the restaurant.

He took her on a tour of original art in the Bellagio Hotel conservatory,
then out to the manmade lake in front. She saw thousands of nozzles and lights
just under the surface and gave him a questioning look.

“Wait,” he said.

People crowded around them to watch the show, and she could smell his
aftershave as he put his arm around her waist protectively. Claire was acutely
aware of his strong body touching hers as the
Fountains of Bellagio
rose
above the water and danced with light to the music of a romantic aria. Romance
and beauty melted her heart, brought tears to her eyes, and ended a million
years too soon.

▼

On the way back to the airport in a taxi, David asked, “Do you play
tennis?”

“Yes.”

“A friend of mine has his own courts,” he said. “Would you like to play
tomorrow?”

She smiled. “I would love it.”

David punched a speed-dial number into his cellphone and put it in
speakerphone mode. A man answered and David said, “Hey Michael, s’up?”

“In a power-off glide between gigs,” Michael answered. “S’up with you?”

“I’m in Vegas on a canyon charter. I’d like to borrow one of your courts
tomorrow with a friend.”

Michael said, “Joanne and I were thinking about tennis. Maybe we could
make it a foursome with lunch and a swim, get us off our lazy butts.”

“Sounds good,” David said. “What time?”

“Ten?” Michael asked.

David asked Claire, “A foursome at ten with lunch and a swim after?”

She nodded and smiled. “Sure.”

“See you at ten, Michael.”

David closed his cellphone and slipped it back into his pocket.

“What a great voice,” she said. “He sounds like a movie star.”

David nodded. “Yes, he does.”

▼

Claire waited in the copilot seat while the Japanese passengers boarded.
David closed and locked the door to the plane, checked the passengers’
seatbelts, entered the cockpit, and closed the door to the passenger cabin. It
had been open during the other two flights. He noticed her questioning look.
“Passengers will be taking flash pictures after we takeoff, and it will be like
a lightning storm back there. A blinded pilot can be detrimental to flight
safety.”