Chapter 8: Incidental Incident

"I know this plane!" The Shaman was quite surprised.

"You do?" Wendy asked.

"Hellyas." He explained, "the Russians claim they shot it down, during a hijacking incident over the Baltic." He grinned. "But it wasn't a hijacking, not really. It took off one dark night, right behind a Tu-85 on a test flight. Who ever the pilot was, he was really good. He tucked under the tail of the prototype and the Russian radar saw one legitimate test flight."

"Didn't anyone on the 85 notice the plane was there?"

"No, but two enlisted crew were shot a week later. Drunk on duty. Happened a lot in the bad old days.

"The Soviets didn't notice the plane on radar until the Tu completed it's test flight and turned back. All they really saw was a moving blip that dove for the sea and fell off the radar. The records show that they sent a couple of Sukhoi Su-9 radar equipped night interceptors after this craft. Only one made it back."

"How do you know this?" Wendy asked. "You said records, you looked at Soviet records?"

"After the collapse of the USSR in the 90's, I traveled and then timed it. I'm a pilot ... I want to know aviation things. My watch goes both ways."

"Collapse of the Soviet Union?" That wondering voice was Kim.

"Yeah. We out spent them, they couldn't keep up."

"Out spent them..."

"I wonder how this plane ended up at Davis?" He mused a bit, shrugged, "no matter, it's here and, evidently, it's yours. I bet the government wants it back ... if it gets back.

"Show me the cargo."

"After we knew it wasn't going to blow up, we made David move it down by the trees," said Wendy, with a grin. "Want a ride?"

"Sure."

"You drive," she gestured at the cockpit. "Excuse me for not asking before, what's your name?"

"Tim, Timothy." He gave a big smile, "Leary."

"Nice to meet you. Do you prefer Tim or Timothy?"

"Professor works, too. But I prefer Tim."

Wendy made the formal rounds. Rachael gave him back his watch. He fired up the engines and we rode down to the trees.

"I must say, the folks at Davis did a bang-up job of disguising this. It would have been simpler to replace the gauges with American ones but no, they took them apart and replaced the dials. I'll bet it's still got the Shvetsov ASh-82T 14 cylinder radial engines though, the Wright Cyclone wouldn't fit under those cowlings." He marveled at the aircraft, pointing out this and that. Finally he noticed the field.

"You people have made quite the little air field here."

"Dave did it."

"Where did you get the rollers and scrapers? This is professionally done. There's got to be 20 thousand feet of runway here. Even the trees are short."

"Yeah, it's a long ways, I've had to walk it several times. I had to fill in two ditches and remove a ton of cactus."

"No, you don't understand," Tim was pretty amazed. "This part of Colorado doesn't have flat places, it's either up, down or sideways. There's been some extensive dirt work here and the grass ... do you have to mow often?"

"Mow? With what? Why? The grass has been this high since we got here. It's never grown ... is it supposed to?" I asked.

And that got a look!

"This is a better grass strip than any British grass airfield ever built. Field maintenance took forever. The mowers were mowing some part of it dawn to dusk every day of the week." He looked around again. "Never mowed ... field already here." He shook his head. "How much gas is left?"

"I run the engines to charge the batteries every night for 20 minutes." I smiled at him. "In the morning, the tanks are full."