Chapter 22

Steve

I had just kissed Sue goodbye when she left the airpark to go to work and Chuck was inside the hangar going over evidence. This was going to be a busy day.

Turning back to the charter office, I found a new person at the desk. "Hi, Charlotte, I thought Star was working this morning."

"No Sir, Star is right seat on the G5 out there leaving in a few minutes. If you need to talk to her, she's probably on the aircraft now."

"That's okay, I'm sure she's fine. Do we have the other aircraft coming, the other G5?"

Charlotte said, "It should be landing in a few minutes. It won't depart until almost nine. This first one will be gone as soon as the rest of the passengers get here. Someone said the judges and their staff are late, so the agents can go on the first flight and the judges on the second."

A white Ford sedan pulled up and an older guy with a crooked grin got out. He exemplified cop, seasoned cop. When he entered the office he asked, "You see Chuck Johnson around here anywhere?"

"Hi, I'm Steve Sharp. Chuck is still out in the hangar looking at some evidence. Go right through this door. You'll see him over under the wing of the nearest G5."

The man gave us a smile and a half salute and continued right through the office and through the door to the hangar. I looked at Charlotte and asked, "What's the condition of the coffee supply. I could really use a cup."

"I just put it on, Steve, it should be done by now. I'll put this pot in a big in-flight carafe and make another pot. This might be a big coffee day."

Chuck and the older guy came out of the hangar. Chuck said, "Steve, I want you to meet the U.S. Marshall Station Chief, Sarge Henderson. His name is really James, but I don't think he'll answer to it. Sarge, this is my friend, Steve Sharp. I've told you a lot about him."

Sarge stuck out his hand and said, "Really good to meet you, Mr. Sharp. Chuck thinks you and your family are the best."

I shook hands with the man as he began telling me of some of the precautions his staff would help me with. He said, "I see a bunch of video cameras all over, do you record from them?"

I smiled, "We have a DVR that has a month's worth of activity on it. Perhaps we need to get more storage and retain more than a month."

Sarge said, "Naw, a month should always be enough. You could use some of those new cartridges that are a terabyte each. They're not expensive and you could store up a year's worth at a time if you wanted."

"Thanks, Sarge, I'll ask about them. I have a full time guard out here now in addition to the airpark patrol and my video security, what else do I need?"

Sarge looked serious, "Luck, in order to catch anyone, and vigilance, as bad guys watch to see when your guard is down. You have a large area out here. Perhaps you might have two men instead of one for a while. It looks like you have men in the maintenance hangar all night. Do you have someone in the office all the time?"

I said, "The office has someone in it when we have aircraft and crews out. It wouldn't be that big of a deal to just schedule someone for the office twenty-four seven. This place is getting bigger and busier all the time."

Sarge asked, "Have you done background checks on your people, the mechanics, the pilots, and other crews?"

"We have a personnel department that is very thorough," I said, trying to give Sarge an idea of how we handled employees. "We do the standard checks like police, financial, and of course, education and background. We do all the drug testing and give additional physicals to all the flying staff."

"That should be sufficient for your business, Sir," Sarge said, "but you might want to run some of your key people through us or Jan. We can look them up in a minute and tell you if anything is out of order."

Chuck said, "I'll tell Ruth about the service the FBI has, so she can check out people through them too. Sarge, these folks have to work with Homeland Security all the time for immigrant issues. They have an entire legal organization that works on those. I'll bet they use the FBI services."

I said, "You're right, Chuck, we do use those services as we have to check with Interpol before we really stick our neck out and sponsor an illegal. So far, immigration has worked with us to handle good people and have taken away the ones with questionable backgrounds."

Sarge told Chuck, "I have a man on the flight with the agents, and I have two men on their way for the flight with the judges. Until we know what this stuff is all about, we'll keep security protection at a high level. I have some other fires to put out Chuck, I need to get. Nice to meet you, Mr. Sharp."

Sarge left for his car and I said, "That guy is cool. He does make you feel all secure and safe, knowing he's going to get to the bottom of whatever is going on."

Chuck said, "Jan will get to the bottom of the situation, she's the bloodhound. She doesn't let too many stones go unturned. She really digs."

I said, "I need to go into the shop, talk to Jimmy, and then get. You probably don't need to babysit out here, Chuck. Hap has a man patrolling and we have people all over the shops."

Chuck waved goodbye and headed toward his car. I walked toward the maintenance hangar to find Jimmy and Wes setting up cameras around the aircraft that had crashed yesterday.

Wes said, "We're going to take this thing apart. It has to come apart anyway, but we're going to know this plane by touch and visual. With the cameras recording everything we do, it will record anything we find as we find it."

Jimmy had pushed a big roll-around tool box over to the aircraft. He looked at me and said, "We'll have this thing apart by noon, and fully inspected by this afternoon. I'll get an estimate together for you for the insurance company. They can use the photos from yesterday and the videos we're taking now. There shouldn't be too much argument over what they should pay for. Let's get at it, Wes."

Wes turned to me and said, "I have the drawings for the body parts that Jeff will need almost done. I'll finish them up and give them to him later today. I want to get started and it will be easy as soon as he gets me some ready made parts. I have to help on this for DeDe's peace of mind."

"No sweat, Wes, just be thorough. You can help on the inspections of the other aircraft if Jimmy can use you. It's more important to make all of our aircraft safe than it is to build something new right now."

"Thanks, Steve. I appreciate you giving me the leeway to help with this."

I said to Jimmy, "While you're stealing people to help on these inspections, you need to find a few more mechanics. We need to staff this place continuously now and I know your guys are probably getting tired of all the overtime. Try for three or four more so you have enough to keep our aircraft in the air, and to perform all of the outside maintenance we're getting. If any of the guys you find are rotary wing qualified, that might be a bonus. I think we may have to go in that direction soon."

Jimmy looked at me funny, "Damn, I know windups, but I've never been big on them. I had to learn all about them in school and have worked on a bunch of them but,,,, "

"Well," I said, "you know our next door neighbors are having arguments between themselves, and it looks like they both want to sell the business and equipment and leave. We might as well do that stuff too. I've been thinking about learning to fly them, but just haven't taken the time. If we do take that over, I'll let you guide me as to good equipment. They have the city, county, and state maintenance contracts, so they have a great revenue base. They don't market their services much, but they still fly often. We could probably make it pay."

Jimmy was shaking his head, "Sure, Steve, with you in on it, it will be successful. They do have a decent business but it could be a lot better. With all the bickering going on all the time, their people aren't the happiest employees in the world. Those two are so cheap that they'll make a guy leave right in the middle of something if it's time to check out. They lose money doing it that way, because the guy usually has to start all over again. Go ahead, buy the place, I'll watch 'em. Too bad Dad isn't here, he loves those things. He flew every kind of helicopter there was in Viet Nam and filled in for a few of the companies up north. Wait till I tell him. He'll want to begin doing rotary wing stuff in Hawaii."

I said, "He's already asked. I told him he could do maintenance on them if he thought he could do a good job. He assured me he could. I guess I know now he can."

I walked over to the helicopter hangar and looked for the office. You knew where it was before you got there, since you heard the two owners yelling at each other. When I walked in, they both looked at me a little sheepishly. Bret, the older of the two, asked, "What can we do for you, Steve, sorry about the yelling, it seems we do more of that than business lately."

"You two mentioned to me a couple of weeks ago that you were thinking of selling out. I might be interested if the price was right."

Carter, the other partner said, "You're damn right, we want to sell. We've agreed that if someone will give us a decent price on our two machines and give us our cost of any inventory we have, it's theirs. It would be easy if it were you, as then we wouldn't need to worry about the sublease of the hangar. Here, we have appraisals of our equipment. Both have just had majors, plus you know how much maintenance work we do. We have a computerized running inventory that is usually accurate to the screw, so we can get prices for you in an instant."

Bret said, "It is as easy as that, Steve. Carter and I have been great friends for years, but we can't work together. I think I'm moving to Hawaii and Carter wants to move to Key West. Come on, Carter, let's get some numbers together."

I said, "Look guys, I'll get Tiny to have some additional appraisals and have his men do a cursory check on your inventory. If everything is straight, we'll give you a check by tomorrow."

Bret said, "Damn, Carter, that's great, isn't it? We can be friends again, especially if we're going to be half a world apart. Wait till the guys hear, they keep telling us that we need to treat them like you treat your people."

Carter said, "We do have some really good techs. Two are good pilots, as well as being techs, so we're never shy on pilots. Bret and I try to take up most of the flight time, but we can't sometimes, so the techs fly. As you know, our safety record is good."

A tech walked into the office with some papers right then. Bret said, "Guess what, Tank, S&S is going to buy us out, how about that?"

The man Bret called Tank grinned real big and asked, "Can we paint our hangar white and the floor too. I want a big S&S logo right in the middle of the hangar."

I had to laugh as the logo wouldn't make their job easier. Tank said, "Man, having Jimmy as a boss is going to be great. The man knows his aircraft. He's helped us out on several problems. When are you going to do this?"

Carter said, "Hold your horses a little, Tank. Steve just told me he was interested. Just hang in there and we'll get this done for you and us."

"Damn, I have to tell the other two guys. They're gonna shit. This is good news."

As Tank left the office, Carter said, "I guess you can see you won't have any trouble with the management change."

"This is going to happen faster than I thought. Let me get Tiny working on this. You should hear from him by this afternoon." I waved and left the two men, who excitedly began putting pieces of paper together.

I called Tiny on my cell, "Tiny, do I have a deal for you."

"Oh no, now what? Did you buy the county, or perhaps only the Sheriff's department? With the trouble out there, I thought perhaps you might have."

"No, nothing like that. I did make a deal with Bret and Carter for their business."

"Helicopters?"

"They're letting the business go to pot because they can't get along. Since it's there for the taking, why not? We can teach rotary wing the same as fixed wing. We can maintain the city, county, and state contracts and look for some more. I'm sure if we were to promote helicopter taxi service, we would get more business than we could handle."

"Oh, Steve, you're too much. What needs to be done?"

I said, "The two men say they have current appraisals of their two helicopters. All I have to do is to give them what the current appraisals are of their equipment and the cost of their inventory, and the deal is done. Their techs are glad to become a part of S&S. We will have to pop for painting their hangar to bring it to our specs, and I don't think it's air conditioned so that will be an expense. If you can get someone to give us another appraisal of their equipment, and have a couple of your men compare some of the inventory and check the costs, you can cut those two a check. Make sure there aren't any liens on the equipment or the business and it should be a done deal."

"At least it's an easy one. I know those two pretty well. Our accounting firm does their books. They're both flamers. I thought they were life partners, but I guess they're not. I'll bet they argue like cats and dogs. Okay, Steve, let me get at this. Oh, I think I have another sailboat in my sights. We're booked for the next twelve months on all of our big boats, so another isn't going to cost anything. Besides, you keep talking about going on a cruise. You should take the big motor yacht, but then you would have to have a crew. Anyway, I'll talk to you later."

I was smiling as I headed to my pickup. I could see Wes and Jimmy buried in the Cessna, so I knew they would have answers soon. The vans were still here, but there was a big flatbed tow truck down by the car at the end of the runway. I could see a security guy in a cart down that way too. I guess we'll get back to normal soon.

As I drove up to the main S&S building, I did have a feeling of satisfaction. It's neat to see the original building and remember where you came from. Inside, people were always smiling, busy, but smiling. Instead of going up to my office, I toured the shops real quick, but didn't go over to the other building. The quantity of personnel working in the building was radically reduced, but it was still more than you would expect in the economic times we were in. I was glad we had been able to keep shifting people around to different areas so we didn't have to lay off anyone.

As soon as I walked into my office, Ruth came in with the news, "The NTSB called to tell us that the accident is being listed as sabotage from persons unknown, with a notation that the FBI was investigating. That'll make Jimmy a lot happier. He just gave me six people to check on for mechanics. I thought you said two?"

"I did a couple of days ago, but since then I decided on four, and if we buy the helicopter shop, the other two may be important if they have helicopter experience."

Ruth shuffled through the papers in her hand and looked up, "They all have experience with helicopters and fixed wing aircraft. It looks like they all have turbine and small engine experience. The least experienced here is six years. I'll check them out and see what they look like. Do you want to run them through the FBI?"

"Do that for anyone we hire out there. We need to be sure of anyone we have working with us in sensitive areas. You might even want to double check the guys we've given Wes."

Ruth asked, "I heard Wes brought the airplane parts Jeff had made back over here to be trashed, is that right?"

"Yes, that's right. Jeff made them to spec, but they weren't engineered correctly and didn't fit. Wes was trying to make them fit, but became frustrated as the job wasn't going to be anywhere near good, much less perfect. I talked him into engineering his own plans for Jeff."