A Time for Patriots

“But I want to fly, Dad. I want to be a pilot, in charge of a crew.”

“And you can fly… just maybe not with the Civil Air Patrol as a mission pilot,” Patrick said. “We’ll have to see what happens. But don’t act like it’s the end of the world if you can’t be a mission pilot. There are plenty of ways to serve. You’ll find that life throws you a lot of obstacles — you have to figure out how to overcome them. That’s the fun of being a grown-up.”

“Well, so far being a grown-up really sucks,” Brad said, and he turned and walked away.

“Amen to that.” Patrick turned and saw Jon Masters standing beside him, looking at the damage to the Cessna. “So you think someone took shots at you, huh? He’s got to be a pretty darn good shot — you were five hundred feet up, going about eighty knots?” He went over and looked at the hole in the wing. “Pretty good-size hole — maybe a hunting rifle?”

“Or an infantry rifle,” Patrick said.

“A military shooter? A marksman with serious military hardware? You mean, someone from the base?” Patrick had no answer. Jon was silent for a short while, then asked, “So what’s Brad sulking about?”

“He got airsick when riding in the back of the Cessna as a scanner,” Patrick said. “He’s okay up front, but not in back.”

“I get airsick sitting in the back too, sometimes, but I take a dimenhydrinate and I’m okay,” Jon said. “I don’t think that’s an option if you’re a crewmember, though.”

“Back in my B-52 days, I had gunners and EWOs who flew facing backward and got airsick all the time, especially when flying low-level,” Patrick said. “They were using stuff like scopolamine patches behind their ears for airsickness, but I don’t know if that’s the case anymore. They have wristbands and neckbands for seasickness, but I don’t know if those are gimmicks or not. Ginger-root pills worked good for me if I took them before a space flight. We’ll find out. But I don’t like to see Brad start to mope around after each and every downturn. He’s got to learn to roll with it.” He looked at Jon. “So what are you up to?”

“Moping around after my latest downturn — losing twenty million dollars’ worth of aircraft in one night,” Jon said. “The Sky Masters, Inc., board members hit the freakin’ roof.”

“Why? The government should make it right. It might take a while, but…” He looked at Jon, his eyes narrowing. “Okay, what did you do?”

“We… hadn’t exactly worked out the details of the contract before the Sparrowhawks were deployed,” Jon admitted.

“Uh-oh…” Patrick said. “You didn’t get a signed contract before you deployed? You donated the Sparrowhawks to the government?”

“I have a draft of a contract,” Jon argued, “so we can argue that it wasn’t meant to be a donation.” Patrick smiled but shook his head ruefully. “The FBI said they were in a hurry, and I wanted to get the aircraft out there before they put the job out for bids. It’ll work out, don’t worry.”

“Sure… five years from now,” Patrick said. “Well, I guess that’s why a lot of the contractors we hire are attorneys.”

“Exactly,” Jon said. “Our job is to get things done, not worry about stupid contracts. Let the suits work out the details.”

“Right,” Patrick said. “Besides, you got insurance on the Sparrowhawks, right?” He saw Jon’s downcast expression, and his eyes widened in surprise. “Jon, no insurance… ?”

“I have R-and-D insurance out the ying-yang,” Jon said, “but… well, I didn’t have a government contract — yet — and you wouldn’t believe what those insurance companies wanted for these simple little missions. You’d think we were flying armed combat missions over Iraq again!”

“Jon, you can’t do stuff like that,” Patrick said. “At best you could get fired — at worst, you could get fired, sued, and have to pay for the Sparrowhawks yourself!”

“Hey, look who’s talking about bending the rules! You practically made an entire career out of it!”

“I did it when I had the discretion as the on-scene tactical commander,” Patrick said. Jon looked at him with a skeptical “oh, really?” expression. “And when I did it otherwise, I was either kicked out, forced to retire, or was sued. You work for a private company. The directors and officers make the decisions, not you.”

“Well, I’d be worried — if I already wasn’t the smartest guy in the company,” Jon said dismissively. “They can’t fire me or sue me — it’d tank the stock and we’d be lucky to get a contract to provide propeller beanies to Cub Scouts. Don’t worry about it.” He paused, looking in the direction of where Brad walked off. “I feel sorry for the kid,” he said. “What’s a scanner do?”

“His job is to search for mission targets or for hazards,” Patrick said. “Apparently Brad has trouble when he looks sideways out the window in a turn, or has to look downward or backward — we don’t quite know yet what triggers the motion sickness.”

“He looks out the window? That’s it ?”

“He’ll also take pictures, make records of what happens on a mission, run checklists, maybe talk to mission base or ground teams on the radio, but basically his job is to search outside the plane, from engine start to engine shutdown.”

“We have stuff that can more than take the place of a scanner,” Jon said. “We’ve developed sensor balls that can fit easily on the wings of a little bug smasher like your Cessnas. They’re a quarter of the size of a Predator’s sensor dome but do even more stuff and perform better. Plus, the scanner can operate the sensors from the ground. You save weight, the plane performs better, and you put fewer crewmembers at risk. Plus, once we install the video datalink, you can up- and download voice, data, telemetry — almost anything.”

“You know,” Patrick said after adopting that “ten-thousand-yard stare” expression for a moment, “the Civil Air Patrol flies missions called Predator Surrogate. They mount a Predator sensor ball on the Cessnas, and they fly around the Nellis Air Force Base ranges. The Army and Marine Corps use them to train sensor operators. It solves the problem of ‘see-and-avoid’ and loss of control that unmanned planes have — you have two guys in the plane that can look for traffic, and they can take the controls if the aircraft loses contact with remote operators.”

Jon was starting to adopt the same faraway expression as Patrick. “But our sensor domes are much better for the job than the Predator’s,” he said. “All we have to do is stick one on the Cessna… maybe one on each wing for better coverage and to even out the drag. Even with two, you’d have lower weight and better performance —”

“Jon, this is the Civil Air Patrol, not the U.S. Air Force or Space Defense Force,” Patrick said. “The whole idea of CAP was to have civilian volunteers helping their country by using their planes and skills. It defeats the purpose of the organization to start outfitting the planes like military aircraft. They’re—” But Patrick stopped… because the idea was starting to make total sense to him. “But… it would take years to get approval to put those sensors on the CAP Cessnas.”

“Maybe so,” Jon said. “So… let’s stick them on your Cessna. The CAP plane here with the bullet holes in it is out of commission, right? Let’s use yours, and anyone else’s plane who wants some toys to play with.”

“What?” But after a few moments, the idea made him smile. “You know, CAP once only used a member’s plane — they switched to using CAP-owned planes about twenty years ago.” But then he shook his head as reality set in. “It would take months, maybe years, to get a field approval from the FAA for that kind of major modification. We’d have to do engineering drawings, do controllability and flutter tests, get authorization for—”

“Blah blah blah blah blah,” Jon Masters said, shaking his head. “Sheesh, maybe living way the hell out here has softened you up. So you decertify your plane and turn it into an ‘Experimental.’ You’re worried about the FAA? Have you ever seen the FAA out here at Battle Mountain? Do they even have field inspectors anymore? What are the odds of getting ramp-checked these days? Besides, if they do catch you, so what? They’ll make you take the sensors off, so we’ll take them off. There are lots of options, Patrick. It seems to me you’re coming up with more excuses not to do it than ideas on how to do it.”

Patrick realized that was exactly what he was doing, and he nodded his head. “You’re right,” he said. But he looked at Jon seriously and added, “But we’re just going to grab a couple sensor balls from the company, again, like the Sparrowhawks? We can’t do that.”

“You’re right, we shouldn’t,” Jon said. He held out his hand. “Got a credit card? We’ll make it a straight-out