Parker's Folly (2 page)

Quantum entanglements formed, probability fields collapsed and finally, a decision was reached. More signals were sent. The material properties of a portion of the hull were altered. What had been impenetrable became permeable.

The young man, still in the act of leaning against the artifact's surface, fell through it into darkness.

Part One

Peggy Sue gazed out of the window of the KWTEX news van at the passing West Texas countryside. Like it or not, this was her home. “A whole lot of nothing,” as the locals would say. Scrub brush, tumble weeds and a few cattle scattered across table top flat country. Occasionally a rock or small mountain poked up to give some sense of distance, but otherwise it just looked like the flat went on forever.

From Odesa west to Pecos, and from Kermit, up near the New Mexico border, south to Fort Stockton, that was her beat. Mainly the triangle of land formed by  Interstates 10 and 20. Oh, it wasn't all as flat as the heart of the Permian Basin area. There were the seemingly endless sand dunes near Monahans, the Guadalupe Mountains to the west and the Stockton Plateau to the south. But it was still one of the most uninhabited areas in the continental United States.

For example, take Mentone, county seat and only community in Loving County, where they had been that morning to interview the local mayor. Loving County has the distinction of being the least populous county in the entire contiguous United States. In 2000, its population was 67. By 2006, the population had risen to 71 but by 2010 it had dipped to only 45. That's the way things are in far West Texas—boom or bust.

Thinking of Mentone brought a fleeting smile to her face.

“You seem particularly pensive today, Miss Susan,” said JT, her driver and cameraman.

“I was just thinking about Mentone,” she replied, “and Kermit.” On the air she went by Susan Write, but everyone back home still knew her as Peggy Sue Whitaker. That's how it is when you come from the land of Billy Joes and Jim Bobs. She liked to blame her two part “good 'ol gal” name on Lubbock native Charles Hardin Holly.

Since no one else in her family was named Peggy Sue and it was not really a common name, even in Texas, Susan credited her unusual christening to Mr. Holly. Though he died in a plane crash long before her mother was born, Holly left behind a song about a girl called Peggy Sue. Of course, he preferred to be called Buddy. Lucky for her, nobody in Texas went by their given name.

“Kermit? The green sock puppet?”

“What?” Her train of thought interrupted, it took a few seconds for the question to register. “No, Kermit my home town. Back in 1966, the town moved the last working wooden oil derrick in the Permian Basin from Loving County to Pioneer Park. People say things in Loving County haven't been the same since.”

“Not very kind to the folks in Mentone,” JT snorted. “You sure your home town wasn't named after the frog?”

“Actually it was named after Teddy Roosevelt’s son. He visited  back around the turn of the last century.”

“How do you know all this stuff? I mean, you're a walking encyclopedia of West Texas trivia.”

“I'm running for Historian of the Permian Basin,” she quipped.

They lapsed back into silence as the endless flat countryside scrolled by. Her relationship with JT was good—better than the two cameramen that preceded him. He at least understood that nonstop chatter was not a desirable thing when traversing the endless flat terrain surrounding them. Spare use of both water and conversation was the West Texas way. Out of the corner of her eye she could see JT wrinkle his brow in thought.

“Permian Basin?” he asked, curiosity getting the better of him.

“I forget that you weren't born around here,” she sighed, switching to her on-air narrator's voice: “The Permian Basin is named for the geologic formation that is buried under this area—rock strata that was laid down during the Permian Period more than 250 million years ago, before the dinosaurs evolved.”

“OK, and that's important because?”

“It's important because deep down that old rock is as buckled and wrinkled as the surface is flat. It created traps for oil and gas to form, and without oil and gas there would be even fewer people in West Texas than there are in Loving County.”

“Ah, oil. That I understand. But I still don't get it.”

“Get what?”

“Why you act the dumb blond when you interview these local yahoos. You are obviously smarter than you let on.”

“Smart doesn't necessarily get a woman what she wants in West Texas, but pretty and dumb often does.” And that's the truth she thought, bitterly.

Peggy Sue had been blessed by nature with cornflower blue eyes, honey blond hair, and a tall curvacious body—a natural Texas beauty. She was also gifted by nature with a keen intellect and a sharp wit. In her youth that wit often resulted in sarcastic remarks and the intellect a knowing air that many interpreted as smugness. As a child she was called precocious, but by the time she reached high school her blessings were more of a curse.

The football and cowboy crowd were put off by her intelligence and sharp tongue while the smart, nerdy boys were intimidated by her physical beauty—it was lose-lose in the romance department. She had to ask a boy to take her to the senior prom in order to get a date. Two things taught her how and when to hide her intellectual gifts and when to use her feminine wiles: the Miss Texas beauty contest and going to college.

She came in third runner up for Miss Texas, which taught her that she couldn't depend on being the prettiest girl in the room to get her what she wanted. But third runner up was good enough for a scholarship that allowed her to earn a degree in communications and journalism from Texas A&M.

That degree, along with being telegenic and smart, had gotten her a job as a roving reporter for KWTEX, the “West Texas News Authority.” Not that bouncing around the Permian Basin dust bowl in a news van was where she wanted to be, but it was a start.

Reality intruded on her reminiscence in the form of Stevie Ray Vaughn blasting out the opening of “Texas Flood.” Stevie Ray was another Texan musician who's life was cut short by an aeronautical mishap—
what was it with rock stars and airplane crashes?
In this case, the smoking hot blues song indicated an incoming call from her boss, station manager Ed Stanton.

“Yes, Ed?” she asked, bringing the iPhone to her ear.

“Suzy, I need you and JT to get on down to Upton County and check out a rancher who's building a rocket ship on his spread,” her boss said without preamble.

She sighed. She hated it when he called her “Suzy” but he signed her paychecks. “Are you going to tell me who this rancher is and where he's located? Or do you intend for us to just start asking about him at the next roadside diner?”

“Terrance Kinkade Parker, goes by TK,” her manager replied, ignoring Susan's sarcasm. “Made a fortune in oil and the last gas boom. He's rumored to be worth billions.”

“Imagine that, a rich, eccentric Texas oilman. We've never done that story before.”

“Not one with his own space program we ain't. I want this for the six o'clock tonight, so tell JT to hustle y'all on down there.” The line went dead.

“Great, he didn't give the address.” Sometimes she really hated that overbearing old redneck.

“What's up, Miss Susan? Are we off on a hot new assignment?”

“Yeah, Big Ed has heard a rumor about some billionaire oilman  who's building his own rocket ship in Upton county.”

“OK,” he replied, leaning over to play with the satnav system between them. “You know that may not be as far out as it sounds. With NASA pretty much out of the manned rocket business there are a number of rich private investors trying to get into the astronaut transport business.”

“Yeah, you know you're right? Ever since the shuttle was retired our astronauts have had to hitch rides to and from the ISS with the Russians.”

“Un huh, damned humiliating for NASA. And expensive.”

“Looks like this guy's ranch is northeast of Castle Gap, pretty much in the middle of nowhere,” Susan announced, consulting the Internet via her iPhone. “You need to head for Crane, then south on state road 385.”

“Ah, Crane, another thriving metropolis,” JT muttered, as he turned the van south, off of Interstate 10 and onto the state highway.

“County seat of scenic Crane County, and right next to the Upton County line,” she replied. Oh well, she thought, it was better than talking to some podunk town's mayor about his plans to revitalize the local golf course. “Then look for Ma Earp Road heading east past Castle Gap to county road 300.”

“And just what is Castle Gap?”

“Castle Gap is a mile-long break in the Castle Mountains 12 miles north-northwest of Horsehead Crossing. It's bordered by King Mountain on the southern end and Castle Mountain to the north.” Susan smiled her best beauty contest smile and brightly announced, “Why everyone who was anyone in West Texas history visited the Gap at one time or another.”

“This,” JT said, “sounds like more fun than when we covered the Pecos Cantaloupe Festival.”

“You keep driving, I'll fiddle with the navigation system.” She put the phone away and turned her attention to the in-dash map display.
What did people do before we got these things,
she wondered?
Wander around lost a lot, most likely.

There are no Marine bases in the state of Texas, but there is a Marine presence in the form of an air wing and pilot training facility co-located with the Corpus Christie Naval Air Station. As with all branches of the military, since the winding down of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was a time of tight budgets and threatened program cutbacks. As a result, public relations had become an even more important part of the Marine Corps' daily mission.

One of the programs that had been in jeopardy since its inception was the V-22 Osprey, a twin rotor, tilt-wing aircraft that was intended to become the Corps' primary rotary wing asset. The V-22 Osprey takes off and lands vertically like a helicopter but flies like a plane by tilting its wing-mounted rotors to function as propellers. The idea behind its design was to combine a helicopter's operational flexibility with the greater speed, range, and efficiency of a fixed-wing aircraft.

Begun in 1982 by the Army and funded in part by the Air Force, the V-22 became primarily a Marine Corps program paid for by the Navy. Development had been troubled from the start, with a number of deadly crashes that claimed the lives of 34 men, 30 of them Marines. Even so, attempts to kill the program—including one by then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney—all failed. Eventually, after almost 20 years in development, the first Ospreys entered the service.

The Marine version, designated the MV-22, can transport 24 fully-equipped troops some 200 nautical miles at a speed of 250 knots, significantly exceeding the performance of the CH-46
“Battle Phrog”
medium-lift assault helicopters the MV-22 was meant to replace. In Afghanistan, the MV-22 was able to fly two missions to every one flown by the more conventional CH-53 heavy-lift helos. Faster, farther, higher and with more lift capacity, the Osprey was intended to be the backbone of Marine Corps Aviation Assault Support for the 21
st
Century.

The Corps now had several hundred of the aircraft in service and planed on buying several hundred more, assuming its critics and congressional budget cutters could be held at bay. And that was why the Corps sent an Osprey and a squad of Marines to the yearly Air Fiesta at San Angelo Regional Airport. It was hoped that seeing one of the multimillion dollar beasts up close and personal would make civilians think more kindly of both the Corps and its primary aerial transport. Reminding Texas voters that the Osprey was assembled in Amarillo couldn't hurt either.

The Osprey had been in the Corps longer than Gunnery Sergeant Jennifer Rodriguez, and the way things look it would outlast her as well. Soon to be discharged from the service, this could be her last ride in one of the cantankerous aircraft. All she could think of when she had been ordered to form a squad of soon-to-be-separated Marines for “special duty” at the San Angelo air show was the term “vortex ring state.”

VRS was a technical term for exceeding the Osprey's flight envelope by descending too fast. Essentially, the craft could fly into its own downdraft and lose control. The result was generally dead Marines. According to Marine Corps scuttlebutt, this was what happened when your transport tried to perform unnatural acts on itself during flight. All Rodriguez could think of was that it would be a real bitch to die at an air show after spending twelve years in the Corps.

“Where are we going again, Gunny?” asked Lance Corporal Feldman. Like the Gunny and the seven other Marines and one Hospital Corpsman on Operation Air Fiesta, Jon Feldman was due to muster out of the service in less than a week. The military was cutting back everywhere, including personnel. That didn't mean they were only letting the screw-ups and misfits go, but you couldn't prove it by this group.

“Mathis Field,” Gunny Rodriguez shouted back, “by way of Goodfellow Air Force Base. Now shut up and enjoy the ride.” At least one good thing could be said about the MV-22, it was about 75% quieter inside than a CH-46 Sea Knight or the heavier CH-53 Sea Stallion.

Established long ago as Carr Field, the squads' eventual destination had been a military training center since before World War II. Over the decades, it was known by a number of names, including at one time Concho Army Air Field and San Angelo Army Air Field. Finally, after WWII, it was designated Mathis Field in honor of Jack Mathis, a B-17 pilot who was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for some now forgotten act of aerial daring-do. The airport was now owned by the City of San Angelo and was classified by the FAA as a commercial primary, non-hub airport. In other words, it was the local regional airport. Still, it was the only commercial airport serving the Concho Valley and its three runways stayed open for operations 24 hours a day to commercial, private and military aviation.