Free A Place We Knew Well by Susan Carol McCarthy Page A

binoculars.
    “Take a good look. Everyone else has.”
    The solemn faces surrounding him nodded. A few men toed the dirt like cattle wary of a shifting wind.
    Avery put the binocs to his eyes, peering south beyond the huge ordnance depot, a beehive of busy front loaders, toward the row of hangars and plane docks off the flight line, far right.
    What he saw shocked him. The US Air Force organized its aircraft into wings of three squadrons with twenty-four planes apiece. Before him, like a giant flock of silver seabirds blown off course, were at least two wings of F-105 Thunderchief fighters, another two wings of F-84 Thunderjets, and a third of F-100 Super Sabres—five wings, 72 birds each, equaled 360 fighters all told! Next to the fighters sat a dozen or so shiny silver Connies (Super Constellations) with their distinctive triple tails. Some were outfitted with radar hoods for reconnaissance; others, obviously paratroop carriers.
    Avery lowered the binocs to make sure they weren’t playing some kind of trick on him. But the packed view was the same with plain sight, only smaller and less detailed. He raised them back up, looked again at the magnified fighters, each armed to the gills with cluster, free-fall, and Sidewinder bombs, and felt his gut clench in genuine alarm.
    In the uncomfortable group silence—Avery was stunned for a moment beyond words—he remembered Charlotte. Determined not to overreact, he took her arm and said, as casually as he could manage, “We were sort of hoping to see a U-2.”
    The dairyman’s eyes flared with surprise as if to ask,
How’d you know about them?
After a moment, he said softly, “One came in ’bout fifteen minutes ago.” He chucked the largest of his several chins. “Walk up another fifty, sixty yards and look left.”
    Avery led Charlotte in that direction, his senses assaulted by the sharp reek of jet fuel and the sucking roar of jet engines.
    “Awful lot of planes out there,” she said, betraying the same mixture of curiosity and dread that was gripping him. “Pretty scary, don’t you think, Dad?”
    Avery threw a protective arm around her. Hoping to distract her from the effect of all that firepower, he said, “Let me tell you about the U-2, Kitten.”
    He told her what little he knew about America’s super-secret spy plane: How it supposedly flew twice as high as most other aircraft, up to seventy thousand feet, “where blue sky meets black space.” How it had a single pilot, a single jet engine, and flew unarmed over enemy territory with a bellyful of special long-range cameras. How, for years, it was thought untouchable by enemy radar or ground fire until 1960, when a Soviet missile shot down U-2 pilot Frank Powers over Russia.
    When they’d reached the point roughly midway between the dairyman and the guard shack, Avery stopped. He pointed out the hangar in the distance, now visible beyond the ordnance depot. The sight of the U-2s out front—five all-black plus another three in silver with the single air force star—took his breath away. Was this a joint CIA and air force operation? Was that possible?
    The binocs provided further details. Milkman Jimmy Simms had compared the U-2’s shape to a big, black buzzard. But to Avery, the aircraft’s long, lean fuselage and significantly wider wings looked more like a cluster of fantastic dragonflies. The flurried actions of the ground crew drew his attention to one U-2 in particular.
    “Hey, Dad?”
    “Just a sec, hon.”
    A group was gathered at the all-black nose dock, canopy up, helping the pilot, moving stiffly in a silver pressure suit, out of the cockpit. Another bunch was busy mid-plane under the wide-open camera bay. And a third was loading a Metro Van with two heavy steel boxes. The film, Avery reasoned. Judging from the care with which the men handled the boxes, the sense of urgency in their movements, the boxes had to contain the spy plane’s film!
    “Dad…”
    Spellbound, Avery watched the Metro