Supernatural fic - Tango Papa Romeo Sierra (1/2)
The title is taken from one 20th Helicopter Squadron pilot’s recollection of his time in Vietnam: “One of the sayings was ‘This Place Sucks’ (TPS) but someone added an ‘R’ to TPRS, ‘this place REALLY sucks’ so if you were talking to a Pony you would undoubtedly get a ‘Tango Papa Romeo Sierra’ somewhere in the conversation.”
I am not an expert in planes, helicopters, Vietnam, or mysterious rituals. If you notice any egregious errors, please let me know!
This story is, in part, a tribute to Robert E. Schroeder and his widow, Winifred McCormick Schroeder.
***
A hot August wind snapped the flags overhead: United States, Ohio, Air Force. The parking lot was crowded with youth group field trips, harried parents and bored kids, wizened veterans, war buffs. The ’67 Impala cut through the lot, sleek, dark, out of place among late-model sedans, boxy SUVs, jellybean minivans.
“Seriously, Dean?” Sam Winchester shook his head, bit back a grin. On the tape deck, Megadeth growled through “Hangar 18.”
Dean Winchester swung the Impala into a spot with two empty slots on either side, threw the car in park, shot Sam a smirk. “Hell, yes, Sam. It’s necessary. Like listening to ‘Vote With a Bullet’ on Election Day.”
Sam huffed a laugh. “Yeah? And when was the last time you voted?”
Dean shrugged. “Well, y’know, back before I was wanted and all.” He cut the music, the ignition. Silence rushed in. They locked up the car and headed for the entrance.
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, located in Dayton, Ohio, housed the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, a collection of historic aircraft and artifacts. It was also home to the eponymous hangar of the Megadeth song, where alien technology from the Roswell crash had supposedly been taken. Sam should have expected the dubious musical accompaniment, as well versed as he was in the law of Dean, but he could not imagine for the life of him how his brother had managed to conjure a mix tape with that song. Surely the black arts were involved.
A blast of cold air hit them just inside the museum’s front doors. They found themselves staring up at a bronze statue of Icarus, classically buff and decorated with a strategically-placed fig leaf. Dean cocked an eyebrow. Sam answered with a shrug.
Admission to the museum was free, but Sam slipped a twenty into the donation box while Dean wasn’t looking. They headed through the gift shop, an array of books, model airplanes, and reproduction bomber jackets. “All right,” Dean said, “Our guy’s name is Thomas McCormick. Base archivist. Said his office is on the second floor, left of the stairs.”
Sam pushed his hair back from his eyes, glanced at the visitor’s map he’d printed from the museum website. Started in the direction of the stairs. “So how did this guy get your number?”
“Remember Jerry Panowski?”
“Yeah, the United Britannia guy?”
“Yep. McCormick’s an old college buddy of his. Guess these plane buffs stick together.”
The archives room was small, with moveable shelves to create more space. Cabinets and work tables took up the rest of the room, the cramped area typical of an agency on a government budget. An assistant pointed them to McCormick’s office, a tiny room crowded with more books.
The man behind the desk looked to be in his mid-forties, with a trim build and curly, graying hair. He looked up over the rim of his glasses, silver wire frames to match gray eyes. He gave a bland smile, the introvert’s substitute for may I help you?
“Mr. McCormick?” Dean asked. “Dean Winchester. We spoke on the phone? This is my brother, Sam.”
“Oh, yes, yes, of course.” The customer-service smile was replaced by something more genuine. McCormick got up from the desk and stepped carefully around a stack of thick manuals to shake hands. “Call me Tom, please.”
An awkward silence settled over the room; Sam recognized the social anxiety common to academics. Probably the subject matter at hand wasn’t helping. McCormick glanced around the office. “I’d ask you to sit down, but - ” He tilted his head toward the single book-strewn guest chair. “Why don’t we try the cafeteria? Buy you some coffee? Lunch?”
Dean’s face lit up, the biggest smile Sam had seen from him in days. Ordinarily, Sam might have declined out of politeness, but neither of them had any delusions about getting paid for this job - not on a government archivist’s dime - and it had been a long couple of weeks. Sam answered, “Lunch would be great. We got on the road pretty early this morning.”
McCormick led the way out of the archives room toward the cafeteria. “Yeah, Dean said you were coming from Amarillo? Hell of a drive to make in two days.”
Dean shrugged, looking entirely too pleased at the prospect of a cafeteria lunch. “We go where the job takes us.”
The cafeteria had a good view of the grounds around the base, though there wasn’t a whole lot to see. Flat land, unused airstrips, a few Korea- and Vietnam-era planes on outdoor display. Scrub trees, rows of cookie-cutter apartments. Beyond the summertime haze, cars streamed past on the highway.
The plastic lunch trays looked like they’d been around since the ’70s, off-white with gold flecks and a fetching museum logo. They loaded up, Sam only marginally showing more restraint than his brother - hell, he was starving, too - and took a seat in a booth near the windows. For a moment, none of them spoke, unwrapping straws and plastic utensils, establishing a comfort zone. McCormick broke the silence. “Can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re here. Jerry said you guys really helped him out.”
“Jerry’s a good guy.” Dean took a healthy swig of Coke. “So, uh, this problem you’re having here…”
McCormick’s face sagged. He ran a hand through his hair. Nibbled on a french fry. “This place has always had its share of ghost stories. There’s a whole chapter in a book called Haunted Ohio. They say the guns rattle on the Strawberry Bitch. A little Japanese boy runs around Bockscar. The crew from the Lady Be Good haunts its propeller. You know - harmless stories. But lately - ” He shook his head. “A janitor said something invisible punched him in the face. One of the nighttime security guards quit in the middle of his shift - scared out of his mind, but he wouldn’t tell anyone what he’d seen. And there have been accidents. One of our volunteers got beaned with a flying wrench. No one could figure out where it came from. Then, last week, one of the mechanics working on a restoration was nearly killed by a propeller when the engine started unexpectedly…all by itself. There was nobody even in the plane.”
Dean raised his eyebrows, duly impressed. “Have any of these things happened around the same planes, or in the same areas?”
McCormick shook his head. “That’s the thing - it’s happened in public areas, in the restoration hangars, hell - a female volunteer said a cold hand grabbed her ankle while she was in the ladies’ room.”
“Wow.” Sam swallowed a bite of his hamburger. “Could be multiple spirits.”
McCormick gave a sad smile. “As many of these aircraft had fatalities, I wouldn’t be surprised if every one of them were haunted.”
Dean grunted in agreement. “Not to mention some of those artifacts, I bet.”
“So how does this work, exactly?” McCormick asked. “I mean, how do you…”
“Send Casper on his way?” Dean supplied.
McCormick nodded.
Dean’s eyes cut toward Sam, a subtle gesture no one else would have noticed that said, diplomacy’s your job, geek boy.
“Well,” Sam started, keeping his voice pitched low, “the standard method is to identify the spirit, locate the burial site, and salt and burn the remains.”
To McCormick’s credit, he didn’t flinch or blanch, just tilted his head, listening with an academic’s curiosity.
Sam went on, “Sometimes the person was already cremated. The spirit may have attached itself to a particular object. In that case, we try to find the object and destroy it.”
A twitch at that, no doubt thinking of some of those priceless artifacts.
“Of course,” Sam said, “we’ll try to avoid that at all cost in this situation.”
McCormick nodded.
“Another option is to summon the spirit, try to convince it to leave. And if all else fails, there are some rituals and spells.”
McCormick laughed, pulled off his glasses. Rubbed a hand across his eyes. “I can honestly say this is the most surreal conversation I’ve ever had.”
Dean grinned, reached over to steal some of Sam’s fries. “We may be a lot of things,” he said, “but we're never boring.”
*
A sweep of the museum for EMF would have to wait; without the camouflage of a jacket pocket, the meters would be too conspicuous. They walked the museum as tourists, getting a feel for the layout. In the Early Years Gallery, they saw everything from an observation blimp to a Sopwith Camel. The Air Power Gallery - the World War II section - seemed to be a good bet for the source of their spirit. Most of the planes had seen action; thanks to the pragmatic wartime mentality, damaged planes had been rebuilt or their parts reused. With the help of a list printed from the internet and some notes from McCormick, Sam and Dean scoped out some of the more notable displays. Bockscar, the plane that had dropped the “Fat Man” bomb on Nagasaki, was supposed to be haunted by a Japanese boy, but that didn’t make much sense to Sam. That bomb had killed thousands - why would the spirit of one boy attach itself to the plane?
Some of the other bombers seemed more likely candidates; the Strawberry Bitch or the Shoo Shoo Shoo Baby, for example, had both seen plenty of action. Then there was the propeller McCormick had mentioned, recovered from the wrecked Lady Be Good, which had crashed in the Libyan desert in 1943. One of the nine crewmen had died when his parachute failed. The rest died in the desert, some of them having walked over eighty miles from the crash site, searching for civilization.
Browsing through McCormick’s notes, Sam saw the man was right: just about any given object in the museum could be haunted. Helicopters that had transported the dead and wounded, planes that had been shot up and repaired, personal effects and recovered debris from doomed flights. Hell, there were even a few Nazi planes. Sam really didn’t relish the thought of trying to find those remains or convince a German-speaking ghost to move on.
He was heading to the Modern Flight Gallery, the Korea- and Vietnam-era exhibits, when he realized he’d lost Dean. He backtracked through the WWII exhibits, found his brother behind the Strawberry Bitch, hands shoved deep in his pockets, staring up at the tailgunner’s position.
Sam stopped short before Dean noticed him. From a distance, Dean could be anyone - an engineering student, a high school teacher. A historian doing research. A dad waiting for his kids to catch up.
The sense of sorrow hit him, sudden, sharp. What path might Dean have chosen, had this life - their fucked-up life - not chosen for him?
Sam shook himself, tried not to think of futures lost forever, of time running out. He joined Dean at the rear of the plane. “Hey. Find something?”
There was a faraway look in Dean’s eyes, a thoughtfulness Sam knew few others had ever seen. “Mom’s uncle flew in one of these,” Dean said. “Tailgunner.”
Quite possibly the last thing Sam had expected to hear. “Really?”
“Yeah. Uncle Bob. Got shot down over Austria, I think. He was a P.O.W. for like, six months, right at the end of the war, till Patton came through.”
“No shit. I never knew that.”
“Me and Dad were watching some thing on the History Channel one night. He told me about it then.” Dean blinked as if coming out of a trance. Glanced over at Sam. “Shit. I don’t even remember the last time we saw Uncle Bob. I must have been - five? Six?” A bitter smile. He turned away. Sam followed.
***
Dean jerked awake late in the afternoon, a hot patch of sun framing his bed, glinting off the line of salt at the window and the giant propeller mounted on the wall. Reality filtered in one detail at a time, the primary colors of the flight-themed room gradually washing over dreams of fire and blood. Airplane-patterned bedspread. Airplane-shaped lamp. A laminated placard on the nightstand proclaimed, “Ohio - First in Flight!” Letters scrawled in Sharpie marker underneath: “Suck it, North Carolina.”
They had a long night ahead, but Dean hadn’t wanted to sleep. Hated the fact that he needed sleep. Kept hearing his father’s voice: You can sleep when you’re dead. The words rang a little too true these days.
Outside, cars rushed past on a state route. In the cocoon of the room, no sound but the hiss of the air conditioning and the soft clack of Sam at the laptop keys.
Dean rustled the sheets, stretched slowly, letting Sam believe he was just waking up. Sam seemed to think Dean never had nightmares.
Sam thought a lot of things. Dean was fine with letting it stay that way.
He sat up. Sam looked over, face pallid in the washed-out glow of the laptop screen. “Hey,” he said.
Dean grunted in reply, rubbed at his eyes. He took a long swig from the bottle of water he’d left on the nightstand, room temperature now. “Find anything?”
Sam leaned back in his chair, stretched his arms up over his head. “Maybe. I’ve been trying to narrow down our list of planes. It seems like all of the legends center on the same ones: the Strawberry Bitch, Bockscar, the parts from the Lady Be Good.
“There are also two helicopters, the Black Mariah, which flew covert ops in Vietnam, and the Hopalong, which was a rescue chopper in Korea. Those stories are almost interchangeable: the pilots can be seen in the cockpit, flipping switches, trying to get home.
“Then there’s a Nazi plane - none of the stories actually say which one. In one version, the pilot waves and poses for pictures. In the other, he just gives people a stern look.”
“Second one sounds a little more like a Nazi.”
“I guess. I gotta tell you, Dean, the stories all reek of urban legend, but a lot of these planes saw some heavy shit. McCormick was right - just about any of them could be haunted.”
Dean stood, knees popping. Stretched, back popping. He leaned next to the window, looked out on the parking lot. Weeds grew up through the cracks in the blacktop. Out on the road, traffic flowed past in a glinting stream. “So we should sweep the whole place just to be safe?” He turned back to Sam.
Sam shrugged, nodded. “Maybe we pay a bit more attention to those planes, but, yeah. The real bitch will be identifying our spirit. It wasn’t always the same crew on the same plane. If we figure out the particular incident involved, we can request a mission report, but…”
“So much for a simple salt-and-burn.”
“Looks that way.”
Dean scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Nothing’s ever easy, is it?”
Sam’s eyes went all soft, his mouth pinched into the sympathetic frown that always made witnesses open up.
Damn. Dean hadn’t meant to sound so maudlin. He must be slipping. He grabbed some clean clothes. “Well, I’m gonna hit the shower.” Glanced at the laptop screen as he passed. Sam might have been researching the planes earlier, but right now, the browser was open to a search for one Robert E. Schroeder, B-24 tailgunner.
Huh. Should have known Sam would latch onto that. “Might wanna try the National Archives site,” Dean said. “They’ve got a database of World War II P.O.W.s.”
He closed the bathroom door on Sam’s astonished face. Felt good now and then to remind the kid he knew how to do his job.
***
Nighttime hadn’t cooled things off by much, but most traffic had vanished. Hot wind whipped through the open windows as they headed back up the Colonel Glenn Highway. Cicadas hummed in the trees. In the shadows, a few late-season fireflies blinked. The Impala’s tape deck played Iron Maiden’s “Aces High.”
“Seriously, Dean?”
“Damn straight, Sam.”
***
Continue to Part Two
I am not an expert in planes, helicopters, Vietnam, or mysterious rituals. If you notice any egregious errors, please let me know!
This story is, in part, a tribute to Robert E. Schroeder and his widow, Winifred McCormick Schroeder.
***
A hot August wind snapped the flags overhead: United States, Ohio, Air Force. The parking lot was crowded with youth group field trips, harried parents and bored kids, wizened veterans, war buffs. The ’67 Impala cut through the lot, sleek, dark, out of place among late-model sedans, boxy SUVs, jellybean minivans.
“Seriously, Dean?” Sam Winchester shook his head, bit back a grin. On the tape deck, Megadeth growled through “Hangar 18.”
Dean Winchester swung the Impala into a spot with two empty slots on either side, threw the car in park, shot Sam a smirk. “Hell, yes, Sam. It’s necessary. Like listening to ‘Vote With a Bullet’ on Election Day.”
Sam huffed a laugh. “Yeah? And when was the last time you voted?”
Dean shrugged. “Well, y’know, back before I was wanted and all.” He cut the music, the ignition. Silence rushed in. They locked up the car and headed for the entrance.
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, located in Dayton, Ohio, housed the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, a collection of historic aircraft and artifacts. It was also home to the eponymous hangar of the Megadeth song, where alien technology from the Roswell crash had supposedly been taken. Sam should have expected the dubious musical accompaniment, as well versed as he was in the law of Dean, but he could not imagine for the life of him how his brother had managed to conjure a mix tape with that song. Surely the black arts were involved.
A blast of cold air hit them just inside the museum’s front doors. They found themselves staring up at a bronze statue of Icarus, classically buff and decorated with a strategically-placed fig leaf. Dean cocked an eyebrow. Sam answered with a shrug.
Admission to the museum was free, but Sam slipped a twenty into the donation box while Dean wasn’t looking. They headed through the gift shop, an array of books, model airplanes, and reproduction bomber jackets. “All right,” Dean said, “Our guy’s name is Thomas McCormick. Base archivist. Said his office is on the second floor, left of the stairs.”
Sam pushed his hair back from his eyes, glanced at the visitor’s map he’d printed from the museum website. Started in the direction of the stairs. “So how did this guy get your number?”
“Remember Jerry Panowski?”
“Yeah, the United Britannia guy?”
“Yep. McCormick’s an old college buddy of his. Guess these plane buffs stick together.”
The archives room was small, with moveable shelves to create more space. Cabinets and work tables took up the rest of the room, the cramped area typical of an agency on a government budget. An assistant pointed them to McCormick’s office, a tiny room crowded with more books.
The man behind the desk looked to be in his mid-forties, with a trim build and curly, graying hair. He looked up over the rim of his glasses, silver wire frames to match gray eyes. He gave a bland smile, the introvert’s substitute for may I help you?
“Mr. McCormick?” Dean asked. “Dean Winchester. We spoke on the phone? This is my brother, Sam.”
“Oh, yes, yes, of course.” The customer-service smile was replaced by something more genuine. McCormick got up from the desk and stepped carefully around a stack of thick manuals to shake hands. “Call me Tom, please.”
An awkward silence settled over the room; Sam recognized the social anxiety common to academics. Probably the subject matter at hand wasn’t helping. McCormick glanced around the office. “I’d ask you to sit down, but - ” He tilted his head toward the single book-strewn guest chair. “Why don’t we try the cafeteria? Buy you some coffee? Lunch?”
Dean’s face lit up, the biggest smile Sam had seen from him in days. Ordinarily, Sam might have declined out of politeness, but neither of them had any delusions about getting paid for this job - not on a government archivist’s dime - and it had been a long couple of weeks. Sam answered, “Lunch would be great. We got on the road pretty early this morning.”
McCormick led the way out of the archives room toward the cafeteria. “Yeah, Dean said you were coming from Amarillo? Hell of a drive to make in two days.”
Dean shrugged, looking entirely too pleased at the prospect of a cafeteria lunch. “We go where the job takes us.”
The cafeteria had a good view of the grounds around the base, though there wasn’t a whole lot to see. Flat land, unused airstrips, a few Korea- and Vietnam-era planes on outdoor display. Scrub trees, rows of cookie-cutter apartments. Beyond the summertime haze, cars streamed past on the highway.
The plastic lunch trays looked like they’d been around since the ’70s, off-white with gold flecks and a fetching museum logo. They loaded up, Sam only marginally showing more restraint than his brother - hell, he was starving, too - and took a seat in a booth near the windows. For a moment, none of them spoke, unwrapping straws and plastic utensils, establishing a comfort zone. McCormick broke the silence. “Can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re here. Jerry said you guys really helped him out.”
“Jerry’s a good guy.” Dean took a healthy swig of Coke. “So, uh, this problem you’re having here…”
McCormick’s face sagged. He ran a hand through his hair. Nibbled on a french fry. “This place has always had its share of ghost stories. There’s a whole chapter in a book called Haunted Ohio. They say the guns rattle on the Strawberry Bitch. A little Japanese boy runs around Bockscar. The crew from the Lady Be Good haunts its propeller. You know - harmless stories. But lately - ” He shook his head. “A janitor said something invisible punched him in the face. One of the nighttime security guards quit in the middle of his shift - scared out of his mind, but he wouldn’t tell anyone what he’d seen. And there have been accidents. One of our volunteers got beaned with a flying wrench. No one could figure out where it came from. Then, last week, one of the mechanics working on a restoration was nearly killed by a propeller when the engine started unexpectedly…all by itself. There was nobody even in the plane.”
Dean raised his eyebrows, duly impressed. “Have any of these things happened around the same planes, or in the same areas?”
McCormick shook his head. “That’s the thing - it’s happened in public areas, in the restoration hangars, hell - a female volunteer said a cold hand grabbed her ankle while she was in the ladies’ room.”
“Wow.” Sam swallowed a bite of his hamburger. “Could be multiple spirits.”
McCormick gave a sad smile. “As many of these aircraft had fatalities, I wouldn’t be surprised if every one of them were haunted.”
Dean grunted in agreement. “Not to mention some of those artifacts, I bet.”
“So how does this work, exactly?” McCormick asked. “I mean, how do you…”
“Send Casper on his way?” Dean supplied.
McCormick nodded.
Dean’s eyes cut toward Sam, a subtle gesture no one else would have noticed that said, diplomacy’s your job, geek boy.
“Well,” Sam started, keeping his voice pitched low, “the standard method is to identify the spirit, locate the burial site, and salt and burn the remains.”
To McCormick’s credit, he didn’t flinch or blanch, just tilted his head, listening with an academic’s curiosity.
Sam went on, “Sometimes the person was already cremated. The spirit may have attached itself to a particular object. In that case, we try to find the object and destroy it.”
A twitch at that, no doubt thinking of some of those priceless artifacts.
“Of course,” Sam said, “we’ll try to avoid that at all cost in this situation.”
McCormick nodded.
“Another option is to summon the spirit, try to convince it to leave. And if all else fails, there are some rituals and spells.”
McCormick laughed, pulled off his glasses. Rubbed a hand across his eyes. “I can honestly say this is the most surreal conversation I’ve ever had.”
Dean grinned, reached over to steal some of Sam’s fries. “We may be a lot of things,” he said, “but we're never boring.”
*
A sweep of the museum for EMF would have to wait; without the camouflage of a jacket pocket, the meters would be too conspicuous. They walked the museum as tourists, getting a feel for the layout. In the Early Years Gallery, they saw everything from an observation blimp to a Sopwith Camel. The Air Power Gallery - the World War II section - seemed to be a good bet for the source of their spirit. Most of the planes had seen action; thanks to the pragmatic wartime mentality, damaged planes had been rebuilt or their parts reused. With the help of a list printed from the internet and some notes from McCormick, Sam and Dean scoped out some of the more notable displays. Bockscar, the plane that had dropped the “Fat Man” bomb on Nagasaki, was supposed to be haunted by a Japanese boy, but that didn’t make much sense to Sam. That bomb had killed thousands - why would the spirit of one boy attach itself to the plane?
Some of the other bombers seemed more likely candidates; the Strawberry Bitch or the Shoo Shoo Shoo Baby, for example, had both seen plenty of action. Then there was the propeller McCormick had mentioned, recovered from the wrecked Lady Be Good, which had crashed in the Libyan desert in 1943. One of the nine crewmen had died when his parachute failed. The rest died in the desert, some of them having walked over eighty miles from the crash site, searching for civilization.
Browsing through McCormick’s notes, Sam saw the man was right: just about any given object in the museum could be haunted. Helicopters that had transported the dead and wounded, planes that had been shot up and repaired, personal effects and recovered debris from doomed flights. Hell, there were even a few Nazi planes. Sam really didn’t relish the thought of trying to find those remains or convince a German-speaking ghost to move on.
He was heading to the Modern Flight Gallery, the Korea- and Vietnam-era exhibits, when he realized he’d lost Dean. He backtracked through the WWII exhibits, found his brother behind the Strawberry Bitch, hands shoved deep in his pockets, staring up at the tailgunner’s position.
Sam stopped short before Dean noticed him. From a distance, Dean could be anyone - an engineering student, a high school teacher. A historian doing research. A dad waiting for his kids to catch up.
The sense of sorrow hit him, sudden, sharp. What path might Dean have chosen, had this life - their fucked-up life - not chosen for him?
Sam shook himself, tried not to think of futures lost forever, of time running out. He joined Dean at the rear of the plane. “Hey. Find something?”
There was a faraway look in Dean’s eyes, a thoughtfulness Sam knew few others had ever seen. “Mom’s uncle flew in one of these,” Dean said. “Tailgunner.”
Quite possibly the last thing Sam had expected to hear. “Really?”
“Yeah. Uncle Bob. Got shot down over Austria, I think. He was a P.O.W. for like, six months, right at the end of the war, till Patton came through.”
“No shit. I never knew that.”
“Me and Dad were watching some thing on the History Channel one night. He told me about it then.” Dean blinked as if coming out of a trance. Glanced over at Sam. “Shit. I don’t even remember the last time we saw Uncle Bob. I must have been - five? Six?” A bitter smile. He turned away. Sam followed.
***
Dean jerked awake late in the afternoon, a hot patch of sun framing his bed, glinting off the line of salt at the window and the giant propeller mounted on the wall. Reality filtered in one detail at a time, the primary colors of the flight-themed room gradually washing over dreams of fire and blood. Airplane-patterned bedspread. Airplane-shaped lamp. A laminated placard on the nightstand proclaimed, “Ohio - First in Flight!” Letters scrawled in Sharpie marker underneath: “Suck it, North Carolina.”
They had a long night ahead, but Dean hadn’t wanted to sleep. Hated the fact that he needed sleep. Kept hearing his father’s voice: You can sleep when you’re dead. The words rang a little too true these days.
Outside, cars rushed past on a state route. In the cocoon of the room, no sound but the hiss of the air conditioning and the soft clack of Sam at the laptop keys.
Dean rustled the sheets, stretched slowly, letting Sam believe he was just waking up. Sam seemed to think Dean never had nightmares.
Sam thought a lot of things. Dean was fine with letting it stay that way.
He sat up. Sam looked over, face pallid in the washed-out glow of the laptop screen. “Hey,” he said.
Dean grunted in reply, rubbed at his eyes. He took a long swig from the bottle of water he’d left on the nightstand, room temperature now. “Find anything?”
Sam leaned back in his chair, stretched his arms up over his head. “Maybe. I’ve been trying to narrow down our list of planes. It seems like all of the legends center on the same ones: the Strawberry Bitch, Bockscar, the parts from the Lady Be Good.
“There are also two helicopters, the Black Mariah, which flew covert ops in Vietnam, and the Hopalong, which was a rescue chopper in Korea. Those stories are almost interchangeable: the pilots can be seen in the cockpit, flipping switches, trying to get home.
“Then there’s a Nazi plane - none of the stories actually say which one. In one version, the pilot waves and poses for pictures. In the other, he just gives people a stern look.”
“Second one sounds a little more like a Nazi.”
“I guess. I gotta tell you, Dean, the stories all reek of urban legend, but a lot of these planes saw some heavy shit. McCormick was right - just about any of them could be haunted.”
Dean stood, knees popping. Stretched, back popping. He leaned next to the window, looked out on the parking lot. Weeds grew up through the cracks in the blacktop. Out on the road, traffic flowed past in a glinting stream. “So we should sweep the whole place just to be safe?” He turned back to Sam.
Sam shrugged, nodded. “Maybe we pay a bit more attention to those planes, but, yeah. The real bitch will be identifying our spirit. It wasn’t always the same crew on the same plane. If we figure out the particular incident involved, we can request a mission report, but…”
“So much for a simple salt-and-burn.”
“Looks that way.”
Dean scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Nothing’s ever easy, is it?”
Sam’s eyes went all soft, his mouth pinched into the sympathetic frown that always made witnesses open up.
Damn. Dean hadn’t meant to sound so maudlin. He must be slipping. He grabbed some clean clothes. “Well, I’m gonna hit the shower.” Glanced at the laptop screen as he passed. Sam might have been researching the planes earlier, but right now, the browser was open to a search for one Robert E. Schroeder, B-24 tailgunner.
Huh. Should have known Sam would latch onto that. “Might wanna try the National Archives site,” Dean said. “They’ve got a database of World War II P.O.W.s.”
He closed the bathroom door on Sam’s astonished face. Felt good now and then to remind the kid he knew how to do his job.
***
Nighttime hadn’t cooled things off by much, but most traffic had vanished. Hot wind whipped through the open windows as they headed back up the Colonel Glenn Highway. Cicadas hummed in the trees. In the shadows, a few late-season fireflies blinked. The Impala’s tape deck played Iron Maiden’s “Aces High.”
“Seriously, Dean?”
“Damn straight, Sam.”
***
Continue to Part Two