The sea is merciless. It stares at you with the lifeless eyes of a place that has swallowed men, ship, and cargo for millenia with impunity. Merciless, but beautiful Cap'n Stuart thought as he surveyed the caribbean from the front porch of his beach front cabin. The sun was just creeping over the horizon as The Cap'n contemplated the day. He only had to arise early on one day each week, and unfortunately this just happened to be it. Monday, and what a Monday it was going to be he thought as he drank his black coffee and smoked his first Lucky Strike of the day. Mondays... mail day.
He surveyed the early morning sky with the eyes of a seasoned and battle tested aviator. The eyes that had seen stormy approaches to Gulf oil rigs in relentless rain and near tornadic winds, to ditching a Lockheed L-188 Electra into the North Atlantic, and everything in between. He was an aviator in the purest sense of the word, but he was retired now. Retired from the airlines, from Petromech Gulf Helictopters, from the world of corporate aviation, and from the Army. He was now retired from everyone but himself, and due to a mob connection gone sour in Chicago, he had retreated... NO, moved to the Carribean to live out the rest of his life with the sun, the sand, and the surf. He bought a modest cabin on the beach which was within a quarter of a mile of the islands 3,000 foot grass runway, and a few aircraft. He was now the President, CEO, and Chief Pilot for Tropico Air, and on Monday mornings, he flew the mail. Every other day of the week, the mail came by boat from Tami Tanga, but the mail service demanded a two day weekend, and so Sunday and Monday the boat did not run. That left Monday up to the individual islands in the area, and it just so happened that Tropico liked their Victoria's Secret catalogs enough to pay for the short airplane flight every Monday.
"A nice slow Monday," Stuart muttered as he topped off his own airplane with MoGas. Preflight inspection consisted of making sure that it still had oil, and that no tires were flat. Master on, primed, mixture rich, a quick turn of the key and the starter quickly brought the engine of the Dehaviland Beaver to life. As he climbed out over the small island's bay, he muttered to himself again, "a nice slow Monday." He couldn't have been more wrong...
Jeff C.
