Test Pilot's Daughter: Revenge (5 page)

Engulfed in a roar of acceptance and snug in her father’s arms, Christina could only think of that whisper. She felt her mother’s presence and longed to hold her.
How could she die so young?
She wanted to cry, but tears wouldn’t come. Beneath the thunderous applause, the whisper returned.

Follow your destiny. . .your destiny. . .destiny.

Chapter Six

Giddy about her good fortune, Jesica thought,
Gold, real gold!
She had gold fever, Spanish gold. She couldn’t wait to show Christina and Heather what she had done.

Every summer in June, Heather’s parents invited the girls to join them in Key West. The beautiful Southern style mansion with huge verandas overlooked the pristine shallows of a turquoise Gulf. It was a perfect setting for treasure hunting and the daily tradition of toasting the setting sun.

On their last day in the Keys, Heather talked her parents into getting the girls a bottle of Dom Perignon. During their sunset ritual on the veranda, Jessica was feeling like a real treasure hunter when she gave her two best friends a very special gift.

Second only to New Orleans, Key West was well known as the fun capital of the South. Island life was a Jimmy Buffet bash. The girls sunbathed, mingled with the tourists on the strip and partied. Heather’s dad sponsored diving lessons for all three and, in the course of those vacations, they became certified scuba-divers.

With a long seeded yen for the “mother lode,” Jessica studied the Spanish galleons that went down in the area and always led their excursions. Over three summers they had explored four sites without luck. This time they chartered a guide-boat to take them out to the better known wrecks. Probably the most famous was the Nuestra Senora de Atocha. That Spanish galleon, found 30 miles off Key West, yielded tons of treasure to the notorious salvaging team of Mel Fisher. After twelve years it was still being worked and off limits to amateurs. Jessica picked another site nearby which contained remnants of the galleon, Santa Margarita.

After several days of hard diving, Jessica moved a large chunk of dead coral and saw something shiny in the silt. Waving her hand over the spot, she sucked at her mouthpiece when she saw a definite glimmer. Digging like a dog burying a bone, she found three small coins, ancient relics called “escudos.” Because of her research, she knew the “one-half escudo” pieces contained twenty-seven grams of 22 karat gold minted in Spain in 1620. She waved in her friends, and they searched the spot for two more days but found nothing more.

On the veranda just before sunset, Jessica could hardly stop giggling when she let her friends in on the secret.

“
What’s this? Christina asked. “Oh my God, you had them mounted.”

Heather joined in, “Oooo, sooo beautiful.”

“
Three coins, three necklaces and Three Amigos,” Jessica laughed. “Where’s the booze?”

“
I’ll get it,” Heather retrieved the bottle and three glasses.

Jessica held the treasure high. Against the setting sun, bright orange colors glittered off the Spanish gold. Carefully hanging the necklaces on Christina and Heather and then around her own neck, she pledged, “These three coins bind us together as long as we shall live. We shall wear this bounty always to crystallize our everlasting loyalty.” Thinking of her rescue from Roy Pitts and remembering a line from
The Three Musketeers
, she added another pledge, “All for one, and one for all. On this day we shall swear our solemn bond as blood sisters.”

Heather and Christina looked at each other then back at Jessica chanting, “All for one, and one for all.”

“
All for one, and one for all,” they said in unison downing their grog like sailors.

“
Jessica, I love you,” Heather said, in complete awe of such a special gift. She poured each girl another glass.

“
I think we should toast Jessica for finding the loot,” Christina offered.

“
Yeah,” Heather agreed as they held their glasses together.

“
Here’s to the best damned treasure hunter I know,” Christina said. “Jessica Ward, may you one day find the mother lode.”

The girls emptied their glasses again.

Jessica was sky high. Finding those tiny coins meant more to her than the state championship. Her chest heaved with pride.

Heather poured another round and gave a toast of her own, “To Jessica, future marine biologist and aquanaut.”

The champagne began to take its effect, and they started getting silly.

“
Here, here,” said Christina grabbing the bottle for more.

“
What adventurous friends I have,” Heather said. “One will explore the sea, and the other the cosmos. . .an aquanaut and an astronaut. So what does that leave for me?”

“
You can be our little agrinaut,” quipped Jessica. She formed her hands over Heather’s tummy like a pregnant woman. “You’ll marry a wealthy landowner and have lots of rug-rats.”

They all started giggling.

“
Thanks a lot! While you two are out conquering new worlds, I’ll be home humping a farmer and breast feeding? No fair!”

“
Well, hell,” Christina slurred loudly, “somebody’s gotta do it!”

“
Shut up,” Heather whined.

Jessica and Christina laughed hysterically as they hugged their pouting friend. Heather’s magnificent body was bulging out of her bright orange bikini. Christina backed away, looked her over and declared the obvious, “Well, my little chick-a-dee, at least you’ve got the right stuff.”

They roared again slapping hands on hips, bending in delight.

“
Wheeee! There’s a little left,” Jessica squealed, drinking right out of the bottle.

The sun was about to set, and the girls fell silent. Holding their drinks high, all three hailed the setting sun, “All for one, and one for all. May the Three Amigos live forever.”

It was a magical moment. The golden orb seemed to expand into a huge fireball right before their eyes. It had a spellbinding effect. They stared out over the water. The sky around Key West lit up like a beautiful painting. Wispy clouds reflected bright orange tones painted on a canvass of brilliant blue. A fresh sea-breeze carried the salty smell of the ocean, accented by the sweet smell of porch honeysuckle. Jessica was overwhelmed with a sense of wonder.

From that time on, the Three Amigos proudly wore their golden escudos. Jessica developed an even stronger fascination for Spanish galleons and spent much of her free time researching archives. She built her own database, tracking the most highly valued wrecks that had not yet been discovered. She was surprised to learn that hurricanes had taken down hundreds of vessels over the centuries, and billions of dollars in treasure remained on the ocean floor.

* * *

All three girls decided to celebrate their adulthood by moving off to college far from home. The only problem was Heather’s SAT scores, and her choices were limited. After considering several locations on the east coast, they finally settled on Atlanta, Georgia. There was something about the hospitality of the deep South that seemed quite appealing, and Atlanta was known as the jewel in the southern crown.

Jessica had several offers for a free ride to play basketball. She picked Georgia Tech because it offered Christina a full academic scholarship. Both were interested in more than academics; the male/female ratio at Georgia Tech was seven to three. It was rumored attractive girls were treated like goddesses on the Tech campus. Jessica majored in Marine Biology and Christina Aerospace Engineering. Heather’s dad was able to pull some strings, and she was accepted at the University of Georgia in Athens, a short drive outside of Atlanta. Heather wasn’t so sure of her future. She leaned more toward an M.R.S. In the end, she decided on Psychology.

Georgia Tech, located in metropolitan Atlanta, was a grind, one of the toughest schools in the nation. The beautiful, old campus was jam-packed on six city blocks, surrounded by typical urban squalor. But UGA, with its sprawling campus in the college town of Athens, was much more typical of the old South. Huge magnolias adorned the greenery with stunning blooms. The entire school seemed covered in flowers year round, with dogwoods in the spring, begonias in summer and pansies in winter. Athens was well known as the home of numerous rock bands, famous for its concerts and active nightlife. Heather got to know some of the local groups and occasionally sang on weekend gigs. Christina and Jessica often ventured there after a hard week of classes to blow off steam.

Their first two years in college were a blur. It was a time for celebrating new freedoms, partying and learning to live away from home. There were plenty of guys knocking on their doors: fraternity men, jocks, engineering nerds, rock singers and just plain “good ole boys.”

Chapter Seven

In her second year at Georgia Tech, Christina felt quite lucky to be approached by a graduate student, Tom Fields, to work in the Aerospace Engineering Lab. She spent every afternoon there and loved the research. One of her professors, Dr. Milo Hartford, received a $2 million grant from NASA to investigate new technologies in spacecraft docking. As far as NASA had come in precision guidance, no one had solved the problem of docking two space vehicles without the need for a pilot. The process of coupling two ships in space remained a strictly manual operation.

During her freshman year, Christina had worked with a friend in the electrical engineering department on laser-guided weapons and laser range-finders for the military. As a result, she proposed to Dr. Hartford a novel approach to automated docking. She envisioned a hybrid technology that would incorporate scanning laser beams for target illumination, laser range finders to control the approach and digital video processing systems to guide the last few feet of closure to actual contact. Hartford loved the idea and funded her project. Christina called her invention DROID for “dead reckoning, optoelectronic, intelligent docking.”

By their third year in college, Christina and her two friends had successfully navigated the transition from flighty coeds to young women in the pursuit of more serious ambitions. Seeking her destiny, Christina decided to take on an even testier challenge. It was no secret she wanted a career in aviation and longed to achieve her father’s dream. If she was to become an astronaut, it was high time she learned to fly. The Aerospace program at Tech offered flight curriculum, where students could work on a pilot’s license at a discount rate and receive college credit. The Ramblin’ Wreck Flight School operated out of Peachtree-Dekalb Airport, usually referred to by its FAA symbol, PDK. She was dead set on becoming a pilot.

When Christina first met her flight instructor, John Furgeson, she was taken aback.
This guy’s really old,
she thought,
more like
ancient!
For some reason he reminded her of the Master Jedi Knight, Yoda, in
Star Wars
. She was at least a head taller than the old man. His back was permanently stooped, and he walked with a cane. Instead of flying airplanes, he looked more like he should be playing shuffleboard in a nursing home. A shriveled five-feet-two-inches, his face was a road map of wrinkles, and dark bags under his eyes testified to a long and stressful life. More than half his head was bald, and the little hair he had was white and scraggly. Laughing inside, Christina thought,
What a joke!
Hope the old guy lives long enough for me to get my license.

She was required to take a few hours of ground-school covering basic rules and regulations before getting into an airplane. With great anticipation, the day finally arrived for her first flight, and she was beside herself with joy.

“
Let’s start with some basic blocking and tackling,” Furgeson barked like a football coach. “There’s only one difference between flying an airplane and driving a car, or even riding a bike. You have to coordinate the movements of your hands and feet in all three. Flying is really quite easy, but it takes a little more coordination because it’s three dimensional.”

Christina sat down at a simulator to get a feel for the controls, and Furgeson went on, “Flying is no big deal if you just relax and get to know your airplane. The yoke or stick is like the steering wheel of your car, but it’s actually three controls in one. It operates your ailerons that roll your wings left and right and your elevator that points the nose up and down. Pull back and you go up, push forward and you go down. See how easy it is? The yoke is also like a second throttle; when you push forward, your airspeed increases, and when you pull back it decreases. You control your airspeed with both the throttle and yoke. This is an extremely important concept to master, because airspeed is everything in flying. If you have enough airspeed you can do almost anything: loops, barrel rolls, steep turns or buzz your buddy’s house. Too much airspeed and the wings come off, too little and you fall out of the sky.”