AMERICA ONE by T. I. Wade Read Free Book Online Page A

Germany, and his family followed him there. By now Jonesy was an expert in free military travel and within twenty-one days of moving into base accommodations, the recently-erected security cameras at Andrews recorded him enjoying his newly achieved freedom. His father was again warned and all he could say to an angry base commander, was that all his fourteen-year old son wanted, was to fly.
    Jonesy was caught three times in his fifteenth year, and six times in his sixteenth year. On his seventeenth birthday he was discovered again monitoring the controls of a Boeing Stratotanker over the Pacific. The flight was enroute to Hawaii from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina. He was dressed as the co-pilot of the long flight’s second flight crew. He even had even arranged to wear the sleeping pilot’s jacket.
    The first flight-crew’s pilot-in-command was rather shocked upon returning for his second shift, and noticing this rather young looking captain monitoring the cockpit while the pilot-in-command was fast asleep and snoring loudly next to him. The co-pilot was also found fast asleep in the small quarters behind the flight deck; nobody had awakened him.
    Jonesy had already forgotten how many times he had been caught actually flying aircraft. Again he was in real trouble, flying a USAF jet without a license, even a motor vehicle license, and for the umpteenth time his father, a newly-promoted colonel, was brought before a panel of senior officers.
    For two days they grilled the poor man, who hadn’t actually done anything wrong, about controlling his son. After pleading with the panel, Jonesy was to be automatically accepted into the next year’s group of Air Force recruits, if he stayed away from all U.S. military aircraft.
    Achieving what he had set out to do, Jonesy agreed, entered the United States Air Force at eighteen, and easily achieved active-pilot status pretty rapidly, helped by the extra hours of actual flying he had achieved before his eighteenth birthday. In his home-made flight logbook he already had logged over 80 hours of being in control of several different very large jet aircraft, including their most modern, a C-5A Galaxy for three hours over the Atlantic!
    A decade later in 1989, he became one of the youngest Air Force test pilots and his father, now retired, was extremely proud of his son. He also became an official test pilot at the lowest rank a pilot had ever been promoted into the elite group.
    Twice in his career he verbally fought with superior officers and spent time in a cell, with orders to think about showing respect to senior officers.
    One talent the Air Force couldn’t overlook was his flying ability. He was not only a natural at flying any type of aircraft, he somehow bonded with the aircraft around him and when he flew, the plane and pilot became one, so much so, that he often could foretell a problem to the mechanics and technicians before the actual problem reared its ugly head. Several colleagues stated under oath at the couple of court-martials for swearing at his superiors, that they believed he had saved several very expensive aircraft and crew by warning the mechanics and technician about a problem long before they ever found it. Most often, Jonesy was right.
    Jonesy lived in a different world when he flew, bonding with the aircraft and the flight crew; but on the ground, he rarely listened to orders, or often was still in flying mode when he walked past the odd general or president, often forgetting to salute.
    In 2005, he reached the pinnacle of his flight career as he had managed to stay out of trouble for several years; he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel and second-in-command of all Air Force test flights, often accepting only the most dangerous flight work.
    Unfortunately in 2007, a new commander of his unit arrived, a man who had rarely flown any aircraft and who was promoted to the position through political maneuvering, and who did not like