Country Eastern

By Don L Clark

A missing groom causes a budding Country Western singer to team up with an unlikely duo and head for Thailand to try and find out what happened to the fiance who had once rescued her from a plane crash. What she learns about his past amazes and scares her, but Jes Darlin pushes on and becomes a big hit in the most crowded refugee camps in the world. Danger, mayhem and tawdry practices await her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Don L Clark
• Release date: Oct 31, 2010
• ISBN: 9781458060075

Don L Clark

Mr. Clark is a retired USAF colonel and college professor/administrator. During his USAF career he primarily worked in Intelligence and also served as a military attache in the USSR and on the Joint Staff where he provided military imput into strategic international negotiations such as SALT. MBFR, Laws of the Sea, etc. He has a third degree black belt in Juo and taught courses at Montana State University in International Affairs (how to get a date in Paris).For sseveral years he wrote weekly newspaper columns about international affairs entitled "Hither and Yon" and excerpts from it were occasionally exceprted on Voice of America.Mr. Clark's novels are all action/adventure types in several settings ranging from Texas rangers who team up with a Chinese female assassin back in the late 1800's (Yala) to what UN Peace making force might be like by the year 2030 (Sunday in Sudan.) All of his novels are intended for adults and all include some sexual implications as well as proffer what he thinks would be better ways for the USA to deal with the problems it is facing globally and internally today.His novel Yala was nominated for (but did not win) an international Frankfurt Award for e-booksBesides writing he currently engages as a CASA volunteer. His one foray as an author into non-fiction is "A Fix for America" in which he proffers moderate soultions for all of the major issues dividing this nation.

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COUNTRY EASTERN

Don L. Clark

Published by Don L Clark at Smashwords.com

Copyright © 2010 Don L Clark

Chapter One

The Crash

Hi, I'm Cam Dixon; had a reserved flight to the Big Apple.

Yeah, Cam, been waiting for you. I'm Jack Zysniak—the one you talked to. I'll be your pilot, and I'm ready to go whenever you are.

Great, I just need a pay phone with a modem connector, and I'll be ready to take off. Shouldn't take more than ten minutes.

There's one upstairs, top of the escalator turn left and there's a bank of phones on the right. Two or three of them are modem accessible.

Great, I'll be right back.

Eh, there's a young lady here who'd like a favor of you. She needs a charter in order to get to Chicago tonight, but you've booked our last plane. If you're the only passenger, she wanted to know if she could hitch a ride—said she'd the cover the entire cost if you'll let us drop her off.

Hmm, I don't know. How late will that get us into New York?

Add an hour and a half, two at the most. She's pretty desperate. Just went to the rest room—should be right back.

Cam looked at his watch and calculated. He had an early appointment tomorrow morning for an interview he'd been trying to line up for months, but well, what the hell, he could get some sleep on the flight. What's she look like?

Zysniak smiled. If that's your criteria you'll say yes; she's a looker.

Cam smiled. All right, tell her OK, and that all she has to pay for is the additional costs. I'll be right back. He took off for the escalator while Jack chuckled. Looks like this'll be a fun trip, the pilot mused. He seems like a nice guy, and let's face it; the cowgirl's a real charmer.

When Cameron Dixon returned to the charter desk a man dressed in blue coveralls led him out to the airplane. It was a bright and shiny looking bird, a four seat, twin engine aircraft Cam recognized immediately as a new Cessna model. Zysniak was in the pilot's seat and greeted Cam. Wanna sit up here with me or back there by the lady? The sly smile on the flyer's face suggested he already knew the answer. Meet JD Simms. Zysniak's body rolled around to his right and looked into the back seat as much as his girth would allow.

Cam immediately agreed that Zysniak had been correct. The first thing he noticed about the lady was her legs. Even covered in faded jeans they seemed to run on forever and then some. The second thing he noticed was that she was sporting a wide-brimmed, gleaming new, white cowboy hat. Running out the back of that six and a half gallon or so chapeau, he couldn't help but notice, was a stream of long, sleek, black hair which tumbled all the way down to the middle of her back. Her face was long, attractive and painted with a pleasant smile.

I'll settle in the back if that's OK with you, Miss....

Sure, pleased to meet ya and thanks. You're a life saver. I really need to make this gig. A long fingered and rather large hand was extended towards Cam.

Cam took it in his right palm and felt snug all over. The hand was so warm it surprised him. The old expression warm hands—cold heart flashed across his mind. Cam Dixon, glad I can be of help. Her grip was also surprisingly strong.

Excuse the hat and attire, it's my costume. I'm supposed to go on at midnight, and not sure I'll have time to change.

Well, I must say you look great. You're a performer?

Yep, country-western singer, she laughed, as if that isn't obvious.

He liked the lilt in her voice, but then guessed that was natural for a singer. Cam wasn't into country, before it was popular or since. He was a music snob, preferring jazz and classical to any form of modern music. But he did have a good ear and was convinced that if this gal's singing voice was anything like her speaking one, she could bang out some smooth tones.

The airplane took off quickly, and shortly thereafter Zysniak turned his head to tell his passengers he was leveling off. He suggested, however, they keep their seat belts on as some turbulence had been reported at their altitude not too far ahead. He had to almost shout for them to hear him over the noise of the dual engines. The thought zipped through Cam's mind that the pilot was stuffed into his seat. If ever a man needed to cut back on calorie intake, he thought, this guy's a top candidate.

Both Cam and JD reclined their seats and settled back in them. As the woman stretched out those tree-length legs, her seatmate noticed a pair of cute, bright red cowgirl boots that encased what looked like pretty long feet as well. Her jeans fit her ample legs quite snugly, almost as if painted on. She was wearing a white cowgirl shirt with red trim around the collar, and what Cam thought of as a John Wayne style double row of red buttons that overlapped her bosoms.

JD was also sneaking a few looks of her own over at her benefactor. She decided Cam Dixon was a nice looking guy. Very solidly built--an athlete's appearance, she was familiar with those. His hair was trimmed short, not a Marine cut, but medium short. He was dressed casually in a sport shirt and khaki trousers. The shirt was dark blue denim and had one of those priest-like collars that buttoned off to one side. He looked to her as if he stood a tad over six feet tall. She always noticed a man's height since her own hovered just under five-foot-eleven.

What do you do for a living, Cam? The cowgirl asked, leaning in his direction and speaking quite loudly into his right ear.

I'm a sports reporter. He shouted back. Was covering the golf tournament down here and now have to hustle up to New York to catch the Open—tennis.

Oh, JD responded. She'd assumed he meant another golf match, or whatever they were called. Like a good country Texas girl she'd been taught the only sport that really mattered was football. Although one might make an exception for baseball or basketball, if played aggressively and with lots of body contact. Actually, JD herself found most sporting events boring—except for rodeo.

Cam opened his laptop and started doing some research. He wanted to make small talk with this attractive gal. He was definitely interested in females and currently foot loose and fancy free, but the loud engine noises put a damper on the getting-to-know-you game. He pulled up a file entitled Magy, and began to read. It included a very enticing picture of tennis' most attractive player, Magdalena San Martino.

Cam had wanted to interview this enigmatic player ever since he'd first watched her play on TV, but it had taken months to arrange a formal interview with her. He wanted to be the first reporter to penetrate the enigma of this beguiling player so he'd loaded his computer with almost every previous interview of the Argentine he'd been able to find, on the net or otherwise. He was even reading articles from Spanish papers and magazines, both in South America and Europe.

JD pulled some music sheets out of a guitar case and was mulling over the order she was going to follow in her first set tonight when her eyes caught the flickering picture of the provocative female tennis star on her seatmate's lap. She leaned over again. Pretty lady; who is she?

Magy San Martino, my interview subject for tomorrow morning.

Never heard of her, but if that's what she looks like I might enjoy watching her play.

Don't follow tennis, eh?

Never watched or played. I think we have some courts in our cow town, but not sure I ever saw anyone on them. Oh yeah, recently I did see some roller bladers out there.

Cam laughed. Where is this town where no one tries to imitate Andre Agassi? You can't be from Dallas?

No way, JD laughed with gusto. No Simms would ever live in a place that big. I went to school in Pine Spring. It's a tiny little town almost on the New Mexico border. We've got a ran ….

JD's sentence was interrupted in mid-word by a noise up front. It was Zysniak; he'd stiffened and let out a sort of muffled groan. His head turned towards the passengers, his eyes bulged, and then he straightened out again as if an electric current had surged through his body. Mini-seconds later he pitched forward, his head banging against the aircraft's controls.

JD and Cam were both momentarily frozen. They were not sure what was going on, what it might mean, or if there was anything they could do about it. But when the pilot continued to lie there limply, they both realized at about the same instant that they just might be in serious trouble."

I think he's had a heart attack or something, JD muttered, trying to sound calmer than she felt.

I'm afraid you're right. Cam replied. He was trying to shut down his computer and unhitch his seat belt simultaneously. Just as he succeeded in releasing the seat belt, his computer tumbled to the floor. Damn! He yelped.

JD tried to lean forward and pick it up, but as she did so the airplane seemed to mimic her motion. Its nose pitched forward, and they were both rammed back against their seat backs.

Ohmigod! The female yelled reflexively.

With a gigantic effort Cam managed to pry himself from his seat back and lean forward. He stretched out, grabbed Zysniak by the hair and pulled him back off the controls. The man's body was a bit entangled with the steering wheel, and therefore it came back part of the way with him. As a result, the plane slowly pulled out of its dive, but only momentarily. The quick changes of direction had destabilized the airflow over the aircraft's wings, and it began rocking left to right, as the wings sought some sense of equilibrium.

JD and Cam were now sort of shouting messages back and forth. Neither was sure that what they said made sense or was understood by the other. Cam was trying to get out of his seat, and either slip into the open copilot's seat or pull the pilot out of his and occupy it. All of those things were on his mind, but he wasn't making a lot of progress towards any of them when the plane dipped into a second dive, this time one that slowly became steeper and steeper.

The two passengers accidentally interfered with one another as each tried to get to the controls or up into that empty free seat. After a few frantic bumps, JD settled back into her seat, wide-eyed, in hopes of allowing Cam more movement room. Somehow, he forced himself up into the copilot's seat, got hold of the yoke and began trying to pull it back.

By then they both realized, horrifyingly, that they were not very high off the ground. Indeed, it sounded as if treetops or something like that were scratching away at the bottom of the fuselage. Cam applied all his considerable strength into a tug and suddenly the stick and aircraft responded. The steering mechanism came back, the nose of the plane shot up, and then the wings began to quiver as the aircraft went into a stall; it's engine still grinding away at cruise speed.

Cam was not a pilot, but he'd learned a little of the art of flying while engaged in parachute training for Special Operations in the Army. A frequently overheard pilot commentary about crashes, fuel and fire came rushing back into his memory bank. He grabbed at the engine control and jerked it back, cutting off all power. Just as he did so, the now almost vertical aircraft smashed into and sheared the top off a tree. Wrack! Swap! Eeeeeeerasssssshhhh!

The light aircraft spun about four hundred and fifty degrees on its vertical axis, both wings broke off about midway, and then it lost momentum and dropped to the ground on its tail, like a sledgehammer sinking through water. What used to be a sleek aerodynamic design became little more than a falling mass of metal. Thus. with its nose again starting to dip, the plunging coffin bounced along the ground smashing through a forest of smaller trees, an opening, and then up against a huge rock, over which it sort of bounced and then came to a grinding stop amidst a clump of trees.

Throughout this deafening, splintering crash there'd been lots of competing noises, but now, suddenly, it was very quiet—deadly so.

Chapter Two

Survival?

Cam awakened, unsure of how long he'd been unconscious. Indeed, just before he'd checked out, he remembered thinking that this was it, his last conscious thoughts, and oddly they had been about disappointment: about missing out on that interview with la Bella Magdalena.

But here he was awake again and surprisingly fit. Some piece of the aircraft, he slowly realized, had whacked him on the head, and his forehead was still bleeding a bit, but other than that, he was amazed to discover, everything seemed to be functioning. Neither an arm nor a leg was broken, and although his head ached, he seemed to be able to see rather clearly. Heck, he thought, it didn't hurt to move as much as it had after some jungle missions he'd completed.

Suddenly, he noticed there was an extra leg in his view. JD's left limb was resting across his tummy. He examined her. She was unconscious and from all appearances had been clobbered more harshly than he had. Her face was really bloody and the leg resting on him should not have been. It was all twisted and surely broken. He sniffed the air to see if he could smell smoke. None! That's good, he thought, but he did smell aircraft fuel and that was not. The slightest spark, he realized, might set it off.

Well, one good thing, he thought. They should be looking for us pretty quickly. We were flying over a heavily populated route. But then when he looked out through several rips in the fuselage, it was obvious they had somehow found a heavily wooded area in which to smack down. Almost on cruise control, Cam found himself checking JD for a pulse and feeling all over her body for signs of more fractures or wounds.

Her pulse was not that bad. He'd excelled in Special Forces training so knew quite a bit about basic first aid. First things first, he decided. We need to put some space between us and this wreckage before it catches fire. He kicked his way out of the aircraft after finding the passenger door jammed shut. Then he carried JD out, cradling her carefully in his arms and trying to give that twisted leg a little extra support. He didn't put her down until he was more than thirty-five yards away from the crash site. There, he nestled her down into some tall grass and weeds. Then he went back to check out Zysniak.

Cam's expectations were met. I hope he died from that stroke, heart attack or whatever it was, he muttered to no one in particular. He said it because there was a huge piece of aircraft metal now lodged in the man's chest. Zysniak was cold with no sign of a pulse. His face was a mess. Cam had seen several dead men in his life, but he hadn't gotten used to it. Damn!

JD Simms reentered the world of the living as Cam tucked a blanket around her body. He'd already set and splinted her leg with tree branches and medicated most of her cuts and bruises with a disinfectant cream he'd found in the aircraft's survival kit. Cam had also retrieved some candy and high energy bars, a hatchet, a flair gun and four flares, four parachutes, and a half dozen blankets from the wreckage. But his adrenaline was beginning to peter out, and he was starting to feel drained and exhausted. A glance at his watch, just as JD stirred, reminded Cam that she'd missed that gig in Chi-Town. Ruefully, he also realized, he was very unlikely to keep that long-awaited appointment with his tennis idol.

Ohhhh, JD moaned, her hand moving instinctively toward a gash on her forehead. She touched it, and felt an increase in pain which was then overwhelmed by the one she suddenly noticed in her clobbered leg.

You're a little banged up, Cowgirl. Cam tried to reassure her. But not nearly as bad off as Zysniak.

He's dead, isn't he? JD asked the question even before she really realized where she was and what had happened.

"Yep, I think he died before we crashed. I also think you're gonna be fine. Only serious injury I can find is that busted leg." Cam didn't mention his concerns about concussions—for both of them.

Then, I've still got my voice. She smiled, and Cam was impressed. It was a great smile, very enticing, even with the blood and dirt remnants all over her face. JD looked over at the crash site and shook her head. That's quite a mess. You walked out of that?

Well, more a limp than a walk, but yeah. We were both pretty lucky. To look at that mess is to figure we're dead.

Hey, did you find my geetar?

Oopps, sorry. I think I did see it, but I was just trying to recover things that would keep us alive.

"I'd sure hate to lose that box of mine. It's been in the family a long time. It is my life. Ouch! Man, do you hurt like I do? I mean like almost everywhere?

"Surprisingly, not so much. I think you got it worse than I did, although I can't figure out why. If you don't mind just laying here alone, I'll go check on that geetar of yours. he tried to match her cute Texas twang but failed completely. Maybe if I can find it again you can play something for us to help pass the night."

You think they're looking for us yet?

Yeah, I'm positive they are. We should have landed in Chicago some time ago now. I bet we'll hear some search planes flying over any minute. We were traveling a pretty busy air route. I'm all set to torch that plane if one comes close, but I haven't heard a single noise: car, truck, or airplane. We seem deep in the middle of some wooded area, but I'm sure by daylight they'll find us.

Cam found her guitar, but it had been broken into two pieces. He was impressed by the way she dealt with it. No tears, just a shrug followed by a slightly aggrieved expression before she moved on.

Cam busied himself with a purpose. He was determined to keep them both too busy and/or conversant to sleep for at least the next five hours or so. He feared that one of the blows to their respective heads might have banged them sufficiently enough to cause a serious concussion. Therefore, he felt it imperative they both stay awake and that he be on the lookout for signs of double images, dizziness, etc.

Sometime well after midnight, in desperation Cam turned to the idea of a sing-along to pass the rest of the night away. But it turned out to be a solo performance rather than a duet because the minute JD entered the game, Cam dropped out. He was literally stunned by the beguiling beauty of her voice. My god, Cam thought, she should be a star. That's the most bewitching, mesmerizing voice I've ever heard.

JD sang magnificently even without her family heirloom geetar. The fire reflected off her face as she sang, and she looked positively angelic. Her lovely black hair appeared damp, and the way she'd brushed it straight back made it look more like a guy's cut than a gal's. But on her it still looked most enticing.

Daylight came and went, and Cam's prognostication of early rescue was dashed. They were not found. Indeed, they neither heard nor saw any signs of civilization, much less signs of an organized search. They'd slept only briefly and only after the sun had come up.

At around ten the next a.m., after four or so hours of sleep, the surviving victims breakfasted on the energy bars and drank soft drinks from the two six packs Cam had found on the aircraft. One contained diet drinks, and the other the more classical stuff. They both drank the ones with the most sugar.

By noon, when they'd still seen no sign of a search mission, JD suggested Cam take off and see if he could find a path, a road, or somehow make his way out to civilization where he could send rescuers back for her. But he insisted that the smart thing to do was to remain at the crash site.

Trust, me, JD, that message has been drummed into me a million times by the so called experts.

I didn't know sports reporters were so accident prone.

Cam smiled, "Good point. that expertise comes more from my misspent youth. I was in the Army and specialized in jungle warfare. I swear I've had more survival training than English courses, and they always said stay with the accident—unless, of course, you're in enemy territory."

Are we? JD joked.

I wish I knew, Cam chuckled. "I rescued this map from the cockpit area. Zysniak had our route drawn on it with some time notations. The way I've figured it, we should've been pretty close to St. Louis when we went down. Logically, it would have been a reporting point for him, but if we're that close to a