The Fifth Victory

By Lael R. Neill

Sam Swift and his partner, Jose Martin, run a fixed base operation at a small regional airport in central Texas. They specialize in the restoration of antique aircraft, and they own a P-51D Mustang and a Mitchell B-25 medium bomber, both from WWII.
When they contract to restore a German Messerschmitt BF-109 fighter of the same era, strange things begin to happen. At first it is only misplaced tools and small items, aircraft mysteriously moved, and the arrival of Messerschmitt parts they had not ordered.
Is it possible that having mortal enemies in the same hangar has roused the ghosts of their wartime pilots, one with a goal of making ace with his all-important fifth victory?

• Language: Unknown
• Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
• Release date: Dec 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9781509223930

Lael R. Neill

After a long and varied work life that began as an English teacher and ended as a computer support technician, Lael Neill, retired to a new career: becoming a full-time author. She began writing somewhere around age eight and has finally fulfilled this lifelong dream. A transplant from the Pacific Northwest, she lives on two wooded acres in rural Central Texas with deer, bunnies, armadillos, hawks, and a resident roadrunner for company. In between stints of writing, she decompresses with volunteer work, knitting, and music.

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The moon had looked down on thousands of battlefields, ancient and new, where armies clashed and sounds of conflict rang. Indifferent that yet another battle would be fought beneath its chill light, it ruled the sky, secure in the knowledge that it would always do so.

Out of the dark maw of a hangar, an aircraft taxied into the stark moonlight. It announced its presence boldly, light flashing from its mirror-bright wings and fuselage. It moved across the ramp and onto the taxiway beyond, engine and propeller belling a challenge. A quick run-up and a last-minute check sufficed at the end of the runway, and Old 47 seized the air and began flying. Her gear came up and she pulled into a max climb. She had a rendezvous to keep. Old 47 ate the altitude, her altimeter winding toward her destiny at Angels’ 10. She leveled out in the cold, still air, and met her enemy, a dark, sinister silhouette against the moon. The two fighters turned toward each other, making a slow, deliberate head-on pass. The insubstantial pilots snapped a salute, a last, gentlemanly gesture beyond which all scruples would be put aside.

The Fifth Victory

by

Lael R. Neill

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

The Fifth Victory

COPYRIGHT © 2018 by Lael R. Neill

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Contact Information: [e-mail]

Cover Art by RJMorris

The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

PO Box 708

Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

Publishing History

First Mainstream Fantasy Rose Edition, 2018

Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-2393-0

Published in the United States of America

Dedication

To the memory of a Mustang pilot:

Col. Virgal I. Sandy Sansing (USAF Ret.),

a true hero who fought in WWII, Korea, and Viet Nam

The August sun beat down unmercifully on the cement and tarmac of the old bomber training base. Sheer heat kept traffic to a minimum; the Unicom monitor that ran in the Martin Swift Corporation hangar had been silent all afternoon except when Sam Swift took off twenty minutes before. Now he played in the rough air, the coarse, rasping blat of the P-51’s short stacks and brutish propeller falling toward the sunbaked earth, an invisible, raucous snow.

Sam and his partner Jose, the Martin half of Martin Swift, had bought the aircraft two years ago, intending to write off the expense as advertising. They had a lot to write off. The P-51 Mustang, officially November X-Ray 2347, a tired old pylon racer, stayed just a step away from being a confirmed hangar queen only by virtue of unceasing work by two superb, devoted airframe and power