Amerika Read Free

between trying to pick up the pieces of my dream.
    It sure as hell wasn’t easy. Still isn’t.
    But that’s not the story I’m telling now, with O and me in mid-air, trying to make a living in a new world not of our choosing – or any American’s, for that matter.
    Ever since the Neutrality Act, the Nazis had restricted civilian flights along the Atlantic coastline - only one of their many conditions. They had officials on the ground to enforce them, too. Not soldiers, of course. Helmets and hobnail boots would not have gone down well with the American public.
    No, sir, these swastika-wearing bastards knew how to do things right by using ‘Compliance Officers;’ smooth-talking, diplomatic types in civilian clothes who just ‘happened’ to be stationed at key industrial sites across the United States to make sure our factories were turning out cars not tanks; washing machines not fighter airplanes. Nothing to aid the global war effort. No arms. No weapons. Just stuff and more stuff.
    They even shipped over their own military aircraft to make sure we toed the line in the restricted airspace, using squadrons of top-of-the-line Messerschmitt Me-109’s, the same plane that had helped win the Battle of Britain in 1940. But for their enforcement role in America, they painted the planes white. And the menacing, black iron crosses on their wings? A friendly green, instead, to make everything seem nice and innocent and diplomatic-like. But make no mistake, the planes carried twenty millimeter cannons and their pilots were more than happy to shoot you down if you flew into ‘temporarily restricted airspace.’
    Temporary, my ass.
    Berlin calmly insisted these restrictions were ‘dictated by current events and not to be considered permanent.’ which was a nice way of saying, ‘until you get your country up and running again, we’re going to make damn sure you don’t do anything stupid, like start a war. Because if you do we will hammer you flat the same way we’re hammering Russia flat.’
    And they were doing that in spades. At last report, Stalin was still alive and well, but like D.C. and New York, the city of Moscow was nothing more than a smoking nuclear crater. What was left of the Soviet government had retreated east behind the Ural Mountains, claiming they were merely re-grouping. But from what radio reports were saying - propaganda or not - Hitler was about to pull off what Napoleon had only dreamed about and God help the Soviet peasants who stood in the way of the SS Troopers goose-stepping eastward, where sooner or later they would shake hands with Imperial Japan.
    Final score? Fascists: 1 -- World: 0.
    In the middle of all this crap, here’s what caught my attention. For some odd reason, Pan American Airlines was still flying airplanes, which surprised many people, but not me. I figured its president Juan Trippe had cut some kind of secret deal with the Germans that allowed his big silver birds to keep making money for his airline. That’s how Trippe was.
    ‘War? What war? Let’s get down to business, boys.’
    By contrast, American Airlines and United Airlines had had their wings clipped on all their coastal operations. Me? I had my wings taken away literally. But don’t blame Pan Am. They prefer sober pilots in the cockpit and I had turned up drunk. Twice, actually. If I had been Trippe, I’d have pulled my wings too. But in my case, I handed them over before they lowered the boom. Regardless of what had happened to me to create this situation, no matter how justifiable my behavior, company rules were company rules and I had broken them.
    On purpose.
    ‘New York’s coming up to starboard,’ I shouted back to Orlando.
    ‘Keep clear of it, you hear? It’s still glowing.’
    ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s nothing there now but a big hole in the ground.’
    ‘Better safe than sorry.’
    He had a point.  It had cost me five hundred dollars to bribe Air Compliance Control