“Boomer” Winfrey

Varmint County Correspondent

One would think, considering that Varmint County is in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by other nowhere places, that the troubles and tribulations of the world at large would barely reach our humble community.  

Even if one gets off at the county’s lone exit ramp from the interstate, it’s still nine miles of bad road to the county seat at Lower Primroy and another seven miles on even worse roads to places like Stinking Creek or McCracken’s Neck. Haig Hollow? Even the locals seldom venture up that way except to pick up a few jugs of the Haig clan’s specialty elixir.

We do have a small airport, however. Most of the traffic at the Varmint County Airport consists of half a dozen private one- and two-seater prop planes belonging to some of the big city folks with summer homes on Mud Lake. 

Last year the university hospital negotiated a contract to fly one of their LifeFlight helicopters out of the airport as well, so now Varmint County has a helipad and a full-time medivac crew running emergency flights for a six-county area, giving our airport a new aura of respectability.

Airport manager Arlie “Ace” Aslinger even started coming to work wearing something other than a dirty T-shirt and bib overalls. Rumor has it that Ace, who is the widowed younger brother of Archie Aslinger and uncle to County Mayor Gabby Aslinger, started dressing up a bit to impress one particular LifeFlight nurse, a 40-year-old divorcée from Burrville.

Still, Varmint County’s airport is not exactly a beehive of activity. In the busy summer months, Ace might see a couple of flights arrive or take off each day as various well-heeled lake dwellers fly to and from their weekend homes. In the winter, there may be no flights for days on end, with the exception of the helicopter lifting into the air two or three times a day to transport heart patients, car wreck victims or the occasional lumberjack who got reckless with a chainsaw.

So it was with great surprise that Ace received a call back in December from some assistant regional director of something with the U. S. Department of Homeland Security, informing him that the Varmint County Airport was being classified as a “high risk” terminal, qualifying it for a four million dollar airport security grant.

“What exactly are we at high risk of?” Ace asked the federal bureaucrat, “I’m the only certified flight instructor and I don’t give lessons because my Piper Cub hasn’t flown in six years, we don’t have any airplane rentals, passenger service or skydiving clubs.”

“I’m not really sure,” Assistant Director Clarence L. Pennycott replied. “The files are all marked ‘classified top secret’ but it has something to do with a place called Haig Hollow.”

“Best I can tell,” Ace later told his niece Gabby and Sheriff Hiram Potts, “The Air Force buys Elijah Haig’s spring run moonshine as a jet fuel additive and decided that his operation should be classified as a national security priority site. Since terrorists could come in here and highjack a plane to bomb his distillery, they want to secure our airport too.”

“Didn’t anyone tell Homeland Security that there is no distillery? The Haigs produce their spring run in around three dozen small whiskey stills scattered over 2,000 acres of forest land in Haig Hollow,” the Sheriff exclaimed.

“Well, I started to tell that government feller that very thing, then I got to thinkin’ that maybe they’d decide I knew too much about their top secret stuff and haul me in for interrogation,” Ace replied with a grin.

“Besides, they’re going to give us four million dollars worth of security improvements. Why look a gift hoss in the mouth?” he added. “With a little luck they’ll fix up my old Piper Cub so it flies again, in case of emergencies.”

“Be careful you don’t get what you wish for,” Gabby observed. “I’m not sure Varmint County is ready for the Department of Homeland Security and I’m pretty darned sure they’re not ready for us.”

Three weeks later Ace found out exactly what his niece had meant when Colonel V. L. “Hap” Sturgis arrived at the airport with a couple of FBI agents and three large trucks filled with various electronic surveillance gear.

“We’re going to set up a passenger checkpoint over there by the gate, install an electric security fence around the perimeter and erect a prefab steel bunker to house the television monitors for the security cameras and surveillance drone,” Colonel Sturgis explained. “We’ll have this facility locked down tight and secure when everything is up and running.”

“Exactly who are you going to use the security checkpoint to check?” Ace asked. “The only passengers who pass through the gate are the handful of private pilots who keep their planes here in the summer and their wives and kids. I’m usually the only person who enters the gate during the winter months.”

“What about all those people who enter that helicopter hangar? You’ve got dozens of potential terrorists walking through the gate every day,” one of the agents pointed out.

“That would be the pilots and nurses for the hospital’s emergency helicopter, the paramedics bringing patients through to load on the helicopter and the patients themselves – car wreck victims, gunshot victims and old folks suffering chest pains. You gonna make them all go through a security checkpoint when somebody’s bleedin’ to death?” Ace asked, his irritability beginning to show.

“In a word, yes. Everyone goes through the checkpoint. We’ll have a scanner set up and someone in the bunker reading the signals and if anything suspicious appears, we’ll need a full body search,” the agent replied.

Fortunately, the full body searches never came to pass, as the Department of Homeland Security ran into some minor problems right off the bat when they ran the first test flight of their security drone.

“We plan to use this drone to monitor ground movements around the sites where the jet fuel additive is produced,” Colonel Sturgis explained. “The cameras will pick up any suspicious activity and we can deploy a rapid response team within thirty minutes from the nearest air base.”

“Have you cleared this drone with Elijah Haig? It’s his distillery operation that you’re going to be snooping around and the Haigs don’t take kindly to snooping of any kind in Haig Hollow.”

“We haven’t discussed it with him yet. It’s none of his business what security measures we take as long as he’s under government contract.”

Ace grinned. He called Sheriff Potts and his cousin, fire chief Stanley “The Torch” Aslinger, and invited them out to the airport. “Thought you might be needed before the day’s over,” Ace told them as the three men grabbed some comfortable seats and leaned back to enjoy the show.

“As you can see, we have several high resolution cameras on this state-of-the-art drone,” the Colonel explained to the two FBI agents as television screens lit up, showing all of Haig Hollow from roughly 4,000 feet and a couple of close-up shots, one of which showed Granny Haig hanging laundry on a line and another of a truck loaded with young Haigs coming out of a wooded area.

“What are those men doing down there? It looks like they’re shooting at our drone!” one of the agents exclaimed. “That’s illegal!” 

“They do appear to be shooting at it but don’t worry. We’re far too high for them to hit anything. It’s beyond the range of those primitive rifles they’re carrying,” Colonel Sturgis replied with a confident sneer.

Suddenly one of the drone’s cameras zoomed in on Elijah Haig’s house and an adjacent barn. A part of the roof slid slowly off to one side as the camera captured the action, then a bright flash as a rocket lifted from the barn’s interior.

“SAM! Surface to air missile. Get that drone out of there!” the Colonel exclaimed to the technician manning the control panel. Suddenly the screens went dark.

Before the Colonel could mobilize a force to invade Haig Hollow, he received a call from the Pentagon. He said little, just listened for about ten minutes, then replied “Yes, sir, I understand.”

Five hours later, all of the surveillance equipment was loaded back on the trucks and the Colonel, the agents and the technicians were on their way out of town.

Ace, Stanley and the sheriff couldn’t resist–the three immediately drove over to Elijah Haig’s home to find out what had transpired.

“Simple. I called the feller who gave me them big rockets – I think he called himself the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs or something like that – and told him I had just used one of them to shoot down some dang-blasted unmanned spy plane snooping around my moonshine stills,” Elijah explained.

“We had an agreement when I signed that contract to sell my whiskey to the Air Force to mix with their jet fuel. I supply what you need, you don’t ask to see my stills or ask no questions.”

“Where on earth did you get a surface to air missile?” Ace asked. “It’s not even legal for a private person to have one, let alone fire it.”

“I don’t know about what’s legal, but when we started producing shine for the government, that chairman feller suggested we have something to defend our production sites from terrorists. I told him we Haigs could take care of ourselves if they’d give us something with a little more firepower than our shotguns and hawg rifles.

“So them rockets is what they sent us. Trucked ’em in here a few years back with a crew of fellers from the 101st Airborne, set ’em up and showed me how to operate them.”

“I guess this shuts the door on that Homeland Security grant,” Sheriff Potts commented as he drove Ace back to the airport.

“Yeah, can’t say I’m sorry. At least they left that steel building behind. I can always use it for a storage shed,” Ace replied. “My only regret is, they took away that X-ray scanning machine. I kind’a wanted to be around in case that cute nurse from Burrville set it off and had to submit to a full body search.”