"That's me," Lowell answered as he straightened up from inspecting the left brake rotor on his 1994 Pitts S2-B. "Actually, Taylor Lowell is my dad. I'm Taylor Lowell, Junior." He wiped his right hand on a shop towel and extended it towards the stranger, who ignored the gesture.

"Mendez, FAA," the man said, unfolding his credentials. "Here for a ramp check. Is this plane registered either Experimental or Exhibition?" he asked abruptly.

"No, it's straight factory," Lowell said, taken aback. He had purchased the immaculate 260-horsepower acrobatic biplane seven months earlier for $104,500, with less than 300 hours total time on its Hobbs meter. The seller had ferried it from his airport in Houston to Lowell's local strip outside Phoenix. Since that time, Lowell had put 110 hours on the craft. Flying, particularly acrobatic flying, was the US West executive's one indulgence.

The FAA inspector stepped up onto the lower wing and peered into the cockpit. "What's this?" he asked, pointing at the seat.

"That's a trickle charger I've got hooked to the battery. To keep the Gel Cell at full charge, if I miss a couple weekends."

"Got an STC for it?" the FAA man demanded, referring to the Supplemental Type Certificate that the FAA required before any modifications to a factory airplane could be legally performed.

"No, I take it out before I go flying. I've got it hooked up for right now, 'cause I haven't been up in two weeks." Then, because he was eager to go flying and the FAA man's ramp check was cutting into his air time, Taylor Lowell made a huge mistake. "I mean, Jesus, it's just a little trickle charger." His tone of voice implied tolerant amusement.

"You have the unit bolted to the battery terminals, which-"

"That's so it can't spark, like spring clips can do," Lowell broke in quickly.

"It also makes it a permanent installation," Mendez said smoothly.

"Christ, I'm not going to go flying with it still hooked up. Jesus, talk about the Princess and the Pea," Lowell said with a laugh as he imagined having to fly his airplane while sitting on a metal box the size of half a loaf of bread.

"It's still a permanent installation," Mendez said with a smile as he reached into the cockpit and withdrew the small piece of FAA cardboard from its clear plastic pouch. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to revoke your airworthiness certificate. For now," he added as he stepped off the wing.

"What?"

"We'll need some time to check for other airworthiness violations, and more people. We'll need to go over this aircraft carefully, Mr. Lowell." The Pitts pilot's jaw dropped, and his face turned bright red. "You can't ground my-"

"And I'm going to recommend that you be given an up-to-date medical evaluation. Your appearance indicates that your blood pressure may be over FAA limits. I also want to see the results of a neurological exam. I'll tell the tower your pilot status is no longer current." With that, Inspector Mendez turned on his heel and walked away.

Taylor Lowell, Junior, had over two thousand flight hours in a dozen different types of private aircraft. He had inherited his passion from his father, who had first taken him flying shortly after the boy had learned to walk. Taylor Lowell, Senior, was an ex-Navy pilot who had had to quit flying in his late sixties when his eyesight began to go. He had never forgotten the instructor who had first instilled in him the combination of respect, awe, and delight for what an airplane could be made to do.

The old man always smiled when he talked about his flight school days in 1944. His son's favorite stories were the ones his father told about the instructor who liked to climb out on the lower wing of the opencockpit trainers, where he could talk right in the student's ear and use his one free hand to punctuate his lessons.

As Taylor Lowell, Junior, stood on the flight line, hyperventilating and willing his heart rate to subside, he cursed himself for speaking his mind to a government agent who held such power over his future. "I'm a goddamned fool," he said under his breath. Then he thought of what his father's reaction would be, and he closed his eyes. "Dad doesn't need to know."

Irwin Mann sipped his coffee and turned to the obituary section of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch before looking at the rest of the paper. It was a practice he'd observed for many years. Face death and accept it, then move on. Mann scanned the listings, but saw no one's name he recognized. Satisfied, he closed the paper and started in on the front page. A news item near the bottom caught his eye.

Sol Schenker, Govt. Holocaust Historian and Advisor, Dies

President Lauds 'Unyielding Commitment', Seeks Successor Compiled From News Services WASHINGTON, D.C. - Sol Schenker, whose calm but relentless dedication to recording the facts of the Holocaust, died Sunday. He was 92.

Mr. Schenker, who underwent cancer surgery in 1993, died at Cedars Sinai Hospital, his grandson Alvin Rosenfeld said. He said Mr. Schenker had had a stroke on Thursday. When doctors could detect no remaining brain function, family members requested that Schenker be removed from life-support systems, Rosenfeld said.

At the time of his death, Schenker was the spokesman for the Washington-based Center for Holocaust Studies, and served as the primary link between the Center and the White House. "It will be very difficult to replace Sol Schenker," the President said in a news conference last night. "He filled a vital role. We will need the same serious, unyielding commitment to history See SCHENKER, Page 3 Irwin Mann folded the page back and finished the article. The President said he needed someone to fill the void left by Schenker's death. For a brief moment, Mann wished that he could apply for the position. Then he laughed at himself.

"Old man, they want a scholar to make the people remember the tragedy," he said aloud. "Not an old fighter to shame them with talk of what might have been."

Irwin Mann went on to the other articles in the newspaper, but his mind would not focus on them.

June 2 "We just picked this up this morning, sir. It looks like everything's on schedule," the ATF agent said as he hit the PLAY button on the tape recorder.

"Hello."

"You got all your ammo loaded?" came the voice that all the men in the room knew was Allen Kane's.

"As a matter of fact, I do. I actually got done a little ahead of schedule. You still coming by on the fifth to pick me up?" Henry Bowman asked.

"Yeah. Probably blow out of here about five in the morning, should wheel into your place about noon. Then we'll load up all your shit and hit the road. That still okay?"

"Yeah. Perfect."

"Good. Hey, I wish you were here right now-I just got the breech ring for my 105. Damn thing took nine months to clear. They're a bitch for one guy to put together."

"Hell, just hook the 105 to the back of the deuce-and-a-half, throw the breech ring in the back, we'll put it together here at my place, and we can take it with us. Shoot it out over Mormon Gulch." There was a long pause, as Henry Bowman realized his friend was actually considering the idea.

"Allen, I was just kidding! Jesus, it's eighteen hundred miles each way! We lunch a bearing in that thing and we're fucked big-time."

"Yeah, I know..." his friend said wistfully. It was obvious from his tone of voice that he wanted to reassemble and test the howitzer as soon as possible.

"Look," Henry said, I'll make you a deal. Since you're coming here to pick up me and all my stuff on the way out, and probably dropping it off by yourself on the way back, here's what I'll do: Soon as you get back to your place next month, I'll whip on over for a couple days and we'll get that thing up and running. Take it out to the reservoir, or the old strip mines, and give it a workout. That way you won't be tempted to try putting it together tonight, drop it on your foot, and ruin the trip for both of us. And it'll give you something to look forward to when you're driving back by yourself. That fair?"

"Yeah-that's a deal."

"Okay. I'll look for you in three days, then, around lunchtime."

"Make sure you got plenty of ammo for your wheelguns. Phil says the jacks are so thick there's a dead one every ten feet on all the roads around Mackey."

"Well, for the .44s, I've got twelve thousand Hemsted hollowpoints, hundred-sixty-five grain with the cavity that goes almost to the base. Goes 1850 out of my Smiths and stays in three inches at 100. New Winchester brass with the old fast lot of H110."

"You still got some of that?"

"Bought sixteen hundred pounds of it from Jurras when he went bust in '73. Got two kegs left." "Wish we could still get powder at a buck a pound."

"That's the truth. Hey, I got to run. Anything else?"

"Nah, just making sure you were all set."

"Yeah, I'm in good shape. See you in a few days."

"Bye." There was the sound of two receivers being hung up, and the agent hit the STOP button on the tape player. He looked up and grinned at his supervisor.

"When Mister Kane gets home," he said with a laugh, "he's going to have quite a little surprise waiting for him, isn't he, sir?" The senior man shook his head in reply.

*'He'll be national news long before he gets back to Indiana.'

Henry Bowman set the alarm to his house and walked out to the detached six-car garage. He carried a nylon bag in his left hand and a thin plastic case in his right. The bag contained some papers, his shaving kit, a pair of running shoes, clean socks and underwear, and his cellular phone and battery charger. The plastic case housed his laptop computer, portable printer, and other related accessories.

Henry put down his computer case, unbolted the walk-in door to the garage with his key, reached in, and pressed the leftmost of the three buttons that operated the overhead doors. He closed and bolted the walk-in door and walked to the far end of the garage, where he kept his motorcycles.

The BMW was the least powerful of the six bikes Henry owned, but it was the only one he had that was truly an all-purpose machine. While the other five were made purely for on-pavement use, the 1989 GS1000 was designed from the start to be a competent mount on asphalt, dirt, gravel, sand, and (in a pinch), snow. It had over eight inches of suspension travel on each end, knobby tires, and was lighter than pinch), snow. It had over eight inches of suspension travel on each end, knobby tires, and was lighter than mile range, integrated bags and luggage rack, and a complete set of maintenance tools. It was one of the few factory-built motorcycles designed to carry a rider and a quantity of gear comfortably over substantial distances, regardless of whether the route was pavement, unimproved terrain, or both. Several similar bikes, in modified form, had competed successfully in the Paris-Dakar rally over the years.

Henry had acquired the BMW in a trade for a 1921 Thompson with mismatched serial numbers three weeks before, and he had put less than 100 miles on it. The bike's former owner would not receive federal approval to take possession of his gun for three to twelve months, depending on the whim of the feds, but he had done business with Henry Bowman before, and he knew that Henry wanted the BMW for his Idaho trip. He had agreed to let Henry take immediate possession, and Henry had thrown in a spare 50-round drum and five 30-round stick mags for good measure.

Be good to put some miles on this thing and shake it out a little before I rely on it as an emergency vehicle Henry thought as he slid his laptop case into the BMW's right hand luggage bag. The computer took up about half the volume of the compartment, so Henry also threw in six nylon tie-down straps for securing the bike in Allen Kane's 2 1/2-ton truck. The nylon bag with his other things in it fit easily into the left side compartment. A folded rainsuit was already stored under a cargo net on the bike's luggage rack.

Henry Bowman put on his jacket, helmet, and gloves, wheeled the bike out of the garage, set the garage alarm, and pushed the button which lowered the overhead door. He threw his right leg over the tall saddle, flicked up the sidestand, turned on the fuel, set the choke, turned the key in the ignition, pulled in the clutch lever, and hit the starter button with his right thumb. The one-liter opposed twin caught on the second revolution and settled into a fast idle. Henry fumbled his sunglasses out of his shirt pocket with gloved fingers and slid them onto his face, then lowered the visor. He snicked the shift lever into First, o pened the throttle, and eased the clutch out until it caught.

As Henry rode towards the gate at the end of his property, he glanced at his fuel gauge and remembered that he had topped off the tank the last time he had ridden the GS. Wonder if I can make it all the way without a fuel stop Henry said to himself as he eased the choke off, opened the throttle, then tested the brakes. Be dark by the time I get there. I hope Allen hasn't given himself a hernia already.

"What have you got for me, Ben?"

"We've received something I thought you should know about, Mr. President. A tetter from a man in Missouri who is interested in filling Sol's position at the Center." '

"What are his qualifications?"

"He says up front that he has no teaching experience and done no research in the last twenty years." "Death camp survivor?"

"Actually, no. Although from what he was able to learn after the war, it would appear that his entire family died at Treblinka and Auschwitz." The Assistant Director of the Center for Holocaust Studies gave a small smile before dropping the other shoe.

"What I thought you might find interesting, sir, is that Mr. Irwin Mann, if he is to be believed, is a survivor not of the death camps, but of the Warsaw ghetto uprising."

"The Warsaw Uprising? I thought there were no survivors." The Assistant Director shook his head.