Ancient Shores Read Online Free Page A

artist than a businessman. His art was incorporated with power and flight as well as with cockpit design and battle emblems. Sundown’s warbirds were not intended to rust on someone’s lawn. (He didn’t even like museums very much, but at least there people could admire the old aircraft for what they had been.)
    Well, what the hell. Maybe he would take a beating, but for tonight he was back at the controls of the Lightning.
    He’d installed modern navigational systems, of course, and he rode his directional beam in and lined up with the runway. At the three-mile mark the aircraft was at five hundred feet. He reduced throttle and dropped flaps. Indicator lamps blinked on to signal that his wheels were down. The field lights rose toward him. Gently he pushed the yoke forward. Off to his left, ground traffic was moving along Plains Avenue. Just over the tarmac he cut throttle and pulled the nose up. The plane drifted in, and his wheels touched.
    Sundown Aviation had its own hangar, which also housed its business offices. He brought the P—38 around, opened the doors with his remote, and rolled inside. There were a couple of other aircraft here that the company was currently working on: a North American P—51 Mustang, which was headed for the Smithsonian, and a Republic P—47 Thunderbolt. The Thunderbolt was owned by an Arizona TV executive.
    He shut the Lightning down and climbed out, grinning, picturing how his mechanic would react in the morning when he walked in and saw that the Lightning was back. Moments later he was in his office. Stell had left the coffee machine on. He poured a cup and eased himself down behind his desk.
    There were a couple of calls on the machine. One was from a parts supplier; the other was from Ginny Lasker.
    “Max,” her recorded voice said, “please call when you can.”
    Her voice had a tightness to it. He could almost think she sounded frightened. He picked up the phonebut put it down when he heard the outer door open.
    Ceil Braddock smiled at him from the doorway. “Hi, Max.” She looked at him curiously. “What happened? Deal fall through?”
    Ceil was the owner and sole pilot of Thor Air Cargo, which was also based at Chellis. She had riveting blue eyes, lush brown hair, a wistful smile, and a TWA navigator in St. Paul. Max had tried his luck, but she’d kept him at arm’s length. They were able to joke about it occasionally. “You don’t love me,” she told him, “you love Betsy.” Betsy was a C-47 that Sundown had sold her three years earlier. It had become Thor’s flagship, hauling freight around the United States and Canada. There were two other planes in the fleet now, and she was negotiating for a fourth.
    Ceil flew Betsy occasionally at air shows, and she and Max had even used it to do a joint good deed. On this past New Year’s Day a blizzard had buried the Fargo area. There had been more emergencies than there were medevac teams, and a boy who’d taken part of his hand off with an electric saw was in desperate shape on a remote farm. They had attached the skis and flown the C—47 to Pelican Rapids. They’d landed east of the town on a frozen lake, picked up the boy, and brought him back to Fargo, where doctors reattached the hand.
    Max smiled. “She was too good for him,” he said.
    She looked pleased. Max knew that his tendency to be protective of the planes was one of the features she most liked in him. “What happened?”
    “I didn’t like him much.”
    She picked up a cup and filled it. “We’re talking a lot of money here. There must have been more to it than that.”
    “That’s it,” he said. “Listen, there are plenty of people out there who would kill to own that plane. I don’t have to take the first offer.”
    “I doubt many of them will have Kerr’s money to throw around.”
    There were times when Max almost thought he had a chance with her. He’d stopped beating himself up over her a year ago. “Maybe not.” He shrugged. “Probably