Lieutenant Beau Myers was more than a little overwhelmed by the mission General Anderson had so suddenly thrust upon him. It was not just the obvious importance of the mission, but also the near complete lack of means to accomplish it. Thankfully, he had thought of his cousin Teddy just in time.

Teddy had taken just enough flying lessons to crop-dust his father’s various large corn, soybean, and tobacco fields. He loved flying, hunting deer, drinking whiskey and not much else. He and Beau had gotten in lots of trouble over the years, but nothing too serious.

When Beau pulled up to Teddy’s house with the two soldiers, Teddy was thrilled at the idea of flying, and they immediately drove over to the small county airfield. No one was around, so they broke into the flight office to get the keys for a nice little Cessna Teddy liked and then hit the fuel shed. After fueling up the plane, they left the soldiers behind and lifted off without a flight plan, or any other real plan for that matter.

Beau initially felt some concern about the dark clouds that seemed to hang over everything, but Teddy wasn’t worried so Beau deferred to his superior experience in such matters. It was not until later that Beau suspected Teddy’s lack of concern was related to the fact he had been drinking heavily since noon.

Beau had never flown before and was mesmerized by the sight below him, but probably not as much as those individuals on the ground. They looked up at the low flying plane in total amazement while Teddy whooped and yelled and Beau waved. Beau’s sense of responsibility eventually asserted itself. He directed Teddy to fly south while he consulted maps and a list of notes he had made on the way over of information he thought Anderson would want.

His biggest fear, other than crashing, was crossing over into Tennessee. On the map there was a very clear line, but he knew he would not have that benefit from the air and after vainly looking for landmarks decided to err on the side of caution. They changed their course from dead south to due east several miles from the border. He also told Beau to get some altitude so he could get a better look at the forces to the south.

Beau was just starting to get a good look to the south when he heard Teddy say, “Uh oh.”

“Uh oh, what?” said Beau.

“Uh oh, those clouds,” said Teddy. “Those are tornado clouds. We need to get either some distance or some altitude.”

“Well give me a few minutes. I just saw something,” said Beau. He refocused his binoculars and saw what he was afraid he had seen. There to the south, directly adjacent to the Purchase Parkway behind some barns and farm buildings, Beau saw three tanks. He had always been fascinated by tanks and recognized these as M1 Abrams. They must have cost a fortune in fuel to move them at all, much less get them north. If Beau remembered correctly, those monsters burned something like 30 gallons of fuel per hour simply idling. He had also heard they actually had a jet engine and therefore required special aviation jet fuel.

Teddy interrupted his thoughts. “Uh…Beau, we gotta go, buddy.”

“Okay, okay, just give me a minute,” responded Beau.

“No, now!” yelled Teddy and Beau noticed that he sounded completely sober all of the sudden.

Turbulence threw the small plane about like a cork on the water. Beau looked from the ground to see Teddy’s eyes were wide to the front and following his gaze he saw a large black funnel cloud descending towards the ground in the distance and three more further ahead. Teddy was leaning forward to look up through the windscreen to see if any funnel clouds were descending on them from above as he quietly said under his breath over and over “ohshitohshitohshitohshit.”

Teddy pulled the plane in a tight turn and headed back north where the skies looked clearer while Beau gazed out the back. After flying a few minutes north, he convinced Teddy to turn around so they could see what was happening. When they did resume their course it was like a scene from a nightmare.

The sky looked like it was literally boiling and there were at least six large tornados over miles of ground each cutting wide swathes of destruction hundreds of feet wide. Beau saw debris thrown high and people running in every direction, some of whom were suddenly sucked right off their feet into the center of one of the angry tornados. Teddy and Beau watched the scene mesmerized for what seemed like hours, but was probably only a few minutes. Eventually, the tornados receded back up into the clouds where they had formed, and the sky quickly cleared up as if nothing had ever happened.

“That…was…awesome!” said Teddy suddenly breaking the silence. “I mean like really awesome! Can you believe that? I ain’t ever seen nothing like that!”

“It was definitely something,” said Beau feeling the adrenalin flooding through him. His mission reoccurred to him. “Let’s get a little closer and then turn east to see what we can see.”

They turned east and flew for the next twenty minutes while Beau looked through the binoculars making notes on everything he saw while approximately every three seconds Teddy asked, “Wha cha see?”

At Barkley Lake they turned around and went back west. He was tempted to have Teddy land at the airport so he could rush the information he had back to General Anderson. He would be shocked by what Beau had seen, but his orders were clear, so they continued on for another fifteen minutes past the airport to the Mississippi River before turning around and heading back toward the airport. This took some convincing on Beau’s part since for some strange reason Teddy was insistent that while up they just had to fly over the house of one of his old girlfriends up in Draffenville.

They barely came to a stop before Beau jumped out and began racing toward the two soldiers laying on top of the General’s car. He yelled and waved frantically for them to get the car started.

Teddy meanwhile followed Beau along in the plane, ignoring the taxiway. He yelled out “Hey buddy that was fun! Let’s do that again!” Beau had a moment of horror when he thought Teddy would accidently run him down and cut him up with the spinning propeller. He turned on an extra bit of speed.

Beau made a mental note to come back and lock up the keys and the fuel. Neither would now be safe from Teddy’s drunken ideas on how to overcome boredom, but that would have to wait. He had to get to General Anderson right away and tell him what he had seen.

He wasn't going to believe it.