Day 10
#12 of Days
We spent the early morning searching the building gathering any and all food we could, it wasn't a huge supply, but thankfully a pantry was filled with canned goods that would still be good.
"Ok, I found these tools in a maintenance cupboard." Harry said, brandishing the bolt cutters he had liberated.
"That should get us through the fence." I said. And so we made for the ground floor of the building.
The front door was facing the wrong way, but after some searching we found a rear service door that led to the fenced off area that abutted the airport.
Harry made short work of the big cyclone wire fence of the airport and we were soon running across open ground and runways toward the hangers.
Harry cut locks on a few, peeking inside, it was on the fourth such, one that had been unlocked already, that he said "Bingo!" and started pulling one of the doors open, I performed similar duties on the other and saw what had him excited.
"Crap, that's a luxury jet!" I said, laughing.
"Yeah, and they are usually kept in very good shape and a full tank, in case the owner needs to get somewhere in a hurry." Karen replied with a grin.
He made for the side door, there was a small set of stairs already waiting, he climbed rapidly up and opened the door. Then drew back sharply. "Ugh, looks like the owner is still in residence." he said, trying in vain to cover his snout.
We opened all the doors to try and help air it out. I found a cabinet of fire-fighting gear and grabbed some of the respirators. "We need to make that thing so we can at least live in it for a few hours." I said, handing him a respirator as he handed me a scrubbing brush and bucket of water. His bucket was empty, I was about to comment on it but realised why, this was not going to be pretty.
"I might not have been with WHO all that long Harry, but I can put up with some of the nasty work." Karen said, and grabbed another empty bucket and made toward the plane.
His laughter as he put on his mask brought us up short, I was about to follow suit and put on the breathing unit when he turned around and showed me my miscalculation. Apparently a human breathing mask doesn't fit well on a wolf, and looking at mine I realised a fox either.
In the end, we settled for a rag soaked in water tied over our muzzles and, after Harry made a quick check on the cockpit, ensuring the plane was air-worthy, got down to work, cleaning out the horrid mess.
By mid afternoon we had most of the mess out and it was smelling a little better. "This will not be a pleasant flight." I stated.
"I am finding a lot of things unpleasant these days. Flying however is not one of them, as long as Star and her kids can handle it we can sit in the reasonably clear cockpit." He advised.
"Yeah, that could work." I agreed.
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It was late afternoon when harry rolled the jet out, taxiing it up to the main runway where he turned into the wind and brought the aircraft's brakes up to full and started easing forward on the throttle.
I pressed the toggle on the intercom, "Star, sit tight babe, we are about to get a little rough." A loud mrow was all I heard muffled back through the headset.
It was then Harry eased the throttle up and let the brakes off and the aircraft started to shoot forward.
He knew his job and did it well as usual and before long we were levelling out and he programmed in the auto-pilot.
We made a hasty dinner from a few tins of stew, not overly tasty, but filled us up. David made sure Star got the last of the rabbit and some tinned meat we had.
Before I had known it we had drifted off to sleep, I was woken later by the pilot. "Right, you just need to watch this indicator on the auto-pilot, if it changes from green wake me.".
I settled down to watching the clouds flying by, glancing to the tell-tale light every now and again.
In no time harry woke and told me to try and sleep, "Nah, not all that tired." I said, before a yawn attacked me. Harry just chuckled and started making a check of all his equipment. I don't know if it was all fine, I was asleep before he had gotten very far.