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Thirteen hours flying time saw them back to Anchorage. And Mick had spent most of it asleep in the back of the Chinook. The rest of it he’d spent marveling at finding Patty nestled in his arms each time he woke.
With the early departure of one Little Bird, the demise of the second, and a mid-air refueling courtesy of the US Air Force—because Attu Island was buried in a harsh storm—the heavy rubber fuel bladder in the Chinook’s cargo bay was only half-emptied. It made a very comfortable mattress for the return flight. A giant, Jet A-fuel filled waterbed.
During the endless hours of debriefing, the investigators—who he was fairly sure were CIA—offered no complaints about he and Patty losing five million dollars of helicopter that would come out of their budget. The intelligence harvest
