THE ADVENTURES OF REX THE WONDER ENGINEER:

REX RIDES THE STEAMJET

It's 0415 in Japan, at Yokota AB, Rex hears the fucking phone ringing somewhere, it must be in this Goddamn room, he thinks....where the fuck is it.....Shit....He groggily fumbles, stumbles around the room until he finds it, picks up the receiver. "Good morning, Sir, Yokota Command Post here, alerting you as an ACM for mission number......" A string of numbers, call signs and other garbage flows out of the phone, Rex doesn't hear shit, he's already in the shitter, smoking and crapping.
Oh, God, he thinks, he's finally fucked good. Stuck out here at Yokota, DNIF for 8 days, abandoned by the worthless shit-bag crew he was with, he finally finds a direct Travis tanker to ride and it turns out to be a fucking KC-135R, piece of flying scrap iron, a Goddamn wore out, re-engined steam-jet with wooden floors and retarded children as crew members. He wouldn't be going home at all, indeed, he has been having quite a rollicking good time here, visiting some of his old Herky buddies, guzzling whiskey, running down some ladies, glad to be away from Travis and those fucking airplanes for a little while. Glad also to be away from Joe the Boomer, asshole bastard that he is, worthless brain-dead idiot from SAC.
He call Command Post back. The duty officer answers. "Hello. This is Rex. I just got alerted to ride on that shit-heap bone yard relic out there to ride to Travis." The Duty Officer replies "Yea, uh we got a call from your squadron DO. Said to put you on the first available transpo to Travis, even a 130 or a boat." Rex ponders this a minute. Now what the fuck did he do now? "OK, OK, fuck!" Rex slams the phone across the room, waking up the crewmember sleeping next door.

An hour later, Rex throws his bags off at the nose of the...the...thing...he doesn't think of it as an airplane. He's been in the Air Force for 20 glorious years and has flown on just about every thing they ever had in that period except one of these disgusting piles of melted bauxite. Oh, sure they tried to slip him on a few over the years, but he always weaseled out of it, somehow. Now he is truly fucked.

Ignoring the crew chief, he begins a slow walk around of the hideous craft. He observes the wrinkled skin, the sagging wings, with the new SMEGMA CFM-56 motors contrasting sharply with the ancient wing design, the patches and BONDO spots on the leading edges where idiot maintenance troops have run ground equipment into them, the cheesy Kruger flaps under the leading edge. Good God, he thinks, even the African countries don't fly shit like this anymore. He gazes up at the tail, trying to comprehend the tail number. Holy shit! They didn't even have electricity when this monstrosity was built. While Rex looks the thing over, farting and spitting, and slowly shaking his head, the pilot and Boom operator walk up behind him and try to be friendly.....
"Hey, are you our ACM? We're going to the MAC-T for some food, bus is on the way. You coming?" The AC looks to be around 18 years old and the boomer about 17. Rex shrugs, spits, grabs his smoke from a leg pocket. Shit. "Yea, all right. You fucking babies have any adults with ya? You clowns get my bags loaded yet? I aint a gittin' on that thing until you guys fire it up and I see it aint exploded." The boomer, some numb-nuts A1C with his weakly chest puffed out and his gloves hanging out of his pocket, trying to look cool, says "Relax Sarge. This is a good jet. We're a STAN/EVAL crew. Let me show you inside."
"Listen, you rug-rat, diaper wearing shit-skid, don't ever call me sarge. I will fuck you up. Got it? And No, I don't want to go to the terminal with your silly asses, I'd be embarrassed to be seen with dorks like you, and no, I don't want to see the inside of this piece of shit until I have to." Rex turns on his heel, breaks wind; the astonished AC and Boomer go away, leaving Rex time to pray. Rex feels his leg pocket for the flask. Good, it's there. He takes a blast, cruises over the starboard gear and pisses powerfully on a brake.

A few minutes later, the dumb-ass boom operator and AC climb onto a crew bus, and Rex curious, and fortified, he ventures up through the idiotic nose hatch and surveys the cockpit, then slowly works his way back into the cabin. There is cargo back there, a few pallets of rubber dog shit, probably just rocks so that these goobers can feel like they're hauling something....Hmmm, what's this thing? Rex is shocked to find what appears to be a gas turbine engine in the back...surely this bomb can't be the APU. He suddenly feels sick.
Looking behind him after hearing a noise, he spies the ignorant boom operator. "Hey, Sarge, what's up? Looking over a real jet, huh? I'm almost an instructor...I can show you around a little bit...How long have you been a boomer?"
SMACK! Rex slaps the pimply-faced bastard across the forehead. The boom boy goes to the wooden deck like drunken loadmaster. Rex reaches down and grabs the little fart-sniffer by the scrotum and drags him over between the two pallets and piles some crew bags on top of his limp body. He smells urine, and notes with satisfaction that the boy has pissed himself.

Some ATOC fool is yelling from the front for the loadmaster. "That's me, dickhead, gimme the paperwork and get the fuck outta here. How many PAX do I got?" Rex tries to look stupid and inbred, like a boomer. The ATOC dude, leaves, satisfied, and Rex goes up to talk to the officers, who are fiddling around with shit in the cockpit trying to look important. "Hey Cap'n, yer dumb-ass boom operator just passed out back there, must be hung over. You want me to call the cops? Or I can help out, I'm a qualified boomer too, I'll just do primary shit until he sleeps it off...." Rex, again, tries to look stupid, sticks his tongue out of one side of his mouth, farts and scratches his massive genitalia. The AC looks at Rex, doubtfully. Rex does look at little like a boom operator, smells like whiskey just like their Chief Boom back home..... "All right, go ahead and take over back there. We gotta get an on time takeoff."

Rex rudely launches flatus beside the other officer sittting sideways, a nav, he thinks...anyway, he goes to the back and starts throwing shit around, trying to act like a boomer.

An hour later, the ancient re-engined strato-turd leaps off the runway, with Rex, terrified, sitting in the Boom seat in the cockpit, wearing a parachute....familiar now with bailout procedures, having reviewed them with the Nav's Dash-one. Behind, in the cabin, loose shit is sailing around, pummeling the passengers and gashing the floors, while the boomer boy struggles to breathe under the pile of crew and passenger baggage. Rex heads back to the pod for a smoke...............and the flight from hell has begun.