Rex and I were going down the Big Sur coast for a ride in my pickup. It was a beautiful day and Rex was behaving himself. To be honest, I was enjoying Rex behaving himself more than the beautiful day. Not much traffic; good visibility: it felt like a good time to play War Plane.

“Rex, Japanese Zeroes at three o’clock! Pilot to navigator, pilot to navigator. Zeroes at three o’clock!!” Rex stuck his head out the passenger window, ears flapping in the wind. I assumed he verified the targets at three o’clock.

I grabbed the steering wheel and made machinegun noises and screamed, just to set the mood. Rex always seemed to like it when I screamed and made machinegun noises. After firing several dozen rounds, I made airplane noises. Over the years I have found that imitating a World War II P-51 Mustang fighter yields the most pleasure. There is something about the rumble of those huge Rolls Royce engines that adds a sense of daring and nostalgia.

It looked as though I had shot down all of the Japanese Zeroes. The skies were clear. “Oh-oh. German Messerschmitts at nine o’clock! Pilot to navigator! Pilot to navigator!” Rex had taken a break from War Plane and was watching a herd of cows. “I said ‘Pilot to navigator!’ That’s you, Rex. For crying out loud. Are you going to watch cows or help me bring down the German Luftwaffe? Come on, get a move on! Chart our course.

Radio the tower and tell them we’re under heavy fire.”

Rex ran over into my lap and started to lick my face. “You could be court-martialed for insubordination, airman. Navigators don’t lick a pilot’s face. Now get back to the flight charts and radio the tower again. Tell them . . . tell them . . . oh, just tell them to call Paris Hilton and tell her I love her. Have them tell her that for just one hour I’d love to . . . oh-oh! Squadron of Taliban at twenty thousand feet. Twelve o’clock high!! Jeeze, I didn’t know the Taliban had an air force. I figured they had maybe a camel cavalry, or the odd stolen tank or two. Maybe they were MIGs. Oil was leaking from their engines. Figures.

“Rex, we’re going up after those buggers! I’m gonna give those dirtballs a little piece of good, ‘ol American Jihad. They’re gonna’ dine with their seventy-two virgins tonight, baby!!!” I like it when I talk tough. Rex seemed to rally as well. We had passed the distracting cows and I had his full attention. “Reload the wing cannons! Ice down those machine guns, Rexie. We’re gonna’ blow those turkeys outta’ the sky!!!”

I made more machinegun noises and P-51 Mustang noises, and slalomed down the highway to make it look like . . . to make it look like . . . oh, it’s just fun. I don’t need a reason. We maneuvered up to twenty thousand feet and snuck in behind the entire Taliban Air Force. At that altitude, I would have to shoot them down within a few minutes; we had left our oxygen masks back in the hangar. “Rex, I’m starting to black out! No oxygen. You’ll have to fire the machineguns!” I took Rex’s paw and touched it to the steering wheel, making a wonderful onslaught of intermittent machinegun noises, and threw in some P-51 noises just to make it seem real. I kept pressing Rex’s paw to the wheel, unloading all of our ammo. He soon tired of machinegunning and looked out the window for more cows.

“Rex!! You did it!! You wiped out the entire Taliban Air Force. Both planes!! Way to go, buckeroo!! Oh-oh. Oh-oh!! Losing oil pressure! Losing oil pressure!! Radio the tower, Rex. Tell them we’re headin’ home on a wing and a prayer. Our engine is fried!!” Rex stuck his head out his window again, probably to verify the engine situation. “Rex, we’ve got to lose some weight on this ol’ bird if we’re gonna’ make it back. Open the bomb bay doors. We’ve got to drop all of our bombs to lose weight.

“Hey look down there, navigator! We’re right over the studios where they make those GEICO gecko commercials. God, I hate that stupid little green talking lizard with the fake Cockney accent! Bombs away!!” Now I got to make the “bomb dropping” noise; the long sustained whistle that trails off until the bombs hit. My finale was a thunderous “explosion” noise which sounded like I was hocking up the entire city of Cincinnati. I had to take another breath, but continued the explosion sound for dramatic effect. Rex appeared to be impressed with a two-lunger.

“Oh-oh. Oh-oh. Landing gear is jammed. Call the tower and tell them to foam the runway—we’re comin’ in on our belly. Brace yourself. Brace yourself. Hey, I never told you this, but, I love you, man.” Rex didn’t get the joke, and for that matter he didn’t radio the tower to foam the runway, either. “We’re comin’ in. Altitude: two hundred . . . one fifty . . . one hundred . . . fifty . . . hang ON!!!!”

My big finish was the alternating sound of screaming and tearing, scraping metal. This consumed about four or five lungfuls of air and was quite cathartic. Our plane came to a screeching halt in front of a little market in Big Sur. Dazed and disoriented, I looked over to my navigator who had his paws up on the dashboard and was inspecting the splattered remains of a dead bug on the windshield. “Forget the bug, Rex, we made it!!!

Want some ice cream, airman?”