Final Flight

29

From his bed Toad Tarkington could see the blue of the Mediterranean in the sun. The sea was three blocks away. The white sand beach was hidden by buildings, but he knew the sand was there, waiting. Maybe next week, after they put a walking cast on this leg. He would borrow some crutches and hobble to the beach even if it took all morning.

A breeze stirred the curtains. It was warm and comfortable. Toad put his head back on the pillow and sighed.

He was bored. Ten days had passed since an Israeli missile boat had plucked him from the sea. Two operations on his right leg ago. A lifetime ago. A former life, with its fears and terrors fading, though too slowly. It had taken two nights and a day for the boat to reach port. They had kept him sedated. The second day in the hospital, after he had fully recovered from the effects of the anesthesia of the first operation, the Naval Attaché from the U.S. embassy had spent two hours questioning him with a tape recorder running. The attaché had ordered Toad not to talk to any reporters, had given him a handful of Israeli money from his own pocket, and had shaken hands as he left. Toad had seen no one but hospital personnel since. Not a single reporter had wandered by for a snubbing. He had read his only magazine, a month-old international edition of Time, three times cover to cover. He picked it up and threw it across the room.

He glared at the telephone on the bedside table. It had not rung since he arrived. And why should it? He had tried to call his folks in Los Angeles, and when no one answered he remembered they were on vacation. They had probably gone to the mountains, and there was no use trying to reach them because there was no phone in the cabin and he would have to leave a message at that grocery store at the crossroads. A message like that would upset his mother — too ominous. No sense in alarming her. He was alright and would get well and a letter describing his adventures would be enough. She and Dad could read the letter when they got back to L.A. Still, it would be nice to talk to someone, to hear a voice from the real world.

Under the telephone was a telephone book. No listing for Judith Farrell. Or for J. Farrell. Or for any Farrell or Ferrell or Ferrel. Of course not, Toad, my man, that was an alias. He had searched the listings anyway. He was damned tired of lying on his back. Twice a day they sat him up, and occasionally they rolled him over for a while. He was sick of it. His ass was sore and his back was sore where the sheets chaffed him and he was sick of this whole rotten hospital gig.

When the nurse came he would see if she could get him some western novels, maybe some Louis L’Amour. Somebody in this corner of the world must read cowboy stories.

He turned as much as he could and slapped the pillows, trying to plump them. He cursed under his breath. When he got himself rearranged, a woman was standing in the doorway.

“Hello, Robert.”

He gaped.

“May I come in?”

“Of course. Please.” He remembered to smile. “How …?”

She sat in the only chair, her hands on top of the purse in her lap, her knees together. Her hair was different, fluffier.

“I was thinking about you,” he said at last. “Wondering, you know.” She was even more lovely than he remembered.

“I’m sorry about Captain Grafton,” she said.

Toad reached for the bed rails to steady himself. Whenever he thought about it he remembered the Gs, the violent slamming and the struggle to remain conscious as he fought to reach the ejection handle, and he remembered the terror. Holding the cold, smooth aluminum bed rails helped. The sun was still shining on the sea and the breeze was warm and soft and she was still sitting there in front of the window with the breeze stirring her hair.

“He was the best,” Toad said at last, seeing the airliner fill the windscreen, feeling the gut-ripping jerk as Jake Grafton slammed the controls over and the fighter rolled and the transport’s wing came straight at the cockpit in a blur, veering at the last fraction of a second to impact the fighter’s left wing. Grafton had prevented the catastrophic head-on that would have instantly launched both him and Toad into eternity. Grafton had saved Toad’s life.

Toad had passed out in the cockpit as the negative and longitudinal G-forces pooled blood in his brain. How many Gs had there been? It had started bad and gotten worse as the shattered fighter wound itself into a rolling spin. When he recovered consciousness he was in the sea with his life vest inflated. Perhaps Grafton had ejected them, or the plane had broken up and his seat had fired somehow. He would never know. His life vest had inflated automatically when the CO₂ cartridges were immersed in salt water. After a struggle that threatened to drown him, he successfully got rid of the parachute and inflated the one-man life raft from the seat pan. With the last of his strength he dragged himself half into the raft. As far as he could see, in all directions, the sea was empty. He had been very sick from the motion of the raft and all the sea water he had swallowed. The Israeli missile boat picked him up in midafternoon and spent the rest of the day searching. The boat had found a few pieces of floating wreckage, but Toad was the only survivor, eyes shot with blood and face swollen and bruised black from the effect of the G, with a badly broken leg. But alive.

The white was coming back to his eyes now, and the swelling and splotches on his face were fading. Eventually his leg would heal. Maybe someday the nauseating panic when he recalled those moments would fade. What would he do with the life Jake Grafton had given him?

“There are so many questions,” Toad said. “Who are you?”

She rose from the chair and faced the window. “We were after Colonel Qazi that night at the Vittorio. We didn’t know what he was planning, merely that he was there. But if we had gotten him then, perhaps the … incident … aboard your ship would not have taken place. Perhaps the sailors who died would be still alive … Captain Grafton … Callie not a widow.” She turned back toward him, and he saw her face again. It hadn’t changed. “So I came to see you. You and Captain Grafton stopped Qazi and El Hakim. Both were aboard that Ilyushin transport you rammed. You succeeded where we failed.”

“It’s a funny world,” Toad said softly because he couldn’t think of anything else.

She opened her purse and removed a folded-up section of a newspaper. She came over to the bed and handed it to him, then retreated. He opened it. It was a three-day-old front section of the New York Times. There was a picture of the United States under a banner headline. And the navy had released a photo of Captain Grafton. He scanned the stories. One of them announced that Vice-Admiral Lewis, Commander U.S. Sixth Fleet, had been relieved and had submitted his retirement papers. The story contained a verbatim transcript of a radio conversation between Admiral Lewis and Captain Grafton that had been recorded by a ham radio operator in Clearwater, Florida, a retired railroad engineer. Toad read the story carefully.

“So that’s why,” Toad murmured, still reading. He finished the story and looked again at the photograph of Jake Grafton, the nose, the eyes, the unsmiling mouth, the ribbons on his chest. Toad folded the newspaper and laid it on the table beside the bed. He cleared his throat. “Thanks for bringing this.”

She was seated again, on the front edge of the chair. She nodded and slowly scanned the room, taking in everything in turn. After another minute she stood. “I still have your letter.”

He searched for something to say. “The doctors tell me my leg’s going to be okay.”

She took a step toward the door.

“If you ever … maybe we … At least tell me your real name. You won’t even call me Toad. I won’t tell anyone. I need to know.”

She smiled brittlely. “Judith Farrell is dead. Now I am someone else, with a new past and a new future.”

“Not your new name. Your real name.”

“My new name is real. It can’t be any other way.” The smile was frozen.

“The name your parents gave you.”

The smile disappeared and she twisted the strap of her purse. She stepped over to the bed and leaned over. “Hannah Mermelstein.” Her lips brushed his cheek. “Good-bye, Robert,” she whispered. He listened to the fading sound of her heels clicking in the corridor. He listened long after the sound was completely gone.

The sea was so blue, with flecks of light reflecting off the swells. He watched it through his tears.