Fly by Night

CHAPTER THREE

Davis stopped in his tracks. Turned around and stared.

Green didn’t say a word. He pulled a handful of papers from his pocket. They were folded in a military manner, neat hard creases that made them the size of a long envelope. Davis took a cautious step back and slowly held out his hand.

“Last page,” Green said.

Davis began to unfold the pages, took his time and rifled through one by one. He was looking at a hastily thrown together briefing package, and definitely not the kind of thing the NTSB would assemble. It had to have come from Darlene Graham’s office. He saw satellite photos of the hangar and airfield. A request for technical assistance from ICAO. And on the last page, amid the corporate profile of FBN Aviation, one name highlighted in yellow. Davis hadn’t heard it in years. In truth, he’d never expected to hear it again. Bob Schmitt.

Davis settled back into the plush chair. “Was he one of the pilots in the crash?” he asked.

“No. There’s not that much justice in the world.”

Davis nodded, and the sorry Air Force career of Bob Schmitt came back like brown water over a failed levee.

The training process for military aviators is brutally efficient. Even so, a handful of misfits slip through, people who earn their wings yet have no place in the profession. Bob Schmitt was one of them. Technically, he was proficient enough. In truth, he’d been one of the best sticks in the squadron, always at the top of the bombing competitions, always a challenge in the air-to-air tangles. But what he lacked was far more critical. Integrity and trustworthiness. With Schmitt on your wing, you never knew what to expect. He regularly flew too low or too loose. Worst of all, he didn’t see any problem with that. Davis had endured his share of terse debriefings with Bob Schmitt. After two tumultuous years, Schmitt had been transferred to a unit in South Carolina. Soon after, there was a crash, a midair collision. Schmitt was involved but ejected safely. His flight lead, Walt Deemer, hadn’t been so lucky. Davis had known Deemer from the Academy. He was a good shit, which, in the parlance of the squadron, was the best you ever said about anybody.

Davis had seen his chance. He’d lobbied hard to be put on the investigation team and got his wish. The inquiry was short and quick, the evidence clear. Schmitt went to a Flying Evaluation Board and lost his wings. He was out of the Air Force a month later, lucky to have not ended up doing time in Leavenworth. That had been ten years ago; Davis hadn’t heard the name since. Not until today.

“So Schmitthead is flying in Sudan.”

“With a stain like he’s got on his record — you can only fly the darker corners of the world. But it gets worse. Schmitt’s not just a line pilot. He’s the boss, FBN’s chief pilot.”

“You gotta be yankin’ me. Bob Schmitt runs this circus?” Davis shook his head in disbelief.

“Jammer, when Walt went down …” Green hesitated, “I know you wanted to make sure Schmitt never flew again.”

“And he didn’t. At least not in the Air Force. That final report was rock solid. I nailed his ass to the wall, got everything I wanted except ten minutes in the alley behind the officer’s club.”

“So,” Green said, “here’s your ten minutes.”

Davis eyed his old boss for a long moment, then turned his attention to the scene outside. Rain was falling again from a hard gray sky, and the coffeeshop window was peppered with mirror-like silver dots. People on the sidewalk were moving briskly against the foul weather, the typical leisurely pace of a Sunday accelerated by the elements. It was a day that should have kindled thoughts of fireplaces and cups of hot chocolate. But Davis had another picture in mind — Walt Deemer sitting in the living room of his military base house. They’d all gotten together for a Super Bowl or some equally vital event. It was funny how you remembered people when they were gone. No matter how vivid their personality, how encompassing the relationship, it all ended up as one or two snapshot visions. The exception for Davis was his wife, but he knew why — he had Jen, a living vestige, full of Diane’s DNA-inspired mannerisms and features. But a buddy like Walt, he was forever a guy on a Barcalounger with a Budweiser, fist in the air as he cheered on his Packers. A good picture to remember.

Green read him perfectly. “Walt was my friend, too, Jammer. One of my guys, way back when.”

“So you want me to take a look at FBN Aviation — as a pretext to see what’s in the hangar.”

“Something like that. And if Bob Schmitt gets caught in your crossfire—”

Jammer Davis nodded, completing that thought on his own.

“So are you in?” Green asked.

Davis sank lower in his chair. He twirled what was left in his cup, the dregs thick and silty and brown. He found himself wondering if they drank coffee in Sudan. Davis tried to divine a way out of it, some practical impediment. He couldn’t think of one. Jen wouldn’t be home until the end of the semester. He didn’t have any other job right now. There wasn’t even rugby practice for the next three weeks. No way out. But what really stuck in his mind was Bob Schmitt. The man had landed on his feet, even if it was in an African backwater. And now people’s lives rested on his decisions. That was what clinched it.

“You know, Larry, you’re a real piece of work.”

“Coming from you, Jammer, I take that as a compliment.”

“So whose payroll will I be on? NTSB or CIA?”

“Does it matter?”

“The way I see it, one makes me a consultant, the other a mercenary.”

“I’ll let you pick your job title. Meet me in my office tomorrow morning. I’ll brief you on everything we’ve got. Then you can go to TMD and make your arrangements.”

Davis was about to ask, What the hell is TMD? when it hit him. “Traffic Management Desk?”

“Yep. That’s what they call the travel office now.”

“Jesus, Larry. I’m beginning to think like the government.”

Green chuckled. “Don’t take it too hard. I’ll see you in the morning.” The general got up and walked off briskly, like he always did, and soon disappeared into the heavy gloom outside.

Davis tipped his cup and drained it. It might be his last good cuppa for some time. Which seemed like a really good excuse to go back to the counter and order a refill.

Davis woke early the next morning and started his day by scalding a cup of “Colombia’s Best” in his three-cup maker. Soon after that he was standing over an open suitcase.

In the military they called it mobilization. The United States armed forces are a global fighting force, which means that any soldier can be ordered on a moment’s notice to deploy anywhere in the world. The orders might be for a week, or they might be for a year, so the military has a hard-and-fast process to make sure everyone is prepared. You stand in line in a warehouse to be issued the necessities of your new life. Mobilization is not a happy process to begin with because you know you’re heading far from home. Then you see what they’re handing out. Gas masks, ammunition, Arctic sleeping bags, nerve agent antidotes, immunizations against rare infectious diseases. The JAG is there to make sure your will is up to date. The chaplain is there just in case you needed to talk. Davis had been mobilized many times, and he’d always thought it seemed like some large-scale, institutionalized omen. Bad things to come. Now that he was a civilian, the process was different. Davis was standing in his bedroom throwing clean socks into an old Samsonite roller bag with a broken wheel. He could have been going on a cruise. Even so, he was shadowed by that same ill feeling.

As he stood next to his bed wondering what he’d forgotten to pack, Davis picked up the cordless phone and dialed Jen’s number for the third time this morning. He cradled the receiver between his ear and shoulder as he stuffed shaving gear into a pouch. On the fifth ring Jen’s message came.

“Hey, it’s Jen. You know the deal.” A beep.

“It’s Dad. I’m heading to Africa for an investigation. Call me.”

He hung up and tossed the phone on the bed. That had been happening a lot lately, even before she’d gone off to Europe. He had two years left with his daughter, a tiny window that was shrinking every day. And then what the hell will I do? Davis grabbed a pair of work boots and threw them into the suitcase.

Probably what I’m doing right now.

Only after she’d gone had Davis realized how closely he was moored to his daughter. Jen had been away five weeks, and he was already starting to drift. He’d been lifting more iron at the gym, swimming a thousand laps in the pool, hitting harder in the rugby matches. But none of that was enough. When Larry Green had come calling yesterday, Davis hadn’t been looking for crash work. He hadn’t been looking for any kind of work. But here he was, throwing shirts in a suitcase, getting ready to fly off to one of the least developed countries in the world to look for a lost drone. Larry Green might say he was going because he had unfinished business with Bob Schmitt. But deep down, Davis knew the real reason he’d taken the job.

He’d realized it last year, in France, when an assassin had tried to gun him down. He needed the adrenaline rush, the thing that used to get satisfied when he flew an F-16 on the deck at six hundred miles an hour. Maybe Larry Green knew it. Maybe he had tried to make the job sound challenging, even impossible, just to lure Davis into it. A smart guy, the general.

Davis stood looking at the open suitcase, wondering if there was anything he’d forgottten. That, too, was something you learned in the military. No matter how well you prepared, there was always something missing, and you wouldn’t realize what it was until you stepped off an airplane and into some godforsaken hellhole halfway around the world. But then, that was part of the challenge.

Davis zipped up his bag. Mobilization complete.