Fortunes of War

8

“Any gas, Jack?”

Bob Cassidy had driven from Washington, D.C. He poured himself a cup of coffee and was standing at the cash register in a gas stationst convenience store on the outskirts of Baltimore. He could hear the distinctive sounds of a ballpark announcer coming from a radio, apparently one behind the counter. “Are you Aaron Hudek?”

The man behind the counter looked him over before he nodded affirmatively. The announcer at the ballpark was getting excited. Hu-dek reached down and turned up the volume slightly. A home run. Hudek was in his late twenties. His jeans were faded and his blue service shirt had a patch over the breast pocket that bore the name Bud. He was about six feet tall, maybe 180 pounds, with a well-developed upper body. An old blue Air Force belt held up his jeans. “Your mom said you were working here.”

“Why don’t you pay your bill and let the man behind you pay his?”

“Pump three, and coffee.” Cassidy forked over money. “My name’s Cassidy. I need to talk to you.”

“What about?”

“A job.”

“I got one.” Hudek looked at the man behind Cassidy, who held up a quart of oil. After Hudek pounded the register keys and finished counting the change, Cassidy added, “It’s a flying job.”

Hudek’s eyes flicked over Cassidy again. “I get off in about ten minutes, when the girl working the next shift comes in. We can talk then.”

“Okay.”

It was closer to twenty minutes, but a tree beside the pavement threw some shade on a concrete bench. Cassidy was there when Hudek came walking over. He didn’t sit. “How’d you get my name?”

“From the Air Force files.”

“So you’re government?”

“Colonel Bob Cassidy, at least for a few more days.”

“What’s the job?” Hudek asked matter-of-factly. He showed no interest in sitting. He didn’t seem nervous or in a hurry. He just stood with his arms crossed, looking at Cassidy. “Have you heard that Japan invaded Siberia?”

“It’s been on the radio for a couple days.”

“I’m looking for people with F-22 experience.” Cassidy went on explaining while he watched Hudek’s expression. He might as well have been talking in Hindi for all the impression he made. Hudek’s expression didn’t change an iota. Looking at him you would find it hard to believe he was an honors graduate in electrical engineering from MIT. One of the “10 percenters,” as Cassidy called them. The military flight programs had been so competitive the last twenty years, a person had to be in the top 10 percent of his class at every stage of his life — high school, college, and flight training — if he expected to fly the hot jets. Hudek was brilliant, a superb student, athletic, in perfect health, and he could fly the planes. Yet somewhere, somehow, it had all gone wrong for him. When Cassidy stopped speaking, Hudek turned his head, checking the vehicles going into and out of the service area, then turned back. “Russia, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, it’s amazing.”

“What is?”

“That you’re here. Didn’t you read my last evaluation? My last skipper thought I was a stupid son of a bitch, and he said so in just about those words.”

“I read it. I don’t give a damn about paperwork or saluting or parking-lot etiquette.”

“You did read it.”

“I need fighter pilots.”

“Well, I really ain’t interested. All that is behind me now. I haven’t flown in three months. Don’t miss it. Don’t miss the pissy little Caesars in their cute blue uniforms, either.”

“This isn’t the peacetime Air Force. This is war, the real thing. I guarantee you, there will be no strutting martinets, no shoe polish, no bullshit.”

“I’ve heard that song before,” Hudek said with a sneer. “Now I’m supposed to raise my right hand, then sign on the dotted line. What if you just happen to be wrong? What if your little operation is more of the same fucked-up fire drill I just got out of? Then I’m already in and it’s my tough luck, huh?”

“I’ll be right there with you. If I’m wrong, we’ll still be in it together.”

“You’re going to be there?” Hudek was incredulous. “Yep. Are you?”

Hudek put his hands in his pockets and flexed his shoulders. “Don’t believe so,” he drawled finally. “Even if it’s what you say, I’ve got some other things going. I’ve done the military thing and it’s time to move on, go on down the road. There’s this girl … She sorta likes me, wants me to settle down, have a kid. Got a deposit down on a little tract house going up in a subdivision near here. Ain’t much, but it’ll be all mine.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m tired of dicking with paper-pushers, tired of always doing what some fathead who happens to be senior to me thinks we oughta do … tired of trying to look good!”

Cassidy got up and dusted his trousers. Then he passed Hudek his card, on which he had written the telephone number of his hotel in Crystal City. “Call me. Let me know what you decide.”

“I’m doing that very thing right this minute, Colonel. I’m letting you know. I have definitely decided. Absolutely decided. I don’t want to go to a fucking Siberian icebox.”

“Call me.”

“I am not going to call you. Listen! I don’t want to go. I don’t even like their food!”

“Tonight. Late. I have another guy to call on. Maybe you know him — Lee Foy?”

“Damnation, can’t you hear me? Ain’t my mouth working right? I ain’t calling you tonight or any other time. I’m telling you right here and now I’m not going to Russia. I don’t do Third World shitholes. And I never heard of Foy.”

“He said he knows you. Said he met you a couple years back during the F-22 op eval. Said you were a real good stick but you had a shitty personality. Said you’d give me a ration of crap.”

“Oh! Foy Sauce, the California Chink. Yeah, I know that lying little slant-eyed bastard. Is he going?”

“Maybe.”

“Jesus, taking Foy Sauce — you clowns must be scraping the bottom of the barrel. They’re going to shoot all you people down. You’ll all be dead in a week.”

“Call me tonight.”

“Where is Foy these days, anyway?”

Cassidy didn’t reply. He unlocked his car and got behind the wheel. Hudek stood watching Cassidy as he piloted the rental car slowly toward the street. He was still standing there when Cassidy went through the light at the corner and glanced back, just before he turned left.

Lee Foy was living in Mclean, Virginia. He was an up-and-coming real estate agent. “I’m making a ton of money,” he told Cassidy. “I don’t speak a solitary word of Chinese, but the company assigns me to every Hong Kong businessman or Chinese official coming to the Washington-Baltimore area. I always make the sale. Being a hyphenated American has its advantages. I’m getting rich.”

“I’ve always wondered what a number two in a Stanford graduating class did with his life.”

Lee Foy beamed. “Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, believe me.”

“Number one in your flight school class, number two in your class at test pilot school. That right?”

“All that is behind me. I’m making serious money now.”

“Uh-huh. Well, I talked to Hudek. You were right about him. He’s a jerk of the first water.”

“Good stick, though. Funny thing, but I never met a saint flying a fighter plane.”

“So, are you going to give up all this good living and easy money and come fly for the Russians?”

“Hell no. I told you that yesterday.”

“That was your wallet talking. The shooting has started. Now I appeal to your patriotism, your manhood, your sense of duty.”

“My wallet covers all those things. I’m making good money and I like it a lot.”

“It’ll still be here when you get back.”

“When I get back, some other Charlie Chan will be sopping up the gravy, Colonel. The world doesn’t stand still for anyone. And we both know that my chances of coming back aren’t red-hot.”

“The chances aren’t bad, or I wouldn’t be going.”

“Don’t shit me, Colonel. If you make it, you’ll come back a brigadier.

General Cassidy. You’ll retire on a general’s pension. You’ll spend the rest of your days lying around some 0-club sucking suds, fat and sassy, schmoozing about the good old days with old farts in yellow golf slacks and knit shirts decorated with ponies and alligators while you wait for the next retirement check to show up in the mail. Me, if I live through this little adventure, I’ll come back a year or two older and a whole lot poorer, with a bout or two of dysentery and a couple cases of clap on my medical record. I’ll have to rent apartments to crack addicts to make a buck. Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll stay right here in the good old US of A and keep the good times rolling.”

“How did you ever become a fighter pilot, Foy, a cynical, money-grubbing bastard like you? You’re a damned civilian.”

“I could make that plane dance, Cassidy. Ask Hudek. But that wasn’t a living. Selling real estate to the “Ah so” crowd is a living. Making the sale is my thing.” He pointed downward. “See these shoes?

Damn things are alligator. Cost five hundred bucks a pair on sale for thirty percent off.”

“What’s your point?”

“I’m tired of being poor, man. My wall is covered with diplomas I can’t spend. I’ve seen the money and I want some.”

“The Russian government will pay five thousand for every Japanese plane you bag.”

“Five thousand what? Bongo bucks? Yuan, yen, pesos, rubles? Man, that stuff is toilet paper.”

“U.s. dollars.”

“That’ll be easy to earn. I’ll go up every morning and knock down two bad guys before breakfast. Seriously, Colonel, I make that much selling a condo and I don’t have to risk anything to get it. I don’t have to bleed, either.”

“Hudek told me not to take you to Siberia. Said you’d be dead in a week. He called you Foy Sauce. Said you can’t fly for shit.”

“Fuck Fur Ball. And tell him I said so.” Hudek’s nickname was fighter pilot jargon for a dogfight, so named because a computer presentation of two or more three-dimensional flight paths resembled something from a cat’s tummy. Cassidy shrugged. “Hudek and I weren’t butt-hole buddies, but he knew damn well I could fly that plane.”

Cassidy fingered his card. He had written the telephone numbers on it in ink.

“You look at my evals, Colonel. My skippers knew what I could do.”

Cassidy tucked his card in Foy’s shirt pocket and turned away. “You see Fur Ball again,” Foy called, “you tell him I’ll kick his ass on the ground or in the sky. His choice.”

Cassidy rented a car at the airport in Cheyenne and drove. He went through two thunderstorms and passed close to another. By the time he reached Thermopolis he estimated that he had seen four hundred antelope. He got directions at the biggest filling station in town. “Which way to Cottonwood Creek?”

The house was at the end of a half mile of dirt road. It had a roof, four walls, and all the windows had glass, but it didn’t look like it would be very comfy during a Wyoming winter, when the cold reached twenty below and the snow blew in horizontal sheets. The thought of a Wyoming winter reminded Cassidy of Siberian winters, and he shivered. A man in bib overhauls came out of the dilapidated little barn next to the house. “You Paul Scheer?”

“Yeah.”

“Bob Cassidy.”

Scheer came strolling over. “Somebody called from Washington, said you were coming, but I told them you were wasting your time. Did they give you that message?”

“I got it.”

“Well, it’s your time. I got a couple beers in the fridge.”

“Okay.”

There was a redbone hound on the porch. Only his tail moved, a couple of thumps, then it lay still. “He came with the ranch,” Scheer said, nodding at the dog. Cassidy lowered himself into one of the two porch chairs while Scheer went inside for the beer. The wind was blowing about ten or twelve knots from the northwest, a mere zephyour. The brush and grass near the house were low, sort of hunkered down, not like the flowers and lush bushes in Japan and Washington, where the winters were milder and the summers twice as long. Cassidy took a deep breath— he could smell the land.

When he and Scheer were drinking beer from cans, Cassidy asked, “How much ranch you got here?”

“About thirty thousand acres. Fifty-five hundred acres are deeded; the rest is a BLM grazing lease.”

“How many cows?”

“Three hundred and thirty cow-calf units.”

“Sounds military as hell.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“As I understand it, Paul, you left the Air Force in 1995 after ten years of active duty, worked for Lockheed-Martin as a test pilot in the F-22 program until last year, then quit and moved to this ranch out here in the middle of Wyoming.”

“That’s accurate.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, what’s a place like this worth?”

Scheer grinned, displaying perfect teeth. The thought crossed Cassidy’s mind that some women would consider Scheer handsome. “What it’s worth and what I paid for it are two completely different things. I paid two million. Now, your next question is, “Where did Scheer get two million dollars.” The answer is, “Out of my four oh one (k) plan.” I’m single, live modestly, don’t have any expensive vices. The stock market has been doing fine the last fifteen years, and I have, too. Saw an ad for this ranch one day, got to thinking about it. You know, as I was looking at that ad, it came to me that the time had come. The time had come to cash out and do something stupid. Haven’t regretted it one minute since.”

“Have you heard about Siberia?”

“You mean lately? Don’t get the paper here and I don’t own a TV.”

“Japan invaded Siberia.”

Scheer took a long pull on his beer and crushed the can. “It’s a crazy world,” he said finally. “Yeah. I’m recruiting fighter pilots. We’re giving an F-22 squadron to the Russians, and they are hiring qualified pilots. You were highly recommended.”

“By whom?”

“The head test pilot at Lockheed-Martin.”

Scheer shrugged. “I miss the flying. The F-22 is a great machine, really great. But …” Scheer took a deep breath and sighed. “This is where I’m going to spend the rest of my life.”

Cassidy looked at his watch. “I got a few hours. How about a tour.”

“Okay. Let’s take the Jeep.”

The road was a washed-out rut with huge mud holes that almost swallowed the Jeep. “Got to do something about the road,” Scheer muttered. “What was last winter like?”

“Cold and long.” Cassidy asked questions to keep him talking, about raising cattle, the weather, the range. Finally, he asked, “Do you really think this is the place for you?”

Scheer took his time before he replied. “I’m only the third white man to own this land. Last owner was from Florida, a real estate broker whose wife divorced him after the kids were grown and out of college. He lasted four years. He bought the place from the original homesteader, who was nearly ninety when he sold. He’s in a nursing home in Cheyenne now.”

Scheer pointed to some of his cattle, then indicated his boundaries with a pointed finger or a nodded head. After a bit, he remarked, “Hard to believe, isn’t it, that the original white settler is still alive?

The country is young.”

Finally Scheer brought the Jeep to a stop on a low ridge. He pointed through the windshield. “See that low peak? Way out there? My line cabin is just under that peak. It’s twenty-five miles from the house to that line cabin.”

“This ranch isn’t that big!”

“But it is. Most of it lies along this creek, and up there is the head of it. The ranch is the watered grazing land. Everything else belongs to the government. Pretty, isn’t it?”

“You could come back to this, after the war.”

“Let’s not kid ourselves, Mr. Cassidy. A lot of the guys you recruit are going to get killed.”

Cassidy didn’t say anything. “I’m going to do my living and dying right here, waking up every morning to this.”

“Why don’t you level with me?” Cassidy asked. “You didn’t have a wife of twenty years divorce you. You didn’t get fired from your job; you aren’t hiding from the law. You aren’t a hermit, an alcoholic, or a dope addict. Why are you rusticating out here in cow-patty heaven, smack in the middle of goddamn nowhere?”

Scheer looked at Cassidy. He turned off the engine and climbed out.

“You’re the first one who asked,” he said. “Oh, they asked, but not like that.”

Cassidy got out, too, and stretched. “I’m HIV- positive,” Scheer said. “Anally injected death serum. Had it for years. Lived longer than I thought I would.”

“So?”

“It’s a death sentence.”

“Man, life is a death sentence.”

“We all go sooner or later. I’m one of the sooners.”

“Your “the time has come” speech — that’s for the local yokels, right?”

“You’re a real smoothy, aren’t you, Cassidy?”

“Come to Russia with me. It’ll be a hell of a fight. You live through that, you can come back here to wait for the Grim Reaper, watch the cows chew their curls, listen to the wind, think the big thoughts when the temp drops to twenty below.”

“You’re a colonel, right?”

“Right.”

“I didn’t get AIDS by licking toilet seats, Colonel.”

“Did you get in any trouble in the Air Force? Or at Lockheed?”

“You must have kept your love life and your professional life separate. Keep doing that.”

“So you’d take me to Russia?”

“Of course.”

“You’re the first blue suiter I ever told about my sexual orientation.”

“I wouldn’t tell any more of “em, if I were you.”

“But you still want me?”

“You’re healthy, right?”

“No symptoms.”

“I don’t think we’ll do physicals. My branch of the Russian air force won’t be very picky. We’ll need to fit you for a full-body G suit if they don’t still have the one you wore at Lockheed. We will do all the shots. Don’t want anyone getting diphtheria or cholera or some other weird disease.”

“I already got my disease.”

“Take me back to my car.”

They got into the Jeep and Scheer started up. “Here’s a card with my telephone number. You know the airplane inside out, and you can teach it. I need you, Scheer, or I wouldn’t have conmade this trip. Think it over and call me.”

They rode the rest of the way back in silence. Scheer didn’t drive any faster than he had coming out, but he didn’t bother to slow for the mud holes and fords. Cassidy hung on with both hands. When they pulled into the yard by the house, Scheer killed the engine and said, “I’ll come. Take me a few days or so to find someone to keep an eye on the cattle while I’m gone.”

“Okay.”

“Lockheed oughta still have my G suit. My weight hasn’t changed, so it should still fit.”

I’ll call them.”

“I’m assuming that you’ll keep this conversation to yourself,” Paul Scheer said. “I’m making a similar assumption about you,” Cassidy replied, and stuck out his hand to shake. “What’s the Russian air force pay, anyway?”

“I don’t know exactly. Washington is still working out the details.”

“I hope the money covers the cost of hiring a hand to look after this place.”

“Well, it will if you get a Zero or two. Probably pay a bonus for every one you knock down.”

“Whose idea was that?”

“Not mine, rest assured. Some Russian experts in the State Department suggested a bonus for every confirmed victory. They say that will impress the Russians with our seriousness.”

“Seriousness.”

“Seriousness is very big in Russia. They didn’t just adopt capitalism, they swallowed it.”

Bob Cassidy got into the rental car, headed for the hard road. A mule deer leapt from the brush onto the road in front of him. He checked that his seat belt was fastened.

Cassidy waited in the break area outside the building. The sun felt hot on his arms and face; the breeze coming in off the Pacific felt soothing. He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. If only he could forget the problems for a little while and just relax, enjoy the heat and the breeze. “Are you Colonel Cassidy?”

He started to stand, but she motioned for him to stay seated.

The woman before him was of medium height, with short brown hair that framed her face. She cocked her head as she looked at him, and her eyebrows arched slightly. The thought occurred to him that she was lovely, in a way. “You’re Daphne Elitch?”

“Please! Dixie. Even my mother calls me Dixie.”

“Have a seat, Dixie. Pleased to meet you.”

“So what brings you to Orange County, Colonel?”

“Recruiting.” Cassidy launched into his spiel. Dixie Elitch listened politely, saying nothing. The breeze played with her hair. Cassidy watched her eyes, which were dark brown and restless. They scanned the other students in the break area, the sky, the grass, and the colonel. Those intelligent eyes didn’t stop moving. Dixie had been a middle-distance runner at the Air Force Academy and had almost made the U.s. Olympic team. She got her degree in astronautical engineering, number two in the class, and turned down an assignment to Cal Tech, where she would have gotten her doctorate. She went to flight school instead, finished first in her class, got F-22’s — even though the program was closed at the time — because the commanding general called the chief of staff. When Cassidy finished, she didn’t say anything. After a bit, Cassidy asked if she had questions. “No. I’m just trying to visualize how it will be. The F-22 is a good plane, but obtaining spare parts, weapons, and fuel will be a horrific nightmare. Everything will be a problem — intel, early warning, basing, everything. What will you do for hard stands? If the enemy catches you on the ground, they’ll wipe you out unless the planes are in revetments.”

“We’re working on that.”

Dixie examined his face with those restless eyes. “You aren’t going to discuss it because you don’t know the answer, I haven’t signed on, or you don’t want me to bother my pretty little head with men’s problems?

Which is it?”

“I don’t know the answers.”

“You’re leading with your chin. What is it you want me to volunteer for?”

“I want you to fly with us.”

“You can’t even assure me you’re going to fly.”

“I’ll solve the problems or live with them, as they arise. That’s all I can do.”

“I’m out of the ‘yessir” crap now,” she said. “I’ve got two more weeks of class; then I’m going to be a stockbroker.”

“I see.”

“Cold-call people, explain why they should let me show them the best investments.”

“Uh-huh.”

“How they can get rich in the stock market.”

“Sounds exciting.”

“Why they should pay commissions to my company.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Even though I have no money myself and couldn’t take my own advice, even if I were foolish enough to want to.” She laughed, a pleasant, full-throated woman’s laugh. Bob Cassidy felt warm all over. He bit his lip. He wasn’t supposed to feel like that. This is a professional relationship, he told himself stiffly, and looked away from Dixie Elitch. “The market is in freefall this afternoon. The Dow industrial average is down to eighteen thousand five hundred, off eighteen percent from its high last week.”

“Sounds like a hell of a time to start selling stocks.”

“Oh, the market will come back. Sooner or later. It always does.”

“So you’re not worried?”

“Colonel, we’ve just been presented with one of the greatest buying opportunities of our age, courtesy of the Japanese government. They will make a lot of people very rich. I hope to be one of them.”

“I see.”

Dixie shivered. “I’ll be glued to a chair in this suburban utopia, wearing my little designer telephone headset, sweet-talking Orange County plutocrats into buying nursing home stock. Meanwhile, you and your friends will be shooting down those poor innocent Japanese boys in their shiny new airplanes, blowing them out of the sky.”

“Something like that,” Cassidy allowed. He passed her a card with his telephone numbers. Dixie pressed on the sides of her head. “Why did I ever think I could do this? I couldn’t sell cold beer to a man on his way to hell. I should have my head examined at the funny farm.” She rubbed her face, then glanced at her watch. “Win the war for us, Colonel. Speaking for myself, I will enjoy the money.”

She stood and held out her hand to shake.

“We could use you in one of those cockpits,” Cassidy said. “I have committments here.”

“You’re not a stockbroker. You’re a fighter pilot.”

“Used to be,” Dixie Elitch acknowledged, then joined the other students returning to the classroom.

“Siberia!” Clay Lacy pronounced the word as if it were a benediction. He took a deep breath and said it again. Bob Cassidy couldn’t suppress a smile. They were sitting in the student union at Cal Tech, where Lacy was working on a masters in electrical engineering. With his military haircut, trim physique, and neat, clean clothing, he looked out of place among the longhaired, sloppily dressed techno-nerds, or so Cassidy thought. But to each his own. Isn’t that the mantra of our time?

“Russia.”

“I suppose you’ve been reading the news, watching the mess on TV?” Cassidy said conversationally. CNN was devoting half of each day to the invasion and half to the falling stock market, which was down to 17,800 now. Just now scenes from Vladivostok were showing on the television at the other end of the room, although the commentary was inaudible. There, a map, showing the Japanese thrusts. Two students were watching. The rest were eating, reading textbooks, holding hands, talking to one another. One was playing a portable video game. “Oh, a little,” Clay Lacy replied, glancing at the television. “But I’m so busy. If the world were coming to an end, I wouldn’t have time to do more than glance at the headlines.”

“This story is not quite that important,” Cassidy acknowledged. “Still, we could use you in Russia. You could go back to school when it’s over, maybe in a year or so. Do some flying, pocket some change, help out Uncle Sam.”

“It didn’t look like we were ever going to have a war,” Clay Lacy explained. “At least during my career. That’s why I got out. That “Peace is our profession’ BS is a real crock.”

Cassidy finished his coffee. “You aren’t CIA, by chance?” Lacy asked. “Just plain old U.s. Air Force.”

“You wouldn’t say if you were CIA, would you? You’d say you were in the Air Force.”

“You’ll have to trust me, Lacy.”

“No offense, sir.”

“Ask me no secrets and I’ll tell you no lies.”

Cassidy’s mood was growing more foul by the second. Lacy was a flake. Perhaps he would be better off without him. After a bit Lacy said, “The F-22 is one hell of an airplane,” almost talking to himself. “So is the new Zero, they tell me,” Cassidy muttered. “If a man missed this fight, he might regret it all his life.”

“I doubt that,” Cassidy snapped, Jiro Kimura flashed into his mind.

He bit his lip. “All his life, “It won’t be happy with the he might wonder,” Lacy insisted. easy,” Bob Cassidy remarked, more than a little un-way this conversation was going. Lacy looked intense. Too intense. Now Cassidy was almost certain the man was a nut. “Flying was almost a religion with me,” Lacy said after a moment. “With me and my friends. We all thought that way. Didn’t think I would ever leave it, but …” He shrugged. “That’s the way things go. I got tired of the peacetime routine. Got tired of the annual budget slashing in Congress. Tired of the eternal cutbacks and resizing and reductions in force. It’s a conspiracy, slashing the defense budget so far that America can’t defend itself. It’s a conspiracy by foreigners, to throw open our borders. They’ve always been against everything American.” Cassidy said nothing. Lacy went on, “Of course, I’ve never been in combat. Can’t honestly say how I’ll handle it, because I don’t know. I thinsteverything will be fine. I won’t pee my pants. I won’t forget to retract the gear or arm the gun. I will manage to do what they trained me to do.”

“Hmm,” Cassidy said. “I always thought I could kill someone if I really had to. If there were no choice. Then I could do what I had to do. But to go to Siberia to strap on a plane to fight Japanese pilots…, well, the whole thing is slightly unreal. Sitting here, I can feel the doubt. It’s tangible. I don’t know if I could kill anyone, Colonel.”

“Well, if you have tangible doubts, Clay, you—“

“I think I could, you understand, but I don’t know for a fact.”

“Uh-huh.”

“No one could know, until it happened to them.”

“Not everyone is cut out for—“

Lacy mused, “Maybe that’s why I’m here, instead of still in uniform.” He frowned. Now he looked at Cassidy with a start, as if suddenly realizing he was talking to a colonel. “I probably shouldn’t be saying these things,” he added hastily. “It’s a complicated world we—” I’ll think about it, sir. Let you know. Do you have a telephone number?”

Cassidy thought for several seconds before he gave the man a card. “Don’t do anything rash,” he told Lacy. “At night, I miss the flying the worst. I can close my eyes and feel myself blasting through space.”

“Think about it carefully.”

“Maybe I—“

“Kill or be killed. The Japs are pretty damn good, Lacy. The Zero drivers will punch the missiles off the rails and they’ll be coming hard. If you don’t handle it right you’re gonna be toast. Even if you handle it right, you may get zapped.”

“You tell me you want to go, Lacy, you better be sure. I don’t want your blood on my hands. I’m toting enough of a load through life as it is.”

“I’ll think it over and call you, sir,” Clay Lacy promised. When Lacy had gone to class, Cassidy put a check mark beside his name on the list. Okay, he’s a nutcase, but if he can fly the plane and pull the trigger, he’ll do.