No Return

9

They ran a little over with the historian. She’d gone on and on about alluvial fans and ancient lake beds.

“We’re never gonna use this,” Wes muttered to Dione.

“Let her talk. Maybe there’ll be a nugget buried in there somewhere.”

When Wes finally got to La Sonora to meet Lars, it was closer to twelve-fifteen than twelve o’clock. He went inside and looked around, hoping he’d recognize his friend after seventeen years. But Lars wasn’t there.

As Wes got into line, he couldn’t help but let out a little laugh. La Sonora hadn’t changed at all since the last time he’d eaten there: the brown-tiled counter, the kitchen, the wall-mounted menu-all the same. And sure enough, sitting on a stool behind the cash register was Hannibal Lecter. It was Mandy who had given the cashier the nickname. Maybe the woman had a few more wrinkles than she used to have, but her uncanny resemblance to Sir Anthony Hopkins remained intact.

The glass door opened behind Wes, and before he could turn around he heard Lars’s voice.

“Wes Stewart!”

Lars, dressed in a pressed khaki uniform, strode up smiling broadly, his hand extended. “Good God. Almost twenty years and you don’t look a damn day older.”

Wes sneered as he shook his friend’s hand. “Then you’ve gone blind, and the Navy needs to think about getting rid of you.”

Lars laughed.

“You’ve certainly changed,” Wes observed.

Lars patted his lean stomach. “Navy prefers its pilots to be a little less rotund than I used to be.”

“You’re a pilot?”

“Now we come back to the vision thing. Wanted to be, but I inherited Mom’s eyes. Forced to stick to the ground. But I liked how I felt after I dropped the pounds.” He smiled. “Sorry I’m late.”

They ordered their food from Dr. Lecter and, once it was ready, grabbed a shaded table on the patio.

As Lars began unwrapping his taco, he said, “So. Hollywood. How the hell did that happen?”

“Honestly?”

“Absolutely.”

“A girl I liked when I was a freshman in college.”

Lars snorted. “This should be good.”

“She was a film major, so I thought it would be cool to take some production classes. You know, show her we had similar interests. Would have worked, too, if she’d actually noticed me. But what I did realize was that I kind of had a talent for the production stuff.”

“What exactly do you do now?” Lars asked.

“Depends. I mostly do both camera and editing. I’ve directed a few of my own shorts, too. But the only place you can see those is on YouTube.”

“So do you do both for this show you’re here for?”

“Kind of. I shoot during the day, then, when we have enough footage, I put together a rough cut on my laptop. They got another guy back at the network who does the final edit.”

“That’s so cool.”

“Yeah, well …” Wes took a bite of his taco. “And you? I distinctly remember both of us saying we couldn’t imagine joining the service.”

“We did, didn’t we?” Lars said with a laugh. “But there’s this little thing called tuition. My parents couldn’t spring for it, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to work my way through school.”

“So you joined the Navy because you were lazy?”

“Ha. Ha. You would think that, wouldn’t you? No, not lazy. Not that can be proven, anyway. The summer after you … left, my brother got me out onto Armitage Field. I got to actually sit in some of the aircraft. That was enough to hook me. Of course, then I thought I’d be flying.”

“So if you’re not flying, what do they have you doing?”

“Operations. Mission planning, that kind of thing. For some reason the Navy got the idea that I’m smart.”

“That makes me have so much more confidence in them,” Wes joked.

When Wes was washing down his last bite with some water, Lars said, “So, yesterday. That must have been pretty intense.”

Wes swallowed, then nodded. “I swear, Lars, I thought he was going to hit us. But then the plane veered off at the last moment. That guy saved our lives.”

Lars stared at his food for a second, then blinked and looked at Wes. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I said he saved our lives.”

“You think he saw you?”

“I don’t see any other explanation.”

“That wasn’t in the paper.”

“I never talked to anyone from the paper. Only one of your guys, Commander Forman. You know him?”

Lars nodded. “He’s in charge of VX-53. They’re the Flying Hammers. Air test and evaluation squadron. There are three different ones that fly out of the base.”

“The pilot who was killed yesterday, was he part of the Flying Hammers?”

Lars nodded, his eyes drifting off for a moment. “Lieutenant Adair, a new transfer.”

“You knew him?” Wes asked.

“Hadn’t met him yet.”

Wes leaned back. “Today must not be a very good day at the office.”

“Truthfully, that’s why I wanted to have lunch with you. I knew it wasn’t going to be pleasant, and having a prearranged getaway seemed like a good idea. I did really want to see you, too.”

“Nice save,” Wes said, but could only imagine what was going through the minds of Adair’s colleagues. “I’ll bet the article in the paper today didn’t help.”

Lars cocked his head. “I’m sorry?”

“The picture?”

Lars scrunched his eyes together.

“They ran the wrong picture,” Wes said as if it should have been obvious.

“Which picture?”

“The picture in the paper?”

When Lars still didn’t look like he understood, Wes did a quick glance around and spotted a newspaper rack on the sidewalk right outside the restaurant. “Be right back.”

A few moments later he returned with a copy of the paper and laid it on the table. He pointed at the photo. “That one. Whoever this guy is, he probably doesn’t think it’s funny they’re saying he’s dead.”

Lars looked at Wes, his brow even more furrowed than before. “Okay. You’ve completely lost me. What are you talking about?”

Wes wondered if he was suddenly speaking a foreign language. “That’s not Lieutenant Adair.”

“Of course it is,” Lars said. “It’s the same picture that’s in the initial incident report.”

Wes stared at his friend for half a second. “No. You must be mistaken.”

“No mistake. I read the report this morning. That’s the picture in the file. What’s the problem?”

Wes felt the skin on his arms tighten. “You’re saying this was the man who was supposed to be flying the plane yesterday?”

“What do you mean ‘supposed to be’?”

Wes leaned toward Lars. “What I mean is this wasn’t the man I found sitting in the cockpit.”