Rules of Betrayal

15

Frank Connor stood on the flight deck, watching from the safety line as Jonathan climbed into the rear seat of the F-18/A. An airman leaned into the cockpit and tightened Jonathan’s harness and acquainted him with the plane’s features. At one point the airman pointed to something at Jonathan’s feet and then crossed his hands over each other dramatically while shaking his head, and Connor knew that Jonathan had just been advised not to pull the ejection handle except in an absolute emergency.

The airman closed the canopy and leaped down from the ladder. Farther up the deck, a flight controller waved a green flag. The pilot gave a salute. The sound of the aircraft powering up was like an industrial turbine red-lining. Connor saw Jonathan glance his way. Feeling that something was expected of him, he forced an arm up and gave a thumbs-up. It was an awkward gesture. He’d never been good at the rah-rah stuff. It wasn’t that he didn’t have much practice at it. Rather, it was that he felt it disingenuous in a business that made its home in the gray regions of the human condition, where success was measured by acts of greater or lesser evil and death was ever-present. Still, he was the director now, and it was his duty to offer encouragement. He smiled, and Jonathan nodded.

The flight controller dropped his flag. The lights on the meatball went from red to green. The F-18 shuddered, then burst from its chocks and thundered down the flight deck, shooting like an arrow into the sky. The engine glowed orange, then red. Connor watched the fighter bank hard right and assume its direction to the north. An amateur, he thought darkly. He had sent a rank amateur without a day’s training to do a professional’s work. He thought of Balfour and the men that protected him, hardened criminals all. One in particular stood out, a six-and-a-half-foot-tall Sikh named Mr. Singh who did Balfour’s dirty work. Ransom was entering a nest of vipers, and he didn’t even know it. Connor stood rooted to the spot until the plane was nothing but a gray speck. Finally it disappeared altogether, swallowed by the sky.

Connor turned and began to walk back to the Island. He had his own flight home to arrange, and he was in no condition to sit like a goddamned daredevil in the back of one of those jets. A helicopter to the nearest major airport would be fine. He walked to the hatch and stopped a step shy, a force beyond him compelling him to take a last look into the sky.

“Godspeed,” he whispered.