The Minotaur

14

With its twin engines bellowing a roar that could be heard for several miles, the Intruder departed the earth with a delicate wiggle, a perceptible rocking of the wings that Rita Moravia automatically smoothed with the faintest side pressure on the control stick. She had let the takeoff trim setting rotate the plane’s nose to eight degrees nose-up and had stopped it there with a nudge of forward stick in that delicious moment when the weight of twenty-five tons of machine and fuel was transferred from the main landing gear to the wings. This was the transition to flight, a shimmering, imprecise hesitation as the machine gathered its strength and the wings took a firm bite into the warm morning air.

Now safely airborne, Rita slapped the gear handle up with her left hand. Her right thumb flicked at the coolie-hat button on the top of the stick, trimming the stick pressure to neutral as the twin- engined warplane accelerated.

She checked to make sure the landing gear were up and locked. They were. Temps, RPMs, fuel flow normal. Oil and hydraulic pressure okay. Using her left hand again, she raised the flap handle as she caressed the stick with her right to hold the nose steady through the configuration change. Accelerating nicely. Flaps and slats up and in and the stabilizer shifted, she isolated the flight hydraulic system and continued to trim. At 290 knots indicated she pulled the nose higher into the sky in order to comply with Jake Grafton’s directive not to exceed 300 knots.

Toad had activated the IFF and was talking to Departure. Now he switched to Los Angeles Center. The controller asked him to push the identification button on the IFF—“squawk ident”—and he complied. “Xray Echo 22, radar contact. Come left to a heading of 020. Passing Flight Level 180, proceed on course.”

Rita Moravia dipped the left wing as Toad rogered.

When she leveled the wings on course, still climbing, he was humming and singing over the ICS as he tuned the radar presenta- tion and checked that he had property entered the computer way- points. “ffi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to work we go, with a hi-hi-hee and a fiddly-dee, hi-hi, ho-ho…”

Rita grinned behind her oxygen mask. Flying with the Toadman was an experience. No wonder Captain Grafton’s face softened every time he saw Tarkington.

She leveled the plane at Flight Level 310—31,000 feet — and en- gaged the autopilot. Just above them a thin, wispy layer slid across the top of the canopy, so close it seemed they could almost reach up and let the gauzy tendrils slip around their fingers. Rita looked ahead and tried to find that point where the motion of the ropy filaments seemed to originate as they came racing toward the cock- pit, accelerating as the distance closed. It was like flying just under an infinite, flat ceiling — some Steven Spielberg effect to give the audience a rush of speed and wonder as the woofers oomphed and the seats throbbed, before the credits came on the screen.

After a moment she disengaged the autopilot and let the nose creep up a smidgen. Almost imperceptibly the plane rose a hun- dred feet, where the cloud layer literally sliced around the cockpit. Toad picked that moment to withdraw his head from the radar scope and look slowly around. After a moment he glanced at her and caught her eye. She saw him wink, then readjust the hood and devote his attention to the computer and radar.

A lifetime of work, all for this.

She had been an outstanding student at an excellent suburban high school, one of those bright youngsters who applied themselves in a frenzy of self-discipline and diligence that separated her from her classmates, who were more interested in boys. music and peer acceptance than school. She had shocked everyone, including her parents, by her announcement that she wanted to attend a military academy. In due course an appointment to the Naval Academy came from a congressman who knew better than to echo her moth- er’s surprise or horror in an era when socially correct posturing was more important than his voting record.

So she set forth bravely that summer after high school, at the age of eighteen, set off into the unknown world of plebes at the Naval Academy, this girl who had never set foot on a military installa- tion, this girl who knew only that she wanted to make her own way in life and that way would be much different from those of her mother or the friends of her youth.

It had been worse than different. It had been horrid, humiliating nightmare beyond anything she had imagined in her worst mo- ments of trepidation. All the sly taunts of her friends, bound for sororities and, they hoped, excellent marriages, hadn’t even hinted at the emotional trauma she experienced those first weeks. During the day she braced and marched and ran and endured the hazing and shouting to the point of exhaustion, and at night she sobbed herself to sleep wondering if she had made the right choice- Finally one day she realized that she hadn’t cried in a week. Her second, more important revelation occurred one morning at breakfast when an upperclassman had demanded to know the name of the Soviets’ chief arms negotiator. She had answered the question cor- rectly, and as he turned his attention to a gawky boy from Georgia seated beside her, she realized that these people were demanding nothing from her she could not accomplish. From then on she had cheerfully endured, and finally excelled.

She thought of those times this morning as the Intruder flew out from under the thin cloud layer into a crystal-clear desert sky and Toad Tarkington, the professional who had been there and back, caressed the system with a loving touch. She had made the right choice.

Sixty miles out she once again disengaged the autopilot and low- ered the nose slightly, then slowly pulled the throttles aft as her speed crept up toward 300 knots indicated. She always liked the feel of the plane as it descended in these long, shallow, power-on glides, gravity helping the engines drive the plane down into the thicker, denser air near the earth- She could feel every knot of the airspeed the engines didn’t generate — free airspeed it seemed, though of course it wasn’t. Because she was the airplane and it was her, the energy was hers: the speed and the life and the power, she absorbed and possessed and became all of it.

The Minotaur

Wingtip speed brakes cracked, but not enough. She flicked them out some more and felt the buffeting of the disturbed air, a gentle shaking that imparted itself to her through the stick and throttles and the seat in which she sat. Satisfied, she slid the speed-brake switch forward with her left thumb. The boards closed obediently and the buffeting ceased.

The desert below was baked brown and red and grayish black unleavened by the green of life. As she came down she could see sand and dirt in valleys and washes and rock the color of new iron in jagged cliffs and ridges.

Toad was chatting with Jake Grafton on the radio. “Never fear, the pros are here.”

“Amen,” Grafton replied. It’s a good thing Dodgers is back in China Lake, Rita thought

“Okay, Misty, I have you in sight. Drop to about 8,000 on the pressure altimeter”—the land here was 4.000 feet above sea level— “and come north up the valley until you see the van. It’s red and has a yellow cross on the top.”

“What kind of a cross,” she asked curiously.

“Dodgers’ son painted it. Three guesses.” “I see it.” At this height it was just a speck amid the dirt and boulders.

“0kay, circle the van at a distance of three miles or so and I’ll tell you when to turn on your gadget.”

“Roger that,” Toad said, and Rita flew away from the van, then turned to establish herself on the circle with her left wingtip pointed at the van.

Toad again examined the little box that had been taped to the top of the glare shield in front of him. The box wasn’t much. It had a three-position power switch which he had had in the middle, or standby, position for the last five minutes. While in standby the coolant was circulating around the Athena computer. Beside the power switch was a little green light that would come on to verify that the computer was receiving electrical power, and another light, yellow, to show when the system was detecting signals from an outside source. When that yellow light was on, the Athena system was doing its thing. There was a red light too, but that would illuminate only when the temperature of the super-cooled computer exceeded a level that endangered it. If that light came on, Toad was to turn off the system.

Down on the ground Jake watched Harold Dodgers and Helmut Fritsche at the radar control panel. “Got em,” Fritsche said after a bit, speaking loudly over the steady snoring of the engine of the generator mounted on the trailer behind the van. The engine noise muffled the moan of the Intruder’s engines except when it had passed almost overhead. Jake looked at the green display. “Tell ‘em to turn it on.”

Jake did so. In less than two seconds the blip faded from the scope. Magic! Involuntarily he looked toward that spot in the sky where the plane had to be. Yes, there it was, just now a flash as the sun glinted from the canopy, then fading to a dull yet visible white spot in the washed-out blue. He looked again at the scope. Noth- ing.

“Maybe if they tightened the circle, flew closer,” Fritsche sug- gested.

The plane was still invisible. However, at five miles from the radar the strength of the emissions from Athena was too much: it beaconed and a false blip appeared at two miles and another at five.

“Dad’s gonna have to tweak it,” Harold Dodgers said, his voice confident and cheerful. “But by gum, it works.”

“Sure enough does,” Jake Grafton said, and wiped the perspira- tion from his forehead. Hard to believe, but that crackpot and his genius son had invented a device that would revolutionize warfare. Just as Admiral Henry had known it would.

After another twenty minutes, during which the Intruder flew back and forth in straight lines tangent to the five-mile circle so that Fritsche could chart the Athena’s protection envelope, Jake told Rita and Toad to go on back to China Lake, where Dr. Dodg- ers would tweak the computer. Then Rita and Toad would bring the plane back here for another session. Jake would have preferred to stage the plane from NAS Fallen, just a few miles west, but Admiral Dunedin had vetoed that on the grounds that base secu- rity there would be inadequate.

“Helmut, you better drive over to the range office and call Dodg- ers on the scrambler and tell him how it went. Then call Admiral Dunedin in Washington.”

“Sure-” Fritsche trotted over to the gray navy sedan parked near the van and left in a cloud of dust. Harold Dodgers killed the generator, which backfired once and fell silent. Now the Intruder’s engines were plainly audible, the moan echoing from the rocky ridges and outcrops.

“CAG,” said a male voice on the radio. “Are we sweet or what?”

“You’re sweet. Misty. See you this afternoon back here.”

Jake watched the white dot shrink to nothing in the blue sky as Rita climbed away to the south. When even the engine noise was gone and all he could hear was the wind whispering across the aand, he walked over to the shade by the side of the van and sat down.

Any way you looked at it, Athena was mind-boggling. A reli- gious crackpot working in a shop that looks as if it should be full of broken-down cars comes up with an invention that will instantly obsolesce all conventional radar technology. But perhaps it wasn’t as wild as it appeared. After all, without the benefit of budgets, bureaucrats, and MBA supervisors worried about short-term prof- itability, Thomas Edison had single-handedly electrified the world and along the way fathered the recording and motion-picture in- dustry. With the same advantages Samuel Dodgers had made junk of all existing Quinary radar systems and the tactics and strategy built around those systems. And if you’re keeping score, he also just blew the B-2 program out of the sky. Why buy stealth bombers for $516 million each when you can make an existing plane invisi- ble with a $250,000 device and some superglue?

A lot of people were going to be seriously unhappy when they heard. Powerful people, the kind that had both their senators’ un- listed Washington numbers on their Rolodex.

Jake Grafton picked up a handful of dirt and let it trickle through his fingers, Tyler Henry, Ludlow, Royce Caplinger — they were sitting on a bomb. No doubt they’ll let Jake Grafton go it alone for a while, stand out there by himself in front of the crowd as the duty expert. After he had run the bloomers up the flagpole and they had precisely measured the direction and velocity of the wind, then and only then would they decide what to do.

They must have been ecstatic when they realized that Jake Graf- ton was just the man they needed: a genuine, decorated live hero whom they could stand with shoulder to shoulder or disavow as a crazed maverick, whichever way the cookie crumbled. They would throw him to die sharks without a second thought if they con- cluded that course looked best. Too bad, but he always was an Officer who couldn’t take orders, not a team player. And after that El Hakim thing, a bad concussion, psychiatrists; he was never right in the head. Too bad.

These powerful people whose boats would start leaking when the Athena secret came out, what would they do? Fight. How? What would be their weapons?

The dirt escaping his fingers made a sculpted pile. The wind swirled away a portion of each handful. The slower the dirt trick- led from his fingers, the more of it the wind claimed.

The most probable argument, Jake decided, was that Athena would destabilize the existing East-West military balance. This ar- gument had finesse. Athena was too cheap to argue the dollars. So argue the consequences. Argue that Athena pushes Russia closer to a first strike. Argue nuclear war and radioactive ashes and the Four Horsemen. If you can’t dazzle them with logic or baffle them with bullshit, then scare the bejesus out of them.

Jake stood and stirred the pile of dust with his toe. The wind carried it away grain by grain.

It was late afternoon, on the third flight of the day, and Rita was flying straight legs north and south, each leg one mile farther west of the radar site. Toad was bored. He was using the navigation system to ensure she stayed precisely where Captain Grafton wanted her to be. That was the hard part. After he had turned on the Athena system there was nothing to do but monitor its “oper- ating” light. He did keep an eye on the Athena temp light, so if it came on he could turn off the system in a smart, military manner. For this the U.S. Navy was using its best Naval Flight Officer, a professional aerial warrior. Peace is hell.

Off to the west, down on the desert, was a long shadow cast by the two-story black windowless building that constituted the only structure in the town known as Deegon’s Well. That building was a whorehouse. Presumably it also contained the office of the mayor and the rest of the municipal employees. From this distance it appeared to be just a tiny box on the desert. He knew it was painted black and had two stories and no windows because he had once inspected it from the parking lot in front. Just a tourist, of course.

He keyed his ICS mike to call Rita’s attention to this famous landmark, but thought better of it.

Rita was checking the fuel remaining in the various tanks. He pressed his head against the radar hood and examined the cursor position.

He heard a whump, a loud, loose whump, and instantaneously the air pressure and noise level rose dramatically. Something struck him. He jerked his head back from the hood and looked around wildly.

The wind howled, shrieked, screamed, even through his helmet. Rita was back against her seat, slumped down, covered with gore, her right hand groping wildly for her face.

A bird! They had hit a bird.

He keyed the ICS without conscious thought and said her name. He couldn’t hear the sound of his own voice.

The plane was rolling off on one wing, the nose dipping. He used his left hand to grab the stick between Rita’s knees and center it.

Slow down. They had to slow down, had to lessen the velocity of the wind funneling through that smashed-out left quarter panel. The bird must have come through there and crashed against Rita as she bent over the fuel management panel on the left console.

He pulled back on the stick to bring the nose up into a climb and concentrated on keeping the wings level. Higher. Higher. Twenty degrees nose-up. Airspeed dropping: 250 indicated, 240, 230—he should drop the gear and flaps, get this flying pig slowed way down —210 knots.

The gear handle was on the left side of the instrument panel, right under the hole where the plexiglas quarter panel used to be, right under that river of air that was pressurizing the cockpit.

He tried to reach it. Just beyond his fingertips. Harness release unlocked. No go. Juggling the stick with his left hand, he used his right to release the two Koch fittings on the top of his torso har- ness. If the seat fired now he wouldn’t have a parachute. He reached again. Nope. He was going to have to unfasten the Koch fittings that held his bottom to the ejection seat. With fingers that were all thumbs he released the two catches, then attacked the bayonet fittings on his oxygen mask. Might as well get it off too. He jerked loose the cord that went to the earphones in his helmet.

Damn — he was stalling. He could feel the buffet and the nose pitched forward. He let it go down and got some airspeed, then eased it back.

He was having difficulty holding the wings level. Power at about 86 percent on both engines. That was okay. But the smell — Jesus God!

The overpowering odor made his eyes water. He tried to breathe only through his mouth.

No longer restrained by the inertia reel in the ejection seat, he grasped the stick with his right hand and stretched across with his left to the gear handle and slapped it down.

Now for the flaps. He was lying across the center console, trying to keep his head out of the wind blast as be felt for the flap lever beside the throttle quadrant. Leave the throttles alone. Get the flaps down to thirty degrees. Fumbling, he pulled the lever aft.

Toad was overcorrecting with the stick as he fought to keep the wings level, first too much one way, then too much the other. Goddamn, those peckerhead pilots do this without even thinking about it.

There! Gear down and locked. Flaps and slats out, stabilator Shifted. Hallelujah.

He glanced up at Rita. She had shit and blood and gore all over her face and shoulders. Feathers. They were everywhere!

Her helmet — it was twisted sideways. Using glances, he tried to wipe off the worst of the crap with his left hand as he concentrated on holding the plane straight and level: 140 knots now, 8,300 feet on the altimeter. Conditions in the cockpit were a lot better.

Were there any mountains this high around here? He couldn’t remember, and he couldn’t see over the top of the instrument panel, bent over the way he was.

First things first- He twisted her helmet back straight. The face Shield was shattered, broken, but it had protected her face and eyes from the worst of the impact

She was dazed. She damn well better come out of it quick, be- cause he sure couldn’t land this plane.

Her right eye was covered with goo, whether hers or the bird’s be couldn’t tell. He wiped at it with his gloved fingers. The bird’s.

Her left eye was clear but unfocused, bunking like crazy. “C’mon, Rita baby. I can’t keep flying this thing!” In his frustra- tion he shouted. She couldn’t hear him.

Back to the panel: 135 knots. Maybe he could engage the autopi- lot

Yeah, the autopilot. If it would work. He jabbed at the switches and released the stick experimentally. Yeah! Hot damn! It engaged.

He devoted his attention to her. Cuffed her gently, rubbed her cheeks- She shook her head and raised her right hand to her face.

He got himself rearranged in his seat and held his mask to his face. “Rita?” Nothing. No sound in his ears. Now what? He had forgotten to plug the cord to his helmet back in. He did so. ftGod- damnit, Rita,” he roared- ”Snap out of it.”

Someone was talking on the radio. He listened. He could hear the words now. It was Grafton. Toad keyed the radio mike. “We took a bird hit. Rita’s a little dazed. We’re going to land at Fallen when she comes around.”

“Understand you took a bird. Where?”

“Right in the cockpit, CAG. Hit Rita in the head. We’re going to Fallen when she comes around. Now I’m leaving this freq and calling Fallen on Guard.” Without waiting for a reply, he jabbed the channelization switches and called Fallen tower. ‘Fallen tower, this is Misty 22 on Guard. Mayday. We’re fifteen or twenty mites out. Roll the crash truck.”

Which way are we heading? 120 degrees. He tugged the stick to the right and settled into a ten-degree turn, which the autopilot held. Fallen was off to the west here somewhere. He craned to see over the instrument panel in that direction.

“Misty 22, Fallen tower on Guard. Roger your Mayday. Come up…” and the controller gave them a discrete frequency.

Hey, stupid, look at the radar. He examined it. Be patient. Toad, be patient. You’re doing okay, if only Rita comes around. And if she doesn’t, well, screw it. You can figure out some way to eject her right over the runway, then you can hop out. Too bad those penny- pinchers in the puzzle palace never spent the bucks for a command ejection system for the A-6. But you can get her out somehow. It’s been done before. There — that must be the base there, just coming onto the screen from the right. He waited until it was dead ahead, then pushed the stick left until the wings were level. Now he dialed in the Fallon tower freq and gave them a call.

Rita was using her right arm to get her left up to the throttle quadrant. “Toad?”

“Yeah. You okay?”

“What—“

“Bird strike. All that goo on you is bird shit and gore. Relax, it ain’t you. Can you see?”

“I think — right eye’s blurred. This wind. Left is red — blood— can’t see …”

“Okay. I got the gear and flaps down and we’re on autopilot motoring toward Fallen. After a while or two you’re gonna land this thing. Just sit back right now and get yourself going again.”

She rubbed at her face with her right hand-

The autopilot dropped off the line. Automatically she grasped the stick and began flying.

“See,” exclaimed Toad Tarkington triumphantly, “you can do it! All fucking right! We’re almost home. Raise your left wing.” She did so and he resumed his monologue, only to pause occasionally to answer a question over the radio.

Rita Moravia flew by instinct, her vision restricted to one eye, and that giving her only a blurred impression of the attitude instru- ments on the panel before her. It was enough. She could feel the plane respond to her touch, and confirmation of that response was all she needed from her vision. Needed now. She would need to see a lot better to land. The wind — it was part of the problem. The wind wasn’t coming into the plane through the shattered quarter panel at 140 knots — the closed cockpit prevented that — but it was coming in at an uncomfortable velocity and temperature.

Cold. She was cold. She should slow some more.

She tugged at the throttles with her left hand. Her arm was numb: her fingers felt like they were frozen. The power levers came back, though the engine-RPM and fuel-flow tapes were too blurred to read. Still she turned her head and squinted with her good eye. She could make out the angle-of-attack stoplight indexer on the glare shield and trimmed to an on-speed condition.

For the first time she looked outside, trying to see the ground. Just a blurred brown backdrop. But Toad could get her lined up.

She tried to make her left thumb depress the ICS button, and after a few seconds succeeded. “Where are we?”

“Come left about twenty degrees and start a descent to … oh, say, six thousand. Can you see?”

“I can see to fly. Can’t see outside very well. Get me lined up and all and I think I can do it”

Toad got back on the radio.

She made the heading change and only then retarded the throt- tles slightly and let the nose slip down a degree or so. One thing at a time. She had once had an instructor who liked to chant that to his students, who were often in over their heads. When it’s all going to hell, he used to say, just do one thing at a time.

The plane sank slowly, the altimeter needle swinging counter- clockwise with about the speed of an elevator indicator. So they had all day. Go down slow and you have an easy transition at the bottom. Go down too fast and … As she sat there she continued to blink and flex her left arm. Doesn’t feel like anything’s broken, just numb. Maybe the world’s most colorful bruise on my shoul- der, some orange-and-purple splotch that will be the envy of every tattooed motorcyclist north of Juarez.

She was hurting now. As the numbness wore off she was hurting. Her face felt like someone had used a steak hammer on it. Like she had slid down the sidewalk on her cheekbone for a couple hundred yards.

“Come right about fifteen degrees or so and you’ll be lined up,” Toad said. “You got fourteen thousand feet of concrete here, Rita, but I think we should try for a wire.” He reached up with his left hand and pulled the handle to drop the tailhook. “Just keep it lined up and descending wings level and we’ll be in fat city.”

“Fuel? How’s our fuel?”

“About ten grand or so. Just a little heavy. Let’s dump the fuel in the wings.”

Rita reached with her left hand, up there under that blown-out quarter panel, for the dump switch on the fuel management panel. “I can’t get it,” she said finally.

“I’ll get it.” Toad leaned across and hunted until he had the proper switch.

“Landing checklist.”

“Okay, you got three down and locked, flaps and slats out, stab shifted, boards?” She put them out and added some power. It took a while to get the plane stabilized on speed again.

“Pop-up?” Toad murmured when she once again had everything under control. “Can you check the fiaper on pop-up?” The switch was on her left console. She had to lower her head and look as she rumbled with numb fingers. “Watch your wings,” Toad warned.

She brought the wings back to level.

“Screw the pop-up,” Toad announced, figuring that she just couldn’t ascertain the switch position. “It’s probably still on. Check the brakes.”

This also took some doing. She had to lift both feet free of the deck where her heels rested and place the balls of her feet on top of the rudder pedals, then push. She had never before realized what a strain that put on her stomach muscles. She was weak as a kitten. She struggled and got her feet arranged and pushed hard. They met resistance. “Brakes okay.” She would have to do this again on the runway if the hook skipped over the short-field arresting gear or she landed long. For now she let her feet slide down the pedals until her heels were once again on the deck.

“My mask.” She gagged. “Get my mask off!”

Toad got her right fitting released just in time. She retched and the vomit poured down over her chest.

Seeing Rita vomit and smelling that smell, Toad felt his own stomach turn over. He choked it back and helped her hold the plane level until she stopped heaving.

“Okay,” she said when she finally got her mask back on, “check your harness lock and we’re ready to do it.” She took her hand off the stick and locked the harness lever on the forward right corner of the ejection seat.

“Oh, poo,” Toad said. She glanced his way. He was reconnecting his Koch fittings- “Sort of forgot to strap myself back in,” he ex- plained.

She ran her seat up as far as she could and yet still reach the rudder pedals. This put her a face a little higher out of the wind, and in seconds she could see better, but only out of her right eye. Her left was still clogged with blood.

“You’re coming down nicely, passing six thousand MSL, eigh- teen hundred above the ground. Let’s keep this sink rate and we’ll do okay. Come left a couple degrees, though.”

She complied.

“A little more. And gimme just a smidgen more power.”

When she squinted and blinked a few more times, she could make out the runway. There was a little crosswind and Toad had her aimed off to the left slightly to compensate.

The approach seemed to take forever, perhaps because she was hurting and perhaps because she was unsure if she could handle it at the bottom. She would just have to wait and see, but it was difficult waiting when she was so cold, and growing colder.

She let the plane descend without throttle corrections, without wiggling the stick or trying to sweeten her lineup. With three hun- dred feet still to go on the radar altimeter, she made a heading correction. She was going to have trouble judging the altitude with only one eye, and she thought about that. She could do it, she decided. There was the meatball on the Optical Landing System. She began to fly it, working mightily to move the throttles. Still coming down, on speed, lined up, across the threshold. Now! Throttles back a little and nose just so, right rudder and left stick to straighten her out … oh yes!’

The mainmounts kissed the concrete.

The pilot used the stick to hold the nose wheel off as she smoothly closed the throttles. She had no more than got the en- gines to idle when she felt the rapid deceleration as the tailhook engaged the short-field arresting gear. The nose slammed down. As the plane was jerked to a rapid stop, she applied the brakes.

She got the flap handle forward with her left hand, but knew she wouldn’t be able to tug hard enough to pull the parking brake handle out. Toggling the harness lock release by her right thigh, she got enough freedom to reach it with her right.

Toad opened the canopy. As it whined its way aft a fire truck came roaring up and screeched to a halt with firemen tumbling off.

Canopy open, Rita checked that the flaps and slats were in. Her left shoulder was aching badly now and it was difficult to make her fingers do as she wished. One of the firemen ran out from the wheel well and made a cutting motion across his throat He had inserted the safety pins in the landing gear.

Both throttles around the horn to cutoff, engine-fuel master switches off as the RFMs dropped. Then the generators dropped off the line with an audible click and everything in the cockpit went dead. Exhausted, she fumbled with the generator switches until they too were secured.

It was very quiet. She got the mask loose and, using only her right hand, pried the helmet off. The compressor blades tinkled steadily, gently, as the wind kept them turning, like a mobile on the porch of your grandmother’s house when you returned after a long absence.

A man was standing on the pilot’s boarding ladder. He looked at her and drew back in horror.

“A bird,” she croaked.

She heard Toad give a disgusted exclamation. “Wipe it off her, man! It’s just bird guts. It ain’t her brains!”

They were loading Rita into an ambulance and the crash crew was filling out paperwork when a gray navy sedan screeched to a halt near the fire truck. Jake Grafton jumped out and strode toward Toad as white smoke wafted from the auto’s engine compartment.

“Looks like you were in a hurry,” Toad said, and managed a grin. He was sitting, leaning back against the nose wheel, too drained to even stand. He felt as if he had just finished a ten-mile run. The crash chief tossed the captain a salute and he returned it even though he wasn’t wearing a hat. He obviously had other things on his mind.

“How’s Rita?”

“Gonna be okay, I think. When they looked at her they thought she had brains and eyeballs oozing out everywhere, but they got most of it cleaned off. Never saw so much shit. Must have been a damn big bird. They’re taking her over to the hospital for X rays and all.”

Jake Grafton deflated visibly. He wiped his forehead with a hand, and then wiped his hand on his trousers, leaving a wet stain.

“How come you didn’t answer me on the damned radio? I about had heart failure when you started doing whifferdills.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I disconnected my plugs and got a little un- strapped so I could reach over and fly the plane. Rita was sorta out of it there for a little while.”

Jake climbed the pilot’s ladder and surveyed the cockpit. He examined the hole left in the plexiglas quarter panel by the late buzzard or eagle or hawk. “She come around okay?”

“Came to and landed this thing like it was on rails. Real damn sweet, CAG. Never saw a better landing.”

A sailor drove up aboard a yellow flight-line tractor. He swung in front of the plane and backed a tow bar toward the nose wheel. “Well,” said Jake Grafton as he made a quick inspection of the Athena antennas, all of which seemed to be firmly in place, “you better zip over to the hospital and let them check you over too. I gotta get this plane put someplace private.”

“Uh, CAG, you’re still gonna let us fly the prototypes, aren’t you? I mean, it wasn’t like we tried to hit that bird or anything.”

Jake looked at Toad, slightly surprised. “Oh,” he said, “you two are my crew. If the doctors say you can fly. Now get over to the hospital and find out. Better get cleaned up too. You look like you’ve been cleaning chickens and the chickens won.”

“Yessir. You bet. But, uh, I don’t have a ride. Can I take your car?”

“Aw, Toad. you’re gonna get that bird goo all over the seat.” He glanced at the car. Smoke was still leaking out. It was junk. “Keys are in it. But be careful — it’s government property.”

Amazingly enough, the car engine actually started after Toad ground on it awhile. Jake had driven about forty miles at full throttle, about a hundred miles per hour, so he shook his head in wonder when the transmission engaged with a thunk and Toad drove away trailing smoke.

15

The base dispensary contained an emergency room, but no other hospital facilities. After Rita Mora- via was cut out of her flight gear, cleaned up and examined by a doctor, she was taken to a hospital in Reno, seventy miles away. Toad Tarkington arrived at the dispensary as the ambulance was driving away.

“0h. Doctor,” the corpsman called when he saw Toad coming through the door, “here comes the other one.”

The doctor was only a year or two out of med school, but he had already acquired the nuances of military practice. “In here.” He gestured to an examining room. A corpsman followed them in and closed the door. ‘”Strip to the skin,” the doctor said. “How do you feel?” He grasped Toad’s wrist and glanced at his watch.

“Okay, Doc. The pilot took the bird hit. I just got splattered.”

“Did you become hypoxic, pass out, inhale any feathers or any- thing like that?”

“No, sir. I just peed my pants.”

The doctor checked his watch again, then looked at Toad with raised eyebrows.

“Not really,” Toad said, suddenly aware that he was no longer in the company of his peers. “Sorry. How’s Moravia?”

The doctor was still all business. “Blurred vision in her left eye, some bruises and cuts, nothing serious. But she’s an excellent can- didate for a major-league infection. I gave her a large dose of peni- cillin and sent her to the hospital in Reno for X rays and observa- tion. She can stay there until we’re sure she’s okay.”

“And her eye?”

“I think it’ll be okay. They’ll look at that in Reno.”

The doctor spent the next five minutes examining Toad. He peed in a bottle and gave a blood sample. The corpsman gathered up his flight gear. Toad insisted it all be put in a duffel bag. He stood holding his flight suit, which already had a hen-house smell. “What am I going to do for clothes?”

“Got any money?”

He dug his wallet from the chest pocket. “Fifty-three dollars.”

The doctor added fifty dollars of his own money to Toad’s for- tune and sent the corpsman to the exchange for underwear, trou- sers, shirt, and tennis shoes. “Should be open until nineteen hun- dred hours. You can make it if you hurry.” Toad gave the enlisted man his sizes and expressed a few opinions about color and style. The corpsman flashed Toad a wicked grin as he headed for the door.

An hour later Tarkington had talked the doctor into loaning him one of the navy sedans belonging to the dispensary. He was on his way to the parking lot in his new duds when he met Jake Grafton coming in.

“You okay?” the captain said.

“Yessir. Just fine. Thought I’d grab a little liberty.” Toad gave Jake back the keys to the sedan he had used to get to the dispen- sary, and displayed the keys to his borrowed vehicle. “I think your car’s had it. Want to come with me?”

“Where you going?”

“Reno. That’s where they took Rita.” He told Jake what the doctor had said.

Jake begged off. He still had security arrangements and phone calls to make. “Call me from the hospital and tell me how she is. I’ll be at the BOQ- Leave a message at the desk if I’m not there.”

Jake watched Toad drive away toward the main gate, then went into the dispensary to see what the doctor really thought about Rita’s left eye. She needed two great eyes to fly. Better than the doctor or even Toad, Jake Grafton knew what flying meant to Lieutenant Rita Moravia, U.S. Naval Aviator.

They had her in a semi-private room with a beautiful white-haired lady who was fast asleep. Toad spent ten minutes talking to the floor nurse and the internist before be went in. ‘They say you’re gonna be okay,” he told Rita with a grin. She had a patch over her left eye. Scratches and small cuts were visible on her cheek.

She raised a finger to her lips. “Mrs. Douglas went to sleep a few minutes ago,” she whispered. Toad stood at the end of the bed glancing uneasily at the shiny, stark hospital equipment. Just being in a hospital made his leg ache.

“Here,” she said, still whispering, “pull this chair over and sit down. Have you had any dinner?” It was almost 10 P.M.

“Uh-uh. How you doin’?” He sat gingerly on the forward por- tion of the seat.

She shrugged. ‘Thanks for saving my bacon.”

He waved it away. “What’s wrong with her?” he asked, glancing at the sleeping Mrs. Douglas.

“Broken hip. She fell in her kitchen this morning. They’re going to pin it tomorrow evening. She’s been in a lot of pain today,”

Toad nodded vaguely and examined the sheets that covered Rita. Hospital sheets always looked so perfect, even with a body between them. Her hair was a mess. They had cleaned it and made no attempt to pretty it up. That’s what’s wrong with hospitals— your dignity is left at the front door on the way in.

“That shirt you’re wearing is the most horrid garment I have— What are those colors? Chartreuse and mauve?”

“Beats me,” Toad muttered, glancing at his torso with distaste. “One of the corpsmen picked it out at the exchange. He thought I would cut a dashing figure in it, I guess.”

“Dashing is not the word I would use.”

They sat for a while, each trying to think of something to say- “Guess your helmet visor saved your eyes,” he said at last “Cush- ioned the impact”

“It’s amazing, when you stop to think about it. I thought about it all the way over here in the ambulance. The ambulance only goes ten miles over the speed limit, so everything on the road passes it. Lights flashing, and everyone whizzing by. So I had plenty of time to think about the odds. It’s amazing.”

“What is?”

“How with the whole wide sky to fly in, all those thousands of cubic miles, that bird and I tried to fly in exactly the same little piece of it. A foot further left, that bird would have missed the cockpit, a foot to the right and it would have hit the nose, a foot higher—“

“Life’s like that. No guarantees. You never know.”

“Is that what combat is like?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Weren’t you and Captain Grafton — over the Med?”

Toad shrugged and slid further back into the chair. He crossed his leg with the pin in it over the good one and massaged it gently. “One flight. A couple minutes of being scared stiff and too busy to even sweat it That wasn’t combat. Combat is day in and day out knowing they’re going to be shooting and being scared before you go and going anyway. I’ve never done that. Hope I never have to.” He grinned wryly and cocked his head to better match the angle of hers against the pillow. “I’m a peacetime drugstore cowboy- Didn’t you know? Make love not war.”

“The Silver Star fooled me.”

“Medals don’t mean shit over the Med. CAG had the guts and determination, enough for him and me both with a lot left over. He’s a balls-out fighter. Those Arab fighter jocks were hopelessly outclassed — at least that’s what I kept telling myself then. Still tell myself that on nights when I wake up thinking about it I’m even beginning to believe it”

She smoothed the sheets with her right hand.

“How’s your left shoulder?”

“Just bruised. Hurts now- If this eye-clears up …”

“It will.”

“Got some cuts on the eyeball. Lots of bird flesh and even the stem of a little feather.”

“It’ll be okay.”

“I suppose.”

“You’ll fly again. Just wait and see- You’re too good to stay on the ground. A person with your talent belongs in a cockpit.”

“Ummm.”

He put his feet on the floor, leaned forward and captured a hand. “listen, Rita — Ginger — I know how you feel. The fickle finger of fate just reached out and zinged you a little one and reminded you that you’re mortal clay. We all are. But — you know all this— you’ve got to live every day the best you can, put the throttles against the stops and fly. Flying is what it’s all about. And when that final flight comes, that last day, as come it will, then look the Man straight in the eye and tell Him it’s been a hell of a great ride. And thank Him. That’s the way you have to live it. That’s the only way it can be done.”

She took her hand from his and touched his cheek.

“Get a good night’s sleep. Get well. You got a lot of flying left to do.” He stood. “I’ll look in on you tomorrow afternoon. Hang tough.”

“Thanks for coming by.”

He paused at the door and winked. “We fly together. Remem- ber?”

“Kiss me, lover.”

He glanced at Mrs. Douglas. Her eyes were closed and she seemed to be asleep. He bent over Rita and gave her his best effort.

It was 1 P.M. the next day when Luis Camacho pulled into his driveway in Silver Spring and let himself into his house. His wife was at work and his son was in school. The house felt strange on a weekday with both of them gone. He walked slowly through the downstairs, looking it over, listening to the refrigerator hum, look- ing out the windows.

He found his leather driving gloves in the hall closet, the pigskin ones his parents had given him two Christmases ago that he never wore because they were too nice. The batteries in the flashlight stowed in the catchall drawer in the kitchen still had some juice, amazingly enough. He tucked the light into his hip pocket and let himself out the kitchen door into the backyard. The wooden fence between his house and Albright’s had a gate with a rusty latch, no lock. The Labrador wanted to come with him, but he shooed it back and latched the gate behind him.

He opened his packet of lock picks on Harlan Albright’s picnic table. He stared at them a moment, trying to decide. It had been a while. Let’s see, the lock is a Yale.

Opening it took ten minutes. The Lab finally quit whining next door. Probably he went back to his favorite spot in the sun and lay down. Camacho was beginning to think he wasn’t going to get this lock when it clicked.

Albright had no fancy alarms, or none that Camacho had ever seen. Service manager at a local garage, he couldn’t afford the visibility that a Fort Knox security system would give him. But no doubt he had some little doodads here and there to let him know if be had any unwanted visitors.

Luis Camacho stood in the door and carefully examined the interior- It looked precisely as he remembered it, exactly the way he had seen it for years. He stepped inside, eased the door shut and listened.

Albright’s house was similar to his, one of four variations on the same basic floor plan the tract builder had used in half the houses in this subdivision. Other than minor interior adjustments, most of the differences were in the front facades.

As he stood there the faint hum of the refrigerator shut off. Albright’s fridge was quieter than his. Probably newer too. He closed his eyes and concentrated, trying to shut out the faint sound of a car passing on the side street. Only a few creaks and groans as the house continued to warm in the early afternoon sun.

He moved slowly through the kitchen and into the family room. A bachelor, Albright spent his evenings here, watching TV or reading. Camacho moved slowly, checking the walls and looking behind pictures — O’Keeffe prints — and tugging at the carpet edges. He inspected the books in the built-in bookcase, then randomly removed a few and checked the integrity of the wall behind by rapping with a knuckle. He didn’t know what he hoped to find, but he would recognize it when he saw it. If there was anything to find, which was doubtful.

The garage was next, then the basement. It was still unfinished, no ceiling or drywall to cover the unpainted cinder blocks. Damp. Only two naked bulbs overhead, plus.the one on the stairs. He glanced at the accumulated junk and the layers of dust and grime, and decided Albright cleaned his basement on the same schedule used by every other bachelor who owned one — never. There were some tools piled carelessly in one corner: a drill, a saber saw, a hammer, a box of hand tools. They were covered with the same thickness of dirt that covered everything else. Some cans of paint that looked like they had never been opened. Perhaps he had had a fit of enthusiasm which had waned on the way home from the hardware store. Camacho went back upstairs, consciously re- minding himself to flip off the light switch at the head of the stairs.

He stopped dead in the kitchen. He turned and went back to the basement door. He opened it. Light switch on. What was that? Was it a noise? Lights off. Yes, there was a noise, some kind of faint grinding, just for a half second or so. He repeated the procedure. He wasn’t imagining things. He could hear something.

In the slanted ceiling of the stairway, down about three feet from the bulb, was a dusty screen. Several of the strands had been pushed aside, perhaps by a careless jab from a broom handle, leav- ing a hole. He flipped the light several more times. He could just barely hear it, the most minute of noises, hard to recognize.

The screen was held on with four screws. Bare metal could be seen on the screw slots. When he got them out and lowered the screen he could see the camera lens. Rubber padding held on with rubber bands covered the camera body. A wire led to it He stood on the stairs and examined it with his flashlight, then reached up and removed the camera, excess wire following along.

The wire was connected to a gadget on top with a small alligator clip. With the stairwell light off, he undipped it and carried the camera to the kitchen table. Unwrapping the rubber padding with gloves on was difficult, so he took them off.

The gadget on top was some kind of an electromagnetic doo- hickey with a lever. When the current was turned on by flipping the light switch, the magnet was energized and caused this steel pin to push the camera shutter button, tripping the shutter. When the current ceased, a spring reset the lever, which released the shutter button and allowed the film to be automatically advanced by the camera.

It was a nice camera, a Canon. The little window said that it was on its ninth exposure. How many times had he turned that light on and off. He tried to count them. Six. No, five. So the film counter should be on four.

He opened the camera and removed the film, then pulled the celluloid completely from its cartridge and held it up to the win- dow. Rewinding the film back onto the cartridge was a chore, but he managed, and after wiping the cartridge carefully, he reinstalled it in the camera. He used a dry dishcloth on the camera and wrapped it carefully. Working by feel with the overhead stair light off, he returned the device to its hole and screwed the screen back on. He nipped the light switch three times and was rewarded each time with that faint noise.

There were three bedrooms upstairs, exactly the same floor plan here as in his house next door, but only two of them were fur- nished. The largest was obviously lived in, but the middle-sized room was ready for a guest. Luis Camacho tried to remember if Harlan Albright had ever had an overnight guest that he knew about. No.

He checked the carpet. Albright might have some kind of pres- sure device under there, or perhaps heat-sensitive paper. Nope. Another camera? Apparently not.

There was a little trapdoor in the hall ceiling that led to the unfinished attic. An upholstered chair sat just inside the guest bed- room. He put his nose almost to the seat and scrutinized it care- fully. Yes, a few smudges of dirt were visible.

Luis Camacho pulled the chair under the trapdoor, took his shoes off and stood on it. He eased the door up. It was dark up there. A few flakes of dust drifted down. He stood on tiptoe and used the flash. He felt between the joists.

Several items. One was a soft leather bagtike thing, a zippered pistol rug. The other was a large, heavy metal toolbox that just fit through the trapdoor. He almost dropped the toolbox getting it down.

The pistol rug contained a Ruger.22 autopistol with black plastic grips and a partially full box of Remington ammunition. Bluing was worn off the pistol in places. The front sight and its sleeve were amputated, and threads were machined into the out- side of the barrel to take the silencer, which was also in the rug. This was strictly a close-range weapon: with no front sight, it would be useless at any distance.

He sniffed the barrel of the pistol. Cleaned since last use. He pushed the catch and the magazine dropped out of the grip into his hand. It was full. He shoved it back in until it clicked. No doubt the cleaning rod and patches and gun oil were up there in the joists somewhere. He replaced the items in the rug and zipped it closed.

The toolbox wasn’t locked. Neatly packed in and padded to prevent damage were fuses, a roll of wire and a two-channel Futaba radio transmitter for radio-controlled models. Lots of servos, ten of them. A little bag containing crystals to change the frequency of the transmitter. Four miniature radio receivers, also made by Futaba. A bunch of nickel-cadmium batteries and a charging unit. Four six-cell batteries wrapped with black plastic. There was even a manual alarm clock.

But the piece de resistance, the item that impressed Luis Cama- cho, was a radio receiver with a frequency-adjustment knob, vol- ume knob, earpiece and spike meter. This device would allow the careful craftsman to check for possible radio interference in the area in which he intended to do his bit to improve the human species, before he armed his own device. Better safe than sorry.

All in all, it was an impressive kit. Everything recommended by Gentleman’s Quarterly for the well-heeled professional bomber was in there, including a case containing a set of jeweler’s screwdrivers and wrenches.

Camacho repacked the items carefully, trying to put everything back exactly as he found it. After much straining he got the tool- box back through the trapdoor into the attic.

He checked carefully in the joists as far as he could reach and see, then replaced the pistol rug. He was meticulous in restoring everything to its proper place, wiping a few flecks of dust from the chair arms and retrieving a larger piece from the carpet. When he had given everything a last look, he went down to the kitchen and seated himself at the table.

Where was the plastique? It had to be here someplace. Using his flashlight, he descended again to the basement and examined the paint cans. He hefted them, shook them gently. They contained something, but it probably wasn’t paint. Oh well.

He locked the kitchen door behind him and crossed through the back gate to his own yard.

Standing in his own kitchen with a pot of coffee dripping through the filter, he thought about Albright’s treasure as he ma- neuvered a cup under the black coffee basket to fill it. With the Pyrex pot back in place, he sipped on the hot liquid as he dialed the phone.

After talking to three people, he was connected with the man he wanted, an explosives expert. “Well, the material’s ability to resist the effects of heat and cold and humidity depends on just what kind of stuff it is. Semtex is a brand real popular right now, made in Czechoslovakia. Heat won’t do it any good, but if the heat is not too severe or prolonged, it shouldn’t take much of its punch away.”

“How about storage in an uninsulated attic?”

“Here, in this climate?”

“Yes.”

“Not recommended. Best would be a place slightly below room temperature, a place where the temp stays pretty constant.”

“Thanks.”

“I keep mine in the wine cellar.”

“Sure.”

Camacho finished the cup of coffee, dumped the rest of the pot down the sink and turned off the coffee maker. He wiped the area with a dishrag and threw the wet grounds into the garbage. He didn’t want his wife noticing he had been there.

It was three o’clock when he locked the front door and drove away.

At about the same instant that Luis Camacho was starting his car to return to his office. Toad Tarkington was parking at the Reno hospital. When he arrived in the room, Rita was sitting in a chair talking with Mrs. Douglas, her roommate. After the introductions Toad pulled up the other chair, a molded plastic job made for a floaller bottom than his.

“When are they going to let you go?” he asked as he tried to arrange himself comfortably.

“Probably tomorrow. The doctor will be around in an hour or so.”

“Did you get a good night’s sleep?”

“Not really.’” She smiled at Mrs. Douglas. “We had a series of little naps, didn’t we?”

“We did.” Mrs. Douglas had a delicate voice. “I don’t sleep much anymore anyway.” She bit on her lower lip.

“Perhaps we should go for a little walk,” Rita suggested. She roee and made sure her robe belt was firmly tied- “We’ll be back in a little bit, Mrs. Douglas,”

“Okay, dear.”

Out in the hall Toad said, “I see you fixed your hair.”

“Wasn’t it a fright? A hospital volunteer helped me this morn- ing. She said it would help how I felt, and she was right.” She walked slowly in her slippers, her hands in her pockets. “Poor Mrs. Douglas. Here I’ve been so concerned about my little half-acre and her two daughters came in this morning and told her she has to go to a nursing home. She’s very upset. Oh, Toad, it was terrible, for all of them. They’re afraid she’ll fall again with no one there, and the daughters work, with families of their own.”

Toad made a sympathetic noise. He had never given the prob- lems of elderly people much thought. He really didn’t want to do so now either.

Rita paused for a drink from a water fountain, then turned back toward her room. “I just wanted you to know the situation. Now we’ll go back and cheer her up.”

Toad put his hand on her arm. “Whoa, lady. Let’s run that one by again. Just how are we going to do that?”

“You cheered me up last night You make me feel good just teing around you. You can do the same with her.”

Toad looked up and down the hall for help, someone or some- thing to rescue him. No such luck. He looked again at Rita, who was absorbing every twitch of his facial muscles. “Women my own age I don’t understand. Now it’s true I’ve picked up a smattering of experience here and there with the gentle sex, but eighty-year- old ladies with busted hips are completely out of—“

“You can do it,” Rita said with simple, matter-of-fact faith, and grasping his hand, she led him back along the hallway.

In the room she nudged him toward the chair near Mrs. Doug- las. He started to give Rita a glare, but when he realized Mrs. Douglas was watching him, he changed it to a smile. It came out as a silly, nervous smile.

Women! If they didn’t screw there’d be a bounty on ‘em.

“Rita says you’re facing some very significant changes in your life.”

The elderly woman nodded. She was still chewing on her lip. At that moment Toad forgot Rita and saw before him his own mother as she would be in a few years. “Pretty damned tough,” he said, meaning it.

“My life now is my garden, the roses and bulbs and the annuals that I plant every spring. I do my housework and spend my time watching the cycle of life in my garden. I wasn’t ready to give that up.”

“I see.”

“I have most of my things planted now. The bulbs have been up for a month or so. They were so pretty this spring.”

“I don’t suppose any of us are ever ready to give up something we love.”

“I suppose not. But I had hoped that I wouldn’t have to. My husband — he died fifteen years ago with a heart attack while he was playing golf. He so loved golf. I was hoping that someday in my garden I …” She closed her eyes.

When she opened them again Toad asked about her garden. It was not large, he was told. Very small, in fact. But it was enough. That was one of life’s most important lessons, learning what was enough and what was too much. Understanding what was suffi- cient “But,” Mrs. Douglas sighed, “what is sufficient changes as you get older. It’s one thing for a child, another for an adult, another thing still when you reach my age. I think as you age life gets simpler, more basic.”

“I’m curious,” said Toad Tarkington, feeling more than a little embarrassed. He shot a hot glance at Rita. “Do you pray much?”

“Na. It’s too much like begging. The professional prayers al- ways want things they will never get, things they just can’t have. Like peace on earth and conversion of the sinners and cures for all die sick. And to prove they really want all these things that can never be, they grovel and beg.”

“At least they’re sincere,” Rita said.

“Beggars always are,” Mra. Douglas shot back. “That’s their one virtue.”

Toad grinned. Mrs. Douglas appeared to be a fellow cynic, which he found quite agreeable. Perhaps the age difference doesn’t matter that much after all. A few minutes later he asked one more question. “What will heaven be like, do you think?”

“A garden. With roses and flowers of all kinds. My heaven will be that anyway. What yours will be, I don’t know.” Mrs. Douglas waggled a finger at him without lifting her hand from the bed. “You are two very nice young people, to spend time with an old woman to cheer her up. When are you going to marry?”

Toad laughed and stood. “You tell her, Mrs. Douglas. She abso- lutely refuses to become an honest woman.” He said his goodbyes and Rita followed him into the hall.

“Thanks. That wasn’t so hard, was it?” She had her arms folded across her chest

“Hang tough, Rita. If they let you take a hike tonight or tomor- row, give me a call at the BOQ. Captain Grafton or I will come get you and bring you some clothes.”

She nodded. “You come if you can.”

“Sure.” He paused. “What do you want from life, Rita? What will be sufficient?”

She shook her head. He winked and walked away.