The Minotaur

7

The bedroom lights were on in the second story of the town house when Terry Franklin parked the car. He turned off the ignition and headlights and sat behind the wheel, trying to think.

He had driven around for an hour and a half after his panicked departure from the drop, craning to spot the agents he felt sure were tailing him. At one point he had pulled over and looked at the damage to the front of his car. The left front headlight was smashed and the bumper bent from smacking into that car when he tried to get out of that parking space too quickly.

A dozen times he thought he spotted a tail, but the trailing vehicle usually went its own way at the next corner or the one after. A blue Ford with Pennsylvania plates followed along for half a mile until he could stand it no longer and ran a red light. His panicky wanderings back and forth through the avenues and traffic circles of downtown Washington seemed like something from a drug-induced nightmare, a horrible descent into a paranoid hell of traffic and stoplights and police cars that refused to chase him.

Franklin sat now behind the wheel smelling his own foul body odor. His clothes were sodden with sweat.

Lucy and the kids were home. He tried to come up with a lie for Lucy as he scanned the street for mysterious watchers and people sitting in cars.

How long could he live like this? Should he take the money he had and run? Where could he run with the FBI and CIA looking for him? He didn’t have enough money to evade them forever. Should he go to Russia? The very thought nauseated him. Freezing in some gray workers paradise for the rest of his days was about as far from the good life as a man could get this side of the grave.

He wasn’t feeling well and went to the dispensary, that was what he would tell Lucy. God knows he must look like he was in the terminal stages of AIDS. No good. No prescription. A beer. Yeah, he went out for a beer. He got out of the car wishing he had really stopped for one. After another look at the broken headlight and grille, he plodded toward the front door.

She came out of the kitchen when she heard the door open. “Where have you been?” She stood rigid, her face pale.

Uh-oh. He kept his voice calm. “Hey, babe- I went out for a beer. Did you all get anything at the mall?”

“I know where you’ve been. Cindy across the street has told me all about your little expeditions when I’m out for the evening. I know all about you, you son of a bitch.”

He stared, thunderstruck. This isn’t happening. No, not to me. For the love of— “How?”

“Who is she? I want to know. Who is she?”

“Who is who?”

“Who is the goddamn bitch you’re tomcatting around with, you son of a fucking bitch. Who is she?”

At last he understood. As the relief washed over him he was suddenly too weak to stand. He sank into a chair. “Lucy, there’s no other wo—“

“Don’t give me that shit! I knowl Cindy told me!” She was a quivering, shouting pillar of hysterical righteousness. “You’re cheating on me.” Tears were flowing now. “Oh God. I tried so hard…”

“Lucy, calm down. Please, for the love of— The kids will hear. Honest to God. there’s no other woman.” He got to his feet and approached her. “Babe, I love you. There’s nobody—“

“Don’t you touch me, liar. I’m getting a divorce.” She spun and made for the stairs. “I’m locking the bedroom door. If you try to get in, I’ll call the police. Liar. Cheat Bastard.”

He lost it. It had been that kind of evening, “You crazy cunt,” he roared. “You don’t know shit. I went down to the corner for a goddamn beer and when I get home you’re fucking loony crazy. I haven’t cheated on youl I haven’t fucked another woman since that night I knocked you up at the drive-in. You don’t have any god- damn evidence at all, you crazy lunatic.”

He heard the bedroom door slam and the kids sobbing. He threw himself onto the living-room couch. Some days — it’s absolutely crazy how some days just go bug-fuck nuts. You almost get ar- rested, smash up the front of the car, your wife demands a divorce because you’re cheating on her when you’re not. What else? What else can fucking happen before midnight?

The drop was empty. He stretched out on the couch and con- templated that fact. He closed his eyes and tried to relax. He could hear Lucy putting the kids to bed upstairs. Finally the noises stopped.

He would have to call them. In Miami they had given him an emergency telephone number that he had memorized and a verifi- cation code. He would call. He looked around for the evening paper. On top of the TV. He flipped to the sports section. The code was simple; the location and opponent in the next scheduled game of the Bullets, Orioles or Redskins, whichever was in season. They had been insistent; he was never to call except in an emergency and then only from a pay phone. Well, this was sure as hell an emer- gency. But he wasn’t going back out onto those streets tonight, no way. Even if he could work up the courage, Lucy would use a butcher knife on his crotch when he got back.

He went into the kitchen and dialed the phone. On the third ring a man’s voice answered with a recitation of the telephone number. The voice was tired, the English perfect. “Six-six-five, oh-one-oh- five.”

“This is Poor Richard.” He had picked his code name himself. Easier for him to remember, they said. “It wasn’t there. It wasn’t at the dr—“

“Verify please.” The voice was hard, exasperated.

“The Bullets play the Celtics tomorrow night at Capital Cen- tre.”

“I’ll call you back. Where are you?”

“Seven-two-nine, seven-four-oh-one.”

The Minotaur

“You’re at home?” The voice was incredulous, outraged.

“Yeah, I—” He stopped when he realized he was talking to a dead instrument.

Shit. He would have to call again. He had to find out what the hell was going on. A pay phone. Lucy was going to come sweet- Jesus holy-hell screaming unglued. What a night! He picked up his jacket and eased the front door shut behind him.

From her seat on the top of the stairs, Lucy heard the door close. She had started to come down earlier but stopped when she heard him enter the kitchen and pick up the phone. She had heard his side of the conversation and she sat now trying to figure it out. “Poor Richard” he had called himself. It wasn’t there. The Bullets play the Celtics? A code of some sort?

What is he into? she asked herself, her horror growing. He had looked so stunned when she said she knew. That look was the verification she needed that he was cheating on her. But how did that fit with a code and nonsense sentences? Was he placing bets with a bookie? No, he wasn’t spending money she didn’t know about. Something to do with his job at the Pentagon? Could he be spying, like those Walkers several years ago? No, that wasn’t possi- ble. Or was it? He would do it if he could get away with it, she decided. In their eleven years of marriage she had found him a man who always put himself first.

What else could it be? My God, what other possibilities were there?

The sun was still embedded in the gray scud over the ocean on Saturday morning when Jake and Callie walked through the gap in the low dune on their way to the beach. Callie trailed along behind him on the narrow path, her hands tucked into the pockets of her windbreaker.

He strolled as he always did, his eyes moving restlessly across the sky and the sea and the naked sand and coming to rest often on her. Whenever she was with him she drew his eyes. It had been that way since they first met, one of the little unconscious things he did that told her without words what she meant to him. This morning walking beside him she was acutely aware of his glances.

“How did your little interview with the soul stripper go yester- day?”

“He says I have to come to grips with your decision to ram that transport in the Med last fall.”

Jake stopped and turned to face her. He looked bewildered. “What the hell are you worrying about that for?”

“For a week I was a widow.”

He turned away and looked out to sea. It was a moment before he spoke. “You may be again someday.” He faced her. “Women live longer than men these days. I don’t have a crystal ball, Callie. Jesus, we can’t stop living because we’re mortal.” He gestured an- grily. “I may get hit by a meteor ten seconds from now. I may get run over by some drunk when I step off the curb at—“

He stopped because she was walking away from him, along the beach, her arms wrapped around her cheat.

He hurried after her. “Hey—“

“For a whole week you were dead. You had killed yourself chas- ing those damned Arabs and I was left here all alone!” He put his hand on her arm and she jerked away, whirling to face him. “You knew how much I loved you and… and… when they called and said you were alive, the memorial service was scheduled for the next morning. I was going to bury you. You were dead!” He enveloped her in his arms and she pressed her face against his shoulder.

After a while she stopped trembling and he murmured, “Still love me?”

“Yes.”

“A little bit or a whole lot?”

“I haven’t decided.”

With his arm around her shoulder, he started them walking north again. In a moment he paused and kissed her, then they resumed their journey with their arms locked together.

Something white. Whatever it was that blocked Toad’s gaze, it was white. He closed his eyes and the pain and nausea washed over him, enveloping him. Ye gods… Something hard and cold against his cheek — he opened his eyes again — and white. Lotta light … He moved. Shit! He was lying in a fucking bathtub.

He raised himself slowly. His head felt like it was coming off. He was still dressed in his khaki uniform, but it was wrinkled and had vomit on it. He still had his shoes on. Oh God, he felt worse than he had ever felt in his entire twenty-eight years, felt like he had been dead for a week or two. He sat up slowly. His head was being hammered on by an angry King Kong. After a moment he grasped the shower handles and faucet and hauled himself erect. He swayed as the blood pounded in his temples with every beat of his heart. Then he tried to step out of the tub. He tripped and sprawled heavily on the floor, striking his head against the bottom of the sink cabinet He lay there, too sick and dazed to move.

Amid the pain he heard the door open. “Good morning.” A woman’s voice.

Toad flopped over and squinted against the ceiling light. Rita Moravia!

What had he done to deserve this? It’s true, life is all misery and pain.

“I’d appreciate it if you would transport yourself to your Own room, Tarkington. Now. I don’t want anybody to get the wrong idea about you and me.”

He tried to speak. His mouth was dry and tasted of sour vomit. He cleared his throat and licked his lips. “How’d I get here?”

“Pour men carried you in here last night. We thought someone should keep an eye on you during the night. I volunteered.”

“Aren’t you a sweetie.”

“I want you out of here, Tarkington.”

He hoisted himself up and staggered past her. He was going to have to find another bathroom pretty damn quick. He went through the little sitting room and got the door open and was hustling down the hall when he heard her voice behind him. “We’re flying at two this afternoon. Meet you in the lobby at ten till twelve.”

Jake sat on the crest of the low dune and watched the glider mov- ing north, away from him above the dune. He had its nose pointed obliquely forty-five degrees out to sea, but the velocity of the in- coming wind was such that the plane stayed more or less over the dune. He was holding her low, only eight or ten feet up, to take advantage of the upward vector of the breeze as it crossed the low sand hill.

“Better turn her back this way,” advised the eleven-year-old aviation expert from up the street.

Jake banked the plane. “Keep the nose up,” David urged, his voice rising. Jake fed in back stick. Too late. The right wingtip kissed the sand and she cartwheeled. David was up and running instantly.

The boy was examining the wreckage when Jake reached him. The rubber bands that held the wings to the fuselage had popped off, which undoubtedly minimized the damage. “A hole in the wing Monokote and a busted spar in the right horizontal stabi- lizer,” the youngster advised cheerfully. “Not bad. Yippy-skippy! You gotta remember to feed in a little back stick on the turns,”

“Yeah. Let’s take it over to my house and fix it”

“What kind of planes do you fly in the navy?” David asked as they walked down the beach with the pieces of the glider in their arms.

“A-6s mostly. Last year I flew the F-14 some.”

“Wow, those fighters! Did you see Top GunT

“Uh-huh.”

“My dad bought that movie for me. I must have watched it a couple dozen times. When I grow up I’m gonna fly fighters.” He paused, apparently considering the implications of this bold state- ment. “What’s it really like?” he asked, not quite so confident- Jake was still trying to explain when they rounded the comer and he saw the strange car in the driveway. When he saw the blue Department of Defense bumper sticker with the three stars on it, he knew. Vice Admiral Henry. He led the boy inside.

The admiral was wearing jeans and a heavy jacket today. He and another man in a coat sat at the dining room table with Callie drinking coffee, David marched over to her and held the wing so she could see it. “He let the nose fall in a turn and crashed. We can fix it, though.”

“Good morning, Admiral.”

“Jake, I’d like you to meet Luis Camacho.”

“Hi.” Jake leaned across the table-and shook hands. Camacho was in his early fifties with no tan, a man who spent his life in- doors. Even though he wore a jacket his spare tire was evident, but his handshake was firm and quick. He didn’t smile. Jake got the impression that he was not a man who smiled often.

“Nice place you have here,” Camacho said.

“We like it,” Callie said. “Would you all like a quiet place to talk?”

The admiral stood. “I thought we could take a walk along the beach. Be a shame to drive all the way over here from Washington and not walk on the beach.”

The three men left David working on the glider at the kitchen table. He was telling Callie about servos and receivers when they went out the door.

“Nice day,” Admiral Henry muttered as they walked toward the beach trail at the end of the street.

“They’re all nice here,” Jake said. “Raw and rainy at times, but nice.”

“Luis is from the FBI.”

“Got credentials?” Camacho produced them from a pocket and passed them to Jake, who looked the ID card and badge over carefully and returned them without comment

Henry stopped at the end of the little path that led through the waist-high dune and looked right and left, up and down the beach. He turned right, south, and walked with his hands in his pockets toward die area with the fewest people. He didn’t even glance toward the ocean. Out on the horizon a large containership was making its way north, perhaps to round Cape Henlopen and go up the Delaware.

“Yesterday you wanted to know what really happened in West Virginia after Harold Strong was killed.”

“Yessir.”

“I told you the truth, but I left a few things out. Camacho here was with me that morning. We met with Trooper Keadle and the local prosecutor, guy named Don Cookman. They weren’t happy campers. They knew murder when they saw it and cooperation smacked of cover-up. So Luis got on the phone to Washington and the director of the FBI drove up along with the forensic team. We got cooperation with a capital C from then on.”

“Go on,” Jake prompted when the admiral fell silent.

The admiral turned to face him. “You’re asking too damn much, Jake.”

“I’m not asking for anything other than what I need to know to do my job.”

“Like shit”

“Would you let yourself be led along by the nose if you were me? Jesus Christ, Admiral, my predecessor was murdered! I got a wife over there”—he pointed back toward his house—“who would like to have me alive for—“

“What do you want to know?”

“Why was Strong killed? What did you tell those people in West Virginia? Why the silence on a murder? Who and what are you investigating?” He looked at Camacho. “Who the hell are you?”‘

Camacho spoke first “I’m special agent in charge of the Wash- ington-area FBI group that handles counterespionage. That’s why the locals in West Virginia cooperated. That’s why Trooper Keadle called me when you left his office Thursday. That’s why he called me when Commander Judy showed up that afternoon to search Harold Strong’s cabin.” He turned and started down the beach, still talking. Admiral Henry and Jake Grafton trailed along. “Why was Strong killed? If we knew that we would be almost there. It wasn’t personal or domestic. No way. It was a hit, a contract. He got taken out by someone who knew precisely what they were doing, a cool customer. So the hypothesis that seems most likely is that he knew something he shouldn’t. That leads us to his job — the ATA program.”

“That sea story about a Minotaur — that was true?”

”Yeah, that’s the code name. But we don’t know if it’s one guy or several,” the agent said, with a glance at Tyler Henry, who picked that moment to look out to sea.

“I thought,” Jake said, “that these spy things usually get broken when you get somebody to talk.”

“That’s the history. It’d be nice if we knew who to put the screws to to clean up this little mess. But we don’t. So right now we’re busy doing it the hard way.” He led the two naval officers along the beach as he talked and answered questions. When Jake remembered to glance out to sea, the containership was no longer in sight

“Let’s transfer Smoke Judy,” Jake suggested to the admiral.

Henry just stared at him.

“Dunedin said if I got goosey. I could get rid of him.”

“I’d rather you left him in place,” Camacho said. “I’ve already made that request to Admiral Henry and now I’ll make it to you.”

“Going to be real tough to pretend I don’t know anything.”

“You don’t know anything,” Henry growled. He jerked his thumb at Camacho. “If he talked to you for a week, you still wouldn’t know anything. I sure as hell don’t.”

An hour later, as they came single file through the dune trail, Henry said, “Now you know as much as I do, which is precious little. On Monday you tell that chief in officer personnel to tear up your retirement papers.”

“Yessir.”

“Don’t ever pull that stunt on me again, Grafton.”

“Or …”

“Don’t you abandon ship and leave me and Dunedin up to our necks alone in this sack of shit.”

After the two men had departed in the admiral’s car, Jake went back into the house. CaUie was sitting on the couch reading a book. “David got your plane fixed, but his mother called and he went home for lunch. He said he would come back later and help you fly it”

Jake nodded and poured a cup of coffee.

“Want to tell me about it?”

“Huh?”

“Jake…” Her voice had that time-to-come-clean, no-fflore- nonsense tone. That tone in her voice always got his attention, perhaps because his mother had used it so effectively some years ago.

“Admiral Henry’s my boss’s boss. Camacho’s a civilian. They drove over here to talk about a problem at the office. A classified problem. That’s all I can say. You want coffee?”

She nodded yes. When he handed it to her she said, “So you are working on the ATA program?”

“Gallie, for Christ’s sake. I told you I was. I don’t lie to you.”

She sipped her coffee for a bit. “David likes you,” she said.

It made him nervous when she shifted subjects like that “He’s a great kid,” he said noncommittally. “Honest, Callie. I tell you the truth. If something’s classified and I can’t talk about it, I just say so. You know that! You know mel”

She nodded her agreement and picked up the book. He waited a moment, slightly baffled, then wandered outside with his coffee cup in his hand. Women! Any man who thinks he’s got them figured out should be declared incompetent and incarcerated to protect himself.

The cursors were running all over the scope when it occurred to Toad to check the velocities in the inertial. They were all gone to hell. “Hold this heading,” he growled at Rita as he consulted his kneeboard cards. He pushed the buttons to take the inertial out of the system, then typed in a wind he thought would work.

“Okay,” he told her. “This run, no inertial and no radar. Com- puter dead reckoning and the IR — that’s all we’ll use. We’ll even leave the laser off. Go in at a hundred feet and let’s see if we can hit anything.” Below two hundred feet system deliveries in the A-6 were degraded, probably. Toad suspected, due to the trigonometry of low grazing angles.

She lowered the left wing and let the nose sag down into the turn. When she leveled the wings they were on the run-in line at a hundred feet, throttles against the stops, bouncing moderately in the turbulence as the engines moaned through their helmets.

He got the reticle, or cross hair, on the IR display onto the tower. The cross hairs started drifting. The wind he typed into the computer was wrong. He pushed the velocity correct switch, then held the cross hairs on the tower bulls-eye.

“Master Arm on, in attack, and in range.”

“I’m committed,” she said. This meant she had squeezed the commit trigger on the stick, authorizing the computer to release the weapon.

Toad glanced out his side window. The desert was right there, close enough to touch, racing by beneath them. He came back to the IR scope. All okay. If Moravia got distracted and let the nose fall just a smidgen, they would be a fireball rolling across the desert so quickly they would never even know what happened. “Release coming,” he advised. The cursors started to drift in close and he held them on the base of the tower.

When the release came she eased back on the stick and Toad felt the G press him down even as he watched the tower on the IR scope — now going inverted — for the hit. Pop. There it was. Almost dead-on.

That was the last bomb. He glanced at the panel in front of her. They were climbing and heading north for Yakima. He flipped the radar to transmit and began to adjust the picture.

“Your hit forty feet at seven-thirty.”

“Boardman, thanks a lot. We’re switching to Center.”

“Have a safe flight.”

“Yo.” Toad dialed in the Seattle Center frequency.

“Pretty good bombing for a fighter puke,” Moravia said.

“Yep. It was that,” he agreed smugly, relishing the role and willing today to play it to the hilt. Moravia had had her fun last night. His head was still thumping like a toothache. “Ain’t any- body better than the ol’ Homy Toad.”

“0r anyone more humble.”

“Humble is for folks that can’t,” he shot back. “I can.”

Rita called Center and asked for a clearance to the military operating area over Okanogan. She leveled the plane at Flight Level 220. Toad played with the scope.

Entering the area, Rita disengaged the autopilot and looked about expectantly. She and her pilot instructor of the previous week, Lieutenant Clyde “Duke” Degan, had agreed to and briefed an ACM engagement. She was right on time. Now if she could just find him first. She dialed in the squadron tactical frequency and gave him a call.

“I’m here,” Degan replied.

Toad caught the first glimpse of the other A-6. It was high, near the sun. 0l’ Duke didn’t intend to give Moravia any break at all. “All right,” Toad enthused. “Now, by God, we’re playing my game!” Toad pointed over her left shoulder. “Up there. Better turn under him and get the nose down for some airspeed.”

Rita knew Toad had just recently finished a three-year tour in the backseat of F-14 Tomcats. He had ridden through literaly hundreds of practice dogfights. Fighter crews lived for Air Combat Maneuvering (ACM), the orgiastic climax of their training and their existence. So she knew Toad Tarkington undoubtedly knew a thing or two about dogfighting. She took his advice. “Think he’s seen us?” The A-6’s radar had no air-to-air capability.

Toad kept the other plane in sight. Immediately above them— maybe two miles above — it rolled inverted, preparatory to a split S. “Looks like it,” Toad murmured. “Already you’re at a serious disadvantage, assuming he’s smart enough to cash in.”

With the throttles on the stops, she began a climbing right turn holding 340 knots indicated, the best climb speed. Toad glanced across the panel, then cranked his neck to keep the other plane in sight. “He’s coming down like a ruptured duck,” Toad advised. “If you had guns you could get a low-percentage deflection shot here. Shake him up some.”

The other plane came rocketing down with vapor pouring off its wingtips. Now his wingtip speed brakes — boards — came open. “He’s trying to minimize his overshoot.” The other Intruder went dropping through their altitude with the boards still open, vapor swirling from his wings. “Work the angles,” Toad advised. “Turn into him and get the nose down.”

Rita Moravia did just that in a workmanlike four-G pull. “Not too much nose-down,” Toad grunted against the G. Duke Degan would undoubtedly use his energy advantage to zoom again and try to turn in behind her, but he should not have left the boards out as long as he did. That was his second mistake. His first was the split S; he should have spiraled down to convert his energy advan- tage to a lethal position advantage.

Degan zoomed. Moravia smartly lifted her nose into a climb, still closing, then eased it to hold 340 indicated. “Very nice,” Toad commented. Inexperienced pilots would just yank on the stick until they had squandered all their airspeed. Moravia had better sense. Patience, Toad decided. She was patient.

Degan was above them now, spread-eagled against the sky, maybe a mile ahead and four thousand feet above. And he was running out of airspeed.

“You got him now,” Toad said, excitement creeping into his voice.

Apparently Degan thought so too. He continued over the top of his loop and let the nose fall through as he half-rolled. He was going to try to go out underneath with a speed advantage and run away from her, then turn and come back into the fray on his own terms. Moravia anticipated him; as he committed with his nose she dumped hers and slammed down the left wing and honked her plane around.

“You get another deflection shot here,” Toad advised. “You’re kicking this guy’s ass! What a clown! He should never have come back at you out of the loop.”

She was dead behind him now, both diving, but Degan lacked the speed advantage to pull away cleanly.

“Fox Two,” Toad whispered over the radio. Fox Two was the call when you were putting a heat-seeking missile in the air. “You’re dead meat”

“Bull.” Degan’s voice did not sound happy,

“Go ahead, try something wonderful and Rita will get a guns solution.”

“I have enough gas for one more series of turns,” Rita told the instructor.

A long pause. Degan wasn’t liking this a bit. Part of the pain, Toad suspected, was Rita’s well-modulated feminine voice on the radio and the ribbing Duke knew he would have to take in the ready room about getting whipped by a woman. Toad would have wagered a paycheck the guys back in the ready room at Whidbey were crowded around the duty officer’s radio this very minute. Toad whacked Rita playfully on the right arm with his fist. He was having a hell of a good time. “Okay,” Degan said at last, “break off and well start again with a head-on pass at twenty-two grand. I’ll run out to the west.”

Rita dropped her wing to turn east. Toad cackled for her benefit over the ICS. Then he keyed his radio mike switch. “Hey, Duke, this is Toad. I got ten bucks to put on ol’ Rita if you can spare it.”

“You’re on, asshole.”

Toad chuckled over the radio. On the ICS he said, “We got him now, Rita baby. He’s mad, the sucker.”

“Don’t Rita-baby me, you — you—“

“Goddamn, cool off, willya?” Toad roared. “I don’t give a damn if you’re the lesbo queen of Xanadu — but right fucking now you’re a fighter pilot. This ain’t for fun.” He paused for air, then mut- tered, ” ‘Fight to fly, fly to fight, fight to win.’ There ain’t no other way,”

“You didn’t just make that up.”

“That’s the Top Gun motto. Now what’re you gonna do on this high-speed pass?”

“I thought a turn in the same direction he turns.”

“He’ll probably make a horizontal turn as hard as he can pull. No imagination. Wait to see which way he turns, then nose up about forty degrees and roll hard into him, the rolling scissors. If he’s not too sharp you’ll get a winning position advantage, and this guy hasn’t impressed me.”

The two Intruders came together out of the emptiness at a com- bined speed of a thousand knots. At first the other plane was just a speck, but it grew larger quickly until it seemed to fill the wind- shield. Toad had been there before, in a head-on pass with Jake Grafton in an F-14 that resulted in a collision. Involuntarily he closed his eyes.

His head snapped down and the floor came up at him. She had the G on. He opened his eyes and used the steel handgrip on the canopy rail to pull himself around to look behind. “Which way?”

“Left. I got him.” She was holding herself forward in the seat with her left hand on her handgrip as she craned back over her shoulder and applied the G.

“Get the nose up higher.” Enough advice. Either she could hack it or she couldn’t.

The left wing sagged to the vertical and the nose fell toward the horizon- G off as she slammed the stick all the way to the right and the plane rolled two hundred degrees in the blink of an eye. Back on the stick with the nose coming down. Pull, pull, pull that nose around.

Degan was in front of them now and below, but Rita was on the inside of his turn going down at him. Relax the stick and build up your speed, close on him; Toad silently urged her on.

“Degan lost sight,” Toad said as he fought the vomit back in his throat. The hangover had caught up with him. He ripped off a glove and jerked the mask aside. His stomach heaved once. She was set up perfectly for a downhill Sidewinder shot.

“Fox Two,” he called over the radio. “You owe me ten bucks, Degan.” Then he puked into the glove again.

Rita lifted the nose and reversed her turn until she was headed west “Fuel’s going to be a little skosh,” she murmured to Toad, then called Degan and told him she was leaving this frequency for Seattle Center.

After the debrief the duty van dropped them at the BOQ. “Thanks,” Rita said.

“For what?”

“Coaching me during the ACM.”

“No sweat. They’re attack guys. ACM ain’t their bag.”

“Are you going to get some dinner?” she asked.

“Naw. I’m going to bed.”

“I hope you aren’t coming down with something,” she called after him.

Jake Grafton sat in the attic beside the pile of boxes that contained the miscellaneous junk he had collected through the years and had never been able to throw away. Everything from high school year- books to souvenirs from half the world’s seaports was tucked away in some box or other. He examined the boxes and tried to remem- ber which was which. Perhaps this one. He opened it. Shoe trees, almost empty bottles of after-shave, buttons, spools of thread and some paperback novels. Three worn-out shirts.

It was in the fourth box. He removed the pistol from the holster and flipped the cylinder out. The chambers were empty. He held the weapon up so the light from the bare forty-watt bulb on the rafter shone full upon it. No rust. Good thing he had oiled it before he put it away. He looked into the box to see if there was any ammo. Yep, one box of.357 magnum, a couple dozen shells still in the box. He closed the cylinder, worked the action several times, then loaded the weapon.

With his back against one of the boxes, he extended his legs, crossed his ankles and thoughtfully stared at the bolstered pistol on the floor beside him. Camacho said it had probably been a professional hit. Harold Strong would be just as dead if he had had a pistol. Still, a pistol nearby would make a nervous man feel bet- ter, sort of like an aspirin. Or a beer.

A large-frame revolver like this couldn’t be hidden under a uni- form. Perhaps in an attache case? Then he would be the slowest draw in the East. In the car it could go in the glove compartment or under the seat, but it would be too far away if someone opened fire while he was sitting at a traffic light or driving along the free- way. And he rode the Metro to and from work anyhow. Maybe he should keep the gun in the bedroom or kitchen here at the beach and in the apartment in Arlington.

How would he explain the gun to Callie?

The hit man nailed Strong as he was driving to his weekend cabin. Probably the same route every Friday night. Predictable. Predictability was vulnerability. Okay. So what do I do routinely every day, every week? He reviewed his schedule in light of his new job. Boarding the Metro, driving to and from the beach, what else?

Strong was divorced, lived alone. What about Callie? Would she be a target?

Smoke Judy — had he put out the contract on Strong?

George Ludlow… Admiral Henry… Senator Duquesne was the tip of the congressional iceberg… Seventeen billion dol- lars, how many jobs did that mean, how many people supporting families and raising children? Seventeen …

“Jake.” Her voice seemed distant. “Jake, are you still up here?”

He shook himself awake. “Hmhun.”

Her head appeared in the attic access hole. She was standing on the ladder. “What are you doing up here?”

“Drifted off.” He stirred himself. Rain was smacking against the roof, a steady drumming sound. He glanced at his watch: 1 A.M.

She came up the ladder and sat down beside him. She touched the leather of the pistol holster. “Why do you have this out?”

“Looking through the boxes.” He laid the bolstered pistol in the nearest open box.

They sat holding hands, listening to the rain. “Jake,” she said, “I want to adopt that little girL”

“Won’t be easy, Callie. An eleven-year-old veteran of how many foster homes? She’s had more rocky experiences and picked up more scars in her short life than you have in yours. Won’t be easy.”

“You’re having problems at work, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Bad?”

“I suppose.” He picked up her hand and examined it carefully, then looked her straight in the eye. “I may be in over my head.”

“Won’t be the first time.”

“That’s true.”

“You’ve always managed to come out in one piece before.”

“That’s the spirit. Good of you to point that out. I see you’ve taken our talk this morning to heart.” He tried to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, but some crept in anyway.

She took her hand back, “Jake. Our lives are slipping by. I want that little girl. I want her now.”

“Okay, Callie-“

“You’re doing what you want to do. I want that little girl.”

“I said okay.”

“Thursday. Thursday morning we see her, then that afternoon we go to the Department of Social Services for an interview.”

“Okay. I’m leaving town Monday, but I should be back Wednes- day. I’ll take Thursday off. Just for the record, though, last week I asked the personnel people to fill out retirement papers for me. I’m going to tell them to forget it before I leave on Monday.”

“Retirement? Is that what the admiral’s visit today was about.”

“Not really. The retirement thing was the catalyst, maybe. No kidding, Callie, this may be the worst mess I’ve ever been in. Worse than Vietnam, worse than the Med last year.”

“You haven’t done anything wrong, have you?”

“Not that I know of. Not yet.”

She got up and moved toward the ladder. “I’m not going to wait any longer. I want that little girl,” she said, then went down.

Toad Tarkington was sound asleep when the phone rang. He was still groggy when he picked it up. “Yeah.”

“Tarkington, this is Grafton.”

The cobwebs began to clear. “Yessir.”

“How’re you doing on the flying?”

“Pretty good, sir,”

“Flown any full-system hops yet?”

“Yessir.”

“How’s Moravia doing?”

Toad checked his watch: 12:15 in the morning. It was 3:15 in Washington. “She’s doing great, sir. Good stick.”

“You doing okay dropping the bombs?”

“Yessir. It’s a little different, but—“

“How many more hops are you going to get?”

“Six, I think. Two each Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. We come home Wednesday.”

“Stay Wednesday and fly two more hops. Do eight. And Toad, leave the radar off. I want you to fly all eight without the radar. Use the IR and the laser and nothing else. You understand?”

“Yessir. Leave the radar off.”

“See you this Friday in the office. And give me a written recom- mendation Friday on what we can do to the system to make it easier to use without the radar. Night.” The connection broke. “‘

Toad cradled the dead instrument. He was wide awake. He got out of bed and went to the window. Raindrops were smearing the glass. What was that all about? Grafton didn’t seem to be getting much sleep these days. Shore duty sure wasn’t cracking up right.

He cranked the window open a couple inches. The wind whis- tled though the crack and chilled mm. It would be a miserable night to try to get aboard the ship. The meatball would be dancing like a crazed dervish while the fuel gauge told its sad tale. “Thank you. Lord, that I ain’t at sea flying tonight,” he muttered, and went back to bed.

The phone rang again. Toad picked it’up. “Tarkington, sir.”

“Grafton again. Toad. Leave the Doppler off too. It radiates.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“Good night. Toad.”

“Good night. Captain.”