Tom Clancy's HAWX

Chapter 17

"First day on the job, huh?" Yolanda Rodriguez said as she put on her mascara. "Like, I bet you're pretty excited, huh?"

"Yeah, it'll be pretty weird having to be somewhere after not having to be anywhere for a few months," Troy said, reaching for his jeans. "But I've been screwing around for long enough; it's time to get back to work and earn some cash."

"Hey, screwing around?" Yolanda giggled. "Is that what you call us?"

"Hey Yo, y'know what I mean," Troy pleaded. They both knew what he meant, and they both knew that their relationship really amounted to little more than screwing around. They had hooked up after Cassie dumped Troy. Yolanda engineered a "chance" meeting and turned on the charm, and their first night together was sufficiently memorable for there to be a second, a third, and so on. But they both knew it was just a lot of fun and little more.

"Hope you got a day off pretty soon, though," Yolanda said. "Sure missed you not drinkin' Corona and shots with us last night."

"You know I couldn't do that, especially on my first day," Troy said.

She understood. The job that Troy had taken was with Golden West Courier, piloting one of their Beech-craft Bonanzas between Burbank Airport and points throughout California and Nevada. Company rules prohibited alcohol consumption by pilots for twenty-four hours before wheels-up.

"So you gonna get your own place then, huh?" Yolanda said, slithering into a tight, teal-colored skirt.

"Yeah. First paycheck," Troy confirmed. "Gotta get out of that house."

"Must be weird watching your own parents split up, huh?"

"It's unreal."

"So your dad, he's got something going on the side?"

"No, it's not like that… least I don't think so…. don't want to think so anyway. I think they're just tired of each other."

An hour after watching Yolanda drive away in her coffee-colored Sebring, Troy was in the cockpit of a Golden West Bonanza going through his final check for takeoff. At last, cleared for Runway 26, he cranked up the Continental E-185 and let its 205 horses lift him into the sky over the San Fernando Valley.

Climbing out over the San Gabriel Mountains, headed north toward his stops in Bakersfield and Fresno, Troy felt the elation of once more being in the air. The Bonanza was about as far from an F-16 as you could get and still be in an airplane, but that didn't matter. He was flying.

Just as Troy's life was starting to come together, his parents' lives were coming apart. When Office Tech downsized, the longtime employees with the biggest salaries were the first to go. Carl's being out of work put further strain on an already strained marriage. Barbara went up to visit her recently widowed sister in San Luis Obispo for a couple of weeks. That was a month ago.

Troy had started spending most nights at Yolanda's, but he was looking forward to getting off on his own permanently.

Watching the trees of the Angeles National Forest slip past beneath his wings, Troy was reminded of how desolate Sudan and Eritrea had been. He was glad to be out of that place, but he found himself missing Hal Coughlin and Jenna Munrough. After all that the three of them had been through in the early part of their knowing one another, a bond had finally formed. Now it had been broken.

He had gotten a couple of e-mails from Jenna, but they hadn't really kept in close contact. Like him, she and Hal had taken their discharge bonuses and had gotten out of the Air Force.

They had both taken jobs with one of those defense contractors that are clustered all around the Washington, D. C., Beltway. Troy had forgotten which one. There were so many, and he had never heard of this one. It sounded, from Jenna's e-mail, as if she and Hal were "together," but she hadn't actually said as much.

He occasionally thought about her in a "what if" sort of way, but the memories of the dirt-encrusted Jenna with her short, ratty blond hair in comparison with the reality of Yolanda's beautifully proportioned body and her long, well-kept ravishing raven hair kept Troy happily in the here and now.

The unspoken understanding between Troy and Yo was that they were each in it for the sex — but the sex was good.

The downside of their relationship, if you could call it a "relationship," was that Yolanda reminded him all too often of Cassie. The two women worked in the same office, and occasionally Yo would mention something in passing.

From what Troy had gathered, Cassie and Enrique had hit a rough patch, and for a moment Troy entertained thoughts of phoning her — but only for a moment. The next he heard, they were back together, and he was glad that he had not called.

The ship of his once inevitable relationship with Cassie had long since sailed, and he was glad to have said bon voyage.