blow over, but he’d get a firsthand look at what the Indians’ capability was.
“You have a problem with that?” asked Blitz.
“All right,” he said. His plans regarding the lieutenant changed abruptly: He’d bag the movie and go straight for the motel, maybe even settle for his quarters. “I’ll grab the first flight in the morning.”
“There’s one already en route. I’m told it’s about ten minutes from landing.”
Chapter 8
When he finally reached his quarters, Bonham pulled off his shirt and pants and booted the computer before going to take a quick shower. His suite here was hardly that — two nearly bare rooms and a bathroom with a stand-up shower — and he bumped his elbow hard on the wall as he toweled off. Feeling a little less dusty, he went over to the computer and brought up the Internet interface; two clicks later he had ESPN.com on the screen.
The Red Sox had beaten the Yankees with a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth. Hallelujah.
Spirits buoyed, Bonham clicked over to CNN, making sure, God forbid, that nothing had been reported beyond his early bland release on the accident. It hadn’t; the newspeople were concerned with the augmented-ABM tests, which had just been postponed another day due to technical problems with the monitoring network.
Bonham scrolled around in vain trying to find out what that meant. The reporters hadn’t been told, and it was impossible to divine from the statements they’d been given what was really going on. Delays had a tendency to mushroom, throwing everything off. The tests should have been concluded by now; every sixty minutes’ worth of delay added that many more problems for everyone.
But he had his own things to worry about. Fisher, for one, who had all the symptoms of a class-one trouble-maker. This wasn’t an FBI case — the Bureau had sent only one man, not the dozens or even hundreds it would detail for a blowout job — but Fisher was just the sort of bee buzzing in someone’s bonnet to screw up everything.
Bonham leaned back in his chair. He could find out about the agent easily enough with a few phone calls. But that was a tricky thing: People might interpret it as paranoia, or worse. Better to suffer through the slings and arrows of outrageous behavior. Besides, Fisher was probably more of a problem for Gorman than for him.
Served the stubborn bitch right.
Someone knocked on the door.
“General Bonham?”
“Tom, come on in,” he said, recognizing Colonel Howe’s voice.
“Door’s locked,” said Howe.
“Oh, sorry. Thought I’d be sleeping already,” said Bonham. He killed the computer and got up to open the door. “Checking the Red Sox. Beat the Yankees with a ninth-inning home run.”
Howe nodded. He wasn’t much of a baseball fan.
He also wasn’t much of a late-night visitor.
“Come on in,” said Bonham. “Drink?”
Bonham walked to the small bookcase where he kept a bottle of Scotch.
“No, thanks. I’m flying tomorrow.”
“You’re flying?”
“That’s why I came over,” said Howe. “The engineers want to put Bird One through its paces, and I’m going to do it.”
Bonham poured two fingers’ worth of Scotch into a tumbler, then went to the small refrigerator he kept in the corner of the room. The tiny ice tray in the unit’s freezer was about three-quarters full; he popped out two cubes and put it back.
“Have a seat, Tom. Take a load off.”
The sides of the small, foam-cushioned chair seemed to pop out as Howe sat on it, as if it were a balloon. Howe shifted uncomfortably, right leg over left, then left over right, then back. Bonham thought to himself that he would not have wanted to trade places with the colonel, who until a few days ago seemed to be riding the career rocket to a general’s star and beyond.
Bonham liked Howe. He was a good, competent officer, and while more than a bit impatient with the bureaucratic side of the job — almost a given for anyone with the flying background Howe had — he made up for it by delegating those responsibilities to people who could handle them.
A little unimaginative. But that could be a useful flaw. Bonham would see that his career wasn’t screwed by this. A few bumps, admittedly — Gorman was just the start — but with patience it could be overcome.
Hard for Howe to know that now, though. Surely he had no reason to be optimistic.
“Tough to lose a wingmate,” Bonham offered.
“Yeah,” said Howe.
“And Ms. York. I know you two were close.” Bonham swirled his Scotch, then took a long sip. Either because of the drink or the hangdog look on Howe’s face, he suddenly felt paternal. “We get through the inquiry stage, people are going to understand that what we do here is loaded with danger. Tragedy, people will understand. This isn’t a normal situation,” said Bonham. “It’ll be taken into account. You’ll probably be commended for saving the plane.”
Howe gave him a wan smile, surely not believing him.
“You know, when I was a young buck, we lost a Phantom over Alaska,” said Bonham, playing the old soldier who’s seen everything. “Didn’t find it until two years later. Person who found it, flying one of those old Otters or whatever the hell it was they call those things. Utter accident.”
The story wasn’t completely apocryphal; there had indeed been a crash in Alaska, though not while Bonham was there, and not by a Phantom. It had, however, taken considerable time to find, and Bonham knew enough details to use the story to make his point. And the Scotch warmed his mouth and throat in a way that he really, truly wanted to cheer the colonel up.
“Thing is, it can take forever in that wilderness to find a crash. We will eventually,” said Bonham.
“It’s odd that there was no satellite coverage,” said Howe.
The statement seemed particularly pointed. Bonham got up and refilled his drink.
“I guess they took that one out for repair or whatever,” said Bonham. “There are satellites, though. With the weather, where you were operating, they couldn’t see anything. From what Colonel Gorman told me, they have ample assets for the search. We’ll find it eventually. It takes time.”
“Has Fisher spoken to you?”
“The FBI agent?”
“He asked me if Williams needed money.”
Bonham laughed. “What, did he think he crashed on purpose?”
He shook his head as he drank the Scotch. A real bee, that FBI bastard.
“Listen, Tom, I wouldn’t worry about the investigators, especially the FBI and CID people. They run around, kick over chairs, stir up dust, see what happens. This Fisher — he’s probably just trying to rile you.”
Howe rose. “Well, I just wanted to give you the heads-up.”
“I appreciate it. You take care tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you.”
After he locked the door, Bonham poured himself another drink, this one about halfway up the glass.
Chapter 9
They put Fisher and the rest of the investigators up in what passed for VIP quarters in a building near the base of the mountain, reachable via a road obviously built for a donkey cart.
