The Hunt

“Plane?”

“Old Delilah, a two-seat AT-6. I wouldn’t go anywhere without her.” He stopped and checked out the bar again. “I have a hard time believing this,” he said. “Let me tell you, this is a pilot’s dream. I mean, to get assigned to a bar taking orders from the owner. The guys will never believe this.”

“The guys aren’t going to know anything about it, Cap’n,” Keegan said seriously. “From now until you’re off buzzing the Himalayas you’re going to forget everything you see, hear and do. Okay? That’s the first and probably last order you’ll get from me.”

Dryman looked over both shoulders, then leaned over and whispered, “Is this some kind of spy stuff? I mean, the bar, these plain clothes, uh . . . you. What’s it all about?”

“You’ll find out in due time. What do they call you?”

“H.P.”

“H.P.? I thought your name was John.”

“It is,” he said, still grinning his cherub grin. “H.P.—for Hot Pilot, a nickname, incidentally, I have earned the hard way.

Ten years in the Air Corps, the last two instructing snotty college kids, hoping they’ll stay alive through the course. I was a test pilot for two years, had my own squadron for a while. Hell, I am so hot, Mr. Keegan, I could set this place on fire with the seat of my pants.”

Keegan was astounded. Smith actually had an Air Corps pilot and plane assigned to him. His respect for dog robbers was growing by the day.

“So tell me, H.P.,” Keegan said. “If you’re so hot, why are you flying courier duty for the White House?”

Dryman shoved his cap to the back of his head and leaned back in the booth.

“Actually ... I was grounded when the White House called.”

“Grounded!” Keegan said with a note of alarm. “For what?”

“I think the specific charge was ‘Unauthorized Flying Procedures,’” Dryman said, taking another swig of whiskey.

“And what specifically were these unusual flying procedures?”

“Unauthorized,” he corrected. “Everything I do in an airplane is unusual, Mr. Keegan. There’re only two things I do well. Flying’s one of them—and I do it a helluva lot better than anything else. Let me tell you, I can fly anything that has a motor and two wings and I can fly it anywhere, anytime and in any kind of weather. I was made to fly’ Mr. Keegan, I’m happiest when my feet are about ten thousand feet off the ground.”

“That’s very interesting but it doesn’t answer my question.”

“Flight instructing is shitty business, Mr. Keegan—and boring. The same thing day after day. You got to set a good example for the cadets, do everything by the book. Hell, I came off a year flying airmail in weather so bad I’d put a cup of coffee in my lap to make sure I wasn’t flying upside down! Then all of a sudden I’m down in Florida wet-nursing a bunch of college boys. So to blow off a little steam, four of us instructors decided to have a race. Thirty miles. The finish line was a bridge out on the coast highway. Well, hell, I could have flown the last five upside down, there wasn’t anybody even close to me.”

He paused to finish his whiskey and chase it with a sip of Coke.

“Unfortunately,” he went on, “my CO. was driving over the bridge at exactly the same time I decided to fly under it. Colonel Frederick Metz. No sense of humor. He never saw the other boys, he was too busy ripping out his mustache when he saw me go under him. I said, ‘Colonel, what can I say, I got a wild hair up my ass.’ He says to me, ‘You got more than a wild hair up your ass, Dryman, you also got grounded for ninety days.’ Ninety days! Christ, a lifetime! And then He leaned back with his flashy grin, “. . . God smiled on me.”

He waved an arm grandly around the room.

“And what exactly were you told?” Keegan asked, wondering what Smith’s instructions to this crazy man were—and how Smith even found him.

“I was told I was a White House courier—how about that, courier—and that I was to come here and report to you and do whatever you said. . . within reason.” He chuckled. “Whatever that means.”

“It means don’t get us killed, H.P.”

“Never happen,” Dryman said, brushing off the remark as if the idea were ludicrous. “Now, what’s the first thing! have to know?”

“For the time being, here’s all you have to know. I’m looking for a guy. I don’t know what he looks like, what his name is, what he does, or where we might find him. And the way things are looking in the world these days, I probably don’t have a lot of time to track him down.”

Dryman stared at Keegan across the table for several seconds and then he snickered.

“O-kay.” He leaned across the table. “What are we really going to do?”

“That’s it, H.P. I have no idea where we’re going to end up, but we’re going to start by flying to Washington tomorrow morning. You’ll stay in my guest room in the penthouse upstairs and you’ll be on call twenty-four hours a day. When we’re not working, I don’t care what you do. I have three cars, you can use the Rolls. I don’t drive it much anymore.”

A look of awe crossed Dryman’s face.

“Rolls?” he asked reverently. “As in Rolls-Royce?”

“Yeah.”