Secret Agent Sam

There was a long, suspenseful silence, during which Tony watched, with a sinking feeling in his gut, the little muscles working in the side of Cory’s jaw, and wondered if he was going to have to start looking for a new best friend.

Then, to his great relief, Cory straightened abruptly and said, “You’re right, you do.” Tony let out a silent, careful breath.

He waited, heart thumping, while Cory glanced over his shoulder toward the terminal buildings, again took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes. Put the glasses back on. Leaned toward him across the aisle and spoke in a soft, conspiratorial way, although there was no one else around to hear.

“You know I was a prisoner in Iraq, right?”

“Yeah, sure-about ten years ago, wasn’t it? Special Forces went in and got you out in the middle of the Second Iraq War. Didn’t you win the Pulitzer with some of the articles you wrote about it afterward?”

Cory nodded in a dismissive way. “So you probably also remember there was another guy rescued same time I was. Tomcat pilot-he’d been shot down over the no-fly zone between the two Gulf wars. Given up for dead. They’d had him for eight years, and nobody knew.”

“Holy jumpin’ jeezits,” Tony exclaimed, whacking the armrest with an open palm, “I remember that! I was working in Richmond at the time-I think it was maybe my second or third big assignment-they sent me to Andrews to cover his return. Had all us media people corralled away from the action behind a chain-link fence so we wouldn’t interfere with the big family reunion. Never got one decent shot. Let’s see…I seem to remember he had a wife…a daughter…”

Cory nodded, took a breath and let it out. “He did. And that pilot out there, Samantha Bauer-” he dipped his head toward the windows “-Amelia Earhart, as you call her…”

“Don’t tell me,” Tony said, in the same reverent tone with which he’d first spoken of the airplane they were sitting in.

“Yep,” said Cory, in a voice like the echoes of doom. “She’s the Top Gun’s daughter.”

Chapter 2

“I met her in the White House rose garden,” Cory said, following a gleefully profane exclamation from Tony.

He could still smile, remembering that day, but carefully, tentatively, with great care not to jostle the memories too hard. The turbulence of seeing her again had shifted and tumbled them-and the feelings that went with them- inside the compartment he’d stuffed them into years ago, and right now he feared if he opened that door too wide and too suddenly they might tumble out and bury him.

He spoke rapidly to get past the danger.

“There was a reception for us-for him, really-Lieutenant Bauer-I was more or less an afterthought. The guy was a genuine hero, and you know what the media does with heroes.”

“Aren’t you the media?”

“That’s why I get to bad-mouth-it’s like family. Anyway, you’re not the media when you’re part of the story.”

“But you wrote those stories.”

“Yeah, mainly to get through it. Get past it. I wonder, sometimes, how it would’ve been if I hadn’t had that outlet. I know Tristan had a tough time of it-of course he’d been gone a lot longer than I was. They only had me a few months. Him they’d had for eight years.”

“Hard to imagine. Impossible, maybe.”

Cory nodded, the knots in his belly relaxing a little. He was always more comfortable concentrating on someone else’s story. “It was tough on his family. They’d assumed all along he was dead. Jessie-his wife-hadn’t remarried, though, which was one good thing. What a mess that would’ve been. Still, it was hard- they had a lot of readjusting to do. But it was hardest, I think, on Sammi-on Samantha. She was just a kid, a ten- year-old tomboy when she lost her dad. That’s how he remembered her-how he described her to me, when we were together in that Iraqi prison. He talked about her all the time. A tomboy with ponytails. With bandages on her knees from playing soccer.” A smile fluttered like a leaf on the gust of his exhalation. “Let me tell you, that’s not what he came back to.”

Not even close.

Oblivious to nuances, Tony whistled. “I guess not. She’d have been what, then-eighteen?”

“Yeah. In college. A grown-up woman, the way she saw it.”

“Still just a kid, though,” Tony said in a musing tone, then threw Cory a quick frown as it finally hit him. “What, you’re telling me you had something going with her? I never figured you for a cradle robber, man. You must have, what, ten or twelve years on her?”

“It wasn’t my intention,” Cory said, putting his head back with a sigh. “Believe me. Well-” the smile this time was brief and wry “-not at first, anyway. Not that I didn’t fall for her. That happened probably the first minute I laid eyes on her.” He threw Tony a look and shifted uncomfortably. “Well, you’ve seen her.” He glanced toward the window and his heart gave a jolt as he saw the tall wavery figure in khakis and a baseball cap striding toward them across the scorched grass.

Alerted by what he saw in Cory’s face, Tony, too, turned to look out the window. After a long moment he said in a reverent tone, “I can see how she’d get your attention, yeah. Even dressed like that I can see it.”

“It wasn’t about her looks, though.” Cory waggled his shoulders, uncomfortable even with the thought. Blond hair, brown eyes, long legs…great legs…okay, sure, she’d had all that. So had any number of other women he’d met in his lifetime and over the course of his career, in one variation or another. But Sammi June-Samantha-there’d just been something about her. So much…more.

“So, you had it bad for the college kid,” Tony said. “So, what happened?”

“About what you’d expect, I guess. Didn’t work out.” Cory lifted one shoulder and closed his eyes, hoping maybe Tony would take the hint and let it drop.

Naturally, he didn’t. “Didn’t work out? That’s all you have to say?” His voice rose in pitch as it lowered in volume. “Look, man, I know you. You’ll make a story out of a trip to the 7-Eleven.” With his eyes shut Cory felt the voice come nearer, and drop to a conspirator’s mutter. “Hey-I saw your face when you recognized that woman out there a while ago. Like you’d been whacked upside the head with a plank.” There was another pause while Tony settled back in his seat again.

After a moment he exhaled in an exasperated way. “Look. Three years ago I stood by your side and handed you the ring while you got married to a woman who just happens to bear an uncanny resemblance to this pilot of ours-don’t think I didn’t notice that-and I gave up my couch when you divorced that same woman barely a year later-not that I minded. I never liked her that much, anyway. Now, I may be crazy, but I’m getting the idea there’s a connection there somewhere. So trust me, ‘didn’t work out’ ain’t gonna cut it.”

“What do you want me to do? I can’t very well get into it now,” Cory threw back at him in an exasperated whisper. “She’s gonna be back in here in a minute.”

“Yeah, well…don’t think I’m letting you off the hook on this one, pal. First thing when we get to Zamboanga- okay the second, but once we’ve got a couple of cold brewskies in front of us, I want the whole story. I’m not kiddin’, man.”

Cory let out his breath in a gusty sigh.

Of all things to happen, he thought. On this, of all assignments. It had to be the mother of all coincidences.

Or maybe just fate, catching up with him.

Outside on the steps, Sam paused with one hand braced on each side of the door as if she were preparing to withstand a gale-force wind. Which she supposed she was in a way, or at least the emotional equivalent. And so far she wasn’t pleased with the way she’d held up in the face of it. No excuses, she’d had plenty of time to prepare. She should have had her emotions battened down a whole lot better than this.

One thing, one small triumph she could cling to: the look on Cory’s face when he’d realized who his pilot was.