Operator B

The pretty colonel, Ashton, stood up from her chair. “Well, General, it comes on very good authority that you’re the best pilot in the world.”

“Are you?” Rainier asked.

Wentz didn’t like this kind of spotlight. “I don’t know. Maybe. I’ve probably got more black test flights than any one else. But there are plenty of guys out there who are top-notch.”

“Top notch isn’t good enough,” Smith said.

Then Rainier: “If you’re not the best, then who is?”

It didn’t come easy, but Wentz put his ego aside. “Will Farrington,” he admitted.

“You’ve flown with General Farrington?” Rainier asked.

“Well, no, sir. He was Marine Corp,” Wentz said, “and what I heard was he retired as a colonel O-6.”

Ashton again: “What do you know about Farrington?”

It was a difficult question to answer or to even contemplate. Like asking a World War I vet about Sergeant York or the French Foreign Legion in Indochina. Farrington was a myth, a legend within the secret circle of classified aviation. Any pilot who ever saw Farrington fly would never forget it. They said that on their deathbeds, the last thought in any woman’s mind would be the first man she’d made love to.

With black-op pilots, the last thought in your head would the time you saw Farrington fly…

“He was the best test in the business, bar none,” Wentz said. “No one could touch him. When he grabbed the stick, he became part of the aircraft. In 1984 I saw him pull a barrel roll in a C-141. This guy could fly cargo planes like they were fighters, and he could pull Immelmann Turns in helicopters. In Vietnam he brought down sixteen MIGs in a Douglas Skyraider, guns only… There was a war correspondent in Hue who actually filmed Farrington in his Skyraider—a propeller-driven plane—shooting down four jet-powered MIGs like they were slow skeet—not with air-to-air missiles, with mounted guns. First day in test-pilot school, they show that film. Will Farrington was astounding. Kind of like everybody’s icon, the pilot’s pilot. He was the King Zeus of black-op flyers and restricted test pilots.”

“What became of him?” inquired Smith. “Do you know? Did you ever hear any rumors?”

“He disappeared in 88,” Wentz said. “Word is he retired and became a recluse; they said he burned out. Didn’t make sense for a driver that good to retire.”

“That’s because he didn’t retire, General,” Smith informed. “He’s been working for us since then, on a very classified project.”

Wentz peered at Smith, then at Rainier. “You want me to work with Will Farrington?”

“Would that change your mind about retiring?” Rainier asked.

These goddamn people kill me, Wentz thought.

“No.”

General Rainier and Smith traded narrow glances.

“That’s not quite it,” Rainier continued. “What we want, Wentz, is for you to pick up where Farrington left off.”

Wentz didn’t know if he felt more puzzled than pissed off. “I don’t get it, sir.”

General Rainier leaned back in his chair with a sigh. “Farrington committed suicide several nights ago. We was clinically depressed because—well, we think he lacked the confidence to undertake his current mission. We want you to consider that mission.”

Wentz felt floored. Suddenly a whirlwind of questions rose, all bidden by his pilot’s propensities and the instincts formed over the last twenty-five years of sitting in classified cockpits. What “mission” could possibly daunt a flyer the likes of Will Farrington? What mission would cause the best pilot in the world—and in aviation history—to kill himself?

Part of Wentz found the notion unfathomable…but it also hooked him.

If Farrington couldn’t hack the mission…maybe I can, he tempted himself

But then the reality swept back down, the promises he’d made, and not just those to Joyce and Pete but those to himself.

“I can’t, sir,” he said. “I can’t do it.”

“Scared? Ain’t got the nuts?”

Wentz uttered the most irreducible chuckle. He knew what he wanted to say in response, thought about all the reasons why he shouldn’t, but then said it anyway.

“Fuck yourself, sir.”

Ashton and Smith went rigid.

Wentz tossed a shoulder. “That’s right, I just told a four-star general to fuck himself.” He shot his gaze across the room. “You haul me away from my family with all this crypto spookshow bullshit and have the audacity to insult me with mind-game challenges that wouldn’t work on a high school kid?” Wentz pointed at General Rainier. “If you think I’m scared, if you think I ain’t got the nuts—try sitting in one of my chairs one motherfucking day, General. Try test-flying a plane with reverse- angle wings where even the goddamn designers don’t know if it’ll fly for more than fifteen seconds before falling apart. Try flying six hundred and fifty knots at an altitude of twenty feet in the dark, just to drop a single laze marker and knowing if you hit a tree or a powerline, a couple of hundred grunts are gonna die along with yourself. Try that, sir. You and your kind get carted around in an Air Force limo; you’ve probably got a master sergeant to hold your dick for you when you piss. Try pissing your pants in a ramjet when the systems light goes off, when you’ve got two choices, you can eject and drop your plane in a residential neighborhood and wipe out a block, or you can try to glide fifty miles to the water and flop a hundred million bucks in the drink when you know you’ve only got one chance in ten of surviving the impact. I did that once. So, I repeat, sir. Fuck yourself.”

Wentz had expended his rant, and probably his honorable discharge. Fuck it, he thought.

Ashton and Smith stood wide-eyed in shock. Rainier strummed his fingers on the desk.

“I don’t like to be played with,” Wentz said to the silent room. Then, to Rainier, “Go ahead and demote me to basic airman. See if I give a shit.”

“This isn’t about that,” Rainier said, unperturbed. “This isn’t about protocol or UCMJ or rank or who’s the top cat. Christ, I wish more men had the balls to talk to me like you just did. The reason you’re here isn’t about any of that Air Force bullshit.”

“What is it about then?”

“Total duty, total service to one’s country.”

Wentz ground his teeth until he could taste the metal in his fillings. “For twenty-five fuckin’ years, I’ve served my country like a waiter, and I never even asked for a tip. Remember the Gulf War, the CNN shot of the Paveway II laser-guided bomb swerving into a single window on a sixteen-story office building? That was me. I took out Iraq’s Office of Tactical Air Command, and after flying so low to make the hit, my plane got punched through by so much triple-A my wings were whistling. I couldn’t even make it back to the base at Jiddah; I had to eject over the Gulf… Two hours after Air-Sea Rescue picked me up, I was flying another sortie. So don’t tell me about duty. Don’t tell me about service… Sir.”

“I would never presume to,” Rainier’s voice grated. “We know all about your feats. We know all about the many times you’ve risked your life for your country. And that’s the reason you’re here instead of some other cocky flyboy. You’re the best. We need the best.”

Smith stepped forward, holding classified evaluation reports. “Our performance indexes are processed through every personnel computer in the United States military, the CIA, and NASA. You were quite right. General Willard Farrington was the best pilot in the world. But now he’s gone. Which means that you are now the best pilot in the world.”

Shit, Wentz thought.

Rainier offered a minuscule smile, stroking his beardless chin. “It’s unlike any mission you could ever imagine.”

“I can’t take it,” Wentz insisted. “It doesn’t matter. I’m retiring tomorrow. I promised my ex-wife and kid.”

“Don’t you at least want to know what the mission is?”

Wentz felt his fingernails scraping his palms. “No, because if you tell me, then I’ll just be that much more