staying inside the wire.'
'You're not in any kind of danger or anything?' 'Naw… not here. What's the weather like there?' 'Pretty warm… and crazy smoggy in the Valley….
what's it like there?'
'Hot as hell with a ninety-nine percent chance of dust storms.'
'Sounds like beach weather.' Cassie laughed.
'Yeah… I sure am looking forward to getting back home and going to the beach with you.'
'When's that going to be?'
'I dunno. Like I said in my e-mail… tours keep getting extended. Not long, I hope… I'm sure missing you.'
'I'm missing you too, big guy,' Cassie said in a matter-of-fact way. Troy was just happy to hear her using her pet nickname for him. 'Listen, I gotta run… gotta get to work. Love ya, big guy.'
'Love you too,' Troy said as the click of Cassie hanging up echoed in his ears.
'I thought that absence made the heart grow fonder,' he said out loud to himself as he dialed his parents' home.
'Heard the smog's been pretty bad,' Troy said after exchanging greetings with his mother. She too had wanted to know what time it was.
'Yeah, very bad here in the Valley. I'm going up to that needlepoint shop in Santa Clarita later. Guess I'll make a day of it.'
'No work today?'
'It's Saturday….. What day is it over there?'
'I guess it must be Saturday night,' Troy said. 'The days just run together. One's the same as the next.' 'You sound despondent,' she scolded. 'Gotta get your blood sugar up. Did you get those cookies I sent?' 'Not yet. When did you send them?'
'Last week.'
'They'll get here. They're pretty good about getting our mail to us… not necessarily in a timely way… but it seems to get here sooner or later….. So where's Dad, if it's a Saturday?'
'He went in to work… something about the warehouse… I don't know.'
It was his mother's turn to have a despondent edge to her tone of voice. Troy decided to change the subject, a subject that worked its way around to the question of when he'd be coming home.
Again, he explained that tours were being extended. 'What exactly is going on over there?'
'You know I can't talk about what we're doing,' he explained, mad at himself for his patronizing tone.
'I watch it on the news, and it just doesn't make sense. These guys look like just a bunch of ragtag punks, but they seem to be winning. Can't you stop them?'
'We're trying, Mom. We're trying.'
'This morning there was a thing on the news… they said that the Americans shot down some planes that belonged to one of those countries over there… not to the punks… but to a country. Did you hear about that over there?'
'Yes, Mom, I did,' Troy answered, suppressing the urge to tell her that he was one of the Americans.
'Is it true?'
'True, what?'
'That Americans are shooting down planes.' 'Yes… it is true.'
'What's gonna happen?'
'That's up to the politicians to decide.'
'Promise me one thing, Troy.'
'What's that, Mom?'
'Promise me you'll stay away from where they're shooting down airplanes.'
'Ummm… '
'Promise me.'
'Yeah, Mom… I promise I'll do my best.'
Chapter 9
'Thank you, sir.'
Eight days and five or six dozen software upgrades later, Troy Loensch had just gotten restored to flight status.
Eight days of grunt work — albeit high-tech grunt work — had gotten Troy's attention. A 1.8-millimeter Phillips screwdriver and a pair of needle-nose pliers were not exactly like the control stick of a jet fighter. The first couple of days of plugging, playing, and running diagnostics with a laptop had made Troy feel a bit humiliated. For the next few days, humiliation had gradually turned to humility. Troy found himself working side by side with people who did this for a living, day in and day out. They crouched in awkward places in the fuselages of airplanes in hangars that felt like ovens so that hotshot pilots like Troy Loensch could have the means to be hotshot pilots. When he finally got the word that his indentured servitude had come to an end, Troy was ecstatic, but at the same time, he would never again take the software geeks for granted.
'We need you back in the air,' General Raymond Harris explained from behind his messy desk. 'We can't afford a pilot off flight status with the situation on the ground as screwed up as it is. Besides that, your team needs you.'
'Team… needs me?'
'Yeah… they've been on my case to get you back in the air. Both of 'em. Coughlin and Munrough…. especially Coughlin.'
Troy was dumbfounded that Hal and Jenna had interceded with the general to get him back in the air. Both had reasons to be glad that he wasn't flying with them. He was also surprised at his own reaction when the general had referred to the three of them as a 'team.' They flew together, executed missions in a coordinated manner, and got things done, but he had never thought of them as a team, certainly not in the sense of the football teams on which Troy had played such a long time ago.
He caught up to his 'teammates' in the officers' mess, sitting together at a table on the edge of the room. Troy grabbed a cup of coffee and walked over.
'Guess what,' he said in as cheerful a tone as he could muster, given that the mere sight of them reminded him of the long-strained relationship. 'You are rid of me no longer. I'm back in the air.'
'Mission briefing at 1400,' Jenna said, standing up to leave. 'Check you then.'
'I heard you put in a good word for me with the general,' Troy said to Hal as Jenna left the room. 'I don't deserve it… but thanks.'
'Whatever your faults, man… you're still a helluva pilot.'
'Thanks. It's appreciated.. * ummm… coming from you… I mean I don't deserve it from you.'
'Like I said… you're a helluva pilot.'
'It was Munrough who saved your ass in that dogfight,' Troy reminded him. 'It wasn't me. I was just watching and trying to get there.'
'I know… I owe her big-time… but I appreciate that you were coming back.'
'All's well that ends well, I guess.'
'It ended well,' Hal said. 'Unless you count the reprimands.'
'That's no big deal… anybody who reads those reprimands is going to see that we got into a fight and lived to tell about it… who would you want on your team? Who would they want on their team?'
'Haven't heard you use the word team before,' Hal said. 'Guess I'm glad to have people like… y'know… you and her on mine.'
'Don't get all gushy on me now,' Troy said, getting up to go. 'See you at 1400.'
Troy felt good, sitting in at his first briefing in nearly two weeks — even if it was a good news/bad news
