“What’s the job?” Hudek asked matter-of-factly. He showed no interest in sitting. He didn’t seem nervous or in a hurry. He just stood with his arms crossed, looking at Cassidy. “Have you heard that Japan invaded Siberia?”
“It’s been on the radio for a couple days.”
“I’m looking for people with F-22 experience.” Cassidy went on explaining while he watched Hudek’s expression. He might as well have been talking in Hindi for all the impression he made. Hudek’s expression didn’t change an iota. Looking at him you would find it hard to believe he was an honors graduate in electrical engineering from MIT. One of the “10 percenters,” as Cassidy called them. The military flight programs had been so competitive the last twenty years, a person had to be in the top 10 percent of his class at every stage of his life — high school, college, and flight training — if he expected to fly the hot jets. Hudek was brilliant, a superb student, athletic, in perfect health, and he could fly the planes. Yet somewhere, somehow, it had all gone wrong for him. When Cassidy stopped speaking, Hudek turned his head, checking the vehicles going into and out of the service area, then turned back. “Russia, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it’s amazing.”
“What is?”
“That you’re here. Didn’t you read my last evaluation? My last skipper thought I was a stupid son of a bitch, and he said so in just about those words.”
“I read it. I don’t give a damn about paperwork or saluting or parking-lot etiquette.”
“You did read it.”
“I need fighter pilots.”
“Well, I really ain’t interested. All that is behind me now. I haven’t flown in three months. Don’t miss it. Don’t miss the pissy little Caesars in their cute blue uniforms, either.”
“This isn’t the peacetime Air Force. This is war, the real thing. I guarantee you, there will be no strutting martinets, no shoe polish, no bullshit.”
“I’ve heard that song before,” Hudek said with a sneer. “Now I’m supposed to raise my right hand, then sign on the dotted line. What if you just happen to be wrong? What if your little operation is more of the same fucked-up fire drill I just got out of? Then I’m already in and it’s my tough luck, huh?”
“I’ll be right there with you. If I’m wrong, we’ll still be in it together.”
“You’re going to be there?” Hudek was incredulous. “Yep. Are you?”
Hudek put his hands in his pockets and flexed his shoulders. “Don’t believe so,” he drawled finally. “Even if it’s what you say, I’ve got some other things going. I’ve done the military thing and it’s time to move on, go on down the road. There’s this girl … She sorta likes me, wants me to settle down, have a kid. Got a deposit down on a little tract house going up in a subdivision near here. Ain’t much, but it’ll be all mine.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m tired of dicking with paper-pushers, tired of always doing what some fathead who happens to be senior to me thinks we oughta do … tired of trying to look good!”
Cassidy got up and dusted his trousers. Then he passed Hudek his card, on which he had written the telephone number of his hotel in Crystal City. “Call me. Let me know what you decide.”
“I’m doing that very thing right this minute, Colonel. I’m letting you know. I have definitely decided. Absolutely decided. I don’t want to go to a fucking Siberian icebox.”
“Call me.”
“I am not going to call you. Listen! I don’t want to go. I don’t even like their food!”
“Tonight. Late. I have another guy to call on. Maybe you know him — Lee Foy?”
“Damnation, can’t you hear me? Ain’t my mouth working right? I ain’t calling you tonight or any other time. I’m telling you right here and now I’m not going to Russia. I don’t do Third World shitholes. And I never heard of Foy.”
“He said he knows you. Said he met you a couple years back during the F-22 op eval. Said you were a real good stick but you had a shitty personality. Said you’d give me a ration of crap.”
“Oh! Foy Sauce, the California Chink. Yeah, I know that lying little slant-eyed bastard. Is he going?”
“Maybe.”
“Jesus, taking Foy Sauce — you clowns must be scraping the bottom of the barrel. They’re going to shoot all you people down. You’ll all be dead in a week.”
“Call me tonight.”
“Where is Foy these days, anyway?”
Cassidy didn’t reply. He unlocked his car and got behind the wheel. Hudek stood watching Cassidy as he piloted the rental car slowly toward the street. He was still standing there when Cassidy went through the light at the corner and glanced back, just before he turned left.
Lee Foy was living in Mclean, Virginia. He was an up-and-coming real estate agent. “I’m making a ton of money,” he told Cassidy. “I don’t speak a solitary word of Chinese, but the company assigns me to every Hong Kong businessman or Chinese official coming to the Washington-Baltimore area. I always make the sale. Being a hyphenated American has its advantages. I’m getting rich.”
“I’ve always wondered what a number two in a Stanford graduating class did with his life.”
Lee Foy beamed. “Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, believe me.”
“Number one in your flight school class, number two in your class at test pilot school. That right?”
“All that is behind me. I’m making serious money now.”
“Uh-huh. Well, I talked to Hudek. You were right about him. He’s a jerk of the first water.”
“Good stick, though. Funny thing, but I never met a saint flying a fighter plane.”
“So, are you going to give up all this good living and easy money and come fly for the Russians?”
“Hell no. I told you that yesterday.”
“That was your wallet talking. The shooting has started. Now I appeal to your patriotism, your manhood, your sense of duty.”
“My wallet covers all those things. I’m making good money and I like it a lot.”
“It’ll still be here when you get back.”
“When I get back, some other Charlie Chan will be sopping up the gravy, Colonel. The world doesn’t stand still for anyone. And we both know that my chances of coming back aren’t red-hot.”
“The chances aren’t bad, or I wouldn’t be going.”
“Don’t shit me, Colonel. If you make it, you’ll come back a brigadier.
General Cassidy. You’ll retire on a general’s pension. You’ll spend the rest of your days lying around some 0- club sucking suds, fat and sassy, schmoozing about the good old days with old farts in yellow golf slacks and knit shirts decorated with ponies and alligators while you wait for the next retirement check to show up in the mail. Me, if I live through this little adventure, I’ll come back a year or two older and a whole lot poorer, with a bout or two of dysentery and a couple cases of clap on my medical record. I’ll have to rent apartments to crack addicts to make a buck. Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll stay right here in the good old US of A and keep the good times rolling.”
“How did you ever become a fighter pilot, Foy, a cynical, money-grubbing bastard like you? You’re a damned civilian.”
“I could make that plane dance, Cassidy. Ask Hudek. But that wasn’t a living. Selling real estate to the “Ah so” crowd is a living. Making the sale is my thing.” He pointed downward. “See these shoes?
Damn things are alligator. Cost five hundred bucks a pair on sale for thirty percent off.”
“What’s your point?”
“I’m tired of being poor, man. My wall is covered with diplomas I can’t spend. I’ve seen the money and I want some.”
“The Russian government will pay five thousand for every Japanese plane you bag.”
“Five thousand what? Bongo bucks? Yuan, yen, pesos, rubles? Man, that stuff is toilet paper.”
“U.s. dollars.”
“That’ll be easy to earn. I’ll go up every morning and knock down two bad guys before breakfast. Seriously, Colonel, I make that much selling a condo and I don’t have to risk anything to get it. I don’t have to bleed, either.”
“Hudek told me not to take you to Siberia. Said you’d be dead in a week. He called you Foy Sauce. Said you
