can’t fly for shit.”
“Fuck Fur Ball. And tell him I said so.” Hudek’s nickname was fighter pilot jargon for a dogfight, so named because a computer presentation of two or more three-dimensional flight paths resembled something from a cat’s tummy. Cassidy shrugged. “Hudek and I weren’t butt-hole buddies, but he knew damn well I could fly that plane.”
Cassidy fingered his card. He had written the telephone numbers on it in ink.
“You look at my evals, Colonel. My skippers knew what I could do.”
Cassidy tucked his card in Foy’s shirt pocket and turned away. “You see Fur Ball again,” Foy called, “you tell him I’ll kick his ass on the ground or in the sky. His choice.”
Cassidy rented a car at the airport in Cheyenne and drove. He went through two thunderstorms and passed close to another. By the time he reached Thermopolis he estimated that he had seen four hundred antelope. He got directions at the biggest filling station in town. “Which way to Cottonwood Creek?”
The house was at the end of a half mile of dirt road. It had a roof, four walls, and all the windows had glass, but it didn’t look like it would be very comfy during a Wyoming winter, when the cold reached twenty below and the snow blew in horizontal sheets. The thought of a Wyoming winter reminded Cassidy of Siberian winters, and he shivered. A man in bib overhauls came out of the dilapidated little barn next to the house. “You Paul Scheer?”
“Yeah.”
“Bob Cassidy.”
Scheer came strolling over. “Somebody called from Washington, said you were coming, but I told them you were wasting your time. Did they give you that message?”
“I got it.”
“Well, it’s your time. I got a couple beers in the fridge.”
“Okay.”
There was a redbone hound on the porch. Only his tail moved, a couple of thumps, then it lay still. “He came with the ranch,” Scheer said, nodding at the dog. Cassidy lowered himself into one of the two porch chairs while Scheer went inside for the beer. The wind was blowing about ten or twelve knots from the northwest, a mere zephyour. The brush and grass near the house were low, sort of hunkered down, not like the flowers and lush bushes in Japan and Washington, where the winters were milder and the summers twice as long. Cassidy took a deep breath— he could smell the land.
When he and Scheer were drinking beer from cans, Cassidy asked, “How much ranch you got here?”
“About thirty thousand acres. Fifty-five hundred acres are deeded; the rest is a BLM grazing lease.”
“How many cows?”
“Three hundred and thirty cow-calf units.”
“Sounds military as hell.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“As I understand it, Paul, you left the Air Force in 1995 after ten years of active duty, worked for Lockheed- Martin as a test pilot in the F-22 program until last year, then quit and moved to this ranch out here in the middle of Wyoming.”
“That’s accurate.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, what’s a place like this worth?”
Scheer grinned, displaying perfect teeth. The thought crossed Cassidy’s mind that some women would consider Scheer handsome. “What it’s worth and what I paid for it are two completely different things. I paid two million. Now, your next question is, “Where did Scheer get two million dollars.” The answer is, “Out of my four oh one (k) plan.” I’m single, live modestly, don’t have any expensive vices. The stock market has been doing fine the last fifteen years, and I have, too. Saw an ad for this ranch one day, got to thinking about it. You know, as I was looking at that ad, it came to me that the time had come. The time had come to cash out and do something stupid. Haven’t regretted it one minute since.”
“Have you heard about Siberia?”
“You mean lately? Don’t get the paper here and I don’t own a TV.”
“Japan invaded Siberia.”
Scheer took a long pull on his beer and crushed the can. “It’s a crazy world,” he said finally. “Yeah. I’m recruiting fighter pilots. We’re giving an F-22 squadron to the Russians, and they are hiring qualified pilots. You were highly recommended.”
“By whom?”
“The head test pilot at Lockheed-Martin.”
Scheer shrugged. “I miss the flying. The F-22 is a great machine, really great. But …” Scheer took a deep breath and sighed. “This is where I’m going to spend the rest of my life.”
Cassidy looked at his watch. “I got a few hours. How about a tour.”
“Okay. Let’s take the Jeep.”
The road was a washed-out rut with huge mud holes that almost swallowed the Jeep. “Got to do something about the road,” Scheer muttered. “What was last winter like?”
“Cold and long.” Cassidy asked questions to keep him talking, about raising cattle, the weather, the range. Finally, he asked, “Do you really think this is the place for you?”
Scheer took his time before he replied. “I’m only the third white man to own this land. Last owner was from Florida, a real estate broker whose wife divorced him after the kids were grown and out of college. He lasted four years. He bought the place from the original homesteader, who was nearly ninety when he sold. He’s in a nursing home in Cheyenne now.”
Scheer pointed to some of his cattle, then indicated his boundaries with a pointed finger or a nodded head. After a bit, he remarked, “Hard to believe, isn’t it, that the original white settler is still alive?
The country is young.”
Finally Scheer brought the Jeep to a stop on a low ridge. He pointed through the windshield. “See that low peak? Way out there? My line cabin is just under that peak. It’s twenty-five miles from the house to that line cabin.”
“This ranch isn’t that big!”
“But it is. Most of it lies along this creek, and up there is the head of it. The ranch is the watered grazing land. Everything else belongs to the government. Pretty, isn’t it?”
“You could come back to this, after the war.”
“Let’s not kid ourselves, Mr. Cassidy. A lot of the guys you recruit are going to get killed.”
Cassidy didn’t say anything. “I’m going to do my living and dying right here, waking up every morning to this.”
“Why don’t you level with me?” Cassidy asked. “You didn’t have a wife of twenty years divorce you. You didn’t get fired from your job; you aren’t hiding from the law. You aren’t a hermit, an alcoholic, or a dope addict. Why are you rusticating out here in cow-patty heaven, smack in the middle of goddamn nowhere?”
Scheer looked at Cassidy. He turned off the engine and climbed out.
“You’re the first one who asked,” he said. “Oh, they asked, but not like that.”
Cassidy got out, too, and stretched. “I’m HIV- positive,” Scheer said. “Anally injected death serum. Had it for years. Lived longer than I thought I would.”
“So?”
“It’s a death sentence.”
“Man, life is a death sentence.”
“We all go sooner or later. I’m one of the sooners.”
“Your “the time has come” speech — that’s for the local yokels, right?”
“You’re a real smoothy, aren’t you, Cassidy?”
“Come to Russia with me. It’ll be a hell of a fight. You live through that, you can come back here to wait for the Grim Reaper, watch the cows chew their curls, listen to the wind, think the big thoughts when the temp drops to twenty below.”
“You’re a colonel, right?”
“Right.”
“I didn’t get AIDS by licking toilet seats, Colonel.”
