low cinderblock structure, the annex of the club, Jake asked Cole what he liked to be called.
“Virgil’s fine. Or Cole. Doesn’t matter.” It was the most he had said since Jake met him.
The Tailhook Bar had originally been the basement for a larger building that had either never been built or had been torn down. But that was some time before the memory of the men who congregated there now, and none of them bothered to ask. It was in the Tailhook Bar that the serious rowdies and drinkers hung out. Patrons could buy a hot sandwich from a short-order grill and all the liquor they wanted for a dime a drink during Happy Hour and a quarter thereafter. No women were allowed.
The place was packed when Jake, Sammy, and Cole entered. Every man there looked as though he had forsaken sobriety hours ago. Sea stories-anecdotes on nautical or aviation themes with presumably some basis in fact-were being recounted in loud voices to listeners less than a foot away. Sure enough, as Snake had told them, a naked, unconscious man lay face down on the bar.
Between the cheeks of his buttocks someone had placed a maraschino cherry.
“How come he’s on his stomach?” Grafton asked.
“Christ, Jake.” Little Augie came up. “Where’ve you been all your life? Everyone knows you always put a drunk face down so he won’t drown if he pukes. Weren’t you ever in the Boy Scouts?”
“Makes sense,” Jake replied and took a glass from Little Augie, who had two, and gulped down half its contents. Then he handed it back.
“That was my specimen for Mad Jack, Grafton. you want any more, just let me know.”
“Thanks.” Lundeen leaned across the nude and yanked the bartender’s sleeve. “Scotch on the rocks . . .” He glanced at Grafton and Cole. “Three of them.”
As they worked on their drinks, they watched the activity that centered around a mock cockpit set on rails near the back wall. This contraption was infamously known as “the beast.” Propelled forward on the rails by a compressed-air charge, the cockpit ran level for about twenty feet, then down a slight decline, through a set of open French doors, and out to a stagnant pond.
The only way to avoid being doused in the water as the cockpit slid to a halt was to adroitly manipulate the only control in the cockpit, a lever that activated a spring loaded tailhook that could snag a restraining wire rigged across the tracks just before the decline.
To catch the wire required split-second timing. Tonight the machine was getting a workout as man after man splashed into the water to the roars of “bolter, bolter bolter” from the revelers.
Ferdinand Majellon and a man Jake didn’t recognize walked over and introduced themselves. The stranger was indeed the new pilot. He looked barely twenty an exuded an innocence that promised to make him the butt of much crude humor.
As they chatted, Jake noticed Cowboy standing beside the group. “Tired of the game?” he asked.
Parker shook his head in disgust. “Too early. Chintzy bastards won’t bet enough yet. I’ll go back later. I see you met Virgil.” Jake nodded. What could one say about this guy?
“How was Hong Kong?” Cowboy asked.
“Okay,” said Jake.
“Get laid?” Cowboy demanded.
“Yeah,” Lundeen leered as Jake flushed. Jake saw Cole glance from one man to the other. Those eyes were a goddamn X-ray machine, Grafton thought.
Everyone else was watching the most recent rider of the beast being assisted from the device, dripping wet.
“We’ve got a man for the beast,” Cowboy announced in stentorian tones.
The crowd parted like the waters of the Red Sea, and Parker grabbed Jake’s shoulders and thrust him forward. Jake yelled, “Find someone else. Get this lunatic off me! I don’t want to ride the damned thing.
He felt more hands seize him. He was lifted roughly off the floor and carried toward the scum-coated beast. Accepting his fate, Jake allowed himself to be placed in the cockpit and strapped in.
Lundeen and Cowboy fiddled with the control panel “How do you turn the damn air on, anyway?” Sammy muttered. Perhaps because someone turned a knob the wrong way, a valve blew and compressed air shot the control handle across the room, shattering a mirror behind the bar. Two men barely ducked the projectile and the bartender, with his back turned, jumped when the glass exploded. The crowd considered all this hilarious.
“You idiots,” bellowed a burly fellow with a handlebar mustache. “Get outta the way, Lundeen, before you kill somebody. You too, Tex. ” Amid another outburst of laughter, Cowboy and Lundeen were shoved aside and replaced by more experienced hands.
Someone passed Jake a drink while he waited for the handle to be reinstalled and a new air bottle hooked up. He was beginning to enjoy this. He leaned back, fished out a cigarette, and propped one foot on the side of the cockpit. “Anytime you fellows get a handle on the situation-” Then he saw Cole, apparently cold and aloof, taking it all in, those blue eyes fixed upon him He wondered how in God’s name was he going to fly with this man every day? He recoiled at the idea of so many hours of enforced togetherness. At that moment Cole winked at him.
Jake grinned and handed his glass to the nearest spectator. “Are you guys going to take all night?” he asked of the repair party behind him. “We have bandits inbound at ten knots and they’re going to blast in through the French doors if you fellows don’t shake a leg.
“Who’s gonna launch this guy?” Handlebar shouted “I am, by God,” boomed a voice from the dee South. Bosun Marion Muldowski stepped up. He stood six feet two and transported a substantial pot belly. Bosun Muldowski was a warrant officer an had worked his way up from the enlisted ranks, “up the hawse pipe,” as the expression ran. He had been the catapult maintenance officer on the Shilo for as long as Grafton had been aboard and regularly took a turn launching aircraft. His commanding presence inspire awe in the officers and instant obedience from the sailors, who regarded him with a mixture of respect an fear. Even the air boss, a commander who headed the department that included all the flight-deck division had been known to slip and call Muldowski “Sir.”
Every eye in the room was on the southern Pole as he surveyed Jake Grafton and the beast. “You ready in there, shipmate?” he bellowed.
Jake took his foot down and tightened the shoulder straps. “Let’s do it, Bosun.”
Muldowski drained his beer, crushed the can with his fist, then tossed it outdoors into the pond. He unbuttoned and removed his shirt.
On his T-shirt was emblazoned a legend in flaming red: “World’s Finest Cat Officer.” Snickers rippled through the crowd.
The big man glowered at several people who had had the temerity to snicker. Silence reigned. “I’ve pissed more saltwater than you puppies ever sailed over.” His face was grim. “You back there,” he said to Handlebar. “Are you ready yet?”
Handlebar flung both hands above his head and held them there, the standard signal to the cat officer that the cat was ready to fire.
“Satisfactory,” the bosun pronounced. “Anytime you care to go we will oblige you,” he told Jake. The pilot sat at attention with his hand on the hook lever, watching the bosun from the corner of his eye. “Well?” demanded Muldowski.
“Well?” repeated Jake.
“I don’t hear your engine running and I don’t see a salute,” Muldowski said as though he were talking to a seventeen-year-old boot recruit from Iowa.
Taking the cue, everyone in the place, Jake included, began to roar like a jet engine. The thunder from threescore voices filled the room and rolled through the open doors, across the pond, and out into the night. Jake saluted and immediately put his hand back on the hook mechanism. He took a deep breath and chomped down on his cigarette. He tried to watch both the bosun and the safety wire at the same time. The bosun’s right hand twirled above his head, then he lunged to his right and his hand came down in a wide arc to touch the floor, the classic launch signal. Grafton tried to look back for the target wire, but it was too late.
Down the track he hurtled. He jerked on the handle but the beast continued to accelerate. He flashed down the incline. Water cascaded over him as the beast slid to a stop.
Jake puffed on his soggy cigarette. He looked back into the barroom. Some of the shouting, laughing men pointed at him with one hand and pounded the bosun on the back with the other.
When the car had been cranked back into batter the bosun inquired in his flight-deck voice, “How was your
