Final Flight

and the breeze was warm and soft and she was still sitting there in front of the window with the breeze stirring her hair.

“He was the best,” Toad said at last, seeing the airliner fill the windscreen, feeling the gut-ripping jerk as Jake Grafton slammed the controls over and the fighter rolled and the transport’s wing came straight at the cockpit in a blur, veering at the last fraction of a second to impact the fighter’s left wing. Grafton had prevented the catastrophic head-on that would have instantly launched both him and Toad into eternity. Grafton had saved Toad’s life.

Toad had passed out in the cockpit as the negative and longitudinal G-forces pooled blood in his brain. How many Gs had there been? It had started bad and gotten worse as the shattered fighter wound itself into a rolling spin. When he recovered consciousness he was in the sea with his life vest inflated. Perhaps Grafton had ejected them, or the plane had broken up and his seat had fired somehow. He would never know. His life vest had inflated automatically when the CO₂ cartridges were immersed in salt water. After a struggle that threatened to drown him, he successfully got rid of the parachute and inflated the one-man life raft from the seat pan. With the last of his strength he dragged himself half into the raft. As far as he could see, in all directions, the sea was empty. He had been very sick from the motion of the raft and all the sea water he had swallowed. The Israeli missile boat picked him up in midafternoon and spent the rest of the day searching. The boat had found a few pieces of floating wreckage, but Toad was the only survivor, eyes shot with blood and face swollen and bruised black from the effect of the G, with a badly broken leg. But alive.

The white was coming back to his eyes now, and the swelling and splotches on his face were fading. Eventually his leg would heal. Maybe someday the nauseating panic when he recalled those moments would fade. What would he do with the life Jake Grafton had given him?

“There are so many questions,” Toad said. “Who are you?”

She rose from the chair and faced the window. “We were after Colonel Qazi that night at the Vittorio. We didn’t know what he was planning, merely that he was there. But if we had gotten him then, perhaps the … incident … aboard your ship would not have taken place. Perhaps the sailors who died would be still alive … Captain Grafton … Callie not a widow.” She turned back toward him, and he saw her face again. It hadn’t changed. “So I came to see you. You and Captain Grafton stopped Qazi and El Hakim. Both were aboard that Ilyushin transport you rammed. You succeeded where we failed.”

“It’s a funny world,” Toad said softly because he couldn’t think of anything else.

She opened her purse and removed a folded-up section of a newspaper. She came over to the bed and handed it to him, then retreated. He opened it. It was a three-day-old front section of the New York Times. There was a picture of the United States under a banner headline. And the navy had released a photo of Captain Grafton. He scanned the stories. One of them announced that Vice-Admiral Lewis, Commander U.S. Sixth Fleet, had been relieved and had submitted his retirement papers. The story contained a verbatim transcript of a radio conversation between Admiral Lewis and Captain Grafton that had been recorded by a ham radio operator in Clearwater, Florida, a retired railroad engineer. Toad read the story carefully.

“So that’s why,” Toad murmured, still reading. He finished the story and looked again at the photograph of Jake Grafton, the nose, the eyes, the unsmiling mouth, the ribbons on his chest. Toad folded the newspaper and laid it on the table beside the bed. He cleared his throat. “Thanks for bringing this.”

She was seated again, on the front edge of the chair. She nodded and slowly scanned the room, taking in everything in turn. After another minute she stood. “I still have your letter.”

He searched for something to say. “The doctors tell me my leg’s going to be okay.”

She took a step toward the door.

“If you ever … maybe we … At least tell me your real name. You won’t even call me Toad. I won’t tell anyone. I need to know.”

She smiled brittlely. “Judith Farrell is dead. Now I am someone else, with a new past and a new future.”

“Not your new name. Your real name.”

“My new name is real. It can’t be any other way.” The smile was frozen.

“The name your parents gave you.”

The smile disappeared and she twisted the strap of her purse. She stepped over to the bed and leaned over. “Hannah Mermelstein.” Her lips brushed his cheek. “Good-bye, Robert,” she whispered. He listened to the fading sound of her heels clicking in the corridor. He listened long after the sound was completely gone.

The sea was so blue, with flecks of light reflecting off the swells. He watched it through his tears.