the chair and watched the remnant turn to ash, which he crushed with his shoe. Klein- berg rubbed his hands and smiled. “Now we begin.” He spent the next hour showing Jake how to create, edit and access documents on this list. When he had finished answering Jake’s questions, he flipped the machine off and gave Jake one of his cards. “Call’ me when you have questions, or ask one of the guys here who’s been around a while.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Welcome to Washington.” KIeinberg shook hands, hoisted his leather bag and left.
Jake began to lock away the papers on his desk. While he was here he might as well look again at that two- year-old book of Harold Strong’s.
He opened the upper left drawer. The matohbooks and rubber bands and other stuff were still there, but the book wasn’t. He looked in every drawer in the desk. Nope. It was gone.
Henry Jenks dropped Toad at the BOQ at 11 P.M. After he filled out the paperwork at the desk. Toad went up to his room and crashed.
The following day was a copy of the previous afternoon: an hour in the simulator, an hour at the blackboard, then back to the simu- lator. By noon he was navigating from one large radar-reflective target to another. In midaftenoon he ran his first attack.
During all his hours in the simulator the canopy remained open and Jenks stood there beside him talking continuously, prompting him, pointing out errors. Running the system in the simulator wasn’t too difficult with Jenks right there.
Toad wasn’t fooled.
At five hundred feet above hostile terrain on a stormy night with the tracers streaking over the canopy and the missile warning lights flashing, this bombardier-navigator business was going to be a whole different ball game. The pilot would be slamming the plane around, pulling on that stick like it was the lever to open heaven’s gate. And the BN had to sit here delicately tweaking the radar and infrared and nursing the computer and laser while trying not to vomit into his oxygen mask. Toad knew. He bad been there in the backseat of an F-14. The best way to learn this stuff was by repeti- tion. Every task, every adjustment, the correction for every failure
— it all had to be automatic. If you had to think about it you didn’t know it and you sure as hell wouldn’t remember it when you were riding this bucking pig up the devil’s asshole.
At five in the evening Jenks drove him back to the BOQ. ‘To- night you study the NATOPS.” NATOPS — Naval Air Training and Operating Procedures — was the Book on the airplane, the navy equivalent to the air force Dash One manual. “Learn the emergency procedures. Tomorrow you and Moravia will be in the simulator together. We’ll run some attacks and pop some emergen- cies and failures. The next day you fly the real airplane. Study hard.”
“Thanks, sadist”
“You’re all right, Tarkington, even if you are a fighter puke.”
Toad slammed the car door and stomped into the BOQ. He was whipped, drained. Maybe he ought to go jogging to clean the pipes.
In his room he changed into his sweat togs. The wind coming in off Puget Sound had a pronounced bite and the sun was already set- tling, so he added a second heavy sweatshirt.
He was leaning into a post supporting the roof over the walkway leading to the officers’ club when a gray navy pickup pulled up in front of the BOQ and dropped Rita Moravia. She was wearing an olive-drab flight suit and flight boots.
“If you’re going running,” she called, “will you wait for me?”
“Sure.” Toad continued to stretch his right leg, the one with the pins in it. He hopped around and trotted in place a few steps. The leg was ready. On the grass was a bronze bust: Lieutenant Mike McCormick, A-6 pilot killed over North Vietnam. The BOQ and officers’ club were named for him.
Toad was standing beside the bust watching the A-6s in the landing pattern overhead and listening to the throaty roar of their engines when Moravia came out. She had her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. “Which way do you want to run?” she asked. “I dunno. How about north along the beach?” They started off. ‘•Were you flying today?”
“Yes- Twice” She picked up the pace to a fast trot.
“How’d you like it?”
“Old airframe, not as fast and agile as the Hornet, of course, but with better range and more lifting capacity- More complex.” An A-6 went over and she waited for the roar to fade. “It’s a nice plane to fly.”
On the western side of the road was a beach littered with drift- wood and, beyond, the placid surface of the sound. Just visible in the fading glow of the sunset was an island five or six miles away— it was hard to tell. Silhouettes of mountains stood against the sky to the southwest. “It’s pretty here, isn’t it?”
“Oh yes. Wait till you see it from the air.”
“Why’d you get into flying anyway?”‘
She shot him a hard glance and picked up the pace. He stayed with her. She was going too fast for conversation. The paved road ended and they were on gravel when she said, “Four miles be enough?”
“Yep.” Well, he had stepped on it that time, got it out and dragged it in the din and tromped all over it. What’s a pretty girl like you doing in this dirty, sweaty business anyway, sweetie? Ye gods. Toad, next you’ll be asking about her sign.
On the inbound leg they stopped running several blocks short of the BOO and walked to cool down. “I got into flying because I thought it would be a challenge,” Rita said, watching him.
Toad just nodded. In the lobby she asked, “Want to change and get some dinner?”
“Thanks anyway. I gotta study.”
As he showered Toad realized that somewhere on the run he had jettisoned his nascent plan to bed Rita Moravia. The Good Lord just doesn’t have any mercy for you. Toad, my man. Not the tiniest pinch.
6
The admiral can see you in thirty minutes, sir.”
“Thanks.” Jake Grafton cradled the phone and doodled on his legal pad. It was almost 10:30 and Smoke Judy was at his desk. He had said good morning to Jake and spent an hour on the phone, and now seemed to be busy on the computer with a report, but he hadn’t mentioned his sojourns of yesterday. Jake had toyed with the idea of questioning Judy about where he was yesterday, then decided against it. Whatever answer Judy gave, truth or lie, what would that prove? Would a lie incriminate him? In what? A mur- der? Espionage? If Judy told the truth, what would the truth be? That he went to West Virginia yesterday — so what? And if he denied it — what then? No, Jake didn’t know enough to even ask an intelligent question.
Vice Admiral Henry, however, was in a more interesting posi- tion. His fairy tale about deflecting a murder investigation left him vulnerable. Vulnerable to what? To more questions. He would have to answer reasonable questions or…? Or?
I can’t recognize truth when I hear it, Jake mused. What the hell kind of job is this? Can I trust the admiral?
Do I have a choice? He tossed the pencil on the desk and rubbed his eyes. He knew the answer to that one. He had no choice at all. He stood and stretched. His doodles caught his eye. Airplanes. Gliders. Long wings.
In front of the breezeway between JP-1 and JP-2, he caught the shuttle bus and rode it over to the Pentagon. The chief offered him a cup of coffee, which he accepted. Then he waved him in to see Henry, who was busy locking his desk and office safe.
“Good morning, sir.”
“Morning. Don’t sit. We’re going to a meeting with SECNAV.”
“Okay.” Jake had never met F. George Ludlow, but he had heard a lot about him. Scion of an old New England family — was there any other kind? — Ludlow was in his early forties, a Vietnam vet with a B.S. from Yale and a business doctorate from Harvard. He had spent ten years knocking around the gray-suit defense think tanks before being tapped as Secretary of the Navy three years ago by his father-in-law, Royce Caplinger, the Secretary of Defense. Nepotism, fumed the Senate Democrats, but they con- firmed the nomination anyway: Ludlow’s
