corpsman flashed Toad a wicked grin as he headed for the door.
An hour later Tarkington had talked the doctor into loaning him one of the navy sedans belonging to the dispensary. He was on his way to the parking lot in his new duds when he met Jake Grafton coming in.
“You okay?” the captain said.
“Yessir. Just fine. Thought I’d grab a little liberty.” Toad gave Jake back the keys to the sedan he had used to get to the dispen- sary, and displayed the keys to his borrowed vehicle. “I think your car’s had it. Want to come with me?”
“Where you going?”
“Reno. That’s where they took Rita.” He told Jake what the doctor had said.
Jake begged off. He still had security arrangements and phone calls to make. “Call me from the hospital and tell me how she is. I’ll be at the BOQ- Leave a message at the desk if I’m not there.”
Jake watched Toad drive away toward the main gate, then went into the dispensary to see what the doctor really thought about Rita’s left eye. She needed two great eyes to fly. Better than the doctor or even Toad, Jake Grafton knew what flying meant to Lieutenant Rita Moravia, U.S. Naval Aviator.
They had her in a semi-private room with a beautiful white-haired lady who was fast asleep. Toad spent ten minutes talking to the floor nurse and the internist before be went in. ‘They say you’re gonna be okay,” he told Rita with a grin. She had a patch over her left eye. Scratches and small cuts were visible on her cheek.
She raised a finger to her lips. “Mrs. Douglas went to sleep a few minutes ago,” she whispered. Toad stood at the end of the bed glancing uneasily at the shiny, stark hospital equipment. Just being in a hospital made his leg ache.
“Here,” she said, still whispering, “pull this chair over and sit down. Have you had any dinner?” It was almost 10 P.M.
“Uh-uh. How you doin’?” He sat gingerly on the forward por- tion of the seat.
She shrugged. ‘Thanks for saving my bacon.”
He waved it away. “What’s wrong with her?” he asked, glancing at the sleeping Mrs. Douglas.
“Broken hip. She fell in her kitchen this morning. They’re going to pin it tomorrow evening. She’s been in a lot of pain today,”
Toad nodded vaguely and examined the sheets that covered Rita. Hospital sheets always looked so perfect, even with a body between them. Her hair was a mess. They had cleaned it and made no attempt to pretty it up. That’s what’s wrong with hospitals— your dignity is left at the front door on the way in.
“That shirt you’re wearing is the most horrid garment I have— What are those colors? Chartreuse and mauve?”
“Beats me,” Toad muttered, glancing at his torso with distaste. “One of the corpsmen picked it out at the exchange. He thought I would cut a dashing figure in it, I guess.”
“Dashing is not the word I would use.”
They sat for a while, each trying to think of something to say- “Guess your helmet visor saved your eyes,” he said at last “Cush- ioned the impact”
“It’s amazing, when you stop to think about it. I thought about it all the way over here in the ambulance. The ambulance only goes ten miles over the speed limit, so everything on the road passes it. Lights flashing, and everyone whizzing by. So I had plenty of time to think about the odds. It’s amazing.”
“What is?”
“How with the whole wide sky to fly in, all those thousands of cubic miles, that bird and I tried to fly in exactly the same little piece of it. A foot further left, that bird would have missed the cockpit, a foot to the right and it would have hit the nose, a foot higher—“
“Life’s like that. No guarantees. You never know.”
“Is that what combat is like?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Weren’t you and Captain Grafton — over the Med?”
Toad shrugged and slid further back into the chair. He crossed his leg with the pin in it over the good one and massaged it gently. “One flight. A couple minutes of being scared stiff and too busy to even sweat it That wasn’t combat. Combat is day in and day out knowing they’re going to be shooting and being scared before you go and going anyway. I’ve never done that. Hope I never have to.” He grinned wryly and cocked his head to better match the angle of hers against the pillow. “I’m a peacetime drugstore cowboy- Didn’t you know? Make love not war.”
“The Silver Star fooled me.”
“Medals don’t mean shit over the Med. CAG had the guts and determination, enough for him and me both with a lot left over. He’s a balls-out fighter. Those Arab fighter jocks were hopelessly outclassed — at least that’s what I kept telling myself then. Still tell myself that on nights when I wake up thinking about it I’m even beginning to believe it”
She smoothed the sheets with her right hand.
“How’s your left shoulder?”
“Just bruised. Hurts now- If this eye-clears up …”
“It will.”
“Got some cuts on the eyeball. Lots of bird flesh and even the stem of a little feather.”
“It’ll be okay.”
“I suppose.”
“You’ll fly again. Just wait and see- You’re too good to stay on the ground. A person with your talent belongs in a cockpit.”
“Ummm.”
He put his feet on the floor, leaned forward and captured a hand. “listen, Rita — Ginger — I know how you feel. The fickle finger of fate just reached out and zinged you a little one and reminded you that you’re mortal clay. We all are. But — you know all this— you’ve got to live every day the best you can, put the throttles against the stops and fly. Flying is what it’s all about. And when that final flight comes, that last day, as come it will, then look the Man straight in the eye and tell Him it’s been a hell of a great ride. And thank Him. That’s the way you have to live it. That’s the only way it can be done.”
She took her hand from his and touched his cheek.
“Get a good night’s sleep. Get well. You got a lot of flying left to do.” He stood. “I’ll look in on you tomorrow afternoon. Hang tough.”
“Thanks for coming by.”
He paused at the door and winked. “We fly together. Remem- ber?”
“Kiss me, lover.”
He glanced at Mrs. Douglas. Her eyes were closed and she seemed to be asleep. He bent over Rita and gave her his best effort.
It was 1 P.M. the next day when Luis Camacho pulled into his driveway in Silver Spring and let himself into his house. His wife was at work and his son was in school. The house felt strange on a weekday with both of them gone. He walked slowly through the downstairs, looking it over, listening to the refrigerator hum, look- ing out the windows.
He found his leather driving gloves in the hall closet, the pigskin ones his parents had given him two Christmases ago that he never wore because they were too nice. The batteries in the flashlight stowed in the catchall drawer in the kitchen still had some juice, amazingly enough. He tucked the light into his hip pocket and let himself out the kitchen door into the backyard. The wooden fence between his house and Albright’s had a gate with a rusty latch, no lock. The Labrador wanted to come with him, but he shooed it back and latched the gate behind him.
He opened his packet of lock picks on Harlan Albright’s picnic table. He stared at them a moment, trying to decide. It had been a while. Let’s see, the lock is a Yale.
Opening it took ten minutes. The Lab finally quit whining next door. Probably he went back to his favorite spot in the sun and lay down. Camacho was beginning to think he wasn’t going to get this lock when it clicked.
Albright had no fancy alarms, or none that Camacho had ever seen. Service manager at a local garage, he couldn’t afford the visibility that a Fort Knox security system would give him. But no doubt he had some little
