Operator B Page 4

  He couldn’t help it now, he couldn’t reel it back in. “And you know, it really fucks me up when you trash me to him.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Wentz nodded cockily. “The other day when we went to the baseball game, he asked me if I was bluffing about my retirement. He says you told him that.”

  Joyce’s cold eyes didn’t blink. “Considering your track record? What else am I supposed to think? And yesterday someone named First Sergeant Something-or-other called and said you were promoted to brigadier general.”

  Wentz stalled. “Oh, yeah, Top. They gave it to me after I made my last flight. I forgot to tell you because it honestly slipped my mind.”

  “You get promoted to general and it slips your mind?”

  “It slipped my mind because it’s not important to me. It’s no big deal. It’s just typical Air Force ploy; they give you a big promo as bait to get you to sign up for one more hitch.”

  Joyce smirked. “But General Wentz isn’t taking the bait, huh?”

  “No, General Wentz is not. And at noon tomorrow, General Wentz will be retired.”

  Her rancor seemed to drift off. “I just wish I could believe that. I believed it in the past and look what happened. How many times?”

  Bottle it up! he commanded himself. Keep your mouth shut!

  But he couldn’t. The arrogant fighter-jock wouldn’t allow it.

  “Well, honey, I’m really sorry about that little thing we had called the Gulf War, and I’m really sorry about the classified orders I got reassigning me to Nellis and Tonopah, but there’s not much you can do about it when you’re on active duty.”

  “You could’ve gotten that waiver you were telling us about,” Joyce reminded him.

  “Certain kinds of classified orders prohibit early-out waivers—”

  “It broke Pete’s heart.”

  That’s all she needed to say. It was like a guillotine falling. It ended the argument before it ever really got started. Wentz wanted to kick the wall, knock things over, bellow out loud, but then he realized why. Because he couldn’t hack the truth; he was too selfish to admit it. Oh, yes, Joyce had every right to treat him like pondscum…because that’s what he was until he proved otherwise.

  And I will prove it, he swore to himself. Damn it, I WILL. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, pushed his selfish angst aside.

  He looked at Joyce.

  “I’ll make it up to you—” He raised a quick finger. “I know you’ve heard that one before, and I know I’ve let you and Pete down a bunch of times in the past. Just the fact that you’re giving me one more chance makes me the luckiest man in the world. I won’t screw it up this time—I swear to God. You gotta believe me.”

  “I know you mean it, Jack,” she said, “but I also know you’re a career pilot. You’re addicted to flying; you all are—”

  “No I’m not, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Jack, I know a dozen other women whose husbands are all pilots—and they’re all divorced, it’s all the same.”

  Wentz nodded after thinking about it. “All right, I guess it is something like that, the adrenalin and all, the rush. When you get to fly the most sophisticated aircraft in the world, it does something to your ego, and, yeah, I guess I was addicted to the thrill. But that’s behind me now.”

  “Is it really? You quit the Air Force tomorrow, and what happens next week? You start flying for the airlines. Right back in the saddle.”

  Was she right about this too? There was no time left to fool around. This truly was his last chance. “All right, you’re justified in saying that. I’m just going from one plane to another. So—” Wentz walked to the walnut highboy where he kept his papers. He pulled open the top drawer, withdrew his employment contract with United Airlines, and ripped it up.

  “I don’t give a shit about that job,” he asserted. “It’s just busy work, and now that you mention it, it’s gonna be pretty damn disappointing trading in a $50,000,000 mach-three-plus ATF for a jumbo jet that won’t get out of its own way.” Wentz balled up the shredded contract and tossed it in the trash.

  “Do you really mean that?” she asked. “That’s fine with me if you do. We don’t need this big house. We can move someplace smaller, tighten the budget, get cheaper cars—”

  “We don’t have to do any of that,” he told her. “I don’t even need a job. When they promo’d me to brig general, my retirement pay went up about twenty percent. Plus…when you’re a classified test pilot, you get this thing called SOM credit. It stands for special operating missions—it’s a hazard pay bonus you get when you retire. Mine’s been building up with interest for over twenty years.”

  Joyce peered at him.

  “It’s…a lot of money,” Wentz admitted.

  “So you’re telling me you’re never going to fly a plane again?”

  “I’m not telling you, I’m promising you.”

  Her eyes looked as big as cue balls. “So…what will you do?”

  “Give you a break, for one thing,” he answered at once. “Drive Pete to and from school every day like you’ve been doing since kindergarten. I’ll do stuff around the house, mow the lawn, weed the beds, shovel the driveway in the winter. I’ll be a house husband—you think I give a shit? I look good in an apron. You’ve busted your tail for the last ten years, now I’ll take up the slack. I’m not kidding about this, Joyce. You quit school to put me through college, now it’s my turn. You can go back and get your degree. I’ll wash the damn dishes. You can open a crafts store like you always wanted. It doesn’t matter. Whatever you want, I’ll do whatever it takes to see that you get it.”

  Joyce looked nearly shocked. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Damn fuckin’ straight.”

  “Don’t cuss. Pete might hear you.”

  “Hey, Dad!” Pete called out from the kitchen. “The water’s boiling!”

  “I’ll be right there,” Wentz said. He put his arm around his wife, pulled her close. “You’ll see,” he whispered. “No more broken promises. And by the way…you’re fuckin’ beautiful.”

  Joyce blushed. “Don’t cuss…”

  He kissed her and went back into the kitchen.

  “Yeah, that’s boiling,” Wentz observed of the pot. “Now I’ll show you another of your old man’s trick’s.” He opened the refrigerator, pulled out a large bottle of beer. “Once the water’s boiling, you pour in about eight ounces of a good German marzen, or something with a lot of malt. It makes the crabmeat come out of the shell easier.”

  Pete watched as his father poured in some of the beer.

  “What are you gonna do with the rest?” Joyce coyly asked.

  “Drink it. What else? When you’re in an SOM wing, you can’t drink. They even polygraph you to make sure you’re not lying. And since I’m not doing that stuff anymore…”

  Wentz took a hit off the bottle

  “Wow. That’s not bad,” he said. “First beer I’ve had since Reagan was in office. A little Johnny Black would do well now…but I’m not complaining.”

  “The water’s back to a boil,” Pete alerted him.

  “Better let me do that, Pete,” Wentz said. “You grab ’em from the back, otherwise they’ll tear your fingers up.” One by one, then, he transferred the crabs from the box to the steamer. “Nothing personal, fellas,” he said to the crabs. “But you’d do the same to me if you had the chance.” Then he dumped in heaps of spices.

  “How long does it take?” Pete asked.

  “About thirty minutes, or when the trap doors come loose. Crabs this big might take a little longer.”

  “I can’t wait!”

  For the first time since he could remember, Joyce actually looked happy. She believes me, Wentz thought. It was a gratifying relief. They were a family again, through thick and thin. That’s all Wentz wanted, more than anything.

  And now it was looking like he’d get it.

  “Get the mallets and placemats out, Pete,” Wentz
instructed. “And plenty of paper towels.”

  “Okay, Dad.”

  Wentz walked back over to Joyce, put his arm around her waist. I’m not bullshitting this time, he wanted to say, but what would be the point in that? He was determined to prove it.

  I’ll show her…

  Several soft thunks seemed to resound from outside. Wentz wasn’t even paying attention. But Pete heard it, and he looked out the kitchen window, pulling up the lace curtains.

  “Hey, Dad. There’s Air Force guys coming up the driveway.”

  The hell? Wentz went to the window, looked out. Sure enough, the first thing he noticed was the tell-tale powder-blue sedan parked at the curb. Two Air Force SP’s remained stationed at the car, while one more approached the house.

  “Who the hell are these fucking bohunkers?” Wentz said.

  “Jack, don’t cuss,” Joyce implored.

  Wentz loped to the foyer, then brusquely opened the front door after one knock. “What do you want?”

  A 1st lieutenant in summer dress stood curtly on the doorstep, built like a body builder. He wore a gunbelt and an armband which read AFSS - SP. “General Wentz?” he inquired.

  “What do you want?” Wentz repeated.

  “I’m Lieutenant Hamilton, Air Force Security Service Courier Detachment, and I have—”

  “What do you want?” Wentz said as rudely as possible for the third time.

  “I have an urgent hand-deliver-only TDY message, sir.”

  Wentz impatiently snatched the yellow piece of paper from Hamilton, then frowned when he read it.

  “Who the hell’s this?” he demanded. “What’s he want to see me for?”

  “It’s classified, sir,” Hamilton stated the obvious.

  “Tell him I’m sick.”

  Hamilton just stared back, wooden-faced.

  “Goddamn it! I’m cooking crabs with my kid!”

  “Sir, it’s an AFSS command order,” Hamilton informed.

  “I’m not coming, it’s out of the question—”

  Hamilton’s brow rose. “Sir, if you don’t come with us willingly…we have orders to—”

  “Damn it!”

  Wentz felt an inch tall when he turned around in the foyer. Joyce stood there looking back at him, glaring.

  “I’m sorry, honey, but I gotta go to the base,” Wentz said. “This muscle-rack and his goons will drag me there if I refuse.”

  She didn’t say anything, but Wentz could read her lips when she said to herself: Goddamn you…

  “I’m not bluffing about tomorrow, I swear. At one minute after noon, I’m a civilian. I give you my word.”

  “Just go,” she said and walked up the stairs.

  Pete looked in from the kitchen entrance, disappointment plain in his eyes.

  Wentz held up his hands. “Pete, I’m sorry, man.”

  “It’s all right, Dad. You gotta obey your orders.”

  “When the crabs are done, stick a few in the fridge for me.”

  “Okay, Dad.”

  Wentz seethed, humiliated. He glared at Hamilton, then looked up the stairwell.

  “Joyce?”

  No response.

  “Joyce! Don’t forget! Tomorrow, noon. Be there!”

  Wentz turned and left the house. “You sons of bitches,” he said right to Hamilton’s face. “I ought to bust you down to E-1. I could, you know that?”

  “I’m just doing my job, sir.”

  “Your job isn’t to fuck up my life. I ought to transfer the lot of you to our tracking site in Nord, Alaska. See how you big bad SP’s like some of that shit.”

  “We apologize for the inconvenience, sir.”

  My ass…

  Guilt loomed behind Wentz like some huge, subcarnate shape as he walked down the driveway and got into the government sedan.

  When the sedan drove away, Wentz had no idea in the world that he would never see his wife and son again.

  CHAPTER 5

  Officially, Andrew’s Air Force Base was not a test site. Officially, it functioned as the main transport hub for the Washington Military District and the President’s primary personal airport.

  Unofficially, however, its northernmost perimeter was known (to those with the proper clearance) as Section Tango-Delta, a modest restricted test site. This had been Wentz’s place of employment for the last month.

  He had no time to change into his Class-A’s, but that was fine with him and his current mood. He was about to meet the four-star general who’d destroyed his weekend less than twenty-four hours before his retirement.

  Hence, Wentz found it appropriate to report in jeans, sneakers, and a New York Yankees t-shirt, smelling like cat food and bay water.

  Hamilton and his AFSS apes escorted him to Section HQ, the CO’s office.

  Somehow Wentz wasn’t surprised to see that the CO was not there.

  Two Technical Services men were leaving just as Wentz was about to enter: Wentz was used to the sight. They’d swept the office for bugs and other potential live surveillance devices, magged the walls for passive mikes, and placed static grids over the windows to block a reflective-laser tap.

  Tech Services, in other words, meant serious business. This probably isn’t a tea party, Wentz reasoned.

  The first thing Wentz saw when he entered were two rows of four stars. What he saw next was the tight, sallow face of a man nearing sixty, Westmoreland-ish, sharp-eyed in spite of the price of his years.

  Wentz approached the desk, snapped to attention, and saluted. Less than enthusiastically, he said, “General Jack Wentz, B Squadron, 41st Test Wing, reporting as ordered, sir.”

  His host sloppily returned the salute. “Drop the protocol, Wentz. I’m as sick of it as you are. Have a seat.”

  Wentz sat down, then craned his neck around. A captain with no name tag sat against the wall in a block of shadow. He looked like bad news. Beside him sat a female full colonel, a brunette, who appeared shockingly young. They both looked at Wentz with focused expressions.

  “I’m General Rainier—” his host announced.

  “Never heard of you, sir,” Wentz said.

  “—of the United States Air Force Aerial Intelligence Command.”

  Wentz repeated, “Never heard of it, sir.”

  “No one has,” Rainier replied, “and we go to the utmost measures to keep it that way, Wentz. Now, I’ll make this short. The woman to your left is Colonel Ashton. She works for me. The captain next to her, whose uniform obviously lacks a name tag—well, you know the drill.”

  “Great, a Tekna-Byman Op,” Wentz recognized at once. The Air Force’s version of Army CIC—their names were national security secrets. “Captain Smith, I presume?” Wentz posed.

  “Captain Smith is fine, General,” the man said.

  “He has some questions for you,” Rainier informed him.

  “Smith” stood up, flipping through an aluminum-covered notebook like a traffic cop. Only this notebook had a lock on it.

  “General Wentz, is it true that you led the initial F117 anti-fire-control raids—code-named Operation Slipcover—on 15 January, 1991?”

  Wentz looked right back into Smith’s face. “No.”

  “From May to December, 1993, did you test fly an experimental reconnaissance aircraft codenamed Aurora at the Tonopah Test Reservation in Nevada?”

  “No,” Wentz said.

  “On 12 February, 1999, did you pilot a parachute mission which involved a low-altitude, low-opening air-drop of Army INSCOM field operatives over the province of Kosovo, twenty-four hours after which a brigade commander of Serbian security forces—a Colonel Zlav—was assassinated by long-range sniper fire?”

  “No,” Wentz said.

  The room stood momentarily silent.

  “All right, Wentz,” Rainier played along. “Here’s your passcard.”

  The General smiled sourly, then passed Wentz a 3x5 sealed plastic envelope that read:

  RESTRICTED, EYES ONLY, WENTZ, J.,

  USAF, 221-
55-4668

  Wentz broke off the perforated edge, then withdrew another plastic card that read:

  4B6: VERBAL CLEARANCE.

  Smith cleared his throat. “General? If you will?”

  Wentz sighed. “Yeah, I led the Black Bird raids on the Iraqi HF radar sites twelve hours before the war started, and I did the same thing in Panama, and, yes, I LALO’d the INSCOM grunts that scratched that asshole in Kosovo. I flew the Aurora at Tonopah and the X-23 at Palmdale and the SCRAM-jets and nuclear ramjets at Holloman and Goodfellow. I’ve flown the YF-24, the F-22, the JSF, and the YF-118. When Lockheed got the bid for the B-3, I was their flight-profile consultant. I’ve flown every classified aircraft we have, and I’ve participated in more classified aerial ops than I can remember, and with all due respect, sir—”

  Rainier nodded. “We know, Wentz, you’re retiring tomorrow. The thing is we have a problem, and you seem to be the only one qualified enough to resolve it.”

  Wentz scratched his chin. “Why me?”