In the wind. It was a foul wind. By hitching himself and Dreamland to the JSF, he was saddling the Air Force with a turkey.
Worse, he was going against his conscience and his duty.
Was he? Was telling other people what they wanted to hear such a sin?
The JSF wasn’t that bad a design. Hell, the people here knew how to fix it. they could too – though the necessary changes would turn it into two or three different planes, with less than forty percent interchangeable parts. Each plane would be excellent, well suited for its job. The only drawback would be the expense.
No, the only drawback would be the fact that DOD and the Joint Chiefs and Congress and the President wanted a Joint Services airplane, one size fits all.
How many men would die because of that?
None – there’d be excellent CAP and AWACS and the SAMs would be suppressed, and everything would snap together clean and to spec every day. What could go wrong?
“Hey, Colonel, why are you messing up my system?” asked Ax, standing in the doorway. “You’re making one pile out of two.”
“Jeez, Ax, did you knock?”
“Sir, yes, sir,” snapped the sergeant, momentarily coming to full drill-master attention.
“Come on in, Sergeant Ballbuster,” said Bastian. “What the hell are you up to?”
“Just looking after my papers, Colonel,” said Ax, fishing the signed documents from Bastian’s desk. “How was your flight?”
“Uneventful, thanks,” said Dog. “Who’s my next appointment?”
“Nothing on your agenda rest of the day.” Gibbs smiled. “I believed there was some sort of scheduling snafu that indicated your test flight was continuing until tomorrow and that you couldn’t be disturbed.”
“You’re a piece of work, Ax.”
“Thank you, sir.” The sergeant smiled again. “I do actually have a question for you.”
“Shoot.”
“Well, I’ve been thinking. I have this friend who has this problem. He’s an executor for a trust. All the people connected with the trust, they want him to buy some stock. He thinks the stock is lousy, but he knows that if he doesn’t buy it, they’ll can his sorry ass and hire someone who will. He kinda needs the job, and he figures if they fire him he’ll be bagging groceries. On the other hand, he likes to look himself in the mirror every morning when he’s shaving.”
Bastian shook his head. “Thanks, Ax.”
Gibbs’s face was the very model of innocence. “Sir?”
“Tell your friend to do what he thinks is right, and damn what everyone else wants,” said Bastian, getting up. “I’ll check in with you later.”
“Thank you, sir,” snapped the sergeant as Bastian snuck out the side door.
Breanna had timed it all out with the precision of a deep-strike mission against a well-fortified enemy city. The five-disc CD player had been armed with Earl Klugh and Keiko Matsui – jazz artists admittedly more to her taste than his, but definitely capable of establishing a preemptive romantic mood. two long tapers of pure bees-wax sat in candleholders in the middle of the freshly polished dinette table, ready to cast their flickering soft light over the borrowed china place settings with their elegant flower patterns. A bottle of Clos Du Bois merlot sat nearby, with a six-pack of Anchor Steam Beer on standby in the refrigerator. Two salad plates – with fancy baby lettuce and fresh tomatoes from a helpful neighbor’s garden – were lined up for the initial assault. A light carrot soup would follow, with waves of seafood crepes and lamb chops to administer the coup de grâce. The lamb was running a little behind, but otherwise everything was perfect, including the long, silky dress Breanna hadn’t worn in more than a year. She glanced at herself in the hall mirror, bending and twisting to make sure she’d gotten rid of the flour that had spilled on the side. The dress was very loose now on the top and in the back; she’d lost a bit of weight since Zen’s accident, but figured that was better than the opposite.
So where was he? He had boarded the Dolphin helicopter shuttle from Dreamland for Nellis precisely an hour and a half before; she had promised dibs on the leftovers to the pilot so he’d call with the heads-up. At Nellis, Jeff would have boarded the public bus – it was a ‘kneeler,’ dipping down to the ground level to allow wheelchairs to access an onboard elevator – and ought to have arrived at the end of their condo development’s cul-de-sac ten minutes ago.”
If he blows me off tonight, I’ll kill him, Breanna though to herself.
And just on cue, she heard his key in the door.
She jumped into action, lighting the candles with the small Bic lighter, hitting the stereo, killing the lights, relighting the burner under the asparagus. Rap made it out to the foyer just as Jeff closed the door behind him.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“I thought you’d like some dinner,” she said, reaching toward him. He held his briefcase out in front of him; she took it from him and then leaned forward and gave him a peck on the cheek.
“Hungry?” she asked.
“Well, kinda.”
“Come on,” Breanna said, backing away. “Dinner is served.”
“I guess I can’t suggest we send out for pizza,” said Jeff.
“Not if you want to live.”
He rolled forward to the table in the seating area between the kitchen and living room. Breanna rushed to unfurl his napkin, placing it gently on his lap. She let her cheek brush against his as she did.
In her fantasy about how this would go, Jeff turned his mouth toward hers and they began a long and passionate kiss, interrupted only by the buzzer announcing that dinner was ready.
In reality, the buzzer rang as soon as their cheeks met. She pecked his cheek, cursed herself, and went and got the soup.
“Wow,” said Jeff.
“We had this at the first restaurant you took me to. Remember?”
“The first restaurant I took you to was Cafeteria Four at Dreamland.”
“Restaurant,” she said, sitting down. “Café Auberge.”
“Oui, oui,” he said.
“Oh, God, wine. You want wine? I have merlot. Or beer – I found a six-back of Anchor Steam.”
“Either’s fine.”
“Why don’t we start with wine?” she suggested. “It will go with the main course.”
“There’s main course?”
“Dahling, I am the main course.” She fluttered her eyes, laughing as she retreated to the kitchen.
Dog wrote out the draft of his formal report on a lined yellow pad as he sat at a back table in Cafeteria Four. He made a few false starts, pausing to listen as a pair of engine technicians debated whether the meat loaf or open-faced turkey was better. He considered walking over to say hello, but their embarrassed waves somehow reminded him that he was just avoiding the work at hand. He nodded, then began writing in earnest, his Papermate disposable pencil squeaking over the paper.
“Despite the great weight of politics and certain outrage that I’m sure will meet this report, I cannot in good conscience recommend that the F-119 project as currently constituted proceed,” he wrote. “I have carefully reviewed the data on the project, and have personally flown the aircraft.”
He paused, wondering if that might sound a little conceited. Before he could decide, Danny Freah’s deep voice bellowed behind him.
“Letter home, sir?”
Bastian looked over his shoulder to find Freah grinning. “Not exactly,” he said.
“Probably not a classified document,” said the base’s security officer, pulling up a chair.
“Probably is,” said Bastian. “But I figure you’ll bounce anyone who gets close enough to steal it.”