“But my car, my apartment, my stuff.”
“Your apartment is a pit and I put your stuff worth keeping in a ministorage. I’ve got the pink slip for your Camaro. Sign it over to me. I’ll sell it and send you the money.”
“You were pretty fucking sure I’d want to do this.”
“What choice do you have?”
Jake parked the Land Rover in short-term parking, shouldered the pack, and led Tucker into the international terminal. They checked the pack and found a rest room near Tucker’s departure gate.
“I can do this myself,” Tucker said.
Jake Skye was peering over the door into the stall where Tucker was preparing to remove his bandages and, finally, the catheter. A line of businessmen washed their hands at a line of lavatories while trying not to notice what was going on behind them in the stall.
“Just yank it,” Jake Skye said.
“Give me a minute. I think they tied a knot inside it.”
“Don’t be a wuss, Tucker. Yank it.”
The businessmen at the sinks exchanged raised eyebrows and one by one broke for the rest room door.
Jake said, “I’m going to give you to five, then I’m coming over the stall and yanking it for you. One, two…”
A rodeo cowboy at the urinals hitched up his Wranglers, pulled his hat down, and made a bowlegged beeline for the door to get on a plane to someplace where this sort of thing didn’t happen.
“Five!”
Security guards rushed through the terminal toward the screaming. Someone was being murdered in the men’s room and they were responsible. They burst into the rest room with guns drawn. Jake Skye was coiling up some tubing by the sinks. There was whimpering coming from one of the stalls. “Everything’s fine, officers,” Jake said. “My friend’s a little upset. He just found out that his mother died.”
“My mother’s not dead!” Tucker said from the stall.
“He’s in denial,” Jake whispered to the guards. “Here, you better takes this.” He handed the tubing to one of the guards. “We don’t want him hanging himself in grief.”
Ten minutes later, after condolences from the security staff, they sat in the departure lounge drinking gin and tonics, waiting for Tuck’s boarding call. Around them, a score of men and women in suits fired out phone calls on cell phones while twenty more performed an impromptu dog pile at the bar, trying to occupy the minuscule smoking area. Jake Skye was cataloging the contents of the pack he’d given to Tuck. Tucker wasn’t listening. He was overwhelmed with the speed with which his life had gone to shit, and he was desperately trying to sort it out. Jake’s voice was lost like kazoo sounds in a wind tunnel.
Jake droned, “The stove will run on anything: diesel, jet fuel, gasoline, even vodka. There’s a mask, fins, and snorkel, and a couple of waterproof flashlights.”
The job with Mary Jean had been perfect. A different city every few days, nice hotels, an expense account, and literally thousands of earnest Mary Jean ladies to indulge him. And they did, one or two at each convention. Inspired by Mary Jean’s speeches on self-determination, motivation, and how they too could be a winner, they sought Tucker out to have their one adventurous affair with a jet pilot. And because no matter how many times it happened, he was always somewhat surprised by their advances, Tucker played a part.
He behaved like a man torn from the cover of some steamy romance noveclass="underline" the charming rogue, the passionate pirate who would, come morning, take his ship to sea for God, Queen, and Country. Of course, usually, sometime before morning, the women would realize that under the smooth, gin-painted exterior was a guy who sniffed his shorts to check their wearability. But for a moment, for them and for him, he had been cool. Sleazy, but cool.
When the sleaze got to him, he needed only to suck a few hits of oxygen from the cabin cylinder to chase the hangover, then pull the pink jet into the sky to convince himself he was a professional, competent and in control. At altitude he turned it all over to the autopilot.
But now he couldn’t seduce anyone or allow himself to be seduced, and he wasn’t sure he could fly. The crash had juiced him of his confidence. It wasn’t the impact or even the injuries. It was that last moment, when the guy, or the angel, or whatever it was appeared in the copilot’s seat.
“You ever think about God?” Tucker asked Jake.
Jake Skye’s face went dead with incomprehension. “You’re going to need to know about this stuff if you get into trouble. Kinda like checking the fuel gauges—if you know what I mean.”
Tucker winced. “Look, I heard every word you said. This seemed important all of a sudden, you know?”
“Well, in that case, Tuck, yes, I do think about God sometimes. When I’m with a really hot babe, and we’re going at it like sweaty monkeys, I think about it then. I think about a big old pissed-off Sistine Chapel finger-pointin’ motherfucker. And you know what? It works. You don’t come when you’re thinking about shit like that. You should try it sometime. Oh, sorry.”
“Never mind,” Tucker said.
“You can’t let that kid with the Bible get to you. He’s too young to have given up on religion…doesn’t have enough sin under his belt. Guys like us, best bet is that it’s all bullshit and we go directly to worm food. Try not to think about it.”
“Right,” Tucker said, totally unsatisfied. If you had a question about any piece of gadgetry on the planet, Jake Skye was your man. But spiritually, he was a hamster. Which, actually, was one of the things Tucker used to like about him. He tried not to think about it and changed the subject.
“So what do I need to know about flying a Lear 45?”
Jake seemed relieved to be back into the realm of technology. “I haven’t seen one yet, but they say it flies just like Mary Jean’s old Lear 25, only faster and a longer range. Better avionics. Read the manuals when you get there.”
“What about navigation equipment?” Tucker’s navigation was weak. Since he’d gotten his jet license, he’d depended completely on automatic systems.”
“You’ll be fine. You don’t buy a four-million-dollar plane and cheap out on the navigation and radios. This doctor’s got an e-mail address, which means he’s got a computer. You’ll be able to access charts and weather, and file flight plans with that. Check the facilities at your destinations, so you’ll know what to expect. Some of these Third World airstrips just have a native with a candle for night landings. And check your fuel availability. They’ll sell you sewer water instead of jet fuel if you don’t check. You ever deal with Third World airport cops?”
Tucker shrugged. Jake knew damn well he hadn’t. He’d gotten his hours flying copilot in the Mary Jean jet, and they’d never taken that outside of the continental United States except for one trip to Hawaii.
“Well,” Jake continued, “the catchword is ‘bribe, bribe, and bribe.’ Offer the highest amount you can at the lowest level of authority. Always have a thick roll of American dollars with you, and don’t bring it to the table if you’re not willing to lose it. Keep something stashed in your shoe if they tap you out.”
“You think this doctor is going to have me hauling drugs?”
“Good chance of it, don’t you think? Besides, it doesn’t matter. These people are brutal. Half the time the government guys have the same last name, so if you move up the ladder, you’re just talking to the uncle of the last one that hit you. He has to charge you more out of pride.”
Tucker cradled his head in his hands and stared into his gin and tonic. “I’m fucked.”
Jake patted him on the arm, then drew back at the intimacy of the act. “They’re calling your flight. You’ll be fine.”