"What are we doing?" Troy asked. "I mean besides the obvious. Why are we… I mean you and Hal…. Why are you here with me?"
"Because I've wanted this for a long time, and it feels like you're wantin' it too."
"What are we doin' to Hal?" Troy asked.
"He's not here, Loensch," Jenna said, leaning back and straightening her disrupted underwear. "I'm tryin' to do you."
"Man, I left him on a goddamn mountain. You reamed me from one end of the hangar to the other for being the self-centered asshole who left him to die. Now, here I am with the woman he thinks he has something with… I just can't… as much as I want to… just can't…"
"This is sure a surprise from an arrogant, self-centered bastard like you," she said, sighing and smoothing her dress. "You got me all on fire, and then you want to pull back without completin' the deal."
"You know what I mean," Troy said.
"Yeah, dammit, I know what you mean," Jenna said, staring into space. "Let me catch my breath. I shouldn't have… we shouldn't have. I'm gonna go back to my room… alone… gonna take a cold shower… alone… and be glad this never went any further."
She reached into her purse and took out her brush, then looked sadly into Troy's eyes.
"You're right," she said, looking seductively into his eyes. "Tomorrow I'll be so glad we didn't, but right now, I want you so bad."
Chapter 20
"Golden West eight-six-four, climb and maintain heading and flight level one-five-zee-ro," crackled the voice in Troy's headset as he climbed out over a California coastline tinted gold by the rays of the late-afternoon sun. Beneath him, the ocean was a deep cobalt blue.
"Roger, this is Golden West Eight-Six-Four, climbing and maintaining," he replied. "Good day."
One thing about his job was that it gave him plenty of time to be alone with his thoughts and with the voices in his head.
More and more, the voices themselves were becoming his circle of friends. Cassie had left him — an old wound, healed but with permanent scarring. He and Yolanda saw less and less of each other, getting together every few weeks — then every few months — only to be reminded that they had little in common.
The voice of the woman in his headset reminded him of the voice of the woman in his head. Since Las Vegas, Jenna's voice bounced frequently into Troy's mind. He heard the Ozark drawl telling him he was an asshole for leaving Hal Coughlin on a mountaintop to die, and he heard it tell him that she craved the warmth of his body.
It seemed that his relationship with Jenna over the past months and years had been a series of unfinished conversations, a relationship that had not yet really formed into a relationship. From the night at the well in Eritrea to the night at the bar in Las Vegas, it was a series of conversations that ended in midsentence without reaching a conclusion. Maybe that was why his mind played and replayed them over and over, each time continuing them to an alternate, imaginary finale.
With Cassie, it was an intended life together of many decades that ended unexpectedly and suddenly on the second lap, like a multicar pileup on a NASCAR track. With Yolanda, it was mutually satisfying, mutually understood shallowness. With Jenna, it was an ambiguous something that was never truly defined, but that might have been defined any number of ways.
After Las Vegas, they had exchanged e-mails. On the surface, they ignored both the fact that something had happened in Las Vegas, and that nothing had happened — although innuendos flowed freely between the lines.
What had happened — or not happened — in Vegas had not stayed in Vegas, but over time, the e-mail traffic grew less frequent. Troy hadn't heard from Jenna in weeks.
That night, when Troy opened his laptop and saw the @fhcoherndon.com suffix on an e-mail, he thought for a moment it was Jenna. As he took a second look, though, he noticed that the From line read rhh@fhcoherndon.com, not jmm@fhcoherndon.com.
Who? What?
Troy clicked on it.
Dear Captain Loensch, Your e-mail address was passed along to me by Captain Munrough. I understand that she and Captain Coughlin gave you a bit of background on what our company is doing. Getting straight to the point, I'm inviting you to consider employment opportunities here. Please advise if you would be interested in visiting us in Herndon. I would be pleased to give you a personal briefing. I look forward to hearing from you.
General Raymond Harris (USAF, Ret.) Director of Air Ops, Firehawk, LLC
As a word to describe Troy's reaction to an e-mail from Harris, two years after Dhuladhiya, surprise would have been a serious understatement. How should he respond to such an invitation from his old commander? He recalled Jenna suggesting such a thing, but he had given it no more than a passing thought since Vegas. Troy started several replies to Harris and deleted them all. He decided to sleep on it, and he woke up deciding, "Why not?"
Chapter 21
It hadn't taken Troy Loensch long to find the place. Herndon is practically in the shadow of Dulles Airport.
Firehawk's unmarked and nondescript headquarters building was a seven-story steel and glass structure, set amid a landscape of steel and glass structures that make up the office park sprawl along Highway 267 between Leesburg and the nation's capital. On the wall of the lobby was a stylized aluminum rendition of the company logo, a bird's head surrounded by flames.
"Troy Loensch to see—" he started to explain to the receptionist.
"He's expecting you, Captain Loensch," she interrupted in a crisp, efficient tone. "Fill out the sign-in sheet, don't forget your social, and show me some ID, if you please."
These formalities done, she handed the retired Air Force captain a badge, directed him to an elevator away from the other elevators, and told him to push seven.
The seventh-floor lobby was clean and corporate modern, trimmed in light wood with large photographs of soldiers in the field wearing very clean uniforms that carried the Firehawk logo as a shoulder patch.
Just as he started to look around for a seventh-floor receptionist, a door swung open.
"Well, hello, Falcon Three, it's good to see that y'all finally made it to Herndon."
It was Jenna Munrough. It was the same Jenna Munrough he had seen in Las Vegas: the one with lips the color of rose petals and with the long blond hair. It was the same Jenna Munrough who had made him almost defy his better judgment — and wish later that he had. She was wearing a straight, businesslike skirt with her photo ID clipped to the waistband.
"Good to see you too, Munrough." He smiled, extending his hand.
"Glad you could make it," she said, ignoring his hand to give him a polite hug and a quick I-haven't-forgottenour-last-meeting-even-if-you-pretend-you-have pinch.
She escorted Troy to Harris's office, and after an exchange of pleasantries, she smiled and left, closing the door behind her.
The room befitted the image of a military man gone corporate. There was a flagpole and the obligatory 1/32-scale mahogany models of aircraft that Harris had flown, as well as framed photos of him with various notable people.
"Please sit down, Captain," Harris said, using Troy's last military rank and gesturing toward a comfortable-looking chair. Harris seemed in good form. He was a big man, but Troy noticed that he seemed to have lost a little weight, as though he had been working out. "I appreciate you coming to see us."
"Let's say I was intrigued, General." Troy smiled, politely using his host's last military rank.