Operator B

by Edward Lee

  Operator B

  Edward Lee

  Bedlam Press

  2010

  Operator B

  © 1999 by Edward Lee

  cover art © 2006 Travis Anthony Soumis

  this digital edition February 2010 © Bedlam Press

  assistant editors

  Amanda Baird

  John Everson

  Jeff Funk

  C. Dennis Moore

  a Bedlam Press book

  5139 Maxon Ter.

  Sanford, FL 32771

  Bedlam Press is an imprint of Necro Publications

  www.necropublications.com

  also available as a trade paperback

  ISBN: 1-889186-49-X

  For Doug Clegg

  PROLOGUE

  “Dad? Mom?”

  Stu and Sarah Billings simultaneously leaned up in bed; Sarah dragged the sheets up over her bosom, flicked on the lamp. How’s that for timing? Stu thought, flushed in embarrassment. He’d been out of town on business for two weeks, and this was the first time since then that he and Sarah had a chance to…

  In the bedroom doorway stood their thirteen-year-old daughter, Melissa, tall and slim in her flannel nightgown. She was rubbing sleep from her eyes but also… quivering.

  “Honey, what’s wrong?” her mother asked.

  “You have a bad dream?” Stu guessed.

  Their daughter just stood there for a few more seconds. When she lowered her fists from her eyes, it was obvious she’d been crying.

  “I-I woke up,” she peeped, “and…”

  “What, honey?” Sarah asked.

  “There was a man looking in my window.”

  Stu got up, hauled on his robe, then guided Melissa to the bed. “You stay here with your mother, honey. I’ll go check it out.”

  “But, Stu,” Sarah fretted, “shouldn’t we call the police?”

  Stu considered this, then tossed a shoulder. “Naw, it’s probably just one of those kids from down the road. They’re always cutting through our yard at night to drink beer behind the fence.”

  Melissa sat next to her mother on the bed. “But, Dad, this wasn’t a kid. It was a man. He was bald.”

  “A lot of those punks shave their heads, honey. It’s this Goth thing. Just stay here with Mom, and I’ll be right back,” Stu assured. “I promise.”

  Sarah hugged Melissa. “Your father’s right, sweetheart. Everything will be all right…”

  Yeah, Stu thought. When neither Sarah nor Melissa were looking, he quickly slipped the Smith & Wesson revolver out of the dresser and stuck it under his robe.

  ««—»»

  First, to Melissa’s room. He peered out the window, saw nothing outside but the night. Yeah, it’s probably those pinhead punks. They drop out of school, shave their heads and put all these metal studs and rivets in their faces…and throw their empty beer cans in my yard.

  Of course, Melissa had probably just had a dream; she’d dreamed of the face in the window. The counselor at school had told Sarah and him it was typical.

  Melissa had been only three years old when her father had been killed in a plane crash; her mother killed herself a year later. That’s when Stu and Sarah had adopted her—immotile sperm had prevented them from having a child themselves. It didn’t matter to Stu, nor to Sarah. They wanted a child and they got one.

  And after ten years, neither of them even gave it thought that Melissa was adopted.

  She was a model child. Intelligent, courteous, perseverant. A straight-A student at Sligo Junior High.

  But she was shy, too. Pensive. Too often, she seemed bottled up, uncomfortable about revealing her feelings. The counselor had told them that even though she didn’t consciously remember her early childhood and biological parents, there would indeed be some subconscious shadows. Ghosts of things that weren’t right, that weren’t the way they were supposed to be. Melissa felt haunted but by what she didn’t know.

  Father dead, mother dead. Her whole world turned inside-out, Stu considered.

  Didn’t matter that she’d only been three. Of course that’s gonna have an impact on a kid, whatever the age.

  Stu walked down the long hall to the living room, then turned toward the kitchen and laundry room. This was the first time he regretted buying a one-level rancher. That’s just great, I’ve got these bald-headed Goth kids looking into my daughter’s window. Christ…

  No one could be in the house; the ABC alarm would’ve gone off. In the laundry room, he stepped into his floppy yard boots, which he donned every Saturday to mow the grass. He turned off the alarm on the console by the door.

  Then he went outside.

  It was warm. Crickets trilled, making the air thrum. The darkness looked infinite. Goth kids, huh? he thought. They think it’s funny to scare my kid?

  He pulled out the Smith revolver, a .44.

  We’ll see who scares who.

  He backtracked the opposite direction. If there really was a peeping tom, this would be his probable direction of escape. Stu’s unlaced, booted feet took him around the back yard, across the patio, and then along the west side of the house.

  He honestly expected to find nothing. What he found instead—

  “Oh, shit!”

  —was a tall, bald-headed man standing beside the azalea bushes.

  “Calm down,” the man said in the softest tone.

  “The fuck!” Stu yelled, and all at once the sensation shocked him: snakes churning in his stomach. He jammed the gun forward. “You were staring into my daughter’s window!”

  “Yes, I was,” the man said.

  “You’re a goddamn pervert! You get off looking at kids!”

  “It’s not that at all, nothing like that at all,” the bald man said.

  “Oh, it isn’t?”

  A stare-down in the warm noisy night. Mosquitoes buzzed about Stu’s head. He pointed the revolver out straight, its sights lined directly onto the bald man’s night-shadowed face.

  “Let me give you some sound advise,” the man offered. His voice flowed like some smooth liquid. “Never point a deadly weapon at someone you aren’t fully prepared to kill.”

  The man held his hands half-up. Stu was sweating but maintaining his bead.

  Then—

  swish

  The man’s hands moved in a blur, snapped the revolver out of Stu’s grasp.

  Fuck, Stu thought.

  “It’s nothing like you think,” the man said.

  “I’ve got money, I’ve got two cars, credit cards, some jewelry,” Stu said. “I’ll give you whatever you want.”

  “To spare your life?”

  “No, to spare my daughter and my wife.”

  The man wasn’t pointing the gun back at Stu, he was just holding it. “And if I say that’s not good enough?”

  Fuck, Stu thought again. “Then I’ll…fight you.”

  “Oh, a tough guy, huh?”

  “I’m no tough guy,” Stu said. “Christ, you just took a gun out of my hands in less time than it takes me to blink. But let’s be real. I’ll give you everything I have to leave my family alone. But the only way you’re walking into my house is over my dead body.” He didn’t know where these words were coming from. In his terror he could barely think, and he was so scared he’d already pissed himself. “You got the gun. But if you miss, I’ll gouge your eyes out, I’ll bite your face off. I’ll do anything to defend my family.”

  “Right answer,” the man said. “Relax. Civilians don’t handle stress very well.” He handed the big pistol back to Stu.

  What the—

  “My name is Willard Farrington,” the man said.

  Wait a minute, Stu thought. Farringt—

  “That’s right,” the man added. “I’m Melissa’s real father. That’s the
reason I was looking in her window. I just wanted to see her.”

  “But—”

  “There’s no time for that,” the man said. “No time for explanations.” He passed Stu a pale-blue piece of paper. “That’s a routing number and an account index. I’ve deposited $500,000 in a trust for Melissa. You can’t ever touch it. She can’t touch it until she’s eighteen. I can only hope that, as her father, you’ll guide her to do the right thing with it. It’s for her future, college, things like that.”

  Stu stared at the sheet. Her father, he thought. “They said you were killed in a—”

  “There’s no time for that,” the man repeated. Then he looked at his watch. “They’re on their way. I can’t be here when they arrive.” Then the man tossed Stu what looked to be a shoebox. “This is for you and your wife, to help out. Don’t be assholes with it. Take care of Melissa.”

  Stu, now in total disbelief, opened the top of the box. It was stuffed with bands of $100 bills. This must be a couple hundred grand, Stu realized.

  “I—wait,” Stu said.

  “No time,” the man said again. He lifted up the cuff of his left pant leg. A metal band lay atop his ankle. “It’s a direction-finder. I’ve got to get out of here.” The bald man stared at him amid the cricket cheeps. “You’re a good man, I can tell.”

  Stu stared back.

  “Take care of my daughter,” the man said. “And don’t ever tell her about this.”

  The pistol felt like dead weight in Stu’s hand. Crooked under his elbow was the box of money.

  A reef of clouds drifted away from the moon. Suddenly white light filled the yard, spilling onto the intruder’s form. Stu noted the tears streaming down the strange man’s face. He also noticed—

  Mittens? Stu thought.

  The man seemed to be wearing mittens. Mittens, in summer?

  But that was it.

  Stu couldn’t think of anything to say as the bald man disappeared across the yard into the darkness.

  CHAPTER 1

  From above the headboard, as if accusingly, the stiff faces stared down at him. Johann Steinhoff, Manfred Freiherr Von Richthofen, E.V.Rickenbacker, Adolf Galland.

  The best pilots in history… And I’m probably better than any of them ever were.

  General Willard Farrington lay back in the large, silk-draped bed. He hated the bed, by the way. He preferred a barracks rack any day of the week. Farrington was fifty-one years old now—when you got older, you were supposed to want nice things. But this place?

  It was a palace. It could be likened to the Presidential Suite at the Mayflower Hotel. Genuine oil paintings hung on gilt-and-columbine-papered walls. Plush burnt-ocher carpets padded every footfall. Fine furniture, a twenty-four-hour attendant, even a hot tub, which he never used.

  Recompense for his duty, his sacrifice.

  But in all, the luxuriant suite proved little more than a well-appointed prison. His brief “escape” a week ago was something the mission staff should’ve anticipated…but what were they going to do? Fire him?

  Farrington chuckled under his breath.

  Oh, he understood the necessity of the quartering rules. I’m special, he thought. I’m a living secret. I can never be seen.

  And he still, essentially, believed that.

  He’d merely taken his unauthorized stroll because he needed to know that his daughter would be well-cared for. He needed to see her, this gift of his own creation that he’d willingly abandoned a decade ago for his duty.

  Farrington still understood the duty. He just wasn’t quite sure if he measured up any more.

  I don’t know if I can do it, he thought. Not this time.

  Maybe he was burned out…

  Duty, it was all about duty, wasn’t it? The sacrifices of the few for the many. That’s why he kept those sterile portraits hanging above his four-poster bed. In the many moments of doubt, all he need do was look up into these faces of greatness and see himself. But the reassurance was dwindling of late. I’ve done my duty, haven’t I? he thought. Why can’t I just have a life?

  There’s no going back, the portraits seemed to say. Don’t forsake your honor. Steinhoff sneered at him, Rickenbacker bristled. I’ve got more aerial combat kills than any of you fuckers, Farrington thought, but since most of mine are classified, I’ll never be in the history books. It wasn’t fair. But Farrington, even in this rare moment of pouting pride, realized how wrong he was.

  Certainly, the men above his headboard would all have sold their souls to have Farrington’s privilege.

  Stop being such a baby. Do your goddamn duty…

  He lay back, his hands propped behind his head in the soft, goose-down pillow. He wondered what the woman thought when she first saw him. A hardcore military type? A busted old man? At least he kept in shape. The women were all wonderful actors. They acted like nothing was wrong when they saw his…

  From the marbled bathroom, he heard the hiss of the shower creak off. At the same time, though, the intercom on the nightstand beeped.

  “Sir, this is the CQ. Is everything all right?”

  “Yes, Sergeant,” Farrington answered. “Everything’s terrific.”

  “Your dinner will be ready in—”

  “Cancel it. I’m not hungry.”

  “Sir, you haven’t eaten all day. I really think—”

  “Cancel it,” Farrington repeated with more edge in his voice. “And I don’t want to be bothered for the rest of the night. That’s an order.”

  A long hesitation. “Yes, sir.”

  The intercom clicked off.

  Steam gusted like smoke when the bathroom door opened. The young woman sauntered out on beautiful long legs, all curves, flawless white skin, and green eyes like emerald fire. She was still trying, he had to give her that. But sometimes even men had “headaches.”

  She stood fully naked, unabashed, drying herself with the terry towel. “Some men like to watch, they like to look,” she said.

  Ain’t working tonight, baby. “You’re very beautiful,” he admitted. But then so was his wife, who’d swallowed a bottle of insecticide a year after his “death” had been relayed to her. If that wasn’t love, what was?

  The woman propped one foot up on the bed, slowly drew the towel down her thigh and calf. “Hmm?”

  Farrington knew the score. The Air Force contracted these girls all the time—the ones who weren’t drug addicts or street scum—and paid them to “surrogate” special personnel. Sex ops, they were called; this whore probably had a Secret clearance. They mainly catered to the sexual whims of double agents in hiding, or demanding defectors.

  And then there’s me, he thought. The one man the Air Force wants to keep happier than anyone else.

  He watched the sway of her perfect breasts as she continued with the towel. A quick glimpse at the soft thatch of her pubis nearly had him going. But he was tired of using people, just as he was often so tired of being used. That, or: Maybe I’m just getting old.

  “Take your pants off,” she whispered through the most sultry of grins. “I’ll get you in the mood.”

  “No, really. Too much on my mind, you know?”

  She stood straight, dumbfounded. “Well…this is the first time I’ve ever taken a shower in a client’s place before I got dirty.”

  “I thought you’d like the digs,” Farrington jested. “How many bathrooms you seen with genuine marble tile and gold fixtures?”

  “Not many,” she said. Clearly, though, she was insulted. She began to put her clothes back on right in front of him, her lips pursed.

  Why should he care? Nevertheless, Farrington got up, walked to the silver cart and poured her a glass of Epernon from the obsidian black bottle in ice. “They always bring me these fancy wines when I have, uh, guests,” he said and passed her the glass.

  She stared at his hands for a moment, then took it.

  “Aren’t you having any?”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t drink. I quit drinking in 1975 when Giap to
ok Saigon. By then, I’d drunk enough Ba M’Ba to fill a gas station.”

  “God, this is wonderful,” she commented, sipping. Then she picked up the bottle. “Jesus, this was bottled in 1914!”

  “You like it?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  Farrington stuffed the cork back in it, put it in a bag. “Take it. Show off to your friends.”

  “Well…thanks.” She was dumbfounded—by the entire night. Farrington guessed the barrack chiefs had already paid her a thousand dollars for this. It was only money.

  “But I’m sorry, you know,” he said, “about the rest. Thanks for stopping by.”

  The woman looked confused through tousles of wet chestnut hair. “They paid me to stay till morning.”

  “Well then tonight’s your lucky night. You’re off early.”

  She blinked, incomprehension in the slits of her eyes. “Is there something—”

  “Nothing wrong with you at all,” he said. “I guess I’m having my period tonight.”