The Quintessence of Quick (The Jack Mason Saga)

by Stan Hayes

  “And how about you?” Jack asked. “The CIA recruiter told you Underhill’s name. What do you think the chances are that they’ll want to silence you- in a permanent way?”

  “Well, I can’t say for sure, but if I were at CIA and making the decision was my responsibility, I’d shy away from unnecessary killing, particularly when an Army officer’s involved. I’ve run it back and forth countless times in my mind, and the conclusion that I’ve come to is that Brannan’s probably keeping mum that he slipped up and gave me the name. He’s probably counting on my respecting the security classification of what he told me to keep my mouth shut. Besides, what are the chances of my seeing a tiny article in the back pages of an out-of-town newspaper?”

  “Pretty damn slim, seems to me,” Jack said. “How’d you happen to be reading the Post, anyway?”

  “Went to Saturday brunch the O Club. Stopped by the reading room and picked it up when I saw the ‘Vietnam Protest’ headline.”

  “That’s the coincidence of the fucking year! Did you mention any of this to anyone at Bragg?”

  “Not bloody likely,” Rick scoffed. “To tell you the truth, I won’t be surprised if my room’s bugged by the time I get back. And I don’t like the thought of that worth a shit, or any of the rest of the CIA’s messing around with the Special Forces’ mission. We’ve had ’em in Laos and Vietnam all along, and they’ve been close to worthless, but yet they’re still able to pull the string on us anytime it suits ’em, and that’s bullshit. So I’m going to get out of the Army before I have any more time invested. Then I’ll see what I can do about letting the public know how their taxes and their sons’ lives are being wasted by people who don’t know shit from Shinola. And now they’re ready to send Army officers out to assassinate American citizens. It’s got to stop, and it won’t unless people like me, who’ve been there, start shining the light on what’s going on.” Rick paused, his face flushed, and drained his glass. “That’s why I’m here, buddy; to ask you what you’d do in my shoes.”

  Jack got on his feet, talking over his shoulder as he set about making fresh drinks. “Well, from what I’ve seen of senior officers- let’s say Lieutenant Commander and above- they have their minds primarily on doing what it takes to move them up in the pecking order. Can’t be much different in the Army; if a Captain makes waves, he’s likely to be overtly run out, or be given shit duty stations ’til he gets the message and quits. Maybe that’s why they call it ‘the Army game.’ Anyway, if I were in your shoes, those shoes would be walking into civilian life ASAP.” Handing Rick a frigid new Martini, he said, “Particularly after you’ve heard my latest brainstorm.”

  Waiting until he’d followed a hefty sip of icy rum with an approving nod, Rick said, “Oh, hell, what’re you cooking up now?”

  “How’d you like to fly a jet for a living?”

  “How’d I like to fuck Ava Gardner for a living? Silly boy. How do you propose to make that happen?”

  Jack grinned, unreservedly, for the first time that morning. “Well, I talked to a guy in Wichita, Kansas this week. His company’s building an executive jet, they call it a Lear Jet, that’s small, fast and, he says, more fun to fly than a fighter jet on jungle juice. It’ll take five fat cats wherever they want to go at the better part of Mach 1.”

  “Holy shit! What do they want for one?”

  “560 big ones. With half-decent luck, we’ll pay it off in three years. I wired him a deposit for the second production aircraft; it’ll be ready in late November. If you were out by 1 July, you could head on down to Bisque and start your flight training with Gene Debs. If you work at it, you could have your Private ticket and be close to flying a check for your Commercial. We’ll start running a little ad schedule during the fourth quarter of this year in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine and- I don’t know, maybe National Geographic. Sy Szymanski, FlexAir’s Chief Pilot, and I’ll go to Wichita, check out in the aircraft for three weeks or so, then pick you up in Bisque. We’ll ease on down to Tamiami and, with any luck at all, start flying a schedule. And in the meantime, you’ll be checking out in the Lear Jet on revenue flights, and training flights when the schedule’s thin. You could be a fully checked-out Lear Jet pilot by this time next year. I’d say it beats working.”

  Rick smiled, moving his head gently from side to side. “I’d say it sounds damn good. Not that you haven’t come up with a few wild-ass ideas in the past, buddy, but this takes the cake. How’d you come up with this one?”

  “Saw an article on the Lear Jet in Aviation Week. They make it sound too good to be true, and it damn near is. They got hold of the design and tooling for an aborted Swiss jet fighter project, and really didn’t change it all that much.” Jack reached into the rum box, pulling out the Aviation Week issue in question. “Here, take a look for yourself.”

  “Damn! That sucker looks like it’s doing Mach 1 just standing still. Hey, listen; you’re talking about anteing up a pretty huge chunk of change to get rolling on this project. I wanta be sure that I pull my weight. To begin with, how do we know that I’ll be a decent pilot?”

  “Ah, hell- a natural athlete like you? I don’t think there’s much question of that.” Jack paused briefly, thinking. “Have you got enough leave on the books to take another week?”

  “I had 60 days backed up before taking this week; I’m pretty sure I can work that out.”

  “Well, let’s give Gene Debs a call and see what his calendar’s looking like; he could help you settle that question with a few flights, all of which would go against your Private Pilot training time. What else?”

  Rick leaned forward, fixing his eyes on Jack’s. “Let’s assume that I can do it; that I’m potentially a decent pilot. You’re still taking a risk with me that you wouldn’t be taking with someone that’s already qualified. If we do this, I don’t want to go on the FlxAir payroll until I’m checked out in the Lear Jet. Can you live with that?”

  Returning his gaze, Jack said, “You want to live off your hump for a year?”

  Rick chuckled. “If that’s what it takes. You aren’t the only one with a few bucks in the bank, buddy. Remember when the Bishop girls told us that they’d trade commodities for us if we just opened up an account and put 10 grand in it?”

  “Yeah, I do, sort of. That was during the first visit we paid them in New York, wasn’t it?”

  “Yep. Guess I was more of a believer than you were in that commodity trading mumbo-jumbo.”

  “Hell,” Jack said, “Sometimes being a cynic’s expensive. You made money, huh?”

  “More than I ever could’ve imagined. When either one of those girls’ psychic powers are at their peak, they can call commodity prices all day long. I don’t doubt that they could buy a couple of Lear Jets and never feel it. Anyway, I certainly won’t have a problem staying out of your pocket for a year. As a matter of fact, if you want a partner in this little venture, we could set the same terms; if I check out in the Lear Jet, I’ll ante up my piece of the capital, if there turns out to be a piece of FlxAir for sale.”

  “Done!” Jack barked, flashing the widest grin of the day and extending his right hand, “On one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That you take my check for 10 grand with you and open up an account for me with the girls. “I’ll just have to take way too much shit from ’em if I call ’em up to do it.”

  “Which means that you’ll only have to take way too much shit from me,” Rick chuckled. Hey.”

  “What?”

  “Why’d we think this was gonna take a week?”

  29 ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING

  “Hey! D’jou get her little ass off to work?” Jack’s voice was slightly strained as he lay on the bed nearest the balcony in room 512, easing out a fart as he spoke.

  “No problemo, buddy,” Rick said as he moved to mix a fresh drink. “And her ass wasn’t that little; you were just dealing with an Amazon.”

  “They’ll be back Wednesday, so we can always
swap if you want a shot at the big one. You know who she reminded me of?”

  “Who?”

  “Good ol’ Maybelle, with the Austin-Healey.”

  “Whoa! Why the hell didn’t I notice that? They could be sisters. This one would be the baby sister, of course. Wonder what’s become of her?”

  “Probably chasing 2-3 kids down there in- where was it, Montezuma?

  Sitting down on the side of the other bed, Rick said, “Hazlehurst, I think. God almighty; only girl I ever fucked in her sleep. Drinking that goddam peach brandy. And ol’ Mose, that classy bastard, bought two of my team member tickets to the Sugar Bowl and then didn’t use them. Gave me money and elbow room, too. That was some weekend in New Orleans! Jesus, I’m sorry he’s gone.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said as he swung his legs down to sit up on the side of the bed. “Me too.”

  “Buddy, you’ve had more than your share of bad luck with your flying pals. I was sick when you told me Linda was lost, and your other pilot- Pete?”

  “Yeah,” Jack said, “Pete Weller.”

  “And they never found out anything more about where they went down?”

  “Not a clue; no wreckage, life jackets, anything at all. I can tell you one thing, based on the many times that I’ve flown its perimeter; the Gulf’s big water when you’re looking for debris like that.”

  “I remember you saying that there were passengers, too.”

  “Yeah, there were, at least as far as we know. Two guys on a fishing trip to Bimini; pickup at Galveston. That’s the strange part; when our insurance company tried to get hold of next-of-kin of either of them, they hit a blank wall. No such people at the addresses or phone numbers that they gave Vickie, our secretary.”

  “Damn! They were really taking a chance that she didn’t need to call them back.”

  “They were,” Jack said, heading to the makeshift bar. “But they’d made the reservation just the day before, and reconfirmed it just before Pete and Linda were set to depart. The phone numbers in Galveston were nonexistent.”

  “Hm. Does anybody know whether or not they were actually picked up?”

  “Yeah; Pete called FlxAir base after they departed Galveston. Sy Szymanski, the Chief Pilot, talked to him.”

  “On VHF?”

  “No, single side band.”

  “Oh, you guys have a single side band setup. I’m impressed.”

  Jack smiled. “We had some clientele that insisted on it. Just as well; we’ll need it for Lear Jet operations.”

  “Guess we’d better be pretty careful on checking clients’ information, too. I’d hate to see us getting into a situation like this one. You never know when somebody’s gonna come in off the street with a lawyer in tow, claiming to be a long-lost relative. Hey; now that I think of it, there’s another angle to this.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Now, I don’t want to go bashing your worthy clientele, but if Pete and Linda knew things that were potentially embarrassing about any of them, they could have unknowingly taken aboard two assassins, one or both of whom were also checked out on Albatrosses.” Holding one hand up in a “stop” gesture, Rick said, “I know it’s a stretch, but it’s a logical possibility.”

  “Sure it is,” Jack scoffed. Another logical possibility would be that they were hijacked to Cuba, or just on the spur of the moment decided to whip a 180 for a wild weekend in Vegas. Bottom line, the plane hasn’t turned up in either place, or any one of the other couple of hundred likely spots that the FAA, police and our insurance company have checked. I grant you that there’s an element of mystery in this, and our insurance company may end up holding the bag, but first these shadowy fishermen’ve got to be identified. Or found, in the case of your ‘they knew too much’ scenario.”

  “So, ‘bottom line,’ as you say, what’s your best guess about what happened?”

  “Good thing you put it that way, because that’s all anybody can do at this point; guess. My guess is that a fuel tank ruptured, and that led to a midair explosion.”

  Rick looked at Jack with mild incredulity. “How does a fuel tank just ‘rupture’ all of a sudden? Is an Albatross really that fragile? They’re from the same outfit that Gene Debs used to call ‘The Grumman Iron Works,’ aren’t they?”

  “None other. And no, they’re not at all fragile, at least in terms of FAA records. But every landing, particularly on water, stresses the hell out of the entire wing structure, the whole airframe for that matter, and quite a few FlxAir operations have called for water landings. That’s the total basis for my guesswork, but I think it’s a bit more logical than the other things we’ve been talking about.”

  “And the Chief Pilot- Sy? Doesn’t have any information other than what we’ve been talking about?”

  Jack smiled. “No. Don’t let that title fool you; it’s not that accurate any more. He checked Pete and Linda out in the Albatross, and he has a hell of a history with that bird. But as soon as they’d logged enough hours to be really proficient, Pete asked Sy to play a different role in the company. FlxAir’s immediate business’s been mostly government work, and a lot of that at night, and none of us wanted to put him in a hazardous situation at his age. None of us wanted to take the title away from him, so FlxAir’s chief pilot flies relief and maintenance hops now, and oversees maintenance in general. He’s never had a role in scheduling or customer contact. Now that we’re changing over to the Lear Jet, and if he handles the transition OK, he may start logging more hours.”

  “You went past that ‘government’ part kind of quick, so I’m going to assume that the details of that work are none of my business.”

  “Yep. So classified that I don’t even know much about it.”

  “And you a company officer!”

  “Well, when your fellow company officers wave the old ‘need to know’ flag at you, there’s not much you can say about it.”

  Rick smashed his fist into his open hand. “Damn! It’s just so hard to believe that Linda’s gone, just like that. Pete, too, but I didn’t know him.”

  So that’s what this has all been about, thought Jack; all it took for Linda to add his scalp to her collection was a gangbang with my aunt. That girl is truly something else. Forcing a straight face, he said, “Believe me, you’dve liked him, too. But they’re gone, buddy, and that’s that.”

  “You’re that sure.”

  “Zero doubt in my mind, and more to the point, the insurance company’s. All we can do is to hold them in fond remembrance and keep putting one foot in front of the other.”

  Setting his drink on the night table between them, Rick leaned back on the bed, both hands thrust out behind him for support. “I feel fucking awful about the way things went that night in Bisque. Even before this happened, I felt like it changed things between you and me. Were you carrying much of a torch for her, as short a time as y’all knew each other?”

  Jack shifted to his left side in order to look Rick in the eye. “No, that turned out to be Pete’s department. Turns out he’d known her before she married, and I guess the feeling was mutual. She left her old man for him, anyway. And as I told you that night in Bisque after we saw Trisha in Paschal’s, the only thing between us was planes, cars, motorcycles and a little sly, sexy fun. Well. I think I could use a little nap before we scout poolside again. This’d probably be a good afternoon to scout elsewhere, as a matter of fact. I’ve yet to introduce you to the Cavalcade of Dunces at the Condado Beach Hotel.”

  On Wednesday of the following week, Rick stood in front of the Brownstone Holiday Inn in downtown Raleigh, looking up and down Hillsborough Street for what Hunt had described as a “piss-yellow Fairlane rent-a-heap.” Spinning around at the sound of a horn-tap across the street, he nodded at the driver’s balding, sun-glassed visage and trotted through traffic across the street, hopping in beside Hunt, who put the car in motion before the door was shut. “Hiya, kid,” he said as he eased the car up to the 25-mile-an-hour speed limit. “Productive trip?”
/>   “Only in the recreational sense,” Rick replied.

  “In other words, your bosom pal’s convinced that the plane went down with all hands.”

  “Absolutely. If he’d had any doubts, he’dve told me. We both knew the girl, and although he’d deny it, he’s still carrying a moderate-sized torch.”

  Turning left on Pullen Road, Hunt glanced at him with a slight smile. “Is she, ah, was she worth it?”

  “On short acquaintance, I’d say so, yeah.”

  Turning into the North Carolina State University campus, Hunt bridled a bit. “But he hasn’t gone celibate or anything like that, I presume?”

  “No,” Rick said, grinning. “Nothing like that.”

  Hunt was not to be further amused. “So in my report, I’m gonna say ‘Based on longtime personal friendship, CUTLASS-’ that’s you- ‘is of the absolutely firm opinion that RECON-’ that’s the fly-boy- ‘has no information or opinion concerning alternative fate of flight PINGPONG that would contradict final report of USCG SAR in any way.’ That about the size of it?”

  “That’s about it; except for one thing.”

  “What?”

  “If I have to be named after a General Motors car, can you change it to NOMAD? I actually have one of them, and I’m partial to it.”

  Maintaining an expression appropriate for Mount Rushmore, Hunt said, “Too late; besides, with a specialty like yours, CUTLASS would seem to be far more appropriate, unless we reach back to Genghis Khan. You may have another one coming up, by the way.”

  “WHAT? Before my class starts? You told me- “

  “Simmer down. You held MY feet to the fire to recommend you for officer training, instead of being happy as a contractor, which in your case would have been far more rewarding financially. The situation I’m talking about probably won’t come up until sometime next year. Your class’ll be well along its way by then. You’ll be ‘sick’ for couple of days, then back in class just as if nothing ever happened. So just relax, pal. You’re well thought of in high places. Graduate engineer, excellent Spanish, Special Forces and a Bronze Star, on top of the fact that reliable people who are practitioners of your ‘specialty’ are goddamn hard to find.”