This time, the giggles burst through, and Sean opened his eyes, smiled up at her. ‘Did I say something funny in my sleep?’
Carrie touched his forehead, smoothed aside some of his hair. ‘No, you didn’t.’
‘Didn’t burp or pass gas?’
‘Nope.’
The smile grew wider. ‘Then I must be as damn near perfect a man as you’ll ever see.’
That caused a laugh and he laughed with her and said, ‘Marry me, then.’
‘Oh, Sean.’
Carrie looked up and saw Susan now dancing with glee as the kite held steady in the breeze. Some great genes the kid had, for even at this young age she was getting the hang of aerodynamics and lift and wind pressures and—
‘I’m serious,’ Sean said.
She leaned down, kissed his nose. ‘I know you are. But you know the rules.’
‘Yes, I know, and I’ve been thinking about that.’
‘Oh? Care to share?’
‘That’s what I’m doing, love. Sharing. I know the rules. We get married, one of us has to leave. And you have seniority. Got that. But I’ve got a line on a good flying job, out west.’
‘How far west?’
‘Anchorage.’
‘Alaska!?’
The cocky grin that endeared him to her, looking up with confidence. ‘Sure as hell don’t mean Anchorage, Arizona.’
‘Uh-huh,’ she said. ‘Didn’t know Alaska Air is hiring.’
‘They’re not. It’s a corporate deal. Some CEO nut, moved his corporation headquarters up to Anchorage so he could be close to the best huntin’ and fishin’ in the world. Air Force Reserve buddy of mine, O’Toole, he’s decided to re-up and get activated, so the CEO’s pilot job is opening up. Great salary, good bennies, best thing is that you don’t do much flying at all. Just some bush stuff and occasional trips to Seattle or Portland. You’ve got to be on call 24/7, but O’Toole said you can go for weeks without getting paged, and still pull a salary.’
‘Sounds good. For you.’
Sean grabbed her hand. ‘No. For us. It’d be a stretch but we could do it, the three of us, without you having to hold down a full-time gig. And you could spend some quality time with Susan. Isn’t that all I’ve heard about, these past months: seeing your girl growing up without being there for her? Just seeing her on the occasional weekends, early mornings and late nights? You’d be off the cargo-air treadmill, Carrie. You’d get a life back. And we’d have a life together. All of us. Besides, who in hell knows if the General can keep AirBox afloat?’
Something started aching inside Carrie as she watched Susan running back and forth, knowing how she would cherish this sight. How damn attractive, she thought. Not to juggle schedules, doctor’s appointments, school appointments, school plays and presentations. Just retro out and be Donna Reed, staying at home, doing something else for a change, instead of the cargo treadmill. How attractive . . .
Yet... never to fly again? Never to be the boss of your air machine, ever? Be a hausffau in Anchorage and swap cookie recipes with the neighbors? And Alaska! Sure, a pretty state but she was used to the Memphis weather and—
‘You’re thinking too hard,’ Sean said.
‘No, I’m thinking quite straight,’ she said.
‘All right, then think about this,’ he said. ‘Alaska will be good not only for us, but for your daughter.’
‘Susan? Why’s that?’
Sean shifted his head in her lap, looked over at her daughter and her kite, and the tone of his voice changed, changed so much that it quickly terrified Carrie. ‘Last time I had reserve duty, I was ferrying an intelligence unit over to Hurlburt for a briefing. Stayed the weekend, went out drinking, met up with them. We had a nice chat. Nothing classified, you understand. Just general bullshit. Guy was telling me about our glorious war on terror. You want to know how long they estimate it’s gonna last? Do you?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Six, seven years, maybe.’
‘Uh-huh,’ he said. ‘Try sixty or seventy years. Or a hundred. Understand that? The past few years, we’ve been in the opening shots of the next Hundred Years’ War. That’s what we’re facing.’
Carrie felt chilled and said, ‘I’ve never heard of that. A hundred years...that’s crazy!’
‘Of course it is, and of course it’s been kept quiet. Do you think Joe American, do you think he and his family and friends, do you think they have the stones to put up with a fight that’s going to involve their children and grandchildren? Do you? No offense to Joe American, they pay the taxes that paid our salaries when we were on active duty, but he puts up with higher taxes, two-hour security lines at airports, and a lessening number of countries each year that welcome American tourists because he believes this war is worth winning, and that we’ll win it, one of these days.’
Sean moved his head again. ‘But how much stamina do you think he’ll have, knowing that this war is going to last another century? He’d say to hell with it, and the hell with the world, and he’ll listen to those politicians and pundits who think Fortress America can keep all the bad guys away.’
‘Maybe it can,’ Carrie said.
‘Hah,’ Sean said. ‘How secure are our borders, Carrie? Tell me that. All it takes is one guy slipping across, carrying a suit-case nuke designed for the KGB back in the 1970s and bought on the black market, and overnight we lose DC or a good chunk of Manhattan or LA. And that’s why the war is going to last for decades. Every other previous war, including the first Hundred Years’ War, was a war between states. You could conquer that state by killing its armed forces and holding the ground. But that’s not the war we’re fighting. We’re fighting an idea, a radical version of a religious belief, and the only way to win that war is to change societies, change people’s minds. And that’s going to take decades. We’ll fight them by killing terrorist cells and overthrowing nations that support them, but the only victory will be when young men growing up in Karachi or Riyadh or Jakarta or even in the slums of London and Marseilles, when those young men decide, they want to live and have families and have good jobs, when all of that is more attractive than strapping on suicide belts and going on jihad. It’s not going to happen in our lifetimes, Carrie. It might happen in Susan’s, if we’re very lucky.’
Carrie felt cold, though it was a beautiful day and a warm breeze was caressing her skin. ‘Why Alaska?’
Sean said, ‘Because except for the pipeline and a military base or two, it’s safe. There’re no real target areas up there. Terrorists like big targets, like big shopping malls, big office buildings, big cities. We could find a place up there and raise a family, and be much safer than living here, in the lower forty-eight.’
‘Sounds like running away.’
‘No, we’ve done our duty, you and me, in the Air Force and Navy. We’ve given our time and talents to the military, put our lives on the line, eaten bad food and slept in strange places, and now it’s time for us to look out for each other. You know I’m making sense, Carrie. You know I am. So marry me and let’s get our lives in order.’
‘North to Alaska?’ she asked, smiling.
‘More like northwest to Alaska,’ he said.
Carrie bent down, kissed Sean’s lips, kissed him again. ‘I’m not saying yes, but I’m not saying no, Sean. Give me some time to think. All right?’
Sean said, ‘Sure. But you know I’m right.’
‘No, I just know you have good taste,’ she said.
‘How’s that?’
Another kiss. ‘Because you spend time with me, that’s why.’
~ * ~
At the US Customs checkpoint at the Route 99 crossing in Washington State, Tanya Mead of the Customs Service walked up to the Freightliner that was hauling a bright yellow Seamarsk container. She carried a clipboard in her hand, and she eyed the truck as she approached it. The license plate was clean, not having been flagged on any of the search-&-seize lists, and the neutron-emission detectors buried along the decorative s
hrubbery flanking the off ramp to the commercial vehicle crossing area hadn’t flickered as the truck went by. There was a driver and a passenger, both looking down at her as she approached.
She went up to the driver’s side, looked up at the open window. Young guy, dark skin, Mediterranean type. Greek, maybe, or Turkish. Who knew?
‘Good morning,’ she called up to him. ‘What’s your destination?’
‘Julius Distribution, Port Bellingham,’ he said. His voice had a trace of an accent. Sounded Middle Eastern but please, let’s not get into racial profiling, all right?
‘Cargo?’
‘Toys. Bats, balls, dolls.’
‘Your paperwork, please.’
‘Sure,’ he said. He ducked in, leaned back out, handed the papers down to her, and then - son of a bitch - he let them go, obviously on purpose. The papers fell to the ground and as Tanya bent down to pick them up she was sure she heard the driver say two words, the first being ‘dumb’ and the second being the n-word, that nasty n-word that she wasn’t going to allow any male fucking driver to use in her presence, and she stood up, glaring at him. Tanya Mead had been with the US Customs service for three years and she loved her job and took it seriously, and the fuck she was going to let anybody push her around.
She smiled sweetly up at the driver. ‘All right, pal. You and your friend get out of the truck. Hope you don’t have dinner plans tonight, ‘cause for the next few hours your ass and his ass and this fucking truck and all its cargo belong to me.’
~ * ~
Also in Memphis, Randy Tuthill was in his small backyard, his head buzzing a bit from the beer and the strange and wonderful thing that had just occurred. A while ago he’d been at the union hall, going through the hundred thousand or so details that had to be taken care of just before a job action, when his wife had called. ‘You need to come home, right now,’ Sarah had said.
‘Why?’
‘Don’t ask why, just do it,’ she had said.
‘Are you okay? Is it about the boys?’ And his heart had almost seized at the thought of something happening to Tom and Eric, their young bodies burnt or shattered or blown up or—
‘The boys are fine. I’m fine. Come home now.’
‘Look, babe, I’ve got so many—’
‘Randy Buell Tuthill, you’ve known and trusted me for years, so trust me on this,’ she had said. ‘You need to get home. Now.’
Sarah had hung up the phone, Randy had sworn and hung up his own phone, and he had left, and less than a half-hour later he was home, smelling the barbecue out back, Sarah meeting him with a cold Coors, and then shoving him out the back door.
And there, standing in Randy’s backyard like nothing had happened, nothing had changed, was the General himself, with a barbecue apron wrapped around his torso and a set of tongs in his hand, and he had said, ‘Hungry?’
‘Damn straight.’
‘Feel like eating and straightening everything out?’
Oh my, a long pause there. Randy thought of the guys and girls back at the union hall, depending on him and the contract-negotiation committee and the strike committee and the relief committee, and Randy knew what was proper and what he should do, and what he should do was politely excuse himself and say, shit no, General, we’ve gone too far. We’ve got to do it by the book.
So he had looked at the General and had said, ‘Pass over those tongs, General, ‘fore you burn up my backyard. And then, yeah, we’ll eat and straighten everything out.’
Which is what they had done. It hadn’t taken that long and both he and the General had to make some phone calls to head off certain things, but it had taken place. There wasn’t going to be any strike.
Now, the barbecue eaten and the beers drunk, and Sarah having shuffled them off to the flagstone patio, Randy sat next to the General, cigars and cognacs in their hands - just like the old days! - and listened to the hum of the night insects out there in the brush.
Randy said, ‘Okay, I’m sure I can get this deal through. Question is, how about you?’
‘What do you mean?’
Randy laughed. ‘Word out on the hangar floors is that shiny new CFO of yours has your balls and checkbook in his back pocket. You think he’s gonna let this deal go through?’
‘It’s my company,’ Bocks said.
Randy sipped from the cognac, taken out only on very special occasions. He would have preferred another beer but cognac was what they had drunk during previous successful contract negotiations, and he wasn’t going to spook the tradition. ‘Beggin’ the General’s pardon, but it isn’t just your company. It belongs to stockholders and mutual funds and your board of directors, and I’m wondering what they’re going to say when they see what kind of deal we reached. They might even force you out in a month or two.’
‘A month or two?’
‘Shit, yes,’ Randy said. What the General said next chilled him right to the core.
‘A month or two ... that’s plenty of time. After a month or two, they can do what they fucking want.’
Randy whipped his head around to look at his boss. ‘You feeling okay, General?’
‘Feeling fine. Why you ask?’
‘Christ, what you said right there, makes it sound like you don’t expect to be around in a month or two. Like you got cancer or something. You sure you’re okay?’
‘Had a company physical last month. I’m all right, Randy. Just like you. And how’re those boys of yours?’
‘Both fine,’ Randy said. ‘Eric is assigned to a maintenance wing out at Lakenheath. Tom...well, he’s a disappointment. Not following in dad’s footsteps.’
The General chuckled. ‘Randy, you old fool, the boy’s flying a KC-135. He’s doing fine.’
‘Shit, yes, but a pilot? Only thing a pilot is good for is taking a perfectly maintained aircraft and screwing it up somehow.’
They both laughed at that. The cognac and beer and full barbecue were settling in, and Randy looked at the tiki torches flickering in the yard that Sarah loved, and thought about what had happened, how everything had just come together, right at the last minute, and Christ, it had looked like a strike was going on, something must have happened, something must have—
Oh.
Shit, yes.
That’s what.
Damn.
‘General?’
‘Yeah, Randy?’
Randy’s fingers were tingling some, holding the cigar and the cognac glass. ‘This settlement - what happened?’
‘Happened? Decided to settle it, that’s all.’
Randy let that comment sit in the air for a moment, and said, ‘Sir, no offense, but that’s a load of shit. You came here and we have a settlement and for that I’m damn proud for what I did for my union, but you got practically shit from this agreement.’
‘You complaining?’
‘I’m observing, sir. That’s what I’m doing. And what I’m observing is that we were about an hour away from a job action and something got under your ass to make you move. Something that made you come to my house and get some-thing settled out real quick.’
‘I just didn’t want a strike, Randy.’
‘Yeah, but that could have been settled last week or last month. General, seems to me that you got a hell of an incentive to keep AirBox flying. An incentive coming from DC or Langley.’
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Sure you do. Look, most of AirBox is ex-military. We know the score. We know how to do our jobs and keep our mouths shut, and we know that sometimes favors get done. Small favors, big favors. And the fact this strike’s not gonna happen - some big favor is coming due, right? A favor that needs AirBox up and running. Am I right?’
The General took a leisurely puff from his cigar, looked up at the darkening sky, and said, ‘Randy?’
‘Sir?’
‘Next couple of weeks...I’m going to need your crews working their best. Oh, I know they always work hard, but this is going to be an important ti
me. I’m going to need a hundred and ten percent effort. Our airfleet... there’s going to be some unanticipated but very important installation work that’s going to be scheduled over the next fourteen days. About thirty aircraft are going to be retrofitted, and don’t ask me why, or what for. I’m just going to need to have it done. No arguments, no discussions, minimal paperwork. It just has to be done, Randy. Got it? It just has to be done.’
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