Operator B by Edward Lee Read Free Book Online Page A

General,” Smith informed. “He’s been working for us since then, on a very classified project.”
    Wentz peered at Smith, then at Rainier. “You want me to work with Will Farrington?”
    “Would that change your mind about retiring?” Rainier asked.
    These goddamn people kill me,  Wentz thought.
    “No.”
    General Rainier and Smith traded narrow glances.
    “That’s not quite it,” Rainier continued. “What we want, Wentz, is for you to pick up where Farrington left off.”
    Wentz didn’t know if he felt more puzzled than pissed off. “I don’t get it, sir.”
    General Rainier leaned back in his chair with a sigh. “Farrington committed suicide several nights ago. We was clinically depressed because—well, we think he lacked the confidence to undertake his current mission. We want you  to consider that mission.”
    Wentz felt floored. Suddenly a whirlwind of questions rose, all bidden by his pilot’s propensities and the instincts formed over the last twenty-five years of sitting in classified cockpits. What “mission” could possibly daunt a flyer the likes of Will Farrington? What mission would cause the best pilot in the world—and in aviation history—to kill  himself?
    Part of Wentz found the notion unfathomable…but it also hooked him.
    If Farrington couldn’t hack the mission…maybe I can,  he tempted himself
    But then the reality swept back down, the promises he’d made, and not just those to Joyce and Pete but those to himself.
    “I can’t, sir,” he said. “I can’t do it.”
    “Scared? Ain’t got the nuts?”
    Wentz uttered the most irreducible chuckle. He knew what he wanted to say in response, thought about all the reasons why he shouldn’t,  but then said it anyway.
    “Fuck yourself, sir.”
    Ashton and Smith went rigid.
    Wentz tossed a shoulder. “That’s right, I just told a four-star general to fuck himself. ” He shot his gaze across the room. “You haul me away from my family with all this crypto spookshow bullshit and have the audacity to insult me with mind-game challenges that wouldn’t work on a high school kid?” Wentz pointed at General Rainier. “If you think I’m scared, if you think I ain’t got the nuts—try sitting in one of my  chairs one motherfucking day, General. Try test-flying a plane with reverse-angle wings where even the goddamn designers don’t know if it’ll fly for more than fifteen seconds before falling apart. Try flying six hundred and fifty knots at an altitude of twenty feet in the dark, just to drop a single laze marker and knowing if you hit a tree or a powerline, a couple of hundred grunts are gonna die along with yourself. Try that, sir. You and your kind get carted around in an Air Force limo; you’ve probably got a master sergeant to hold your dick for you when you piss. Try pissing your pants in a ramjet when the systems light goes off, when you’ve got two choices, you can eject and drop your plane in a residential neighborhood and wipe out a block, or you can try to glide fifty miles to the water and flop a hundred million bucks in the drink when you know you’ve only got one chance in ten of surviving the impact. I did that once. So, I repeat, sir. Fuck yourself.”
    Wentz had expended his rant, and probably his honorable discharge. Fuck it,  he thought.
    Ashton and Smith stood wide-eyed in shock. Rainier strummed his fingers on the desk.
    “I don’t like to be played with,” Wentz said to the silent room. Then, to Rainier, “Go ahead and demote me to basic airman. See if I give a shit.”
    “This isn’t about that,” Rainier said, unperturbed. “This isn’t about protocol or UCMJ or rank or who’s the top cat. Christ, I wish more men had the balls to talk to me like you just did. The reason you’re here isn’t about any of that Air Force bullshit.”
    “What is  it about then?”
    “Total duty, total service to one’s country.”
    Wentz ground his teeth until he could taste the metal in his