Skyfire by Mack Maloney Read Free Book Online Page A

months before, from a barely honest marketeer in Boston, a man recommended to him by the agent who had sold him the farm. Surprisingly, other than the to-be-expected clutch problems, the car had run very well.
    The second smaller barn was about a hundred feet from the first, it being the most isolated structure on the farm. Unlike the breezy farmhouse and the larger barn, this building was locked up tight-sealed against water and the salt air-and was ringed with a half dozen nearly invisible security systems.
    Hunter rarely visited this barn-his psyche had tabbed it the black sheep in the otherwise happy conglomoration of buildings that made up his place. It contained no farm tools or hay or bats or cats. Rather, its walls held in memories-they being in the form of one, extremely souped-up 50
    but now never-used AV-8BE Harrier jumpjet.
    Hunter hadn't flown in nearly six months, and to his surprise, he didn't miss it. Life on the farm had provided him with a myriad of pleasant distractions: Would the hay get too much rain or not enough? Should he cut one cord or two of wood to fuel the wood stoves that kept the farmhouse warm during the winter? How many cans of home-grown tomatoes were enough for a year? What would the price of kerosene be in the fall?
    His days were now filled with the calculations of the earth-good and bad acres, the number of earthworms per square foot, the acidity of his soil-so many, in fact, that he had been able to sweep aside the numerics of flying a fighter jet. Weapons load, fuel available, and time-to-target were numbers now buried as deeply in him as the turnip roots in the farmhouse's cellar. And the way things were going, those numbers and the memories they ultimately represented-war, misery, death-would stay buried, possibly never to see the light of day again.
    Two hours passed.
    Hunter was in the barn, shooing away a squad of kittens from his disassembled motorbike when he heard the back door of the farmhouse squeak and open.
    He turned and saw her and immediately felt a pleasant chill run through him.
    She was carrying two cups of tea on a tray and a small jar that he knew contained cognac-their ritual drink for watching the sun dip down over the bay. She was barefoot. A long white, almost see-through linen dress clung to her slim yet well-curved figure. Her shoulder-length blond hair was gathered into two hastily arranged pony-tails.
    Good God she's beautiful, he thought.
    Even now, after all this time, the sight of Dominique could take his breath away.
    "You're a little early, aren't you?" he kidded her as thej 51
    met just outside the barn door. "The sun doesn't begin to go down for at least another hour."
    "Now you are complaining?" she asked in her slyly pouting French-dipped English.
    He didn't answer-instead, he kissed her, causing a minor spill of hot water from the teacups onto her delicate fingers.
    "Too-il-a-belle?"he asked, casually wiping the tepid tea from her hands.
    She shook her head. "You have burned me with the tea," she said. "You have insulted me, and now you are trying to compliment me-with bad franfais?"
    "OK, you win," he said, taking her arm and gently leading her to their west field, a place where she grew strawberries. "In fact, you always win . . ."
    Once they reached the small unplowed field, they sat on the splintered wooden bench and she poured a splash of cognac into their half-full teacups. Time passed and the day cooled off. They held hands and drank the slightly spiked tea, and Hunter tried to get Dominique to laugh at just one of his jokes with no success.
    Eventually the orange ball on the sun passed over them and sank down into the now-greenish waters of Cape Cod Bay.
    "It's beautiful," she whispered, the glow making her features even more radiant. "Beautiful as always . . ."
    "Sure is," he agreed softly, taking a deep breath and then asking her: "How do you say 'This is the life' in French?"
    52

Chapter Nine
Nova Scotia
    Lieutenant Commander Stan