Wingmen (9781310207280) by Ensan Case Read Free Book Online

guys,”
said Fred, “Frank over there has at least ten points and three or
four of your hearts. You sure you want to play this one out?”
    Hammerstein
looked up in surprise. “ How’d you know that?”
    “Well?” Fred
prodded.
    Levi rolled his
eyes and tossed his cards into the center of the table.
    “You watch the
way he sorts his cards,” said Bagley, gathering the cards into a
deck and starting to shuffle.
    “Hey, listen to
this,” said a pilot who had his feet propped up on the chair in
front of him. “Says here, ‘On board an escort carrier en route to
landings in North Africa, brave fighter pilots pass the time in
their ready room by engaging in a songfest.’” The man was reading
from a tattered copy of National Geographic , and he paused between some words and
mispronounced others. Bagley dealt the cards. “‘Later in the same
day, these men flew off in their fast and sturdy aircraft to engage
enemy forces around the port of Dakar, no doubt carrying in their
hearts the ambition and desire to help make a world where they
could sing their songs under peaceful skies, and not in the ready
room of a ship bound for enemy waters and combat.’”
    “Horseshit,”
said one of the wet pilots.
    “Come on,
guys,” said the reader. “Let’s have a songfest.”
    “Horseshit,”
said the wet pilot.
    “You got
something against peaceful sentiments?” asked the reader.
    “Pass,” said
Bagley, folding his hand without enthusiasm. Fred finished
arranging his cards and counted up his points. It came to
twenty-three—the biggest hand he ever remembered having.
    The door at the
other end of the room opened now, and the Skipper came in, carrying
a clipboard with a thick bundle of papers on it. Unlike the
listless pilots in the room, he wore a tie and his black hair was
neatly trimmed and combed, his trousers had a sharp crease, and his
shoes gleamed. A chorus of voices produced a ragged “Afternoon,
Skipper.”
    “Scuttlebutt
has it that you’re gonna learn to fly one of these days, Skipper,”
said Brogan, one of the old timers.
    “Only if the
sun comes out,” said Jack Hardigan, stopping beside Hammerstein and
patting him on the shoulder. “Your call just went through, Frank,”
he said pleasantly.
    “Jesus Christ,”
said Frank. He slapped his cards down on the table and headed for
the door. “Thanks, Skipper,” he called, his voice echoing down the
hall.
    Fred closed his
eyes and sighed. “I knew it was too good to be true,” he said. “I
get the first good hand of the game and now we can’t play it.”
    Jack leaned
down and picked up Hammerstein’s cards. Fanning them with one large
hand, he scanned them once, closed them up, and said, “Pass.”
    “Oh, boy,” said
Fred.
    “Pass,” said
Levi.
    “Four hearts,”
said Fred.
    “Pass,” said
Bagley.
    “Six hearts,”
said the skipper, still standing, and reading from a page somewhere
near the middle of the stack on the clipboard.
    “Pass,” said
Levi.
    “Pass,” said
Fred.
    “Pass,” said
Bagley, tossing out the first card.
    Without a word
Jack turned Hammerstein’s cards over, spread them with a single
movement of his left hand, and started back across the room.
Halfway to the door, he stopped and turned. “You guys doing
anything tonight?”
    Levi and Bagley
shrugged.
    Fred said, “Not
me, Skipper.”
    “Twenty
hundred. My room at the BOQ. Bring your own booze.” He reached the
door and disappeared.
    “I’ll be
damned,” said Fred.
    “He’s a good
bridge player,” said Levi.
    Tricks began
falling and were raked into Fred’s corner of the table.
    “Bridge,”
snorted Lieutenant Brogan from across the room. “You ladies ought
to play acey-deucy. Now there’s a man’s game.”
    “He wouldn’t
say that with the skipper in the room,” said Bagley.
    “Neither would
I,” said Fred. He busied himself with the play, winning all but the
last trick. “Penny a point?” he asked.

    Duane Higgins
met Jack Hardigan in the