Top Gun

by T. E. Cruise

  “Holy cow,” Andy repeated, awestruck.

  She was around five foot six and no older than twenty-two, a lean, green-eyed knockout just now sheened with sweat, wearing only a skimpy pair of thigh-length cutoff fatigue pants, knee socks, ankle-high black work boots, and a T-shirt chopped short to reveal her flat, tanned midriff. What was left of the T-shirt hid little. Andy was unable to take his eyes off her smallish breasts rising and falling beneath the T-shirt. Her nipples looked like BBs upholstered in sage-green cotton.

  “I think you’re out of uniform. Sarge. I know that these days. Aircraft Generation squadrons are more than fifteen percent women, but that outfit cannot be regulation!”

  She shook her head, chuckling. “No, guess I am breaking regs to be dressed like this, but it gets hot wearing those overalls in this desert heat.”

  “Hot, yes, very hot…” Andy nodded slowly, starting to feel the heat himself as he noticed a bead of perspiration lazily glide out from bencath the ragged hem of her loose, high-cut shorts to travel the curve of her inner thigh.

  “Anyway,” she continued. “Things always get a little loosey-ducey around here when you visiting players arrive all at once and we AGS personnel have got to get you all tweaked up for fun and games.”

  Yes, I am feeling quite tweaked up for fun and games, Andy thought. His trousers were feeling awfully snug. He wondered if his throbbing erection was noticeable.

  “Things will be a lot quieter for us grease monkeys from here on in.” She yawned, turning to close the Stiletto’s bay. “I’m through for the night, and this will be my last stint on the graveyard shift until next month.”

  Andy watched her sleek little butt flex and wiggle as she gracefully climbed down off the scaffolding platform. She was built curvy, but kind of narrow through the hips, so that Andy guessed he could probably very easily cup her nicely rounded ass in the palms of his hands.

  “My plane!” he exclaimed, abruptly remembering his earlier concern. “What’s wrong with—”

  “Nothing’s wrong with her, Lieutenant,” she cut him off. “Earlier, my crew’s diagnostic checkout showed a glitch in your electrical system, but everything’s okay. The fault was with our equipment.”

  “That’s a relief.” He sighed. “But thanks for checking it out.… I didn’t mean to yell at you before.”

  “No problem,” she said, smiling, and then cocked her head to look at him. “I guess you’re feeling a little edgy about your training, and then Red Sky a few weeks from now?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded. “How’d you know?”

  “You’re here,” she said simply. “You’re not the first fighter jock to come around wanting to feed his mount a sugar cube the night before it all begins.”

  “Yeah, the guards who gave me a lift over here said as much.” Andy nodded, then smiled. “You know, it’s sort of funny that you should use a rider and horse analogy, because that’s what I was thinking when I decided to come over.”

  “Great minds think alike,” she said brightly.

  Andy laughed. “There’s Roy Rogers and Trigger, and Gene Autry and Champ—”

  “Champion,” she corrected him. “Gene Autry’s horse was named Champion.”

  “Oh…” His mind went blank. They stood quietly for a moment. She was watching him like she was expecting him to say something else, so of course his mind had to go triple blank. He’d always been awkward with girls, goddammit!

  “Well…,” she said.

  Shit! Quick! Think of something, Andy frantically thought. Don’t let her leave.

  “My name’s Andy Harrison,” he said, holding out his hand.

  “Gail Saunders.” She smiled, shaking hands. “Listen, Andy, don’t freak out. You’re going to do fine.”

  “You think so?” he asked, feeling shy.

  “Sure! Listen. Take this from someone who’s seen it all before. Major Greene comes on real strong in his opening speech, and when you first see those Attackers coming at you led by Greene in that flat-black F-5 of his, you’re going to think: Sweet Jesus! Here I am up against the Angels of Death!”

  “Something like that,” Andy agreed wryly.

  “Oh-ho!” Gail said, her big, beautiful eyes opening wide. “I get it now. You want to be the Warlord, don’t you?”

  Andy colored. “The thought had crossed my mind.” It wasn’t much of an impressive-looking award, really, just a small rectangle of walnut with a silver silhouette of a delta-winged fighter, engraved with a pilot’s name, his unit, and the date of the Red Sky exercise in which he was proclaimed “Warlord”: the fighter jock with the highest kill score during Red Sky…. No, the Red Sky Warlord award wasn’t much to look at, but looks weren’t everything. To a fighter pilot being Warlord was like winning the Academy Award, the Super Bowl trophy, and the heavyweight boxing championship of the world, all rolled into one.

  Gail said: “Let me tip you off to a not very well kept secret, but one you greenhorns usually don’t immediately glom onto. It might help you to get a leg up on your dragon quest.”

  “I’m listening,” Andy said.

  “Okay. The Attackers have got to fly ACM according to Soviet tactics,” Gail began. “That’s their whole reason for existence, and Soviet tactics suck, if you’ll pardon my French. Once you and the rest of the visiting players get used to the rules of the game, you’ll eat the Attackers for lunch.” She paused, shrugging. “You always do!”

  “I hope you’re right.” Andy sighed.

  “I am,” she promised. “And anyway, even if Red Sky can get pretty heavy at times, bottom line is that the war between you players and the Attackers is only a game.”

  Andy threw back his head and laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” Gail demanded.

  “Nothing. Everything,” Andy managed, shaking his head. He took a deep breath. “Listen, it’s only a little after ten. Can I pay back all your kindnesses by buying you a drink?”

  Gail hesitated.” I don’t drink.”

  “Neither do I!” Andy said quickly.

  “Come on, don’t hand me that!” She eyed him skeptically. “I’ve never met the fighter jock who didn’t consider beer to be as crucial to him as jet fuel was for his warbird!”

  “Well, you’ve met one now,” Andy told her. “Actually, what I’ve been dying for—it’s the only thing that relaxes me—is a black-and-white ice-cream soda.”

  “Well, there is the ice-cream parlor over by the commissary.”

  “Would it be open this late?”

  She nodded. “Most stuff here is open twenty-four hours to accommodate personnel coming off duty.”

  “How about it, then?” Andy asked. “Have an ice-cream soda with me?”

  He could see her thinking it over. Her wide-set green eyes were evaluating him. The tip of her pink tongue was just peeking out from between her pearly teeth. She’s going to shoot me down, he mourned.

  She said, “I prefer banana splits.”

  “It’s a deal!” he said eagerly.

  She smiled. “Come on, then, we’ll just swing by my quarters. You can wait in the car while I get cleaned up and changed into something a little more appropriate.”

  “You’ve got wheels?” Andy asked, surprised.

  “Check it out, right over there.” She pointed proudly to a battered, pine-green MG convertible parked alongside the ramp. “He’s a ‘fifty-nine ‘twinkie’; a twin cam based on the BMC B-series engine—”

  “There you go again with that ‘he’ stuff,” Andy interrupted. “Most people call planes and cars and stuff ‘she’.”

  “Do they?” Gail shrugged. “Funny, I never noticed. Anyway, I bought him for a song about a year back. I haven’t worked much on his body, but he runs fine. I rebuilt his engine in my spare time.”

  “Really?” Andy shook his head. “I’m impressed. A friend of mine once had one of those old sports cars. I remember him saying he could never find parts.”

  “Well, we’ve got a pretty good machine shop here, so
I was able to jerry-rig a lot of what I couldn’t buy off the shelf,” Gail said.

  “Anything you can’t do. Sarge?” Andy teased her.

  “Probably, but I haven’t run across it yet,” Gail countered, smiling hugely. “Now, come along, Lieutenant. You owe me a treat.”

  (Four)

  He’s just what the doctor ordered, Gail thought as she walked with Andy toward the MG. For one thing, he was incredibly good looking, but more important, he was funny. Of the two qualities in a man, it was a sense of humor that always served to hold her interest over the long haul.

  Not that there was going to be any long haul with this one, Gail reminded herself. He wasn’t the first visiting player to hit on her in the two years that she’d been stationed here at Ryder, and she had a rule about not getting involved with these guys, because what was the point? Five weeks later, they would be back at their home bases in South Korea or West Germany or New Jersey, or wherever….

  No, she wouldn’t have accepted Andy’s invitation, cute and funny as he was, if she hadn’t been feeling down in the dumps. She was coming off the tail end of a seven-month relationship with her boyfriend, one of the fighter jocks permanently stationed here at Ryder. It was really too bad. Gail thought. When she’d first started dating the guy, she’d entertained the notion that he was going to be “the one”

  “What are you looking so sad about?” Andy startled her by asking as they got into the MG.

  “Oh, nothing. Just thinking,” Gail said, hiding her discomposure by starting up the car and then peeling out.

  God. but the fire had burned hot at the start of the relationship, Gail thought, thinking back seven months ago to that first time her boyfriend had kissed her. When their lips had met that first time, she’d seen sparks the equal of the fireworks display visible for miles here at Ryder when the visiting players executing their nocturnal bombing runs on the live ordnance ranges. Sadly, however, the passion between them hadn’t lasted. This past month or so, they’d done more bickering than lovemaking, so they’d decided to stay apart for a couple of weeks in order to cool down and see how they felt about one another.

  Gail executed a racing change at the corner of Thunder Alley, and pushed the MG hard down Tiger Boulevard, past the motor-vehicle pool and the big water tower. She purposely took the old sports car to its performance edge, coaxing the speedometer to nudge seventy, and then glanced at Andy’s handsome profile to see how he was taking her daredevil driving: He was slumped in the worn leather bucket seat. His hair the color of wheat was blowing in the windstream, his soulful brown eyes were slit-closed, and he was wearing that shit-eating grin the fighter jocks wore whenever they were riding in something mechanical that was pushing the edge of its envelope.

  Yes. indeedy-do, Lieutenant Andy Harrison. Gail thought. You are just what the doctor ordered to take my mind off the past and help me sort out my feelings.

  She grinned to herself as it occurred to her that her being seen around the base in the company of this dreamboat just might get back to her boyfriend and make him jealous. Well, so much the better in terms of bargaining chips for her own game plan. She was no longer sure of her feelings toward her boyfriend, but who knew? Maybe if he became a little more romantically attentive, she might thaw toward him?

  In any event, having Andy flying escort on her wing gave her the tactical edge, and that’s what counted. Her boyfriend might be the acknowledged master of ACM, but this was a different sort of one-vee-one combat, an eternal duel in which a man and a woman sent heat-seekers streaking toward one another’s heart.

  “Yes indeedy, Major Robert Blaize Greene,” Gail vowed. “You’re going to find out that if you break up with this girl, she isn’t the type to sit home at night washing her hair and crying her eyes out over you.”

  CHAPTER 15

  (One)

  Paris Air Show

  Le Mouret Airfield, on the northern outskirts of

  Paris

  12 June, 1978

  Harrison sipped a glass of Roederer Cristal champagne. He was standing within the air-conditioned comfort of the GAT hospitality suite’s glassed-in terrace, watching as the GC-600 jetliner prototype taxied along the runway in preparation for a short demonstration flight over Le Mouret.

  Everything’s going terrifically, Harrison thought. It was the third day of the Paris Air Show, the ten-day annual extravaganza that was international aviation’s premier trade event, attracting more than a hundred thousand industry executives and involving more than a thousand aerospace companies. Happily, the show had so far been dominated by GAT and its newest addition to its jetliner family: the GC-600.

  This afternoon, for example, attention had been focused on the GC-600’s scheduled demonstration flight. The large, luxuriously appointed hospitality suite overlooking Le Mouret’s tangle of runways was packed with aviation-industry representatives and members of the media. Earlier, Harrison had taken advantage of the reporters and cameras to hold an impromptu news conference announcing that at the show GAT had received orders for the first twenty production models of the GC-600. Harrison was now hosting the reception indoors, while Steve Gold worked the industry crowd that had chosen to view the demonstration flight from the outdoor viewing area beyond the hospitality-suite complex.

  Harrison was wearing a dove-gray, tropical wool, double-breasted suit and a black silk turtleneck. He had initially thought the outfit was a little too flashy for him—he felt naked without a tie—but his wife, Susan, had insisted he wear it, telling him it made him look like Robert Redford. Harrison was glad he’d listened. Steve Gold had complimented him on the look, and Steve was certainly up to the minute when it came to fashion.

  Now Harrison felt dapper and Parisian, comfortable and uniquely in control of things. Susan, looking chic in a cream-colored suit and dark, textured nylons, was hobnobbing with a cluster of guests near the ten-foot cutaway scale model of the GC-600 that was the room’s centerpiece. GAT’s best sales and marketing people were sidestepping the cruising waiters bearing trays of hors d’oeuvres and champagne as they handled inquiries concerning advance GC-600 sales and interest in the World-Bird fighter-plane project.

  Harrison was on his second glass of champagne. He’d been too nervous to eat this morning, so now he was feeling just the slightest bit pleasurably woozy as the commotion whirled around him. There were the reporters busy jotting on their pads, likely racking their brains to come up with new superlatives to describe GAT’s triumph; the airline purchasing agents clamoring to get the attention of the GAT sales team; the camera crew hired by GAT to film the proceedings for the next stockholders’ meeting…. It seemed to Harrison that the next big problem facing GAT would be what to do with all the money the company was going to make.

  There was a scattering of applause from the spectators on the terrace as the GC-600 lifted off. The trim little onehundred-seat fanjet airliner was painted GAT’s signature colors of turquoise and scarlet. The 600 climbed quickly due to its light weight. On this first demo flight it was flying without passengers, and the plane required only a two-man cockpit crew thanks to its computer-augmented controls. Harrison glanced towards the outdoor viewing area in the distance several stories below and saw that an array of tripod cameras were pointing their long, black telescopic lenses like antiaircraft weapons to capture on film the striking image of the gaudy GAT bird rising against the white overcast Parisian sky.

  This may not be airplane heaven, but it’ll do for now, Harrison thought as he flagged a passing waiter carrying a champagne-laden tray and exchanged his empty glass for a full one.

  Perhaps the sweetest bonus coming out of all this was that Harrison fully expected the GC-600’s successful debut to at last erase from the industry trade publications the embarrassing headlines built upon the continued, anonymous leaks that had come from the traitor inside the company. The private investigators who Harrison had put on the case had yet to come up with the so-called Icarus’s identity, but after today who the bastard
was and what he said would no longer matter.

  Icarus had done some serious damage to GAT’s image through his leaks reporting the internal dissension between the engineering, marketing, and management areas of the company concerning the new jetliner’s readiness. Of course, it was just like the press to blow the situation out of proportion. Sure there’d been some internal tension at GAT these past eight months, and sure there had been some honest differences of opinion about the advisability of accelerating the construction of the GC-600 prototypes, but Harrison had stuck to his guns—he’d led—and he’d turned out right. The jetliner just now soaring in triumph above Paris was his vindication.

  Harrison was distracted by a colleague coming over to offer his congratulations. As Harrison was shaking hands with the man, he heard somebody blurt: “Something’s wrong! That airplane’s not flying right!”

  Harrison turned quickly, peering fearfully into the sky, and saw that the GC-600 had banked too sharply during its approach back to the airfield. It was knifing toward the airstrip with its wings perpendicular to the ground.

  “The jetliner’s out of control!” somebody shouted.

  Behind Harrison, the reception’s genteel tumult dwindled quickly as people roughly shouldered past Harrison to get to the windows for a view. Harrison kept his eyes on the jetliner, which was now fluttering like a butterfly as its pilots struggled to regain control.

  Jesus Christ, it’s going to crash, Harrison realized. This can’t be happening….

  There was a brittle cracking sound. Harrison looked down to see that his hand was wet with wine and blood: he had crushed his champagne glass.

  He looked back up at the pastel creation that carried upon its swept wings his company’s future. The jetliner had flipped over onto its back and was now hurtling toward the earth upside down. The overwrought scream of the 600’s tortured turbofans was growing louder, rattling the terrace windows.