Top Gun (40 page)

She’d removed her cap, liberating her hair, which cascaded in shiny, auburn waves to her shoulders. Now, as Andy watched,
she stood on her raised platform and performed an impromptu striptease. First she pulled off her work gloves, revealing long,
slender fingers with pink enameled nails. Then she unzipped and shucked off her overalls….

“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.”

(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.