Free Top Hook by Gordon Kent Page B

off the deck in less than four hours. That’s my priority. I haven’t got time to dick around with you.” He leaned a fraction of an inch closer, his eyes still fixed. “If you can’t serve under me, get out. Stay or go, I don’t care; just say which!”
    â€œYou know they’ll cream me if I go!”
    â€œYou have three minutes to decide whether you’re my senior pilot or a man looking for a new job. If you want to leave, you leave today. I’ll square it with the detailer.”
    Stevens, red-faced, tried again to stare him down and lost. “I’ll stay, goddamit—I’ve always wanted to work for a fucking ground-pounding spy!”
    Heads turned throughout the hangar bay. Spy came out loaded with connotation, and Alan was briefly back in his first days at the squadron, dealing with the aviators as an outsider, an enemy, where intel guys, “spies,” were second-class citizens. He hadn’t been there in years.
    Stevens started to move away under the wing of 902. He followed and grabbed Stevens’s arm.
    â€œStart getting this unfucked. You and I are flying together in four hours.”
    It all certainly took his mind off Mike Dukas and the admiral.
Washington.
    The lawyer’s name was Emma Pasternak, and she looked like an under-developed photograph of herself. The dress-for-success clothes did nothing to hide her essential anonymity; she wore no makeup, no jewelry, and her hair was cut so short and so awkwardly that Rose suspected the woman cut it herself.
    â€œWe’re expensive,” she said. “We’re worth it—but can you pay?”
    Rose hesitated. “How much?”
    â€œA lot.”
    â€œWe’re naval officers, for Christ’s sake!”
    â€œSo mortgage the house.”
    â€œIt is mortgaged! And I’ve never lived in it; it’s in goddam Houston, and I’ve got to find a place in fucking West Virginia; my kids are with my parents; my husband’s at sea—!”
    A long stare. Then: “Can you pay for it? Five years’ worth of legal bills?”
    â€œIf it’s even a year, my career is finished.”
    â€œThat’s what compensatory damages are for.” Her hand went to the telephone. “Can you pay?”
    Rose thought of her salary, Alan’s; of the empty house in Houston; of the house Alan had inherited from his father in Jacksonville, a little dump, but in a good market. They had some savings, a few thousand they’d put into tech stocks for the thrill of it—And two kids, and her with no career if it failed. And some friends.
    â€œYes.”
    Emma Pasternak straightened and put the phone to her ear. “Let’s kick ass,” she said. She started to punch in a number.
    â€œWhat are you going to do?”
    â€œScare the shit out of the CIA.” She inhaled and drew herself up even straighter. Rose still had the feeling that the woman was an imposter, perhaps a daughter sitting in her mother’s chair for the day. She was simply too improbably wispy—until she opened her mouth.
    â€œLet me speak to Carl Menzes, please—Internal Investigations.” Pause. Rather icily: “This is Emma Pasternak at Barnard, Kootz, Bingham.” She wrote something on a notepad. Billing me for the call, Rose thought. Jesus, I’ll be timing everything that happens to me now .
    Suddenly, she heard Emma’s voice in a new key, fingernails on a blackboard. “What meeting is he in, may I ask?” Pause. “If you don’t know, how do you know he’s in a meeting?” Pause. “Is he in the building?”
    Pause. “Well, when you see him, you tell him that I am about to sue the Central Intelligence Agency and him personally in civil court for damages compensatory and punitive, and I think it only fair to chat with him before I file. Have you got that? Oh, and tell him that we met at the Liu trial, will you do that? Oh,