Relentless

“It might not be in your own name,” the Major said, watching him unblinkingly.

Walker’s face shifted. “Just what kind of flying did you have in mind?”

“Twin-engine. Mostly daylight flying, mostly on radio ranges. You could do it with your eyes shut.”

“Not according to the FAA.” But he leaned forward, bracing a hand on his knee. “Unless you’re talking about flying somewhere outside of the country?”

“Partly in, partly out.”

“Look, Major, I don’t like fencing. The last time I saw you, you had a couple of Special Forces A-Teams working the back hills in Cambodia and Laos. All right, I read the newspapers, I saw where they were recalling the Green Berets and cutting them back.”

Hargit said drily, “A few lard-ass Pentagon generals decided there wasn’t room in the United States Army for an elite corps. Which was pretty fu

“Okay, they did you out of a job. But I hear the CIA’s hiring hundreds of former Green Berets to serve in Laos. That’s just what I read in the papers. I don’t know anything. But if you’re traveling around signing up recruits to fight some ass-hole war out in Laos you can count me out. I’ve had my ass shot at enough.”

The Major laughed, his eyes closing up to slits. “It’s got nothing to do with Laos.”

“Or the CIA?”

“Or the CIA.” The Major pulled a flat billfold out of his inside pocket and extracted a folded newspaper clipping. “Evidently you didn’t read all the papers.”

It was eight or nine months old, starting to yellow and get brittle at the folds. It had a one-column head shot of Hargit in his beret at the top. The caption spelled his name and the headline beneath it said: BERET MAJOR DISCHARGED AFTER VIET COURT-MARTIAL.

Hargit took it back before he’d had time to read more than a paragraph. He folded it carefully and put it back in the billfold. “Some South Vietnamese civilians got killed and they needed a scapegoat. The details don’t matter, it’s all politics. The gooks were VC at night and law-abiding citizens during the day—you know the drill. But it was supposed to be a pacified hamlet and Saigon raised hell.”

Walker stared at him. “I’ll be damned. So they threw you out.”

“Seventeen years in uniform,” the Major said in a dull low voice. “If I hadn’t had a friend or two they’d have put me in the stockade for murder. Murder, for God’s sake—there’s a war going on.” The Major slipped the billfold into his pocket and adjusted the hang of his jacket. “So you see we’ve got something in common, Captain.”

“You don’t look like you’re hurting.” He couldn’t help it. The big car and the three-hundred-dollar suit didn’t stimulate his sympathies.

If it angered Hargit he didn’t show it. “Money? I had a little saved up. It doesn’t amount to anything.” He stood up and turned to stare out the plate-glass front window, talking oyer his shoulder. “I could have hired out to half a dozen armies. South America, Africa—plenty of work around for a mercenary who knows guerrilla work.”

“You were damn good,” Walker agreed. “Why didn’t you do that?”

“I’m going to. But on my terms, not theirs. It’s always a mistake to get into a position where you’ve got responsibility but not authority. From here on in I don’t take orders from anybody but Leo Hargit.”

“Easy to say. You going to hire yourself?”

“Yes.” Hargit turned to face him. There was no reading the expression but the eyes were hard as glass. “There are countries around willing to hire whole armies at a clip.”

Now it really began to frighten him. “And you’re going to raise an army?”

“I figure to put together the best mobile force of crack guerrilla mercenaries anybody ever saw. And then I figure to hire out to the high bidder and run his war the right way—my way, with no interference from anybody and no Pentagon to court-martial me.”

It took time to absorb. After a while Walker said, “And you don’t care who you fight for. Which side, I mean.”

“Sides don’t mean anything below the Equator.”

“Well I know that. I hate to sound like a hick but I meant what about right and wrong?”

“Virtues make sense when you can afford them, I suppose. I can’t. Anyhow, morality’s a pen for sheep, built by wolves. Take what you want and don’t look back, that’s all that matters.”

Walker blinked. “Why’d you come to me?”

“I told you. I want a pilot.”

“I never flew a combat plane in my life.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to.”

It wasn’t making any sense. All he knew was that Hargit was playing him, enjoying the’ game; and Hargit wasn’t about to spell it out until he was good and ready. So Walker tried another tack. “How’d you find me?”

“Does it matter? I traced you through some old contacts.” Then the billfold came out again and Walker was staring at a multi-engine commercial instrument-rated FAA pilot’s license, complete with seals and stamps and a description: Kendall Williams, date of birth 10/27/41, place of birth Albuquerque, N. Mex., ht 5’ 11”, wt 160 lbs, hair brown, eyes gray. Everything had been filled in except the bearer’s signature.

Walker’s hand, holding it, was not steady; the document fluttered with vibration.

“Where’d you get this?”

“It’s a forgery but nobody has to know that.”

“It’s a damned good phony.”

“Of course it is. What do you take me for, an amateur?”

“Okay, Major, you’re a professional.” He stood up and thrust the pilot’s license back at him. “The question is, a professional what?”

“Let’s say a professional thief.”

5

“Captain, you’ve got your tit in a wringer. I’m offering you a way out—enough money to go to Canada or Brazil and start your own bush airline. There’ll be a minimum of fifty thousand in it for you and it may come to more. All you’ve got to do is fly a couple of airplanes and drive a car twenty miles.”

“It’s too risky.”

“Nothing’s risky if the stakes are high enough.”

“What the hell do you want with all that money anyway?”

“It takes a lot of money to raise an army, Captain. Recruiting, training, equipping.”

“Jesus, the kind of money you’re talking about you could forget all that and just retire on it.”

“Some men could.”

It was terrifying to see a Green Beret type go bad. For all those years, in line of duty, he’d been breaking all the rules of civilized conduct, and it gave him a feeling of untouchable immunity from all those rules.

“Do you want me to go over it again, Captain?”

“No. I get the pitch. You’re going to rob a bank.”

“Not just any bank. A million-dollar cash bank.”

“And if we get caught?”

“This is a military operation, Captain. We’ll be prepared for every possibility. We’re not going to get caught.”

“Jesus, I don’t know. I never stole anything bigger than a pack of chewing gum.”

“Captain, it may be the last chance you’ll ever get at owning your own airline and flying your own plane.” Hargit was an astute and clever judge of weakness and of a man’s needs.

“I’m not asking you to turn to a life of crime,” he added. “We pull off one score and that’s all. It’s the habituals who get caught—the odds catch up to them.” And the Major unfolded the unsigned pilot’s license, put it on the desk in front of Walker, took a fountain pen out of his pocket, uncapped it, and handed it to him.

After a while Walker took the pen and signed at the tip of the Major’s finger.

6

“But why me?”

They were riding north in the Lincoln on Interstate 10. The speedometer hovered at seventy but it was cool and quiet inside the air-conditioned sedan. The Major drove the way he did most things—with casual and unflappable efficiency. Walker repeated, “Why pick me?”

“Because it’s always better to deal with a known quantity. You were a good officer. You know how to take orders, you’re accustomed to military operations. There were half a dozen uniformed pilots I could have brought into this thing, but they’d have had to go AWOL and it would have made a fuss. Nobody’s going to miss you.”