Dusty squirmed, his chair creaked under the strain. “Well, you know, it’s kinda…”

And suddenly, amid the stammering, Tucker got it. The kid was a virgin. He raised his hand to quiet the boy. “Never mind, Dusty.” The big tackle slumped in his chair, exhausted and embarrassed.

Tuck considered it. He, who understood so much the importance of a healthy sex life, who knew what women needed and how to give it to them, might never be able to do it again, and Dusty Lemon, who probably could produce a woody that women could chin themselves on, wasn’t using it at all. He pondered it. He worked it over

from several angles and came very close to having a religious experience, for who but a vicious and vengeful God would allow such injustice in the world? He thought about it. Poor Tucker. Poor Dusty. Poor, poor Tucker.

He felt a lump forming in his throat. He wanted to say something that would make the kid feel better. “How old are you, Dusty?”

“I’ll be twenty-two next March, sir?”

“Well, that’s not so bad. I mean, you might be a late bloomer, you know. Or gay maybe,” Tuck said cheerfully.

Dusty started to contract into the fetal position. “Sir, I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind,” he whimpered. There was a knock on the door and he uncurled, alert and ready to move. He looked to Tucker for instructions.

“Well, answer it.”

Dusty lumbered to the door and pulled it open a crack. “Yes?”

“I’m here to see Tucker Case. It’s okay, I work for Mary Jean.” Tuck recognized Jake Skye’s voice.

“Just a second.” Dusty turned and looked to Tucker, confused.

“Who knows we’re here, Dusty?”

“Just us and Mrs. Jean.”

“Then why don’t you let him in?”

“Yes, sir.” He opened the door and Jake Skye strode through carrying a grocery bag and a pizza box.

“Greetings.” He threw the pizza on the bed. “Pepperoni and mushroom.” He glanced at Dusty and paused, taking a moment to look the tackle up and down. “How’d you get this job? Eat your family?”

“No, sir,” Dusty said.

Jake patted the tackle’s mammoth shoulder. “Good to be careful, I guess. Momma always said, ‘Beware of geeks bearing gifts.’ Who are you?”

“Jake Skye,” Tuck said, “meet Dusty Lemon. Dusty, Jake Skye, Mary Jean’s jet mechanic. Be nice to Dusty, Jake, He’s a virgin.”

Dusty shot a vicious glare at Tuck and extended a boxing glove size mitt. Jake shook his hand. “Virgin, huh?”

Jake dropped his hand. “Not including farm animals, though, right?”

Dusty winced and moved to close the door. “You-all can’t stay long. Mr. Case isn’t supposed to see no one.”

Jake put the grocery bag down on the table, pulled out a fourinch-thick bundle of mail, and tossed it on the bed next to Tucker. “Your

fan mail.”

Tucker picked it up. “It’s all been opened.”

“I was bored,” Jake said, opening the pizza box and extracting a slice. “A lot of death threats, a few marriage proposals, a couple really interesting ones had both. Oh, and an airline ticket to someplace I’ve never heard of with a check for expenses.”

“From Mary Jean?”

“Nope. Some missionary doctor in the Pacific. He wants you to fly for him. Medical supplies or something. Came FedEx yesterday. Almost took the job myself, seeing as I still have my pilot’s license and you don’t, but then, I can get a job here.”

Tucker shuffled through the stack of mail until he found the check and the airline ticket. He unfolded the attached letter.

Jake held the pizza box out to the bodyguard. “Dopey, you want some pizza?”

“Dusty,” Dusty corrected.

“Whatever.” To Tuck: “He wants you to leave ASAP.”

“He can’t go anywhere,” said Dusty.

Jake retracted the box. “I can see that, Dingy. He’s still wired for sound.” Jake gestured toward the catheter that snaked out of Tucker’s pajama bottoms. “How long before you can travel?”

Tucker was studying the letter. It certainly seemed legitimate. The doctor was on a remote island north of New Guinea, and he needed someone to fly jet loads of medical supplies to the natives. He specifically mentioned that “he was not concerned” about Tucker’s lack of a pilot’s license. The “need was dire” and the need was for an experienced jet pilot who could fly a Lear 45.

“Well,” Jake said, “when can you roll?”

“Doctor says not for a week or so,” Tucker said. “I don’t get it. This guy is offering more money than I make for Mary Jean. Why me?”

Jake pulled a Lone Star from the grocery bag and twisted off the cap. Tuck zeroed in on the beer. Dusty snatched it out of Jake’s hand.

“The question is,” Jake said, glaring at Dusty, “what the fuck is a missionary doctor in Bongo Bongo land doing with a Lear 45?”

“God’s work?” Dusty said innocently.

Jake snatched back his beer. “Oh blow me, Huey.”

“Dusty,” Dusty corrected.

Tucker said, “I’m not sure this is a good idea. Maybe I should stay here and see how things pan out with the FAA. This guy wants me right away. I need more time.”

“Like more time will make a difference. Damn, Tucker, you don’t have to sink eyeball deep in shit to know it’s a good idea to pull yourself out. Sometimes you have to make a decision.”

Tucker looked at the letter again. “But I…”

Before Tucker could finish his protest, Jake brought the Lone Star in a screaming arc across Dusty Lemon’s temple. The bodyguard fell like a dead tree and did a dead-cat bounce on the orange carpet.

“Jesus!” Tucker said. “What the fuck was that?”

“A decision,” Jake said. He looked up from the fallen tackle and took a pull on the foaming Lone Star. “Sometimes this high-tech world calls for low-tech solutions. Let’s go.”

“I can’t believe you hit him,” Tucker said. He was in the passenger seat of Jake Skye’s camouflaged Land Rover. It was much more car than was re-quired for the Houston expressway, but Jake was into equipment overkill. Everything he owned was Kevlar, GorTex, Polarfleece, titanium alloy, graphite-polymer composite, or of “expedition quality.” He liked machines, understood how they worked, and could fix them if they didn’t. Sometimes he spoke in an incomprehensible alphabet soup of SRAM, DRAM, FOR-TRAN, LORAN, SIMMS, SAMS, and ROM. Tuck, on the other hand, knew most of the words to “Mommas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” and could restore burned toast to new by scraping off the black stuff.

Of the two, Jake was the cool one. Tucker had always found being cool a little elusive. As Jake put it, “You’ve got the look, but you can’t walk the walk or talk the talk. Tucker, you are a hopeless geek trapped in a cool guy’s body, but out of the goodness of my heart, I will take you on as my student.” They’d been friends for four years. Jake had taught Tuck to fly.

“He’ll be fine. He’s a jock,” Jake shouted over the buffeting wind. He hadn’t bought a top for the Land Rover, opting instead for the Outback package with the “patented rhinoceros poking platform.”

“He was just a kid. He was reading the Bible.”

“He would have ripped my arms off if I’d let him.”

Tuck nodded. That was probably true. “Where are we going?”

“The airport. Everything you need is in that pack in the back.”

Tucker looked into the back of the Rover. There was a large backpack. “Why?”

“Because if I don’t get you out of the country right now, you’re going to jail.”

“Mary Jean said she had that handled. Said her lawyers were on it.”

“Right, and I go around smacking kids with beer bottles for recreation. The hooker filed a civil suit this morning. Twenty million. Mary Jean has to throw you to the wolves to save her own ass. She has to let the court prove that you fucked up all on your own. I grabbed your passport and some clothes when I got your mail.”

“Jake, I can’t just take off like this. I’m supposed to see a doctor tomorrow.”