Tucker cradled his head in his hands and stared into his gin and tonic. “I’m fucked.”

Jake patted him on the arm, then drew back at the intimacy of the act. “They’re calling your flight. You’ll be fine.”

They rose and Jake threw some cash on the table. At the gate Tucker turned to his friend. “Man, I don’t know what to say.”

Jake extended his hand. “No sweat, man. You’d have done it for me.”

“I really hate flying in the back. Check on that kid from the motel, okay.”

“I’m on it. Look, everything you need is in the pack. Don’t leave it behind.”

“Right,” Tucker said. “Well…” He turned and walked down the ramp to the plane.

Jake Skye watched him go, then turned, walked to a pay phone, dialed some numbers, and waited. “Yeah, it’s Jake. He’s on his way. Yeah, gone for good. When can I pick up my check?”

Once on the plane, Tucker unfolded the letter from the mysterious doctor and read it again.

Dear Mr. Case:

I have become aware of your recent difficulties and I believe I have a proposition that will be of great benefit to us both. My wife and I are missionaries on Alualu, a rather remote atoll at the north-western tip of the Micronesian crescent. Since we are out of the normal shipping lanes and we are the sole medical provider for the people of the island, we maintain our own aircraft for the transport of medical supplies. We have recently procured a Lear 45 for this purpose, but our former pilot has been called to the mainland on personal business for an indefinite time.

In short, Mr. Case, given your experience flying small jets and our unique requirements, we feel that this would be a perfect opportunity for us both. We are not concerned with the status of your license, only that you can perform in the pilot’s seat and fulfill a need that can only be described as dire.

If you are willing to honor a long-term contract, we will provide you with room and board on the island, pay you $2,000 a week, as well as a generous bonus upon completion of the contract. As a gesture of our sincerity, I am enclosing an open airline ticket and a cashier’s check for $3,000 for traveling expenses. Contact us by e-mail with your arrival time in Truk and my wife will meet you there to discuss the conditions of your employment and pro vide transportation to Alualu. You’ll find a room reserved for you at the

Paradise Inn.

Sincerely,

Sebastian Curtis, M.D.

Sebcurt@Wldnet.COM.JAP

Why me? Tuck wondered. He’d crashed a jet, lost his job and probably his sex life, was charged with multiple crimes, then a letter and a check arrived from nowhere to bail him out, but only if he was willing to abandon everything and move to a Pacific island. It could turn out to be a good job, but if it had been his decision, he’d still be lingering over it in a motel room with Dusty Lemon. It was as if some combination of ironic luck and Jake Skye had been sent along to make the decision for him. Not so strange, he thought. The same combination had put him in the pilot’s seat in the first place.

Tuck had grown up in Elsinore, California, northeast of San Diego, the only son of the owner of the Denmark Silverware Corporation. He had an unremarkable childhood, was a mediocre athlete, and spent most of his adolescence surfing in San Diego and chasing girls, one of whom he finally caught.

Zoophilia Gold was the daughter of his father’s lawyer, a lovely girl made shy by a cruel first name. Tuck and Zoo enjoyed a brief romance, which was put on hold when Tuck’s father sent him off to college in Texas so he could learn to make decisions and someday take over the family business. His motivation excised by the job guarantee, Tuck made passing grades until his college career was cut short by an emergency call from his mother. “Come home. Your father’s dead.”

Tuck made the drive in two days, stopping only for gas, to use the bathroom, and to call Zoophilia, who informed him that his mother had married his father’s brother and his uncle had taken over Denmark Silver-ware. Tuck screeched into Elsinore in a blind rage and ran over Zoophilia’s father as he was leaving Tuck’s mother’s house.

The death was declared an accident, but during the investigation a policeman informed Tuck that although he had no proof, he suspected that the riding accident that killed Tuck’s father might not have been an accident, especially since Tuck’s father had been allergic to horses. Tuck was sure that his uncle had set the whole thing

up, but he couldn’t bring himself to confront his mother or her new husband.

In the meantime, Zoophilia, stricken with grief over her father’s death, overdosed on Prozac and drowned in her hot tub, and her brother, who had been away at college also, returned promising to kill Tucker or at least sue him into oblivion for the deaths of his father and sister. While trying to come to a decision on a course of action, Tucker met a brace of Texas brunettes in a Pacific Beach bar who insisted he ride back with them to the Lone Star state.

Disinherited, depressed, and clueless, Tucker took the ride as far as a small suburban airport outside of Houston, where the girls asked him if he’d ever been nude skydiving. At that point, not really caring if he lived or died, he crawled into the back of a Beechcraft with them.

They left him scraped, bruised, and stranded on the tarmac in a jockstrap and a parachute harness, shivering with adrenaline. Jake Skye found him wandering around the hangars wearing the parachute canopy as a toga. It had been a tough year.

“Let me guess,” Jake said. “Margie and Randy Sue?”

“Yeah,” Tucker said. “How’d you know?”

“They do it all the time. Daddies with money—Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Petroleum. Hope you didn’t cut up that canopy. You can get a grand for it used.”

“They’re gone, then?”

“An hour ago. Said something about going to London. Where are your clothes?”

“In their car.”

“Come with me.”

Jake gave Tucker a job washing airplanes, then taught him to fly a Cessna 172 and enrolled him in flight school. Tucker got his twin-engine hours in six months, helping Jake ferry Texas businessmen around the state in a leased Beech Duke. Jake turned the flying over to Tuck as soon as he passed his 135 commercial certification.

“I can fly anything,” Jake said, “but unless it’s helicopters, I’d rather wrench. Only steady gig in choppers is flying oil rigs in the Gulf. Had too many friends tip off into the drink. You fly, I’ll do the maintenance, we split the cash.”

Another six months and Jake was offered a job by the Mary Jean Cosmetics Corporation. Jake took the job on the condition that Tucker could copilot until he had his Lear hours (he described Tuck as a “little lost lamb” and the makeup magnate relented). Mary Jean

did her own flying, but once Tucker was qualified, she turned the controls over to him full-time. “Some members of the board have pointed out that my time would be better spent taking care of business instead of flying. Besides, it’s not ladylike. How’d you like a job?”

Luck. The training he’d received would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and he’d gotten most of it for free. He had become a new person, and it had all started with a bizarre streak of bad luck followed by an op-portunity and Jake Skye’s intervention. Maybe it would work out for the better this time too. At least this time no one had been killed.