“You may not remember me. Hargit, Leo Hargit.”
“I remember you, Major.”
The Major had driven into the gas station in a four-year-old Lincoln Continental. It suited him; he had the carriage to bring it off. Steel gray hair close-cropped against a well-shaped skull. Near six feet tall, long-boned, a straight taut body in superb condition. In mufti now, a cool light grey suit that had not come from stock. When Walker had last seen him at Hue the Major had been wearing a Green Beret uniform.
Hargit had a flashing grin, the teeth as white and even as a military cemetery. He was powerfully handsome with that larger-than-life magnetism which was, in certain men, a force of leadership. His face was big and square and all straight lines.
He had got out of the car and shaken hands with Walker. He wasn’t a bone crusher but you could feel the power in his grip; he had muscles he hadn’t even used yet.
“They tell me you’ve had it a little rough, Captain.”
“I haven’t exactly been sweating the income tax.”
“Someplace we can talk?”
Then it wasn’t just an accidental meeting.
“I’ve got the place to myself till three o’clock or so.”
The Major glanced at his watch and shot his cuff. “That ought to be time enough.”
“You want gas in that thing?”
“Let it wait.” The Major had thrown his big arm across Walker’s shoulders and walked him inside the filling station. There was only one chair, by the telephone desk with its credit-card machines and free roadmap stand. The place was a litter of tools and old batteries and cans of oil; it smelled of lubricants. The Major swept a patch of workbench clear of tools, cocked himself on it hipshot with one foot on the floor, and waved Walker into the chair. It gave Hargit the position of command.
The doors were open but it was hot and close. The desert sun shot painful reflections off passing cars and the store windows across the boulevard. Traffic was a steady noise.
“I might have a job for you.”
“Doing what? Back in the Army?”
“No. Something else. Flying a plane.”
Walker’s laugh was more of a snarl. “I haven’t got a license.”
“I’ll get you one.”
“It’s not that easy. They took it away from me and they’re not likely to give it back before World War Five.”
“I’ll get you a license. Hell, a piece of paper?”
“It’s not that easy,” Walker said again, keeping his face blank, trying not to show the bitterness. His overalls were black and filthy with grease and he found himself wiping his hands on the bib front. His fingernails were inky.
“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 funny coming from charter members of the West Point Protective Association.”
“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.”