“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.”

7

Travel Tips

“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.