'I've been keeping a list all these years. Never told no one. Not even you, Doc. You don't write down shit like this, you forget.' He sipped. 'I think there's a market for it. Maybe one of those little books you see up by the cash register.'

I put the headset on and watched rural farms and dormant fields slowly turn into houses with big barns and long drives that were paved. Cows and calves were black-spotted clusters in fenced-in grass, and a combine churned up dust as it slowly drove past fields scattered with hay.

I looked down as the landscape slowly transformed into the wealth of Warrenton, where crime was low and mansions on hundreds of acres of land had guest houses, tennis courts and pools, and very fine stables. We flew lower over private airstrips and lakes with ducks and geese. Marino was gawking.

Our pilots were silent for a while as they waited to be in range of the NRT on the ground. Then I caught Lucy's voice as she changed frequencies and began transmitting.

'Echo One, helicopter niner-one-niner Delta Alpha. Teun, you read me?'

'That's affirmative, niner Delta Alpha,' T. N. McGovern, the team leader, came back.

'We're ten miles south, inbound-landing with passengers,' Lucy said. 'ETA about eight hundred hours.'

'Roger. It feels like winter up here and not getting any warmer.'

Lucy switched over to the Manassas Automated Weather Observation Service, or AWOS, and I listened to a long mechanical rendition of wind, visibility, sky condition, temperature, dew point, and altimeter setting according to Sierra time, which was the most recent update of the day. I wasn't thrilled to learn that the temperature had dropped five degrees Celsius since I had left home, and I imagined Benton on his way to warm sunshine and the water.

'We got rain over there,' Lucy's copilot said into his mike.

'It's at least twenty miles west and the winds are west,' Lucy replied. 'So much for June.'