To look at Sam, it was impossible to picture him living anywhere. They made movies about men like Sam and the movie was about Job--hell, they had made two movies about Sam and both of them were about Job. No personal effects, no mention of home or wife or dog, no car that wasn't company issued and loaded with more Job, nothing that wasn't Job-driven, Job-related, Job-connected. Clothes? Suitable for the Job. Food? Eaten on the Job. Women? Part of the Job or sacrificed to the Job. Samuel P. Gerard genuflected at the altar of Work and no other. It had always been a little bit like crossing a border, to go into Sam's space with laundry or linens or mail. Unless you knew what to look for, it was hard to tell anyone used the room at all.

So Jade and I were both shocked, on a Saturday morning in March, to find Sam in the kitchen when we got there. He had everything he owned in the world stuffed into two battered leather suitcases and a gym bag. He told us he had time, and was taking it. Before we could ask about the suitcases, he went into Ultra-Sam mode and told us that he wasn't sure if he would return to the house once he was back in Minneapolis. He asked us to forward what little mail he received at the house to the office, looked at us with lost eyes in a stony face, and left.

The defection was unlike Sam. I would have expected him to stand pat and wait for Bill to crack. Bill would have been annoyed as hell, but he was never around. I would almost have rather had him back in field ops, because this was nuts. Sometimes Ryan traveled with him, sometimes Bully, but mostly he traveled alone. Once, he and Bully returned to the house looking like the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald after two solid weeks of on the road with no contact. Ryan threw Bully into Elmore's room and Bill went straight to bed. I picked up his jacket to hang it in the closet and his passport fell out of the inside pocket. Curiously, I flipped through the pages. The most recent activity in it was entry and exit stampings from Sydney and Wellington, New Zealand. I knew better than to bother asking.

Elmore was our constant during these confusing weeks. When he wasn't at the Corner or out in the pole-barn beating that godforsaken whatever-it-was into shape for the summer racing season, he could be counted on to go with us to the store, to sit with us or, his seemingly favorite job, to mind the little ones. There were people who were honestly surprised to learn that Elmore wasn't Mick and Nuala's father--those same people often found themselves with 192 pounds of angry Irishman hanging from the ends of their noses. And they took it on faith that the big man who handled the small baby with such gentle assurance could only be his father, and that the glowering white-haired gentleman was grandpa. They usually discovered how wrong they were.

We were equally surprised, come the beginning of July, to arrive home in the small hours to find Sam nonchalantly constructing a sandwich as though he hadn't been gone for months. He offered no explanations at the time, but later on he told Jade. She tended to inspire confidence in her taciturnity. Sam told her the little ones had brought him back, that he'd been unable to stay away, really. The bond of blood was there, and whether he believed Bill's cock and bull story or not was immaterial. Rainer looked like every baby picture of Eliot he'd ever seen.

Elmore had commenced racing at Elko Speedway and Raceway Park as soon as these local tracks had opened up in the spring. In return for allowing One's friend, the restoration fiend Shaggy, space in the pole barn to ready his own demo car, the boys served as Elmore's pit crew when the length of the race demanded it. Elmore ran in the Sportsman class, and occasionally would enter races of one hundred or more laps. These events would require some assistance with refueling and tire changes, and the boys were usually more than willing.

Which was why the owner and operator of Pratt Motorsports was astonished to learn that he had nobody to pit for him on the day of his most important race. This coincided with Edgefest or Ozzfest or some Shitfest or another and I had been hearing for weeks about how the entire lot of them were pitching in to go. Sorry, Elmore, we go to worship the sacred and holy Metallica.

I'd been hearing so much about it that I'd quit hearing any of it. Jade would thrust her fingers in her ears and yell "blaaaargle" until the boy took his chatter away. It appeared nobody bothered to mention any of it to Elmore. He was the only one who might have cared.

Elmore folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the new Viking stove. Jade and I both started forward--there was blood in Jade's eye and I probably looked crazed.

He leaped away from the appliance and settled himself as far away from it as possible. The Viking was a professional grade range, and given the number of people we cooked for and the frequency with which we cooked, Jade and I had felt such a premier appliance was necessary. Bill had squawked, he had refused point blank, had dangled mere Maytags and Jenn-Airs beneath our noses. We had held out. We had out-stonewalled the stone wall. We had gotten the stove we wanted, and had issued death threats to anyone or anything that even looked at it wrong.

Elmore wandered off in the face of our exquisitely blank looks. If I knew him, he would have a crew lined up before the end of the night if he had to recruit them from the Corner regulars. Jade and I turned to the subject nearest to our hearts, the continuing cold war between Sam and Bill.

Both of us knew that was a little shy of the truth. They were speaking to one another, but 'move your carcass, shit-for-brains' and 'excuse the fuck outa me' were hardly expressions of fraternal affection. Both men were coldly impersonal, and if nothing else could have convinced me they'd leaped from the same genetic soup, that was enough.

Jade spoke from past experience. Bill had once made a difference in her life, but he had refused to move until he had her entire past history condensed and written down. His very survival had, at times, depended on the quality of his knowledge. This was making him nuts, the total lack of information coupled with a relative dearth of people to question.

Jade looked into the middle distance while I felt my mind scrambling for a grip. Upstairs, Rainer woke from his nap and bellowed his desire to get up. Elmore called 'Got 'im, Ma,' so I didn't even have that to play with.

Jade gave me a patient look. Her experience with paramilitary organizations was the sort which left no paper trail. Everything was carried between someone's ears, which explained why Ryan remembered everything anybody had ever told him. Bill had served the United States Government, which kept records of its records.

I trotted through the dining room, into the living room heading for the stairs. I dodged around Sam, who was pausing in the middle of the living room to catch something on CNN. He happened to be blocking Bill's view of the self-same program.

Sam stepped aside, hurling a murderous glare over his shoulder. I bumped into him, finding him rigid as steel.

I scrabbled through the box until the file I wanted came to hand. There was the list... six names... only six. I scrambled back to the kitchen and let Jade see the paper. Instantly she latched on to a name.

Jade and I both had a case of terminal hero worship for Major General William "Hawk" Hawkins, decorated aviator and most likely certifiable lunatic and hero of the biggest thing to hit the space program since the Challenger.

Back before Christmas, it had been announced that a Russian communications satellite was dying. There had been lots said about a deteriorating orbit and rate of descent and be looking because this'll be the best show since Skylab. Most people knew Russian gear was lamentably bad, poorly constructed, held together with spit and bailing wire. It barely made a ripple in the news after the initial announcement.

A week later, all hell broke loose. The Yeltsin government announced that the satellite was actually a missile platform placed in orbit during the middle of Reagan's first term. More scientific babble, about a failing guidance system and how when the guidance system goes that satellite would assume that the US and Russia were no longer playing nice. Oh, and by the way, we swiped the guidance system from you guys way back when, so do you suppose you could help us fix it before the thing toasts Omaha?

Enter Team Daedalus. These were four test pilots who'd done everything together short of reproduce. They'd been passed over for the Mercury program mostly because they were built like trees. But now at the end of the millennium there was a space craft big enough to park a satellite in so height wasn't an issue. General Frank Corvin was the only one qualified, at least qualified right away, to go and repair the thing. As the designer, he was more than willing to go up and perform the necessary repairs. But he was 65 years old and he did not want to go into space as an old fart passenger. John Glen could have that distinction. No, Corvin wanted his own handpicked crew--the rest of Team Daedalus.

Uproar! It was unheard of, impossible; to hand a billion-dollar spacecraft and a mission charged with the preservation of millions of lives over to a handful of decrepit shuffleboard jockeys? There was no way.

Corvin held out, and Corvin got his way. In addition to Tank Sullivan and Jerry O'Neill--a Baptist minister and irrepressible smartass, and a roller coaster designer and hopeless letch, there was the pilot Hawk Hawkins, an instant legend. Ill with cancer but so aggressively fit he passed his physical anyway. Hawkins took his ship, the Enterprise, up to the stricken satellite and performed a flawless docking maneuver. The satellite would have been a cakewalk to repair had it not been for a young brainiac Team Daedalus had been forced to take with them. As it was, the bird was all but mortally wounded.

Again, Hawkins saved everyone's bacon. When the satellite started to come apart, his instant reaction saved the shuttle from a fate similar to that of the bird. Somehow or another he was hurt during this move, but he donned a space suit and, along with Frank Corvin and Jerry O'Neill went outside to jury-rig the guidance and propulsion systems long enough for Mission Control to turn the satellite around and send it out of earth orbit. Then Hawkins piloted the shuttle to a point near the drifting brainiac and held it long enough for Tank Sullivan to pluck the minute bit of space offal from free-fall using the capture arm of the shuttle. It was a little like trying to pick up a pinfeather with a steam shovel. To put the frosting on this piece of cake, Hawk brought the shuttle in with a dead computer and something like half of one engine. He performed a dead-stick, seat of the pants landing that would have made Pappy Boyington proud and which made instant believers out of their fighter/recovery escort.

The landing had pre-empted all regular programming. All four members had received Congressional Medals of Honor. The President had congratulated Hawk on his landing. Hawkins had given a classic response--any landing you can walk away from is a good one. Then, as most of the world watched, Hawk Hawkins was slam-dunked into an ambulance and flown, courtesy of his government, to Johns Hopkins, where he received state-of-the-art treatment. As of now he was in remission, and his doctors were guarded, but hopeful.

Jade's voice was reverent.

Bill must have liberated Rainer from Elmore, because his young eagle was on his hip when he came to the kitchen.

I went scarlet and considered crawling under the table with the dogs. Jade crammed the list casually into her pocket and stood up.

He grinned vilely at both of us. Jade remained unimpressed. She smirked at Bill, and left the room.

The exaggerated look of innocence on his face was infuriating. But his next remark made me forget my embarrassment and Jades' mission. I was laughing too hard.

Why such a thing would strike me funny was anyone's guess, because Bill had a man's fascination with motorized things. For his birthday I had done interesting things with my savings and bought him a Harley. It was a couple of years old, but I'd had it painted and bought the leathers and he thought he was King Shit of Turd Mountain. Elmore had been so impressed he'd gone out and bought himself an Indian. It was all Jade could do to keep Mick off of them until he was bigger, and she had threatened Ryan's neck in case he had any ideas. Why would I laugh at the idea of Bill pitting for Elmore? I wasn't sure. I would try to figure it out when I was done laughing.

This was priceless. Too bad I would be unable to see it. I would have to be down at the Corner to help Phil.

I calmed myself before continuing.

Annapolis, suddenly and completely.

There was no point in defying him. When he talked that way things were as good as done according to his plan.

God damn it.

Bill handed Rainer to me.

A big finger touched the end of Rainer's tiny nose and I got a calming smile. Jade tumbled into the kitchen the second the back door closed. It was as if she'd been waiting.

She waved the list at me.

Jade consulted the paper, which she had covered with notes.

It was probably Hawkins, I told myself.

I shifted Rainer to my shoulder. Gus immediately came to sniff the baby's diaper. I shooed him away.

Jade was grinning hugely, helplessly.

Jade was imperturbable. She started playing 'snatch the nose' with Rainer.

Jade interrupted me, not brutally, but finally.

Oh, yeah. The 20/20 piece. Only the most shameless bit of flag-waiving puffery I'd ever personally seen. Baba Wawa had put it together after Team Daedalus was back on the ground. She'd interviewed everyone she could get her hands on, so we had been treated to an endless succession of proud wives (I always believed in him), bemused children (I didn't think the old man had it in him), and semi-hysterical grand-children (Grampa's comin' to my school!). We'd also been treated to a few former and current girlfriends of Jerry O'Neill's (I always said there wasn't anything he couldn't do well), as well as some of his employees (Great guy. Helluva lot of fun. Smart as a whip. Best boss I ever had. Great with the ladies!). She'd managed to get some of Tank Sullivan's congregation to talk--actually, she'd had a tough time getting a few of them to shut up (A wonderful minister, so comforting, knows his bible so well, wonderful with children, so devoted to his flock...).

But for the Hawk, there was really nobody. A couple of people at the airstrip where he kept his plane, his doctors, and the rest of Team Daedalus. That was about it. They showed two photographs of Hawk and his Jackie, a wedding portrait and a snapshot taken later in life. Of children there were no mention, and it was plain that the loss of his wife was one subject William Hawkins would be unable to discuss, not even with Baba Wawa. Bill had watched part of it with Jade and Elmore and me and he'd landed on me--'get it outa your head, Punk, that's not some stray waitin' for you to pick 'im up.'

Too many things had been going on, and I hadn't given it another thought, until now.

Jade grinned.