User Guide

2237 Hours
The evening’s business is concluded,
and excitement fills the air. Stern has
closed a deal, apparently quite a lucrative
deal. Although the details are not yet
available, everyone can breathe easier
now, at least until morning; the pressure
to sell themselves over, tomorrow they’ll
turn their attention to staying alive. But
for tonight, everyone stays behind
drinking as Stern heads out the door, his
stony exterior cracking long enough for
him to give his team a wink and a thumbs
up. No late drinking for him, I’m
disappointed to discover. I’d hoped that
he would loosen up after a few belts, but
Stern takes his responsibilities too
seriously to indulge himself. Along with
Richards, Stern drives back to the Lair,
leaving his pilots behind to blow off some
steam.
The bill collector will be held at bay yet
another month, and in the uncertain life
of a merc, this is cause enough for
celebration. Most squadrons teeter on the
brink of perpetual bankruptcy, but far
from being just a job, the Istanbul scene
is a way of life that hardened mercs are
helpless to surrender. Another day,
another bullet, another funeral, another
dollar. An addiction both destructive and
legal, an irresistible combination. I see it
in the way Richards drew his gun in the
cafe, the way Schraeder lovingly
supervised the care and feeding of his
deadly pets in the hangar. You never feel
so alive as just after you’ve looked death
in the eye.
Gwen and Billy renege on their
promise to talk to me “later,” and head
off for a dark corner. I’m surprised to
see Janet “Vixen” Page with one of the
Wildcat pilots at a secluded table,
engaged in what appears to be intimate
conversation, and Schraeder is talking
to Virgil at the bar. Not wanting to get
sucked into that particular conversation,
I leave Selim’s and take a taxi back to
the Lair. From what I understand,
tomorrow will be quite different from
today’s lazy pace.
0500 Hours
Damned early. Damned, damned early.
Still dark out. Tex looks at the rats on the
roof of the hangar forlornly, but even he
doesn’t dare break the morning silence,
not with all his comrades milling around
inside the hangar. He gives the rats a look
that promises deferred pain, then steps
inside to join his peers.
A long table supports the Wildcat
version of a breakfast buffet: coffee,
aspirin, antacid, bologna, mustard, bread
with the crust trimmed off… The Wildcats
pace anxiously as they wait for Stern’s
briefing, some clutching their heads and
complaining bitterly about hangovers as if
such things were curses leveled by God
against them for utterly inexplicable and
vindictive reasons. There’s lots of nervous
chatter, jovial insults flying back and
forth, pilots quipping about the cuisine at
Chez Virgil, Virgil bitching in turn about
the food budget —
And then Stern arrives. The room
grows silent. Stern speaks quietly, but his
voice carries throughout the hangar as he
begins.
“We’re going to repo a Maxima Gold
Card.”
Commotion. Gwen hoots and claps.
Billy and Tex exchange high fives.
Richards appears anxious, Janet greedy,
Miguel startled — the reactions vary, but
no one is unaffected by the announcement.
A Maxima Gold Card. The most
coveted object in all the world. Available
to only the megawealthy, the most
obscenely, decadently affluent citizens of
the earth, it provides the bearer with
unlimited credit, and is what Maxima
Corp terms an “electronically secure
credit line” — in other words, no one, not
even Maxima Corp, can imprint, update,
download or otherwise tamper with a
Maxima Gold Card. Charges are noted by
computers at point of purchase, but the
Maxima Gold Card is an old-fashioned
“read-only” card, keyed to the user’s
thumbprint. This feature provides the
ultimate fiscal security in an era of
hackers and electronic theft. But it is the
SUDDEN DEATH •
July 2011
17
Day 2
Day 2