The Debtor Class by Ivan G. Goldman

Author:Ivan G. Goldman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781579624187
Publisher: The Permanent Press
Published: 2015-02-06T00:00:00+00:00

SPEED RECALLED very little of his storied exchange with the control tower in Ramstein on what turned out to be his last air force mission. He remembered a previous mission more clearly. Angry spirits swirled around the plane, but he knew he mustn’t talk about them. They were none too pleased that Logan was clipping his nails in the cockpit. Multitasking, he called it. Logan was pleased no one was shooting at him and relieved that they were already on their way back, above the reach of weather or enemy malice, making them curiously godlike. They’d brought munitions and PX items into Al Asad in Iraq, dumped it off, and picked up the boxed-up cargo of corpses destined for Dover with a fourteen-hour stopover in Ramstein. Speed was particularly rancorous because he felt relieved along with Logan. Logan was a true believer who’d become even further enamored of Operation Iraqi Freedom after an intelligence officer laid it all out in a one-hour class he took back at Lackland.

“What was the guy’s name?” Speed asked him.

“I don’t remember.”

Click. Another nail fragment fell to the briefing book cover. Logan’s eyebrows were set on pronounced, hairy Neanderthal ridges and the eyes beneath were sunk so deep into his skull they were barely visible. It was an inhuman face and disturbing, no doubt, even to the mother who bore him. The guy could act in a Planet of the Apes sequel without cosmetic assistance. Speed couldn’t stop stealing glances at his implausible face, as though maybe next time it wouldn’t look so peculiar.

“Okay, what was his rank?”

“The intelligence officer? Major, I think. I know I told you that.”

“Some insignificant desk jockey who was such a fuckup they assigned him to lay out their bullshit propaganda to your little group of cargo jockeys or whoever the fuck else was there.”

“They were all officers. Including a couple bird colonels. And he was a major. I’m almost certain.”

“So this pissant who you’re pretty sure was a major tells you something he’s been told by somebody whose job or identity you don’t know and now it’s an unassailable truth, is that right? And now I can’t even question the conclusion of this anonymous possible major.”

“This stuff gets sent down from the top. Even you know that. How come you need to know his rank anyway? You’re just pissed off you got called back. You don’t know shit.”

“I know we’re taking a load of bodies back to Dover. They left young and healthy and they’re coming back in dead pieces.”

“If we’d listened to guys like you we’d a lost World War Two.”

“You think so? Because right after World War Two we listened to guys like your major or whatever he was, and we recruited Nazis to work for us against the Russians.”

“We don’t have all the facts on that.”

“Fucken right we don’t. If they let us have the facts we wouldn’t be flying this cargo back to Dover.”

“Shut up already with all your Bolshevik bullshit. And you’re not the only guy who reads stuff, you know.

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