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Lord to save him from smartass Air Force majors. To think, Willy, that we depend on you to protect this great nation of ours in time of war.’
    Willy noisily pulled across one of the red-and-gold Mexican kitchen chairs, and sat down on it, propping one angular leg across the other. ‘You don’t know how damn hicky you are,’ he said. “The reason I spent all night in the armoury was because single-handedly and unaided I have discovered a flaw in our air-to-air radar systems. Now, what do you think about that?’
    ‘What should I think?’ asked Daniel.
    ‘What should you think? You should only think that you have sitting in your humble little kitchen the greatest genius in ordnance and navigation systems in the entire United States Air Force. And that’s just for beginners.’
    ‘Have some coffee, Daniel enjoined him.
    Willy was unusually disconnected and disarrayed-look-ing for an Air Force major, particularly an Air Force major who flew regular tactical training missions in a jet airplane
    which could fly at 920 mph and had cost the American taxpayer something over $18 million. He was thin, Willy, with a large hatchet nose, and bright dark eyes. He had been married once, years ago, but his wife Nora had left him during Viet Nam, and he had sworn to himself that he would never try marriage again. Instead, he had devoted his on-duty hours to familiarizing himself almost fanatically with the Air Force’s new and sophisticated weapons systems, becoming an amateur expert in radar and guided missiles; and his off-duty hours to Chivas Regal, poker, and scandalous womanizing. He was the only officer in the Air Force who had completely overhauled a Boeing 8-1 defensive radar system single-handed, and the only officer in the Air Force who had actually succeeded in tugging the white nylon pants off Corporal Sherry P. Kearns, the Junoesque but notoriously inflexible secretary of General Tailpipe’ Truscott, at Nellis Air Force Base.
    Willy was Nebraskan by birth; rangy, funny, but also very good at what he did, an Air Force man through and through. If his wife hadn’t left him, and if he had behaved himself, he could have been a major-general by now, on $38,000 a year. But he had remained a major for six years, while younger and correcter men were promoted over his head, and his latest posting to Williams AFB to train inexperienced young pilots on F-15 Eagles had been an unmistakable message from Tactical Air Command that he could expect to rise no further. He called Williams ‘the Graveyard of Dreams’.
    He hadn’t quit the Air Force. There was nothing else he could do, not happily, at least. But now and then, when he was drunk, his chagrin rose to the surface like the boiling bubbles from a sunken submarine, and he foully cursed all wives, and all superior officers, and most of all he foully cursed himself.
    He sipped his coffee noisily, and helped himself to a handful of chocolate-chip cookies. ‘I can’t wait to lay all this stuff on Colonel Kawalek’s desk. I can picture his face already. “Well, Willy, what’s all this, Willy? What do you
    mean our radar’s up shit-creek? Apart from being distasteful, Willy, it’s politically impossible.” ‘ Willy did a particularly cruel impersonation of the blustery Kawalek.
    Daniel peeled strips of bacon out of a greasy plastic pack, and laid them in the skillet. ‘Is it serious, this flaw you’ve found?’
    ‘Is it serious? Was Hiroshima serious? Of course it’s
    serious.’
    Willy munched cookies and swallowed coffee as if he were trying to win himself a place in the Guinness Book of Records as the man who gave himself indigestion the fastest.
    ‘Well, are you going to tell me?’ asked Daniel.
    ‘It’s very technical,’ said Willy. ‘I’m not sure I could explain it to a short-order cook.’
    ‘Restaurant proprietor, if you don’t mind.’
    ‘Whatever. It isn’t easy to understand, not unless you have a moderate grasp of the principles of X-band