Frank had made the rounds with pilots in the squadron weeks ago, asking if they’d experienced a portion of what she did. No one had. They didn’t believe Mary’s story. She must have left something out, they said. The cockpit couldn’t have given her the readouts she described. This morning he’d overheard a pilot from another squadron, some captain from Albuquerque, with mitts for hands and a smirk instead of a smile. Call sign was Roughhouse. Someone told Roughhouse that Mary’d fouled up ejection. She had. But who told him? How’d that word get out?

“And then,” Frank said, continuing, “they clamped down hard on him, put a letter in his file. Almost like they wanted to put out it was your fault, and then decided against it.”

“Maybe,” Mary said, looking down, focusing on the black glitter she’d just noticed on her sneakers. It was everywhere. Her eye went to the bar and the razzmatazz of dancing skeletons.

“It’s just like dogfights,” Frank said.

“What?”

“You don’t see it?”

“See what?” She honestly didn’t.

“Like, how it’s all related.”

Well, she could try to see it. “Uh—there’s no more dogfights. I mean, yeah. Yeah.”

“And basically, like, they trained us for that.”

“Sure did.”

“Chinese got—what—a dozen J-10s.”

“About, maybe.”

“So—that’s a ways off. Dogfights with J-10s.”

“Too late for us,” Mary said, genuinely sad about it, though still in the dark about what all this had to do with her crash.

“So we, like, best of best, drop fire.”

“Uh-huh.” They could drop ordnance on a pin. It wasn’t what Mary would have liked to do. It was definitely what Frank hated doing.

“Instead of what we, allegedly, um, by our training, should, should do …”

“… which is aerial combat, aka the dogfight.” She tried not to sound impatient. “And?”

“They’re trying to have us do something else.”

She couldn’t help it. She was exasperated.

“Like, make us into projectiles. Ourselves,” he said, leaning close to her conspiratorially. She groaned. She had to.

“Listen up,” he said, still level with her ear. “See, we got technology so advanced, Haj can’t compete. So what does Haj do? Takes up darts. A suicide bomb isn’t even a slingshot. It’s the tactical equivalent of a peashooter. But, practically speaking, strategically speaking, it works better than a fighter jet.”

“I know, but, but …” She still didn’t see.

His expression lit up. Wait, something else had his attention. She turned to see what—how could it be, but it was—Blue, as in Airman Mike “Blue” Schuyler, ordering from the bartender.

“This can’t be happening,” she said.