The Agent's Daughter by Ron Corriveau Page A

when
her dad yelled up to her that it was time to go. Her dad was not in
a mood to talk either. He had to be to the airport in less than an
hour, and he was already starting to go through the pending mission
in his head. With her brother in the car, though, the drive was
anything but quiet. After they backed out of the driveway and drove
down their street, he started right in.
    “ I’m a pretty big hit with
the ladies,” Travis said, looking over at Melina.
    She had planned on looking out the window
and stewing about Angela for the whole drive to school, but this
was too good to ignore.
    “ What do you mean, ‘I’m a
pretty big hit with the ladies?’” Melina asked.
    “ Just what I said,” Travis
replied, now lowering his voice. “I’m as smooth as a baby’s butt.
With butter on it.”
    “ As smooth as a buttered
baby butt?” Melina said as she laughed. “Are you sure you want to
go with that visual?”
    “ Why not?” Travis said.
“What would you suggest that I use instead?”
    “ Silk, maybe. Or melted
chocolate. You never want to compare yourself to a butt. Anyway,
what makes you the ladies’ man all of a sudden?”
    “ I don’t know why,” he
said, “but lately, some of the girls in my class have been coming
up to me before class, smiling and saying ‘Hi Travis’ in some weird
girly voice. And some of them come and sit by me at lunch. They
tell me that they like my hair.”
    “ Well, you do have cool
hair,” Melina said. “And you are in seventh grade. This is about
the time that girls start to show interest. Just go with it. At
least they don’t think of you as a pest like I do.”
    Melina smiled and mussed her brother’s
hair.
    “ Hey!” he said. “You’re
messing with the source of my smoothness.”
    Talking with Travis helped keep the
situation with her dad and Angela from her mind, but after he was
dropped off, and Melina and her dad were alone, there was absolute
silence. Melina was still focusing on her dad’s trip. She was never
happy when he left on a trip, but this was even worse. He was
leaving her with some woman ex-coworker with whom he seemed to be a
little too cozy.
    She broke the silence. “Are we going to see
Mom this weekend?”
    “ Yes,” he said. “This is a
short trip. I should be back before you get out of school on
Friday.”
    “ Great. I figured that, as
part of my practice driving, I could drive us out there,” Melina
said.
    The practice driving. Evan had completely
forgotten that he had promised he would help her practice her
driving.
    “ Umm … good idea,” he
stammered.
    They drove into the high school parking lot
and pulled up to the curb out front. Melina got out and came around
to her dad’s window.
    “ Remember, Angela will be
at our house after school, so you can go right home,” he said as he
rolled down the window.
    He puckered his lips, and she leaned forward
so he could kiss her forehead.
    “ Have a safe trip, Daddy,”
she said as she walked toward the curb.
    “ I will kiddo.”

    ………………………… .

    “ Thirty minutes to drop,
Mr. Roberts,” said a voice in Evan’s helmet. The voice came from
one of the pilots in the cockpit of the B2 stealth
bomber.
    Nothing made Evan feel older than being
called ‘Mister’ by these young Air Force Pilots. He had tried to
get them to call him by his first name, but their military protocol
training precluded any sense of informality.
    Evan was strapped into the MAC-25 SSC in the
bomb bay of the B2. Seated in a chair next to the SSC was a woman
with a clipboard. She was Colonel Shirley Beal, the Mission
Director.
    “ How are you doing, Evan?”
Shirley asked.
    She was regular Air Force but had worked
with Evan for so many years first names had long been standard.
    “ I’m doing as well as can
be expected for being thirty minutes away from exiting a perfectly
good airplane sealed inside a giant pill,” he said as he let out an
uncomfortable laugh.
    Shirley smiled and looked down