“You must have one of everything in there,” Green continued after a moment.
For the first time in their acquaintance, Symington looked embarrassed. “I never asked for the f*****g things, they just kept giving them to me. Look, fellas, forget you ever saw them, okay?” He closed the box and struggled for a smile. “I only use them to impress the broads, anyway.”
Nevertheless, Hawker and Green came away from the incident with a new respect for their friend.
The trio packed their few belonging and left the base as civilians for the first time in fifteen years. Each of them was more nervous than he would have cared to admit. The bus that took them into town was small, light-weight, and ran on battery power rather than gasoline. Green said he’d been expecting vehicles that rode on cushions of
