Final Flight (13 page)

Jake stared at the crosshairs display on the
ALL in front of him and watched the horizontal
line representing the glideslope descend toward the
center of the display. As it reached the center the
throttles moved aft and the plane transitioned to a
600-foot per-minute rate of descent.

They were exactly on speed, the
angle-of-attack needle frozen in the three-o’clock
position. The plane was still in clouds, yet it was
rock-steady, descending nicely.

“You’re on glidepath, on centerline,” the
approach controller said, confirming what the instruments
were telling the pilot.

As far as Jake was concerned, these coupled ACLS
approaches, known as Mode One, were the
greatest thing to happen to naval aviation since the
invention of the tailhook. He had been making these
automatic approaches at night all the way
to touchdown for the last month, since his night vision had
begun to noticeably deteriorate. And my eyes
have probably been going downhill for years, he
told himself bitterly, and I just haven’t noticed.

He was feeling rather pleased with himself until, at one
mile from the ship, under the clouds, the crosshairs
disappeared from the ALL and the autopilot dropped off
the line.

The angle-of-attack needle rose slightly,
so Jake added a smidgen of power and stared into the
darkness for the meatball and the deck centerline lights.
They were very dim and far away.

He had to see the meatball, the yellow light between
the two green reference, or datum, lights of the
optical landing system. This visual aid defined the
proper glideslope. And he had to see the landing
area centerline lights and the red drop lights
extending vertically down the fantail of the ship. These
lights gave him his proper lineup. “Oh fuck!”

“Three-quarters of a mile. Call the ball.”
Reed made the call. “Five Zero Two,
Intruder ball, five point zero.

“How’m I doing?” Jake asked the BN.
“You’re high.”

Jake made the correction. The lights were still
too dim. He fought the controls.

When he glanced away from the angle-of-attack
indexer lights on the cockpit glare-shield, he
had trouble focusing on the meatball on the left
side of the landing area. Then when he looked back at
the indexer, it was fuzzy unless he stared at it. So
he missed the twitching of the meatball as he
approached the ship’s ramp, and by the time he saw
movement, the ball had shot off the top of the lens
system and he touched down too far down the deck
to catch a wire. The Intruder’s wheels hit and
he slammed on the power and continued on off the angle
as the landing signal officer, the ALSO, shouted
“Bolter Bolter Bolter,” over the radio.

The next pass was better, but he boltered again.
He couldn’t adequately compensate for the twitches
of the ball when he just didn’t see them.

He caught the four wire on his third
approach, mainly because he assumed he was high and
reduced power hoping it was so.

They debriefed in the Strike Operations office,
surrounded by Air Intelligence officers,
the strike ops staff’ and a half-dozen senior
officers from the A-6 squadron. The crowd was
happy, laughing. They had met the enemy and “taught
“em not to fuck with the U.s. Navy,” in Reed’s
words. Reed was the happiest of the lot. Jake
Grafton sat in a chair and watched Reed
explain every detail of the bomb run to the A-6
skipper, John Majeska, whom his peers knew
as “Bull.”

“That tracer was so bright you could read a newspaper
in the cockpit,” Reed proclaimed. “And the CAG
didn’t even blink. Man, that system was humming!
Those fucking Arabs had better stay perched on their
camel humps or they’re all going to sleep with
Davy Jones.”

When Bull Majeska turned to Grafton and
asked quietly how Reed had really performed,
Jake smiled and winked. “He did okay. Let
him crow. They were trying to kill him.”

One of the strike ops assistants answered the
ringing phone. “CAG, the admiral wants to see you
in his stateroom when you’re finished here.”

“Thanks.” Jake gathered his helmet bag and
shook Reed’s hand.

“Uh, sir,” Reed said softly. “About
that subject we were discussing earlier. Uh, maybe
I could come see you tomorrow?”

“Sure, Mad Dog.”

As Jake went out the door the crowd was rigging up
the videotape monitor to watch the tape from the
aircraft that recorded the radar and IR displays,
the computer readouts, and the cockpit conversations.
Maybe they could learn more about the sunken boat.

“So how did it go?” Cowboy Parker asked. The
two men were in the admiral’s cabin. Jake sat
beside the desk watching Parker shave at the little sink.

“They must have been packing a boatload of
explosives. It was one big blast. Either the
Rockeyes or the fire set the stuff off or
they blew it up themselves. They were on a suicide
mission.” Jake took a deep breath. “Good thing
for us that someone got triggerhappy.”

“That lot would have been pretty spectacular going
off against the side of a ship.” Parker rinsed his
razor and attacked his chin. He eyed Jake in the
mirror. “Damn good thing for us that someone got shook
when you turned on your lights and headed right at them.”

“Hmmm. Even I was surprised when I did
that.” Jake chewed on a fingernail. “We don’t
have any evidence except our word that it was a
terrorist boat. They may announce that the U.s.
Navyjust offed some poor fishermen, all good
Moslems on a sailing pilgrimage to Mecca
by way of Gibraltar and the Cape of Good Hope.
And if those guys had succeeded in damaging an
American ship, well . .

“You boltered twice tonight.” Cowboy was examining
his face in the mirror, trying to find if he’d
missed a spot. “Yeah. I couldn’t see jack.”
Jake stared at his toes. “Mode One didn’t
work, huh?”

“Quit on me at a mile.” Jake sighed.
“I’m going to ground myself at night and send a
message asking to be relieved. The good part is that
this little incident will improve morale on this tub.
Everyone can see what we’re up against and they’ll
keep their noses firmly on the grindstone.”

“Quitting smoking hasn’t helped the eyes?”

“Not that I can tell.”

“A tough way to end a flying career.” Cowboy
rinsed his face and dried it on a towel.

“Cowboy, if I didn’t ground myself, you’d
ground me. I know you.

You’re yuks and giggles and Texas corn off
duty, but you can slice the raw meat when you
have to, whether it’s living or dead.”

Parker snorted and sat down at his desk. “I
wish you were writing my fitness report.”

Jake rubbed his chin. Over eighteen hours had
passed since he had shaved and his face felt like
sandpaper. “Those Arabs. Suicides earning their
way to Allah’s big tent in the sky. Damn,
that’s scary.

What would you have done if he hadn’t started
shooting?”

Parker stroked his forehead with an index finger.
“I’m not going to take a missile hit before I
open fire. I don’t give a damn what
Washington thinks or how it reads in the
newspapers. Every ship in the force was at general
quarters tonight. Every gun was ready to fire. The
battlewagon was ready with sixteen-inchers and
Harpoons.

If one of these boats uses a radar on the
proper frequency, points its nose at a ship and
holds that heading to stabilize the gyros in a
missile, I’m going to blow him out of the water.

Right then and there.”

“The next guy won’t panic and start shooting,”
Jake said.

“They learn real fast.”

“We never suck it up and go after these guys. For the
life of me, I can’t see why it’s better to drop
bombs from an airplane or shells from a ship’s
gun than it is to just hunt the terrorists down and
execute them on the spot. Our response
to hijackings and murder is to merely send some more
ships over here to wave the flag. And salt a bomb
around every now and then.”

“Where is all this going, Cowboy?”

The admiral scowled and his right hand became a
fist. “Israel wants us in bed with them. The
terrorists are trying to push us there. The Soviets
are hoping to catch us there. Iran claims that’s where
we’ve been all along.” His hand slowly opened.
“It’s Vietnam all over again, Jake. Our
politicians have gotten sucked into taking sides,
so our diplomatic options have evaporated. Now the
only American card left is the military one,
and sooner or later Washington is going to play it.

Just as sure as shootin’.” The hand was a fist again,
rapping on the desk. “And the politicians aren’t
going to do any better here than they did in
Vietnam. Those people never learn.”

Jake Grafton’s shoulders rose a
half inch, then subsided. “Everybody but us will have
God on his side. And we’ll be in the middle.”

“If only we were in the middle,” the admiral
mused, drumming his fingertips on the tabletop. “And
everyone knew it.”

Jake stood and stretched. “Thanks for giving me
the chance to ground myself.”

The admiral’s lips curved into a hint of a
smile. “I know you, Jake.”

THIRTY SECONDS after Colonel Qazi
stepped onto the sidewalk in front of the terminal
at Leonardo da Vinci Airport with his jacket
hanging over his shoulder and his tie loosened, a sedan
slid to a halt near the curb.

He tossed his valise on the backseat and
climbed in. The woman driving had the car moving in
seconds.

“How was your trip?” she asked as she deftly
worked the vehicle through the gears. Her hair was cut
in a style common in Europe this year, medium
length and swept toward one side. She was wearing a
modest, medium-priced tan dress and casual
shoes.

Qazi scanned the back window. “I was
recognized at the airport.” He
checked the road ahead. “Drive on into Rome.”

The driver glanced at her rearview mirror.
“How do you know you were recognized?”

“I saw it in his eyes. It was the gate
attendant, as all the passengers filed past him.”
He sighed. “Ah, Noora. I’m too well
known. It’s time for me to retire.”

Noora concentrated on her driving, checking the
mirror regularly. She had grown
up in Paris. She had studied dance seriously, and
chucked it all after the allowance from her father dried up
when her affair with a fellow female student became
common knowledge in the Arab expatriate community.

She was belly dancing in a cabaret in
Montmartre when Qazi recruited her. He had
had misgivings then, and they still nagged at him
occasionally. She was physically attractive, though
not too much so, and she meshed into her surroundings
anywhere in Europe, but try as he might, he could
not break her of her distinctive heel-and-toe
dancer’s walk, the smooth, muscular flow of which
made her stick in an observer’s memory. While
high heels helped her gait, they also emphasized
the molded perfection of her legs. He used her
sparingly, only when he had to.

“Your pistol and passports are in the glove
compartment.” The weapon and passports had come
into Italy in the diplomatic pouch and Noora had
picked them up at the embassy.

Qazi removed the Walther PPK from its ankle
holster and checked the magazine and the chamber. It was
loaded. He pulled up his right trouser leg and
strapped the holster on. The silencer went into a
trouser pocket. Then he carefully scrutinized
both the passports, especially the photographs.

One passport was British, for Arnold
MacPhee, age forty-one, six feet tall,
residing Hillingdon, Middlesex. Inside was an
international driver’s license and a membership in the
British Automobile Association.

The other passport was for an American,
occupation priest, one Harold Strong of
Schenectady, New York. This passport
contained a New York driver’s license and a
medical insurance card from a large American
firm. The passports were genuine. They had been
stolen, of course, and all the pages were genuine
except for the pages that contained the physical
description of the bearer and the photograph. The paper
for the new pages had been stolen from the
manufacturers who supplied the very same paper to the
governments involved. No cheap forgeries, these; they
had been manufactured in the state passport
office by men who had spent their adult lives
printing genuine passports.

The documents contained in the passports were
forgeries, but good ones. They would pass the scrutiny
of immigration officials whose expertise was
passports.

Qazi slipped the documents into his jacket
pocket and sat back in the seat. He adjusted one
of the air conditioning vents to blow the air on him. The
heat here was less oppressive than in North
Africa, but the air-conditioning of the airplane had
lowered his tolerance. “Where will Yasim meet us?”

“The parking garage under the Villa Borghese.”
They came into Rome on the main thoroughfare from the
airport, which was on the coast, near the mouth of the
Tiber. The hills around Rome were partially
obscured by thick haze. A typical September
day in Italy, Qazi thought.

Soon the car was embedded in heavy
traffic-buses, trucks, automobiles, and
motor scooters. The exhaust fumes pumped through
the car’s air conditioning system made his
eyes sting. They passed the Circus Maximus and
circled the Coliseum, then weaved through boulevards
until they were on the Via Veneto. Ahead, the
tall umbrella pines and huge oaks punctuated
the open expanse of the Villa Borghese, the
Central Park of Rome.

“I don’t think we are being followed by a solo
vehicle,” Noora said.

Qazi said nothing. With enough vehicles and two-way
radio communications, a surveillance team would be
almost impossible to detect. One never knew if the
airport watchers had enough time to alert such a team.
The only safe course was to always assume the
surveillance team was there, undetected and watching.

Immediately after crossing the Piazzale Brasile,
Noora slipped the car into the lane that led down to the
entrance to the underground parking garage under this section of the Villa Borghese. On the second level down,
near the back of the garage, Noora slowly crept
by a parked limo.

A uniformed chauffeur was dusting the vehicle.
He wore a cap and did not look up from his task.
Noora continued on, apparently hunting for a parking
place. She descended to the third level of the
garage, drove up and down the rows, and
returned in about five minutes to the second
level. This time the chauffeur’s cap was on the
fender. No one was in sight. Noora stopped as the
limo backed out of its parking slot and the trunk
sprung open.

Qazi leaped from the sedan and tossed his valise
into the open trunk.

Noora threaded the sedan into the vacant parking
space.

Then Qazi and the girl laid down in the trunk
and the chauffeur slammed the lid closed. The
transfer had taken forty-five seconds.

The trunk was dark and their positions were cramped,
although they were lying on a blanket. Qazi and
Noora tried to ease themselves in comfortable positions as
the vehicle swayed and bounced. The safe house was
only three miles away, but the circuitous route
the driver would take would stretch the ride to almost an
hour.

“Welcome to Rome, Colonel,” Noora
whispered as he helped her unfasten the buttons on
her dress. She wore nothing under it. As she
fumbled with his trousers, Qazi tried to decide if
wearing a bra would make Noora more or less
noticeable in a major European city.
He lost his train of thought when her lips found his.

The man in the gray wool suit cut in the
English style paused briefly in the door of St.
Peter’s and quickly scanned the tourists, then stepped
to his right and let the people behind him enter. He moved
further right and scrutinized each person coming in while
he pretended to consult a guidebook. Finally the
book went into his pocket. He stood with his left
arm folded across his chest, his right hand on his chin,
raptly examining the architectural features of the
great basilica as if seeing them for the first time. On
his right, near the Pieta, he saw a man in a
rumpled black suit, with close-cropped hair and
fleshy lips. This man was also engrossed in a
guidebook. After another minute of wondrous
contemplation, the man near the door crossed to the
left side of the basilica and strolled slowly
toward the high altar. He circled it completely,
appearing to examine Bernini’s bronze baldachin from
every angle, his restless eyes actually scanning
faces and the niches and cornices above where
conceivably a man might observe the crowd.

The crowd was thin today, perhaps owing to the summer heat
outside.

Colonel Qazi checked his watch as
he consulted his guidebook again.

With the book closed in his left hand, he walked
slowly back toward the main entrance, his eyes
moving, his pace slow and even.

The man in the black suit with the fleshy face was
still near the Pieta, yet he was well behind and away
from anyone using a camera to photograph the
sculpture. Qazi paused near him and opened the
guidebook.

“I see we are using the same book,” the man
said in English. “Quite so,” Qazi replied. “Most
informative.”

“Thorough, although there are not enough illustrations.” He
had a slight accent, hard to place.

“Yes.” Qazi placed his book in his pocket
and walked toward the nearest door.

Crossing St. Peter’s Square, the man in the
black suit was fifty feet behind. Qazi paused
at the colonnades on the north side of the square
until the man joined him. Then he turned and
proceeded north through the colonnades, the other man
at his side.

“Where are we going?”

“You will know when we get there. What should I call
you?”

“Chekhov.”

“Someone in the GRU has a sense of humor.
This shatters my preconceptions. One hopes the
rot has not spread too far. As it happens, I
am called Solzhenitsyn. You are perspiring,
Chekhov.”

“It is very warm.

“They should let you leave Moscow more often,”
Qazi said as he glanced over his shoulder. “And how
have you found the Roman women?”

The Russian did not deign to reply. In a
few minutes they reached the entrance to the Vatican
Museum and Qazi paid the admission fee with lire
for both of them. Once inside he paused where he
could watch the door and consulted his guidebook. The
Russian looked about dourly and stepped across the
room, where he became absorbed in a dark
medieval painting with little to recommend it.

Finally Qazi replaced the book in his pocket
and wandered away, the Russian a few paces behind.
After five minutes of this he entered a men’s room.
Qazi stood beside a heavy Italian at the
urinals while Chekhov used a stall. When the
Italian departed, the door to the stall opened and the
Russian exited to find Qazi pointing
an automatic pistol with a silencer screwed into the
barrel.

“Very slowly, Chekhov, lean against the door.
We don’t need any visitors.” The
Soviet’s face reddened and he started to speak.
Qazi silenced him with a finger. “Do it, or this will be
a very short meeting.” Chekhov slowly placed both
hands against the door. “Feet wider apart. That’s
right. Like in the American movies.” Satisfied,
Qazi patted the man down. “What, no gun? A
GRU man without a gun …” Qazi carefully
felt the man’s crotch and the arms above the wrists.
“First humor and now this! The GRU will become a
laughingstock. But of course there is a
microphone.”

Qazi lifted all the pens from the Russian’s
shirt pocket and examined them, one by one. “It had
better be here, Chekhov, or you will have to part with your
buttons and your shoes.” It was in the third pen.
“Now turn around and sit against the door.

The Russian’s face was covered with perspiration,
his fleshy lips twisted in a sneer. “The shoes.”

Qazi examined them carefully and tossed them
back. “Now the coat.”

This he scrutinized minutely. From the
uppermost of the large three buttons on the front
of the coat a very fine wire was just visible buried
amid the thread that held the button on. Qazi
sawed the button free with a small pocketknife,
then dropped the pen and button down a commode. He
tossed the coat back to Chekhov. “And the belt.”

After a quick glance, Qazi handed it back.
“Hurry, we have much to say to each other.” He
unscrewed the silencer and replaced the pistol in his
ankle holster. He opened the door as the
Russian scrambled awkwardly to his feet.

An hour later the two men were seated in the
Sistine Chapel against the back wall, facing the
altar and Michelangelo’s masterpiece The Last
Judgment behind it. On the right the high windows
admitted a subdued light. Qazi kept his eyes
on the tourists examining the paintings on the ceiling and
walls.

“Is it in Rome, as General Simonov promised?”

“Yes. But you must tell us why you want it.”

“Is it genuine, or is it a masterpiece from an
Aquarium print shop?”

The Aquarium was the nickname for GRU
headquarters in Moscow.

The Russian’s lips curled, revealing
yellow, impacted teeth. This was his smile. “We
obtained it from Warrant Officer Walker.”

“Ah, those Americans! One wonders just how
long they knew about Walker’s activities.

The Russian raised his shoulders and lowered them.
“Why do you want the document?”

“El Hakim has not authorized me to reveal his
reasons. Not that we don’t trust you. We value
the goodwill of the Soviet Union most highly.

And we intend to continue to cultivate that goodwill.
But to reveal what you do not need to know is to take the
risk that the Americans will learn of our plans through
their activities against you.”

“If you are implying they have penetrated…

“Chekhov, I am not implying anything. I am
merely weighing risks. And I am being very forthright with
you. No subterfuge. No evasion. Just the plain
truth. Surely a professional like you can
appreciate that?”

“This document is very valuable.”

“Perhaps. If it is genuine, it certainly has
some potential value to El Hakim or we would not
desire to obtain it. If it is genuine, El
Hakim will no doubt be grateful in
proportion to the value it ultimately has for us.
If it is not genuine, the Americans have made very
great fools of you. And of us, if we do not factor in
that possibility.”

The Russian slid his tongue out and moistened his
lips. “El Hakim has yet to approve the
treaty granting the Soviet Navy port
facilities.

Anchoring privileges are very nice, but we need
the warehouses and dock space provided for in the
treaty.”

“Your masters should reconsider their position. A
strong, united Arab people friendly to the Soviet
Union and hostile to American imperialism would
certainly fulfill many of the Soviet Union’s
long-range diplomatic objectives. Yet, you
ask for the politically impossible now as your price
to assist in a great effort which will benefit you in
incalculable ways.”

“If it succeeds.”

“First you must plant the potatoes, Anton.”
The Russian sneered. “We have it and you want it.
The treaty must first be approved.”

Qazi stared into the Russian’s eyes. Then the
Russian felt a sharp pain on the
inside of his thigh. He looked down and saw the
knife, ready to open an artery. “Your belt,”
Qazi said.

“What?”

“Take off your belt and give it to me.

Chekhov complied slowly, his eyes reflecting
dismay. Qazi knelt as if to pray with the buckle a
few inches from his lips. His eyes swept the
chapel. “General Simonov, I would like to take
delivery of the manual for the Mark 58 device tomorrow.
I shall call the public telephone on the north
side of Piazza Campo deiFiori at ten
o’clock. Please follow the directions you are given and
come alone.”

Qazi laid the belt in Chekhov’s lap. The
Russian watched him join a group of American
students and leave the chapel. Chekhov slowly worked
the belt with the transmitter in the buckle through the
loops in his trousers as he wondered what General
Simonov was going to say.

Qazi sat on a bench watching the lovers and
office workers eating lunch near the lake. Through the
trees he could see the Galleria Borghese and
traffic in the Piazza le Brasile. This great
green park in which he sat, the Villa
Borghese, was one of his favorite places in
Rome. The magnificent pines and oaks, the
strolling lovers, and the squealing children seemed to him
to epitomize the best of European civilization.

He sat on a bench under the trees. This walking
area was covered with a mixture of dirt and pea
gravel. When someone walked through a shaft of
sunlight, he could see the little dust clouds rising every
time a foot came down. Beyond the walkway there was
grass, but it was spotty; the city didn’t water the
grass and it suffered from the heat and too much traffic.