Final Flight (15 page)

As soon as the car was in motion, Qazi opened the
attache case. It was empty except for a stack of
paper almost two inches thick, held together with rubber
bands. He pulled away the top sheet, which was
blank, and examined the next. He was looking at a
copy machine copy of a photograph. The photo
was of the cover of a document marked “Mk-58″ and
“Top Secret” in inch-high black letters. On the
lower right was a printed four-digit number and a
hand-lettered inked notation “2 of 3.”

Qazi placed the document in an empty shopping
bag that sat waiting on the floor. He passed the
attache case to the man beside him. “Wipe
it off.”

In the front seat, Ali turned and watched with
raised eyebrows. “A man watched my meet with the
general. He chased me. I shot him.”

“We heard the sirens.”

“Who?” Ali asked. “I don’t know.”

The car stopped shortly thereafter and Ali walked
over to a large green trash barrel near a cross
walk, deposited the attache case, then returned
to the car.

At the next traffic light, Ali looked over
his shoulder at Qazi and said, “The United States
will anchor in Naples seven days from now.

“For how long?”

“The hotel reservations are for eight nights.”

“Any particular hotel?”

“Over a dozen reservations at the Vittorio
Emanuele. Some reservations elsewhere.”

“Noora,” he said to the girl, “get us two
rooms at the Vittorio.

Suites, if possible, doubles at least. And
stay out of sight.” She nodded.

Qazi turned to the young man beside him. “As soon
as you learn which rooms will be assigned to the
Americans, Yasim, wire as many as
possible.” Yasim was a rarity, an Arab with
mechanical talent. He had been the star pupil
of the national university’s engineering department when
Qazi had discovered him.

“Ali, you set the plan in motion. I will join you
at home tomorrow.”

Qazi kept checking the rear window as Noora
threaded through the traffic onto the Via Tiburtina
eastbound. When they came to the limited-access
highway that circled Rome, Ali merged with the
traffic in the high-speed lane headed south as
Qazi checked behind them repeatedly.

An hour later Noora dropped Qazi near
Castel Sant’Angelo and sped away.

The colonel now wore a short-sleeve,
open-neck pullover shirt with a little alligator on
the left breast. He walked west on the Via
della Conciliazione. Old medieval buildings
rose four and five stories above the street on either
side, while ahead of him he could see the facade
of St. Peter’s. Several blocks short of St.
Peter’s Square, he turned right into a side
street. He walked under the ancient Roman wall
that arched above the street and kept going, into one of the more expensive quarters of Rome. After
several blocks, he entered a quiet hotel with a
tiny lobby.

“I say, old chap,” he hailed the desk
clerk. “Have you any messages or calls for me?
Name’s MacPhee. Room 306.”

“No, Signor MacPhee,” the clerk said after
looking in the key box.

“There is nothing.” Qazi would have been astounded if
there had been.

No one, not even Ali, knew he was here. He
had checked in this morning, before he walked the three
miles to the Villa Borghese.

“Grazie!” the new Signor MacPhee
murmured as the clerk handed him the key.

Dusk had fallen and the street below his window was
lit with lights from the bar across the street when Qazi
finally tossed the last of the photocopied pages on
the bed and gazed out his window. Without conscious effort his
gaze moved from figure to figure on the sidewalk
below, then roved over the parked automobiles.

His eyes ached from four hours of reading. He
stretched, then slouched down in a chair and stared at the
manual lying on the bed. After a few moments he
picked up his pistol from the writing desk where he had
been reading, turned off the light and
stretched out on the bed. He laid the pistol on
top of the manual.

When he awoke, the room was illuminated only
by the glare of streetlights coming in the window. He
checked his watch. Eleven o’clock. He lay in the
darkness listening.

After twenty minutes he arose, tucked the
pistol into its ankle holster, and placed the manual
back in the shopping bag. He locked the room
door behind him and descended the maid’s staircase
all the way to the basement. The hallway was silent
and dark. The eyes of a scurrying mouse reflected
the glare from his pocket flashlight. The coal
furnace was in the second room on his right. It
looked exactly as it did two months ago when
he selected this hotel because it had this furnace.

He opened the chimney flue and the firebox
door. He placed a dozen pages inside the
firebox. Soon the fire was burning nicely.
He fed the pages in a few at a time. It took
half an hour. When all the pages were cold
ashes, Qazi latched the furnace door, closed
the flue, and climbed the stairs back to his room.

There was a telephone book in the nightstand beside the
bed. Qazi looked up a number and
dialed it. After two rings a man’s voice said in
English, “You have reached the Israeli embassy.
May I help you?” Qazi cradled the receiver.
He stared at the listing in the telephone book and
repeated the number several times to himself. Then he
replaced the book in the nightstand.

“But he did not have the manual when he got off the
airplane this afternoon,” Ali protested.

El Hakim set his jaw. “What did he do with
it?”

“Your Excellency, he must have read it and
destroyed it.”

“Why?”

“He obviously has no further use for it,
Excellency.” Ali shrugged helplessly.

I’m sure he doesn’t, El Hakim thought
savagely. Qazi has just made himself the
indispensable man. This little episode is his life
insurance. El Hakim smote the table with his fist,
then rose and went to his large world globe. He
twirled it with a finger and watched it spin. He hated
to be thwarted by anyone, but especially by one of his
lieutenants whom he did not trust. It was
infuriating. He slapped the globe and it spun so
fast the colors blurred. He adjusted the
collar of his fatigue shirt and his pistol belt as
he watched the globe spin down.

He pinched his nose between his thumb and forefinger and
tried to think like Qazi. Qazi was a devious man,
a dangerous man. A far too dangerous man.

“Jarvis,” he muttered finally under his breath.
He turned and grinned wolfishly at Ali.
“Jarvis,” he repeated aloud.

“WHO WROTE this piece Of shit?”

The three officers on the
other side of the desk sagged visibly. Jake
Grafton arranged his brand new glasses on his
nose and read from the accident report in front of
him.” “It is believed that a failure in the
liquid oxygen system led to the loss of this
aircraft. However, due to the loss of the airframe
at sea, the precise cause of this accident will never
be known.”

“Jake looked up. The three faces across the
desk were blurred. He took off the glasses.
“I won’t sign that.”

None of the three said anything.

“Has the Naval Safety Center got any
record of any other F-14 lost this way? Have you
torn down a LOX system and tried
to identify possible components that might fail?
What does the Grumman rep have to say?

Maybe the connection from the oxygen container and the
aircraft’s system wasn’t hooked up right.
What connectors or filters or whatever could have
failed and allowed ambient air to dilute a flow of
pure oxygen?

You guys have got to answer these questions.”

“Dolan and Bronsky are dead. I want to know
what killed them.”

“A defective oxygen system killed them,
CAG.” Jake picked up the report and waved it
at the officer who spoke. “This report doesn’t
say that.

This report hasn’t got enough facts in it to say
that and make it stick.

Right now this report is merely a guess.”

“We’re going to need more time, CAG.”

“Write an interim message report and send
it to the safety center and everyone on the distribution
list. Tell them what you think and what you’re working
on and tell them when you hope to get finished. Then
get cracking. I want answers. Not bullshit.
Not guesses. Real answers.”

He closed the report and pushed it
back across the desk.

“Sir, the captain’s office says there will be some
reporters out here in a few days to interview you about
that boat you sank.” Farnsworth was standing at the
office door.

Jake looked up from the maintenance report he was
reading. “When?”

“About 1400 Wednesday, sir. They should arrive
on the noon cargo plane from Naples.”

“Okay.”

“Lieutenant Reed is waiting out here to see you.
Oh … and some congressmen are going to arrive on
Tuesday. The XO is going to talk to you about it.
I think he wants you to host them.”

Farnsworth always saved the worst for last. “Who
stimulated that think?”

“YN2 Defenbaugh in the captain’s office.”
The captain’s office was the administrative heart
of the ship, sucking in paper and pumping it out in
quantities that awed Jake. And still the yeomen there
found time to tell Farnsworth everything aboard ship
worth knowing!

“When should I expect the XO’S call?”

Farnsworth looked at the insulated pipes in the
overhead and pursed his lips. “In maybe
thirty minutes or so” sir. There’ll be three
congressmen and a senator, and the captain’s office is
gonna bunk “em in the VIP quarters. Four
squadrons will each furnish one junior officer
as an escort. Captain James will meet em
On the flight deck when the cargo plane arrives,
then a trot to the flag spaces to meet the
admiral.

After that, lunch with the XO. Then I thought you might
start them on a tour of the ship with the escort officers.
We’ll set up a deal that afternoon down in the mess
hall where they can meet their constituents.

Politicians always want to shake hands with
voters. Finally, dinner with Admiral Parker in the
flag mess.

“That schedule should let them find a ton or two
of facts,” Jake agreed.

“Firm it up and brief the escorts.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“Send Reed in.”

Jake motioned the bombardier-navigator into a
chair and leaned back in his own. He pulled out a
desk drawer and propped his feet up on it.

Wait. Where were Reed’s wings? He rummaged
through his top drawer and took out the
gold-colored piece of metal. He tossed it
on the desk on top of the maintenance report and
resettled his feet on the drawer.

Reed stared at the insignia. You could buy one in
any navy exchange for about $4.50.

“You wanted to see me?” Jake prompted.
“Uh, yessir. I’ve been thinking and all. About
our conversation. Maybe I should stay in the cockpit,
at least until I get discharged.” Jake
grunted. He picked up the metal insignia and
tossed it across the desk. It landed in front of
Reed, inches from the edge. The bombardier palmed it.

“Still going to get out, huh?”

“I’ll have to think about it. Talk to my wife.”
Jake found himself searching his pockets for
cigarettes and consciously grasped the arms of his
chair to keep his hands still. “You may spend another
twenty years in the navy and never get shot at again.
It’ll be train, train, train, bore a lot more
holes in the sky, kiss your wife good-bye for
cruise after cruise.”

“It sounds like you think I should get out.”

“What I’m telling you is that this job isn’t
Tom Cruise strutting along with his balls
clicking together, ready to zap some commie before
breakfast.” The movie Top Gun was going through the
ready rooms, for about the fourth or fifth time.

“We need people with brains and ability to fill these
cockpits, but there’s no glamour. None. And you
aren’t ever going to be the guy who helps win the big
one for our side. If there ever is another major
war, the first and last shots are going to be fired by some
button-pushers in silos or submarines. Then the
world will come to an end. Everyone who isn’t vaporized
by the explosions, or who doesn’t die from burns,
shattered skulls, or asphyxiation, is going to die
slowly of radiation poisoning. And who in his right mind
would want to survive?

Civilization will be over. The birds and animals
will all die, the seas will become sterile as the
fallout poisons them … about the only creatures
that will survive will be the cockroaches.”

Jake was feeling for cigarettes again. He stared
at Reed dolefully.

“What the navy has out here on these carriers are
jobs for warrIors.

It’s an ancient and honorable profession, but just
about as obsolete today as horse cavalry. The
button-pushers who are preventing a nuclear war,
and who will wage it if it happens, aren’t
warriors.” Jake shrugged.

“Maybe they’re professional executioners.
Hangmen. Whatever the hell they are, they’re not
warriors.

He settled his new glasses on his nose and
flipped a few pages of the maintenance report.
“I understand,” Reed murmured.

“I don’t think you do.” Jake closed the
report on a finger and eyed the younger man. The people in
the navy are first-rate. Our enlisted men are the
smartest, best educated, best trained on the
planet. You’ll never work with better people. The flying
is pretty good. The pay is adequate. The
family life sucks. Most officers get
squeezed out of the service after twenty years or so
because they can’t all be captains and admirals. Now
that’s the stuff you should be talking over with your wife.
But … while you wear that uniform I expect you
to fly when you’re scheduled and to give it the best you’ve
got. Use every ounce of knowledge and brains and ability you
have. You owe that to your country.”

Jake gestured toward the door. “I have work
to do.” He spread the report open on the desk and
began to read as the lieutenant departed.