Final Flight (8 page)

“Yes.” The toe began its back and forth motion.
“Are you agreeing with me merely to avoid
unpleasantness, or do you really intend to help us and
spare your wife the agony we can inflict?”

“You said … my wife…” Qazi placed both
feet on the floor, leaned forward and slapped the
quaking man several times. “Bring in the other man,”
he said to Ali in Arabic. A cursing Sakol was
dragged in by four guards and lashed to a chair. Ali
removed the blindfold and slapped him into silence. He
did it with vigor, Qazi noticed. The guards
assumed a position at the door.

“Another man with a secret. You Americans
seem to be up to your eyes in filthy little
secrets.”

“Please, mister,” Sakol begged. “For Christ
sake, let’s talk about this. I didn’t mean
to hurt her. It was an accident…” Ali’s open hand
on Sakol’s face made a dull smack. And
another. He began to weep.

“Let me introduce William James
Moffet, Jarvis. He is a technician with some
experience and a taste for young women. Unfortunately
for them, they rarely survive his attentions.
Moffet shall assist you in assembling the instruments.
Now I am going to have you taken back to your cell where
you will be given food and water and a pencil and paper.

After you have eaten, you will make a list of the
material you will need to construct these devices. Tomorrow
morning at nine o’clock you will be brought back here. I
shall examine your list and question you about it. You had better
have all the answers tomorrow morning, Jarvis, or your
wife’s humiliation shall begin before the sun sets. Do
you understand me?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, sir.” He snuffled
uncontrollably, in little gasps. “I don’t
think you do, Jarvis. I don’t think you do.” He
produced a large black-and-white photograph which
he held in the light. He watched the man’s eyes
slowly focus. The picture was of Jarvis and a
boy, about six or seven. Jarvis had the boy’s
penis in his mouth.

“Guards, take them to their cells.”

THE ROAD ran south through a parched brown
landscape. Heat mirages obscured the horizon
in all directions. Still Qazi stared out the window
at the barren earth as Ali kept the
Mercedes at over a hundred and twenty
kilometers per hour. They passed an occasional
truck, but no other cars.

Qazi’s boyhood had been spent in country
like this, living with his uncle and his family. They had
lived in a small village and his uncle had been
a shepherd. Qazi’s earliest memories were of
dust storms and foul waterholes and the aroma of sheep
and camels.

He had been about thirteen when his uncle’s only
three camels had been stolen. He had never
forgotten the look of despair on the old man’s
face as he examined the camels’ leather hobbles,
severed with a knife.

The family’s journey across the harsh terrain,
following the flock as it grazed, would be difficult
without the camels, if not impossible. A third of the
assets his uncle had worked a lifetime for were gone
into the desert. The old man had borrowed four
camels from his neighbors and, together with Qazi and
his two sons, had set off after the thieves.

They rode for a week across the rock and hardpan.
The nights had been bitter the sun merciless. The
wind had an edge that chapped exposed skin, then
opened it and scoured a bleeding sore. The
wind had wiped out the tracks of thefieeing thieves
by the second day. They followed the trail of dung
thereafter, until it too gave out because the thieves
weren’t pausing to let the camels graze on
thorns. Not that there were very many thorns. The desert had
become a hot, empty hell a wasteland of
smouldering stone under a pitiless sun.

His uncle stared at the featureless horizon
while the boys fingered their Enfields and looked
helplessly about, tired and frightened and desperately
weary. “The well at Wadi Hara,” his uncle
finally said and goaded his camel into motion. “Not the
closest waterhole, which is Wadi Ghazal “his
elder cousin said, “but the closest uninhabited one.
The Mami live at Wadi Ghazal, and they would not
steal our camels.”

Never before had Qazi rode so long and drank so
little. They were baked by day and frozen by night. His
tongue became a lump ofuselessfi’esh and his lips
bleeding sores. But day by day the excitement had
increased.

The thieves would be at Wadi Hara with the camels.

The men checked their Enfields every evening, and
Qazi practiced aiming at rocks. How
would it feel to aim at man? How would it be to hear the
whine of bullets? How would it be if one struck
him? Would he be able to stand the pain? Would he die?
The emptiness of the desert now had a new taste a
new feel. He heard the sounds and felt the wind as
he never had before.

An hour south of the capital, Ali slowed and
turned from the main road to an unmarked track that
wound across the natural contours of the land.

Immediately beyond the crest of the second ridge away
from the highway they encountered a roadblock.
Uniformed soldiers approached the car cradling
submachine guns. Ali rolled down his window to show
his identification. The smoldering air filled the
interior of the car.

They rolled on through the sand and rock. After another
fifteen minutes a military post appeared. Ali
stopped before an unpainted, rambling two-story
wooden building and both men got out of the car.
Qazi stretched and let the furnace heat engulf
him. “It feels good, eh, Ali?”

“Personally, Colonel, I wish we had some
rivers and trees and grass.

“Explain the device again.” Qazi stared across
the waist-high table at Jarvis, who had
cut himself several times that morning when he had been
allowed to shave for the first time. Pieces of toilet
paper clung to the gouges in his jowls. The men stood
in a large room. The only illumination was the
summer sunlight coming in the three open windows.

Even with the breeze it was very hot and Jarvis was
sweating.

“The weapon has numerous safety devices
placed in the firing circuit.

Upon release from the aircraft, a jolt of
220-volt direct current ignites a
pyrotechnic squib. The heat from the burning squib
is converted into an electrical current that charges
a lithium battery. It happens quickly. The
safety devices are between the battery and the
detonators.”

Jarvis picked up a bundle of leads with
alligator clips attached.

“These attach to the battery. Basically, I have
rigged up a timer, so you set these dials,” he
touched them, “and at the end of the set period, current
will run from the battery directly to the
detonators.”

He picked up another wire bundle with
alligator clips on the end.

“These attach to the detonator circuits.”

“What about the weapon’s safety devices?”

“Oh, they are still in the weapon, but they are
bypassed. Once this thing is properly hooked up,
the bomb will go nuclear at the end of the period set
on the timer.” He pointed to the seventh trigger. “The
radio in that one will receive the signal and that will start the
timer.

So you could initiate the firing sequence by radio and
have whatever time was set on the timer to leave the danger
zone.”

“We don’t want this bomb to blow up in our
faces while we handle it or as we hook it up.
Is there any way to leave the safety devices
installed and still allow the weapon to be triggered
remotely?”

“No way.”…Jarvis shook his head and his jowls
quivered. “Absolutely no way. The installed
circuitry requires that you drop the bomb, let
it free-fall for over ninety seconds
continuously. Then the radar altimeter in the weapon
is enabled, and when the weapon reaches the preset
height above the earth, it detonates. There are over
a dozen safety devices in all. There is no
way to physically satisfy all those
parameters unless the weapon is used as it is
designed to be used-that is, dropped or tossed
by an aircraft. So these safety devices must be
bypassed. And once bypassed, there are no
safety devices.”

“And how do we ignite the pyrotechnic squib
that charges the weapon’s battery?”

“This thing down here.” Jarvis led the way to the end
of the table.

“I’ve rigged four automobile batteries in
series and used a voltage regulator and a
capacitor. The juice is stored up and then fired
as one brief jolt of direct current.”

He paused and looked at the device. “You
wire this contraption to the battery in the weapon. The
timer triggers it. That’s all there is to it.”

“Will these things work?”

Jarvis mopped his brow with a shirttail. The
bits of toilet paper looked grotesque against his
pasty skin. “Yes, they’ll work.”

“Will they, Moffet?” Qazi asked Sakol.

“They should. Actually both these things are pretty
simple.” Qazi bent down and examined the wiring
and workmanship on the battery charger. Finally he
straightened up. “Show me.

It took only a minute to rig the battery
charger to a voltmeter. Jarvis performed the task
smoothly, with no lost motion, as Qazi and Ali
watched. When all was ready, Jarvis used a
portable voltmeter to check the charge on the
automobile batteries. Then he pushed a switch
on his device. The needle on the voltmeter on the
output wire swung and stopped. Qazi examined
the reading.

“See, I told you it would work.”

“Now the safety bypass device, please.”

This instrument took several minutes to rig. All
the input wires were connected directly to the battery
charge device since Jarvis had no battery
capable of storing the energy required in only a few
milliseconds. Separate voltmeters were
connected to each of the dozen output wires.
Colonel Qazi dialed in one minute on the timer
and watched it tick down. While it ticked,
Jarvis triggered the battery charger. At the end of the
minute, the voltmeters on the output wires
pegged. Qazi examined each one.
“Satisfactory, he said at last.

“Now build me six more of each of these. Then we
will test them all.”

Jarvis mopped his brow again with his shirttail, which
by now resembled a cleaning rag. “Listen. You have
what you wanted.

Anyone can duplicate these. Moffet here is quite
capable.” He stopped as his lower lip began
to tremble uncontrollably.

Qazi stood silent, expressionless, his hands
limp by his sides. Ali moved toward a wall and
Jarvis followed him with his eyes.

“Go on.

“I’m Jewish,” Jarvis blurted.

Qazi slowly folded his arms. In the silence you
could hear the bleats and cries of children coming through the window from the huts across the empty street.

“I don’t know where you are going to get these
weapons. Maybe you have them already.” Jarvis took
a step forward. “But for God’s sake, man,
don’t make me a part of it. You can’t.”

“Get on the floor.”

“What?”

“On your knees. On the floor.”

Jarvis looked desperately from face to face.
Sakol was staring stonily out a window, oblivious
to the scene. Ali stood in the shadows with a trace of a
smile just visible on his lips. Qazi’s
face was expressionless, without mercy or emotion of
any kind.

“I will not repeat myself,” Qazi said softly.
Jarvis slowly sank to his knees.

Qazi stepped forward and looked down on the man.
“In this position you forfeited your rights as a man, as
a Jew, as a human being. You forfeited your life.
Now you will obey my orders or you will force us to smear
your wife with your slime.”

Jarvis was sobbing.

“You will do as you are told. You will do precisely
and exactly as you are told and you will attempt no
evasions or subterfuges. You will concern yourself only
with performing the tasks I set for you. You have lost the
right to make moral judgments on the affairs of men.
You have cut yourself off from your fellow Jews and from your
family. We are all that you have left.”

Qazi seized Jarvis’ chin and forced his head
up. He stared into the watery eyes. “I’m all that
you have now.

At last he removed his hand and motioned to Ali,
who seized Jarvis by an arm and jerked him to his
feet, then propelled him toward the door.

After the door closed behind them, there were only the
dusty shafts of the early afternoon sun.

Qazi bent to the devices on the table.
“Nicely played, Colonel,” Sakol said.
“Your reputation for manipulating overweight
sexual deviates is well deserved.”

The amplified call of the muezzin came through the
windows and filled the room. “Allah is most
great, I testify that there is no god but Allah,
I testify that Mohammed is the Prophet of
Allah, come to prayer, come to success, Allah is
most great, there is no god but Allah.” Even
here, at this army base in the desert, the call of the
faithful was part and parcel of life. The workmanship
was excellent, Qazi decided finally. Each wire
was of equal length, each was connected with a
conservative little solder dollop, nothing sloppy
or makeshift.

“But it’s all an act, isn’t it, Colonel?
Just an act to impress Jarvis and Ali and whoever
Ali whispers to. You have no intention of really using
a nuclear weapon.”

Sakol sensed movement behind him and turned to see
that Qazi had an automatic pistol leveled at
his face, a lethal little Walther PPK, Sakol
noted professionally.

“El Hakim is insane, but you aren’t,
Qazi. You know that Israel has nuclear
weapons and, if pressed too far, will use them. You
know that pushing the nuclear button would remove the
Arabs from the human race.

You know all that, Qazi. So what’s your game?”

“You talk far too much, Sakol. I understand now
why the Americans left you to die in that prison in
Afghanistan.”

“They were playing games, too.”

“Just one more word and I will finish what the
Russians started.”