Flash Point (38 page)

The aircrew laughed nervously. Woods tried to join in with sufficient sincerity so he wouldn’t stand out. He glanced at Pritch, who was standing in the corner behind the SDO desk. She looked as if she was going to faint.

“Not only do they say they saw F-14s in the battle, but they say the F-14s had the skull and crossbones on their tails,” CAG said. “And there’s more. Syria said they aren’t basing this accusation only on visual sightings. Several of their pilots claim their wingmen were shot down by F-14s. They claim that Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles were used. A couple of pilots themselves claim to have been shot down by Tomcats.”

The officers dismissed the accusation as so much nonsense. “That’s not all,” CAG said, frowning. “The Syrian Ambassador said that they were
sure
.” He lowered his voice and took a step forward. “Their electronic warfare people identified the F-14 radar.”

Woods tried not to hyperventilate. The pilots and RIOs were silent, wondering suddenly if it was somehow true, but unable to imagine how it could be.

“If anyone has anything to say, I would like to hear it,” CAG said softly. He stood in front of the group and waited for someone to speak.

Woods tried not to draw attention to himself. He began to sweat, and told his body to stop sweating. He knew he couldn’t look at Big, or Wink, or Sedge. Any knowing look would be intercepted by the CAG, or someone else, and all would be lost. They had never discussed what to do if found out. Lie? Lie boldly? Say nothing? Lie to protect others but not yourself?

Woods admitted to himself that he hadn’t thought it through in the infinite detail he should have. They never should have turned on their radar. Just because he wanted the kill. No, he thought, because he wanted to live. Because the Flogger was coming after them and was going to kill them if they hadn’t turned on the radar. He had to.

But he thought he had all possibilities covered. He had told himself that if they closed in on him, if they discovered what had happened, he would stand up courageously and announce what had happened, and tell the world that he was proud of it.

But he wasn’t proud anymore. He was scared. Officers began to stir. Nobody wanted to even touch the subject, or risk being the focus of some investigation.

Bark stood up and crossed to the other side of the ready room from the CAG. He looked at the squadron. “Any of you have anything to say?” he asked, sweeping his eyes over them. “Who was on the flight schedule yesterday?” he asked.

Woods thought Bark’s gaze rested a little longer on him than it did on the other officers.

“CAG,” Bark said, “when was this supposed to have happened?”

“They didn’t give a time. Sometime yesterday, during the air battles.”

“But the reports I’ve read said there were several battles, going on most of the day.”

“That’s right. We don’t know the actual time.”

Bark smiled. “Well, are they saying there were Jolly Roger Tomcats there all the time?”

The other officers smiled, realizing the ridiculousness of such a statement.

“I don’t think so,” CAG said. “Sounds like one section to me.”

Bark rubbed his chin, his brown eyes intense and thoughtful. “They say these Tomcats shot down ‘several’ MiGs?”

“That’s right.”

“How many?”

“Between four and eight.”

Bark whistled. “That’s pretty good work. And with missiles?”

“That’s right,” CAG confirmed.

“If they shot down four to eight MiGs, there should be four to eight missiles missing. Right?”

CAG thought for a second. “Right.”

“Let’s inventory the missiles.”

“Great idea,” CAG said. “Do it.”

“Yes, sir, sure will,” Bark replied.

CAG turned his gaze back toward the aircrews. “But I want to hear from the officers in your squadron. I want to hear from them that they
weren’t there
.”

“Sir, you asked them if they had anything to say, and they didn’t.”

CAG paced in front of the squadron. “How could the Syrians have been so wrong about seeing F-14s?”

Bark smiled. “I’d like to meet the MiG pilot that can tell the difference between an F-14 and an F-15 in the heat of the battle. Both have two tails, two engines, nice radome shaped noses, basically the same color unless you see them together — I have trouble sometimes when we fight F-15s. Easy mistake. Look at World War II — U.S. pilots shot at
American
planes thinking they were Japanese. Happens all the time.”

“But why would they say the planes had the skull and bones on the tail?”

“Because we’re the most famous Navy fighter squadron in the world!” Bark replied.

“Ooorah,” one officer said loudly, endorsing the accolade.

Bark went on, “We’ve been in movies, commercials, you name it. Nearly every book you see about F-14s has our plane on the cover. Every model made of the F-14, just about, has our paint scheme on it. It’s everywhere. It’s probably the only one they know about. Hell, CAG, that’s why VF-103 changed its name to the Jolly Rogers when the Navy decommissioned VF-84. We didn’t want to see that great tradition die, so we became the Jolly Rogers.”

CAG hesitated, his confidence in his information faltering. “What about the radar? They detected the F-14 radar.”

“I’ll bet they had the F-18 radar too, and our E-2C,” Bark replied. “It’s a powerful radar. Those electrons keep going — I’ll bet you could pick them up on the moon.” His eyes searched the room. “Who’s our NATOPS RIO? Wink?” Wink raised his hand. “How far you figure an F-14 radar could be picked up by ESM? More than a hundred miles?”

Wink nodded. “Way over two hundred miles. Probably could detect it on the moon. Literally.”

“They probably were being
bombarded
by F-14 electrons. No news there. We were flying all day, and radiating the entire time. No reason not to. We didn’t even know about the air battle. This sounds like sour grapes to me. They know we were in port the day before. They’re probably just trying to make us look bad. To tie us in. Trying to throw blame around for their rout. As if the Israelis need our help.”

Maybe there was an explanation, CAG decided. He surveyed the room slowly, trying to find something that seemed out of place in the demeanor of the officers. “Well,” he said to Bark, “I guess we’ll know for sure if we’ve got a problem when that missile inventory is completed.”

“Yes, sir, we sure will.”

“I want CAG Ops to do the inventory.”

“Yes, sir, no problem,” Bark said.

CAG hesitated and then made his way out of the room. The officers breathed easier.

Woods sat at one of the tables in the dirty-shirt wardroom with his squadron mates.

“What do you think?” asked Easy, holding the lasagne on his fork in mid-air, his elbows resting on the table. “We now have evidence CAG has lost his mind. Do we do the
Caine Mutiny
thing and have him removed, or what?” he said, smiling.

“How could he buy what the
Syrians
say?” asked Big. “Have they
ever
said anything that was true?”

“You think he really bought it?” Sedge asked.

“Did you see his face?” Big asked. “He looked like he was going to kill somebody. All because the Syrians claimed to have picked up an F-14 radar.”

“He was really intense,” Easy said. “I thought he was gonna explode.”

“Depends on that inventory, I guess,” Terry Blankenship, the Machine, said in his usual mechanical way. “Like they’re going to find a bunch of missiles missing,” he added. He glanced at Gunner Bailey, who was sitting quietly at the end of the table. “Gunner, you’d better hope to hell your brain-surgeon ordies haven’t lost seven or eight missiles on this cruise.”

Gunner Bailey drank slowly from his glass of red bug juice, then put it down. “We inventory all the time,” he said. “There aren’t any missiles missing. Could have told him that,” he added. He took another sip from his glass and looked knowingly at Woods, who found himself breathing easily again for the first time in an hour.

Sami held the paper in his hands and read it quickly. The Arabic flowed. It was printed neatly in the newspaper and was easy to read even though his was a fax copy. The others in the room waited for him to finish. When he finally looked up, Kinkaid spoke first. “Well?”

“We’re in deep shit—”

“Yeah? Maybe
he
is. What does it say?”

“Well, first, it’s in
Al-Quds al-Arabi
. That’s the most authoritative Arabic paper in Europe. Published in London. They printed the entire communiqué. Very nicely done.”

“What the hell does it say?” Kinkaid yelled impatiently.

“The title is: ‘Declaration of War’ — actually Jihad — ‘of the World Islamic Guardians against the Jews and the Crusaders.’ ” He read, then continued. “According to the newspaper it was faxed to them under the signature of Sheikh al-Jabal. The Arabic is incredible. Poetic . . . He starts off with a bunch of stuff from the Quran and the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad . . . then he says: ‘Since God laid down the Arabic Peninsula and created the Arabs for the land east of Europe, no calamity has befallen this land like the Crusades, which the Europeans brought here a thousand years ago and continue to this day, now carried on with their puppets, the Jews. The Crusader-Jewish alliance has ruined the verdure of the land, eating its fruits and destroying its people; this when the nations contend against the Muslims like diners around a table of food.’ “ Sami motioned with his hand, indicating he was skipping the totally unnecessary. “ ‘The facts are known to all . . . ’ Then he lists the three main grievances: ‘First, The United States is occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of its territories, plundering its riches, overwhelming its rulers, humiliating its people, threatening its neighbors and using bases as a spearhead to fight against the neighboring Islamic peoples. The true nature of this occupation is now made clear by the continuing American aggression against the peoples of Syria, Lebanon, and Iran.

“ ‘Second, despite the immense destruction inflicted on the Iraqi people at the hands of the Crusader-Jewish alliance, and in spite of the appalling number of dead, now exceeding a million, the Americans — never satisfied — nevertheless tried to continue and repeat the dreadful slaughter against Iraq and now spread their death to other countries in the region.

“ ‘Third, while the purposes of the Americans in these wars are religious and economic, they also serve the petty state of the Jews, to divert attention from their occupation of Jerusalem and their killing of Muslims in it.

“ ‘These crimes amount to a clear declaration of war by the Americans against God, his Prophet, and the Muslims. This condition calls for Jihad, according to the Ulema and the Sharia.” Sami glanced at his listeners, explaining, “This is the
fatwa
— the ruling. It holds that: ‘It is the duty of every Muslim to kill Americans and their allies, both civil and military. It is an individual duty of every Muslim who is able, in any country where this is possible, until the Aqsa Mosque’ — that’s in Jerusalem,” he said, looking up at the now horrified faces of the task force members, “ ‘and the Haram Mosque’ — in Mecca — ‘are freed from their grip and until their armies, shattered and broken-winged, depart from all the lands of Islam, incapable of threatening any Muslim.’ ”

Sami, chilled by the language before him, forced himself to keep reading. “He cites some Quranic verses, then continues: ‘By God’s leave, we call on every Muslim who believes in God and hopes for reward to obey God’s command to kill the Americans and plunder their possessions wherever he finds them and whenever he can. Likewise we call on the Muslim Ulema and leaders and youth and soldiers to launch attacks against the armies of the American devils and against those who are allied with them from among the helpers of Satan . . . ’ And he goes on with more quotations from Muslim scripture.

“That’s about it. I could explain most of the Quran references if you want. He’s extreme, but I’ve got to say his beliefs are not that unusual in much of the Islamic world.”

“Who does this guy think he is?” Kinkaid whispered furiously. “How the hell can he declare war on the United States?”

“He must buy that Syrian bit about the U.S. Navy going into Lebanon with Israel. That was more effective than we expected.”

“How could he believe
that
? As if we’re going to send a couple of airplanes with the Israelis. We have
never
operated with them! What would we accomplish? Some people will believe anything. So,” he said to Sami, “what do you make of it?”

“Pretty simple. He wants a war with the United States.”

Kinkaid gritted his teeth. “Maybe we should give him one.”

Bark sat at the console in a small room on the
Washington
that controlled the PLAT cameras. It also had a station to replay tapes from previous landings since LSO’s occasionally reviewed the tapes. Once in a while the Air Boss came down and watched a tape. Whenever there was an accident the station got quite a workout. But this was the first time any of the Petty Officers had seen a Squadron Commander watch a normal landing of one of his squadron’s planes over and over again. Especially a three wire. They glanced at each other and shrugged. If a commander wanted to sit there all day and look at landings, it was fine with them.

Bark rolled the tape backward and forward. Regular speed, slow speed, stop action, every way he could. Woods’s plane was coming back from the first hop after they’d pulled out of Haifa. Bark leaned forward, easing the cramp in his lower back from the metal chair he had been sitting on for too long. The missile inventory had gone fine. There wasn’t one missile missing. That should have ended it. But Bark wanted to check everything. He had a feeling. Woods and Big had come back awfully sweaty.

He studied the images of Woods’s F-14 coming aboard the ship again. Suddenly he slapped a large button on the console and froze the image on the screen. He studied it. There was a dark area, perhaps a shadow, perhaps carbon, on the Sidewinder missile rail on the left side of the airplane. But the missile was still there. They
couldn’t
have shot any missiles, Bark thought to himself. Even if the Gunner has faked the missile records, that wouldn’t explain how Woods had missiles on his airplane when he landed. Can’t reload in the air. They sure weren’t reloaded on deck. He could see them. He slapped the button again and the film continued. He stood and stretched, checking his watch. Not time for chow yet. He debated inspecting Woods’s airplane. Might as well. “Thanks,” he said to the Petty Officers as he stepped out of the small room and headed to the hangar deck.