Final Flight (4 page)

Tarkington’s group then packed themselves into the
minuscule island elevator for the ride down to the
flight deck level. Somehow the lieutenant ended
up jammed face-to-face with Judith Farrell.
He beamed at her and she stared at his Adam’s
apple. The machinery was noisy and the whole contraption
lurched several times. “Nobody’s died in
here since last week, ma’am,” he whispered.

“I wish you wouldn’t call me “ma’am,”
“Farrell said, refusing to whisper.

“Yes, ma’am.”

When the door opened, they went down another ladder
to the 0-3 level and then through a myriad of turns
to a ready room. The tourists were greeted by an
officer who gave a little explanation of how
aircrews planned and briefed their missions in
ready rooms like this throughout the 0-3 level. He
showed them the closed-circuit television monitors
around the room on which the only show playing during
flight operations was the launch and recovery of
aircraft on the “roof,” the flight deck.

And he got some laughs with his explanation of the
greenie board that hung on one bulkhead. Every
pilot in this squadron had color marks recorded
for each of his carrier approaches, which his squadron
mates witnessed in glorious detail on the
television monitors. Green was the predominate
color and symbolized an OK pass, the best
grade possible.

Yellow was a fair grade and a few red spots
recorded no-grade or cut passes.
Apparently a pilot’s virtues and sins
were recorded in living color for all to see.

Back in the passageway one of the
reporter-photographers delayed the group almost
three minutes as he repeatedly snapped an
apparently endless, narrow passageway that ran fore
and aft. At this level the openings in the frames that
supported the flight deck were oval in shape and
only wide enough for people to pass through in single file.

“Knee-knockers,” Tarkington called them. The
passageway appeared to be an oval tube receding
into infinity. The photographer got a shot of a
sailor in the passageway over a hundred yards
away that later appeared in a German
newsmagazine. The picture demonstrated
visually, in a way words never could, just how large,
how massive, this ship truly was.

“It’s very noisy,” one of the visitors said
to Toad, who nodded politely. The hum and whine
of the fans inside the air conditioning system was the
background noise the ship’s inhabitants became
aware of only when it ceased.

“What is that smell? I’ve noticed it ever
since we came aboard,” Judith Farrell said.

“I don’t really know,” Toad replied as he
examined her nose to see if it crinkled when
she sniffed. “I always thought it was the oil they used
to lubricate the blowers in the air-conditioning system,
or the hatch hinges, or whatever.” All the other
visitors were inhaling lungfuls.

“You don’t notice it after awhile,” Toad
finished lamely.

The photographer was finished. They went down
another set of ladders and back to the wardroom where
they had begun the tour.

“I sure am glad you folks could come out today for a
little visit,” Tarkington said as he shook hands with the
men. “Hope we didn’t walk you too much or
wear you down. But there’s a lot to see and it takes
a little doing to get around.” He turned and gazed
into Judith Farrell’s clear blue eyes. “I just
might get up Paris way sometime this summer,
ma’am, and maybe you could return the hospitality
and give me a little tour of Gay Paree?”

She favored him with the smallest smile she could
manage as she ensured he had only her fingertips
to shake.

“I hope you enjoyed your tour,” Captain
Grafton said to the group.

“Very much,” the Italian woman replied as
heads bobbed in agreement.

“There’s more Kool-Aid,” Grafton gestured
toward the refreshment table, “if you’re thirsty.
Please help yourselves. The boats will be leaving in about
five minutes to take you back to the beach. Your tour
guides will escort you to the quarterdeck. If you have
any unanswered questions, now is the time to ask them.”

“Are nuclear weapons aboard this ship,
please?” The question came from one of the Frenchmen.

“The American government can neither confirm nor
deny the presence of nuclear weapons aboard any
ship.”

“But what if a war begins?” Judith Farrell
asked loudly. Grafton’s face showed no
emotion. “In that event, ma’am, we’ll do the best
we can to defend ourselves in accordance with American
government policy and our commitments to NATO.”

“Isn’t it possible the presence of this ship in these
waters adds to international tension, rather than lessens
it?” Farrell persisted.

“I’m not a diplomat,” Grafton said
carefully. “I’m a sailor: You should ask the
State Department that question.” He glanced at his
watch, then at the junior officer tour guides.
“Gentlemen, perhaps it’s time to take these folks to the
quarterdeck.”

As his group prepared to descend the ladder from the
quarterdeck to the Yes sir float
Lieutenant Tarkington again shook each hand.
To Farrell he said, “I sure am glad I had
the chance to get to know you, ma’am. It’s a small world
and you just never know when or where we’ll meet again.”

She brushed past him and was three steps down the
ladder when she heard him say loudly, “I’m sure
you’re a fine reporter, Judith, but you shouldn’t work
so hard at playing the role.” Teetering on her
heels, she turned and caught a glimpse of
Tarkington’s face, dead serious, as the man behind
her on the ladder lost his balance and almost sent her
sprawling.

“Don’t forget the Toad, Judith Farrell.”

A week later the Tangiers police received an
enquiry from Paris about the J Accuse reporter.
He had not returned from his trip nor had he filed
a story. At the hotel where he had reservations, the
bartender, a retired merchant mariner from
Marseilles, identified the reporter from a
black-and-white photograph which pictured a
middle-aged man with thinning hair and heavy jowls.
The bartender gave a tolerably accurate
description of the young woman to the police, but
he had not overheard any of the couple’s conversation.
The reporter’s bed had not been disturbed and his
luggage was missing when the hotel maid entered the
next morning. The bartender ventured the opinion that
the woman was not a prostitute, and this professional
observation caused police to make fruitless
enquiries at every other hotel in Tangiers that
catered to foreigners. Where the pair had gone after they
left the hotel bar was never established.

An official of the French government asked the
American embassy in Paris if the Accuse
press pass to the United States had been used,
and was informed several days later that it had. Two
weeks after the event a photo of the missing
journalist was shown to the naval officers who had
guided the tours. The ship was then at sea in the
Mediterranean. None of those who viewed the
picture could recall the individual, so that
information, for whatever it was worth, was passed via the
embassy to the French authorities.

The American embassy CIA man reported
the disappearance to his superiors, and U.s.
Naval Intelligence was routinely informed.

Apparently the incident was too unimportant
to be included in the summaries prepared for the
National Security Council. After all, the group
had not been shown anything classified or anything that
was not shown as a matter of course to any visitor
to the ship. Notations were made in the appropriate
computer records and within a month the incident was
forgotten by those few persons in the intelligence
community who were aware of it. The reporter was never
seen again. Since he was divorced and his only
daughter lived in Toulon with children of her own, his
disappearance caused scarcely a ripple. Within six
weeks his mistress had another regular visitor
and Accuse had another reporter at a lower
salary.

EL HAKIM, THE RULER, stood at the
window and gazed east in the direction of Mecca. He
took a deep breath. Ah, the air smelled of the
desert-it smelled of nothing at all. It was pure
and empty, as Allah had made it.

“There are enormous risks involved, Colonel
Qazi.” The colonel sat behind him on
a carpet before a low table. A hot dry wind
stirred the curtains. El Hakim continued, “The
Americans declared war at the end of the last century
when one of their warships was merely suspected of being
lost due to hostile action. The course you
propose is unambiguous, to say the least.”

El Hakim turned from the window and glanced down
at Qazi, today dressed in clean, faded khakis.
About forty, Qazi was dark with European features.
Only his cheekbones hinted at his ancestry. The
son of a British army sergeant and an Arab
girl, Qazi often moved about Europe as a
wealthy playboy or businessman, sometimes
Greek, sometimes French, English, or
Italian. He spoke seven languages without
an accent. In a military environment he stood
ramrod straight. “You have never failed us,
Qazi. And you have never attempted so much.”

The colonel remained silent.

El Hakim obliquely examined the seated
man. Qazi did not think like most soldiers, he
reflected. He thought like the spy Allah must have
intended him to be. And his ability to slip so
completely into the roles of these people he pretended to be
indeed, to actually become the man his papers said he
was-this ability troubled El Hakim, who had
heard the stories of Qazi’s feats from
informants and silently marveled, since he himself had
spent his entire forty-nine years in the Arab world,
except for one six-month visit to England
twenty years ago. On that one foreign excursion
he had felt so utterly, totally out of place,
among people who seemed to have just arrived from another
planet. One just never knew, he told himself now,
when Qazi was onstage. He was a dangerous
man. A very dangerous man. But most dangerous for
whom?

El Hakim reluctantly resumed his seat.
“Tell me about the ship.”

“Her main weapons are her aircraft. Her
deck is crammed with airplanes and to ready them for
launch requires many men and a reasonable amount of
time. It cannot be done quickly, if at all, while the
ship is at anchor and unprepared. Then she is
most vulnerable.

“She carries three missile launchers, known
as the Basic Point Defense Missile
System.” Qazi opened a reference book and
displayed a picture of the ship. “A battery is
located on each side of the after end of the flight
deck, below the level of the flying deck, and one is
forward of these two aircraft elevators in front
of the island, on the starboard side of the ship.” He
pointed them out. “The reference book says these contain
Sea Sparrow missiles with a ten-
to twelve-mile range. “Her only other weapons
are four close-in weapons systems, called
CIWS .” He pronounced the acronym as the
American Navy did, “see-whiz.”

“These are very rapid-fire machine guns aimed
by radar and lasers. Two are located on each
side of the ship.” His finger moved to the prominent little
domes that housed each installation. “These weapons
automatically engage incoming missiles and shoot
them down before they can strike the ship. Maximum
range for these systems is about two kilometers.
They are for last-chance, close-in defense.”

“Is that all the weapons the ship has?”

“At sea, Excellency, the ship is surrounded
by surface combatants with modern guns and
missiles with ranges beyond ninety miles. These
escorts also carry antisubmarine weapons.
Occasionally a large surface combatant, such as a
battleship, will accompany the task group. When the
carrier anchors, several of her escorts will anchor
nearby.”

“But the carrier? Has she any other weapons?”

“Four machine guns, about 12.5 millimeter,
are mounted on the catwalks around the flight deck
when the ship is anchored, two on each side.

These are constantly manned by marInes. These guns
could engage any unauthorized boat that comes too
close, or a helicopter. The carrier’s crew
does not carry small arms.

El Hakim arched an eyebrow. “Not even the
officers?”

“No, sir.

“And how many men are in the crew?”

“About five thousand six hundred,
Excellency.” The ruler gazed incredulously at
the photograph in the reference book, Jane’s
Fighting Ships. Although it is a big ship, he
thought, with that many peasants crammed into such tight
quarters the discipline problems must be stupendous.
He remembered the stories he had heard about the
slums of Los Angeles and New York, and
allowed his upper lip to rise contemptuously.

“Have you any photographs?”

“Yes, sir.” Qazi passed across a stack of
enlarged prints. El Hakim took the photos to the
open window and studied them in the sunlight. He had
a strong, square face set off by a perfect
Roman nose. His nostrils flared slightly above
sensuous, expressive lips. He had
been an army officer when, nineteen years ago, he
had organized and led a coup, preaching independent
nationalism. Through the years he had stayed on top
by ensuring the officer corps received a generous share of the
petrodollars from the nationalized oil industry and
by using every technological and public relations
gimmick at his disposal to enshrine himself as the
peoples’ savior while he spent the rest of the
oil money to keep them fed, clothed, and housed. He
postured on his little corner of the world stage under the
benign eye of his state media, which portrayed him as
one of the world’s movers and shakers and flooded every
radio and television set in the country with his
simple drumbeat message: American and
European imperialism -political,
economic, cultural, and technological-were
responsible for the dishonor of his people. Harried
government bureaucrats were kept on edge with a
never-ending avalanche of “revolutionary reforms”
decreed from on high, as well as a raging torrent
of orders and counter orders and orders changing the
counter orders. All the while he goaded his North
African neighbors and fluxed the military with
rumors of war. The constant confusion created a tense
domestic atmosphere, perfect for rooting
out real and potential political enemies and
ruthlessly destroying them in the name of national
security.

El Hakim’s methods certainly weren’t
unique. Military strongmen routinely toppled
governments and seized power in other Third World
nations, poor nations slowly sinking into hopeless debt
and starvation in the effluvium of the great powers’
economies. El Hakim knew just how easy it
had been for him-he knew how much money he had
spent-and through the years he had tired of the footnote
role history had assigned him.

He wanted glory. He wanted to be the man his
propagandists said he was.

El Hakim tapped the stack of photos on his
left hand and looked out the window. “The American
government,” he said slowly, “has never admitted
the presence of nuclear weapons aboard any naval
vessel. Nor,” he added dryly, “has it ever
denied it.” He thumbed through the photos again, then
turned back to the colonel. “We must be very sure,
Qazi.

Absolutely certain. Once we begin we shall be
unable to hide our involvement. We will have laid hands
on the very essence of American power.” El
Hakim paused as the shame of past insults and
outrages from the madmen who ruled America flooded
him. He threw back his head, a conscious
gesture, and spoke authoritatively. “What do
we know?”

“The weapons are aboard, Excellency.” El
Hakim stood waiting expectantly.

“An American sailor told us. We used
sodium pentothal. There is no possibility he
was lying.” Qazi extracted a cassette player
from his attache case and set it on the low table before
him. He adjusted the volume and pushed the “play”
button.

El Hakim sat and sipped coffee as they
listened. He spoke English well enough to follow
what was being said, although he occasionally missed a word
or two. He identified Qazi voice
immediately. Qazi certainly had been thorough. He
had approached the subject from every conceivable angle
and discussed details that were far beyond the level of knowledge of El Hakim. Apparently the American knew the
answers.

Even with sodium pentothal, the American had
needed encouragement to talk, Qazi reflected.
He managed to be looking at El Hakim
when the man on the tape screamed. El Hakim
sipped his coffee.

Qazi had listened to the tape many times, so now as
it played he reviewed the kidnapping of the
American. Weeks of effort had gone into selecting
the proper individual, one whose speciality was
aircraft weapons and who would be officially leaving the
ship soon. Four agents had worked the bars and
nightclubs of Naples under Qazi’s
supervision during two port calls by the USS
Carl Vinson. She was a sister ship of the United
States, slated to leave the Med soon and
sufficiently similar to the United States that the
information obtained was still valid.

Qazi finally settled on a second-class
petty officer who was going on three weeks leave
to visit a brother serving in Germany with the U.s.

Army. The team took the man off a train in
Rome and drove him to a safe house.

It had been a good operation, Qazi reflected as
he watched the cassette reels turn. The
sailor had known the answers and his absence would not be
missed for a reasonable time. He would appear to be a
deserter and only a cursory investigation would be
made, one which, Qazi was reasonably
certain, would fail to uncover even a hint of the
sailor’s real fate.

A reasonable time and a reasonable certainty were all
he could hope for.

This business-one had to be so careful and yet there were
so many unknowns. Chance or the unforeseen could betray
one anywhere. So one moved in a perpetual
paranoid fog, weighing the incalculable against the
unknowable, forever tensed against contact with an obstacle
that might or might not be there. And the nations that bordered
the Mediterranean were awash in foreign agents, as
thick as fleas on a camel. The Soviets were the
most numerous and the Israelis the most energetic and
efficient.

Qazi was certain the Mossad had a
voluminous file on his activities.

If El Hakim approved this operation, it would have
to be his last, for he was already a marked man.

El Hakim’s fingers twitched and Qazi
stopped the tape. The dictator sat silently for
several moments before he spoke. “The bombs will
alter forever the balance of power in the Mideast.” He
rose and strolled around the apartment examining objects
with eyes that were opaque.

The Jews would have to come to terms or risk
obliteration, El Hakim assured himself. That fact
alone would make him the strongest man in the Arab
world. Perhaps he should drop a bomb on Tel Aviv
before he began to talk. Even Egypt would
grudgingly yield to his leadership. He would be a
hero to the masses and he would have the bomb: that combination would melt the most reluctant heart.

He had thought deeply on this subject.
Nuclear weapons were the power base that would allow him
to force the world to its knees. The Americans, the
Soviets, the French and the British all have these
weapons, many of them, and one walked softly in their
presence because the weapons could conceivably be used.
Even the Israelis had them, though they refused
to admit it.

And every time he had tried to obtain them in the past
he had been thwarted! Immense quantities of
time, money and prestige had been expended, all
to no avail. This time there would be no necessity
to obtain some foreign government approval for a
reactor sale, no secret deals to siphon
processed fuel from an Indian reactor, no
negotiations with the Chinese-no necessity to reveal
information to foreign officials that they could sell or
give to the Americans or the British for
their own purposes.

He would use one of the weapons as soon as he
got it, so the question would not be, Will he use the bomb?
The question would be, Will he use it again?

His influence and prestige in the Arab world would
rise astronomically.

None of the superpowers has the courage to use the
ultimate weapon, El Hakim assured himself, as
he had a hundred times before. The Americans
excoriate Truman for using two on the
Japanese and luxuriate in their guilt. The
Communists are too fearful of losing their
privileges to ever let one of their number pull the
trigger. The French? That nation of decadent
sensualists whom the Algerians defeated with
rifles and pistols? Conceivably the British under
that maniac Thatcher, they might. But not for the Jews.
Not for the Americans. And the Israelis? If they
ever used nuclear weapons they would have to live with the
holocaust as perpetrators, not victims. No,
none has the courage to oppose the man who
possesses the weapon and the will to use it, he told
himself, believing it absolutely, believing it with all
his heart and soul.

I will bring down the decadent
unbelievers and the misguided imams, like
Khomeini, who understand so little of the ways of the world.
Khomeini, that fool! He thought he could build a
pure, holy nation on the insatiable thirst of the
infidels for that stinking black liquid. The old
imbecile is almost as bad as the Saudi princes,
Saddam Hussein, and all those others who lust so
for the goods of the West. Their greed is a travesty of the
Koran.

Praise Allah, I am not like them. I have the
courage and strength to live according to the Word. With the bomb will come all power, so I can purchase only what is
really needed.

I will defend the Faith. I will purify my people.

Mecca will be my capital in a united Arab
world. He started from his thoughts and glanced at Qazi,
who was examining the photographs. Yes, he thought,
Qazi is ambitious and competent and almost as
ruthless as I. Unconsciously El Hakim
flicked his hand as if at a fly.

“Ring for coffee.” He composed himself as the
servant moved about, the only sound the faint clink of
china.

After the servant departed, El Hakim seated
himself across from the colonel. “What is your
plan?”

CAPTAIN JAKE GRAFTON held his
F-14 Tomcat level at six thousand feet in
a steady left turn as his wingman came sliding in
on a forty-five-degree line to rendezvous. The
other plane crossed behind and under Jake and settled
on his right wing. Jake leveled his wings and added power
as he tweaked the nose up.

He keyed his radio mike and waited for the
scrambler to synchronize.

“Strike, Red Aces are joined and proceeding
on course.

“Roger, Red Ace Two Oh Five.
Report entering patrol area Bravo.”

“Wilco.”

It was a cloudless night with a half moon, now just
above the eastern horizon. To the west a layer of low
haze over the sea limited visibility, but Jake
knew that there was nothing to see in that direction
anyway. The Lebanese coast was a mere thirty
miles to the east, and as the two fighters climbed on
a northerly heading toward their assigned altitude
of 30,000 feet, Jake searched the blackness in
that direction. Nothing. No lights. Jake
scanned the night sky slowly in all
quadrants for the lights of other aircraft. They
seemed to be alone.

“Keep your eye peeled for other planes,
Toad,” he told the RIO in the rear cockpit.

“Uh, yes sir,” came the answer, sounding
slightly puzzled. Normally the pilot performed
routine lookout duties while the RIO worked the
radar and computer. Well, thought Jake Grafton,
let him wonder.

“What’s on the scope, anyway?”

“Not a daggone thing, CAG. Looks like one big
empty sky to me.

“When’s that El Also flight from Athens to Haifa
scheduled to be along?”