Final Flight (43 page)

When at last Qazi opened his eyes, El
Hakim had reclined his seat and was watching him with a
satisfied, contented expression.

Jake Grafton strode across the
flight deck toward the F-14 Tomcat sitting
behind Cat Three. The boarding ladder was still down and
he mounted it. “Get out, Harvey. I’m going in
your place.”

“What about the ship?” Schultz asked when he
found his tongue, his voice bitter.

“The navigator can handle it. Unstrap and get
out and give me your gear. You can brief me.”…Jake
lowered himself back down the ladder.

“CAG,” came a voice from the backseat. “Do
you want me in here?” Jake looked into the rear
cockpit. Toad Tarkington was looking back.
Jake nodded yes and motioned for him to stay put.

When Harvey Schultz reached the flight deck,
he began taking off his flight gear. “None of this
stuff will fit you,” he muttered.

“No time to wait for my stuff.” Jake paused,
then continued, “It isn’t that I don’t trust you,
Harve, but I’m the senior man and I’m the one who
should take the shit when the fan starts turning.”

“I could handle it, CAG.”

“I know that, Harve. But I’m not taking you up
on the gallows with me.

I want you to get with my staff and get as many of
these planes ready to fly as possible.
Cannibalize if you have to. If Qazi gets
away, those weapons are going to crop up somewhere, and
whoever ends up with them will have bought a lot of trouble.
You get this air wing ready to give them all the trouble
it can dish out.

Get this ship ready to fight.” Jake zipped
Schultz’s G-suit around his legs. The fit was
terrible. Schultz’s calves and thighs were much
thicker than his; it was as if he wasn’t wearing a
G-suit at all. He unzipped it. He would just
go without one.

Farnsworth came hurrying across the deck carrying
a load of flight gear.

“I heard you were going flying, CAG.”

“Thanks, Farnsworth.” Jake pulled his own
G-suit from the pile Farnsworth laid on the
deck and zipped it around his stomach and legs. Then
he wriggled into his torso harness. All this was going
on over his khakis, since Farnsworth hadn’t
brought his flight suit. “Ask the waist catapult
officer,” Jake said to Farnsworth as he pulled
on his survival vest, histo come over here and talk
to me.”

Schultz briefed Jake as he completed donning
his flight gear.

They discussed rendezvous altitudes and
frequencies. “Toad knows all this stuff,”
Schultz said. “You have two Phoenix missiles
and two Sidewinders. We had to download the
Sparrows-they had shrapnel damage.”

Jake nodded. The Phoenix missiles were the
big guns and were mounted on a missile pallet on
the Tomcat’s belly. Weighing almost a thousand
pounds each, they could knock down a plane over
sixty nautical miles away with a 32-pound
warhead when red from any angle. They were expensive,
too, costing over a million dollars each. Although
the F-14 could carry six of them, because of their
size, weight, and cost, Sparrows and Sidewinders
were the usual load. Phoenix was loaded only when
you were going hunting for bear-like now. The Sidewinders
were heat seakers and had a limited head-on
capability with a much shorter range. They were also a
lot smaller and cheaper than Phoenix, weighing
only 190 pounds each. Sidewinder was a
simple, reliable weapon.

Farnsworth came back with Kowalski and a
chief. “Morning, CAG,” the chief said. He was
in khaki trousers and a yellow shirt, but Kowalski
was still wearing grimy civilian trousers.
His once white T-shirt had spots of vomit
on it. “Where’s the cat officer, chief?”

“The only one we had aboard is dead, killed
in that hangar fire, and the rest of them are on the beach.
I’m all the khaki catapults have aboard.”

“Who’s going to launch us?”

Kowalski looked around the deck and shrugged his
shoulders. guess I am,” he said sheepishly.
“But I’m sober, sir.” The chief nodded at both
comments, then added, “He knows more about launching
procedure than I do, CAG.”

“Whose bright idea was it to flip that chopper upside
down with the JBD?”

Jake climbed the ladder into the cockpit. The
ane captain followed him up to help him strap
in. “Mine, sir,” Kowalski said, looking up
at Jake. “Didn’t you hear my orders on the
l-MC not to interfere with those people?”

“I didn’t hear any announcement, sir,”
Kowalski said. “What? I can’t hear you. “No,
sir,” Kowalski said, louder.

“Did you know that there was an armed nuclear weapon
sitting on deck over there by the island, and the leader of
that bunch had threatened to detonate it if anybody
interfered with him?”

Kowalski pressed both hands against the sides of
his head. The plane captain finished strapping
Jake in and went down the ladder. “I didn’t hear
your answer, Ski.”

“No, sir. I didn’t know that.”

Jake motioned at the catapult captain. “Come
up here.” When the man’s face was a foot from his,
Jake said, “Do you know enough to launch these planes?”

“I’ve seen the shooters do it lots of times,
CAG.”

“You can practice on me first.” Jake grabbed
a handful of Kowalski’s filthy T-shirt.
“Son, you’re a drunk. We need you sober or not
at all.

Promise me here and now, if you ever take
another drink, you’ll ask for an administrative
discharge as an alcoholic.”

Tears filled Kowalski’s eyes. His head
bobbed. “Okay,” said Jake Grafton. “Now
give everybody a good shot. Take your time and be
sure you know what you’re doing.”

“You can trust me, sir.” Kowalski said and
disappeared down the ladder.

JAKE GRAFTON eased the throttles forward
to full military power and felt the nose
of the fighter dip as the thrust of the engines compressed the
nose wheel oleo. The Tomcat seemed to crouch,
gathering strength as its two engines ripped the night
apart.

“You ready back there?” he asked Toad. As
usual, Jake’s heart was pounding as he scanned the
engine instruments. “I’m behind you all the way,
sir.”

Jake glanced over at the waist catapult
bubble as he flipped on the external light master
switch. The bubble windows were opaque. He looked
straight ahead, down the catapult track at the
dark-black void.

The GEE’S pushed him back into his seat and the
end of the deck hurled toward him faster and faster as the
howl of the engines ropped in pitch.

The deck edge flashed under the nose and then
subsided, and he released the throttles and slapped
the gear handle up as he let the nose climb to its
optimum, eight degrees up, attitude.
Accelerating nicely… 180…

190… 200 knots, still accelerating and
climbing, flaps and slats up, little wallow as they
come in…. Passing 250 knots, he looked
ahead for the lights of the KA-6 Intruder
tanker, which had been the first plane off Catapult
Four.

Toad was on the radio to Gettysburg:?…
airborne, two miles ahead of the ship, passing
two thousand and squawking. Jake eased into a left
turn and looked back for the next plane. God,
it’s dark out here!

There-a mile or so behind. Back on the gauges,
still climbing and turning, still accelerating-Jake breathed
deeply and tried to relax as his eyes roamed across
the panel, taking everything in.

The Tomcat that had launched from Catapult
Four was on the inside of the turn, closing. Jake
searched the night for the beaconing anticollision
lights of other fighters leaving the little island of light
that was the carrier. Nothing yet. Kowalski must be
taking his time. That’s good; better safe than
sorry.

Jake eased back the throttles and leveled at
5,000 feet, still turning.

The second fighter was only a hundred yards
away, closing nicely. It traversed the distance and
slid under Jake and stabilized on his right wing, on
the outside of the turn. The tanker was on the
opposite side of the ship, so Jake
steepened his turn to cross the ship and rendezvous.

“Red Ace Two Zero Six, Volcano,
over. “Volcano” was the radio call sign for the
Gettysburg.

“Go ahead, Volcano,” Toad replied.

“Roger. Uh, sir, we have received, uh…” The
transmission ceased for a few seconds. “Maybe
we should go secure.

“Roger.”

After he turned on the scrambler, Jake glanced
again at the carrier.

Still no anticollision lights on deck or in the
air. Come on, Ski! He turned his attention again
to the little collection of lights in the great black
emptiness that was the tanker. “Red Ace,” the
controller aboard Gettysburg said when Toad had
checked in again, “we have received a high-priority
message from Sixth Fleet and have relayed it
to Battlestar.”

“Battlestar” was the United States. “Sixth
Fleet has directed that there be no planes
launched to pursue the intruders unless and until
authorized by the president. Battlestar suspended
the launch after we relayed this message to them
by flashing light. Do you wish to hold
overhead until we have presidential authorization
for the mission, or do you wish to recover back aboard
Battlestar?”

Jake stole a glance at his fuel gauge as he
closed on the tanker on a forty-five-degree of
bearing. The totalizer had begun its relentless march
toward zero when he started the engines. Fuel from the
tanker would delay the inevitable, but not prevent it.

“Any timetable on when you might hear from the
president?” Jake asked as he matched his speed
to the tanker and passed under it, surfacing on its right
side.

“Wait.” The controller aboard the cruiser must
be questioning his superiors.

The tanker lights flashed, and Jake flashed
his; now he had the lead. He could see the
reflective tape on the pilot and
bombarier-navigator’s helmets whenever his own red
anticollision light swept the plane. That was
all. Just the outline of two helmets in the darkened
cockpit. The tanker drifted aft so the pilot
could look up the leading edge of Jake’s left wing.
Jake checked his right wing. The other Tomcat hung
there motionless, suspended in his black, formless
universe. “No, sir,” the controller
finally said.

“Talk to you in a minute,” Jake replied.
He glanced at his reading indicator. Passing
210 degrees. He rolled wings level when the
indicator read 80 degrees.

“Toad,” Jake said over the intercom, use your
red flashlight to signal those guys to switch to two
three two point six.” Tarkington did as
requested while Jake dialed the radio to that
frequency. “Two, you up?”

Jake asked. “Roger.” This was the other fighter.
“Shotgun’s with you.” That was the tanker crew. “Go
secure.

The response was mike clicks.

With the scrambler engaged, Jake said, “Who’s
over there in the turkey?”

He slowly nudged the throttles forward and
lifted the nose. The needle on the altimeter
began to move clockwise.

“Joe Watson and Corky Moran, CAG.”
The needle on the vertical speed indicator
swung lazily up past five hundred feet a
minute, then eight hundred, and stabilized at one
thousand. It was reassuring, in a way; he could make
these little needles do precisely as he
wished with the smallest displacement of stick or
throttles. Jake added more power and tweaked the nose
higher.

“Joe and Gorky, huh? And you, Shotgun?”

“Belenko and Smith, sir.”

“Well, this is how it is, guys. I’m going
after those terrorists.

Sixth Fleet ordered me not to. The
president will probably approve of a pursuit,
but we’ll lose the chance if we wait around. 1
Those people killed a bunch of our guys and stole two
nuclear weapons. I’m going with or without you. If
you want to go back, that’ll be fine. If you go
along, the fact that I’m the man responsible and
you’re just following orders may not be a big enough
piece of armor plate to cover your ass. I
don’t have any steel underwear to give you. Think about
it.”

Silence. He had 90 percent RPM on both
engines now and they were passing through 12,000 feet.
He was wasting fuel climbing this slowly, but the
tanker pilot probably had his throttles almost
to the stops.

“Uh, CAG,” Toad said over the intercom.
“Don’t I get a vote in this?

I’d like to stay out of prison if at all
possible. I’m pretty young, you know. Whole life
before me and all that. It seems to me-“

“‘Shut up,” Jake Grafton said. “You’re
flying with me.” The scrambler beeped. “What do you
think they might do with those weapons, GAG?”

“They’re not going to mount them on a wall somewhere as
trophies.”

The jets passed through a thin cloud layer. Above
it, Jake could see the pink light of dawn to the
southeast. The stars were fading rapidly.

It was going to be a good day to fly.

“Red Ace Two Zero Six. This is
Volcano on Guard.”

“Guard” was the emergency frequency, 243.0,
which was constantly monitored by a separate radio
receiver in each plane. “RTB. Return to base.
Contact Volcano on… and he named a
frequency.

When that transmission ceased, the scrambler beeped
in, and the voice from the other fighter said, “CAG,
we hold Palermo five degrees port.

What are we gonna do when we get there?”

“What about you, Belenko?”

“If you guys are going to tilt some
windmills, we wanta be there to watch.”

“Oh, shit,” Toad sighed.

From his seat Colonel Qazi could see the light
in the eastern sky. The airplane was heading right for the
spot where the sun would shortly appear. The windows
were round and small and covered with scratches which
suffused the pink dawn. El Hakim was in the after
part of the cabin watching Jarvis complete the task of
wiring the trigger to the bomb. In the seat behind him, the
bodyguard with the Uzi kept the gun pointed at
azi’s stomach. Qazi shifted in his seat and tried
to get comfortable. His wrist and head hurt from the blows
of the night and his entire body ached from the exertion.

He heard someone walking this way. The dictator
fell onto the seat beside the guard and leered at him.

“You know, I assume,” Qazi said, “that the
triggers won’t work.”

El Hakim’s lips pulled away from his teeth,
exposing them. “Oh yes. I thought you might do something
along those lines, soJarvis checked them before he
left Africa. He replaced the timing
devices.” The dictator leaned forward. “They’ll
work now.” Qazi looked out the window. The fiery
disk of the sun had leeped over the
horizon. “You tipped your hand when you subverted
Ali,” he said just loud enough for El Hakim to hear.
“He was not a good double agent.”

El Hakim sat with his hands on his knees, the
knuckles whitening. The muscles in his cheeks
tensed and relaxed, tensed and relaxed, rhythmically.
“Another possibility to be guarded against. Another
precaution to be taken.” He leaned across and
slapped azi hard. “Look at me!” Qazi
complied.

“You knew I might discover your sabotage of the
triggers. What precaution did you take against that?”
Qazi merely looked at him.

“Answer!”

“Your only viable alternative,” Qazi said
slowly, calmly, “is to take these weapons back
to Africa and use them as diplomatic tools.
They will give you stature and respect in international
councils. Your voice in the Arab world will… That
is your only alternative, Excellency.”

“What else did you do, Colonel? Tell me
now.”

“I called the Israelis and told them you were
coming. You won’t get within a hundred-” El
Hakim stood speechless, his mouth open.
He licked his lips.

It wasn’t true, of course, Qazi
reflected. Too risky to give an aggressive
bunch like that any advance warning of his acquisition of
weapons that would change the entire power structure in
the Mediterranean. But El Hakim was accustomed
to calculating different risks.

“You’re lying,” El Hakim spluttered.
“You’re bluffing.” He tried to laugh. “It won’t
work with me.”

“The number in Rome is 6799362.”

El Hakim had him around the throat. He shook
him like a dog 1 shakes a snake. “Traitor!
You filthy, slimy traitor!”

Qazi’s cuffed hands wouldn’t reach. He fought for
air. He bit his tongue. The darkness closed in and
his vision shrank to pinpoints. He could hear El
Hakim shouting, but the words were being replaced by a
roaring in his ears. Then suddenly the pressure on his
neck ceased, leaving him gasping, chest heaving.

too good for you. Oh, no! I will kill you
slowly, make you die by inches.” El Hakim
stood over him, staring down. Perspiration glistened
on his face. “You betrayed us. You betrayed me.
And we will get through. We will use the weapon
on the Jews.” El Hakim leaned down.

Saliva flecked his lips. “I have fighters coming
to rendezvous. They will escort us in and we will push the
weapon out the back and the parachute will open and it will
detonate in an air burst a thousand meters above
Tel Aviv.” The perspiration was making rivulets
on his face. “You will live to see it, Colonel.”
El Hakim struck him, then turned away toward
the flight deck, breathing hard.

The three American jets came from the north, from
the sea. Far below, the airmen saw the city of
Palermo and they saw the thin, irregular line where the
land surrendered to the sea. The land was rough,
convoluted, and as the sun crept over the rim of the
earth the ridges cast long shadows into dark, misty
valleys.

With his throttles pulled back to max conserve,
Jake remained at 25,000 feet and watched
Joe Watson’s plane fall away toward the
city below as he listened to yet another transmission
from the Gettysburg on Guard.

The tanker was behind and to Jake’s right. Both
fighters had topped off just before they made landfall.
In the rear cockpit Toad was scanning the sky with the
radar. Nothing.

dawn on a Sunday morning in September, the
sky over Sicily was empty.

“That’s the seventh time they’ve called,” Toad
said, his voice revealing his irritation.

“Persistent beggars, aren’t they?”

“Goddamn, CAG, Sixth Fleet! You can’t
give the finger to Sixth leet.

For the love of-was

“I’m not in the mood for you today, Toad. A lot
of good men died trying to stop these assholes, and
you’re whining. Now shut the fuck up.”

The sun was a fireball just above the horizon.
As his plane rned through the easterly heading Jake was
blinded by the glare coming straight through his heads-up
display. He squinted behind the green visor of his
helmet and tried to see the instruments. They were almost
indecipherable. His eyes couldn’t look from brightness
to darkness and accommodate anymore. It irritated
him, as Toad did. So much at stake and nothing
going right. What would Joe and Corky find down
there? Was Qazi still there? Even if he was, where were
the weapons? It was an impossible problem. He
engaged the autopilot, knowing it would fly the plane
more smoothly than he could and thereby save a few
pints ffuel. A few gallons. He
unfastened one side of his oxygen mask and swabbed his
face with a gloved hand and let the mask dangle.
Come on, guys. What’s down there?

“There’s a chopper here on the mat beside a hangar
with the door closed, CAG. As near as I can
tell, it looks exactly like one of those that was on the
ship. No one in sight. Not a solitary soul.
Nothing down here but light planes, Cessnas and
Pipers. What do you think?”

Jake refastened his mask. “How many hangars?”

“Two.”

“How about big trucks? Any semis parked
around?”

“Empty as a politician’s promise.”

Had the bird flown? Jake had to make a
decision and make it fast. Joe Watson was down
low, burning gas at an appalling rate. “Could
they be in the hangars?”

“It’s possible, I guess,” Watson said, his
voice dubious. Jake cursed to himself and swung his
F-14 to the south. He leveled the wings and pushed
the throttles full forward as he trimmed the stick
aft. “Joe, climb to about five thousand and orbit
the field as long as you can. If anybody gets
nervous and tries to drive off in a van
or semi, or if they open a hangar and you see a
big plane parked in there, shoot it up.

Understand?”

“Roger.”

“Watch your gas and get back to the ship. Keep
your eyes peeled.

Belenko, I want you to go down to Cape
Passero, on the southeastern tip of the island south of
Syracuse, and orbit overhead at forty grand.

Wait for me there.”

“Red Ace Two roger. “Shotgun roger.

“Good luck, Joe,” Jake said.

The mike clicked twice.

As they knifed upward through 30,000 feet headed
southeast with the unfiltered sunlight filling the
cockpit Toad murmured over the intercom.

“Qazi got away, CAG, and you know it.”

He did know it. Qazi had two nuclear
weapons that belonged to the United States Navy and
he was gone. Gone where? Tripoli or Benghazi
or somewhere else? If he was on his way
to Africa, he was talking to Air Traffic
Control. Jake began frantically flipping through the
bundles of cards on his kneeboard, looking for the
Air Traffic Control sector and
frequency list. Why hadn’t he thought of this
sooner?

He selected the frequency for the southeastern
coast of Sicily and, after turning off the scrambler,
dialed it in on the radio. His radio was UHF,
and a transport, even a military one, would be using
VHF. But the controllers normally transmitted
on both VHF and UHF. Jake leveled at
40,000 feet. The throttles were in high cruise
and he was clipping along at .86 Mach.

“See anything?” he growled at Toad. “No,
sir. Empty sky.”

How about that frigate that went through the Strait of
Messina last night? It was supposed to be off the
east coast of Sicily now. Jake looked up the
frequency on another kneeboard card and dialed it
into the second radio. He gave them a call and
got an answer. They assigned a discrete IFF
code, and he squawked it. He wondered how much
help he would get if Vice-Admiral Lewis
was talking to them. He had to use his real call sign
because the frigate could read the classified IFF
code, which was specific to this aircraft. Here goes
nothing. “Buckshot, we’re running a little
intercept exercise this morning and I
wonder if you’ve observed any traffic out of
Palermo in the last several hours headed south or
southeast, over.”

“Wait one.

Mount Etna was off to his left, spectacular
with the sun on its flank.

Normally Jake Grafton would try to make a
mental note of every detail to include in his next
letter to Callie, but this morning he glanced at the
mountain, then ignored it.

“Red Ace, Buckshot. We can’t see quite that
far, but we had a North African Airways
flight cross the coast southbound from Palermo about
fifteen minutes ago, speed about three five
zero. And we had a TWA flight cross
Catania eastbound six minutes ago. He’s about
fifty miles east, apparently on course for
Athens. Then there was a Red Cross transport
eastbound past Syracuse twenty minutes ago.”

“Any destinations?”

“Not specifically, but the controller asked the
North African Airways flight if their trip
was going to become a regular one. I gathered it was
some kind of a one-time deal.”

“Thanks for your help, Buckshot.”

“For further assistance, give a shout.
Buckshot, out.”

“Just what the world needs, another clown,” Toad
grumped on thelCS.

With another anxious glance at the fuel readout,
Jake shoved the throttles into afterburner. If
Qazi was up ahead, he was going to have to catch him.
He flipped the switches on the radio panel so
he could monitor the Air Traffic Control
frequency. Static! Someone was transmitting!
He turned down the squelch and heard words in
English, but they were too garbled to understand. Then the
transmission ceased.

Okay! Someone was on this frequency this morning.
It could be anyone, but maybe, just maybe.

“North African Airways Three Zero
Six, you are departing Italian airspace. You
are cleared to leave this frequency. Good day, sir.”

“I may have ‘em, CAG,” Toad said. “Right
on the edge of the scope, heading south. We’re
following them. They’re headed for Africa all right.
Tripoli if they hold this heading.”

Jake nudged the throttles deeper
into afterburner. The Mach meter indicated 1.5.
He could go faster, but he was using fuel at
a prodigious rate.

“He’s below us, about twenty-five thousand feet
or so, making three hundred fifty knots, the
computer says. No, about three hundred sixty
knots. Pretty slow for a jet.” They crossed the
coast of Sicily and headed out to sea. Malta was
off to the left there, someplace.