Firebreak (11 page)

On the first day after the Article 15 had been administered, Matt had shown up in the squadron building at exactly 7:30 in the morning in a clean flight suit. He dropped in on mission briefings and listened to what the crews were planning for their flight. But he had to stop that, for it was a form of pure torture that was pushing him into a pit of despair. Then he hung around the scheduling desk drinking coffee and watched the crews go out to fly. That made him feel worse. At the end of the first day, his flight suit was still clean.

The routine repeated itself for two more days and Matt slipped deeper into a sour funk, wallowing in self-pity. On Thursday, Locke stopped him in the hall and asked for a “How goes it” on the self-help project.

“Sir,” Matt admitted sourly, “I haven’t got a clue.”

“That’s a true statement,” Locke said, looking around the squadron. Nothing had been done for three days. “It’s going to be a long forty-two days.” He walked away. Matt’s first thought was to strangle Locke, but instead late that afternoon, he found himself knocking at Locke’s office door, determined to restate his case and at least get back on flying status.

“Damn it, Colonel Locke,” he protested. “Rumor around the squadron has it that you raised all sorts of hell when you were a lieutenant. Why are you coming down so hard on me now?”

Locke motioned for him to sit down. For a moment, he looked into his own past and a sadness came over him. “Because I was going down the same road you’re on right now.” Matt started to interrupt, his case made. Locke held a hand up. “But the best officer who ever strapped on an F-Four saved me from myself by letting me sweat out a pretrial investigation for a court-martial. He knew I was going to get out of it because of a technicality—but I didn’t. One other thing; I deserved to be court-martialed. I was guilty.” He let it sink in. “That officer was Muddy Waters.”

Silence hung in the room. Waters was one of the Air Force’s legends, the man who had taken the 45th Tactical Fighter Wing into combat in the Persian Gulf and died getting them out. Now Locke’s squadron was part of the 45th.

Locke leaned forward over his desk. “Waters taught me the meaning of leadership. Without leadership, a fighter puke isn’t worth shit. And the key is a sense of responsibility—I didn’t have it then—and you don’t have it now.” The silence came down hard.

“Sir,” Matt finally said, “may I ask you a question about Waters?” He had overhead the old heads BS in the bar and every now and then, the legend of Muddy Waters would come up. “Did he really give you his call sign just before he bought it?”

Locke stared at him—hard. The memories were painful. “Yeah. He made me Wolf Zero-One just before he was killed surrendering the base.” Another long pause. “He gave me the responsibility of bringing the Forty-fifth home. I did.”

“It was different then,” Matt protested. “The Mideast is all sorted out now. I’ll never fight a war—”

“That’s what I said.”

Something turned inside Matt. Locke followed Waters into hell and came out forever changed. Long ago, Matt Pontowski had admitted to himself that Locke was probably the best pilot he would ever meet. And now he knew that Locke was a true rarity—a leader. “Sir, I want to be a leader, but what in the hell can a lieutenant do?”

“Leadership for a lieutenant means doing the best job you can and taking care of your people.”

“And who do I take care of?” Matt asked, bitterness in his voice.

“Your backseater. Don’t kill him. I happen to like Haney.”

“And not me.”

“There’s nothing to like. Sure, you’re a charmer and the ladies think you’re God’s gift to studdom, but there’s nothing to you.”

Locke’s hard words cut into him. A hard resolve came over him to prove Locke dead wrong. “Colonel, about this self-help project, I don’t even know where to start.”

“Talk to the best NCO you can find.” Locke looked and then nodded at the door, his way of telling Matt that the conversation was over. Matt stood up, saluted, and left.

The next morning, Matt found the NCO he was looking for, Master Sergeant Charlie Ferguson. Ferguson was the squadron’s senior-ranking sergeant and considered himself the unofficial “first shirt” for the squadron. He knew how to make the Air Force system work and, within hours, the lumber, plaster, and paint they needed were in the building. For help, Ferguson went to the “Detention Facility,” Air Forceese for jail, and had six inmates released to his custody for a work detail.

Matt was learning a lot about construction and how the Air Force worked. He had never realized that there was so much involved in just putting up a simple wall or doing a little electrical wiring or plumbing even though he had majored in civil engineering. He also learned how to bypass most of the Air Force bureaucracy’s paperwork. But he could not avoid all of it. He was getting the job done and would have been all right if it hadn’t been for the ceiling in the lounge.

Ferguson and his convict crew of laborers were almost finished with the lounge. They had installed a kitchen area and a bar, paneled the walls, and were ready to mount indirect lighting against the ceiling. But the ceiling was too high and Matt thought that they should drop it about two feet. He and Ferguson went on one of their “requisitioning runs.” The military contracting system generates tons of surplus and Ferguson found what they needed buried in a pile of junk that had been tagged for disposal. One the way back to the squadron building, the colonel who served as the base’s RM, the resource manager, stopped them. They explained that what they had found was surplus and that they were using it for a self-help project in their squadron. When they couldn’t produce the paperwork, the RM had them return it all.

The next day, Ferguson ginned up the required forms and Matt took them over to the RM’s office for an official signature. But he couldn’t get in to see the RM because a crew of workmen were installing a new dropped ceiling in his office using the same large acoustic tiles and hangers that Ferguson had unearthed. Matt was furious. That night, he and Ferguson’s crew of six convicts visited the RM’s office and did a quick bit of midnight requisitioning. By the next morning, the ceiling was safely installed in the squadron’s lounge.

The RM had a very strong suspicion about what had happened to his ceiling and was in the squadron before eight o’clock in the morning. For a moment, Matt was certain the man was going to have a heart attack when he saw
his
ceiling. Before they had lifted the large tiles into place, two of Matt’s “helpers” had dropped their trousers and bent over. A coat of paint was applied to the buttocks of each in the squadron colors of black and gold and each tile was pressed against the makeshift templates. Now the ceiling was decorated with a mass of black and gold butt prints. The RM sputtered and, at a loss for words, stormed out of the squadron lounge.

Matt and his crew were busy turning the tiles over when Locke came into the lounge. He shook his head and told Matt to report to his office. Once there, Matt paid for the ceiling with a chewing out of legendary proportions. Locke considered the matter closed but the RM had other ideas. Within hours, Matt was under investigation by the Office of Special Investigations for theft of government property. Ferguson came to his rescue two days later when he produced a bill of sale from a local civilian supplier that stated they had bought the ceiling tiles from him. Matt was off the hook but in the bad graces of every colonel in the wing. With the exception of the NCO Club, the squadron building had the best interior decoration of any building on base.

Romance and clothes dominated Nadya Mana’s life and nothing else seemed to interest her. Shoshana was shocked when the girl mentioned she would celebrate her eighteenth birthday next month and Shoshana realized that she was dealing with the mentality and impetuousness of a spoiled teenager. On most outings, they met with three of Nadya’s friends who were also chaperoned by older women and Shoshana found herself swamped by giggly girls, all talking about boys and clothes, exactly like her friends when she was thirteen.

Shoshana was amazed how the girls plotted to break away from their chaperones to meet their latest boyfriend until she realized the older women deliberately looked the other way. But the rules didn’t apply to her and Nadya’s aunt stayed attached like a leech.

Panic started to build when she realized that she was being carefully watched and would never be able to establish contact with her team unless this changed drastically. Mana provided the key when he visited her one night and told her that she wouldn’t be meeting his family.

“I’ll not be your mistress!” she screamed at him and started to pack. Mana tried to stop her but much to her surprise, she discovered she was stronger. Like most of his class, Mana had never engaged in physical exercise or hard work. His muscles were as soft as his face. Then she turned playful, physically dominating him while they made love, using pain instead of ice to control his response. He screamed in agony and begged for more. Later, before he left, it was agreed that she could find a tutor to teach her Arabic but that Nadya and her aunt would have to accompany her.

Nadya sulked when she accompanied Shoshana to meet her tutor, a small wisp of a woman, one of the struggling Iraqi middle class who ran a language school for foreigners. The girl would sit huffily in a corner of the room while her aunt would go to sleep, snoring loudly. “Nadya, I feel so bad about you having to wait for me,” Shoshana consoled her. “Why don’t you visit one of your friends while I’m at my lesson? Your aunt can take me to you if you’re not back.” Nadya eagerly accepted, seeing an opportunity to meet her boyfriend. It worked perfectly, Shoshana would go into her lesson, the aunt would go to sleep, and Nadya would disappear. Just before the lesson would end, Nadya would reappear with new makeup and freshly combed hair.

One day, the woman who normally instructed her was sick and Shoshana had a substitute—Gad Habish. The woman who ran the school was Mossad’s Baghdad station chief.

Nothing in Fraser’s face or actions betrayed the cold fury that was rolling through him as he scanned the switchboard’s computerized telephone log that listed every phone call the President made or received. He could not control the outgoing calls, for it was his job to do the President’s bidding. But he was determined to control the incoming calls and the log was clear—a call had reached the President without his okay. He noted who was on duty at the time of the call. Melissa, he fumed to himself. That bitch had stabbed him in the back! He jabbed at the intercom button on his communications panel and ordered Melissa Courtney-Smith into his office.

“Melissa,” he began, his voice calm and businesslike, “I noticed a call reached the President without my okay. You know anything about it?”

Melissa looked at the offending entry in the log. “I cleared that one. It was a personal call from Matt. You weren’t in yet.”

Fraser’s lips pursed into a thoughtful moue. She had done the right thing. If the President found out he was withholding personal phone calls … well, he preferred not to think about that one. Zack Pontowski’s anger never surfaced, but the results were something to behold. “Okay, next time memo me, though.”

“Sir”—she gave him a confused look—“I think I did. Let me check the files.” She hurried out of the office and was back with a memo in a few minutes. Nothing was ever thrown away; everything was carefully filed and stored as a record of the Pontowski administration. “It did come across your desk.” She didn’t mention that she had buried it in a pile of low-priority memos that Fraser often ignored and farmed right back to her for action.

“Okay, next time make sure I initial it.” His face and tone were all reasonableness. “Melissa, you know the success of a presidential administration rests on the flow of information to the President. I cannot let him get inundated with trivia.” She nodded and left. They were still at a stalemate. Fraser wanted to fire her and lock up the office of the presidency in his control. Melissa had other priorities and, when she was honest with herself, she would admit that she loved Zack Pontowski and wanted to protect him.

Thomas Patrick Fraser was power-hungry. He longed for it like some sought money or fame. He had money, gained in a slash-and-burn career organizing corporate takeovers. But what he had always wanted was power over people—the ability to call the shots and make others jump at his bidding. And that ultimately meant politics. He was a realist and knew that while he had the wealth and connections to be elected a senator, he did not have the charisma or the long-term staying power to reach the ultimate pinnacle—the presidency of the United States. So he chose an alternate road; he would be a kingmaker and become the chief aide and adviser to the man he would make President. The man he had selected to back was Zack Pontowski. It may have been a mistake.

Normally, a chief of staff is the President’s chief adviser, but in the case of Zack Pontowski, there was no one single adviser, for he listened to many sources and then made up his own mind. Perhaps his wife came as close as any to being his principal adviser, and while he always listened to what she had to say, he still made up his own mind.

Goddamn it, he swore to himself, I made Pontowski and I will control him. His intercom buzzed. It was the President.

“Tom, I want to meet the delegation when they arrive and let them know this is a friendly meeting.” A group of three congressmen and two senators who were sometimes called the Israeli lobby were scheduled to meet with the President in fifteen minutes.

“Good idea,” Fraser agreed. “Want me at the entrance with you?”

“Not necessary. But I do want you at the meeting. Bring the briefing books.” The briefing books were the thick three-ring binders that were constantly updated and held all the information needed to review a subject. In this case, the subject was Israel and the Syrian-Egyptian treaty.

Fraser was waiting for the President and the delegation when they entered the Oval Office. He said nothing and took notes during the meeting. His mind raced as he listened, ferreting out the implications of what was being said. The delegation was worried about the latest signs of cooperation between Syria and Egypt and saw an inherent danger in the treaty for Israel. Pontowski agreed with them, and then he dropped the bombshell. “We have intelligence reports that the treaty contains a secret protocol fusing the Syrian and Egyptian military command and control systems.” He didn’t mention the suspected Iraqi connection. That would have sent the delegation into orbit.