Firebreak (21 page)

Her fingers were at rest. B.J. Allison had made a decision. “Do you remember the unfortunate Watergate affair with Mr. Nixon?” Tara said nothing. “Perhaps we need something like that to occupy Mr. Pontowski’s time and energy. Are those nice two young reporters still working for that horrid newspaper?”

Tara arched an eyebrow. “No. But there are others.”

Shoshana sat in the shade of the building next to the bus stop outside the new chemical factory the Iraq Petroleum Company had built near Kirkuk and concentrated on the activity around her. She judged the time to be after ten o’clock, which meant Habish was over three hours late. He should have come out of the chemical factory with the other workers at shift change. Shoshana fought down her impatience, hating the waiting, and wondered what might have gone wrong. The gates of the factory opened and a silver blue Mercedes drove out. She recognized one of the occupants from when she had toured the plant with Is’al Mana, but no one in the car even glanced her way.

A policeman made his way through the crowd at the bus stop and asked a man dressed in a fairly clean Western-style suit for his identification papers. The policeman scanned the papers mechanically and grunted. He handed back the papers, glanced at Shoshana, ignored her, and moved on past. My disguise is working, she decided. She watched the policeman approach Mustapha Sindi who was sitting nearby. Again, the policeman repeated his demand for identification.

Shoshana watched Mustapha as he handed his papers over. You are a cool one, she thought. Mustapha Sindi had a chameleonlike ability to change identities instantly. She remembered how convincing he had been at the cemetery when he appeared as a mullah. Even Habish had been fooled and he had told Mustapha to meet them there. He was reaching for his Walther when Mustapha identified himself. After that, Mustapha had taken them to a house in Kirkuk where they could hide. The sponge bath she had taken while a woman washed her clothes revived her spirits and she had established an instant friendship with a teenage Kurdish girl who had helped her wash her hair. A meal of grilled lamb, Arabic salad, and freshly baked bread had worked magic and she had slept soundly for the first time in weeks.

The next morning, she had joined Habish as they waited for Mustapha to return. Habish explained that Mustapha was a Kurdish rebel fighting for his people’s independence from Iraq’s rule. The Israelis had supported the Kurds in their fight and through that connection had recruited Mustapha to help Mossad.

When Mustapha returned, he had a new set of identification papers and a factory pass for Habish that identified him as a worker in the new chemical plant. Habish quizzed her about her tour of the place with Mana until he had a good idea of the factory’s layout. Then he calmly announced that he was going inside.

“Haven’t we done enough?” she protested. The two men ignored her and plotted how Habish would enter the plant as part of the night shift crew and come out the next morning. Shoshana and Mustapha were to be waiting for him at the bus stop. If nothing else, they could listen to the workers talk and hear any rumors if he was caught.

As planned, Habish had mingled with other workers that evening and entered the plant during shift change. Now it was late the next morning and Habish had not come out. After the policeman had disappeared, Mustapha got up and moved past her heading for the truck. “Walk away,” he mumbled. “I’ll pick you up down the road.” She did as he said.

“What now?” Shoshana asked as they drove away in the truck.

“We come back tomorrow morning,” Mustapha replied. The waiting was back, bearing down with its weight.

The crowd at the bus stop the next morning was buzzing with a low murmur. As more workers came through the plant’s gates and joined the throng, the buzz grew and changed into a loud babble. Shoshana could catch enough words to understand that a massive search had been going on inside the plant. She fought down the urge to corner Mustapha and ask him what was happening.

Then she saw Habish come up to the gate with a large crowd of men. Each man had a slip of paper that the guards were collecting—an exit permit. Then it was Habish’s turn. The guard studied his pass and the exit permit. She could see him ask a question and Habish shrug in reply. Something was wrong. The guard motioned for another guard to come over as a bus pulled up to the stop. The crowd being held at the gate behind Habish did not want to miss the bus and started shouting and pushing. The guard held on to Habish with one hand and frantically checked passes and exit permits while the other guard tried to push his way through the crowd.

Fighting to control her panic, Shoshana looked around for Mustapha. Then she saw the truck moving down the street toward the gate. Mustapha honked the horn as he eased through the men crossing the street to the bus stop. She fought down the urge to run as she walked out into the road and jumped into the back of the truck. She heard loud shouts from the gate and two gunshots. Mustapha hit the accelerator and the horn at the same time, adding to the confusion. Then Habish was at the tailgate scrambling to get on board. Another man was also trying to climb on the truck and escape the shooting. Mustapha drove faster, barging through the crowd.

Shoshana held on to the side of the truck and grabbed the back of Habish’s shirt with her free hand, trying to pull him in. But the other man was in the way. With a vicious kick in the face, Shoshana sent him sprawling in the road. She heard a scream followed by a loud thump. They had run over a man not able to get out of the way. Then Habish was in the truck and they were clear of the crowd. “What happened?” she gasped.

“Mustapha shot the guard and I broke away in the confusion. Where’s the Uzi?” Shoshana scrambled up to the cab and reached through the open rear window. She grabbed the small machine gun that was hidden behind the seat and passed it back to him. “They’ll be after us,” Habish predicted. “We need to ditch the truck and separate. I didn’t get my ID back from the guard. It’s got my picture on it.… So listen.

“They’re in full production making a binary nerve gas at the plant. That doesn’t make sense because binary systems are the devil to make—takes too much quality control. It would be much easier for them to make a normal V agent, like the Soviets do with their VR Fifty-five. Also, that building Mana never took you through is crawling with Europeans and Chinese. I got inside …”

“How did you do that?” Shoshana was amazed. “It was so well guarded.”

Habish ignored her question. “I got as far as the machine shop before a guard found me. They’re making a special casing for one part of the nerve agent.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of shavings. “It’s some kind of polymeric material.” He gave her half of the shavings. “Shoshana, we’ve got to get out that combo pen, these shavings, and what’s going on in there.” He crawled up to the cab’s rear window and told Mustapha they had to get rid of the truck and split up.

“You said a guard found you,” Shoshana said when he rejoined her.

“I had to kill him. I stuffed the body in an air shaft but before I could crawl out of the duct, the next shift came on. I had to spend six hours in that air shaft with a corpse. Then by the time I got out of the building, I had to wait for the next shift change. Then with my rotten luck, some worker found the body and security started an ID check on everybody in the plant. In order to leave, you had to get your ID checked and pick up an exit pass. I ‘borrowed’ an exit pass from a worker.”

“How?”

“God, you’re naive. I had to strangle the bastard. Anyway, you saw what happened at the gate—the pass didn’t match my ID.”

“Habish. There.” Shoshana was pointing to a sandy-brown-colored truck four hundred meters behind them. She could see a man standing behind a machine gun mounted aft of the open cab.

“Mustapha!” Habish yelled. “We’ve got a weapons carrier behind us.” The Kurd floored the accelerator and started to weave through the traffic, putting four cars between them and the pursuing truck. The machine gun on the weapons carrier barked and a car behind them spun out and crashed, blocking most of the road. Mustapha gained a little more distance when their pursuers slowed to get around the wreckage they had created. “Just some bastard going about his own business,” Habish said. He was staring at the truck that was chasing them. “They’re probably talking on the radio. We haven’t got long.”

Now the weapons carrier was clear of the crash and accelerating. The three cars still behind them had heard the machine gun, seen the crash, and pulled over. The road was clear behind them. “He’s gaining on us,” Shoshana shouted. Again the machine gun raked the road. But the distance was still too grat and Mustapha was weaving the truck back and forth. A bend in the road gave them a moment’s respite.

Habish was lying on the truck bed beside Shoshana, still holding the Uzi. “We won’t be so lucky next time.” He crawled forward to the cab and yelled at Mustapha. Shoshana could not understand what he said and panic twisted through her when she felt the truck slow. Mustapha was pulling alongside and matching the speed of two cars they were overtaking. When they were abeam of the lead car, Habish stood up and held the Uzi over the side. He raked the top of the car with a short burst. Mustapha keyed on the gunfire and swerved the truck, smashing into the small car. Habish turned the Uzi on the following car and fired through its windshield, killing the driver. Shoshana caught a glimpse of a family inside as they sped away and Habish lobbed an incendiary grenade at the cars. She sickened when the two cars burst into flames.

For a brief moment, Shoshana seriously considered shooting Habish. Her humanity was in shreds and she could not accept the price others had to pay for their escape. “You fucking shithead!” she screamed. “You goddamned fucking shithead! You’re killing innocent people! They’re innocent!” Habish slapped her hard, cutting her off, stopping the wave of condemnation.

“Look!” He was pointing back down the road. The two cars were totally blocking the highway and they could see the weapons carrier off to the side as it slowly worked its way past the wreckage. “They don’t care if they kill their own people.” He was snarling. “Why should we?”

‘ ‘Because we aren’t them.” She stopped at a loss for words. Habish ignored her when Mustapha called for him to come forward and talk. Shoshana could see the weapons carrier in the far distance moving after them again and yelled the news through the rear window of the cab.

“Up ahead,” Habish shouted. “When we stop, you and Mustapha jump out. Follow him.” He half turned his head toward her. “Do whatever it takes to get out of Iraq.” He paused. “We’ve got to do this. We don’t have a choice.” For a fraction of a second. Shoshana thought she heard a trace of humanity in his voice. She didn’t believe it.

They rounded a corner and Mustapha slammed on the brakes. Before the truck was fully stopped, Shoshana was out and running between two low buildings, and Mustapha was right behind her. She heard the gears on the truck grind as Habish sped away. Sooner than she expected, the weapons carrier shot by. “There’s a car out back,” Mustapha told her.

“What about Habish?” she asked.

“He knows what he has to do.” The distant rattle of a heavy machine gun cut off his words. “Come,” he said, “time to become a man and wife going about their business.” He led her out to the car where the teenage girl who had helped wash her hair was waiting.

The girl frowned when she handed Shoshana her new papers. “You’ll like being Mustapha’s wife,” she said as Shoshana got into the car.

Mustapha spoke softly to the girl and touched her cheek. Then he hopped in behind the wheel. “Meral is my wife,” he explained and started the engine. “She’s expecting our first child.” Much to her surprise, Mustapha turned down the road in the same direction they had been going. “That is the way we want to go,” he said. A few minutes later they were caught behind a string of cars, inching their way past the burning wreckage of Habish’s truck. His escape had ended in a crash with another truck. A soldier waved them by and did not stop them for an identification check. Shoshana caught a whiff of burning flesh as they drove off.

Matt was standing at the scheduling desk in the squadron, getting ready for his first flight as an instructor pilot. He had been assigned to fly in the backseat with a new lieutenant in the squadron, one Sean Leary. He copied down the information from the big board behind the desk and grimaced when he saw the duty officer rub out his wingman’s name and write in “Martin.” Mike Martin was the new deputy for operations.

“You’ll love having Mad Mike as your number two,” the duty sergeant said.

“I thought they called him Gorilla,” Matt said.

“That’s what he calls himself,” Furry said. He had walked into the squadron and was standing behind Matt. “Both names fit.”

“I wish you were going along on this one,” Matt said.

“Then who would be sitting on whose lap?” Furry laughed. “You get to play backseater on this one while your student plays nose gunner. Come on, we need to talk about the lieutenant.” He led Matt into a briefing room and closed the door behind them. “What do you know about Sean Leary?” Matt shook his head. “His mother is a movie star.” Furry mentioned a name Matt recognized instantly.

“I didn’t know she was that old.”

“Yeah, kinda surprising,” Furry continued. “I was in his pit the last time he flew and recommended that he fly with an instructor pilot for a few rides.” Matt waited to hear why. “Basically, he’s okay. But he has a tendency to get behind the aircraft.” Matt was still listening. That was a problem but an experienced wizzo like Furry could sort that out. “Also, he tends to bury the nose of the jet and get going straight down.” The F-15 could easily handle that; might lose some altitude, but no big deal. “And he gets too aggressive at the wrong times, especially when he’s near the ground.”

“Why don’t they team him with an instructor wizzo?” Matt asked. “You could handle all that in a heartbeat.”

“Why kill a perfectly good wizzo?” Furry said. “It’s your turn to be a DM.”

“A what?”

“Designated mort. Welcome to the backseat of the F-Fifteen.” Furry laughed and walked away.

“Stalwart fellow,” Matt mumbled at his back.

Sean Leary was waiting in the briefing room when Matt walked in. Leary was a young version of Robert Redford and made Matt think of a young, eager Doolie at the Air Force Academy. Mike Martin came lumbering in and, much to Matt’s surprise, Furry emerged from the DO’s shadow. Furry grinned and said there was another last-minute schedule change and he would be Martin’s backseater. Leary sat quietly, making the appropriate notes while Matt ran through the briefing for a one-versus-one BFM mission. At one point, Matt paused, remembering the basic fighter maneuvers mission he had flown with Jack Locke. He gulped and pressed ahead.

Once airborne, Matt discovered that Leary was a good pilot but too eager and aggressive. His timing was off and he would start a maneuver too soon and then run out of ideas on how to correct the situation he had gotten himself into. It was simply a matter of slowing him down. On the third engagement, Martin dragged the fight down to die bottom of die training area they were flying in. Their altimeters were hovering at 5,000 feet when the two fighters met head-on. Martin went into a horizontal turn and held it. “Pull the nose up and use the vertical to counterturn on him,” Matt said.

Leary pulled up into the vertical. “Okay,” Matt said, “Martin’s holding his turn. You can go on the offensive now and eat his shorts.” The colonel was deliberately holding the level turn, his eyes glued to Leary’s jet. He was willing to be a target at least once if the lieutenant could learn from it. “Roll inverted and watch him while you come across the top,” Matt said. “Keep your eye on him until he’s come through 180 degrees of turn. Drift a bit over the top and than pull down hard into him so you’ll be in a lag position at his six o’clock.”

The maneuver was developing perfectly when Leary pulled hard down into Martin, stroking the afterburners. He was premature and should have waited about five more seconds. Matt had not been expecting the move and his head snapped to the right when Leary loaded the Eagle with four g’s. Matt’s helmet bounced off the canopy, momentarily stunning him. Leary was aiming them directly into Martin’s flight path and had them pointed straight down and going through the Mach. Only Martin’s rattlesnake-quick reflexes saved them from a midair collision as he pulled up, as Leary flashed by fifty feet in front, going straight down in full afterburner.

The first coherent thought Matt had was of the color brown filling the windscreen in front of him. The digital altimeter was unwinding in a blur and he could not read it. “PULL!” he shouted as he raked the throttles aft out of afterburner. He grabbed the stick, but it was already coming back.

“EJECT!” Leary shouted over the intercom.

“NEGATIVE! NEGATIVE!” Matt yelled. They were going too fest and outside the ejection envelope. The air blast would have crushed their chests when the seat kicked them out into the slipstream.

The nose of the Eagle came up as “Bitchin’ Betty,” the computer-activated woman’s voice on the Overload Warning System, announced they had an over g. Matt didn’t worry about Betty. An over g was the last of their worries. The nose was pointed up but they still had a six-thousand-feet-a-minute sink rate. “AFTERBURNERS!” Matt yelled. He could not light the afterburners from the rear cockpit. The dash 229 engines kicked in when Leary jammed the throttles full forward.

They both heard a loud “Oh fuck!” over the radio as a cloud of dust enveloped them and, for a split second, Matt knew he was a dead man. Then they were flying again in an upward vector.

“Fire warning light on number one engine,” Matt said as they climbed out. His breathing was ragged and quick. He called up the Overload Warning System on a video screen as Leary shut down the left engine. The screen read, “10.5 g’s, 130% overload.” It was a major over g and the fire light was probably a result of the engine sucking something in. But they were still flying.

“We’ve lost utility hydraulics,” Leary said, his voice also coming in pants.

“Okay, so fly the damn airplane. What systems have we lost and what do we do now?” Matt was still being the instructor.

“No brakes and we take the barrier,” Leary said.

“Take your time and do it right,” Matt told him. Slowly at first, and then with increasing confidence, the lieutenant ran the checklist for taking the barrier, the cable stretched across the approach end of the runway that would catch their tail hook and snatch them to a stop as in a carrier landing. Leary’s voice was almost normal when he told Martin to look him over to see if any pieces of the jet were missing. Then he called air traffic control to announce that he had an emergency and would be taking the barrier at Stonewood.

The approach and landing went smoothly and Leary snagged the first barrier cable one thousand feet down the runway. When they were at a complete halt, Matt ripped off his oxygen mask and took a deep breath. He could smell urine. Leary had wet his pants. “We’ll go to Life Support and change before we debrief Maintenance on the over g,” he said. Leary was quiet.

When they had finished debriefing Maintenance about the over g, the fire warning light, and lost hydraulics, they went back to the squadron. Martin was waiting for them. “We got two fresh jets,” he said. “Let’s go and do it again.” Leary visibly paled. “Get your ass out there,” he snapped. “Now.”

“What happens now?” Leary asked Matt.

“We kick the tires and light the fires and go do it again.” Matt shrugged.

“Is that all there is to it?”

“No way,” Matt explained. “We’ve got to help Maintenance do an over g inspection on the bird when we get down. We’ll be up all night and at it most of tomorrow.” He gave Leary a hard look. “This time do it right and eat Martin’s shorts. Got it?”

The lieutenant got it and once they were airborne performed faultlessly. After they had landed the second time, a much more confident Leary walked into the squadron for the mission debrief. Martin and Furry both sat quietly while Matt recapped the mission in a briefing room. When he was finished, he asked if there was anything else.

Martin stood up and leaned across the table at Leary. “Lieutenant, you flew two ways today. The first time you had your goddamn head in the map case and almost pranged. You heard that ‘Oh fuck’ call over the radio?” He was jabbing his finger into the lieutenant’s forehead. “That’s the ‘Oh fuck’ I always use when I see some dumb shit diggin’ a new hole in the countryside with one of my jets. We lost sight of you in the rooster rail of dust your afterburners kicked up from the ground. I prefer not to see assholes commit suicide, so the next time do it when you’re alone.

“The second mission was nothing to brag about in the bar but at least you brought the jet back in about the same shape as when you got it. Now get the hell out of here and chase your body over to Maintenance and stay there until the over g inspection is finished.” He glared at Matt. “You too, Fumble Nuts.”

Martin stood there as Matt and Leary rapidly left the room. His lips compressed into a thin line. Then he threw Furry a hard look and gave a sharp nod with his head. “He’ll do fine,” he said.

“Leary?” Furry asked.

“No. Pontowski.” He banged out of the room, careful not to let Furry see a crooked grin split his face. He headed for his office in wing headquarters, content with a good day’s work.

Mustapha took his time covering the 160 miles to their next safe house. They worked their way down back roads, slept in the car, and avoided roadblocks and soldiers. Occasionally, they would double back to find a way around a checkpoint. But Mustapha always returned to their original course as they headed for the northwest comer of Iraq. On the seventh night, Mustapha found them a room at a makeshift inn outside the city of Mosul. He dropped into an overstuffed chair and fell into an instant sleep. Shoshana covered him with a blanket, concerned about his obvious fatigue, and then crawled into the narrow bed and fell asleep.

Loud voices outside the inn jolted her awake. She could barely see Mustapha in the dark as he rummaged in one of the battered suitcases that had been waiting for them in the car. Then he was sitting on the bed beside her. “Put this on,” he ordered. “It’s my wife’s.” She sat up in bed and peeled off her dress while Mustapha undressed. She fumbled at the nightgown he had thrown at her and then slipped it on. She was still trying to arrange it when he crawled into bed beside her naked and threw his arms around her.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

“Quiet,” he ordered. She lay there against him, her body rigid, and was surprised to feel his heart pounding. But there was no lust in the young Kurd, only fear. The voices outside grew louder and she heard footsteps echoing through the inn. The door to their room banged open and a young soldier, no older than Mustapha, barged in and turned on the light.

Mustapha jumped out of bed and yelled in Arabic, much too fast for Shoshana to catch the invective. The soldier laughed and called for this sergeant. Two other soldiers hurried over to the room and stood in the doorway and stared at Shoshana. She was sitting up in bed and the covers had fallen away. In the light, she could see the nightgown was flannel and very demure. Hurriedly, she pulled up the covers, afraid of the men.

An older man pushed through the door, obviously the sergeant in charge of the soldiers. “Identification,” he snapped. While Mustapha dug their identification booklets out, he pulled the covers back from Shoshana, took a long look, and then ripped them completely away. He was more interested in her than the papers or the naked man standing in the middle of the room. Then Mustapha yelled in Arabic, dove at the open suitcase, and pulled out a small knife. He waved it around and shouted even louder. The sergeant started to laugh, threw their identification papers on the floor, and walked to the door. “We are good soldiers,” he said. “Not like those other pigs.” The look on the three younger soldiers indicated otherwise. Then he closed the door and they could hear him order the soldiers out of the inn.

Mustapha pulled his pants on, sank back into the chair, and took a deep breath. “I told them we had been married less than six months and soldiers had raped you twice. I swore that I wouldn’t let it happen again.”

“That was a foolish thing to do,” she said, her voice soft and thankful. “But that knife against their guns?”

He looked at her and snorted. “I’m not crazy. I swore that I would kill you before I let it happen again.”

The duty officer glanced up from his seat behind the scheduling desk when Matt walked into the squadron. “Call Major Furry at his office,” he said and went back to reading the latest edition of
Stars and Stripes,
the newspaper published for the armed forces overseas. Matt used one of the phones at the desk to call Furry at wing headquarters.

“Hey, boy,” Furry said, “you see the message that came in this morning from USAFE?” USAFE, United States Air Force in Europe, was their higher headquarters at Ramstein, Germany. Matt told him no. “Then you better chase your young ass over here ‘cause it’s got your name on it and Mad Mike is not a happy camper.” Matt could hear amusement in his wizzo’s voice.

Five minutes later, Matt and Furry were standing at attention in front of Martin’s desk. There was nothing in the DO’s face to indicate amusement. “You know what PI is, Captain?”

“Yes, sir. It’s been explained.” Matt was puzzled. He had been very careful to avoid anything that smacked of using political influence since the accident with Locke.

“This has got PI pecker tracks all over it,” Martin said. He threw a message at Matt to read. Headquarters USAFE directed the 45th Tactical Fighter Wing, RAF Stonewood, U.K., to send one F-15E Eagle to Israel for a sixty-day exchange visit with the Israeli Air Force. The purpose of the visit was to demonstrate the capabilities of the F-15E weapon system. Captain Matthew Zachary Pontowski III was to lead the team.

“Sir, I had nothing to do with this,” Matt protested. “I’d never pull—”

“Captain, if I had my way, you’d only pull duty as a nighttime latrine orderly. I suppose some paper-pushing, pencil-necked asshole on the staff at USAFE
just
happened to
pull
your name out of a hat.” Martin was on a roll. ‘ ‘An exchange visit like this one is normally headed by a full bull, not a captain. Now you tell me how it happened.”