Flash Point (29 page)

“We’re going to Dar al Ahmar.”

“You’re going after the Sheikh himself? The one taking credit for Gaza, and the bus?”

“The very one.”

Woods felt goose bumps on his arms. “What would I do?”

“You can cover me. We are expecting the Syrians to come after us this time. We will be baiting them. Just a little.”

“They’re going to be sending fighters after you?”

“Yes.”

“What could I do?”

“Keep them off me. I have to deliver a laser-guided bomb to our friend.”

“Why don’t you want your own fighters doing escort?”

“I do. They will be there. You can fly high cover, above most of the AAA and low SAMs.”

Woods tried to keep his voice from shaking. “I’d never get permission.”

Woods barely heard Chermak’s rueful laugh. “I didn’t expect you to ask.”

Woods’s mind was spinning. “Are you serious?”

“Very.”

“I couldn’t be of much help. I can’t fire my missiles. Can’t very well go back to the ship without them.”

“There may be a way around that too.”

“Are you nuts?” Big asked, quickly glancing around for other squadron officers. “This is the kind of thing that they don’t think is funny. We’ll be making big rocks into little rocks.”

“What’s up?” Pritch asked, strolling up to the two Naval officers she enjoyed being with the most. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said to Big.

Big ignored her and, returning his focus to Woods, said, “You talk to Wink yet?”

“No. I wanted to talk to you. If you’re in, we can talk to Wink and Sedge.”

Big shook his head thoughtfully. Pritch looked at them in frustration. “We’d never pull it off,” Big said finally.

“It’ll work. There’s not that much to plan. We just have to go along with them. Making it look like a regular hop from the ship will be the tricky part, but it will work. I
know
it will.”

“Maybe you’re not the best person to decide that.”

“Let’s find Wink and Sedge. I’ll go over the whole thing. Then we’ll decide.”

Big spoke to Pritch. “Let’s go.”

They moved toward the back of the room where most of the squadron was congregated, waiting to return to the ship.

“Go over what whole thing?” Pritch said to their backs.

Big took off his white uniform and hung it in his closet. “We’re sticking our heads into a noose. They don’t
need
our help. If we don’t show up it won’t make any difference at all.”

“Except we already said we would.”

“I doubt they’d care,” Big said, sitting down heavily in his stateroom chair.

“You having second thoughts?”

“I’m way past that,” Big said. “I think these are fifth or sixth thoughts. I’ve done a lot of things in my life that I shouldn’t have done, some of them even illegal.” He leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes. “I’ve broken Navy regulations on occasion, when it suited me. I’ve even worn my belt upside down, contrary to Uniform Regulations. My being left-handed and all, it seemed like I should be able to wear it as a normal left-handed person would, not some arbitrarily drawn regulation.” He opened his eyes and studied Woods’s face. “But I’ve never done anything that qualifies as a
felony
before.”

Woods stopped undressing and turned to Big. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. I’m not going to talk you into anything. You’d hold it against me.”

“Of course I would. I’ll hold it against you even if you
don’t
talk me into it,” Big replied. “Are we doing the right thing here, Trey?”

Woods closed his closet door too hard. “Tell me what right is, Big. Is it right that some self-appointed Sheikh Assassin or whoever else it will be next time, can shoot one of our squadron mates and get away with it? Is that right?”

“That’s a stupid question. I’m asking about
us
, not them. What’s right for us isn’t decided by what they do. It may make it harder, but it doesn’t determine it.”

“They don’t care about
anybody
! Human life is not valuable to them, except maybe for the chumps who are at the head of
their
organization. I don’t see them doing the attacks themselves. Human life is valuable to
me
though. A lot. That’s my point.”

“I don’t know, Trey,” Big said. He drummed his fingers on his fold-down desk. “What do you think Father Maloney would say about it?”

Woods was shocked. “Since when do you care what he thinks about anything? Every time he sits down by us you get up and leave like he has leprosy.”

“I get uncomfortable talking about religion.” He chewed his lip thoughtfully. “I guess I don’t like being put on the spot. I don’t know what I think. It shows fast.” He rubbed his mouth. “You ever think about dying?”

Woods’s face showed his amazement. “What’s gotten into you? Mr. Cavalier, Mr. Cynic, suddenly you want to know the meaning of life?”

“I don’t know, Trey. Thinking about tomorrow, it just occurred to me.”

Woods sat down. “Sure, I’ve thought about it. The way I see it, I’m invincible until God wants me to die, then there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Big reflected. “What does
that
mean?”

“I don’t know. My father used to say it. I always thought it sounded clever . . . until he died. Then it wasn’t funny anymore.” His voice trailed off. “You gonna go with me or not?”

Big sighed resignedly. “You’d probably get lost, or screw something up. I’ll have to be there to watch out for you.”

Woods relaxed. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me. We may both end up in Leavenworth.”

“Bring it on. Let me testify in a court-martial about how no one cared about Vialli. If we end up in Leavenworth, it’ll be worth it.”

“I hope you’re right,” Big said, climbing onto his rack for a short night’s sleep. “Somebody’s got to take care of these terrorists. I guess it’s time somebody took a risk to do it. It’s like Humphrey Bogart said in
The Maltese Falcon
,” Big added. He did a Bogart voice: ‘You’ve got do something about it. If you don’t, it’s bad for business, bad all around.’ “

Woods thought he heard a noise and turned toward the stateroom door. He heard it again. It was a soft but determined knock. He opened the door a crack and Wink pushed it the rest of the way open and let himself into the room.

“Wink. What’s up?” Woods asked.

“We can’t do this,” Wink said nervously. He looked around the room to make sure they were alone. He acknowledged Big sitting on his rack.

“Do what?”

“Cut the crap.” Wink sat down in Woods’s desk chair and rubbed his hands back and forth on the tops of his legs like a schoolboy in the principal’s office. “We’ll never pull it off.”

“Yes we will,” Woods countered.

“Too much can go wrong—”

“No doubt about it. But we
will
pull it off, Wink. You know we can do it.”

“It’s not the escort part of it that worries me.” He was clearly struggling. “I don’t want to go to
prison
, Trey, not for some impulsive, feel-good revenge deal.”

“We won’t go to prison!”

“We’ll never pull it off!” Wink exclaimed, louder than he intended.

“Yes, we will. What’s gotten you going?” Woods asked. “You said you were in—”

“I was. I’ve been lying in my rack staring at the overhead. I can’t even swallow. Do you
realize
the implications if we get busted?”

“Of course I do. But we won’t.”

“Yeah. Right. Tiger has to do the fake symbols on the radar—”

“You talk to him?”

“Yeah.”

“He said he could?”

“Sure. But if someone looks close they’ll see the difference—”

“They won’t. Nobody checks on Tiger. He’s the man.”

“What if they do?”

“They won’t.”

“And we’ve got to get there and back in one cycle? One hour and forty-five minutes? Are you kidding me?”

“Wink, I
showed
you the chart. You know this stuff. It’s one hundred eleven nautical miles to Ramat David. How long is that at five hundred knots? Thirteen point three two minutes, Wink. You did the calculation. And how far is it from Ramat David to the Bekáa Valley in Lebanon? Sixty-four friggin’ miles, Wink. How long does
that
take at six hundred knots? Six point four minutes, Wink. So far that’s about twenty minutes. And to get back? Another fifteen, or twenty minutes, depending. So forty or so minutes total, add a little time for air combat. What, ten minutes? Think we can squeeze that into an hour forty five? Sure, there will be some time between, but the timing works—”

“I just don’t think we’ll pull it off.”

“Come on Wink,” Woods said. “Show some cojones. This is about Tony, not us. We’re doing this for him. It’s about courage, about
never
forgetting. About a willingness to hang your ass out when it’s time to hang it out, and not sit around, fat, dumb, and happy, after these
assholes
murder our squadron mate.”

Wink stood up and looked straight at Woods. “
No
, Trey. It’s about going to
jail
. It’s about doing something
really
stupid!”

Woods wasn’t going to force him. “If you don’t want to go, I can get somebody else to go. Easy would go.”

Wink looked at Big who was sitting on his bed listening carefully. “You in?”

“With both feet.”

“Why?”

Big jumped down. “For Boomer. For the kids he never had. If I got whacked like that I want someone to go take them out. I don’t care who, but
someone
. And no one else is going to do it. It’s up to us.”

Wink struggled. “We can’t even fire any missiles—”

“Yes, we can! The Major has taken care of it. I told you the plan.”

“How do we know he’ll actually do it? What if he’s setting us up for embarrassment? And what about on the ship? Won’t they know?”

“The Gunner is on board with us.”

“Shit! Who else? Everybody on the ship know?”

“Just who has to. He’ll take care of the missiles.”

“How?”

“He’s got access to the computer and the hard copies of the missile records.”

“This is right on the edge, Trey.”

“You coming?”

Wink stood silently. They all listened to the humming of the ship. “Yeah.”

Woods tapped lightly on the hollow stateroom door, leaning forward to listen for sounds of someone stirring. He tapped again, slightly louder. He looked at his watch, glowing in the low red light of the passageway — 0200. He tapped once more and heard someone shuffling to the door. Pritch opened it. She was wearing a baggy flannel nightgown, her hair sticking up in all directions. “What?” she asked angrily.

“Get dressed, please,” Woods said.

“What for? Do you know what time it is?”

“I need some help.”

“Help? What are you talking about?”

“Get dressed, please,” Woods said again.

Pritch groaned and turned back toward her bed, wanting desperately to crawl back into it. But she knew Woods — he wouldn’t give up so easily. She groaned again, opened her closet, and removed the fresh uniform she had set out for morning when she would be giving the 0515 intelligence brief for the first launch at 0700. She closed the door while she dressed.

Woods leaned on the bulkhead in the passageway. He had started to doubt himself. The chance to hit back was irresistible. He had to do it for Vialli. But for the first time he hesitated. While he waited, Woods glanced down the passageway. Three knee-knockers aft a sailor was waxing the deck. Half the passageway was taped off so no one would step on the fresh wax. Woods watched him as the handle of the rotating wax buffer pushed against his ample belly, causing it to shake under his soiled dungaree shirt. He shook his head, glad he didn’t have to wax floors. He had done it once, when he was a third-class midshipman on his summer cruise. That had been enough for him. Never again, at least not until he was court-martialed and busted to seaman for violating every Navy regulation known to man, international law, and good sense. The door startled him when Pritch threw it open.

“Okay,” she said with irritation.

“Let’s go,” Woods said, moving quickly down the passageway.

“Where are we going?” Pritch asked, trying to keep up.

“To CVIC,” replied Woods.

“What for?”

“You’ll see.”

They rounded the corner into CVIC, the carrier intelligence center, and looked into the one-way glass where the Duty Petty Officer sat. Recognizing Pritch’s face, he buzzed the door and Woods pushed it open. They stepped through and heard it electronically seal behind them. Woods walked deeper into CVIC and stopped. A seaman was buffing the green tile in one corner of the large room, and another walked by carrying a piece of electronic testing equipment.

“What are we doing here, Trey? I’ve got to give a brief in three hours. I need my sleep.”

“No, you don’t. Sleep is for chumps.” He turned to Pritch. “I need charts; an ONC and JNC of Israel, Lebanon, and Syria. Then I need you to pull out the Electronic Order of Battle for Lebanon and find all the SAM sights for me, and whatever we know about the AAA sights.”

Pritch didn’t bother to hide her astonishment. “What for?”

“It doesn’t matter what for.”

“It does to me.”

“Then don’t ask.”

Pritch lowered her voice to make sure the seaman couldn’t hear her. “The only reason you could possibly want them is because you’re going to be flying there. But we’re not flying there.”

“This is one of those times in your life when it may be best for you not to know, Pritch. Just do what I say,” Woods said with an intensity Pritch had never seen in him before.

Pritch walked to a metal chest in the corner. It had several long thin drawers and a flat top angled down. She pulled out a drawer close to the bottom and removed a chart of Lebanon. She opened it up and laid it flat on the top of the chest. They leaned over it and began examining the terrain. “This is Lebanon. Where are you going?”

Woods didn’t even hesitate. “I didn’t say I was going anywhere. This is just a research project. If I
was
interested in going to Lebanon, I might be interested in going” — he studied the chart, then pointed — “right here.”