Flash Point (48 page)

“If someone from this ship went into Lebanon without the country knowing it, without authorization, and it led to an official declaration of war, it may not be, well, it might not be a just war, or the right thing to do. That would be deceitful.”

Woods wiped his face and closed his eyes momentarily. “I’m not following you.”

“When you sent my memo to Congress, we told them how just it would be to declare war. But the actual reason Congress gave for going to war was not for the attack on Lieutenant Vialli, but for the other attacks: the attaché, the Navy commander, and the State Department man. And those attacks were in response to their belief. You, or someone like you went into Lebanon with the Israelis. Wouldn’t that make the war unjust? Wouldn’t the declaration of war by Congress based on deceit be fraud?”

“No,” Woods replied quickly. “We should declare war against this guy for killing Vialli. That’s all this is about. Tony Vialli. They killed him, and now they’re going to pay for it. Simple as that.” Woods got up from the leg press and walked around the chaplain to the next station. He sat on the bench facing out. “And now they’ve killed other Americans. I don’t understand how you can even say that,” Woods said.

The chaplain stood in front of him, refusing to leave until he satisfied some apparently unquenchable desire to talk this through. “Remember how Germany invaded Poland?”

“What?”

“World War II. Remember? Germany invaded Poland in 1939.”

“Of course. Everybody knows that.”

“Well, that’s what brought England into it, and started the real fighting. Remember how it started?”

“Sure. Germany invaded Poland and beat the hell out of them.”

“Yes, but
why
did Germany invade? What was the supposed reason?”

“Don’t remember.” Woods checked his watch.

“There was an attack on German soldiers around a radio station on the Polish border. Twenty or thirty soldiers were killed. Pictures of the dead bodies with their German uniforms were circulated. Hitler was outraged and said he would defend Germany. He invaded Poland the next day.”

“Okay,” Woods said.

“His response was justified?”

“Maybe, I don’t know—”

“Hitler
staged
the entire thing,” the chaplain said. Woods was interested, but he didn’t get the point. “The dead Germans were prisoners. Hitler murdered a bunch of prisoners, put them in uniforms at the communications station, and declared that an outrageous attack had occurred. He deceived his own countrymen, the Poles, and the world. He used it as the pretense to start World War II.”

“I gotta keep going here. What are you getting at?”

“If someone from this ship performed an illegal action and our declaration of war is the result of that, we’re in the same boat as Adolf Hitler.”

“It’s not the same at all,” Woods said.

“Why not?”

“Because the Sheikh
murdered
Vialli.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because the
Sheikh
said so!”

“What if they were there for another reason, and Vialli attacked them? After all, they didn’t kill the children.”

“Right. Unarmed, Tony attacked a bunch of innocent terrorists who just wanted to ride on the bus.” Woods had heard enough. He was losing patience with this attempt to cast the American action in a cloud of moral ambiguity, where, for once, Woods believed it didn’t belong. “Now I get it,” Woods continued, trying to keep from saying too much. “You just make up a scenario to justify doing nothing. Well, I’ll tell you what. I am going to do something about it. You can watch and you can wring your hands. You can complain that it didn’t all line up perfectly, but things in human history rarely do. We’re doing the right thing here. This was going to happen eventually anyway. So we’re going to go after this guy, and we’re going to go all out. If anything else comes of it — if World War III results — then at least we know who our enemies are. Let’s get it over with.”

Woods stood up, took his towel, and left the gym without looking back.

Sami was surprised to see Kinkaid at the agency cafeteria. He’d never seen him there before. It was close to personal enjoyment and Kinkaid seldom did anything for fun. He only ate for fuel. The caffeine was simply the stimulant that allowed him to work ungodly hours without collapse.

He waited in the checkout line behind Kinkaid. “Hey,” he said to Sami, finally noticing him, “What brings you here so early?”

“The espresso. They guy who runs the machine is actually Italian, and knows what he’s doing.”

“You mean it matters?” Kinkaid smiled as he paid the clerk. “I thought the idea was just to make it as bitter and awful as you could, and then sell it to people who have spent a long time convincing themselves it tastes good.”

“No, no,” Sami replied enthusiastically. “There is a huge difference. Lots of factors. Probably the most important are the quality of the coffee beans and the freshness of the coffee when it’s handed to you. He does a great job.”

“Well, good,” Kinkaid said. “You got a minute?”

“Sure,” Sami shrugged, a little concerned. He paid for his espresso and followed Kinkaid to the corner of the room, where they sat at a small round table. “What’s up?”

“I don’t know,” Kinkaid said, taking a drink. “I try to read people. Sometimes I’m right. I’m getting the feeling that there’s something eating you about our task force. Something’s going on in there,” he said, pointing to Sami’s head.

“I hope there’s something going on in here,” Sami said, trying to make his response sound lighthearted. He wasn’t ready to talk about things yet, but he did have serious concerns.

“So what’s going on?”

“Nothing, really.”

“Horseshit,” Kinkaid said with such force that it caught Sami completely off guard.

“What?”

“That’s horseshit. Don’t try to blow smoke at me, Sami. Something’s bugging you. What is it?”

“You really want to know?”

“Yeah, I really do.”

“I don’t trust the Israelis.”

Kinkaid was surprised. “Huh? What do they have to do with any of this?”

“They might be behind the whole thing.”

“What whole thing?”

“The whole stinking mess. The whole thing may have been just to get the United States more deeply involved. To do their dirty work for them.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Think about it. A nice Navy Lieutenant met a beautiful girl who turned out to be Israeli. She lured him back to Israel, where he was promptly murdered—”

“So was—”

“You wanted to hear it, let me finish,” Sami said more abruptly than he’d intended. “He got killed, then something happened in Lebanon that may have involved a Navy plane. I’m not sure what happened there, but let’s assume one of our pilots went on his own private revenge attack with the Israeli Air Force. That sure as hell was with their consent, and would almost certainly have been their
idea
. No doubt. Then this Sheikh guy got all pissed at the U.S. because we were on the attack, which the Syrians claim to have figured out all by themselves, and his guys start attacking U.S. citizens all over the damned place. Now we declare war against him and are figuring out how to get back at him and take him out. Exactly what Israel wanted.”

“They couldn’t do it themselves? You think they’re afraid of this lunatic?”

“He’s not a
lunatic
,” Sami said, shaking his head. “Trust me, he is no lunatic. He may be wrong, and misguided, even evil, but he’s not a lunatic.”

“So who attacked the bus and killed this Lieutenant and his girlfriend?”

“You saw the reports. Men in Israeli Army uniforms.”

“So the
Israelis
attacked the bus and killed their own people?” Kinkaid exclaimed. “
You’re
the lunatic! Don’t go irrational on me, Sami! I can’t afford to lose you.”

“I’m not being irrational. I’m thinking about angles you may not be. You have to look at
all
the angles, Joe. All of them!”

“And then the Sheikh cooperated and took responsibility for the attack? Where are you getting this stuff, Sami? Get off it before you stink up the whole place.”

“If the order comes from high enough, the Mossad would do anything.”

“I’ll see you at the task force meeting,” Kinkaid said disgustedly. He got up and walked out of the cafeteria.

Sami hadn’t even touched his espresso. He had sounded stupid, like some conspiracy theorist. He hadn’t thought it through all the way. Still, it was possible.

The
Washington
Battle Group steamed northward two hundred miles off the coast of Lebanon. Woods and Wink had waited anxiously for the final word. They were sure that at some point, someone would cancel their flight. That’s what always happened. When it came time to pull the trigger, politicians and Admirals wanted everything to be perfect, and it never was. So they had waited, certain the strike would be called off at the last possible moment.

They went up the small ladder that rose from the catwalk to the flight deck, leaning backward into the wind automatically as they moved aft toward the fantail and their waiting Tomcat. Woods glanced up at the night sky through the dim red floodlights that lit the deck. He could see the stars faintly. A perfect, crisp night for flying.

Wink started around the Tomcat counterclockwise as Woods began his preflight clockwise. Woods looked for leaking hydraulic fluid the way an ER doctor would look for blood. Both red, and both would mean death if the bleeding wasn’t found. Only Woods had to look for his in the dark. It was one of the most important things in his life tonight. The fluids inside the titanium and composite skin were more important to him now than the blood running through the veins of a lot of people in the world.

Woods wanted the people who had killed Vialli so much he could taste it. Their mission was to drop laser-guided bombs on the fortress where they thought the Sheikh was most likely to be. He wished he could ride one of the bombs like Slim Pickens in
Dr. Strangelove
— but without dying.

Woods walked underneath the F-14 and saw the dark shadows of the GBU-10s underneath. The ordies had already placed the laser guidance noses on the massive, two-thousand-pound bombs.

Wink stared at the bombs. “Know what I like about these bombs?” he asked Woods.

“What?” Woods said.

“They just make shit go away. Just vanish. That’s so cool.”

Woods smiled at Wink, who was being much more talkative than usual. “Probably should be carrying the GBU-24s, though.”

Wink agreed. “Bunker busters. Maybe on our next hop.”

“We’ll see.”

Woods ran his bare hand along the underbelly of the Tomcat and turned on his mini Maglite flashlight now and then to check for the telltale red hydraulic fluid. He went as far aft underneath the F-14 as he could until he came up to the edge of the flight deck. He shone his flashlight as far back as the light would reach out where the tail of the plane was hanging over the water that was eighty feet below, examining it carefully.

He turned back, going forward, until he was by the left jet intake. Now he was in a hurry. He could feel the tension building throughout the ship as launch time grew closer. No one had canceled it. It might actually happen.

He slipped into the front cockpit and Benson hurried over to stand next to Woods on the access step. He reached over, grabbing the shoulder harness fittings and handing them to Woods, one at time. Benson connected Woods’s G-suit to the environmental system that fed air in direct proportion to the G forces experienced.

“All set, sir?” Benson asked, already knowing the answer.

“All set, Benson. Thanks. Wish us luck.”

“Be safe, sir,” Benson said.

“Roger that,” Woods answered, checking the switches in the cockpit of the Tomcat and pulling the elastic strap of the knee board around his right thigh.

Wink watched Benson climb down and fold the ladder up into the Tomcat. Wink checked both sides of the plane and looked up at the large canopy that stuck into the sky at a forty-five-degree angle. “Clear!” he announced in a loud voice.

“Clear,” Woods said.

Wink pushed the handle of the canopy forward and it closed.

The engines were turning beautifully, the engine instruments hovering in the middle of acceptable ranges. Woods signaled Airman Benson, who disconnected the huffer and power cable. Wink ran through his checklist carefully. Woods’s hands darted back and forth, instinctively moving switches and knobs until the cockpit was set up perfectly and the systems all checked out. He could almost do it without thinking, a risk he was particularly aware of tonight. His mind wasn’t worrying about cockpit switches — he was thinking about SAMs and the Syrian Air Force, which would like nothing better than to be able to engage him, and ideally, ask
him
a few questions.

He put his feet on the top of the rudder pedals to hold the brakes as Benson took the tie-down chains off and moved the chocks away from the wheels. Benson glanced at Woods and Wink and saluted sharply. Woods returned his salute in the dark, then saw that the yellow shirt was ready to start him taxiing toward the catapult.

“Hot mike,” Woods said as they moved toward the bow catapult. He glanced down at the clock on his dashboard and saw that it was ten minutes before the time for his launch. It was also five minutes before the scheduled launch of the Tomahawk missiles. No one knew what Syria would do. All they had was a warning from the Syrian Ambassador to the United Nations. He had called a press conference immediately after the declaration of war by the United States and had told the Americans in unequivocal terms that any attack on Syrian soil would be perceived as an act of war against Syria. This had given the politicians some pause. The reaction in the VF-103 Ready Room had been: Excellent! Come on up.

Woods squinted at an enormous flash that lit the horizon to his left. As he watched, a fireball climbed into the sky and suddenly another, then another, all of them coming from the vertical launchers of the destroyers that surrounded the carrier. Five more glowing, burning missiles flew up from the ships and headed east after the first.