Phantom Strike

by William H. Lovejoy

  There were only four dim night-lights on, but it was enough to find her way to the back door. She defeated the alarm system, unlocked the door, and pulled it open. A soft warm breeze struck her face, carrying with it the aromas of diesel oil, hot metal, and jet fuel.

  A pair of floodlights mounted on the hangar lit up several rows of single-and twin-engined airplanes. Some of them awaited their turns at the hands of Aero-consultants craftsmen, and some of them belonged to employees. Wyatt let them park their planes for free. Bucky Barr’s pristinely restored Bell helicopter was parked at one end, its rotors tethered.

  The twin jet braked to a stop in line with parked client aircraft, the nose bobbing lightly, then the engines whined down. When the door opened and Wyatt descended to the apron, Kramer picked up a set of wheel chocks resting nearby and began walking toward him.

  Wyatt saw her coming. “Hey, my favourite ground crewman.”

  “Crew person,” she said, handing him one linked pair of chocks.

  “You just watch. Someday, I’m going to have all the gender-definitive terms down pat.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Anyone else around?”

  “Just me. If they aren’t in Nebraska, they’re home in bed.”

  Together, they chocked the wheels, then Wyatt locked the door. She waited, fingering the new red stripes on the fuselage.

  “I thought you weren’t going to show this logo around here.”

  “I wasn’t, but if anyone notices, they’ll just think it was a client.”

  They walked back to the hangar, and Kramer wrapped her fingers around his arm.

  “How was Washington?”

  “Near gridlock inside the Beltway.”

  “The traffic?”

  “That, too. Mostly, the politics and the intellectual capabilities are close to standstill.”

  Inside the hangar, Kramer locked the door and reset the alarm. Wyatt walked over to the Texan’s Mystere-Falcon and peeked inside the open door.

  “Security systems in?” he asked.

  In addition to the luxury upgrade, Aeroconsultants was installing antiterrorist detection and protection systems which included bomb detectors and infrared and radar threat sensors. More executives who flew internationally were becoming nervous about drug-toting maniacs with Stinger missiles. The pilots who flew for them were treated to two-week workshops in defensive and evasive flying tactics conducted by Wyatt, Barr, Hackley, and Zimmerman.

  “They’re mostly in,” she said.

  He climbed the airstair and slipped inside, turning on an overhead lighting strip.

  She followed.

  Much of the interior panelling had been replaced with laminated teak. The new carpeting had not yet been laid and the sofa and chairs — reupholstered in new, soft leather — had not been reinstalled as yet. Snugged up against the rear bulkhead, behind a fitted fiberglass door that folded to either side, was a full-sized bed.

  “The bed work?” he asked.

  “Hasn’t been tested.”

  “Should it be?”

  She moved in close and wrapped her arms around his waist. The heat of Washington was still on him, musky. She could feel the strength in his arms as he pulled her to him.

  She tilted her head back to look up at him and said, “Around here, we double-test everything.”

  *

  Wyatt woke at five-thirty.

  He was in his own bed, which felt a little strange. The first early morning light was sliding into the bedroom through the large and undraped window which overlooked his backyard. The overgrown, dense shrubbery and trees which completely enclosed the yard made it private, even though it was small. The grass was also overgrown; the neighbour’s boy was a day or two behind on his mowing.

  Wyatt’s house was forty or fifty years old, located in a quiet residential area of northeast Albuquerque. Since buying it, he had painted it inside and out, installed new carpet, then added air-conditioning. It was the first house he had ever owned, and after three years, he still wasn’t certain how he felt about his ownership. His feet were still attuned to Air Force ways, ready to move on at any moment.

  The queen-sized bed dominated the room, which was the largest of the two bedrooms, and left little space for the nightstands and dresser. The bedspread was crumpled in one comer, where he had tossed it at two o’clock.

  He sat up, worked his way backward, and leaned against the headboard.

  Jan opened one eye.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “I know. You like to watch the sun come up.”

  She opened her other eye, and both eyes came alive, a vibrant green in the soft light. Slithering her way up beside him, the sheet fell away from her full breasts.

  Wyatt raised his left arm and put it around her shoulders, tugging her close.

  “You’re worried, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “Who, me? Worry?” he said, but he was. He was putting a lot of lives on the line, more than ever before. And he found himself thinking about the people attached to those lives, the wives and the families.

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Yes, I do. I made a commitment.”

  “Make this the last one.”

  “The commitment is four years old.”

  She knew that. He had told her. Church had given him five million dollars as the fair price of having Wyatt on tap for undetermined years into the future. More than that, Church had known Wyatt better than he knew himself. Church had known that Wyatt lived up to his promises.

  She turned slightly and put her hand on his chest. She locked her eyes on his. “The company is doing very well. We don’t need the covert contracts anymore.”

  “I also believe in what I’m doing, Jan.”

  That was true, also. There wasn’t one operation he had performed for Church for which he felt any regret whatsoever. His actions — or Bucky’s or Norm’s or Karl’s — were necessary in some degree toward maintaining stability in one part of the world or another. His people felt the same way, he thought.

  Her dark red hair was tousled. There was an impressed line on her cheek from a wrinkle in the pillowcase. Her hand felt warm on his chest.

  He slid his left hand along her upper arm.

  “So,” she said, “you’re only going to make one commitment in your life? To God and country, but mostly country?”

  “That’s the pressing one right now, Jan.”

  She pulled away abruptly, spun around, and sat on the edge of the bed with her back to him.

  He leaned toward her and put his hand on her shoulder.

  She shrugged it off.

  “You don’t think I should fulfil my promises?”

  “Maybe you should make more of them, Andy. Maybe you should think more about the company, about the people who work for you.”

  “Well, damn it! I am.”

  “Bullshit!”

  She stood up, crossed to the dresser, and scooped up her clothing. Clutching them to her stomach, she turned toward him. Her breasts heaved, and he saw a tear in the corner of one eye.

  “You need to rethink your priorities, Andy.”

  “Jan…”

  When she went through the doorway, she slammed the door behind her.

  Wyatt sighed, leaned back, and waited for her to come back.

  She had had temper tantrums in the past, and she got over them quickly.

  He waited three minutes.

  Then heard the yelp of tires on his driveway.

  He scrambled out of bed, jerked the door open, and trotted down the hall and into the living room. Through the front window, he saw his carefully tended and lovingly treated 1965 Corvette roadster in a four-wheel drift as it rounded the comer at the end of the block.

  Then she gunned the 396 cubic-inch V8, and black smoke boiled off the rear tires.

  *

  “Are you married?” she asked.

  “I was,” Ahmed al-Qati told her. “My wife and two
children were killed when the Americans bombed Tripoli.”

  She put her hand to her mouth. Her fingers were long and slim, expressive. They danced against her lips, which were lightly defined with pale pink. “I am so sorry.”

  “Many would say it was God’s will. I do not know.”

  The waiter interrupted to pour more coffee, then backed away with tiny, servile bows. He was seeking a tip that would last him a month, no doubt. Foreigners with money still visited Libya, but not in the droves of previous decades. Tobruk was no longer a thriving and bustling resort city; most of the tourists who stayed here came for reasons other than simple relaxation. Foreigners rented the hotel rooms while they worked on government contracts. There were Russians, Frenchmen, Germans, Dutch, even a few Americans.

  Sophia Gabratelli had her reasons. When al-Qati had first met her, almost three months before, she had told him simply that she was hiding out until her divorce was finalized. She had not elaborated, but al-Qati, ever the perfectionist when it came to information, had conducted his own inquiry through friends in Libyan intelligence.

  He had learned that Sophia Gabratelli — her maiden name — was indeed awaiting a final divorce decree from a French court. She had established a residency in the south of France since the Italian courts would not acknowledge her right to leave her husband of two years, a Sicilian named Aragone. Moreover, the husband was a known Mafia chieftain, and that fact alone explained her desire to lead a low-profile life in Tobruk.

  Al-Qati had learned more than that, of course. He knew that she had a small appendectomy scar on her lower torso and that her small toe on the right foot had been broken once. He knew the names of her parents, who lived in northern Italy. He knew that she had once aspired to a career in filmmaking or modelling, a dream worthy of the classic, high-cheekboned lines of her face, the smouldering dark eyes beneath full lashes, the perfectly smooth, olive skin, and the straight, flashingly white teeth revealed by her ready smile. She was petite, and though she wore loose-fitting, non-revealing, and conservative dresses — perhaps in deference to the mores of the country — al-Qati was aware that the curves she attempted to disguise were abundant and lush. He had imagined them out of disguise more than once.

  Ahmed al-Qati also knew that she had lied to him. She had told him she was twenty-nine years old when, in fact, she was thirty-three years old. That deceit was perfectly understandable in a Western or Continental woman. She had also told him that she had a modest sum put by, enough to live in relative comfort in the seedy Seaside Hotel overlooking the Mediterranean until her divorce decree was handed down. He knew to the contrary that she had escaped the mansion in Sicily with the equivalent of two-and-a-quarter million American dollars. Considering that the spurned Aragone was probably looking intently for that money, that lie was also understandable.

  In one of his fantasies, which would never be lived out, al-Qati had given himself the role of protector of Sophia Gabratelli and her fortune. By her upbringing, she was considerably more worldly and outspoken, and probably needed less defending, than any woman he had ever met. Still, she was tiny and likely susceptible to wily men. After the sixth time he had met her for dinner, he had let it be known quietly around the city, and through the police, that she enjoyed his protection. He had not told her this.

  He forced his eyes from her face and stared over the railing at the smooth, darkening expanse of the sea. White rollers coasted up the sand of the beach. A dozen people walked in the surf’s edge. Two swimmers were far out.

  For the life of him, he could not recall his wife’s face. Sophia had that effect on him.

  “Does it make you bitter?” she asked.

  “The American attack? Yes, it does.”

  “Do you seek vengeance?”

  He smiled at her. “At one time, it was all I could think of. But no longer.”

  “You are at peace with yourself?”

  “Not at peace, I think. But I have decided that the fates of nations are not up to me. I will do my part, and I will be prepared if it should ever happen again.”

  “Defensively? With your battalion?”

  “Yes. That is, I believe my soldiers will conduct themselves with honour, should the Americans come again.” After convincing Ramad of the need to check on his command, al-Qati had conducted a quick inspection at El Bardi, then headed directly for Tobruk.

  “And you?”

  “Myself, I now play games with the air force.”

  “And you do not think much of the air force?”

  “I do not think much of the games,” he said.

  She smiled at him. “Enough of this. I tire quickly of war talk and coffee. Will you walk in the sea with me?”

  He grinned. “I have not done that in many years.”

  “Then you will enjoy it all the more.”

  Al-Qati paid the bill, then the two of them walked down the steps from the veranda to the sand.

  She stooped to free her feet from her sandals, and he noted that the small toe of her right foot was slightly bent. Nevertheless, all of her toes were delightfully carved.

  When she straightened up, standing a full head shorter than he, she wrapped her hand around his forearm. Her skirt swished against his leg as they walked down to the sea.

  Ahmed al-Qati had not felt as content in many years.

  *

  Jim Bennett had Liz Jordan and mechanic Slim Reddy witness Wyatt’s signature, then had them sign their names at the bottom of the document.

  For a lawyer, Bennett was only mildly ambitious, a trait that had encouraged Wyatt to retain him a couple years before for his personal needs. His personal requirements weren’t all that extensive, but Jan Kramer had insisted that Wyatt use someone other than the company attorney. Bennett also took care of the legal niceties for Bucky Barr’s educational foundation.

  After they were left alone in the office Wyatt shared with Kramer and Barr, Bennett asked, “Where’s Jan?”

  “She took some vacation days, Jim.”

  He assumed she had. By the time Wyatt had gotten dressed, called for a cab, and arrived at the office, she had totally disappeared. His Corvette was sitting in the parking lot with the keys in the ashtray, but her Riviera was gone. She either wasn’t at her condo, or she wasn’t answering the phone. During the day, he had left five messages on her machine.

  He ended up spending the day with Liz Jordan, paying the monthly statements, preparing bank deposits, and constructing last month’s profit-and-loss report. Jan was right; they were doing okay.

  The meeting with Jim Bennett — the primary reason he had returned to Albuquerque — took place at three in the afternoon. Together, they reviewed the final draft of his will, Wyatt asked some questions, Bennett answered them satisfactorily, and Wyatt signed off.

  Wyatt shoved the document into its envelope, then got up and put it in the wall safe. Only he, Bucky, and Jan had access to the safe. He noted that Barr also had a more recently dated will stored in the safe. Apparently, neither of them were very confident about this operation.

  Bennett snapped his briefcase shut. “You sure you don’t want to get in some handball?”

  “Can’t do it, Jim. The work’s stacking up on us.”

  “Next week, then? I’m going to go to potbelly if I don’t spend more time on the court.”

  “Give me a call, but don’t write anything solid on your calendar, Jim. I’m going to be in and out of town.”

  Bennett gave him a wave, then went to the outer office to hassle Liz for a couple minutes. She didn’t want to play handball either.

  Wyatt stood, looked around, couldn’t think of anything else he needed. He started for the door.

  Then stopped and went back to lean over the phone.

  He punched the memory number labelled, “Kramer.” It rang four times, then the answering machine kicked in.

  He hung up.

  Checking his watch, he decided he had better get airborne for Nebraska.

  He checked the conte
nts of his wallet. Four-thousand-two-hundred-and-eleven dollars. The roll in his left pocket contained eleven thousand. He figured it was enough to get him through the next couple of weeks.

  Shutting off the lights, he stepped into the reception area and headed for the door to the hangar.

  Time to go.

  “Are you leaving already, Andy?” Jordan asked.

  “In a little while, Liz,” he said, altering course for the door to the parking lot.

  The Corvette started right away, and he rolled down the windows for air. The heat was oppressive, but his Corvette didn’t offer air-conditioning except for the forced-air kind. Pulling out of the lot, he took the access road to University Boulevard and got the roadster up to seventy before he came abreast of the passenger terminal. The traffic slowed him down then, and he drifted with it onto Gibson Boulevard and got into the lane for Interstate 25 north.

  He managed seventy miles an hour on the freeway, staying with the flow of the traffic until he reached Lomas Boulevard and took it west.

  Jan Kramer’s condominium was in a four-story minitower just north of downtown Albuquerque. It was a newer building, following the architectural principles in evidence throughout much of the downtown region. The rounded corners and lodgepole projections of adobe construction predominated.

  His wallet contained a plastic pass-card for the underground parking garage, and he used it to gain access to a guest parking spot.

  Jan’s Riviera was parked squarely in her slot, and his hopes lifted a trifle.

  Taking the elevator to the fourth floor, he got off and walked the carpeted hallway to the north end. Being circumspect, he knocked on the door.

  No answer.

  He unlocked it with his key.

  She wasn’t home.

  Wyatt walked through the living room and peeked into the master bedroom. He checked the closets and found large gaps in the hanging clothes.

  In the second bedroom, which she used primarily for storage, he found that her luggage was missing.

  And that made him feel somewhat lonely.

  Memorial

  Seven

  Ibrahim Ramad stood beside the podium at the head of the briefing room. The ventilation system was struggling with the haze of cigarette smoke that drifted near the ceiling. He could never figure out why pilots, who should strive to be in the best possible condition, smoked so much.