by Greg Dinallo
For the last eight years, Brancato had been Shepherd’s alter ego and wizzo. The latter in more ways than one.
“Name the island that has a quarter of a million less inhabitants today than it did a hundred years ago.”
“Ireland,” Shepherd answered hesitantly.
“Not bad. . . . The American who had a long association with the Soviet Union as businessman and ambassador?”
“Armand Hammer.”
“Averill Harriman. Hammer was never ambassador.”
“You going to do this all the way to the U.K.?”
“Just for that, which famous composer poured ice water over his head to stimulate his brain?”
“Elton John,” Shepherd cracked, as they stowed their luggage on a rack in the weapons bay, empty because the plane was flown “clean,” without ordnance, on deployment flights. The crew chief, who for three years had overseen 179’s maintenance with customary fervor, hadn’t been transferred to England and he watched wistfully as the two aviators did their inspection, then slipped beneath the gullwing canopies into side-by-side red leather couches.
After forty-five minutes of systems checks and engine warm-up procedures, Shepherd radioed for clearance. “Andrews tower, Viper-Two ready to roll.”
“Viper?” Stephanie had asked when they first dated, thinking there was nothing at all venomous about him. “It certainly doesn’t suit you.”
“Well,” he replied, glancing skyward, “you have to understand I’m different up there.”
She hadn’t understood; indeed, she still didn’t. Despite being blessed with that rare combination of guts, skill, and judgment found in the best fighter jocks, killing was out of character for Walt Shepherd; conversely, call sign Viper had no trouble handling it.
Shepherd started the F-111 down the west runway; 30 seconds later, the sleek F model, hottest of the 111 series, was banking over Chesapeake Bay. Soon it was at 30,000 feet, streaking through the atmosphere at 750 MPH. The wings were at 16 degrees, standard for takeoff and climb. Shepherd set the indicator stop at 52, advanced the throttles, and eased back the handle in the sidewall; the wings swept at a rate of 10 degrees per second and the F-111 bolted forward.
“Yeah,” Brancato hooted as the acceleration slammed him back into his seat; it was a kick every time.
Speed was now Mach 1.75; precisely 1,250 MPH.
Shepherd guided the plane into a GAT-assigned commercial air corridor and engaged the autopilot; then he and Brancato settled in for the long haul.
Two hours later, the sleek bomber was 2,400 miles out over the Atlantic, 1,300 miles from its destination. Unlike practice missions, deployment flights had no tactical objective. Once on autopilot, aviators were essentially passengers in a supersonic taxi. Brancato passed the time reading, his nose buried in a biography of Churchill. Shepherd monitored the avionics.
“Mind watching the store for a while?” Shepherd asked, as he removed a palm-sized cassette recorder from a pocket in the leg of his flight suit and clicked it on. Years ago, the first time he and Stephanie were apart, he had wooed her via cassette, and he had been using it to keep in touch with home ever since: from Vietnam, the Philippines, wherever he was stationed without her.
“Thursday, three April,” he began in his easy drawl. “Real pretty up here, babe. We left the Grand Banks behind about an hour ago. Advance report for touchdown is rain and more rain. Sounds like we’re talking weather for ducks. Speaking of water, Al thought you should know that Beethoven used to pour ice water over his—” He paused, catching Brancato signaling to the multi systems display. “He’s waving at me like a matador. Not Beethoven, Al. Be talking to you soon.”
“Three bogies coming off the deck at a hundred miles,” Brancato said, eyes riveted to the MSD screen, where three blips had penetrated the radar envelope.
Far below and to the northeast, a Redfleet Surface Action Group was cruising the waters of the North Atlantic: four submarines, three cruisers, and six destroyers in escort of the Kiev-class carrier Minsk.
A radar operator in the Minsk’s attack center had picked up the F-111’s signal. Its speed indicated he was tracking a military jet. The chance to observe American military aircraft wasn’t taken lightly.
Three Yak-36 VTOL interceptors had been scrambled. They were far from the cutting edge of technology. But advanced Soviet interceptors hadn’t been engineered to withstand the stress of catapult launches and arrester-hook landings like their American counterparts, and the vertical-takeoff-and-landing Forgers were the only aircraft deployed on Redfleet carriers.
In the F-111’s cockpit, Shepherd was intently studying the three blips on his radar screen. “Nothing coming back on the IFF,” he observed. Identification friend or foe transponders were carried on all NATO aircraft; radar blips not accompanied by an IFF symbol were considered hostile. “Have to be Forgers,” he concluded. “Under or over? What do you say?”
“We have twenty angels on their ceiling,” Brancato replied, suggesting they climb to avoid contact.
“Going to be tight,” Shepherd said.
He pulled back on the stick, putting the F-111 into a climb. The Forger’s ceiling was 41,000 feet, the F-111’s 60,000. At a rate of climb of 3,592 feet per minute, the F-111 would reach clear air in 3 minutes 10 seconds. The F-111 kept streaking upward through the blinding whiteness. The beeps from the radar detector were coming faster. The altimeter had just ticked 37,000 when they blended into a screech.
“Three bogies dead ahead fifteen miles,” Brancato announced. “We’re not going to make it.”
At a combined closing speed of 40 miles a minute, the 15-mile gap closed in just over 20 seconds.
The two lead Forgers split at the last instant and screamed past; one above, followed an eyeblink later by the second below. The passes were dangerously close.
The F-111 shuddered and bounced, emitting loud, thumping protests as it slammed into the vortex of turbulent air that spiraled off the Forgers.
“Crazy bastards,” Brancato growled.
“Six months on a carrier’ll do it to you.”
The third Forger was still 10 miles away, closing on the F-111’s nose from below.
“I got a lock on the trailer,” Brancato said, which meant the F-111’s computerized attack radar system was targeted on the approaching Forger. It was a warning, a game of one-upmanship, a deadly way of making a point. Hell, the Russian had it coming.
“Squirm, turkey, squirm,” Shepherd drawled, at the thought of the Soviet pilot’s radar detector letting him know that, but for an aversion to starting World War III and a clean plane, he and Brancato would have blown him out of the skies.
They had no way of knowing that the Russian was a kid; that his wingmen had purposely set him up for an initiation, fully expecting he would get the “treatment” for their harassment of the F-111. Unfortunately, the treatment had an effect his wing-men hadn’t anticipated. The novice pilot froze in the cockpit, his eyes wide with terror at the thought of his young life being ended by one of the Sidewinder missiles he imagined hung from the hardpoints beneath the F-111’s wings.
“What the hell?” Shepherd exclaimed, realizing the planes were on a collision course, seconds from impact.
He turned hard right, executing the standard avoidance maneuver, expecting the Russian to do the same. He didn’t. Instead, he panicked and turned left across the F-111’s path, just beneath its nose.
The Forger’s wingtip slashed into the underside of the bomber’s fuselage just forward of the cockpit. A hailstorm of metal fragments filled the air as the wingtip disintegrated and the Forger continued past. Several of the projectiles punctured the F-111’s skin. One tore through the left sidewall beneath the auxiliary gauge panel and slammed into Brancato’s right shoulder.
“Al? Al?” Shepherd shouted, over the piercing whistle of rushing air as the cockpit depressurized.
Brancato groaned in pain. His hand clutched the blood-soaked shoulder of his flight suit. A crimson spl
ash was creeping up the side of the canopy, turning it into a garish stained-glass window that gave a red glow to the cockpit.
Shepherd scanned the instrument panel: the master caution light was full on; the left engine tachometer was surging erratically, indicating the whirling turbine had ingested metal fragments; the utility pressure gauge had dropped to well below 1,000 psi, which meant the hydraulic system that deployed landing gear and activated speed brakes was also damaged.
Shepherd shut the malfunctioning engine down, pushed his oxygen mask bayonets tight into the receivers, then did the same to Brancato’s. “Al? Come on, Alfredo, talk to me!”
“I don’t know, I feel real weird,” Brancato muttered. “Better head home.”
“We’re past the PNR,” Shepherd replied, making reference to the point of no return, which meant they were closer to England than the United States. “Hang in there,” he said. He thumbed the radio transmit button and began broadcasting. “Four-eight TAC? This is Viper-Two. Four-eight TAC, this is Viper-Two. I have an in-flight emergency. Do you read?”
“This is Four-eight TAC,” Lakenheath tower replied. “Affirmative, Viper-Two. Go ahead.”
“Harassed and struck in midair by hostile aircraft. Assume Soviet Forger. My wizzo’s injured. We have frag penetration in the capsule; left engine and utility pump are out. ETA nineteen-thirty zulu.”
“Copy, Viper-Two. You have an immediate CTL. Repeat, immediate CTL. We’ll monitor.”
The three Forgers were nowhere in sight now.
Shepherd brought the wings forward to 16 degrees and set the throttle of the working engine to cruise speed; then he engaged the autopilot and unzipped Brancato’s flight suit, peeling it away from the wound. “How’re you doing?”
“Nothing a dish of fettuccine wouldn’t cure,” Brancato growled, fighting the pain.
Shepherd removed his squadron scarf, folded it into a thick wad, and pressed it against the bloody puncture. “That one T or two?”
“Huh?”
“How many Ts in fettuccine?”
“Two, dammit. You going to do this all the way in?”
“Yeah. Somebody once told me it’s impossible for a Sicilian to die while he’s talking.”
“God.” Brancato groaned, adjusting his position in the flight couch.
“That big G or little g?”
3
THAT SAME MORNING in Washington, D.C., while shock waves from the bombing of the TWA jetliner reverberated round the world, armored limousines converged on the White House. They snaked between the concrete barricades, depositing solemn passengers at the South Portico.
The hastily convened group sat with the president in the cabinet room as he read a memorandum. It listed the names, hometowns, and ages of the four Americans who had been killed. One was a fourteen-month-old child. The president’s lips tightened in anger; then, he set down the memo and looked up at his advisers.
“Is this Qaddafi’s work?” he asked softly.
“We can’t prove he gave the order, sir,” National Security Adviser Kenneth Lancaster said, “but we know he did.”
“I think it’s time to consider an air strike against Libya,” the secretary of state chimed in.
“Not in my book,” the chairman of the Joint Chiefs said firmly. “I’m going on record right now as opposed to any military response to terrorism. Frankly, I’m far more interested in talking about the Soviets,” he went on, chafing over the incident with the Forgers.
“As you very well know, Admiral,” the secretary of state lectured, “a protest has been filed and I expect an apology will be forthcoming. The incident has been overshadowed by these events and I suggest it remain so.”
“I agree,” the president said. “This is no time to take a hard line with Moscow over an accident.”
“Yes, sir,” the CJC replied dutifully. “But I respectfully submit we have no justification for attacking Libya.”
“What we have is a nasty problem,” Lancaster said. “Anyone care to suggest how we solve it?”
“With a pistol, Ken,” CIA’s Kiley replied coldly. The pressure had become intolerable of late, intensified by the fact that, despite CIA’s vast resources, Beirut station chief Tom Fitzgerald had vanished without a trace.
“That would put us in violation of twelve-three,” the secretary of state warned, referring to Executive Order 12333, which forbids sanctioning assassinations.
“Forget twelve-three,” Kiley said. “An attack on Qaddafi’s nerve center couldn’t be construed as an assassination even if it did kill the son of a bitch.”
The president thought it ironic that the civilians were in favor of using force and the military opposed. “It seems we have no proof Qaddafi gave the order. Is that right?”
“Yes, sir,” Lancaster replied, tamping his pipe. “Furthermore, the antiterrorist people in Rome and Athens have announced their investigation isn’t focused on Libyans.”
“Which means Qaddafi’s going to get away with it,” Kiley retorted, angrily. “We should bomb his Muslim ass right out of North Africa.” He saw the president grimace and added, “As Machiavelli once so wisely advised, ‘Never do an enemy a small injury.’”
“Well, no one would like to get him more than I,” the president said. “But first, I want evidence, hard evidence that Libya is behind these terrorist acts.”
“You’ll have it, sir,” Kiley replied, then he turned to an aide seated behind him, one of many who ringed the walls of the conference room, providing documents and data to their bosses. “That KH-11 we have parked over Poland—how fast can we adjust its orbit?”
Keyhole number eleven was a spy satellite equipped with an ultrasophisticated electro-optical surveillance system a hundred times more sensitive to energy in the infrared and visible light spectrums than state-of-the-art film or video cameras. It also had formidable signals intelligence capability and could intercept a broad range of electronic data: radio, telephone, video, and cable transmissions in the VHF, UHF, and microwave bands, among them.
An intense, physically compact man with military bearing stood in response to the DCI’s query and crossed to the table carrying a red binder. A Vietnam ace and charter member of a top-secret Special Forces unit formed after the failed Iran hostage rescue mission, Air Force Colonel Richard Larkin possessed the cool fatalism men who have often faced death acquire. The surge of terrorism had gotten him assigned to the White House as a consultant on antiterrorism; but in truth he worked for Bill Kiley.
Colonel Larkin set the binder on the table and found the section he wanted. “Three days, sir,” he replied in a resonant voice that emphasized the hard Ohio vowels.
“Good,” Kiley said. “Have them park it right over Qaddafi’s tent. We’re talking cast-iron coverage. He won’t be able to get a hard-on without us knowing it.”
SEVERAL DAYS after meeting with Muammar el-Qaddafi, Saddam Moncrieff flew to Tunis, 300 miles northwest of Tripoli, taking a taxi to PLO Worldwide Headquarters.
Despite the grandiose title, it turned out to be a series of cramped offices in a shabby building near the university quarter. The Saudi was thoroughly searched by PLO guards, then driven to Yasser Arafat’s private residence. The nineteenth-century seaside villa was on a cul-de-sac several miles northeast of the city, near Carthage. The chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization had been living here since his expulsion from Beirut.
Now, in a sparsely furnished sitting room adjacent to a courtyard where several stunted pines rustled, the man with the large features and scraggly beard, who had made the checkered kaffiyeh a symbol of the Palestinian cause, listened intently as Moncrieff laid out a proposal that involved the PLO, Libya, and the United States. “The net result,” Moncrieff concluded, “would be a homeland for Palestinians in Libya.”
Arafat’s eyes widened with resentment. Despite being scattered throughout the Middle East and North Africa, despite decentralized leadership, despite being oppressed and demoralized, Palestinians had never
lost sight of their goal. “Are you suggesting we relinquish our claim to Palestine?” Arafat asked incredulously.
“On the contrary,” Moncrieff replied, having purposely provoked him to make the distinction. “I believe this could go a long way to securing it.”
Arafat’s eyes softened with curiosity. “How so?”
“Think of it as a sanctuary; a territory, if you will, where you could gather your people and infuse them with a renewed sense of hope and purpose.”
Arafat mused as the implication dawned on him. He had long ago admitted, if only to himself, that the Israelis would never willingly grant Palestinians any degree of sovereignty. Indeed, they had recently begun resettling Soviet Jews throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip. “An unoccupied territory—”
“Yes, sir, precisely.”
“Free of Israeli scrutiny,” Arafat went on, becoming more intrigued with what he was envisioning. “One where, if I understand your thinking correctly, Palestinians and their leaders could regroup and launch an all-out effort to reclaim their homeland.”
“I’d say your view coincides with mine, sir, yes.”
Arafat settled back in his chair and spooned some honey into a cup of tea. The idea had merit, he thought. Divide and conquer was the oldest tactic in the book; and for decades, the Israelis had confined Palestinians to territories in southern Lebanon, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, which their forces occupied—territories that were thousands of miles from Tunis, where the PLO leadership had been exiled. Four frustrating years of it, not to mention decades as the titular head of a nonexistent nation, had convinced Arafat that reunification was vital. “I think it’s worth exploring,” he said after a long silence. “What does Qaddafi want? Or should I be asking, how much?” he added with a knowing smile.
“No, he’s not interested in money; but he would very much like to acquire certain ‘currency’ which you’ve amassed per Article Seventeen of the Intifada.”
