Change of Heart by Jack Allen

by Unknown

  Josh felt ridiculous. The new guy stepped toward Josh with his right hand extended. Josh shook it.

  “Name’s Austin. Any other day I’m Captain Frederick’s Radar Intercept Officer. Today the Navy tells me they want to put you in my seat.” He shrugged. “They want my chair, I give it to 42

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  them.”

  Josh winced. Austin had a strong, crushing grip.

  “Don’t blame me. This wasn’t my idea.” His hand throbbed when Austin released it.

  He straightened the collar around Josh’s neck.

  “Forget about it. It’s no big deal. I know you’re a capable pilot.” He slapped Josh on the shoulder. “There, now your helmet will fit better.”

  “Thanks,” Josh said.

  “Don’t thank me until you bring my plane and my captain back.”

  Fredericks picked up his helmet.

  “Let’s move out of here.”

  Josh noticed the words on Fredericks’ helmet applied with small adhesive letters over the sun visor. On one side was Frederick’s name. On the other was his nickname.

  “Who gave you the name Corn Dog?” Josh said.

  “Do me a favor. Don’t ask,” Fredericks said as he walked by Josh.

  Josh shook his head. “That’s not a nickname. It’s a curse.” Josh followed Fredericks across the paved airfield toward the parked jets. Several technicians in gray jumpsuits swarmed over one of the F-14’s like worker ants. The jet’s engines were running, making a high pitched whine. Hoses and cables hung from openings in its skin like a patient in intensive care, all running to a pair of vehicles parked near the plane. With the extra fuel tanks it carried beneath the wings and fuselage it looked more like a pregnant cow than the Navy’s most advanced interceptor.

  The nearest flight technician, an ensign, turned and saluted Fredericks. Fredericks returned his salute. The man held the salute as Josh approached. It took him a moment to remember to return the salute. He still held the rank of lieutenant commander in the Navy, but he spent so little time on Naval bases he sometimes forgot he was an officer.

  “How’s my plane, ensign?” Fredericks said, the cigar rolling Change of Heart

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  between his teeth.

  “It’s full like a tanker, sir. I just hope you can get it off the ground.”

  Fredericks stood with his hands on his hips. Josh stood beside him. They stared at the jet together. It looked ungainly, like an overweight hog waiting for slaughter.

  “Do you mind if I ask what route we’re taking?” Josh said.

  Fredericks took the cigar out of his mouth.

  “We have a full fuel load. That will get us to the Air Force Academy in Colorado. We’ll only be there long enough to top off the tanks. The carrier Kennedy sailed from Alameda this morning.

  We’ll catch it a couple of hundred miles off the coast. From there we fly to Pearl. From Pearl to the carrier America, and that’s it for me. You’re on your own from then on. Whatever they have in mind for you, I don’t want to know.” They climbed into the plane and the technicians strapped them in. Fredericks sat in the forward seat. Josh sat in the rear.

  “Are you certified for the F-14?” Fredericks asked when the intercom was turned on.

  “I got about twenty hours in an F-4,” Josh replied.

  “Close enough.”

  He lowered the cockpit canopy, the technicians disengaged the fuelling hoses and power cables, and Fredericks taxied to a runway. Josh listened to his radio communication with the control tower without speaking. It had been several years since he flew in a fighter jet. It was an incredible thrill the first time, but he didn’t think this trip would be the same. They carried far too much fuel for high speed maneuvers. Josh hoped Fredericks wasn’t the kind of nut who would do crazy stunts just to show off.

  On takeoff, the plane used twice as much runway as normal.

  Even to Josh, sitting in the back seat, the plane felt sluggish. He hoped it would stay in the air with all the extra weight.

  Over the Mississippi River, the plane picked up speed once a large portion of the fuel was burned off. They raced into the darkness to the west with the sun continually rising behind them.

  They had just begun a long trip to the other side of the world.

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  It was unusual to use a fighter for a trip this long, but Josh knew this plane would get them there faster than any passenger jet.

  At the Air Force Academy airbase in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the F-14 attracted a lot of attention from the ground crews and young Air Force pilots. All around it on the airstrip were F-15 Eagles and F-16 Falcons, but it was a rare event when a Navy plane visited the Academy in Colorado.

  Josh knew they couldn’t stay long if they needed to catch up to an aircraft carrier that already sailed into the Pacific off the coast of Northern California. Neither he nor Fredericks, however, expected that Colonel Hawkes, the Air Force Academy Base Commander, would be unwilling to cooperate.

  Hawkes was a lean man in his forties with the confrontational stance and hard stare of a man who had experienced combat.

  Josh saw the look of stubborn determination in his eyes when they reported to him, and realized right away the success of this entire mission could be compromised by this one man.

  “You want me to what?” Hawkes snarled.

  “Refuel my Tomcat so I can get back in the air,” Fredericks said.

  Josh could see him fight to restrain an anger that boiled inside.

  “Lemme get this straight. You want me to waste ten thousand pounds of my precious fuel on a Navy jet when I got thirsty Air Force fighters sittin’ on the ground waiting for that gas?” Fredericks started to say something and Josh was sure he was going to make a comment about Air Force jets the colonel would not be too happy to hear, so he cut him off.

  “Forgive me, Colonel,” Josh said in a pacifying tone. “I believe you should have received an order to refuel Captain Frederick’s plane with all haste.”

  Hawkes face cracked from its stony expression and he laughed.

  “I don’t know who the hell you think you are, young man, but I never got any goddamned order to refuel your plane ‘with all haste’, and I am fully prepared to refuel your asses at my own Change of Heart

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  convenience, and only if I damn well feel like it.” Josh was unable to hold Fredericks back. He exploded at Hawkes with some of the most colorful language Josh ever heard.

  Josh grabbed the phone on the desk, ignoring Hawkes protests that he was not allowed to use it, and dialed. Hawkes was trying to hold two arguments, one with Josh and one with Fredericks, when Filmore answered on the other end.

  “Filmore,” she said curtly.

  “It’s me. Josh.”

  There was a short pause from her end.

  “Josh, why am I talking to you on the phone?” she said.

  “We’ve, uh, run into a slight problem.” Filmore sighed. “Ok, what is it?”

  Josh turned away from the noise of the argument between Fredericks and Hawkes and described to her briefly their situation in a low voice. She asked Josh to hold. He listened to Hawkes and Fredericks yell at each other while he waited. He was amazed they could maintain their vehemence for so long. It appeared they were actually enjoying themselves.

  The line clicked and Josh heard a new voice.

  “This is General Lawson,” a gruff, angry voice barked. “Who am I talking to?”

  Josh told the general who he was. General Lawson grunted, as if disgusted to speak with a lowly Navy man, and asked to speak with Hawkes. Josh held out the phone for the colonel. It was like holding up a stop sign. Their argument stopped immediately and Hawkes took the phone.

  “Yeah, what is it?” he shouted into the receiver.

  Lawson must have barked something in his ear because Hawkes snapped upright and the rest of his end of the conversation consisted mainly of “Yes” and “Sir”.

&nb
sp; When he put the phone down he looked forlorn for a second, then hustled out of the office, pushing his way between Josh and Fredericks, shouting for someone at the top of his lungs.

  “Who the hell did you call?” Fredericks asked, his face set with astonishment.

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  Josh shrugged. “The President.”

  Fredericks’ eyebrows arched and he looked away.

  A young lieutenant arrived, out of breath, and was informed by Colonel Hawkes that he was to fuel the F-14 to the very tops of its tanks with the best fuel he could find on the base and he was to do it immediately. If there was any delay, every officer involved from the time the F-14 put down risked being busted to Corporal and losing any benefits and pension they may have accumulated.

  Josh and Fredericks were off the ground in less than an hour.

  Hardly a word was spoken while the plane was being refuelled, which was directly supervised by Hawkes and three senior officers from the Academy.

  Fredericks struggled to contain his laughter throughout the entire event. As the wheels lifted off the runway, he was laughing out loud.

  “Did you really call the President?” he said, speaking up to be heard over the noise of the engines.

  “Not really,” Josh admitted. “I just called my boss. She called some general. But it might as well have been the President.” Fredericks was nodding as he laughed. Josh worried he might not be able to control the plane if he was laughing so hard.

  Chapter 3

  Ismail Rafjani was a man with many jobs. Today he was a liaison officer returning from Zonguldak, on the Black Sea coast of Turkey, with a shipment of supplies from the Russians. This was not a commercial trade that benefitted the economies of both countries. There would be no papers to record the transaction.

  He had no knowledge of the financial end of the exchange, but he presumed it was already taken care of, otherwise there would have been no shipment for him to receive.

  With the dim glow of his favorite Turkish cigarette, Rafjani guided the big, old truck through a small village. The road was little more than a wide path in the dirt, cut in deep ruts by other trucks on countless rainy days. Rafjani drove slowly. He was in no hurry. He had a very heavy load, six tons of Russian explosives, and it would not be wise to risk losing the entire load, along with his life.

  The son of a Greek banker and a Pakistani painter, Rafjani was born in Athens, where his father lived his entire life, but was raised in Pakistan by his mother and her family when his parents separated.

  His father was a sensitive, overweight, balding man and his mother loved him dearly. She just couldn’t stand to be around him after five years of marriage. His mother was a tall, elegantly beautiful woman who could have been royalty, and Rafjani shared her delicate good looks and Middle Eastern features. He was always glad for that because his father was not the least bit handsome.

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  Rafjani had his mother’s black hair, long nose, high cheekbones and dark skin. If he had been given his father’s European features and fat, bulbous nose, he would not have been as readily accepted into the world in which he chose to live.

  Rafjani left Pakistan as a teenager to fight a war he felt was important to set the order of the world correct once again. He found his way to Iraq, where he was accepted into a training camp and learned to kill and deceive. He had been there nearly eight years, and was rapidly climbing the ranks. His hard work and devotion to the Iraqi cause earned him much praise.

  This was not the first time Rafjani made the trip from the Syrian Desert in western Iraq through the middle of Turkey to the small port on the coast of the Black Sea. In fact, he had made this trip many times and expected to make it many more times in the future, especially since they were becoming more and more frequent.

  These Russians Rafjani did not mind. They were more like him, not like the Russians of the north, who behaved like the people of the west, always so superior and always treating his people like children and servants. These Russians had their own fight. They supplied materials not because they were sympathetic to the Iraqi cause but because they were profiteers who needed to fund their own cause. Rafjani could respect that. He had nothing against these Russians and they had nothing against him. If this were his war he would spare them.

  He rolled down the window and tossed out the cigarette. In the pocket of his shirt was an open, half empty pack. He took out another one. He had six more packets in his case, which he stored behind the seat. Along with the cigarettes in the case were false papers for the crates in the back of the truck. They identified the cargo as machine parts from the Ukraine.

  He lit the cigarette. Ahead, just over a rise in the road, were the lights of an oncoming car, rare on these roads, but not unusual.

  A light in his mirror caught his attention. It was the headlights of a car approaching from behind. The cigarette lighter hovered an inch from the tip of the cigarette. This much traffic on a road Change of Heart

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  this deep in Turkey was highly unusual. He slowed as he came over the rise.

  Ahead on the descending slope were two cars parked at angles on either side of the road, both facing his direction. Their bright headlights shined directly at him, obscuring his view of the road. He slowed to a stop. Several policemen carrying machine guns approached. One officer, who did not have a machine gun, stepped toward the cab. Rafjani rolled down his window.

  The officer looked up at Rafjani and smiled.

  “Good evening,” he said in Farsi.

  He had narrow, pointed features and an engaging, pleasant smile. Rafjani couldn’t help but smile back.

  “Good evening,” he replied.

  “Are you hauling any cargo?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you step down, please, with the proper papers?” He stepped back to allow Rafjani to swing the door open.

  Rafjani grabbed the case from behind the seat and stepped down out of the cab, not feeling the least bit nervous. If the Russians did their job there was nothing to fear. He had no reason not to trust the Russians. He opened the case and handed the papers to the officer.

  “You are Armen Ghazal?” the officer said as he scanned each page.

  “Yes.”

  “What is your destination?”

  “Cizre,” Rafjani said, which was true.

  Cizre was the last populated city on the southern border of Turkey with Syria. It was a small, isolated industrial town where spare machine parts would be needed.

  The officer flipped through the rest of the papers.

  “We would like to examine your cargo.”

  “Certainly.”

  They went to the back of the truck. Rafjani dropped the tail-gate and the officer shined his flashlight in at the wooden crates.

  Each was marked in English and Russian with the word Ukraine.

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  There were forty eight stacked in the back of the truck. The officer checked the papers and flashed the light on the boxes.

  “Please open that one,” he said, shining the light on a particular box.

  Rafjani was prepared for this. He took the crowbar from along the side wall of the truck, hopped up into the back and pried open the top lid of the indicated box. The officer pulled himself up into the back of the truck and shined his flashlight down into the open crate. The pale beam reflected off the hard, shiny surfaces of several rows of steel gears. The officer crouched to read the numbers on the side of the crate and compared them with the sheets of paper.

  The officer stood up. Rafjani was almost gloating. These Turks were not Westerners, but they were just as easy to deceive.

  “Bring the dogs,” the officer said to one of his subordinates as he climbed out of the truck.

  The subordinate rushed away toward the vehicles at the front of the truck.

  Rafjani’s gloating feeling deflated like an old balloon. He had
been stopped for inspections before, always by Turkish police searching for smuggled hashish and heroin, but they never used dogs. Rafjani’s face betrayed no emotion. Nevertheless he was suddenly very nervous. There were no drugs for the dogs to detect, but they would surely sniff out the explosives. The dogs would alert the officer, who would command his men to open every crate, the explosives would be discovered and Rafjani would be arrested. He jumped down from the truck, standing away from the officer. He wanted to run, but he knew if he did he would immediately be shot in the back. He had no choice but to wait for what seemed inevitable.

  A pair of younger men in uniform came to the back of the truck, each holding an eager German shepherd on a leash. The officer gave them a command and the men unhooked the leashes from the collars. Both dogs leaped into the back of the truck and scrambled over the crates. Rafjani closed his eyes, his body tense, Change of Heart

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  waiting for the first sharp, accusing bark that would eventually get him tried and shot for smuggling and treason and espionage and whatever else the Turkish courts could think up.

  But there was no bark, only the sounds of the dogs’ claws scraping on the wooden crates and their loud snuffing noises.

  Rafjani opened his eyes. The officer and the other men were standing in their same spots. No one had a gun pointed at him.

  He glanced around at the other policemen. They all seemed more interested in the dogs than him. Rafjani turned his attention to the dogs.

  They had not yet detected the explosives. How? Russian plastic explosives traditionally had a unique odor that could be detected by a sensitive human nose, even over the pungent smell of gear oil. Yet, the trained dogs were not smelling it. Again he wondered how this could be, unless the Russians had deceived him and there were no explosives in the crates. They would not do that, not just to steal the Iraqis’ money. The Communists were just as susceptible to a terrorist attack as anyone, even if they were underground. They would not risk a terrorist retaliation simply for a few thousand rubles, would they?

  The officer gave another quick command and the dogs were taken down off the truck, reattached to their leashes and led away.