Final Flight jg-2

by Stephen Coonts

  “I know.”

  “How much do you smoke?”

  “A pack or so a day.”

  “Your lungs sound clear.” Hartman turned to the X rays on a viewing board and studied them. “No problem there,” he said finally and came back to Jake. “Stand up and drop your drawers.” After the usual indignities were over and the doctor had peered into all of Jake’s bodily orifices, he told him to get dressed and resumed his seat at the desk.

  “Your eyes are twenty-forty,” the doctor said as he scribbled. “You need glasses.”

  “Okay.”

  He flipped through the medical file. “You’ve gained ten pounds in the last ten years, but you’re still well within the weight standards. Have you been having any headaches?”

  “Occasionally.”

  “Probably eyestrain. The glasses will cure that.” Doctor Hartman laid his pencil aside and turned in his chair to face Jake. “But you’ve been having some other vision problems.” Jake said nothing. Hartman cleared his throat and toyed with the papers in the medical file. “Captain, I know this is going to be damn tough for you. It’s tough for me. I’m sorry I have to be the one to tell you this, but your flying days are over.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Captain, you flunked the night-vision tests. Glasses won’t cure that. Nothing can. Your eyes are aging and you just don’t see well enough to fly at night.”

  “Gimme some pills or shots.”

  “I can give you some vitamin A that may help. Over time.” He shrugged. “Everyone’s vision deteriorates as they age, but at different speeds. Yours just happens to have started faster than most people’s. The nicotine you have been poisoning yourself with for twenty years may also be a factor. Sometimes it has an adverse effect on the tissues inside the eye.” He found an envelope on his desk and sketched an eye. “When light stops stimulating the eye, the tissues manufacture a chemical called liquid purple, and this chemical increases the sensitivity of the rods inside the eye. In your case, either the chemical is no longer being manufactured in sufficient quantity or the rods are becoming insensitive….” He droned on, his pencil in motion. Jake thought he looked like a flight instructor sketching lift and drag vectors around an airfoil.

  “Listen, Doc, most people don’t command air wings. I do, and I have to fly to do my job.”

  “Well, I’ll have to send in a report. My recommendation is that you be grounded, but maybe we can get permission for you to just fly during the day.”

  Jake finished dressing in silence and sat in one of the molded plastic chairs. “That won’t hack it,” he said at last. “I have to fly at night and I’m going to continue to do so. This cruise will be over in four months and I can turn in my flight suit then. But until we get back to the States, I have to fly at night to do this job.”

  “They could send another officer out here to replace you.”

  “They could. But even if they do, he won’t be here for a while, and I’m the man with the responsibility.”

  Hartman toyed with his pen. “Are you ordering me not to make a grounding recommendation?”

  “No. I’m telling you I am going to keep flying at night and I don’t give a damn what you do.”

  “You can’t fly if I recommend you be grounded,” Hartman said aggressively. “I know where I stand.”

  “You know all about sore throats and clap and which pills are which. But you don’t know a goddamn thing about the navy. How long have you been in? Three years?”

  “Three and a half. But that’s beside the point.”

  “No. That is the point. I was flying navy airplanes and scaring myself silly coming aboard while you were still in junior high school. I’ve been riding these birdfarms for twenty years. I know what naval leadership is and I know my own capabilities. The navy picked me for this job because I know how to do it. And I intend to do this job the best way I know how until I’m relieved by another qualified officer.”

  “I’m going to send a message to BUMED.”

  “Before you do, I want you to talk to the admiral. You give him your opinion. I. work for him.”

  “And you’re going to keep flying?”

  “Unless Parker says not to, that’s precisely what I will do. You whip up some of those vitamin pills. Order the glasses and call me when they come in.”

  * * *

  Toad Tarkington was standing by the wardroom door when Jake approached carrying a helmet bag. Toad stepped through the door and announced, “Attention on deck.” The men were still rising when Jake went by Toad and said loudly, “As you were.” He still couldn’t get used to officers snapping to attention when he entered a room.

  By the time he reached the portable podium placed on a table at one end of the room, most of the men were back in their chairs. Jake waited until everyone was settled before he spoke. It had been over three hours since he had a cigarette. He noticed that there were ashtrays on the tables and several people were stubbing butts out.

  “Good evening.” He looked at the eight squadron skippers sitting in the front row. “Have we got about everyone?”

  “Except for the guys flying, sir.”

  “Fine.” Jake took an envelope from his hip pocket on which he had made some notes. He looked at the sea of faces looking at him. Most of the faces were young, in their twenties. Just looking at them made him feel over the hill.

  “How many of you guys are on your first cruise?” Almost a third of the men raised their hands. “Well, this is my ninth one, and I have never before been at sea for three months straight. We didn’t stay out like this during that little fracas in Vietnam. Ain’t peace wonderful?”

  Titters.

  “I’m not here tonight to give you any little patriotic pep talk. The politicians that drop in do it a whole lot better than I could.”

  More chuckles. The ship had recently been visited by several congressmen and a senator, and those worthies had insisted on addressing the sailors from their home states. As they told it, the sailors were the equals of Washington’s troops at Valley Forge.

  “A couple of guys died last night. We don’t know why they died, and we may never know. But they are indeed dead, and dead forever. No one shot them out of the sky. The hazards inherent in naval aviation killed them.

  “Now that doesn’t mean that we are not going to try to find out why they died, or that we are not going to do everything humanly possible to prevent further accidents. We are going to do both. I had a discussion with the squadron skippers this morning, and they tell me they are going to conduct safety reviews in every squadron.” Jake had ordered them to do so. “We’re going to ensure these planes are being properly maintained and you guys who fly them haven’t forgotten how.

  “But what I can’t do is give you and your sailors some time off. We’re going to have to keep our noses to the grindstone. We’ve got to keep the planes up, to guard this task group.”

  A hand shot up several rows back. Jake pointed and a lieutenant he didn’t recognize stood up. “Sir, we wouldn’t have to keep flying around the clock if we pulled off a couple hundred miles and gave ourselves some sea room. Then we could go to an alert status. Sitting here thirty miles off the coast just cuts our reaction time to incoming threats.”

  “We may be thirty miles off the coast right now,” Jake replied, “but just before dusk we were seven miles offshore so everyone in Lebanon could get a good look. Every wacko in Lebanon knows we’re here. The orders to steam seven miles off the coast came from the National Security Council.”

  The lieutenant sat down and spoke from his chair. “We’ll just get those fanatics stirred up.”

  “Maybe. What’s your name?”

  “Lieutenant Hartnett, sir. I just think that if we had more sea room, we would have a little more reaction time if and when Ahmad the Awful cranks up his Cessna or speedboat and comes roaring out to sink us.”

  “Do you think we can handle a threat like that?” Jake asked with a grin.

  “We’ll send
him to that big oasis in the sky, sir.”

  “I’ll sleep better knowing that.”

  Laughter swept the room. Jake grinned confidently, though he was well aware of the real problems involved in defending the task group. The admiral, his staff officers, and Jake had spent many hours discussing alternative courses of action in the event of a terrorist threat from Lebanon. It wasn’t a laughing matter. The rules of engagement under which the American ships operated severely limited the options available. This was the main reason Admiral Parker was rarely more than twenty feet from Flag Ops.

  “Seriously, we are here to make our presence felt. That’s why we parade around right off the coast. Doing damn fool things because politicians tell you to goes with the uniform. And every man in this room is a volunteer. But I don’t want anyone killing himself or his crewman because he kept flying past the limit of his own capabilities.” He unzipped the helmet bag and took out a helmet. He held it out by the chin strap, so it hung upside down.

  “I’m going to hang this thing in my office. Anyone who thinks that he has had all of this bullshit he can stand can throw his wings in it. Put a piece of tape around your wings with your name on it so I’ll know who to talk to.” All eyes were on the helmet. “Flying the schedule we do demands the best you can give it. I hate to see guys turn in their wings, but I like it even less when people kill themselves. Each and every one of you knows what your personal limit is. I am relying on you to call it quits before you go beyond that limit.”

  He picked up the helmet bag, tucked the helmet under his arm and headed for the door.

  “Attention on deck,” Toad roared.

  Everyone in the room snapped to attention while Jake walked out.

  Up in the air wing office Jake handed the helmet to Yeoman First Class Farnsworth. “Get a coathanger,” he said, “and hang this thing from the ceiling right here by the door. I want anyone who opens this door to see this helmet.”

  “Why?” asked Farnsworth, slightly baffled.

  “It’s for wings,” Jake said and tossed the helmet bag on a table. “Go get a coathanger and do it now. Someone may want to use it sooner rather than later.”

  “Yessir.” Farnsworth laid the helmet on his desk and started for the door.

  “Any new messages on the classified board?” Jake asked before Farnsworth could get out the door.

  “Yessir. A bunch. There’s even another intelligence report about a planned raid on the ship by some group or other using an ultralight.”

  “Again? How many air raid warnings have we had?”

  “I think about nineteen, CAG. Thank God for the CIA.” Jake waved Farnsworth out the door and took the message board into his office. He thought about having a cigarette. There should be a pack in his lower right desk drawer. He remembered putting it there two or three days ago. Well, maybe it was still there. He opened the drawer and glanced inside. Just papers. He stirred them. Aha, the pack of weeds had fallen under this little report with the blue cover. Hiding there, weren’t you, little fellow. Don’t try to get away like that. He closed the drawer and began thumbing through the messages, trying to sort the important ones from the usual reams of computerized goo that constituted the vast bulk of the classified traffic.

  He found it difficult to concentrate on the messages with that pack of cigarettes lying down there in the drawer, just waiting. Shit, how long had it been? He looked at his watch. Three hours and fifty-one minutes. No, fifty-two minutes. Almost four hours!

  * * *

  The black Mercedes rolled through the dusty streets on the edge of town as if the streets were empty, which they most certainly were not. Children and men leading laden mules and camels scurried to clear the path of the speeding vehicle with army flags on the front bumper. Dark glass prevented anyone outside the vehicle from seeing the passengers, but most of the people on the street averted their gaze once they ensured they were not in danger of being run over.

  The limousine stopped momentarily at two army checkpoints on the outskirts of the city, then rolled through the open gate of an enormous stucco building.

  In the courtyard two men stepped from the rear of the car. Both wore Western clothes. A waiting officer wearing a major’s uniform led them through a small door and up a flight of stairs lit only by a naked bulb hanging above each landing. High, narrow windows without glass lined the lengthy corridor at the top of the stairs. Dirt from the desert lay accumulated in corners. Their footsteps echoed on the slate floor. After several turns, the major opened a door and stood aside. The two men from the Mercedes entered a well-furnished apartment. The late afternoon sun shone in the one window, a window in which glass had been installed at some time in the past but which had apparently never been washed.

  “Colonel Qazi, Sakol is in the next room. Is there anything further you need?”

  “Tell me about Jarvis, the weapons expert.”

  “Your instructions have been followed precisely. He was examined by a physician while still sedated after his journey. The physician found him in fair health with no apparent abnormalities, although seventeen kilos overweight. He has been kept naked in solitary confinement and fed precisely one thousand calories a day, with all the water he can drink. The bucket in his cell is never emptied. The light there remains on continuously. No one has spoken to him.”

  “Very well. Has Sakol been any trouble?”

  “No trouble, sir, although he has asked several times when to expect you.”

  “You have guarded him well?”

  “Of course. His guards are unobtrusive, but he cannot leave the apartment area where he is staying.”

  “Thank you, Major. Bring Sakol in.” Qazi selected a stuffed chair and sank into it. His companion stood against the wall, a man of medium height with short, dark hair and olive skin. He wore dark blue trousers, a white shirt open at the collar, and a lightweight Italian sport coat that had lost its shape at some point in the distant past. He had a large, square jaw which he unconsciously clenched and unclenched rhythmically, making the muscles in his cheeks pulsate. His restless black eyes scanned the room, then steadied on the door through which Sakol, the ex-CIA agent, would enter.

  Qazi placed a pack of American cigarettes and some matches on the table before him, then studied his fingernails.

  The door opened and a bearlike man in his fifties entered. He had the broad chest and heavy arms of the serious weightlifter, but now the muscles were covered with a layer of fat that made him look even more massive. He stood at least six feet tall. “Ah, Sakol. So good to see you,” Qazi said in English.

  Sakol stopped three steps into the room and studied the man against the wall. “Why did you bring this son of a dog?” Sakol asked in Arabic. The expression of the man against the wall did not change.

  “Sit here, Sakol.” Qazi pointed to a chair beside him. The American turned the chair so he could see both Qazi and the man against the wall and sat. “You know Ali is indispensable to me. I cannot do everything myself.” English again.

  Sakol sniffed several times and said in Arabic, “Ah, yes, I can still smell him.”

  “English please,” Qazi said firmly and offered the American a cigarette, which he accepted. Qazi had gone to great lengths in the past to ensure Sakol thought Ali could speak only Arabic, and he was not yet ready to drop the deception. Conspirators felt most comfortable when their secrets appeared safe.

  “You have succeeded brilliantly with the Jarvis recruitment. I’ve had good reports.”

  “I took a lot of heavy risks pulling it off, Qazi, and earned every goddamn dime of the money you agreed to pay. I assume the money is where it’s supposed to be?”

  Qazi extracted a bankbook from his jacket pocket and passed it to Sakol, who examined the signatures carefully, then placed it in his trouser pocket without comment.

  “That’s a lot of money, Sakol.”

  “I’ve supplied things you could purchase nowhere else. I risked my butt doing it. I earned the fucking money.”
r />   “Indeed. Have you enough money now?”

  Sakol pursed his lips momentarily. “Jarvis is a nuclear weapons expert.” He smoked his cigarette while Qazi sat in silence and watched the dust swirl in the sunbeam coming through the one window.

  “Your help on my next project would be worth one million dollars,” Qazi said when the burning tip of Sakol’s cigarette had almost reached the filter. “Half in advance.”

  “The agency and the Mossad are after us both. They want us dead. Ding dong dead. Blown away.”

  “Indeed! What did you expect? Why do you think we paid you so much money?”

  “I want two million, half in advance. You Arabs always like to haggle. People eventually forget about stolen antiaircraft missiles and kidnappings, but they won’t forget about anything that smells of nuclear weapons. Not ever.”

  “One million real American dollars in your numbered Swiss account, Sakol, and if you are very lucky, you will live to spend it.”

  Sakol threw back his head and laughed harshly. “You amaze me, Qazi. You could have killed me anytime, and only now you threaten me. My sheep-fucking Arab friend, you can kiss my ass. I’ve taken precautions.”

  “Ah, yes. The letters to be mailed in the event of your death. The ones you gave your sister in Chicago, which she keeps in a safe deposit box at the State Street National Bank. Box number One Five Oh Eight.”

  Sakol helped himself to another cigarette. He struck a match and held it to the cigarette with twisted and gnarled fingers without nails. The flame did not waver. He inhaled deeply, then blew the match out with a cloud of smoke that engulfed Qazi. “Two million. You know damn well I’m not scared of you.”

  “One million, one hundred thousand. Half in advance. The Americans will learn of your aid to our cause.”

  Henry Sakol laughed, a harsh guttural laugh that filled the room. “You really know your bastards, don’t you, Qazi? That’s right! I want those arrogant, snot-nosed, Ivy League pig fuckers to know I helped you screw ’em. Right in their tight little cherry asses.” He slapped the bankbook on the arm of his chair, then handed it over. “What’s the job?”