Flash Point

by James W. Huston

  “War’s on,” Woods said as he headed toward the Med.

  “Home base, 263 for two hundred thirty.”

  “Roger that. Let’s get out of here,” Woods said.

  31

  Sean Woods sat in the ready room chair in the briefing area and fought to stay awake. He had been operating on adrenaline for so long that when the excitement of flying in combat waned, he was left more exhausted than he would have been otherwise. He’d been up for twenty hours. He had flown the first strike into Lebanon and was about to fly on the last strike of the night. He could smell himself. He waited for 0230, for the brief to start for his next hop. His launch time was 0430.

  The sorties after his first had been met with even more resistance even though they had expended as much effort hitting the SAM sites as they had the fortress. They had suppressed the SAMs somewhat, but not enough to satisfy those who were about to fly over them again.

  His eyes were scratchy. They seemed to be the focus of his existence as he closed them to capture some moisture. We should have used more Tomahawks, he thought. But he also knew they cost a million dollars each, and one laser-guided bomb was only fifty thou, assuming of course that the zillion-dollar F-14 that was dropping the fifty-thou bomb didn’t get shot down.

  Wink sauntered back from the front of the ready room and sat next to Sean. They didn’t speak. They knew each other better than brothers. They knew the things to look for in the other that might be a sign of a problem, especially a problem that might cause a flight to be unsafe.

  Big and Sedge sat down as the spare crew just as the Air Wing Intelligence Officer came on the closed circuit TV.

  “Morning,” he said curtly, obviously as tired as the aircrew were. “The next event will be the final night’s strikes against our target. Moving quickly to what you probably want to know about first—the battle against the SAMs we’ve been waging all night. We’ve had great success. As you know, one of the problems with mobile SAM systems is that they are mobile. The ones that have been brought in by Syria, contrary to our expectations, were used more frequently and were more capable than what we had been led to expect. The Syrians have apparently shipped a number of their SA-6s into the area as well as SA-13s. Although we’ve had success, we think they’re still focusing on the western approach to the target. We’ve recommended to most of you who will be going feet dry that you change your approach to make it farther to the north to actually make the final bombing runs from the east to the west . . .”

  “We got time to change our route?” Woods asked Wink, concerned.

  “Already did.”

  “When?” Woods asked, surprised.

  “When you were snoring in your ready room chair like a dying calf,” Wink replied.

  Woods swallowed and confirmed the dryness of the back of his throat. He hadn’t even known he’d been asleep. “I was preoxygenating. Loading up on extra air, for the hop. Makes your brain clearer.”

  Wink rolled his head toward Woods and looked at him without saying anything. Woods just stared at the screen.

  The Air Wing Intel Officer went on, unaware of the various distractions in the ready rooms of the aviators that were watching him. “Let me show you the SAM sights that are currently operating.” He turned to a chart of the target area with the telltale red circles. “The new ingress corridors are clear. We don’t expect any SAM activity until you reach the target areas.” He went on to describe in general the mission for each airplane on the event.

  “As to the success we’ve been having against the target, we haven’t had a chance to do much BDA,” referring to Bomb Damage Assessment, “as it is still dark. What we can tell is that we’ve been hitting the target, and hitting it hard. We’ll have to wait until light to get a better feel for whether we’re having the success we hope for.”

  When the intelligence brief was completed, Woods went to the podium in the back of the small briefing area in the ready room to finish the section’s brief for the hop. He leaned on the podium. “This is it. Last hop of the night. I’m tired. You probably are too. We have to set that aside. I think adrenaline is going to be as important as JP-5 tonight,” he said, referring to the jet fuel used by the Tomcat. “We’ve got to stay alert. We need to start thinking supersonic now, to make sure we don’t miss anything. Pritch has given us updated charts.” He moved the sliding map board to reveal a detailed chart of all of Lebanon, prepared with tremendous detail. There was a large white box on the lower right corner of the chart. It said: “Current as of 0217.”

  “Kudos for Pritch,” Wink said, pleased.

  Woods went on with his brief. “If in fact the SAM sites are where they’re shown, this should not be too tough. Many of them, though, are mobile SAMs. They could be moved, but it seems unlikely to me that these guys are going to drag SAM sites around in the middle of the night to any great extent. I think our chances are pretty good to stay free of them.

  “Our load-out is the same it’s been all night: two GBU-10s, two Sparrows, and two Sidewinders. We’ve got up-LANTIRN pods on both birds. Wink and I will be in the lead.

  “We don’t expect any fighter opposition.” He paused. “But sometimes you get what you don’t expect. The Israelis got plenty of fighter opposition when they went into Lebanon a while ago—to an area not far from where we’ve been going. We’ve heard. So we’ll see. Don’t assume anything. It’s unlikely they’ll come after us because it will be dark. Let’s go.”

  Skate Wilson didn’t like the setup around the Rabat embassy at all. Since the arrival of the Snapshot Team he had spent his time finding the best observation posts and angles for the evening’s work. None of it met with his satisfaction. They were too close to many other buildings. Very easy for a sniper or bomber to set up. Even for a mortar, if someone were so inclined, a dangerous and deadly weapon that terrorists hadn’t used since the IRA tried to take out 10 Downing Street from a few blocks away with a mortar in the back of a van with a canvas top. Clever, but ultimately unsuccessful.

  After circling the entire inside of the building several times like a cat, Wilson reluctantly chose the best of several bad locations for his team members to position themselves with their equipment. He set up a heavy tripod and opened a case to remove the enormous lens of a nightscope. He was screwing the tripod into the base of the scope when the door opened behind him. Wilson watched the door as he continued what he was doing. It was the American Ambassador to Morocco himself.

  “Hello,” the Ambassador said to Wilson in a friendly tone. “I figured you’re the one in charge of this surveillance thing.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Anything out of the ordinary at all.”

  “Don’t you think they will be expecting us to look for them?”

  Wilson adjusted the scope and tested its balance on the tripod. It was perfectly weighted so the attachment point was exactly in the middle and moved easily and precisely. “Probably.”

  “But it still makes sense to do this?”

  “Does to me.”

  “Why did they pick this embassy? Do you know? I mean there are a lot of embassies out there. Why this one?”

  “You mean why are we here?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Teams have gone to several embassies. But here . . .” Wilson closed the case for the site and placed it out of the way. “Probably because of the photographs.”

  “Those pictures the Marines took?”

  “Right.”

  “Really? Hmm. I didn’t think they showed very much.”

  Wilson wasn’t going to humor him. “Probably right. They didn’t show much at all.”

  “Well then, this is really just an exercise, isn’t it?”

  “You bet, sir.”

  “How long do you think it will take to find this Sheikh person?”

  The Ambassador was beginning to annoy Wilson. Politicians generally did. He didn’t answer, intending his nonresponsiveness as an insult. />
  The Ambassador didn’t pick up on the insult. His thoughts were elsewhere. “Well, I believe they already have it narrowed down, and will be dropping some big bombs on him soon, if they haven’t already.”

  “That will take care of it then.” Wilson thought of Ricketts. Laser-guided bombs. Right. Easy mission. No problem. Over tomorrow. “That how you think these people work?”

  “I think in this case, it may well end the whole thing. This seems like an operation run by one man. If he’s gone, that may very well end it.”

  Wilson pulled a second tripod out of a nylon bag and started to extend the legs. “You ever heard of this guy before?”

  “No. No one had before he started killing people.”

  “The Old Man of the Mountains goes back nine hundred years. There’s always someone to replace him.” Wilson adjusted night-vision goggles over his eyes. The Ambassador suddenly looked ominous—Wilson could see his dilated pupils. He looked like a zombie. Wilson directed his attention outside, through the crack in the gauze curtains. The side streets were clearly visible.

  “Well, I guess that’s right,” the Ambassador said a full ten seconds after a normal response would have been due.

  Wilson saw someone move toward a doorway in an alleyway beside the embassy. He took off his night-vision goggles, reached for the huge night-vision scope, and pointed it toward the doorway, where a man stood, his face covered. Wilson transmitted on the lip mike that trailed a cable to the radio on his belt. It was digital and secure. “Suspect at 26/33, grid 6. Get the locals out there.”

  He heard a double-click on the radio in response. Wilson waited. The man appeared to be expecting someone. He should have moved long ago. Wilson wanted to check his watch but didn’t want to take his eye off the suspect, who still lingered in the doorway, extremely cautious. Wilson’s attention was drawn to movement through tiny side streets two blocks away. Two police officers approached the quiet street carefully. Wilson listened to the sounds of rhythmic cars throughout the city as the two walked toward the doorway brushing against the stucco along the wall of the building as they approached.

  The Ambassador interrupted his thoughts. “So how long you think—”

  “Just a minute,” Wilson said as the two policemen the Ambassador couldn’t see cautiously neared the doorway. Wilson watched them as the sounds of distant cars interrupted the silence with their unceasing honking even though there was no other traffic below.

  The policemen gripped their automatic rifles as they crept along the wall ten feet from the opening. Suddenly they charged the doorway, rifles ready. Wilson watched the fuzzy green images, horrified, as they stepped in front of the doorway and pointed their weapons at the unidentified man. The policemen were thrown back into the street, the fire from the silenced machine pistol surprising Wilson as much as it did them. He could hear their weapons clatter to the stone street as they fell backward.

  Wilson stared helplessly as the intruder, his face still covered, walked confidently away from the embassy down the narrow street. He transmitted on the encrypted radio, “Race, you there?”

  “Here.”

  “Get on the Sat phone. Tell them we’ve got contact and our friends know we’re onto them. We will pursue, but likelihood of capture or significant intel is low. Tell them to get out as many Snapshot Teams as they can. This guy is taking it to a different level.”

  The next morning on the Washington found a lot of very tired aircrew anxious to know whether the war was over or just beginning. Syria had started the day by going apoplectic about the American attacks. It was a violation of their sovereign statehood. A violation of international law. An act of war against a country that had done nothing to the United States. The outrage must stop.

  The Air Wing Intel Officer was conducting an unscheduled brief over the ship’s broadcast closed circuit television system to all the ready rooms showing the BDA, based on satellite images and reconnaissance flights that had gone in at dawn.

  Every ninety minutes, airplanes off the Washington and the Eisenhower had gone all night, attacking the targets in Syria and Lebanon and the surrounding SAM and AAA sites. The bombs had mostly been on target, but determining how much damage had actually been done was difficult. They also now had evidence that several mobile SAM sites had been moved to the areas around the targets during the night and might be operational within twelve hours.

  “As you can see, we’ve had numerous hits with our laser-guided bombs on the fortresses that were our targets last night. The damage is obvious, here, and . . . here, and on the side, there. It is impossible to know how much internal damage has been caused. These hills are very hard. The bombs didn’t penetrate very deeply, and if he is underground, we surely didn’t get him.”

  The Air Wing Intelligence Officer put up a video image of Marines landing their helicopters on a field and running out of them. “This is the video provided to the news media in the States to show on their news programs. It is what is likely to happen next, according to all sources. The President believes the only way to truly get the Sheikh is to put troops on the ground and go after him. That is why the Marines are preparing to go to both fortresses on the ground within the next forty-eight hours.

  “Additionally, the Army has flown the 82nd Airborne to Sigonella, Sicily, and told them to prepare for a drop into Syria.”

  The Jolly Rogers couldn’t believe their ears. If Syria was angry about some bombs being dropped on an old fortress in the mountains, the response to landing American troops on their soil would be volcanic. Syria would be required to respond. How could they possibly just let Americans walk into their country with armed troops?

  “We will continue to try to soften the fortresses, but the assessment of the intelligence community is that ultimately it will be necessary to put troops on the ground. To ID the Sheikh, if for no other reason. How will we know we’ve gotten him if we don’t ID him?”

  “Any indication of what Lebanon or Syria might do?” asked a voice off screen.

  “Well, they have told us in no uncertain terms that they believe everything we’re doing violates their sovereignty, and their territorial integrity. This will simply make it worse. The idea of CNN broadcasting footage of Marines landing on Lebanese or Syrian territory and walking toward the target is almost sure to make them try to take action earlier rather than later. But so what? I think the thought process is that they have been harboring terrorists for years, decades. They have supported, directly, the murderers of many hundreds of people. They are now protecting and shielding perhaps the most vicious self-appointed murderer of the new millennium. I think it is fair for the United States to ask whether Syria, or anyone else, is really intending to stand on behalf of the Sheikh.

  “The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, of course, is where exactly is this Sheikh? Everything I’ve seen”—he looked off screen for confirmation, and nodded—“seems to tell me that we don’t really know where he is. His most probable locations are where we’ve been going. Plus, of course, the target in Iran, which we haven’t yet attacked.”

  Kinkaid sat in his office and studied the Bomb Damage Assessment reports on the fortresses the Navy had hit all night. He didn’t hear the STU-III phone as it rang repeatedly. One of his people walked by his office and came back to look at him, wondering why he wasn’t answering his phone. Kinkaid saw him, and then heard the phone. He picked it up. “Yes.”

  “Joseph. How are you?”

  Kinkaid immediately recognized the deep voice, the heavy accent. “To what to do I owe the honor, Efraim?”

  “Greetings, good friend. I wanted to talk about the events of last night.”

  Kinkaid settled back in his chair. His mind shifted out of idle, where it had been for hours. He knew he would need all his faculties for this conversation. He stood up as he held the receiver to his ear. “How have you been?”

  “Well. I wanted to talk about the strikes.”

  “You and I have never failed to get someone we went
after, have we?”

  “We have had some success.”

  “I don’t think we’ve ever failed, have we?”

  “Just once. Cypress.”

  “I’d forgotten. Did he ever surface?”

  “Never. We think they might have killed him just so we would always think he was out there.”

  “Well, that would be just as good then. Other than him, we’ve had success.”

  “Yes. It pays to have friends on whom you can rely, Joseph.”

  “The problem with great friendship in our business,” Kinkaid said, “is that the greater the trust, the greater the exposure to betrayal. Like a marriage.”

  Efraim paused, considering what Kinkaid had said. He had thrown large pieces of ice into a conversation Efraim had tried to start warmly.

  Efraim hesitated. “There is something you want to say to me.”

  “This thing has come together in a very . . . curious way. I need to know about it. I need to know about the woman, Irit. What was she doing with the Navy Lieutenant?”

  “Why?”

  “It is what started all of this.”

  “Started? How?” Efraim asked, puzzled.

  “It was the Sheikh’s first move.”

  “No, it wasn’t. Gaza was.”

  “Okay, second move, but part of the plan. So who was she?”

  “She was Israeli.”

  “We know that. Who did she work for?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “Why’s that? She must have been with the Mossad then, or you would say,” Kinkaid pointed out. “This whole thing is very real now. Not just intelligence people talking among themselves. We have declared war on this man, and we have attacked his strongholds in sovereign countries. Some of it is based on what you’ve told us, and you won’t tell me what may have started the whole thing? That strikes me as odd.”