by Robert Gandt
But something happened in the courtyard that did surprise him. An American, whom he recognized as the CIA chief in Bahrain, cold-bloodedly executed the Bu Hasa leader, Al-Fasr. When he was about to execute the American prisoner, he was thwarted by the other American, the tall pilot called Maxwell.
Who killed Bronson.
Very perplexing. Mustafa had no idea why such a sequence of events occurred, but he could guess the impact it would have back in the paneled offices of the CIA. It was a story that would send tremors all the way to Washington.
Which, he understood now, was why Tyrwhitt had sent him on this unauthorized mission.
Mustafa continued to stare at the motionless bodies in the courtyard. The thin light of dawn was illuminating them. He could see the body of Bronson, face to the sky, the dark cavity of a heavy-caliber pistol shot in his forehead.
In the distance he could hear the rattle of the Gatling guns on the Cobra helicopters. The Sherji were in full retreat. Mustafa knew what would happen next. The Americans wouldn’t leave their fallen soldiers behind. They would collect the body of Bronson and, probably, Al-Fasr.
Mustafa reached a decision. It was illogical, dangerous even, but he was following his instinct. He scanned the courtyard for signs of life. There were none. He climbed over the low wall. As he scuttled across the courtyard to the motionless bodies, he slipped the nine-inch curved blade of his kukri fighting knife from its scabbard.
< >
Rasmussen felt as if he were dreaming. Two burly Marines, one on each arm, hoisted him into the helicopter.
He sat in the forward cabin, his back to the cockpit bulkhead. On the bench next to him were Gracie Allen and Brick Maxwell. One now a strike fighter wing commander, the other a squadron skipper.
Amazing.
These two had been with him on the mission into Iraq. The only one in the flight not here was his wingman, DeLancey. He wondered if DeLancey was still in the Navy.
It was funny how memory worked. He could recall with perfect clarity the details of his last flight—the blackness of the night, the winking lights of Baghdad on the horizon, the fiery tail of the missile he’d fired at the oncoming MiG. He could remember them as if they happened yesterday. Other large pieces of his life were gone like gaping holes in a floor. He was a Rip Van Winkle.
The cabin filled with black-faced, grinning Marines. They were high-fiving each other, shaking hands, filled with themselves. Several wanted to shake his hand. A young corporal asked for his autograph. Their commander, a lieutenant colonel, told them to cool it and leave the guy alone.
They came to get me.
The reality still hadn’t taken hold. Why now? After all these years, why did they come now? It was entirely possible, Rasmussen thought, that he was hallucinating.
His thoughts kept drifting back to the darkened courtyard. Something very unreal happened back there, and he was still puzzling together the pieces. Little by little, as in a complicated mosaic, he was getting a sense of what it meant.
Someone didn’t want him to leave Iran. The American—the one that accompanied Maxwell and Al-Fasr—killed Al-Fasr. Then he was about to kill me.
Maxwell shot him.
At least that was what he thought he saw. It didn’t make sense.
Rasmussen wanted to ask Maxwell what the hell really happened. Who was the other American? Why did he put the bullet in Al-Fasr? Why did he want Rasmussen dead?
And then he saw Maxwell watching him. His sober, intent expression was conveying a message. Not now. Keep it just between us.
Rasmussen nodded.
He heard the mechanical drone of the helicopter’s turbine engines deepen. Through the hard bench seat he felt the vibration of the rotors changing pitch. The chopper lifted, tilted its nose forward, gathered speed.
He stared out the window at the cloud of dirt whipped up by the blades. The hard brown earth was dropping away like a vanishing world.
This was the moment he had deliberately shut out of his dreams. It had been the only way to keep his sanity. Don’t let yourself think about leaving. Dead men don’t go home.
Now he was going home.
The realization came over him like a thunderclap. He wasn’t hallucinating. It was as real as the vibration of the big turbine engines, the whopping of the blades, the curious, self-conscious faces of the Marines in the cabin. It was all goddamned real.
He hadn’t wept for years. That was another thing he had learned to shut off. Dead men didn’t cry.
He looked at Maxwell, then at Allen. There was much he didn’t understand. But the knowledge that he was going home had taken hold of him. Over the din of the rotor blades, he said, “You. . . you came back. . . I thought I would never. . .”
He couldn’t finish. His chest convulsed, and he began to weep uncontrollably. From deep inside the tears gushed from him, making muddy streaks down his dirty face. He sobbed—a deep, visceral moaning sound—coming from some dark place inside him.
Maxwell put his arm around Rasmussen. Gracie Allen unstrapped and walked across the metal deck. They sat on either side of him.
Rasmussen wiped his eyes on his sleeve. “I. . .was supposed to be dead. You came back.” Through his red-rimmed eyes he looked at Maxwell, then Allen. “Thank you.”
Another wave of helpless sobbing shook him. The morning light was streaming through the port windows. The young Marines were trying their best not to stare at him. Some were crying too.
Finally Rasmussen gained control of himself. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I gave up. I shouldn’t have, but I’ve been dead for a long time. I didn’t think I’d ever go home again.”
Maxwell nodded his understanding.
Allen leaned toward him. “We came as soon as we could. We didn’t know you were alive, Raz. Not until a little while ago.”
He forced himself to sit upright. Be a man, damn it. Show some dignity. He blew his nose. “Does anyone else know I’m alive?”
He saw Allen glance at Maxwell. “Yeah,” said Allen. “And a lot of things have changed since you were shot down.”
Rasmussen nodded. He knew what was coming.
“There are some things you need to know,” said Maxwell. “Some personal stuff.”
He braced himself. “Maria, you mean?”
Maxwell nodded. “Yeah. Maria.”
“I know.” He took a deep breath. “The Iraqis made sure I knew all the bad stuff.”
“She thought you were dead, Raz.”
“So did I.”
“After what you’ve been through, it’s—”
“After what I’ve been through,” he said, his voice cracking, “I can handle it.”
Maxwell squeezed his shoulder and left him to his thoughts.
Through the starboard cabin window the gray murk of the Persian Gulf was coming into view. Somewhere out there was a carrier—a super new carrier that hadn’t even been constructed when he disappeared in Iraq.
Maxwell was right. A lot had changed in the world. It would take time to adjust to all the changes. He could already feel the pain of loss. He supposed it would be painful for Maria, too.
He used to worry that he might lack the courage to survive. Years of imprisonment changed all that. If he’d gained nothing else, he had learned an essential truth about himself. He possessed an inner strength that he didn’t know he had.
It was true, he thought. I can handle it. I can handle anything.
Chapter 26 — Recovery
Southern Iran
0640, Wednesday, 24 March
It was sweet.
Boyce had always wanted to fire a Maverick under real combat conditions. There was nothing more real than hosing a terrorist while the ragheaded sonofabitch was motoring across a swamp in a heat-emitting vehicle.
His wingmen—Flash Gordon, Hoser Miller, Leroi Jones—were in a loose trail formation behind him. They would rejoin during the egress from Iran, using Fiddle—fighter-to-fighter link—to identify each other and slide into formation.
Boyce called the FAC. “Snake, Galeforce Zero-one is checking out.”
“Good work, Galeforce. I confirm a direct hit with the Maverick.”
“Mighty fine. I’ve been wanting to—”
His transmission went dead. Now what?
Then he saw the red light on his UFC—Up Front Control. The number one radio, the one with the Have Quick facility that synchronized with the control and surveillance inputs, was dead.
Okay, a pain in the butt, but no big deal.
He switched to the number two radio. “Galeforce Zero-one flight, Galeforce Zero-one on the back radio. Be advised my front radio is tits-up. I won’t be monitoring squadron common.”
“Two.”
“Three.”
“Four,” said Leroi Jones, then he added, “We promise not to talk about you behind your back, CAG.”
Boyce grinned inside his oxygen mask. Wingmen always badmouthed their bosses on the radio when they thought they weren’t being overheard. What the hell, let ‘em run their mouths.
“Yeah, right. Galeforce flight, let’s go strike frequency now.”
Boyce checked in with strike control and passed the daily code word for the Return to Base signal.
“We’ve got you, Galeforce One-one,” said the controller. “Call Marshal at fifty out.”
Ahead, Boyce could see the coastline, the sunrise glinting off the network of streams that wound like veins through the delta. Crossing the shoreline, he would order his flight to “fence out”—check master armament switches safe, de-select weapons, shut down transponder squawks.
He disconnected the right side of his oxygen mask, letting it dangle from his helmet by the left fitting. The cold air of the cockpit air conditioner felt good on his sweaty face. He was still new to the Super Hornet, less than a hundred hours in type, and that was one of the things he liked about it. You could drop the mask and actually—
What was that smell?
Something electrical. Ozone? What the hell? He didn’t see any smoke—
There was something else. His right MFD—multi-function display—was blinking on and off. With each blink he was getting a deedle-deedle in his headset. The master mode display was cycling from air-to-air to NAV.
Definitely not normal.
“Galeforce Zero-two, you’ve got the lead,” he called. If he was going to lose navigational gear, he needed someone to find the ship for him.
Flash Gordon acknowledged, and seconds later Boyce saw Gordon’s Hornet slide forward, past Boyce’s right wing, taking the lead of the formation. Boyce slid down and beneath Flash, crossing to his right wing, re-balancing the formation with Miller and Jones on the left side.
He glanced again at the blinking MFD. It wasn’t blinking anymore. It had gone blank, totally dead.
Shit almighty. This jet was going to hell in a handcart. Lucky for him it was daytime, visual conditions. Nothing bad could happen unless—
Uh oh. What he was smelling wasn’t just ozone, and it wasn’t his imagination. Something oozing from beneath the consoles. The noxious smell of smoke.
“Galeforce Zero-one has a problem,” he called.
< >
USS Ronald Reagan
Bullet knew he should leave it alone, wait until Maxwell had returned and finished his debriefing, then fill him in on the bogus corrosion inspection mess. It would become the business of the Judge Advocate General and the ship’s legal department.
But he couldn’t, at least not yet. Something was smoldering like an ember in his gut. The sons of bitches. They had signed off flawed airplanes, then sent unsuspecting pilots to fly them.
The image kept coming back to him—smoke billowing from the floorboards of the cockpit, displays flashing on and off like cheap neon signs. The runway almost under him when the goddamn jet slewed out of control and—wham—an ejection at near-zero altitude.
He’d been lucky. He almost bought the farm. And they blamed it on combat damage when all along those two—Manson and DiLorenzo—knew the truth. Even worse, they were setting up somebody else for the same thing. The next guy might not be so lucky.
He caught Manson coming out of the maintenance office on the second deck.
“Craze, can I have a word with you?”
“Sorry, I’ve got business on the flight deck.”
The guy never changed, thought Alexander. Disrespectful as ever. “It’ll have to wait. I need to ask you something.”
“What is it?” Manson made his usual show of looking at his watch.
Alexander glanced both directions, up and down the passageway. They were alone, at least for the moment. “The corrosion inspections on aircraft 306, 307, 309. Tell me why they weren’t accomplished.”
Manson gave him a wary look, then smiled disarmingly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, XO.”
“Sure you do. You’re the maintenance officer. You’re the guy who’s supposed to be on top of those inspections. Remember, you said you’d work the shifts smarter so you’d get the jets through the inspection and back on line?”
“And that’s what I did. Is there a problem?”
“Yeah, if you think criminal falsification of records is a problem.”
“What I think,” said Manson, watching Alexander closely, “is that you don’t know anything about squadron maintenance. If you’d done a tour of squadron officer duty like everyone else, you’d understand how the system works.”
“Well, that may be true,” said Alexander. “But I don’t have to know very much to understand that your quality assurance officer and the QA petty officer are both guilty of faking the inspection records of those jets.”
“That’s a lie.”
“And I understand enough about human nature to know they’re not going to go down without taking their boss with them.”
Manson’s pudgy face changed color, reddening from the neck up. “What are you trying to pull? I don’t know anything about any false records. You’ve been trying to make me look bad ever since you got to this squadron.”
“You knew what they were doing. You told them to do it.”
“How the hell would you know?” A look of cold fury covered Manson’s face. The veins stood out like ropes on his thick neck. “You come here, not knowing shit about the real Navy, playing the minority card, a goddamn showboating carpetbagger—”
Alexander’s fist caught him flush on the jaw line, snapping Manson’s head back, knocking the hat from his head.
As Manson sagged against the bulkhead, Alexander seized the collar of his flight jacket and hoisted him upright. He thrust his face within four inches of Manson’s nose. “Maybe I didn’t hear you clearly, Craze. I believe you said, yes, sir, you would cooperate with the investigation into the inspection matter?”
He gave him a shake, thumping him into the bulkhead. “Isn’t that right?”
Manson looked at him with dazed eyes. “You can’t assault an officer like this. . .”
Alexander heard footsteps clunking down the passageway. He released his grip on Manson’s jacket and stooped to pick up his hat. “Oops, sorry to bump into you like that, Commander.”
He was replacing the hat on Manson’s head when he heard the footsteps stop behind him. He turned to see Holmes, a yeoman from the squadron admin office.
“Ah, Commander Alexander, I’ve been looking all over for you,” said Holmes. The yeoman kept staring at Manson, who was wobbling on his feet, his eyes glazed. “The Air Boss wants you up in Pri Fly right away.”
“What’s going on?” said Alexander.
“A problem with one of the jets, sir. Some kind of emergency.”
“Who is it?”
“CAG Boyce. In aircraft 307.”
< >
USS Ronald Reagan
“Red, this is Bullet.”
“I read you, Bullet. Go ahead.”
Alexander was still catching his breath. He had climbed the ladder to Pri-Fly—the windowed space up in the carrier’s island that had a
panoramic view of the flight deck and the sea around them—three steps at a time. Aerobic workouts sucked, especially on a full breakfast.
“How bad is the smoke?” Alexander asked. He was standing next to the Reagan’s Air Boss, Cmdr. Jock Williams, seated in his high, padded chair.
“I’ve got the mask back on,” answered Boyce. “Visibility in the cockpit is crappy. I’ve lost the right MFD and the HQ radio and—whoop, wait a minute. The radar just X-ed out.”
Bullet swore under his breath. Boyce’s jet was coming unglued, just as his had at Al Jaber. He took another second to catch his breath. He saw Craze Manson come into the compartment.
Manson took a place by the glass-paned window, watching the scenario with an expressionless face. Alexander noticed that the right side of his jaw was red and swollen.
“All right, listen up, Galeforce Flight,” Bullet said in the microphone. “Flash, you lead CAG back here fast, but do not go supersonic. You hear me?”
“Dash two hears you,”
“Set him up on a two mile straight in. The Boss—” he paused to glance at Williams, the Air Boss, who was following the dialogue. Williams gave him an affirmative nod. “—the boss will have a ready deck for you. Galeforce flight, you all copy that?”
They all copied.
“CAG, you have to trust me on this,” said Alexander. “You’re in a no shit emergency. After you roger this transmission, I want you to turn off your generators and battery, then secure all electric switches except for your good radio. Do not—repeat, do not—turn anything on until Flash signals you at three miles. Then just your battery, no generators. You can dirty up normally and fly a straight in pass. Once you’ve stopped in the wires, turn everything off and shut down.”
He paused for a breath. “If you understand, CAG, just say copy and turn the switches off.”
