Final Flight (10 page)

“I’m all for it. I think I can get Captain
James to approve it. You talk to the admiral.
It’ll depend on whether we can pull off the coast
long enough to go to alert status that day. Admiral
Parker’ll have to ask the big poo-bahs.” He was
referring to the people in Washington.

“Three times longer than Columbus, huh?”

Jake nodded and Reynolds crossed his arms on
the desk in front of him.

He waited expectantly. He was waiting for
Jake to light a cigarette. Reynolds was the
driving force behind a rigid antismoking campaign
that was rolling over tobacco users with the relentless power
of a mountain avalanche; indeed, Reynolds was
waving the banner of purity with the awesome zeal that he
brought to every task. So whenever Jake visited the
XO’S office, he lit a cigarette and deposited the ash in a
neat pile on the front edge of the desk. Reynolds’
fulminations were quite gratifying.

Jake patted his pockets dramatically.
Sighing, he said at last, “Oh gee, I almost
forgot. I quit.”

“A sinner saved! Hallelujah!” Reynolds
clasped his hands together and looked up.
“Thank you, Lord, for saving this poor ignorant
fool sitting here before me from the evils of tobacco and
impure women and bad whiskey and marked cards and….

Jake couldn’t help himself. He laughed. Most
of the berthing compartments and working spaces aboard ship were now nonsmoking. The ship’s smoke shop, where
cigarettes and pipe tobacco had been sold, was
now a free-weight gym. The only place aboard
a man could still buy cigarettes was in the ship’s
store under the forward mess deck. And the wise and the
weary knew its days were also numbered.

“I had to quit. They stopped carrying my brand.”
Reynolds feigned surprise, his hand on his chest
and his mouth in a little 0. He leaned across the desk and
lowered his voice conspiratorially. “I’m only
letting them stock seven brands from now on, the least
popular brands on the ship. When the smokers
complain, I’m just going to look surprised and tell
them it’s the supply system. It’ll work sort of like
the no-smoking sign caper.” No-smoking signs
had appeared magically one night in a grab bag of
spaces where smoking was traditionally allowed, and the
ship’s master-at-arms force had ruthlessly enforced the
prohibition. Protests about the signs’
legality fell on deaf ears.

“The little people must be made to suffer.”

Reynolds screwed his face up and giggled. In
spite of himself, Jake joined in the laugh.
Reynolds was one of the few men Jake had ever met
who truly loved stress. Not excitement or
danger, but pure fingernails-to-the-quick,
heart-attack stress. He thrived on it,
reveled in it, lived for it. Once Laird
James had figured that out, Reynolds could do no
wrong. In his mind’s eye Jake could see the two
of them huddled like thieves on the bridge, plotting
every detail of the antismoking campaign and the
subsequent disinformation cover-up to deflect the
outrage of the addicted.

“One of the reasons I came down here to see the
Knight of the Busted Ashtray,” Jake said, “is
because I’d like to send a message to Oceana.”

NAS Oceana was the air base where the air wing
had its headquarters when the ship was not deployed.
“My wife and four or five of the other wives
wanted to come to Europe sometime this cruise, and I
figure we’d better do it now. May not have another
chance.”

“No sweat. You draft up the
message. I think there are six or eight officers
in ship’s company who want their wives to come over,
too. I’ll ask around and we’ll put it all in the
message.

“Okay.” Jake stood up.

Reynolds held out his hand. As Jake passed
through the open door, Reynolds roared, “Get your
miserable ass in here, Ski, and tell me some more of
your pathetic crap!”

The Old man had difficulty making the first step
up into the bus.

A young man in a dirty undershirt and smelling of
wine steadied him.

The old one’s back was hunched and he moved
slowly, carefully, with the aid of a walking stick. A
woman gave him her seat. He sank down with a
sigh. “Grazie!” His hair was gray, his face
lined, and his glasses had an obvious correction.
In spite of the June heat, he wore a shabby
black suit and leather gloves that had been
expensive when new.

As the bus wound its way through the Naples
business district, Colonel Qazi ignored his
fellow passengers and stared Out the window, which
was covered with grime. The glasses strained his
eyes, so after a few minutes he closed his eyes
and nodded as if drifting off to sleep.

Every so often he started at a car horn or a
severe lurch, glanced around with eyes blinking
vacantly, then he napped again. The bus slowly
made its way into the suburbs.

It had taken several hours to dye his hair
gray, and two hours more to get the makeup just right.
He wore cotton plugs between his cheeks and lower
teeth to appear more jowly, and the upper front teeth were
covered by a false cap that made them look yellow
and slightly twisted.

He left the bus at an intersection of a
tree-lined street. No one got off with him. He
looked about in all directions, examined the fronts
of the nearest houses as if unsure of where he was,
and began walking slowly.

In a few moments a car stopped beside him and a
middle-aged man exited from the backseat and held the
door for him. He got in unaided and sat with his
walking stick between his knees, both hands resting on the
handle. Neither the driver nor the man in the backseat
spoke.

Twenty minutes later the car turned
off the two-lane country road and swept through an
open iron gate. After fifty meters of gravel,
a large villa appeared. The car circled the house
and eased to a stop on the lawn in back. Qazi’s
backseat companion helped him from the car and pointed
toward the garden.

A man in a white dress shirt with rolled-up
sleeves was pruning leaves from tomato plants.
He greeted Qazi and watched him settle into a
wrought-iron chair with a padded seat.

“Buon giorno, Signor Verdi.”

“Signor Pagliacci, with respect, it is
indeed a pleasure,” Qazi replied, keeping his
voice soft and husky.

The Italian produced a large handkerchief from
his hip pocket and mopped his brow. He was at least
sixty, with an ample girth, though he didn’t
look fat. He poured two small glasses of
wine, held them up and examined them against the sky.
He grunted after a moment, then set one glass on
the small table on Qazi’s right. He, too,
took a chair.

Qazi took a tiny sip of wine. It was
dry and robust. “You had a good trip?”

“Si. The jet airplanes are much
better than the old ones. Really, it is the
airports now. Pagliacci smiled politely and
drank from his glass. If he knew Qazi was
thirty years younger than he looked, he had never
even hinted at it in the five years Qazi had known
him.

“Is he well?” the Italian asked.

Qazi knew he was referring to El Hakim.
“Oh, yes. He is a bull. It is the women.” Qazi chuckled
dryly.
Pagliacci smiled again and used the handkerchief on his
brow. He sipped his wine in silence and frowned at
his tomato plants.

Looking at his clothes and hands, one would think him
a gardener or perhaps a captain of industry who had
taken early retirement and burned his business
clothes. Pagliacci was neither. He was one of the most
powerful mafiosi in southern Italy, and he was very
well connected in the international cocaine trade:
four of his sons were in the business-two in New
York, one in Colombia, and one, the eldest, here
in Italy. Qazi had never met the sons,
preferring to do business with the father.

“He agreed,” Qazi said at last, after he had
lowered the level of the wine in the glass
half an inch and set the glass on the table.

“I hoped he would. You see, I have many friends, and
I like to help them out as best I can. I help you because
you are a friend and I help them because they are friends.
Friends help each other, right?”

“It is so.

“And a man cannot have too many friends, friends he can count
on in times of trouble, for favors and aid. Aah,
sons and brothers, we have too few. So friends are the
next best thing, friends who are as brothers and who
help each other.”

“I have taken the liberty of preparing a list,”
Qazi said and slowly felt in his jacket
pocket. He passed it across.

Pagliacci held it Out, almost at arm’s length,
and scanned it. “The uniforms will not be a problem. The
vans are, of course, no problem.

The helicopters .

“They must be fueled and ready. Every night, all
night, for the entire ten days. And I cannot guarantee
their safe return.”

Pagliacci reached and flipped a slug from a
tomato plant. Finally he nodded, “We can do
it,” and looked again at the list. At last he
folded it and put it in his shirt pocket.
“We can help you. The telephone items’ “he
waved his hand to show their insignificance-“and all these
other things. But the airport surveillance at both
Roma and Napoli?

That will take many people. They will have to be paid.”

He belched and poured himself another glass of
wine. “People for a month? And a safe office at both
airports, with passes to get through security? These
things will be expensive. It is our organization and
expertise your cocaine is compensating us for, so we
should not go out of pocket on your behalf.” He
gestured for understanding to his guest.

“Do you agree?”

Qazi had expected this. The old pirate would
squeeze him for every lira. “Signor Pagliacci,
we value your friendship. What do you think is
fair?”

“First we must know just what is it that you are
planning. What are our risks?”

Qazi rested both hands on the head of his cane.
They were badly palsied. Next time he must
remember to half the drug dosage.

“I will be frank with you,” Pagliacci said. “I
will tell you my problems. You must explain carefully
to El Hakim. If an . event . .

. happens at an airport, then the
authorities will place such pressure on my people that
they might be compromised.” He gestured again,
hugely. “I must watch out for their interests.”

“It will cost more?” C”‘eaazi asked
disingenuously. “Truly. I must take care of
them.”

“El Hakim is looking for several enemies of
his regime,” Qazi lied.

“He is irrevocably committed to removing these
people as threats to our political system. We will
provide your watchers with photographs of these
misguided ones. When they are found, of course they
will die.”

The colonel needed a reasonable explanation for the
equipment and services he needed from the Italian,
and the best way to provide a plausible one was to expand
the list of goods and services required to fit a
fictitious story, the cover. This was the cover. The
entire airport project was designed to keep
Pagliacci’s people occupied while Qazi was busy
elsewhere.

“Here? In Italia?”

“Probably.”

Pagliacci named a figure which both men
knew from past experience was twice as much as he
wanted.

They discussed it like two pensioners relating recent
surgical experiences, with gusto and mock
sympathy. Pagliacci came down. Qazi
came up. They sipped wine and finally compromised.

Qazi was apologetic. “El Hakim
expects me to haggle. You know the Arab mind.”

Pagliacci was gracious. “No man likes
to pay too much. And sometimes what sounds right in one
place will sound too expensive in another. Do not
concern yourself.”

“As long as you understand.” Qazi wet his lips with
wine and set the glass down with finality.

“When can I tell my friends in New York
to expect the first shipment?”

“It will arrive at our embassy via the
diplomatic pouch the day after tomorrow. Your man should
call at the embassy and ask for this man.”

Qazi produced another scrap of paper from a
pocket and passed it over.

They settled on a recognition phrase. “I
am sorry we must deliver it there in the embassy,
but it has become too dangerous for our man to carry
it in the streets.” This was an understatement.
Should a diplomat accredited to the United Nations be
involved in an accident, or be detained by police,
and be found in possession of several kilos of
cocaine, the diplomatic consequences would be
catastrophic. Even El Hakim understood that.

“Getting it into the U.s. is the problem,”
Pagliacci said. “My friends can handle it from there.”
His sons, he meant.

“We will deliver twoz kilos of pure, uncut
cocaine on the same day every other week until you have
the quantity we have agreed upon. If your man does
not show on the appointed day, he will be expected two
days later.

If he does not appear then, it will be assumed that
he is never coming and all deliveries will cease.

Qazi leaned back carefully in his chair. “Money would
have been easier.”

Pagliacci ignored that comment. Years ago, when
Qazi had first approached him for aid on another
project, cocaine was the only currency which
Pagliacci would discuss. The money was secondary,
icing on the cake, for the local soldiers.

“But now I must go back to El Hakim and inform
him that money is also required.” Qazi
had made this comment on other occasions. Both men
knew it was proforma.

“He will understand. I have great respect for him.”

“I suggest that we pay you the money when we are
ready to take delivery of the goods.” Qazi was
apologetic again. “yt is no reflection on you
or on our relationship, which is an excellent one of
long standing, with mutual satisfaction, but a
necessity due to my position with El Hakim.”

Pagliacci nodded slowly. Qazi always
insisted on this point, too.

Qazi used his cane to rise from the chair.
“Signor Pagliacci, I salute you. You are a
man of wisdom and discretion.” He looked slowly
about, at the grass, the tall palm trees, and the
rows of olive trees across the back of the lawn.
“It’s so beautiful here. So peaceful.”

“It is perfect for an old man like me. With my
wife gone”-he crossed himself-” ‘and with the children in
homes of their own, I am left with the pleasures of
old men. And the summer is not being kind to my
tomatoes. Like all old men, I complain, eh?”

“Arrivederci. Until we meet again.”

The two men shook hands and parted. Qazi
made his way toward the waiting car without
looking back.

When Jake walked into the air wing office, one
of the A-6 squadron bombardiers was sitting in the
chair by Farnsworth’s desk. Jake tried to match
the name to the face but couldn’t. He was too far away
to read the leather name tag on his flight suit.
“What can we do for you today?”

“I need to talk to you, sir.”

Farnsworth nodded toward the helmet hanging by the
door. Jake tilted it and a bright piece of metal
fell into his hand. Naval Flight Officer’s
wings. A piece of white paper with a name was taped
to it. Lieutenant Reed.

“Better come into my office.” Jake led the
way.

When both men were seated with the door closed, Jake
tossed the wings in the middle of his desk.

“Okay.”

Reed swallowed several times and wet his lips with
his tongue. He was about twenty-five, with short
blond hair. His features were even, as if eyes,
nose, lips, and chin had been carefully chosen
to make an attractive set. A fine sheen of
perspiration was just visible on his forehead. His name tag
proclaimed he was Mad Dog Reed.
Jake pulled out his lower desk drawer and propped
his feet on it. The desire for a cigarette was very
strong, so he rammed both hands in his trouser
pockets. “What’s the deal?”

“I want to turn in my wings.” Jake grunted
and stared at his toes.

“Uh, you know”

“No, I don’t.”

“Well, you said if we got to feeling that we
couldn’t do our best up there, we ought to turn our wings
in. That’s the way I feel,” he said
defensively. When Grafton didn’t respond
he added, “I’ve had all of this bullshit I can
stand.”

“By chance, do you have a personal computer on
board?”

“Yes sir.” Reed brightened. “I do all my
paperwork on it. I’ve written a few
programs. We can now track . . .” and he
rambled on enthusiastically.

Jake wiggled his toes. Almost every junior
officer these days had a computer in his stateroom. The
flight program had become so competitive that one
almost needed an honors engineering degree to have a
chance for the limited slots available. As a
result, the pilots and naval flight
officers today were the cream of the college crop,
brilliant youngsters with stock portfolios and
spread sheets that the navy couldn’t keep beyond the first
tour. Over half of them turned down
career-retention bonuses that approached fifty
thousand dollars and left after their first tour. Rocket
scientists, one admiral called them. “I see,”
Jake murmured.

“I submitted my letter of resignation from the
navy, but it won’t be effective for six months.
I just don’t think I should keep flying if my
heart isn’t in it.” Reed’s words were carefully
enunciated, respectful but not apologetic.

Jake searched for something to say. “How’d you get
that nickname, Mad Dog?”

Reed flushed. “There was a big party at
Breezy Point.” Breezy Point was the name of the
officers’ club at NAS Norfolk. “I had
too much to drink and . . . made something of a fool of
myself. When the CO of the base called the squadron
a few days later to complain, the skipper told him
I was just a mad dog.”

The A-6 skipper was John Majeska.
“What does Commander Majeska say about all this?”

“Well, sir, he and I fly together and
I’ve talked it over with him.”

“And…”

The door opened and Farnsworth stuck his head
in. “You better start suiting up now, CAG. You
have a brief in ten minutes for a five-minute alert
bomber. With the A-6 outfit.” His eyes
swiveled to Reed.

Jake stood up. “You’re my bombardier tonight,
Reed. See you at the brief in ten minutes.”

“But, sir, I was…

“No fucking buts, Reed. Ten minutes. Now
get out of here so I can change clothes.”

When Reed was gone, Farnsworth said, “That was a
good line, sir. “No fucking buts”

“Go fly your word processor, Farnsworth.”

“A very good line, sir. I may use it as the
title for my memoirs, which will chronicle my
lifelong crusade to promote heterosexuality.”

Jake Grafton laughed and slammed the door in
his face.

An hour and a half later Jake stood in
Flight Deck Control and stared out the bomb-proof
porthole at the flight deck. Misting rain and
water trickling down the glass distorted the planes
and men on the flight deck as Jake
watched the aircraft handling officer, the “handler,”
who was seated in a raised chair, direct the
spotting of the planes that were landing. As each
aircraft announced its arrival on deck with a
full-power bellow of its engines as the arresting gear
dragged it to a halt, a sailor wearing a
sound-powered telephone headset placed a cutout
of the plane in the landing area of the table-sized model
of the ship, which stood in front of the handler’s chair.
Taxiing out of the landing area, the pilot visually
signaled the aircraft’s maintenance status to a
man on the deck, who relayed it by radio to another
sailor here. This man placed a colored nut or
washer on the model aircraft. The handler then
announced the parking spot, which other sailors wearing
radiotelephone headsets relayed to the taxi
directors on the flight deck.

Four sailors wearing headsets surrounded the
table and pushed the aircraft models around it in
response to the observations of spotters stationed high
in the island or on the hangar deck. The scale
model and the cutout aircraft allowed the handler
to instantly ascertain the location of every aircraft on
the ship. Although he had four and a half acres of
flight deck and two acres of hangar
to work with, the handler fought a never-ending battle against
gridlock.

Against the far wall the squadron maintenance
chiefs shouted into their headsets and intercom boxes and
wrote with grease pencils on a large plexiglas
board that showed the maintenance status of every aircraft
on the ship. Almost everyone was shouting, at someone
else or into a mouthpiece, and the muffled whine of
engines at idle or full power provided
symphonic background. The airmen in flight gear
waiting to man the alert aircraft crammed the rest
of the space. Grafton turned back to the window when
a sailor near him lit a cigarette.

“Okay. That’s the last one,” the handler finally
roared over the hubbub. “You alert guys give me
your weight chits and man em up.”

Grafton passed him a printed form with his
aircraft’s weight computation penciled in. The
launching officer would need this weight to calculate the
proper setting for the catapult in the event the alert
birds had to launch.

The handler glanced at the form, ensuring it was signed
by the pilot, then scribbled the number in grease
pencil on a status board beside him.

The crews donned their helmets and
waddled toward the door in pairs-it was hard to walk
normally wearing forty pounds of flight gear and a tight
torso harness that impinged upon your testicles.

Grafton opened the hatch to the flight deck and
stepped through. He and Reed walked between two
aircraft and stopped at the foul line, the right edge
of the landing area. The wind and misty rain gave the air
a chill, and Jake shivered. The rescue
helicopter, the “angel,” came Out of the gloom
over the fantail and settled on to the forward portion
of the landing area. The crewman tumbled out the side
door of the SH-3 and began installing tie-down
chains as flight deck workers in blue shirts rushed
in to help. In moments the chains were installed and the
engines died. The rotors spun slower and slower,
until finally they came to rest.

A yellow flight deck tractor towed an
F-14 with wings swept aft past the helicopter
and spun it around into the hook-up area of Number
Three Catapult. When the blue-shirts carrying
chocks and chains had it secured, the tractor was
unhooked and the nose tow-bar removed- In a few
moments another tractor came aft from the bow towing
the A-6E that Jake and Reed were to man and parked
it just short of the foul line on the port, or
left, side of the landing area.

Tonight the alert aircraft consisted of the two
F-14 Tomcats spotted just short of the waist
catapults and two A-6 Intruders spotted
clear of the landing area. Only one aircraft was
aloft now in the night, an E-2Can Hawkeye
early-warning radar plane. This twin-engine
turboprop could easily stay airborne for four
hours. The radars aboard the various ships would also
be probing tzhe night, but the Hawkeye’s radar,
from its vantage point six miles up, had a
tremendous range advantage. The information from all
these radars was data-linked to the NTDS computer and
displayed in the Combat Information Centers aboard every
ship in the task group. In the half-light of
computer-driven display screens, amid the murmur
of radio speakers, the CIC watch-standers coded,
analyzed, and identified every object within hundreds
of miles. And if any unidentified plane
appeared whose course might take it so near the task
group as to constitute a possible threat, the alert
fighters would be launched. If the bogey was an
unidentified surface target, a ship or boat,
the A-6 bombers would follow the fighters into the
air.

Tonight the handler had his alert bombers spotted
clear of the landing area, so he would only have to respot
the two alert fighters when the time came to launch
another Hawkeye and trap the returning one.

Jake Grafton began his walk-around inspection
as the tractor backed up to the starboard side of the
aircraft and a high-pressure air hose was
attached to the plane. Another man dragged a power
cable across the deck from the catwalk and plugged it into the
aircraft.

Jake examined the ordnance hanging on the
A-6’s wing stations. A Harpoon
air-to-surface missile was mounted on the right
inboard wing station, station four; a pod of flares
hung on the left inboard wing station, station two; and
four Rockeye cluster bombs hung on each of the
outboard wing stations, stations one and five. The
centerline station, station three, contained a
two-thousand-pound belly tank, as usual. He
checked each weapon to see that it was properly mated
to the rack and the fuses were correctly set.

Jake also examined the grease-penciled numbers
in the black area on the port intake to ensure the
plane captain had written in the proper weight
of the aircraft, including fuel and
ordnance. This was yet another check for the catapult
officer, whose calculation of the catapult launch
valve setting had to be correct or the aircraft
would not get enough push from the catapult to get safely
airborne.