Final Flight (44 page)

At forty miles Jake pulled the throttles
back slightly and lowered the nose. Toad turned
on the Television Camera System and Jake
punched up the picture on his Horizontal
Situation Display. “Looks like a C-130
Hercules to me,” Toad said. “Same high wing.
Right speed for a turboprop.”

“There aren’t any Hercs going to Africa this
morning,” Jake said as he studied the picture.
The image was still so small and it shimmered as the light
was diffused by the atmosphere.

“Maybe an An- 12 Cub? Didn’t the
Russians sell those things all over North
Africa?”

“Yeah.”

“What’re you going to do?” Toad asked.
“Rendezvous so you can give the pilots the
Hawaiian good luck sign.”

“Well, we can’t just shoot ‘em down,” Toad
said acidly. “We can’t just blast ‘em out of the
sky.”

At ten miles Toad said, “Looks like this guy
has a gun turret or something in the tail. That’s
no Herc.” It’s no airliner, either, Jake thought
as he looked through the heads-up display and picked out
the speck in the sky near the symbol that was the
transport.

He came out of burner and let his speed drop as
he approached the turboprop from the stern. There was a
man in the gun turret, but the twin barrels
remained pointed upward as the fighter rapidly
traversed the last mile and Jake pulled the engines
toward idle and cracked the speed brakes to kill his
speed.

He slid up on the right side of the transport.
A four-engine turboprop.

An Antonov An- 12 Cub, all right, with a
glass chin for the navigator to peer out of. The
Americans hadn’t put a chin like that on a plane
in forty years. This plane was painted in desert
camouflage but lacked markings of any kind. That’s
curious, Jake thought. Not even a side number.

He let the fighter drift forward so he
could see directly into the transport’s cockpit.
Both pilots were looking this way. He used his
left hand to signal a turn to the left. Nothing.
They just stared.

Jake flipped the switches on the armament
panel and triggered a short burst from the Vulcan
20-millimeter cannon mounted in the port side
of the F-14’s forward fuselage. He could feel
the weapon’s vibration as the tracers shot forward and
disappeared from sight.

The Cub continued on its heading. Jake
signaled vigorously for a left turn. Nothing.
“They’re a thick bunch,” Toad muttered.
Jake triggered another burst. Still the plane
continued on course. “What if the weapons aren’t in
there?” Toad demanded.

“What do you want me to do? Let him go
to Africa and drop the bomb next week on New
York?” Jake reduced power and let the
transport pull ahead.

Maybe a few rounds right over the wing would change
this guy’s mind.

He glanced left just in time. The twin barrels in
the tail turret were swinging this way. He rammed the
stick forward and orange fireballs flew
across the top of the canopy. The negative G
slung the two men upward as far as the slack in their
harness restraints allowed. Jake dove under the
transport and added power and kept the nose down.

“What do you want to do now, Tarkington, you
goddamn flea on the elephant’s ass. Got
any ideas?” When Jake was several miles ahead
of the Cub, he began a turn. “How many people have
to die before you’re willing to get your hands dirty?”
He craned his neck to keep the transport in
sight. It turned the opposite way and dove,
trying to flee, a fatal mistake. Jake
relaxed his turn and reset the armament switches.
“No smirches on your lily-white soul. What do
you think Farrell was fighting for?”

The Cub was in the forward quadrant now, several
miles ahead as Jake completed the 270-degree
turn. The tailgunner was blazing away but the
shells were falling short. Jake put the pipper in
the heads-up display on the plane, and got a
rattling tone in his ears, the locked-on signal from
the heat-seeking Sidewinder that had given the
missile its name.

He squeezed the red trigger on the stick pistol
grip. A missile leaped off the rail in
a blaze of fire. It tracked. Jake got
another tone and squeezed the trigger again. The
second missile shot after the first.

The gunner shot at the missiles. It was
futile. They slammed into the engines of the Cub at
two and a half times the speed of sound. Their
25-pound warheads flashed. The Cub rolled onto
its right wing and began a spiral. The nose fell
steeply.

Jake dipped a wing and watched the transport
going down. It was going too fast. A piece of wing
came off and the plane began to roll about its
longitudinal axis, out of control, going down,
down, down. Jake added power and eased the Tomcat
into a climbing turn toward the north, still watching the
falling plane far below. Then it exploded.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Toad said.

Jake took off his oxygen mask and wiped his
face. He felt like he was going to be sick.
“I’m sorry, too,” he muttered to the Gods,
who were the only ones who could hear.

“Do you think they had the bombs?” Toad asked.
When Jake had his mask back on and adjusted, he
said, “I doubt it.” Qazi didn’t seem the
type to let himself be waylaid quite so
easily. “Get on the radio. Find out where that
frigate thinks that Red Cross plane is and ask
the tanker to fly straight east at top speed.
We’ll rendezvous with him and get some more gas, then
try to catch the east-bound jet.”

“You don’t think it’s a Red Cross plane?”

“That has the earmarks of our colonel friend. An
airline flies certain known routes every day, so you
can’t just pretend you are an airliner without confusing the
controllers. He needed a one time flight plan.”

Toad did as requested.

Or, Jake thought, Qazi could do what Jake was
doing right now, which was fly around illegally without a
flight plan and hope the controllers had their radars
tuned to just receive transponder codes, not skin
paints.

But Qazi didn’t run risks like that. Oh,
no. He would be covered, with a perfectly legal
international flight plan filed days in advance.
For a one-time trip.

The 11-76 with Qazi, El Hakim, and the
weapons aboard was circling, waiting. The fighters
were late, Qazi heard one of the crewmen say.

They had been circling for ten minutes. Out his
defective window he could see only the
blue of the ocean and the changing shadow of the wing as the
transport flew a lazy circle.

El Hakim had never understood the importance of
timing in clandestine operations, Qazi reflected.
This ocean was an American lake, with
missile-carrying surface combatants sprinkled
at random. There was a carrier battle group off
Cyprus. When the Americans sorted out the mess
aboard United States, they were going to be in a very
pugnacious mood, and Soviet-built
transports wandering erratically in international
airspace were going to attract unhealthy attention,
especially if escorted by fighters. El
Hakim’s time was fast running out, and he didn’t
know it.

Noora and Jarvis were in the last row of seats in
the module, their heads only occasionally visible. The
guard with the Uzi had looked that way four or five
times and was showing an increasing interest in their
activities. That Noora, she could be relied upon
to put her pleasure first. Qazi permitted himself a
hint of a smile. He had not considered the
possibility that she would be attracted to Jarvis.
I am getting too old, he thought ruefully. He
sighed and watched the guard crane his neck,
trying to see. The sexual curiosity of the Arab
male could also be relied upon. He folded his hands
across his lap and closed his eyes and tried to relax.
The plane continued to circle.

The guard stood. It was too noisy to hear him,
but Qazi sensed it. He opened his eyes to slits.
The man was at the end of the aisle, looking aft.
Then he passed behind the row of seats Qazi was in.
Qazi lifted his right leg and drew the Walther
PPK from his ankle holster. He thumbed the
safety off. He laid it on his lap and covered it
with his left hand.

Jake approached the tanker from the stern. The
refueling drogue was extended. He flipped the
refueling switch, and his refueling probe came out
of the right side of the fuselage just under and forward of his
cockpit. He added power and began closing on the
tanker.

The drogue on the end of the fifty-foot hose
hung down and behind the tail of the Intruder. Looking
exactly like a large badminton birdie, the
drogue oscillated gently in the lower edge of the
tanker’s slipstream. The air displaced by the nose
of the Tomcat would push the drogue away if Jake
closed too slowly, so he used the
throttles to make his closure brisk and sure.
But at this altitude, at this low indicated
airspeed, only 210 knots due to the tanker’s
capabilities, the Tomcat was sluggish,
responding sloppily to the controls. There, he
snagged it. He pushed the drogue toward the tanker
until the lights above the hose exit in the
tanker’s belly turned from amber to green. He was
getting fuel.

“How much do you want, CAG?” the tanker
pilot asked. “All you can give me and still make it
to Sigonella.” They were flying east at 40,000
feet. The island of Sicily lay over a hundred
miles behind them.

Toad was talking to the frigate on the other
radio, as he had been for five minutes.
Apparently he was conversing with one of the enlisted men in
the watch section of the frigate’s CIC, all very
low-key, though with the scramblers engaged. Toad
handled it well, seeking aid on an “oh, by the
way” basis, a few traffic advisories for a
Tomcat crew out for a spin and some practice
intercepts I this fine Sunday morning.

“Here’s something interesting, Red Ace,” the
sailor on the frigate said.

“The spooks say we have some MiGs airborne
north of Benghazi. We picked up the radar
emissions and some radio traffic.” The
transmission broke, then resumed, “And this is
funny. There’s an airplane circling about a
hundred ten miles or so north of Benghazi.”

“Ask him if he can pick up a squawk,”
Jake said to Toad, who made the transmission.
He checked the fuel readout. Twelve thousand
pounds aboard. The tanker’s light was still green.

“Uh, it’s that Red Cross flight. Pretty
weird, huh? You guys may want to return
to Sicily or turn northbound to avoid the
MiGs, 1 over.

“Yeah,” Toad said. “Thanks a lot,
Buckshot.”

“That’s it, CAG,” the tanker crew said as the
light over the hose hole turned red: 13,200
pounds of fuel. That would have to do.

“Thanks guys.” Jake backed away from the
drogue and watched his probe retract. He eased
up onto the tanker’s right side and gave the pilot
a thumbs-up when the drogue was completely stowed.
Then he pushed the throttles forward to the stops and
flapped his hand good-bye. The tanker’s right
wing came up and the plane turned away to the left as
it fell behind the accelerating fighter.

Jake reset the radio switches so he could
transmit on the second radio.

“Buckshot, Red Ace. Get your watch
officer and put him on the horn.”

The Tomcat was in burner, accelerating through Mach
1.4 when the watch officer came on the radio.

“Buckshot, this is Captain Jake
Grafton. Please notify Sixth Fleet
ASAP that Colonel Qazi and the weapons are
probably in the Red Cross flight your controller
has tracked. We are on course to intercept now.
Got it?”

“Yes sir. But what-“

“Just send the message. Red Ace out.”

Someone was there. Qazi opened his eyes. It was
El Hakim, livid, trembling with fury. “679
93 62. That is the telephone number of the
Israeli embassy in Rome. Tripoli
confirms it. That was the number!

How did you know it?”

“I called it.”

“Traitor!” The dictator’s lips drew
back in a sneer and he threw back his
head, his favorite gesture. You are lying.
Hypocrite!”

“You have the weapons, Qazi said carefully.
“Fly to Benghazi. The fighters are late. It’s
suicidal to continue to remain out here over the ocean
with the Americans soon to be swarming and the Israelis
on the alert. Madness. Go to Benghazi and announce
your triumph. The Arabs will come to you like iron to a
magnet.”

“I am the Messenger, returned to lead my people from
the godless ways, to purify them A member of the
flight crew stuck his head through the door.

“Excellency, the fighters are joining us with their
tanker. We have them in sight.”

“East. Now!” He turned back to Qazi,
nostrils flaring. “My mission has just begun. The
unbelievers shall fall before our swords-“

“Inshallah,” Qazi said softly, fiercely.
“If Allah wills it.” El Hakim was mad,
of course. The ruler was a small, foolish,
hollow man whose ambition and appetite had long
ago won control of his soul. Ashes.

Qazi’s plan was ashes. He had wanted so much
to give these people hope and a future, and yet this
vainglorious petty tyrant was the man
who ruled them. “If the Israelis don’t shoot
you down,” Qazi muttered, suddenly laden with
fatigue. “If the Americans don’t strike you
down.

If Allah doesn’t destroy you as an
abomination.” El Hakim seized the Uzi of the
bodyguard who stood on his right, but the weapon was on
a strap over the man’s right shoulder. The ruler
pulled at it, trying to rip it from the strap.

“Excellency, American fighters! The
ECM! They are here!”

The ruler struggled with the gun as the bodyguard med
to pull the strap from his shoulder so he could pass the
weapon.

“No!” It was Noora. She leaned across El
Hakim and grabbed for the gun. “No! We are
pressurized. The pressure-” Qazi was so
tired. He raised the pistol from his lap and pointed
it at the window beside him and pulled the trigger. The
report was loud. A hole appeared in the crazed
glass, then cracks as the scream of the escaping air
dropped in pitch. Then the glass exploded
outward.