Acts of Vengeance

CHAPTER THREE FACE OF THE ENEMY

“Why did they do it?”

Cmdr. Spook Morse, the flag staff intelligence officer, peered at the questioner, a pilot from one of the Hornet squadrons, as if the guy had just landed from Uranus. Like most air intelligence officers, Morse had a low regard for the cognitive abilities of fighter pilots. Pilots were like single-purpose gladiators. They were dangerous if they knew too much.

“For the same reason they destroyed the World Trade Center. Because they could. In case you haven’t noticed, that’s what terrorists do — kill Americans.”

The pilot wasn’t satisfied. “Are you saying that these assholes get to take a shot at us whenever they feel like it?”

“No.” Morse gave the pilot a glacial smile. “Listen up, and you’ll hear what I’m saying.”

The ready room was filled with the senior officers of the air wing — squadron commanding officers, executive officers, designated strike leaders. A few, like the Tomcat squadron skipper Burner Crump and his beer-hoisting buddy, Rico Flores, who commanded a Hornet squadron, were nursing world-class hangovers. In the recall of personnel ashore, they had managed to jump on the helicopter from the fleet landing before the Reagan hauled anchor and headed to sea.

Maxwell sat in the row behind Boyce and his staff. He could feel the motion of the ship. the Reagan and its battle group were steaming southward in the Persian Gulf. He could only guess where. The Strait of Hormuz? Into the Indian Ocean?

In the front row sat Capt. Red Boyce, the Air Wing Commander. Boyce’s honorific title was CAG — the extinct but still-used label for Commander, Air Group. Boyce was gnawing on an unlit Cohiba as he listened to Spook Morse’s briefing.

Morse turned to the map projected on the screen before him. It was a topographic depiction of the southern half of the Arabian peninsula. He tapped the screen with his pointer. “Here’s what you need to know,” he said, leaving the clear implication — there’s a hell of a lot more that you pilots don’t need to know.

Listening to Morse’s briefing, Maxwell couldn’t help thinking about the strangeness of his situation. His life seemed to be punctuated by the loss of someone close to him. His mother passed away while he was still in high school and his absentee father was commanding a fleet. Debbie, his astronaut wife, had been lost forever in a burst of flame one morning at Cape Canaveral. Her death caused him to leave NASA and come back to the fleet. Then when it seemed that his career as a fighter pilot was washed up, his commanding officer, Killer DeLancey, died in a dogfight over Iraq. Maxwell took his place.

Of course, that could change. He had no illusions about how the Navy worked. To most of the men in this briefing room, he would always be an outsider — an ex-astronaut and test pilot. A carpetbagger who hadn’t paid his dues like they had.

It was not the way he had expected to spend his first day as a squadron commanding officer. The USS Reagan had been scheduled for another week in Dubai. He had already booked a room in a small guest hotel on the outskirts of the city, where he intended to spend most of the week with Claire Phillips.

Claire. Though it was still too soon to trust his own feelings in these matters, he knew that he felt the stirrings of something very much like love. If his own instincts were correct, he was sure that she felt the same way.

Morse was pointing to a spot on the map. It was in the northwestern part of Yemen. “We don’t have an op plan yet. Our guys nailed three of the operatives in the terrorist group, and they’ve provided enough intel data to give us a good ID of the group. They’re exiles from a failed coup attempt in Abu Dhayed three years ago.

“We have good recon and intel data about the group’s headquarters. They’ve got a few high-tech weapons, including some SA missiles appropriated from their own military in Abu Dhayed. We assume, too, that they’ve got some high tech communications and a certain level of intelligence-gathering capability, because the guy who runs the outfit has plenty of assets and a military education.”

A lieutenant commander from the Bluetails spoke up. “Is this bunch connected with Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden’s gang?”

“Yes, they’re connected. But they’re not part of the Islamic jihad movement. The leader of this group has a different agenda.”

With this, he switched the picture on the screen. The portrait of a handsome Arab man in a military flight suit flashed into view. He had a neat black mustache. On his flight suit was embroidered a set of silver wings, and beneath his collar he wore a checkered scarf.

Maxwell felt a shock of recognition. That face. From somewhere back in time. He stared at the image, scratching his memory. Where? What was his name…?

Morse supplied the answer. “Gentlemen, meet Col. Jamal Al-Fasr.”

“I know him,” said Maxwell.

Morse stopped. “Excuse me?”

“From the Red Flag exercise,” said Maxwell. It was coming back to him now. “At Nellis about ten years ago. He was an F-16 pilot from one of the emirate air forces.”

Morse was nodding his head. “That’s correct. I was there too, and met this guy. The fact is, he was an impressive character. He’d gone through flight training with the U.S. Air Force. He did the fighter weapons course at Nellis, then came back with his home team to compete at Red Flag.”

Maxwell stared at the face on the screen. Yes, it was definitely Al-Fasr. He was hard to forget.

Boyce turned around in his seat. “Was the guy any good?”

“The best they had. Very aggressive, but he had a problem. He broke the rules. He’d violate the hard deck altitude, take shots outside the box, whatever it took to win engagements. One day in a one-vee-one, he took it all the way down to the deck and scraped one of our guys off on a ridge in the Sierra.”

“I remember that incident,” said Boyce. “They kicked the sonofabitch out of the country and sent him back to the emirate.”

“That’s Al-Fasr,” said Morse.

Boyce peered at the smiling face on the screen. “Spook, you’re telling us that’s the terrorist who took out Admiral Mellon and Admiral Dunn and the ambassador?”

“We have evidence that he planned it and gave the order.”

“When do I get the chance to put a Sidewinder up his ass?”

“Not soon. According to the intel on this guy, he doesn’t have any tactical aircraft. Certainly no fighters. You’ll have to settle for a laser-guided bomb on his hooch in Yemen.”

A strike leader from VFA-34 spoke up. “Does that mean we’re launching a strike?”

“The new Battle Group Commander’s on his way out, along with some honcho from the National Security Council. We’ll know in a few hours.”

The room became quiet, each pilot thinking about a possible air strike. From the projection screen, the face of Jamal Al-Fasr smiled down at them.

The high desert landscape looked like the surface of an asteroid. The entire valley was barren except for the terraced fields on the hillside where peasants tended a few scraggly sheep and tried to raise miserable crops of sorghum and millet.

Al-Fasr kept the Marchetti SF260 in a steep turn while he peered down at the target area. It would have been expedient to perform the mission with a MiG-29, he reflected. As a ground-attack platform, the MiG was a terrifying vehicle. But today’s mission was special. He didn’t want the speed and devastating firepower of the big Russian-built fighter.

The single machine gun of the Marchetti, mounted in a pod beneath the left wing, and the relative slowness of the aircraft — only 350 kilometers per hour in its dive — were suitable for his purpose. Al-Fasr wanted the luxury of time. He needed to observe his target at close range.

He flipped the master armament switch to ON. The target was below his left wing. He shoved the throttle to full power and rolled the Marchetti nearly inverted, pulling the nose through the horizon.

The targets appeared in his windscreen. In the rock-strewn clearing they looked like stick figures, pitiful caricatures of human beings. Al-Fasr almost wished he had armed them with automatic weapons. It would be more sporting if they could shoot back.

No, he thought. It was better this way.

He felt the airframe hum and resonate as the propeller-driven fighter-trainer gathered speed. He liked the agile little Marchetti. This particular example had been acquired from the Libyan Air Force, where it had flown in Khadafi’s Sudan and Chad campaigns.

Through the fixed gunsight on the glare shield, he studied the six targets. They knew what was happening, and they were trying to conceal themselves behind each other. Like rats hiding from a marauding cat.

Each wore green fatigues except for one, who was dressed in a white, shirtlike gellebiah. Each was tethered to a mast by a four-meter chain.

At a range of three hundred meters, he squeezed the trigger. The vibration of the pod-mounted machine gun rattled through the Marchetti’s airframe all the way to the control stick in Al-Fasr’s right hand.

He saw the tracers kicking up dirt three meters short of the tethered prisoners. His aim point was slightly low. The prisoners scattered, running to the end of their tethers like chained dogs.

Using the tracers like the tip of a brush, Al-Fasr walked the fusillade of bullets to the left, where two of the prisoners had scurried.

Machine-gun fire tore through their bodies. The figures rolled and flipped across the dirt, arms and legs splayed.

Al-Fasr released the trigger and pulled up in a high chandelle over the target site. Looking back over his right shoulder, he saw the bodies of the two executed prisoners spread-eagled on the ground. The remaining four stared up at him.

It was appropriate. Condemned prisoners should serve a useful function, he believed. Like strafing practice. No one should be surprised.

Least of all Naguib Shauqi.

His faithful lieutenant. His fellow freedom fighter and commander of the Bu Hasa brigade. Maj. Naguib Shauqi and his armor could have saved Akhmed when he was besieged by the Royal Guard.

It was Naguib, he finally determined, who had betrayed the coup.

As he identified each of the traitors, he had dealt with them. Twelve of Naguib’s collaborators had been assassinated. Another half dozen — all military officers and close associates of Naguib — were taken from their homes or offices. Naguib was snatched from the sauna in his villa where he had been found with his German mistress. After being forced to watch while the woman’s throat was slashed, he was bound and gagged, then transported to Yemen.

To become a target.

Another firing pass. The prisoners darted back and forth, trying to anticipate the bullets. Naguib, conspicuous in his white garb, tried to conceal himself behind the others.

Al-Fasr fired at the prisoners, walking the trail of bullets through the scampering bodies.

Naguib was the only one left standing.

Al-Fasr pulled up and circled for another pass. As he brought the nose of the Marchetti back toward the target area, he forced himself to remember. My father’s severed head… the bullet in my mother’s forehead… my sister, executed like a dog.

He waited until he was close enough to see the terror on Naguib’s face. He squeezed the trigger, working the tracers toward the cringing figure.

Naguib tried to run, then fell. Al-Fasr trained the hail of bullets on the white shirt. He saw the body shred, pieces scattering, the white shirt turning crimson.

At the last instant, he released the trigger and hauled back on the stick. The Marchetti skimmed low over the target, barely clearing the mast.

Al-Fasr realized that he was perspiring. His breathing was heavy and rapid. A feeling of grim satisfaction came over him. Al ain bel ain sen bel sen. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

Most of the officers had left the briefing room. Maxwell sat by himself in the front row, studying the visage of Al-Fasr on the screen.

Boyce walked over. “You know this character. What do you think? Is he gonna be a problem?”

Maxwell nodded. “If it’s the same Al-Fasr, yes. A big problem.”

“Let me share some news that will fill your heart with joy. Guess who the President is sending out to oversee the Yemen operation.”

Maxwell shook his head.

“Does this name ring a bell? The honorable Whitney T. Babcock?”

Maxwell groaned. It rang a bell. Babcock was the meddlesome Undersecretary of the Navy who had inserted himself into Admiral Mellon’s op planning for the preemptive strike on Iraq’s munitions factory. After the strike had been declared a success, it was Babcock who took all the credit.

“For some reason, the President loves this guy,” said Boyce. “Thinks he shits gold bricks. He promoted Babcock to chief staff officer of the National Security Council, and now the little dipshit is coming out to run another war for us.”

“Who’s going to command the battle group?”

“A two-star named Fletcher. Apparently Babcock picked Tom Mellon’s replacement. Ever heard of him?”

Maxwell shook his head. “What’s his aviation background?”

“None. He’s a black shoe — surface warfare, cruiser-destroyer guy. Except he didn’t do much of that either. Stickney, who doesn’t usually bad-mouth senior officers, turned livid when he heard about Fletcher. Says he worked for him at OpNav, and the guy was a political animal who spent his whole career cruising the Pentagon and working for civilian bureaucrats. Sticks said they used to call Fletcher ‘the Governor’ because he politicked like he was always running for the office.”

“Like Babcock.”

“You get the picture.” Boyce turned to regard the photograph of Al-Fasr again. He pointed his cigar at the screen. “There’s something wrong with this scenario. If that guy’s half as smart as we think, why would he do something so amateurish? Like killing the admirals, then letting his stooges get caught. And botching that bomb job on the embassy. Pretty dumb.”

Maxwell didn’t have an answer, but he had a clear recollection now of Jamal Al-Fasr. Whatever he was, he wasn’t dumb.

Chuff. Chuff. Chuff.

She had a good eight-minute-mile pace going as she completed the fourth lap around the perimeter of the hangar deck. Passing the number two elevator, she stopped. A yellow tug was towing an F/A-18 Super Hornet toward the elevator.

The Hornet belonged to the VFA-36 Roadrunners — her squadron. Beneath the left canopy rail was the name of the pilot, Lt. B. J. Johnson. Under the name was a freshly painted kill symbol — the silhouette of a MiG-29 and a small Iraqi flag.

“Pretty cool, huh?”

Surprised, B.J. turned to see Leroi Jones standing beside her. Leroi was a muscular young man from Nebraska. He was a lieutenant and the only African-American pilot in her squadron.

“Cool? Yeah, I guess so.”

“The squadron’s pretty proud of you, you know.”

B.J. didn’t know how to respond. Jones was one of those guys who, until last week, had treated her as if she carried the Ebola virus. As the only surviving woman pilot in the squadron, she had felt the resentment — hate, even — from the men. She knew the not-so-secret name they had for women pilots — aliens. As an alien aboard the world’s largest warship, she was ostracized by everyone. The wall of bias had become impenetrable.

All that had changed in a single blazing afternoon over Iraq.

She was Brick Maxwell’s wingman when they engaged a MiG-29, a big Russian-built fighter with the code name Fulcrum. The MiG was on Maxwell’s tail, but instead of countering the fighter with one-versus-one defensive tactic, Maxwell set the Fulcrum up and trusted B.J. to do the rest.

She did, and now she had a kill symbol beneath her name. And the guys were actually talking to her.

Well, it was too late. To hell with them. Aliens didn’t need the approval of jerks like Leroi Jones.

An awkward moment passed. Jones was shuffling his feet, gazing out through the open elevator door. “Uh, B.J., I’ve been thinking about something…”

“That’s a change.”

“I mean, I wanted to tell you… I wanted to apologize for…”

He couldn’t get it out. Like most male primitives, he was inarticulate. She decided to help him. “For being an asshole?”

“Yeah, okay. I was an asshole. I was wrong, really wrong, and I apologize for the way I treated you.”

She gave it a moment, not sure that he meant it. This mea culpa stuff didn’t impress her. She should tell Jones to go shit in his brain bucket.

But he seemed serious. Leroi, she remembered, was never one of the really obnoxious ones. Just too supercool to associate with aliens.

“It’s history, Leroi. I’m over it. Let’s just be buds, okay?”

Jones seemed relieved. “Works for me.” He held up his hand. She looked at him for a second, then they touched fists.

She resumed her run. Six more laps and she’d have her four miles. Jogging on the hangar deck was risky — tie-down chains, tugs skittering back and forth — but it was the only area on the ship with space. She hated treadmills, pounding along with an unchanging view.

Sometimes the new skipper, Brick Maxwell, jogged with her, and that was fun. For an old guy — he was at least thirty-eight or forty — he did okay. In fact, for an old guy he was kind of cute, with that brushy mustache and lopsided grin.

She remembered the really bad times, the alien days, when Maxwell was her jogging partner — and only friend. On one of the especially bad days, she poured out her innermost fears and frustrations to him. She was ready to quit, turn in her wings. Maxwell had talked her out of it.

She liked to think that they had a bond, she and Maxwell. Maybe more than a bond.

She knew the realities of military protocol. He was a commander and she was a lieutenant. He was a friend. A mentor. Nothing more.

She picked up the pace to a seven-minute mile. Running hard kept her from thinking too much.

After landing on the hard-packed road, he let the Marchetti roll under the camouflage nets, into the open bay of the underground revetment.

Climbing down from the wing, he saw Shakeeb waiting for him.

“I was watching, Colonel. Naguib is dead. The killing is finished, no?”

“No.” Al-Fasr pulled off his helmet and handed it to him. “The traitors are dead, but the killing is not finished.”

Shakeeb nodded, his face revealing no change of expression.

The overhead fluorescent lights illuminated the spacious bunker. In the same revetment were two MiG-29 Fulcrums. In the adjoining bunkers were four other Fulcrums, as well as six attack-configured Dauphin turbine-powered helicopters.

In addition to the MiGs, the complex’s air defenses consisted of a SA-6 anti-aircraft missile battery on a self-propelled launcher, a dozen SA-16 shoulder-launched missiles, and a battery each of fifty-seven- and thirty-seven-millimeter antiaircraft guns. All Russian-built, purchased in the underground arms market of the third world.

His eight hundred Sherji — freedom fighters — were bivouacked outside the compound. Technically they were mercenaries, but most were veterans of the Afghanistan war and had been trained in Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda camps. Each possessed his own ingrained hatred for all non-Islamic adversaries.

Though Al-Fasr had no belief in a being more supreme than himself, he understood the power that Islam had over its faithful. The Sherji believed that if they died in battle, they would join Allah in the hereafter. Their willingness to become martyrs, as well as their skill in guerilla warfare, made them the most potent weapon in Al-Fasr’s arsenal.

His tiny air force was another matter. It was neither skilled nor potent. Despite that, it possessed an advantage of incalculable value: The Americans didn’t know they existed.

Or so his intelligence source assured him.

The arrival of the MiGs two weeks ago — flown in darkness across the Red Sea from Chad, where they had been delivered by the Libyan Air Force — was timed to avoid the scrutiny of the two American reconnaissance satellites that regularly spied on Yemen. The satellite-tracking technology was a purchase from China, stolen, Al-Fasr presumed, along with a plethora of secrets from the United States.

They walked outside the bunker to Shakeeb’s Land Rover. As they drove to the command post, Al-Fasr peered around the complex. It had been constructed back in the 1950s, when British Petroleum was still drilling the Arabian peninsula for oil deposits. Declaring Yemen to be a dry hole, they abandoned the complex, leaving behind the tin-roofed buildings and hard-packed road.

And the airstrip.

The old BP road meandered out of the desert, running in a nearly straight line for the last three kilometers to the compound. Though the road was gravelly and potholed, it was suitable for the sturdy MiG-29, which had been designed for the unimproved runways of Russia. For takeoff and landing, a door in each of the two big air intakes closed to prevent foreign object ingestion, while intake air was ducted through louvers on the top of the wing roots.

Seen from the lens of a satellite camera or a low-flying reconnaissance jet, the old road was nearly invisible. It looked like just another of the primitive camel paths worn into the arid earth of Yemen. It was a trick the Soviets had long used — building lengthy, straight sections of highway that could be instantly converted to tactical jet runways.

The Land Rover pulled up to the tin-roofed building that served as Al-Fasr’s headquarters. An array of antennae festooned the building. Inside, a dozen technicians worked at the rows of consoles, listening to encrypted message traffic, monitoring the movements of the U.S. Navy’s Middle East fleets.

The operator at the SatComm station looked up and saw Al-Fasr. “You have a message, Colonel. From the Reagan.”

“There’s the answer to my question,” said Claire, pointing to the land masses passing on either side of the Reagan. “Now we know where we’re going.”

“Not exactly,” said Maxwell. “But we know where we’renot going.”

They stood on the viewing deck behind the island, six stories above the flight deck. The heat of the afternoon sun was tempered by the twenty-knot breeze that whipped over the open deck.

the Reagan was leaving the Persian Gulf. To starboard, jutting into the sea like a spearhead, was the long, pointed tip of Oman. On the opposite shore lay the hazy brown coastline of Iran.

The entire battle group was steaming southeastward through the Strait of Hormuz. In the lead was a pair of destroyers followed by the Aegis cruiser Arkansas. Behind the cruiser sailed Reagan, flanked by a destroyer on either side and trailed by the amphibious helicopter carrier Saipan. The ammunition ship Baywater brought up the rear, in company with two more destroyers.

On the Saipan’s flight deck Maxwell could see a swarm of medium transport helos and Cobra gunships. The ship carried an entire Marine Expeditionary Unit — over a thousand battle-ready marines.

From the loudspeaker bellowed the voice of the Reagan’s air boss. “Stand by to recover CODs!” COD stood for Carrier Onboard Delivery. CODs ferried everything from personnel to airplane parts to toilet paper. “Recover CODs in five minutes!”

The bow was swinging into the wind. On the flight deck, yellow-shirted crewmen in float coats and cranial protectors scurried to clear the landing zone. The rescue helicopter lifted from the flight deck and wheeled out over the water, taking up its alert station.

The first of the two blunt-nosed turbo-prop C-2A Greyhounds was already in the groove. Maxwell watched the COD sweep over the ramp and settle with a plop onto the number three wire. Seconds later, the twin-engined aircraft was clear of the wire and scuttling to the forward flight deck. The second COD arrived, snagging a two wire, then joined the first one on the forward deck. The howling of the turbine engines came to a stop.

Maxwell saw the clamshell doors open in the aft fuselage of each COD. At the same time a party of officers came out of the island onto the flight deck. He recognized one of them, a tall man in khakis. It was Sticks Stickney, captain of the Reagan.

Over the loudspeaker blared the bosun’s pipe. Following naval custom, the bosun’s mate’s voice announced, “Commander, Task Force Eleven — arriving.” Another screech of the whistle, then, “Deputy National Security Adviser — arriving.”

A civilian wearing starched khakis and aviator sunglasses emerged from the COD. He was followed by an officer with two stars. Captain Stickney rendered a stiff salute, which both men returned.

“Good Lord,” said Claire. “Who’s that?”

“The new Battle Group Commander. Admiral Langhorne Fletcher.”

“Who’s the civilian? The one dressed up like MacArthur that they’re all kowtowing to?”

“You’re looking at the honorable Whitney T. Babcock, confidant and adviser to the President. Remember him?”

Claire nodded. “Uh-oh. Watch out, Sam.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

Boyce sat alone in the conference room. Spook Morse had removed the image of Jamal Al-Fasr. Now a map of Yemen covered the screen.

Here we go again, thought Boyce. Within a few hours his strike fighters would be on their way to another target in yet another godforsaken hostile country. There was no end to it. The world was crazy. Instead of a single, monolithic kick-ass opponent like the Soviet Union, now they had an enemy du jour. Little pissant wars were breaking out like anthills in a pasture.

Boyce had already ordered a practice load-out. On the hangar and flight decks, the ordnance divisions of the air wing’s squadrons were scrambling to hang weapons — thousand- and two-thousand-pound bombs — beneath the wings of the Hornet strike fighters. Chief petty officers were yelling at the red shirts, hacking stop watches, exhorting them to move faster.

When they were finished, they would unload. Then they would do it all over again. It was a backbreaking job, but critical. When the strike order came down with specific weapon loads, Boyce wanted his jets armed and ready.

He hadn’t yet designated a strike leader. He had already ruled himself out, much as he wanted to be in the front. Something about this one was giving him a bad feeling. If things went sour, the place for an Air Wing Commander was not in the cockpit but here aboard ship.

Who, then? To be fair, the nod should go to Rico Flores, who commanded the VFA-34 Bluetails. He was the senior squadron skipper and a competent strike leader. Or Burner Crump, who ran the Tomcat squadron. Crump had the most combat experience and was a steady leader.

Something in Boyce’s gut was troubling him. When you had nutcase enemies like these Islamic terrorists, who had nothing to lose and believed that dying was a ticket to paradise, you never knew what to expect.

There wasn’t a textbook solution for everything that could go wrong on a deep air strike. They had to keep learning that same damned lesson every time — Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq again, Afghanistan.

Now Yemen.

This operation could turn ugly. He needed a strike leader who could make decisions on the spot. Somebody who could change the game plan if necessary.

Brick Maxwell.

Boyce could already hear the outraged bitching from the other strike leaders. It would be the same old stuff about seniority and that carpetbagging ex-astronaut and what the hell does he know about tactical air combat?

Too bad. They’d get over it.

Maxwell was the right guy. Every eye in the Pentagon would be on the Reagan and its air wing these next few days. Maxwell knew when to shoot and when to hold his fire. In the No-Fly-Zone over Iraq, he had passed up a sure MiG shot when it wasn’t necessary to kill him. Then he had not hesitated to kill an adversary when the bastard needed killing. Maxwell was a guy who didn’t agonize over decisions.

Boyce looked at his unlit cigar. The conference room, like almost every other space on the ship, was a no-smoking area. The goddamn tree-hugging pure air freaks had ruined it for everyone.

He pulled out his ancient Zippo and applied the flame to the cigar. He got a nice ember going, then wafted a cloud of gray smoke across the room. Yeah, he would take flak about his choice of strike leader. Sometimes you just had to break a few rules.