Alpha Kat

Ten

“We could always abort the mission,” Ted Simonson said.

Wilcox had to watch the eyes of the Deputy Director of Operations closely to be certain he was sincere.

“I… well, we have got three million invested,” Wilcox said. “Not to mention the favors we called in with other agencies in order to secure all the permits.”

He got up from the easy chair in Simonson’s office and crossed to stand at the window. It was a nice view, better than his own, which had part of a parking lot in it. The one o’clock sun was hot in a clear sky, bringing out a wide range of color. The green forest that encircled the CIA headquarters had a tinge of yellow to it. It would not hurt to have some rain.

“You really worried about the money, Ben? It’s cheap at ten times the price. We spent thirty mil trying to change leadership in Iraq.”

“No, the bucks don’t bother me. I’m worried about the consequences. If the timing is off by a day or two, Kimball’s shit outta luck.”

“Can we push him ahead?”

“I don’t think so. His schedule is locked in, Ted. Changing it means raising questions in too many governments.”

“They’re going to be suspicious anyway.”

“After it’s over, and if it goes as planned, they’re going to be suspicious,” Wilcox said. “With precision and a hell of a lot of luck, that’s all they’ll ever be, suspicious. There won’t be any evidence.”

Wilcox moved back to the desk and leaned over Simonson’s shoulder to study the map spread over the blotter. It was a coarse scale depiction of Southeast Asia, and it had come off the laser printer in color. The colors did not follow national boundaries. A yellow stain inundated the Shan State of Burma, but also slopped over into Kayah State and Kachin State, as well as into northern Laos and a piece of Thailand. There were a few dots of yellow beginning to bleed into the blue that was Kampuchea. On the northwestern coast of Burma, around the cities of Sittwe and Myebon, the yellow had also taken over.

The yellow represented local governments and influences that had moved to the Lon Pot camp.

“I knew Lon Pot could move fast,” Simonson said, “but I didn’t think it was going to be this easy for him.”

“Two reasons, I think. Those are the areas where he’s bought his loyalties. There was little resistance to change, according to the numbers we’ve gotten so far. Only sixteen dead.”

“And the second reason?”

“The Burmese military is tunnel-visioned right now. The government’s in disarray, and they’re mainly worried about the banditos in the hills who are yelling about human rights and democratic reform. They’re not paying attention to the Lon Pot faction because he’s spent twenty years being nonpolitical. His influence has been economic, and Rangoon thinks that’s all right.”

“I can buy that,” Simonson said. “Plus, Pot’s cadre of advisors and henchmen is multinational. From one point of view, that might seem less threatening. On the other hand, it gives him entree into at least four countries. I don’t think he’ll tackle China.”

“Pot is simply moving into a political vacuum. The same thing is going to happen in Laos and Kampuchea. Two bits Kampuchea goes next,” Wilcox offered.

“No bet.”

“There will be resistance from the dissidents and revolutionaries with other visions in their heads when Pot hits Sagaing State and maybe parts of Kachin, but Pot’s too well organized. He may just bypass them and starve them out. Arakan State, along the coast, is mostly his for the asking.”

“But the peninsula? Pegu?”

“I think, Ted, that he’s got a lot of the key bureaucrats in his wallet pocket. They’ll roll over, and they’ll bring the military and police with them. It won’t be as tough as we think it could, or should, be.”

“You’re going to have an intelligence estimate for the White House in the morning?”

“Yes.”

“Best guess?”

“Right now,” Wilcox said, “we’re going to project that Burma falls to Lon Pot in ten days. Call it July twenty-sixth, and give it a day or two tolerance. That date is fifteen days ahead of our last projection.”

“Damn.”

“On down the road, we think he’ll wrap up Kampuchea by the end of the year, and Laos shortly after that. Then he’s got Thailand encircled. Three years, maybe.”

“In three years, he controls… what?”

“Eighty-six million people. Six hundred thousand square miles, about half the size of India. In ten years, with either outright invasion, or by treaty, he could encompass Malaya and Vietnam.”

“Drug money,” Simonson said, “turned into a mini-superpower. One that will be just as ruthless and just as unpredictable as Saddam’s.”

“Money talks. Fear talks. Lon Pot has twenty billion personal dollars that we can track. With what we can’t trace, we can figure at least a fifty billion dollar total, and that much moola leverages maybe another two hundred billion. When he gets control of Burma, he’ll better than quadruple his fiscal control.

“For the people who disagree with him, he’s got a little squad of zombies, headed by Micah Chao, who specializes in erasing disagreement.”

“Plus his army,” Simonson added.

“It’s not large, but it doesn’t have to be. He’ll subvert existing military organizations. They tend to report to the people footing the payroll.”

Simonson went back to the timetable. “So, if Kimball doesn’t get there in time, rather than taking a poke at the big, bad druggie, he’s attacking a sovereign nation.”

Simonson’s comment was not a question.

“The U.N. probably wouldn’t take kindly to that. Unapproved aggression is frowned upon,” Wilcox said.

“Kimball’s not stupid,” the DDO said. “He’s going to read a paper, now and then. He’ll know if Burma falls to Lon Pot. Will he cancel on his own?”

Wilcox turned and sat on the edge of the desk.

Simonson pushed his castered chair away from the desk and put his feet up on the map, waiting.

“Maybe not.”

“Jesus, Ben, I hate all these ‘maybes.’”

“Kimball had a baby brother, ten years younger. Good kid, straight-As through high school, played football. Got to graduate school and got into heroin.”

“Deep into it?”

“Yeah. He was home for summer vacation, driving his parents somewhere, flying high, and took them into the back end of a semi-truck stalled on the highway.”

“Shit! No survivors?”

“None,” Wilcox said.

“That’s why you knew he’d go along with you, isn’t it? More than the precarious financial position of Kimball Aero?”

“I thought that might be the kicker, yes.” Simonson’s chin dropped to his chest as he pondered the alternatives.

“You want to try getting a shooter close to Pot?” Wilcox asked.

“It’s not going to happen, Ben. He’s too well insulated by either space or bodyguards. That’s why I went along with your massive firepower scenario.”

“How do you think the White House is going to react to the new timeline?”

“Not well, I assure you.”

“Any guesses?” Wilcox asked.

“If Kimball can make a move before Pot hits Rangoon, we’ll get a green light.”

“And if he can’t?”

“I’m not going to guess at that,” Simonson said.

“Even if we get a red light, 1 don’t know if I can stop Kimball. He bought into the drug concept, and he may not put the brakes on just because Pot owns a country.”

“The Agency’s at arm’s length?”

“Much farther than that,” Wilcox said.

“Then we probably don’t want to stop him, White House approval or not. He’s expendable.”

“He’s got thirty damned good people with him, Ted.”

“Thirty people versus eighty million? Thirty people versus what Lon Pot’s operation is doing to America? Do you know how far his tentacles reach, Ben?”

“We think he owns a shopping center in Atlanta. There’s probably others. He’s got that twenty billion doubling every three or four years.”

“Kimball’s expendable,” Simonson repeated.

Wilcox had known that from the beginning. It was part of the profession. Sometimes, though, it was difficult to admit it to himself.

Dao Van Luong had once told Lon Pot that his father was Vietnamese and that his mother had been Laotian. He had only known them for fourteen years, the age at which he had been conscripted into the North Vietnamese Army, (NVA). They had been killed in one of the American B-52 raids of the Linebacker operation.

It was not out of compassion for the fate of his parents that Dao had received an education. Rather, some officer had noted his penchant for arithmetic and made him a clerk in an NVA accounting office. He had moved successively to battalion, then regimental levels. After the war had been won, he had been encouraged to pursue an accounting degree while working for the national bank.

And several years after obtaining his degree, he had created some phantom accounts, transferred a large amount of the government’s dong to Shanghai, then converted it to American dollars and shipped it to New Delhi where he met up with it.

Vietnam was still trying to get it back, or to extract its equivalent in blood, and twice in earlier years had almost managed to do so. After the second attempt on his life, Dao had arranged a meeting with Lon Pot and offered his creative financial services in exchange for protection.

The arrangement had been beneficial for both of them, Lon Pot thought. The man had orchestrated the investment of Pot’s excess cash, which was considerable, and much of it was now considered legitimate by any government’s definition. The rate of return was immense, considering that little or no taxes were ever paid on the income.

He was certain that the small, dark-haired man sitting opposite him on the couch had made parallel investments of his own and had also benefited. He was also certain that Dao had never mismanaged one baht of Lon Pot’s money. Dao had already learned of the ferocious revenge sought by the Vietnamese government, and he knew that Lon Pot’s vengeance, unlike a mere government’s, could not be blocked.

They understood each other.

Dao had spent an hour reporting, as he did each month, on the current state of Lon Pot’s financial affairs. Lon Pot found the reports boring in the extreme, but he always listened in rapt attention and asked what he thought were pertinent questions. He did not understand much of what went on: shell companies, foreign exchange rates, blind corporations. But, he thought it important that he display some degree of knowledge.

“And the Pegasus Fund?” he asked.

Dao searched the papers littering his lap, found one, and said, “Twenty-two million dollars.”

“It is all in dollars?”

“Yes. The recipients prefer dollars.”

The fund was tapped for bribes and for greasing the wheels of various bureaucracies. Lon Pot thought he would eliminate a lot of bureaucratic functions in the future. If they could be bribed by him, they could be bribed by anyone.

“And the change?”

“It is down almost three million from last month,” Dao Van Luong said. “We have paid out much in the last week.”

And well worth the price, Pot thought. Most of the northern coastal villages had quietly reported their change in allegiance. Within a week, he told himself, the Rangoon government was going to wake up and have no government to manage.

“And speaking of the Pegasus Fund, Henry Loh wants me to give him a million dollars in cash tomorrow,” Dao said.

“Let him have it, then. He is going to the capital to meet with old friends. It will be used to our advantage, I am certain.”

“Of course, Prince.”

Lon Pot liked the sound of that. When he had passed out the “Chief” titles to his key advisors, he had told them that, from now on, he would assume his rightful position as a prince of the realm. The only prince of the realm.

He had liked it in Machiavelli, and he liked it in himself. There was a pure sense of tradition and custom and power in the title, unlike that of president or chancellor or prime minister, any of which could be transitory and fleeting.

“Henry Loh also wants to buy four more airplanes. Attack aircraft from the French.”

Pot pondered the request. In a week, Loh would have the entire Burmese air force at his disposal.

If the air force did not put up a strong resistance. Was Loh concerned about that?

“He had a rationale?” Pot asked.

Dao smiled his little grim smile. “It is to be a reserve unit for your personal air guard, or so I was told.”

“Nothing beyond that?”

“There may be a squadron or two of the national air force that might not capitulate readily. That is my own interpretation of possibilities, Prince.”

“We should have prepared long before this.”

“Perhaps the information was not known to Loh until recently?”

Lon Pot pursed his lips. “Perhaps. Very well, let him obtain bids from his sources, then we will discuss it.”

Dao Van Luong nodded.

He waited.

Dao waited also.

“Is there anything more?” Pot asked.

“There is your wife.”

Lon Pot had many wives, some as transitory as the titles of leaders, but this one was legal.

“She has a complaint?”

“She would like to have larger living quarters. And she insists upon an increase in her allowance.”

He could tell that Dao did not relish bringing up these matters any more than Lon Pot relished hashing over her insistent and unreasonable demands. In the infrequent times when he met with her, she was as complaisant as ever. When she found pen and paper, she created elaborate and expensive plans for herself. She felt as if she must present to the world the facade of a queen, simply because Lon Pot had some resources.

“No to both demands,” he said.

Dao Van Luong nodded.

Derek Crider drove the rented Renault. It was fifteen years old, and the wind whistled past holes rusted through the floorboard.

He bitched at the inane traffic from time to time, but they had left the hotel early enough to find their spot. The sun would not go down for another hour. They passed one policeman on their way to the airport.

“No security to speak of,” Alan Adage said.

“I didn’t think there would be. Kimball’s not a visiting dignitary.”

He glanced over at Adage, who opened the attaché case. Nestled in foam was a broken down Husqvarna Monte Carlo de Luxe. There was a Weaver scope, a hand-machined silencer, and five hand-loaded 7.62 millimeter rounds in the case also. There had been eight cartridges, but Adage had used three to fire in the weapon earlier, out in the desert.

The attaché case had been waiting for them when they arrived at the hotel. All it had cost Crider was a phone call from the Azores and five thousand American dollars. He had lots of friends and acquaintances, and friends of friends, all over the world who liked money.

Adage lifted the receiver from the case and began fitting the stock. His fingers moved over the blued metal surfaces with a loving touch. Adage’s old man had taught him the finer points of hunting in the Kentucky hills, and the Marine Corps had refined his trade for him. The man loved a well-designed weapon more than he would any woman.

He had a blue stocking cap pulled down over his telltale bushy red hair, but not much was going to disguise his flaming red beard. They both wore dark blue windbreakers and black denim jeans.

Crider bypassed the entrance to the passenger terminal, jamming the gear shift into third, and lurching onto a service road headed north. The transmission required jamming, and the clutch was on the ragged end of its useful life.

The engine screamed through a ventilated muffler until he could get enough speed to shift to fourth.

“Didn’t have a better car, did they?” Adage asked.

“Nothing that didn’t stand out like a sore thumb.”

Crider had scouted the area earlier. He passed several freight and industrial transfer companies housed in small buildings. They were already darkened, their inhabitants gone for the day.

Adage screwed the silencer into place.

Crider turned into a small gravelled lot, keeping an eye on the rearview mirror. There was no traffic behind him.

He downshifted twice, bouncing through the lot.

Adage fitted the Weaver scope to its mountings and tightened the thumb screws.

At the edge of the lot, Crider whipped a hard left, slammed on the brakes, and ground the gearshift into reverse. He backed over a set of dried-mud ruts and into the narrow space between two buildings. They were both constructed of corrugated steel that shimmered with rust.

With his arm over the back of the seat, peering through the dirty rear window into the shadowed alley, he gripped the wheel with his left hand and raced in reverse toward the chainlink fence that guarded the airport proper.

Easing on the brakes, he slid to a stop a few feet before hitting the fence. He left the engine idling and they both got out.

Adage glanced up to check his sunlight, then looked across the runways to where Kimball’s aircraft were parked.

“That’s them?” Adage asked.

“That’s them.”

“No sweat. About six hundred yards. Where do you want it?”

Crider squinted to clarify his image of the six Alpha Kats lined up with their noses toward the runway. Behind them were the two giant transports and the Kappa Kat.

He had been thinking about it.

“They’re due to take off just before dusk. Before that, the ground crews have got to pull off the protective covers on the intakes. As soon as they do, you put a slug right up the intake.”

“Why wait for the covers? We do it now, and take off.”

Crider tried to be patient. “Because a bullet hole in an intake cover gives us away. We want it to look like engine failure.”

“They’re center-line mounted, Crider? The engines?”

“Right.”

Adage moved toward the building on the right, got right next to it, back by the fence, and squatted down.

“Yeah, maybe,” he said. “I might just have enough angle, if I put the round to the right side of the left intake. Can’t guarantee much, though, since I don’t know what kind of interior curve the intake has.”

“Do what you can, Adage.”

“Oh, I will.”

The sniper stood up and went back to the car to get his rifle.

Crider turned the engine off, crossing his fingers in the hope that it would start again.

The shadows were long, and between the buildings, they were in semidarkness.

Adage went back to the fence and stretched out on the ground, lifted the Husqvarna to his shoulder, and peered through the scope. He wet his finger with his tongue and tested the wind. There was none that Crider could feel.

Adage adjusted his windage and elevation knobs and then lowered the rifle gently to the ground.

Crider sat down on the driver’s seat with the door open, his feet planted in the dusty earth.

They waited.

The shadows got longer. The sky dimmed toward gray. It did not get cooler. The sweat beads formed on his forehead and slithered down his cheeks.

Adage retrieved an already sodden handkerchief and used it frequently.

Twenty minutes went by before Crider saw mechanics begin to move around the airplanes with some purpose.

“I could take out five of them,” Adage said.

“Just one. We don’t want questions about unexplained coincidences.”

The intake covers started coming off.

“Any one in particular you’d like?” Adage asked.

“Take the fourth in line.”

“Good. The angle should be right.”

The ex-Marine pulled the Monte Carlo sporting rifle tight against his shoulder, aimed more quickly than Crider expected, and squeezed the trigger.

Phut!

Adage stood up, already disassembling the weapon.

“You got it?”

“Of course. Let’s go get something to eat.”

The Aerospatiale Super Frelon, capable of handling thirty combat-loaded troops, but equipped as a military VIP transport, lifted off shortly after dark. Its massive rotors kicked up a dust storm that should have obliterated N’Djamena.

Kimball sat in one of the over-cushioned flight seats next to Sam Eddy. Soames had gone back to manage the flight operations, and Kimball felt like he was sidelined. He should be flying, or at least directing the mission, but here he was playing salesman.

One look at McEntire in the dim reddish cabin lighting told him that Sam Eddy had the same thing on his mind.

The Chad air force and defense ministry people were in good humor after a heavy dinner that Kimball had picked his way through. They lounged in their seats and tried to chat above the roar of the engines. It was a lark for them, and Kimball couldn’t help thinking about the lack of thought that had gone into putting all of the heavy brass and high defense people into the same vulnerable transport helicopter.

One missile.

Exit the command structure.

No problem at all for the Alpha Kat.

He flipped open his notepad and looked at the roster he had set up for the demonstration:

He studied the list, fingering the walkie-talkie resting in his lap. His codename was Lion, but he would only be able to talk to Soames since the portable radio couldn’t manage the scrambled channels. If something drastic…

McEntire slapped him on the shoulder and leaned over to practically shout in his ear, “Quit fretting about it, Kim. The right decisions have already been made.”

He shook his head, unable to stop worrying.

There was a lot riding on this program.

McEntire grinned at him. “Dumb shit. If I’d known you were going to turn all sour on me, I’d never have married you.”

Sixty miles later, according to the map they had been given, the helicopter set down, deplaned its passengers, then raced away into the night.

Despite a couple of generators chugging away to provide electricity and a couple of trucks that were idling a hundred yards to the east, it seemed magnificently quiet in the middle of the desert.

The night would have been utterly black but for the thousands of stars that ranged over and around them like a bowl. They stretched from one horizon to the other. The whisper of a mild wind touched his cheeks, cooling them. What he could see of the landscape was rugged and barren. There wasn’t all that much sand, and the ground was hard, cracked and creviced from intense heat.

Two large canopies had been erected, lit on the inside with red bulbs, and straight-backed chairs were arranged in rows facing north. Several folding tables had been set up, and radios rested on them. The radio operators spoke in clipped, guttural Arabic and passed hand-written messages to several junior officers.

General Haraz, the air force chief of staff, waved toward several chairs, and Kimball and McEntire sat down with him near one of his radios.

Kimball raised his portable unit to check the operation. “Zookeeper, Lion.”

“Five by five, Lion,” Soames came back.

“Status?”

“Ah… we’re ready to pounce.”

Kimball looked to the general, and he nodded.

“Launch them, Zookeeper. Let me know if you have a problem.”

“Roger that, Lion. Launching in ten.”

Haraz spoke quickly to a colonel in Arabic, who passed the word to his radio operator. Kimball figured that the ten Mirage defenders had been ordered into the air.

In his cultured and stiff English, the general said, “Let me orient you, Mr. Kimball and Mr. McEntire. The map is never quite the same as the reality, is it? Out there,” he pointed with a stiff right forefinger, “directly ahead of us by two thousand meters is the target, the old truck. It is radiating a signal on UHF radio.”

The finger moved in a large circle. “We have emplaced four mobile surface-to-air missile units around the target. Their crews are very reliable.”

“I’m sure they are, General. As are your pilots, but I’m afraid they won’t see anything to shoot at.”

The general smiled. “We shall see.”

Sam Eddy got up and went to look at a repeater monitor that was relaying the radar picture from one of the SAM sites. When he came back he said, “The Bengals are moving north at about Mach One, Kim. Give ’em another five minutes.”

He went back to the radar screen.

Kimball checked his watch, and when the time elapsed, called Soames on the portable.

“Zookeeper, kill the IFF.”

Twenty seconds later, from next to the radar repeater, McEntire said, “We just went incognito.”

A large group of field grade officers had begun to gather around the radar screen. Kimball couldn’t interpret the rapid chatter, but the various tones ranged from skeptical to incredulous.

The colonel supervising the radio operators reported to General Haraz, again in Arabic.

“Our fighters are closing in,” he said to Kimball. “They have targeted your command plane.”

Kimball heard the moan of one flight of Mirages passing high overhead.

The dialogue on the radios started to get excited. Messages flew back and forth.

Kimball was getting anxious.

“You mind if we take a look at the radar, General?”

“Not at all.”

Haraz came out of his chair as if he’d been waiting for the excuse, determined to have Kimball make the request.

The crowd made way for them and they stood near the set and watched.

The sweep left eleven blips behind as it rotated. Ten blips in two flights were closing on a single target, some thirty miles to the northeast.

“General Haraz,” McEntire said, “your defenders are concentrating on the AWACS. You don’t want them to forget there are six more aggressors out there.”

“Whose side are you on?” Kimball asked him.

The general smiled, spoke to the colonel, and some message went out to the fighter pilots.

Almost immediately, the blips on the screen began to separate.

“They’re setting up a search pattern,” McEntire observed.

Then the target blip disappeared as Connie Billingsly stopped radiating emissions.

The Mirages circled, climbed, dove. The screen looked like a random kaleidoscope.

It remained empty of all but scrambling Mirages for nearly four minutes.

Abruptly, without warning, a heavy thump sounded out in the desert ahead of them.

Everyone whirled toward it.

Another thump.

“Bet that truck’s got a dented hood,” McEntire said. “Those five hundred pound dummies don’t make a lot of noise, but they make a big dent.”

Thump.

Thump, thump.

And then, like bats from a darkened cave, the Alpha Kats shot overhead in trail, one after the other, at less than three hundred feet. They were throttled back, almost silent, and they were just shadows against the stars as they went by.

Almost everyone under the canopy scrambled outside to get a better look, Haraz included.

But they were gone.

All five of them.

Five thumps, five shadows.

Kimball swore under his breath and raised the portable radio to call Soames, but McEntire grabbed his arm.

“Let it be for now, Kim.”

Eleven

Hanging around at the demonstration site rasped heavily on Kimball’s nerves, even after Soames radioed the message that the aircraft had been recovered and that the Alpha Kat pilots were claiming four Mirage kills. Out of earshot of their hosts, Sam Eddy kept telling him that, if some tragedy had occurred, Soames would have called it in.

Kimball wasn’t so sure. The frequency used by the portable radio wasn’t secure, and A.J. might not have wanted to broadcast an accident to the world.

His mind kept replaying five shadows when there should have been six.

Kimball’s fingers worried at the transmit stud on the radio, but he managed to restrain himself as they loaded aboard the trucks and drove out to the target.

Two of the dummy bombs had missed the target by fifteen or twenty yards, but three of the five-hundred-pounders had nearly obliterated the sheet metal of the junked bus.

The two Americans followed General Haraz around to the SAM units and listened to the interrogations of the crews without understanding a word. It was clear to Kimball, however, that none of the SAM radars had ever detected an intruder.

The Mirage pilots reporting in by radio insisted that none of them had been shot down, but none of them would claim a kill of an Alpha Kat. For any one of them to do so, they would have had to identify the symbol emplaced on each of the Alpha Kats with white tape: cross, diamond, circle, square, rectangle, or octagon.

After an hour of collecting information, General Haraz said, “I think we have most of what we need, Mr. Kimball. We shall go back now, and then debrief in the morning.”

“That’ll be fine with us, General. We’re looking forward to it.”

The helicopter ride back to N’Djamena took forever, and the Aerospatiale landed next to the headquarters building at eleven o’clock.

As soon as they deplaned and performed their glad-handing with the dignitaries, Kimball and McEntire began the long walk back to their ramp. Except for a few floodlights near the hangars, it was dark, and neither of them had anything to say to the other. Kimball figured Sam Eddy was just as worried as he was.

Closing on the aircraft park, Kimball counted the silhouettes in the front row. There were only five.

The Kappa Kat was lined up next to the Starlifters, and there seemed to be a lot of light emitting from the space between the C-141s, but his view was blocked.

McEntire stopped to squat down.

“We’ve got six,” he said. The relief in his voice was evident.

Kimball bent over and looked. Sighting beneath the Kappa Kat and the first Starlifter, he saw the tires and oleo struts of the sixth fighter.

They both stood up and started to trot.

Light spilled from the cargo bays of both transports, illuminating the lowered ramps. Quite a few men seemed to be moving around the planes.

As he rounded the Kappa Kat, Kimball saw that the sixth Alpha Kat was parked between the two C-141s, enclosed by canvas windscreens stretched on ten-foot-tall aluminum frames. Seven floodlights were mounted on top of the frames, lighting the enclosed space.

He slowed to a walk and slipped through a gap into the makeshift work area.

The entire aft fuselage skin had been removed from the Alpha Kat, and at the moment he entered, the massive turbofan engine was being lifted from its mounts by the portable crane. The crane’s engine groaned with the load; it hadn’t been designed for lifting that amount of weight. Four men stood on the back end of the crane’s squat body, attempting to keep it from tipping over. It had four small tires, and the two front tires appeared to be almost squashed flat.

Everyone had turned out to help. Technicians and pilots both were manning tools and diagnostic equipment. Three men stood on top of the wing, guiding the engine as it rose from its bed.

Tex Brabham was standing next to the crane, helping the operator, Elliot Stott, with a long series of colorful and innovative invectives.

A.J. Soames spotted him, slapped Tom Keeper on the arm, and led him over to Kimball and McEntire. Keeper was limping a little. He had an arthritic knee, which was why the Navy medicos had suggested another line of work for him.

“What the hell, A.J.?”

Keeper responded. “She cranked up just fine, Kim. But when I ran it up to full power, I got a hell of a vibration, so I shut it down right away.”

The ex-Navy aviator was also an aeronautics engineer, and he had completed a duty tour at the Patuxent Naval Air Test Center. His “hell of a vibration” was magnified by his sensitivity to potential design or operational problems.

“I only sent five on the mission,” Soames said. “And I didn’t want to broadcast the fact that we had a malfunction.”

“I think it’s okay,” Sam Eddy said. “We never told them how many we were sending. If they couldn’t see them, they couldn’t count them.”

Kimball was both relieved and concerned. He didn’t want to hide problems if it meant the safety of a pilot. If a fighter had gone down on the mission, he wanted rescue units dispatched as soon as possible.

Soames read his mind. “If somebody’d plowed ground, Kim, you’d have heard my yell without the radio.”

“All right, good. I should know that. What’s with the engine?”

“The end of one turbine blade snapped off,” Soames said. “There wasn’t a hell of a lot of vibration, but I’m damned glad Tom caught it. In the air, at Mach One, the whole unit might have started coming apart.”

“Shit!” McEntire said. “It can’t happen.”

He headed for Tex Brabham.

The turbine fan assembly was McEntire’s design. Kimball knew how he felt.

“What do you think, A.J.?” he asked.

“I’ve been hassling with the alternatives, Kim. If it’s a design flaw, we don’t have a choice but to ground the airplanes. Right in the middle of the demo tour, that’ll kill us.”

“It won’t be a design problem,” Kimball said with conviction. “How about a casting flaw?”

“Yeah, that’s my best scenario. We’ve got nine engines with us, counting the spare. There’s always that slim chance that one of the nine got a bad set of blades.”

“Jesus! We checked and double-checked everything,” Kimball said.

One of the canvas panels was lifted and shunted aside, and eight men shoved the dolly with the spare engine inside the enclosure.

“We put the windscreens up to protect us from prying eyes more than anything,” Soames said. “As far as anyone out in that desert knows, we’re running routine maintenance.”

The engine at the end of the crane’s cables came free of the airframe mounts, the airplane rose on its oleo struts, and the crane backed the turbofan away from between the rudders. Brabham barked orders. Mechanics scrambled to place four-by-fours on the ground to receive the engine as the crane’s boom swung to the side.

“Tex is going to disassemble it as soon as we can get it aboard the Starlifter,” Keeper said. “Warren’s in there now, setting up the portable X-ray unit.”

“Do we even want to install the new engine?” Kimball asked. “At least, until we know?”

“Tex thinks so,” Soames said, “for two reasons. He needs the dolly for the bad engine, and he’s like you. He doesn’t think it’s a design flaw.”

It took nearly an hour to get the new engine settled correctly into the mounts and bolted in place. While a dozen men swarmed over the plane, connecting wire bundles, fuel lines, and control systems, Kimball and McEntire helped Brabham raise the damaged engine from the timbers with the crane and get it on the dolly. It took sixteen of them to shove it far enough onto the ramp of the transport so that the ramp could be raised and the engine slid into the cargo bay.

It was nearly four in the morning before Brabham had the turbine wheel out of the engine casing and X-ray photos of the offending blade printed.

Kimball, McEntire and two mechanics stood around a worktable while Brabham went over the photo with a magnifying glass. All of them knew better than to interfere with the expert when he was at work.

He finally stood up straight and stretched his back. He shoved his cowboy hat back on his head.

“Not our fault,” he said.

McEntire grabbed the magnifying glass and bent over the photograph.

“No flaw marks at all in the casting,” Brabham went on. “Take a close look at the break, Sam Eddy, near the right-side outer edge of the blade. There’s a chip there, kind of rounded. Then, too, the break is too jagged. A flaw would likely have broken along cleaner lines.”

McEntire handed the magnifying glass to Kimball, and he took his own look.

“Couldn’t have picked up a rock,” McEntire said.

“A rock wouldn’t have had the velocity,” Kimball agreed. “The fragment wasn’t in the engine?”

“Naw, it’d have gone right out the back, the minute the turbine started to turn. The magnets — which attracted metal shavings and dust to provide evidence of bearing wear — didn’t have much on them, and certainly wouldn’t have caught a rock. We’re not going to find it in the dark.”

“When it started to turn… you’re right, Tex!” Kimball said.

McEntire whipped the magnifying glass out of Kimball’s hand and bent over the photo again.

“Son of a bitch!” he said.

“If that engine had been turning,” Brabham said, “three or four blades would show some damage. That blade there got hit when it was stationary.”

No one wanted to say anything for a while. Kimball crossed to a canvas seat and sat down. One of the mechanics, Mark Westergood, turned the tap on an iced water vat and filled a paper cup.

“Bullet?” McEntire finally asked.

“Heavy slug, I’d say,” Brabham said.

“That’s sabotage,” Kimball told them. “That’s damned scary.”

The cargo bay lights suddenly seemed too bright. Kimball looked out the back of the plane, but saw only the line of Alpha Kats and the lights of the passenger terminal on the far side of the lighted runways.

McEntire turned around and leaned against the worktable.

“Okay, boss man, where do we go from here?”

“Tex?” Kimball asked.

“We’ve got a couple spare turbine wheels with us. Mark and Darrell, here, are going to get one of them and rebuild this engine so we’ve got a spare. They’re also going to make damned sure that slug didn’t cause any damage to the casing. Me, I’m going outside and keep a close watch on the heavy-handed people out there while they put two-seven back together right. I want the fuselage back in place before daylight so the Chadians don’t know we’ve done a full engine swap. Then, we’ll need a couple, three hours to run it in. I don’t know what you guys are going to do.”

Kimball rubbed his fingers over the whiskers on his jaw. “Sam Eddy and I have a debriefing at nine. We’ll go back to the hotel and get cleaned up.”

“And get a couple hours sleep,” McEntire said. “Our audience will expect cheery.”

“And ship about thirty breakfasts out to us,” Brabham said. “I’m not eating MREs.”

“And call Mr. Washington,” Sam Eddy said. “Right?”

“Right,” Kimball told him.

Jimmy Gander kept thinking of the word, “broast.”

He didn’t know what it meant, though he thought he recalled seeing “broasted chicken” on a menu once.

He thought he was being broasted.

Slowly, to retain the flavor.

The heat rose off the tarmac in waves that made him think his vision had gone bad. Carl Dent had measured the temperature in the Kappa Kat’s cockpit at noon and had reported a dysfunctional thermometer or an actual reading of 145 degrees Fahrenheit.

A passenger airliner had taken off forty minutes before, but that was the only activity he had seen. No one was moving around on the ramp or in the planes.

Gander was sprawled on top of a couple of parachutes, leaning back against a missile crate. Tex Brabham was next to him, his hat tilted over his eyes, sound asleep. He snored like an underpowered McCullough chain saw attacking a giant redwood. Gander and Brabham stuck together since they were the only two who wore, and respected, Stetson hats.

The temperature inside the cargo bay of the transport was well over 110, and movement from one point to another was akin to heavy exercise. About half of the crew were curled into one corner or another, trying to sleep, but only Brabham seemed to be having any success. Added to the aromas of Cosmoline and lubricants was the body odor of the great unwashed.

Jay Halek was on his fourth unlit cigar of the day, rolling it back and forth in his teeth. Mel Vrdlicka had a water-soaked rag draped over his eyes. Conrad Billingsly had suggested a game of bridge and had been speared with pears and Mandarin oranges left over from breakfast.

Outside, the Alpha Kats were ready to go. They were “clean,” the dummy missiles not used the night before removed and repacked. Chunks of white canvas were draped from the opened canopies in the attempt to keep the cockpits cool. Or at least cooler. Two-seven had been ground-tested for several hours in the early morning, and Brabham had declared it one hundred percent operational.

Gander heard a car pull up next to the plane, but he didn’t have the ambition to get up and go see who it was. No one else did, either. If it was a terrorist, they were all going to be blown to hell.

A car door slammed, the engine revved up, and then died away as it drove off. A minute later, Soames climbed the ramp into the bay.

“I want to know,” Soames said soberly, “who it was that forgot to bring the fans.”

“Who needs fans?” Speedy Contrarez asked. “I was dreaming of this very tall bottle of Carta Blanca. It’s so cold that the beads of moisture on the outside have turned to ice. You pick it up and —”

“Jesus Christ! Shut him up, Papa,” Alex Hamilton said.

“You’re dreaming of donuts, right, Alex?”

“No, but it’s a good thought.”

“Kim and Sam Eddy aren’t back yet?” Soames asked.

“Not yet,” Gander said, trying to sit up without disturbing Brabham.

He got off the parachutes and went to get himself a cup of iced tea, When Soames raised a finger, he filled two from the vat and carried one over to where Soames had collapsed on a canvas seat.

“You get us checked out of the hotel, A.J.?”

“Yeah. Probably maxed out the company Visa card. I didn’t check the rooms, so if anyone left anything behind, he can come back and get it on his own.”

Gander took a small sip of his tea and held the cool liquid in his mouth for a minute. He felt like he was dehydrating rapidly.

“How come this seems so much like the USAF?” Hamilton asked.

“Hurry up and wait. Get in line. Wait.”

“We wanted you to feel at home, compadre,” Contrarez told him.

Gander was about to sit down next to Soames when he heard more car doors slamming. Kimball and McEntire walked up the ramp, and Sam Eddy headed straight for the water can.

Soames asked, “Well, Kim?”

“Seemed to go all right, A.J. They kept us for about three more hours than we’d figured on. Lots of questions, and lots of them were good ones. I think we handled it.”

“They’re interested?”

“Interested!” McEntire said. “They were drooling. Or maybe it was just the heat.”

“We ran our tapes, and we listened to a few of the audio tapes from the Mirages,” Kimball said. “Not that we understood the language, mind you. But I think we reached consensus on the fact that no Alpha Kat was spotted. We agreed that at least two Mirages would have been our trophies.”

“They had some gun camera video,” McEntire said. “But there was never a target on the film.”

“They ever get close to the Kappa Kat?” Soames asked.

“They swear they did, but they don’t have video, audio, or a visual sighting of the taped double cross symbol to prove it.”

“So they’re going to buy five squadrons?” Gander asked.

“Who knows?” Kimball said. “They’ve all got our brochures and two sets of specifications. They’ve got the demonstration data, and they’ve set up an analysis committee. The committee will study the options for a couple of months, then make a recommendation to some bureau in the ministry.”

“Yeah, but did you get any personal feedback?” Gander said.

Sam Eddy responded to the question. “General Haraz, who I think swings a lot of weight, tried to appear neutral. On one side of it, he’s being loyal to his pilots, and maybe to the two French guys who sat through the whole show. On the other side of it, I got the feeling he was impressed. He mashed my hand when we finally said goodbye.”

“Can we go now?” Soames asked.

“It’s not going to be any cooler in Riyadh, A.J.,” Kimball said.

“Not for you, maybe. I’m thinking about my hotel and my bed. Us old guys get wrinkled pretty bad if we don’t get our sleep.”

“Well, hell,” McEntire said, “if you’re going to get cranky, we might as well saddle up.”

“I’ll take two-seven,” Gander said, “and shake her out.”

“She’s mine,” Sam Eddy claimed.

“Flip you for it.”

“Not before I flip you.”

Kimball reached in his pocket, found a quarter and tossed it. “Call it, Jimmy.”

“Heads.”

The coin landed on the deck heads up.

Gander tapped his boot toe against Walt Hammond’s left foot.

“Come on, Walt. Find me a start cart, so I can get the air conditioner going.”

Hammond grunted an obscene suggestion about the start cart, but rolled over and got to his feet. The other mechanics, also complaining, began to stir.

Everybody, including himself, Gander thought, would bitch and moan about the routine duties, but when it came to staying up all night to change an engine, they all got their hands dirty and the complaints were left outside.

He walked forward to the crew compartment, found his duffle bag, and changed out of his boots. Stripping to his shorts, he donned his Nomex flight suit and then pulled on the pressure suit.

When he emerged into the sun wearing his Stetson and carrying his helmet, the men from the other transport were also slithering down the ramp, headed for their airplanes.

He clambered up the ladder of two-seven, pulled the canvas from the canopy, and slid inside. He found a place behind the seat for his hat, and Hammond helped him buckle into the chute and seat harness.

It was sweltering in the cockpit. The perspiration from Hammond’s forehead dripped on him.

“Go easy with her, Jimmy, until you’re sure she checks out a hundred percent on all systems.”

“Got it, Walt.”

They took longer than usual with the checklist, making absolutely sure all of the switches were in the right position and all of the readouts were in the green.

They had to wait for a start cart, and when they finally turned the engine, it came to life immediately.

Gander gave Hammond a thumb’s up, and the ex-master sergeant pulled the chocks.

McEntire was in zero-eight and signalled with his hand for Gander to pull up alongside him.

He released the brakes and the Alpha Kat rolled ahead. McEntire pulled out of line, turned onto the taxiway, and Gander fell in off his right wing.

Ten minutes later, they were climbing through eight thousand feet, and cool air was blasting from the vents of the air conditioning system.

Things were looking up again.

Brock Dixon took the next call at a public phone in an Arlington Heights shopping center. Crider had a whole list of telephone numbers and calling times, and none of them were repeated.

“Negative,” Crider said.

“What do you mean, negative.”

“We tried to decommission a jet engine, but they caught it and changed it out. They took off for Riyadh about an hour ago.”

“Shit.”

“Couldn’t be helped. Not if you want us to be subtle.”

“I want you to be subtle.”

“Soon as we get our flight plan filed, we’re taking off.”

“Good. Make sure something embarrassing happens, and damned soon.”

“Subtle, huh?”

Dixon thought about it. “Maybe less subtle, as long as it appears to be a KAT problem.”

“That makes it a little easier,” Crider said and hung up.

It was cooler in Saudi Arabia, but that was because the sun had gone down.

It also helped to be inside the Hilton, sitting in an easy chair, sucking on a Coke. Soames thought longingly about Chivas Regal poured over four ice cubes.

His roommate Conrad Billingsly said, “I’m going down the hall and get another Coke. How about you?” Susan and Andrea had doubled everyone up to save on expenses.

“You suppose the bellboy could find us something more suited to our taste, Connie?”

“I doubt it, unless you’re talking females.”

“I’ll have another Coke.”

Billingsly walked out, leaving the door open a crack, and the phone rang.

Soames got up and crossed the room to pick it up.

“Soames.”

“A.J., it’s Susan.”

“Hi, Susie.”

“I tried Kim’s room, but no one answered.”

“They’re still downstairs, working on dinner. They’ve got a couple Saudi air force officers with them, one of whom is a prince, I think.”

“Tell me about Chad.”

Soames related the details of the demonstration, and being naturally circumspect, neglected to mention the sabotage of two-seven.

“Sam Eddy felt good about it? About the reaction to the demo?”

“Said he did.”

“And Kim?”

“You know Kim. He’s not very speculative.”

She took too much time framing her next question, he thought, and made it too general. “How are they doing?”

“About the same as the rest of us,” he said.

“You know what I mean, A.J. They’re both under a lot of pressure.”

“About the same as the rest of us,” he repeated.

“A.J.”

“Look, Susie, ask your question.”

“Sam Eddy didn’t look at all well when he left. I thought he might be coming down with something.”

Soames thought about it. McEntire never seemed to change, at least in any way that Soames had noticed.

“He’s lost a couple pounds, maybe. Hell, I’ve lost five pounds in this heat, but I needed to lose it. What are you worried about, Susie?”

“I’m as involved in the company as anyone,” she said. “Can’t I worry?”

“Feel free,” he told her, and then they spent ten minutes on the details of what was going on in Phoenix. She had upped the working hours of several people. Some avionics systems had been back ordered on them. DJ Alloys wanted more money on account before they would ship the next order.

“Send them a check,” Soames said. “I’ll clear it with Kim.”

Billingsly had returned with their Cokes by the time he hung up.

“All’s well along the Salt River?” he asked in his deep voice.

“The normal logistics screw-ups, Connie. Abnormal concerns from Susie.”

Billingsly kicked his shoes off and stretched out on his bed. “In what way?”

“We both know she’s a bit of a mother to all of us —”

“Some of us would prefer a slightly different relationship, I think.”

“My wife has mentioned that possibility and nixed it in my case,” Soames said. “However, she seems particularly worried about Sam Eddy and Kim.”

“You think she knows something important the rest of us don’t know?”

“I don’t know what to think. She and Sam Eddy were divorced-almost two years ago. Lately though, she’s been watching him like a hawk.”

“Maybe she wasn’t in favor of their divorce?” Billingsly said.

“What? I thought it was amicable.”

“Sam Eddy initiated it.”

“The hell he did. I didn’t know that. With Sam Eddy, it’s usually the other way around.”

“Yeah. He’s an unreformed womanizer, and he always gets caught. This time, though, he dumped her.”

“Shit,” Soames said. “Tells you what kind of observer of human nature I am. I thought she’d been making eyes at Kim for the last few months.”

“Well, that’s true, too,” Billingsly said.

“Damn it, don’t confuse me, Connie. I thought Susan was the confused one.”

Billingsly sipped from his can and said, “Nothing confusing about it, A.J. She’s in love with both of them. At least, that’s the way I see it from my limited perspective.”

Soames tried to recall various interactions in the last year. “Yeah, I could maybe buy that. And Kim hasn’t figured it out.”

“I don’t think so. Or maybe he missed seeing Paint Your Wagon.”

“You think Sam Eddy knows?” Soames asked.

“He knows.”

“And that’s why he divorced her?”

“I don’t think so,” Billingsly said, but he wouldn’t elaborate.

Henry Loh and Jean Franc landed their Cessna A-37 Dragonfly in Rangoon in mid-afternoon.

The Dragonfly was a two-seater fitted out as an unarmed jet trainer, and Loh liked to fly it when he was going into populated airports. Rangoon Air Control might have rebelled if he had requested permission to land a Mirage 2000 that did not belong to an established air force.

That would soon change.

He did not know whether the change would be for the better or for the worse, nor did he care. Henry Loh simply looked forward to the change, to some kind of action.

After parking the Cessna in the commercial section, he and Franc shut down the systems and opened the canopy. The air was humid and fetid with the aroma of the Irrawaddy River. Standing on the wings outside the canopy, the two of them quickly changed clothes, swapping flight coveralls for short-sleeved khaki shirts and shorts. The garb was almost, but not quite, military uniforms.

Loh had never been enamored of uniforms, but he suspected that Lon Pot would soon expect his army and air force personnel to become more ceremonial.

Franc disappeared to pursue one delight or another, and after closing out the flight plan, Loh found a taxi and ordered the driver to take him to the Americanized bar called the Wild West.

The journey was more death-defying than combat flight. Drivers in Rangoon, as in most of Southeast Asia’s large cities, observed traffic laws as misguided suggestions. Pedestrians and bicyclists were less fellow travellers than targets of opportunity.

While the streets were crowded and the storekeepers stood on the sidewalks hawking the sapphires, Sony stereos, eyeglasses, and tailored suits of their inventories, Loh thought that there were probably few buyers. The worldwide recession had cut heavily into tourism, and very few of the potential customers were Westerners. When they were, they appeared more likely to have pockets lined with hashish than with American Express cards. Then, too, the civil war had deterred many from visiting the sights of Burma.

Loh knew that the proportion of poverty-stricken peasants was on the rise, along with inflation. The time was ripe for change, and he felt he had chosen the side that would emerge in control.

The Wild West Saloon was set back from the sidewalk, its entranceway festooned with an unlikely mix of pepper trees, imported yucca plants, and a papier-mâché Saguaro cactus that had large holes punched in it.

He paid off the driver with a few more kyat than necessary, walked up the flagstone path to the door, and pushed open both swinging doors.

The interior was fogged with cigarette smoke, making the full-width bar at the back vaguely more distant. A high-wattage amplifier boomed American country music through ceiling speakers. Some male singer he had never heard before sang about lost love, a typical theme.

The bar was crowded to overflow with Burmese cowboys, Thai and Burmese whores, ex-patriot Americans and Brits. The mob at the bar was three-deep, and the thirty-five or forty tables were all taken. More people stood around or sidled through the throng on seemingly important errands. He saw at least a dozen blond and blue-eyed giants dressed in the ancient fatigues of Vietnam veterans or deserters. Having made their decisions twenty years before, they had no other place to go now.

There was sawdust on the floor and the smell of tobacco and marijuana and spilled beer hung in the air. Wagon wheels with lantern globes over forty-watt bulbs were suspended from the ceiling. The bar was twenty meters long, and the back wall was liberally decorated with oil paintings, prints, and photographs of nude women, all Westerners, and all large-breasted.

Loh stood just inside the entrance for several minutes, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dim interior. When he could see clearly, he scanned the tables and found his quarry.

There were four of them. They were dressed in slacks and white shirts, but their normal attire would be that of the Burmese Air Force. They were sipping cautiously from bottles of Budweiser beer and surreptitiously watching the entrance.

He forced his way through the milling crowd, declining three less than suggestive offers from girls who were probably less than fifteen years old.

Colonel Kun Mauk nodded at the chair they had saved for him, and Henry Loh sat down in it. He waved off the girl serving the table.

No one offered a greeting. They had known each other for many years, and they knew why he was here.

Mauk said, “Well?”

“You will be promoted one grade immediately, and your salaries will advance by half-again what they are now.”

They all looked at each other, then back to Loh.

“And there is a bonus.”

He reached inside his shirt and withdrew four envelopes, somewhat dampened by contact with his skin.

He glanced around the room, then divided the envelopes and slid them across the table to each man.

Each slit his envelope and peered within. Loh watched them closely.

At the sight of the American dollars, no one smiled, but the lines around their eyes eased considerably.

Mauk asked, “When?”

“Very, very soon. I will notify you.”

Mauk looked to the others and received curt bobs of the heads in reply.

“We are committed,” Mauk said.

“You have chosen the correct path,” Loh said.

“If it is not, we will make it so.”

The statement was one that Lon Pot would enjoy, Loh thought.

He also thought that his air force had just expanded by sixteen fighter aircraft.

Twelve

The Saudis were much better organized, and their military had a great deal more discipline than the Chadians. The military section of the airport, where the Kimball Aero aircraft had been parked, was under constant surveillance by army units patrolling on foot and in jeeps.

It was a large complex, with long rows of first-class aircraft. Crider recognized Northrop F-5E Tiger IIs, McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagles, Lockheed C-130 Hercules, and some British Aerospace Strikemasters. The activity level was high, with flights of aircraft constantly on the move, taxiing, taking off, landing.

The Learjet’s twin engines were toned down to a muted roar as Lujan taxied slowly toward the spot where he’d been told to park.

Crider, Gart, and O’Brian were settled low in their seats so they could get decent views of the ramp where the Alpha Kats were parked. Wheeler and Adage were on their knees in the aisle, peering over their shoulders.

“Security’s damned tight,” Del Gart said.

“And it’s a big fucking base,” Alan Adage added.

His beard could use a shampoo, Crider thought.

“One of the largest airports in the world,” Crider told him. “The Saudis have to spend their bucks somewhere.”

“They could have spent it somewhere other than in the middle of the damned country,” Wheeler said.

“Christ! I haven’t seen so much nothing in my life.”

Saudi Arabia was one fourth the size of the United States in land area, but not much of the land area was hospitable. Twentieth Century warplanes broke the sonic barrier directly over nomadic tribes whose routines and way of life had not advanced much past what they were at the time of Jesus Christ. Or of Mohammed, Crider reminded himself.

The KAT planes slid out of view as Emilio Lujan turned the Lear into a parking place.

“Any ideas?” Crider asked.

“We can get plastique?” O’Brian asked.

“Yeah, I’ve got some contacts around the Gulf. Shouldn’t be too difficult.”

Gart turned around in his seat to look back at Corey O’Brian. The two munitions experts stared at each other for a few minutes.

“Fuel tank?” Gart asked.

“That would be the best and quickest by far, I think,” O’Brian said.

“No,” Crider told them. “Any goddamned plane can have a fuel tank explode. This has to be a problem peculiar to Kimball’s airplane.”

“We tried the engine,” Adage said.

“Control, then,” Gart said.

“They’re fly-by-wire,” Crider said.

“What we want,” O’Brian said, “is just the teeniest little charge placed against the electronics box, wherever it is. At speed, the pilot won’t even hear it before he loses control. He may then broadcast his sudden new problem over the air, so everyone knows.”

“We don’t want it discovered during the post-crash investigation, Corey,” Crider insisted.

“We’ll give it a couple minutes delay, then the fuel tank goes,” Gart said. “That should obliterate any evidence.”

“Or fatalities, Del,” Crider reminded him. “We’re supposed to avoid fatalities.”

“Give it five minutes, then,” the Irishman said. “The pilot can eject, and the plane blows up on crashing. For certain.”

“I like it,” Crider said.

“One problem,” Wheeler said.

“What’s that?”

“If the guy’s at ten thousand feet, he’s got time to eject. If he’s showing off, flying fifty feet off the sand, that son of a bitch is going to dig a hole immediately.”

“Well,” Crider said, “we’ll have done the best we can do, under the circumstances.”

Lujan shut down the jets, then came back from the cockpit and opened the hatch.

O’Brian said, “Well, and now that’s settled, let’s find a hotel, hey?”

Ben Wilcox was acutely aware of the calendar on his desk. Three hours before, at exactly midnight, he had flipped the page. July 19.

Simonson’s assets in Burma and Thailand were now saying July 27 looked like a good bet.

Worse, his own source confirmed it.

The White House was saying that, if civil war erupted in Burma, the CIA was to stay out of it. The President would go to the UN and raise hell, but U.S. covert actions were to be suspended.

It was dark outside, and though there were a few hundred people still working in the building, he felt quite alone on his floor.

The digital clock that was part of his elaborate telephone set read 3:06.

It was six minutes after ten in Riyadh.

Where in hell are you, Kimball?

He got up from his desk chair and paced around the room. He started to fill his mug from the automatic drip pot on the sideboard, then put it down. Caffeine was beginning to become his life.

The stubble on his face rasped loudly in his ears when he ran his hand over his cheeks.

The telephone rang.

He whipped around and went back to the desk, snatching the phone from its cradle.

“Wilcox.”

“You called?” Kimball asked.

“Damned near two hours ago.”

“My business is selling airplanes. The customer comes first.”

“Let’s not forget, Kimball, that I’m your first damned customer.”

“What do you want?”

“How secure is your line?”

“As secure as Sheraton makes it. First things first. What did you find out about my… engine problems?”

Wilcox sighed. At least, Kimball was being circumspect on the phone.

“I haven’t found out anything yet. I’ve got a couple people taking a look at it.”

“I want to know what’s going on, and damned soon. If my people are in greater danger than I expect them to be, I want to know why and how.”

“We’re doing what we can, Kimball.”

“Do more.”

“Damn it, we’re doing everything we possibly can,” Wilcox said, but had to go on. “You’ve got to be in Rangoon on the twenty-sixth.”

“No way. We get into Dacca that day.”

“Hell, no one in Bangladesh can afford to buy your aircraft.”

“They want to look at them, and I’m going to let them look, Wilcox. Hell, for all you know, they’ve got a secret treasury stashed away.”

“I don’t…”

“Besides,” Kimball continued, “if I try to change the schedule for Burma and the rest down the line, somebody’s going to get suspicious.”

Wilcox damned the lack of a secure line, but asked, “Can you make your first… priority flights out of Dacca?”

Kimball only thought it over for thirty seconds. “That can be done, but why? What’s the sudden rush?”

“New developments.”

“What new developments?”

“I can’t talk about them on the phone.”

“Then you’d better get your ass over here and tell me in person. I’m not deviating from the original schedule unless I’ve got a damned good reason.”

Kimball hung up.

Shit!

He didn’t want to go to Saudi Arabia.

A.J. Soames sat with Kimball, McEntire, and Hamilton at a linen-covered table in the hotel’s dining room. After the morning spent in the heat blistering the concrete at Riyadh International, the air conditioning was one step away from paradise.

The waiter took away the scoured hamburger plates and delivered the bowls of ice cream with a flourish that was beyond necessity.

Soames said, “Hell, Kim, I don’t know how great a salesman I am.”

“You and Alex will do fine, A.J. The prince is easy to get along with, and about all you have to do is flip through the charts.”

“And stand around during the demonstration,” Sam Eddy added. “The questions aren’t all that hard to answer. Just remember to keep a straight face when their planes go so far off the target. Smirking is off-limits.”

“I smirk easily,” Hamilton said, scooping into his vanilla ice cream. “I’d better stay in the airplane.”

“Who’s going to stand in as Zookeeper?” Soames asked.

“We’ll put Vrdlicka on it,” Kimball said.

“Are we fouling up the planned rotation just because you and Sam Eddy want to fly?” Soames asked.

He wasn’t above adjusting to emergencies or revised circumstances, but if there was an emergency, he wanted to know about it.

McEntire answered, “We want to be closer to the operations because of the event in Chad.”

Hamilton asked, “Are you sure you’re going to eat your ice cream, Kim?”

“No, you can have it.”

“Ah shit,” Soames said. “I guess we move to public relations.”

“You speaking for me?” Hamilton asked.

“Damned right.”

“You’ll probably be better at it than we are,” McEntire told them. “In fact, I’m sure you will be.”

“If we sell some airplanes, do we get a commission?” Hamilton asked.

“We’re all on commission,” Soames said, thinking of his stock.

“Okay, good,” Kimball said. “How are we doing? What’s the status?”

“The birds are all pre-flighted,” Soames said. “Most everyone is on a sleep-or recreation-break right now.”

“You mean there’s recreation somewhere around here?” Sam Eddy asked.

“If you look for it,” Soames said. “The Saudis have the base well-secured, but I’ve got Perry Vance and Dave Metger standing afternoon guard on the aircraft. We won’t load weapons until just before the demonstration.”

“We want an intense inspection of all aircraft before takeoff,” Kimball said.

“I’ve got it on my chart.”

“And then, at three o’clock, during our afternoon exercise, the prince is taking a little joy ride.”

“Oh, damn!”

“I couldn’t very well refuse him,” Kimball said. “He’s an active air force pilot, he’s rated in F-15s and F-16s, and he’s loaded up with flying time in both. Plus, he’s got combat experience in the Gulf war.”

“I don’t think he’ll break the airplane,” McEntire said, “and if he does, he can afford to pay for it.”

“You’ll go with him, Kim?” Soames asked.

“Sam Eddy’s going to fly his wing.”

“Don’t shoot him down or do anything silly, Sam Eddy,” Soames said.

“I know a golden goose when I see one, A.J.”

Derek Crider’s credentials and business cards, describing him as an assistant vice president and a field engineer for Rockwell International, worked very well.

Twice.

Along with Del Gart, who carried a similar set of forged documents, he whisked through a chainlink gate manned by a Saudi military policeman. Corey O’Brian had stayed behind because they thought his maimed hand, with its missing three fingers, might have drawn too much attention.

They were dressed almost alike in sturdy work shoes and khaki cotton pants. Gart wore a pastel blue shirt with a half-dozen pens and pencils in a pocket protector. Crider thought it might have been over-kill. He himself wore a white shirt and an open tan safari jacket that whipped in the light breeze. He had an expensive Hewlett-Packard calculator clipped to his belt.

Gart wore a beat-up straw hat, an essential ingredient of his uniform.

The two of them approached a short slim man sitting on the lowered ramp of a C-141. The guy lolled there, a black Los Angeles Raiders baseball cap pulled low over his eyebrows, and watched them approach. He had an M-16 with a clip in place leaning against the ramp beside him. A trickle of sweat ran down the side of his face, and he wiped it away.

Pulling out his wallet and offering the credentials, Crider said, “Good afternoon.”

“Afternoon,” the man said, pushing himself to his feet. “What can I do for you guys?”

“We’re with Rockwell, been working on a Saudi air control project for the past eighteen months.”

“Chip Block,” Gart said, offering his hand. “It’s a nickname, for the obvious reason.”

“Dave Metger,” the guy said and shook Gart’s hand, then Crider’s.

“Bill Torrington, Atlanta,” he identified himself with a drawl he had spent half of his life trying to lose. “You working on the base?”

“Yeah, back theah at the main towah.” Crider flipped a thumb over his shoulder.

“And you’ve been here a year and a half?”

“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” Gart said. “Another six months, and I’ll go nuts.”

“What it was,” Crider said, “we all saw fellow Americans with their own planes, ya know, and we thought we’d walk over and see if ya’ll didn’t have somethin’ ta wet a whistle with.”

Metger grinned. “Yeah, I’ll bet you’ve been here a long time.”

“Long damned time.”

“But I can’t help you out. Unless you want a cup of iced tea.”

Gart made a long face. “Well, we didn’t hold out much hope. Thanks, anyway.”

Crider turned to look at the row of Alpha Kats. “Nice lookin’ planes.”

“Thanks. We’re kind of proud of them.”

“Ah worked the B-l bombah program till Jimmy Carter dumped all over us.”

“The hell you did? That was a nice airplane.”

“SOB was a fellow Georgian, too. But that’s how come I ended up playin’ with ground computers.”

“You mind if we take a look?” Gart asked.

“Oh, hell no! Come on, I’ll take you around.” Metger loosened the sling on his assault rifle and draped it over his shoulder, then led them across the tarmac to the Alpha Kats.

He was a right proud airplane salesman. Opened access panels and showed them the kinds of things engineers would be interested in. Helped Crider up a ladder to peer into the cockpit. Ignored Gart as he wandered around to the other side of the aircraft.

Metger showed them the other planes and the Kappa Kat, explaining the tactics briefly.

They spent twenty minutes on the tour, then Gart said, “Damn, Bill! We’d better get back before the royal family crawls all over us.”

Crider lifted his wrist and looked at his watch. “No shit. Hey, Dave, we all ’preciate the tour.”

“No sweat. Come back and meet some of the others when they’re here. We’re going to be hanging around for a couple days.”

“We all will just do that,” Gart said and offered his hand again.

Walking back toward the chainlink fence, Crider said, “That asshole’s not mean enough, or suspicious enough, to be in the aerospace business.”

“You’re telling me?”

“Any trouble?”

“None at all,” Gart said, taking his straw hat off and wiping his forehead with his forearm.

Crider saw that the small explosive charges that had been hidden in the hat were gone.

“Where in hell’d you get that accent?” Gart asked.

“My childhood’s comin’ back to me.”

Kimball wasn’t particularly worried about the prince. The man was qualified in the Falcon, so he was accustomed to the fly-by-wire controls.

Still, he was on edge until he saw both Alpha Kats on the final approach. When they touched down, one behind the other, the prince’s landing even smoother than Sam Eddy’s, and slowed to a crawl, he let his breath out.

“See?” Gander said. “Nothing to worry about.”

“Me, worried?”

“You’re getting to be a regular old fuddy duddy. Chill out, Kim.”

After the turbojets were shut down, he and Gander crossed the ramp to the planes. Tex Brabham was the first up the ladder to help the prince out of his harness and connections.

Four mean-looking and heavily armed Saudis in desert camouflage also moved in close to the plane. They hadn’t been introduced, and Kimball assumed they were in the bodyguard business.

The prince, who was both earnest and agile, scrambled down the ladder behind Brabham.

“Delightful!”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” Kimball said. And he was glad. There was nothing like hands-on experience to promote love for the airplane.

“It is a joy to fly.”

“We warned you,” McEntire said, coming around the nose of the next plane in line. He was holding his hands up, palms out, in deference to the bodyguards.

“I am, naturally, both concerned and intrigued about the capability in tandem with the Kappa Kat.”

“You’ll see that tonight,” Kimball said.

“But I wonder…”

Uh oh, Kimball thought.

“…if we might not change the demonstration somewhat?”

“In what way?” Kimball asked.

“I am certain that you have carefully choreographed your program, in the interest of safety as well as of showing off the talents of the craft. However, our interest lies primarily in defense, rather than the attack mission.”

“You’d like to see us fly defense?”

“Exactly!”

Kimball looked at McEntire.

“That’s my preference, actually,” Sam Eddy said.

“Fine with us,” Kimball echoed.

“Wonderful. I will have my two squadrons attack the target, and you will protect it.”

Kimball’s watch read 4:30 P.M. “I’ll get my people together, and we’ll brief them for the change.”

“You have the maps, Kim?” the prince asked.

“We’ve got everything we need, thanks.”

“And then we’ll see you for dinner.”

“What we’d like to do is have A.J. Soames and Alex Hamilton brief you and your officers over dinner. Sam Eddy and I are leading the flight, so we’ll have some of our own preparations to make here.”

“I like a man who demonstrates his own convictions,” the prince said. “I will lead the attackers.”

Kimball grinned at him. “I’ll see you before you see me.”

The prince smiled back. “Perhaps.”

As soon as the prince and his party departed, the KAT crews went into action. A refueling truck was ordered up for the two Alpha Kats just returned. The ordnance teams began wheeling the dollies beneath the fighters and loading air-to-air missiles. Carl Dent dutifully checked each missile to be certain it was a dummy.

Kimball specified only four missiles per Alpha Kat. They wouldn’t actually be fired, but their heat-seeking or radar-tracking heads would be utilized to designate contacts. Additionally, the lighter ordnance load increased the stealth of the planes. The missiles were not constructed with stealth technology, and at close ranges, would provide a radar return. The absence of iron bombs on the centerline hardpoints also improved the fighters’ performances and lowered their radar cross sections.

One of the techs, Paul Diamond, took one of the jeeps provided by the Saudis and went to find a restaurant that would box some dinners for them.

Kimball and the day’s demo team (McEntire, Gander, Mabry, Halek, and Cadwell) met with Billingsly and Vrdlicka around a stack of missile crates in the Starlifter.

Billingsly was Hawkeye Three and Vrdlicka would handle the headquarters chores as Zookeeper.

Sam Miller, Ito Makura, and Phillipe Contrarez, the rest of the Hawkeye crew, listened in from their places on the drop-down canvas seats along the fuselage.

They spent the next three hours revising their plan of operations, chewing slowly through cold chicken when Diamond got back with it. Everyone argued freely about the methodology, and it began to refine itself around 7:30 P.M.

The target, a tin shanty that had been moved into the desert by cargo helicopter, was two hundred miles to the south.

“Seems to me,” Gander said, “that the Saudis will figure us to all be at altitude.”

“They’ll also come in low, trying to avoid the radar coverage,” McEntire added.

“You want us to stay low, then? Use pop-up tactics like the MiG-23s did in ’Nam?”

“The prince is familiar with American tactics,” Billingsly said. “So let’s not be absolutely traditional.”

“How about CAP?” Sam Eddy asked.

“They’re coming in with eight Eagles,” Kimball said. “If Connie would give up his CAP, we could have six planes available when they’re only expecting four.”

“I can live without the CAP,” Billingsly said, “if you can live with the fact that I might have to go off the air more frequently.”

“What the hell? Let’s try it,” McEntire said.

Tex Brabham walked up the ramp and asked, “Got to interrupt. Who gets what?”

McEntire wrote quickly on slips of paper, and they drew N-numbers out of Gander’s Stetson.

Kimball opened his slip and saw: one-five.

Brabham memorized the roster and went back to do the final checks.

“Hey, Tex,” Kimball called after him.

“Yeah, Kim.”

“Look real close, huh? Flashlights everywhere.”

Brabham gave him a dirty look. “Yo, boss.”

The flight crews split up and headed for the crew compartments of whichever C-141 held their flight gear. Kimball dampened a towel with ice water and carried it into the compartment with him. He stripped and used the towel to give himself a sponge bath before donning his flight suit and G-suit. He carried his survival equipment, helmet, and oxygen mask out to one-five.

Brabham was waiting for him, and they did another walkaround together.

“She looks clean, Kim. But I’m worried.”

“About what, Tex?”

“These honeys are so complicated, it’s easy to hide something when somebody wants to hide something.”

“Engines check out?”

“We put floodlight through them and turned them on the starters. They’re okay.”

“We’ll be all right,” Kimball assured him and climbed into the cockpit.

The Kappa Kat took off while the fighters were being started. All six fired without complaint, and all six stayed in place and ran their engines up to one hundred percent, then idled back.

“Anybody?” Kimball asked on Tac Two.

“Two’s good.”

“Three.”

“Four.”

“Five, yo.”

“And Six,” McEntire said. He had elected to ride wing on Five, flown by Jay Halek.

Kimball called ground control, then the tower, and got them airborne ten minutes later. Two minutes after that, air control allowed them to kill their IFF transponders.

“Kimball Aero one-five, Riyadh.”

“Go Riyadh.”

“That’s scary, one-five. You should not just disappear like that.”

“It’s supposed to be scary,” Kimball told him, then went to Tac Two. “Hawkeye, Bengals are up.”

“Let’s hope so,” Billingsly came back. “Five and Six, go to Hawkeye Four on Tac Three. One through Four, let’s keep hot mikes. I want to hear you breathing.” Kimball reached for the communications panel and flipped the toggle that kept his microphone on transmit. The receiver for his Tac Two channel, carrying Hawkeye’s voice, was on a different frequency.

“One and Two, take up a heading of one-three-five. I’m aiming you toward the coast. Three and Four, go to one-seven-five. Let’s keep ’em two hundred feet off the deck, airspeed four-five-zero knots.”

“One. Roger one-three-five, two hundred feet, and four-five-zero,” Kimball answered for himself and his wingman, Cadwell.

“Two. One-seven-five, two hundred feet, and four-five-zero.”

The terrain rolled easily ahead of them, vaguely visible through the windscreen, but clearly shown on the night vision camera’s image displayed on the instrument panel CRT. The desert was green in the image, and Kimball couldn’t find one distinctive piece of geography that he would call a landmark. The big turbofan purred with a lion’s pleasure behind him.

Sixteen minutes later, Billingsly called, “Bengal One, go to one-eight-zero now.”

“Going one-eight-zero.”

Kimball eased the stick to the right and pressed lightly on the rudder pedal.

Nothing happened.

He jiggled the stick.

Nothing.

Glancing down to his right side, he saw the red light right away.

“You turning or not?” Cadwell asked him.

“I’m showing malfunction on the control computer,” Kimball said.

His throat had tightened up on him almost immediately.

Instant sweat coated his palms under the flight gloves.

The plane stayed level, but the desert scene on the screen suddenly appeared way too close. Low-level flight was normally accomplished in unexpected turbulence. The day’s heat bleeding off the desert was fairly steady now because of the flat terrain, but could change at any moment.

“Cheetah, list for me.”

“No rudder, ailerons, or elevators, Frog.”

“Leave the throttle alone.”

“Wouldn’t touch it for the world,” Kimball said, switching on his running lights so Cadwell could see him.

“We’re way too damned low,” Cadwell said.

“Okay,” Billingsly said. “Let’s get you some altitude. See if you can trim in some elevator and give it a bit of power.”

Kimball gingerly touched the throttle and eased it forward. He was afraid that the turbulence of their low flight was going to destabilize the plane once he changed the setting.

Tapping the rocker switch on the throttle handle, he fed in some up-trim on the elevator.

“That’s it, good,” Cadwell said.

He glanced at the HUD. The rate-of-climb readout was positive.

“I’m showing fifty feet per minute, Frog,” he said.

“Good, that’s enough. We’ll just work you up to altitude slowly.”

It sounded good to Kimball.

Until the back end of the Alpha Kat erupted in a yellow-red flash of light that erased his night vision.

Thirteen

Because the mikes were hot, Jimmy Gander, Bengal Three, heard one explosion and what might have been part of a second explosion before Kimball’s transmitter whistled loudly in his ears and then went dead.

“Jesus Christ! The son of a bitching plane blew up!” Cadwell yelled.

“Chute?” Billingsly asked.

“Goddamn!”

“Did you see a parachute, Two?” Billingsly asked, his voice as calm as water confined to a lagoon.

“Hell no! I went by too fast. Took some debris hits. I’m turning back now.”

“Hawkeye, Three,” Gander said. “Vector me in.”

“Go to zero-nine-eight, Three.”

Gander eased the controller over, added rudder, and took up the new heading. He flashed his wingtip guide-lights twice so Warren Mabry could stay with him, then slammed the throttle forward.

The Gs shoved him back in the seat, and the HUD readout quickly rose through the numbers, switched to Mach, and climbed again to Mach 1.5.

Seconds later, he saw the glow on the horizon.

“Got visual, Frog.”

Speedy Gonzales must have notified Bengals Five and Six because McEntire came in on Tac Two. “What the hell’s happening?”

“Two here. I’ve got an orbit. The plane’s destroyed, scattered all over the damned desert. Fuselage is still on fire.”

“Beeper, Two?” Billingsly asked.

“No beeper. No chute.”

“Bastard!” McEntire yelped. “Vector me, Frog.”

“Hold on, troops,” Billingsly said. “I’ve got hostiles. Charlie, Delta, and Echo coming hard from the east. Fox and George high to the south.”

“Screw ’em,” McEntire said.

Gander searched the skies ahead for Cadwell, but couldn’t see him.

“Two, give me some lights.”

He switched on his own and was aware that Mabry had illuminated alongside him.

The fire was dying as he approached, retarding his throttle and getting back down through the sonic barrier.

He spotted Cadwell’s lights low to the south of the burning fighter.

Slowing until the HUD readout displayed 300 knots, Gander dialed his Tac Four transceiver to the Guard channel, 243.0, where it was supposed to be anyway. Someone — himself — had missed it in the pre-flight checklist.

“How about you, Cheetah? Talk to me.”

Nothing.

“Come on, Cheetah, quit horsing around. Tell the Gandy Dancer all about it.”

“Got me, Gandy.”

Kimball’s voice sounded weak, or maybe it was the survival radio. He eased into a wide turn.

“Can you give me a flash?”

A flashlight beam erupted from the dark desert floor, nearly a mile north of the wreckage. Gander rolled out of his turn and headed for it.

Everyone tried to speak on the Guard channel at once.

“Shut up!” Gander yelled. “Give me a rundown, Cheetah. How you feeling?”

“Like I’ve been kicked in the ass.”

“How about something more objective?”

“No broken bones that I can detect. I’m not bleeding anywhere obvious. The flying suit’s a loss. Nearly burnt through in spots. The damned chute was barely open when I hit the sand. Knocked the wind out of me.”

“Hostiles Charlie, Delta, and Echo are seventy miles out, turning for the wreckage,” Billingsly said. “They’ve spotted it.”

“Go get ’em,” Kimball said.

“I’ll orbit you,” Cadwell said.

“Get the hell out of here, now! Frog, send me a chopper when it’s over.”

Gander wagged his wings when he flew over the flashlight beam, then cut his running lights and switched back to the Tac Two radio.

Billingsly was reporting to Vrdlicka, who wouldn’t have heard the Guard channel conversations because of the line-of-sight interference.

“Zookeeper, that Saudi SAR chopper still standing by?”

“Roger, Hawkeye. Sitrep, please.”

“He’s fine, but scratch one Alpha.”

“Call them all back, Frog.”

“Cheetah won’t go for it.”

“Neither will Irish Eyes,” McEntire cut in.

“It’s the safest course,” Vrdlicka said.

Gander broke in, “I’m still waiting for a vector, Frog. Fuck the recall.”

Billingsly barely paused before reading off a set of coordinates. “Send the chopper two minutes after the exercise is completed, Zookeeper.”

Vrdlicka obviously didn’t like it, but read back the coordinates and said, “Roger the chopper.”

McEntire came in, “Give me Fox and George, Hawkeye.”

“Two, join on Three and Four. Three, go to zero-eight-seven. I’ll tell you when to pop up. Five, reverse course and pick up zero-zero-nine…”

Kimball sat in the sand, still trying to catch his breath. He shut off the flashlight and laid it next to the radio beside his leg.

Once again, he ran his hands over his whole body, and once again was amazed that they didn’t run into protruding bones or organs. The backs of his G-suit and his flying suit were scorched. He tugged at the fingers of his gloves and slipped them off.

He realized that he still had his helmet on and unsnapped the straps, then lifted it off. The air caressing his face felt better, though it was still hot.

Some of the hair on the back of his neck felt like it was singed.

He rolled onto his stomach, got his knees under him, and pushed himself to a kneeling position.

Felt a little dizzy.

Waited.

The dizziness passed and he stood up. The sand shifting under his feet felt like heavy seawater, and he spread his legs to keep his balance.

Another short flash of dizziness.

With trembling hands, he unbuckled the parachute harness and dropped it to the earth.

He waited three full minutes before squatting to pick up the radio, flashlight, and helmet.

He barely remembered the last minutes in the Alpha Kat. It was a safety quirk of the mind, he thought, which didn’t want to remember.

Because he had no control of the aircraft and expected to go wing-over at any minute from turbulence, he had had his right hand lightly gripping the ejection handle between his legs. The second he heard the dull thump of the explosion, felt the heat, and was blinded by the light, he had ejected. He thought he went out at about a thousand feet AGL, tumbling over backwards. The Martin-Baker seat parted from him as advertised, and the drogue chute streamed out of his pack, tugging the main canopy behind it.

He remembered looking upward for the canopy deployment, seeing the white nylon blossom, felt the tug, and boom…! He slammed into the earth.

The air whooshed out of his lungs.

Followed immediately by the muted concussion of the fighter crashing into the earth south of him.

He had a headache.

His back hurt. He felt as if he were two inches shorter, his vertebrae squashed together by the ejection.

He was going to write a long letter of appreciation to the people at Martin-Baker.

He was thirsty as hell, but he had lost his water bottle in the ejection.

Walking carefully in the oozy sand, he started out toward the wreckage. The dunes weren’t high, but they felt as if they were as he struggled with the shallow inclines.

He was damned certain it was sabotage, this time. He had too much faith in the airplane. If he had been in some maneuver when the fly-by-wire went out, rather than in trimmed-out level flight, he wouldn’t be walking in the sand now.

And he tried not to wonder if one of the other planes had also been compromised. He should have sent them all back to the airfield.

But then, he reasoned, two similar crashes would have been too coincidental.

He felt better.

Mentally.

His back still hurt, and his head was throbbing.

A.J. Soames appreciated the thoughtfulness of the prince. Before taking off with his two flights of F-15 Eagles, the prince had ordered everyone who could manage it to use English on the radio, in deference to the guests.

He and Alex Hamilton sat in comfortable chairs, along with a dozen dignitaries, in the underground combat center. It was well outfitted with computers and radar repeater screens lined up along two walls. A huge map of the Middle East was projected onto a wall screen. Symbols moving across the southern portion of the map were identified as the aggressor Eagles. Commercial and other, flights had been routed to the north, to stay clear of the exercise.

The aggressors had split into three groups of two aircraft and taken three different headings, circling the target wide, and then beginning to move in on it in a pincer movement. They were all above twenty thousand feet, and two of them had already identified the Kappa Kat by its radar emissions.

He leaned over to his right and said, “What do you think, Alex?”

“I think they’re in for a surprise.”

The pilots’ dialogue was broadcast over ceiling speakers, and some of it was confusing when it overlapped or reverted to Arabic.

“Blue Dart One, Sapphire One. I have visual on a fire.”

The Sapphire flight was headed for the target from off the Persian Gulf.

In response to a question, Sapphire One said, “On the ground.”

“In the target area?”

“Negative.”

“Investigate, Sapphire. Dart One out.”

Soames felt himself holding his breath.

“Now, I know why we’re here, and Kim’s flying,” Hamilton said. “He couldn’t take the suspense.”

“I can’t take it either. We may have to renegotiate,” Soames said.

Two more Eagles, Red Fox flight, began to converge on the target from the west. One of them split off and headed for the Kappa Kat.

Which promptly disappeared from the screen.

“Hey,” one of the Saudi pilots called, “I have got a J-band threat. Missile locked on me.”

“I will check your… what! Threat receiver. Missile lock on.”

It was all over in twelve minutes. Not one of the F-15s got close to the target or to Hawkeye.

As soon as he was shot down, the prince, Blue Dart One, began to chuckle.

“The fire was a ruse, I think,” he said over the radio.

“If it was, Kim didn’t bother to tell me about it,” Soames said to Hamilton.

“It was a damned good idea, though,” Hamilton said.

Four choppers came.

They were directed to his position by Billingsly who had moved the Kappa Kat to an orbit position some three thousand feet above him.

The fire had gone out, but the wreckage was still hot, and Kimball had not been able to get close enough to inspect it thoroughly.

He was pretty certain that the explosion and fire had completely destroyed any of the electronics and computer software that Kimball Aero had patented or would like to have protected. If the detonation of the fuel cell hadn’t done the job, the small self-destruct charges provided by Wilcox would have.

Tex Brabham was the first one out of the first chopper, some three feet before it would have officially landed. He ran clumsily in the sand toward Kimball’s flashlight.

Sliding to a stop in front of where Kimball sat, he said, “Kim?”

“I’m all right, Tex. There’s a couple bruises and a hell of a headache.”

Brabham went to his knees and dug into a canvas bag. He came up with three aspirin and a thermos of ice water. “Take these.”

Kimball followed orders. The cool water tasted damned good. He swirled it around in his mouth.

“Goddamn, boss. I should have caught it.”

“Not necessarily, Tex, but yeah, I think it’s sabotage, too. But I can’t figure out how they got to the planes.”

“Rockwell International.”

“What!”

“I doubt they really worked for Rockwell, but they had papers that said they did.” Brabham told him what he had learned from Dave Metger

“Dave’s pretty shot,” he added.

“I’ll talk to him,” Kimball said.

Floodlights began to wink on. KAT personnel came by to check on him, then began to search for the scattered debris. Saudi air force investigators were directing everyone, shooting video and still camera shots.

Vrdlicka showed up, shaking his head.

“How’d it go, Mel?” he asked.

“We downed all of them. They downed you.”

“I don’t think we’re talking about the same enemy.”

“Come on, Kim, there’s a chopper headed back now,” Vrdlicka said

“I’m going to stick around here for a little while longer,” Kimball said.

“Bullshit,” Brabham said. “I’ll be here, and you’re getting on the bird. The easy way or the hard way.”

Kimball chose the easy way and got up to walk over to the helicopter, a twin-rotored Boeing Chinook.

Slightly over an hour later, with his headache only mildly diminished, he slid out the helicopter’s wide doorway onto warm concrete.

Sam Eddy McEntire, A.J. Soames, and the prince were waiting for him.

He told them the story. It seemed as if he had repeated it a dozen times.

In his mind, he probably had.

“No control at all?” McEntire asked. “That system’s redundant. You don’t lose both of them at once.”

“I don’t think the guy who set it up knew that,” Kimball said. “There’s no way it was going to look like an accident or system failure, but he thought it would.”

“We have the descriptions of the men,” the prince said. “Unless they have already left the country, they won’t be leaving soon.”

Soames went back to their ramp area to coordinate the investigation, and over Kimball’s objection, Sam Eddy loaded him in a jeep and took him back to the hotel.

The prince had a doctor waiting in the room for him, and Kimball submitted to a thorough examination before stumbling into the shower.

When he came out with a towel wrapped around his waist, feeling a smidgen better, McEntire handed him a glass.

“What’s that?”

“Johnnie Walker Black cough syrup.”

“In Riyadh?”

“Understanding doc. Drink up.”

The liquor burned nicely going down. “What’d the doc tell you?”

“You’re mostly in one piece. Slight concussion. You’ll live, whether you want to or not.”

“Good deal.”

Kimball crossed the room to his own bed and sat on the edge of it.

The phone rang.

He looked at his watch. 12:15 A.M. in the morning. 3:15 A.M. in Phoenix.

The phone rang again.

“You want to take that, Sam Eddy? It’ll be Susan.” McEntire splashed more scotch in their glasses.

The phone rang again.

Finally, he picked it up. “Grand Central Zoo.”

He listened for a minute, then told Kimball, “She wants to know how our day went.”

“Tell her about yours. Tell her mine was a bust.”

Kimball lay back and closed his eyes to rest them, but they didn’t want to open again.

Fourteen

Bangkok was teeming with life. Too much life. It flowed through the jammed streets on tireless, sandaled feet and in shrilly honking, smoke-emitting trucks, automobiles, and weaving motorscooters, and it sailed along the edges of the Chao Phraya River and the canals, the klongs, in thousands of well-maintained or decrepit longtail boats called hang yao, propelled by ratty motors driving propellers mounted on long driveshafts.

The silver and gold spires of the city were slowly becoming hidden by the glass-faced highrises imported from Western architects. This holiest of cities was being subverted by the devils of America and Europe. Still, Buddha reigned, and foreigners who wished to reside in the city paid at least superficial homage to the prevailing attitude of serenity. A Thai did not increase the volume of his voice, debate meaningless issues, nor demonstrate anger.

In a city that appeared so wealthy, where gold leaf was left at the feet of the Buddha in innumerable temples, there was still an underlying patina of vast poverty.

It seemed to Lon Pot that almost every citizen of the Thai capital either had his hand out, pleading for alms, or had his hand out, offering breadfruits, orchids, and cheap watches in exchange for pitifully few baht. The gem dealers were scarcely more subtle.

Lon Pot’s white Lincoln passed over the main canal, Phadung Klong, coming close to mashing a pedicab. His driver was more concerned with his destination than with those who might possibly get in the way of it.

The Lincoln dwarfed most of the automobiles on the street and signified that a great personage sat behind its darkly tinted windows.

The personage, Lon Pot, was accompanied by two bodyguards in addition to the driver. He was dressed in a white silk suit, silver-blue shirt, and spotless white tie. When he came to Bangkok, he liked to dress for the occasion.

They passed the small temples that proliferated through the city, bedecked with purple orchids, yellow roses, and white jasmine. Monks in saffron robes moved along the sidewalks, appearing and disappearing in the crowds. The city of six million international souls had grown too fast.

Pot ordered the car stopped at a grocer’s stand, and Dhat, one of his guards, got out and bought mangoes and durian, a spiky fruit that he loved.

Just before reaching Yawaraj Road, the driver turned left into a narrow alley containing several houses and apartment buildings. He drove slowly until reaching the front of a narrow, newer building, then stopped at the curb.

Dhat got out of the car and explored the street with his eyes. He walked to the nearest structures and examined the doorways, then walked back and opened the rear door of the Lincoln.

“All clear?” Pot asked.

“Chai, Prince.”

Pot got out of the car and was nearly run over by a bicycle that appeared from nowhere. He jumped back against the car as Dhat backhanded the boy on the bicycle.

The boy and the bicycle landed four feet away.

After examining the boy, no more than nine years old, for hostile intent, Dhat helped him up.

“I apologize,” the bodyguard told the boy. “It was a mistake.”

“Mai pen rai,” the youngster said, pushing his bicycle away.

Never mind. It was the philosophical bent of the Thai people.

Pot crossed the sidewalk, and unlocked the front door with his own key. He pushed open the steel door, which had a wrought iron grille over its window, and stepped into a small foyer. There were two apartments in the building, the main floor quarters dedicated to Pot’s employees who happened to be in the city on one errand or another. The upstairs apartment was his own.

A flight of steps with a black wrought iron railing climbed along one wall, and he immediately took them. On the landing at the top of the stairs, he was faced with another locked steel door which yielded to his key.

He shoved it open with a bang.

“Aie!” a small boy yelped, then gushed, “Father!”

He rose to his feet from the carpet of the living room, where he had been reading a book, and bowed to his father. At ten years of age, he had his father’s lanky, black hair, and nothing else. He wore round, thick spectacles, and his chin receded as if he had no jaw at all. His stature was tiny, his shoulders thin and slumped. All in all, he was not very regal, and he was a disappointment to the Prince.

“Where is your mother?”

“I will get her.”

He raced from the room.

Dhat stepped inside and looked around. It was a large room, the far windows overlooking a large balcony decorated with white-painted wrought iron furniture and potted orange trees. The railings were draped with bougainvillea. Beyond the balcony was a view of Yawaraj Road and beyond that, the river and Chinese Town.

Satisfied that only the proper persons were in residence, Dhat withdrew and closed the door behind him.

Besides the large living room, the apartment contained a small kitchen, a dining room, a very nice Western bathroom, and two bedrooms. It should not have been difficult for the boy to locate his mother.

Pot walked across the deep-pile carpet to the sideboard and used another key to unlock it. He withdrew a bottle of Glenlivet scotch, checked the mark on the bottle to be certain it had not been tampered with, and poured several centimeters in a lead crystal glass. Lon Pot had acquired the taste for Scotch whisky from an American CIA agent with whom he did business during the crisis in Vietnam. He put the bottle back and relocked the cabinet.

“Master.”

She said it in such an even-toned, noninflected way that it was difficult to interpret her as either softly yielding or brazenly insubordinate.

Lon Pot turned to face his wife, who stood in the entrance to the hallway. She was tiny, less than one-and-a-half meters tall, and obviously the source of his son’s stature. She was also an exquisite miniature, with finely formed features, flowing hair so shiny it appeared to be silk, and delicate, almond-shaped brown eyes. She wore the traditional ao dai of her Vietnamese culture, this one a pale-cream with an intricate embroidery of rose petals outlined in gold.

He had bought her when she was fourteen, and she was now twenty-five.

“Hello, Mai.”

“It is a pleasure to see you after so much time,” she said. “Will you be here long?”

Again, the even tone of her voice displayed no pleasure, nor any reticence. Her vocal presence was always less demanding than the words she placed in her letters.

“Perhaps a week. It depends on events.”

“We can look for a new apartment?” There was the first hint of a light in her eyes.

“Perhaps,” he said, though he had no intention of doing so. A week from now, who knew where he might wish to live? It could be here, it could be in Rangoon.

Her flower-red lips parted in the trace of a smile.

“We will go to our room,” he said.

She pivoted gracefully toward the hall and led the way.

The lady in the pink sweatband and stuffed blue sweatsuit yakked on and on. Dixon figured she was not talking to her lover, so it had to be her mother.

He sat on the blond wood bench in the middle of the mall and watched the people sauntering up and down the shiny, rose-tinted tile. They were dressed in ultra casual, and not many were carrying shopping bags. They weren’t buying; they were cruising the neighborhood.

Brock Dixon felt out of place in his thousand-dollar charcoal suit.

Every few seconds, he glanced back at the woman gripping his telephone. Beside him, a huge, plastic philodendron in a redwood planter was coated with dust.

Two boys and four girls dressed in black leather and multi-hued tattoos stopped to peer in the window of a formal wear shop. With the haircuts that made them nearly indistinguishable as to gender, he could not imagine them in tuxedos and gowns. Maybe they were going to have their own prom.

He checked his watch. Eight minutes late.

Get off the damned phone, lady.

A mall security guard moseyed along, staying close to the black leather.

Finally, she hung up and jogged away from the public phone, most of her moving in up-and-down directions.

Dixon stood and crossed to the telephones. There were three of them, side by side, but she had taken his.

He had almost reached it when it started to ring.

The security guard cast a questioning look in his direction, and Dixon chose to ignore it.

He grabbed the receiver.

“Yeah?”

“We’re in New Delhi,” Crider said.

“You think that’s where they’re going next?” Dixon wished he knew Kimball’s schedule. He could have discovered just what it was with a few phone calls, but he did not want anyone remembering who made those few phone calls.

“Who knows? But we got out of Riyadh just as soon as the package was placed. Anything in the papers there?”

“The Post gave it almost two inches on page fifteen,” Dixon complained. “All it said was that a plane crashed on a Saudi training mission and that there were no casualties. No mention of the manufacturer.”

“Same thing in the international edition of the New York Times,” Crider said. “The Saudis are protecting Kimball’s reputation for some reason.”

“I can figure out the reason easy enough.”

“What?”

“They know it wasn’t an accident or design flaw. You screwed it up.”

“You want to do it?”

“How did you set it up?” Dixon asked.

Crider told him about the small dab of plastic explosive in the electronics compartment.

Dixon shook his head.

The kids in leather had moved on, and so had the security guard.

“That was stupid, Crider. Those planes have two, maybe three systems. Even if the black boxes are side by side, and they must be if you succeeded, they have armor protection from the exterior. Two or three systems aren’t going to fail at the same time, not for electronic reasons. They’ll examine the armor and know the explosion came from inside the plane.”

“You wanted aircraft engineers, you should have hired aircraft engineers. We can quit now and go home,” Crider told him.

“No, damn it! You’ve got your money. Earn it!”

“Find me an itinerary,” Crider ordered, which Dixon did not like. “Working off the cuff, on the spur of the moment, isn’t going to do it. We need some planning time.”

“That’s too damned risky.”

“Let’s compare your risk to mine.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Dixon said and slammed the phone down.

Digging some quarters from his pocket, he picked up the receiver and dialed a number.

“Weapons Procurement, this is Linda.”

“Is General Ailesworth in, Linda? This is Brock Dixon.”

“Just a minute, sir.”

When Ailesworth came on the line, the first thing he said was, “Pretty disappointing, Brock.”

“You read the paper?”

“I read it every morning. Our friends aren’t getting their money’s worth.”

“This last one was a good idea. It just didn’t come off well.”

“Banner headlines would be better. Lots of discredit falling where it belongs.”

“You’ll get them. Just hang on.”

“It’s a funny thing about time, Brock. When it runs out, it’s gone. If the man from the desert makes one good sale, then he’s a contender, and the committees on the Hill will take a good look at what he has to offer. We’ll have civilians dictating hardware purchases to the services. Given the penny-pinching attitudes, I think there may well be a shake-up in traditions that have lasted decades. Where were you planning to work after you retired, Brock?”

Dixon had always thought that, after he earned his third star, he might snoop around for one of the major aerospace contractors. They always had a need for decent intelligence-gathering.

“Same place as you, Jack.”

“They might not be there,” Ailesworth said.

Which was overstating the case, Dixon thought. The industries would still be around, but they would be downsizing and scrambling and not hiring retired generals at inflated salaries. Unless, of course, they knew by word of mouth or some other way that Brock Dixon had helped them out when they needed it most.

“We’re working on it,” he said.

“Work fast. Time is money, as they say.”

Islamabad was not Ben Wilcox’s idea of an exotic paradise, not even close to it.

Kimball’s recital about his downed Alpha Kat was also not a story he wanted to hear.

Wilcox, Kimball, and McEntire were in Wilcox’s hotel room. It was a small room, and they sat in straight chairs around the double-sized bed. McEntire had his big feet up on Wilcox’s pillow.

“You said you were working on it,” Kimball said. “What have you found out?”

“To date, not a damned thing.” Mostly, that was because he had not been actively investigating who might be sabotaging Kimball’s aircraft. There was no way in hell that he was going to get the Agency crosswise with the law concerning domestic activity.

“Shit.”

“That’s right, Kimball. I have my suspicions, of course, but there’s not a rumor, not a whisper, out about any group that’s targeting you.”

“We all know who wants us to fail,” Kimball said, with some earned bitterness.

“We all think we know,” Wilcox said. “I’m looking around… I’ve got my people looking, but you’ve got to remember that we’re not dealing with nerds. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to make a connection between the attempts on your aircraft and anyone who matters.”

“I think you’re probably right,” McEntire agreed. “The CIA couldn’t find its ass with ten assistant directors and a flashlight. We’ll do it ourselves.”

Wilcox gave him a dirty look, but decided not to get in a pissing match with him. Not just now, anyway.

“What do the Saudis say?” he asked.

“They’re still investigating the remains from the crash scene, but offhand, they seem to agree with us. That bird was sabotaged,” Kimball said.

“Any salvage at all in it?”

“No,” Kimball said. “There was a secondary explosion, either fuel or another bomb. Then, the little packages we got from you went off and evaporated most of what was left.”

“And you?”

“I’m okay. The back’s a little stiff, but the headache’s gone.”

“We’re out an airplane,” McEntire said.

“You knew there was going to be a risk.”

“Not from in back of us, we didn’t. We’re still a couple thousand miles from the danger zone.”

“You’re insured,” Wilcox said, knowing they were not.

“On experimental fighter aircraft? How dense are you, Wilcox?”

“If I dig deep, I can maybe come up with another million,” Wilcox told him.

“That’s about two million short,” McEntire said. “Transfer it to our accounts this week,” Kimball told him.

On this quiet, hot night in Pakistan, there was a difference in the personalities. In Colorado, Kimball had been the reticent one and McEntire had been more than a little flippant. Here, the flippancy had disappeared. McEntire was being tough. There was a heavy current of anger running through the man, and Wilcox guessed it was probably the result of the near-miss with his best friend. McEntire was not likely to be very demonstrative with male friends though the feelings would run deep. That was contrary to his behavior with his female friends.

Kimball was very reserved, though not as negative as he had been in Colorado. He hadn’t mentioned dropping the mission, so Wilcox figured he was still locked in on that.

“You’ve got to skip New Delhi,” Wilcox said.

“Fuck that,” McEntire said.

“I second Sam Eddy. Motion passes,” Kimball said. “We’re not going to blow even one of our chances to show the airplanes. It might not ever come around again.”

Wilcox weighed his alternatives, but the options were fast depleting. Simonson would not be happy with his divulging the information, but time was now crucial.

“There’s a new factor,” he said.

Kimball grimaced. “There always is.”

“Tell us about the new factor,” McEntire urged. “Then we’ll cancel everything and go home.”

“Our sources tell us there’s a deadline.”

“What sources?” McEntire asked.

“What deadline?” Kimball asked.

Wilcox shifted his gaze to McEntire. “There’s no way in hell I’m going to give you a name. But the source is damned highly placed.”

“Deadline?” Kimball asked again.

“July twenty-seventh.”

“For what?”

“That’s the tricky part of it,” Wilcox said. “Lon Pot is staged for a coup. He’s planning to take over the Burmese government.”

“Shit!” McEntire said. “The druggie becomes a dictator? Never happen.”

“Look at Colombia. Who’s really running the important things?” Wilcox asked.

Kimball got up and paced in small circles near the end of the bed. Both Wilcox and McEntire watched him.

Kimball stopped suddenly and turned toward him. “You knew this from day one, right?”

Wilcox only considered lying for ten seconds. “Yeah, we did. Not that the drug angle doesn’t weigh heavily, Kimball, it does. The major concern, though, is that Lon Pot could buy himself one government, then another.”

“He’s bought this one?”

“A lot of palms have been greased. We expect very little resistance to the takeover. And once he’s got himself a country, he legitimizes his operations. That makes it tougher to combat, without obtaining UN sanctions. And those sanctions might be watered down.”

Wilcox forced himself to slow down. He did not want to oversell.

“And more countries after that?” McEntire asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“He’s got his fingers in some Cambodian and Laotian pockets, too. The intelligence estimate… top secret, by the way, and not something I should be giving you… says he’ll run into very little opposition.”

“You believe the intelligence estimate?” Kimball asked.

“I wrote it.”

“Damn it. Is this your scenario alone? How high does it go?”

“High enough.”

“I want to know.”

“That won’t happen, Kimball. You got the money, didn’t you? That tell you anything?”

“Have you been working this from a single source?” Kimball asked.

“Hell, no! I have five, one of whom is in a sensitive position.” Simonson had four, and Wilcox had one.

“This highly placed spook,” McEntire said, “he’s naturally reliable.”

“Naturally.”

“For money, or for ideology?”

Wilcox thought about hedging on that one, but did not. “Money.”

“That makes me feel better,” McEntire said.

“The spook confirms your domino theory of countries tumbling to Lon Pot, one after another?” Kimball said.

“Lon Pot has started calling himself the Prince of Southeast Asia.”

“Christ! How come the world has so many self-ordained saviors?”

“We see him becoming another Idi Amin, another Saddam Hussein.”

Kimball abruptly plopped into his chair. “I wish we had something to drink.”

“The twenty-seventh,” Wilcox repeated.

“We’re in Dacca then,” Kimball told him.

“After the twenty-seventh, you’d be taking on a country, rather than a druglord.”

McEntire dropped his feet to the floor with a thud. “He’s still the same asshole.”

“If things go the way they’re supposed to go,” Kimball said, “nobody sees us anyway. Who cares if we go up against Lon Pot or the next Burma?”

“The odds change,” Wilcox said. “Lon Pot has already bought himself four Burmese squadrons for sure. There might be more. After the twenty-seventh, they’re fighting for him.”

“And what about before the twenty-seventh? If they’re already bought?”

“They’ll be confused. The squadron commanders won’t want to commit themselves until they know which way the wind is finally going to blow.”

Kimball leaned forward and placed his elbows on his knees. His eyes seemed particularly blue and particularly penetrating as they stared into Wilcox’s.

“Bottom line, Wilcox. If we don’t initiate sorties before the deadline, what?”

Wilcox hated the requirement of uttering the party line. “We call it off.”

“Well, shit,” McEntire said. “We’re home free, then. We made us a few bucks, got the demo tour, and go home without risking the guys. Good-fucking-deal.”

Wilcox thought he read sarcasm in McEntire’s statement, but he was not certain.

Kimball still had an eye-lock on him. “But you don’t agree with the big boys?”

“Hell, no. I don’t want to see Lon Pot convert Southeast Asia into his own playground. We’d see official sanction of his poppy-growing.”

Kimball swung around to look at his partner. “Sam Eddy?”

“You and I need to talk by our lonesomes.”

“Take a walk,” Kimball said.

“Hey, it’s my room,” Wilcox protested.

“Go down to the lounge.”

“They only serve tea.”

“Drink tea.”

Wilcox got up, grabbed his suit jacket, and headed for the door.

Kimball called after him, “Keep in mind, Wilcox, that we can’t trust you anymore. You keep fucking with the story.”

“You didn’t trust me before.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

Henry Loh met with his commanders.

Jake Switzer, a wizened and weatherbeaten ex-American whose F-4 Phantom had been shot from under him over Vietnam, and who had decided to walk away from his parachute landing rather than go back to the Marines at Da Nang, led the First Squadron. The unit, composed of four HAL Maruts and one Mirage 2000, was housed at Shan Base near Mong Tung. The well-camouflaged and equipped airfield also maintained several helicopters and seven transport aircraft.

The Second Squadron, composed of three MiG-23s and four elderly MiG-19s, was hidden away at Muang Base on the Nam Tha River in Laos and was commanded by Pyotr Burov. A seasoned veteran of the Soviet conflict in Afghanistan, Burov had been a colonel in the Red Air Force at the time of the coup. It had occurred to him shortly after the coup’s failure that his safety, his future, and his financial success might be better assured elsewhere.

The Chinese, Kao Chung, headed the Third Squadron of the Prince’s Dragon Wing, the only wing currently. Chung had done most of his flying for the Chinese air force in the Fantan, a redesign of the MiG-19 which the West called the F-6bis. Now, he commanded a force of five Mirage 2000s, three Super Frelon helicopters, and six multi-engined, well-abused transports. Sited in northern Thailand, his squadron occupied what was known as Chiang Base.

There was another squadron, called the support squadron, composed primarily of tankers and transport craft for supplying the hidden bases, and Loh oversaw its operation.

The hierarchy of command in the Dragon Wing was meeting in Loh’s headquarters at Shan Base. His headquarters was a Quonset hut concealed in the trees alongside the single runway and the interior was baked with the heat of day.

“At seven o’clock in the morning of the twenty-seventh,” Loh briefed them, “Colonel Mauk will make an announcement on Rangoon radio. This will coincide with proclamations made by several army and police leaders. Mauk will say that the alteration in direction is positive and that his units will not interfere with a change in leadership.”

“They will stay on the ground?” Chung asked.

“No. He will launch all aircraft before making his speech, and he will urge his fellow senior commanders to join him. He will also inform them that their units are grounded. Any aircraft taking off will be shot down.”

Since Mauk commanded most of the Union of Burma Air Force strike aircraft, comprised primarily of Lockheed AT-33As and propeller-driven SIAI-Marchetti SF.260MBs, it seemed unlikely to Loh that any commander would oppose him.

“We will want show of force,” Loh said. “The First Squadron will make its presence known in the north and the Chin State. The Second will fly high-visibility missions through southern Shan and along the coast. The Third will stay close to the southern coast and Rangoon, but not intrude unless I learn from Mauk that it is necessary. Within hours, by nine o’clock, I should think, 1 will notify you of airfields which have capitulated, and where you may land for refueling.”

Pyotr Burov seemed less optimistic than the others. “What if this passive transfer of power does not occur? Mauk could betray us. Some of the helicopter commands may join with the army in opposition.”

Loh grinned at the Russian. “If it occurs, it will make our day more interesting. Micah Chao will be in Rangoon, directing our efforts there, and he will keep me informed. I will instruct you and your flight elements if assistance is necessary at any point.”

“And on the twenty-eighth?” Switzer asked.

“In the morning, I will fly to Bangkok and bring the Prince back. In the afternoon, we will proceed with the reorganization as we have discussed it. Jake Switzer will assume command of Dragon Wing, with the First Squadron and two T-33 squadrons of the UBAF. Pyotr Burov will have the new Lotus Wing, including the Second Squadron and the SF 260s.”

Burov did not appear enthused about adding ten dual role strike/training craft to his new wing.

“And Kao will assemble the Moon Wing with his Third Squadron and the helicopter companies.”

“What of Mauk?” Chung asked. “You have promised him a command, have you not?”

“Of course,” Henry Loh replied, “but his usefulness will have come to an end.”

It was after 11:00 P.M. when the Kappa Kat finally landed. Jimmy Gander was Hawkeye One, and it wasn’t until Gander shut down the twin turbofans that Kimball felt the tension go out of his shoulders.

He crossed the ramp in the darkness and stood next to the command craft as the canopies raised. Walt Hammond and Wes Overly chocked the wheels and set the tie-down lines.

Soames climbed out of the lead controller’s seat first, hefted a leg over the coaming, and came slowly down the ladder rungs.

“Smooth as silk, Kim.”

“Hell, A.J., I’m beginning to worry if something doesn’t go wrong.”

They waited for Gander, Wagers, and Contrarez to descend from the cockpit, then they all headed for the lighted cargo bay of the C-141. It had become their mobile briefing room, as well as warehouse and workshop.

Kimball spun around to check the perimeter and counted all four guards. He had doubled the guard contingent. No one was allowed to look at the aircraft without an escort.

Inside the transport, Tex Brabham was passing Cokes around, and Sam Eddy was finishing a joke which must have been good. It drew a few heartfelt guffaws.

Kimball walked to the front end of the bay and scrambled on top of a missile crate. He turned to look at the faces aimed at him and raised two thumbs.

“Good show, guys. Not one hitch. Alex, how did your end go?”

Hamilton was dressed in a lightweight blue suit, but he had pulled his tie off. “Sam Eddy made a credible presentation. I outshined him, naturally.”

“Naturally,” McEntire said.

“There was one general,” Hamilton said, “by name of Abassi, who kept giving Sam Eddy this come-on look. I think he’s in love.”

“What he is,” McEntire said, “is needy. He’s looking for a little cash in hand to help him make up his mind.”

“We going to do that?” Soames asked. “Grease palms?”

“I’m not much in favor of it,” Kimball said, “but you all know this part of the world. If a little baksheesh is expected, when and if the negotiations get further along, I suppose we’ll have to oblige.”

“We could give round-trips to Hawaii, instead,” McEntire suggested.

“That might do it, Sam Eddy. Okay, in half an hour, we’ll change the guards, then get everyone else to the hotel for a few hours. Sam Eddy and Alex will handle the debriefing, which is scheduled for six in the morning. With luck, we can be wheels-up by 7:30 A.M.”

Kimball dropped off the packing crate and sat on it.

“We’ve got one more snag,” he said.

“What’s one more, with all we’ve had?” Halek said.

“This one could be intense.” He told them what he and Sam Eddy had learned from Wilcox. “I told the man from Washington we wanted to get your reaction before making a decision. He’s waiting for it.”

“So the sucker’s a wannabe dictator, in addition to a druglord,” Mabry said. “I move that we put him down for the count.”

“And longer,” Keeper added.

“You’re missing the point,” McEntire said. “We’re going to land in Rangoon the day after their air force changes ownership. We may be cancelled out, or we may be talking to brand-new generals.”

“Or we may land in the middle of a civil war,” Kimball added.

“Or?” Soames asked. “There’s got to be another choice. What have you and Sam Eddy cooked up?” Kimball told them about it.

When he finished, Gander said, “Doesn’t bother me. Go for it.”

The reaction was unanimous, and Kimball broke up the meeting.

They climbed into the vans that had been loaned to them and headed for the hotel. Kimball was sitting next to Billingsly, who leaned over and said, “Your girlfriend called.”

“Cathy?”

“Cathy? Who’s Cathy?”

“You said”

“I know what I said. A.J.’s all screwed up.”

“What in the hell are you talking about, Connie?”

“Susan called. I told her you’d call when we got back to the hotel.”

Jesus. Now, Billingsly and Soames had him lined up with Susan McEntire. He eyed Billingsly under the light of passing street lamps, but the man stared straight ahead, maybe just a little embarrassed.

When he reached the hotel, and then the third floor room he shared with McEntire, he waited until Sam Eddy had crawled into the bathtub before calling Phoenix. It was noon there.

“Kimball Aero Tech.”

“Hey, Andrea.”

“Kim! God, am I glad to hear your voice. Let me get Susie.”

She came on a few seconds later. “You son of a bitch! You didn’t tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“It was in the papers.”

“What was in the papers?”

“The crash. Who was flying? Sam Eddy?”

“No, it was me.”

“Damn it, are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Susie. A couple bruises. What’d the papers have to say?”

“Nobody was mentioned by name, not even the company. But damn it! We can read between the lines, Kim. You should have told me, so I could call the wives.”

Kimball sighed. He wasn’t thinking very straight. “You’re right, Susie. I’m sorry.”

“Sam Eddy’s a son of a bitch, too. I talked to him right after the crash, and he didn’t say a word.”

“I said I’m sorry.”

“Have you seen a doctor?”

He told her about the doctor. “My prognosis is so good I’ll have insurance agents calling day and night.”

“I’m relieved,” she said. “How is Sam Eddy doing?”

“He’s in the tub, splashing water all over hell, and singing, We’ll Sing in the Sunshine.”

“That’s his theme song, all right,” Susan said. “But he looks all right?”

“I’m not going to go in and peek. He’s fine.”

“You call me immediately if there’s any more problems. Especially a crash! Goddamn it!”

“I do apologize, Susie. I had too much on my mind, and I forgot the courtesies.”

“To hell with the courtesies. There’s people here who love you, Kim. Don’t let them down again.”

Dial tone.

Kimball replaced the phone as Sam Eddy came out of the bathroom wrapped in a fluffy white towel.

“Did you know,” McEntire said, “that I kept the rest of that cough syrup?”

“No lie? The Johnnie Walker syrup?”

“You want a shot?”

“We flying in the morning?”

“Nope. We’re passengers.”

“Just one, then.”

McEntire poured them each a shot.

Kimball took his glass and a sip of the liquor. The warm liquid slithered down his throat.

McEntire pulled back the covers on his bed and slipped into it.

“Sam Eddy, you understand women, right?”

“Wrong. I’m the first to admit it.”

“But —”

“It’s your dilemma, buddy,” McEntire said, “but I figure you’ll work it out.”

Christ! Everyone knew more than Kimball did.

On the night of July 22, Crider reached his contact in Alexandria again.

“I’m here,” the man said, his voice tinny on the phone.

“And I’m here,” Crider said. “What did you find out?”

“You’re in the right place. They’ll be in New Delhi tomorrow morning.”

“Shit. That doesn’t give me any time at all.”

“And then Dacca on the twenty-sixth.”

Crider tried to think of contacts he might make in Bangladesh, but a first run through his memory was not encouraging. Maybe he could get the ordnance he needed out of Sri Lanka.

“And after that?”

The man read off a list that ended in Manila. “But you can’t wait much longer, Crider.”

“Don’t use my name.”

“Sorry. The contractor is expecting results, and damned soon.”

Crider looked at his watch.

“We’re too short of time here. It’ll have to take place in Dacca.”

“Do it right.”

“Don’t sweat it. All the world is going to hear about this one.”

He had decided to be less subtle.