Final Flight

5

How much longer before we go into port?”

Jake was still in his flight suit and stared at the admiral, Cowboy Parker. They were seated in the admiral’s stateroom on the 0–3 level, immediately below the flight deck.

“I don’t know.” As usual, Cowboy’s angular face registered no emotion. In his mid-forties, he had been identified years earlier as one of the finest young officers in the navy and had been sent to nuclear-power school after his tour as commanding officer of an A-6 squadron. He had served two years as executive officer of a nuclear-powered carrier, then as commanding officer of a fleet oiler. When he finished his tour as commanding officer of the Nimitz, he had been promoted to rear admiral. In spite of that, Jake thought, his ears still stuck out too much.

“We can’t keep flying around the clock like this. We’ve just lost one plane, and if we keep it up, we’re going to lose more. These men have been working like slaves.”

Cowboy sighed. “I know that, Jake.”

“If we can’t go into port, at least let’s pull off a couple hundred miles, say down south of Cyprus where we can get some sea room, and stand down at five- or ten-minute alert. It’s keeping airplanes aloft around the clock that’s wearing these guys down to nothing.”

“Jake, I don’t have that option. You know that! As soon as I get that authority, we’ll go down there.”

Grafton stood up and began pacing the little room. “Well, maybe we can drop our nighttime flights to just the E-2, a tanker, and a couple fighters. Maybe use the Hornets as fighters during the day and the Tomcats at night. Keep the A-6s in five-minute alert status at night, armed for bear.”

“Sit down, Jake.”

Jake eyed Cowboy. They had served together during the Vietnam War in an A-6 squadron aboard the Shiloh and had remained good friends ever since. When Cowboy had had his tour commanding an A-6 squadron in the late seventies, Jake had been his assistant maintenance officer.

“Sit down. That’s an order.”

Jake sat.

“This is like Vietnam, isn’t it?”

Jake nodded. “Yep,” he said at last. “Just another set of damn fools pulling the strings. And we’re grinding people into hamburger. It’s frustrating.”

The telephone rang. Cowboy picked up the receiver. “Admiral Parker.” He listened for a moment or two, grunted twice, then hung up.

The two men sat in silence. A plane slammed into the flight deck above their heads and the room vibrated slightly as it went to full power. Then the engines came back to idle and faded into the background noise. A minute later another one hit the deck. On the television in the corner the landing planes were depicted in a silent show filmed from a camera high on the island and one buried in the deck, aimed up the glideslope. The picture alternated between the two. The only audio was the very real sound of the planes smashing into the steel over their heads.

Jake massaged his forehead and ran his fingers straight back through what was left of his hair.

“You don’t look very well,” Parker said.

“Hell of a headache.”

“The head quack tells me you’re over a month late getting your annual flight physical.”

“Yeah. He’s been after me.”

“Go get the physical.”

“Yessir.”

“What do you think went wrong with that plane tonight?”

“Don’t know. My guess is a malfunction in the oxygen system, but we may never know. Depends on how much wreckage that destroyer pulls out.”

“They haven’t found much.” Parker jerked his thumb at the phone. “Just a few pieces floating. Most of it went to the bottom.”

“Did they find the bodies?” A postmortem on the bodies might reveal an oxygen malfunction.

“Nope.” Cowboy searched the younger man’s face. “What are you going to do now?” Jake knew he was referring to the leadership problem.

“Remember the last month of the war in Vietnam, after I was shot down? Camparelli hung a helmet in the ready room and said anyone who couldn’t hack the program could throw his wings into it.”

“I remember.”

“I’m going to hang up a helmet.”

“As I recall, no one quit.”

“Yeah. That’s why Camparelli did it. He was smart. I’m going to give the helmet a try, but with my luck I’ll have a dozen crews quit on me.”

Cowboy laughed. “Your luck will hold, Cool Hand. Keep rolling the dice.” He stood up. “I better get back to flag plot.” That space, a part of the combat decision center, depicted the task group’s tactical situation to the admiral on computerized presentations. It was his battle station. “They get nervous if I’m gone too long. Hell, I get nervous if I’m gone over ten minutes.” He paused at the door and turned back toward Jake. “If it’ll make you feel better, I have a ‘Nixon in ’88’ T-shirt I can let you steal.”

“It may come to that.”

Admiral Parker stuck out his hand and Jake pumped it.

When Jake entered the air wing office, Chief Harry Shipman was sitting at his desk.

“Heard we lost one.”

“Yeah. Call Mister Cohen and ask him to come to the office.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Jake walked between the desks and entered his office. For some reason known only to the ship’s architect, he had a sink in his small office. He took three aspirin from a bottle in the desk drawer and washed them down by drinking from the sink tap. Then he soaked a washcloth in cold water, raked the papers away from the middle of the desk, sat in his chair and tilted it as he arranged his legs on the desk. He draped the wet cloth over his forehead and eyes.

He tried not to think about Jelly Dolan and Boomer Bronsky. His office was on the 0–3 deck, immediately beneath the flight deck, so he could hear the sounds of aircraft being moved about his head. He tried to identify each sound.

He had just drifted off to sleep when someone knocked on the door. “Come in.” He threw the washcloth in the sink. He felt better.

Lieutenant Commander William Cohen and Chief Shipman entered and sat in the two empty chairs. Cohen was the air wing aircraft maintenance officer. Shipman worked for him.

“Who went in?” Cohen asked.

“Dolan and Bronsky. They were flying my wing. I didn’t see them eject, and the angel and the destroyer haven’t found them. They passed out in the cockpit and the plane nosed over.”

“Oxygen problem?”

“Probably, but who knows? Maybe the accident investigation will tell us.” Jake removed his feet from his desk and sat upright in his chair. “How well are the squadrons maintaining the planes?” Jake asked this question looking at Cohen.

“Availability is very good. Only three planes down awaiting parts, one F-14 and two A-6s. F-18s are doing fine. That F-18 is one hell of a fine airplane to maintain.” Cohen had started in the navy as an enlisted man and received his commission while a first class petty officer, Jake knew. After twenty-two years in the navy, Will Cohen knew aircraft maintenance better than he knew his children.

“Are the squadrons taking shortcuts to keep the availability up?” Jake found his cigarettes and set fire to one.

“I don’t think so.” Cohen draped one leg over the other and laced his fingers behind his head. “If they are, I haven’t seen it.”

“We’re going to find out,” Jake told them. “Will, I want you to check the maintenance records on every airplane on this ship. Are the squadrons missing or delaying scheduled inspections? Are they really fixing gripes or merely signing them off? Look for repeat gripes signed off as ‘could not find’ or ‘could not duplicate.’ You know what I want.”

“Yessir.”

“Chief, I want you to check their compliance with proper maintenance procedures. Select gripes at random and watch the troops work them off. See if the manuals are up to date and being used. Check to ensure the supervisors are supervising and the quality-control inspectors are inspecting. Check their tool inventory program.”

“Aye aye, sir. Do you have a deadline on this?”

“Make progress reports from time to time. Start with the Red Rippers, then move around at random.”

Cohen flicked a piece of lint from his khaki trousers. “CAG, this is gonna look like we’re trying to close the barn door after the horse has shit and left.”

“I don’t give a fuck how it looks.” Jake put his elbows on the desk. “The troops are tired and morale is low. Shortcuts and sloppy work become acceptable when you’re tired. We’re going to make everyone, from squadron skippers to wrench-turners, absolutely aware that the job has to be done right. We’re going to reemphasize it. We’re going to make sure we don’t drop a plane in the future because of sloppy maintenance.”

“I understand.”

“I want you guys to be visible. I want everyone to know just exactly what you’re up to. Let it be known that I intend to burn anyone who’s slacking off.”

Both men nodded.

“Finish your night’s sleep, then get at it. Chief, before you go back to bed, call the squadron duty officers and tell them I want to see all the skippers here at 0800.”

“Yessir.” The two men rose and left the office, closing the door behind them. Jake retrieved the washcloth from the sink and rearranged his feet on the desk. In moments he was asleep.

Jake sat in one of the molded plastic chairs in the sick bay area. He watched the corpsmen in their hospital pullovers moving at their usual pace, coffee cups in one hand and a medical record or specimen in the other. They came randomly from one of the eight or ten little rooms and strolled the corridor to another. The atmosphere was hushed, unhurried, an oasis of routine and established procedure.

At last the door across from him opened and a sailor came out tucking his shirttail into his bellbottom jeans. Seconds later Lieutenant Commander Bob Hartman stuck his head out and waved at Jake.

The little room had one desk and a raised examination table. “Good afternoon, CAG. Glad you finally paid us a visit down here in the dungeon.”

Jake grunted. Doctor Hartman was assigned to Jake’s staff and liked to while away off-duty hours in the air wing office, yet whenever anyone suggested he look at a sore throat or toe, he told them to come to sick bay. This was his turf.

“Strip to skivvies and socks, please, and take a seat on the table.” As Jake hung his khakis on a convenient hook, the doctor pored over the notes the corpsmen had made when they ran Jake through the routine tests.

At last he left his desk, arranged his stethoscope in his ears, then held it against Jake’s chest. “You failed the eye examination, you know.” The doctor was about thirty-five, had a moderate spare tire, and a world-class set of bushy eyebrows. When he looked at you, all you saw of him were the eyebrows. Then the nose and chin and all the rest came slowly into focus.

“Please cough.” Jake hacked obediently. “Now turn and let me listen to your back.” He thumped vigorously. “You need to quit smoking.”

“I know.”

“How much do you smoke?”

“A pack or so a day.”

“Your lungs sound clear.” Hartman turned to the X rays on a viewing board and studied them. “No problem there,” he said finally and came back to Jake. “Stand up and drop your drawers.” After the usual indignities were over and the doctor had peered into all of Jake’s bodily orifices, he told him to get dressed and resumed his seat at the desk.

“Your eyes are twenty-forty,” the doctor said as he scribbled. “You need glasses.”

“Okay.”

He flipped through the medical file. “You’ve gained ten pounds in the last ten years, but you’re still well within the weight standards. Have you been having any headaches?”

“Occasionally.”

“Probably eyestrain. The glasses will cure that.” Doctor Hartman laid his pencil aside and turned in his chair to face Jake. “But you’ve been having some other vision problems.” Jake said nothing. Hartman cleared his throat and toyed with the papers in the medical file. “Captain, I know this is going to be damn tough for you. It’s tough for me. I’m sorry I have to be the one to tell you this, but your flying days are over.”

“Bullshit.”

“Captain, you flunked the night-vision tests. Glasses won’t cure that. Nothing can. Your eyes are aging and you just don’t see well enough to fly at night.”

“Gimme some pills or shots.”

“I can give you some vitamin A that may help. Over time.” He shrugged. “Everyone’s vision deteriorates as they age, but at different speeds. Yours just happens to have started faster than most people’s. The nicotine you have been poisoning yourself with for twenty years may also be a factor. Sometimes it has an adverse effect on the tissues inside the eye.” He found an envelope on his desk and sketched an eye. “When light stops stimulating the eye, the tissues manufacture a chemical called liquid purple, and this chemical increases the sensitivity of the rods inside the eye. In your case, either the chemical is no longer being manufactured in sufficient quantity or the rods are becoming insensitive….” He droned on, his pencil in motion. Jake thought he looked like a flight instructor sketching lift and drag vectors around an airfoil.

“Listen, Doc, most people don’t command air wings. I do, and I have to fly to do my job.”

“Well, I’ll have to send in a report. My recommendation is that you be grounded, but maybe we can get permission for you to just fly during the day.”

Jake finished dressing in silence and sat in one of the molded plastic chairs. “That won’t hack it,” he said at last. “I have to fly at night and I’m going to continue to do so. This cruise will be over in four months and I can turn in my flight suit then. But until we get back to the States, I have to fly at night to do this job.”

“They could send another officer out here to replace you.”

“They could. But even if they do, he won’t be here for a while, and I’m the man with the responsibility.”

Hartman toyed with his pen. “Are you ordering me not to make a grounding recommendation?”

“No. I’m telling you I am going to keep flying at night and I don’t give a damn what you do.”

“You can’t fly if I recommend you be grounded,” Hartman said aggressively. “I know where I stand.”

“You know all about sore throats and clap and which pills are which. But you don’t know a goddamn thing about the navy. How long have you been in? Three years?”

“Three and a half. But that’s beside the point.”

“No. That is the point. I was flying navy airplanes and scaring myself silly coming aboard while you were still in junior high school. I’ve been riding these birdfarms for twenty years. I know what naval leadership is and I know my own capabilities. The navy picked me for this job because I know how to do it. And I intend to do this job the best way I know how until I’m relieved by another qualified officer.”

“I’m going to send a message to BUMED.”

“Before you do, I want you to talk to the admiral. You give him your opinion. I. work for him.”

“And you’re going to keep flying?”

“Unless Parker says not to, that’s precisely what I will do. You whip up some of those vitamin pills. Order the glasses and call me when they come in.”

Toad Tarkington was standing by the wardroom door when Jake approached carrying a helmet bag. Toad stepped through the door and announced, “Attention on deck.” The men were still rising when Jake went by Toad and said loudly, “As you were.” He still couldn’t get used to officers snapping to attention when he entered a room.

By the time he reached the portable podium placed on a table at one end of the room, most of the men were back in their chairs. Jake waited until everyone was settled before he spoke. It had been over three hours since he had a cigarette. He noticed that there were ashtrays on the tables and several people were stubbing butts out.

“Good evening.” He looked at the eight squadron skippers sitting in the front row. “Have we got about everyone?”

“Except for the guys flying, sir.”

“Fine.” Jake took an envelope from his hip pocket on which he had made some notes. He looked at the sea of faces looking at him. Most of the faces were young, in their twenties. Just looking at them made him feel over the hill.

“How many of you guys are on your first cruise?” Almost a third of the men raised their hands. “Well, this is my ninth one, and I have never before been at sea for three months straight. We didn’t stay out like this during that little fracas in Vietnam. Ain’t peace wonderful?”

Titters.

“I’m not here tonight to give you any little patriotic pep talk. The politicians that drop in do it a whole lot better than I could.”

More chuckles. The ship had recently been visited by several congressmen and a senator, and those worthies had insisted on addressing the sailors from their home states. As they told it, the sailors were the equals of Washington’s troops at Valley Forge.

“A couple of guys died last night. We don’t know why they died, and we may never know. But they are indeed dead, and dead forever. No one shot them out of the sky. The hazards inherent in naval aviation killed them.

“Now that doesn’t mean that we are not going to try to find out why they died, or that we are not going to do everything humanly possible to prevent further accidents. We are going to do both. I had a discussion with the squadron skippers this morning, and they tell me they are going to conduct safety reviews in every squadron.” Jake had ordered them to do so. “We’re going to ensure these planes are being properly maintained and you guys who fly them haven’t forgotten how.

“But what I can’t do is give you and your sailors some time off. We’re going to have to keep our noses to the grindstone. We’ve got to keep the planes up, to guard this task group.”

A hand shot up several rows back. Jake pointed and a lieutenant he didn’t recognize stood up. “Sir, we wouldn’t have to keep flying around the clock if we pulled off a couple hundred miles and gave ourselves some sea room. Then we could go to an alert status. Sitting here thirty miles off the coast just cuts our reaction time to incoming threats.”

“We may be thirty miles off the coast right now,” Jake replied, “but just before dusk we were seven miles offshore so everyone in Lebanon could get a good look. Every wacko in Lebanon knows we’re here. The orders to steam seven miles off the coast came from the National Security Council.”

The lieutenant sat down and spoke from his chair. “We’ll just get those fanatics stirred up.”

“Maybe. What’s your name?”

“Lieutenant Hartnett, sir. I just think that if we had more sea room, we would have a little more reaction time if and when Ahmad the Awful cranks up his Cessna or speedboat and comes roaring out to sink us.”

“Do you think we can handle a threat like that?” Jake asked with a grin.

“We’ll send him to that big oasis in the sky, sir.”

“I’ll sleep better knowing that.”

Laughter swept the room. Jake grinned confidently, though he was well aware of the real problems involved in defending the task group. The admiral, his staff officers, and Jake had spent many hours discussing alternative courses of action in the event of a terrorist threat from Lebanon. It wasn’t a laughing matter. The rules of engagement under which the American ships operated severely limited the options available. This was the main reason Admiral Parker was rarely more than twenty feet from Flag Ops.

“Seriously, we are here to make our presence felt. That’s why we parade around right off the coast. Doing damn fool things because politicians tell you to goes with the uniform. And every man in this room is a volunteer. But I don’t want anyone killing himself or his crewman because he kept flying past the limit of his own capabilities.” He unzipped the helmet bag and took out a helmet. He held it out by the chin strap, so it hung upside down.

“I’m going to hang this thing in my office. Anyone who thinks that he has had all of this bullshit he can stand can throw his wings in it. Put a piece of tape around your wings with your name on it so I’ll know who to talk to.” All eyes were on the helmet. “Flying the schedule we do demands the best you can give it. I hate to see guys turn in their wings, but I like it even less when people kill themselves. Each and every one of you knows what your personal limit is. I am relying on you to call it quits before you go beyond that limit.”

He picked up the helmet bag, tucked the helmet under his arm and headed for the door.

“Attention on deck,” Toad roared.

Everyone in the room snapped to attention while Jake walked out.

Up in the air wing office Jake handed the helmet to Yeoman First Class Farnsworth. “Get a coathanger,” he said, “and hang this thing from the ceiling right here by the door. I want anyone who opens this door to see this helmet.”

“Why?” asked Farnsworth, slightly baffled.

“It’s for wings,” Jake said and tossed the helmet bag on a table. “Go get a coathanger and do it now. Someone may want to use it sooner rather than later.”

“Yessir.” Farnsworth laid the helmet on his desk and started for the door.

“Any new messages on the classified board?” Jake asked before Farnsworth could get out the door.

“Yessir. A bunch. There’s even another intelligence report about a planned raid on the ship by some group or other using an ultralight.”

“Again? How many air raid warnings have we had?”

“I think about nineteen, CAG. Thank God for the CIA.” Jake waved Farnsworth out the door and took the message board into his office. He thought about having a cigarette. There should be a pack in his lower right desk drawer. He remembered putting it there two or three days ago. Well, maybe it was still there. He opened the drawer and glanced inside. Just papers. He stirred them. Aha, the pack of weeds had fallen under this little report with the blue cover. Hiding there, weren’t you, little fellow. Don’t try to get away like that. He closed the drawer and began thumbing through the messages, trying to sort the important ones from the usual reams of computerized goo that constituted the vast bulk of the classified traffic.

He found it difficult to concentrate on the messages with that pack of cigarettes lying down there in the drawer, just waiting. Shit, how long had it been? He looked at his watch. Three hours and fifty-one minutes. No, fifty-two minutes. Almost four hours!

The black Mercedes rolled through the dusty streets on the edge of town as if the streets were empty, which they most certainly were not. Children and men leading laden mules and camels scurried to clear the path of the speeding vehicle with army flags on the front bumper. Dark glass prevented anyone outside the vehicle from seeing the passengers, but most of the people on the street averted their gaze once they ensured they were not in danger of being run over.

The limousine stopped momentarily at two army checkpoints on the outskirts of the city, then rolled through the open gate of an enormous stucco building.

In the courtyard two men stepped from the rear of the car. Both wore Western clothes. A waiting officer wearing a major’s uniform led them through a small door and up a flight of stairs lit only by a naked bulb hanging above each landing. High, narrow windows without glass lined the lengthy corridor at the top of the stairs. Dirt from the desert lay accumulated in corners. Their footsteps echoed on the slate floor. After several turns, the major opened a door and stood aside. The two men from the Mercedes entered a well-furnished apartment. The late afternoon sun shone in the one window, a window in which glass had been installed at some time in the past but which had apparently never been washed.

“Colonel Qazi, Sakol is in the next room. Is there anything further you need?”

“Tell me about Jarvis, the weapons expert.”

“Your instructions have been followed precisely. He was examined by a physician while still sedated after his journey. The physician found him in fair health with no apparent abnormalities, although seventeen kilos overweight. He has been kept naked in solitary confinement and fed precisely one thousand calories a day, with all the water he can drink. The bucket in his cell is never emptied. The light there remains on continuously. No one has spoken to him.”

“Very well. Has Sakol been any trouble?”

“No trouble, sir, although he has asked several times when to expect you.”

“You have guarded him well?”

“Of course. His guards are unobtrusive, but he cannot leave the apartment area where he is staying.”

“Thank you, Major. Bring Sakol in.” Qazi selected a stuffed chair and sank into it. His companion stood against the wall, a man of medium height with short, dark hair and olive skin. He wore dark blue trousers, a white shirt open at the collar, and a lightweight Italian sport coat that had lost its shape at some point in the distant past. He had a large, square jaw which he unconsciously clenched and unclenched rhythmically, making the muscles in his cheeks pulsate. His restless black eyes scanned the room, then steadied on the door through which Sakol, the ex-CIA agent, would enter.

Qazi placed a pack of American cigarettes and some matches on the table before him, then studied his fingernails.

The door opened and a bearlike man in his fifties entered. He had the broad chest and heavy arms of the serious weightlifter, but now the muscles were covered with a layer of fat that made him look even more massive. He stood at least six feet tall. “Ah, Sakol. So good to see you,” Qazi said in English.

Sakol stopped three steps into the room and studied the man against the wall. “Why did you bring this son of a dog?” Sakol asked in Arabic. The expression of the man against the wall did not change.

“Sit here, Sakol.” Qazi pointed to a chair beside him. The American turned the chair so he could see both Qazi and the man against the wall and sat. “You know Ali is indispensable to me. I cannot do everything myself.” English again.

Sakol sniffed several times and said in Arabic, “Ah, yes, I can still smell him.”

“English please,” Qazi said firmly and offered the American a cigarette, which he accepted. Qazi had gone to great lengths in the past to ensure Sakol thought Ali could speak only Arabic, and he was not yet ready to drop the deception. Conspirators felt most comfortable when their secrets appeared safe.

“You have succeeded brilliantly with the Jarvis recruitment. I’ve had good reports.”

“I took a lot of heavy risks pulling it off, Qazi, and earned every goddamn dime of the money you agreed to pay. I assume the money is where it’s supposed to be?”

Qazi extracted a bankbook from his jacket pocket and passed it to Sakol, who examined the signatures carefully, then placed it in his trouser pocket without comment.

“That’s a lot of money, Sakol.”

“I’ve supplied things you could purchase nowhere else. I risked my butt doing it. I earned the fucking money.”

“Indeed. Have you enough money now?”

Sakol pursed his lips momentarily. “Jarvis is a nuclear weapons expert.” He smoked his cigarette while Qazi sat in silence and watched the dust swirl in the sunbeam coming through the one window.

“Your help on my next project would be worth one million dollars,” Qazi said when the burning tip of Sakol’s cigarette had almost reached the filter. “Half in advance.”

“The agency and the Mossad are after us both. They want us dead. Ding dong dead. Blown away.”

“Indeed! What did you expect? Why do you think we paid you so much money?”

“I want two million, half in advance. You Arabs always like to haggle. People eventually forget about stolen antiaircraft missiles and kidnappings, but they won’t forget about anything that smells of nuclear weapons. Not ever.”

“One million real American dollars in your numbered Swiss account, Sakol, and if you are very lucky, you will live to spend it.”

Sakol threw back his head and laughed harshly. “You amaze me, Qazi. You could have killed me anytime, and only now you threaten me. My sheep-fucking Arab friend, you can kiss my ass. I’ve taken precautions.”

“Ah, yes. The letters to be mailed in the event of your death. The ones you gave your sister in Chicago, which she keeps in a safe deposit box at the State Street National Bank. Box number One Five Oh Eight.”

Sakol helped himself to another cigarette. He struck a match and held it to the cigarette with twisted and gnarled fingers without nails. The flame did not waver. He inhaled deeply, then blew the match out with a cloud of smoke that engulfed Qazi. “Two million. You know damn well I’m not scared of you.”

“One million, one hundred thousand. Half in advance. The Americans will learn of your aid to our cause.”

Henry Sakol laughed, a harsh guttural laugh that filled the room. “You really know your bastards, don’t you, Qazi? That’s right! I want those arrogant, snot-nosed, Ivy League pig fuckers to know I helped you screw ’em. Right in their tight little cherry asses.” He slapped the bankbook on the arm of his chair, then handed it over. “What’s the job?”

“Has Jarvis seen you?”

“No, he hasn’t. The guys you sent to help were competent.”

“Then I’ll explain.” Qazi talked while Sakol chain-smoked. The sunbeam coming through the one window crept up the wall and finally disappeared, leaving the room in growing darkness.

The phone rang. “Captain Grafton.”

“Jake, this is the Admiral. I’m here in Flag Ops with Captain James and Doctor Hartman. Would you come over, please.”

“I’ll be right there, sir.”

Jake gave the message board to Airman Smith to lock away and rooted in his desk drawer for his baseball cap. He needed to be covered to salute the admiral, and aboard ship everyone routinely wore ball caps. He found his and settled it on his thinning hair.

In Flag Ops, the commanding officer of the United States, Captain Laird James, was discussing a mechanical problem in the forward reactor with Admiral Parker when Jake arrived. Laird James was in his late forties and tall and lean, without an ounce of fat. In those few times Jake had dined with him, James had only picked at his food. His hair was shot through with gray and the skin of his face was stretched tightly around a small mouth. He never smiled, or at least he never had in Jake’s presence.

The doctor was looking over the shoulders of several members of the watch team as they worked the displays on the Navy Tactical Data System (NTDS) computer. Jake stopped several steps short of the admiral’s raised padded chair and waited. When Parker nodded toward Jake, he stepped over and saluted. The doctor joined them.

“Doc Hartman wants to ground you,” Cowboy Parker said without preliminaries. “He says that your night vision is unacceptable.”

“Yessir.”

“Why don’t you want to be grounded?”

“Admiral, we’ve got these flight crews stretched as tight as rubber bands. We’re getting all the flying out of them that anyone has a right to expect. We lost one crew last night. And no matter how careful we are, we may lose another. These men all know that. I can’t ask them to keep flying unless I put myself on the flight schedule. It’s that simple.”

“How long would it take to get a new CAG out here from the States,” Parker asked Captain James.

“A couple months, if we’re lucky,” James said gloomily.

Parker shifted in his chair several times, then stood up and stretched.

“What do you think, Doc?”

“Sir, the regulations say …”

“How many times did you check Captain Grafton’s eyes?”

“I didn’t, sir. A first-class corpsman did.”

“So you don’t even know if the corpsman’s result, or diagnosis, is correct?”

“Well …”

“Assuming the corpsman is correct, could this be a temporary condition that might clear up?”

“I suppose anything’s possible, but—”

“He said that maybe nicotine is contributing to the vision loss,” Jake put in quickly. “I got a bottle of vitamin pills to take. And maybe quitting smoking will help.”

Parker looked at the doctor with one eyebrow raised.

“It’s possible nicotine is contributing to the loss,” the doctor said.

“You personally recheck Captain Grafton’s eyes in two weeks,” Parker said, “and let me know the results.”

“Yessir.”

“Can you live with that, Laird?” Captain James had been ordered aboard the United States while she was still under construction, so he knew every frame, every space, almost every bolt and rivet, all ninety-five thousand tons worth. He knew all the systems in the ship better than any other living human. He had no time for incompetents or fools, preferring instead to transfer those officers whom he concluded fell into one or both categories with fitness reports that ensured they were professionally doomed. His department heads scrambled to match his knowledge of their domain and lived in terror of his wrath. Jake doubted that Captain James could lead a horse to water, but as the chief administrator of a fifty-six-hundred-man institution, he was ruthless efficiency incarnate. In short, he was a perfect bastard.

“Yes, sir,” Laird James said sourly. Although Jake was not under his command — indeed, under the new air wing system, James actually needed Jake’s permission to fire the ship’s weapons — still, it was his ship, and if Jake crashed coming aboard, James would be splattered with his share of the blame.

“Thanks, Doctor. And Laird, I’ll talk to you later.” Both the doctor and the CO saluted and left the space.

“Can you still see to fly at night, Jake?”

“Yessir. Not as well as I used to, but well enough. If I couldn’t, I’d be the first to know.”

“I’m banking on that. Just go easy on yourself. Do most of your flying in the daytime. Are you flying tonight?”

“No, sir.”

“How did it go this evening with the helmet?”

“You should have seen them looking at it. They’re thinking. A man or two may quit, but most of ’em will stick like glue since they’ve been offered an out. They wouldn’t be here if they weren’t stubborn as hell; they’d have washed out long ago.”

“Go get a decent night’s sleep.”

“Thanks, Cowboy.” Jake saluted and Parker returned the salute with a smile.

Jarvis was led into the room naked and blindfolded, in handcuffs, and a rope was lashed around his ample middle to hold him to the chair. A lamp had been placed on the table and shone directly in his face. Qazi and Ali stood in the shadows until the guards closed the door behind them. Sakol was not in the room.

“Welcome, Jarvis.” Qazi came forward and sat in the same chair that he had occupied when Sakol was in the room. A portion of his lower legs was in the lamplight, but he knew from careful experimentation that his face was hidden. He crossed his legs and began moving his toe back and forth slightly. He nodded and Ali stepped forward and untied the blindfold. Jarvis screwed up his face in the light and narrowed his eyes to slits.

“We know your little secrets, Jarvis. All of them.”

“Who are you? Where am I?” The voice was soft, hesitant, fearful.

Qazi uncrossed his legs, leaned forward and slapped him soundly. The man in the chair began to cry.

“All your little secrets, Jarvis. Each and every one of them.” Qazi slapped him again.

“Please …” Another slap.

“Get a grip on yourself, Jarvis, or this will go on all night.”

Sniff. Sob. Sniff.

“You are here to help us, Jarvis, and you shall. If you do your work diligently and well, you may live to return to your wife in Texas and your Tuesday evening meetings with the woman who supplies you with little boys. If you fail us, well … I need not go into that.”

Jarvis was at least sixty, with several long strands of brown hair which he normally combed over his bald pate but which now hung at odd angles and made him look pathetic. His jowls quivered when he breathed.

“You won’t tell my wife about … Will you?”

Qazi slapped him again. “You fool. Your wife is the least of your problems.” Wrong response, he thought. He changed tactics instantly. “You will do as we say, or indeed, we will tell your wife, we will send her pictures of you and several of your little friends, then we will pass the photographs to several newspapers. Every man, woman, and child in Texas shall know of your perversions and your wife’s shame. Do you understand me?”

Jarvis blinked continuously and his jowls quaked as he nodded his head.

“Answer me!”

“I understand.”

“Very good.” Qazi leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs again. He sat silently for a moment as Jarvis squinted to see his face, but finally began speaking when the prisoner began watching the foot that was in the cone of light. Qazi moved his toe rhythmically.

“I want you to build me seven instruments, Jarvis. These instruments shall be used to bypass the safety devices in Mark 58 nuclear weapons.”

“I don’t …” The toe stopped and Jarvis ran out of steam.

“If you were going to tell me that you know nothing of these weapons, it is well you saved your breath.” Qazi got the toe in motion again. “Your position as a design engineer at the factory that assembles these devices is your finest credential. We did not bring you here because you disgust us. You will build seven instruments that will bypass the safety devices in Mark 58 nuclear weapons. These instruments shall contain a source of electrical power that will energize the weapon and trigger it. One of these instruments will contain a radio receiver that allows it to be triggered from a distance. Do you understand?” The toe stopped again.

“Yes.” The toe began its back and forth motion.

“Are you agreeing with me merely to avoid unpleasantness, or do you really intend to help us and spare your wife the agony we can inflict?”

“You said … my wife …”

Qazi placed both feet on the floor, leaned forward and slapped the quaking man several times. “Bring in the other man,” he said to Ali in Arabic.

A cursing Sakol was dragged in by four guards and lashed to a chair. Ali removed the blindfold and slapped him into silence. He did it with vigor, Qazi noticed. The guards assumed a position at the door.

“Another man with a secret. You Americans seem to be up to your eyes in filthy little secrets.”

“Please, mister,” Sakol begged. “For Christ sake, let’s talk about this. I didn’t mean to hurt her. It was an accident—” Ali’s open hand on Sakol’s face made a dull smack. And another. He began to weep.

“Let me introduce William James Moffet, Jarvis. He is a technician with some experience and a taste for young women. Unfortunately for them, they rarely survive his attentions. Moffet shall assist you in assembling the instruments. Now I am going to have you taken back to your cell where you will be given food and water and a pencil and paper. After you have eaten, you will make a list of the material you will need to construct these devices. Tomorrow morning at nine o’clock you will be brought back here. I shall examine your list and question you about it. You had better have all the answers tomorrow morning, Jarvis, or your wife’s humiliation shall begin before the sun sets. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, sir.” He snuffled uncontrollably, in little gasps.

“I don’t think you do, Jarvis. I don’t think you do.” He produced a large black-and-white photograph which he held in the light. He watched the man’s eyes slowly focus. The picture was of Jarvis and a boy, about six or seven. Jarvis had the boy’s penis in his mouth.

“Guards, take them to their cells.”