Flash Point

9

“How come we didn’t take the train?”

“We’d have had to go this morning. I didn’t want to leave until later. So is Israel like you expected?” she asked over the sound of the diesel engine of the bus and the thirty school children bouncing on the seats. The bus windows were open and the two teachers were spending much of their time trying to keep the grade-schoolers from jumping out onto the Tel Aviv highway. Irit and Vialli had been riding for thirty minutes and initially found the children amusing, but were now becoming annoyed by their noise. They had hoped for a nice quiet bus ride to talk. Other than the teachers, the only other adult riding on the bus was an Israeli soldier, who sat casually behind the driver.

Vialli looked out the window at the beach and the sea. The sun had set fifteen minutes before. It was a beautiful if unspectacular sunset. Vialli had already seen more than a hundred at sea, and was growing accustomed to the sun dropping suddenly into the water. “I’m not sure what I expected, but it’s smaller and more arid than I thought. It’s beautiful. Reminds me of Southern California — not that I’ve been there. Woods’s always going on about San Diego, and how beaut — “ He stopped as a different look came over her face. He peered out the bus window following her gaze.

Something had caught her eye on the darkening water.

He leaned toward the window and saw several men in dark uniforms running up the beach carrying assault rifles. They were coming from rubber boats they’d pulled up on the shore. “Look like SEALs,” he said.

“Why would they come ashore in Israel?”

“They look like them, but I’m sure they’re not. Do you have navy commandos?”

“We have commandos, but I don’t know if they’re with the Army or Navy…”

“Wait a minute,” Vialli said, focusing on the armed men.

“What are they doing?” There was concern in her voice.

“I don’t like this,” he said, jumping up from his seat. He got to the front window just in time to see three of the men cross the road a hundred yards ahead of the bus and turn and point their guns directly at the driver.

“Go around them!” he said to the driver.

“No! They are security—”

“No, they’re not!”

The driver looked ahead, examining the men as he slowed the bus. He looked quickly at Vialli and said something in Hebrew. The Israeli soldier sitting in the seat directly behind the driver stood, holding his M-16 by his side as he looked out the windshield over the driver’s shoulder. He didn’t like what he saw.

“Gun it! Run them over!” Vialli yelled.

The soldier didn’t speak English and shouted something in Hebrew at the driver. As the bus rolled to a stop, one of the armed men pointed his rifle at the driver while the other two ran directly toward the bus.

“Are there any other weapons on board?” Vialli shouted.

The Israeli soldier pulled the slide back on his M-16 to chamber a round and pointed his rifle at the approaching men.

Suddenly shots shattered the windshield on the right side of the bus. The soldier was struck by several bullets and thrown back into the seat behind the driver. Vialli tried to grab his M-16 but the soldier had the strap around his shoulder. Vialli crouched and retreated down the aisle.

The children were hysterical, screaming. The teachers were pleading with them to stay down on the floor of the bus.

More shots rang out and the window on the door shattered. The armed men yelled at the driver, who reached for the handle to open the door.

Vialli sat down next to Irit, bending over, trying to keep his head below the top of the seat. “You okay?”

“Yes. They’re speaking Arabic.”

“You speak Arabic?”

“Yes.”

“Now what?” Vialli asked Irit, his eyes darting around for a means of escape. He looked to the back of the bus and saw there wasn’t a rear door, not even a bathroom. There was no way out except through the front door or a window. He reached over Irit, grabbed the two handles of the top window, and pulled it all the way down. It left a hole big enough for him to get out of if he had to. “If they get on we’re going out the window,” he murmured in a low, tense voice.

She nodded, understanding. In seconds two of the armed men were on board. Vialli stood up to help Irit out the window when he saw five other men running toward them from the beach, their automatic weapons trained on the bus. They were all dressed in black jumpsuits and wore black ski masks, no insignia or rank on any of them. They yelled at the people on the bus, waving their weapons wildly.

“What are they saying?” Vialli demanded, trying to understand.

“I don’t know,” Irit said, her face suddenly colorless, her voice hoarse.

Vialli looked at her and saw she was looking straight ahead, dead calm. He tried desperately to get his running shoe off in the cramped enclosure of the bus seat. He had double-knotted it as he always did, and grunted as he forced it off. He slid his Navy ID card inside it before furiously working it back on.

The two men in the front of the bus were yelling at the driver to no effect. He didn’t speak Arabic. The driver, shaking, saw the other men outside the bus pointing their weapons at him. He opened the door again slowly as a hand reached through the broken glass and forced it open the rest of the way. The others charged onto the bus, suddenly full of men wearing black. Making their way down the aisle, they pointed their weapons at the passengers, who screamed and cowered on the floor. The men spoke rapidly to each other, trying to gain immediate control. Up front, one of the men shouted at the driver in Arabic. Another terrorist said something to the first one and pulled him away from the driver. He spoke quietly to the driver in Hebrew, and the driver nodded.

From where they were, Vialli and Irit could see everything that was happening. Irit breathed hard, trying to understand what was being said to the driver; Vialli watched the terrorists to see if they had any vulnerabilities.

One of the bigger terrorists, six feet tall and stockily built, walked back and stood next to Vialli. He pointed his rifle at Vialli’s head. Vialli recognized the gun as a Galil, the same kind Moshe had shown him on the train. The bus began moving and the man grabbed one of the handles on the back of a seat to keep his balance. He shifted the gun away from Vialli’s head.

Vialli stole a glance at him. His face wore a cold determined expression, a look that Vialli had seen before in street fighters who fought all the time. For fun. The ones who knew something hard was ahead, and were ready for it. Regaining his feet, the man suddenly concentrated on Irit. He spoke to her softly, with the same look in his eyes. Vialli watched her react. “What is he saying?” Vialli demanded. She shook her head as the man continued. The terrorist continued talking to Irit, still holding the gun to Vialli’s head. She shook her head again and again, fear in her eyes. “What’s he saying?” Vialli asked once more.

Shouting at Vialli, the terrorist hit him in the side of the head with the barrel of his rifle.

The man who seemed to be the leader came back and talked to the stockily built one, who pointed to Irit, satisfaction on his face. The leader nodded and began speaking rapid Arabic to Irit. She pretended not to understand.

The leader’s submachine gun dangled from his shoulder on a sling. Vialli recognized it as an Israeli Uzi. He began calculating whether he could grab it at about the time the leader pulled a handgun out of his belt, holding it to Vialli’s head with his left hand. “Get up.”

Vialli was surprised to hear English. “What do you want?”

“Get up,” the man repeated, swaying with the movement of the bus. The driver was speeding down the highway and the terrorists were spaced throughout the bus, covering every direction.

“What do you want?” he repeated, still not moving.

The leader brought his handgun up and hit Vialli in the mouth with the barrel, splitting his lip and shattering his two front teeth instantly. “Get up!” he yelled again.

“Thshit,” Vialli cursed through the blood and broken teeth.

“Sit there!” the man insisted, pointing to the seat in front of them. Vialli rose and staggered to the seat, sitting down heavily, fighting the pain in his head.

The leader returned his attention to Irit, putting his handgun back into his belt. He unslung his Uzi and handed it to one of his men. Some of Vialli’s blood was on the seat next to Irit. The leader touched it with his finger and looked at it. It was bright red. He touched her cheek with his bloody finger. He spoke to her in Arabic, obviously asking her a question. Vialli tried to figure out what the man wanted; he was concentrating on Irit, no one else. He peppered her with questions. She sat silently, staring at him.

Finally she spoke in fluent Arabic, which seemed to gratify the leader for a moment, as if he were making progress. He asked her another question, which she also refused to answer. He kept using the same word over and over again. Vialli knew he had heard the word, but couldn’t identify it. The bus slowed and the leader looked out the window toward the water. Turning to the man behind him, he spoke. The man looked down at the small electrical device he was holding and nodded. Vialli tried to see what it was. He could make out four white arrows on a handset with a small window — a GPS receiver. Global Positioning System. A satellite navigation system that allowed anyone with a receiver to know his position within a few feet. They were checking a rendezvous point.

Vialli stared out at the water, but saw nothing. It was growing quite dark.

The leader turned back to Irit with more intensity. He asked her one more question, which she clearly wasn’t going to answer. He nodded to two others in masks, who reached over the seat and grabbed her, pulling her screaming toward the aisle. One of the men grabbed her right arm and pulled it out. Her deformed hand was exposed for all to see.

The leader glanced at it and nodded. Satisfied. He took out his handgun, pointing it at her. Vialli leaped out of his seat, and lunged at him. He went for the man’s gun with his left hand, momentarily knocking the terrorist’s arm away and grabbing for the other’s Uzi. Vialli was much bigger and he was quick, and his movement caught the other man by surprise. Vialli managed to get his hand on the Uzi and was pulling on it roughly when the leader reached out with his gun and struck Vialli viciously on the head. He fell back, blood dripping from a deep gash. The heel of the handgun hit him again, this time squarely in the forehead, dropping him instantly to the floor. Vialli lost consciousness as his body fell to the rough rubber mat. The leader pointed the gun at his back and pulled the trigger twice. Two bullets tore into Vialli, killing him instantly.

Irit stared, horrified. Then somehow she managed to pull away from the men holding her and climbed onto the seat. Turning quickly, she tried to jump out of the window, but the leader raised his pistol again, shooting her in the back. The impact jerked her backward, and as she fell he shot her once more, her lifeless body tumbling on top of Vialli’s.

The leader moved quickly. He checked the GPS handset, glanced out at the dark water, and nodded to his men. One of them went forward and ordered the driver to stop. When the bus had come to a complete halt, the man shot the driver, who pitched forward against the steering wheel.

The teachers and the children huddled together on the floor of the bus, sobbing, terrified that they too would be murdered. The leader motioned to his men, who removed their hoods and threw them on the floor. They stripped off their black jumpsuits and adjusted the Israeli Army uniforms they wore underneath.

The leader spoke clearly in Hebrew. “Silence! The rest of you, stay behind your seats. You must remain still for thirty minutes. We will be outside on the sand. If anyone moves, we will come back and kill all of you!”

The terrorists put on the red berets of the Israeli paratroopers, and one by one left the bus carrying their Israeli rifles.

They walked up the beach in orderly fashion, looking like an Israeli patrol. A fast black rubber boat appeared. It had a blue Star of David in a white circle on the side and was driven by a man who also wore a red beret. They waded out into the shallow water, climbed into the boat, and disappeared.

Woods strode into the ready room and sat at the desk where he worked as the Assistant Operations Officer. Vialli worked for him as the Flight Officer and drew up the flight schedule every day. Among other things, he kept track of how much flight time each pilot and RIO had each month, how many arrested landings each had had, daytime and nighttime, and how many of each kind of hop each pilot had flown.

Now well past the middle of their six-month deployment to the Mediterranean from their home port of Norfolk, Virginia, the only things they needed to worry about were traps and hours. Everything else had been taken care of before the cruise.

Woods studied the greenie board behind him. He had the second-highest landing grades of any pilot in the squadron, followed closely by Bark himself and Big McMack, another lieutenant. The only one ahead of him was Lieutenant Terry Blankenship, but he didn’t count. All the other pilots thought he was actually a machine and therefore he didn’t qualify for admiration. Woods was proud of his landing grades, butdidn’t talk about it. You were supposed to act as if it was a very ordinary accomplishment that you never thought about at all. Routine stuff. Ordinary day’s work. The objective of Navy Air was to accomplish the impossible with negligible apparent effort.

Woods wanted to draft the flight schedule for Vialli for the first day out of Naples. It would be ready when Vialli got back and he wouldn’t have to try to do it in the middle of the night after everyone had gone to bed, not knowing when they were flying the next day and therefore angry at him for not doing it sooner. And that’s exactly what would happen if he didn’t do it for Vialli. Vialli wasn’t due for one more day. He would undoubtedly rush to get back to the ship the hour his leave expired, which was midnight the night before they sailed. Better to do it now, get it over with, and have Vialli owe him one. He drank deeply from his coffee cup and opened a new file on Vialli’s computer, under the flight schedule macro.

The rear door to the ready room flew open from the passageway. Big walked in with his usual flourish and looked around. There were three officers in the ready room including Woods. Brillo was the Squadron Duty Officer and was sitting in his khakis at the desk at the front of the room, and Sedge was using his ready room chair as a desk to write the evaluations of the enlisted men in his division. He had the Aviation Armament division, which included the AOs, the aviation ordnancemen who handled the missiles and the bullets.

Big saw Woods and walked over to him. “Well, I guess we’re hosed on our port call in Haifa,” he said resignedly.

Woods glanced up, debating whether to ask Big the question he was obviously begging to be asked. Might as well get it over with. “Why’s that, Big?” he asked as he typed “Event 1A” on the computer.

“Didn’t you hear?” Big asked, hiking his pants up around his girth, glad to have found someone who didn’t know what he and most everyone else on the ship knew.

“Why don’t you tell me,” Woods said, bored.

“Terrorist attack in Israel last night. It’s on the closed circuit TV.”

Woods forced himself not to jump up and turn on the television. He knew Big would do it for him. Big crossed to the briefing area in the back of the ready room and turned on the television overhead. Brillo had heard what Big said and turned on the larger set in the front of the room at the same time. They came to life simultaneously. Lieutenant Commander Randy Dennison, Intelligence Officer for the Air Wing, was on the screen.

Woods turned his chair around to listen as Big raised the volume so it filled the room. “… But we don’t know yet how many were killed, or why. No one has taken responsibility for the attack. Hamas and Hezbollah have made public statements that they had nothing to do with it, and hint it may be the same people who were responsible for the Gaza crossing attack.” Dennison showed a news wire photograph of a bus sitting by the side of the Tel Aviv road, its windshield shot out. “The bus was on its way from a town north of Haifa to Tel Aviv. It had numerous school children aboard and several adults. There were four adults killed, three men and one woman. None of the children was harmed. For those of you who are wondering whether this will affect our port call to Haifa in three weeks, we don’t know right now. If you have any questions, dial two-two-four-five on your phones.”

“Brillo!” Woods shouted. “Call him and ask if there were any Americans on board.”

“Don’t you think he’d tell us?”

“Do it!” Woods screamed.

Brillo looked quickly at Big as if to ask, “What the hell’s up with him?” but Big simply shrugged. Brillo dialed the phone on the desk and spoke to an intelligence specialist, first class, who was covering the phone in CVIC, the carrier intelligence center. Lieutenant Commander Dennison took the call.

“Yes, sir, Ready Room Eight. Sir, we were wondering if there were any Americans on that bus in Israel.”

“Why do you care?” Dennison asked.

“Just interested in our fellow citizens,” Brillo said, glancing at Woods.

“We don’t know. I don’t have any information either way. Looks like it was just a bus trip from Nahariya.”

“Okay. Thanks, sir,” Brillo said, hanging up. “They don’t know. School trip from Nahariya,” he told Woods.

Woods jerked visibly on the mention of Nahariya. He fought the panic he felt deep in his gut. He tried to act nonchalant and drink his coffee as he looked at the flight schedule, but he realized he had been staring at it for five minutes without writing anything. He glanced up suddenly and saw Brillo and Big studying him. He couldn’t shake his feeling of foreboding.

The ready room door swung open again and Bark came in carrying a stack of papers. He sat in his chair and opened the steel drawer between his legs. He dropped the papers in the drawer on top of another pile of papers and tried to shut it. The drawer wouldn’t close. “Damn it!” he said, standing up quickly. He turned around and kicked the drawer. The drawer flew back and jammed, with paper stuck betweenthe drawer and the seat bottom. Muttering, he sat down in the chair with the drawer hanging open three inches. He got up again, walked three steps to the front, and leaned down under the blackboard and sliding charts. He examined the stacks of individual mailboxes that one of the squadron’s shops had created at his request. He stood on the enormous skull and bones cut into the tile in the front of the ready room. It had been his idea to bring the template of the skull and bones used to paint the huge Tomcat tails to the ready room and use it to make a tile masterpiece on the deck when the squadron retiled the ready room in Norfolk. He had purchased the black and white tiles with his own money. The pilots had cut pieces to form the skull and bones, which now lay perfectly as part of the tile floor surrounded by the yellow tile of the rest of the room, the squadron’s color. He was the only one in the squadron actually allowed to walk on the skull and bones.

He looked into his mail slot as he spoke to Brillo, sitting at the desk to his left. “Mail call yet this morning?”

“Yes, sir. Petty Officer Whaley just put it all in the slots.”

Bark bent over farther, looked into the back of his slot, and saw some letters. “Aha!” he exclaimed, drawing out three letters in pastel envelopes with the same writing. “She hasn’t forgotten me!”

“Well, she may have; she may just be writing so you don’t know it yet,” Big said, laughing hoarsely at his own humor. He was as his name suggested. Big. He was about six four, well over two hundred pounds, with a jolly round face and thinning hair.

“Thanks for the encouragement, Big,” the CO said, sitting back down in his seat. He held the letters to his nose and breathed in deeply. “Aaahhh,” he said, exhaling. “Why is it that perfume fades on the body in a matter of hours, but stays on a letter for weeks, or months?”

“I don’t know, Skipper,” Big said, glancing at Brillo. “I’ve always been fascinated by that question myself. Probably some scientific explanation about that. Maybe we should write to Chanel, or…”

“Maybe you should shut the hell up, Big,” Bark growled as he opened the letter with the oldest postmark. “As much as I love e-mail, there’s nothing like a good, old-fashioned letter… Hey, Brillo,” Bark said, stopping momentarily. “Where’s Vialli? I need to talk to him about the flight schedule for the next at-sea period. He’s had me on too many night hops lately. Real night hops. That’s no way to treat your Commanding Officer. I need a few more pinkies.” Pinkies were hops that landed after sunset but before it got really dark. They counted as night hops.

“He’s on leave, Skipper.”

“That’s right,” Bark replied, pulling out the two pages from his wife’s first letter.

“Hey, Trey,” Brillo said loudly so Woods could hear him from the back of the ready room. “When’s Boomer due back?”

“Tomorrow night,” Woods said. “Midnight. So, undoubtely he’ll be on the last O-boat at 2359. He’s probably trying to figure out whether being ‘back’ means ashore on the pier, or here in the ready room.”

Big stood next to Brillo drinking his coffee, his other hand in the pocket of his polyester khaki trousers, still looking for people who hadn’t heard the news. “Hey, Skipper, d’ya hear about that bus thing in Israel?”

Bark put down the letter and shook his head vigorously. “Could you believe that? I don’t get it at all. Take a bus, drive south, kill four of the people on board and disappear? Not the usual terrorist attack at all. Sounds more like an assassination. But why kill schoolteachers? I’ll tell you, those guys’ll kill anybody.” He shook his head in amazement. “I wonder if they’ll identify themselves. Bunch of cowards.” They all nodded in agreement. He started reading his letter again, then holding the open letter out in front of him, as if reading, he said, “They probably write letters to their sweethearts: ‘Dear Susie, weather is great here in southern Gaza. Wish you were here. I want you, I need you. Had a great day yesterday. Read a good book, killed a few people. It was great. Please write soon. Love, Abdul.’ “ He rubbed his forehead with his fingers. “I just don’t get it. What makes someone able to kill innocent people? Where does that come from?”

“I don’t know, Skipper,” Big replied. “I never have understood it. But if there’s anybody who knows how to take care of terrorists, it’s the Israelis. They don’t take any shit from anybody. We just wring our hands and sit on our asses. If it was a bus full of Americans, I sure as hell’d be ready to hurt someone.”

After the Skipper had read through his letters twice and smelled them three times, he stood up and stretched. “Hey, Trey,” he called out. “You put any more thought into how to intercept those Air Force F-15Es when they come out?”

Woods looked up from his blank flight schedule. “Not really much to it, Skipper. Pick them up on our radar from about a million miles out. They’ll be on the deck, thinking that going fast and low will make us not see ’em, we’ll roll in behind them and shoot ’em.”

“I’ve heard they can go almost supersonic on the deck in military power,” Bark said.

Woods shrugged. “They can go supersonic all day long for all I care. Just means they won’t be using their burners. Saves gas. It’s not like we can’t do supersonic intercepts.”

Bark looked at him as if he was slow. “I just think it’s pretty impressive to be able to go that fast without burner. I wish we could.”

“I don’t know of anybody else who can,” Woods said casually. “Maybe the Concorde. Or the old F-111F. Now that was a fast airplane.”

“Want to head down to the wardroom for lunch early? I’m starved.”

Woods didn’t. He wanted to be alone. He wanted to think. He wanted to stare at the blank flight schedule to hide the worry that he knew would soon be showing on his face. “Sure, Skipper,” he said as they walked out the ready room back door. He needed some time. He had to tell the Skipper that Boomer had gone to Israel. But he was probably fine, and if he told the Skipper now, Boomer could be court-martialed. He probably wouldn’t be; Bark would probably just put him in HAQ — House Arrest, Quarters — for the next five thousand port calls, or make him SDO for life, but it wouldn’t be in his record. Take the risk, Woods thought; just don’t be wrong.