Flash Point

10

The members of the task force had a uniformly grim look. The banter was gone.

Kinkaid spoke. “What do we know?”

Nicole White, a woman with short dark hair, sat next to Kinkaid in the conference room. Sami was in the next seat, and Cunningham sat next to him. She stood and approached the front. She had a small infrared remote control in her hand, which she pointed at her laptop sitting on the conference table next to the Sharp projector. Someone in the back dimmed the lights. She pushed a button and a map of Israel came up. There was an arrow on the map pointing to the coastal highway from Haifa to Tel Aviv.

“This is where it happened, or rather where it stopped. The bus was taken” — she pointed with a laser pointer — “here. The attackers came from the sea, apparently undetected. The Israelis are greatly chagrined about this. They thought their coastal surveillance was impenetrable. They used rubber boats, which don’t show up on radar, and they apparently knew the pattern of the Israeli patrol boats off the coast. The IR sensors and other equipment either didn’t pick them up or the guards watching it weren’t paying very close attention. In any case, they came ashore and took the bus. They drove south twenty miles, killed four adults on the bus, including the driver, then vanished. They left two teachers on the bus, and thirty children.”

“Go on,” Kinkaid ordered.

Nicole called up the next slide. “Here is the bus after the attack.” The photograph was from the front and showed the windshield shot out and the driver slumped on the side of the steering wheel. She silently went to the next photo, which she had scanned into her computer, and which was now incorporated into her digital slide presentation. It showed the inside of the bus and the seat behind the driver where the Israeli soldier lay. The next photo had been taken inside the bus looking down the aisle. A man and a woman were lying dead on the floor, face down. Their blood was a dark brown against the black rubber mat of the aisle. “This is the couple who was killed. We have no idea who they were. If the Israelis know, they’re not saying.”

Kinkaid looked at the photograph hard. “I’ll call.”

“Mossad or Aman?” Ricketts asked.

“Mossad,” Kinkaid replied, appreciating that Ricketts knew the difference between the Israeli intelligence agency and their military intelligence arm. He had learned long ago never to underestimate Ricketts. “Who would operate like this, Nicole?” Kinkaid queried. “Why not kill everyone? Why not make demands, and play it out? Why hit and run? To show they could? Some other agenda at work? These the same people who did Gaza?”

Sami stared at the map, wondering.

One man in the back spoke. “This isn’t the usual terrorist attack. They did this for a reason. The who is the why in this one.”

Sami spoke. “If this is the same group as Gaza,” he began, still forming the thoughts, “it’s a new level.”

“What do you mean?”

“These would be the first civilian targets.”

“We don’t know they were civilian targets.”

“Well, the driver, the couple—”

“We don’t have any idea who they were,” Kinkaid said.

“Fair enough, but if they are civilians, and it’s connected to Gaza, it would be the first time they have attacked civilians.”

“So?”

“Other terrorist groups have focused on suicide attacks. Some of that is to be dramatic. Some of it is because they know they’ll never get away with it anyway, so they may as well go out in a blaze of glory. These guys know they can get away with it. They’re smarter and more clever. And they’re showing the world,” Sami replied.

“What do we make of that?” Kincaid continued.

“I think we’re going to be hearing from them. They’re going to want to let everyone know who they are. That’s my guess.”

Farouk sat down heavily in the chair across the table from the Sheikh. He was proud and content, but exhausted from the journey. “We had complete success.”

“You bring honor to us. Did everything go according to the plan?”

“Yes. It went perfectly.”

“What of the men?”

“All did well, except for one. He was yelling and screaming. Too charged with feelings.”

“Do not take him next time.”

“Of course.”

“Did you find what you expected?”

“We did. We made sure.”

The Sheikh closed his eyes and put his head back. He seemed to be thinking for a long time. Finally, he stood and leaned on the chair he had been sitting in. He looked at Farouk. “It is time. I will go to Beirut and show myself. They must know of us and what we stand for. Things will never be the same again.”

Woods sat in the wardroom with other pilots and RIOs from VF-103. They took up almost an entire table of twenty as they sat shoulder to shoulder drinking coffee in their leather and nylon flight jackets, joking about other squadrons, other carriers, the Pacific Fleet, the Air Force, and one another. The morale in the squadron was as high as Woods had ever seen it. Bark had left the wardroom ten minutes before, which had allowed the rest of the officers to relax.

“Where’s our next port call, Trey?” asked Brillo.

“Athens,” Woods answered.

“What’s it like?” Wink asked. He was on his third cruise, but his first two had been to Westpac, the western Pacific, on the Nimitz. This was his first time in the Mediterranean.

“It’s really beautiful — “ began Woods.

“It’s not even a port,” Big interrupted.

Wink looked at him curiously. “Huh?”

“It’s not a port. Athens isn’t on the water. Everybody thinks it is, but it isn’t. The port is Piraeus, about fifteen miles south of Athens. It’s a great place though.”

“Who’s in charge of the admin?” asked Brillo.

“Gunner Bailey,” said Big, wrinkling his nose, referring to Chief Warrant Officer Ruben Bailey. He was a Warrant Officer, and therefore a member of the officers’ mess. But he was more like a Chief Petty Officer, a senior enlisted man, which he used to be. He didn’t have many friends in the squadron among the officers, mostly because he was very serious about his job and not prone to joking around. He was old enough to make them feel very young, yet, as a Warrant Officer, junior to the most junior Ensign. “He’s got the taste of a hooker,” Big continued. “He’ll find some Greek motel with no running water and prostitutes all over the place. He’ll crow about how much money he saved.”

Woods replied, “He did a good job in Barcelona.”

“Yeah, but we got arrested by the Guardia Civil right by the hotel he selected for making too much noise…”

“No, Big, you got arrested for taking a leak on him — you thought he was a light post.”

The table erupted in laughter as Woods brought up one of the squadron’s mythologically large stories about Big, the one who always seemed to be in the middle of a story if it was colorful.

Big’s eyes disappeared as he laughed with the others. “How was I supposed to know? Brillo was supposed to be my seeing-eye dog. He allowed me to make that perfectly understandable mistake.”

Brillo exclaimed, “You’re going to lay that on me? You piss on the meanest cop in the Med and it’s my fault? I don’t think so.”

Big chuckled deeply. “Anybody who wears a hat that stupid deserves to get—”

The 1MC loudspeaker system on the ship came to life. “Now hear this. Now hear this,” said a young voice that they all recognized as one of the boatswain’s mates on the bridge who routinely made announcements. They quieted just enough to hear whatever he had to say. “Lieutenant Woods to the flag bridge. Lieutenant Woods to the flag bridge.”

Woods turned deep red. He looked at the other members of the squadron, who were looking at him. Never in his experience in the Navy had he heard of an aviator being summoned personally to the bridge, let alone the flag bridge. His heart was racing as he stood up, reluctantly, ready to go to the executioner. The smiles faded. They could tell from his face that either he had no idea what this was about, or he knew exactly. They didn’t ask.

Woods walked aft from the wardroom down the starboard side through the knee knockers. They had been on cruise for three months and he had never even seen the Admiral. He didn’t even know what he looked like and couldn’t remember his name. He stepped from gray tile to blue tile, denoting his passage into flag country. He passed the Admiral’s wardroom, nearly as large as one of the forward wardrooms for fifty officers. What’s his name? Woods asked himself. He found the shining ladder with white painted rope wrapped around the rails and began his long climb up to the 08 level, eight levels above the main deck — the hangar deck — and five above the wardroom and the ready rooms on the 03 level.

He jumped up the last two steps on the ladder to the 08 level and breathed deeply to catch his breath. Standing in front of the closed door that led to the bridge, he was finally ready. He opened the door and stepped through the hatch, stopping in his tracks as he neared the bridge — the Admiral, the Ship’s Captain, the Air Wing Commander, and Bark, his Squadron Commanding Officer, were all there. The Admiral was holding a sheet of yellow paper, which was obviously from an official Navy message.

“Here he is, sir,” Bark announced as Woods approached.

“Good evening, sir,” Woods said.

“Lieutenant…” The Admiral looked at Woods and then said. “This isn’t the place to get into what I have to discuss with you. Let’s go below.” With that he stood up and walked past Woods out the door, starting down the ladder that Woods had just climbed.

Woods and the senior officers followed the Admiral to his wardroom. The admiral sat at one end of his table and motioned for the other senior officers to join him. He was about fifty, average height, trim build, with graying black hair combed neatly. Everything about him said that he was organized, neat, and disciplined. The messman automatically went for cups and a pot of coffee. Woods stood awkwardly in the middle of the room. “Sit down, Lieutenant,” the Admiral said roughly, pointing to the seat at the other end of the table.

Admiral Joseph Sweat, former A-6 and F/A-18 pilot, with over a thousand carrier landings and a chest full of ribbons, had a reputation in the fleet as being fair and reasonable, but he wasn’t known for his great sense of humor.

The messman set a cup in front of each of them and poured coffee. He put cream and sugar in the middle of the table in matching porcelain containers.

The Admiral’s leather flight jacket was covered with patches from his former squadrons and centurion patches from carriers marking each one hundred carrier landings. “What do you know about Lieutenant Junior Grade Vialli?” he asked quickly, reaching for his coffee and staring at Woods with his intense eyes.

Woods didn’t want to have this conversation. Whatever it was about, it was going to be bad. He prayed it wasn’t as bad as he feared. “He’s my wingman, roommate. What in particular would you like to know?”

“Where is he?”

Woods’s heart skipped as he swallowed. “He’s on leave.”

“Where?”

“Naples, sir.”

“Did he go anywhere else?”

The other officers were watching him closely. “I’m not sure,” Woods replied finally, not wanting to meet the piercing gaze of the Admiral’s blue eyes.

“Did he tell you he might go anywhere else? Anywhere at all?”

Woods knew the game was up. “He did mention one possibility, sir.”

“Where?” the Admiral pressed, knowing Woods knew.

Woods leaned against the back of the black leather chair, trying not to slump. “He met a girl he thought was Italian. Turned out she was from Israel…”

At the mention of the word Israel, the Admiral’s face twitched noticeably.

“… and she wanted him to come see her. He took leave for Naples, thinking he might fly to Israel for the weekend, see her, and come back before he was due back aboard.”

Bark’s eyes opened to twice their usual size. “You didn’t tell me?”

Woods didn’t respond. He just looked at his CO with his lips pressed tightly together and nodded almost imperceptibly.

The Admiral picked up the yellow paper. “We just received this message. You should be aware of it. It’s from the Secretary of Defense, forwarding a message from our embassy in Tel Aviv. Apparently one of the adults on the bus that was attacked, one of those killed, had Lieutenant Vialli’s ID card in his shoe.”

Woods closed his eyes and lowered his head. The pain on his face was apparent to everyone at the table. They sat in complete silence, waiting.

Finally the Admiral spoke again to Woods. “Can you think of any way someone else would have his ID card?”

Woods tried to speak, stopped, then tried again. “Can’t they identify him?”

The Admiral nodded. “Probably. But they were wondering what the hell he was doing there, and asked us. Now we’re wondering what the hell he was doing there and asking you.”

“What happened?” Woods asked.

“He died in the attack.”

Woods was suddenly engulfed with rage. His eyes burned as he looked around the table. None of the senior officers was affected. Bark was mad at him for not telling him Vialli was sneaking off, the Admiral was mad because he was being squeezed for allowing one of his officers to go to Israel without the State Department knowing about it, and the others were just along for the ride.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” Bark asked finally.

Woods looked at him in disbelief. He felt betrayed. “What do I have to say for myself? For not telling you he was going to see his girlfriend in Israel? Guilty. I should have told you and I didn’t,” he said, spite dominating his thoughts. “I should probably get court-martialed.”

“Don’t get cute, Lieutenant,” the Admiral said. “We just want to get to the bottom of this. We want to find out what happened, how one of our officers could have gone to Israel without us knowing about it. We wanted to ask you how—”

“Doesn’t anybody care who did this?” Woods interrupted. “Why aren’t we talking about what we’re going to do to them?”

The Admiral looked at him disapprovingly. “You’re upset. That’s understandable.” He paused. “I want you to prepare a report on how Mr. Vialli took leave without informing his Commanding Officer of the true destination and have it ready by the end of the day.”

Woods exhaled suddenly, a sound that could have been an exclamation or a laugh. He looked at Bark. “Yes, sir. I would be happy to prepare a report, sir.” He got up and moved toward the door.

“Lieutenant!” the Admiral shouted.

Woods stopped and turned around.

“I have not dismissed you yet.”

Woods stood at attention looking over the Admiral at the portrait of George Washington on the wall behind him. He’d go after whoever did this to Vialli.

After some seconds the Admiral said, “Dismissed.”

Woods executed a perfect about-face and strode quickly out of the room. A sailor opened the door for him and shut it quietly behind him as he left.

“What the hell was he doing in Israel?” Sami asked Cunningham as they walked to the conference room, for the next of what seemed like an infinite number of meetings of the task force.

“Woman,” Cunningham replied, looking down the corridor for Kinkaid whom he wanted to see right away.

“Did he have permission?”

“Nope.”

“No?”

“No. Told his roommate, but nobody else. The roommate didn’t tell anyone until it was too late.”

“He’s in some deep shit.”

“Good guess.” They opened the door to the conference room and crossed to the coffee machine that was kept fresh by some unknown person.

“Good morning,” Kinkaid said as they got their coffee. “If everyone will take a seat, we can begin. We all have work to do, so I want to keep this time to a minimum. We’ve got two hits, clearly well planned and well executed. No casualties to the terrorists, which sets them apart from virtually all terrorists that have come before them. They care about living through it and they have escaped without a trace from Gaza, and from Israel itself, something most of us considered impossible. Anybody got anything?”

Nicole spoke. “I’ve been in contact with the Mossad. They’re playing it very close to the vest. I think there’s more to this one than meets the eye. Official position is that they have no idea who did it or why. The one initially unidentified man who was killed we now know was a U.S. Navy pilot from the Washington. The carrier was in Naples. The officer, we now learn, was on unauthorized leave, apparently visiting an Israeli woman from Nahariya. At least that’s the report we’ve gotten from the Navy. Met her on the train south of Naples, and fell for her. Went to visit her, and she’s the one who was killed with him.” Nicole stopped, seeing the image of what she was about to say. “They were both shot in the back. At close range.”

“Assassinated,” Sami said. The others listened. “So who was the target?”

Kinkaid replied, “You can’t know from that evidence, but the communiqué makes it pretty clear. Sami?”

“Right,” Sami said. He stood and switched on the overhead projector, placed the acetate of the communiqué on it, and turned on the light. The beautiful Arabic script was projected onto the large screen in the front of the room. “This was received this morning by several wire services and our embassy in London. You all have a translation of it in front of you.” They glanced at the papers lying on the table. Some picked them up. “The translations from the wire services aren’t bad, but there’s more to it. First, I want you to note that this is handwritten. Beautifully. Someone took great care in writing this. There are no errors of spelling, or punctuation, or grammar, or even syntax. That implies several things: We’re dealing with someone who is very educated, and very careful. My guess is that this document went through many drafts, probably before the events it discusses. It also shows that the person doesn’t care if he is identified. Like English, only perhaps more so, Arabic script writing is very characteristic. You can recognize someone’s hand, or style, fairly easily. My sense is that he doesn’t care.”

He placed a pencil on a line in the middle. “The content is equally interesting. The gist of this communiqué is that they are the ones who conducted the attack on the Israeli bus, and they also are the ones responsible for the Gaza crossing attack. They note… here” — he pointed to some Arabic — “that they left their American weapons in the van in sequential serial number order for easy identification. We knew that because the Mossad sent us those pictures. Those photos have not been released to the press, and those not involved in the attack would have no way of knowing about the serial numbers. This is their means of authentication.”

“Or they could have inside information from Israeli intelligence,” Nicole added.

“Or Palestinian intelligence,” Cunningham said.

“Other than those two possibilities, it shows they were involved,” Sami replied.

Sami read on to himself, then spoke. “Here’s the heart of it… ‘We are the Assassins. Israel is an intolerable sore in the region and must be eradicated. We are everywhere, but will never be seen. We will never rest until Israel is no longer. The bus attack was necessary and important. Ask Israel why, if you want to know the reason.’ “ He looked up. “Frankly, I’m puzzled. Why would Israel know the reason for the school bus attack? Anyway, they go on. ‘The American was an unexpected gift. His presence on the bus confirms that Israel is the puppet of America and America is just the most recent Crusader to try to take over Islamic land.’ “ He read on to himself for a moment, then stopped. “The rest is pretty predictable, condemns the Palestinian Authority of Gaza as a bunch of traitors, condemns the West, the usual.”

“So,” Ricketts said. “At least they’ve identified themselves. And it’s not the usual. Very different. The Assassins…” he said. He looked at Sami. “Is it signed?”

Sami looked down at the document even though he already knew the answer. He was annoyed at himself that he hadn’t mentioned it already. “Yeah. Sheikh al-Jabal.”

Ricketts sat up. “That’s your guy, right? The one from that NSA track?”

“That’s him.”