Firebreak

by Richard Herman

  B. J. Allison smiled. “There’s the smoking gun. Imagine, the President’s campaign financed by the Mafia and being investigated by the IRS.” Her mind wheeled with the implications. “We’ll need proof. I’m positive that the middle man is the only link to Pontowski and everything hinges around him. Can you find him?”

  “Oh, I think so,” Tara promised.

  “When are you seeing Fraser next?”

  “Tonight. We’re having dinner at his Watergate apartment.”

  “How appropriate,” Allison said. “Can you have something for those nice reporters by tomorrow?” Tara reassured her that she would. “Have you met that young man we talked about the other day? The congressman who …” lira told her that they had met and the congressman was nibbling at the bait.

  “Drop him,” Allison ordered. “After you finish with Fraser, there’s a more interesting person I’d like you to meet. But it will have to be carefully arranged.”

  Mad Mike Martin was pacing back and forth in RAF Stone-wood’s Intelligence vault like a caged tiger, his limp more pronounced than normal. When he was worried, deep in thought, or the weather suddenly turned damp, his old war wound flared up and his hip would stiffen. All three conditions were affecting him as he listened to Matt cover the Iraqi defenses that they would have to penetrate in order to hit the nerve gas plant near Kirkuk.

  Furry was dozing on a couch, worn out by the long hours he had spent with Carroll and Matt trying to put something together that would satisfy the colonel. But true to form, Martin was knocking their planning into the dirt—again. Carroll stared at his feet as he listened to Matt cover the fate of Dave Harkabi when he tried to lead a strike against the plant. When Matt was finished, Martin grunted an obscenity and turned to Carroll. “Okay, Roger Rabbit Redux, what’ve you got?”

  Carroll caught the allusion, no, he corrected himself, a double allusion to fantasy and fiction. Why did Martin go to such lengths to cover a brilliant mind? “Colonel, the DIA sent us a videotape on that engagement Matt just briefed you on. Never seen anything like it.” He shoved a cassette into a VCR. The videotape was a copy of the radar tapes from the orbiting AWACS that had monitored the engagement. The radar returns on the tape had been color-coded to separate the F-16s from the SU-27s and captions summarized the battle. The audio on the tape recaptured the radio transmissions between Johar and Samir and had been synchronized with the action.

  “That’s really helpful,” Martin grumbled, “I don’t understand a fucking word of Arabic.”

  Carroll ran the tape again and translated as the engagement unfolded. Now the men were clustered around the TV set. “Run it again,” Matt said. “Did you hear the one jock call the other one Joe?”

  This time, both Matt and Furry made notes as the engagement replayed and Carroll interpreted. “Jesus H. Christ,” Furry blurted when the short tape played out, “those two guys did that at night! They are good. And who the hell is Joe?”

  “Brigadier General Hussan Mana,” Carroll said, spreading out a Baghdad newspaper and a glossy magazine with Mana’s picture on the cover. “According to these articles he got both kills. The tapes here prove that one pilot did shoot both F-Sixteens down. I think he’s Joe.” He translated the articles for the men.

  When Carroll had finished, Martin sat down and studied his hands for a moment. “Gentlemen,” he said, his voice changed, respectful, “you have just seen a professional aerial assassin at work who’s as good as they get.” He looked at them. “I think it’s time to get serious here. Start taking notes.” For the next twenty minutes, Martin laid out a plan that launched them out of Diyarbakir, a Turkish air base 240 nautical miles northwest of Kirkuk. He also integrated KC-135 tankers, an AWACS, and an RC-135 reconnaissance bird into the mission. The colonel gave the plan a polish and refinement that was the end result of twenty years spent in the Tactical Air Force. The lessons he had learned through Red Flag exercises and endless hours in the cockpit were now bearing fruit. No staff officer, a product of professional military staff schools and endless headquarters assignments, could approach his level of expertise when it came to doing what the Air Force was all about.

  “Okay,” he finally said, “this is a beginning. We still have the problem of Joe to solve.”

  “Colonel”—it was Matt—“Dave Harkabi told us how the Israelis deliberately go after a good pilot like Mana. It takes some coordination, but it can be done.”

  Martin jabbed a finger at the glossy magazine. “Sounds fair to me. Work on it. Mana is dead meat, Pontowski, and I’m gonna do the rendering.

  “Next subject—training,” Martin continued. “Program the flight simulator for an attack on Kirkuk. Every crew going on the mission runs the attack at least four times in the sim until they can do it in their sleep. I don’t want this to be a first-look mission.”

  “Colonel,” Furry said, “easier said than done. First, the low-level attack program in the sim is dedicated to nuclear strike lines. We’d need a waiver to the regulations from pretty high up to down load the computer.”

  “Is that regulation man-made or God-made?” Martin growled.

  “Also,” Furry continued, “reprogramming the sim’s computer isn’t that easy. It takes three, maybe four weeks to create a realistic data base.”

  Martin paced the floor, fully alive for the first time in months, eager to engage. His “fangs” were out. “You swingin’ dicks know who the Gruesome Twosome are?” The three men exchanged puzzled looks. “Those are the two computer whiz kids who run McDonnell’s simulator at St. Louis,” Martin explained. “They can reprogram that damn thing to represent an entire low-level route, a target, and every air defense threat known to man whenever they get the urge.”

  “Colonel Martin,” Furry protested, “our sim’s nowhere as cosmic as McDonnell’s. They got computer capability our pukes can’t even spell.”

  “Yeah? Well, I want the Gruesome Twosome here to work on our simulator.” A wicked look crossed his face. “The crews I choose for the mission have got to stomp the hell out of those two meatheads in the sim before they get to fly the real thing.” Martin believed in competition. “They’ll be here tomorrow,” the colonel promised.

  A nasty grin split Dennis Leander’s elfin face as he rolled a hand controller on the console of McDonnell Aircraft Company’s flight simulator. Inside the planetariumlike room, two young Air Force lieutenants were getting their first taste of air-to-air combat against a MiG-29 Fulcrum. Thanks to Leander, they were losing. His partner, Larry Stigler, was bored. They had defeated too many budding aces and needed a new challenge. Stigler stretched out his lanky frame that had at one time earned him the nickname Stork. Now he was known as the senior partner of the Gruesome Twosome.

  “Give the kids a break,” Stigler told Leander.

  “Why? Better they learn some hard facts here than in real life.” He was rolling the Fulcrum in for a “kill” on the crew inside. He was about to send an AA-11 missile up the crew’s tailpipe when the door from the hall opened and the vice president in charge of F-15 production walked in. The two immediately became all business and froze the simulator. “Please stand by,” Leander told the crew over the intercom. “We will resume in a few moments.” Both he and Stigler assumed they were in trouble for something they had done. Their hijinks in the simulator were too many to catalog and both young men were certain that some Air Force colonel had lodged a complaint—again.

  The vice president studied the frozen displays on the console. “Good move,” he allowed. “By freezing the action, they may get a clue and sort it out.” He kept a straight face. “What in the devil have you two been up to now?”

  Stigler shot a worried look at Leander. “Sir, if it’s about sandbagging that colonel who was in here yesterday with the good-looking captain, well, we figured he was only in here trying to impress her so we—”

  “Right”—the vice president grinned, letting them off the hook—“you gave him a fuel transfer problem every time he approached t
o land so he would flame out and crash.” The two young men hung their heads, trying to act ashamed. “She wasn’t impressed,” the vice president said. “Do either of you remember a Colonel Mike Martin who came through here about a year ago?”

  The Gruesome Twosome nodded yes. Their experience with Martin had been a hard one to forget. Not only had the colonel soundly trounced them, but he had taken them out for a night on the town, hooked them up with three Too tie La Rues, drunk them all under the table, and then come back the next day for a repeat performance in the simulator.

  “We got a phone call about ten minutes ago. Martin wants you two at RAF Stonewood in England ASAP for some special project. Want to go? When Martin says ASAP, he means yesterday.”

  Leander spun in his chair and keyed his mike. “Gentlemen, you’re free and flying,” he told the crew inside the simulator. He rolled his hand controller and flew the MiG-29 Fulcrum out in front of the pilot and let him take a missile shot. When the image of the Fulcrum on the wall exploded in front of the crew, Leander and Stigler worked furiously, shutting the simulator down.

  The two puzzled lieutenants crawled out of the mock-up of the cockpit and walked out of the dome. No one was at the console and the door to the hall was open.

  The armored personnel carrier that had been configured as an ambulance clanked up to the makeshift aid station. The rear ramp flopped down and Shoshana and Hanni carried out a litter with a badly wounded soldier. “She was out there for three days,” Shoshana told the waiting doctor. “We were lucky to have found her.” Shoshana did not tell the doctor that it had taken her and Hanni almost six hours to carry the girl down a hill through heavy sniper fire to get her to the APC.

  A private on the side of the tent was working a field telephone. “They’re asking for transportation to bring in wounded POWs,” the old man said. Shoshana got the details from the private, a reservist she estimated was pushing sixty years of age. We’re reaching deep, she thought. “It’s pretty quiet up front,” the private told her, “so we’re moving POWs. Probably want to interrogate them.” Experience had taught the Israelis that a gentle questioning by a doctor while he was treating a wounded POW produced a wealth of intelligence. But it had to be a male doctor who spoke Arabic, otherwise the POW would clam up and not say a word.

  The war that Shoshana was now caught up in amounted to endless short runs in an M113 APC between an aid station and the fighting. She would normally drive the twelve-ton tracked vehicle and take it right into the action to bring out wounded tankers and infantrymen. She and Hanni had turned into a well-rehearsed team and could quickly pick up a wounded man or woman. Shoshana would use die APC as a shield, and when she shouted “GO!” Hanni would drop die ramp while she darted back through the crew compartment to help. The two women could have a casualty back into the APC, buttoned up, and moving in less than a minute. They were a good team.

  The run to the pickup point was quiet and they fell into a line of trucks and vehicles moving forward for resupply. Hanni had the top hatch open and watched the traffic for clues. They had become experts at judging the ebb and flow of the fighting by what was moving on the roads. Shoshana had no trouble finding the POW holding cage, which in itself was an indication that things were under control. While they waited for the MPs to bring the POWs out, they sat and ate in the shade of the APC. “I think we’re building up for a major push,” Hanni said.

  “How soon?” Shoshana asked.

  “At least forty-eight hours. They’re still moving battle-damaged tanks to the rear and there’s not much movement of fresh troops—yet.”

  “I could use some sleep and a shower,” Shoshana said.

  “And a chance to wash our clothes,” Hanni added. They both smelled very ripe.

  Shoshana pushed the sleeves of Matt’s flight suit up above her elbows. “We got to get you one of these,” she said. “It’s much more comfortable than fatigues and dries a lot faster when you wash it.”

  “I don’t think I’d look quite as good as you do in one,” Hanni allowed.

  An MP came up leading four Syrian POWs who were carrying two litter patients. “You get the bunch,” he said. After the litters were strapped into their backs, he made the four POWs sit on the floor and chained them together. “Got a weapon?” he asked. Hanni showed him the Galil assault carbine they carried and cocked it, setting the safety. They had hauled POWs before and the guard couldn’t be spared to escort them.

  The trip back was uneventful and they deposited the POWs at a large barbed-wire compound. Then they drove the APC to a service point for fuel and maintenance. A technician inspected the APC and told them to clean it out while he checked the V-6 diesel engine. “Look at all that crap,” he said. Hanni explained that the Syrian POWs had left the trash behind: mostly empty food containers and wrappers. The technician kicked a Syrian newspaper aside with his foot. “Why do they let them keep all this?”

  “Well, those are personal belongings,” Shoshana explained, “and they were just captured.” She picked up the Syrian newspaper and glanced at it. The picture on the front page drove her to her knees. She knelt there, unable to move.

  “Shoshana,” Hanni said rushing over to her, “what’s the matter?”

  Shoshana handed her the paper. “I knew that man,” she said. It was the same picture of Gad Habish that the Ganef had seen.

  The grisly sight of the man hanging by his neck stunned Hanni as she translated. “It’s a story about Egyptians hanging an Israeli spy in Cairo. They hung him in public.”

  “His name is Gad Habish,” Shoshana said. “He worked for Mossad.”

  “A family member?” the technician asked. It was a common question.

  She shook her head. “Somebody I used to know.” Shoshana knelt there, trying to understand her feelings. She had driven Habish from her memory, refusing to think about the man who had been her control. If anything, she had always blamed Habish for the Mana affair and what she had become, a murderer and whore. But why didn’t she feel relief at his death? There was no sense of justification, revenge, or even sympathy. Nothing. Had she become so hardened to death that she felt nothing?

  Now the floodgate of memory opened and she could no longer control it. It washed over her, threatening to drown her. And kneeling in the crew compartment of that battle-scarred APC, surrounded by the quiet of a lull in a war that seemed to have no end, the tears came. Through her anguish, Habish’s voice came to her out of the mist of memory. “You must put your personal feelings away.… Always remember where you hid them … that is the way you remain a human being.… There is no choice.”

  Slowly, the emotions wracking her quieted. “Do we ever have a choice?”

  Hanni knelt beside her and wrapped her arms around her, comforting the woman. “No, child. We don’t have a choice.”

  The technician looked away, not wanting to intrude. He kicked a small green round tube out of a corner. “Now what the hell is that?” he asked, kicking it again, toward the two women.

  Shoshana recognized it immediately and picked it up. “I thought those were Syrian POWs,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper.

  “They were,” Hanni answered.

  “Then why did they have this?” she asked, holding the combo pen, the antidote to Iraq’s newest and most deadly nerve gas.

  22

  Thirty-five kilometers aren’t very much, Shoshana thought, but they make all the difference. She was standing with Hanni in the shower room of a vocational school thirty-five kilometers south of the border, letting the warm water wash over her, filling her with pleasure. They had been pulled out of the front line fourteen hours before, loaded on a truck with twelve other women, and sent south for rest and recuperation. Shoshana could not believe what a hot meal, twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep, and now a shower could do for her morale. Or how the simple things could revive her and feel so good. She felt alive.

  “Here, catch,” Hanni said, throwing her a tube of shampoo. Shoshana quickly unbraid
ed her heavy plait of hair and scrubbed vigorously, feeling it come clean.

  “My hair’s too long,” she admitted. For the first time in weeks, she felt clean. She stepped out of the shower, wrapped her only towel around her hair, and found a spot at a large washbasin with three other women and scrubbed at her clothes. Matt’s flight suit was easy to wash but she doubted that her underwear would ever come clean.

  Hanni handed her a large towel that was still damp from its earlier user. Shoshana wrapped it around her and die two women went outside to a soccer field, spread their clothesout to dry and collapsed onto the grass. The warm sun lulled them to sleep.

  A hand was shaking Shoshana. “We need to find some shade or we’ll get sunburnt.” It was Hanni. They gathered up their clothes and kit bags and moved under a lanai. All the chairs and sun lounges were occupied by other women so they sat on the cement deck. Shoshana found her hairbrush and ran it through her hair. “I need to do something with this,” she said.

  “Why don’t you tie it back instead of braiding it,” Hanni suggested, “at least for now.”

  Shoshana rummaged in her kit bag and pulled out a pair of scissors. “I know just the thing,” she said. She grabbed Matt’s flight suit and examined the long zipper that ran down the front. “The flap behind the zipper really chafes at my skin. I don’t know why it’s even there.” She pointed to the red rash between her breasts and then went to work, snipping away at the flap. Finally, she had a long strip of cloth two inches wide and two and a half feet long. Hanni took the makeshift ribbon from her and pulled Shoshana’s hair back, using the green strip to hold her hair in a loose plait.