“Are you avenging your people?”
“I am killing Americans. They are the ones who let the Serbs do what they did and they are the ones who left the Serbs in place when the fighting was over. They and their friends the Russians. They order the world as it pleases them. Together, the Russians and the Americans, they are the new Soviets. They think everything is for them. They take everything from the world and give back nothing. I hate them. I want to make trouble for them. I want to teach them there is a price they must pay for what they do.”
Turko did not hate the Americans. But it was true they were becoming the same thing as the Russians. As far as Chechnya was concerned, they were as good as the same. With America’s blessing, the Russians were waging their “war on terrorism” against Chechnya. The Americans at the same time had Afghanistan and Iraq, the Philippines, the Sudan, Indonesia. More to come.
“I agree with you,” he said.
Pec reached around Turko’s other side, and unlocked the door. Then he handed the Chechen a folded piece of paper. “When you are ready for your new crew, call this number, and they will come. If they don’t answer, keep calling. Once you have talked to them, don’t call it again. Now get out.”
Turko did so. He still wasn’t sure if he was going to be shot. He tried to remember how long a walk it was back to the highway, and how he would get from there to where he needed to go.
Pec lowered his window. “Over in the corner by those pine trees is a gray Dodge automobile. It was stolen yesterday in West Virginia, but has another license plate. There are more license plates in the trunk. If you need another vehicle, steal one. The truck you use, the boat you use, they should be stolen. Don’t rent or buy anything. Stolen vehicles can be traced only to their owners.”
“Very well,” said Turko.
Pec’s driver started the van. “I will see you in a week,” Pec said. “If you fail, we will not meet again—ever.”
“I understand,” said Turko.
“So do I.”
Westman tied up just aft of the Roberta June in the darkness, at a dock extension that offered ample mooring for the small inflatable. The waves in the bay were running two feet when he crossed, compelling him to put on an orange Coast Guard float coat to keep dry. He removed it now that he was at the dock, rejoicing in the coolness that followed. The stiff wind that had been blowing up the bay was only a soft, caressing breeze here in this sheltered anchorage. He stood a moment, savoring it, then reminded himself of the task at hand.
Returning the flotation jacket to its locker just forward of the inflatable’s big outboard engine, he stepped up onto the dock and stood a moment, looking about, and listening.
There was some laughter coming from a boat across the river, and a dog barking somewhere on Westman’s side of the waterway. The other sounds were also normal—air-conditioning, voices from a television set, frogs and insects, and the call of some night birds. Nothing from the Roberta June.
He approached the boat carefully. He had deliberately left his pistol in a pocket of the float coat. He wasn’t expecting trouble, let alone gunplay. What he was fearful of was simply being caught aboard the head boat without a warrant. The director of the CGIS was as straight an arrow as could be found in Washington.
Walking a few steps more, pausing to look up at the starry heavens, he waited by the entryway at the boat’s port-side railing. No one was near, or coming near.
Stepping quietly onto the boat’s deck, he slipped quickly into the main cabin, taking out his flashlight and shielding the beam from view from the shore. It looked much as it had on his earlier visit, though some of the junk and gear had been stowed.
Descending to the next deck, he found a storage area, filled with fishing equipment, and some cabins, two to each side. Three of them were empty but for gear and supplies, but the fourth contained a bunk, a metal desk, and a chair—all bolted to the flooring.
He searched the cabin quickly, finding nothing of interest. Opening the hatch to the engine compartment, he found things tidier than he had expected. There was little oil and almost no fumes in the bilge. This was hardly a first-class operation, but the boat was entitled to pass inspection. The whiskey bottle he’d seen on the floor of one of the cabins was another matter, but not one to deal with this night.
There was absolutely nothing to implicate the Roberta June in whatever it was the bridge bombers had been or might be up to here on the Delmarva Peninsula—or in any kind of wrongdoing, save some minor neglect of maritime regulations.
Clicking off his flashlight, Westman returned to the dock. Checking his watch, he decided to declare himself off duty. He started walking along the roadway that led to the Lighthouse Restaurant.
It was a warmly lit and friendly place. Taking a small table in the bar, he ordered a glass of cold white wine and a plate of fried scallops, with double tartar sauce.
There was music playing—bad soft rock. Westman tried to ignore it. His taste was wide-ranging and eclectic—Maurice Ravel and Erik Satie; Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson; Ramon Bermudez and Nokai; Django Reinhardt and Chet Baker. And Moondog, not to speak of Maxine Sullivan and Peggy Lee and Jane Monheit. But he could not fathom the processed pap and jittery noise that passed for popular music of the present era. He wondered how bar owners could think it a worthwhile investment to have it playing for customers.
But he hadn’t come to this place for the music. He had hoped the bartender would know her and be able to tell him where she lived. As it turned out, he didn’t need to. The blond lady off the Roberta June was there at the bar. She was staring down into her glass, paying him and the world about her no mind whatsoever.
Westman sipped his wine, taking the opportunity to note the lovely shape of her long legs, which were as tan as the rest of her.
His food came. Asking for a check only a second or two after his plate was set before him, he gobbled the meal down as decorously as he could manage. Wiping his mouth carefully with a napkin, he left enough money to cover the bill and provide a twenty-percent tip, then rose.
Her glass was nearly empty.
“Buy you a drink, sailor?” he said, standing just behind her.
Her head whipped around, but, recognizing him, she relaxed, and even smiled.
“I think that’s supposed to be my line,” she said.
“Consider it said.”
“All right. One more.”
“Have you eaten?” he asked.
“Yes. One of their fabulous cheeseburgers.”
“May I join you?”
“I guess you have.”
He settled himself on the stool next to hers. She had changed clothes, but was dressed much as before—khaki shorts and a light-blue polo shirt that matched the color of her eyes.
“You exercise,” he said.
“You’re observant.”
“I’m a professional investigator.”
“I swim. It’s the best exercise there is. In cadet training, we had to swim ten laps in this circular pool in full flight gear.”
“You made it.”
“I lapped all the guys.” She drank the last of her glass. “It’s true.”
The bartender came. Westman ordered scotch for her and a glass of red wine for himself.
“What brings you here?” she asked.
“I’m paid to check things out.”
“Including me.”
“Tonight. Yes.”
“Do I check out?”
“I guess you do.” That afternoon, he had run a computer search of the DOD database from the Manteo’s communications center. She’d been a Navy lieutenant—three pay grades above him—and a carrier combat pilot aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln until grounded because of a mishap. After that, she’d served as a base recreation officer. On the recommendation of her CO, she’d subsequently been separated from the Navy with a general discharge—though that was under appeal. There’d been an incident.
“You looked me up?” she said.
“Yes
I did. Also your friend Captain Schilling.”
“In the line of duty, or something else?”
“Curiosity, most of it official.”
“I don’t need any more trouble.”
“You won’t get any from me.”
Their drinks came. Westman sipped his wine, wishing they’d turn down the music. She took a healthy swallow of her whiskey.
“You want to know why I’m no longer in the Navy,” she said. A statement of fact, not a question.
“That was the reason for my curiosity. There was something about insubordination.”
“Did you ever hear of Kara Hultgreen?”
The name was familiar, but he couldn’t quite recall why.
“She was the Navy’s first carrier combat pilot. A Texas girl, out of San Antonio—call sign ‘Revlon.’ A looker, as you guys would say. But with balls. As you guys would say. Terrific pilot. Afraid of nothing. I saw a tape once of her landing an EA-6 Prowler with one of the landing gear jammed in the up position. Landed it as gently as a butterfly. The wing barely brushed the ground when she brought it to a stop.”
She lifted her glass again, this time taking only a sip. “You’re not a pilot, by any chance?” she asked.
“Used to be. After a fashion. Sailplanes. Schweizer 1-26’s.”
He thought she’d respond with an odious comparison of flimsy toys with gigantic war machines, full of thrust and weaponry. He was wrong.
“Sailplanes,” she said. “No engines. Then you are a flier.”
“Was. Only sailboats now.”
She stared down at her glass. “Kara Hultgreen was about the best goddamn flier I ever heard of. But she was a woman, so she got a ration of brown stuff all the way down the line. She hated EA-6’s. Thought she was better than that—an attitude not exactly appreciated by the male Prowler pilots. When Bill Clinton became President, he opened the combat slots to women, and Hultgreen leapt at it. Some say she got special dispensation—that she was hurried along through the program because she was a woman during an administration that was obsessed with political correctness. And maybe that’s true. But she qualified for a boat nevertheless. Had something like fifty traps, day and night.”
She rubbed at her eye, and then drank again.
“Her boat was the Lincoln too. Some of the men they had in the squadron back then never really accepted her. I don’t know if you ever met any carrier jocks, but the fact that theirs is the most dangerous and difficult form of military aviation is not lost on them. They think of themselves as superhuman—the ultimate macho. And maybe that’s true too. But when a mere girl came along and did what they can do—well, it must have been devastating. Hultgreen did what they did, and not a few of them hated it.”
“Did you know her?”
“I never heard of her until she was killed. But, yes, I know her. I learned everything I could about her. She’s why I joined Naval aviation.” Another sip. “She was a fully qualified F-14 pilot. Tomcats, just like I got to fly later. They were doing daylight traps, in good weather, when things went wrong. She made a bad approach, I’ll concede that. No neat ninety-degree turn on final, but that wasn’t the cause. Her port engine stalled. She kept trying to fly the plane in anyway. It was like she was willing it to land. But it was no go. She had lost control and was rolling to the left when her RIO—the guy in the backseat—decided they had only milliseconds to live and punched them out. His ejection fired first, shooting him out parallel to the sea at about two hundred feet. The plane had completely inverted by the time her ejection fired. She was shot directly into the water like from a cannon. It’s funny. Her flight jacket had only one tiny tear. But when they got her body out of the water she had no face left.”
Westman signaled the bartender for two more drinks.
“They spent a lot of money to recover that aircraft,” she said. “It was three thousand feet down. They wouldn’t have done it for a male pilot. You knew from the git-go they were trying to determine if a female aviator had screwed up big-time—and if so, whether the idea of call signs like ‘Revlon’ wasn’t a big mistake.”
She rubbed her eye again. Westman had an impulse to put his hand on her shoulder as a gesture of reassurance, but restrained himself. It would be taken badly. And he was on the job here—if working it a little self-indulgently.
“The official report was that it was engine failure—and it was. Some Pentagon reporter broke the story, and it was carved in marble ever after. But there was an unofficial preliminary report—where they take comments from everyone within miles and then sift through it all until they find something hard. Well, guess what all the macho types had to say? She wasn’t qualified. She was rammed through the program just to suit Navy political correctness. All those right-wing talk shows picked it up. There was even a documentary on PBS to the same effect. Women couldn’t cut it. They were a danger to American national security. Shit.”
“I had a woman CO once,” Westman said. “She was first-rate. Now she’s a rear admiral.”
“They grounded a number of women pilots after that,” Cat said. “But guess what? They’ve got females in pretty much every squadron now—with no problems. They had dainty little ladies dropping precision bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan. They’re doing it now in Africa.”
Her voice sounded as though it were about to crack. He admitted to himself that he had never encountered this sort of attitude among male members of the Coast Guard.
“What happened to you?” he asked.
“The same thing as Kara,” Cat said. “Only it was my backseat guy who didn’t get out in time. They blamed the engine stall on my approach. Claimed I was in an excessive crab that cut off the air to the engine, causing a compressor stall.”
“Those F-14’s were notoriously underpowered.”
“They lost a whole bunch of them to engine failures. There was a refit program in the eighties, but it got canceled.”
The new drinks came. She quickly finished her old one.
“He was a sweet guy, my No. 2,” she said. “He shouldn’t have had to die that way. Just because of a shift in procurement priorities.”
“Why did you leave the service?”
“I gather you read my 201 file.”
“Not completely.”
“I’ll put it simply. They wouldn’t let me fly anymore. And then my flight leader made a pass at me. More than a pass. An all-out assault. I hit him. Broke his nose. I got hit with insubordination, striking a superior officer, conduct unbecoming, the whole fucking thing. They didn’t buy the sexual assault charge I filed. So I had to walk out with a general discharge.”
“I’m sorry. Wouldn’t have happened in the Coast Guard.”
“The Coast Guard doesn’t have male carrier jocks. It’s not the real military.”
Working out of the Puerto Rico office, Westman had followed a crew of drug smugglers into a Yucatan jungle. He had shot one of them to death—after a DEA guy on their team had taken a burst of Uzi bullets in the belly.
“Just a bunch of lifeguards,” he said.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean that. Service rivalry getting to me, I guess.”
“And what do you do now?”
“I fly advertising banners along the beach—when the federal government lets us—and work on Burt’s head boat.”
“Until you get reinstated.”
“I don’t know that that’s going to happen. I just feel I owe it to myself to give it a shot. I have a job offer. A feeder airline in Iowa. Little turboprops. You know, my father and uncle were Navy—both pilots. I don’t think this is what they expected of me.”
“I’d like to see you fly.”
“I’m no national aerobatics champion, like Patty Wagstaff. But I get by.”
She took another very large swallow of whiskey.
“Easy there. You don’t want to end up like your next-door neighbor.”
“That’s right. You said you checked Burt out too.”
“He got bounced from the airline
s for drinking.”
“He had reason.”
Westman reminded himself of his job. “Getting crocked isn’t any more acceptable on the water than it is in the air.”
“I’m working on that.”
“What’s his problem?”
She turned on her stool to look at him, her right knee close to his thigh. Her eyes were speculative. They remained fixed on him, even as she took another sip.
“He dropped two nuclear bombs.”
Westman could think of nothing to say. He saw that she was deadly serious.
“You’re confusing him with Paul Tibbets, who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima.”
“It wasn’t on Japan. He’s not that old. He was a C-130 pilot. One night about forty years ago he lost two engines and had to dump cargo. The cargo was two hydrogen bombs. He says they’re still there. Offshore, southeast of Cape Henlopen.”
“Hydrogen bombs?”
“Yes, sir. Are Coast Guard warrant officers called ‘sir’?”
“They’re called ‘mister.’ But it doesn’t matter to me. Is that what you were doing out by Deepkill Shoal, looking for his bombs?”
“Yes. With a metal detector.”
“He didn’t go to the Air Force?”
“He’s been writing letters to Dover Air Force Base for weeks. They don’t care. Burt thinks one of the bombs is harmless. But the other one definitely isn’t. He’s old and sick—possibly terminal. He wants to find it. Get it out of the water.”
“It was such a long time ago.”
“They both contain fissionable uranium. One has a plutonium core. That stuff has a half-life of five hundred thousand years, but the casing—the weapon itself—it deteriorates. A few decades and it deforms. That’s why they’re constantly testing the stockpile at Los Alamos.”
Westman felt a little dazed. He had no doubt whatsoever she was telling the truth. But it was more than his mind could hold at the moment. He thought of the attack on the Bay Bridge, and what that might have been like if it had been a nuclear device that the bastards had exploded.
She finished her scotch. “Buy me a drink, sailor?”
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