Phantom Strike

by William H. Lovejoy

  “Then I don’t need the transcripts, do I?”

  “Oh. No, you don’t.”

  “Can you tell a lie if you need to?”

  She had to think about that one. This was not an interview like any she had ever read about or experienced. “I don’t know. Are you talking about legal matters?”

  “If the security of your nation were involved?”

  “That’s what Fawn Hall thought.”

  “If Baghdad was going to poison Seattle’s water supply?”

  She hesitated once again. “I suppose I could, if the rationales were justifiable.”

  “You’re up-to-date on aviation law?”

  “Very much so.”

  “How about office administration?”

  “I think I could handle that. I worked in my father’s accounting office through high school and while I was attending college at the University of Washington.”

  “And you’re divorced?” Wyatt asked, his blue eyes holding hers, being just a little obtrusive.

  That was not on her resume. Wyatt had run some background checks on her before showing up. That indicated he was more thorough than her first impression had suggested.

  “I don’t know what bearing that has on…”

  “This position would require that you move to a new city, Miss Kramer. It’s easier for a single person.”

  “The divorce was finalized over two years ago.”

  “You mind if I call you Janice?”

  “I go by Jan.”

  “And you don’t object to moving?” He went back to staring at the airplanes.

  “Probably not,” she said. “Mr. Wyatt, your ad simply asked for, ‘Attorney, aviation law and contracts.’ I don’t know anything about your company. For instance, for starters, where is it located?”

  Wyatt turned his head and grinned at her. “It isn’t. It’s not even formed yet, which is the first reason I need a lawyer. But I’m leaning toward Albuquerque as the base of operations at the moment. Do you like Albuquerque?”

  “I’ve never been there.”

  No wonder it was a blind ad. The whole thing was beginning to sound like a fly-by-night scheme. Without really meaning to do it, Kramer started to reverse the procedure of the interview. She became the interviewer. “What kind of business are you starting, Mr. Wyatt?”

  “We’ll be consulting professionals in aviation matters,” he said. “Anything from efficiency studies to route management to federal aviation applications to customizing and rebuilding very sophisticated aircraft for clients.”

  “And you have the background for that?”

  Again, she got the half-grin, as if he was amused at the course of the conversation. “I just got out of the Air Force, Miss Kramer.”

  “You were a pilot?”

  “Of just about every aircraft type they have.”

  “And you retired?”

  “No. I left a couple years early.”

  And gave up his pension? No way. He was probably kicked out of the service. She was becoming very skittish. “Mr. Wyatt, I’m not sure I’m the one…”

  “You haven’t asked about salary.”

  “All right. What salary are you offering?”

  “We’d start you at seventy thousand.”

  Well, now.

  “If it works out for you, and for us, we’ll boost that steadily and throw in stock bonuses and stock options.”

  “You say ‘us’, Mr. Wyatt.”

  “There are some friends of mine who will be joining the company.”

  It sounded a little more interesting to Kramer, being in on the start-up of a new enterprise. Still, there were no guarantees.

  “You seem assured that this venture will be successful,” she said.

  “It will be.” He spoke with absolute confidence. “I already have four contracts lined up. Of course, my attorney will have to check them over before I sign them.”

  “It sounds like a fair opportunity,” she said, attempting to be nice, “but I guess I’m also looking for some degree of security.”

  His grin widened. “Well, Jan. At the moment, I could guarantee your salary for a couple hundred years. I’ve got ten million in capitalization.”

  “My God! Where do you get money like that?”

  “That’s one of those little secrets we have to rationalize. Think of it as Seattle’s water supply.”

  Shady. All she could think was that this was on the shady side.

  “I don’t know about you,” he said while looking at his watch, “but your questions have convinced me. Do you want to go to dinner with a new boss?”

  “You’re offering me the job?”

  “If you could pack tonight, you can fly to Albuquerque with me in the morning.”

  The whole thing was preposterous, of course. She couldn’t just fly away to some vaporous destination with a stranger she had just met.

  But she did.

  And her father was furious with her.

  In four years, Andy Wyatt had never been bossy. And after four years, Janice Kramer was vice president, treasurer, and general manager of the company and making $100,000 plus bonuses annually. She did not get the really impressive bonuses some of the others did, but then she did not take the same risks they did. Wyatt appreciated her, though. He hated administrative details and left all of the day-to-day decisioning and the standard contracting to her. Only on general policy questions and special contracts did she get together with Wyatt and Barr and argue the merits. She had learned to love and trust both of them. She thought the feelings were reciprocal, though Wyatt wasn’t the effusive type, and Bucky Barr was so outgoing he loved everyone.

  And her relationship with Wyatt had taken a course with more curves in it than the Rio Grande. She wasn’t quite certain how she had allowed herself to become so involved — enthralled? — with a man whose attention was so easily diverted by high risk.

  The phone rang and Liz Jordan answered it, then swivelled her chair toward her, “Andy’s on Line One, Jan.”

  “Thanks.” Gently moving Ace’s massive head from the telephone console, she picked up the receiver. “Are you on-site?”

  Whenever this kind of operation was under way, they used extreme caution on the telephone.

  “On site and schedule,” Wyatt told her.

  “Good.”

  “Have you heard from Neil?”

  “He called last night,” she said. “He made the first contact, even though it interfered with a fabulous dinner he had planned.”

  “How did it go?”

  “The dinner? He didn’t say.”

  “No, damn it.”

  “The contact looks promising. He thinks it will pan out, but he won’t know for certain until the end of next week.”

  “All right, then. We may put this together yet.”

  “You didn’t have problems in Arizona?” she asked.

  “Only a good one. We were able to obtain the full complement of equipment. If we’re going to stay on schedule, I need a couple more bodies.”

  Of Aeroconsultants’ thirty-eight employees, only sixteen, including herself, had been cleared by Wyatt and Barr for special contracts. “You’ve used them up, Andy. All we’ve got left is Fox, and I’ve got him out in Riyadh.”

  “I know. What do you think about bringing in Harris and Gering?”

  Lefty Harris and Amie Gering were engine techs. “You’ve got power plant problems?”

  “We’re going to rebuild them all, but no, not real problems. They can handle some of the other chores, like everyone else is doing. Painting, for one.”

  “How long would you need them?” she asked, feeling suddenly protective of her schedule. “I’ve already got a backlog of projects for them here.”

  “A week.”

  “Andy.”

  “Ten days, maybe.”

  “You think they’re ready for this?”

  “They won’t know the whole operation. I’ll meet them in Lincoln, first, and work them through it.�
�

  “Okay,” she said with some misgivings.

  Jan Kramer did not like risking her whole future on unexpected developments.

  *

  Nelson Buckingham Barr had been married once, while he was stationed at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. Raylene Delehanty Barr was a statuesque blonde who stood four inches taller than Barr. Her physique had matched the strict requirements for showgirls at the Tropicana, and Barr had thought at the time that everything about her was flawless. It was not the first time he had been wrong, but it was the most expensive time. The excitement went out of the marriage in about thirty days, and the passion followed a couple months after that. It had cost him a $200,000 settlement to get unmarried.

  The episode still stung, whenever he thought about it. Despite his outward demeanour, Barr was not careless with money. He was not materially acquisitive. Back in Albuquerque, he owned a small two-bedroom condominium, an eight-year-old Ferrari 308GT, and an antique Bell Model 47 helicopter that dated from the Korean War. He and Wyatt shared ownership of a restored P-40 Warhawk.

  Since his twenty-fifth birthday, when he started receiving $250,000 a year from the trust set up by his father, he had learned that he could get along pretty well on his Air Force pay. He had set up a budget then that he still followed today. A large chunk of the trust payment was set aside to meet taxes, five or six thousand dollars was dumped into his checking account for play purposes, and the balance was invested. Barr’s stock, bond, money market, and Certificate of Deposit portfolio was currently valued at close to seven million. He owned fifteen per cent of Aeroconsultants, Inc., and was listed on the private corporation’s paperwork as vice president and secretary. The position paid him $100,000 a year, plus an occasional bonus. Sometimes the bonuses matched the salary, but every time he received one, he doled out chunks of it to the Red Cross, the American Heart Association, AIDS research, and/or his favourite educational foundation.

  Mostly, what he did for his salary was fly, which was his first and true love.

  He also talked about flying a lot when he and his friends gathered around a table.

  The Rancher’s Cafe and Lounge was going to be their kitchen for the next few weeks, and the whole group arrived there at eight o’clock in the evening, parking the three Jeep Wagoneers rented in Lincoln at the curb. It was a nice small-town establishment. Formica-topped tables and new linoleum on the floor. Big glass windows gave them a view of the main drag and the half-dozen cars and pickups cruising it. Barr had high hopes for the food.

  There were ten diners in the place when they arrived, and the seventeen-year-old waitress behind the counter straightened up to her maximum of five-five when the thirteen men trooped through the door.

  Wyatt crossed the room directly to her. “Is the manager around?”

  “Yes, sir. The owner. I’ll get him.”

  She turned and went to the doorway behind her, calling, “Dad!”

  The man came out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel. He was in his forties, dressed in an apron.

  “Mr. Jorgenson?”

  “Yes. What can I do for you?”

  “My name’s Cowan. I’m with Noble Enterprises.”

  Which was obvious, Barr thought. All of them wore either shirts or jackets with the company name tastefully displayed. It was part of the act. Class act, he thought, since he had designed the logos and the clothing.

  “I understand you prepare the best food in town, Mr. Jorgenson.”

  “We are proud of our reputation,” the man agreed.

  “I tell you what,” Wyatt said, digging a roll of bills out of his pocket and beginning to peel them off. “We’re going to be hanging around for a few weeks. We’ll need breakfast every morning and dinner every night. I’d like to have you make up lunch boxes daily. If I give you five thousand dollars now, would you just run a tab for me?”

  The economy of Ainsworth just took a giant leap, and it showed in Jorgenson’s face. “I’d be happy to do that, Mr. Cowan.”

  “You just let me know when the tab catches up with the deposit. Let’s start off with a case of Budweiser.”

  “I’ll get the beer, Julie, while you put four tables together.”

  Barr went over and helped Julie shift tables and chairs around in a back corner, then plopped himself down. Julie was a quiet girl, but developing quite nicely. She seemed uncomfortable with Barr’s innocuous questions. When Barr looked up at Wyatt, the boss gave him a stem look.

  The others gathered around the tables, many of them wiping away the sweat of the day, preparing for the air-conditioning of the cafe. Dennis Maal sat next to Barr. He was a company pilot, too, the one who had flown the C-130 in the day before. Next to him was Winfield Potter, the company’s best technician. He was also a rated pilot and had flown the Citation. The other specialists in ordnance, electronics, and jet engines were Ben Borman, Sam Vrdla, and Henry Cavanaugh.

  “Where’s Lucas?” Barr asked, realizing they were missing Littlefield, their airframe technician.

  Potter responded. “I expect him late tonight. I sent him to Lincoln to rent a ten thousand-gallon tanker and buy a few buckets of JP-4.”

  Jorgenson started placing bottles of Bud around the table. Barr downed his in three gulps. “Mr. Jorgenson, I’m ready for another.”

  The man smiled happily. “Be right back. And call me Max, please.”

  Hackley asked, “Hey, Andy, were there enough motel rooms in this burg for us?”

  “Winnie took care of it,” Wyatt said.

  “Got us fourteen rooms at the Sandy Inn,” Potter said. “Nothing but the best. And I was damned lucky. We’re at the height of the tourist season.”

  “You’re shittin’ us,” Demion said. “What tourists?”

  Potter whipped his thumb toward the east. “Hey, if you’re over thataway, and you want to go thisaway, you got to go through Ainsworth.”

  “What’s over thisaway?” Barr pointed toward the west.

  “Black Hills. Mount Rushmore. You wanta see where the cavalry cut down Chief Crazy Horse, you got to go to Fort Robinson. That’s over west of Chadron.”

  “Chadron.”

  “Bucky, there’s a bunch of history in this part of the country.”

  “I think I’d rather read about it, or fly over it,” Barr told him.

  Julie got their orders in sequence, her eyes going wide at the quantity in some cases. Barr gave her his best, most polite smile and ordered two chicken-fried steaks.

  They lived up to his expectations.

  *

  Major Ahmed al-Qati had a fetish about cleanliness, perhaps because he recalled his Bedouin youth as one of dirt and sand. He bathed daily or more often, and he dressed himself in a fresh khaki uniform each morning. Though his closet contained traditional Arabic garb, he was most comfortable in a short-sleeved uniform shirt and knife-edge creased slacks bloused into combat boots in the paratrooper fashion.

  In his mid-fifties, al-Qati was lean and as hard as the desert from which he had emerged. His forearms below his shirt sleeves and his face were burned into bronze from the sun. He was meticulous about the trim of his dark hair — which was tightly curled and contained a bald spot at the back of his head — and the smoothness of his cheeks. His eyes were almost black, peering through a permanent squint. The lines of his face deepened with each passing year, spreading outward from his eyes and vertically down his cheeks from the base of his wide and proudly humped nose.

  Al-Qati commanded a motorized infantry battalion — including a company of special forces soldiers, and he commanded it well. He had learned the finer points of his trade as a foreign officer visiting the Ranger training centre at Fort Benning, Georgia, thirty years before. The foundation of that education as a professional soldier had instilled in him a discipline that he was certain could be found nowhere else in the Libyan military.

  He was aware that most of the men in his command did not like him. They respected him, however, and that was far better. His men
worked harder, drilled more frequently, and engaged in realistic training exercises on an accelerated schedule. They did not like him, no, but they took pride in themselves, and al-Qati was certain that many would die for him if called upon to do so. The men in his companies and platoons were qualified as parachutists, as airborne assault infantry, and as members of a rapid deployment force. The majority were cross-trained in at least two combat specialties.

  The four hundred soldiers in his battalion had more morale, more esprit de corps, than could be found in the balance of the Libyan armed forces. Of that, al-Qati was certain. He knew that other commanders were jealous of him, and though he offered advice when asked, it was never acted upon. Ahmed al-Qati considered most of his brothers in the officer corps to be elitist and lazy, and that kind of leadership manifested itself in sloppy, mistake-prone combat units.

  The Leader, naturally, recognized al-Qati’s abilities, for al-Qati was often called upon to deliver lectures at various military workshops.

  Which was why, he assumed, he was now at the Tripoli barracks, ordered away from his battalion which was garrisoned at El Bardi, adjacent to the Egyptian border on the Mediterranean Sea.

  Though he was irritated at his sudden recall, al-Qati did not reveal it as he attended the briefing on the morning after his return to Tripoli. The briefing was held in a cramped conference room on the first floor of the wood-sheathed and air-conditioned administration building and was attended by only al-Qati and a uniformed air force lieutenant. The lieutenant did not provide his name, and al-Qati did not ask for it.

  “I am to give you an overview of an aircraft, Major.”

  Al-Qati did not know why, but he said, “Then let us get on with it, Lieutenant.”

  The lieutenant turned down the lights in the room and switched on a projector. On the large wall screen appeared the silver and grey form of a late-model airplane that had been built in the former Soviet Union. “This is the Sukhoi Su-24 fighter bomber.”

  Al-Qati had seen it before.

  Another slide flashed on the screen. It was a drawing of the airplane with cutaway sections allowing internal views. Lines and arrows and crisp Arabic lettering identified various parts of the anatomy. In many cases, where the Arabic was insufficient for the technology involved, the original Russian words were utilized.