“Wasn’t it like a personal feud between them?” Adams replied.
“Or a duel,” Stanford added.
“Yeah.” Carroll nodded. He turned to go back to work. “I don’t think we’ll be hitting the brewskis for a while,” he told them as he disappeared inside.
“What do you make of that?” Adams asked.
“Beats me,” Stanford shrugged. “Maybe he’s got a fight on his hands.”
“Or thinks he’s Churchill,” Adams speculated.
“Churchill never ran that fast in his life.”
CHAPTER 5
Sunday, February 25
Kansas City, Kansas
The ten-year-old girl sat on the packed suitcase listening to her mother. “Melissa, quit trying to out-negotiate your grandmother on homework. I’ll be calling every night to check on you and should be home late Friday afternoon.”
Melissa was listening carefully, not to the words but to he tone of her voice. The little girl’s sensitive internal barometer was finally at rest after charting the emotional weather changes that had been going on inside her mother. Everything seemed normal, so it was natural that her fertile mind considered other reasons, all right out of her grandmother’s romance novels, for a pilot driving her mother to the base. “Who is he, Mother?” she asked.
“Just a friend, Melissa,” Waters replied.
“Friend?” Melissa replied. She didn’t want to believe it. “You’ve got to learn the difference between being friendly and being romantic,” Waters told her.
The doorbell rang and Melissa bolted down the stairs. “I’ll get it,” she shouted. She was back in a flash. “Oh, Mother. Not him! He’s an overgrown teddy bear.” John Leonard was waiting at the door.
“I do appreciate this,” -Waters told Leonard as she slid into the front seat for the seventy-mile drive to Whiteman Air Force Base.
“No problem,” Leonard smiled. “Besides, it will give you a chance to read the plan before we take it to the boss.” He handed her the thick operations plan titled OPPLAN STAND DOWN.
It was the first time Waters had seen the air show spelled out in detail. While she had been occupied with her assailant’s trial, Leonard had created an exciting program that made the spectators part of the flying routine by setting up large video monitors in the main hangar. By tying into video cameras at different locations, the audience could follow the pilots through the briefing and launch of A-10s on a mission to the gunnery range. Two screens would be devoted to the range and the crowd could watch the Warthogs in real time as they dropped bombs and strafed targets. On the last screen, they could watch the debrief in the squadron and see videotape that was recorded through the HUD from the mission they had just seen.
For an added touch of realism, the audience had to go outside and watch the Warthogs fly an overhead recovery pattern—the traditional landing pattern flown by fighters returning from combat. For the show’s finale, Leonard was proposing that five A-10 pilots fly an aerial demonstration like the famed Thunderbirds or Blue Angels. He was calling it “The Flight of the Thunderhogs.”
“This is fantastic,” Waters told him. “I hope Colonel Pontowski buys it.” Leonard smiled, nodded, and concentrated on driving. Waters sank back into the seat and closed her eyes, feeling warm and safe.
Major Frank Hester was waiting outside the deputy for maintenance’s office building when Pontowski arrived. He snapped a salute. “Ripper said to meet you here. She didn’t say what about.” There was a hard undertone in his voice.
“Have you read STAND DOWN?” Pontowski asked. A sharp nod in return. “We need to find out how maintenance can support the air show.” Hester was silent as they walked into the deputy for maintenance’s office.
The room was packed with every maintenance officer and NCO who could think of a reason for being there. The excitement was contagious as the wrench benders and gun plumbers told the two pilots what they wanted to do for the air show. Corrosion control, the section responsible for painting the jets, wanted to paint every Warthog’s nose with teeth and eyes like the famous nose art from the Flying Tigers.
“The regs,” Hester blurted, “don’t allow nose art.”
“To hell with the regs,” a gruff old NCO growled. But the idea died a quick death.
An excited junior captain promised them, “We’re going to have LASTE peaked and tweaked on every jet. Every bomb you drop is going to be a shack. We’re talking nasty LASTE time on the range.”
Twenty minutes later, the two pilots were walking back to the squadron. “It looks like the wrench benders have bought into the air show,” Pontowski said, pleased with Maintenance’s response.
“Is all this necessary?” Hester groused. “The damn air show is still five months away. Hell, it doesn’t make any sense. Why fly so damn many missions to the range on the last day of flying? When the last plane lands, that’s it. The squadron is kaput, finished.”
“What would you do, Frank?” Pontowski’s voice was flat.
“Just fly the time line out.” The time line was the number of flying hours the squadron was allocated to fly each calendar quarter.
“That’s not in the cards,” Pontowski told him. “We’re going out in style with an open house and one hell of an air show. Maintenance will be ready. Will the pilots?”
Hester shrugged. “I’ll tell ‘em.”
“I want more than that,” Pontowski said, a trace of anger clipping his words.
“I can’t perform miracles,” Hester shot back.
Pontowski walked in silence for a few moments before he decided to take the gloves off. He started on a low key. “Until we stand down, I’ve got three simple objectives: motivate, motivate, motivate. The 303rd has been too damn good for too long to go tits up at the very end. I want the squadron to go out with flags flying and every swingin’ jock alive and well.
“You’ve kept your end of the bargain so far and I appreciate what you’ve done. But damn it, Frank, you’re digging your heels in on this one and not giving me other options. So right now, you’ve got three choices—lead, follow, or get out of the fuckin’ way. Be in my office in an hour with your decision.” Pontowski surprised the major by throwing him a salute and then turning and marching off. A very confused major waved a half, and very hesitant, salute at his commander’s back.
Hester arrived fifteen minutes early for the meeting with Pontowski. Waters told him to have a seat and she would get him inside as quickly as possible. “There’s no hurry,” Hester told her. “Ah … Ripper …” He hesitated, searching for the right words. “You’re behind him all the way, aren’t you?”
“He’s my boss.”
“Is that the only reason?”
“No,” she answered. “It’s because he cares and lets nothing get in the way of real accomplishment. He’s going to make a difference here.”
“With only five months to go? What can he do in that short time?”
“You haven’t been listening, Major. He means it when he says he wants everyone alive and well when we turn out the lights. But he wants something else.” She took a deep breath, knowing that what she was going to say sounded trite and corny. “There will be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the United States Air Force just lost its best fighter squadron.”
Rester nodded, his decision made. The intercom on Waters’ desk buzzed. “You can go in now,” she told him. Three minutes later, Hester walked out, his face unreadable. Pontowski followed him into the outer office and watched him disappear.
“Surprise, surprise,” he told her. “He says if I’ll keep him, he’ll give it his best shot.”
Waters recalled her own feelings when she had made the same decision. “You can believe him,” she said.
Pontowski shook his head and smiled. He had three allies.
Tuesday, March 5
Cheung Chau Island, Territory of Hong Hong
The faint gold of the rising sun outlined the gray mass of Lamma Island five miles to the east as Kamigami sat alone
on a rock keeping his early morning vigil. The cloud-laced sky slowly streaked with red and gray and then rushed into brighter hues of red as the sun lifted above the horizon. But Kamigami was oblivious to the panorama playing out above him and kept scanning the sea for the fishing boat that would bring Jin Chu back to him.
The ache of worry grew heavier in his chest. I should have gone out on the fishing boat, he berated himself, not her. Since food was scarce, she had insisted she had to help the islanders and nothing he could say or do changed her mind. But for the first time, his body had failed him and he was still weak from the infection that had ravaged his massive frame. The knife wound and the polluted waters of Victoria Harbor had almost killed him.
How clearly he remembered when his fever was consuming him and he had lost the will to fight. All else was lost in a vague fog but Jin Chu. She had stepped out of the mist, her nude body glowing in the half-light of early dawn, and had crawled into bed beside him. She had only held him, speaking in a language he did not understand, and stayed with him until his fever had broken. After he had slept for over twenty hours, she had returned and gently bathed him with a sponge. Then she dropped her clothes onto the floor and slipped into bed beside him. She sat astride him as they made love and he knew from her pain that she was a virgin.
“They will return,” a voice said. Kamigami turned, surprised to see Zhang Pai standing behind him. He shot to his feet and motioned to the place on the rock where he had been sitting. Like everyone on the island, Kamigami deferred to the old man they called “the Master.” And like Jin Chu, the old man sensed what Kamigami was thinking.
“She is ho wan “—good luck—”and the fishermen trust her. The catch will be good because she is with them. Perhaps,” Zhang Pai continued, “you can help us in a different way. There are reports of gangs raiding the islands for food. Soon they will come here to take ours.” Kamigami nodded. He had heard the radio and TV reports detailing the violence that followed in the wake of the embargo the PRC, the People’s Republic of China, had clamped on Hong Kong.
The United Nations and the western powers had used diplomatic protests to make the PRC back off enough to avoid a military clash and force a stalemate. The colony was still embargoed but, thanks to the fishing boats, not enough to starve it into immediate submission. Trade was still going on between the colony and the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone on the mainland next to Hong Kong. In exchange for the wealth of Hong Kong, the Chinese kept supplying water, electricity, and some food to the colony. But it was a one-way exchange that would soon bleed the Hong Kongers dry. Until that happened, the gangs were going to take what they could.
“I can help,” Kamigami said. Zhang Pai led Kamigami down the hill and into the town.
A cold north wind started to blow after midnight and the two boys shivered as they sat on Cheung Chau’s extreme northern headland. “There,” one of the boys said, pointing into the night. Seven low shapes i u the water, high-speed motorboats, were moving toward them. Five of the boats stopped while two continued at a slow rate toward the harbor. “Run,” the older boy told the youngest. The boy ran at breakneck speed down the path that led to the harbor. Kamigami’s early warning net was working.
When the boy arrived breathless at the police station Kamigami had appropriated as a headquarters, Kamigami listened, sent him right back and initiated a silent alert.
Within minutes, every able-bodied man in the town and on the harbor was roused with the news that a raid was in the offing. “The two boats,” Kamigami explained to Zhang Pai and his lieutenants, “are a diversionary attack. We’ll separate them at the breakwater entrance.” The men nodded in understanding and another runner was dispatched, this time to the men stringing out along the man-made breakwater that formed the harbor. More reports came in.
“This is too easy,” one of Kamigami’s lieutenants chortled.
“Wait,” Kamigami told him. For once, he was glad that Jin Chu was out on a fishing boat.
The men on the breakwater crouched unseen on the landward side and waited for the two boats that were now accelerating for a high-speed dash into the harbor. The stern of the first boat had barely cleared the entrance when the men raised a heavy anchor chain that had been salvaged from an old freighter. The second boat never saw the chain and plowed into it going forty miles an hour. The force of the impact ripped a gaping hole in the bow and pitch-poled the boat up and over onto its back, spilling the raiders into the water. The first boat came about to rescue the men as three Molotov cocktails were hurled from nearby sampans. Only one of the flaming bottles of gasoline hit the boat and ignited. But it was enough to force the raiders on that boat into the water.
A shout from the breakwater rang out and the harbor turned into a dark boiling caldron as a swarm of sampans converged on the entrance. Lanterns were lit to aid in the search and shadowy figures leaned over the sides of the sampans, swatting the water with oars and clubs. It was over before the burning hulk of the first boat sank.
The sampans scurried for shore and shouts of triumph reached the police station where Kamigami was waiting long before the first boat bumped against the dock. He cautioned the men clustered around him to remain calm. “We still have much to do,” he warned them. Shortly, two half-drowned and badly beaten men were dragged into the room. One of the guards handed over two walkie-talkie radios they had found on the prisoners. Kamigami tested them, surprised that one still worked. He thought for a moment. “What is the signal for the other boats to retreat?” Kamigami asked in passable Cantonese. Silence. “Do you understand my words?”
One of the men spat in defiance. Kamigami whirled and, with incredible speed, karate-chopped the man’s Adam’s apple. He watched the man gurgle and gasp as he choked to death. He turned to the second man, who was looking at him with wide, fear-struck eyes, not believing the apparition in front of him. Kamigami said, “Do you understand my words?” This time he received a nod.
Kamigami hooked his fingers under the man’s jawbone and lifted him up until his feet were dangling above the floor. “You must make a choice,” he said, his soft voice totally at odds with his actions and masklike face. “Tell us the signal for the boats to withdraw and live. Or you can spend the next three days dying. It will be a miserable, most painful death. You will curse your parents for giving you birth. You will wake up to your own screams. The women and children of the village will beg me to end it. When I slit your stomach and show you your own guts you will thank me and you will kiss my feet in gratitude as you bleed to death. Choose now.” He dropped him to the floor.
Words spilled from the man. Kamigami nodded and handed him the radio. “You give the signal,” he ordered. The man keyed the radio and spoke. When he was finished, Kamigami told the guards to put him in a cell. “Now we wait to see if he gave the correct signal.”
“He didn’t lie,” Zhang Pai said. “I have never seen such fear in a man. Would you have done all that?”
Kamigami shook his head. “No. I wanted him to talk and didn’t have much time to convince him.”
“They will come back again,” a man said. “They will be better prepared and stronger.”
“And so will we,” Kamigami replied. The same boy who had brought the original warning darted into the room with a new message: The five boats that had been standing offshore were leaving at high speed.
“We have gained some time,” Kamigami told the crowded room. “Have divers salvage everything they can from the boats. Dive until you find every weapon the raiders were carrying. I’ll show you how to make them serviceable.” He smiled. “A little salt water never hurt bullets.”
Zhang Pai spoke to the silent room. “Sun Tzu wrote that balking the enemy’s plans is the highest form of generalship. We have such a general among us.” He pulled himself to his feet and walked out the door.
The setting sun cast a warm glow on the island’s busy waterfront as the sea turned to the color of dark red wine. Kamigami and Jin Chu found a bench at the edge of
the water and sat down, the sun warming their backs. A pack of six-year-olds scurried past, jabbering and smiling at them, A sampan bumped against the dock with its load of Blue Girl Beer for the Park ‘n Shop store across from them at people went about their business.
“It’s so peaceful,” he said, looking up and down the shops that lined the other side of the street. “Two days ago they were fighting for their lives. Now, you would think every. thing was normal.”
“Life doesn’t change,” Jin Chu replied. “They are safe for now and that is enough.”
“Is this what you want?” he asked.
Her answer was soft. “I want what they want. A place where my children can live without hunger or fear.”
“That’s an easy one,” he laughed. “We leave for the States tomorrow.” He felt her head move in a gentle shake. No.
“Please, you must listen.” He could feel her trembling, “You are my love.” She hesitated, afraid to say the next words. “But our love can only live here.”
Kamigami stiffened at her words. Her tone of voice and the way she stared straight ahead warned him she was seeing beyond their immediate time and place. His western education, training, and experience rebelled at the idea, yet something deep in his Oriental background responded to the girl and would not be denied. The words of his long-dead grandfather came back. “The truth is what you believe.” But did he believe her?
“What can I do?” he asked her. “I’m not Chinese.”
She did not answer at first. “Look how they trust you. What you have done for the islanders, you can do for Zou Rong.”
“I’m not so sure,” he answered. “Defending the island against a gang was easy. They were only vicious. The PLA is a standing army.” Jin Chu said nothing and waited. “You want me to help Zou?” he asked.
“Only you can decide,” she answered.
“If I do, will you stay with me?”
Jin Chu turned toward him, not touching. Public displays of affection in China rarely went beyond standing close together. Her eyes were full of tears. “You are my love,” she whispered.
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