Dark Wing

by Richard Herman

  “But you chose Von Drexler.”

  “I thought he was the perfect political general for the job. He did have his strong points. I was wrong.” He saw confusion on her face. “Mazie, it’s people who make things happen.” Did she understand?

  “You use people.” Her words were flat and toneless, without emotion.

  Silence ruled the room. She’s almost there, he thought. Come on, Mazie, don’t quit now. Make the right decision.

  She did. “We can’t stop now. Failure has too high a price.” Slowly, she gained momentum, more sure of herself. “The last I heard, Pontowski had taken Shoshana to Israel.”

  “He’s still there with his son.”

  “I think I can convince him to go back,” she said, hating what she had to do. Another revelation came to her. Carroll wasn’t even close to losing his nerve. He had been leading her, helping her reach the decision he wanted, still using her.

  Wednesday, October 9

  Near Bose, China

  The ragtag convoy inched its way toward the bridge, caught in the mass of refugees fleeing westward. The people were strangely quiet and the sounds of crying babies, animals, and laboring truck engines gave an eerie punctuation to the silence. Behind them, to the east, the familiar rumble of artillery started again and the crowd surged forward, anxious to cross the bridge.

  The two Junkyard Dogs, Big John Washington and Larry Tanaka, had gone ahead to scout the bridge and were forcing their way back to the convoy, pushing against the throng that was shuffling forward. “Where’s Captain Waters?” Tanaka asked when they reached the lead truck of the convoy. The driver said she was in the communications van, four vehicles back. They elbowed their way through more refugees surging past the convoy. Waters saw them coming and opened the door for them. “The bridge is about two miles ahead,” Tanaka told her. “It’s one lane across a deep gorge and some soldiers from the New China Guard have set up a barricade on our end. That’s what’s causing the holdup. The refugees have to bribe them to get across.”

  Two Warthogs circled overhead and the UHF radio in the van squawked. “Ripper, how copy?” It was Maggot.

  Waters grabbed the mike and looked up, relief in her face. They had been without air cover for most of the day and the strain of commanding the convoy was taking its toll. “Copy you five by,” she said. In the distance, the sound of artillery grew louder. The battle was coming their way.

  “The bridge ahead of you is blocked,” Maggot radioed. “I know,” she replied. “Is there any way around it?”

  “Negative,” Maggot answered.

  Waters fingered the mike as she considered her next move. She hadn’t brought sixty vehicles and over five hundred people three hundred miles in five days to let it go now. She made her decision. “Maggot,” she radioed, “can you convince that roadblock to go away?”

  “Can do” came the answer. The two Warthogs peeled off and disappeared toward the bridge.

  Waters keyed the hand-held radio that kept her in contact with the various sections of the convoy. “All section commanders report to the communications van ASAP.” She turned to the two Dogs. “Get Marchioni here. He’s either with his precious black boxes or with his village.” The eccentric, bearded civilian had saved all the spare black boxes and equipment he needed to keep the LASTE systems in the Warthogs working and was guarding them like precious diamonds. But before he left Guilin, he had collected every man, woman, and child from the village where he lived and was moving them right along behind the convoy.

  Within moments, the section commanders and Marchioni were gathered around her. She explained the situation. “Once we start moving, we are going to push right across the bridge. If we have to, we’ll bulldoze our way through. Charlie, load your villagers on our trucks and buses. We’re not going to leave anyone behind.”

  “Thanks, Bosslady,” Marchioni said. “We owe you one.” He hurried back to the rear of the convoy.

  Maggot’s voice came over the UHF radio. “The bridge is open, start movin’.” She gave the order and the convoy moved slowly forward, parting the mass of humanity in front of her like a snowplow. Then the refugees were moving with the trucks as an avalanche of people surged across the bridge.

  They reached the bridge an hour later. Two destroyed trucks were off to the side, riddled with cannon fire from Maggot’s Warthog. Angry soldiers wearing New China Guard uniforms glared at them as they passed. Charlie Marchioni’s voice came over the radio when he reached the burning hulks. “Remember, friends, they are on our side.” Behind them, the sound of artillery grew louder.

  “You did good,” Leonard told Waters. He was slumped in a chair in the wing’s operations tent. Around them, the airfield at Bose was alive with noise and activity. “How bad was it?”

  “Piece of cake,” she lied. Getting the convoy through had been the hardest thing she had ever done in her life. It surprised her that she didn’t need anyone’s praise. She knew what she had done.

  The phone rang—another problem he had to solve to keep his jets flying. Leonard’s face was drawn with worry and dark shadows under his eyes were mute testimony to lack of sleep. He hunched over the telephone, his voice strained and tense. “Marchioni came in on the convoy,” he said. “Get him on it.” He hung up. “We got LASTE problems again. You got Marchioni here in the nick of time.”

  There’s no escape for him, she thought. He’s carrying a burden that won’t go away and there’s no one for him to share it with. The Klaxon blared with a red alert, jolting them into action. He dropped the phone and they ran for a slit trench outside the tent. She huddled beside him as he yelled into his radio. Aircraft were less than three minutes out, headed straight for the field.

  “They’ve got a nasty surprise,” he said. “We got a Hawk missile battery in last night. It’s up and operational.” A plane roared overhead as a smoke trail reached up, homing on the attacker. The attacker fireballed as the Hawk missile found its mark. Debris fell to earth on the far side of the field but no bombs fell.

  The moments passed as they waited for an all-clear signal. She touched him and felt the tension that knotted his muscles and drove his breathing. How long can he take this? she thought. Did Muddy have to live through this hell? Did it wear him down the same way, with a steady, grinding pressure until death ended it? Am I strong enough to watch it happen to the man I love?

  A steady tone on the Klaxon announced the all clear. Leonard stood up, stretched, and looked around. He pulled her to her feet beside him. “Scratch one Gomer,” he muttered.

  They stood there for a moment, close, touching, but saying nothing.

  He climbed out of the trench. “Why don’t you crash in my tent and get some rest?” He spoke into his walkie-talkie and a Chinese guard escorted her to the far side of the field, into a tranquil village of tents where the Americans were bivouacked.

  It was dark when Waters woke. A maid was waiting and led her to a common shower. “Here, Miss Waters,” she said, her English surprisingly good. She waited patiently while Waters showered, savoring the hot water. The luxury of it all grew as the maid handed Waters a fresh towel, clean underwear, and a freshly laundered BDU. Even her boots had been polished. The maid took a few minutes to blow dry and comb her hair. “Colonel Leonard,” the maid explained, “said to take good care of you and make sure your clothes were clean.”

  Waters’ morale soared. Tango knows, she thought. The simple things make the difference. Five minutes later, she walked into the operations tent and found herself back in the caldron. But she was ready for it.

  General Trimler was there with a few of his staff, laying out the resupply operation that was under way. “We’ve got four C-130s flying resupply out of Cam Ranh Bay,” he explained. “The Pentagon won’t allow the KC-10s inside China now. Too dangerous, and the KC-10s are too high value to risk.”

  “They were our main source of JP-4,” Leonard told him. “Without the Tens, we’re going to run out of fuel real fast.”

  �
�I know,” Trimler conceded. “We’ve got a possible workaround. The rail line from Hanoi to Nanning has been cut, but the Vietnamese are opening the track from Hanoi to Kunming. We might be able to solve your fuel problem that way.” He shook his head. “It’s getting dicey and Zou is barely holding on.”

  “Maybe it’s time to get the hell out of Dodge,” Leonard replied. “My troops are ready to cut and run.”

  “You may be right,” Trimler conceded. “Right now, the girl, Jin Chu, seems to be the only thing holding Zou together. For some reason, the Chinese consider her good luck.”

  “If Zou loses,” Waters said, “Kang will butcher people by the thousands.”

  “It will be a bloodbath,” Trimler predicted.

  “We all know that,” Leonard said. “It’s the main topic of conversation around here.” He walked to the side of the tent that had been rolled up for ventilation and looked across the airfield. “Three pilots asked to be sent home. I granted their requests and they left. The funny thing is, two came back.” He turned back to Trimler. “But if we don’t solve the fuel problem, we are all out of here. One KC-10 sortie bringing fuel in means twelve combat sorties for my Hogs.”

  “I’ll see if I can get the KC-10s back in here.” Trimler jammed on his helmet, motioned to his staff, and disappeared into the night.

  “There goes the world’s only combat-ready, armed-to-the-teeth logistics officer,” Waters said.

  “We can’t do this without him,” Leonard replied. “Sara, I want you back working on base preparedness. We’ve been lucky so far and have only been attacked once. It’s not going to last.” He sat down in his chair and leaned back. His face was etched with fatigue and he hadn’t slept since she arrived. “Do you remember the mockup airfield at Cannon Range in Missouri?”

  How long ago was that? she thought. It seemed like years before when the 303rd had launched sorties to practice dropping bombs on Cannon Range. But even that had been a dangerous place, and Leonard had crashed there. “The one the Junkyard Dogs built,” she said.

  He nodded. “Get with Byers and build another one here. The Junkyard Dogs know how to make it look realistic from the air. I want a fake airfield to draw the attention, and the bombs, of any attacking aircraft.”

  “We can camouflage and tone down the main base at the same time,” she told him. “I even know where we can get the labor we need.”

  “Get to it,” he told her.

  Two hours later, Charlie Marchioni introduced Waters and the Junkyard Dogs to his village. The village elders thanked her for saving them from Kang’s troops and promised they would help in any way they could. She had a work force of almost five hundred people. “You guys got it,” Marchioni told them. “I got work to do on the Warthogs.” A big grin split his scraggly beard. “Smart jets beat smart bombs any day of the week.”

  “Too bad you have to keep retraining them,” Byers deadpanned, knocking Marchioni’s beloved LASTE. Marchioni ignored the remark and left. “Okay, Captain,” Byers continued, “you are looking at the finest construction team in Asia and we are going to build you one eye-watering, awe-thin-teek-looking airfield.” The sound of distant artillery punctuated his words.

  Wednesday, October 9

  Haifa, Israel

  The dark gray sedan dropped Mazie off in front of the apartment in the Hadar, the old residential district halfway up the hill above the city of Haifa. She knocked on the door and a bearded, hunch-shouldered bear of a man answered. She instantly recognized Avi Tamir, the most famous living scientist in Israel, the father of Shoshana Pontowski. “Doctor Tamir, I’m Mazie Kamigami and I’m trying to contact Matt.”

  The bear held the door open and pointed toward open French doors that led onto a balcony. A spectacular view of the broad bay spread out before her and she heard a little boy’s laughter as she walked through the open doors. Pontowski looked up. “Matt,” he told the little boy, “go inside and harass your grandfather. He needs cheering up.”

  The miniature image of Pontowski was very serious as he studied Mazie. “You’re pretty,” he said, scampering past her.

  “Kids,” Pontowski allowed.

  “There is no doubt he’s your son,” Mazie replied. Silence. “How’s he doing?”

  “Kids are amazing,” he answered. “They get on with life. He still cries occasionally, mostly when he goes to bed. He loved the bedtime ritual … that’s when he really misses his mother …” His voice trailed off into his own, private memories. He was still coming to terms with his grief. He offered her a seat and stood at the railing, his back to the sea, waiting for her to speak.

  A slender, dark-complected woman in her mid-fifties appeared in the doorway. “Lillian,” Pontowski said, “this is Mazie Kamigami.” The two women exchanged greetings.

  “We’ll take Little Matt to the beach,” Lillian said. “We’ll be back in a few hours.” Pontowski nodded and again, a difficult silence came down. It held until Lillian and Tamir had corraled Little Matt and hustled him out of the apartment.

  “Lillian,” he explained to Mazie, “is Shoshana’s aunt and has been taking care of Little Matt. She wants to take him to their kibbutz in the Huleh Valley. It’s a great place to raise kids.”

  “He still needs a father,” Mazie said. They were still skirting the reason for Mazie’s sudden appearance and it hung between them, dark and foreboding.

  Let’s get to it, Pontowski decided. “Why?” was all he said. Mazie stood, joined him at the railing, and gazed out to sea. Little Matt was right, he thought, she is beautiful.

  She didn’t look at him. “We need you,” she said. Mazie’s voice matched her image, beautifully crafted and composed. “The situation in China is very bad.”

  “So I’ve heard, but I don’t think I can help. Not now.”

  “We can still stabilize the situation if—”

  He interrupted her. “Mazie, our side is getting its ass kicked.” Now he had to talk. “We’re in over our heads, trying to play policeman to the world. Of all the places to get involved, to take sides, China is the worst. What were we thinking of? Hell, what was I thinking of?”

  She let him talk, not interrupting. He had to come to terms with his grief and doubts, he had to tame the demon of responsibility that tore at his soul. She listened until the hurt was yielding. Finally, he looked at her. “How many times has China died before?” he asked. He didn’t want an answer. “Yet it has always been reborn after the old rubbish has been cut or burned away.”

  “You’ve been reading a history of China,” she said.

  He nodded. “I should have done that before I got involved.” Bitterness surrounded every word.

  “China was your karma,” she told him.

  “Because of my involvement, Shoshana was killed. That’s not fate, that’s responsibility.”

  “What about your responsibility to the wing?” she asked.

  “I know why Carroll wants me back,” he said, ignoring her question. “Congress is going to pass legislation tying the administration’s hands and forcing us out of China. My name, my connections, still carry enough weight to stall Congress for a while. Carroll hopes that will give him enough time to get his irons out of the fire.” Now she could hear a new anger in his voice. “It’s politics, pure politics. Damn him to hell. That’s why he wanted me over there in the first place.”

  “Carroll uses everybody,” she said. “It’s the way he makes things happen.”

  “I don’t like being used.”

  “He’s used me, Went, everybody.”

  “Mazie, I’m not going back.”

  “Someone has to bring the wing out,” she told him.

  It was the second time she had linked the wing to him. This time it registered. “Where does responsibility end?” he asked himself. He knew the answer. “My grandfather showed me many times. But I wasn’t listening until the very last.” He made his decision. “I got them in there—I’ll get them out. I hope I can make my son understand why I’m going away aga
in. He’s been hurt a lot.”

  “His aunt and grandfather will help,” Mazie said. “The Israelis understand duty.”

  Now she could tell him the rest. “Matt, we know what happened at the airport and why Shoshana was killed.” He tensed at her words and she waited, fearing the anger she saw in him. “It was Kang. He took a contract out with the Yakuza to kill you or any member of your family.”

  “Who found out?”

  “Toragawa,” she told him. “He went through the Yakuza like the grim reaper until they told him the truth.”

  “They probably lied to get him off their backs,” Pontowski said.

  Mazie shook her head. “I don’t think so. The two men who arranged the contract committed suicide. Toragawa demanded it be done properly.”

  “But why my family? I was the enemy—not Shoshana.”

  “Not to Kang’s way of thinking.”

  “Why did you wait until after I had decided to go back to China before telling me?”

  She considered her answer. “Revenge is the worst possible reason to go back.”

  His eyes were cold blue steel. “It’s the best.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Friday, October 11

  The Philippine Sea

  Weathermen call it an “equatorial wave,” as it resembles an eddy in the tropical easterlies, the winds that blow constantly out of the east over the low latitudes of the great oceans. Normally, an equatorial wave brings a spell of rain, a band of showers as it moves westward. Occasionally, about ten times a year, a wave will deepen into a tropical depression and moist tropical winds will flow into it, gaining speed, building into a storm.

  A weather satellite in orbit twenty-two thousand miles above the equator imaged the formation of one of these storms in the eastern reaches of the Philippine Sea and transmitted its discovery to a station in Australia. Within hours, weathermen were plotting its course as it moved to the west and bent northward. When its wind speed passed seventy-four miles per hour, they named it Typhoon Kewa, the eleventh of the season.