High Flight

by David Hagberg

  Someone was coming up the road behind him. “McGarvey!” Ryan shouted.

  The hunched figure turned at the same time the engine of a car started. A second later its headlights came on, illuminating Reid, and the Jimmy roared out of the carport, sliding on the slippery road as it turned left, toward the lake.

  McGarvey raced up the road and fired five shots at the retreating Jimmy, the last one hitting its gas tank just before it reached the woods. The rear of the car exploded, a fireball lighting up the entire clearing.

  Ryan fired from behind, the single shot catching McGarvey in his side, just above his right hip, knocking him to the ground.

  “You bastard, you’re under arrest,” Ryan shouted triumphantly.

  McGarvey rolled over as Ryan came up holding his gun in shaking hands, a wild look on his face.

  “You’re under arrest, you sonofabitch! You’re under arrest.”

  Two shots were fired from the direction of the burning Jimmy.

  McGarvey leaped up and shoved Ryan down, the third shot catching the CIA lawyer in the side of his face just below his jaw.

  Whitman fired toward the Jimmy as McGarvey disentangled himself from Ryan.

  “He’s down! He’s down!” Whitman shouted.

  McGarvey scrambled painfully to his feet and trained his gun on what appeared to be Mueller’s body lying at the edge of the road twenty feet from the furiously burning Jimmy.

  Ryan, hurt but still alive, was fumbling for his gun, which he’d lost in the snow. In the distance they could hear sirens.

  “Stay with him,” McGarvey said, and he limped down the road before Whitman could object.

  Mueller lay on his back, his arms outstretched, his eyes open. He still had his gun in his right hand. “McGarvey,” he said, and he started to rise.

  “You lose,” McGarvey said, lanquidly raising his own pistol. He waited a moment, then fired one shot, hitting the German in the middle of the forehead above the bridge of his nose.

  FORTY-FOUR

  “Many active sonobuoys in the water!”

  “Range and bearings,” Lestov demanded. The destroyers had probably deployed LAMPS ASW helicopters. But he would have thought they’d be too busy with the other two submarines to venture this far out.

  “Captain, they’re all around us. Must be eight, maybe ten of them.”

  “Do they have us?”

  “I don’t think so … but it won’t be long.”

  “Has Reid said anything?” McGarvey asked hoarsely.

  “He insists on talking only to you,” Whitman said. “But it’ll have to wait. We’ll get what we need from him once we’re back in Washington.”

  “It can’t wait, and you know it. We’ll take the chopper back. Have it brought here.”

  “Listen, pal, you’re not going anywhere except to a hospital,” the paramedic bandaging McGarvey’s wound told him. They sat in the back of one of the ambulances Lawton had sent up. “You’re mostly one lucky bastard, but I think there may be some internal bleeding.”

  “I need a couple of hours, so do the best you can.” His entire body was on fire, and he didn’t think that he could walk ten yards without help. But the crisis wasn’t over. More than ever they needed to get to the President.

  “The chopper’s going to try for it,” Whitman said. “But in this weather the best he can do is follow the interstate.”

  McGarvey closed his eyes. He’d refused any pain medication, but he blocked that out of his mind. They still didn’t have all the answers. More than two thousand people were dead, and they could only guess why.

  “Ms. Kilbourne is shook up, but she’s okay. We’ll take her back with us,” Whitman said.

  “What about Ryan?”

  “On the way to the hospital. He’ll live.”

  “They won’t listen to me, John, so it’ll be up to you to convince them.”

  “Convince them of what? What the hell happened?”

  McGarvey shook his head. “That’s what Reid’s going to tell us.”

  “You hope.”

  McGarvey managed a grim smile. “You’re learning, John.”

  “Conn, sonar. They’ve dropped a DLC buoy,” Bychkov said excitedly.

  “Are they sending us a message?” Lestov asked. The DLC was a down-link communications buoy used by aircraft or surface ships to communicate with submerged submarines.

  “Aye, Captain. But it’s in Russian!”

  “Conn, Elint. It’s not one of our buoys, but they have the proper codes.”

  Lestov tried to work it out. It was thought that the Americans had their ELF codes, but they could have shared them with the Japanese.

  “They’re sending three groups. Are you ready to copy, Captain?”

  “Go ahead, Mikhail.”

  “What do we do, Captain?” Savin asked.

  “I don’t know,” Lestov admitted.

  From where they were parked at the side of the road in the hills above Yokosuka, they could see the entire city as well as the harbor and naval bases, which were nearly empty of warships. With the morning, the riot had begun to collapse of its own accord. They’d accomplished what they’d set out to accomplish, and the people had begun to drift away. For the most part the police had done nothing, but fifteen minutes ago a half-dozen troop transport trucks had pulled to the gates, and a hundred Ground Self Defense Force soldiers were helping the remaining U.S. Marines clear out the base. Dozens of ambulances and police cars came and went from the Seventh Fleet’s headquarters building, while several American helicopters hovered overhead like a swarm of angry, but ineffectual, bees. Considering the size of the demonstration, and the resistance they’d met, there’d been surprisingly few Japanese casualties.

  “Rising Sun has won this battle, Ashia-san,” Taku-shiro Hatoyama said. “Now it is up to our navy and air force.”

  “It worries me that we cannot reach Kamiya. Is Morning Star taking place?”

  “If not now, the day will come.”

  “We are not ready.”

  Hatoyama smiled. “No matter the outcome, from this day forward the United States will treat us differently.”

  “Hai.”

  “Isn’t that what we wanted, Ashia-san?”

  Ashia nodded uncertainly.

  “Let’s return to Tokyo. I’m hungry. I’d like to have a steak and some beer. We’ll celebrate.”

  “I hope it’s a celebration,” Ashia said.

  They rode in two highway patrol cars back to the interstate highway where the Sikorsky Sea King helicopter waited for them. The snow was still heavy, but the navy pilot said they could get over the low clouds with no real problem. Already it was beginning to show signs of breaking up to the south.

  Dominique was strangely aloof from McGarvey as Whitman and a cop helped him aboard the helicopter and strapped him in. She sat in the rear, leaving McGarvey and Whitman to sit with a very subdued Reid, who looked like he was on the verge of collapse.

  As soon as they were airborne and headed south, McGarvey lit a cigarette and Whitman bummed one from him. The smoke made him lightheaded for a few moments. Reid did not look like a monster, just like a tired old man. “You wanted to talk to me?”

  “I saw them taking Colonel Mueller away in a body bag. Did you kill him?”

  McGarvey nodded. “I’m surprised he didn’t kill you and Dominique.”

  “He wanted a diversion. Something to slow you down. But it didn’t.”

  “How did you discover that the Japanese had sabotaged Guerin airplanes?” McGarvey changed subjects.

  “It was a stroke of luck. A company in California by the name of InterTech designed an electronic subassembly for Guerin under a secret contract with a Japanese company.” Reid stopped. “But then you know most of that, otherwise you wouldn’t have come this far.”

  “Was it the engineer who killed Jeanne Shepard?” Whitman asked.

  Reid glanced at him. “His name was Louis Zerkel. He figured it out and designed a triggering mechanism t
hat they hid at eight airports, plus Andrews.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Dead, like the others. Colonel Mueller buried them in the garbage pit behind my country house in Sterling.”

  “How about Phil Carrara?” McGarvey asked.

  “There were two of them. Mueller took them up to Baltimore somewhere.”

  “Your house in Sterling, is it near the airport?” Whitman asked.

  “We can see the runways from the upstairs windows.”

  “Did you cause the crash two weeks ago?”

  “Zerkel was conducting an experiment. But it came as a surprise to all of us.”

  “Were you working with the Japanese?” McGarvey asked.

  “On the contrary,” Reid replied. “I wanted them to be blamed for the crashes. I wanted Americans to see what they were still capable of, and do something about it before we’re faced with another Pearl Harbor. You can’t believe how politically naive we, as a people, have become. It’s going to happen all over again unless we do something about it.”

  “More than two thousand innocent people were killed,” Whitman said.

  “The number will probably go higher. Remember the Japanese killed more than twenty-six hundred Americans in their attack on Pearl Harbor. They’re willing.”

  “But they didn’t do it. You did.”

  “It doesn’t make any difference. The effect will be the same. America awakened today.”

  “Okay,” McGarvey told Whitman. “Call your boss and tell him what we’ve got. He’ll have to convince the DCI, who’s probably in the White House situation room.”

  “It’s that simple?” Whitman asked.

  “Does it surprise you?” McGarvey asked tiredly.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’d better hustle, John.”

  “Didn’t it bother you thinking about all the people you were going to kill?” McGarvey asked Reid.

  “It was a lot less than would be killed in a war with Japan,” Reid replied. “You’re too young to remember the last war. Three hundred thousand Americans lost their lives. But worldwide the number killed was over twenty-five million. The horror of it is beyond imagination.”

  “You were going to make a profit, weren’t you?” McGarvey accused. “When Guerin failed, you were going to buy its stock for next to nothing, bolstering the company. It would have made you a hero.”

  “Actually we would have bought their bonds for ten or fifteen cents on the dollar,” Reid said smugly. “Stocks don’t mean much. He who owns a company’s bonds is the one who owns the company. You see, we need Guerin, so I was willing to do whatever it took to save it.”

  McGarvey sighed to relieve the pressure in his chest. It would be easy, even in his condition, to reach across and kill the man. But it would serve no purpose. There’d been too much killing. The pain and suffering would continue for a very long time. This was like Pearl Harbor, Kennedy’s assassination, and the shuttle disaster all wrapped into one. It was a watershed for the United States. Now they would have to end it, to make sure the killing stopped.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Reid said. “But even if we do step back from a war with Japan, it’ll come in the not too distant future, for the same reason it came in 1941. The same pressures are building, now that the Cold War is over. With Japanese bases in the Philippines, and a Japanese nuclear weapons program because of the threat of North Korea, the next war won’t be so easily won.”

  “Shut up,” McGarvey said. “Just shut the fuck up.”

  It took fifteen minutes to convince Ken Wood and FBI Director John Harding that McGarvey had something. They patched the call through to Roland Murphy at the White House situation room.

  “Where are you, McGarvey?” Murphy demanded.

  “We’re in a helicopter an hour and a half from Washington. What’s the situation there, General? Have we exchanged shots with the Japanese?”

  “It’s more complicated than that now. You’d better tell me what you’ve come up with.”

  “Is the President there?”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “Does he know what I’ve been working on?”

  “Yes.”

  “Put this on the speakerphone.”

  “All right,” Murphy said. “Okay, you’re on.”

  “Mr. President, can you hear me?”

  “Yes, we can, Mr. McGarvey. It’s my understanding that you may have some information for me. But be quick about it. We are in a very difficult situation.”

  “Mr. President, the Japanese did not bring down our airplanes. They did not attack us.”

  “We know that,” Lindsay said. “We have evidence that some of the sabotaged equipment aboard the Guerin fleet was of Japanese manufacture, but other more important elements were of Russian design.”

  “No, sir. That’s wrong. I have a confession from one of the men who was responsible for the crashes. His name is Edward Reid. He worked with an engineer from an electronics company in California and an officer from the former East German intelligence service. Reid has told me how he did it, and why.”

  “He must have been working for the Russians,” the President said. “At this moment the Russians are attacking Hokkaido in force.”

  “The attack is in retaliation for the Tatar Strait incident, Mr. President. The Russians do not want a war with Japan.”

  “The war is with us,” Lindsay said. “Prime Minister Enchi has formally asked for our help.”

  “Call President Yeltsin. Tell him that we know who sabotaged our fleet, and to back down.”

  “I have spoken with him. He promised to withdraw his forces, but he lied.”

  “They could be experiencing technical difficulties,” McGarvey insisted. His head was spinning. It was becoming increasingly difficult for him to hang on. “Think it out, Mr. President. Reid has no reason to work for the Russians. And the Russians have no reason to go to war with us over Japan. Just the opposite is true.”

  “I appreciate what you’ve done, Mr. McGarvey. But you cannot know all the facts. I do.”

  “I don’t think so, Mr. President.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “Conn, sonar. I have torpedoes in the water. Five, no six. Range above thirty thousand meters. They’ve just gone active.”

  “Our torpedoes?” Lestov demanded.

  “Aye, Captain. Range and bearing match the two Japanese destroyers.”

  “It has finally begun,” Savin said.

  “Fire tube one, fire tube three,” Lestov ordered. “And then get us the hell out of here.”

  “Fire one … fire two!” the weapons control officer, Lieutenant Zukko, responded. Seconds later the two cruise missiles were launched.

  “Crash-dive the boat, make your depth one thousand meters, make your speed forty-five knots.”

  Murphy held his finger on the mute button. “I think we should listen to him, Mr. President.”

  “I did listen,” Lindsay said. “The Russians continue to press the attack against Hokkaido, despite Yeltsin’s promise to withdraw his forces. The vital part of the system that brought down our fleet was Russian designed. And Mr. McGarvey just told us that Edward Reid worked with a former officer of the Stasi—a service, need I remind you, that was de facto an adjunct of the Soviet KGB.”

  “McGarvey knows the Russians …”

  “Are you saying that he’s done a better job than the CIA? Because, General, you’ve told me that you could produce no clear evidence against Russian involvement.”

  “In this case, Mr. President, perhaps he has.”

  “I have two sub-sea missile launches,” the Viking leader ELINT officer reported.

  “Do we have a positive fix on the target?” the pilot, Lieutenant Frances Kane, demanded.

  “Aye, Skipper. Twenty thousand yards, bearing two-six-zero degrees. She’s diving.”

  Kane hauled the twin-turbofan ASW aircraft in a sharp turn to the left, her stomach tight. This was her first actual combat mission.
<
br />   “Holy shit! Those are nukes!”

  Two missiles had just surfaced and streaked to the south on long fiery tails.

  “Skipper, I confirm the launch of two SS-NX-21 Russian missiles! They are nuclear!”

  “Get that off to Sugar Hill, and prepare to launch two Mark 46 torpedoes on my command,” Lieutenant Kane said. The crazy bastards. “Estimate time to impact?”

  “Less than two minutes,” the ELINT officer reported excitedly.

  “Stand by,” Kane said. She pulled the Viking back to the right, away from the coast, so that they would not be blinded by the flash. “Did you get that to Sugar Hill?”

  “Aye, aye!”

  “Mac, do you have Reid with you?” Murphy asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, I’ll clear it for you to land here behind the White House. An escort will be waiting to bring you down to the situation room.”

  “You’d better try to calm everybody down, General. I’m sure about this one. Reid was trying to engineer public sentiment against the Japanese, but he wasn’t working for the Russians.”

  Secretary of Defense Landry was on another telephone. His face turned white. “Mr. President, the Russians have launched two nuclear missiles against Hokkaido from one of their submarines in the strait.”

  Lindsay was silent for several seconds. “That is a clear declaration of war against Japan, and against us.”

  “No!” McGarvey shouted.

  Murphy realized that he’d left the line open and that McGarvey had heard everything. He reached out for the disconnect button.

  “It’s a mistake, General!” McGarvey shouted. “Somebody made a mistake!”

  “The launches were clean,” Lieutenant Zukko reported.

  “Time to impact?” Lestov asked. Everyone was braced against the steep dive angle.

  “Impact now!”

  “Eliminator Leader, this is Peregrine Able Leader. Those weren’t nukes! They were conventional explosives!”