He still felt a sense of unreality, as if his cell phone would somehow ring any moment now, and a voice would snap, “Lieutenant Commander Bedford? That’s it, sir, we’re going. Prepare platoons for pack-down. Depart 0500 hours Thursday. Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan. Classified rules apply as from now.”
Even the thought of his old life brought an ineffable sense of utter sadness upon him. He stared through the bus window at the typical Maine waterfront view, with dense dark-green pine woods growing so close to the ocean they would feel the lash of the spray. The granite ledges that stretched far out into the coastal waters formed a minefield for all but the most careful and skillful of mariners.
The bus drew to a halt at the head of a long, straight road that led down to the wide estuary of the Kennebec. The doors opened, and he stepped down carrying just his leather bag. There was no one at the bus stop and no one walking along the long, narrow road home.
Mack and Anne owned a classic white clapboard Maine farmhouse with a barn and a view across marshland to the water. The shipyard was located way behind the backyard, more than a half mile away, but it was omnipotent, a backdrop to the little town, with rising cranes, tall, but not as tall as old Number Eleven up the road at Bath.
From the bus stop it was a 1,000-yard walk, and Mack set off, marching down the middle of the road, staring at the waterfront beyond the house, longing to see Anne, longing to see Tommy, but dreading the latest news from the doctors.
No traffic passed him, and the wind dropped, giving way to a warm morning in what ought to be paradise, but on this day was not even close. Fifty yards from the front gate Mack saw someone come hurtling out of the front door and across the driveway to the road. For a split second he held Anne’s gaze, and then she ran toward him, and hurled herself into his arms, saying over and over, “Thank God, my darling, thank God you’re here – I saw you from the upstairs window.”
For almost a full minute he held his powerful arms around her, saying nothing, marveling as always at the beauty of her body and the dark luster of her hair, which cascaded over her shoulders and his eyes. Finally, he released her and stared into her deep blue eyes, and said softly, “As homecomings go, this one’s sure got a lot of promise.”
Anne laughed at him. She always laughed at him. In fact, it was his gift of real humor, coupled with a vibrant physical presence, that had first attracted her. She once told him it was like being married to a cross between Johnny Carson and Rocky Marciano.
“You don’t even remember Rocky Marciano,” he’d chuckled. “He died about twenty years before you were born.”
“Yes, but my grandpa knew him – he was a police chief in Brockton, Massachusetts, where Rocky lived. I’ve seen pictures.”
“Well, he was nothing like me. He was a fighter. I don’t know how to fight. I only know how to kill.”
“Oh, that’s a relief,” she said. “At last I’m safe.”
They walked slowly up to the house, and just before they opened the front door, Mack stopped and said, “Annie, how is he?”
“Not good. Just starting to show all the early signs of the disease.”
“What are they?” asked Mack, frowning.
“Oh, signs of aggression, unreasonable and of course the memory loss. Long-term, that is. He can remember anything for about five minutes. But the next day he can’t seem to grasp that he ever learned it. The school’s really worried about him.”
“Jesus,” replied Mack. “Where is he? Poor little guy.”
“He’s still in bed right now,” she said. “This is another sign – unusual tiredness. And the doctors say it will get worse and worse.”
“Is it leukemia, like they first thought?”
“Not really. It’s similar, but it involves a complete breakdown of the nervous system. And he needs a complete bone marrow transplant to give him any chance of long-term recovery. The hospital says he’s just too young for them to attempt it. Trouble is, if we wait, it may be too late.” “And no one knows how the hell he caught it?”
“Not really.”
“Christ!” said Mack. “It’s not as if he’s from weak bloodlines, right? He’s from generations of stonecutters, lumberjacks, shipwrights, Navy SEALs and goddamned police chiefs. He ought to be as strong as a fighting bull!”
“Guess it doesn’t work like that,” said Anne. “I just find it all so sad.” Mack closed the door and put down his bag. Once more he took his very beautiful wife in his arms, and kissed her longingly. Then he told her, “We’ll get him fixed up. Somehow, by Christ, we’ll come up with something.”
“Look, he may come down any moment now. Is there anything you’d like to do beyond the obvious? Let me fix you some breakfast?”
“That would be great,” he said. “But you look wonderful, and fried eggs with sausage and hash browns comes a very distant fourth to the obvious.”
“Shhh,” she said, staring into his gray-blue eyes. “Or you’ll persuade me to cast care to the winds. And we have to be at the hospital at noon. Tommy’s test results are ready. They may even want to keep him there overnight.”
“Does he mind that?”
“Not really. I put him to bed and stay in the room with him. But he gets very tired, very quickly, and then I drive back here by myself, and worry about him for the rest of the night.”
Mack kissed her again, and said, “Can I have my breakfast out on the front stoop? And do we have a newspaper yet?”
“I’ll just check Tommy, and then I’ll bring it. Go and sit down. I’ll get you some coffee.”
Mack’s father had long ago turned the front stoop of the house into a screened porch, and Anne had set a milk-white cloth on the table, with a small vase of pink beach roses in the center. The wicker furniture was wide and comfortable with broad blue-and-white-striped cushions. Mack sank gratefully into the rocker and stared out, down to the ever-widening estuary of the Kennebec. The great tidal flow, which had started far to the north in Moosehead, would soon be spilling out into the ocean. Within two miles it would surge past its lonely guardian island of Sequin, a place for which President George Washington personally signed the deeds more than 200 years ago.
Above the island stands one of the most famous, and indeed the second oldest, lighthouse on this vast and rugged coastline. The Sequin light towers 180 feet above the ocean, just two miles offshore. Mack Bedford, despite his wonderful seaward view, could not quite see it, even on the clearest day. But when the autumn fog banks rolled in and a dank, hollow white blanket spread over the inshore waters, Mack could hear the powerful lighthouse foghorn boom out its warning, as stark and as lonely as a Basin Street trombone.
He loved this place. He passionately loved Anne. And he loved his little boy. What a cruel trick of the Almighty to deliver two such hammer blows to his life – charged with murder and effectively sacked from the SEALs and the monstrous threat of Tommy dying from an untreatable disease.
Still, there had to be hope, and when Anne came sashaying onto the porch bearing hot coffee and that morning’s copy of the Portland Express, the clouds lifted from him, and he smiled at her and pulled her down onto his lap and kissed her yet again. “I love you, Mrs. Bedford,” he told her. “And I’m always thinking of you, no matter where I am.”
“Even at that firefight on the Euphrates?” she said.
“Even then. Especially then. Because I thought for one awful moment our marriage might end the only way it ever could – until I reloaded, that is.”
Anne, as ever, laughed at him. “You want burned sausage and hard-boiled eggs?”
“Not really.”
“Then you’d better let me get up.”
Mack released her and reached for the coffeepot, poured a mugful, and hit it with a couple of lumps of brown sugar. He stirred it thoughtfully and then picked up the newspaper and scanned the front page.
FIVE MORE US DEATHS IN IRAQ-ILLEGAL MISSILE BLAMED
It was not conducted in battle conditions. The Americans were returning t
o base after a mission against an insurgent cell operating in the bombed-out regions near the Tigris River. The attack was sudden, without warning. There were no survivors in either of the two armored vehicles, and reports again confirm the victims were burned alive.
The US military has protested in the strongest possible terms to the UN Security Council, which has unanimously banned the missile throughout the world as “a crime against humanity.” The UN secretary-general confirmed that the attack had all the hallmarks of the banned missile, and that a formal warning was being issued to the government of Iran against supplying the Diamondhead to Iraqis or any other Muslim terror group currently operating in the Middle East.
A spokesman for the US armed forces in Iraq stated last night that the insurgents seemed to have a constant supply of this missile. “Either that,” he said, “or they still have a large stockpile – probably hidden in the desert with Saddam’s goddamned uranium 235, which was also difficult as hell to find.”
The spokesman, a US Army lieutenant colonel, was clearly very angry at this latest attack “‘We’re all angry,” he said. “You’d be angry if you saw how these guys died. The worst part is we have twice been close to intercepting the supply.
“Both times we were just a fraction too late. We believe the missiles come through the foothills of the Zagros Mountains and then cross the frontier into Iraq, somehow getting across the river to the north of Abadan. But that’s a huge area to patrol, and we have limited resources.”
A White House spokesman said last night, “The president has sent a signal to the government of Iran pointing out that the Diamondhead is officially banned in all countries. And that the world community will not tolerate any Middle Eastern regime continuously ignoring the UN edict.” The president had warned the Iranian prime minister that if there was one more American death from the missile, the Security Council would meet in emergency session to consider the possible launch of military action against Iran.
The names of the American dead will not be released until after the families have been informed. But it is believed that at least two of them were US Navy SEALs, one of them a lieutenant junior grade.
Mack Bedford shook his head and muttered, “Those murdering bastards.” Then he turned inside the newspaper to an Associated Press feature, which concentrated on the source of the missile, France. The writer, a retired US Army colonel, claimed the Diamondhead was still being shipped to Iran. He also believed the French government had a duty to find the arms factory and bring the owners to justice. He stated that the current scandal was bringing no glory to the French Republic and indeed reflected very badly on the nation as a whole. “The mere image of anyone growing rich off the lives of US military personnel being burned alive would, in the end, sicken all right-thinking nations.” However, his contact in the Elysée Palace gave something of a Gallic shrug and told him, “France has always been the world leader in the manufacture of heat-seeking guided missiles, and the industry has many branches in many departments throughout the country. Sometimes things happen which are beyond our control.” He added, unhelpfully, that France was a very big place, and they had no idea where the Diamondhead was made. “There is a shady side to the arms industry, monsieur, as I am sure you realize. Mostly, both buyers and sellers cover their tracks very well.”
Mack put down the newspaper and sipped his coffee. In his mind was a vision of the Phantom of the Opera in a black cloak hoisting the killer missile onto a horse-drawn farm wagon driven by cackling Arabs wearing robes and turbans. “Murdering bastards,” he said for the second time in as many minutes.
Midnight. Montpellier Munitions Forest of Orléans, France
It was impossible to see precisely what was being loaded onto the sixteen-wheel freight truck that was backed up to the concrete dock on the deserted south side of the arms factory. A huge tarp was draped over the entrance and right over the back end of the truck. Only someone standing inside the cargo area could possibly have seen the five-foot-long wooden crates, three feet high and three feet wide, being transported on forklift loaders and then stacked inside the heavy-duty vehicle. They piled them three wide, and three high, and there were four stacks, thirty-six crates, each one containing six guided missiles. The crates were unmarked.
Beyond the loading dock, six armed guards patrolled. There were four more constantly walking around the chain-link perimeter fence. The gates that led out to the private road that cut through the forest between Montpellier and the highway were locked. Two armed guards manned the concrete security office outside the gates, where a steel barrier formed another line of Montpellier defense. Until that barrier was raised, no one was going anywhere.
Inside the canopy the first shipment was loaded and secure, attended personally by Montpellier’s chairman and owner, Henri Foche himself, attired as usual in his immaculate dark suit, shiny black shoes, white shirt and dark-blue tie. No overcoat. Just his trademark scarlet handkerchief placed jauntily in his breast pocket. Satisfied that almost eleven 11 dollars’ worth of military hardware was safely in place, he ordered the rear door of the truck to be slammed shut and locked. Not even the driver would be told the combination that would open it. The chairman would take care of that personally. Only his trusted number two, rocket scientist Yves Vincent, was privy to that information, and he was waiting in the black Mercedes with Marcel and Raymond, ready to accompany the convoy on its journey.
There were three more trucks waiting to be loaded, which would bring the total number of missiles to 864, with a street value, as they say in the drug trade, of 100 million dollars. Wholesale value to Henri Foche was a little over 43 million, paid before shipment from the coffers of the Iranian government, which had been, literally, awash with cash since oil prices went straight through the roof of the mosque.
Not all the missiles were going to the Iraqi insurgents. There would be a shipment of 200 for the army of Hezbollah, currently hunkered down in Beirut, awaiting their next chance to strike out at Israel. There would be 200 for the embattled warriors of Hamas, in their grim but hopeless fight against the iron-souled regulars of the Israeli defense force. Around 200 were earmarked for the Afghan tribesmen of the Taliban in their war against the United States and Great Britain. And there would be 162 for the insurgents fighting in Iraq, to be distributed by terrorist commanders. The rest would remain in Iran.
The remaining three security trucks were loaded within an hour, and at one thirty the convoy pulled out, running through the blackness of the forest toward the city of Orleans, which was, essentially, deserted. They drove past several thousand statues of Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans, who, right here in 1429, persuaded King Charles VII to attack the besieging forces of England and liberate the city. Joan thus provided the turning point in the Hundred Years’ War, and the city fathers, ever since, have been determined that no one should ever forget La Pucelle, the French peasant girl-warrior from Lorraine. There was thus something gruesomely poetic about Henri Foche’s convoy of death, speeding through the historic cradle of French military defiance in order to provide hardware for several different wars.
Also, it was raining like hell. With wipers slashing the downpour off the windshields, they rumbled over the bridge that spans the Loire River and headed south through the Forest of Sologne, forever the refuge of the French aristocracy, a flat, damp, and dismal area. Here French kings for centuries hunted wild boar and deer across the empty heathlands. The area is redolent with marshes, lakes and wetlands. It also boasts some of the most beautiful chateaus of the Loire, including the mighty Chateau Chambord, the largest and grandest on the entire river. This is a gigantic palace of 440 rooms and 85 staircases, built by King Francois I in 1519 in a bold attempt to outshine the pope.
Francois was schizophrenic, since he claimed his chateau would establish him as “one of the greatest builders in the universe.” Yet to the end of his days he referred to it only as his “little hunting lodge.”
Henri Foche, who nursed similar grandiose a
mbitions as a national leader, charged straight past this monument to sixteenth-century French architecture, leading the way at the head of his convoy, speeding down Route A71, a few miles east of Chambord. They ran on for another twenty miles before turning west off the highway onto a truly desolate landscape, flat, featureless, and very, very wet. The rain continued to lash down, and the headlights from the trucks cast the only light as far as the eye could see.
Eventually, they turned off and ran through a wide path cut though a small woodland area. When they emerged from the trees on the far side, there before them was a one-mile-long blacktop surface, with small bright lights on either side running into the far distance. They were switched on only when Foche’s four trucks growled their way out of the woods.
Up ahead was a small cement building, with one single light. Outside was an air-traffic man holding two illuminated sticks to steer them to the correct spot. To the controller’s left stood the four-engine wide-bodied cargo aircraft, the Ilyushin 11-76, workhorse of the Russian Air Force, Iranian owned but built in the enormous Khimki aviation plant, northwest of Moscow, near Sheremet’yevo Airport.
The Ilyushin is essentially a military freighter, a specialist in heavy tonnage, requiring ramp loading through its huge rear doors under the distinctive T tail. Its designers, the Tashkent Aviation Production Association in Uzbekistan, gave it a high-mounted “shoulder” wing, with a span measuring more than fifty yards. Its four Russian engines generate more power than the US-built Lockheed C-141 Starlifter.
The Ilyushin was specifically designed for short-field takeoff, with a special capacity to handle rough fields, both incoming and leaving. A total of twenty low-pressure tires on the landing wheels are designed to bear the weight. This evening the Ilyushin had not even attempted to land until the Montpellier convoy was within two miles of the runway.
And right now, the air traffic controllers at Tours Airport were wondering where the heck the big Russian military freighter had gone. Their efforts to locate it, however, were pretty halfhearted, since it was after all almost two o’clock and no one had suggested an emergency. They resolved to keep a close lookout for its reappearance, but meanwhile decided to pretend it had not been sighted.
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