Final Flight (21 page)

“He will betray us,” Ali said.

“Perhaps, given the opportunity.” Qazi sighed
and stretched. “Are we on schedule?”

“It will be very tight. I am returning to Africa
this afternoon. Noora should return with me. We will need
her to handle jarvis.”

“Three days. We must be ready to go in three
days. The Americans might sail at any time.”

“Their reservations are for another seven days,”
Yasim reminded them.

“The American government could order the ship
to sail at any time in response to events in
Lebanon. This would be an excellent time for those
Shiite fools to behave themselves, but one cannot expect
miracles.

We must seize this opportunity before it escapes
us.

“Then we must make some changes.”

“Yes.” Qazi rubbed the back of his neck.
Ensuring the painstaking accomplishment of a myriad of
small details was the foundation of a successful
clandestine operation, and the reason Colonel Qazi was
still alive after twelve years in the business. He
insisted Ali and his other lieutenants exhibit the
wholehearted enthusiasm for detail he preached.

Unanticipated events would occur in spite of
every precaution, but the less left to chance the better.
“Tell me about the communications.”

Jake left the hotel at eight A.m. with
four other officers he met in the lobby. All were
attired in civilian clothes. Walking down the
Via Medina together, they still drew glances from
pedestrians and kamikazes zipping by on motor
scooters. American sailors on liberty were no
longer authorized to wear their uniforms ashore due
to the terrorist threat, but their nationality was obvious
to everyone, especially when they opened their mouths.
Another regulation decreed without even a nod toward
reality, Jake mused. He began to perspire as
he walked. The exercise felt good after so long
without it.

They turned left when they reached the
Piazza Municipio and walked down the divided
boulevard toward the harbor. Behind them, across the top
of the boulevard, was the Municipal Building. On
their right the Castel Nuovo jutted upward into the
dirty white morning haze. On the side of the
seven-hundred-year-old structure Jake could
see a shell impact mark, perhaps a scar from World
War II. It appeared as if a shell with a contact
fuse had gouged a shallow hole in the stone and the
shrapnel had ripped out gouges which radiated in all
directions from the center crater.

Jake wondered how many wars and sieges and years
the castle had withstood.

The little group threaded their way through bumper-to
bumper morning traffic to the gate to the quay. The
carabinieri on duty gave the little group a salute
and received smiles in reply.

They joined other officers and men waiting for the
ship’s launch. As they chatted they watched the
ferries getting under way for Ischia and Capri.
People boarded the vessels through the stern, then each moved
slowly ahead as a man on the bow took in the
anchor cable and, a hundred yards from the quay, the
anchor itself. Now the screws bit the water in
earnest and the wake began to spread. As each
ferry departed, people on the stern waved heartily to the
Americans.

When the officer’s launch arrived at half past
the hour, Jake stood with the boat officer and
coxswain amidships rather than sit in the forward or
after passenger compartment. He had never gotten used
to riding these small craft in the chop beyond the
breakwater.

The launch plowed the oily, black water and
stirred the floating trash with its wake as it passed
the bows of four U.s. destroyers and frigates
moored stern-in against the breakwater. At the
masthead of each ship the radar dishes rotated
endlessly. Most of these ships were part of the flotilla
that accompanied and protected the United States.
At the piers on the other side of the harbor, on his
left as the launch made for the harbor entrance, ships
of the Italian Navy were moored. Just visible in the
haze beyond them was the rising prominence of Mount
Vesuvius.

Jake looked aft, over the stern on the boat.
Buildings from prior centuries covered the hills
behind the Castel Nuovo and the Municipal
Building. At the top of the most prominent height
stood a magnificent stone castle. This was
Castel Sant’Elmo, now a military prison.
The flanks of the hill between the Municipal
Building and Castel Sant’Elmo formed the
oldest, poorest quarter of the city, the tenderloin
known to generations of American sailors as “the
Gut.” The bars and girls there had entertained
seafarers for centuries, and the punks there had rolled
them and left them bleeding for at least as long.

Even with its smart new residential and shopping
districts, Naples remained an industrial port
city, not pretty, not spruced up for tourists, but a
city of muscle encased in fat and smelling of sweat
and cheap wine. It was an old European city that
modern Italian glitz and new Roman fashion
had yet to transform.

He watched the features of the city merge into the
morning haze as the boat bucked through the swells beyond
the harbor entrance. The natural breeze was
magnified by the boat’s speed, so the perspiration
dried on Jake’s face and his stomach remained
calm. He even traded quips with the boat officer,
a young F-14 pilot in whites.

Gulls looking for a handout swept over the
launch, almost close enough to touch, their heads pointed
into the prevailing wind, out to sea. On the
boat’s fantail the Stars and Stripes crackled
at attention.

It was a good feeling, Jake reflected, seeing
the gray ships lying there at anchor in the sun with the
sea breeze in your face, the coxswain wearing his
Dixie cup at a jaunty angle to prevent it from
being blown off” his white uniform incandescent in the
sun. This was the part of his life Jake would miss the
most, this carefree, tangy adventure with the world young
and fresh, life stretching ahead over the waves
toward an infinite horizon.

But as the launch approached the United States
Jake Grafton’s thoughts were no longer on the
scenic quality of the morning. The two linesmen
lowered the bumpers at the last moment and leaped onto
the float below the officer’s brow as the launch brushed
against it. At the top of the ladder the
officer-of-the-deck saluted Jake, who nodded and
rushed on by.

He made his way to his stateroom on the 0-3
level, right beneath the flight deck, and called
Farnsworth as he changed into a khaki uniform.

“Have you been ashore yet?” he asked the
yeoman.

“Not yet, sir. I’m going this afternoon after
I get a few more things done.”

“How about having someone bring the maintenance
logbook for that A-6 that crashed up to the CAG
office. I want to look at it.”

“I’ll call their duty officer.”

“Anything sizzling?”

“Same old stuff’ sir. The XO is having
everyone do another muster this morning. Seems three
guys, one of them a petty officer, didn’t show
up this morning. So the XO is making the whole ship
muster again.”

“See you in a few minutes.”

He wondered what that was all about. Ray
Reynolds must be worried about something.

In the office he automatically reached into the
helmet suspended from the overhead. It was empty.
He accepted a mug of coffee from Farnsworth and
stared accusingly at the helmet as he took the first
experimental sips. Finally he retreated to his
office, the “cave,” where he flipped through the incoming
messages and letters. The navy had named an officer
to replace him, someone he didn’t know. The new
man would report in four weeks. No hint as
to Jake’s next assignment.

Perhaps that was just as well. No doubt it
would be some staff or paperwork job somewhere. Better
he shouldn’t know just now, while Callie was here.

The maintenance logbook was delivered by a young
airman, whom Jake thanked. The book was a
loose-leaf binder. On the metal cover in
numbers an inch high was the black stencil “503,”
the side-number of the A-6 Majeska and Reed
had taken on Reed’s last flight. Below the large
number, in smaller stencil, was the aircraft’s
six-digit bureau number.

Jake opened the book. On the right side were the
“down” gripes for the last ten flights. Each
gripe card carried the date of the repair, the name
of the man who had performed it, and the corrective action
taken.

On the left side of the book were all the “up”
gripes that had not been repaired. A down gripe,
by definition, was one so serious that the aircraft could not
fly until it was fixed. An up gripe, on the
other hand, was a nuisance problem that could wait until
the bird was down for another problem or a planned
maintenance inspection before it was repaired, or “worked
off.”

Jake read the down gripes first and the particulars
of each signoff.

The problems struck him as routine; the type of
complaints that one expected an aircraft to have,
especially if it were used hard, as all the
A-6’s had been these last few months.

The up gripes constituted quite a stack. The little
forms were arranged in order, with the most recent on the
top of the pile and the oldest on the bottom. When he
had read each one, he went back through and read them
all again carefully.

Finally he closed the book. What was there about that
aircraft that caused a crash? There was not a single
gripe on the oxygen system. Had Bull
Majeska really blacked out? At sea level,
where there was plenty of oxygen if his mask were not
completely sealed to his face? Or was he lying?
What revelation could he make that would be so terrible?

Terrible to whom? To Majeska, of course.

When Jake found himself chewing on a fingernail,
he slammed the book on the desk and shouted for
Farnsworth. “Gimme a cigarette.”

“No.”

“Goddammit! Please!”

“Bust me. Give me a court-martial. No
more weeds for you. “If you shaved your legs,
Farnsworth, you’d make somebody a good
wife.”

“No cigarettes for you, sailor. But you wanna
buy me a drink?”

“Go down to the captain’s office and find out why
we had two musters this morning.”

“Yes sir.”

Up on the flight deck Jake wandered along
until he found an A-6 unattended by maintenance
troops. He lowered the pilot’s boarding ladder and
thumbed the canopy switch. The canopy opened
slowly, the battery driving a small hydraulic
pump that whined loudly in protest.

He climbed the ladder and sat down in the
cockpit.

He wondered if Reed would still be alive if he
hadn’t taken him flying that night. Mad Dog, with the
regular, even features and the soft voice. Agh,
who can say what might have been or should have been or
would have been, if only…? That kind of thinking was for
philosophers and politicians. But Reed was
dead. The kid that had had enough was now dead.

His eyes went from instrument to instrument. ALL,
altimeter, airspeed, radar altimeter, gyro,
warning lights … His gaze meandered to the buttons
and knobs on the bombardier’s side of the
cockpit. He found himself staring at the black hood
that shielded the radar and FLIR.

They were looking over a Greek freighter at
night. Reed must have had the FLIR on, just as he
had done when he and Jake had swooped down on that
dynamite boat several weeks ago. And Reed
would have had his head glued against the hood. Bull
Majeska had been sitting here, flying the plane,
close to the water comhow high? As they went by the ship
Reed would have used the zoom lens on the FLIR in the
nose turret to see the detail of the freighter. And
Majeska? He would have squeezed the stick trigger
and brought the infrared display up on the AD!. And
he would have been paying attention to flying the plane.
If he got too near the water, the radar
altimeter would have given him a warning.

Jake’s left hand went to that instrument and rotated
the knob that set the altitude at which the warning beep
would sound. He watched the little wedge-shaped bug
move around the dial. If the pilot had it set
too high, when the warning went off he would ignore
it. If he had it set too low, when the warning
sounded it would be too late.

Say Majeska was watching the freighter instead of
flying. Or say he got distracted
by something in the cockpit. The audible warning sounds when
the aircraft descends to whatever altitude the bug
was set to. And then? What? Majeska rights the
plane and breaks the descent?

No. Not that. They either hit the water or, or
what? What made Majeska refuse to talk?
Jake smacked his fist on his thigh and got out of the
cockpit. He closed the canopy and strode across
the deck. Down in the CAG office, he grabbed the
maintenance logbook and flipped through the up gripes.
There it was. “Contrast control on AD!
intermittent. Went dark once. Possible short.”
That had been an up gripe. Two fights later,
just the night before the crash, a down gripe: “AD!
went black. FIX THIS THING.” The sign-off was
the same as on the previous gripe: “Could not
duplicate.” He fired up the office copying
machine and shot copies of both gripes. He put
the copies in the top drawer of his desk.

“What did you find out?” he asked Farnsworth
when he re-turned.

“They just said the XO told them to take another
muster. He didn’t say why.”

“Here,” Jake said, handing the maintenance log to the
yeoman. “You can take this back, then go
get some chow. It’s lunchtime.” Jake called the
XO, Ray Reynolds. “This is Grafton,
XO. Just curious, why two musters this morning?

“One of those guys who didn’t show for muster is
a petty officer.

Another’s a marine lance corporal. I know the
corporal. He stands orderly duty for me
sometimes. He is one squared- away marine, a
damn good kid. Something is wrong.”