The Lion's Game (16 page)

Simpson asked, “Are we talking, like, Arab terrorist?”

I replied bluntly, “We’re talking the mother of all terrorists.”

Nash said to Simpson, “Forget everything you heard.”

“I heard nothing,” replied Simpson.

As we approached the Brooklyn Bridge, Kate said to me, “I think you may be late for your date on Long Island.”

“How late?”

“About a month.”

I didn’t reply.

She added, “We’ll probably fly to Washington first thing tomorrow.”

This was the Fed equivalent, I guess, of going to One Police Plaza to face the music and dance. I wondered if there was an escape clause in my hiring contract. I had it in my desk at Federal Plaza. I’d have to give it a quick read.

We went over the bridge and exited into the canyons of lower Manhattan. No one said much, but you could smell the brain cells burning.

Police cars don’t have regular AM/FM radios, but Officer Simpson had a portable radio, and he tuned to 1010 WINS News. A reporter was saying, “The aircraft is still in the fenced-off security area out by one of the runways, and we can’t see what’s going on, though we’ve seen vehicles arriving and leaving the area. What appeared to be a large refrigerated truck left the area a few minutes ago, and there is speculation that this truck was transporting bodies.”

The reporter paused for effect, then continued, “Authorities haven’t released an official statement, but a spokesperson from the National Transportation Safety Board told reporters that toxic fumes had overcome the passengers and crew, and there
are
some fatalities. The aircraft, though, has landed safely, and all we can do is hope and pray that there are few fatalities.”

The anchorwoman asked, “Larry, we’re hearing rumors that the aircraft was out of radio contact for several hours before it landed. Have you heard anything about that?”

Larry, the on-the-scene guy, said, “The FAA has not confirmed that, but an FAA spokesperson did say that the pilot radioed in that he was experiencing some fumes and smoke on board, and he thought it was something chemical, or maybe an electrical fire.”

This was news to me, but not to Ted Nash, who commented cryptically, “I’m glad they’re getting their facts straight.”

Facts?
It seemed to me that lacking any smoke in the aircraft, someone was manufacturing it and blowing it up everyone’s ass.

The radio reporter and the anchorlady were going on about the Swissair tragedy, and someone recalled the Saudi air tragedy. Nash turned off the radio.

I realized Kate was looking at me. She said softly, “We don’t know what happened, John, so we won’t speculate. We’ll avoid talking to the news media.”

“Right. Just what I was thinking.” I realized I had to watch what I said.

What I was also thinking was that the Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies were sort of like a cross between the Gestapo and the Boy Scouts—the iron fist in the velvet glove and all that. We won’t speculate meant, Shut up. Not wanting to wind up in protective custody for a year, or maybe worse, I said, with real sincerity, “I’ll do whatever I have to do to bring this guy to justice. Just keep me on the case.”

Neither of my teammates replied, though they could have reminded me that I wanted out not too long ago.

Ted Nash, Super-Spy, gave Officer Simpson an address a block away from Federal Plaza. I mean, jeez, the guy’s a cop, and even if he was stupid, he could figure out that we were going either to 26 Federal Plaza, or 290 Broadway, the new Fed building across the street from Fed Plaza. In fact, Simpson said, “You want to walk to Federal Plaza?”

I laughed.

Nash said, “Just pull over here.”

Officer Simpson pulled over on Chambers Street near the infamous Tweed Courthouse, and we all got out. I thanked him for driving us, and he reminded me, “I have damage to the front of the patrol car.”

“Charge it to the Feds,” I said. “They’re collecting a trillion dollars today.”

We began walking up lower Broadway. It was dusk now, but it’s always dusk down here in the skyscraper caverns of lower Manhattan. This was not a residential or shopping district, it was a government district, so there weren’t many people around on a Saturday, and the streets were relatively quiet.

As we walked, I said to Mr. Nash, “I have this sort of impression that maybe you guys knew we’d have a problem today.”

He didn’t reply right away, then said, “Today is April fifteen.”

“Right. I got my tax return in yesterday. I’m clean.”

“Muslim extremists attach a lot of significance to anniversary dates. We have a lot of watch dates on our calendar.”

“Yeah? What’s today?”

“Today,” said Ted Nash, “is the anniversary date of when we bombed Libya in nineteen eighty-six.”

“No kidding?” I asked Kate, “Did you know that?”

“Yes, but I attached little significance to it, to be honest with you.”

Nash added, “We’ve never had an incident on this date before, but Moammar Gadhafi makes an anti-American speech every year on this date. In fact, he made one earlier today.”

I mulled this over awhile, trying to decide if I’d have acted any differently if I’d known this. I mean, this kind of stuff was not in my clue bag, but if it was, I might have at least put it into my paranoia pocket. I love being a mushroom, as you can imagine—kept in the dark and fed a lot of shit—and I asked my teammates, “Did you forget to tell me?”

Nash replied, “It didn’t seem terribly important. I mean, important that you know.”

“I see,” which means, “Fuck you,” of course. But I was learning to talk the talk. I asked, “How did Khalil know he’d be transported today?”

Nash replied, “Well, he didn’t know for sure. But our Paris Embassy can’t or won’t hold a man like this for more than twenty-four hours. That much he probably knew. And if we
had
held him in Paris longer, nothing would have been much different, except for the missed symbolic date.”

“Okay, but you played his game and transported him on the fifteenth of April.”

“That’s right,” answered Mr. Nash. “We played his game, wanting to arrest him here on the fifteenth.”

“I think you’re going to miss the date.”

He didn’t reply to this, but informed me, “We took extraordinary security precautions in Paris, at the airport, and on the aircraft. In fact, there were also two Federal Air Marshals on board, undercover.”

“Good. Then nothing could go wrong.”

He ignored my sarcasm, and said, “There is a Hebrew expression, shared by the Arabs, that says, ‘Man plans, God laughs.’”

“Good one.”

We reached the twenty-eight-story skyscraper called 26 Federal Plaza, and Nash said to me, “Kate and I will do the talking. Speak only if spoken to.”

“Can I contradict you?”

“You’ll have no reason to,” he said. “This is the one place where only the truth is spoken.”

So, with that bit of Orwellian information in my head, we entered the great Ministry of Truth and Justice.

April 15, I reflected, now sucked for two reasons.

Lieutenant Chip Wiggins, Weapons Systems Officer, United States Air Force, sat silent and motionless in the right seat of the F-111F attack jet, code-named Karma 57. The aircraft was cruising along at a fuel-saving 350 knots. Wiggins glanced at his pilot, Lieutenant Bill Satherwaite, to his left.

Ever since they’d taken off from the Royal Air Force Station Lakenheath in Suffolk, England, some two hours before, neither man had said much. Satherwaite was the silent type anyway, Wiggins thought, and not given to useless chatter. But Wiggins wanted to hear a human voice, any voice, so he said, “We’re coming abeam of Portugal.”

Satherwaite replied, “I know that.”

“Right.” Their voices had a slight metallic ring to them as the words filtered through the open cockpit interphone that was the actual verbal connection between the two men. Wiggins took a deep breath, sort of a yawn, beneath his flight helmet, and the increased flow of oxygen caused the open interphone connection to reverberate for a second. Wiggins did it again.

Satherwaite said, “Would you mind not breathing?”

“Whatever makes you happy, Skipper.”

Wiggins squirmed a little in his seat. He was getting cramped after so many hours of sitting restrained in the F-111’s notoriously uncomfortable seat. The black sky was becoming oppressive, but he could see lights on the distant shore of Portugal and that made him feel better for some reason.

They were on their way to Libya, Wiggins reflected—on their way to rain death and destruction down on Moammar Gadhafi’s pissant country in retaliation for a Libyan terrorist attack a couple weeks ago on a West Berlin disco frequented by American military. Wiggins recalled that the briefing officer made sure they knew
why
they were risking their lives in this difficult mission. Without too much spin, the briefing officer told them that the Libyan bomb attack on La Belle disco, which killed one American serviceman and injured dozens of others, was just the latest in a series of acts of open aggression that had to be answered with a display of resolve and force. “Therefore,” said the briefing officer, “you’re going to blow the shit out of the Libyans.”

Sounded good in the briefing room, but not all of America’s allies thought this was a good idea. The attack aircraft from England had been compelled to take the long way to Libya because the French and the Spanish had refused them permission to cross over their airspace. This had angered Wiggins, but Satherwaite didn’t seem to care. Wiggins knew that Satherwaite’s knowledge of geopolitics was minus zero; Bill Satherwaite’s life was flying and flying was his life. Wiggins thought that if Satherwaite had been told to bomb and strafe Paris, Satherwaite would do it without a single thought about why he was attacking a NATO ally. The scary thing, Wiggins thought, was that Satherwaite would do the same thing to Washington, D.C., or Walla Walla, Washington, with no questions asked.

Wiggins pursued this thought by asking Satherwaite, “Bill, did you hear that rumor that one of our aircraft is going to drop a fuck-you bomb in the backyard of the French Embassy in Tripoli?”

Satherwaite did not reply.

Wiggins pressed on. “I also heard that one of us is going to drop a load on Gadhafi’s Al Azziziyah residence. He’s supposed to be there tonight.”

Again, Satherwaite did not answer.

Finally, Wiggins, annoyed and frustrated, said, “Hey, Bill, are you awake?”

Satherwaite replied, “Chip, the less you know and the less I know, the happier we will be.”

Chip Wiggins retreated into a moody silence. He liked Bill Satherwaite and liked the fact that his pilot was of the same rank as he, and couldn’t order him to shut up. But Satherwaite could be a cold, taciturn son-of-a-bitch in the air. He was better on the ground. In fact, when Bill had a few drinks in him, he seemed almost human.

Wiggins considered that maybe Satherwaite was nervous, which was understandable. This was, after all, according to the Ops briefing, the longest jet attack mission ever attempted. Operation El Dorado Canyon was about to make some kind of history, though Wiggins didn’t know what kind yet. There were sixty other aircraft somewhere around them, and their unit, the 48th Tactical Fighter Wing, had contributed twenty-four F-111F swing-wing jets to the mission. The tanker fleet that was flying down and back with them was a mix of the huge KC-10s and the smaller KC-135s—the 10s to refuel the fighters, and the 135s to refuel the KC-10s. There would be three midair refuelings on the three-thousand-mile route to Libya. Flying time from England to the Libyan coast was six hours, flying time toward Tripoli in the pre-attack phase was half an hour, and time over target would be a long, long ten minutes. And then they’d fly home. Not all of them, but most of them. “History,” Wiggins said. “We are flying into history.”

Satherwaite did not reply.

Chip Wiggins informed Bill Satherwaite, “Today is Income Tax Day. Did you file on time?”

“Nope. Filed for an extension.”

“The IRS focuses on late filers.”

Satherwaite grunted a reply.

Wiggins said, “If you get audited, drop napalm on the IRS headquarters. They’ll think twice before they audit Bill Satherwaite again.” Wiggins chuckled.

Satherwaite stared at his instruments.

Unable to draw his pilot into conversation, Wiggins went back to his thoughts. He contemplated the fact that this was a test of endurance for crew and equipment, and they’d never trained for a mission like this. But so far, so good. The F-111 was performing admirably. He glanced out the side of his canopy. The variable wing was extended at thirty-five degrees so as to give the airplane its best cruise characteristics for the long formation flight. Later, they’d hydraulically sweep the wings back to a streamlined aft position for the attack, and that would mark the moment of the actual combat phase of the mission.
Combat
. Wiggins really couldn’t believe he was going into actual Jesus H. Christ combat.