“Not that I can tell.”
“A tough way to end a flying career.” Cowboy rinsed his face and dried it on a towel.
“Cowboy, if I didn’t ground myself, you’d ground me. I know you. You’re yuks and giggles and Texas corn off duty, but you can slice the raw meat when you have to, whether it’s living or dead.”
Parker snorted and sat down at his desk. “I wish you were writing my fitness report.”
Jake rubbed his chin. Over eighteen hours had passed since he had shaved and his face felt like sandpaper. “Those Arabs. Suicides earning their way to Allah’s big tent in the sky. Damn, that’s scary. What would you have done if he hadn’t started shooting?”
Parker stroked his forehead with an index finger. “I’m not going to take a missile hit before I open fire. I don’t give a damn what Washington thinks or how it reads in the newspapers. Every ship in the force was at general quarters tonight. Every gun was ready to fire. The battlewagon was ready with sixteen-inchers and Harpoons. If one of these boats uses a radar on the proper frequency, points its nose at a ship and holds that heading to stabilize the gyros in a missile, I’m going to blow him out of the water. Right then and there.”
“The next guy won’t panic and start shooting,” Jake said. “They learn real fast.”
“We never suck it up and go after these guys. For the life of me, I can’t see why it’s better to drop bombs from an airplane or shells from a ship’s gun than it is to just hunt the terrorists down and execute them on the spot. Our response to hijackings and murder is to merely send some more ships over here to wave the flag. And salt a bomb around every now and then.”
“Where is all this going, Cowboy?”
The admiral scowled and his right hand became a fist. “Israel wants us in bed with them. The terrorists are trying to push us there. The Soviets are hoping to catch us there. Iran claims that’s where we’ve been all along.” His hand slowly opened. “It’s Vietnam all over again, Jake. Our politicians have gotten sucked into taking sides, so our diplomatic options have evaporated. Now the only American card left is the military one, and sooner or later Washington is going to play it. Just as sure as shootin’.” The hand was a fist again, rapping on the desk. “And the politicians aren’t going to do any better here than they did in Vietnam. Those people never learn.”
Jake Grafton’s shoulders rose a half inch, then subsided. “Everybody but us will have God on his side. And we’ll be in the middle.”
“If only we were in the middle,” the admiral mused, drumming his fingertips on the tabletop. “And everyone knew it.”
Jake stood and stretched. “Thanks for giving me the chance to ground myself.”
The admiral’s lips curved into a hint of a smile. “I know you, Jake.”
9
Thirty seconds after Colonel Qazi stepped onto the sidewalk in front of the terminal at Leonardo da Vinci Airport with his jacket hanging over his shoulder and his tie loosened, a sedan slid to a halt near the curb. He tossed his valise on the backseat and climbed in. The woman driving had the car moving in seconds.
“How was your trip?” she asked as she deftly worked the vehicle through the gears. Her hair was cut in a style common in Europe this year, medium length and swept toward one side. She was wearing a modest, medium-priced tan dress and casual shoes.
Qazi scanned the back window. “I was recognized at the airport.” He checked the road ahead. “Drive on into Rome.”
The driver glanced at her rearview mirror. “How do you know you were recognized?”
“I saw it in his eyes. It was the gate attendant, as all the passengers filed past him.” He sighed. “Ah, Noora. I’m too well known. It’s time for me to retire.”
Noora concentrated on her driving, checking the mirror regularly. The daughter of a rich Arab carpet merchant, she had grown up in Paris. She had studied dance seriously, and chucked it all after the allowance from her father dried up when her affair with a fellow female student became common knowledge in the Arab expatriate community.
She was belly dancing in a cabaret in Montmartre when Qazi recruited her. He had had misgivings then, and they still nagged at him occasionally. She was physically attractive, though not too much so, and she meshed into her surroundings anywhere in Europe, but try as he might, he could not break her of her distinctive heel-and-toe dancer’s walk, the smooth, muscular flow of which made her stick in an observer’s memory. While high heels helped her gait, they also emphasized the molded perfection of her legs. He used her sparingly, only when he had to.
“Your pistol and passports are in the glove compartment.” The weapon and passports had come into Italy in the diplomatic pouch and Noora had picked them up at the embassy.
Qazi removed the Walther PPK from its ankle holster and checked the magazine and the chamber. It was loaded. He pulled up his right trouser leg and strapped the holster on. The silencer went into a trouser pocket. Then he carefully scrutinized both the passports, especially the photographs.
One passport was British, for Arnold MacPhee, age forty-one, six feet tall, residing Hillingdon, Middlesex. Inside was an international driver’s license and a membership in the British Automobile Association. The other passport was for an American, occupation priest, one Harold Strong of Schenectady, New York. This passport contained a New York driver’s license and a medical insurance card from a large American firm. The passports were genuine. They had been stolen, of course, and all the pages were genuine except for the pages that contained the physical description of the bearer and the photograph. The paper for the new pages had been stolen from the manufacturers who supplied the very same paper to the governments involved. No cheap forgeries, these; they had been manufactured in the state passport office by men who had spent their adult lives printing genuine passports.
The documents contained in the passports were forgeries, but good ones. They would pass the scrutiny of immigration officials whose expertise was passports.
Qazi slipped the documents into his jacket pocket and sat back in the seat. He adjusted one of the air conditioning vents to blow the air on him. The heat here was less oppressive than in North Africa, but the air-conditioning of the airplane had lowered his tolerance. “Where will Yasim meet us?”
“The parking garage under the Villa Borghese.”
They came into Rome on the main thoroughfare from the airport, which was on the coast, near the mouth of the Tiber. The hills around Rome were partially obscured by thick haze. A typical September day in Italy, Qazi thought.
Soon the car was embedded in heavy traffic — buses, trucks, automobiles, and motor scooters. The exhaust fumes pumped through the car’s air conditioning system made his eyes sting. They passed the Circus Maximus and circled the Coliseum, then weaved through boulevards until they were on the Via Veneto. Ahead, the tall umbrella pines and huge oaks punctuated the open expanse of the Villa Borghese, the Central Park of Rome.
“I don’t think we are being followed by a solo vehicle,” Noora said.
Qazi said nothing. With enough vehicles and two-way radio communications, a surveillance team would be almost impossible to detect. One never knew if the airport watchers had enough time to alert such a team. The only safe course was to always assume the surveillance team was there, undetected and watching.
Immediately after crossing the Piazzale Brasile, Noora slipped the car into the lane that led down to the entrance to the underground parking garage under this section of the Villa Borghese. On the second level down, near the back of the garage, Noora slowly crept by a parked limo. A uniformed chauffeur was dusting the vehicle. He wore a cap and did not look up from his task. Noora continued on, apparently hunting for a parking place. She descended to the third level of the garage, drove up and down the rows, and returned in about five minutes to the second level. This time the chauffeur’s cap was on the fender. No one was in sight. Noora stopped as the limo backed out of its parking slot and the trunk sprung open.