Tears glistened in Tosh’s eyes. “That is good news. I would like to see him.”
“I can arrange that,” Melissa offered.
“No, please don’t. He is on his own.” Then another thought surfaced. Like her husband, Tosh Pontowski was a political animal and, even now, could not put her restless mind at ease. “Does Tom Fraser know about the report? That you’re here?” Melissa shook her head no to both questions. “Please don’t tell him. I would like to tell Zack.” She sank back into her pillows. “I know Tom is an excellent chief of staff … but for some reason … I just don’t like him. I’m being silly, I suppose.”
Melissa shook her head no again. “At times, he can be a real …” she didn’t finish the thought. “He is an excellent administrator, the best I’ve ever met. He works hard, very hard.” Both women understood how the chief of staff lightened the load of the President. “I’m worse than you — I don’t trust him. He wants something.” The younger woman had confirmed Tosh’s suspicions and she wanted to hear more. “Lately, B. J. Allison has been telephoning him a lot. Fraser’s driver told me he drove him to her town house at three o’clock the other morning.”
A rueful smile played across Tosh’s lips. “I wish it had been for something illicit. But not with that old biddy. Do you know she still works until three or four in the morning?”
“Well,” Melissa said, “rumor has it that was when she always did her best work — especially when she was younger.”
“Come now,” Tosh replied, “we mustn’t speak poorly of our elders.” Her eyes sparkled. “Especially one who is eighty-six years old.” They both laughed. Now the President’s wife grew serious. “I cannot fathom how anyone can be so greedy and grasping.” She reached out and held Melissa’s hand. “She sold her soul years ago to rise to the top of the oil industry and will do anything to protect her ties to the Middle East. I just know she wants to influence Zack’s Middle Eastern policy. That must be the reason for her interest in Fraser.” She fell silent, thinking. “Now what in the world does she have on Fraser?”
10
The twin five-year-old girls, Megan and Naomi, burst into the room and threw themselves onto Furry’s lap, each demanding a good-night kiss and hug before their mother hustled them upstairs to bed. A warm feeling came over Matt while he watched Ambler and his wife go through the nightly routine. He had seen it before and envied his backseater’s domestic life. Furry caught the bemused look on Matt’s face after the two little girls he called his Heckle and Jeckle scampered out of the room. “Why don’t I look forward to when they discover boys?” he asked.
“No problem,” Matt replied. “Just buy a pair of matched shotguns and make sure every lusty stud that comes around sees ‘em.”
“Ironic, isn’t it,” Furry said. “In the not too distant future, I’m going to be discouraging boys from doing the same thing I was trying to do to some father’s little girl when I was sixteen. One of the joys of being a parent, I guess.”
“Well, at least you know the opposition,” Matt said.
“Not fair,” Furry laughed. “Throwing one of my own ‘rules’ back at me.”
“It does apply,” Matt replied, “I was thinking about that when I saw the operations order for Gunslinger Four.” Gunslinger IV was the name of a NATO exercise their wing had been tasked to participate in.
“I was talking to Colonel Martin about that today,” Furry told him. Matt shook his head at the mention of the wing’s new deputy for operations. He didn’t like the man. “He wants your squadron to plan our tactics,” Furry continued. “I suggested that you do it since you just got checked out as a flight lead.”
“You must have slipped a cog,” Matt protested. “I’m not ready for that.”
“You are and Martin bought it.”
“Thanks for the favor.” Sarcasm laced Matt’s words.
“Hell, I didn’t invite you over to eat my grub and guzzle my booze for nothing. We need to talk about it.”
“Amb, let one of the old heads take it. I haven’t got a clue.”
“I remember when Jack Locke said the same thing.” Furry waited while Matt wrestled with his emotions at the mention of Locke. “Muddy Waters—”
“Why does his name keep coming up?” Matt interrupted.
“Because Waters was a rare bird. He could lead men in combat and they would follow. He didn’t let Locke off the hook and it paid off when the ragheads were pounding the hell out of us at Ras Assanya. Jack was the guy who planned the defense of the base.” For the next hour, Furry retold the story of how the 45th Tactical Fighter Wing had gotten involved in the first Persian Gulf war and had to fight its way out. Matt listened, absorbing the lessons that Furry had learned the hard way. “Then it was Locke who helped plan the rescue of the men who were left behind and captured. Locke picked up where Waters left off.”
A shattering pain beat at the pilot’s defenses. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Matt, I’m not like Waters or Locke. It’s just not in me. For that matter, I only know one person who is.” He paused. “You.”
Matt stared at his backseater and his pain yielded to disbelief. He didn’t believe what Furry had said. “That’s bullshit.”
“Nope. Fact. Time you proved it.”
Matt stood up and paced the floor. “What the hell is this? Some type of buck-the-kid-up session?”
“It’s what the Air Force is all about,” the major told him, not about to let the pilot off the hook. “We take our losses, learn from our mistakes, and get on with the job. Now it’s your turn.”
“Amb, I can’t do it.”
“You’ll never know until you try.”
“Look, it’s late and I got to go,” Matt said. Furry nodded and walked him to the door. His wife joined them as they stood talking and hugged him good-bye. They watched Matt retreat down the walk before closing the door.
“You really upset him,” she said. “Can he handle it?”
“Yeah,” Furry answered, “he can handle it. But he doesn’t know it yet.”
The next morning, Matt walked into Wing Intelligence and asked to see the operations order for Gunslinger IV. After wading through the dull document, he had one of the sergeants pin a large-scale chart of the exercise area up on a wall in the mission planning room and cover it with acetate. Then he sharpened a grease pencil and pulled a chair up in front. He straddled the chair backward, his arms resting on the back and looked at the chart, determined to make something happen.
“It’s our hands,” Shoshana said.
“What about them?” Habish replied as he fought the steering wheel and guided the truck along the rutted track that passed for a road. He tried to pick out the smoothest path, aware that every bump and jolt hurt Avidar.
“They’re not hard and calloused like my father’s. He grew up on a kibbutz and still goes there for vacations.”
“So some people have funny ideas about vacations,” Habish countered. “We need to find a place to spend the night.”
“Our hands are too soft and clean. If we hit a roadblock, someone might notice.”
“That’s why we’re on these back roads — to avoid roadblocks.” The trail in front of them split and Habish stopped the truck. Shoshana automatically picked up the compass and one of Avidar’s maps and got out of the truck. In Iraq, only the military and intelligence agencies were given accurate maps. But in the early days of the operation, Avidar had replaced the hard disk in his computer with a spare one he had brought in with him as a “repairman.” The disk contained a cartographic data base and he was able to make maps that rivaled anything the Iraqis had. The map Shoshana and Habish were using included the web of dirt roads and tracks that crisscrossed Iraq and allowed them to avoid using the main highway from Baghdad to Kirkuk. But they had paid a price; it had taken them forty-eight hours to cover 125 miles and they still had 60 miles more to go.