The ready room door opened suddenly and a group of officers in white turtlenecks and flotation vests walked in. “Event one?” the leader asked.
Woods looked up and recognized the CAG LSO, the Air Wing Landing Signal Officer, the one on the platform for the recovery of the first event. He was debriefing every pilot who had landed and had worked his way aft to Ready Room Eight. “Hey, Bolt, right here,” Woods said, lifting his hand.
Woods and Big stood up and the group of LSOs — and LSOs in training crossed to meet them.
“211?” Bolt asked.
“Me,” Woods said.
Bolt opened his book and looked for the entry on 211’s pass. Finding it, he read the comments. “Okay three-wire, little high at the start, settled over the ramp. That’s it,” Bolt said, looking at Woods. He didn’t expect much response, having given him nearly the highest grade possible, only an underlined okay being better, but very rare.
“Thanks,” Woods said.
“207?”
“Me,” Big said.
“Okay two wire, little left in the groove, little nose down at the ramp.”
“Thanks,” Big said.
Bolt closed his book. His fine straight blond hair was a mess from the wind and jet exhaust. He looked at Woods and Big with a gleam in his eye. “How fast were you guys going coming into the break? We didn’t see you in the overhead pattern, then suddenly we see you coming like your hair was on fire, enter the break, and land.”
Woods glanced at Big and shrugged. “What do you think, Big, two-fifty? Two seventy-five?”
“Kilometers, maybe,” Big said. Then to Bolt. “It’s hard for you, Bolt.” Bolt was an S-3 pilot. “You’re not used to seeing that kind of speed, you know, like a Cessna or a Piper might throw at you.”
“You’re hilarious,” Bolt said, smiling.
Pritch came in as Bolt left. Woods fixed her with a sharp glance, but Pritch avoided his eyes. “The aircrews from the first event haven’t debriefed in CVIC,” Pritch announced to Sedge.
Sedge turned away from the schedule board where he was looking for their next hop. “Like it matters. What are we going to say? Did four million intercepts, saw my wingman each time, returned home, and took a leak? Why do we go through this charade?”
“Not up to me, Sedge,” Pritch said. “Who’s it going to be?” she asked, studying all four of them.
“Come on, Sedge,” Wink said. “Let’s go tell the nice Intelligence Officer about our hop.”
They followed Pritch out the door and down the passageway to the intelligence center. “How’d it go?” Pritch asked Wink as they walked down the passageway.
“No problem. Routine hop,” he answered.
“Everybody get back okay?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t we? It was just a silly AIC hop, you know, you go outbound, then inbound, then you land. Nothing to it.”
Pritch turned and examined their faces as they walked behind her.
“You expect any trouble?” she asked in a low tone of voice.
They both shook their heads, as they entered CVIC.
23
The task force members had gathered in the fusion room, where they waited for Joe Kinkaid. The computers in the room hummed from the satellite photos and data being manipulated by eager agents; a live CNN broadcast played in the back of the room, showing footage of an Israeli air strike into Lebanon. Sami watched it abstractedly. It looked so much like other strike footage he had seen he couldn’t help wondering if they ever just pulled out footage of a similar Israeli air strike and showed it with a new date on it.
Now his attention focused on Joe Kinkaid, who’d just come into the room, looking more rumpled than usual. Sami could tell that Kinkaid wasn’t interested in the latest news reports or anything else. He was very unhappy, and very angry. “I didn’t tell you what Ricketts was doing,” he began, forgoing any preliminaries.
Sami stared, wondering what was coming.
Kinkaid continued, “He was involved in an operation to kidnap the Sheikh.”
Sami looked around to see how many of the task force members were in control of their expressions. Kinkaid wasn’t looking for any reaction as he went on. “He had excellent intelligence of the Sheikh’s whereabouts and set up one of the most creative covert ops I have ever heard of. The Sheikh was about to walk into the trap this morning, while you were all sleeping soundly in your beds.” Kinkaid reached for the cigarette pack in his shirt pocket, forgetting that it hadn’t been there for ten years. “Apparently the Israelis had the same intelligence we did. The air strike they conducted this morning was against many targets all over southern Lebanon, but one of the targets was the place where the Sheikh was supposed to be this morning. Ricketts was standing right in the middle of it. There was some thought that the explosives Ricketts was… using, might have gone off at the wrong time. But we don’t think so. The Israelis hit the building with two one-thousand-pound laser-guided bombs and blew it to hell.”
Sami winced. He had enjoyed his evening conversation with Ricketts. It had ranged from the general untrustworthiness of the Israelis to the stupidity of Syria and various terrorist groups. They had discussed Islam, Judaism, Christianity, the future of the United States in the Middle East, and the Agency’s role in the area. Sami had asked Ricketts what guided him through all the confusion. Loyalty to the United States had been his response. Not the answer Sami had expected. Ricketts had actually said loyalty to the U.S. Sometimes it was tricky, but that was his guide. And look where it got him, Sami thought.
One of the members of the task force from the Directorate of Intelligence, the same directorate Sami was part of, asked angrily, “When are the piss-ant Israelis going to start telling us when they have an operation this big going down so we can stay out of the way?”
Kinkaid agreed. “That was the first question that occurred to me too. I think their answer would be ‘when are the piss-ant Americans going to tell us they’re conducting a covert op we might want to know about?’ I don’t think we can blame the Israelis for this one.” His frustration boiled over. “I mean what are the chances two countries are going to act on the same piece of intelligence at exactly the same time? Minuscule. Can’t happen. But it did.”
“Now what?” Sami asked.
“Now it’s going to be harder than ever to get to him, and what’s worse, we’ve probably stirred up the hornet’s nest. Let’s just hope the Sheikh doesn’t know about Ricketts’s operation or he’ll blame everything on the U.S. He’ll probably think the Israeli attack was our idea. Oh, and by the way, the Sheikh hadn’t arrived yet when the bombs hit. They missed him, and now he knows they were trying for him, which means he knows he has an intelligence leak. It’s about the worst possible result.”
“Think he’ll be on to Ricketts?”
“I don’t think there’s any way Ricketts would leave a trail. I think we’re okay there. But now we’ve got to get smarter on how to get this guy. He’ll be twice as paranoid as before.”
Sami was stuck on something else. “Anybody talked to the Israelis lately? ’Cause it looks like they really wanted this guy too.” Sami looked at the others. “The Sheikh had to be after the woman on the bus.”
“How do you figure that?” Kinkaid said doubtfully.
“It wasn’t the bus driver.” Everyone nodded. “And probably not the soldier…”
“Well, possibly—”
Sami replied, “No way. He was” — he opened a thick file and looked for a piece of paper — “nineteen years old.” He looked up. “Unless he’s somebody’s son, he probably hasn’t done enough to piss off someone of the Sheikh’s stature to make him take that kind of risk to get him. And it couldn’t have been that Navy Lieutenant…”
“Lieutenant Vialli,” Kinkaid said.