“I hear ya,” Woods replied.
“I’m not going to plan nonexistent strikes. I’ll wait till we have a real target.”
Lieutenant Commander Randy Dennison, the Air Wing Intelligence Officer, yelled at them from across CVIC. “You guys hear?”
“Hear what?” Woods asked.
“Syrians say they found a missile casing from the big air battle with the Israelis. They’re claiming it’s an American missile.”
Woods tried not to look surprised or show his inner panic. “What do they mean by that?”
“They say it’s different from the Israeli missile casings that they have. There’s some different writing on it.”
“That’s a dead issue,” Big said. “They’re still trying to make us look bad. Pretty desperate. I wonder what they did to it to make it look American. Probably put ‘This missile is American, fired by an American fighter at a Syrian without authorization’ on it.”
Dennison walked over to them. “Could be interesting if the missile is truly different.”
“Interesting in that it might help us see how clever and deceitful they are. We weren’t there, Commander. And if we weren’t there, there sure wasn’t any other carrier or American airplane nearby.” Woods hoped his bravado disguised the panic that was about to engulf him.
“If the missile has a number on it, it can be traced,” he said, smiling. “I guess we’re about to find out.”
Pritch tried to get back to the planning. She didn’t even want to know about the missile. She wasn’t ready for her world to crash down around her, which is exactly what would happen if the missile they found had an American serial number on it. She was sure she’d be exposed at some point. She had begun to think that not being fully informed about the entire operation wouldn’t get her out of it. Yet she couldn’t tell Bark about Woods. It would ruin him, and she had grown very fond of him, fonder than she would ever acknowledge. “What exactly is the plan for the strikes?” she asked Big and Woods.
Woods replied first. “The Eisenhower battle group is on its way. They are supposed to be here tomorrow—”
“From Italy?”
“Right. Naples. Where the CO of VFA-136 was shot.”
“It’s ironic,” Big said philosophically. “They murdered an officer off each carrier. Makes the revenge knife just a little sharper.”
Pritch studied the pilots. “What did we ever do to him?”
“We’re the Crusaders of the Middle Ages, conquering the Middle East in a different way. They used horses and soldiers, we’re using Israel and diplomacy.” Big pushed his sleeves up. “These people construct these bizarre dead-wrong theories, and go kill people based on them. They are so far from reflecting reality that it causes you to wonder if there isn’t something else at work.”
“Are we going to have some kind of briefing where we discuss who will be doing what?” Pritch asked.
“There’s supposed to be a joint strike planning meeting when the Eisenhower gets within helicopter range. Big and I are on the strike planning team. I’m not sure if the meeting will be here or on the Eisenhower—”
“Think I could go?” Pritch pleaded.
“I doubt it. Why would you want to?”
“Because I need to know what’s going on.”
“We’ll see.”
28
Sami strode into Kinkaid’s office and looked at his boss anxiously. Kinkaid glanced up from a pile of papers he was leafing through. “Right in the middle of this crisis, I have to do paperwork. What you got?”
“I’ve been searching every library I can find. Every historical reference I know, anything else that would help. I found some histories of the Isma’ili sect, the one these Assassins came from. I think I found something.”
Sami walked over to the table and spread out an Operational Navigational Chart of the Middle East. Then he laid several reference pages he had copied on the corner of the table. “Check this out,” he said, handing a copy of a photograph to Kinkaid, who took the picture and studied it. “What’s this?”
“Alamut. The very place we talked about. The fortress of the Old Man of the Mountains, where these guys have operated for centuries, off and on. The same place referred to by Marco Polo, of all people. This is the actual place.”
“Where’d you get this?”
“It was in a book I found. Looks to me like the fortress has been improved since it was last abandoned. I think we have to consider the possibility that he went back to the place where his namesake originated.”
“When was this photo taken?” Kinkaid asked, his curiosity aroused.
Sami brought the photo close to his face to study the unusual numbers at the bottom. “It doesn’t say. But I think it was taken in the 1930s.”
“There’s no photograph of this fortress after 1930?”
“I sure haven’t found one.”
“Maybe it’s time to get some new imagery,” Kinkaid said. “Where is this place?”
Sami leaned over the chart and studied the northwestern part of Iran. He checked the piece of paper on which he had written the latitude and longitude. “Right… here,” he said, putting his finger on the brownish area on the chart, some of the highest mountains in Iran.
“Shit, Sami. Talk about inaccessible. We could never get anyone in there. And worse than that, it’s in Iran.” Kinkaid pondered the problem. “We’ve declared war against this guy, but we haven’t declared war against Iran. Ever since that declaration of war went out, they’ve been yelling about how they are going to go ballistic if we set one foot on their land or do anything contrary to their sovereignty. Typical Iranian bluster, but still…”
“We can at least get some imagery. If he’s there, maybe we’ll be able to figure it out. If he isn’t there, we’ll know to look elsewhere.”
“Like where? Could he be somewhere else?”
“Yes. Those were even harder to locate than Alamut. According to the stuff I found, this guy, or the ones who came before him, went everywhere. Egypt, India, Pakistan, Syria, Lebanon, even Jerusalem. Everywhere. But it’s still a small group that is generally thought of as political, even in Islamic circles. There are several other mountain fortresses that may be tied to this guy. Left over from the Crusades. Some were built to stave off attacks that were sure to come from their Muslim neighbors. I finally came up with two others that I think are candidates. I could only dig up a picture of one of them, and we’ll need to track the others.”
Kinkaid was pleased. Although it wasn’t hard information, it was a good start. It certainly gave them something to work toward, and at least a place to focus intelligence gathering. “Let’s find the two. You can keep looking for more in the meantime. What do we know about them?”
Sami picked up the stack of papers on the table corner. “The first one isn’t too far from where Ricketts got it.”
“Dar al Ahmar?”
“Yeah.” Sami recalled the laser sight dancing on his eyes. “Sure would have made things easier if he had just kidnapped the Sheikh.”
“And he’d still be alive… I had forgotten he was even there. How could I have forgotten that?” he asked Sami, but more to himself. “That guy gave his life for his country, and nobody’ll ever know. Except us.” He paused.
Sami thought maybe it was time for him to leave when Kinkaid spoke again. “We should have known about the Israeli air strike. We could have coordinated with them to take out this Sheikh guy before he did more damage. Not only did we not coordinate, we didn’t even know about their plan. So we took a risk, sent one of our best men to snatch this guy, and he gets obliterated by a bomb that we should have known was on its way. Just three weeks ago, I was sitting in this same room with Ricketts planning his operation. And now he’s dead. And I had forgotten about it.” Kinkaid sat down heavily. “How do you get to the point, Sami, where the immediate takes away your friends and their memories?”