The control tower personnel watched the sleek fighters lift off the 10,000-foot runway, then followed the flight path of the white-orange afterburners as the jets approached the low, uneven dark clouds.
McIntire was smoothly working his controls to stay in perfect position as the jets were engulfed by the gray, foggy haze. A moment later a blinding flash and violent concussion stunned McIntire. He fought the controls as the aircraft began rolling and the nose tucked down.
Without warning, the observers in the tower saw a bright flash, followed by a tremendous explosion. They stared in horror while one of the jets tumbled out of the gray sky. The Fighting Falcon had been reduced to a huge fireball spinning out of control.
I've got to get out! Jeff realized as he frantically reached for the ejection-seat handle. His last thought was two seconds too late to save his life. Mclntire's heart pumped the last surge of blood into his circulatory system as the ejection seat fired.
The shocked men in the tower watched a blazing pinwheel of jet fuel spray in every direction before the aircraft smashed into the ground. The stunned witnesses could feel the tower shake from the impact and explosion.
Filled with anger and grief, Major Tony Lavancia slowly walked around the crash site. The light rain that continued to drench the base had extinguished the last of the smoldering fires. Only a few wisps of gray-white smoke rose from the charred debris that had recently been a sleek, multimillion-dollar fighter plane.
His lip quivered when he thought about Jeff McIntire. The humorous, good-looking young man with the superior intellect and raw flying ability never knew what hit him. McIntire had ceased to exist when the spinning fighter hit the ground at the same moment the ejection seat fired.
His neck muscles ached with tension, but Lavancia ignored the pain and replayed the accident over and over in his mind. One moment Jeff was there, tucked in tight against his wing, and a split second later he was gone. Something wasn't right. There was simply no reason, no history of F-16s blowing apart in flight.
Something strange had happened to Mclntire's fighter, but Lavancia had no idea what. He was intimately familiar with every system in the F-16, yet nothing came to mind that could cause this kind of disaster if it failed.
The team of investigators who were probing the debris of the blackened, twisted wreckage knew who Lavancia was and paid little attention to him. They understood his desire to be left alone.
Lavancia was expected to report to the flight surgeon while the details of the flight were still fresh in his mind. Afterward he would attend a debrief to go over the sequence of events leading to the fatal crash. But that wasn't what the tormented pilot wanted to do, not by any stretch of the imagination.
All Tony Lavancia wanted to do was have a very stiff drink and purge his emotions. Still in his rain-soaked flight suit, he sat down on the perimeter of the deep crater and stared blankly into the scorched hole where his friend had perished less than an hour before.
Fifteen minutes later, Lavancia's commanding officer, accompanied by the base chaplain and the flight surgeon, walked to his side and helped him to his feet.
Chapter 7
When the dessert dishes were cleared and the movie began, Steve gave Susan Nakamura a fleeting look. She was sitting by herself across the aisle, reading reports from a stack of papers she had retrieved from her briefcase. The three of them would wait to discuss the incident at Pearl Harbor until they had complete privacy.
Susan looked at Wickham and subtly motioned to the seat beside her, then neatly stacked her reading material on the foldaway tray. Her soft brown eyes narrowed and sparkled.
He secured his tray and moved into the seat next to Susan. "He went to sleep," Steve said in a low voice, "like he'd turned off a switch."
She leaned around him and glanced at Callaway. "He's the only person I know who could sleep through an earthquake."
"He doesn't waste any time," Wickham observed and fastened his safety belt. Ensconced in his seat, Steve turned to the alluring young woman. "So, you promised to tell me all about yourself."
She gave him a questioning look. "What would you like to know about me?"
There was an awkward moment before Steve made the adjustment to her straightforward style of conversation. "Actually, at the risk of sounding too forward, I'd like to know everything about you. It's not every day that I meet a Japanese-American who happens to be an FBI agent."
"You mean a Japanese-American FBI agent," Susan said patiently, "who happens to be a woman."
He swallowed and looked her straight in the eyes. "You're right, but you'll have to admit that's not something people in my line of work see every day."
"I suppose that's true."
"What made you decide on a career in the FBI?" Steve inquired innocently.
She turned slightly sideways to face him. "It's a long and boring story."
Steve could see that she was masking something that was very painful. "I didn't mean to upset you."
Susan relaxed her facial muscles and gave him a wide smile. "It's okay, believe me. I don't normally talk about it, but if you're really interested…"
"I'm really interested."
"When Pearl Harbor was attacked," she began without any sign of emotion, "my parents were newlyweds. They didn't have much money, so they were living with my mother's parents in East Los Angeles. Shortly after the war started, the FBI took my parents and grandparents right out of their home and placed them in a temporary war-relocation center."
Tilting her head, she stared absently out the window at the puffy white clouds, then pulled the shade to block the bright sunlight. "The relocation center was a section of converted stables at the Santa Anita racetrack."
Steve closed his eyes for a second and slowly let his breath out. He could only imagine the terror and degradation the innocent Japanese-Americans had felt.
"The saddest part about the internment," she continued, turning her head to look into Steve's eyes, "was that no one tried to sort out who was spying for Japan and who wasn't. If you were of Japanese extraction, you were guilty, period."
Maintaining eye contact, Steve gave her a soothing nod. "I know, and it wasn't fair, but we—"
"Many of the Japanese-Americans were kindhearted," she quietly interrupted, "loyal U. S. citizens, including my grandparents."
There was a long silence as Steve began to understand why Susan had been compelled to join the FBI. He suddenly had the clear impression that she was reading his mind.
"Sometimes," she said steadily, "when an organization does something so grotesque to innocent civilians, you want to challenge the system, to join the organization and rise to the top so you can work toward seeing that it never again happens to anyone, regardless of race or creed."
Susan quietly sighed while a nagging protest tore at her nerves. "I know that sounds idealistic, but I really believed that I could make a difference."
"And now?"
"Well, I suppose I've matured over the years," she conceded. "I realize now that I can't single-handedly change the system, but I still like to think that I've made an impact — in some small way."
She noticed the uncomfortable, almost grim look on Steve's face. "I didn't mean to get so serious."
"I'm sorry, Susan. I was just trying to imagine what your family must have gone through — the humiliation and absolute loss of pride and dignity."
"It was beyond belief," she replied sadly and looked down for a moment. "For years I lived with the psychological scars that my parents tried to conceal under a facade of smiles and happy talk. They pretended, for the sake of their children, that everything was wonderful, when deep inside they were living in mortal fear that a man with a badge might knock on their door at any moment."