FIVE
“You’re holding our pilot.” Ambassador Wexler’s voice was calm and level, deadly. She held the Cuban ambassador’s gaze, forcing him to meet her eyes.
The man spread his hands apart, palm up, and shrugged lightly. “So you say, Madame Ambassador. You have become uncharacteristically boring on this point. Yet you have no evidence. Do you? Just your bald assertion that Cuba is somehow responsible for this pilot.” He half turned away from her and gestured to the stack of messages on his desk.
“I would know, would I not?”
“We have sources, too,” she replied levelly. “I know you have him.”
The satellite imagery she’d seen earlier that morning was conclusive.
“And you do, too. Let’s quit playing games with each other.” Without waiting for him to offer, she took a seat on the large leather couch dominating one end of the Cuban ambassador’s office. “Tell me why you’re doing this.”
He hesitated for a moment, then followed her to the small seating area.
He chose an armchair at right angles to the couch and lowered himself into it slowly. “I will play your game. For the sake of argument, just why would we want to keep your downed pilot from you? I assume you do have a theory, one no doubt involving a massive conspiracy by my small nation.” He eyed her sardonically.
Ambassador Wexler leaned forward. “This is your third strike. First, downing the civilian aircraft. Second, holding our downed pilot. And third” She paused and gazed at him steadily, looking for any reaction.
“I think you know what number three is.”
He shrugged. “We are in disagreement as to one and two as well. How can I read your mind and know what fantasy you have contrived as reason number three?”
“I think you know all too well,” she answered softly, steel underlying the smooth words. “And it costs nothing for me to confirm what you already know. In a word no, make that two words. Libya. And weapons.”
She leaned back, a grimly satisfied expression on her face.
The Cuban ambassador held the pleasant, charming expression on his face at some cost to him. He could feel the muscles quiver, the mouth threaten to twitch into a scowl. It was just the confirmation she was looking for, he was certain. If, in fact, she needed it at all.
“What would you like me to say?”
“Nothing. At least then you won’t lie to me.” She eyed him sternly.
“What Cuba does as a sovereign nation is her own business. But you know better than to push us too far.
And you have this time. That pilot had better be back in American hands by the end of the day or you’ll suffer the consequences.”
“A threat?” he snapped.
She paced slowly across to the door, paused with her hand on the knob, and turned back to him. “Consider it a promise.”
“Release me now.” Thor kicked at the man holding his arms behind him. “Damn it, you have got no grounds to” “We can do anything we feel necessary.” The guard easily evaded Thor’s foot and jabbed him sharply in the kidneys with the muzzle of his pistol. “You are no longer in the United States, my friend, but on our soil.”
“We’re not at war!” Thor wheeled around to face Santana. Thirty-six hours of kick-floating in the warm ocean, no food, no sleep the movement made him dizzy. But he held on to consciousness, straining to look solid and steady on his feet.
Santana regarded him blandly. “Oh, indeed we are.
You’re to be tried for war crimes, sir on behalf of the nation that downed an innocent aircraft in our airspace and then violated our no-fly zone.”
“You shot those aircraft down, not us. And you damned well know it.
And as for this supposed no-fly zone, what makes you think your nation has the right to cordon off international airspace unilaterally?”
Santana shrugged. “The rest of the world believes otherwise. As for the exclusion zone, you should understand that well enough America is the first to declare one in any part of the world. Iraq and Bosnia are just the most recent examples. I suggest you cooperate fully with my friends when they ask you question sit may help to mitigate your sentence after your trial.”
Two of the men standing against the wall stepped forward. The first one slammed his fist into Thor’s gut, then brought his knee up to smash the pilot’s face as he doubled over. Thor hit the deck, bleeding.
The second stranger muttered a questioning comment to the first. Even through the pain, Thor heard enough to cause his balls to contract.
He may not have taken Spanish in school, but Latin had at least given him a familiarity with some of the root words, and what they were speaking was certainly not Spanish or any other Romance language. He stared up at the two men, now more afraid than he’d been when the first shark had brushed up against him in the warm ocean.
“And that concludes this discussion of rough sea ditching procedures. Are there any questions?” The VF-95 safety officer looked around the room inquiringly. Not an aviator twitched.
The safety officer sighed and shook his head. Not that he’d expected any. Still, it would have been nice to be certain they’d been paying attention. Deep in his heart, he knew exactly what they were thinking the same thing he thought at that age. Invincible, invulnerable no way they’d ever need to review rough weather ditching procedures, not a chance. Maybe the guy in the next seat. But not me.
He supposed it took turning thirty and putting that first oak leaf on the collar to convince a pilot that the unthinkable could happen to him.
“Okay, let’s break for chow. We’ll reconvene in the Ready Room at thirteen hundred. At that time, I’ll give the quarterly NATOPS quiz.
Those of you who are current have to take it, too,” he added quickly as the surly muttering arose from the back row. “That’s part of safety stand-down.”
He watched from the podium as the aviators filed out, some in shipboard washed cotton khakis, others in faded flight suits. He heard the comments drift toward the front of the room.
“Goddamn Marines. If they could just …”
“I don’t know why we need to …”
“And then she wrapped her legs around …”
He placed the pointer carefully on the narrow lip at the edge of the podium. Well, there was nothing that said they had to be enthusiastic about the safety stand-down.
If truth be told, he wasn’t so wild about the idea himself.
Parking the world’s finest naval aviators in a classroom all right, a Ready Room, but a classroom for this day while a pilot was missing at sea and tensions boiled to the south rankled all of them. Still, AIRPAC supposedly knew best.
With the spate of recent mishaps and incidents, he could understand a renewed emphasis on safety. But a stand down? Now, with so much unexplained in the area? He shook his head again, and scowled. The only aircraft airborne right now were the SAR helos still searching for the downed Marine pilot.
Like his fellow aviators, there was no requirement he like the safety stand-down just that he do it. He followed the last aviator out of the Ready Room and headed for chow.
“All right, what have we got?” Batman said as he strode into the conference room. “I want some answers, people.”
The admiral sat down in his usual spot halfway down the table and glared at Commander Busby, who was standing in front of the room. Lab Rat met his gaze steadily. It was always like this, admirals demanding immediate answers and definitive explanations for every scenario. In an ideal world. Intelligence would be perfect and there would be no surprises.