“He said he had a concern about the syllabus. I have no idea what his problem with it is, though, but my real question, and the reason I wanted to talk to you guys, is to see whether we should discuss it with him at all.”
Stamp took a sip from his coffee. “If we start opening up the syllabus, then every student or squadron that comes through will want to customize it. I’m not sure we want to get into that.”
Luke said, “It might make sense. It would be a good marketing tool. There are a lot of things we could spend more time on.”
Thud frowned.
Hayes stood up and moved toward the coffeepot, waiting for the last bit to drip. He pulled it out, filled his cup, and spoke to Luke. “I’m not too worried about his syllabus problems. I’m more worried about him.”
Luke was surprised by Hayes’s position. “You don’t even know him.” Then he remembered that Hayes had recognized the name as the same as some Pakistani intelligence official’s. “Did you tie him to that intelligence group?”
Hayes shook his head. “No. I’m worried about the way this whole thing has come together. We don’t know this guy from Adam. We have no idea who these pilots are, other than that they’re Pakistani,” Hayes said. “I pulled their clearance documents this morning and looked at them again. They have everything they should have, and they’ve been reviewed and approved by the Undersecretary himself.” He looked at the other three officers waiting for a response. There wasn’t any. “Don’t you guys think it’s a little unusual that the Undersecretary of Defense signs off on a foreign pilot’s clearance? You think he actually checked out these guys himself? I’m sure he took whatever Pakistan gave him as the final word.”
“He’s not going to just let anybody come here. Look, Brian, I appreciate your thoughts, but we’re not really here to start second-guessing the Undersecretary. He has that on his shoulders.”
“But it’s our skins that are at risk.”
Stamp didn’t get it. “How? Did you call your brother yet? He tell you something we should know?”
“No. I didn’t want to sound stupid. But that’s what haunts me. I can’t imagine what these guys are up to—if they’re up to something.”
Luke shook his head. “Up to something? Like what? Overpaying us? I just know we have to get this class under way.”
Hayes sensed the coolness of the others. “Have you guys just completely forgotten our history with Pakistan?”
“What history?” Stamp demanded, wishing Hayes would just drop it.
“We gave hundreds of millions of dollars to Pakistan when they were helping us support the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union,” Hayes said. “Pakistan was our best friend,” Hayes said. “They kept the pipeline open and got the money and weapons to the right places. Worked like a champ. We increased our support of the Pakistani military, too, selling them first-rate weapons systems and making them into our big-time South Asia ally. Then, when the Soviet Union pulled out of Afghanistan, we stopped supporting Pakistan, and the money and weapons dried up. But you see, their threat wasn’t the Soviets. Never was. Their threat has always been India. And that threat wasn’t going away. So we get them hooked on American aid and weapons, then cut them off.
“Then in ’96 this Pakistani guy walks into an intersection just outside of CIA headquarters at Langley. Whole bunch of CIA commuters. Pulls out an AK-47 and starts shooting people. He killed three or four CIA people. It was an incredible move. And he actually escaped! But the CIA wasn’t just going to let that happen. They tracked him down in Pakistan two years later and pulled him out of his bed in some fleabag motel. They brought him back to the United States, where he was convicted of murder.”
“I remember that,” Thud said, nodding.
Hayes went on, “So right after he’s convicted, some unidentified men attacked a bunch of American businessmen in Karachi. Murdered them in their car on the way to work in broad daylight, right in the middle of a busy street. Just machine-gunned them to death. Oil workers from Texas. The Pakistani government said they were really sorry, but of course they had nothing to do with it. They promised to work real hard to find out who did. And nothing ever came of it. The people were never captured, and no one was ever put on trial, and the Americans are still dead.
“Then India tested a bunch of nuclear bombs in 1998. Something like three or four underground explosions. Pakistan said, ‘Oh, yeah? Watch this,’ and tested something like eight of them underground. So the United States jumps up and starts condemning people left and right. Remember?”
Luke half shrugged, indicating he didn’t have much other than some vague memory.
“The United States condemned Pakistan. Said they were renegades and were in violation of the nonproliferation agreement. We sanctioned them both. We turned on them at the most critical time of their military development. And Pakistan has supported the Taliban militia in Afghanistan—which we condemn for hiding Osama bin Laden. Lots of people in Pakistan probably think we’re dogshit.
“So that’s the background. Now all of a sudden, out of nowhere, out of all the countries in the world that could come here as foreign students, Pakistan shows up. And it was greased by the Undersecretary of Defense. I don’t know,” he said, sitting on the counter by the coffeepot. “It just makes my hair stand up. But that’s my job.” He smiled.
Stamp didn’t like what he’d heard at all. “Well, shit, Hayes. Now you’re making my hair stand up. We’ll have to keep our eye on these peckers.”
“And what exactly does that mean?” Thud asked. “How do we keep our eye on them any better than we keep it on the other students?”
“That’s what we’re going to have to—” Hayes said, but he stopped in midsentence as he had the inescapable feeling of being watched. He turned his eyes toward the door and saw Khan, who had obviously been standing there listening.
The others turned toward the door, following Hayes’s gaze. “How long have you been standing there?” Hayes asked.
“Long enough,” Khan answered loudly as he stepped slowly into the ready-room door, blocking it.
“Were you listening to our conversation?” Hayes asked.
“I could not help but hear,” Khan answered. The other three Pakistani pilots appeared behind him in the hallway and peered into the door that Khan was blocking. “You were talking about us, although I’m not sure what a ‘pecker’ is or how that might relate.”
Luke started to respond, but Hayes cut him off. “We thought it was kind of extraordinary for foreign students to land, introduce themselves, and demand a change in the curriculum. We were trying to imagine what it was that would cause someone to do that.”
“It is simple.” Khan crossed to the other officers. “We have some concerns with the syllabus.”
Luke tried to stay cordial in spite of the elevating tensions. “Well, that’s why we’re here. So come in, tell us what your concerns are, and we’ll tell you what we think.”
Khan nodded, as if he knew what Luke was going to say before he said it. He then looked each of the four Americans in the eye before he began to speak. “First of all, as you know, our sworn enemy is India—”
“Potential enemy,” Luke corrected.
Khan stared him down. “Our sworn enemy is India.” He paused, then went on. “They fly the MiG-29. It is why we’re here. To see that airplane in action. But better than seeing it is flying it. Since you have a two-seat version, I would like each of my pilots to get enough time in the MiG-29 to know how it flies, how it operates, where the visibility problems are—everything.”