The three American jets came from the north, from the sea. Far below, the airmen saw the city of Palermo and they saw the thin, irregular line where the land surrendered to the sea. The land was rough, convoluted, and as the sun crept over the rim of the earth the ridges cast long shadows into dark, misty valleys.
With his throttles pulled back to max conserve, Jake remained at 25,000 feet and watched Joe Watson’s plane fall away toward the city below as he listened to yet another transmission from the Gettysburg on Guard. The tanker was behind and to Jake’s right. Both fighters had topped off just before they made landfall. In the rear cockpit Toad was scanning the sky with the radar. Nothing. At dawn on a Sunday morning in September, the sky over Sicily was empty.
“That’s the seventh time they’ve called,” Toad said, his voice revealing his irritation.
“Persistent beggars, aren’t they?”
“Goddamn, CAG, Sixth Fleet! You can’t give the finger to Sixth Fleet. For the love of—”
“I’m not in the mood for you today, Toad. A lot of good men died trying to stop these assholes, and you’re whining. Now shut the fuck up.”
The sun was a fireball just above the horizon. As his plane turned through the easterly heading Jake was blinded by the glare coming straight through his heads-up display. He squinted behind the green visor of his helmet and tried to see the instruments. They were almost indecipherable. His eyes couldn’t look from brightness to darkness and accommodate anymore. It irritated him, as Toad did. So much at stake and nothing going right. What would Joe and Corky find down there? Was Qazi still there? Even if he was, where were the weapons? It was an impossible problem. He engaged the autopilot, knowing it would fly the plane more smoothly than he could and thereby save a few pints of fuel. A few gallons. He unfastened one side of his oxygen mask and swabbed his face with a gloved hand and let the mask dangle. Come on, guys. What’s down there?
“There’s a chopper here on the mat beside a hangar with the door closed, CAG. As near as I can tell, it looks exactly like one of those that was on the ship. No one in sight. Not a solitary soul. Nothing down here but light planes, Cessnas and Pipers. What do you think?”
Jake refastened his mask. “How many hangars?”
“Two.”
“How about big trucks? Any semis parked around?”
“Empty as a politician’s promise.”
Had the bird flown? Jake had to make a decision and make it fast. Joe Watson was down low, burning gas at an appalling rate.
“Could they be in the hangars?”
“It’s possible, I guess,” Watson said, his voice dubious.
Jake cursed to himself and swung his F-14 to the south. He leveled the wings and pushed the throttles full forward as he trimmed the stick aft. “Joe, climb to about five thousand and orbit the field as long as you can. If anybody gets nervous and tries to drive off in a van or semi, or if they open a hangar and you see a big plane parked in there, shoot it up. Understand?”
“Roger.”
“Watch your gas and get back to the ship. Keep your eyes peeled. Belenko, I want you to go down to Cape Passero, on the southeastern tip of the island south of Syracuse, and orbit overhead at forty grand. Wait for me there.”
“Red Ace Two roger.”
“Shotgun roger.”
“Good luck, Joe,” Jake said.
The mike clicked twice.
As they knifed upward through 30,000 feet headed southeast with the unfiltered sunlight filling the cockpit Toad murmured over the intercom. “Qazi got away, CAG, and you know it.”
He did know it. Qazi had two nuclear weapons that belonged to the United States Navy and he was gone. Gone where? Tripoli or Benghazi or somewhere else? If he was on his way to Africa, he was talking to Air Traffic Control. Jake began frantically flipping through the bundles of cards on his kneeboard, looking for the Air Traffic Control sector and frequency list. Why hadn’t he thought of this sooner?
He selected the frequency for the southeastern coast of Sicily and, after turning off the scrambler, dialed it in on the radio. His radio was UHF, and a transport, even a military one, would be using VHF. But the controllers normally transmitted on both VHF and UHF. Jake leveled at 40,000 feet. The throttles were in high cruise and he was clipping along at.86 Mach.
“See anything?” he growled at Toad.
“No, sir. Empty sky.”
How about that frigate that went through the Strait of Messina last night? It was supposed to be off the east coast of Sicily now. Jake looked up the frequency on another kneeboard card and dialed it into the second radio. He gave them a call and got an answer. They assigned a discrete IFF code, and he squawked it. He wondered how much help he would get if Vice-Admiral Lewis was talking to them. He had to use his real call sign because the frigate could read the classified IFF code, which was specific to this aircraft. Here goes nothing. “Buckshot, we’re running a little intercept exercise this morning and I wonder if you’ve observed any traffic out of Palermo in the last several hours headed south or southeast, over.”
“Wait one.”
Mount Etna was off to his left, spectacular with the sun on its flank. Normally Jake Grafton would try to make a mental note of every detail to include in his next letter to Callie, but this morning he glanced at the mountain, then ignored it.
“Red Ace, Buckshot. We can’t see quite that far, but we had a North African Airways flight cross the coast southbound from Palermo about fifteen minutes ago, speed about three five zero. And we had a TWA flight cross Catania eastbound six minutes ago. He’s about fifty miles east, apparently on course for Athens. Then there was a Red Cross transport eastbound past Syracuse twenty minutes ago.”
“Any destinations?”
“Not specifically, but the controller asked the North African Airways flight if their trip was going to become a regular one. I gathered it was some kind of a one-time deal.”
“Thanks for your help, Buckshot.”
“For further assistance, give a shout. Buckshot, out.”
“Just what the world needs, another clown,” Toad grumped on the ICS.
With another anxious glance at the fuel readout, Jake shoved the throttles into afterburner. If Qazi was up ahead, he was going to have to catch him. He flipped the switches on the radio panel so he could monitor the Air Traffic Control frequency. Static! Someone was transmitting! He turned down the squelch and heard words in English, but they were too garbled to understand. Then the transmission ceased. Okay! Someone was on this frequency this morning. It could be anyone, but maybe, just maybe …
“North African Airways Three Zero Six, you are departing Italian airspace. You are cleared to leave this frequency. Good day, sir.”
“I may have ’em, CAG,” Toad said. “Right on the edge of the scope, heading south. We’re following them. They’re headed for Africa all right. Tripoli if they hold this heading.”
Jake nudged the throttles deeper into afterburner. The Mach meter indicated 1.5. He could go faster, but he was using fuel at a prodigious rate.
“He’s below us, about twenty-five thousand feet or so, making three hundred fifty knots, the computer says. No, about three hundred sixty knots. Pretty slow for a jet.” They crossed the coast of Sicily and headed out to sea. Malta was off to the left there, someplace.
At forty miles Jake pulled the throttles back slightly and lowered the nose. Toad turned on the Television Camera System and Jake punched up the picture on his Horizontal Situation Display. “Looks like a C-130 Hercules to me,” Toad said. “Same high wing. Right speed for a turboprop.”
“There aren’t any Hercs going to Africa this morning,” Jake said as he studied the picture. The image was still so small and it shimmered as the light was diffused by the atmosphere.