Richard Herman
Firebreak
For my mother,
Mildred Leona,
who taught me to meet life
head-on and still dream.
Map
PROLOGUE
The five ships rode easy in the gentle swells of the South Atlantic, a welcome break after the pounding they had taken for three days. Avi Tamir stuck his head out of the main control room on the command ship and sampled the weather change for himself. Since he was a rotten sailor, he could still feel an occasional twinge of seasickness in the lower regions of his stomach. Satisfied that the storm had blown through on its race to the east and that his stomach would improve, he stepped onto the main deck and pulled the hood of his duffel coat over his head. Slowly, and then with increasing confidence, the heavyset man lumbered toward the outside ladder leading to the bridge.
Tamir mumbled in Hebrew as he climbed the steps to the bridge, wondering what in the hell he was doing halfway between the southern tip of Africa and Antarctica. He knew exactly why he was there, but he needed to jolt himself back to reality and the task at hand. He paused on the port wing of the bridge, swept the horizon with his binoculars, and pinpointed two of the South African cutters on patrol. There was a third somewhere over the horizon maintaining station with its two sister craft and his ship, all in a giant circle around an old freighter.
Harm van Dagens was on the bridge and stepped outside, joining Tamir. “They must have taken a beating last night,” Van Dagens said, marking the two cutters with a wave of his right hand. “I fell out of my bunk.” The big Afrikaner snorter. “Forty foot waves … sixty mile an hour winds … too much for an old crock like me. Come on inside. It’s warmer and there’s coffee.”
The two men stepped through the hatch onto the bridge. As promised, it was much warmer and a steward handed them each a mug of coffee. Tamir had worked with Van Dagens for three years and had come to like the gruff old man during that time. If this test was successful, Tamir calculated, he just might be home in Israel in time for Yom Kippur and would probably never see Van Dagens again. He would miss the crusty old South African scientist.
“Time to work,” Van Dagens said and stepped up to the radar scope in front of the helmsman while Tamir put on a headset and ran a checklist. Van Dagens studied the scope, ensuring the five ships were alone. He became all business. “Status of the freighter?”
“Taking on water and listing seven degrees,” the first officer told them. “They had a bad night and lost one of their pumps. They were lucky the old scow didn’t sink.”
Van Dagens continued to look at the scope. “It would not be good if ground zero sank before the ‘package’ arrived. Weather?”
“Perfect,” Tamir told him, flipping through reports on a clipboard. “Visibility thirty nautical miles plus, winds steady out of the west at sixteen knots, the ceiling is unlimited. The tail end of the storm left a scattered cloud deck at twelve thousand feet in the southeastern quadrant. It will blow out.”
“Stations?” Van Dagens asked, looking at Tamir from under his bushy eyebrows.
Tamir spoke into his boom mike and waited for a reply. “All stations are in the green and transmitting. Recorders are on.” The seventy-four South African and Israeli scientists and technicians scattered over the command ship and the three smaller cutters that ringed the old freighter in the center of the giant circle continued to run their checklists. They were a well-rehearsed team and, one by one, they checked in as they completed their assigned tasks. Finally, Tamir glanced up at the ship’s clock on the bulkhead, noted the time, and spoke into his mike: “We’ve got a go. Evacuate ground zero, send the launch message, button up. Resume countdown on takeoff.”
Six hundred miles to the north at an airfield near Port Elizabeth, South Africa, two unmarked Israeli F-4 Phantoms taxied out of a heavily guarded bunker and lined up on the runway. The two aircraft maintained radio silence as the first ran up its engines. A green light blinked from the tower and it roared down the runway. Twenty seconds later the second Phantom started its takeoff roll. The first Phantom turned to the south, arcing out to sea and allowing the second F-4 to cut it off and join up as they climbed out.
A Bantu construction worker noted the time and that both aircraft were configured with three fuel tanks; one on the centerline and one under each wing. He also photographed the first Phantom, which carried a silver-gray dart on its left inboard wing pylon. He judged it to be a 500-pound bomb, approximately ten feet long. Actually, it weighed 765 pounds, was fourteen inches in diameter, and twelve feet long. He did not risk taking a photo of the other aircraft, which carried eight air-to-air missiles. He later reported the second Phantom as an armed escort.
It had been a standard Washington, D.C., dinner party, and now the last of the guests were standing at the door, waiting for their drivers to bring their cars down the elegant Georgetown street. Senator Matthew Zachary Pontowski stood just inside the door with his wife, bidding the speaker of the House a good-night.
“Zack, think about it,” the speaker said. “We can make it happen if we start now.” He gave the senator and his wife an encouraging smile and walked down the steps, disappearing through the open door of the Lincoln that was waiting for him.
Zack Pontowski stood for a moment and watched the car drive away. The Secret Service agent who had been detailed to guard the entrance that night watched him, thinking how much the sixty-year-old man looked like a senator: exactly six feet tall, lanky with slightly hunched shoulders, a full head of gray hair deliberately left long, and a hawklike nose. The senator sniffed the balmy night air as if he was sensing a change in the weather, nodded at the agent, and closed the door.
“Two-thirty in the morning,” the senator’s wife said. “Most unusual for the speaker to stay so late but it does make for a successful evening.” He followed his wife down the hall while her practiced eye surveyed the final cleanup by the catering crew. She was satisfied with their performance and that the house would be ready for whatever the day would bring. “Emil does these things well,” she allowed. “We’ll use him again.” She looked around for a moment before calling, “Melissa?”
A tall woman in her early thirties came out of the kitchen. She was drying her hands on a towel and a dark wisp of hair had fallen over her left eye. Her simple black cocktail dress revealed her shapely legs and accentuated a trim figure that had never known the stress of childbearing. “We’re almost finished, Mrs. Pontowski. Another five minutes.” Melissa Courtney-Smith was one of the senator’s more efficient and long-suffering aides.
“Thank you, Melissa. You helped make the dinner a huge success and I know you gave up your evening.”
The woman smiled and pushed the errant strand of hair back into place. “I’m glad it all turned out well. Besides, I enjoy it. I’ll make sure you’re all locked up when I leave.”
“Did Matt bother you tonight?” the senator asked. “I saw him hanging around.”
Melissa stifled a frown. “No, not really. I found him lurking around the back stairs dress all in black with his cassette recorder. I chased him off to bed.”
The older woman paused on the stairs and sighed. “What’s he up to now? That boy’s always into something.”
“Probably James Bonding it,” the senator explained. “He’s been reading spy novels lately. I’ll talk to him in the morning.” He followed his wife up the stairs.