The trailing edge of the wings, incorporating the ailerons and flaps, were also taped in two-foot-wide stripes, red on top and yellow on the bottom. The scheme was meant to identify for air show spectators whether or not a plane was inverted when it was flying several thousand feet above the crowd. The small plane pilots who hung around the fixed-base operator’s office had seemed reassured when they saw the planes in their new livery. Stripped of weapons pylons and military insignia, the jets presented the appearance of an aerial demonstration team.
Which was exactly what they were supposed to represent.
Both of the Hercules aircraft followed the same theme, though they had not received the cream paint. The tanker had been sandblasted down to its original aluminium finish, matching the Aeroconsultants craft, then both had received the red fuselage striping, N-numbers, and logos.
Noble Enterprises looked like a going concern, but it was misleading. None of the F-4s were currently capable of flight. Almost all of the avionics had been stripped from each aircraft. Pilots and technicians swarmed over the six aircraft, working side by side, congenially complaining while they focused on their particular tasks.
Tom Kriswell and Sam Vrdla had finally been turned loose on the contents of the Jeep trailers. They had black boxes, cables, and diagnostic equipment spread all over the workbenches. Vrdla had one old radio connected to a battery and antenna, and a Lincoln radio station pumped out Garth Brooks, Vince Gill, Tanya Tucker, and an occasional Willie Nelson.
Barr walked over to seven-seven and climbed the ladder. The ejection seats had been removed, and Wyatt was on his back on the cockpit floor, his head stuck between the rudder pedals, working a ratchet on the back of the instrument panel.
“Hey, Andy.”
Wyatt lowered his head against a pedal and peered up at him. “Yeah?”
“How long we been here?”
“We’re one day short of two weeks.”
“It seems like one week short of two years.”
“You get that main gear reinstalled?”
“Damn betcha! We are now complete on the body work and mechanical shit.”
“So you climbed up here to tell me it’s worth celebrating,” Wyatt said.
“Hell, yes! It’s a milestone.”
“Okay. Send somebody to town for beer.”
Barr slid back down the ladder and crossed to where Littlefield was cleaning tools and putting them away in his stack of castered cabinets.
“You want to check out the hydraulics while we still got her on the jackstands, Bucky?”
“We’ll do it in the morning, Lucas.” Barr pulled his wallet from his hip pocket. The leather was streaked dark with moisture. He fumbled in the bill compartment and extracted five fifty dollar bills. “You want to take a break?”
“Hell, yes, but we ain’t going to find any females in this burg.”
Barr stuffed the bills into Littlefield’s breast pocket. “Take one of the Wagoneers and go buy us a propane grill, about ten pounds of chopped sirloin, buns, pickles, chips, the works. Potato salad. Don’t forget the potato salad. And baked beans.”
“You forgot the beer.”
“The beer goes without saying.”
Littlefield dipped his hands into a plastic vat of waterless hand cleaner and started to smear it around.
Barr walked over to the workbenches at the back of the hangar.
The seeming confusion of wires, cables, instruments, and electronics boxes was actually organized. Kriswell and Vrdia had nearly identical groups of components arranged into six areas. As they probed each piece with digital and analogue instruments, verifying the correct functions of integrated circuits and silicon chips and other mysteries Barr didn’t care to know about, they tagged the components that passed with yellow tape. “How’s it going, Tom?” he asked.
“Magnifico! This is top-grade stuff, Bucky. All we’ve run into are some calibration problems.”
“I wonder how much it cost Uncle?”
“Don’t ask. We’ve got maybe ten million bucks on the bench.”
Barr reached out for a six-inch-square box.
“And don’t touch!”
“Hey.”
“This is my office. Go sit in your own.”
“Is it going to work?” Barr asked.
“Hell, I don’t know.”
“That’s comforting as hell.”
“Of course it’ll work,” Kriswell said, putting down a probe and digging his Marlboros out of his pocket. “I flat-out guarantee it.”
“For how long?”
“Hundred hours good enough?” He stuck the unlit cigarette in his mouth. He didn’t smoke anymore.
“Should be,” Barr agreed.
He moved down the bench and bent over to peer into a Head Up Display screen resting there. It was blank, but he pictured targets showing all over the place.
The F-4 Phantom was designed as a two-seat fighter, with the radar operator placed in the rear seat. The philosophy had been not to overload the pilot with too many chores to accomplish, especially when the going got hectic in a combat situation. The philosophy was still in vogue for F-14 Tomcats and F-lll swing-wing bombers.
Noble Enterprises was converting the F-4 to single seat operation, utilizing avionics and controls designed primarily for the F-15 Eagle. It was an ambitious venture, but one that Demion, Kriswell, and Wyatt thought feasible. And if they did, so did Barr.
All he had to do was fly it, and he was looking forward to that.
At four-forty-five in the morning, the air was unmoving on the perimeter of the small airfield. Ahmed al-Qati expected it to start moving at any time.
To the northeast, the faint glimmer of dawn was beginning to wash the squat buildings of El Bardi. It was not light enough yet to define the sea beyond the town.
Behind him in the darkness were the eighty-five men of his First Special Forces Company. The four platoon leaders and the company commander, Captain Ibn Rahman, stood with him at the side of the runway, waiting.
Al-Qati and Khalil Shummari had flown back to El Bardi right after the briefing at Marada Base yesterday, and al-Qati had put his special forces officers to work immediately, recalling the men from the exercise underway and cajoling them into cleaning and preparing their equipment for this morning’s deployment.
The grumbling had been widespread last night, and still this morning, though he could not discern the exact words, al-Qati heard the tone of discontent in the dozens of conversations taking place behind him.
He also sensed that his officers were displeased with him, not because of the unannounced deployment — for which they had not yet been fully briefed, but because he had shirked his own duties for three hours during the night.
The magnetic attraction of the Seaside Hotel in Tobruk was almost beyond his will to resist. At least, he did not mount a defensive strategy within his mind. Al-Qati could not believe, nor fathom, the fates that had brought Sophia Gabratelli to him so late in his life. Nor did he even try to understand why, after months of what he was certain was fruitless courting, she had taken him into her arms and her bed.
He harboured no illusions about himself. He had become newly aware of the bald spot expanding on the back of his head. His bold, hooked nose dominated a face ravaged by wind and weather and sun. To be truthful to himself, there were some positives. He was hard and fit. The muscles of his arms and legs and stomach were apparent and utile. Unlike many Arab men, he tried not to treat women as inferiors. He supposed that there might have been some mystique in his reputation as a professional warrior, if she were even aware of it. When they were together, he talked very little about himself or his past exploits. He was not a braggart. She was quite aware of world politics and tensions, and their conversations embraced those topics as well as soccer, for which they were both avid fans, the cinema, and music. She was far ahead of him in the realm of art and literature, but he enjoyed her analyses of both. She was an avid listener when he talked of what he had learned of military leadership and tactics.