A good omen, Larkin thought, as the golden rays streamed through the canopy, warming the cockpit. He dipped a wing, putting the bomber on a heading for the air base, and thumbed the radio transmit button.
“Upper Heyford, this is Viper-Two,” he said. “Request clear to land.”
“We have you, Viper-Two,” the tower replied. “You’re CTL on one seven west. Winds are at one three five; ten knots.”
“Copy that, Heyford.”
The two F-111s circled to side-by-side landings and taxied to the hangar at the far end of the field. Larkin popped the canopy and climbed down from the cockpit. The name on his flight suit read MAJ W. SHEPHERD. All uniform badges and insignia were fastened with Velcro and easily changed.
He and Applegate had test-flown the F-111s several times since Larkin’s return from Holy Loch. Special Forces aviators served as their weapons systems officers.
A cable was waiting for them in the office when they got to the hangar. Larkin tore it open, smiled at Moncrieff s message, and handed it to Applegate. It read:
READY TO PROCEED WITH TRANSACTION.
14
Shepherd had been comatose for several days when his eyes finally fluttered open. He was in an unfamiliar bed, an IV sticking into his arm, the suffocating smells of illness filling his head.
Two security guards, making their morning rounds of the train yards, had found him — he was blue from the cold and naked, save for a torn T-shirt and a pair of skivvies. The derelicts had picked him clean: flight suit, boots, watch, dogtags, tape recorder, and wallet.
The guard with the metal chevrons pinned to his black cableknit returned to the security office at the gate, scooped up the phone, and dialed 999, London’s toll-free emergency number.
A short time later, a white ambulance, its blue roof flasher glowing eerily in the ground fog, came racing down Leyton Road. The clumsy-looking van went round the eighteen-wheelers queued at the entrance to the yards and across the flyover that bridged the expanse of tracks, continuing to where Shepherd had been found.
Shepherd was taken to The London Hospital on Mile End Road. The dreary buildings of soot-blackened brick were well suited to the tough East End neighborhood, which had been terrorized by Jack the Ripper a century before. Since the end of World War II, Whitechapel’s traditionally ethnic population of European Jews had gradually given way to Indians, who were now being supplanted by poverty-level blacks and Pakistanis.
The men’s ward was on the second floor of the main building. The glossy white walls had long ago turned a pale nicotine yellow. A single row of lights hung overhead, the illumination dimmed by the dead flies in the bottom of the milk glass globes. Forty beds, separated by clothes lockers, lined the sides of the long, narrow room. A rectangular card at the foot of each bed displayed the patient’s name in letters boldly printed with a black marker. Shepherd’s name card was blank.
Administrators had no clue to his identity. But that wasn’t unusual among the many indigents treated here. Like them, Shepherd was dirty, battered, and unshaven. The fact that he wasn’t emaciated or suffering from exposure led them to conclude he was a victim of an all too familiar scenario: New arrivals to the street were constantly being preyed upon by the bands of hardened regulars. The army of homeless that roamed the city was growing at an alarming rate; engineers were becoming almost as common as laborers. Following standard procedure, London’s Metropolitan Police had been notified; a check of their missing persons files shed no light on Shepherd’s identity.
A nurse making her rounds noticed Shepherd pushing up onto an elbow and hurried to his side.
“Go easy now,” she whispered, delighted that he had regained consciousness.
“Where am I?” he wondered feebly.
“In luck is what I’d say,” the sprightly woman quipped, before hurrying off to fetch a doctor.
“Can you tell me who you are?” the doctor asked in a gentle singsong cadence as he leaned over Shepherd, examining him. He was a rail-thin Indian with coal-black eyes and a soft smile.
“Walt, Walt Shepherd,” Shepherd muttered, his head throbbing. “Major, United States Air Force.”
“I see,” the young doctor replied with the amused smile of a man accustomed to hearing grandiose claims: Jesus Christ and John Lennon were the most common.
Shepherd heard the skepticism in his tone and slowly recited his serial number, adding, “I’m a pilot.”
“Well, you’ve been with us for several days, Major,” the doctor said, beginning to sense that Shepherd’s claim might be genuine. He went on to explain how Shepherd got there and that they had been unable to identify him. “I’ll be happy to let your people know you’re with us, if you’ll tell me who to call.”
Shepherd just stared at him blankly, suddenly overwhelmed by the terrifying events that started coming back in a chilling rush: a montage of gunfire and blood; of screeching rubber and steel; of bone-crunching collisions and exploding fuel; and of hope, dashed by the cruel shattering of glass against his skull.
“Major Shepherd?” the doctor said, testing his response to the rank. “Major, are you all right?”
“Oh, sorry,” Shepherd finally replied, coming out of it. He winced in pain, his hand going to the bandage on his forehead, where he’d been struck by the bottle. “Hurts. It hurts like hell.”
“Yes, you’ve had a rather nasty knock on the head; actually, more than one,” the doctor replied in his clipped musical cadence, having treated Shepherd for a severe concussion, scalp lacerations, and minor burns on his hands and face. “Now,” he said in a gentle challenge, “you were going to tell me who to call—”
“Applegate,” Shepherd finally replied in a dry whisper. “Major Applegate — Lakenheath.”
It made perfect sense to call him. Shepherd never saw who shot at him from the balcony and had no reason to think it was Applegate. On the contrary, the major was with military intelligence and had conducted a bona fide debriefing after the incident with the Soviet Forgers. Besides, though Larkin and the others who had attacked him were wearing air force uniforms, it went completely against Shepherd’s grain to accept that U.S. military personnel were involved. His unquestioning sense of patriotism wouldn’t allow it.
That same morning, five hours before its scheduled launch, the raid on Libya was given the final go-ahead.
In the hangar at Upper Heyford, Larkin and Applegate were in a planning room, reviewing mission data at a map-covered plotting table, when one of the Special Forces clerks informed Applegate he had a call. The major left and crossed the hangar to his office to take it. His eyes widened at the doctor’s message, his mind racing to cope with the knowledge that Shepherd was alive.
In The London Hospital, a nurse was at the foot of Shepherd’s bed writing his name on the blank card when the doctor returned. “I’m afraid he insists on talking to you, Major,” he said, displeased at the idea. “I told him more than once you were in discomfort.”
Shepherd nodded and pushed up shakily onto an elbow. His double vision was gone but the moment he sat up, the room started spinning. They lifted him into a wheelchair and took him to the doctor’s office.
“Can you identify these men, Major?” Applegate asked after Shepherd had explained what happened.
“Just one of them,” Shepherd replied weakly. “His name was Larkin… Colonel Larkin.”
“Larkin…” the heavyset intelligence officer repeated coolly, glad that Shepherd couldn’t see the panic in his eyes. “Doesn’t ring a bell. You sure they were in the military?”
“They looked and sounded like Americans, but—”