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  “Dead ahead, one mile, two hundred fifty knots closure,” Wink said to Woods, then on the radio: “Fox two.” The last transmission let everyone know they had completed the intercept and simulated the launch of an AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking missile.

  “Want to thump him?” Woods asked excitedly.

  “Could get in trouble for that,” Wink said warily.

  “Rules were meant to be broken. So you want to?”

  “Just don’t hit him. That could really get us in trouble, and wet—I don’t want to go swimming tonight. I’m not wearing my dry suit.”

  “Roger that.” Woods pushed the throttles forward.

  Tiger, the Air Intercept Controller on the carrier, transmitted: “Victory 207, head outbound at 270—204, continue inbound 090 to set up another one.”

  “That’s it for us,” Wink transmitted in reply. “207’s heading for marshall.”

  “Roger that, 207. Good work. See you on deck.”

  “Thanks, Tiger. Good work.”

  “Three hundred knots closure,” Wink told Woods. He leaned to his left and studied the approaching lights of their wingman.

  Woods also watched his wingman ahead. “He’s skimming along the cloud layer. It’s totally flat—he’s completely in the clouds except his canopy and the two tails.” He pondered their plan for a moment. “We’ll have to go into the clouds to get below him.”

  “That’s pretty marginal. Another time.” Wink knew Woods was willing to lean on the boundaries.

  “Nah, we’ll be huge. You got a good lock?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell me when we pass under him,” Woods said, lowering the nose of the Tomcat and moving into the darkness of the cloud. The approaching lights of their wingman faded, then disappeared.

  “One tenth of a mile—three hundred closure,” Wink called, his eyes on the computerized radar image and the raw radarscope simultaneously. They were coming up to their wingman from dead behind with three hundred knots more speed. Wink saw the angle of the radar increase rapidly toward the top of the nose of the Tomcat, then felt the thud as the radar broke lock at a 65-degree up angle and the disappointed antenna returned to its neutral position. “Directly overhead,” Wink said.

  “Roger,” Woods replied anxiously. “Think we’re clear?”

  “Should be,” Wink replied.

  “I’ll give it a few,” Woods said, counted to three in his mind, then pulled back hard on the stick. They came screaming up out of the cloud. The sky cleared and the stars were vivid again. “You got him?” Woods yelled.

  Wink grabbed the handle on top of the radar console and used it to turn around and look between the two tails of the Tomcat. “Got him.” Wink watched as their F-14 went straight up at five hundred fifty knots directly in front of their wingman, like a rocket.

  Lieutenant Junior Grade Tony Vialli saw a flash of darkness outlined by anticollision lights and the green blur of the formation lights on the sides of the Tomcat directly in front of him. Realizing there was something in front of him, he tried to dump the nose of his Tomcat toward earth to avoid what he thought was an imminent collision. “Holy shit!” he yelled into his oxygen mask so loud that Sedge could hear it in the backseat even though Vialli’s microphone was off. Coming out of their seats as the negative G forces from their evasive action pushed them up, they flew through Woods’s jet wash and entered the clouds at the same time. Vialli, fighting to recover his bearings, forced himself to watch his artificial horizon to avoid vertigo, a loss of reference that could be fatal. He quickly checked his engine instruments to make sure the jet wash hadn’t caused a flame-out.

  In the other F-14 Woods and Wink were enjoying the rocket ride into the Mediterranean darkness. “That ought to do it,” Woods said. “Think they saw us?”

  The radio jumped to life. “If that was you, you’re dead.” Vialli didn’t even have to say who he was talking to. He was using the radio in the front cockpit, reserved for squadron use, set to the squadron’s private frequency. Woods was the only other squadron airplane airborne on this, the night’s last flight. It was 0145.

  Woods could hear the anger in Vialli’s voice and realized he might have miscalculated. He keyed the radio with the switch on the throttle. “Yeah, we overshot. Let’s knock it off. See you at marshall.”

  “You thumped us,” Vialli said furiously as he climbed the F-14 out of the clouds and leveled off.

  “See you on deck,” Woods replied.

  Sedge answered, “We’re switching. See you guys in marshall.”

  “I think they’re pissed,” Wink said as they flew straight up away from the earth.

  “They’ll get over it. Got to be ready for anything.”

  Wink switched the frequency on the digital display of his radio. “Victory 207 checking in. We’re on the 268 at 40, state 7.3.” They were forty miles from the carrier and had 7,300 pounds of jet fuel.

  “Roger, 207,” said the controller, the same one who was there every night, the one who mispronounced the same words every night, saying “Roger” with a long “o” and available with an extra “i,” “availiable.” His consistent mistakes had come to be highly regarded by the aircrew as signposts of the ship and a comforting familiarity.

  “Contact, Victory 207. Stand by for your marshall instructions.”

  “Victory 207,” Wink replied. Unlike Woods, he enjoyed marshall. It was where all the carrier’s planes went before landing aboard the carrier at night, a finely choreographed holding pattern where they circled twenty or more miles from the carrier until their time came and they began their descent to the dreaded night landing.

  “Want to go up on the roof?” Woods asked Wink.

  “Sure. We’ve got time,” Wink replied as he searched for a card on his knee board. “As long as we’ve got the gas.”

  “We’ve got it,” Woods replied.

  “Victory 207, Marshall at the 240 radial at 22 miles, angels 7. Your push time is . . . stand by.”

  “Passing thirty,” Wink said to Woods as they passed through thirty thousand feet.

  “Push time is 04.”

  “Victory 207—240 at 22, angels 7, push at 04, roger,” Wink replied. “Passing forty.”

  Woods started the nose of the Tomcat back toward the horizon. “How high do you want to go?”

  “If we go above fifty we’re supposed to wear a pressure suit. Wouldn’t want our blood to boil.”

  “Forty-nine, aye,” Woods said. He leveled off at forty-nine thousand feet and set the plane straight and level, heading in the direction of their assigned marshall location where they would begin their descent to the carrier for their landing. Their push time, when they were to begin their descent to the ship from a very specific spot, was four minutes after the hour—twenty-four minutes away. “Ready to darken ship?” Woods asked.

  “Affirm,” Wink replied. They both moved their hands around the cockpit expertly adjusting the lights, consoles, and switches that gave off any light at all, leaving faint indications of critical information, and turning off or dimming everything else. They lowered the radio receiver volume so they couldn’t hear the other pilots checking in to marshall. Wink switched off his radarscope and PTID screen even though the radar stayed on. There were no reflections off the clear Plexiglas canopy which reached over their heads and down below their shoulders.

  Woods adjusted the trim of the Tomcat so it would fly straight and level with his hands and feet off the controls and turned on the autopilot to hold their altitude and heading. As a last step he switched off the flashing red anticollision lights, which could be seen for miles and warned other planes of their presence. Tonight, there was no one else up that high and no risk of colliding with another airplane. The Tomcat blended in with the night, invisible to everyone but God.

  Woods put his arms on the railings of the canopy and looked up at the stars. As beautiful as they were from the ship in the middle of the sea on a clear night, nothing compared to sitting on the roof, on top of
the world, in a darkened airplane. Woods studied the patterns of galaxies and stars, the vast number and density of them. He loved to fly as high as he could go over the water, or anywhere else, for that matter. Even on top of the highest mountain, the view couldn’t compare to the clear sky over the sea from fifty thousand feet—above the highest mountains, the highest clouds, the highest storms, and the highest airplane traffic. There was no sensation of movement at all. It was like sitting in a planetarium. But even the view in the best planetarium would pale in comparison to this. The planets had actual size. The stars were closer, clearer, and brighter. The ones he could see pointed to the ones behind them, dimmer but clear, and the ones behind them, dimmer still. They were gathered in groups, or clusters, so numerous he couldn’t even count them in one section of the sky. God’s living room.

  Woods thought of the other Navy pilots flying their racetrack patterns aimlessly in marshall, waiting for their time to descend and land on the carrier, to go below and watch a movie, or eat ice cream, or do the never-ending Navy paperwork, all without ever looking up.

  He leaned back and closed his eyes to moisten them. The oxygen leaking out of the top of his oxygen mask had dried them out. He opened his eyes again and looked toward the eastern horizon where the moon would be coming up in forty-five minutes. He could see the faint glow of white as the moon gathered its energy to rise and illuminate the night.

  Wink broke the silence. “Two more months and we head back to Norfolk, Sean.”

  “Yep. But some good port calls before then. Like Israel.”

  “Never happen. Too much going on. They’ll never let us go.”

  “I’ll take that bet. I was on board last cruise when we stopped at Haifa. Same kind of deal.”

  “They’ll probably blow somebody up and we won’t get to go. We’ll end up in Naples again.”

  “Roger that.”

  Woods sat for another minute breathing the pure oxygen. Real air was stale and warm compared to the Tomcat’s pure oxygen, which seemed to rejuvenate him whenever he put on his mask. He didn’t want to go to marshall and just drill around, waiting. They were supposed to get there early enough to set up their speed and arrive at their push time within ten seconds. He liked to get there as late as he could and still make it. Somehow they always made it. Maybe it was just his way of putting off the inevitable—landing aboard the carrier.

  The mere thought of landing aboard the ship at night with no moon and an overcast caused his palms to sweat. He had never gotten used to it. He was good at it; one of the best in the squadron—but it was still an unnatural act. Woods turned up the instrument lights and switched on the anticollision lights. He rolled the F-14 over on its back and headed for marshall. “Let’s do it.”

  2

  Sami Haddad slowed as he turned into CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. He had worked there for only three years but it was already becoming old hat. He had the apartment, the badge, the cool job, and the respect that came from lowering his voice when he told people where he worked. This was the New CIA. The one with a website. The one that acknowledged its existence and allowed people to say that was where they worked. At least the analysts. It was only the spooks who went odd places and did unspeakable things who couldn’t tell people what they did.

  He parked his ugly Nissan and slammed the door as hard as he could without being obvious about winding up. He listened for the telltale protest of the door with its trademark ping, the sound of a cheap, thin door. He wished his car would just die so he could have an excuse to buy another one. Until it broke he couldn’t justify a new car. His father would never approve. Only replace things when they need replacing, especially transportation. You don’t buy a car to make a statement or look good. That’s what his father said. Mr. Pragmatic, who drove an S class Mercedes. So Sami didn’t wash his car, or change its oil, or do any scheduled maintenance. He just waited for it to die, which it refused to do.

  He walked to the building and held his key card in front of the red light on the other side of the window near the door. It recognized his card and let him in. The guard looked at him as he entered and nodded toward the X-ray machine and metal detector. All employees had to be checked every day. No exceptions. Too many people had too much against the Central Intelligence Agency to be sloppy about security.

  “Morning,” Sami said, putting his briefcase onto the conveyor belt. He wondered, as he did every morning, whether the X rays affected his sandwich. Probably not. If anything, they probably killed some bacteria. He knew the rays didn’t affect the rest of the contents, the Arab newspapers, the Arabic dictionary, and the book he had taken home, The History of the Crusades.

  Sami rode the elevator to the third floor and headed for his cubicle, where, like any good Dilbert, he put down his briefcase, took out his lunch to put in the refrigerator in the coffee room, turned on his computer, and sat down to work for the day. His mind immediately brought him back to where he had been the previous night at 9 p.m., the last time he had been at his desk. The very thoughts that had caused him to go to the Library of Congress and take advantage of the after-hours access that few ever used. He had checked out an obscure book on medieval Middle Eastern history and another on the Crusades.

  He picked up the report that he had left on his desk. It was from the NSA. They had intercepted some communications they had found curious and sent them his way as they did many others in a given week. This was the only one he had kept.

  It was from a very common transmitter, using ordinary voice codes that unsophisticated people used to allow themselves to think no one could figure out what they meant. But there had been a name that had been spoken in the signals. The name had created confusion at NSA, and caused them to make sure Sami was aware of it—he got all the unusual Arabic references.

  Sami had a Ph.D. in Arabic studies from Georgetown, and was the son of a former Syrian diplomat. His father was a man who had found himself on the opposite side of Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, and had left the service of Syria to stay in the United States with his American wife. Sami had been born in the United States and had only a passing knowledge of Syria, based mostly on visits he had made to his cousins. But he knew Arabic, and he knew how Arabs thought. That made him invaluable to the Agency and in particular, the Middle Eastern Section, in the subdirectory of Emerging Terrorist Organizations.

  “You still looking at that NSA report? It’s not that long,” Terry Cunningham said. Cunningham was a fellow analyst with a Ph.D. in political science. His strength was having knowledge of everything that had happened in the Middle East in the twentieth century. He knew all the political groups, angles, and implications. Although he wasn’t perfect, his ability to predict what would happen next was uncanny. He also spoke passable Arabic.

  “I’m worried,” Sami said.

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Talk to me.”

  “A new organization. That goes way back.”

  “Where?”

  “I can’t really talk about it and make sense yet.”

  “What do you have?”

  “I need to think about this some more.”

  “The boss is going to want to hear about it.”

  “Not yet.”

  “I want in.”

  “When I’ve got something to say.”

  “Sounds to me like you do.”

  “Soon.”

  “Don’t wait too long,” Cunningham said, heading out of Sami’s cubicle for his own.

  “Don’t worry.”

  “What the hell were you thinking?” Tony Vialli asked Woods as they stood facing each other in the paraloft, where all the pilots kept their flight gear and hung their G-suits and dry suits. Vialli knew he was a hothead, but he also knew when he was right. He pulled the zipper on the leg of his G-suit all the way to the top, freeing the zipper, which he angrily pulled apart. “Well?” he asked, waiting for Woods to reply.

  Woods was taking his flight gear off slowl
y, methodically. Sedge, Vialli’s RIO, and Wink were removing their flight gear and staying out of the discussion. Wink knew he was next. He and Woods were of virtually identical seniority in the squadron.

  Woods finally replied, “What?”

  “That stunt,” Vialli answered instantly, knowing Woods was stalling.

  “Cool your jets, Boomer. No harm done.”

  Vialli glared at him and continued, “Scared the shit out of me, man. That’s harm to me.”

  “Keeps you on your toes.”

  “When I’m already skimming an overcast?”

  “See? You weren’t even complying with Visual Flight Rules. Violating cloud clearance requirements,” Woods said as he hung his torso harness—the webbed harness they wore around their legs and chest and attached them to their ejection seats—on the hook with his name on it.

  “I’m serious. You went IFR and then thumped me. That’s reckless, Sean. Someone could have gotten hurt.”

  “All right. It won’t happen again. Let’s forget about it.”

  Vialli didn’t say anything.

  “Let’s go to the wardroom. I need a slider. Wink’s coming.”

  “Aren’t we going to debrief the hop?”

  “What’s to debrief? We did twenty intercepts and didn’t see anyone trying to attack the ship. Skip it. Wink’s already done the intel debrief at CVIC.”

  Vialli hung the rest of his gear on his hook. He pulled his green flight suit and the T-shirt he wore under it away from his chest to break the seal his sweat caused and rolled up the cuffs twice, exposing his forearms slightly. He was still peeved, but not sure what to do about it. He didn’t want to turn in his roommate, section leader, senior officer, and best friend for a flight violation. That would be a breach of the unwritten rules. “I’m going to hit the rack. Too damn late for a greaseburger.” He walked toward the door of the ready room.