Джанет Моррис - The 40-Minute War

“Too many international honchos on board for that.” Beck, giving up all attempts to chastise Ashmead, whom he’d chosen because of his unconventional methods, fell in beside. “ETD’s forty-eight hours, if it suits you….”

“That’s a lot of security arrangements in forty-eight hours.”

“Plus the arrangements for Zaki’s funeral,” Beck agreed gently.

“Saiyeret will take care of that, give Zaki a military funeral as a Saiyeret hero, which is easier than making up some story about how he happened to get in the way of a Maadi AK round. Saiyeret aren’t identified while they’re alive, and it’ll make his parents proud. We couldn’t go to his funeral in any case: too much chance of a cohort of this bunch of martyrs being there hoping we’ll do just that.”

“Fine,” Beck said in his most neutral diplomatic voice as he searched for a trace of hostility in Ashmead’s eyes: he knew how deeply the Covert Action Chief cared about his operatives. “I’ve already started security checks on the dignitaries; your pilot can have his pick of the aircraft; my pilot will fly the other; co-pilots are you and me… we’ve got to keep this thing manageable. And, at the risk of ‘ruining your day,’ you ought to know that our best estimate is that the jet stream’s no longer blocked—it’s going to get hotter here, so we might as well put this show on the road.”

Ashmead grunted as approvingly as if Beck had just shot a one-inch group at a hundred yards.

Slick trotted past them in nondescript khakis, face clean of powder smears and hair combed, rubber issue mask pushed rakishly up on his forehead.

Beck said, “Mind if I know why you’re siccing Slick on Chris?”

“Slick’s replacing Zaki.”

“Damn, I forgot about Zaki. I’m sorry—”

“Plant a tree for him or something. Zaki won’t be the last we’ll lose on this fucking suicide mission of yours.”

“ That’s why you gave those commandos the serum. You didn’t tell them?”

“No. But I sure as fuck hope they figure it out. Somebody ought to get some good out of Morse’s serum; it’s five-to-one against that the Administration will, and that’s my official strategic analysis.”

“Morse!” Beck slapped his forehead. “He’s—”

“Sleeping like a baby. Relax, Beck, don’t sweat the small stuff. That’s what you’ve got us for.”

The P-3B AEW was an antisubmarine aircraft modified for early warning and control. It had a mission endurance of fourteen hours, a maximum range of forty-two hundred nautical miles, a maximum cruising speed of three hundred forty-six knots, and its takeoff distance of fifty-five hundred feet was approximately the same as the 727 full of multinational fact-finders it was escorting.

There all resemblance ended: the P-3B AEW’s primary mission capabilities included, as well as early warning, passive detection, surveillance, C3I (command, control, communications), over-the-horizon targeting that could detect fighters and small surface vehicles in excess of one hundred fifty miles to the radar horizon, search and rescue, and miscellaneous other capabilities that allowed its use as an emergency command post.

For maximum efficiency, however, its crew had to consist of a pilot, co-pilot, flight engineer, radar operator, and two air controllers, four of whom would always be working while two rotated aft to the galley or the pair of bunks provided.

This meant that, like everything else about Operation Tiebreaker’s early stages, necessity took matters out of Beck’s hands and put them squarely in Ashmead’s.

Beck had wanted to divide Ashmead’s people evenly between the two aircraft, the way the serum was divided, but Ashmead insisted on “full operational capability for the P-3B, Beck, or we might as well scrub this thing, here and now.”

“Here and now” had been three hours before takeoff, when Beck was harried by the intermittent arrival of forty-three dignitaries and trying to go over Yael Saadia’s outrageously detailed intelligence dossiers on each and every one of the IMF honchos, NATO guns, International Red Cross and UNESCO reps, and officers of the Japanese Ministry of Trade.

Saadia had puffy circles under her eyes and every now and then would bolt for the bathroom. During the third such incident, after which she’d come back with a freshly scrubbed face and smelling like a baby, Beck had voiced his fears to Ashmead: “Do you think it’s the serum, Rafic? A bad reaction? Or too many Rems?” Vomiting was an early warning sign he’d been hoping not to see.

“It’s worse than that,” Rafic had muttered; “she’s pregnant and she wants to have it. Best damned station chief I ever had, and Thoreau goes and knocks her up. Don’t say anything about it.”

The faucets, which couldn’t quite mask the sound of retching from the bathroom, were turned off; the toilet flushed.

Ashmead tapped the avalanche of paper on Beck’s desk: “Come on, we’ve got to shred this stuff. Cave. It’s my way or not at all: Thoreau’s the P-3B pilot, I’m the co-pilot, Slick’s the radar operator, Yael and Jesse are the flight controllers. That leaves room enough, even with what electronics we’ve pulled, for only six passengers—you, your girl Patrick, Morse, and three dips of your choice. Pick ’em out.”

“Rafic, I need to be on the 727; so does Patrick; I’d like Slick there too… and Saadia. If we miss this opportunity to tell these people what we want them to think, we may not get another. And Chris’s credibility isn’t going to be helped if she’s not on—”

“One more time, Marc, and then I’ll just assume you’re not listening: as far as I’m concerned, the 727 is a decoy. We can’t protect it worth a damn; it’s expendable. You’re not. My people aren’t; you tell me that Patrick girl’s not. If we had Zaki, maybe I could have done without a full complement on the flight deck, but we don’t. I need everybody. We’ve got to assume that both aircraft may not make it to Houston. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t put that case of serum on the 727, but I’m—”

“Rafic.” Beck gave Ashmead his best interrogator’s stare. “If you know something you’re not telling me—if this is another case, like the consulate, where you’re holding back informa—”

Saadia came back with murmured apologies and flopped bonelessly down on Beck’s couch: “Don’t stop because of me, guys.” She wiped swollen lips with the back of her hand.

“Yael,” Beck said, resisting an impulse to touch her knee, lecture her about the madness of going into radiation red zones pregnant: “I’m trying to convince Rafic that I can handle one flight controller’s station—probably both—and that I’d like you and Jesse on the 727 with Chris Patrick… we need your propagandist talents more than we need another scope-watcher: you and Jesse, as ‘reporters,’ have an opportunity to assess and cut out the targets from this herd of—”

“Beck,” Ashmead’s rough-hewn face was expressionless, his gaze fixed on Yael Saadia, who was looking at him hopefully: “Go with Yael to the P-3B. If she checks you out, you’ve got your deployment of assets. But don’t ever do this to me again. It was an intelligence failure that got us into this—yours. You want to go for two, that’s fine, but not while I’m involved. If you think this is some fucking democracy I’m running here, you’re deluded. Explain things to him, Yael.”

Dismissed as if he were a member of Ashmead’s team and not its controller, Beck had left quickly with Yael Saadia, who, in the hall of Beck’s apartment building as they waited for the lift, touched his arm gently and said: “Rafic’s never wrong about this sort of thing, you know.”