Strike Eagle (5 page)

“Right.” The “no alimony” pierced him. Divorced … He thought it would never happen to him—but no use dwelling on it. Charlie was right, they all had adjustments to make.

Bruce leaned to the front of the jeepney; he tried to speak over the onrushing air so that the driver could hear him. “Excuse me.”

“Aih?” Again the driver turned, smiling back at Bruce.

“Are there any stores that sell gum?”

“Cigarettes? You want Blue Seal?”

“No,
gum.
You know chewing gum?” Bruce pantomimed putting a stick of gum in his mouth and chewing.

“Aih, gum! Yes, yes, the market! One minute.”

The man turned back to the front and gunned the jeepney. He pulled off the main street and slid between long rows of buildings. As they slowed, they passed what appeared to be an open market. It was a cross between an outdoor and indoor shopping center: merchants spilled out into the street hawking animals, complete meals, fabrics, stereo equipment, books, plants, furniture, fresh vegetables, mounds of rice three feet tall, chickens—anything imaginable. The selling extended far into a tin-covered, single-story building. Buildings in the neighborhood resembled warehouses more than offices.

The driver stopped in front of the market. An incoherent jabber of foreign language surrounded the jeepney. The driver nodded happily. “Here, you find gum.”

Bruce turned to Charlie. “What do you think?”

“Whatever.”

Now Bruce concentrated on the time. “Skipper cautioned us to stay together, and it’s getting late. What do you say we skip it this time and head back to the Club—for dinner.”

“That’s a rog, Assassin.”

Bruce waved the driver on. “Thanks, but we’ll pass.”

“No market?” The driver looked disappointed.

“It will take too long. We’ll try another time.”

The driver suddenly brightened. “Okay. Maybe I help you.”

The jeepney shot off down the street, and had not had much time to accelerate before it screeched to a halt. It stopped before a low-slung building.

“Here. Sari-sari store. Run in fast. Ziggy now.” The driver tried to shoo Bruce into the tiny building.

“Uh?” Bruce looked bewildered. “What’s going on?”

“He wants you to go in there,” said Charlie.

“Master of the obvious. Maybe it’s their equivalent of a 7-11.” Bruce hopped out of the jeepney and started for the store. “Stay with this guy. I don’t want to have to walk back.”

“If we can even find our way back,” muttered Charlie.

Six tiny tables were pushed to the side of the store, making it look like an Asian version of a Paris cafe. The screen door had a tiny bell attached to it. Inside, a long counter ran the entire length of one wall. Music came from an open door to the back; someone was singing “Obla-dee, obla-da” along with the Beatles.

The singing stopped as a girl walked into the room from the back. All Bruce could see was dark hair that extended halfway to the floor. When she swung her hair around and looked up, Bruce was floored, unable to talk. She was the most beautiful woman he’d seen in his life.

The girl lowered her eyes. She spoke in halting English. “May I … help you?”

Bruce stuttered, trying to talk coherently. “Uh, yeah. Do you have any gum?”

“Gun?” The girl looked up, puzzled.

“No,
gum.
You know, chewing gum? Chew, chew.” Bruce pantomimed putting a stick of gum in his mouth and chewing. He felt suddenly foolish at his Pidgin English.

She still avoided his eyes. “Gum. Yes we have.” The girl turned and stretched, reaching to the top shelf, and brought down several packs of Wrigley’s gum, some of them open. She held them out to Bruce. “How many sticks?”

The girl finally looked at him, and he felt lost in her deep brown eyes. Her skin was flawless; she looked so innocent he couldn’t tell her age. It took Bruce a moment to figure out what she was asking.

“How many sticks? Oh, you mean I can buy just a stick of gum, rather than a pack?”

“Yes.” The girl seemed amused now.

“Well, then … here.” Bruce dug into his pocket and pulled out a wad of pesos. He shoved the money to the girl. “I’ll take all the gum. Is this enough money?” The foreign currency seemed more like play money—Monopoly bills—than hard cash.

The girl carefully counted out the money and held out the remainder to Bruce. As she counted, her long black hair fell over her shoulder, giving it the appearance of a waterfall. She pushed eleven packs of gum across the counter to him, then swung her hair back over her shoulder and lowered her eyes.

Bruce backed out of the tiny store. The screen door swung shut, cutting off his view of the young woman. He didn’t know how long he stood there, but Charlie’s voice seemed to pierce through a fog that enveloped him.

“Hey,
Bruce!
Would you get back in here? The O’Club is going to close.”

Bruce turned and headed for the jeepney. Reaching out to grab the railing, he realized that he still tightly held the packs of gum. He shoved them into a pocket.

Charlie eyed his frontseater as the jeepney started off. “Get enough gum?”

“Umm? Yeah … sure.” Bruce turned back to watch the traffic. He kept to himself the rest of the trip.

Headquarters, Thirteenth Air Force
Clark AB

The Commander of the Thirteenth Air Force reported directly to the Commander of the Pacific Air Forces, which was headquartered at Hickam AFB, Hawaii. Pacific Air Forces were responsible for the security of an area nearly four times the breadth of the United States—twelve thousand miles—a region that spanned seventeen time zones including the Philippine Islands. And with the reopening of Clark, fueled by national strategy change of “pivot to the East,” Thirteenth Air Force was reactivated, and its operational units were augmented by squadrons rotated in from Seymour Johnson, Elmendorf, Eglin and Langley.

As such, Major General Peter Simone, Commander of the Thirteenth Air Force, was literally on his own. With the exception of a three-star general at Yokota AFB, Japan, and another one at Osan AFB, Korea, Simone was the highest-ranking officer for a thousand miles.

Discounting fleet operations at the newly reopened Subic Naval Base, just fifty miles down the road.

But that was Navy, and therefore didn’t matter.

Simone had short, wirelike hair, dark ebony features, a solid build, and he always had a gleam in his eye and something up his sleeve. As long as you told him the truth and kept him informed, he would support you to the hilt. And that was the secret of his success. His hell-raising instinct was tempered by his charisma. The other generals regarded Simone as their alter ego, the person whom they’d like to be—let down their hair and go crazy. He was the stereotypical, old-school fighter pilot, and he played it for all he could.

Major General Simone reveled in his autonomy. He ran the base with an iron fist and didn’t put up with anyone’s crap. There was a base commander on Clark, a colonel who served more as a housekeeper than anything else, but he didn’t slow Simone’s stride. Everyone knew who ran the base, who was the most important person on Clark, and everyone knew that if it weren’t for his fighters—his
boys and girls
out there who strapped themselves into screaming tons of metal—Clark would not have a purpose.

It was a perfect match. Simone’s last assignment had been as Commandant of Cadets at the Air Force Academy. He had served the shortest time of any Commandant in history—five months—when the usual tour was two years; the impression he had made on the cadets had gotten him booted upstairs to where he couldn’t influence such naive, pliable minds.

It wasn’t an isolated incident that had led to his “promotion.” It was a combination of events. One time, he had gotten rip-roaring drunk with the senior class and puked at their graduation Dining-In—a formal dinner that was celebrated Air Force-wide; another time he had flown his F-35 over the Academy the day he was supposed to report in—and somehow the afterburners had kicked in and he’d passed Mach 1, sending a sonic boom thundering across the aluminum-and-glass campus, knocking out half the windows. Rather than blame Simone, they had taken the F-35 apart three times before finding a faulty wire to blame for the incident.

But the final straw was the food fight he had started in Mitchell Hall, the cadet mess hall. The scene had made the papers, and Simone was reassigned to Clark the very next week, with the addition of another star.

He’d like to think he’d gotten booted upstairs because of his competence and not because of his race, but he didn’t dare question General Newman’s decision on that one.

So Major General Peter Simone was having his last hurrah, and Clark vibrated with his presence, his aura.

When a visiting general came, the base straightened up and performed like clockwork. After the general left, the partying went on as before.

He kept an eye on his boys and girls, just to make sure they didn’t take things too far. His concept of “too far” was activated when they had to fly—there were no compromises in the air. But if the kids wanted to raise a little hell, drink a little beer, and didn’t hurt anyone—well, Simone knew that it would be best in the long run. A happy crew would follow him to hell and back.

In his headquarters’ office, Simone rocked back and studied the memo given him by his aide, Major Stephanie Hendhold, who waited outside the door.

“Stephanie?”

“Yes, sir?” Hendhold appeared at the door.

“Has anybody else seen this?”

“Not that I know of, General. Colonel Bolte delivered it to me himself.”

Simone nodded. “What about the flight line? Did anyone else report this, or see what the hell happened?”

“Nothing, sir. In fact, Colonel Bolte would not have seen it himself if he hadn’t been waiting for the flight. He wanted to greet every new pilot that ferried in on the planes. He was out on the flight line, watching the ’15s do an overhead when he spotted Maddog Four.” Hendhold shrugged. “Some people on the ground may have spotted it, but there was no way for them to know that it wasn’t an approved pattern.”

“Approved pattern! Flying a ‘break-in’ upside down?” Simone snorted, then slowly broke into a smile. He squinted at the memo. His eyes had been slowly getting worse for the past few years, but pride prevented him from getting glasses. Especially the black model prescribed by Air Force doctors—“B.C.” glasses, his cadets had called them, for “birth control” glasses: a girl wouldn’t come within a hundred feet of you with them on. A true fighter pilot, Simone classed wire-rimmed flight glasses in the same category.

Major General Simone made out the pilot’s name. “Bruce Steele. Bring his record … and his backseater’s, too, Charles Fargassa. I want to know something about these clowns before I meet them.”

“Very well, sir.”

As Major Hendhold turned to leave, Simone called out, “And knock off after you get them, Stephanie. It’s too late for a young major to be hanging around here.”

“Thanks, sir.”

Simone rocked back in his chair when his aide had left.
Inverted overhead,
he thought.
These young guys must have brass for balls.
He hadn’t seen this much esprit since the Gulf.

He wasn’t going to intervene at this time—“Lightning” Bolte had done the right thing by disciplining the kid on the spot, and not drawing it out. But it was refreshing to know that there was some untamed spunk out there. As long as it was nurtured, hope remained.

Major Hendhold laid the personnel folders on her boss’s desk.

Simone scanned the document. “Steele … So he’s a zoomie, call sign ‘Assassin.’” He looked up. “Do you know this guy?”

Hendhold narrowed her eyes. The young Major was also a zoomie—an Air Force Academy graduate—and usually had the scuttle on other grads in the area. “Yes, sir. Football player, and one of the better defensive backs the Academy’s ever seen. He has a reputation for being a killer—he put more than one receiver into the hospital—but he’s a hot dog too. Some say Air Force lost that big Notre Dame game three years ago because Steele was trying to beat the all-time interception record.”

“Would you have him as your wing man?”

Hendhold didn’t hesitate. “Give me five minutes with him and I’ll let you know, sir.”

“Okay, thanks, Steph.” He dismissed her with a wave. “Get lost, and have fun.”

“Good night, General.”

Simone glanced through the record: Risner Trophy, Top Stick out of Willie, recommend upgrade to Stan Eval—the prestigious Standardization and Evaluation crew, the cream of the crop. He nodded to himself.

As a general officer, Simone was forbidden from flying the F-15E by himself—he needed an instructor pilot to accompany him. So far he’d flown the pants off the instructor pilots who went up with him. But now there just might be someone who could handle him.

He thought he was going to like this Bruce Steele.

Saturday, 2 June

Bangkok International Airport

Cervante waited for Kawnlo to speak. The student did not interrupt the teacher, as a journeyman does not hurry a master.

They had met twice since Cervante’s initial training—each time in a crowded airport to avoid drawing attention.

They sat in a small coffee shop, just outside of security. With his small stature, sparse hair, and black glasses, Kawnlo looked far from formidable. He looked to be in his late sixties and seemed quite frail, not at all a dangerous freedom fighter. His fingernails were stylishly long—stylish for a Korean—extending out and curling up and over, at least ten centimeters if they could be stretched unbroken. He carefully smoked a filterless cigarette, allowing the smoke to corkscrew up into his nostrils as he inhaled.

The airport was jammed with people, all chattering away; dogs barked in the background—it seemed as if an outdoor market had been rolled up and stuffed into the building. Cervante glanced at his watch. Ten minutes until check-in for his flight back to Manila. He had only been with Kawnlo for half an hour, and once Cervante had related the details of the latest Huk raid the older man had simply grown quiet, as if he were deep in thought.

Cervante ground out his own cigarette as Kawnlo finally spoke.