Martina thought for a few moments, unconsciously waving the papers under her throat as if cooling her skin.
“All right,” she said to Mussa in German. “Cut the cabin lights and tell the men to stay alert.”
Mussa retreated to his tasks, while Martina resumed her forward vigil. She was not interested in nature’s canvas of night sky. She knew that if her flight had been pinpointed by American military forces, U.S. Navy fighters would try to intercept her here, where their carriers plied the Mediterranean and there were many Allied bases into which to force her down. Behind her, the brightly lit passenger compartment turned to a purple cavern as her men swiveled to the windows, watching for the flames of afterburners. She handed Dawson one of the printouts.
“Drop ten thousand feet,” she ordered like a submarine captain. “Shallow glide path on the first heading.”
Dawson and Bergh were actually relieved to take control from the Honeywells. They felt better easing up on the white throttle spools, handling the yokes rather than watching their disembodied jinking.
“Give me the Oran tower frequency,” said Martina. “It is one one seven point one.”
Bergh made the radio adjustment.
“A microphone,” said Martina.
Dawson was tempted to say “Aye, aye, sir,” but he just unclipped the hand mike and passed it over his shoulder.
“Oran, Oran,” Martina said into the mike. “Ici Vol Nanci Neuf Zero Zero France Jardin.”
She continued to transmit in a clipped Parisian French, which Dawson understood only vaguely despite his four high school years of the language. From the pleasant, almost jocular responses she received from the Oran tower, it was clear that she had full clearance for Algerian airspace.
“Nanci Neuf. Fin,” she said, and she handed the microphone back to Dawson by briefly resting her wrist on his shoulder. “You can drop down to twenty thousand.”
The pilots continued their descent, paying closer attention now to engine performance, checking heat and pressure. The Falcon power plants rarely failed, but aeronautical superstition held that the gremlins showed up at the most inconvenient times.
“Would you like us to make the next turn on your mark?” Dawson asked. He had not intended the question to sound facetious, but Martina was a hunter of the fragile male ego.
“Sarcasm could cost you your gratuity, Mr. Dawson,” she said. “Just follow the plan. It gets rather tricky near the end.”
Chip Bergh was wearing a Jetstar flight cap of the classic captain’s style. He reached up and pushed it back, scratching the crown of his head, then took it off and laid it on his right thigh. He waited a while, searching the fuel gauges until he found Martina’s face reflected in one of the glass lenses. When she turned her head and called out something to one of her funeral cortege, he quickly hung the cap over a small red metal housing on the far right corner of the cockpit’s dash.
Dawson glanced over at his copilot, who continued staring innocently ahead. A smile snatched up the corners of Bergh’s mouth for only an instant.
The housing above Bergh’s knee protected a large toggle switch, with the options ARM, ON, and RESET now obscured by the cap. In the event of a crash, the emergency beacon would be activated automatically. But the switch could also be thrown at the copilot’s will, sending out a constant nonvoice signal over the international emergency frequency of 121.50.
Bergh had spent most of his air force time flying out of U.S. bases in southern Europe. The charts of that continent, as well as of the African one below it, were still fresh in his memory. He knew that once you crossed the Algerian coast and headed south, the desert came up real quick. There were not even semicommercial strips past Béchar. They would be low on fuel, and the Falcon’s tri-jets were fussy about sand.
Dawson held his course for another ten minutes. The Falcon was not exactly in a screaming dive, but the airspeed was up over five hundred knots and he let it ride, because they were not going to make an approach into Oran. No need to tiptoe. He bolstered himself with the thought that the sooner they delivered this bizarre entourage, the sooner he and Bergh could rotate back to Oran, refuel, find some place to “crash,” and head home to Baltimore at dawn. And if the woman’s eccentricities sucked their tanks dry, she would just have to whip out her AmEx card and spring for a fuel truck.
Forward and below, the North African coast was shrouded in a puffy bustle of winter Mediterranean cloud, the obscured cities a lighter glow trying to penetrate the cotton. The Falcon was really starting to buck now. Dawson heard a soda can clang and roll off a surface back in the passenger compartment. The woman sat in the jump seat, unfazed by the turbulence. She wasn’t buckled in, and he was not going to suggest it. Anyway, he was convinced that even if he barrel-rolled the airplane, she would just hang on and grin like some Tilt-A-Whirl junkie.
At exactly forty point four one nautical miles out from Oran, he made a hard ninety-six-degree right turn and came onto the new heading. The woman got back into the act.
“Good,” said Martina. “Now, as you can see by the plan, you have two forty-two point four nauticals to your next way point.” She slipped off the jump seat and came to her haunches again. “At your present speed, this leg should take just under thirty minutes.”
“You ought to strap in, ma’am,” said Chip Bergh. “It’ll get rough when we break through the cover.”
“I have a mother, thank you,” said Martina. “Just fly.”
You should fly through the fucking windshield, Bergh thought, as he just nodded like a dashboard doll.
“At the end of this leg,” Martina instructed, “you must be down to thirty-five hundred feet.”
“Thirty-five,” Dawson confirmed. Just go with the flow, Chip, he tried telepathically to coach his younger partner. Just go with the flow.
Martina watched the instruments vigilantly, cross-checking the progress against her plan. Other than Vietnam vets who had spent a lot of time in the bush, Dawson had seen few men who could squat like that for so long. With the cloud cover tapering off in the distance and the endless black desert reaching out to them, he had a fleeting vision of the woman crouching on a dune, wearing one of those Lawrence of Arabia robes and a white headdress. Halfway through the descent, she rose for a moment and called aft in the language he now assumed to be Arabic. Someone handed her a black purse, and she resumed her unladylike pose, while Dawson wondered if she was going to powder her nose, then found himself speculating as to what kind of underwear she wore, if any at all.
It took all four of the pilots’ hands to hold them on the second half of the leg, while a crosswind tried to push them southeast and a ragged layer of cumulus swatted the undercarriage. On other occasions when they had ferried executives through such nauseating vibrations, the high-paying passengers often raised their voices in alarm. Not a whisper came forward from the darkened fuselage. For condensation over an arid land, the vapor was as thick as clam chowder, and the pilots flew IFR, hoping there were no rocky peaks unaccounted for by the woman’s computer flunky. When the cockpit windows began to patter, Dawson reached for the wiper switch and found his wrist stopped by Bergh’s hand.
“It’s sand, Joe.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“It twists up from the desert floor.”
“Terrific. I’ll just get out and put the filters on the intakes.”
“Just keep cool, Mr. Dawson,” said Martina. “We will clear out of it in another thousand feet.”
Dawson white-knuckled his yoke, yet it was from anger, not fear. He wanted to stand the Falcon on its tail and send the bitch somersaulting all the way back to the head.
But she was right again. They suddenly broke from the clouds, and while the grit still tickled the windows and the wind did not release them, the flat contours of the land came into sharp focus. To the right, a low range of craggy mountains curved out and then returned in the distance like a burnt banana. To the left, an endless pattern of gentle brown waves was highligh
ted by long, oval troughs. The wastes looked harmless at this altitude, but the shadows meant that the dunes were huge.
A very slim black line followed the lee of the mountain range and faded into the distant landscape. Across the entire panorama, maybe five pinpoints of light indicated civilized outposts. They could have been towns, or hotels, or, more likely, Bedouin bonfires.
“Make your turn,” Martina ordered.
The Falcon banked gently to the right, turning forty-five degrees onto the next heading. They straightened out, receiving a jarring pocket blow for their troubles.
“You have sixty-one nauticals until landing,” she said. “Come back on the power.”
“I have a mother,” Dawson snapped, unable to contain himself any longer.
To his astonishment, the woman barked a single laugh.
“Touché,” she said. “Give me a frequency of one-one-one point two.”
Dawson handed her the mike. She began speaking, in Arabic this time, while he craned his neck, searching for the landing lights. Nothing. Just that black ribbon between the mountains and the dunes.
“Where’s the strip, lady?” He no longer gave two shits for Jetstar’s public relations.
“You will see it in a minute,” said Martina. “No downwind or base legs. It is a straight approach. But you will need the Fowlers.”
Dawson turned his head and looked at her. The Falcon’s wings were equipped with additional flaps, called Fowlers, on the leading edges. They were used only for extremely short field landings. Martina was holding the mike, looking back at him with her head cocked like an innocent lapdog’s.
“How long is this strip?” he demanded.
“Long enough.”
“It’s not an airport?”
“Not in your sense of the word.”
“No tower?”
“It is a two-lane blacktop. Perfectly wide, straight, and acceptable,” she said.
He stared at her for a moment, then turned back to his controls. His face was set at the edge of a decision. When he glanced over at Bergh, the slight shake of his copilot’s head confirmed it.
“I won’t do it, ma’am,” said Dawson.
“You won’t?” She sounded curiously surprised.
“No,” he stated with clipped finality. “You didn’t advise Jetstar about any of this.” Then he added, in homeboy tones, “Just ain’t in our contract.”
“I see,” said Martina thoughtfully. “Well, then. Would you be so kind as to give me some volume?”
Bergh turned up the cockpit speaker. He smiled. They had won. Dawson was already starting a gentle left turn. They were heading back around to the north.
Martina spoke into the mike.
“Skorpion, this is Stinger. If you read me, kindly reply in English. Over.”
“Stinger, this is Skorpion,” replied a heavily accented voice bathed in static. “Read you loud and clear. Over.”
“Tell me, Skorpion,” she said offhandedly. “This aircraft is a Falcon 900. Are you familiar with the model?”
“Oh, yes, madam,” the voice replied with enthusiasm.
Oh, yes, madam, Dawson mouthed silently. He was thoroughly disgusted now with the whole goose chase.
“Well, then,” Martina queried. “If I kill the pilots, do you think I can bring it in?”
“Oh, certainly, madam. That aircraft practically lands itself.”
Dawson and Bergh both spun their heads around, their jaws dropping for a second, then clenching back to tooth grinding. Martina had removed her wig. What they saw now was the same steely face, yet crowned with a thick crop of blond bristles. She held a very large pistol in one hand.
“Fuck,” said Bergh as he snapped back around to the controls.
Dawson continued to stare at her.
“You are out of your mind, lady,” he said through his teeth.
“Absolutely,” Martina agreed, although only ice remained in her voice. “And I have a fat life insurance policy that covers air disasters. No children, and no ‘loved ones.’ I will shoot you as soon as kiss you, and I would much rather shoot you.”
Dawson believed her. He turned back to his airplane, muttering, “They don’t pay us for this bullshit.”
“Now continue your foolish maneuver,” said Martina. “And make it a full three-sixty. You are low on fuel.”
They were back on course in less than a minute. As they approached the black ribbon at two thousand feet, Martina instructed, “Come left and follow the road.”
Dawson complied. There was a good moon now and sharp contours, but it wasn’t enough to set down by. He was no longer thinking about a drink in a hotel bar and a soft mattress. He was trying not to “buy the farm.”
“What about cars?” he muttered.
“There will be no traffic.”
“We need some illumination here.”
“Don’t whine, Mr. Dawson. Just throttle back and drop the gear.”
The wheels slid down and locked, while the tri-jets struggled to keep the Falcon flying at its approach pitch.
“No spotlights,” Martina ordered, and Bergh shrugged, removing his hand from the wing projector switches.
She spoke Arabic again into the mike. After a moment, a long stretch of straight road just a thousand meters ahead was washed by the yellow glare of twenty landing beacons, set out in perfect order along both shoulders.
“Now that’s more fucking like it,” Dawson whispered as he and Bergh worked furiously to bring the Falcon on line. While their fingers stabbed at toggles, Bergh quickly added the transponder beacon to the frenzy, but Dawson was too busy to notice. He had certainly made his share of successful carrier landings; it was just that he had sworn off ever doing it again.
They were well below the right-hand ridgeline now, the slopes rushing by as the updraft tried to lift the starboard wing. They wrestled with it and came in flat and high, a hundred feet above the first beacon, as snakes of sand whipped across the road and they ignored them, pushing the Falcon down. It was going to be a hot and hard landing, but they could not tell how much room they had, and they needed four thousand feet of friction starting right now.
The road was not flat. It bowed up in the center, and Dawson corrected to keep the screeching outboard wheels astride the hump, holding the nose off until he absolutely had to set it on the winter-cracked macadam. The engines howled in reverse, and the fuselage sounded like it might buckle over the pebble washes, but as sand twisters beat at the cockpit, the pilots nudged the brakes until the last beacon came up, and they stamped down hard. The Falcon stopped, but not before slipping to the left in a tire scream that left it tilted toward one shoulder while a cloud of dust settled over its wings.
Silence. No one in the back applauded.
Dawson and Bergh sat very still, finally expelling two long exhalations between tight lips.
“Very good,” said Martina as if a pair of clumsy flight students had surprised her.
“What now?” Dawson murmured.
She did not reply, but her finger pointed forward of the Falcon’s nose.
From behind a high dune, a pickup truck rumbled out into the road, turning to show its fender to the airplane. In the open back sat a man in a dark field jacket. A black kaffiyeh covered his head, one corner of it drawn up over his face. He held an AK-47 assault rifle in his lap.
On the rear of the truck’s tailgate, a large piece of plywood had been mounted. It was painted white, and its high black letters read, in English:
FOLLOW ME
Ruth had to be helped down the Falcon’s stairway. The drug residue in her veins, the lack of food, and the final adrenaline surge of the rough landing had short-circuited her leg muscles. Impatient with her hobble, Youssef turned at the bottom of the gangway, put his hands under her arms, and lifted her to the ground like a toddler.
Although the cabin of the jet had been dark, the undulating plains of the Sahara were darker. The moon had gone behind a coastal bank of clouds, and no man-made light sh
one from any quadrant. She squinted into veils of shadows that reminded her of a midnight swim at the bottom of an unlit pool.
But she knew desert when she smelled it. The jet’s engines had shut down, and a cold, lifeless wind swept the burnt gases away, bringing the flat scent of dry rock and parched thorn to her nostrils. The stillness of a desert night was unmatched in nature, for no leaves rustled, no insect wings buzzed, no small feet pattered through undergrowth. If you heard a slither, it would be when the snake was at your toes.
Of a thousand earthly deserts, she had no idea upon which one she stood. But it was surely not the Negev.
She started when the stairway was cranked back up into the jet. The pilots had not emerged, but Ruth assumed that they were part of Martina’s “crew.” After the landing, the aircraft had taxied for a long time over hard-packed sand, a gently twisting wadi whose floor had been worked over by spade and shovel. Yet here at the wadi’s mouth the earth was loose and softer. She heard the clang of a grappling hook, then the whine of a distant winch, and the plane began to move again, its tires crunching loose stone as its big body receded, dark and lifeless like a beached whale.
“Clean the intakes and get the nets over it.”
Ruth turned to the sound of the German voice. She could see more clearly now. She was standing at the edge of a wide bowl of house-high dunes, its flat floor the size of a soccer field. Along the far side, before the foot of ridges, a low row of mounds jutted up from the floor like fresh graves. Each mound had a small metallic cap, like a conical Chinese straw hat, protruding from its spine. Her attention was drawn to Martina, whose figure appeared as a black silhouette striding across the flat sand.
Ruth shivered. No desert, despite its midday heat, retains its temperatures long past sundown. In winter, the contrasting dangers can be brutal, from death by heat stroke to crippling hypothermia. Youssef released her arm for a moment, took off his suit jacket, and draped it over her shoulders. Then he gripped her again, harder, so she would not mistake preservation of a hostage for kindness.
The Nylon Hand of God Page 37