by Marc Cameron
Chavez and Adara sat up straighter in their seats.
Midas came over the radio next, sounding tense, like he was talking through clenched teeth.
“We have company!” he said. “Two Hilux pickups full of trouble. Estimate eight to ten men. All armed.”
Chavez turned toward the door in time to see the man behind the counter at the FBO come up with a pistol.
“Gun left,” he snapped, for Adara’s benefit. He gave the man behind the counter a quarter-second benefit of the doubt. There was a slim chance he was protecting himself from the newcomers outside.
Nope.
The night manager swung the gun in a wide arc, crossing Adara first. Both she and Chavez fired at the same time, both rounds catching him center-mass.
“One down inside,” Chavez said over the radio. “We’re still good, but the cops can’t be far away.”
“Bad news,” Jack said. “I’m thinking these are the cops.”
Adrenalized, Chavez forgot about his pounding headache. Unfortunately, it hadn’t forgotten about him, and he swayed on his feet as he moved toward the door that led to the ramp. “Do not let these guys ID you.”
“Copy,” Jack said. “We’re still sitting in the vans. So far they don’t even know we’re here.”
“They’re gearing up to come in,” Caruso added. “Jack can go; I’ll stay and help you out.”
“Negative,” Chavez snapped, regaining his balance by sheer force of will. “Adara and I will slip out the back door to the flight line before they come in. We’ll work our way around to the south if we can. Jack, you sit still. Midas, you guys wait until they are about to hit the door, and then haul ass. Peel out, make a lot of noise like you’re bolting. Hopefully they follow you. Jack, if you can, slip away after they leave. We’ll rendezvous at the alternate site in four hours.”
The alternate site was a church downtown that he’d designated when they first arrived in Manado. It was a long way from the airport—and the F-15s—but if Chavez sat still, Calliope would be long gone before they got here—and he and Adara would likely be dead.
Pistol in hand, Chavez grabbed the door and gave Adara a nod to let her know he was ready. He could barely see out of his left eye, his head was on fire, and he was sure he had at least two bruised ribs. Yeah, things were just peachy.
Adara grabbed her pack and threw her body across the counter, reaching for the button to buzz open the exit to the ramp. Chavez held the door until she got there. A quick peek outside said they were clear, and they ran into the sticky blackness.
The sound of squealing tires carried around the building. Chavez caught a glimpse of the Toyota’s taillights heading away from the FBO. He counted one, and then a second pickup truck sped past, giving chase.
Chavez and Adara stopped next to a parked fuel truck. The smell of the tarmac rose on the warm night air, reminding him of a racetrack. On any other evening, one where he wasn’t running for his life with some stolen computer tech in his pocket, he would have enjoyed the smell.
“Looks like they’re buying it,” Adara said, watching the taillights.
“Hope so,” Chavez said. “Now Midas and Dom just need to get away.”
Jack came across the net. “Heads up! They left three behind. One’s watching the parking lot; the other two are coming your way.”
“Stay where you are,” Chavez said, panting more than he should have been.
“You okay?” Adara asked.
“I’m good.” He was able to muster a grin. “Just a little smashed up from my beating.”
The men coming inside would be finding the dead FBO manager about now. They’d slow down to check the building if they had any sense, but there wasn’t much to check besides a back office and the restrooms. It was a matter of seconds, not minutes, before the men were right on top of them.
“Tell me you have a surprise Ding Chavez plan up your sleeve,” Adara hissed. Crouched in the shadows with her pistol at low ready, she looked formidable. Chavez had little doubt they’d be able to handle the two men, but he hoped to get out of Indonesia without engaging any police officers, even if they were on Suparman’s payroll. He thought about going to the Gulfstream for about half a second, but a thin-skinned aircraft was a terrible place to make a stand.
A Batik Air commercial airliner roared overhead, vibrating the ground as it took off to the south.
“Ryan’s penned down,” Adara said. “Short of hijacking an airplane, I’m not sure we have many options besides duking it out with those guys when they come out. I guess we could always give up.”
Chavez nodded, half standing. “That’s it.”
“Give up?” Adara scoffed, her face blue in the scant ambient light. “That was a joke. I don’t think these guys plan on taking us to jail.”
Chavez gestured toward the Piper Cheyenne with his pistol.
“I’m not talking about giving up.”
46
The Piper’s rear door hung open at the back of the aircraft, integral stairs extended. The only light inside came from the faint glow of cockpit instrumentation. The two pilots were already on board, while the rest of the loading crew had gone between the ramshackle metal buildings to see what all the noise was in front. Adara pointed out at least one long gun, which meant there were surely more.
Two seats faced aft, back to back with the pilots in the open cockpit, one on either side of a narrow aisle. The rest had been removed to make room for the cargo—which consisted of several dozen bales of something wrapped in black plastic bags and copious rolls of duct tape.
The Cheyenne IIIA normally carried only nine passengers with full seating, so Chavez was almost in the cockpit in one good bent-over stride from the time he breached the door.
The Indonesian pilots both turned as Chavez bounded up the steps, his pistol trained toward the cockpit. Adara followed close on his heels, lifting the door and folding stairs before the pilots realized what was going on. The one in the left seat, older than his copilot by at least a decade, raised his hands and grinned, giving an amused shake of his head.
“You won’t get very far if you shoot us.”
“I only need one of you to fly the plane,” Chavez said, dead serious. “Your copilot looks capable enough.”
He didn’t have a problem popping a drug smuggler. It would, in fact, not be a new experience for him. Any hint of bravado bled from the pilot’s face.
“I assume you are running from those people who are making all the noise out on the street?” he asked.
Chavez smacked the headrest with his free hand. This was a tricky time. In reality, the pilot held most of the cards. All he had to do was sit on his hands while the men he worked for stormed the plane. Chavez banked on the fact that the pilots were smart enough to realize they were highly likely to catch a few bullets themselves if their companions stormed the plane. Drug smugglers weren’t known for their discerning shot placement. Chavez leaned farther into the cockpit between the two seats, partly to check for weapons, but crowding the men in the process to keep up the tension.
“Let’s go! And no headsets. I want the radio on speaker so I can hear everything. And keep in mind that I know the transponder codes, so you can forget about sending a message that way.”
The pilot turned and looked at him full in the face, as if he’d been about to do that very thing.
Squawking 7700 on the transponder alerted air traffic control to an emergency. A squawk of 7500 meant the aircraft had been hijacked.
The pilot did as he was directed. The little airplane began to shudder as he fired up one Pratt & Whitney turbine engine at a time. He glanced over his shoulder as he let the props come up to speed.
“My name is Deddy,” the pilot said, an obvious attempt to humanize himself to the man who had a gun to his head. Chavez couldn’t blame him. He would have done the same thing if the situation
were reversed.
He kept his voice firm and direct. “You’re doing fine, Deddy. We’ll get through this no problem as long as you do exactly what I tell you to.”
“But they are after you?” He half turned in the seat. “Those men?”
“They are,” Chavez said. “Eyes on the road, Deddy.”
“Okay,” the pilot said. “But to be honest, I think you may have killed us all. I am much more frightened of the man who owns what you are sitting on than I am of you.”
Adara peered out the back window, and then stooped in the aisle to duck-walk back to Chavez between the plastic and duct-taped bales. She leaned forward to whisper in his ear. “Anytime now,” she said. “The guys with guns are coming back.”
Chavez gestured down the taxiway with the Smith & Wesson. “Get us in the air. No headsets. Keep the radio on speaker so I can hear.”
The pilot had already filed a flight plan, and the Cheyenne received rapid clearance to taxi the length of the single runway. They took off to the south, heavy with drugs, wallowing into the humid air. Climbing into the wind, the pilot followed Departure’s instructions and banked to the east. The lights of the runway and the island of Sulawesi fell away quickly, giving way to the blackness. Chavez felt the disconcerting clunk under his feet as the landing gear folded into place.
The copilot, a rumpled young man with longish, unevenly cut hair over the collar of his white uniform shirt, began to chuckle.
Chavez nudged the back of the right seat. “Something funny I don’t know about?”
The pilot shot a glance at his copilot and rattled off something in Bahasa Indonesian.
“Speak English!” Chavez gave the pilot’s headrest another smack.
“I am sorry.” Deddy craned his neck around to look over his shoulder at Chavez, as if he wanted to spare the copilot what he was about to say. “Men like you and me, we have been doing dangerous things like this for a while. My copilot is new. He laughs when he gets nervous. That is all. He took this job to feed his family. He did not even know what we were flying tonight.”
“Nice story,” Chavez said. “But a little hard to believe.”
The copilot was young, perhaps in his late twenties. Chin quivering like he might burst into tears at any moment, he maintained a white-knuckle grip on the yoke—though the autopilot was flying the airplane.
The pilot shrugged. “Believe it, don’t believe it. Neither makes it any less true. I only hope to calm his nerves. I told him that you had no reason to harm us, as long as we fly you to where you want to go.”
“That is true,” Chavez said.
Halfway between the cockpit and the door, Adara leaned over the plastic bales. She pressed her face against the side window to get a better look at anyone behind them. They had no headsets and the drone of the Pratt & Whitney engines forced her to shout.
“They’re not behind us.”
“They will be soon enough,” the copilot said, chuckling again, then catching himself and biting his bottom lip.
“My friend is right,” the pilot said. “Those men, they would not want to cause problems with authorities at the airport, not with the cargo we have on board. But there is another pilot in the group. I do not know if you noticed, but there was a fat little business jet parked on the tarmac beside us.”
“A Hawker,” Chavez said, not liking where this was headed. “I saw it.”
“That is right.” The pilot nodded, his eyes gazed beyond his instruments at the darkness ahead. “A Hawker 800 has a range of almost three thousand miles and a top speed of over five hundred miles per hour. Even at cruise speed it can outpace this Cheyenne by a hundred knots—and that’s if we weren’t loaded down with cargo. What’s more, it can fly almost as slow as we can, which will make it very difficult to evade.” The pilot leaned into the aisle between the two cockpit seats so he could make eye contact with Adara. “If you keep watching long enough, Habib will be there.”
The copilot’s face twitched. He chuckled, and then put a knuckle to his teeth.
Chavez gave the instruments a quick scan. They were flying almost due east at ten thousand feet above the ocean surface. Altitude above you was useless in an emergency, but Chavez wanted to keep them relatively low. The Cheyenne’s cabin was pressurized to around eight thousand feet, so a sudden loss in pressure at ten thousand would not pose a problem. If they went too high, the pilots might be tempted to reduce cabin pressure and oxygen to try and regain control of the aircraft. He snapped his fingers next to the pilot’s ears. “Give me those charts.”
The pilot complied, grabbing a stack of folded paper aeronautical maps from the upholstered pocket next to his left knee. Chavez passed them back to Adara. “You mind finding us a safe place to land?”
Adara gave him a thumbs-up. Chavez still found himself startled when he turned and saw her with dark hair instead of blond.
“On it,” she said.
“Pass me the mic,” Chavez said, snapping his fingers again.
The pilot did as he was told. “We must land soon,” he said. “The Hawker is probably already in the air. Habib is on his way. He knows people in the tower who will give him our position on radar.”
“Now set the frequency to Guard,” Chavez said. Guard was 243.0 MHz, an emergency frequency that was monitored by military aircraft.
Deddy glanced over his shoulder. “I tell you, Habib will find us. He will force us down and he will shoot you both. After that, he will kill me and my friend because we allowed you to steal this airplane.”
The copilot began to giggle uncontrollably.
“Nobody’s going to die today,” Chavez said, a little too grimly to believe. “Well, maybe this Habib guy, if he’s not careful.”
47
The flight from the South Lawn to Andrews Air Force Base on the VH-3D Sea King—designated Marine One when the President was on board—took just over six minutes, depending on the route taken. Three identical helicopters switched positions constantly along the way in an aerial shell game meant to confuse any would-be attackers on the ground. Each bird was equipped with an impressive and highly classified array of protective measures—not the least of which were a couple of Noble Eagle F-16 fighters patrolling the D.C. area high overhead. The many sophisticated weapons systems used to protect him had embarrassed Ryan at first, until he came to grips with the fact that the Secret Service, the Capitol Police, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, and all the rest were protecting not just him as a man but the institution of the presidency.
Not one to waste precious minutes, Ryan was on the phone for the entire flight, talking to the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia. He guarded his words at first, his mind in overdrive, considering the possible outcomes of his words. A president had to be extremely careful about what he said or it would be construed to mean something totally different than what he’d planned. For instance, Ryan had wanted to ask this crew chief a question about Sergeant Scott, the crew chief who he saw most often. He knew Scott had already shipped out for Jakarta with the presidential-lift package of HMX-1, and asking one crew chief about another could easily be misinterpreted as “Hey, where’s the guy I like?” So Ryan had saluted and kept his mouth shut, saving his question for Sergeant Scott when next they met beside the White Top in Jakarta.
That was, however, about the limit of Jack Ryan’s patience. He could feel his temperature rising as he discussed Father West’s conditions of confinement with Ambassador Cowley. The ambassador assured Jack that he had an appointment to see Father West once the transfer to Nusa Kambangan was complete. Citing security reasons, the Indonesian authorities advised that prisoners could have no visitors while in transit.
Ryan barely suppressed the urge to curse. Ambassador Cowley was a gentle soul, bred for diplomacy, not the frontal assault Ryan craved at the moment. It was evident in the ambassador’s voice that he felt he was living in a house of cards. He we
nt so far as to ask if Ryan had something “grand” planned upon arrival.
“By grand,” Ryan said, “you mean foolhardy?”
“Well,” the ambassador said. “Mr. President, you are the final arbiter of what constitutes foolhardy in this case. But I would not be doing my job if I did not—”
“Understood, Mr. Ambassador,” Ryan said. “You may pass on to President Gumelar that I come in peace, but I do plan to leave Indonesia with my friend, one way or another.”
“Mr. President—”
“Or,” Ryan said, “Don’t tell him. It’s up to you. But I want you to know, that’s the way it’s going to happen . . .”
“Pardon me for saying.” Arnie van Damm gasped when Ryan replaced the handset on the console beside his seat. “But holy shit, Mr. President. Are you trying to start a war with Indonesia?”
“I am not,” Ryan said. “I do, however, think it’s important to set expectations. If Ambassador Cowley believes I’ve lost my mind, he’ll convey that to Gumelar with the fervor of a true believer.”
Mary Pat sat at the rear of the compartment, leaning forward with her hands braced against her knees. She stared at the carpeted floor, deep in thought, as Marine One settled softly onto the tarmac.
“Have you, Mr. President?” van Damm asked, removing his seat belt as he prepared to exit the helicopter. He, Foley, Montgomery, and the other agents would disembark ahead of Ryan.
“Have I what?”
“Lost your mind, sir.”
Ryan chuckled. “In a good way,” he said.
Van Damm paused at the door, half turning to face Ryan. “Are you sure about this . . . this plan of yours? I mean, it’s virtually guaranteed to blow up in your face.”
“Like I said, Arnie. Sometimes the way to win the game is to rip out the steering wheel while everyone is watching.”
* * *
—
First, the guards had given him a haircut. Then they’d brought in five buckets of relatively larvae-free water with which to clean himself. He was given a robe, and then ushered to a regular shower, as if he’d been too dirty to enter the place until he’d washed off the outer layer of grime. The shower was tepid but unbearably pleasant, and he’d wept at the feel of so much water on his skin. By the time he stepped out of the cubicle someone had left a stack of tan hospital scrubs on the bench. The simple shower and clean clothes made it impossible to control his emotions. It was all too much to comprehend.