Passenger 19

by Ward Larsen

  Jen stared at her. “Who has connections like that? Is he a mob boss or something?” She saw Kristin smile for the first time since they’d been on the airplane.

  “There are people who might put it that way.”

  Jen looked at her quizzically.

  “My biological father is Martin Stuyvesant—the vice president of the United States.”

  “Holy—” A hand clamped over her mouth.

  The silence outside was broken as footsteps scuffed nearby. The girls lay frozen with fear. Neither breathed, and through a slim gap Jen saw a pair of boots approach, then turn away until only one was visible. It was big and black, and had a crescent-shaped scar on the heel.

  Kristin was watching too, and she silently mouthed one word. Pablo.

  * * *

  Davis had the engines pushed hard against the red lines on the gauges. The airspeed was pegged at 210 knots—painfully subsonic, but covering ground. He estimated they would reach the airfield in eight minutes.

  “I’ve got Jorgensen on the phone,” McBain announced as he jockeyed the sat-phone antenna to get better reception. “He says the jeeps got bogged down on a bad section of road—right now they’re about three miles south of the landing strip.”

  “Ask him who got left behind at the airfield—I didn’t take the time to look.”

  Moments later McBain had the answer. “He says the only person in sight is the Cessna’s pilot.” He gave Davis a tentative look. “Let me guess—we’re going to land there too?”

  “Why not?”

  “We have no other choice,” piped in Delacorte from the back seat.

  Davis turned and said, “I knew I brought you for a reason.”

  “How do we handle the pilot?” McBain asked.

  “There’s three of us and one of him. We have imitation heavy weapons, he’s probably packing something between a semiauto handgun and a Swiss Army knife.”

  “I doubt he’s one of the bad guys. Chances are, he’s only a charter pilot—probably got five hundred bucks plus expenses to retrieve this courier and deliver him to a coordinate set in the jungle. Tomorrow he’ll go back to his usual gig. He’ll fly a couple of movie stars to a high-end resort, or maybe give an eco-tour of the rain forest.”

  “By cruising over it in a turboprop gas hog?” Davis asked.

  “Maybe he’s got a Greenpeace sticker on the side of his airplane. My point is that we’re not talking about a tactically oriented individual.”

  “Which means what?” Delacorte asked.

  Davis reached into the same leather side pouch from which he’d pulled the aircraft checklist and withdrew a cheap pair of sunglasses. He put them on to ward off the brilliant sun, and said, “Which means we can keep our toy guns in the bag … for now.”

  * * *

  Kehoe sensed he was nearing the endpoint of his journey. He felt the jeep slow considerably, and one of the men behind him muttered something about being hungry.

  He was comforted that the briefcase full of cash was still in his lap. Kehoe did his best to glean information during the ride, but there had been little of use. Clattering valves from an ill-kept engine, the occasional shadows from trees overhead, and enough dust in his lungs to tell him he was riding in the trailing vehicle. Not much to advance an understanding of his circumstances.

  He was used to it, of course. Most of his jobs, by design, involved an acute lack of information. He’d been told there would be seven million in the briefcase, and that much was true—he’d opened it in a quiet moment alone on the G-III, because no one can carry that much cash and not look at least once. What he didn’t understand was why the girl he was getting in exchange was so important to Martin Stuyvesant.

  Back in Cleveland, Stuyvesant’s chief of staff let slip in his briefing that the Secret Service was somehow involved. This was not a complete surprise, given Stuyvesant’s status, and Kehoe was being paid well enough to know that the reasons were none of his business. But it did pique his curiosity. He’d asked if the money was counterfeit because he doubted he could spot a high-quality forgery, and because there were plenty of people here who could—Colombians had long been the world’s most prolific counterfeiters of U.S. currency. He’d been assured that the money was legitimate, and he thought it might be true. All the same, the fact that the people he was meeting had brought him this far without inspecting the cash seemed doubly curious. Both sides, apparently, were highly confident of a straightforward deal, and if everything held together for a few more hours the transaction would be, in his experience, uniquely successful. It suggested that both sides had some kind of insurance, or perhaps a mutual interest in a positive outcome.

  His inference that the end of his journey was near proved correct. The jeeps came to a rough stop and both engines fell silent. Under the black hood, Kehoe’s senses heightened. He knew they were in the shade, and he felt the jeep rock as the driver and two soldiers in back dismounted. Someone ordered him to stay where he was. Kehoe was happy to do just that.

  Then things got interesting. He heard a distant conversation in Spanish, the voices quiet but strained. Then he heard the man in charge, shout, “Cómo pudiste dejar escapar a los dos?”

  Kehoe stiffened ever so slightly. There had been an escape. The girl he was sent to retrieve? Los dos implied two. A second hostage? That was news to him, but he supposed it wasn’t out of character—they were, after all, kidnappers. Get the girl back safe. That was his objective, he reminded himself—aside from getting out alive.

  He heard a command to begin a search, the voice of the man who’d spoken to him at the airport. Then another order, one that froze Kehoe to the worn upholstery. “Ir a buscar el hacha!”

  Go find the ax.

  FORTY-TWO

  McBain was the first to spot the airfield. He pointed to a gap in the trees, and said, “Yeah, that one looks familiar. We did a joint raid with the Colombian Army—two, maybe three years ago. We showed up a day late and everyone was gone. Word of our arrival often precedes us when the army gets involved. At any rate, we got the enemy to pull up stakes. It’s hard to run a processing factory when you’re moving every two weeks.”

  Davis glanced at the airfield, but largely kept his eyes on the sky. There was a drone out here somewhere. According to Jorgensen it was loitering above their altitude, however, there were no air traffic controllers to sort things out, and a midair collision would ruin everyone’s day. He was flying the Comanche much like he’d flown on his first-ever lesson—a small airplane, no autopilot, and operating on the see-and-avoid concept when it came to air traffic.

  The sat-phone chirped, and McBain relayed the highlights of a message from Jorgensen. “The jeeps have stopped—we know where they’re holed up. It’s about five miles south down the airfield road. There are a few secondary trails, but we shouldn’t have any trouble finding the place. It’s an abandoned plantation we’ve had our eye on before, three buildings in marginal shape. According to Jorgensen there are four vehicles altogether, roughly twenty hostiles.”

  “Hostiles?” said the engineer in back. “That is not a word I like.”

  “And not a number I like,” agreed Davis. He spotted the road easily because there were no others in sight—just a single brown ribbon through the carpet of green. He flew over the airfield and they all saw the single-engine Cessna that had delivered Martin Stuyvesant’s courier. It had fat tires and a big high wing, the signature features of an airframe built to operate on short, soft fields. The pilot looked up at them. He didn’t wave.

  “Okay, Jammer, this is your rodeo. What now? Do we fly south for a little reconnaissance?”

  “No, that would only spook them—if I take this crate within two miles of the compound they’ll hear our engines. Besides, it doesn’t add anything. As long as the drone is overhead we’ve got eyes on target. What we need is boots on the ground.”

  Davis sized up the landing strip, and what he saw wasn’t encouraging. It appeared rough, certainly not the kind of surface
that the engineers at Piper Aircraft had in mind when they designed the Twin Comanche. But then, a few days earlier a Colombian named Blas Reyna had landed a regional jet here, and subsequently taken off again. Davis thought, If he can do it …

  He tried to get a feel for the wind at ground level, but the jungle air seemed to be only heating and rising, no measurable vector in either direction. He made one last pass over the clearing, scouting for the smoothest surface and picking an aim point for touchdown that was just beyond the most obvious obstacle—a broad puddle that was one good downpour away from pond status. The pilot of the Caravan watched them closely, standing motionless under one wing. A good sign, Davis thought. It meant he was more concerned with shade than issuing a warning with the radio in his cockpit.

  He set up on final approach and cinched his seat belt tight. McBain noticed, and did the same without being told. Fifty feet above the ground Davis spotted a pair of long grooves in the surface, likely made by TAC-Air Flight 223 days earlier. He adjusted his flight path to straddle one of the tracks, reasoning that any ground solid enough to support a twenty-ton regional jet would hold up fine under the much lighter Comanche. If nothing else, a comforting thought. His touchdown was reasonably smooth, and as they coasted to a stop Davis sensed exhales of relief behind and to his right.

  He did a pirouette at the far end of the field, a turn just wide enough to avoid bogging down in the soft earth. Davis shut down the engines as soon as the nose was reversed and pointed down the runway, a trick he’d picked up from an old Africa hand on an equally dodgy mission. Be ready to go on a moment’s notice.

  The propellers chugged to a halt and everything went quiet, the only sounds that of cooling fans and gyros spinning down in the instrument panel. Davis actuated switches to shut off the battery, and all three men turned their attention to the other airplane. The Cessna was fifty meters away, the pilot still standing under the port wing. He looked interested but not concerned. He’d parked his own aircraft close to the road, oriented to provide the shortest possible walk for his passenger. A pilot accustomed to clients who didn’t want to get their shoes dirty. This reinforced McBain’s earlier assessment. They were looking at a local charter pilot who’d been hired for a morning’s work. He probably had no idea what he was doing here, who he was working for, and likely didn’t care. He was just out flying a charter with one eye closed, somewhere south of propriety, a guy happy with a five-hundred-dollar morning.

  “How do you want to handle this?” McBain asked.

  “I don’t see a lot of options,” Davis answered. He outlined a simple plan, one born quite literally on the fly. There were no objections, and they all disembarked and walked casually toward the pilot. All three men smiled, and Delacorte even waved. When they were ten steps away, McBain greeted the pilot because he was the best Spanish speaker. Davis heard something along the lines of, “Is this the road that leads to the Colombia Rain Forest Project?”

  Everyone knew it wasn’t. It had been McBain’s suggestion, an airfield and service road that did exist, but one they’d missed by forty miles. The charter pilot smiled condescendingly. He looked at Davis as if he’d just met the worst navigator in the world. The mood was easy and loose when the charter pilot began to reply. Then Delacorte and Davis lunged the last few feet and trussed the Colombian firmly by his elbows.

  * * *

  Go find the ax.

  Kehoe sat patiently with his hands crossed on top of the briefcase, perhaps subconsciously the one with the handcuff underneath. He hadn’t liked the handcuff routine to begin with, thinking it amateurish and dangerous, but Strand had insisted. Kehoe didn’t like to wear anything that restricted his movement—belts, ties, overcoats. Not in his closet. A Kevlar vest was the only exception, and that hadn’t seemed appropriate for this mission. The key to the cuffs was in his shoe. Not particularly clever, but what the hell was he supposed to do?

  His senses were still keen under the hood. He heard shuffling nearby, multiple sets of boots, and suddenly Kehoe was dragged off the jeep and thrown to the ground. The case flew from his grasp, and at least two men held him down. He saw little point in resisting—not until someone took his arm, the one chained to the briefcase, and forced it out wide. The briefcase was pulled until the chain went taut, and then everything stopped moving, his forearm pinned to the ground. The next Spanish command he translated instantly. “Do it—cut it off.”

  “Wait!” Kehoe yelled. “I have a key! Let me—”

  His protest was cut short by a boot to the head. An instant later, he was sure he heard a whoosh of air as the ax swung down.

  * * *

  The Cessna pilot didn’t bother to struggle, in Davis’ view a display of sound judgment as he was outweighed by a hundred pounds on either side. The look on his face was one of intense concentration, the factors of his situation no doubt multiplying in his head. Delivering an American passenger with a heavy briefcase. Two jeeps full of paramilitaries. Another airplane with three men, also American, but who were clearly on a different team. Men whose mission did not dovetail with his own. That fast, like flying into a box canyon, his easy money trip had disappeared.

  McBain patted him down, but found nothing. The DEA man stood with his hands on his hips, a dubious look on his face. “No,” he said. “Nobody flies to a place like this without protection.” He went to the airplane, and in five seconds found what he was looking for under the left seat—a 9mm Beretta. McBain turned the piece in his hand and said, “Now we have a real gun.” His expression of victory evaporated when he ejected the magazine and pulled back the slide. “One round,” he announced weakly.

  “One?” repeated Davis. He looked disbelievingly at the Colombian. “Don’t you know there are dangerous people out here?”

  McBain said roughly the same in Spanish, and the pilot only shrugged. He didn’t look worried, which Davis took to mean that he either had faith that someone would come to his rescue, or that he’d been in difficult situations before. The latter seemed more likely.

  McBain went over the airplane more thoroughly, but found nothing useful. “Now what?” he asked. “We’ve got one bullet, one gun, and five miles between us and twenty heavily armed soldiers.”

  “No,” said Davis, “we’ve got five miles between me and my daughter. That’s the closest I’ve been in a long time.”

  “So, how do we get her back?” Delacorte asked.

  “We wait,” McBain said. “That guy delivering the ransom will be back soon. His airplane and pilot are right here, which means he’s leaving the same way he came in—delivered by two jeeps and a half a dozen guys. He’ll have his girl, and maybe your daughter too.”

  Davis had already made similar calculations, only to hit a stop when it came to Jen. “I don’t think so. If he’s delivering a payoff, it’s for the vice president’s daughter. There’s no incentive for these people to release Jen. And if that’s the case, as soon as Kristin is clear, they’re going to move. I say we go in now while we know where she is.”

  Davis looked at Delacorte, then McBain. Both nodded.

  Delacorte said, “How will we do it? If we leave this pilot alone he might create trouble. He could make an unwanted radio call or disable our airplane.”

  “We have one bullet,” said McBain.

  Davis looked at him closely and saw the threshold of a smile. At least he thought it was a smile.

  “Okay, just kidding,” said McBain. “We don’t have anything to truss him up with, and there’s a chance somebody else might show up. One of us has to stay here to watch him, make sure he behaves.”

  They both looked at Delacorte.

  “D’accord,” the Frenchman replied. “It only makes sense that I am the one to stay.”

  “All right, tell him,” Davis said. He released the pilot’s arm and Delacorte did the same. McBain began talking, and pointed to Delacorte. The pilot looked at the Frenchman who was ten inches taller, twice his weight, and staring with a newfound menace. The pilot’s expre
ssion said he wished he’d stayed home today.

  Davis retrieved the canvas bag with the facsimile MP-5s, tossed in the sat-phone, and on a whim added the Comanche’s government-issue survival kit. Finally, he took in hand the flight control locking bar and key. The Colombian watched closely as they went to the Caravan’s cockpit and tried to secure the bar across the control yoke. Unfortunately, the design was different and the locking bar didn’t fit. Davis backed outside, put his hands on his hips, and soon saw a better solution. The pilot protested vehemently as Davis secured the locking bar around a very expensive Hartzell propeller.

  Davis said, “Tell him we’ll be back in an hour with the key. All he has to do is sit tight and relax with his new friend from France.”

  McBain translated, and the pilot acquiesced by sitting on the ground.

  “You sure you’re okay with this?” Davis asked Delacorte.

  “Absolument!”

  With that, Davis and McBain moved out, the DEA man shouldering the canvas bag. The sun was getting higher, the temperature rising. Davis felt his shirt already clinging to his back, and sweat beaded his forehead.

  “How far did you say it was?” he asked.

  “According to Jorgensen, five miles.”

  “Sounds like about half an hour.”

  “Half an hour?” McBain repeated. “How the heck can we—”

  Davis broke into a run before he could finish.

  * * *

  Kristin started to cry out when the ax came down, but squelched her outburst. The girls froze in place, as still and silent as twin toppled statues, fearful that their concealment had been compromised. They waited for a finger to be pointed in their direction, for a shout of alarm. None came.

  After a full five minutes Jen, who was unable to see outside, asked what had happened. Kristin gave a hushed account, and Jen maneuvered onto one side, a tolerable position from which she could glimpse the scene outside. She saw six soldiers standing in a semicircle, all of them laughing. A man wearing a hood was seated on the ground, rubbing one hand over his opposing wrist where half a set of handcuffs dangled. She saw the other silver cuff and a severed chain on the handle of a suitcase. Carlos had it on the hood of one of the jeeps and was trying to pry it open with the ax.