At Mach 1.2, their flight time from Phoenix was just over two hours.
There was a haze stretched over the verdant countryside that threatened to thicken into an opaque cloud cover by later in the afternoon. The local meteorologists concurred with that prediction, but Kimball intended to be a long way from Georgia before it happened.
“Bengals, Hawkeye. Everybody awake?” Billingsly asked. “I’m taking my data feed back.”
Each of the pilots responded with his number, and Kimball deactivated the autopilot.
The fighters broke away from the Kappa Kat and formed on Kimball.
He contacted Atlanta Air Control on Tac One, and they were put in the stack for landing. Traffic was heavy.
It was 11:20 A.M. when he and McEntire landed as a pair and taxied off the runway.
“The big birds are still here, Cheetah,” McEntire said.
“Could we have expected more, Irish?”
“I guess not, buddy.”
Kimball got on the radio and requested permission to park near the Starlifters for refueling, and the request was promptly granted.
He had the turbofan shut down, the brakes locked, the ejection seat safed, the canopy open, and was mostly out of his gear by the time Gander, Vrdlicka, and three uniformed officials reached the plane. The Customs agents took their time looking the Alpha Kat over.
Kimball got his portfolio from its crevice next to the seat and made his way to the ground. The sweat broke out on his forehead right away.
“Damn, we’re glad to see you,” Vrdlicka said.
“You got a problem, Mel?” he asked.
“Are you Mr. Kimball?” one of the agents asked. He seemed to be in charge, and he took an inordinate amount of interest in the bluish-brown blemish on Kimball’s forehead. The swelling had disappeared.
“Got me.”
“You have weapons on those planes that are not cleared for departure.”
“Oh, shit! You don’t have the releases, Jimmy?”
“Hell, no.”
“Well, let me see what I’ve got here.” Kimball took his time opening his leather envelope and leafing through his file folders.
McEntire came around the nose of zero-eight and joined them. “Good morning, gents.”
“Sam Eddy, have you seen the releases for the security weapons?” Kimball asked.
“Not me. I don’t believe in red tape.”
The Customs agent gave him a sour look.
“Here we go,” Kimball said, withdrawing the two sheets of paper. They had enough Transportation, State, Commerce, Treasury, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms counter-signatures on them to start their own government.
The officer looked them over.
“Every serial number will agree with what’s listed there,” Kimball assured them.
The other two agents peered over the first one’s shoulder and gave him nods. He raised his clipboard, signed the two top papers, and passed them to Gander and Vrdlicka.
“I guess that takes care of it, Mr. Kimball.”
“Well, I appreciate it. Now, we’ve got seven more airplanes for you to take a look at.”
“Yes sir, we’ll do that.”
The three of them wandered off for a closer look at the Alpha Kat.
Two more Alpha Kats rolled in from the taxiway and parked in line.
Gander moved closer to Kimball and McEntire.
“Jesus, I was worried as hell. A.J. said we had all the documentation we needed.”
“He did say that,” Kimball agreed. “Except we pulled these, on purpose.”
“What! And put me through all this shit!”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Kimball said. He and Sam Eddy had discussed the tactic in detail.
“It wasn’t a good goddamned idea, not at all,” Gander countered.
“Sure it was,” McEntire said. “You give a guy a little problem to worry about, you think he’s going to worry about a larger problem?”
Vrdlicka laughed and slapped Gander on the shoulder. “Hell, yes! I’d rather worry about twenty pounds than fifteen tons, any day.”
Gander gave him the finger.
*
Derek Crider was stretched out on the bed in his hotel room when the phone rang.
He rolled over and picked the receiver from the bedside stand.
“Yeah.”
“They filed a flight plan out of Atlanta for the capital of Chad.”
“Chad?” he asked.
But the caller had already hung up.
Crider sat up, made five calls to other rooms in the hotel, then got up and packed his small valise. By the time he got down to the lobby, the others were already in line at the cashier’s counter, checking out.
The six of them took two taxis out to Isla Verde Airport where they went through the immigration checks without one question being raised about the six passports Crider had supplied. He knew very competent people in the passport business.
While Lujan went to file his flight plan, Crider led the others out to the airplane, a Gates Learjet 25B that normally carried ten passengers. This one was modified with two additional fuel tanks in place of four seats in the rear of the passenger cabin.
One could assume that it had seen service between South and North America. Crider was confident that Lujan had vacuumed, dusted, washed, and rinsed the plane inside and out. There would be no traces of prior cargoes to trip them up.
Wheeler opened the swing-down cabin door, and they climbed inside, stowed luggage, and selected seats. All of them were big men, and the space disappeared quickly.
Del Gart opened a small case and pulled out a bottle of Jim Beam. He held it up toward Crider.
“I don’t drink on an operation, Crider, but we aren’t starting anything today, are we?”
“Go ahead,” Crider said.
Gart started filling paper cups.
Lujan arrived a few minutes later, his brown eyes excited by the prospect of adventure and money, and clambered up the steps. He turned to pull the doors closed behind him.
“What’s the route, Emilio?” Crider asked.
“We’re goin’ to the Azores, man.”
“Can we make it on fuel?”
“If the wind’s right.”
*
Henry Loh was a multi-millionaire. His accounts in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Bern kept accumulating higher totals, but he never worried too much about it. He had never had any trouble making money, but he preferred having it in his accounts to flaunting it.
His wardrobe contained nothing worthy of ceremonial or formal occasions. There were two pairs of blue slacks and a couple of white, short-sleeved cotton shirts. A dozen sets of khaki pants and shirts, along with a couple of safari jackets rounded out his closets at the Fragrant Flower compound and at the small flat he kept in Bangkok.
Retirement to an exotic, peaceful island did not enchant him, whether or not he could afford it. Loh was addicted to activity, preferably activity involving aircraft, and Lon Pot had offered him the most attractive deal in his world.
As one of Lon Pot’s four chief lieutenants, Henry Loh received a salary equivalent to one million U.S. dollars a year, paid to him in automatic dollar, franc, baht, kyat, and riel deposits to his accounts. He generally carried with him ten thousand dollars because he never knew when a bribe might be required.
As much as he disdained money, Henry Loh was always ready to accept it when it was offered. It was primarily a way of keeping score, but it did not substitute for his other needs.
Better, to his way of thinking, he was chief of Lon Pot’s air arm. Where else in the world could a poor boy from Taiwan become the general of his own air force?
The air force was spread all over the State of Shan, with two additional bases, Muang and Chiang, hidden in the geography of northern Laos and northern Thailand. The core of the fleet, naturally, was composed of aged transport craft, operating under cover of a half-dozen airline names. The transports could be f
ound anywhere from Rangoon to Bangkok to Mandalay to several dirt strips hacked out of the jungle and the hillsides.
Slowly, however, with careful orchestration of Lon Pot’s ego, and working through foreign intermediaries, Henry Loh had amassed two MiG-23s, two MiG-27s, four Maruts, and five French Mirage 2000s. His helicopter squadron consisted of an Aerospatiale Gazelle dedicated to the transport of Lon Pot, several Super Frelons, and five Augusta-Bell AB 212s, a version of the famous Huey produced under license in Italy.
At nine o’clock at night, Air Force Chief Henry Loh landed his AB 212 in a self-raised dust storm twenty meters from the village administrator’s house in Mawkmai. Loh always took the controls when he was aboard any aircraft, and the helicopter’s regular pilot had assumed copilot duties.
As the rotors wound down, a flight of two MiGs passed overhead and began to circle the village at less than one thousand meters. They were there for emphasis, though they were unlikely to be needed.
Eight men scrambled from the helicopter’s cabin. Six of them were uniformed in camouflaged fatigues, with no badges of rank, but with the authority of new model Kalashnikov AK-74 assault rifles.
Two of the men were assistants to the new village administrator, who was also a passenger.
The last man was Police Chief Micah Chao. He was a small and tidy man, with oiled blue-black hair, and eyes the color of flint. Like his squad of men, he was dressed in fatigues, but he wore a Sam Browne belt … a reincarnation of colonial British oppressors Loh frequently thought … with a holstered Colt .45 automatic that was nearly as large as Chao. Loh thought that if Chao ever fired the weapon, he would find himself rocketed into China.
Loh also thought that Lon Pot’s organization re-fleeted the leader’s mind. A police chief, an air force chief, an army chief, and a finance chief were close to the head of the new government. Posts in domestic and foreign affairs and policy would be designated later, if they became necessary, and would report to one of Pot’s deputies.
He did not care, one way or the other, as long as he headed the air force.
Sliding out of his seat, Loh joined Chao as they walked toward the house. The noise of their arrival had alerted the occupants, and lights were coming on.
“This man may be more difficult,” Chao told him.
Loh shrugged. A few had resisted, but most had not. Throughout the Shan state, helicopter teams had visited the key villages, urged the old administration to step aside, and installed new administrators. It was a warlord society, the custom of generations, and warlords changed.
The least difficult had been in Taunggyi, the capital city of Shan. Lon Pot already owned most of the government officials there, and they had readily signed new oaths.
The transition of power was taking place smoothly and with less bloodletting than Loh had anticipated.
By the end of the week, Shan State would be Lon Pot’s. Within a month, the master anticipated having control of Kachin State in the north and Kayah State, which lay just southwest of this village.
The governments of Burma had been in chaos for years, and neither Lon Pot nor his deputies expected heavy resistance to subtle and unadvertised transfers of loyalty. As the tide of change rolled south, toward Rangoon and the national government, key members of the incumbent armed forces and police would either be converted or terminated.
Loh followed Micah Chao to the door, which opened immediately.
The administrator stood in the doorway and bowed his head in recognition.
Police Chief Micah Chao, whose new title was unknown to the administrator, but whose relationship to Lon Pot was, said, “You have been demoted. You must now collect your belongings and move.”
The man’s eyes widened. They shifted to peer into the darkness beyond Chao’s shoulder and weigh the threat of the armed men. The jet fighters circled, their throttled-back engines still an ominous thunder.
“I have not been advised of this change.”
“You are being advised now.”
“I should contact the capital.”
“Which will tell you the same thing,” Chao said. “You will leave immediately.”
“But my family! It will take time …”
Chao unsnapped the flap of his holster.
Loh was not certain whether the policeman would be able to lift the Colt from the holster. He stayed behind Chao, an observer of one of life’s lesser events.
“I insist upon seeing your credentials and a written order,” the administrator said.
Unfortunately.
The Colt came out of the holster with ease.
Exploded loudly in the night.
And Chao was not rocketed into China.
*
On the last leg, A.J. Soames moved to air controller in the Kappa Kat’s backseat, and Fred Nackerman, a hazel-eyed, redheaded youngster of twenty-eight years, took over the controls. Nackerman was a New Jersey native, and he had never gotten it out of his speech.
Kimball had set up a rotation schedule for all of the pilots, and not one of them was in the same seat in which he had left Phoenix.
The stopover at Greenham Common Air Base in England had been uneventful, primarily since there was no concern for the import or export of cargo aboard the C-141s. Whatever it was, it was going straight through.
They had refueled the planes and fed the personnel and taken off.
Eleven-and-a-half hours out of Atlanta, at four-thirty in the morning in North Africa, the flight of KAT aircraft was approaching their destination. They had been allowed to overfly France, as long as they stayed above 30,000 feet, but they had had to circumnavigate Libya, flying across Tunisia, Algeria, and a large segment of Nigeria.
Soames estimated that the Starlifters were now about twelve hundred miles behind them. The squadron had passed them just south of Paris.
Tex Brabham was still in the copilot’s seat, having overruled Kimball’s rotation plan because, he said, he didn’t often get such a chance to fly the beast. Nackerman had let him take the controls for a couple hours.
Kimball was in the seat next to Soames, sound asleep.
The stars were crisp and clean in a moonless sky. Soames hadn’t been to Africa in so long that he had forgotten that clarity. They were at 20,000 feet above ground level (AGL), and not much of the terrain was visible in the darkness, but it wouldn’t have been very scenic if he could have seen it. He remembered that.
Jay Halek was Bengal One, and Soames called him on Tac Two.
“Barnfire?”
“I’m awake, Papa.”
“ETA in twenty.”
“I see the lights,” Halek said.
In the far distance, there was a slightly warm glow on the horizon.
“Your eyes are better than mine,” Soames said.
“Nah, Papa, just my anticipation.”
“All right, Bengals, let’s go to work. I’m cancelling data feeds and you’re coming off autopilot. Let’s begin our descent. Take it slow to angels ten,” Soames said, and on the intercom, added, “You want to lead the way, Flapjack?”
Nackerman was fond of big breakfasts, and often ate them for dinner.
“Roger, Papa.”
The steady drone of the turbofans changed pitch, and the Kappa Kat began to settle.
Soames checked the running lights of the fighters off both wings and found them matching the descent.
When he saw starshine reflecting from the surface of the huge Lake Chad, Soames checked his chart under the red map light and dialed in a new frequency on the Tac One channel.
“N’Djamena Air Control, this is Kimball Aero Tech two-two.”
“Two-two, N’Djamena.” The voice was in the upper ranges, with a pronounced British accent. “We indicate a flight of seven aircraft.”
“Affirmative. I have a flight of seven.”
“You are ahead of schedule, two-two.”
“I had nice tail winds. I’m requesting permission for landing.”
“Permission to land is grant
ed. There is no other traffic in the area. Visibility unlimited, winds northwest at five knots, gusting to twelve knots.”
Soames went back to Tac Two and broke off the Alpha Kats, setting them up in landing pairs and spacing them ahead of the Kappa Kat.
At 8,000 feet, he released his oxygen mask and let it hang from the side of his helmet.
The capital of Chad had about 200,000 residents, and the city was sprawled widely around the confluence of the Logone and Shari rivers, which fed Lake Chad. That early in the morning, the lighting appeared dim and the city sleepy as they circled it to the north. The runway lights were bright and welcoming.
The lead pilot in each pair of fighters checked in with the tower, then landed smoothly.
Nackerman brought the Kappa Kat in last, and it
wasn’t until the main gear touched down that Kimball stirred.
He sat up, rolling his head to stretch his neck muscles, and looked out the canopy. Unsnapping his oxygen mask, he licked his lips. The oxygen mixture tended to dry out the mouth.
On the intercom, he said, “Damn, A.J., I didn’t think I’d sleep that long.”
“It’s good for you, boy. There wasn’t anything to see anyway.”
“The Starlifters?”
“It’ll be a couple hours before they get in.”
“Any glitches?”
From the front seat, Brabham asked, “With my birds, Kim? You crazy?”
“It was just a loose thought, Tex.”
“As soon as my equipment gets here, we’ll tear into ’em and see how they fared,” Brabham said. “I don’t think we’ll find much of anything wrong, though.”
A white Toyota pickup was leading the string of fighters down a taxiway, and Nackerman fell in behind them. On the far side of the airport was the commercial terminal. On this side, they passed several large hangars and parked military aircraft, primarily of French manufacture. Soames saw a couple Hueys and several varieties of Cessna and Beechcraft light-twins that had apparently been converted to military use.
“I’m going to uncork us, Flapjack.”
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