by Tom Clancy
It was not lost on Hendley that the 650 was also the most expensive aircraft of those in the running, but the statistics in its favor were convincing. Hendley began looking for a 650 but immediately realized the pickings were slim. The Campus wanted to keep the purchase of the jet as quiet and as low-key as possible, and sales of the new 650s were simply generating too much interest in the corporate aircraft community. He reconvened the committee, and they settled, if one could call choosing the second most luxurious and advanced aircraft in that class as settling, on the Gulfstream Aerospace G550, a model that was not yet ten years old and still very much top-of-the-line. Immediately, quiet feelers were sent out into the market by Hendley and other executives in The Campus.
It took nearly two months, but the right aircraft did come along. It was a seven-year-old G550 that had been owned previously by a Texas financier who’d been sent to prison for knowingly working with Mexico’s Juárez Cartel. The government had liquidated the financier’s assets, Gerry had gotten a call from a friend at DOJ who was involved in the auction, and Hendley was delighted to learn he could get the airplane at a price far lower than what the aircraft would have gone for at open sale.
The Campus then arranged the purchase via a shell company based in the Cayman Islands, and the aircraft was delivered to a fixed-base operator at a regional airport near Baltimore.
Once Gerry and his executives went out to see the plane in person for the first time, all agreed they’d gotten a hell of a deal on a hell of a jet.
With a 6,750-nautical-mile range, their G550 could fly anywhere on earth with only a single refueling stop, transporting as many as fourteen people in comfort as the aircraft’s two Rolls-Royce engines propelled them at .85 mach.
Those in the cabin during long-haul flights had access to six leather seats that folded down to turn into beds, a pair of long couches aft of the chairs, and all manner of high-tech communications throughout. There were flat-screen satellite televisions, broadband multi-link coverage over North America, the Atlantic, and Europe, as well as two Honeywell radio systems and a Magnastar C2000 radiotelephone for those in the cabin.
There were even several features built into the craft to reduce jet lag of the passengers, a critical factor for Hendley, considering he might be rushing men into harm’s way without any time whatsoever to acclimate themselves to their new surroundings. The large, high windows delivered much more natural light than regular commercial aircraft or even other high-end commercial jets on the market, and this helped to reduce the physiological effects of a long flight. Further, the Honeywell Avionics environmental systems refreshed one hundred percent of the oxygen every ninety seconds, reducing the risk of airborne bacteria that might slow his men during their missions. The environmental systems also held the pressurization inside the cabin three thousand feet below a commercial aircraft flying at the same altitude, and this reduced jet lag upon arrival, as well.
Hendley’s friend at DOJ had mentioned something else in their conversations about the plane. The original owner, the crooked moneyman, had been flying to Mexico City in his jet, then stuffing bags of U.S. currency into hidden compartments built throughout the craft by Colombian engineers, and then taking everything up, over the border, and into Houston. From there, the cash was distributed to low-level operatives in the Juárez Cartel, who took the cash, minus a small percentage, to Western Unions across the state of Texas. These Mexicans wired the money back down to accounts in Mexican banks, thereby laundering it. The Mexican banks in turn made wire transfers to anywhere in the world the narcos wanted it sent; purchasing drugs from South America, bribing government officials and police throughout the world, buying guns from militaries, and anointing themselves with the finest in luxuries.
Gerry had listened politely to this explanation of the money-laundering process although he understood the movement of world currency, both illegal and legal, better than all but a few. But what really got his attention was the existence of these secret stash compartments in his new jet. Once the aircraft was delivered to the fixed-base operator at BWI, a dozen employees of The Campus and a maintenance team at the FBO spent a day and a half looking for the secret hides.
They found several stashes of different sizes throughout the airplane. Although most people assume the cargo area of all jets is below the floor, on most smaller private aircraft like the Gulfstream G550, the cargo compartment is actually in the rear below the tail. Below the floor of the cabin was a large space that was partially taken up by wiring, but the Colombian engineers had created hidden compartments under the inspection panels in the floor that were large enough to hide as many as four small backpacks full of gear. Another vacant space was found in the lavatory, under the top panel that held the toilet seat. With sixty seconds and a screwdriver, one could remove the panel to reveal a large square empty space. The Colombians had added a small tube for waste to pass through, leaving a hide large enough for a single backpack, thankfully without affecting the function of the lav itself. Maintenance also found another ten smaller spaces hidden behind inspection panels and servicing access doors throughout the aircraft. Some of these hides would allow for the stowage of nothing more than a pistol; others were bigger, maybe the size of a submachine gun with a folded stock and a few extra magazines.
All in all, maintenance crew found nearly ten cubic feet of nearly perfect hiding places, enough to transport a fair amount of gear covertly wherever and whenever The Campus needed to move items surreptitiously. Pistols, rifles, explosives, surveillance equipment that would have sent foreign customs agents into seizures, documents, money. Anything that Gerry Hendley’s men needed to do their work.
Hendley hired a flight crew of three, all ex-military and vetted for Campus operations. The lead pilot was from the Air Force, which would have surprised no one. The fact that she was female should not have surprised anyone, either. She was fifty-year-old Captain Helen Reid, a former B1-B pilot who had made the jump into corporate jets by taking a job with Gulfstream. She had been on the G650 project as a test pilot, but she didn’t seem to mind “slumming” by flying the G550 instead. Her first officer was Chester Hicks, but everyone still called him by his call sign of “Country” because of his pronounced southern drawl. He was an ex–Marine Corps aviator from Kentucky who’d flown rotary and fixed-wing aircraft in the Corps. He spent the last six years of his career training young pilots at Naval Air Station, Corpus Christi, piloting B-12 Huron multi-engine aircraft, before retiring and going into business aviation. He’d flown G500s and G550s for a decade.
Hendley had surprised the five operators of The Campus back in June by taking them on their first ride in the G550. They’d driven to BWI, through the gate of an FBO called Greater Maryland Charter Aviation Services, which was run by a friend of Gerry Hendley’s. Gerry’s FBO-owning friend allowed Hendley’s aircraft and his employees to avoid virtually all scrutiny.
On this first flight, the six men had boarded their new plane, and Gerry introduced everyone to Captain Reid and Country, and then Hendley introduced them to their flight attendant.
Adara Sherman was an attractive thirty-five-year-old with short white-blond hair and bright gray eyes that she kept behind serious glasses. She wore a blue uniform with no insignia, and she always kept her jacket on.
Sherman had spent nine years in the Navy, and she looked like she had not let her physical training slack in the least since leaving the service.
She was polite and professional as she showed the men around the cabin for a one-hour flight that would have them circling the area and then performing a touch-and-go in Manassas, before returning to BWI.
As Jack sipped his wine over the Atlantic, he thought back to that day, and it made him chuckle. During takeoff, while Adara Sherman was out of earshot, Gerry Hendley had addressed the three single men in the cabin. “We’re going to play a word-association game, gentlemen. Our flight attendant is Adara Sherman. I want you to think of her as General Sherman, and think of yourselves as A
tlanta. Got it?”
“Keep it businesslike,” Sam had said with a slight smile.
“You got it.”
Caruso nodded obediently, but Jack spoke up. “You know me, Gerry.”
“I do, and you are a good man. I also know what it’s like being twenty-six years old. I’ll just leave it there, okay.”
“I understand. The flight attendant is a no-fly zone.”
All the men had laughed, just as Adara unstrapped herself and returned to offer coffee to the passengers. Immediately Dom, Sam, and Jack Junior looked away from her, kept their eyes low, somewhat nervously. Clark, Chavez, and Hendley just chuckled.
Adara wasn’t in on the joke, but she worked it out pretty quickly. The single men had been told that she was off-limits, and that was best for everyone. A minute later, she’d leaned across a table to grab a towel, and her jacket rose as her arms stretched. Jack and Dom both chanced quick glances—it had been coded into their DNA, after all—and both men saw a small but serious-looking Smith and Wesson with a stainless-steel slide and a spare magazine tucked into a holster that disappeared into her skirt in the small of her back.
“She’s packing,” Caruso had said appreciatively when she returned to the forward galley.
Hendley just nodded. “She provides security for the aircraft. She has a couple of weapons to help her do that.”
Jack smiled again thinking about Sherman and her weapons. He looked down to his watch and saw it was 10:30 p.m. on the East Coast. He grabbed the phone and called his mother’s mobile.
“I was hoping to hear from you today,” she said as she answered.
“Hey, Mom. Sorry it’s so late.”
Cathy Ryan laughed. “I don’t have morning rounds tomorrow. I’m with Dad in Cleveland.”
“Which means you’ll still have to get up, get ready, and walk through a diner shaking hands at morning rush hour, right?”
Now she laughed out loud. “Something pretty close to that. We’re going to a conveyer belt factory, but first breakfast with the media here at the hotel.”
“Fun.”
“I don’t mind it. And don’t tell him I told you, but I think your dad enjoys it more than he admits. Well, parts of it, anyway.”
“I think you’re right. How are Katie and Kyle?”
“Everybody’s fine. They are back at home; Sally is watching them for a couple of days. You should go up if you can get away from work. I wish I could give the phone to your dad so you could say hi, but he’s meeting with Arnie in a conference room downstairs. Can you wait a few minutes?”
“Uh, no. I’ll have to catch up to him later.”
“Where are you?”
Jack exhaled slowly, then said, “Actually, I’m on a plane right now. Flying over the Atlantic.”
That got a quick response. “Heading where?”
“Nowhere exciting. Just work.”
“Do you know how many times your father has given me that exact response?”
“Probably because it was true most of the time. You have nothing to worry about.”
“Are you sure?”
Jack Junior started to say “I promise” but refrained. He’d told himself he would not lie to his mother. Telling her she had nothing to worry about was damn close to an outright falsehood, but he sure wasn’t going to tip the scales into the realm of deceit by promising anything. He had no idea what he was about to get into, other than the fact he’d be on a crew of five armed men who planned on killing three other armed men and capturing one more.
Cathy said, “I’m worried, Jack. I’m a mother, it’s my job to worry.”
“I’m fine.” He changed subjects quickly. “So is Dad ready for the debate tomorrow night?”
He had no doubt that his mother would know what he was doing. His father had told him she would be able to see any “tricks” he tried to play on her from a mile away, and, so far, his dad had been right about that.
Still, she let it go. “I think so. He’s got the facts and figures dead to rights. I just hope he can keep his hands to himself and not reach out and slap Ed Kealty. This is the debate where the two candidates sit right next to each other at a table. It is supposed to be less formal, more like a friendly chat.”
“I remember Dad talking about this one. Kealty didn’t want to do this format at first, but since he’s down in the polls, he changed his mind.”
“Right. Arnie thinks this will be your father’s best chance to show his warm-and-fuzzy side.”
They both laughed at that.
Adara Sherman appeared over Jack with a small pitcher of water. Jack shook his head with a polite smile but made certain not to hold eye contact for too long, lest Gerry somehow find out about it later. She turned to head back to the forward galley, and he wanted to watch her walk away, but he knew this cabin was full of reflective surfaces, and he did not want to get caught checking her out, so he just looked down to his laptop.
“Okay, Mom. I’d better go. Get some beauty sleep for the presser in the morning.”
“I’ll do that. And you please be careful, okay?”
“I promise.” That was a promise he felt he could keep. He had every intention of doing his best to avoid getting shot in the a.m.
Mother and son signed off, and Jack Junior returned to his work. He was racing to meet up with a dawn that itself was racing to meet up with him, and that left him so little time.
12
Captain Helen Reid banked onto final approach at Paris–Le Bourget Airport just after five in the morning, positioned the nose of the Gulfstream toward runway 25, just behind another executive jet, a Falcon 900EX. The Falcon touched down and then taxied onto the taxiway, and the G550 followed suit ninety seconds later.
Captain Reid brought the aircraft to a large yellow box on the ramp that was the designated customs area. Once there, the aircraft idled with its door sealed, as per customs requirements, and Jack Junior arranged his luggage on the seats for the customs inspector to look over. Adara had arranged for a customs officer to be waiting for the flight so that they could be cleared immediately, and within a few minutes there was a knock at the door. Adara opened the door and greeted an extremely sleepy-looking man. He boarded, shook hands with Jack and the crew, and made a perfunctory glance into one of Ryan’s bags. All in all, he spent a grand total of two minutes on board doing this, as well as stamping passports and looking over the aircraft’s registry information, before telling the captain that she was now free to park the aircraft at a nearby FBO.
The tired-looking customs official bid everyone on board bienvenu, bonjour, and adieu, and he stepped back down the steps and off into the darkness enveloping the ramp.
Five minutes later, Captain Reid and Country shut down the aircraft at the FBO, and Adara opened the cabin door once again. Dominic Caruso, himself a recent arrival to France, greeted Ms. Sherman on the other side of the door, and then he and Jack unloaded the four backpacks full of gear from the airplane and put them in the back of the Ford Galaxy.
The Gulfstream crew walked toward the lounge of the FBO to arrange for the jet to be refueled and for the oxygen stores to be replenished. They would then wait on the jet until it was time to leave France, whether that moment was to be in three hours or three days.
Dominic and Jack drove off the airport grounds in the Galaxy with no security check whatsoever of their gear or their documents.
When hauling contraband around the world, private aircraft was, indeed, the only way to fly.
At this time of the morning it was only a fifteen-minute drive from Paris–Le Bourget to the Paris safe house. Jack Junior himself had secured this apartment the day before, just after sending Ding and John from Frankfurt to Paris. At that time, he could not have imagined he’d be pulling up at the door himself just nineteen hours later.
The men parked the minivan in the street in front of the apartment. They began unloading the backpacks by themselves, but Driscoll and Chavez appeared at their sides in the dark, and all four m
en unloaded without speaking. Once the men were back inside the small, furnished flat, the bags were laid out on the floor, the door was shut, and only then was the overhead light turned on.
Under the illumination of a simple steel chandelier, John Clark handed Ryan a cup of coffee. Clark nodded with a crooked smile. “You look like shit, kid. Staff Sergeant Buck has been putting you through the ringer, hasn’t he?”
“Yes. I’ve learned a lot,” replied Jack as he accepted the hot caffeine.
“Excellent. There is a box of day-old croissants and some ham and cheese on a plastic tray in the fridge.”
“I’m okay for now.”
“You were wined and dined on the plane?”
“Perks of the job.”
“Damn right. Okay, then let’s get right to it.” Clark addressed the room: “Everybody front and center.” He stood in front of the television while the four others found seats in the modern living room.
Clark referred to a notebook as he talked. “We’ll organize gear in a bit, but for now let’s go over the op. The plan, in short, is this: I’ve got us the room right above Rokki’s, and a room right next to his. We’ll hit them hard and fast, and from multiple entry points, all while they’re sipping their morning coffee.”
“You got two rooms at the Four Seasons George V? Gerry is going to love that invoice,” Ryan said with a chuckle.
Clark smiled himself. “He knows, and we aren’t paying for it. The rooms were already booked for tonight, so Gavin Biery went into the hotel’s reservation system and moved the existing reservations to other rooms. He made our reservations with a credit card number that we have, which is linked to a guy in Islamabad who moves money between Saudi fat cats and AQ accounts. It will be, according to Gavin, as if someone changed the reservations from one of the terminals at reception in the lobby. The Campus is clean on this operation, and the only vague trackbacks investigators will find after the fact will be the credit card, and that will lead them to an AQ player in the Middle East. When we hit the URC, it will look like some sort of lovers’ quarrel between the two groups.”