by Tom Clancy
THE GULFSTREAM G-IV touched down at Benghazi exactly on its flight plan. It had actually been as pleasant a journey as was possible under the circumstances. Even the normally roiled air over the central Sahara had been calm, making for a smooth ride. Sister Jean Baptiste had remained unconscious for most of the flight, drifting into semi-awareness only a few times, and soon drifting back out again, actually more comfortable than the other four people aboard, whose protective garb prevented even a sip of water.
The doors never opened on the aircraft. Instead fuel trucks pulled up and their drivers dismounted to attach hoses to the caps in the long white wings. Dr. Moudi was still tensely awake. Sister Maria Magdalena was dozing. She was as old as the patient, and had scarcely slept in days, devoted as she was to her colleague. It was too bad, Moudi thought, frowning as he looked out the window. It was unjust. He didn't have it in his heart to hate these people anymore. He'd felt that way once. He'd thought all Westerners were enemies of his country, but these two were not. Their home country was essentially neutral toward his. They were not the animistic pagans of Africa, ignorant and uncaring of the true God. They'd devoted their lives to service in His name, and both had surprised him by showing respect for his personal prayers and devotions. More than anything, he respected their belief that faith was a path to progress rather than acceptance of preordained destiny, an idea not totally congruent with his Islamic beliefs, but not exactly contrary to them either. Maria Magdalena had a rosary in her hands—disinfected—which she used to organize her prayers to Mary, mother of Jesus the prophet, venerated as thoroughly in the Koran as in her own abbreviated scriptures, and as fine a model for women to follow as any woman who had ever lived…
Moudi snapped his head away from them to look outside. He couldn't allow such thoughts. He had a task, and here were the instruments of that task, one's fate assigned by Allah, and the other's chosen by herself—and that was that. The task was without, not within, not one of his making, a fact made clear when the fuel trucks pulled away and the engines started up again. The flight crew was in a hurry, and so was he, the better to get the troublesome part of his mission behind, and the mechanical part begun. There was reason to rejoice. All those years among pagans, living in tropical heat, not a mosque within miles of his abode. Miserable, often tainted food, always wondering if it was clean or unclean, and never really being sure. That was behind him. What lay before was service to his God and his country.
Two aircraft, not one, taxied off to the main north-south runway, jostling as they did so on concrete slabs made uneven by the murderous desert heat of summer and the surprising cold of winter nights. The first of them was not Moudi's. That G-IV, outwardly identical in every way but a single digit's difference on the tail code, streaked down the runway and lifted off due north. His aircraft duplicated the takeoff roll, but as soon as the wheels were up, this G-IV turned right for a southeasterly heading toward Sudan, a lonely aircraft in a lonely desert night.
The first turned slightly west, and entered the normal international air corridor for the French coast. In due course, it would pass near the island of Malta, where a radar station existed to serve the needs of the airport at Valetta and also to perform traffic-control duties for the central Mediterranean. The crew of this aircraft were all air force types who customarily flew political and business luminaries from point to point, which was safe, well paid, and boring. Tonight would be different. The co-pilot had his eyes fixed jointly on his knee chart and the GPS navigation system. Two hundred miles short of Malta, at a cruising altitude of 39,000 feet, he took the nod from the pilot and flipped the radar transponder setting to 7711.
"VALETTA APPROACH, VALETTA Approach, this is November-Juliet-Alpha, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday." The controller at Valetta immediately noted the triple-bogie signature on his scope. It was a quiet watch at the traffic-control center, the normally sparse air traffic to monitor, and this night was as routine as any other—he keyed his microphone at once as his other hand waved for his supervisor.
"Juliet-Alpha, Valetta, are you declaring an emergency, sir?" "Valetta, Juliet-Alpha, affirmative. We are medical evacuation flight inbound Paris from Zaire. We just lost number-two engine and we have electrical problems, stand by—"
"Juliet-Alpha, Valetta, standing by, sir." The scope showed the aircraft's altitude as 390, then 380, then 370. "Juliet-Alpha, Valetta, I show you losing altitude."
The voice in his headphones changed. "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday! Both engines out, both engines out. Attempting restart. This is Juliet-Alpha."
"Your direct penetration course Valetta is three-four-three, say again, direct vector Valetta three-four-three. We are standing by, sir." A terse, clipped, «Roger» was all the controller got back. The altitude readout was 330 now. "What's happening?" the supervisor asked.
"He says both engines out, he's dropping rapidly." A computer screen showed the aircraft to be a Gulfstream, and the flight plan was confirmed.
"It glides well," the supervisor offered optimistically; 310, they both saw. The G-IV didn't glide all that well, however. "Juliet-Alpha, Valetta." Nothing. "Juliet-Alpha, this is Valetta Approach."
"What else is—" The supervisor checked the screen himself. No other aircraft in the area, and all one could do was watch anyway.
THE BETTER TO simulate the in-flight emergency, the pilot throttled his engines back to idle. The tendency was to ham things up, but they wouldn't. In fact, they'd say nothing else at all. He pushed the yoke farther forward to increase his rate of descent, then turned to port as though angling toward Malta. That should make the tower people feel good, he thought, passing through 25,000 feet. It actually felt good. He'd been a fighter pilot for his country once, and missed the delightful feelings you got from yanking and banking an airplane around the sky. A descent of this speed would have his passengers white-faced and panicking. For the pilot it just felt like what flying was supposed to be.
"HE MUST BE very heavy," the supervisor said.
"Cleared into Paris De Gaulle." The controller shrugged and grimaced. "Just topped off in Benghazi."
"Bad fuel?" The answer was merely another shrug. It was like watching death on television, all the more horrible that the alpha-numeric blip's altitude digits were clicking down like the symbols on a slot machine.
The supervisor lifted a phone. "Call the Libyans. Ask if they can get a rescue aircraft up. We have an aircraft about to go down in the Gulf of Sidra."
"Valetta Approach, this is USS Radford, do you copy, over."
"Radford, Valetta."
"WE HAVE YOUR contact on radar. Looks like he's coming down hard." The voice was that of a junior-grade lieutenant who had the CIC duty this night. Radford was an aging Spruance-class destroyer heading for Naples after an exercise with the Egyptian navy. Along the way she had orders to enter the Gulf of Sidra to proclaim freedom-of-navigation rights, an exercise which was almost as old as the ship herself. Once the source of considerable excitement, and two pitched air-sea battles in the 1980s, it was now boringly routine, else Radford wouldn't be going it alone. Boring enough that the CIC crewmen were monitoring civilian radio freqs to relieve their torpor. "Contact is eight-zero miles west of us. We are tracking."
"Can you respond to a rescue request?"
"Valetta, I just woke the captain up. Give us a few to get organized here, but we can make a try for it, over."
"Dropping like a rock," the petty officer on the main scope reported. "Better pull out soon, fella."
"Target is a Gulf-Four business jet. We show him one-six-thousand and descending rapidly," Valetta advised.
"Thank you, that's about what we have. We are standing by."
"What gives?" the captain asked, dressed in khaki pants and a T-shirt. The report didn't take long. "Okay, get the rotor heads woke up." Next the commander lifted a growler phone. "Bridge, CIC, captain speaking. All ahead full, come right to new course—"
"Two-seven-five, sir," the radar man advised. "Target is two-seven-five and
eighty-three miles."
"New course two-seven-five."
"Aye, sir. Coming right to two-seven-five, all ahead full, aye," the officer of the deck acknowledged. On the bridge the quartermaster of the watch pushed down the direct engine-control handles, dumping additional fuel into the big GE jet-turbines. Radford shuddered a bit, then settled at the stern as she began to accelerate up from eighteen knots. The captain looked around the capacious combat information center. The crewmen were alert, a few shaking their heads to come fully awake. The radar-men were adjusting their instruments. On the main scope, the display changed, the better to lock in the descending aircraft.
"Let's go to general quarters," the skipper said next. Might as well get some good training time out of this. In thirty seconds, everyone aboard was startled into consciousness and running to stations.
YOU HAVE TO be careful descending to the ocean surface at night. The pilot of the G-IV kept a close eye on his altitude and rate of descent. The lack of good visual references made it all too easy to slam into the surface, and while that might have made their evening's mission perfect, it wasn't supposed to be that perfect. In another few seconds they'd drop off the Valetta radar scope, and then they could start pulling out of the dive. The only thing that concerned him now was the possible presence of a ship down there, but no wakes were visible before him in the light of a quarter moon.
"I have it," he announced when the aircraft dropped through five thousand feet. He eased back on the yoke. Valetta might note the change in descent rate from his < transponder, if they were still getting a signal, but even if they did, they'd assume that after diving to get airflow into his engines, the better to achieve a restart, he was now trying to level out for a controlled landing on the calm sea.
"LOSING HIM," THE controller said. The display on the screen blinked a few times, came back, then went dark.
The supervisor nodded and keyed his microphone. "Radford, this is Valetta. Juliet-Alpha has dropped off our screen. Last altitude reading was six thousand and descending, course three-four-three."
"VALETTA, ROGER, WE still have him, now at four thousand, five hundred, rate of descent has slowed down some course three-four-three," the CIC officer replied. Just six feet away from him, the captain was talking with the commander of Radford $ air detachment. It would take more than twenty minutes to get the destroyer's single SH-60B Seahawk helicopter launched. The aircraft was now being pre-flighted prior to being pulled out onto the flight deck. The helicopter pilot turned to look at the radar display.
"Calm seas. If he has half a brain, somebody might just walk away from this. You try to splash down parallel to the ground swells and ride it out. Okay, we're on it, sir." With that, he left the CIC and headed aft.
"Losing him under the horizon," the radar man reported. "Just passed through fifteen hundred. Looks like he's going in."
"Tell Valetta," the captain ordered.
THE G-IV LEVELED out at five hundred feet by the radar altimeter. It was as low as the pilot cared to risk. With that done, he powered the engines back up to cruising power and turned left, south, back toward Libya. He was fully alert now. Flying low was demanding under the best circumstances, and far more so over water at night, but his ^-orders were clear, though their purpose was not. It went rapidly in any case. At just over three hundred knots, he had forty minutes to the military airfield, at which he'd refuel one more time for a flight out of the area..
RADFORD WENT TO flight quarters five minutes later, altering course slightly to put the wind over the deck from the proper direction. The Seahawk's tactical navigation system copied the needed data from the ship's CIC. It would search a circle of water fifteen miles in diameter in a procedure that would be tedious, time-consuming, and frantic. There were people in the water, and rendering assistance to those in need was the first and oldest law of the sea. As soon as the helicopter lifted off, the destroyer came back left and raced off with all four main engines turning full power, driving the ship at thirty-four knots. By this time the captain had radioed his situation to Naples, requesting additional assistance from any nearby fleet units—there were no American ships in the immediate vicinity, but an Italian frigate was heading south for their area, and even the Libyan air force asked for information.
THE «LOST» G-IV landed just as the U.S. Navy helicopter reached the search area. The crew left the aircraft for refreshments while their business jet was fueled. As they watched, a Russian-made AN-10 «Cub» four-engine transport fired up its engines to participate in the search-and-rescue mission. The Libyans were cooperating now with such things, trying to rejoin the world community, and even their commanders didn't know very much—indeed, hardly anything at all—of what had gone on. Just a few phone calls had made the arrangements, and whoever had taken the call and cooperated knew only that two aircraft would be landing to fuel and move on. An hour later, they lifted off again for the three-hour flight to Damascus, Syria. It had been originally thought that they would fly right back to their home base in Switzerland, but the pilot had pointed out that two aircraft of the same ownership flying over the same spot at nearly the same time would cause questions. He turned the aircraft east during the climb-out.
Below to his left, in the Gulf of Sidra, they saw the flashing lights of aircraft, one of them a helicopter, they were surprised to note. People were burning fuel and spending time and all for nothing. That thought amused the pilot as he reached his cruising altitude and relaxed, letting the auto-pilot do the work for the remainder of a long day's flying.
"ARE WE THERE yet?" Moudi turned his head. He'd just changed the IV bottle for their patient. Inside his plastic helmet his face itched from his growing beard. He saw that Sister Maria Mag-dalena had the same crawly, unwashed feeling he had. Her first action on waking was to move her hands to her face, stopped short by the clear plastic.
"No, Sister, but soon. Please, rest yourself. I can do this."
"No, no, you must be very tired, Dr. Moudi." She started to rise. "I am younger and better rested," the physician replied with a raised hand. Next he replaced the morphine bottle with a fresh one. Jean Baptiste was, thankfully, still too heavily drugged to be a problem.
"What time is it?"
"Time for you to rest. You will attend your friend when we arrive, but then other doctors will be able to relieve me. Please, conserve your strength. You will need it." Which was true enough.
The nun didn't reply. Accustomed to following the orders of doctors, she turned her head, probably whispered a prayer, and allowed her eyes to close. When he was sure that she was back asleep, he moved forward.
"How much longer?"
"Forty minutes. We'll land a little early. The winds have been good to us," the co-pilot answered.
"So, before dawn?"
"Yes."
"What is her problem?" the pilot asked, not turning, but sufficiently bored that he wanted to hear something new.
"You do not wish to know," Moudi assured him.
"She will die, this woman?"
"Yes, and the aircraft must be completely disinfected before it is used again."
"That's what they told us." The pilot shrugged, not knowing how frightened he should be of what he was carrying. Moudi did. The plastic sheet under his patient would now contain a pool of infected blood. They'd have to be extremely careful unloading her.
BADRAYN WAS GRATEFUL that he'd avoided alcohol. He was the most conscious man in the room. Ten hours, he thought, looking at his watch. Ten hours they'd talked and disputed like a bunch of old women in a market.
"He will agree to this?" the Guards commander asked.
"It is not unreasonable in the least," Ali replied. Five senior mullahs would fly to Baghdad, offering themselves as hostage to—if not the goodwill, then the good word of their leader. It actually worked out better than the assembled generals knew, not that they really cared. With that settled, the general officers looked at one another, and one by one they nodded.
"We accept,"
the same general said, speaking for the group. That hundreds of lesser officers would be left behind to face whatever music was in store for them was, after all, a small thing. The lengthy discussion hadn't touched on that subject very much.
"I require a telephone," Badrayn told them next. The intelligence chief led him to a side room. There had always been a direct line to Tehran. Even during hostilities there had been a communications link—that one via microwave tower. The next one was a fiber-optic cable whose transmissions could not be intercepted. Under the watchful eyes of the Iraqi officer he punched the numbers he'd memorized several days earlier.
"This is Yousif. I have news," he told the voice which answered.
"Please wait," was the reply.
DARYAEI DIDN'T ENJOY being awakened early any more than a normal person, the less so that he'd slept poorly over the last few days. When his bedside phone rang, he blinked his eyes for several rings before reaching to lift it.
"Yes?"
"This is Yousif. It is agreed. Five friends are required."
All praise to Allah, for He is beneficent, Daryaei thought to himself. All the years of war and peace had come to fruition in this moment. No, no, that was premature. There was much yet to be done. But the most difficult thing was done now.
"When shall we begin?"
"As quickly as possible."