The van accelerated at full throttle for fifty feet, then the engine noise dropped. "You asshole," someone said loudly. "You killed the wrong man. You blew it, fucker!" Three or four of them began talking at once.
"Silence!" It was a command. Judith's voice.
He could smell the sweat and hear them breathing hard over the street noises and the eternal quacking of automobile and motor-scooter horns. He could hear the distinctive clicks and hisses of a two-way radio conversation, muted, from the front of the vehicle, the voices low and indistinct. He concentrated on the tinny voice from the speaker and concluded it was a foreign language, one he didn't recognize. Cutting through all the noises was the distant, two-tone panic wail of a siren.
Two sirens, moaning out of sync.
He could tell from the road noises, the short accelerations and brake applications, that the van was cruising in traffic. Time passed. How much Toad didn't know. The sirens eventually became inaudible.
When he felt his legs cramping and he could stand it no longer, he said, in as conversational a tone of voice as he could muster, "Take your foot off my neck, please." The pressure increased. He raised his voice, "I asked you nice. Take your fucking foot off my neck!" "Okay, let him up." Judith's voice.
"He'll see our faces." It was the flat, American Midwest voice. "He ought to see yours." Another male voice. This was a heavy accent, perhaps Eastern European. "You agency assholes want to be included, then you fuck it up.
"Shut up, everyone," Judith said. "Let him up." He was pulled bodily toward the rear of the van and turned into a sitting position. Hands seized his face. They were Judith's hands.
Her face was only inches from his. "Don't look around." The light came through the back windows of the vehicle headlight glare and occasional streetlights. Her eyes held his as the lights came and went. They were the most intelligent, understanding eyes he had ever seen.
"Don't ever tell anyone what you've seen or heard. Promise me! Not a word." Her eyes held him. "Oh, Judith! Why you?" "If you tell, people will die. Not you. Other people.
Good people." "You?" "Perhaps." "I don't even know your real name." "Don't tell," she whispered fiercely and increased the pressure of her hands on his temples.
"I love you.
The van came to a halt and the rear door opened.
"Get out." As he did so" he heard her say, "I'll keep the letter." The van accelerated into traffic. He was beside a pedestrian zsland in the middle of a vast piazza.
Buses were parked in rows cross the street from him.
To his right was the central train station, easily recognizable with the black triangles on the low, roof. He was in the Piazza Garibaldi.
Then he remembered that he should have looked at the license number on the van.
He put his hand in his pockets and began shuffling along.
Jake and Callie were having dinner in a storefront trattorl' the Via Santa Lucia famous among U.s. Sixth Fleet sailors.
patches covered three large mirrors in the crowded dining rc The floor was linoleum and round bulb lamps hung from ceiling. Pictures of American ships and airplanes in cheap I frames adorned the dingy wallpaper. Two men in their served the noisy customers at the fifteen tables.
An Italian couple at the next table was slaughtering a pizza demonstrating the proper use of the knife and fork on this cacy to their daughter, who was about eight. The utensils used to roll up the triangular slice until it looked like a blintz1 the fork was stabbed through it and the pizza roll raised mouth, where one took a delicate bite from one end. The youngster was having her troubles with the technique. Red sauce and gooey cheese dribbled down her chin.
The little brother was peeking at Jake. Jake winked. The little boy averted his face, then peeked again. Another wink. The little boy jerked away, then inched back around very, very slowly and grinned.
"Kids are great, aren't they?" Jake remarked.
"Oh, you think so?" "You know what I mean.
"Then you won't mind if we adopt?" Jake hitched himself up in his chair and stared at his wife who sipped her wine and gazed innocently around the room with a trace of a smile on her lips, her eyebrows slightly arch' the corners of her eyes minutely crinkled. God, she was beautiful He grinned.
"Anyone specific in mind, or will a girl do?" Her eyes swiveled onto him like two guns in a turret, her head followed.
"She's ten years old. Her name is Amy Ca' has black hair and black eyes and a smile that will break your heart." "And..." "She has diabetes. She's been in four foster homes eds a family of her own. She was sexually abused in her first foster home, and the man went to prison. She doesn't like men. Jake's smile faded.
"Well.
"She needs us, Jake. Both of us. She needs love and understanding and a place of her own and a man who can be a loving her." Jake took a deep, deep breath, then exhaled through his nose. Callie had mentioned adoption casually in the months before the United States sailed on this cruise, but it had been so tentative with newspaper clippings left for him to see, occasional dinner conversations, all of it casual and distant, a social phenomenon worthy a few minutes of notice. And she had been testing the water! Jake sat now slightly baffled, trying to recall just when and how he had lost sight of the picture. The little girl at the next table caught his eye. She had tomato sauce smeared all over the lower half of her face and running down her fork, which she held like a sword in her right fist.
"Amy Carol Grafton. When do we get her?" "Oh, Jake," Callie exclaimed and dashed around the table. She on his lap and enveloped him. People at the neighboring tables applauded enthusiastically as Callie gave him a long, passionate kiss.
After all, this was Italia.
Qazi leaned back against the sink.
Noora and Ali sat at the kitchen table with Youssef and the senior helicopter pilot. "So Sakol and Yasim are dead?" "The police radio says they are.
"Sakol is no loss," Ali sneered. "But Yasim is. Who were these people?" Ali asked the question of Qazi.
"I don't know. I heard the silenced automatic weapon in the courtyard. I heard them speaking English. I looked. One of them a woman, perhaps Judith Farrell. We had finished listening to the tapes Yasim had flagged, and Sakol had left." "Why did you let him leave?" Ali asked.
"He could betray us.
"Myjudgment. My decision. We shook hands and he left. A few moments later we heard the shots and I looked out the window. ran toward the stairwell and started down. Then we heard someone running up. So I went up onto the roof.
Yasim must ve decided to go back through the corridor and take the elevator down to the lobby.
He probably figured it would be safe with all the people there." "So they killed him in the lobby." "Apparently. He isn't here and the police are telling each other there are two bodies." "Yasim is a martyour," Youssef said.
"He's on his way to paradise." Youssef was a Palestinian, the senior man in the PLO contingent that El Hakim had foisted on Qazi. Political considerations. The PLO needed a success just now, and El Hakim would need the PLO if this operation was to pay the kind of dividends the dictator hoped it would. So the PLO should earn a share of El Hakim's glory.
Not too much of it, of course, but an expedient little bit of the shine. Too bad, Qazi thought bitterly, that the Palestinians' primary asset was enthusiasm.
"What do the Americans know?" Ali asked.
"This afternoon Captain Grafton and his wife discussed the fact Farrell is not a native English-speaker. Apparently they were worried she would entrap Lieutenant Tarkington, one of the officers from the ship.
Grafton had the Americans searching for Tarkington this afternoon, apparently without success. Then the Graftons went out. Grafton is suspicious and worried, but he really knows nothing." "Someone knows something," AI-I said. "If that assassination team is waiting at the helicopters or the Americans are warned or the Italians are alerted, we won't succeed." "At last," Qazi said acidly, "you begin to appreciate some of the basic facts." Ali said n
othing.
"I'm worried about the weather," the pilot said.
"The winds are going to get gusty, and we'll have rain showers under a low overcast. It may get very rough in the air tonight." "Is it possible to fly?" "Yes, it's possible, if the forecast is accurate. But if the weather is worse than forecast, it will be dangerous. There will be no margin for error." "And in Sicily?" "The weather should be better there. That is the forecast, anyway.
"So there are many factors we cannot control. We knew that when we were planning." Youssef spoke. "The PLO does not want this mission to fail. The chairman has given the orders. My men and I are ready to proceed regardless of the danger." Qazi ignored him.
"Could we wait a day?" Noora asked. "The weather might improve." "They may dispose of the crate on the ship. The carabinieri or the GRU or the CIA or the Mossad or the Mafia may catch on." Qazi ticked them off on his fingers. "There is already at least one assassination team out there on the hunt. And Yasim or Sakol may still be alive, and the police-radio conversations just a ruse. If either is alive, he can be made to talk. The risk increases every minute we wait. It's now or never.
Do we go?" Noora and Ali looked at each other, then back at Qazi. They both nodded yes.
Qazi slapped his hands together. "Okay.
Youssef, load the vans.
Noora, getJarvis to supervise the loading of the trigger. Then line the men up for inspection. Ali and I will check every man. When that is done, we'll pull in the guards and be on our way." He looked at his watch. "We leave in twenty-seven minutes. Go!" AZ! AND AL! sat in the front seat of the van and stared through binoculars at the gate in the chain-link fence and the helicopter pad beyond. Nothing moved under the lights on the corner of the hangars.
Qazi aimed his binoculars through his open window at the guard shack. The old man was inside. He stil] had a two-day growth of beard.
The colonel turned in his seat and examined the tops of the warehouses across the street. No heads or suspicious objects in evidence. He scanned the windows.
"What do you think?" Ali asked.
Colonel Qazi laid the binoculars in his lap and sat watching the scene.
Go," he said at last.
Ali stepped from the van and eased the door shut.
He walked past the edge of the nearest warehouse and on across the street, where he was luminated by a streetlight. Qazi could hear his foot. steps fading. He raised his binoculars and scanned the warehouses again, trying to detect movement. There was none. HE wung the glasses to the guard shack and watched Ali walk up to the window.
The guard opened it. Ali reached through the winow.
Qazi knew he was cutting the telephone wire.
Then Ali walked on toward the hangar.
"Sentries out," Qazi told the people in the back of the van. He heard the rear door open and saw, in the rearview mirror, a man black clothing with a submachine gun post himself against the large metal trash box on the edge of the alley. Another man dressed similarly trotted past the front of the van and disappeared around the corner; his post was opposite the gate. "Anything on the scanner?" Qazi asked over his shoulder.
"No." It was Noora. She was monitoring the police and Carabinieri frequencies.
Through his binoculars Qazi could see Ali working on the doorknob to the office of the helicopter company. The hangar windows were all dark.
Then Ali opened the door and disappeared inside.
In a moment the lights in the office shone through the windows. Since this was normal when the company was waiting for a late-night passenger, it should arouse no comment. One of the two hangar doors slowly slid open. Qazi raised a hand-held radio to his lips. "Van two, go. In a few seconds he heard the engine of the other van. It came down the street past the alley and turned in at the gate.
Qazi had instructed the driver to pause at the guard shack, and he did so. When he drove past two parked helicopters and through the open hangar door. "Van three, go.
Almost a minute lapsed before this van passed the alley where Qazi sat.
It also came to a brief halt at the gate, then threaded between the helicopters and entered the hangar.
Now the door slid shut.
They waited.
"Nothing on the scanner," Noora told him.
At last the door to the office opened and a man appeared. Qazi could see that he wore the same uniform as the gate guard. This man walked the hundred feet across the tarmac to the guard shack.
Qazi turned in his seat. "Noora, it's time." She took off the earphones and gathered her shoulder bag.
"Don't kill any Italians unless absolutely necessary. Understand?" "Yes." "Shoot any Palestinian the instant he disobeys. And watch Ali's back for him.
She nodded. "G." She stepped between the feet of the men sitting in the back of the vehicle and exited out the rear door.
Qazi watched her. The man behind the wheel of the sedan parked behind the van got out and Noora took his place. The engine of the sedan came to life and the car eased past the van, stopping at the sidewalk as Noora looked both ways. Qazi could see the black outline ofJarvis's head above the top of the backseat. Then Noora accelerated into the street and turned left toward the gate.
Behind him Qazi could hear the rear door of the van being closed.
In a few minutes five men emerged from the hangar and walked to the helicopter furthest from the guard shack. They began to preflight it with flashlights.
A small two-door sedan came down the street. As it went by Qazi could see a man and woman in the front seat. It passed the entrance to the airfield without slackening its pace and disappeared around the far corner.
Sound carried and echoed through the alleys. He could faintly hear a man and woman shouting at each other, and through some fluke of acoustics, snatches of television audio.
The gentle breeze felt good after the sticky heat of the day. Qazi sat and watched the flashlights move around the helicopter, erratically and haphazardly.
The five men on the other side of the fence spent five minutes examining the first helicopter. When they left it and moved to the next one, a voice came over Qazi's radio. "It's okay.
Fuel sample satisfactory." "Roger." A small pickup truck came down the street from comthe north, its headlights almost lost in the black evening. It shot down the street at full throttle, slowing slightly as it passed Qazi so it could make the next corner, which it tore around.
He could hear the sound of its engine fading for half a minute after it had passed. A moment later he heard the engine of a large truck. Thirty seconds after it came into view, engine laboring, and drove up the street with its diesel engine snorting. "This one's okay." "Roger." What had he forgotten? What was left undone?
As he sat there behind the wheel of the van Colonel Qazi reviewed the operation yet again. He glanced at his watch from time to time, and turned to check on the men sitting patiently behind him. They looked scruffy in their worn, dirty jeans and short-sleeve knit and pullover shirts.
Most of the shirts were filthy. Some of them were torn.
Most of the men wore dirty tennis shoes.
Satisfied, Qazi esumed scanning the warehouses with his binoculars.
0 0 0 0 The camel thieves were two young boys, about eleven and twelve years of age. Orphans. His uncle had forced them to dig the water holes and fill bags for the camele, which were let out on hobbles to graze. When the work was done, the boys were fed. They had no food of their own. Then the men had lain in the shade as the sun scorched the earth. The two thieves huddled together against a stone below where Qazi and his cousin sat with their rifles across their knees. The old man found a place further away, where he could keep an eye on the camels. Qazi wandered over in late afternoon and found him reading the Koran.
They tied up the thieves for the night. At dawn the next day the animals were watered again and the last of the dried dates and bread were shared. "Who is the eldest?" the old man asked. One of the thieves acknowledged that he was.
&nbs
p; The old man looked at his son and Qazi.
"Seize him. Put his right hand against that rock. was He pointed at a large stone.
"No! Allah be praised have mercy. No." Kill me instead." Qazi had helped drag the sobbing boy to the indicated stone. The old man took his sword from the saddle of his camel. "You have violated Aliah @. law. And you know the law" The sword made a sickening sound as it bit into the boy's @. wrist. It took the Id man three chops to sever the hand. He bound the wrist with a tourniquet and his own undershirt.
They set the two on their own camel, a beast sullering so badly with the ange that it had only habits hair. The old man jammed their rifle into its cabbard and s1apped the beast into motion. The young boy held his brother in the saddle as the animal climbed slowly out of the wadi and disappeared over the rim.
Stephen Coonts - Jake Grafton 2 - Final Flight Page 27