Robert Ludlum’s The Janson Command

by Robert Ludlum; Paul Garrison

  As police sirens began echoing shrilly in the narrow streets, he walked his bicycle across Berkeley Street and into the square. Behind him, a yellow and blue Smartcar police car hooked around the corner of Burton Place and stopped beside the abandoned BMW.

  The bicyclist, a cool-headed young man—despite appearances and the disappointments he had dished out to his father—stared innocently at the commotion over his shoulder and kept walking the bike. A Flying Squad car came down Berkeley Street at high speed, a large Volvo with siren screaming. Armed robbery specialists jumped out, pistols in hand, and peered into the empty BMW. Pedestrians pointed toward Piccadilly. The Flying Squad roared off.

  Having crossed the narrow square, Illyich Hagopian was mounting his Raleigh when two men, one dressed in a pinstripe suit, the other in jeans and windbreaker, rose from their benches and took his arms.

  “Don’t yell,” they told him. “Or we’ll call the cops.”

  “And show them what’s in your basket.”

  A van pulled up. It had room for his bicycle. They snapped a set of handcuffs to his right wrist and the bike, ending any thought of jumping out of the van at a traffic signal. Then they took the velvet bags out of the basket and sealed them in a number of small padded postal envelopes. When Illyich Hagopian saw the printed address labels he thought he had lost his mind.

  Graff Jewellers

  New Bond Street

  London W1

  (Attention: Lost & Found)

  The van stopped. The man in pinstripes hopped out and stuffed the envelopes through the slot of a post office pillar box and walked away. The van continued on. The mystified would-be jewel thief noted that they were following the signs to the M4 and Heathrow Airport and, once there, toward Airfreight.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “Home to Mummy.”

  * * *

  PAUL JANSON’S EMBRAER flew eleven hundred miles from Port Harcourt, Nigeria, into Luanda, Angola. It landed at Quatro de Fevereiro Airport, with Mike and Kincaid, who was sitting in for Ed in the first officer’s seat, paying strict attention to tall oil derricks poking into the sky. They taxied through crowds of giant 747 air freighters and oil corporation passenger charters.

  Dr. Hagopian’s Angolan agent, operating under the guise of a translator of Portuguese, met Janson in the terminal and ushered him through a special section of passport control. He was half-​Portuguese, half-Angolan, of the Fang tribe, a tall and handsome man in middle age with courtly manners. In the car he professed astonishment at the high regard in which Hagopian held Paul Janson: “The doctor said I am to treat you as if you were he. I will admit freely to you, sir, that he has never said a thing like that before.”

  “Don’t worry; I’ll be gone soon.”

  They drove twenty minutes to O Cantinho dos Comandos, a restaurant in the Old City, situated on the ground floor of a pink stucco building that housed an Angolan Army club.

  The gunrunners themselves were not there but were represented by a young guy in a cheap leather jacket. Janson would have pegged him for a nightclub manager or car salesman. He seemed eager to please and started by saying, “I am in your debt, mister. A very important supplier who has both First Class and Economy Class clients informs me that from this day on I will fly First.”

  “My pleasure,” said Janson. “You know what I want. I give you my word we will be no trouble. Just get us onto the island and set us loose. We will not get in your way and no one will ever know that you helped us.”

  The young man spread his hands in a gesture that feigned emotional devastation. “If only I could help you, I would. But the ship has sailed.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday. She is approaching Isle de Foree as we speak.”

  “Why didn’t she wait?”

  “The captain, he decided…” The man trailed off. Janson exchanged looks with Hagopian’s agent, who appeared mortified by the screwup or betrayal, whichever it was.

  The gunrunner said, “It is as well, my friend—the situation has changed on the island. Iboga has acquired a shipload of tanks.”

  “What kind of tanks?”

  “Amphibious snorkel-equipped T-72s.”

  A tank attack on the FFM stronghold would be bad news for the doctor, thought Janson. There was no time to lose if they were going to get him out of there. “Where’d they get T-72s, the Nigerians?”

  Hagopian’s agent nodded. “Nigerian Directorate of Military Intelligence has not, shall we say, kept its fingers out of that pie.”

  “You would not want to be there when the tanks come,” said the gunrunner.

  “I want to be there.”

  “As I say, if there is anything I could do to help, my friend.” He opened hands even wider to Hagopian’s agent. “Anything. You need only to ask. But the ship has sailed.” He turned back to Janson. “Anything.”

  “I’m taking you up on that right now,” said Janson, which elicited a tentative, wary, “If I can…”

  “You can and you will. Radio your captain that we will catch up with his ship. Tell him to stay fifty miles off until we get there.” That would put the ship well beyond Isle de Foree’s territorial sea and contiguous zone.

  “I don’t know how long he can stall. There are schedules, rendezvous.”

  “He can wait eight hours,” said Janson, and Hagopian’s agent nodded cold agreement.

  Back in the car on the way to the airport, Janson said nothing until Hagopian’s agent finally broke the silence. “The tanks?”

  “What shape do you suppose they are in?” Janson asked.

  “Usable,” said the agent. “And, of course, as everyone knows, Isle de Foreens are excellent mechanics.”

  Janson nodded. Island people were always good mechanics. “Who will drive them?”

  “The presidential guard are Angola veterans. They are no strangers to Russian tanks.”

  Janson pondered that. Not that he was looking for a fight with the dictator’s forces, but if he ran into them he had to be prepared.

  “May I propose a thought?” the agent said.

  “Please.”

  “It is possible that Dr. Hagopian might know of some respectable, trustworthy individual at the airport who might have access to some RPG-22s.”

  “I would rather Dr. Hagopian know of someone who has access to AT-4s.” The excellent AT-4, a powerful anti-tank recoilless rifle made by Saab, was capable of stopping the Russian-built T-72s. Six warheads and launchers would weigh ninety pounds, the absolute limit they could carry in on top of the rest of their gear.

  “I would strongly doubt that AT-4s could be available in time for a rendezvous in eight hours.”

  “Would there be any already on the ship?”

  “Sadly, no. She is not an arsenal, but mainly conveying legitimate cargo.”

  The Russians made the less powerful RPG-26 and there was no shortage of Russian and older Soviet arms in Angola. “Do the gunrunners have any?”

  “Not on this run. All they’re carrying are machine pistols, ammunition, and drugs for malaria and infection.”

  “Would Dr. Hagopian know anyone in Angola with access to six RPG-26s?”

  The agent shrugged. “Perhaps he could find one or two.”

  “With HEAT?” A shaped-charge warhead to penetrate the tanks’ armor.

  “Yes. But his associate would possibly be forced to complete the order with RPG-22s.”

  An older version, out of production since Jessica was in elementary school. Janson frowned. Hagopian’s agent said, “In perfect condition, recently uncrated and thoroughly inspected.”

  “I would expect no less of a trustworthy associate of Dr. Hagopian,” Janson said sternly.

  Back at the airport twenty-five minutes later, Janson ordered, “Port-Gentil soon as we load up.” The seaport was on the coast of Gabon, which lay north of Congo, and closer to Isle de Foree. Mike and Ed already had their course punched in.

  Within the hour a truck with a noisy refrigeratio
n unit backed up to the Embraer and unloaded six dripping crates onto the tarmac in the shade of the plane. Ed and Mike began humping them aboard.

  “This is a hell of a lot of lobsters, Boss.”

  “Nothing like Angolan seafood,” said Janson.

  The pilots carried the crates into the plane before locking up and taking off for Gabon. “How’d you do?” Janson asked Jessica.

  “Found a helicopter. How about you?”

  “Found out the dictator got tanks.”

  SIX

  The Sikorsky S-76 had worked long and hard in the oil patch.

  Fresh from the factory, the twin-​turbine machine had flown ChevronTexaco executives out to the seismic vessels exploring Angola’s deepwater blocks. When the company started drilling, they replaced the fancy leather seats with aluminum ones and used the S-76 to ferry crew to the floating rigs. Long hours and salt water took their toll, as had dicey landings on sloped and slippery helipads. Eventually the company downgraded the helicopter to cargo runs before common sense dictated they sell it to an independent Italian company that traded it after several hard years to settle a debt to an equipment-leasing outfit. AngolLease ran it until a near-fatal hard landing bent its landing gear and shoved one of the struts through the cabin floor, which had led to jury-rigging the retraction mechanism. AngolLease passed it twelve hundred miles up the coast to Port-Gentil, Gabon, into the hands of LibreLift, a service operation owned by the pilots: an anorexic Frenchman with a sun-blasted face and a nicotine-yellowed walrus mustache, and a beefy Angolan wearing a patchwork of army uniforms, who also served as the helicopter’s mechanic.

  Janson had no desire to take the panels off to confirm how worn its guts were. Judging only by loose rivets, oil streaks along its tail boom, and crazed Plexiglas, he figured he had flown in a lot worse. Jessica Kincaid had not and she mentioned as soon as they had their headsets on that she smelled a fuel leak.

  “No problem,” said the pilot.

  “You’re smelling the extra tanks in the cargo bay,” Janson explained. But the co-pilot/mechanic was quick to defend his brand-new composite tanks with crashworthy fuel cells that LibreLift would inherit after the job along with their mounting rafts. “Not auxiliary,” he assured Kincaid. “Main tank leak. No problem.”

  She looked at Janson. “Am I supposed to be relieved?”

  Janson pointed at the instrument panel. “You can relax unless you see one of these chip sensors light up.”

  “Chips of what?”

  “If they sense chips broken off the main bearings floating around the oil pan, the manual says: ‘Land while you still can.’ ”

  “Glad to hear it.” Kincaid checked their rigid inflatable boat, the RPGs they’d separated from the lobsters, and her personal weapons, then strapped in and closed her eyes. The S-76 got clearance and lifted off with a racket of loose turbine bearings. Despite the ominous sound effects, Janson and Kincaid exchanged an approving glance. The pilot had a nice smooth touch. By the time his helicopter was whining and thudding west making 130 knots at four thousand feet above the Atlantic Ocean both agents had fallen asleep. They awakened simultaneously in one hour.

  “Bateau délesteur,” said the Frenchman, pointing down at a little gray ship plodding through the murky sea. Janson glassed her. She was rust stained and heaped with cargo, a two-hundred-foot former OSV converted to freighting up and down the African coast. The main deck was crowded with used cars, pallets of bottled water, and lumpy shapes covered in blue poly tarps. With a three-deck wheelhouse sticking up in front and a fixed cargo crane in back, it offered no place to land a helicopter.

  “Fast rope,” Janson said, and handed the glasses to Kincaid. The wheelhouse roof, the highest point on the ship, was the safe choice for the helicopter to hover while they went down the rope. But it was small, and in the middle spun a horizontal four-foot radar dish.

  Janson radioed the ship’s captain on the short-range VHF channel the Angolan had specified to avoid transmitting on the general marine channel that anyone could monitor. The captain spoke only French. Janson passed the radio to Kincaid.

  “Démonter la radar antenne, sil vous plait?”

  The radar dish stopped spinning. While seamen climbed to the roof with tools and removed it, Janson and Kincaid attached the helicopter’s cargo hook to the inflatable’s harness. Then Janson and Kincaid put on their packs and rifles and rope gloves and snap-linked the bitter end of the fast rope to a cable donut ring anchored to the helicopter floor. Janson instructed the pilot to hover twenty meters above the wheelhouse.

  The machine approached obliquely, angling in from the side. By now it was clear that the Frenchman was an exceptional pilot with light feet on his pedals, applying and reducing power smoothly. But unlike a ship captain, whose first responsibility was to his passengers, a helicopter pilot’s priorities were machine and crew first, customers second. The Frenchman would do anything he had to to keep from crashing, which would include a sudden departure while Janson or Kincaid was still on the rope.

  Kincaid dropped the running end of the fast rope, which was coiled around a length of firewood, out the door. The thick, braided line uncoiled down to the roof of the wheelhouse and snaked around violently, whipped by the rotor wash. Janson took it in his rope gloves, clutched it to his body after running it between his thighs and around his right calf. Assault rifle hanging from a strap over his shoulder, barrel down, face turned aside, he swung away and slid down, controlling his descent on the rough surface by squeezing the line in his gloves. His weight straightened the rope. Sixty feet under the helicopter he landed on the roof.

  Kincaid tipped the heavy RIB pack out the door and lowered it with the electric cable winch. Janson guided it to the deck beside him, signaled for her to crank the cable up, then steadied the fast rope for Jessica. She came down in three seconds and touched lightly beside him. He signaled the pilot to go up, and let the rope ease out of his hands.

  They climbed down the ladder behind the house, stepped into the wheelhouse, and greeted their reluctant hosts.

  * * *

  THE CAPTAIN WAS so nervous that his small store of English deserted him. His first mate, a Congolese, spoke no English at all. Janson’s French was not up to the task. Kincaid took over and the captain quickly calmed down.

  “Nicely done,” said Janson. “How’d you get him smiling?”

  “He likes my French accent. He thinks I live in Paris. He wants to have dinner next time we’re both in the city. But we’ve got a problem. There’s a U.S. Coast Guard cutter patrolling between us and Isle de Foree.”

  “I’ve been watching him on the radar,” Janson replied. The screen beside the silent helmsman showed a large ship twelve miles to the west. They had not seen her through the haze from the helicopter.

  “What’s our Coast Guard doing six thousand miles from home?”

  “Must be part of the Africa Partnership Station, maintaining a ‘persistent presence,’ as they call it. In other words, showing the flag in the oil patch.”

  “Yeah, well, the captain’s concerned they’ll board us. Particularly if they spotted our helicopter on their radar. He wants to stash us in a hidey-hole down in the engine room.”

  “Ask him where are the gunrunners?”

  “Already hiding.”

  Janson nodded to the captain and said to Jessica, “Assure the captain that we, too, have no desire to explain our presence to the United States Coast Guard. Tell him we’ll hide if the cutter decides we’re a Vessel of Interest. Let’s hump the boat undercover.”

  The captain ordered seamen to help and they got the RIB pack onto the main deck under a blue tarp. The radar target drew nearer. At eight miles the cutter appeared as a light dot on the horizon. At five miles she raised a tall, knife-like narrow silhouette. At four miles a helicopter took off from her, circled out around them, and went back.

  Then the cutter radioed a boarding hail identifying herself as the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Dallas, asserting their aut
hority under the African Partnership Station. The captain answered requests for his ship’s name, cargo, port of departure, and destination.

  Janson could hear chatter on the cutter’s bridge. It sounded like a lot of people were gathered around the radio. The captain muttered to Kincaid, who translated, “He says it’s probably just an exercise—they’ve got local sailors visiting.”

  The Dallas announced their intention to board and requested the captain to heave to.

  “Merde!” said the captain.

  “Merde for sure,” said Janson “All right, let’s check out the hidey-hole.”

  They put on their packs. The Congolese first mate led the way, down four deck levels of stairs, at the bottom of which he swung a heavy door on the deafening roar of two three-thousand-horsepower 16-cylinder Electro-Motive Diesel engines. He led them through the engine room and out the back into a quieter, dimly lit tween-decks space. Halfway to the stern, he rapped his knuckles on a gray-painted bulkhead, waited thirty seconds, and rapped again. The bulkhead, which appeared to be an immovable slab of steel welded to scantlings, slid aside with a grinding of metal on metal. Janson was relieved to see that the gunrunners knew their business.

  Two men stepped into the light, a black Angolan and a mulatto South African.

  “What is this?” asked the South African in nasal English. His eyes widened at the sight of Jessica Kincaid, who had stepped back and drawn a pistol to cover Janson.

  “Room for two more?” asked Janson.

  “Are you the bloody American mercs?”

  “We are the bloody American mercs,” said Janson. “You are our bloody highly paid guides, Agostinho Kiluanji and Augustus Heinz. And the bloody Coast Guard is boarding. Why don’t we continue this conversation undercover?”