Robert Ludlum’s The Janson Command

by Robert Ludlum; Paul Garrison

  Janson saw flashing lights through the branches of the trees around the control tower. “If we’re going we better go now.”

  Number Two engine hadn’t fired yet, but without hesitating Kincaid released the brakes and throttled Number One. The plane began rolling. A police car careened around the control tower. The driver started to pull in front of the moving Embraer. The sudden howl of Number Two engine finally churning to life made him think better about it and the car veered away. The FADEC (Full Authority Digital Engine Control) speed synchronized Number Two revolutions with Number One.

  “The good news,” Kincaid muttered, testing flaps, slats, and rudder, “is Ed and Mike had her ready to fly. They did their checklist and kept the motors warm. We’re going to find out how warm. The other good news is idle to takeoff thrust spool-up time is quick on these Rolls-Royces.”

  “What’s the bad news?”

  “It’s a short runway. I have to turn around and go back to the beginning.”

  Janson nodded reluctant agreement. The plane had taxied several hundred meters already and the sea at the end of the runway looked remarkably close in the early light. Kincaid turned the nosewheel, pivoted the plane 180 degrees in its own length, and steered back at the police car. Janson flicked on the powerful landing lights, blinding the police. The police car careened out of Janson and Kincaid’s way and scurried behind the terminal.

  At the beginning of the runway Kincaid pivoted the plane again, set the brakes, and smoothly slid the throttles forward until they clicked into the indent marked: “TOGA” (takeoff/go-around). The engines screamed as they spooled up toward takeoff power. The plane began to shudder. Kincaid reached for the brake release. She paused to check that the engines were turning at the same speed. It was not necessary, Janson knew, as the sequence synchronized them automatically, but she had picked up habits of caution from Mike and Ed, whose flying careers predated automation.

  Kincaid released the brakes.

  Nine tons of thrust shoved the Embraer forward. Janson felt the chair press hard into his back. Already the ground was moving fast beside them. The airspeed indicator numbers rolled like a slot machine. Janson watched anxiously for the little bud that marked 114 knots. The Embraer felt heavy on its tires, rumbling over the worn tarmac. The beach was racing at the windshield, the surf bloodred as the sun broke the horizon. His hand, unbidden, inched toward the landing gear switch.

  “Not yet,” Kincaid said coolly.

  “V1,” said Janson.

  They were committed.

  Janson watched for VR. At last, 130 knots indicated airspeed.

  “Rotate.”

  Kincaid hauled back on the control yoke. “Here we go, my friend.”

  The Embraer rotated, raising its nose centimeters before the tires hit the beach and canting the wings to an angle to the wind that gave them lift. The main gearwheels swirled a rooster tail of sand and surf. But now the wings were carrying the Embraer and the engines thrust the ship to safety speed.

  “Gear up.”

  * * *

  JANSON IGNORED REPEATED radio hails from Italian Air Traffic Control.

  “Take her back down to the deck,” he told Kincaid. Ground radar antennas, going round and round, could track them three hundred miles from land. They had to fly under the radar.

  “A hundred feet suit you?” Proud of her takeoff, she had high color in her cheeks and fire in her eyes.

  “Try not to hit any boats.”

  They streaked south, ten miles off the coast, two hundred feet above the waves, startling fishermen and yacht captains.

  Janson was hoping that the early hour, territorial jealousies, and general confusion would make Air Traffic Control hesitate before requesting the Italian Air Force to scramble Panavia Tornado interceptors. Time to ratchet up the chaos: He typed a private code on the co-pilot’s keyboard that unlocked alternate transponder options. The transponder was supposed to identify the Embraer and reveal their flight plan and their altitude when queried by ATC radar. The alternates—violating every civil aviation rule in the world—would answer ATC radar queries with false data about a phantom Embraer flying an illusionary flight plan.

  In twenty minutes they rounded the southern tip of Sardinia and angled westward into the Mediterranean. “Up,” said Janson.

  Kincaid set the auto throttle and autopilot for climb-out and asked, “Above or below one-eight-oh?”

  Flying above eighteen thousand feet mandated instrument flight rules.

  “Above,” said Janson, placing a heavy bet on their false transponder signals and EUROCONTROL’s latest experiment with a Mediterranean Free Flight scheme that allowed aircraft flying the lightly trafficked airspace above the sea between Europe and North Africa to manage their own separation instead of maneuvering at the specific orders of Air Traffic Control. Permission to fly as an “autonomous aircraft,” not being required to report every move, should make it easier to disappear.

  He was hoping, too, that the situation on the ground at Tortoli was so confusing that the police might not have distinguished the fake French Foreign Legion Transall from the Embraer. The Italian police at Tortoli Airport whose vehicle was shot to pieces would have already reported a French Foreign Legion Transall C-160 with French markings.

  The sky was blue and empty in every direction, the rising sun behind them and a vast stretch of the Mediterranean ahead. But this was still Europe of the European Union, where it seemed that half the adult citizens worked for one regulatory agency or another. And Janson could do little about that but pray the Italian government would spend the next three hours expressing outrage to the French through diplomatic channels, time to get past the Strait of Gibraltar and out over the high seas of the Atlantic Ocean.

  “Where are we going?”

  “The only place I can think of that will take us in without questions is Isle de Foree. How are you doing on fuel?”

  “Ed and Mike topped off in Rome, but it won’t get us near Isle de Foree.”

  The first officer’s Multifunction Control Display Unit confirmed they hadn’t the fuel. Janson played with the functions to put together a flight plan. “Figure two thousand miles to the Canary Islands if we can get past Gibraltar.”

  “Big if.”

  The narrow choke point between the coasts of Spain and Morocco was guarded by Spanish, Moroccan, U.S., and British military bases.

  “As long as no one is really hunting us I can fake our way through. It’s not like trying to sneak up the English Channel dodging fleets of transatlantic jets leaving and arriving in northern Europe. So we fuel up in the Canaries and then clear sailing three thousand, six hundred miles on a dogleg around the bulge of Africa to Isle de Foree.”

  “Thirty-six hundred miles is pushing it. When we flew up to the Mediterranean, Mike was practically tacking into crosswinds.”

  “If it looks hairy, we can take our chances in Praia or Dakar, but I’d rather not. Freddy’s people can help us in the Canaries, but we don’t have any special friends in the Cape Verde Islands or Senegal.”

  Janson tapped in another private code that revealed the chaff and flare operating manual. He regarded the Embraer’s chaff and flare dispenser hidden under the fuselage as an absolute last resort. The main purpose of electronic countermeasures was to trick enemy missiles—which was not the case here. There was no way a high-end business jet was going to tangle with fighter planes. The task Janson required was to confuse ATC radar and, worst case, failing that, to confuse air force fighter jets sent up to intercept the unidentified target. But before they deployed electronic countermeasures, the best chance was to remain unidentifiable by leaving the transponder off. Which meant keeping a sharp eye peeled for other aircraft on a collision course, unlikely as it was in lightly trafficked skies.

  “Something tells me you might be right that those fake Legionnaires weren’t SR,” said Kincaid. “But that was a slick operation to launch on such short notice. It was almost as if someone expected us to snat
ch Iboga from SR.”

  “Set up by someone who didn’t want him to stand trial in The Hague,” Janson agreed. “Who could include the Nigerian Directorate of Military Intelligence, the mysterious GRA, and American Synergy Corporation.”

  “Maybe you should ask your friend Doug.”

  “Not quite yet.”

  Janson used his sat phone to call CatsPaw Research.“GRA? What have you found?”

  “Nothing. No such company exists on the record.”

  “Are they possibly a subsidiary of American Synergy Corp.?”

  “That was one of my thoughts. I found no connection to ASC.”

  Janson thought hard. “Are they possibly a government front? A CIA front or …” He let the thought lie between their telephones and the researcher finished it for him, “Cons Ops?”

  “Well?”

  “Could be. But there is no record. No paper trail. And certainly no digital trail.”

  “The only piece of paper I know of was a business card.”

  “What did it look like?”

  “I didn’t see it. I was told about it. How would you like a trip to London?”

  “Could I fly Business Class?”

  “You can fly Business Class. Look up a fellow named Pedro Menezes. He’s a former oil minister of Isle de Foree. He says he took money from GRA.”

  Kincaid reached across and tapped his arm. “The Amber Dawn. Didn’t somebody say it was owned by the Dutch?”

  Janson said into the phone, “Look into a Dutch connection. Ask Mr. Menezes about Dutch independents.”

  They rang off.

  Kincaid reached over and tapped again. Urgently. “Paul!”

  “What?”

  “Where are his cigarettes?”

  “Whose?”

  “Iboga’s cigarettes. He had a lighter, but no cigarettes. No cigars.”

  “Maybe he smoked the drug.”

  “No, you eat ibogaine. You don’t smoke it.”

  They looked at each other in astonished disbelief. What had they both missed? “Where’s his stuff?”

  “My backpack.”

  Janson scrambled for her backpack and found the mesh bag inside that contained the items she had taken from Iboga. He plucked out the Zippo cigarette lighter and brought it to the first officer’s chair. It looked like a lighter. The brand “Zippo” was stamped on the bottom of the case, with a flame dotting the letter i. He opened it. Inside, it looked like a lighter, with a rough steel wheel and a blackened wick. He held it to his nose. It smelled of lighter fluid. He flicked the wheel. To Janson’s disappointment, a spark flew from the flint and the wick ignited. He blew out the flame, pulled the mechanism out of the case, and turned it over. There was the cotton wool that absorbed the fluid with a screw head. He unscrewed it. Out fell a normal flint. He opened his pocketknife to an awl blade, snagged the cotton wool, and pulled it out. He looked inside the case. The interior was empty. He squeezed the cotton wool.

  “Aha.”

  He spread it on Ed’s keyboard and peeled the fibers off something hard inside and held it up for Kincaid to see. “What is this, a key? It looks like a key to a safe.”

  Kincaid gave him a pitying look she reserved for covert operators who began their careers in the twentieth century. “Janson, it’s not a key. It’s a flash drive that looks like a key. You hang it on your key chain.”

  Janson stuck the flash drive inside the nearest USB port and looked at Ed’s screen. “Numbers. Routing numbers. A list of them.” He called CatsPaw’s forensic accountant on his Iridium. “Try these,” he said, and read them off.

  She called back in minutes. “Four banks in Zagreb.”

  “Can you get into them?”

  “Whose rules do you want to play by?”

  “Corrupt dictator rules.”

  “We can try to get in with the help of a certain third party to whom we’ve already hinted that a million-euro gratuity might be authorized.”

  “Consider it authorized,” said Janson.

  * * *

  AS THEY APPROACHED the Strait of Gibraltar at an altitude of forty-two thousand feet, Janson switched off the Embraer’s radar so as not to broadcast their presence, leaving them dependent entirely on what their own eyeballs could perceive beyond the Embraer’s blind spots astern. He was searching the sky when suddenly a Royal Moroccan Air Force Mirage F1 rocketed up from Casablanca Air Base Number 4.

  It would have nailed them for sure if Janson hadn’t glimpsed an early flash of sun on its swept wings. His hand had been poised over the flare switch since they drew within two hundred miles of Gibraltar, and he pressed it instantly. The chaff and flare nacelle departed the Embraer with a sharp bang. Moments after it ejected, its internal rocket fired and it flew astern, putting miles between it and the Embraer before it exploded open like a flower, scattering reflective chaff and burning hot points designed to show up on the Mirage’s acquisition suite as myriad targets.

  “Up or down?” asked Kincaid.

  Janson debating diving to the deck again, versus the attention that maneuver would draw before they made it under the radar. “Up. Fast.”

  Kincaid fire-walled it west.

  Perplexed and angry controllers queried them on the radio with swiftly increasing urgency. Janson ignored those who spoke fluent English and bullshitted the rest. Five minutes passed slowly. Had the Mirage given up? Or was it coming back for them? He cast his eyes in every direction he could see, praying that the immense blue sky would not be split by the silver dart of a warplane.

  At last it looked like they had escaped notice. The Mirage had given up. Nor did additional interceptors appear in the windshield. Ahead and to either side all they could see was the blue North Atlantic Ocean. Eleven hundred miles to the southwest lay the Canary Islands, two and a half hours’ flying time.

  Kincaid confirmed that the autopilot had the course, stood up, and stretched.

  “Mike would have been proud of his pupil,” Janson told her.

  “If they were SR, I don’t understand why they didn’t kill us. Iboga sure as hell wanted them to.”

  “Maybe Iboga wasn’t calling their tune. That was as much a capture as a rescue.”

  “You mean to take his dough? But they had him weeks before we took him. If they wanted his money they could have forced it out of him.”

  Janson’s sat phone chimed the bell-like note that indicated Quintisha Upchurch was calling. “Yes, Quintisha.”

  “Acting President Ferdinand Poe would like to speak with you, urgently.”

  Janson called Poe. The old man answered in a voice high-pitched and anxious. “Do you have Iboga?” he shouted.

  “I did, Mr. Acting President. I’m afraid I lost him. I’m working at getting him back.”

  “I told you he would escape.”

  “Yes, I know and—”

  “You don’t understand. They killed Mario Margarido.”

  “Who killed him?”

  “Who knows,” Poe said, adding bitterly, “He supposedly drowned in his swimming pool.”

  “Where is Chief of Security da Costa?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I will be there in thirteen hours.”

  “Iboga is coming back. I know it.”

  “I will be there ahead of him. I guarantee it.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  Janson telephoned Doug Case. “Anything new underground?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’m forty thousand feet above ground on a company jet drinking champagne and thirty-year-old Bordeaux and eating beef Wellington.”

  “You’ll miss that luxury in your new government job.”

  “It was great the first hour; now all the guys and the too-few gals are text messaging their kids at home. Folks don’t know how to party anymore.”

  “Where are you headed?”

  “Isle de Foree. We’ve got a big media shindig aboard the Vulcan Queen. Where are you?”

  “Italy.”

  “Italy? What are you doing in Italy?
”

  “Talking my way out of a jam. What’s the media thing about?”

  “It was supposed to be a public signing of ASC’s exploration agreement with Ferdinand Poe—ASC and the new acting president shaking hands for the world to see. Only I just heard that Mario Margarido died. God knows what monkey wrench that will throw into it. Mario was pretty much the voice of sanity in the rebel regime— Listen, I gotta go. I got calls stacked up.”

  “Doug. Any new information on GRA?”

  “Ground Resource Access? No.”

  Janson put down the phone and looked across the engine control pedestal at Kincaid. “How’s old friend Doug?” she asked.

  “Closemouthed,” answered Janson. “Why don’t you get some shut-eye? I’ll babysit the autopilot while I make some calls.”

  “I’m not that tired.”

  “I need you rested.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Can you land this plane in the Canaries, take off again the second we refuel, and land it again on Isle de Foree?”

  “I just aced a takeoff. Any luck, I can ace another. They’re ten times simpler than landings: push straight down the runway, rotate on the right speed. But landings, if you get too slow, you undershoot; too fast, you might overshoot. The plane wants to keep on flying unless a wind shift punts you sideways or a wind sheer drops you like a rock. What I’m telling you, Janson, there’s a reason Mike never let me land her myself. Twice will be pushing my luck.”

  “How’d you do on the simulator?”

  “Two out of three.”

  “So you’re getting better.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “It’s going to be tough finding a pilot we can trust to join us in the Canaries on short notice. Besides, with all the crap I’ve added to the plane, the most we can carry without burning too much fuel to make Isle de Foree is eight people and gear, including the pilot.”