Robert Ludlum's the Treadstone Exile

by Joshua Hood

  At fifty feet the pilot pulled up and resumed level flight, Dábo letting go of the handhold, the sergeant yelling at the assault team to lock and load.

  The troop compartment was filled with the meted snaps of magazines being shoved into rifles and the thunk of bolts slamming rounds into chambers.

  At the “five minutes out” call, Dábo gave his last-minute instructions.

  “The runway and the people inside the tower are not to be harmed.”

  “What about the people outside the tower?” the captain asked.

  “If it moves, it dies,” Dábo grinned.

  “One minute,” the pilot announced.

  Here we go, Dábo thought, glancing out the window.

  The gunship pilots were trained to work in tandem, and while the trail bird stayed on the deck, Dábo’s pilot pulled back on the stick, the pitch of the blades changing as the helo gained altitude.

  From the satellite imagery, Dábo knew there wasn’t much to the airfield—a single runway, three weather-beaten hangars, and an orange-and-white corrugated-steel building that served as the terminal. On the north side of the field sat the tower, a squat two-story building of white stucco.

  The only other structures were three machine gun towers and two mortar pits the rebels had constructed in the open fields on either side of the tarmac and a row of plywood barracks hidden beneath a ratty camouflage net.

  Fields of fire had been set up back at the FARP and the gunships went about their work. The conversation on the radio was one-sided: the pilots calling out targets and the gunner responding with either a burst from the four-barrel 12.7-millimeter gun beneath the nose or a salvo of 80-millimeter rockets from the pods on the wing.

  Having no other responsibilities at the moment, the general simply sat there, a grin spreading across his face as he watched the symphony of death.

  The lead helo was the first to draw blood, using a ripple fire of 80-millimeter rockets to turn the barracks into a cloud of splinters and then twisting toward the machine gun towers. This time the main gun spat fire.

  “Falcon 1, you have troops in the open, looks like they have some kind of APC in that hangar.”

  “General, permission to engage with missiles.”

  Dábo had wanted them to avoid using their anti-armor AT2 for fear of blowing up any of the main buildings, but with the APC on the ground he didn’t have a choice.

  “Cleared to engage.”

  The pilot reduced his airspeed and dropped into a hover, keeping the helo as stable as possible so the gunner could get a lock. The missile screamed from the pylon, the burst of light from the motor illuminating the dim interior.

  “Yeah, he’s dead.”

  Ten minutes later, it was all over and the Hinds were wheeling over the airfield like iron vultures in search of carrion, pillars of black smoke rising skyward.

  “Take us down,” Dábo told the pilot.

  “But sir,” the pilot interjected, “it’s not safe.”

  “Then make it safe,” he ordered.

  “Yes, sir,” the pilot said, snatching the radio from his RTO.

  “Falcon 2, this is Falcon 1, deploy your troops.”

  “This is Falcon 2, understood.”

  * * *

  —

  The Hind circled the airfield, General Dábo watching from the troop doors as her sister ship touched down and let the troops rush down the ramp before lifting off again.

  Dábo was expecting the commander to form his men up and set up a base of fire before starting toward the tower, but it never happened. Instead, the overzealous officer waved for his men to follow and rushed toward their objective.

  There was a spray of automatic fire from the hangar, and then a voice screamed over the radio, “Ambush.”

  I don’t have time for this shit, Dábo thought, thumbing the transmit button.

  “This is Dábo to Hunter 1. Take out that fucking hangar.”

  “But sir, our men . . .”

  “That is an order, Major.”

  The Hind came whirling around, rockets flickering from the pods—slamming into the hangar and exploding.

  “Hit it with the guns, then get us down there,” Dábo ordered, before turning to Falcon 1. “Captain, I want all those rebel scum dead and the fires out in ten minutes, do you understand?”

  “Y-yes, sir.”

  Dábo climbed out of the helo and crossed the tarmac, his radioman at his heels.

  “Where is Captain Koffi?”

  “He is at the hangar with the prisoners, sir,” a sergeant said, pointing to a knot of kneeling men.

  Dábo nodded and stomped over. “Captain, I need these fires out, now,” he shouted.

  “Of course, sir, we would already have taken care of it, but these prisoners . . .”

  But Dábo wasn’t interested in the prisoners.

  “These aren’t prisoners, they are traitors,” he said, stripping the gold-plated .45 from his holster and shooting both men in the head. “Now get those fires out.”

  Dábo barged into the control tower with five minutes to spare, the smoking .45 still in his hand, and scanned the fearful faces cowering before him.

  “I am General Joseph Dábo, the commander of the Republican Guard,” he announced. “Who is in charge here?”

  “I-I am, sir,” a middle-aged man with a graying goatee, wearing a white button-down, answered. “My name is Daniel Aké. There is no need for the gun, sir.”

  “I will be the one who decides that, do you understand?”

  “Y-yes, sir.”

  “Good. I want to make myself perfectly clear. Those men outside were enemies of the state, rebel scum, and were dealt with accordingly,” he said, holstering the pistol. “As long as everyone does as I ask, none of you will be harmed. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Excellent. There is a plane coming in,” he said, taking the paper with the tail number and radio frequency from his pocket and handing it to the man. “You are to make sure we are ready to receive him.”

  The man pulled a pair of readers from his pocket and frowned at the paper. “No flight plan?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have any idea where this aircraft is coming from?”

  “That is all I have.”

  “Hmm,” the man frowned. “Th-this is not an easy ask, but we will do our best.”

  He crossed the room, came to a halt next to the radar operator, and handed the man the paper.

  “This might take some time,” Aké said.

  Dábo nodded and moved to the window overlooking the runway where the APC smoldered. “Tell them I want that piece of junk off the runway, now!” he told his RTO.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The rush of adrenaline that had come with the assault had begun to wear off and Dábo was suddenly tired. He pulled the cigarette case from his pocket, lit up, and took a deep drag. Since getting the call from Cabot, his only focus had been taking the airfield, but it was only now that it was safely in his hands that Dábo began to consider the implications of his actions.

  It was an election year, and high on President Alassane’s platform was reunification—ending the fighting that had gripped the country since the civil war.

  What is he going to say when he learns what I’ve done here? he wondered.

  Dábo knew the answer, but he was positive that this was one situation that his wife couldn’t get him out of.

  “Sir, I have your aircraft on the scope, bearing zero-three-four degrees,” the man said.

  Daniel Aké moved over to the radar station, the general tight on his heels.

  “Have you tried to make contact?” Aké asked, peering at the screen.

  “Yes, sir, but I’m not getting an answer.”

  “Is it him?” Dábo demanded. />
  Both Aké and the controller ignored him.

  “Sir, I think the aircraft is in trouble.”

  “In trouble, what does that mean?”

  “The aircraft is rapidly losing altitude, that plus the fact that we cannot get the pilot on the radio is usually an indication of a problem,” Aké said, pulling off his readers and grabbing a pair of binoculars from his desk.

  “Someone turn up the power on the transmitter,” he said, moving to the window, Dábo close on his heels.

  Aké lifted the binoculars to his eyes and turned to the northeast.

  Dábo was already thinking about what he was going to do with the money when the speaker on the wall came to life, the voice calm despite the message.

  “Mayday . . . Mayday . . . Korho . . . tower . . . this is Pilgrim three-niner x-ray. Request . . . emergency . . . landing.”

  21

  BOBO-DIOULASSO

  Airspeed was the only thing that mattered, and Hayes forced himself to block everything else out, ignoring the flashing warning lights and the urgent TERRAIN—TERRAIN—PULL UP of the Ground Proximity Warning System alerting him to what seemed an imminent collision.

  Hayes waited until the last possible second to start his climb and gently pull back on the yoke. The Provider’s nose tipped skyward, the airspeed indicator heading in the wrong direction as the altimeter ticked upward.

  He begged and pleaded with the plane, but she wasn’t going to make it. As a last-ditch effort to get over the rocks, Hayes dropped the flaps—the sudden shake of the yoke indicating that he was getting dangerously close to stall speeds.

  One second they were hanging in limbo, the bottom of the plane inches from the rock face, and then they were over—nothing but clear sky and flat ground as far as the eye could see.

  “Hell, yeah,” Hayes yelled, slapping the yoke with his left hand and retracting the flaps with his right.

  While the Provider would never win a beauty contest or a race, the old warbird could take a punch, which was the only reason Hayes had stayed with her when his gut was telling him to strap on the chute and get the hell out.

  “Mayday, Mayday, this is Pilgrim,” he said over the radio.

  But there was no response.

  According to the GPS, he was fifty miles north of Korhogo, and the fact that he couldn’t get ahold of the tower was the least of his problems. While the Provider was currently holding steady at seven thousand feet, all it took was one look at the fuel gauge, its needle buried in the red, to know it wouldn’t last. Even with all the maneuvering over the drop zone, the Provider should have had enough fuel to make it to Korhogo. The fact that it was in the red told Hayes that there had to be a leak.

  The only thing he could do was adjust the fuel mixture and throttle back, but even with the Provider running as lean as possible, he knew he was living on borrowed time.

  Just hold on, girl, he begged.

  Without the tower, it was up to Hayes to figure out the most fuel-efficient approach, so he activated the autopilot and grabbed the chart. According to it, the runway at Korhogo ran east to west. The last weather report had the wind coming in from the west, so Hayes plotted his approach accordingly.

  He plotted and replotted his route, double- and triple-checking his math until he found the most fuel-efficient trip, turned off the autopilot, and banked the plane gently to the east, leveled out, and flew straight for ten minutes before heading south.

  A final turn brought him to the west and he was ten miles out from the spot he hoped was the airfield when he saw the smoke—three charcoal pillars rising into the sky like ancient funeral pyres.

  Yeah, that’s not good, he thought, beginning his descent.

  According to the chart, the runway was large enough to accommodate the Provider, but at five thousand feet it looked impossibly short and barely wide enough to handle a single-engine Cessna.

  Only one way to find out.

  He’d centered the nose on the runway and was about to drop the gear when the radio came to life.

  “Pilgrim three-niner x-ray, this is Korhogo tower, do you copy?” the calm voice asked in French.

  The surprise of hearing his tail number over the radio was overshadowed by the realization that he was no longer alone, and he eagerly pressed the talk button.

  “Tower, this is Pilgrim three-niner x-ray requesting an emergency landing,” he replied in French.

  “Advise nature of emergency.”

  “Where do you want me to start?” he asked, dropping the gear.

  There was a moment of silence, the controller not sure how to answer the question, finally coming back with a “Roger that.”

  He was at fifteen hundred feet when the port engine began to sputter like a lawnmower with a busted carburetor and the Provider started to pull to the right. Hayes shut the engine down, aware of the fresh sheen of sweat breaking out on his forehead.

  “Uh, Tower, I just lost an engine,” he advised, knuckles white on the yoke.

  Hayes double-checked the gear, knowing it was down, but needed to give his mind something to do when he saw the cloud of ocher dust skitter laterally across the runway.

  Atop the tower, the blazing orange windsock hung limp, and Hayes was beginning to think his eyes were playing tricks on him when he saw it flutter.

  If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have any luck at all.

  By the time he reached five hundred feet, there was a full-value wind blowing in from the south, and Hayes felt the gust of air pushing the aircraft out of position.

  He gave the rudder pedals a hard kick, managing to get the plane back online a second before the tires hit the runway. As soon as the wheels made solid contact, he stomped hard on the brakes and pulled the throttle into reverse thrust.

  The engine groaned, the acrid stench of burnt rubber and overheated brake pads inundating the cockpit, but Hayes didn’t care. He was alive and that was all that mattered.

  The Provider shuddered to a halt a hundred yards from the end of the runway—the silence that followed the rush of air through the shattered glass was deafening.

  He shut down the plane and unhooked the harness, the back of his shirt peeling from the seat like Saran Wrap when he got to his feet and stepped out of the cockpit. Hayes headed aft, hands shaking when he unlatched the troop door. The only thought on his mind was getting the hell out of the plane.

  The door swung open and he stepped out onto the tarmac, the Ivorian sun hot as a blast furnace on his face.

  I made it, he thought.

  The relief that came with cheating death was more powerful than any narcotic. Hayes could have stood there forever, savoring the warmth of the sun on his face and the sway of the green grass in the wind.

  But the moment was cut short by the unmistakable bacon fat smell of charred flesh and the squeal of tires on asphalt. He followed the sound toward the tower in time to see a pair of Toyota Hiluxes race into view—their beds overloaded with gunmen.

  This isn’t good, he thought, watching the pickups race toward him.

  His first thought was to run, but with the plane shot to shit and nothing but open ground on all sides, Hayes knew he wasn’t going anywhere.

  Well, this sucks.

  But this wasn’t the first time he’d found himself stuck in a third-world shithole on the wrong end of an AK-47, and in his experience the best course of action was to play the dumb American redneck.

  Hayes stood there, arms raised over his head, a lopsided grin stretching across his face, when the trucks screeched to a halt in front of him. The passenger-side door of the truck swung open and a tall man in starched BDUs jumped out, sunlight flashing off the stars on his collar as he came stomping across the tarmac.

  He stopped next to Hayes, tore the sunglasses from his face, and stared open-mouthed at the damaged plane.

  “Wh-what
have you done?” the man demanded in French.

  “Sorry, pal,” Hayes answered with a shrug, “no parlez vous French.”

  He watched the anger spread across the man’s face, saw the jerk of his shoulder that told him a blow was coming, but, sticking to his plan, made no move to get out of the way.

  “You idiot,” the general snapped, backhanding him across the face.

  It was a hard blow, the force rocking Hayes back on his heels and starring his vision. He stepped back, making space, but the general wasn’t through. He waded in and hit him with a sweeping right to the gut, the impact folding him like a cheap card table, blasting the air from his lungs. He bent double, gasping like a fish on the bank, but before he could go down, Dábo fired a knee at his face.

  Hayes was fully committed to his role but had no interest in a broken nose. He twisted to the left, dropped his head, and took most of the blow on his shoulder before collapsing to the ground.

  The force bowled him over. Hayes felt the rage rising up from the pit of his stomach, but forced it down.

  He’d seen the general’s type before. The man was a bully who’d made his rank by killing women and children, and as much as he wanted to beat the man’s ass, show him what happened when you tangled with a real man, Hayes wasn’t stupid and knew the camouflaged coward wouldn’t hesitate to order his men to kill him if he felt disrespected.

  Forcing yourself to take an ass kicking wasn’t easy for a man of his ilk, but it was the only option that guaranteed that he’d stay alive.

  He bent down and grabbed Hayes by the front of the shirt and lifted his upper body off the ground.

  “Where is the Russian?” he demanded, slamming his fist into Hayes’s face.

  This is going to get ugly, the voice commented as the general hit him again.

  But Hayes knew how to handle men like this. While his attacker was drawing him close for another punch, he was busy collecting a mouthful of blood.

  “I don’t speak fucking French,” he spat, spraying blood across the front of the general’s spotless uniform.

  The man dropped Hayes like a hot coal and leapt backward, eyes dropping to his ruined tunic, his face turning white with rage, lips twisting into a feral snarl. “I-I’ll fucking kill you!” he screamed, reaching for the pistol strapped to his hip.