Cloudburst (33 page)

“That clinches it,” McAffee said. Their plan was the only way now. “What about a final go?”

“We’ve got permission to stage from Tenerife. The chief says
go
.”

“Thumbs-up on this end,” Blackjack noted.

“On this end, too, Major. And thank Graber. His plan was a damn good one.” The colonel released the radio circuit.

Al-‘Adiyat

Muhadesh slowly scratched his chest through the shirt, feeling the folded paper inside. There were actually two, one of which he needed to get rid of…had to get rid of.

He paced back and forth in front of his rigid executive officer, his breath expelled in angry spurts from his nostrils. He stopped in front of Indar, looking not at him, but away, focusing on a picture of the colonel that hung on the wall. To the left and below was the fax machine, now useless. The room was lit by a pair of battery-powered lanterns, giving the faces of both men eerie lit-from-below masks.

This was the second time Indar had been summoned to explain since the power was lost.

“Now, Lieutenant, I am doing my utmost not to lose my composure with you; first, because I do not believe it is worth the effort, and, second, because I wish this entire, idiotic episode to simply be over.” Muhadesh turned only his head, but Indar’s eyes were fixed straight ahead, staring at nothing and avoiding his commander’s gaze. “Explain, please, why you have not been able to restore power four hours after you so carelessly saw to its loss.” Directing a bulldozer backward onto the power lines, laid on the ground after the poles were removed, was careless, if anything. “When we last spoke you were going to see to the generators. Why has this not been done?”

The lieutenant’s gaze changed slightly, hinting at…fear?

Muhadesh turned completely to face Indar. “Why?”

Indar met his commander’s eyes. “The generators, sir, they are…gone.”

“Gone?!” Muhadesh exploded. His arms flailed out and up, coming to rest atop his head in disbelief.

“Yes,” Indar replied in a snap, ready to shift responsibility. “Before you returned, a unit from the airfield came and confiscated our generators. Their commander was a major. I could not defy him. He said they would be better used supporting the outer defenses of the airfield.”

“Both of them? And you found it so unimportant that you felt you could wait to inform me until now?” Muhadesh leaned back upon the edge of his desk. His eyes searched the ceiling for some reason, for some meaning in all this. Was Allah testing him?

“Sir—” Indar began, but was cut off by the captain’s gesture.

“No, Indar. Your lies, and excuses, and your borderline treachery is over. Finished. Now,
you
will listen, and I will explain to you what will be done. You have exactly one hour, and one hour only, to restore power. Sixty minutes, and they are passing as we speak. The next thing I want to hear from you is that the power is on. No…I don’t even want to hear from you—just turn on the power. The lights will be the signal.”

The lieutenant’s eyes fell, then came back up, glancing briefly into his commander’s black eyes. They were frightening in the unnatural light.

“I don’t even care if you understand,” Muhadesh said, turning away. “Go.”

He waited for the sound of the door closing before releasing his anger. It was vented in the form of a fist against the wall, connecting solidly with the plaster below the colonel’s photograph.

Muhadesh held it there for what felt like minutes. He felt pain, intense pain, spread across the fingers on his right hand and it increased when contact with the wall was broken. There was no mark on the old plaster, attesting to its strength. His skin was not broken, either. He spread his fingers out, examining the trembling digits.

One hour.

He calmed himself. The anger was unproductive, he knew, but there were times when it surfaced, like it or not. In ninety minutes he would have to leave for the rendezvous. Thirty minutes would be cutting it close, but there was no choice. He had to get the other message off to the Americans.

In the meantime he would wait, alone in the semidarkness of his office. He sat at his desk and turned one of the flashlights on its side to illuminate the writing blotter. There was one last message to compose. It was actually less a message and more an explanation. A justification? Muhadesh wouldn’t go that far.

He removed his writing paper and took a pen in hand, writing the words that would soothe no one, but that he was compelled to put on paper. Amazingly, they came easily.

Thunder One

Blackjack walked down the right side of the Starlifter, heading aft from the com suite, which was a generous description of the radio operator’s console. He sidestepped past the Humvees, stopping at the nose of the second. “Gather round!”

The troops sensed something, but McAffee’s face never belied his thoughts. Graber checked that they were all around, including the two drivers. Joe Anderson was still in his seat, fifteen feet back, staring intently at the message he had received.

“The colonel just called with the following message: Execute Cloudburst.” The major’s face stayed a mask of stone, and he noticed that Graber’s, unlike the rest of the team’s, was also. The others let out a collective yell of relief. They were finally getting their chance to do the job the unit had been formed to do. “Settle down, troops. We’re going to be on the ground in less than ninety minutes. We have to be ready to go when we land, so get your gear checked, and rechecked. Captain, you see that the buddy checks get done.” Graber acknowledged the order. “Get to it. Captain, I’m going to talk to the pilot. Be back.”

“Holy shit,” Buxton said, almost somberly. “This is for real.”

“Chris is right,” Sean said, getting attention instantly. “This is it, and we better have our shit together. Buddy checks, now!”

The men broke off into pairs, going over each other’s snug web gear and limited equipment.

“Captain Anderson,” Antonelli yelled, his partner’s hands tugging on cinch straps of his body armor. Joe looked up. “We’re going in.”

The Delta troopers went about their preparatory ritual. Joe watched for a second, looking over his glasses, then returned his attention to the diagram. That was a generous word, but then the CIA man he had talked to while the printout came over the aircraft’s fax machine said it was obtained from someone with no knowledge of what it might be.
What might it be?
Joe asked himself. It was not a nuclear bomb, that was for sure. Even in its crudeness it could be almost anything but that.

The drone of the engines was punctuated by the chatter of the troopers. Joe heard none of it. He was in his own world, one he alone understood—most of the time. But not now. He would be dealing with this … thing when they got aboard, and he felt at a loss for not knowing what it was. The scary thing, though, was that it might not be anything he could deal with.

Knock that crap off, Joe.

Thirteen

THE EXPECTED, THE UNEXPECTED, AND THE NECESSARY

Flight 422

“How much did we get?” Hendrickson asked.

Buzz checked the fuel readout again. Data on the amount of fuel in the tanks was gathered through means much different than those used in a car. Floats in each of the seven fuel tanks were operated using reverse pressure. This negated the effect of minimal sloshing while the aircraft was in motion. Readings from the floats were matched against inflow and outflow meters on each tank, and all the numbers were tracked by a computerized fuel-management system.

“Two-twenty,” the first officer answered. There were 220,000 pounds of jet fuel in the
Maiden’s
tanks. “I didn’t pump into the outboard extenders.”

“Good,” Hendrickson said. The 656-gallon tanks inside the wings, right at the tips, were dry. That would keep more of the weight forward, since the wings, swept back at thirty-seven degrees, added mass behind the aircraft’s center of gravity. “Is the rest spread around?” he inquired, leaving Buzz to manage the fuel while he preflighted the engines.

“The center is full. The inboards and outboard mains are splitting the rest.” That still left over 130,000 pounds of free space in the tanks. “This load out and the empty seats should help.”

Hendrickson came to the number three instruments right then. With a total weight reduction of 160,000 pounds, the
Maiden
was lighter than at any point since landing at Benina. But the number three turbofan was showing a marked degradation in performance, down 55 percent, even at idle. “I hope. But we’re going to be dragging this one all the way,” he said, pointing at the dying engine’s indicators.

“What do you think’s with it?” Buzz entered the final fuel numbers in the flight computer, though that would help them little without a given flight path.

“I don’t know. It looked like the compressor two days ago. Now…?” It was more than the compressor, he knew. It might be that, or an engine bearing. Or something else.

“Yeah.”

The captain finished his checks. “She’ll do it.”

“Damn right.”

The captain turned. Hadad was sitting, the glow of the cockpit instruments lighting his face. The eyes, like before, stared ahead. “No tower contact, correct?”

“Correct,” the answer came, without a movement or a blink.

Hendrickson had won a small victory in securing the release of two hundred passengers. It still wasn’t enough to make up for the death of one.
Or of another hundred and fifty
, he told himself. He had to do it. “Look, we’re probably going to get off the ground all right, with the weight reduction and all. But we had to take on less fuel to get it down even more. Our number three engine is getting worse, even while we’re sitting here. I don’t know what’s going to happen once we get up there.”

The face came out of its trancelike mask. “What are you saying? If it is to release more passengers, the answer is no.”

Hendrickson’s head shook. “No. Let me explain. We had to take on less fuel in order to get the best possible chance at taking off. In doing that we reduced our range. With the engine not performing right, that’s going to increase our fuel consumption and reduce our range further.”

Hadad spoke no words in response, his eyes issuing the challenge.

“If you want to get to Chicago, then we’ve got a problem. With this amount of fuel, our load, and our bum engine, we’ll have to stop and refuel, probably in New York.”

The words did not trigger anger in Hadad. Instead, they elicited frustration, and exasperation. There was little reason for the American to lie. What would it get him? After all, his prime concern was staying alive, and keeping the passengers alive. It was another thing gone awry in the plan. “There will be no additional stop in America.”

“We can’t make it,” the captain repeated. “We have to go a shorter route. Stop somewhere and refuel.”

Why?
Hadad’s thumb rubbed circles on the trigger switch. He was tiring. Sleep did not help. The fatigue was deeper than mere physical exhaustion.

If they could not make it, then all was for naught. They had to have enough fuel for three hours of flying once the American coast was reached, for three hours of deception until he could leave his mark upon the Great Satan. If not, the mission would fail. The purpose would be unfulfilled. And… And…

The little face filled his mind. There had to be a way.

“Havana,” Hadad said. “Can you make it there?”

Hendrickson visually checked with Buzz. They weren’t sure how receptive the Cubans would be to their appearance, but then they wouldn’t have much of a say.
Just like the Russians had no say with Korean Airlines 007.
“It’ll be close, but the skies should be clear. We can do that.”

“Then do it. Get off the ground, now.” Hadad slid back into his seat. In a minute he could remove the increasingly painful vest, and try to rest.

With a concrete destination and flight path—direct—the crew could let the flight computer and auto flight system do most of the flying. Buzz programmed in the destination—Jose Marti Airport.

Hendrickson checked the entered data, as was standard. A simple mistouch of a key could have serious repercussions. Each crewman backed the other…

The captain made his move almost automatically, reaching just above and to the left of the flight control computer and touching the activation button. There was no obvious sign of what he had just done, but Buzz could tell instantly from the crackle of static in his headset.

Hadad was too busy being tired, and lacked enough detailed knowledge to realize that the captain had just activated the hot mike function of the VHF radio.

Springer Seven-Three

“Break away! Break away!” The AWACS commander yelled into his boom mike. Two seconds later the converted Boeing 707 banked hard right as the pilot responded to the order and broke away from the KC-10 tanker replenishing the AWACS’s half-empty tanks.

“Read it back, Com,” the commander ordered.

“It’s just chatter, sir. I’ve got it on tape, but the stuff sounds like preflight for their roll.”

“Radar, looks like the bird’s taking off.” The commander checked his own display. “Anything in the way.”

“Negative.”

“Outstanding. Tag anything that gets within twenty miles of that bird on my scope, as well as yours, and give me a holler. Com, what’s going on now?” He could hear it on his headset, but he also had to process other relative information. The com officer was dedicated to listening.

“Sir, he’s got a hot mike. He’s transmitting everything. Jesus H. Christ, that’s one slick-thinking pilot.”

“Cut the commentary. Just give me the important stuff. You’re my filter, remember.”

“She’s up, sir,” Radar reported. “Gaining altitude. Slow climb.”

Okay, baby, where are you goi—
“What was that?” the commander asked, interrupting his thought. He heard it, but…

“He said Jose Marti, sir,” Com reported. “Jose Marti is their destination. Just slipped it into the old conversation.”