The Janson Command (36 page)

“What?” yelled Iboga, blinking, struggling to shield his eyes with his trussed hands. Janson and Kincaid had already flipped down their night gear, which neutralized the glare.

When they saw the rear cargo door spilling paratroopers onto the tarmac, they had only seconds to escape. But that would mean abandoning their prisoner and drawing fire at Ed and Mike on the Embraer.

“It’s the goddamned French Foreign Legion.”

“This is Italy. They can’t come here.”

“Looks like no one told them.”

A stentorian voice amplified by a bullhorn bellowed French.

“He’s saying, ‘Hands in the air.’ ”

“I got that.” They raised their hands. “Now what’s he saying?”

“Uhhmm … ‘We arrest Iboga … taken illegally from France.’ ”

Two soldiers ran up, grabbed the dolly’s handgrips, and wheeled Iboga to the Transall.

“Here come the cops.”

An Italian police car squealed around the terminal, past the control tower, and raced onto the runway with flashing blue lights. Two Carabiniere officers jumped out, straightened their black tunics, and swaggered toward the Transall. A French paratrooper stepped forward and fired a long, loud burst with his assault rifle. Bullets whistled past the police and blew out all the windows in their patrol car.

Kincaid said, “Since when does the French Army issue AK-47s?”

A second burst over their heads sent the Italians running into the dark.

Janson counted paratroopers. “That Transall holds eighty. I see ten.”

“They’re not Legionnaires. They’re as phony as ours were. Jesus, who the hell are they?”

“Just hope they keep the act up and don’t strafe us. Those AKs aren’t phony.”

“And just let them take Iboga?”

“We’ll follow them,” said Janson, with little hope. “If they don’t shoot our tires out.”

The gunmen in paratroop gear unstrapped Iboga from the dolly and helped him up the Transall’s steps.

At the top, the wary-looking Iboga suddenly broke into a grin so broad that it showed his pointed teeth.

“What is going on?” said Kincaid. “He looks happy as hell.”

“Wait,” said Janson. “It’s going to get worse.”

One of the phony Legionnaires presented Iboga with a bright yellow scarf, his signature Arab kaffiyeh. Iboga gathered it around his enormous skull. For a long moment he stood proud as a king. Then he gestured imperiously for the trooper to shoot Janson and Kincaid, who were still holding their hands in the air.

The trooper did not pull the trigger but with help of the others urged Iboga into the transport. He argued and kept pointing at Janson and Kincaid. It took four strong men to shove Iboga in the door. To Janson’s surprise, the last man up the ramp did not strafe the Embraer’s landing gear with his assault rifle. Instead, he threw a mock salute as the airplane started rolling down the runway, and pulled the door shut.

Janson vaulted up the Embraer’s steps, with Kincaid right behind him.

“Fire ’em up, boys! Follow that plane
—Oh, God!
”

Ed’s and Mike’s seat belts held their bodies in the pilot and co-pilot chairs. Their throats had been cut and the cockpit stank of blood.

THIRTY-EIGHT

V
icious, senseless…” Kincaid’s voice was cracking, her mouth trembling. “Why didn’t they just kill us instead?”

“Ed and Mike were easier to kill.”

There were times, Janson thought, that he was ashamed to be a human being. These two men, these gentle men, so precise in their skills, so quietly proud of the partnership they forged daily with the elegantly engineered Embraer, so ready to whisk Janson anywhere in the world, to change course without hesitation, to be always loyally at his service, to risk their licenses to play fast and loose to serve him, did not deserve to be murdered.

“Senseless,” Kincaid repeated. “They’re just pilots. They’re not— Oh, God, they were always so nice to me.”

Not quite senseless, thought Janson. There was purpose behind the murders. The phony Legionnaires had left him and Kincaid holding the bag, stuck on the ground, on foreign soil, with two dead men to account for. They would be tied down for weeks explaining to the Italian authorities. Under Italian law they could be held without charges for two years.

He was heartsick. The inner circle of CatsPaw and Phoenix was small, very small. His family. Jesse, Quintisha, his pilots. He stared out the windshield. How many miles had Ed and Mike looked through it taking him places he had to go? The Embraer was pointed east down the runway. The sky was brightening over the sea. The Carabiniere would be radioing reinforcements.

“I’ll get towels and blankets,” he said. “We’ll lay them out aft.”

Kincaid followed him to the back of the plane, stumbling like a woman wrenched from sleep. They got blankets and towels from the linen locker and hurried forward, Janson moving with increasing urgency. He stopped to retract the stairs and lock the door. He found Jessica on her hands and knees in the cockpit, toweling blood off the deck. They wrapped Ed and Mike as best they could in the blankets, carried them aft, and strapped them into the fold-down bunks.

“Iboga looked surprised. He didn’t expect to be rescued.”

“Yeah, I saw that. Fucking SR.”

“These guys weren’t necessarily SR. SR would have shot everyone in sight. Cops, us.”

“They did Ed and Mike.”

“They did the bare minimum to leave you and me holding the bag so the Italians will hunt us instead of them. We can spend a year in Italy. Or we can try and get out of here so we can track down Iboga and his money.”

“And get who did this to Ed and Mike?”

“Have you been practicing takeoffs on the simulator?”

She tore her eyes from the shrouded bodies. “Yeah, Ed set it up. Mike sat in with me.”

“How’d you do?”

“Aced it. Second try.”

Janson said, “It’s been a while since I’ve flown and I expect you’re better at it than I am.”

“Not saying much.”

“I’ll lay smoke. You get us out of here.”

* * *

KINCAID WIPED MIKE’S
blood off the left-hand chair, climbed in, and adjusted it forward so she could reach the rudder pedals. Ed had taped a card to the throttle on which he had written “V
₁
114” and “V
_R
130.”

V
₁
was her all-important takeoff-decision speed, which Ed had based on the weight of the aircraft, the length of the runway, the temperature, and the speed of the wind. It told Kincaid that she had until the fifty-thousand-pound jet plane was hurtling at 114 knots—130 miles per hour—to decide
not
to take off. If she lost an engine slower than that she had to abort. Above 114 knots, she had to try to take off. She showed Janson the bud that Ed had set on the airspeed indicator at 114 knots. It would be Janson’s job, as the one not flying the ship, to call out, “V
₁
.” At V
_R
, rotation speed—which Ed had written as “130 knots”—Janson would simply call out, “Rotate,” so Kincaid would know when to draw back on the control yoke to elevate the nosewheel off the runway.

Janson climbed into the co-pilot chair, slipped on the headset, and turned his attention to the electronics. “Laying smoke” meant using the Embraer’s defensive aid suite to make Air Traffic Control think that the twin-engine passenger jet was either elsewhere or nowhere at all.

But first he switched off the transponder, which replied to radar queries from ground control and other airplanes. Then he shut down the AFIRS (Automated Flight Information Reporting System) air-to-ground data link service that had recently replaced the antiquated “black box” onboard flight data recorder. Now they would leave no electronically enhanced trail in the sky.

He checked the flight plan in the computer. Ed had filed for The Hague, Holland, eight hundred miles to the north. That was now out the window.

“We’ll hang a right, shoot low and fast as we can down the coast past Sardinia and out of Italian territory into Mediterranean Free Flight Airspace.”

“Let’s see if I can get off the ground, first.”

Kincaid touched the left-hand engine master switch, then the start lever. Number One engine’s compressor started cranking on battery power. Janson watched her eyes flicker between controls and monitors. The Embraer’s automatic engine start sequencer made it slightly similar to starting a car in that she did not have to decide when the turbine was spinning fast enough to introduce fuel and when to ignite it. The engine caught immediately. She let it spool up as she used its generator to crank the Number Two engine’s compressor. Number Two was balky. The sequencer refused to ignite the fuel.

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.

“V
₁
,” 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.