and nose, and gradually his vision began to clear.
Down several intersecting streets he could see road blocks and more people heading in the direction of the embassy, but no one noticed him heading in the opposite direction, or if they did, nobody seemed to care.
The Rover was where he had left it, parked between the battered Mercedes and the Flat van. But he approached carefully to make sure that it had not been staked out. As far as he could tell, however, there wasn’t a single soul around.
He got behind the wheel, touched the starter wires together and the car’s engine came immediately to life. He backed out of the parking slot, drove out the alley and headed down the street to the main boulevard that led to the airport.
To the south on Bebe-Maihro Street, toward the city center, there seemed to be roadblocks, military vehicles and soldiers everywhere, directing the thousands or perhaps tens of thousands of people heading toward the embassy. Traffic was being diverted away from the barricades, and was already backing up.
To the north, in the direction of the airport, the road was clear, but that was the direction they’d be expecting him to come. There was only one main road to the airport, and it would be heavily guarded until the American transport aircraft came in, picked up its passengers and departed. Airports were very large places, however. They sprawled across hundreds of acres of flat countryside. There might be only one road to take passengers to the terminal, but there would have to be several access roads for cargo deliveries, fuel and aircraft repair supplies, and for maintenance vehicles to have access to the ILS lights and electronic aids.
McGarvey headed straight across the broad boulevard, and found himself in another section of narrow, winding streets that sometimes opened to broad avenues lined with apartment buildings, or parks, or other districts of craftsmen-wool merchants, tin-and copper smiths and even goldsmiths. Like the other areas of the city he’d seen this morning, most of these shops were closed, some of them boarded up, others with steel mesh security shutters lowered over their windows and doors. The anti-American demonstrations had turned into a national holiday of sorts.
He worked his way generally north and east, sometimes finding himself stopped by dead-end streets and having to backtrack several blocks before he could find another way. It was like being a rat in a maze. At one point he came around a corner into the middle of another large crowd of people and official vehicles, their blue lights flashing. He jammed on his brakes. But it wasn’t a roadblock as he had feared. A large building that might have been a warehouse was on fire. Flames and smoke shot several hundred feet into the sky. Firemen using antiquated equipment poured water into the building, while on the other side of the street dozens of men had formed a bucket brigade and were dousing down their own shops and houses in a frantic effort to stop the flames from spreading. No one noticed him as he backed up and hurried off in the opposite direction. The houses and shops and other buildings began to thin out about the same time the pavement ended. The streets continued in some places only as narrow dirt tracks. He came around another corner, and the track abruptly stopped at a tall chain-link fence topped with razor wire. For several long seconds he gripped the steering wheel and simply stared at the fence as he tried to catch his breath. His vision had gone blurry again, but when it began to clear he realized that he had reached the airport. Directly across from him, perhaps fifty or sixty yards away, was what looked like the main east-west runway. He could make out the white lights along the paved surface. In the distance to the right he could see the markers at the end of the runway. Straight across was a line of maintenance and storage hangers, and in the far distance to the left were the control tower and terminal.
His heart skipped a beat. Pulling away from the terminal was the distinctive, squat shape of a C-130 Hercules transport. McGarvey checked his watch. It was already past nine o’clock. It had taken him two hours to come this far, but the airplane was almost an hour early.
In minutes his last chance to get out of Afghanistan would be at the end of the runway and lined up for takeoff. He needed to find a way to get out there, or at the very least signal to them.
As the C-130 majestically started up the long taxiway, McGarvey threw the Rover in reverse, backed around and spit gravel as he raced through the labyrinth of narrow, bumpy tracks. This far from the city center the dwellings were little more than crude adobe brick hovels. But there were people around, most of them farmers tending small fields or herds of goats. Some of them looked up in astonishment at the speeding car, others didn’t bother.
He got lost several times and had to backtrack so that he could keep the airport perimeter fence in sight. The C-130 was nearly to the end of the runway by the time he reached a gate. There were no guards, but the gate was secured with a heavy chain and thick businesslike padlock.
He jumped out of the Rover, drew his pistol and fired three shots into the lock. The bullets fragmented on the hardened steel and ricochetted dangerously around him, but the lock held.
The Hercules had reached the end of the taxiway and was turning onto the runway as McGarvey popped the Rover’s rear lid, pulled the spare tire out of its compartment and found the tire iron. At the gate he jammed the tool into one of the links of the chain and tried to pry it open. The tire iron bent, but the chain held.
A pair of Russian jeeps, their lights flashing, were racing directly up the runway from the terminal, directly for the nose of the C-130 as the pilot gunned the four Allison turboprop engines.
McGarvey tossed the tire iron aside, jumped back into the Rover and backed up twenty yards. He slammed the transmission in drive and floored the accelerator. The heavy car shot forward, slamming into the gate, shoving it backwards nearly off its hinges.
The C-130 was lined up now and starting to roll, as McGarvey backed up again, dropped the transmission into four-wheel-drive and jammed the pedal to the floor. He hit the fence with a bone-jarring crash. The big Rover climbed up an dover the mangled gate, finally breaking free with a horrible screeching of metal. Immediately the oil pressure indicator began to drop and hot oil started to spray out from under the hood.
He shifted to drive, never taking his foot off the accelerator, bumped over the last few yards of grass up onto the runway and headed after the accelerating C-130 while flashing his headlights.
He tore the scarf and hat off and tossed them aside. The Rover’s engine started to bog down as the temperature needle climbed into the red and pegged. The C-130 began to pull away from him.
“Goddamnit,” he shouted.
He started to look for a way out of the airport, when incredibly the rear loading deck of the Hercules started to open and the big airplane slowed down.
A loud clattering noise started under the hood and the car lost even more power. The transport’s ramp was fully down now just inches off the runway, and several crewmen were frantically waving him on.
The front tires bumped up on the ramp and he nearly lost control of the car as it swerved sharply to the right. But then he inched the rest of the way up onto the ramp. The crewmen leaped to the side as the Rover’s rear wheels hit the ramp and suddenly the car accelerated like it had been shot from a cannon into the belly of the airplane.
McGarvey slammed on the brakes and the car slewed to the left, finally coming to a halt against cargo restraining straps that had just been raised.
McGarvey slammed the transmission into park, and as the rear cargo deck closed, and the big airplane gathered speed, he laid his head back, his hands still gripping the steering wheel as his heart began to decelerate.
He closed his eyes, and thinking about the Russian jeeps heading toward them, willed the airplane off its front landing gear, and then into the sky.
One of the crewmen came to the driver’s side. The window had been smashed out. “Mr. McGarvey?” he shouted over the roar of the engines.
McGarvey opened his eyes and grinned with such intense relief that his mood bordered on the manic. “Actually I’m Evel Kneivel. McGarvey’s a better driver than that.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
What is the purpose of your visit to the United States, Mr. Guthrie?” the Dulles International Airport passport official asked.
