The plane leveled out and the seat belt sign went off, prompting Jon Smith to slip from his seat and walk to the back of the first-class cabin. Dahab was easy to spot through a small gap in the curtain, his height and turban making him tower over the other passengers. He was in a window seat, looking around him with paranoid jerks of his head and dabbing at his face with a handkerchief.
Smith brought his eye closer to the gap, looking for blood on the white cloth. Nothing, thank God. There would be soon, though. Too soon.
“More champagne?”
Smith glanced back at the flight attendant putting a cup onto Howell’s tray.
“Looks like it’s almost empty,” the Brit said, tapping the bottle in her hand. “Perhaps you could just leave it?”
She cheerfully complied and then headed back to the galley for a fresh one. Howell brought it to his mouth and drained it under the disapproving stare of a woman who clearly wasn’t pleased to be stuck across the aisle from two men who smelled like sweaty camels.
As always, Howell was thinking ahead. The bottle would be a useful weapon — heavy enough to do serious damage to any skull it came into contact with, but blunt enough not to generate much blood.
The flight attendant reappeared, this time with a cheese tray, and headed straight for Smith. “Antsy already? We’ve barely been in the air fifteen minutes. Would some Brie help?”
“I don’t think so,” he said and then lowered his voice. “I’m Colonel Jon Smith with the U.S. Army. There’s a situation on the plane that I need to speak to the pilot about.”
“A situation? What kind of situation?”
“I’ve been tracking a terrorist for the past few weeks and I finally caught up with him at the Entebbe airport. But I wasn’t able to keep him from getting on the plane.”
Her eyes widened a bit, but she was clearly not convinced. “Do you have any identification?”
“Just a passport. For obvious reasons, I don’t have anything on me that could connect me to the U.S. government.”
She examined his face for a moment and, finding nothing to suggest that he was joking or a crazy, turned toward the cockpit. “I’ll speak to the pilot.”
When he looked through the curtain again, Dahab was in a heated exchange with the man sitting next to him. Smith tensed, preparing to signal Howell to move, but the Sudanese seemed to lose his train of thought and the argument was suddenly over.
“Sir?” the flight attendant said, reappearing behind him. “If you could follow me, please?”
She led him to the galley, where a short, fastidious-looking man in uniform was waiting.
“I’m Christof Maes, the captain of this flight,” he said, extending his hand hesitantly. “I’m told you believe we have a problem?”
“I’m afraid so, Captain. A Sudanese terrorist I’ve been tracking managed to get on board—”
“Is he armed? Did he get a weapon through security?”
“Not in the normal sense,” Smith said, deviating into the story he’d invented during takeoff. “What he does have, though, is an extremely serious form of drug-resistant tuberculosis. His plan is to get into Europe and spread it.”
“And it’s my understanding you have no identification or proof of this.”
“If you let me use your radio, I think I could get you confirmation.”
“Perhaps it would be better if I notify the authorities in Brussels myself. They can—”
“It may be too late for that, Captain. He’s also extremely violent and borderline psychotic. He knows that my partner and I are on board, and it’s likely that he isn’t going to go quietly. Also, there’s the matter of quarantining the passengers.”
“Quarantine? You think that will be necessary?”
“Unfortunately, yes. Now, if you could please let me use your radio to contact my people, they can get in touch with your government and we can try to deal with this thing as efficiently as possible.”
“I’m afraid it’s against regulations to allow you access to the cockpit,” he said, pulling a satellite phone from his pocket. “I can offer you this, though. In the meantime, I’ll notify ground control—”
“The phone will work just fine,” Smith said, having to supress the impulse to snatch it from the man’s hand. “But could you hold off contacting ground control? It might be more appropriate to let our respective governments handle that.”
Maes frowned as Smith dialed. “I’ll wait for a short time, Colonel. But then I’m going to expect to be satisfied as to who you are.”
Smith nodded and turned away when Maggie Templeton came on the line. He never thought he could be so happy to hear someone’s voice.
“Creative Party Supplies. How can I direct your call?”
“Hi, this is Jon on an open line. Is Fred around?”
“He’s been anxious to talk with you,” she said with practiced ease. “Hold, please.”
Klein came on a moment later. “Hi, Jon. It’s good to hear from you. We were disappointed when we lost touch.”
“Sorry, Fred. I wasn’t able to get to a phone. But now Peter and I are on a Brussels Air flight heading for Europe.”
“Should I have one of our salespeople meet you at the airport?”
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary. There’s an ill man on the plane and Mehrak and Sarie decided they didn’t want to fly back with us. I’m not sure how they’re getting home.”
There was a brief pause before Klein responded. “Understood. How ill is the man on the flight?”
“I think in the next couple of hours he’s going to need attention.”
“And are there facilities on the plane to give him the help he needs?”
“I hope so.”
“Let me see if I can make some arrangements, Jon. I’ll get back in touch as soon as possible.”
The line went dead and Smith handed back the phone.
“That was a very cryptic conversation,” the pilot observed coolly. “Perhaps your British friend has some sort of identification?”
He did, but an Argentine passport in the name of Peter Jourgan wasn’t going to carry a lot of weight.
“Just hold off a little longer, Captain. My people are working on this. You should get confirmation of my identity soon.”
“And in the meantime?”
“I’d like your permission to subdue the man.”
The pilot shook his head. “Impossible. Until I know exactly who you are and have some kind of authorization, you
Smith wasn’t happy about the response, but there was very little he could do about it at this point. He headed back into the first-class cabin and crossed over to where Peter Howell was standing at the curtain.
“Were you convincing, mate?”
“Apparently not. I talked to my CO. He’s going to contact the Europeans and try to get us some cooperation.”
“I hope your CO is very fast and very persuasive,” he said, pointing through the gap in the curtain. “Take a look.”
A flight attendant was offering Dahab a drink, but he didn’t react at all, just sat there banging his knuckles into the window at an alarmingly precise six-second interval.
“We can go anytime, Peter, but at best we’re on our own.”
“And at worst?”
“The crew fights us.”
Howell sighed quietly. “Too many passengers and too little space, Jon. This is a cock-up waiting to happen.”
They had been watching the Sudanese for an excruciating two hours when the flight attendant came up
