There was a faint reddish glow inside the cockpit, coming from the instrument panels, and the copilot, Adare, could see the terrified expression on the man’s face. The doctor wore thick black glasses, and the greasy lenses seemed to be made of waxed paper, but Johnny Adare could still see that this was not a happy flyer.
Adare, amused, looked at this little man seated in the jumpseat just aft of the captain and gave him an ironic and assuring thumbs-up. It was a gesture the doctor found most unconvincing. Something was very wrong. Look! They were about to fly though a big wave! He covered his eyes with both hands and waited for the impact.
The 747 was carefully following a well-thought-out flight plan. Unfiled with any aviation authority, but still, her flight plan. She would fly north-northwest for one hundred miles at an altitude of fifty feet above sea level. It was dangerous and made more so by the storm, but it was necessary. For now. A hundred miles out over the Pacific, safely out of Indonesian airspace, and any radar anywhere, she would begin an ascent to an altitude above normal commercial operating routes. 45,000 feet was the plan. Barring any unforeseen difficulties, the 747 would be touching down at LAX International Airport in Los Angeles, California, in just less than twelve hours.
Two minutes after takeoff, Doctor I.V. Soong, still very agitated, said from the jumpseat, “I am wondering, Captain, how long we must stay so low to the sea? Dangerous. Very dangerous. Ground effect, you know.”
The captain turned in his seat and glared. The prospect of this hyperactive little gnome sitting behind him for twelve long hours was not appealing. He now understood why the Suva technicians referred to him as Poison Ivy. The man was indeed poisonous. It seeped from his pores. Even his breath was tainted and foul. He silently cursed bin Wazir for saddling him with this toxic little toad.
Ten long minutes into the flight they were still skimming the wave tops of the South China Sea. It was a bumpy ride, flashes of lightning lit up the cockpit, and they could hear the shouts of the passengers through the locked cockpit door. Khalid could only imagine what it must be like back there, flying through this mess in pitch- black darkness. When he’d agreed to the Pasha’s instructions, he hadn’t known about the storm.
“Cabin and cockpit lights,” he said to the copilot, and Adare flipped the two switches that turned them both on.
“Cabin and cockpit on,” Johnny said, as the cockpit was fully illuminated. “Nav lights? Wings? Beacon and strobe?”
Khalid looked at his watch. If bin Wazir ever found out about any of this, he’d most certainly be dead. He’d certainly been fired for less. Many times. But by the time bin Wazir did find out, he’d be long gone. The reins had begun to chafe long ago. In twelve short hours, he’d be out of harness forever.
“Light her up,” Khalid finally said, easing back on the wheel. He’d turn all the goddamn lights on and take the airplane up to five hundred feet. Flying this low to the water in these conditions was suicidal.
“Oh!” Soong cried. “Oh, my God!”
It was even rougher at five hundred feet. Khalid’s metal flight binder went flying across the cockpit. Soong knew they might have to fly lower than normal to avoid radar, but he’d had no idea they’d be flying at this altitude through a typhoon. He slipped out of his shoulder straps and staggered to his feet. He grabbed the back of the copilot’s seat and held on. He couldn’t stand it any longer.
“May I be having a small word with you?” Soong said, leaning over the co-pilot’s shoulder and speaking into his ear.
“What?” Adare said, lifting his headphones. He, too, was annoyed and shared Khalid’s distaste for the last- minute passenger in the cockpit.
“A word, if you please. Important. We could go down to bin Wazir’s kitchen,” Soong said, his smile no more than a minute crack, “Have a cup of tea. A spot of whiskey.”
“Took the bloody galley out,” Adare said, speaking above the engines and the storm. “Even the two bedrooms. Everything that used to be back there on the lower deck is now a fuel tank.”
“His sitting room, then?”
“Jesus. What is your bloody problem?”
“The Pasha told you. In the hangar. Last-minute change of plans. I need to explain. What needs to be done. We must speak.” The captain craned his head around and stared at Soong.
Khalid said, “If you and the Pasha cooked up some plan to do something with my airplane other than fly it across the Pacific, you’d best spit it out. Now.”
“My plans will in no way affect you nor your airplane, Captain,” Soong said. “In any way. You have my most sincere assurances.”
The captain returned his gaze to the black and rain-splashed windshield. This flight, his last official mission, was not getting off to a good start.
“Do it, Johnny,” Khalid finally said without looking back at either of them. “Find out what the little bugger’s up to. As long as you’re back there, you might as well do what you can to calm the ladies down.”
“Aye, Skipper, will do,” Johnny Adare said, playfully punching Khalid’s shoulder. “Ladies aren’t happy, nobody’s happy.” He laughed silently at the thought. Four hundred suicide killers back there, handpicked from the most brutal terrorist training camps on the planet. Wasn’t much left that could scare them, he didn’t imagine. He unbuckled his shoulder straps and eased out of the right-hand seat. “Come along, Doc, let’s see what kind of trouble we can get our ruddy selves into back there.”
“Johnny?” Khalid said to his copilot, grabbing his arm.
“Aye?”
“You hear any squawking out of this little bird that sounds even remotely sketchy, you get back up here and tell me all about it.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
The Emirate
FOUR SKELETAL BLACK BIRDS SOARED HIGH ABOVE THE WHITE floor of the valley. Jagged snow-blown mountains marched shoulder-to-shoulder up both sides of the wide basin, craggy promontories that scraped the crystalline blue skies. Three of the four gaunt black birds flew up this valley in a fair semblance of formation.
The fourth, mission code Hawkeye, putative leader of the flight, did not. This mischievous bird would lag behind the flock; first scribing tight corkscrew arcs downward, she would then ride a rising column of warm air, only to nose over the top and dive once more, the earth rushing crazily up, the airspeed indicator redlined. At the last possible moment, the wayward blackbird would level its wings and climb out, soaring once more on the warm thermals and rejoining the flight.
The pilot of this fourth bird, grinning with exhilaration, heard a squawk in his headphones.
“Hey. Offer you a deal, Hawkeye,” Patterson drawled on the intercom. “Limited time only.”
“Shoot, Tex.”
“You keep this bird on an even keel till we reach the LZ, set us down gently in one unbusted piece of high- tech plastic, you get use of this aircraft right here for one entire month of playtime.”
“You’re not serious?”
“I reckon I am.”
“Deal,” Hawke said, thrilled. With a wingspan of sixty feet, Hawkeye was in every sense the world’s most sophisticated high-altitude stealth glider. He’d never flown anything remotely like her. Few had.
The lanky Texan, seated two seats aft of the Englishman in the cockpit, heard the huge smile Hawke had put behind that word, Deal. Never in his life had he known a boy who just loved flying airplanes so much. And, never once, at least not since this whole nightmare had begun in Venice and on the steps of a little church in England, had he heard Alex Hawke sound so happy.
“Would you like to drive, Tex?”
“Naw, son, you doin’ jes fine now.”
“I aim to please.”
“G’night,” the big man said, flipping down the most darkly tinted of the three visors attached to his helmet. Tex stuck a fresh mint toothpick in his teeth, leaned his head back against his headrest and closed his eyes; trying to relax a little in the short time remaining before all hell broke loose.
For some time, Hawkeye soared gracefully up valley, riding the thermals, flock in tow, and nothing and no one
