had the Americans searching for Tarkington this afternoon, apparently without success. Then the Graftons went out. Grafton is suspicious and worried, but he really knows nothing.”
“Someone knows something,” Ali said. “If that assassination team is waiting at the helicopters or the Americans are warned or the Italians are alerted, we won’t succeed.”
“At last,” Qazi said acidly, “you begin to appreciate some of the basic facts.”
Ali said nothing.
“I’m worried about the weather,” the pilot said. “The winds are going to get gusty, and we’ll have rain showers under a low overcast. It may get very rough in the air tonight.”
“Is it possible to fly?”
“Yes, it’s possible, if the forecast is accurate. But if the weather is worse than forecast, it will be dangerous. There will be no margin for error.”
“And in Sicily?”
“The weather should be better there. That is the forecast, anyway.”
“So there are many factors we cannot control. We knew that when we were planning.”
Youssef spoke. “The PLO does not want this mission to fail. The chairman has given the orders. My men and I are ready to proceed regardless of the danger.”
Qazi ignored him.
“Could we wait a day?” Noora asked. “The weather might improve.”
“They may dispose of the crate on the ship. The carabinieri or the GRU or the CIA or the Mossad or the Mafia may catch on.” Qazi ticked them off on his fingers. “There is already at least one assassination team out there on the hunt. And Yasim or Sakol may still be alive, and the police-radio conversations just a ruse. If either is alive, he can be made to talk. The risk increases every minute we wait. It’s now or never. Do we go?”
Noora and Ali looked at each other, then back at Qazi. They both nodded yes.
Qazi slapped his hands together. “Okay. Youssef, load the vans. Noora, get Jarvis to supervise the loading of the trigger. Then line the men up for inspection. Ali and I will check every man. When that is done, we’ll pull in the guards and be on our way.” He looked at his watch. “We leave in twenty-seven minutes. Go!”
19
Qazi and Ali sat in the front seat of the van and stared through binoculars at the gate in the chain-link fence and the helicopter pad beyond. Nothing moved under the lights on the corner of the hangars. Qazi aimed his binoculars through his open window at the guard shack. The old man was inside. He still had a two-day growth of beard.
The colonel turned in his seat and examined the tops of the warehouses across the street. No heads or suspicious objects in evidence. He scanned the windows.
“What do you think?” Ali asked.
Colonel Qazi laid the binoculars in his lap and sat watching the scene. “Go,” he said at last.
Ali stepped from the van and eased the door shut. He walked past the edge of the nearest warehouse and on across the street, where he was limned by a streetlight. Qazi could hear his footsteps fading. He raised his binoculars and scanned the warehouses again, trying to detect movement. There was none. He swung the glasses to the guard shack and watched Ali walk up to the window. The guard opened it. Ali reached through the window. Qazi knew he was cutting the telephone wire. Then Ali walked on toward the hangar.
“Sentries out.” Qazi told the people in the back of the van. He heard the rear door open and saw, in the rearview mirror, a man in black clothing with a submachine gun post himself against the large metal trash box on the edge of the alley. Another man dressed similarly trotted past the front of the van and disappeared around the corner; his post was opposite the gate.
“Anything on the scanner?” Qazi asked over his shoulder.
“No.” It was Noora. She was monitoring the police and carabinieri frequencies.
Through his binoculars Qazi could see Ali working on the doorknob to the office of the helicopter company. The hangar windows were all dark. Then Ali opened the door and disappeared inside. In a moment the lights in the office shone through the windows. Since this was normal when the company was waiting for a late-night passenger, it should arouse no comment. One of the two hangar doors slowly slid open.
Qazi raised a hand-held radio to his lips. “Van two, go.”
In a few seconds he heard the engine of the other van. It came down the street past the alley and turned in at the gate. Qazi had instructed the driver to pause at the guard shack, and he did so. Then he drove past two parked helicopters and through the open hangar door.
“Van three, go.”
Almost a minute lapsed before this van passed the alley where Qazi sat. It also came to a brief halt at the gate, then threaded between the helicopters and entered the hangar. Now the door slid shut.
They waited.
“Nothing on the scanner,” Noora told him.
At last the door to the office opened and a man appeared. Qazi could see that he wore the same uniform as the gate guard. This man walked the hundred feet across the tarmac to the guard shack.
Qazi turned in his seat. “Noora, it’s time,”
She took off the earphones and gathered her shoulder bag.
“Don’t kill any Italians unless absolutely necessary. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“Shoot any Palestinian the instant he disobeys. And watch Ali’s back for him.”
She nodded.
“Go.”
She stepped between the feet of the men sitting in the back of the vehicle and exited out the rear door. Qazi watched her. The man behind the wheel of the sedan parked behind the van got out and Noora took his place. The engine of the sedan came to life and the car eased past the van, stopping at the sidewalk as Noora looked both ways. Qazi could see the black outline of Jarvis’s head above the top of the backseat. Then Noora accelerated into the street and turned left toward the gate. Behind him Qazi could hear the rear door of the van being closed.
In a few minutes five men emerged from the hangar and walked to the helicopter furthest from the guard shack. They began to preflight it with flashlights.
A small two-door sedan came down the street. As it went by Qazi could see a man and woman in the front seat. It passed the entrance to the airfield without slackening its pace and disappeared around the far corner.
Sound carried and echoed through the alleys. He could faintly hear a man and woman shouting at each other, and through some fluke of acoustics, snatches of television audio.
The gentle breeze felt good after the sticky heat of the day. Qazi sat and watched the flashlights move around the helicopter, erratically and haphazardly.
The five men on the other side of the fence spent five minutes examining the first helicopter. When they left it and moved to the next one, a voice came over Qazi’s radio. “It’s okay. Fuel sample satisfactory.”
“Roger.”
A small pickup truck came down the street from the north, its headlights almost lost in the black evening. It shot down the street at full throttle, slowing slightly as it passed Qazi so it could make the next corner, which it tore around. He could hear the sound of its engine fading for half a minute after it had passed. A moment later he heard the engine of a large truck. Thirty seconds later it came into view, engine laboring, and drove up the street with its diesel engine snorting.
“This one’s okay.”
“Roger.”
What had he forgotten? What was left undone? As he sat there behind the wheel of the van Colonel Qazi reviewed the operation yet again. He glanced at his watch from time to time, and turned once to check on the men sitting patiently behind him. They looked scruffy in their worn, dirty jeans and short-sleeve knit and pullover shirts. Most of the shirts were filthy. Some of them were torn. Most of the men wore dirty tennis shoes. Satisfied, Qazi
