Sills’ face showed his surprise. “But what about the rest of the crew, sir?”
Rogers put a foot through the hatch and felt the rung. “The CNO said ASAP and sixty-seven percent makes us mission capable. Radio the harbormaster and tell him we get under way in five minutes.”
CHAPTER NINE
“You can go one of two ways,” Hudson said.
Ariana looked from the communications man to Mansor, who had just climbed down from the small opening, his mission to find a break in the cable unsuccessful. The three of them were gathered around a small table on which were spread the schematics for the plane.
Other than Mansor’s mission, the last hour had been uneventful, for which Ariana was grateful. No more beams of light had gone through the plane. Nor had there been any noises outside of the plane but none of that helped the atmosphere inside much. The bodies of Daley and the engineer killed in the crash were in the rear of the plane, covered in blankets, reminders of their perilous situation, as if they needed any.
Ariana looked across the table. Mansor was layered with dirt, grime and grease and looking none-too-happy. It had taken over an hour for him to traverse the crawl space to the base of the two stanchions that held up the rotodome. The SATCOM cables had been intact the entire way and disappeared up into the right stanchion, out of sight. Ariana was running out of options; that left going outside to check the rotodome. For all she knew, the entire system might have been sheered off in the crash and the satellite dish lost.
“You've got the emergency over wing escape door or the emergency overhead hatch,” Hudson pointed out the two doors on the chart, one opening onto the right wing, the other onto the roof of the aircraft just behind the pilot's cabin.
“Do you think the overhead one might have been damaged with the cockpit?” Mansor asked.
Ariana remembered the way the metal had been cut. “I don't think so. The opening ended before the back of the cockpit.”
“What about the beams?” Ingram asked. “What if they're being aimed by someone outside and once they spot you-” he stopped, the others knowing the end to the sentence.
“We're not in a stable situation here,” Ariana said. “We have to act and act quickly. My father would have sent a rescue party as soon as he lost contact with us. It’s long past the time for such a party to have reached us, so we have to assume we’re going to get no outside help. I don’t know why, but that’s the situation. And the message we received told us we had only twelve hours. We’ve already wasted some of that.
“The first step is to try to get satellite communications and see if we can contact someone. If that doesn't work, then I’ve made the decision we're going to have to leave the plane. I say we try the radio first.”
Given those choices, the others nodded their heads. Mansor stood, shaking some of the dust off his clothes.
“I'll go with you,” Ariana said, grabbing a mini-mag light and sticking it into her pocket.
“There's no-” Mansor began, but he was silenced by the flash in her eyes.
“Let's do it. We'll go out the top hatch,” Ariana decided. “That way we won't have to climb up from the wing.”
Mansor held up a reel of co-axial cable. “I'm ready.”
Ariana turned and walked toward the front of the plane. The emergency overhead access door was in the ceiling of her office. They unhooked her heavy metal desk and pushed it underneath. Mansor climbed up, after tying off one end of the coaxial cable to a leg of the desk. He grabbed the emergency latch and twisted it. With a loud popping noise, it opened inward, swinging down, revealing a pitch-black rectangle. There were no stars visible, nothing but utter blackness. He glanced down. “Ready?”
“Ready,” Ariana said, climbing on top of the desk and crouching next to him.
Mansor pulled himself into the darkness. He disappeared for a second, then his arm reappeared. Ariana grabbed his hand and he pulled her up and out of the plane.
“We had a rescue team on standby,” Freed said. “Lucian coordinated it.”
“And?” Dane asked. Chelsea was rubbing against his leg. The four Canadian mercenaries were waiting by the plane, as was the pilot, out of earshot.
Freed laid the facts out. “As per our emergency plan, Lucian ordered the team in once he got word the plane went down. It went toward the last plotted position we had for the Lady Gayle.”
“And you never heard from it again,” Dane summarized.
“Contact was lost and has not been reestablished,” Freed said.
“Who were the lucky sons-a-bitches?” Dane asked.
“Cambodian Special Forces,” Freed said. “A twelve man A-team, plus two men in the helicopter crew.”
“That explains why the Cambodian government is so eager to support you now,” Dane said.
“Screw the Cambodian government,” Michelet said. “I want my daughter out of there.”
“Those Cambodian soldiers had lives too,” Dane said. “Families.”
“Their families have been well compensated,” Michelet said. “It was the nature of their job.”
“Running missions for rich Americans?” Dane asked.
“They took the money quite eagerly,” Michelet said.
Dane ignored the old man and stared at Freed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“We don’t know what happened to the team, so there wasn’t much we could tell you,” Freed said. Seeing Dane’s stare, he sighed. “All right. We didn’t think you’d come if we told you the team had disappeared.”
Dane was thinking of something else. “The tape. Was it real?”
“Yes,” Freed assured him. “The Lady Gayle picked up and forwarded that message before it went down.”
“Maybe someone taped us back in ‘68 and…” Dane's voice trailed off.
“And saved it for over forty years to use?” Freed asked.
“Who ambushed us at the warehouse?” Dane asked. He knew Freed and Michelet weren't lying about the tape. He'd known it from the moment he heard it. But he’d known the two men were withholding other information.
“It must have been people hired by Hie-Tech,” Freed said.
“Maybe they were Cambodians pissed about the Special Forces guys,” Dane suggested.
Freed shook his head. “No. There wasn’t enough time. It had to be Hie-Tech. And we did pay a considerable amount of money to the Cambodians and their families.”
“What else don’t I know?” Dane asked.
“You know everything now,” Freed assured him.
Dane grimaced. “That’s assuming you know everything, which I don’t think is the case.”
To that, Freed made no comment.
“What’s the plan now?” Dane asked.
Freed jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the Canadians. “We jump with them-“
“Who’s we?” Turcotte asked.
“You, me, and Professor Beasley.”
“Jump?” Beasley asked, a worried frown appearing on his forehead.
“You signed on for the whole deal,” Freed said. “All you have to do is fall off the ramp. The parachute will do all the rest.”
“Fall off the ramp?” Beasley repeated.
Dane turned to Michelet. “And you?”
Freed answered for his boss. “Mister Michelet will go on the flight with us, make sure we’re down OK, clear a landing zone, then return here and bring the chopper back to the landing zone and wait for us to contact him for exfiltration or arrive at his landing zone.”
“Where the LZ?” Turcotte asked.
Freed pulled out his map. “This hilltop five kilometers from the watchtower where we’re jumping.”