“We’re up!” the captain exclaimed.
Buzz retracted the gear without prompting. The aircraft responded to the reduced drag with more speed. The climb-out was on a gentle slope — no jump into the sky for noise abatement reasons. Instead, the Maiden skimmed above the glistening desert floor at two hundred knots, gaining speed and altitude at a mild, but acceptable rate.
“My stick,” the captain announced as they passed through fifteen hundred feet. Buzz released his soft backing grip and checked the displays thoroughly.
“Number three’s acting up.”
“Like usual.”
“It’s hot.” Buzz took out the performance manual. “Down four percent — no, five percent.”
“We’ll back all of them off twenty percent when we pass eight thousand.”
“Gotcha,” Buzz agreed.
They continued to take the jet up and over the water, oblivious to Hadad, who stood from his seat and now crouched behind them, looking through the thick windshield. He would rather look behind, but what was the point. Several months ago he had left his home, and now he was leaving without seeing his friend. The colonel had worked tirelessly to bring the mission, once just a concept, to reality, and the effort had weakened him further. Hadad would pray for him.
Now it was time for instructions. “Fly two-seven-oh, at thirty thousand.”
Neither pilot responded verbally to the command — they simply acted upon it, banking the Maiden to the left in a smooth, fluid turn. The captain knew he had his hands full with the unbalanced load. Trim would be a problem, especially later as fuel was burned and the balance further changed.
They both concentrated on their flying, trying to keep thoughts of how they had left a passenger behind in the dark, quiet recesses of their minds. It was horrific. Benghazi was behind them, and what was ahead neither knew.
“Set reduced thrust.”
Buzz followed the instructions, selecting reduced climb thrust on the Thrust Control Panel.
“At reduced thrust,” Buzz announced. He noted the altitude. “Passing eight-five-hundred.”
“Spell me?” the captain requested.
“Sure.” Buzz gripped his column. “My stick.”
“Slow and easy climb. The trim is lousy,” Hendrickson said unenthusiastically.
The Maiden rose into the sky, finding the cool, thin air that made its ascent slow. It would be a full thirty-five minutes to thirty thousand feet.
The captain checked the instruments, trying to occupy his consciousness. Everything was as it should be, save number three. The mere fact that the wings were still attached could be construed as a positive. But he cared little about the technicalities at the moment. They were small, infinitesimal concerns that would not be able to hold his attention. His thoughts were elsewhere, back at Benina, somewhere along the runway.
The checkpoint was gone.
Muhadesh slowed his Range Rover, then stopped. Where the tank had been was now only a wide circle of disturbed hard sand and track marks onto the road. They had gone, by the way of the main road from the direction of the tracks. He put it back in gear and continued on.
Two minutes later he again stopped, this time at a guard shack on the north side of Benina’s control tower, and was promptly waved through on recognition by the two smiling guards. Muhadesh was well known to the garrison at Benina, whose company and conversation he preferred to the ideologues back at the camp. These soldiers were from the rabble: common people, not very sophisticated, most from the arid regions far from the city. They were like him, doing their duty. Some did it reluctantly, some willingly. Few of them understood the significance of their government’s attitude toward the Western world, or to their Arab neighbor states. In conversation with them, topics such as goats, and old people, and the joy of swimming in the waters of the Mediterranean were common. It was refreshing, a welcome and too seldom respite from everyday happenings.
Muhadesh brought the vehicle around to the front of the tower, the bottom floor of which was the airport garrison’s command post. The implied formality of the term held little stock here. A lone lieutenant, his shirt open to the waist, dozed with his feet up while an old metal fan high on the wall struggled uselessly to cool the room.
The creak of the tattered screen door awakened the disheveled junior officer.
“Captain Algar!” The lieutenant sat up, struggling against the liberal reclining springs of the old wooden chair. He noticed the captain’s lowered stare and began buttoning his tunic.
“Good morning, Lieutenant. Or is it afternoon? I thought you might be waking from a good night’s sleep.” Muhadesh strode from one side of the CP to the other, his hands behind his back, eyeing the lieutenant alternately as he feigned a cursory inspection. “Is this your usual dress at your post?”
“No,” came the answer, and with it the second from the top button.
The look was the next interrogative.
“It has been a long night, sir.” He fingered some papers on the desk, as if they were some magic explanation. “A very long night. And today’s heat…as always, it takes your strength.”
“Mmm.” Muhadesh picked up a heavy paperweight, tossing it up over and over. “Lieutenant…”
“Hafez.”
“Lieutenant Hafez, where is Captain Ibrahim Sadr?”
“Sadr?” He looked to the piles of work.
A heavy, flat hand came down on a stack of files. “I am asking you…not your unfinished work. Now, again, where is Captain Sadr?”
“Sir, he left when the American plane departed.”
“Where?”
A swallow, justified by fear of the captain’s legendary, if seldom exhibited wrath, preceded the reply from the wide-eyed officer. “I do not know. He…he did not say.”
Eyes bored into the junior officer. You tell the truth. “Did he have anything with him? A duffel, possibly?”
The lieutenant shook his head, which was enough of an answer. Muhadesh had a good idea what it meant Sadr would not have gone directly back to Tripoli, not the prissy captain who was the “model” of a perfect officer. It was a joke, though one not funny in the least.
“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Muhadesh left the CP without further discussion and departed the airport by the way he came, waving at the guards as he passed through the gate.
The drive to the camp would be short. He would go there first, and a bit later into Benghazi. Muhadesh would have preferred that it be a clean, simple job. If Sadr had been here, it might have taken less time. He could have lured the prima dona into the open spaces outside of the airport, where things would be less conspicuous. As it was, that was not to be. He would venture into the city and punctuate his departure, making life in his homeland impossible.
And it would be worthwhile. He thought for a moment as he drove. Yes, it would be, but for whom?
Was this a normal reaction? the president wondered. He was angrier than he had ever been, at the hijackers, the Libyans, even at himself, though that was caused by the frustration and helplessness he felt. Vengeance was on his mind, and he knew that wasn’t right.
“Has there been any success contacting the Libyans?”
Bud shook his head.
“Sir, even their UN ambassador can’t get through,” Gonzales added.
The president scoffed at that. “He’s falling in line.”
“She, sir,” the COS corrected him.
Bud felt underdressed. The president and chief of staff were dressed somberly for the viewing at eleven.
“What about the body?”
“Satellite evidence indicates it’s still on the runway,” Bud answered. “We’ll work with the Red Cross to have it returned, as soon as the Libyans open up.”