“Break away! Break away!” The AWACS commander yelled into his boom mike. Two seconds later the converted Boeing 707 banked hard right as the pilot responded to the order and broke away from the KC-10 tanker replenishing the AWACS’s half-empty tanks.
“Read it back, Com,” the commander ordered.
“It’s just chatter, sir. I’ve got it on tape, but the stuff sounds like preflight for their roll.”
“Radar, looks like the bird’s taking off.” The commander checked his own display. “Anything in the way.”
“Negative.”
“Outstanding. Tag anything that gets within twenty miles of that bird on my scope, as well as yours, and give me a holler. Com, what’s going on now?” He could hear it on his headset, but he also had to process other relative information. The com officer was dedicated to listening.
“Sir, he’s got a hot mike. He’s transmitting everything. Jesus H. Christ, that’s one slick-thinking pilot.”
“Cut the commentary. Just give me the important stuff. You’re my filter, remember.”
“She’s up, sir,” Radar reported. “Gaining altitude. Slow climb.”
Okay, baby, where are you goi— “What was that?” the commander asked, interrupting his thought. He heard it, but…
“He said Jose Marti, sir,” Com reported. “Jose Marti is their destination. Just slipped it into the old conversation.”
That smart son of a bitch. “Keep off that frequency, Com. No chances. That guy in the cockpit with them might be able to hear.”
“Yes, sir,” Com responded, a smile evident in his voice.
“We’ll just wait. Get that off to the Pentagon.” It was good news, the commander felt. They had an idea where the aircraft was going, even if it contradicted their earlier announcement.
He also knew that at least one body of men would not be happy to hear the development. Their aircraft was just coming into the inner zone on his scope.
McAffee gave a polite ‘thank you, sir’ to Cadler on the other end of the radio and slammed the headset down on the console in front of the startled communications officer. He stopped at the top of the stairs to the hold, letting the initial anger at the news dissipate. It took a full minute before he proceeded down.
“All right, listen up,” the major shouted. The Starlifter started into a shallow bank to the left. It was obvious to the troops that something wasn’t right — Tenerife was to the south, or right. “Effective now we are in a stand-down. The bird flew.”
The soldiers reacted quietly. This had happened before, but not when they had been so close, in such a big operation.
Anderson looked around, catching Graber’s gaze. It was downcast, but not fixed. “What happened?”
Sean noticed the diagram in Joe’s hand. It had been there for over an hour. “The aircraft took off. We’re heading back.”
“Back? Back to where?” Joe excitedly asked.
“Pope, most likely.”
Joe pulled himself up from the wraparound seat. He worked his way across the tilting cargo deck to McAffee’s position in the darkness of the Humvees’ side. “What the hell is this about going back? What about those things on board?”
The major looked up, almost uninterested in the civilian’s protest. “Unless you think good old Fidel is going to give us landing rights, then we don’t have much choice.”
“What?” Joe didn’t understand.
“Havana, Anderson. They’re going to Havana. They announced it over the radio. Nice, safe Havana, where we can’t touch them.” Blackjack was pissed, and it showed.
Anderson didn’t say anything else. It was just as well, since the major’s eyes said, ‘Back the fuck off’ quite clearly.
Failure had again invaded his existence.
Muhadesh pushed the roller-mounted chair into its space under the desk. It didn’t go in completely, requiring him to push it with more force. The jacketed arm fell into view.
Indar. He, too, had failed. An hour he had been given to restore power, and still they were without it, leaving the camp in the dark and the Americans with only a partial response to their request. Muhadesh bent down with the flashlight and shone it on the body. It was curled into an unnatural ball in the cramped space below the desk. If the diminutive lieutenant was any bigger, he would not have fit. Muhadesh lifted the arm and laid it back against the head. Still there was little blood from the bullet hole in the forehead.
The Beretta was less three bullets. Two used on the whore in the city, and one on the wormy lieutenant. It was still a waste of lead, Muhadesh thought. He tossed the still loaded weapon under the desk. “Take this with you into the hereafter, Indar. It will not help. Satan fears no gun.”
He went to his wall safe. The combination was a date, one he would never forget. The date of al-Dir’s disappearance. Inside the small boxlike vault were some papers, unimportant now as always, and a holstered weapon. It was a Russian-made Makarov pistol, a gift from al-Dir. Muhadesh removed it from its leather holster. The steel was cold and clean, with a slight feel of the penetrating oil he used to regularly clean it. Just enough to keep the rust away. Also in the safe were two clips, both full. He took one, inserted it into the weapon, and chambered a round. There was no need for a second magazine.
He put it back in the holster, clipping that to his belt. Next he checked his pocket; the messages were there, including the last, handwritten one. It was in Italian, his second language. If things went accordingly, someone would get it, and would have it translated in due time. It was best that those who were coming for him didn’t know the entire story immediately.
He grabbed his parka, the one earned as a commando years before. The room was left behind, locked, without a second look or thought. It was now his past.
The military jeep hesitated to start in the cool night, as was usual. It turned over after a minute’s trying. Muhadesh swung it around, heading south from the command center toward the camp’s rear exit road. He followed that to the perimeter gate — actually a hole in the combined barbed wire-chain link fence — and drove through, getting a casual salute from the enlisted man at the rear. Within two minutes the red taillights faded to almost imperceptible dots in the distance as the vehicle headed south, and then east.
It was well past midnight. A new day, Muhadesh thought. A beginning. There was no joy to accompany that thought.
“Our choices are few, gentlemen.” The president was looking for answers. “I don’t like what is happening.” He was mindful of the contingency plan Bud had set in motion.
Bud and Meyerson were silent. Coventry jingled the ice in his glass. The water was long gone. Outside the light was still evident, though it was tempered by the scattered gray in the sky. It cast pretty, uneven shadows on the south lawn, leaving several of the smaller trees shrouded in the shade of the larger ones.
“Can we get them to land somewhere before going on to Chicago?” Ellis asked.
“The point is to not let them in the country,” Bud responded. “If we let them in, we lose.”
“Then what?” Meyerson inquired of the others, not expecting a satisfactory answer.
“Sir,” Coventry began, “who are the culprits in this?”
“Your point?” the president responded.
Coventry sat forward, putting his glass down. Meyerson grabbed a handful of nuts from the tray, dropping a few into his mouth.
“Leverage and diplomacy of the most delicate order,” Coventry replied. “One of the causes of this crisis, one who made it possible, is sitting protected in a villa somewhere outside of Havana. The world might not know that, but we do, and a certain Communist dictator does.”