When they rolled up in their UN-marked vehicles, Jambo — in full mask, goggles, and bunny suit — lowered his window and offered his paperwork and Hendrik’s blue, UN Laissez-Passer passport for inspection.
The armed soldiers looked at him like he was crazy. They were all too familiar with disease in Congo. They weren’t going to exit the safety of their booth and inspect anything. In fact, they immediately shut their own window, opened the security gates, and quickly waved the convoy through.
The jet’s airstairs were already down as the Land Cruisers pulled up alongside. As instructed, the pilots remained in the cockpit and did not exit.
Knowing that they were under observation, Harvath waited until they had loaded Hendrik inside the aircraft to say thank you. He shook each man’s hand and told them how much he appreciated what they had done.
While he would have loved to have bought them all beers and steak dinners to celebrate the completion of the assignment, his work wasn’t done. They were professionals. They understood.
As they filed down the stairs, Asher was the last to leave the plane. He stopped in the aircraft’s door and turned to Harvath.
“If you ever to come back to Africa,” he said, “I’ll be expecting a phone call. And that steak dinner.”
“You got it,” replied Harvath.
Asher stepped onto the top stair, gave the doorframe two quick taps and shouted “See ya, Superman,” as he returned to the vehicles.
After retracting the airstairs and closing the aircraft door, Harvath checked to make sure Hendrik was secure and then informed the pilots that they were ready to take off.
As the plane began to taxi forward, Harvath took a seat, cinched his seat belt, and drew a deep breath. Goma International was known for its crashes — both on landing and on takeoff. He prayed Mr. Murphy had overlooked the airport today.
The plane had been given first position and had been cleared for takeoff. The engines whined as the pilot throttled up the power and turned onto the runway.
Harvath leaned back in his seat and looked out the window. Ash, Mick, and Jambo had already cleared the gate and were headed back to the hotel. They were good men. Harvath had meant it when he said that he appreciated them. They had his back and had proven that he could trust them. That was everything in his book.
He could only imagine the new assholes Decker was going to tear them once they cut her loose. But no matter how arrogant or nasty she was, they would take it like pros and make sure she got on her flight, even if they had to carry her onto the plane.
As the jet raced down the runway and lifted off into the air, he watched Congo fall away beneath him. This was the point where he usually felt relieved. Not this time.
Throughout the flight, he monitored Hendrik and kept him pumped up with sedatives. When the jet touched down in Malta, it taxied into a private hangar where he handed over the prisoner to the interrogation team. The lead operative was a man named Vella. Harvath had never met him before, but he knew him by reputation. He was very good at what he did. He worked out of a facility masquerading as a rural Maltese farmhouse. It had been irreverently nicknamed the “Solarium” because most of it was deep below ground with no windows. If Hendrik was holding anything back, Vella was going to get it.
Waiting in the hangar for Harvath was a new jet and crew. The Gulfstream G650ER had been arranged by Beaman to get him back to the States as quickly as possible. It came fully catered along with a flight attendant. But the best feature as far as Harvath was concerned was the private bedroom.
He had a drink just after takeoff and another with his meal. By the time he took off his clothes and hit the bed, he was more than ready to close his eyes and fall asleep.
He woke up a couple of times in flight — just long enough to open his eyes, check his watch, and drift back asleep.
It was a godsend — a chunk of over eight hours of uninterrupted time. When he couldn’t sleep any longer, he availed himself of the en suite bathroom and took a long, hot shower. He then shaved as he let the water pound against his body.
After drying off, he returned to the bedroom, where he found the bed made, his clothes hung up, the TV turned to a satellite news channel, and coffee waiting. Sitting on the bed was a menu offering a range of meals he could choose from before they landed.
This really was the way to fly. The only thing it was missing was someone to share it with. He had no doubt Lara would love it. Who wouldn’t?
Scanning the menu, he made his decision, and called up front to order. By the time he had dressed and walked out of the bedroom, the table had been set with new silver, new flowers, and a fresh linen tablecloth. A plate of fresh fruit was already waiting. Lara would like this a lot.
The flight attendant asked if he wanted a cocktail, and he politely declined. He knew he was going to have to hit the ground running when the plane landed.
After eating a double portion of bacon and eggs, he took a bottle of water back to the bedroom and closed the door. There wasn’t much time before they touched down, and he wanted to use it to get his thoughts together.
He didn’t know how secure the plane’s WiFi was, so he had refrained from using his laptop. He didn’t like going in to the office blind, but he didn’t have any choice. Security always came first.
They would be landing at Dulles and Harvath assumed the Old Man would send someone to pick him up. If no one was there, he would just hop in a cab. The Carlton Group was not that far away. The building’s proximity to Dulles had been one of the selling points for Carlton. Taking in the crawl along the bottom of the screen, Harvath tried to get up to speed on what had transpired while he had been away. He also needed to make the mental shift from Congo mode to back home, CONUS mode — military speak for Continental United States.
Once the plane had landed and come to a stop, the flight attendant lowered the airstairs and a U.S. immigration agent boarded the plane. Harvath handed the man his passport, as well as the still blank declaration form the flight attendant had given him.
The agent looked at it and smiled. Harvath was on a very special VIP list.
“Nothing to declare then?” he asked.
“Only that I’m glad to be home.”
“It’s good to have you back, sir.”
The man handed Harvath’s passport back to him, and Harvath picked up his bag and stepped off the plane. The crew met him at the bottom of the airstairs and thanked him for flying with them. They were extremely professional and he thanked them in return before heading across the tarmac.
Though most of his travel was done out of D.C.’s Reagan International, he knew the private aviation routine at Dulles very well and walked toward the Signature Flight Support building.
When he stepped inside, he saw that Reed Carlton had sent someone to meet him. Standing with a garment bag over her shoulder was one of his colleagues from the Carlton Group, Sloane Ashby.
“You better not have been in my house,” Harvath said as she held out the garment bag to him.
Only Reed Carlton had keys to Harvath’s home, but on more than one occasion he had given them to Ashby for one reason or another.
Harvath didn’t like it. Not only because he didn’t want her looking around his house when he wasn’t there but also because it was demeaning to an operator of Ashby’s status to relegate her to errand-girl status.