“Well it’s about damned time!” Schmitt’s voice came in a hushed growl over the radio.
“Are we comm secure?” Davis asked.
“You’ve got about a minute. I sent my copilot back to the cabin to check on a bogus oil leak. I’m flying with your buddy, Achmed.”
That name struck Davis hard. The last time he’d seem Achmed, the kid’s eye had been behind the reticle of a gun sight.
Davis said, “Do you realize what’s going on here?”
There was a long pause. “This is my fini-flight with FBN,” Schmitt said, using the old Air Force slang for the last flight with a unit. “After this, I get a nice severance check and a good letter of recommendation.”
“Is that what Khoury promised?” Davis said sarcastically. “You must realize that the airplane you’re flying is the control ship for a drone.”
“Yeah, so what? These idiots in this part of the world have spent the last two thousand years poking each other in the eye. I’m just going to make a few bucks out of it this time.” The transmission crackled as the signal began to degrade. Schmitt was getting too far away.
“This is a lot more than some regional skirmish, Schmitt. That drone is going to strike something big.”
“Like what?” Schmitt asked.
“I don’t know, but you can expect them to hang it on you, Boudreau, and Johnson. Get it? Three Americans. They hoisted the Stars and Stripes in the hangar you just left, and there’s a guy inside taking video of a desk with your old nameplate on it.”
No reply.
“Are you still there?”
“Yeah,” came a crackling reply, “I saw the flag.”
“Listen, dammit! I don’t expect you to sing ‘God Bless America’ here. I’ll just appeal to your more basic instinct. They’re setting you up. You’re not going to get any fat bonus, you’re going to get a life term in a Third World jail cell. Maybe worse.”
Again silence.
Davis threw his last pitch. “I found a phone in your filing cabinet that looked a lot like one I had. Did you pass some information to the CIA a few weeks ago?”
“Could be. A guy I met on a layover in Riyadh gave me the phone, said there could be a little money in good information. I’d seen the drone once, so I made a call. After that, the handset died on me. Nothing more I could do.”
Davis could argue that point. Now wasn’t the time. “Who’s on the airplane with you?”
“The engineer, Khoury, Achmed, and two of Khoury’s thugs.”
“We need to figure a way to stop this.”
“What do you expect me to—” Schmitt cut off his transmission.
There was silence for a moment, then Schmitt and a voice Davis recognized as Achmed began arguing about an oil pressure gauge. The transmission was continuous, so Schmitt had jammed the radio’s transmit switch on. Davis sat there and listened to the “hot microphone,” eavesdropping on the flight deck of the control ship. He thought he heard Khoury’s voice in the background, but the words were indistinguishable. Soon everything was indistinguishable as the transmission faded. Schmitt’s airplane was too far away.
“Dammit!” Davis muttered. Without the radio link he was helpless.
Then he heard Schmitt’s voice again, a briefly coherent transmission. His words were clear — not because the microphone was near his lips, but because he was shouting. “Dammit Achmed, I’m the captain, and that’s that! Take the airplane while I go back and check. Heading three-five-zero, and keep the speed up!”
The transmission faded again, this time to nothing. But Schmitt had just told him a lot. They were indeed following Blackstar, controlling it. They were heading north. And most important of all was the fact that he’d keyed a hot microphone. Bob Schmitt had made up his mind. He was on Davis’ side.
And he was asking for help.
Davis waited five minutes, hoping for something more. The speaker over his head was stone silent. Even if Bob Schmitt had seen the light, he was flying away at over a hundred miles an hour. Probably ten miles in the last five minutes. Davis turned to the larger problem — the attack that seemed imminent. Was the drone carrying a weapon? Or was Blackstar itself the weapon, every cavity from nose to tail packed with high explosives? The latter smacked of simplicity, so that got Davis’ vote. The northerly heading would take them to Egypt, then Israel, so the target had to be in that direction. A lot of possibilities.
But what to do about it?
Davis had no way to contact Larry Green, or for that matter anybody who could help. And even if he could get through, what would he say? “There’s a DC-3 and a drone heading north out of Sudan. Jammer Davis says shoot them both down.” What were the chances of that? Davis knew all too well how the alphabet soup of intelligence and military organizations in Washington operated. Collectively, they were like some massive bureaucratic train, full of momentum, full of confidence that brute size would be enough to overcome any obstacle. Never mind that the bridge ahead was out. That’s where Larry Green and Darlene Graham and all the rest were heading at this very moment — to the bottom of Confidence Gulch. But sitting where he was, Davis was in no position to help either. No help to Schmitt or anyone on the other side of the Atlantic.
Davis stared at the instrument panel in front of him. He who hesitates dies.
He started flipping switches, trying to remember the right sequence. Davis was about to start the port engine when he remembered the chocks. He bounded outside and scrambled beneath the airplane. The big wooden wedges under each main wheel were connected in pairs by a short length of heavy rope. They were as big as concrete blocks, and nearly as heavy. Davis kicked away the front chock on each side, and didn’t worry about the rear. On the way back to the entry door he spotted another problem — the forklift was parked just behind the cargo door, too close to the horizontal tail for the airplane to move.
“It’s always something,” he muttered in frustration.
Davis started the forklift, and after some trial and error with the levers and foot pedals, soon had it backed up and clear. He set the parking brake, jumped off, and had one hand to the entry stairs when he heard tires squeal and saw the glare of headlights wash over the fuselage. Davis turned to see Rafiq Khoury’s Land Rover settle in front of his left wing. Hassan the giant stepped out.
It’s always something.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
There is a reason boxing matches are classified by weight. Owing to the laws of physics, a larger man has a significant advantage. Davis had been in plenty of fights in his time — some with referees and official sanction, others decidedly less formal — yet aside from a few childhood scraps with older boys, he had held the size card probably 98 percent of the time. This was the other 2 percent.
Hassan seemed in no hurry as he strolled closer. Chances were, he was a 100 percenter. Fortunately, size wasn’t the entire issue. Training and experience also came into play. Unfortunately, the T. rex had something there too. Davis saw it in his movement and balance, the way his eyes registered everything. He had parked the Rover to block the airplane’s forward path. So he was big and trained. But Davis wouldn’t give him the trifecta of the last variable.
Davis stood calmly as Hassan approached, hoping like hell the guy spoke English. He said, “Did you lose your master?”
Hassan didn’t respond, so he either didn’t speak English or wasn’t going to let Davis distract him. As he ducked under the left wing, Hassan grabbed a set of wheel chocks. When he cleared the wing and stood tall, he raised one of the wooden blocks with a bent vertical arm, leaving its mate dangling by the short rope that connected the pair. It looked like he was holding a massive pair of nunchucks. Davis searched left and right, figuring that he wanted something too. He stepped sideways toward a toolbox that was resting on the back of the forklift. Davis looked into the tray of assorted tools and grabbed the biggest thing he saw, a foot-and-a-half-long crescent wrench that looked better suited to an ocean liner than an airplane.