She had started to have second thoughts as soon as she turned the Nissan around, seeing Justin’s jeep disappear in the dark night. She had been agonizing during the entire trip, torn between her sense of loyalty to her partner and to her agency.
“Well, we’ve got to find him and stop him.”
“Pardon?”
“I said we’ve got to stop him before he does something stupid.”
And how do we do that? she wanted to ask, but she was sure McClain had a plan.
“I’ll check the tracker in his sat phone,” he said. “I’ll also flag his passports, credit cards, IDs.”
“With all due respect sir, those measures will prove to be useless. Justin will turn off his sat phone and disable the tracker. He will not use any paperwork issued by the Service.”
“So what are you saying? That we do nothing?”
Carrie hesitated for a split second. “We can help him. I’m sure he can use a few more—”
“No, absolutely not. I can’t authorize a reckless operation, with no preparation, no reconnaissance.”
“CIA has eyes in the sky, and they can give us accurate aerial shots of the area. I’m sure they have a man or two on the ground around Sa’dah. They may be willing to help. The Yemeni government can also play a limited role. We have the exact location and the time where Justin will be about sixteen, eighteen hours from now. It’s doable.”
An unsettling silence followed for a few seconds. Carrie muttered a silent prayer for McClain to change his mind.
“No, we’re not helping him. We’re not starting a private war in Yemen. We want Al-Khaiwani, and we want to find the traitor. But not in this way, not now. There are too many variables, too many unknowns, too many unnecessary risks for all agents.”
“Sir, I’m volunteering to go.” She could hardly believe she was saying the words. “If I can have a safe infiltration and some ground support, I can stop Justin.” She finished her sentence quickly before she changed her mind or McClain interrupted her.
“You’re so like him, O’Connor, you know that? You both think you can do this on your own?”
“With your support and authorization, sir, yes, we can stop him.”
McClain seemed to mull over her words. “I’ve got to think about this, talk it over with CIA. I’ll make a decision soon. By the time you land in Nairobi, I should have an answer.”
Carrie kicked the Nissan in gear and turned toward the airport. “Thank you for considering it, sir.”
“Eh, don’t thank me yet. I might just decide to fly you back home and let Hall dig himself out of his own mess. I’ll be in touch.”
“Good bye.”
I hope you decide otherwise, she thought.
The Nissan’s tires raised a thick cloud of dust as she sped ahead.
Chapter Thirteen
The state Justin’s body had experienced over the last two hours could not be called sleep or even dozing off. Crouched in the front seat of his jeep, he did not move, his eyes focused at the end of the narrow airstrip straight ahead. His body was resting, but his mind was awake, fully active, processing and analyzing any sounds and moves around him. He had parked the jeep at an angle, so he could cover both the road leading to and the dirt runway at the same time in the same glance.
He had called Romanov earlier and agreed to his proposal. They worked out some details of the operation, which began with extracting Justin out of these dusty plains. Romanov was a filthy rich man, but even a filthy rich man needed some time to arrange for a light airplane pilot crazy enough — or brave enough — to fly at night and land in eastern Somalia, close to the border with Kenya. The area was crawling with Islamic militants, Godless bandits, Somali and Kenyan government troops, and not-so-secret foreign intelligence service operatives. A single RPG round or a well-aimed volley of a heavy machine gun — both weapons as common as the red dust in this lawless land — could bring down the airplane.
So Justin waited by the exfiltration point, a remote airstrip absent from any decent map, but well-known to smugglers and local outlaws. The pilot was expected to arrive at 2:30 a.m. and fly Justin to Kismayo, a port city in southern Somalia. Romanov had given Justin the coordinates of the remote airport, and Justin made sure he arrived there in plenty of time. He checked the perimeter, then called Romanov to confirm he was in position.
He gave some thought to his next move before making his next call. It would serve to secure him his own exit plan out of Yemen after the operation, if the operation was successful. It was Plan B, if Romanov’s exfiltration failed. It would be like his insurance plan. He hoped he would never have to use it, but it offered peace of mind to know it was there in the worst-case scenario. Justin made all calls through his personal satellite phone he carried with him in case of such a turn of events, when he could not rely on his agency for any help. Even Carrie did not know that number.
Carrie.
Justin wondered about McClain’s reaction to his defiance and hoped he would not unleash his anger on her. She had done her best to change his mind. He wished Carrie would have been convinced by his words. She would have really had my back, but hers was probably the right decision. Justin knew the impossibility of his mission. He hoped the team Romanov was putting together was worth the millions he claimed was their payment.
A barrage of tracer bullets cut through the black night sky, off in the distance. Clouds had blanketed most of the stars, and Justin followed easily their glowing trajectory. Somebody was throwing a party, maybe celebrating a pillaging or a killing. Justin rolled down his window. No sounds of gunfire. Just bright yellow streaks, bursting in irregular intervals and unsteady patterns but coming from a single location.
As he scanned the horizon, this time through his night-vision goggles, he noticed a bright dot moving across the sky slower than the fluttering fireflies around it. Justin adjusted the front objective lens and the eyepiece oculars of the goggles and looked at the dot as it grew in size. He could now make out its shape. A small airplane was flying toward him.
Justin got out of his jeep. He advanced with a swift pace toward a hedge of thorn bushes near the edge of the runway. The flying target was increasing by the second. Justin put the airplane in the sight of his AK. He was expecting a Cessna 172 with a single man aboard. The pilot was a Somali called Ibrahim. That’s all Romanov had said, and that was enough for Justin.
A sliver of the moonlight broke through a tear in the clouds. The dark silhouette of the airplane became visible as it started its descent. Justin noticed the high wings, the tricycle landing gear, the vertical tail and concluded it was indeed a Cessna. He ran to the jeep and switched on his headlights, then drove to the side of the runway. The light beams would illuminate the airstrip but not blind the pilot.
The Cessna dropped over the runway in a wobbly pattern. It veered first to the left, then to the right. Its nose was coming down at a high angle. Justin prayed the pilot would quickly make the correction. The airplane rumble was irregular, the engine coughing and spurting like a drunken man in a fit of rage. The airplane leveled off when it was still a few dozen feet over the ground. Justin thought it was still going at a much higher speed than necessary for landing. If the pilot did not slow down, he was going to overshoot the runway and end up in the thorn bushes.
The airplane lost some altitude and speed at the same time. It seemed as if it was just hovering there for a moment. Then it came down fast, bouncing on the hard-packed soil. The gears absorbed some of the shock, but the airplane shot up a couple of times. It zipped through the runway, raising a storm of dust behind its tail. The brakes did their job, eventually, and the Cessna stopped less than a dozen feet away from the jeep.