“You realize it’s probably inadmissible as evidence?”
“A major point for us to argue, eh?” Campbell replied. “That depends entirely on where Harris is tried, doesn’t it?”
“This isn’t over,” Jay said.
“Indeed, it is not,” Campbell said, shaking his head without smiling. He sighed and continued. “Please understand, Mr. Reinhart, I do admire your client, but even titans must answer to the law. We began moving in the direction of that little tradition nine hundred years ago with the Magna Carta and the legal restraints it placed on the original King John, if you recall. Eliminating sovereign immunity under this treaty is a great fulfillment of the rule of law, and I have no intention of breaking nine hundred years of progress by making an exception for your King John.”
THIRTY
Alastair finished the read-back of the air traffic control clearance and turned to Craig with a smile as he made a zooming gesture with his left hand and punched his transmitter button.
“Sigonella tower, Ten-Ten would like immediate takeoff clearance.”
“Damn right!” Craig echoed. “Let’s get the flock out of here.”
“Roger, Ten-Ten,” the young Navy controller in the tower replied. “You’re cleared immediate takeoff… ah, stand by, sir.”
Alastair turned his eyes toward the tower. “Say again, tower?”
Craig had begun rolling forward, but he braked now, stopping the jet short of the white “hold line,” which stood as a visual barrier to the runway beyond.
“What’s going on?” Craig asked.
“I don’t know…” Alastair began, following Craig’s gaze to the right. There were lights moving over the runway surface at the far end, more than five thousand feet distant.
“Cars?” Alastair asked.
Craig nodded. “I guess.”
The tower operator’s voice boomed in their ears, betraying surprise. “Ten-Ten, we, ah, have unauthorized vehicles entering the runway. Hold your position.”
Craig’s left index finger found the transmit button on his control yoke. “What do you mean, tower? What vehicles?”
“We’re unsure, Ten-Ten. They came through a back gate or something. Stand by.”
Headlights were aligning themselves with the reciprocal runway heading and racing toward their position. Two, three, and four more cars fell into formation behind and both pilots could now see red and blue rotating beacons flashing urgently on the top of each car.
“Craig, in the vernacular, ‘Oh shit!’ ”
“Roger on the ‘Oh shit,’ ” Craig replied, glancing at Alastair. “Get him to give us a blanket takeoff clearance.”
Alastair nodded and punched the transmit button simultaneously. “We’ll take the responsibility, tower, but give us a clearance to take off when we can do so safely.”
There was silence for twenty seconds before the tower operator’s voice returned with a defiant tone. “Roger, Ten-Ten, you’re cleared to takeoff at pilot’s discretion and at your own risk. Caution for men and equipment on the runway, and none of them is under the control of the tower.
“Get Captain Swanson on the phone!” Craig ordered, turning to Alastair. “You have the number?”
“Yes.” Alastair yanked a piece of paper from his pocket with one hand while pulling the satellite phone from its cradle with the other. He punched in the digits and waited as they watched the official cars stop one by one in the middle of the runway at two-thousand-foot intervals, effectively making a takeoff attempt suicidal.
Seconds ticked by like minutes as Alastair waited for the Navy commander to answer his GSM phone.
“Captain Swanson? Alastair Chadwick. We’ve got a problem out here.” He quickly explained the dilemma, then turned to Craig.
“He says he just found out. It’s the Carabinieri. They just came barreling onto the field. He says they smashed through a back gate.”
Alastair turned back to the phone. “Yes, sir?” He listened, nodding at intervals. “I understand. We’ll hold on.”
“What?” Craig asked.
“He’s trying to call Rome and find out what’s happening. He says his orders haven’t changed.”
The car closest to the 737 began moving toward them again, accelerating toward the head of the runway, where it turned off and stopped, the headlights pointed at the cockpit. Craig could see the doors of the police car open and several men get out, each of them carrying what appeared to be automatic weapons.
Deputy Foreign Minister Rufolo Rossini had been on his way home when summoned. He raced to his boss’s office to be confronted by the white-hot anger of a blind-sided bureaucrat.
“He misunderstood, Giuseppe!”
Giuseppe Anselmo’s secretary physically leaned around the corner and flagged his attention.
“Sir, I think you should talk to Captain Swanson at Sigonella.”
Anselmo turned with a finger in the air to rebuke her for the interruption, then thought better of it.
“Why?”
“The Carabinieri are overrunning his base.”
“The… what?”
She motioned to the phone and Anselmo launched himself at the instrument as he pointed Rossini to a chair. “Is this your work, too?”
Rossini had turned chalky-white and was having trouble getting a complete sentence out. “I… ah… don’t know how…”
Anselmo motioned him into a chair disgustedly as he yanked up the receiver and listened to Swanson’s complaint.
“I want you to stand by on this line, Captain. This is not being done on our orders. In fact, I just ordered Air Traffic Control to let them depart.”
He replaced the receiver and bellowed around the corner for his secretary to get a connection with the Carabinieri commander nearest to the leased Navy base, then turned his full fury on Rossini.
“What, exactly, did you say to them?”
“You mean the…”
“You know exactly what I mean! Why are they overrunning an American base?”
“All I said was that we… appreciated their help, and were still trying to find a way to detain Mr. Harris and his plane.”
“Wonderful! You said this to a Sicilian commander?”
“Yes.”
“A Sicilian commander who was left red-faced yesterday when told to leave that base? Are you insane?”
The phone rang and Anselmo scooped up the receiver with his right hand in a rapid, fluid arc which ended at his face.
“Is this the commandant? Good. This is the foreign minister of Italy. Listen very, very closely!”
Four armed men wearing uniforms of some sort had arrayed themselves in front of EuroAir 1010, one of them making a lateral gesture across his throat and pointing to each wing.
“He wants us to shut down,” Alastair translated.
“Like hell I’ll shut down!” Craig replied.
“Right. He’s waving an Uzi.”
“Let him wave it. I’m not shutting down.”
Alastair pressed the satellite phone to his ear, waiting for some sign that Captain Swanson had returned to the line.
“Alastair, check the runway diagram. Taxiway Bravo, the next one down. How much runway available from there?”
“Enough,” Alastair answered.
Craig’s left hand hauled the nosewheel steering tiller to the right immediately as he goosed the throttles and sent the four men ahead scrambling backwards. The 737 turned sharply right and reversed course as he guided the nosewheel back to neutral and then left to head back down the taxiway as if they were returning to the ramp. Craig glanced over his left shoulder, straining to see the reaction.