“Is that possible?” the President said as Jay held the terminal door open for him and Sherry.
“I haven’t had time to work on it,” Jay said when he caught up with them after handing off the door to Garrity and the others, “and frankly, I was reluctant to make a reservation in your name for fear Campbell’s team would be watching.”
“You have a list of the flights, though?” Sherry asked.
Jay nodded. “Yes. Aer Lingus and Delta are the direct ones, although Delta makes a stop in Shannon. I was thinking you could use my passport, John…”
The President had come through the door and stopped, shaking his head “no” as he cast a sideways glance at Sherry. “I’m not going to do it that way, Jay. I’ve got to draw the line somewhere. Besides, my using your passport would be a criminal offense in almost any nation on earth. You know that.”
“I… yes, but I just want to get you home.”
“Well, I want to get me home, too, but not by pulling some cheap stunt.”
He saw Jay wince and hastened to put his hand on Jay’s arm. “That wasn’t a shot at you, Jay. You’re doing exactly what I need you to do by looking at every option, but I’ve got to ride herd on my own panic.”
Jay nodded. “I understand.”
“I’m very concerned,” Harris continued, inclining his head toward Craig Dayton and Alastair Chadwick, who were waiting at a respectful distance, “that I’ve let these two wonderful pilots put themselves in great professional jeopardy for me. If they lose their jobs, I’ve got to fix it.”
“We had to get you out of Italy, John.”
“I know. But I’m getting more nervous about this by the hour, because I’m finally beginning to appreciate the gigantic scope of the dragnet Miraflores has cast around the globe to snare me. I’m sure Stuart has unlimited funds and unlimited numbers of people to help him.”
Another pulse of self-doubt shot through Jay’s head. In contrast to the legal juggernaut captained by Stuart Campbell, John Harris’s legal team consisted of a single barrister of unknown capability, a solicitor he had yet to meet, and a failed Texas jurist trying to reclaim his long-dormant stripes as an international lawyer. The odds were shameful, and he would need every minute to prepare for battle in the Irish courts.
Craig Dayton caught Jay just before he climbed into the first of two vans hired to take them to the nearby hotel.
“Where do we go from here, Mr. Reinhart?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Are you going to need us, I mean? My airplane and my crew?”
“I don’t know. Can you stand by through tomorrow?”
Craig looked around at Alastair, who was approaching with his bags, then back at Jay. “Look, we’re probably about to be fired, and… the reason I need to know, is that if the charter is continuing, I can probably get EuroAir to let us keep on going. I know the only reason they agreed to this charter is the pressure the White House put on them, but once it’s over, the money’s stopped, and the political pressure is off, we’ll be ordered to deadhead the bird to Frankfurt.”
“Tell them the charter continues and the money won’t stop,” Jay said immediately.
Craig nodded. “Good. I… may need some help from Washington again if the stunt we pulled over the English Channel has too many people calling for our heads. They thought we’d gone down, and there was a rescue effort.”
“Let me know. I’ll make the calls to D.C. and do my best.”
“One other thing. We may need more pressure from D.C. anyway to go back Stateside with the airplane.”
“You can make it Stateside? Without a fuel stop in Iceland or Canada?” Jay asked, his eyebrows up a notch. “I thought…”
Craig nodded as he glanced at Alastair once more. “Let me put it this way. Dublin to Presque Isle, Maine, is about twenty-eight hundred nautical miles, but the maximum range of this airplane is just a tiny bit over three thousand nautical miles. That means that if the headwinds aren’t too bad, and if we fly at what’s called maximum endurance airspeeds, and if the airports in Iceland and Greenland and Canada aren’t socked in as alternate fields, we might be able to make it safely, although there’s one big legal hitch.”
“I should say!” Alastair chimed in.
“What?” Jay asked.
“This isn’t an ETOPS bird.”
“That’s… alphabet soup to me,” Jay replied, leaning against the van and willing himself to believe he wasn’t tired.
“We love esoteric acronyms in aviation,” Craig was saying. “ETOPS means extended twin-engine overwater operation, and to reach the U.S. mainland from here we’d be way, way out over the Atlantic, instead of staying within three hundred miles of a suitable airfield, which is the normal limit.”
“So… you’d be doing something illegal?”
“More… against regulations than illegal… in a criminal sense,” Craig added.
“Mr. Reinhart,” Alastair interjected, “what my partner here is trying to say with practiced understatement is that technically we’re not allowed to fly passengers straight out over the Atlantic, even though we are equipped with all the required overwater gear: life rafts, life jackets, survival gear, and such. You see, there’s a certain procedure for officially blessing twin-engine jets for such operations, and this one hasn’t yet qualified. We’re already in terrible trouble with our company, but even if we weren’t, I guarantee you EuroAir would never approve such an illicit route.”
“They wouldn’t have to,” Craig said. “We’ll file by way of Keflavík, Iceland, and Gander, Newfoundland, then to Presque Isle, Maine. Only we’ll change the routing in flight and go direct, or as close to direct as they’ll let us. There is a specific system of tracks across the North Atlantic.”
“I think I understand,” Jay said.
“I’m assuming you still don’t want to touch down in any country other than the U.S., including Canada.”
“That’s right… you can navigate over water?” Jay asked.
“Piece of cake,” Craig answered, noticing the pained expression on Alastair’s face.
“I hate that phrase,” Alastair muttered.
“He hates that phrase,” Craig repeated, arching a thumb at the copilot. “We’ve got two GPS’s, global positioning satellite systems. We know our position within three feet at every moment.”
“Yes, indeed,” Alastair said. “For instance, at this moment we know our careers are precisely within three feet of the intersection of Unloved and Unemployed. So why not enjoy the trip and push on some more?”
“In other words…” Jay started to say, completely confused.
“In other words,” Craig replied, “we can do it if the President needs us. Provided the winds aren’t ridiculous.”
“Try to arrange it, fellows,” Jay said. “If I can’t get him out any other way, we’ll do it your way.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
The drive to the midlevel airport hotel was brief, and the restaurant Garrity had lined up to feed them turned out to be a smokey pub with too much noise to permit serious conversation. It was nearly eleven when they returned to the hotel, said goodnight to the two pilots and three flight attendants, and gathered in John Harris’s room, with the President, Sherry Lincoln, and Jay sitting on two chairs and an ottoman while Matt Ward and Michael Garrity stood.
“I do hope the accommodations are satisfactory, Mr. President,” Garrity said. “Mr. Reinhart wanted to keep you as close to the airport as possible.”
“They’re fine, Michael,” the President said. “I don’t always need to be in a six-room suite.”