The sudden transition from smooth concrete to rough sand felt like a pot-holed road as the red lights marking the end disappeared under the nose of the Airbus and Dan watched the barrier at the end come closer, slow, and stop, mere feet in front of his window.
The realization that they were in fact safely on the ground and actually at a dead stop took what felt like an eternity to fully comprehend.
“We made it!” Dan said, his tone beyond amazement.
“Yeah… we’re on the ground and stopped and alive,” Jerry echoed, breathing rapidly. “Holy crap!”
Smoke was already billowing from both main gear, flashing red lights reflecting off the interior of the cockpit as a squadron of fire trucks roared in to fight what they assumed would be flames.
“Let’s get the hell out of this cockpit,” Jerry said, feeling as if he’d been working through a completely unreal simulation. Surely there would be a quiet simulator bay beyond the cockpit door. None of this could be real.
Jerry punched up the PA before pulling off his headset to order an emergency evacuation.
“This is the captain. Evacuate the airplane! Follow the instructions of your flight attendants. When you’re out of the airplane, remain clear of the wings and the main landing gear!”
The shoulder straps and seatbelts of the two jumpseats were snapping off as Bill Breem and Tom Wilson stood and disappeared into the forward cabin to take control of the emergency evacuation. Jerry was already out of his seat before realizing that Dan hadn’t moved. He stopped and grabbed his left shoulder.
“You okay? Let’s go!”
Dan looked up at him in momentary disbelief before snapping back into action, clawing at his seatbelt release and clambering out to follow the captain.
“Roger that!”
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
Baghdad International Airport (8:10 a.m. local / 0610 Zulu)
After fanning out and racing down both aisles of the passenger cabin to make sure no one had been left aboard, both pilots converged at the front left entry and stood together momentarily in an air of mutual disbelief, watching the sea of humanity they’d skippered for the last ten hours being herded away from the smoking aircraft.
Dan started to move toward the exit slide, but Jerry caught his sleeve.
“I wasn’t sure we could pull this off, you know? So I want to… to thank you…”
There was a haunted look to the captain’s face, the suspicion of inadequacy casting deep shadows on the glow of success, and Dan recognized it all too well from his own deep well of personal experience.
“But we did pull it off, Jerry! That’s what counts.” Dan replied, extending his hand to the captain who took it, covering it with his other hand as he looked Dan in the eye.
“You saved us, Danny! You did it, man! I choked…” the words trailed off.
Dan Horneman interrupted him quickly, before the word “choked” could lead to something more emotional.
“No. You didn’t choke. You hung in there and led a good team. We did it. All of us.”
“Yeah, but…”
“Hey!” Dan said sharply, smiling as broadly as he could manage. “Where do you get off thinking you cornered the market on being scared shitless?”
“I was that.”
“So was I. But what say we get out of this crate before we burn to death congratulating each other! Okay?”
“Okay.”
Dan stepped out and jumped onto the slide for the quick trip to the bottom with Jerry right behind. They got to their feet as Carol waved them to follow the passengers she’d been marshalling aggressively off to the west side of the runway and clear of the fire trucks that were still spraying down the smoking main landing gear.
“I don’t know if the whole plane’s going to go up or not,” she said. “Come on, you two. Hurry!”
“The brakes are carbon, Carol. They don’t burn.”
“Yeah? But they smoke pretty well.”
It was Dan who thought to fish out his cell phone, turn it on, and try to punch up the direct number to Chicago, shocked when it rang without hesitation. He reached out and stopped the captain.
“Jerry, I’ve got Chicago on the line. I asked for Rick Hastings. You should talk to him.”
Jerry took the phone somewhat reluctantly.
“Captain, Rick Hastings here. Congratulations, sir. I have a room full of people here in Chicago who haven’t taken a breath in ten minutes! We are in your debt.”
Situation Room, The White House
Strange, Walter Randolph thought to himself as the smiles and congratulatory handshakes ran their course. This is a subdued response compared with other successes we’ve shared in this room. Of course, we were hardly in charge of anything.
The fate of everyone aboard Pangia 10 was just one scene in an unfolding play. Much was left in motion: an Israeli pilot still evading in the Iraq desert waiting for rescue, a lethal set of ballistic missiles still standing, fueled, and ready on several would-be launch sites deep inside Iran, and he could just imagine the tension in the Hole in Tel Aviv. The president had already diverted two airborne US Air Force C-17s to Baghdad to pick up the passengers and crew within the next hour, and no one seemed to know the precise reason for his also ordering a Special Forces team in to secure and guard the airliner. What was clear to everyone in the Situation Room, however, was that something was aboard the Airbus that must not be allowed to fall into unaffiliated hands. It was unspoken common knowledge that both DIA and CIA were nearly desperate to examine the mysterious electronics, as well as find out how Lavi had pulled it off.
The president had paused minutes before leaving the room, then turned to both Walter and his DIA counterpart with a chilling request for a meeting and a post mortem in two days. Clearly the chief executive was not happy with the performance of his intelligence community, and that posed a major problem.
Walter Randolph sighed internally. The next two days would be exhausting as they tried to build a defense for every conclusion, every action, and every opinion the CIA had rendered, and DIA would be doing the same. The worst part, he thought, was that neither agency yet knew precisely what the hell had just happened, or why.
Or, for that matter, how.
He pulled out his pen and made a quick note regarding the mysterious William Piper. The company’s conclusion in the heat of the battle had been that Piper was, in fact, the missing employee at Mojave who dispatched the wrong jet and the former Mossad agent was even supposed to be in Washington masquerading as a DIA operative. The president had been insistent on getting to the bottom of that. But then, on return to the Situation Room, the president had surprisingly appeared to lose interest.
Why? Walter wrote, underlining the word four times.
Baghdad International Airport
Ashira Dyan needed no briefing about the dangers to an Israeli agent who found herself suddenly in Iraq, even in post-Saddam Iraq. Being alive and on the ground was a positive thing, but the ground they were on was anything but good for an Israeli. That was especially true when you were in the company of the one Israeli official the Muslim world hated above all others.
As soon as Ashira’s feet had hit the ground, she was struggling with her satellite phone for a connection to Tel Aviv and some sort of plan. Casually blending in with the passengers to wait for alternate transportation would be unthinkable, and perhaps lethal, on a host of levels.
Moishe Lavi was equally aware of the dangers, but the urgency of the call he was struggling to connect took precedence even over the sudden sweating and pain in his left arm, both of which had come out of nowhere after he slid down the exit chute.