“No mistake,” Nasim smiled back. “He’s a little beauty. I opted for all the VIP options when I bought him. King of the skies!”
“And how long ago was that?” asked Nick, approaching the small turbo prop plane that didn’t look like it would reach the end of the runway, let alone the other side of Africa, almost two thousand miles away.
“Let’s see, my son’s forty,” he began, “and it was a few years before he was born… so, maybe forty-three years ago? Beechcraft King Air, never let me down yet…unless I wanted it to, of course,” he added, laughing.
He opened the door and the interior did not look any different than the external condition. Four seats lined each side of the fuselage and the cockpit area was open to the rest of the plane. The seats were badly worn and the controls were from a whole different era, before computers. It would have been an excellent museum piece.
Nasim turned to face him, instantly losing his joviality, directing the discussion to money. “So young man, payment. Return to Sudan, no questions asked, $12,500 as agreed.”
Nick pondered the situation. He looked back at the gleaming corporate jet, a small Learjet. It would be twice as fast.
“A quick call to Net Jets and I’m sure, with all the docs and flight plans in order, you’d be good to go. Of course, it needs a good tarmac runway for landing,” said Nasim, tapping his nose and pointing to his tires.
Nick looked at them. They were oversized with a chunky tread. The plane could land anywhere.
Nick handed over his pre-loaded credit card. Nasim looked at it carefully and then pulled out his cell to connect to the credit card’s website. He checked the balance. $15,000 was showing. It seemed Nasim was more than familiar with this type of transaction, somewhat surprising Nick, who thought he was going to have a hard sell.
“I don’t have change,” said Nasim.
“If we get there alive, consider it a bonus. If we don’t, it doesn’t really matter,” replied Nick, stepping into the small plane and taking one of the seats.
Nasim climbed in, removed his tie and started the engines, which immediately fired up. Being the only aircraft on the field, they were given immediate clearance. Nasim wasted no time in powering the small twin prop plane down the runway and with a prayer to Allah, lifted off.
Mustafa Ghazi was arranging Nick’s next meeting, just as Mohammed Farsi had organized the meeting with Mustafa. It wasn’t an ideal plan, and involved a significant risk should the meeting details fall into the wrong hands, but it also built a significant level of trust. Trust was lost far more easily than it was gained. Having killed the Caliph, Nick had a mountain to climb but with overwhelming evidence for his actions, the trust was coming back. That and a plan that would strike back and destroy America in the name of the Caliph certainly helped.
“Do you have the exact co-ordinates?” asked Nasim.
Nick handed Nasim a slip of paper Shaheed had given him.
Nasim punched the details into a small GPS locator. “This can’t be right,” he said, looking at the destination displayed by the coordinates.
“Why, what’s wrong?”
“It’s directing us into the desert in Northern Sudan, hundreds of miles from anywhere.”
“No, it’s right,” said Nick, closing his eyes and grabbing some sleep.
Chapter 36
Carson and Frankie arrived at NCTC minutes apart, well before Turner but not before Reid. Reid had already gone through the previous night’s updates from across the world by the time they arrived. The situation was, as she informed them on arrival, unchanged. Nick Geller had vanished.
Reid pointed to a screen on the bottom left of the wall of screens showing the infected man. “They reckon eight hours at most, if the poor guy lasts that long.” She shivered.
“We may have a lead,” announced Frankie, not wanting to linger any longer than necessary on the Ebola victim’s image.
Reid perked up. Leads over the previous twenty-four hours had been either nonexistent or false-starts.
Frankie was bringing Reid up to speed when Turner arrived. She started from the beginning again.
“He’ll have ditched the identity too,” said Turner.
“Seven million Euros to deposit though, what are the chances of that amount being deposited in one go at around that time?” explained Frankie.
“It’s a long shot,” said Reid. “If he changed everything else, why leave the amount of money the same?”
“That’s what I thought and then I thought maybe he’d think the amount was irrelevant given how many transactions are made daily.”
Turner looked at Reid and nodded. “Worth a try?”
“Fair enough, we’ve got nothing else,” said Turner. “Frankie, grab Dan and check out all the other private banks.”
Frankie grabbed a pad and rushed off to find Dan.
“So where are we on the fleeing radicals?” asked Carson.
“Four hundred and eighty-two to date and they were just the ones on our watch list. We have another seven hundred or so who were being watched and haven’t gone anywhere.”
“I’d bet my left testicle that that’s because they shouldn’t have been on the list in the first place,” said Carson bitterly. “How many of them are we still tracking?” he asked.
Reid coughed. “Twenty-three,” she replied, embarrassed.
“Jesus! Four hundred and fifty-nine lost, just like that?!”
“It was a very coordinated move. Most of them had no bookings. They just headed to the airport without notice, paying cash for flights leaving within the hour. The Security Services in England are tracking ten of the twenty-three after they landed in the UK. Six are being tracked by the Germans, four by the French and three by the Spanish. Most took flights but never arrived. They must have booked transfers under different names when they arrived at their first destinations, thereby avoiding having to leave the airport.”
“What are the twenty-three doing?”
“So far, nothing. They’ve just visited family or friends.”
“Had they pre-booked their flights?” asked Turner.
Reid checked down the list of names. “They were all pre-booked,” she said.
“Shit! How can we lose four hundred and fifty-nine potential terrorists so fucking easily?!” shouted Carson to no one in particular.
“It was hours before we realized what was happening and by that time, we were desperately trying to coordinate resources to be where they were landing but they never arrived where they were supposed to,” replied Reid defensively. “We’re going through footage and passenger lists and bookings, but it’s taking time.”
“I’m not criticizing you, Jane,” replied Carson. “It’s just frustrating. They’re handing our asses to us on a silver platter!”
“What about the twenty-three?” asked Turner.
“Keep a watch on them. If they come back, I suspect they should be off the watch list. If nothing else, we’ve freed up a hell of a lot of resources.”
Frankie and Dan spent the day calling every Swiss bank they could find. A number of transactions of similar amounts at around that time were found. It would take some time to track them all back to source and identify the owners but they were getting somewhere, or at least it felt as though they were.
At 6:00 p.m., Carson approached an exhausted Frankie. “May I have a word?”
“Of course,” she answered.
“In private,” he said, looking at Dan.
Dan removed himself from earshot.
Carson leaned in closer. “I think you may have done it,” he said happily.
“I haven’t done anything.”
“No, let’s just say that the NSA can see and hear more than most people think they can. Anyway, I gave them a few parameters this morning and asked them to start a search,” he said, pressing a piece of notepaper into her hand.