Assassin

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Flight 00

NATURALLY, HE WAS A LITTLE NERVOUS, JOHNNY ADARE reassured himself, wiping the sweat from his palms on his trousers. Hell, you got a suitcase bulging with a couple of million pounds cash in the back of the bus. Your passenger manifest includes four hundred zoned-out zombies, and you’ve got one royally pissed-off pilot back there somewhere, too. You got LSD or Ecstasy or God knows what in your oxygen system, and, plus, you got a lunatic Indian snake charmer sitting in the left-hand seat shooting a goddamn movie.

And that was all before the really bad part started.

“British 77 heavy,” a voice suddenly crackled over his headphones. “This is L.A. Center, good afternoon.”

He looked over at the doctor and tried to pull himself together. He’d been dreading this part. How to pull it off, meaning land this plane at LAX without a hitch and walk away a millionaire. The main thing was to stay cool and act normally.

The doc nodded “okay,” go ahead. Adare thumbed the mike.

“L.A. Center, British 77 heavy at three-five-oh, good afternoon,” Adare said, and thank God he now actually remembered what real pilots sounded like.

“Speedbird 77 heavy…hold on, sir…uh, roger…turn right to a heading of one-four-oh and…uh…stand by.”

“Speedbird 77, roger!”

“Excellent, Johnny!” Soong said, all excited. “Perfect! Just like that. Keep it up and we are good!” It was a few minutes before the tower came back.

“Uh, Speedbird 77 heavy, sorry about that. I have you, radar contact, one-sixteen northwest of Los Angeles. Descend now and maintain flight level one-niner-zero…L.A. Center.”

“Descend and maintain one-niner-zero, Speedbird 77 heavy.”

Another long silence. Johnny watched Soong with his camera. Soon, he’d be getting a good shot of the hazy California coastline in the far distance. Malibu down there somewhere. Man, the stories old Johnny could tell about Malibu nights—

“Uh…Speedbird 77 heavy, give me your fuel remaining and souls on board.”

“Stand by, L.A….” he said, looking at Soong.

“Tell him…okay…tell him 367 passengers,” the doctor said, running his finger down the last passenger manifest he’d downloaded from British Air. He had all the documents spread out on his lap. Crew names and everything. He was prepared for this, had to give the little bugger credit.

“77 heavy, this is Center. I need the number of souls on board and fuel remaining…”

“Los Angeles, we have 367 souls on board, and 20,000 pounds remaining.”

“Stand by, 77…”

“Some kind of a problem, Center?”

“Speedbird 77, confirm you are squawking two-five-zero-six…”

“Squawking two-five-zero-six, L.A. Center.”

“Captain, could I have your name?”

“Center, certainly…may we ask why…what the hell?”

Dr. Soong looked over at him, exasperated. “Just tell him! Simon Breckenridge. Jesus Christ, Johnny. Don’t lose it now.”

“Los Angeles Center, British 77 heavy, this is Captain Simon Breckenridge. Some kind of a problem, L.A. Center?”

Another long silence.

“Speedbird 77 heavy, this is L.A. Center…uh, affirmative. Affirmative, some kind of a problem, sir. I will need your personal company I.D. number, over.”

“Stand by, L.A….”

He looked at Soong who was feverishly going through the reams of paperwork.

“Damn! This ain’t working, Doc! They smell something.”

Soong put a hand on his shoulder, trying to reassure him.

“Don’t do this, Johnny! We’re so close! I feed you everything you need to land this plane! No question we can’t answer. Walk away. Rich, rich, rich! All we need is you to stay calm. Okay? You see? Deep breath, that’s it. Here’s your ID number! Now. Read it to him but ask him why first. This is most unusual, you’re resenting this question, okay?”

“L.A., Speedbird 77 heavy…right, this is Captain Simon Breckenridge, company ident alpha–four–four–x-ray–seven, over.”

“Roger, 77 heavy…that’s company ident alpha–four–four–x-ray–seven, sir.”

“That’s affirmative, L.A. Can I ask why you…uh—”

“Uh, okay, thank you, Captain. Sorry. Please come to heading zero-three-zero, contact SoCal Approach on one-two-five point two and have a good afternoon, Speedbird 77 heavy.”

“One-two-five point two, Speedbird, good day!”

Johnny sat back in seat and rubbed his face with both hands. Then he looked over at the little doctor and both of them laughed out loud. They’d done it!

The president shook his head and rubbed his bloodshot eyes. His family was safe deep inside a mountain somewhere in West Virginia. He wished he could say the same for the other couple of hundred million souls he’d sworn to protect. Could the Constitution survive this attack? Could democracy? Jesus. He hadn’t slept much in a week and he was not one of those guys, and there were some in Washington, who could get away with it.

There was one thing that terrified the president of the United States right now, and it scared him more than anything else. Bad advice.

“What do you think, Warren?” he asked his vice president, Warren Baker.

“I think Hawke’s got bad information, sir. Period. You heard that pilot. Why he—”

“Steve?”

Steve Thompson, his national security advisor, looked at him for a long beat, then nodded his head. “I agree with Warren, Mr. President, look, you’ve got a foreign carrier properly transponding his assigned squawk, correctly identifying himself absolutely as the assigned company pilot to that squawk, and now we got an outbound American Airlines captain in visual contact saying it’s got the same damn tail number as the British Air plane that left Singapore roughly twelve hours ago.”

“That British Air pilot. He sound to you like he had a gun to his head?”

“He absolutely did not, Mr. President,” Thompson said. “Rock solid.”

“No,” Baker agreed. “No coercion in that voice.”

“Holy Mother of God,” the president said. “Get the British prime minister on the line. And patch me through to Hawkeye.” A Marine bird colonel waved at him and he picked up the blinking phone.

“Hawkeye, we got a little problem here,” the president said.

“Yes, sir,” Alex Hawke replied.

“Airplane now approaching LAX is a Boeing 747-400ER, tail number matches the one BA confirms as having departed Singapore at 0700 hours this morning. Passenger count is identical. Squawk code identical. Pilot identifies himself as Captain Simon Breckenridge, exactly the man who should be sitting in the left-hand seat according to the BA spokesman in London and has correctly given his company identification number. Any ideas?”

“Yes, sir. Shoot him down.”