Blackout

CHAPTER 19

A last line of thunderstorms had pelted the airport with hail the size of golf balls and moved on, leaving a resplendent starry sky in the hour before sunrise.

Kat had spent the previous hour sitting and thinking in the backseat of the Consulate’s car while the driver slept in the front. She startled him awake by getting out to stretch and look at the stars at the same moment Jake rang her satellite phone.

“Kat? Langley’s relayed the word that Meridian has gone down in Vietnam.”

Kat felt her legs get rubbery and she leaned against the car. “Oh my God!”

“All I have is a potential crash site, nine miles west of the coastal city of Da Nang, Vietnam, in some low mountains. No information on survivors.”

“Did it come down intact?” she asked, knowing instinctively that a jumbo jet couldn’t withstand a high-speed encounter with a forest.

“Ah… they mentioned a debris field almost a mile long, Kat, with active fires in the area. That doesn’t sound hopeful.”

The image of the cabin in which she had sat for a brief moment was etched in her mind, but she forced her eyes open and made herself concentrate.

“Okay, Jake, here’s what I propose to do.” She stood away from the car, commanding her legs to support her. “I should get the first flight into Vietnam and get to the site as fast as possible. Can you formally approve that and assign me to the case, and get me out of that obligation at the Consulate? I think we’ll also have to coordinate with NTSB.”

“I’ll need twenty minutes.”

“Call me back. I’m going to go pick out a flight. Oh… Jake, did they ever see that Global Express in the air?”

“Langley said no.”

“Can we check with NRO directly?”

Again Jake fell silent on the other end, long enough to register extreme discomfort. “You realize, Kat, that NRO is probably monitoring this call.”

“On tape, yes. But I have a reason for not trusting Langley on this. Methinks they doth protest too much on the subject of accident versus terrorists. If NRO saw the Global Express, Langley will want to discount the identification because it disproves their midair theory and leaves us with a terrorist attack. Therefore, they’re getting in the way of a criminal investigation.”

“You said the magic words, Kat. You don’t think much of them, do you?”

“I’m just a neophyte regarding CIA, but — let’s just say I think they’re developing a pointed habit of not wanting the Cuban crash and this one to be terrorist-related, and I don’t trust their motives. Heck, Jake, they’re trained to shade things. But we need their help. That Global Express crew is still a big threat in this situation.”

“How do you mean?”

“They’re going to be very concerned now that they’ve got a loose end. If anyone survived the Meridian crash, and there’s a chance that evidence of what the Global Express did has been left behind, they’ll have to go in and clean it up. That crash site needs to be found and protected quickly, and any survivors recovered.”

The first glow of dawn had begun to illuminate the jungle, revealing the details of individual branches where only dark outlines had been minutes before. The small group had helped each other out of the wreckage, and found a large metal panel to sit on by the time Graham and Susan Tash returned with ashen faces.

“What did you find?” Robert asked.

Graham Tash merely shook his head. There was silence for a few telling seconds before Dan raised his head in response. “Why is no one saying anything?”

Graham Tash knelt beside the copilot. “Dan, Susan and I went back to the main wreckage. It’s strewn behind us for a thousand yards, at least.” Graham stopped and cleared his throat. “We found no one alive back there.”

Dan Wade sat in stunned silence for a moment. “You… you mean everyone… down below and… in coach…”

“I’m afraid so. The entire lower portion of the airplane was… I don’t know any other word for it… shredded. Somehow the forward part of the top section, with us in it, came through, but nothing below. There are no other survivors.”

“Two hundred…” Dan said, almost in a whisper. “My God! And Mr. Sampson, who tried so hard to help — did he…”

“He had gone back to sit with his wife in coach, Dan,” Britta said, touching his shoulder. “He isn’t here.”

Robert MacCabe was pacing. “So what’s our plan?” he asked. “We need to formulate a plan.”

“I guess we sit here and wait to be rescued,” Dallas said.

Britta’s hands were in the air in a gesture of frustration. “But why aren’t they here already?”

Robert started to answer, then pursed his lips. “We can all walk, right?”

“Except for Mr. Barnes,” Britta replied.

“Okay,” Robert said. “We flew right over Da Nang just before the crash. I figure we’re no more than ten miles from there because we weren’t in the air very long. The jungle in here is pretty sparse and scrubby. Dan? You know the area from your Air Force years, right?”

Dan nodded slowly.

“Any reason we shouldn’t just walk out of here?”

Dan sat for several long minutes with his head in his hands before raising his head and speaking. “In daylight, without snipers trying to kill you, it won’t be that hard a walk.”

“Dan,” Dallas began. “Wouldn’t they be sending rescue choppers, or ground parties, or something?”

He shook his head vigorously. “They probably don’t even know we’ve crashed. We flew past a bunch of primitive facilities on a deteriorated airfield in the middle of a nighttime storm and disappeared into the darkness, and we haven’t been in radio contact since Hong Kong. Who in hell is going to know we’re here?”

“Well, wouldn’t there be villages around here?” Britta asked.

Again Dan shook his head forcefully. “No. Not in these mountains. There’s a road not too far from here called the Ho Chi Minh Trail, but no one would have seen or heard us crash if we’re where I think we are. Charlie—” He stopped himself.

“Who’s Charlie?” Britta asked.

“The Vietcong,” Dallas answered for him. “Right, Dan?”

Dan nodded. “It’s hard to shake the old cautions, but I do know we’re almost certainly alone up here. We must have hit a mountain plateau.”

“Well, eventually someone will show up, right?” Dallas prodded.

“Sure,” Dan agreed. “Eventually. But God knows when.”

“So what do we do?” Britta asked.

“We walk out of here,” Robert MacCabe said, noticing how fast Dan nodded in response. “And if it’s only six or eight miles back there to the ocean, at most it’ll take us five or six hours.” The image of his computer flitted across his mind, and the fact that he’d just seen it on the floor. Robert returned to the remains of the cabin and climbed inside to retrieve it, finding it still intact.

“What happens if we take off walking and then rescue arrives?” Britta asked.

“Then Mr. Barnes gets help even quicker, and we end up in a thinly disguised physical fitness run,” Robert replied, as he joined them again.

“Barnes is semiconscious,” Graham Tash said. “We need to leave a note or something, so if someone does come, they’ll know we’re walking out.”

“We’ll do better than that. If they come, I’ll tell them,” Susan Tash said. Graham looked at her in alarm.

“I’m going to stay here, Graham,” she explained. “I’m a nurse, remember?”

“No, Suze! I’ll stay.”

She shook her head. “My ankle is hurting and I’m wearing heels. Walking any distance is just not an option for me in bare feet or heels.”

“Well, then, I’ll stay, too,” Graham said.

“No, Graham. You’re a good hiker, and if anything occurs with the rest of the group… if there are injuries we don’t know about, you need to be there. I’ll be fine. Heck, I’ll probably get rescued first.”

“How about tigers and snakes and such?” Dallas asked.

Graham’s worried eyes were firmly on his wife, his mind registering the fact that her bright yellow dress was becoming more visible by the second in the growing light of dawn. After several long seconds he shook his head. “Tigers don’t exist around here, and you’d almost have to look for a snake to bite you. Only monkeys. Thousands of them.”

Dallas looked at each of them in turn. “Okay. Dan, are you staying here?”

“I’m going,” the copilot said. “Anything’s better than just sitting here in agony. I’ll… just hang on to someone’s shirttail.”

“We should get moving, then,” Robert prompted.

Britta looked around uncomfortably, weighing her sense of duty with her sense of revulsion at remaining one minute longer than necessary in the midst of such carnage. “I’ll go, too, unless Susan wants to borrow my shoes.”

Susan shook her head no.

Dr. Graham Tash gently tugged at Susan’s sleeve as he looked at the others. “Ah, give me just a minute, will you? And Britta, we’ll want to take a few basics with us from the first-aid kit, just in case.”

Britta nodded and turned back to the wrecked upper cabin. Graham and Susan walked a few paces from the group to talk. He turned at last and put his hands on Susan’s shoulders. “Honey, I’m terrified of your staying here alone.”

“Nonsense. We’re both still in shock, but other than my twisted ankle, we’re physically okay. That man needs help and the rest of the group may need you. We’re professional medical people, Graham. This can’t be personal.”

“The hell it can’t! You’re my life, Honey. I love you!”

She put the palm of her hand on his cheek. “And I love you. But I don’t believe God kept us alive just to tear us apart. Now keep these folks safe and go get help. No one’s shooting at anyone in Vietnam these days. I’ll be fine.”

Graham pulled Susan to him and hugged her tightly, stroking her hair until she pulled away. She smiled and kissed him lightly, then turned and headed back to the wreckage.

Arlin Schoen sat on the edge of a plush leather armchair and took the receiver to the satellite telephone, pulling it to his ear and nodding to the broad-shouldered, heavyset man who’d taken the call.

The thoroughly controlled voice of the man on the other end spoke with unhurried ease, as though nothing had gone wrong. “What’s your status, Arlin?”

“I was going to call you. They went down about twelve miles west of Da Nang, in the mountains. We’re orbiting offshore, undetected so far.”

“Did you fly over the site?”

“We did. Couldn’t see a thing except the fires. That was before dawn.”

There was a sigh on the other end. “We can’t rule out survivors. But I can’t get you any more assets out there now. You’re on your own to solve this.”

Schoen shifted the receiver to the other hand, weighing his words carefully. “I know. Some could have made it. So far no rescue forces have launched. I don’t think these local morons realize anyone crashed.”

“We must stay on schedule. No loose ends, or loose lips, to tell tales and undo everything we’ve put in motion. You know that.”

Schoen took a deep breath. To go in was a huge risk, but to imperil the operation after all that had happened was unacceptable. “We’re going in, of course.”

“I agree,” the voice on the phone replied. “Get in and get out fast. In twenty-four hours the entire world will be crawling all over this one. Don’t forget the timetable.”

“I won’t.”

“This was your show, Arlin. I had your assurances it was the best solution and that you could make it work.”

“It is, and I will. Relax.”

Within five minutes, the Global Express touched down on Da Nang’s runway under an emergency declaration, leaving the tower operators in a state of confusion over where the sleek business jet had come from. A quick exchange of American currency at the door of the jet produced the local military garrison commander, a bored Vietnamese army officer who emerged ten minutes later with a smile and a briefcase containing $200,000 U.S. small bills.

Within fifteen minutes, the leader and crew of the American business jet lifted off in an ancient, American-built Bell UH-1 helicopter.