Blowback

SIXTY-THREE

Where are we going?” asked Jillian when Harvath got back in the car and pulled away from the curb in front of the hotel.

“Here,” he replied, and handed her the glossy brochure for Sion International Airport he had picked up in the lobby. “This caught my eye when we were on our way out this morning.”

As Jillian looked at it, Harvath added, “It’s a pretty impressive operation. Along with being a military airbase, they’ve poured a lot of money into it in the hopes that this region is going to be the next big thing. Besides having a runway long enough to accommodate the most sophisticated business jets, the airport has just about every service simple tourists like us could ask for.”

“I can see that,” replied Jillian. “Anything and everything when it comes to charters. Helicopters, gliders, hang gliders, parachute flights, sightseeing flights over the Alps. They don’t seem to have missed anything.”

“Nope. They even do glacier aviation, the desk clerk told me. It’s their specialty. If the glacier is big enough, they can actually land a plane on it.”

“So what’s the plan then?” asked Jillian as she set the brochure in the door pocket next to her.

“You and I are going to charter a plane and do a reconnaissance flight,” said Harvath. “We’ve already got pictures of what security is like at the base of the Aga Khan’s funicular. I want to see what things look like up top.”

“Then what?”

“Then we’ll try to figure out what to do next.”

Staring out the windshield at the mountains rising up on both sides of them, Jillian said, “A line like that doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence.”

Harvath forced a smile and replied, “I’ll try to come up with something a little bit better once I’ve gotten a look at Aiglemont. Right now, though, let’s focus on what we need to get done.”

Harvath and Alcott arrived at the Aéroport de Sion posing as climbers looking to charter a plane in order to conduct aerial surveys for a series of upcoming expeditions in the Bernese Alps. Even without reservations, they had no problem finding a willing charter company. Cold hard cash was an amazing problem solver. Not only did they luck out in finding a plane without a reservation, they also managed to land an extremely chatty pilot with an excellent command of English. The first thing he pointed out as they taxied out onto the runway was where the Aga Khan’s Cessna Citation X jet was parked. Had the police at the bottom of the funicular not been enough to confirm his presence, now they knew for sure that he was in residence. Hopefully, that meant Rayburn and Emir Tokay were at Aiglemont as well.

The pilot went on to explain that whenever the Aga Khan had one of his aid meetings or get-togethers with his bankers in Geneva, he had his own helicopter pick him up at Aiglemont and bring him back. He never drove.

With his detailed atlas of Switzerland on his lap, Harvath was able to guide the pilot over and around the peaks the would-be climbers were interested in tackling. Each pass was designed to bring them as close as possible to the Aga Khan’s mountaintop retreat, which their pilot was pleased to point out and discuss.

When Jillian told the pilot she hadn’t been able to capture the structure as well as she would have liked with her video camera, the pilot was more than happy to oblige with another, lower pass. Not only did they get an even better view, but they also got the additional bonus of seeing how the Aga Khan’s security team reacted to low-flying aircraft. It was exactly as Harvath had feared. The heavily armed men poured out of the building like angry bees from a hive. Though he couldn’t be one hundred percent sure, he even thought he saw one of the men armed with a shoulder-fired missile. The Aga Khan’s security team didn’t leave anything to chance.

After the pair had gathered all the pictures and videos they needed, Harvath had the pilot do a pass over Le Râleur and return to the Aéroport de Sion. The extent of what they had collected wouldn’t be evident until they were able to review it back in the hotel, but from what Harvath had seen already, he had a feeling it wasn’t going to be good. The Aga Khan’s retreat was impregnable.