Fly by Night

CHAPTER TEN

Davis needed help, needed shade. At the nearby mechanic’s workshop he tried for both.

He walked through the roll-up door, but didn’t see Johnson. A big floor fan was pushing hot air from one side of the place to the other, distributing the misery. Davis pulled out the phone Larry Green had given him. It was a satellite gadget that looked pretty much like any phone, maybe a little bigger, a little heavier. He was sure Green had gotten it from someone in Darlene Graham’s orbit, probably the CIA. He’d been told to use it like any phone. Call, text. Davis figured the U.S. government had phones like it spread all over the Middle East. Military attaches, intelligence types, informants. Probably handed them out like candy, preloaded with contact numbers for anonymous tips and reward information.

When the phone powered up, it showed decent signal strength. He’d been told the thing was secure, and while Davis might have doubted that in certain corners of the world, here the promise likely held. Sudan’s capability for signal intercepts and decryption, if there was any at all, had to be primitive. Davis figured the government in Khartoum was worried about the same things governments here had been worrying about for a thousand years. Food, water, rival warlords. The basics.

Davis checked for messages from Washington, but didn’t see any. He did the math and figured it was midmorning in D.C., so Larry Green ought to be at work. He pecked out his message, which was a lot of typing because he had a lot of requests. That being the case, he didn’t expect a reply anytime soon. Looking at the handset, his thoughts turned to Jen. She had probably returned his call from three days ago, but he’d been traveling constantly and his regular phone didn’t work here. They hadn’t talked in almost a week now, and Davis realized that their linkups had become increasingly less frequent since she’d gone to Norway. Jen was distancing herself, probably without even realizing it. Soon she’d be gone for good to college.

Davis typed Jen’s number into his CIA sat-phone as a new contact. That gave him two. It was late afternoon in Norway, so he hit the call button, and once again got her message after five rings.

“Hey, it’s Jen. You know the deal.”

“It’s Dad, I’ve got a new number.” He gave it and said, “You know the deal. Call me.” Frustrated, he ended the connection and shoved the phone in his pocket.

Davis looked over the workshop and saw just what he’d expected — screwdrivers hanging on a pegboard, racks of spare tires, a pile of spent oil cans. The wrench turners might work outside, but they had to have shelter for their tools and spare parts. Davis poked the toe of his boot into a completely bald airplane tire. It had good pressure, so he pegged it for a worn item that had been recently removed. Then again, it could be a dubious spare. Kept in stock to replace something worse.

Davis noted another portrait of Sudan’s glorious leader, this one tacked to a support column. It looked a lot like the one he’d seen in Schmitt’s office. Same pose, same artist, this particular article faded from the heat. The president was depicted in military garb, his jacket breast covered in medals and ribbons like some kind of war hero. His eyes were cast downward slightly. Watching. Which was probably the point.

Davis heard a sudden rush of mechanized noise, and he caught a glimpse of a military truck and a jeep speeding by the open workshop entrance. They were moving fast, like they had somewhere to go. Davis edged outside, looked to his right, and saw the little convoy pull to a hard stop in front of the second parked DC-3, the one where the young man and woman were preparing to drive away in their truck. The jeep blocked the truck’s forward path, and the troop carrier blocked the rear. A squad of soldiers with rifles held across their chests spilled out and fanned into a circle.

Davis stepped out of the workshop but kept in its shadow.

The last guy to dismount was the jeep’s passenger. He was thicker than the others, wore green fatigues with patches and brass bars and colorful insignia. He didn’t need any of that. The way he moved, full of an airy swagger, was enough. Colonel, captain, whatever. This was the guy in charge. The officer put himself squarely in front of the delivery truck. The man and woman in the cab didn’t move, so they all just stared at one another through a dust-encrusted windshield. Nothing happened for a time, not until the officer gave a hand signal. On that command, half the soldiers shouldered their weapons and began shifting the load of supplies from the delivery truck to their own carrier.

The officer stood watching like a patient headmaster, waiting to beat down any dissent. It was the woman who finally ended the stalemate. She bounded down from the driver’s side of the cab, circled around back and began yelling at the enlisted men. Davis was fifty yards away, but he could hear enough to know she was speaking Arabic. The words meant nothing to him, but her tone was clear. Accusative, demanding. When she yanked one box out of a soldier’s hands and threw it back on her truck, the men froze with stunned looks on their faces.

A line had been crossed.

Davis was impressed. It was a stupid move. Exactly the kind of move he might make. The soldiers were clearly not used to getting yelled at by a woman. Having stopped the flow, she stood defiantly with her hands on her hips. Davis couldn’t help but notice that they were nice hips. Her work clothes were drab and loose, but cinched in the right places, certain seams challenged when she moved. Her hair was black and full and long. The woman began barking orders, gesturing for the supplies already unloaded to be put back. The soldiers didn’t move.

Their commander did.

So did Davis.

Davis had only gone two steps when he felt a hand on his arm, pulling him back. It was Johnson.

“Easy, buddy,” the burly mechanic said. “They might not act like it, but those are soldiers. They show up once or twice a week and take whatever they want, call it a tax.”

“The government is raiding aid shipments?”

“Not exactly. The government looks the other way. They can’t pay the soldiers much, so nobody cares if they take a little on the side.”

“Who is she?”

“I don’t know her name, but I’ve seen her before. She’s an Italian doctor, I think. Works for one of the NGO’s.”

NGO. Non-governmental organization. Davis had heard the term before, but never seen one up close. He liked the sound of it. Anything nongovernmental had to be good. It was probably an organization that worked, one that wasn’t bound by organizational charts and performance evaluations. Just a handful of committed individuals getting a job done. Which was what the lady on the ramp was trying to do right now.

The officer stopped a few paces in front of her. Just as he opened his mouth to speak, the woman unloaded. Both barrels. She began screaming, Arabic again, but if Davis wasn’t mistaken with a few Roman expletives thrown in. He wondered what the officer could be thinking. Of all the reactions he might have expected from a female Italian doctor, a military-style ass chewing probably wasn’t one of them. The woman’s partner in the truck was staying out of it. Smart kid. Johnson’s arm came down, and Davis held steady as he tried to calculate outcomes. There was a chance the soldiers would simply settle for what they had and leave. If so, the woman might stand down and watch as a few of her supplies were driven away. If that was how things progressed, Davis would stay put.

But the doctor didn’t allow it. She worked herself into a lather, hands jabbing and hair flying. Davis wished she was in a hospital somewhere, setting a broken bone, giving an immunization, shining a light in somebody’s yellow eyes. There, if she felt the need to come unglued, she could vent at a nurse or another doctor. Maybe a difficult patient. That was the kind of conflict doctors were used to dealing with. Not squads of armed soldiers.

“Shut up,” Davis muttered.

The commander only stared at her, and Davis had a bad feeling. Every country has its indigenous equations of culture and morality. This woman was pressing hard against the local standard deviation. But there was another variable, something Davis had served long enough in uniform to understand. The dynamics of command. Discipline, particularly in a ragtag outfit like this, was a precarious thing. No officer could allow himself to be dressed down in front of his men by a civilian. Let alone a foreigner. Let alone a woman.

Davis had a very bad feeling.

Johnson must have sensed what he was thinking. “I’m telling you, don’t get in the middle of that. The military here doesn’t play by our rules. They don’t worry about judges or court-appointed lawyers, and it won’t matter if you’re an American or a pilot — whatever. That bunch will make you disappear.”

Davis didn’t respond. He was watching the officer’s hand. When he saw it edge toward his sidearm, Davis moved.

“Jammer!” Johnson whispered harshly.

Davis ignored it.

“That’s enough!” Davis yelled. He said it at maximum volume. Intonation, command. He might have been calling a formation of Academy cadets to attention. Only these weren’t cadets. Still, it had the desired effect.

Everyone looked.

Larry Green got Davis’ message just before lunch. It came via secure courier, forwarded by the CIA after they’d done their magic — unscrambled, cleansed, filtered. The flow of communications was something Green didn’t like, but he figured he had to choose his battles.

The message read:

Green read it again, and thought, You don’t ask for much, do you Jammer?

He wondered about the tail numbers. N2012L was the accident aircraft, but the second registration number meant nothing to Green. He dialed Darlene Graham’s number and was immediately put on hold. She had told him all requests were to go directly through her office. The director had been pleased when he’d told her that Davis had accepted the assignment. She had a lot of faith in the man, as did Green. The fact that there was nothing in the message about Black-star meant Davis hadn’t gotten into the hangar yet. But he’d find a way.

Green had been working with Davis for a long time. He had dressed him down more than once, and also put him up for commendations. There was a strange asymmetry to Jammer Davis. Investigating aircraft accidents could be delicate work. Intricate forensics, technical know-how, sensitive interviews with the next of kin. In that kind of environment, a blunderbuss like Davis would seem a surefire liability. Indeed, every time Green put Davis on an investigation he felt like he was pulling up a deck chair to a dangerous intersection, just waiting for the crash. On one occasion, Davis had blown up a mothballed airplane to see how a pressure bulkhead would fail. He hadn’t gotten any kind of permission or permit — he’d just packed a jet with explosives and blown it up. Green had once seen Davis climb into a bulldozer and push around sections of wreckage until he found the defective engine fan blade he was after. Then there was the full-bird colonel who had ended up in the hospital with a broken jaw because he’d tried to order a lieutenant to fly a jet that Davis was convinced wasn’t safe. That had gotten Davis busted from lieutenant colonel to major, the rank at which he’d retired. It had also saved the taxpayers an F-16 and probably the lieutenant’s life.

Wherever he went, Davis managed to piss somebody off. But he got away with it, because he was right. At least, every time Green had seen him in action. In some Neanderthal-savant way, Jammer Davis knew where to stick his big nose. And once he had a scent, there was no shaking him. You might as well light off an Atlas V rocket, then try to keep it on the pad.

Green wished he was there to watch. Right now there was probably only one person in all Sudan who even knew Davis, and Bob Schmitt hadn’t known he was coming. So a little airline had readied its books for inspection, stacked manuals on desks, and double-checked logbooks. All the procedural ducks were lined up in a nice neat row, everyone standing at attention with belt buckles polished. Ready for the usual ICAO inspector, a button-down overseer of standards and protocols. A stiff professional in a stiff suit. What they’d get was Jammer Davis.

With the phone still clenched between his ear and shoulder, Larry Green smiled. It’ll be like a meteor strike on Walden Pond.

His long strides gave Davis presence, a sense of purpose. It also gave him no more than twenty seconds to figure out what the hell to do.

Option 1: Get in the commander’s face, tell him to take his boys and shove off. That might work. More likely he’d get arrested. Worst case, shot. Davis kept up his pace as he struggled for Option 2. His trajectory was taking him to the tiny gap between the officer and the doctor. The soldiers were all frozen in place, watching Davis with the same regard they might give to an oncoming steamroller.

He noticed that much of the cargo was stenciled with U.N. logos. When he was two steps away, Davis yanked out his NTSB ID and quickly fanned it in front of him. Nobody looked at the credentials because they were busy watching him. Jammer Davis knew how to intimidate. He had the size and the stare. He also had the perfect voice, a bass reverberation that passed right through soft tissue and lodged in people’s spines.

“Davis, with the U.N. Inspector General’s office,” he said. “Whatever the hell is going on here, it stops right now.” He put out an arm and barged in between the two like a referee separating a pair of prize-fighters. Once established, Davis made his choice. He half turned to face the doctor.

“You,” he said stridently, “will back off and let these men finish their work!”

Her eyes went wide with surprise. She’d been expecting an ally, a knight in shining armor.

“Who are you to tell me this?” she responded in English.

Good, Davis thought, she speaks English.

He turned to the officer and got his first close look. A gaunt man, he was leering at Davis with reddened, dopey eyes. The eyes of an addict. There was no name over his breast pocket, no embroidered block letters or acetate tag. The boss-man did, however, have a distinguishing mark — a scar on one cheek. He seemed to hold his chin at an angle to put it on display, probably hoping Davis would think he’d gotten it in a knife fight or some kind of duel to the death. It might have been that. But more likely it was a vestige of something less dramatic. A car wreck or a drunken father.

If the man was worried about Davis being less than a yard away, it didn’t show. He was confident. He was also stupid. Jammer Davis had joined the United States Marines right out of high school, had boxed at the Academy. He’d learned a lot about close-in combat from some of the most skilled practitioners in a very nasty business. Right now, Davis was close enough to render the man’s sidearm useless. He figured he could break this doped-up loser’s neck in about two seconds, and based on what he’d seen so far, tomorrow he wouldn’t feel particularly bad about it. But there was more to consider. To be exact, seven considerations, all with rifles and machine pistols. The other men here might be soldiers in the loosest sense, but a disciplined fighting unit they were not. If Davis took out their leader, the guy with the quickest trigger finger would have the inside track to becoming the new alpha dog.

Having figured all that out, Davis addressed the woman again.

“You have no authority here,” he said. Which implied that perhaps he did. “These men should finish their work. I’m sure the supplies will be put to good use.”

Scarface appeared to contemplate this, which suggested that he too spoke at least some English. His hand was still near the handle of his revolver, but more relaxed now. Davis looked right at the guy, then rolled his eyes in the direction of the doctor and shook his head, the way guys did to say, Women! Two clouded eyes came alight, like searchlights out of a mist. The boss man smiled and said something to his men. It was probably an off-color joke, something sexist and demeaning. Scarface chuckled, and when he did, everyone seemed to lighten up.

Everyone except the doctor.

Davis saw her reaching a boil, so before her lid came off he reached out and grabbed her by the arm. Grabbed hard, his fingers clamping like a vise. The doctor winced, and again Davis thought, Good. She had gotten so wrapped up in her objective that she’d lost her situational awareness. Pilots simply referred to it as SA. Knowing what was going on all around you. In aerial combat, you had to do a lot more than just fly your own jet. You had to know where your adversaries were, where your wingman was, the height of the mountains below and the clouds above. Sometimes it was a lot of information, a big picture that had to be whittled down and prioritized. That was what this passionate Italian doctor had lost. The big picture. She’d been so incensed by the hijacking, all she’d wanted to do was challenge it, not study the odds. But now her arm hurt, and that made her forget about her precious truckload of supplies. Made her consider a lower level on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Davis leaned closer to her, and twisted his head so no one else could quite see. He whispered, “Faites-confiancemoi. Laissez lui allez.”

The doctor stared at him. She was certainly educated. And Italy was right next to France, so there was an excellent chance that she would understand the French phrase. Trust me. Let it go.

She did. Or at least she calmed down. Davis eased his grip on her arm. Let her go.

The soldiers switched the load from one truck to the other with quick efficiency, like they’d done it all before. Davis took note of what they were stealing. Blankets, medicine, bulk food. Most would probably still make its way to those in need. There was just another middleman now. That’s what Davis told himself, again and again.

The doctor backed away, clearly not wanting to watch. She went to the driver’s side of her truck, still seething, but quiet. She had her SA back. When the thieves were done with the transfer, the officer looked at Davis and gave him a knowing grin, along with a two-fingered salute. Davis returned it, rather subtly, with a one-fingered variant. The little convoy drove off at a more leisurely pace than it had arrived. Sitting in the passenger seat of the jeep, the commander looked smug. Davis wondered briefly if he had made the wrong choice, wondered if he should have broken the guy’s neck after all. The other men might have cheered. Might even have made Davis the new squad leader. Yeah, he thought, that’s just what I need. My own private army.

Once the trucks were out of sight, he turned to the doctor. She was at the running board going over a clipboard with a pencil, probably checking off what she’d lost, item by item. Damage control. When she was done, she set the clipboard on the front fender, came over, and stood right in front of Davis. With a big windmill swing, she slapped his face hard.