Fly by Night

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

A lot might have gone through Davis’ mind if he’d had the time. Phones in cabinets. Less than honorable discharges. Dead Ukrainians. Walt Deemer. Some of that might have made Davis believe that Schmitt could be on his side. Some of it would shut the door on the idea. But there was no time to think. Not even a second. Davis had only one option — he had to trust the man.

With Schmitt staring at him, Davis stood straight, almost as if at attention. Very deliberately, he tapped a closed fist to the side of his head and gave signals in rapid succession: one finger up, two fingers up, two fingers sideways, five fingers up. He did it again, faster, hoping Schmitt could see in the early light. Or hoping he could guess what Davis wanted. 1–2–7–5. Their old squadron VHF frequency, 127.5 MHz. He thought he saw a quick wave in reply. The airplane passed, and Schmitt glanced over his shoulder as the airplane thundered away. Davis tapped two fingers to his wrist, where a watch would be, and added a one and a closed fist for a zero. Ten minutes.

Seconds later, Schmitt and the airplane were gone in a churning rumble, rising into the waking sky.

Davis needed a radio, needed it now. The hangar seemed the most likely place to find one.

Ever since Larry Green confirmed that something had indeed crashed into the Red Sea, Davis had asked himself one question. As improbable as it seemed, could Khoury’s people be trying to get Blackstar back in the air? The technicians in D.C. would have said no. They’d have said that the craft’s guidance signals came by way of encrypted satellite commands, and as such, no one in a backwater like Sudan could have a technical prayer of making it work. But when Davis had seen the modified cockpit at the bottom of the sea, he’d suspected they were very wrong. Now he knew it. And he understood why FBN Aviation had shipped in so much old-school hardware — telemetry interfaces, actuators, guidance modules. Somebody had taken out the original, high-tech parts, and replaced them with relics. Then they’d made it all work. But that left one unanswered question, the one Antonelli had nailed. Why?

Davis closed in on the hangar. There was no one in sight. The man he’d seen pulling the chocks had to be nearby. Davis stopped at the big entry doors and saw a void in the middle of the place where the two aircraft had been, tools and stands and work benches all around. He then looked up and froze at the sight — a huge American flag hanging from the rafters on the far wall. Davis stood dumbfounded, stunned by the incredible image. The Stars and Stripes fluttering softly in a hangar owned by a mad Sudanese cleric. He forced his feet to move, realizing there was no time to figure out what it meant. His universe was shrinking rapidly. He had to find a radio.

Davis sprinted to the side of the building where a door led to what looked like an administration area. He burst through, and once again came to a sliding stop. The man with the mechanic’s coveralls was in the middle of an office. Only the mechanic wasn’t working with a wrench. Instead, he had a camcorder held up to one eye and was panning across the room. When he sensed Davis’ presence, the camera came down. The man backed away cautiously, his eyes locked to Davis, and then bolted through a door on the opposite side of the room.

Davis heard him yell, “Hassan! Hassan!”

He stood still and tried to decipher yet another incredible scene. The office was torn apart. Chairs upside down, file cabinets tipped over with drawers agape. Loose papers carpeted the floor like some mini-haboob had rolled through the room. But the thing that really drew Davis’ attention was resting on the hardwood surface of the desk. Bob Schmitt’s Korean-made nameplate. And behind it, nailed to the wall, a photograph of the president of the United States. A Klaxon rang in his head, a five-alarm bell that blotted out the world. At that moment, everything made sense. Terrible, logical sense.

Davis heard more shouts from outside. Urgent Arabic. Closing in.

His universe was down to one word. Radio. He didn’t see one here, hadn’t seen one in the hangar. But Davis knew where to look. Knew where to find half a dozen. Turning back the way he’d come, he started running again.

His boots hammered over concrete, strides eating up ground. With three DC-3s to choose from, Davis headed for the nearest one.

As he ran, a terrible picture brewed in his head. The American flag, Schmitt’s nameplate, a ransacked office. And a man, probably the Jordanian mechanic, making a video record of it all. Taken together, it answered the “why” question. Blame. The Blackstar drone was going to strike, and when it did, the evidence would be insurmountable. Wreckage that was certifiably MADE IN USA. As an accident investigator, Davis knew how clear that would be. The rest was window dressing, visual sweetener for a media campaign. A hangar rented by a shady corporation that flew U.S. registered aircraft. Worst of all, plenty of unwitting, verifiable Americans on display — Boudreau, Johnson. Schmitt was the question mark. Davis hated the man, but he couldn’t believe he’d be party to this. More likely, he was being used at the moment for his flying skills, and later would be lined up as a third American scapegoat. Two pilots and a mechanic paraded for a sensational trial. Headlines as bold as they came. With such overwhelming evidence, could Washington deny it? Who would listen? Certainly no Arab nation.

The only question remaining was the target. In this part of the world there were a lot of options. Jerusalem? Mecca? Either devastating in its own way. Davis could think of only one way to get that answer. Ask Bob Schmitt. Schmitt could tell him because he was flying toward the target right now, even if he didn’t know it.

Davis reached the first DC-3 and pulled open the entry stairs. He climbed inside and rushed to the cockpit, tried to remember where the battery switch was. He found it, powered up the airplane, and tuned the primary radio to 127.5 MHz.

Davis picked up the hand microphone and switched on the overhead speaker. “Schmitthead! Are you there?”

“We are nearly eighteen miles behind,” Jibril admonished. “We should be closer.”

Khoury stood behind Jibril and watched the engineer manage his creation. “But you said we could control the craft at twenty miles,” he argued.

“By my calculations, that is the nominal performance. But we have never tested control beyond that range. There could be nulls in either the sending or receiving antennae. Here in safe airspace, we should err on the side of caution and stay close.”

Jibril’s jargon meant nothing to Khoury, but his caution carried weight. “Schmitt!” he barked.

Khoury saw the American fiddling with something on the central instrument column. Schmitt peered back from the flight deck.

“We must go faster!” Khoury ordered.

Schmitt looked at his instruments. “I’m dead on time,” he argued, “right where you told me to be on the route.”

Khoury glared. “Do it!”

The pilot shrugged and pushed on a pair of levers. The engine noise rose to a higher pitch. Khoury then heard a less agreeable sound — an argument from the flight deck. Schmitt was pointing to a gauge, and soon Achmed came back from the copilot’s seat, his perpetual scowl in place.

“What are you doing?” Khoury asked.

“The infidel says there is low oil pressure on one of the engines. He wants me to check for a leak.”

Achmed went to a window on the left side of the cabin and studied the engine.

Khoury studied Schmitt.

“Well it’s about damned time!” Schmitt’s voice came in a hushed growl over the radio.

“Are we comm secure?” Davis asked.

“You’ve got about a minute. I sent my copilot back to the cabin to check on a bogus oil leak. I’m flying with your buddy, Achmed.”

That name struck Davis hard. The last time he’d seem Achmed, the kid’s eye had been behind the reticle of a gun sight.

Davis said, “Do you realize what’s going on here?”

There was a long pause. “This is my fini-flight with FBN,” Schmitt said, using the old Air Force slang for the last flight with a unit. “After this, I get a nice severance check and a good letter of recommendation.”

“Is that what Khoury promised?” Davis said sarcastically. “You must realize that the airplane you’re flying is the control ship for a drone.”

“Yeah, so what? These idiots in this part of the world have spent the last two thousand years poking each other in the eye. I’m just going to make a few bucks out of it this time.” The transmission crackled as the signal began to degrade. Schmitt was getting too far away.

“This is a lot more than some regional skirmish, Schmitt. That drone is going to strike something big.”

“Like what?” Schmitt asked.

“I don’t know, but you can expect them to hang it on you, Boudreau, and Johnson. Get it? Three Americans. They hoisted the Stars and Stripes in the hangar you just left, and there’s a guy inside taking video of a desk with your old nameplate on it.”

No reply.

“Are you still there?”

“Yeah,” came a crackling reply, “I saw the flag.”

“Listen, dammit! I don’t expect you to sing ‘God Bless America’ here. I’ll just appeal to your more basic instinct. They’re setting you up. You’re not going to get any fat bonus, you’re going to get a life term in a Third World jail cell. Maybe worse.”

Again silence.

Davis threw his last pitch. “I found a phone in your filing cabinet that looked a lot like one I had. Did you pass some information to the CIA a few weeks ago?”

“Could be. A guy I met on a layover in Riyadh gave me the phone, said there could be a little money in good information. I’d seen the drone once, so I made a call. After that, the handset died on me. Nothing more I could do.”

Davis could argue that point. Now wasn’t the time. “Who’s on the airplane with you?”

“The engineer, Khoury, Achmed, and two of Khoury’s thugs.”

“We need to figure a way to stop this.”

“What do you expect me to—” Schmitt cut off his transmission.

There was silence for a moment, then Schmitt and a voice Davis recognized as Achmed began arguing about an oil pressure gauge. The transmission was continuous, so Schmitt had jammed the radio’s transmit switch on. Davis sat there and listened to the “hot microphone,” eavesdropping on the flight deck of the control ship. He thought he heard Khoury’s voice in the background, but the words were indistinguishable. Soon everything was indistinguishable as the transmission faded. Schmitt’s airplane was too far away.

“Dammit!” Davis muttered. Without the radio link he was helpless.

Then he heard Schmitt’s voice again, a briefly coherent transmission. His words were clear — not because the microphone was near his lips, but because he was shouting. “Dammit Achmed, I’m the captain, and that’s that! Take the airplane while I go back and check. Heading three-five-zero, and keep the speed up!”

The transmission faded again, this time to nothing. But Schmitt had just told him a lot. They were indeed following Blackstar, controlling it. They were heading north. And most important of all was the fact that he’d keyed a hot microphone. Bob Schmitt had made up his mind. He was on Davis’ side.

And he was asking for help.

Davis waited five minutes, hoping for something more. The speaker over his head was stone silent. Even if Bob Schmitt had seen the light, he was flying away at over a hundred miles an hour. Probably ten miles in the last five minutes. Davis turned to the larger problem — the attack that seemed imminent. Was the drone carrying a weapon? Or was Blackstar itself the weapon, every cavity from nose to tail packed with high explosives? The latter smacked of simplicity, so that got Davis’ vote. The northerly heading would take them to Egypt, then Israel, so the target had to be in that direction. A lot of possibilities.

But what to do about it?

Davis had no way to contact Larry Green, or for that matter anybody who could help. And even if he could get through, what would he say? “There’s a DC-3 and a drone heading north out of Sudan. Jammer Davis says shoot them both down.” What were the chances of that? Davis knew all too well how the alphabet soup of intelligence and military organizations in Washington operated. Collectively, they were like some massive bureaucratic train, full of momentum, full of confidence that brute size would be enough to overcome any obstacle. Never mind that the bridge ahead was out. That’s where Larry Green and Darlene Graham and all the rest were heading at this very moment — to the bottom of Confidence Gulch. But sitting where he was, Davis was in no position to help either. No help to Schmitt or anyone on the other side of the Atlantic.

Davis stared at the instrument panel in front of him. He who hesitates dies.

He started flipping switches, trying to remember the right sequence. Davis was about to start the port engine when he remembered the chocks. He bounded outside and scrambled beneath the airplane. The big wooden wedges under each main wheel were connected in pairs by a short length of heavy rope. They were as big as concrete blocks, and nearly as heavy. Davis kicked away the front chock on each side, and didn’t worry about the rear. On the way back to the entry door he spotted another problem — the forklift was parked just behind the cargo door, too close to the horizontal tail for the airplane to move.

“It’s always something,” he muttered in frustration.

Davis started the forklift, and after some trial and error with the levers and foot pedals, soon had it backed up and clear. He set the parking brake, jumped off, and had one hand to the entry stairs when he heard tires squeal and saw the glare of headlights wash over the fuselage. Davis turned to see Rafiq Khoury’s Land Rover settle in front of his left wing. Hassan the giant stepped out.

It’s always something.