Fly by Night

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

The fuel tanks in the next DC-3 were nearly empty, so Davis ran to his last chance. It wasn’t much better. Three hours of fuel, no more. He didn’t know how far he was going to have to fly. All he knew for sure was that each minute he wasted took the two-ship formation of Blackstar and Schmitt’s DC-3 farther away. If he could get up in the air, the radios would have a much greater range, and he reckoned he could contact Schmitt again.

His head ached, and when he rubbed it Davis felt a warm patch of blood on his scalp where the oak block had connected. Another ding for his collection. He slapped switches and levers into position, then took a quick look at the laminated preflight checklist to see if he’d forgotten anything. Davis cranked the engines, and the big radials spit to life. Just as the starboard motor caught an idle, however, he saw another problem — Regina Antonelli running across the ramp. She passed the damaged airplane, and Davis saw her eyes go to Hassan’s body under the forklift. Antonelli didn’t even slow. She kept coming straight at him. Straight at the churning propellers.

“Christ!” he spat.

He tried to wave her away through the window. She looked right at him, but ignored the warning and kept coming. Then Davis saw why. A truck in the distance, a small pickup with a gun mounted in the bed. It didn’t look military, so it was probably one of Khoury’s. Not that it mattered. Davis set the parking brake, went to the cabin, and threw open the boarding door. Antonelli was there waiting.

“I had to come back because—”

“Get in!” he barked.

When she didn’t move instantly, Davis reached down, grabbed a fistful of shirt, and hauled her up into the cabin. Antonelli went sprawling, but Davis made no attempt to help her up. He slammed the door shut, raced back to the cockpit, and slapped the throttles forward. The big machine lurched ahead and Davis began a right turn. Over his shoulder, he saw the truck bearing down. A man was standing at the gun station, holding his balance with one hand as the other worked to feed an ammo belt. The truck changed its vector, swerving around a wheel chock, and the gunner fell on his ass.

Finally a break, Davis thought.

Having learned from Schmitt, he steered for the longest taxiway in sight. The big machine accelerated. At sixty knots the truck started to drop back. At eighty it disappeared. At ninety they were airborne and climbing into the light of a new dawn.

Antonelli edged her head into the cockpit. After an awkward silence, she said, “I went to the hangar first, but couldn’t find you.”

“Why the hell did you even come back?” he snapped.

The doctor just stood there and stared. Didn’t answer. They both already knew.

As Fadi Jibril was watching his computer monitor, he felt Khoury’s presence over his shoulder.

“Are we on schedule?” the imam asked.

“Yes, no more than a minute behind,” Jibril answered. “We will reach the staging point in two hours. When can we expect to receive the final targeting information?”

“Soon, Fadi. Achmed is handling it. He will take the coordinates over the radio from our man on the ground in Israel.”

Jibril moved the cursor back and forth on the computer screen. As if his mind was on his work. In truth, he found himself analyzing the imam’s words. He had left this one unresolved task to Khoury — the receipt of the final coordinates. Over the radio … from our man on the ground in Israel. How could this be? Jibril wondered. This airplane had four radios, two he’d specially designed and installed. Jibril had positioned and checked every antenna, analyzed the configuration for interference, susceptibility to icing, and power requirements. He knew, by precise calculation, the range of each component. Israel was seven hundred miles away, over two hundred from the staging point. That was the closest they would ever get. The range of the best VHF radio on the airplane was less than one hundred sixty miles, even under the most favorable atmospheric conditions. They could never receive a signal from Israel. Did the imam not know this? Then Jibril recalled the other thing that had been bothering him — the Israeli prime minster was supposedly in Washington today. Jibril had not followed his instinct to verify this — it would have been simple enough. Instead, he had trusted Khoury blindly.

“Sheik …” Jibril hesitated, “are you sure we can receive this report?”

“Of course,” Khoury said, a comforting hand falling to Jibril’s shoulder. “Achmed is in contact with our operative as we speak. All is on schedule.” The hand stayed on Jibril’s shoulder for some time before Khoury said, “I must go and check with him now.” The imam went to the cockpit.

Jibril’s hand fumbled over the controls, and his stomach churned. He manipulated his computer to show a new readout. He had thought it useful to create a program to monitor the VHF radios, giving him the ability to track the frequencies tuned by each component. Presently, two were controlling the drone as expected. One of the airplane radios was tuned to an air-traffic-control frequency. Jibril studied the last radio, the auxiliary VHF on the flight deck. It was tuned to 127.5 MHz, a frequency that meant nothing to Jibril. Was this the frequency that would be used to receive the targeting coordinates? It had to be. But how at this range? He saw the imam engaging one of the two security men. Again Jibril felt uneasy, and for the first time asked himself why Khoury had even seen a need to bring these men.

Jibril had also programmed the ability to listen to the radios, and so he clicked a symbol on his screen to send the audio from 127.5 MHz to his headset.

Fadi Jibril heard nothing.

The airplane was steady on a heading of three five zero. Almost due north.

Antonelli had taken the copilot’s station — not for any duties, but simply because that was the only other seat on the aircraft. Davis watched her scanning the sky, watched the early light play through her raven hair. She was beautiful. She was maddening. He had tried to be angry with her for not going to the embassy, for not extracting herself from the danger he’d put her in. It was all but impossible. Antonelli had done exactly what he would have done.

As the airplane climbed, he explained what he’d found at the hangar. He told her that Blackstar was on its way to an attack, and that the United States was being set up to take the blame. “The only thing I can’t figure out,” he said with one hand on the control column, “is what they’re targeting.”

“We are heading north. Could it be something in Israel?”

“That was my first guess, but now I’m not so sure.”

“Why?”

In truth, Davis couldn’t peg where his reservations had come from. He said, “I took a look through Khoury’s Land Rover, the one that was near the—” his voice trailed off.

“Body? I have seen bodies before, Jammer. I also see the wound on your head, so I won’t pass judgment.”

“Fair enough.” He had taken one of the posters from the Rover, folded it up and stuffed it in a pocket. He pulled it out and showed Antonelli. “Any idea who this guy is?”

She looked closely. “I may have seen his picture before. But I definitely recognize the name. General Ali is the Sudanese minister of defense.”

“Okay,” he said. “Now look closer, at the bottom. Check the title.”

Antonelli did, and the revelation clearly hit her. “What could this mean?”

Davis studied the picture again, and had the same odd feeling he’d had earlier — that he’d seen it before. Then it dawned on him. He hadn’t recognized the picture. It was the pose. Eyes cast downward slightly. Watching. Just like the propaganda photos of the president that were hung in every office of every building in Sudan. There were a thousand copies of General Ali’s photo back in the Land Rover, all cut to fit in the very same picture frames. Davis stared at the poster.

“Contessa …” he hesitated.

“What is it?”

“I haven’t seen much news lately, but that Arab League conference is taking place today, right?”

He could see her run a quick calendar in her head. “Yes, it is scheduled for this morning.”

“And who will be there?”

“The leaders of virtually every Arab country,” she said.

“What about the Sudanese president?”

“Of course, it has been in the local papers for weeks.”

That’s it, Davis thought. It all made perfect, wicked sense. He stared at Antonelli and waited. She was a smart lady, so it didn’t take long.

“A coup d’état?” she exclaimed.

“Disguised as an attack by the United States. Ten or twenty heads of state killed, including the Sudanese president. If it happens, there will be power struggles all across the region tonight, just like after the uprisings that got rid of Mubarak and the rest. The Arab world will be so shocked and incensed by the idea of a U.S. attack that nobody will give a second thought to the minister of defense taking charge in Khartoum.”

Antonelli stared out the front window. “What can we do?” she asked.

Davis checked the manifold pressure on the engines and bumped up the throttles, pushing the old radials as hard as he dared.

“We can fly faster.”