Headwind

TWENTY-FIVE

Captain Swanson took the unexpected call from the foreign minister of Italy at his desk, where he’d been sitting in thought, rubbing his eyes and wondering if there was anything else he should be doing to defuse the situation on his ramp.

“Yes, sir?”

“Commander Swanson?”

“Captain, actually.”

“Very well. This is Giuseppe Anselmo, and this call has never happened.”

“Ah, you mean this is completely off the record?”

“If that’s the correct phrase.”

“Very well, sir. Go ahead.”

“I will be brief. I am aware that you know all the appropriate names. Mr. Campbell’s representatives have been at the home of one of our highest judges asking that our interpretation of the lease on your base be changed to include immediate Italian jurisdiction over the flight line.”

“Yes?” Swanson said with a sinking feeling.

“The judge is considering his request. We have no control over that, any more than you control your courts in the United States.”

“Yes, sir. I understand. If the captain of that aircraft wants to leave Italy, will you protest?”

“That’s a diplomatic question, Captain,” Anselmo replied with a chuckle. “A military officer should not be so astute. Let me answer in this manner. As of this moment, no request for an air traffic clearance for that aircraft would be handled in any other manner than normal and routine. In other words, the government of Italy has no interest in blocking or interfering with air traffic at Sigonella at this moment.”

“But… if the judge rules otherwise…”

“Then we shall behave in accordance with the law, and even though our government may appeal any court order or decision, we may still have to honor it in the meantime.”

“How long, sir? When is the judge likely to rule?”

“Not until noon on the day after tomorrow. He has refused to make a decision until then, and has set this for a hearing. Nothing changes until then. After that, who knows?”

“Understood. Thank you.”

David Carmichael looked closely at the temperature gauge on the end of the vent above the dash panel and shook his head.

“What?” Jay asked.

“I was hoping it’d warm up and we could shed the ice, but there’s a temperature inversion, and it’s getting colder as we descend.”

“Five miles to go, David,” the controller was saying.

David looked at the altimeter, now reading five thousand six hundred fifty feet, the rate of descent steady at two hundred ninety. If he tried to stretch his flight path a bit farther by pulling more back pressure, he ran the risk of stalling again, and a stall so close to the ground would undoubtedly be fatal. But all he needed was to stay in the air a short distance more.

“What can I do?” Jay asked.

“Pray,” was the response.

“Four miles,” the controller told him. “You might pick up a small tailwind that will help you. Just a couple of knots.”

“Good.”

David forced his eyes around the panel as he fought through the wall of panic obscuring the other thing he knew he was forgetting. Was there anything else he could do to make the airplane fly more efficiently?

Wait a minute! He glanced at the mixture control. He had set it just after takeoff and it was partially lean, but nowhere close to maximum performance!

He reached over and pulled the knob carefully, watching the cylinder temperature gauge as he felt the power increase slightly.

“Only two miles to go, David,” the controller said, his voice utterly calm and reassuring.

The engine power suddenly diminished and David backed off on the mixture control, pushing it in slightly, his heart almost stopping before the power revved again. He pulled his hand away and returned his eyes to the gauges as the stall warning sounded momentarily, then stopped.

One hundred twenty indicated and I can’t slow! I must be carrying a ton of ice!

“One mile now, David. I show you right on centerline.”

“Roger.”

“It’s a huge runway, and it should come swimming into view in just twenty seconds or so.”

There was nothing but gray in front of the windscreen.

“Can’t I do anything?” Jay asked.

“Yeah,” David replied. “Look hard. It’ll show up just ahead of us.”

“I see fuzzy lights!” Jay replied. “They just appeared.”

Splotches of red and white and something flashing furiously swam into view just ahead of the aircraft, and visions of setting the Cessna down in a tangle of steel approach light towers sent yet another shudder through David as he worked to resist the tendency to pull back on the yoke, a move that would instantly stall the airplane and kill them for certain.

“Half a mile to go,” the controller said.

David couldn’t force himself to push the transmit button to answer. All his concentration was focused on keeping the airspeed precisely the same, the airplane aligned, and praying they’d stay clear of the metal approach light structures that were reaching up to grab his airplane, closer and closer with every second. All he could see ahead were the approach lights, the sequential strobes leading him forward, the galaxy of lights steadily flattening.

We’re not going to make it! he felt himself think, rejecting the idea in the same microsecond.

The last approach light tower was just ahead, coming up at him, the lights bright and threatening, the metal structure unyielding and unforgiving to the thin skin of a Cessna. If the landing gear snagged those…

And just as suddenly they were past the structure with concrete coming up at them and the runway visible ahead of them, the main wheels of the 172 passing just two feet over the lip of the runway’s threshold before David yanked the yoke back to break the descent. The aircraft shuddered, the wings losing the battle to stay airborne with the wheels less than six inches off the pavement.

And suddenly they were rolling down the runway after a bone-jarring touchdown.

David found the top of the rudder pedals with his toes and pressed forward to apply the brakes, wondering why the pedals were shaking before realizing his feet were doing the vibrating, propelled by a bloodstream full of adrenaline.

There was a turnoff just ahead and he guided the little Cessna toward it, remembering at the same moment the Denver controller who was probably not breathing.

“Denver… ah… we’re down okay. We’re on the runway.”

The transmitter came on without a voice, but he and Jay could hear cheering in the background at Denver Center and a long sigh on the controller’s headset microphone.

“Understood, David. Great job,” he said simply.

“You, too,” David managed. “Thank you, sir.”

“No problem. Turn off when you can. Call Denver ground now on one one nine point two, and we’ll give them back their airport.”

Sherry Lincoln punched off the GSM cell phone and looked up at the starfield above Sigonella as she stood on the small platform topping the portable airstairs. She’d stepped out into the night for better reception, but the air had cooled considerably and she was shivering now in the light breeze.

Most of the clouds overhead were gone, leaving the stark blackness of the sky as an inky canvas for the stellar work of art above, the spiral arm of the earth’s own Milky Way galaxy spread above in spectacular profusion, diminished only mildly by the filtered glow of the sodium vapor lights bathing the ramp.

Sherry took a deep breath and exhaled, her mind still whirling from the intensity of the past few hours. There was a window of opportunity now to take control of the situation and, depending on Britain’s attitudes, perhaps quash the warrant within a few days. Thanks to the Italian leaders, they could safely wait until tomorrow before leaving, with no concern that the enemy was going to reappear.

She thought about the C-17 out there somewhere in the darkness thousands of miles distant as it hung in the sky over the Atlantic, moving ever closer to American shores – an utterly wasted flight without John Harris aboard. She wondered what the crew was thinking. Military men and women felt the ache of an unsuccessful mission far more than civilians could ever understand, their entire purpose for being called into question by any political override of a military operation.

The Vietnam syndrome never leaves us, she thought, suppressing a flash of anger.

The warning the President had given her just twenty minutes ago replayed in her head: his could be a long stay in Britain, and she should be thinking about other career plans. “Nonsense,” she’d told him. “I’m sticking with you, regardless of where you are, and I’ll be there for you as long as you need me.”

“Need you? Are you kidding?” John Harris had replied. “I certainly can’t imagine handling things without you, Sherry.”

She smiled at the memory and the fact of being needed, the smile quickly fading with the reality that he was about to surrender to an uncertain fate and become a gold-plated pawn in an international tug-of-war.

Sherry remembered the mission of the call she’d just received from Jay Reinhart and turned to hurry back into the 737 to brief the President.

“Jay was just boarding his commercial flight in Denver,” she explained. “He said he had about two hours of research to do before giving us the green light for London. He’ll call from the plane.”

“Okay,” John Harris nodded.

“His voice sounded strange. I got the impression something happened on the flight to Denver, but he wouldn’t tell me what. He sounded really spooked.”

“Jay hates flying. He’d take Amtrak to London if they served the market.”

“I got that impression.”

“Where are General Glueck and his folks?”

“Inside, sir. Captain Swanson’s having a dinner catered for them in the terminal, and sending food out to us, too.”

“Did you see what those fellows did, Sherry?”

She nodded. “I did. I didn’t hear everything that went on…”

“I mean, you talk about something to make you humble, that level of…of…”

“Honor?”

“Just love of country, Sherry. General Glueck talked all of them into turning down that charter back to Rome.”

“Sir, they’re having fun with this in a manner of speaking. I imagine it’s been a long time since some of them have felt really needed.”

He nodded slowly. “Good insight. That’s something I have to consider. I was concerned about their wanting to come with us.”

Sherry looked startled. “Wait a minute. They’re coming with us?”

“Their next stop was Rome, but, according to Glueck, the whole group… including their tour director, Annie Ford… want to stay with us. They even had their baggage put back on the plane when the others left. You… have a problem with that?”

She smiled. “Your call, sir, but I would rethink that. Once we leave here, I really don’t think they can help.”

“Well, as far as I’m concerned, I’m honored to have them along if they want to go, and if it makes sense. Yeah, I’ll reconsider. What I do have a problem with is why we need to wait here until tomorrow afternoon.”

“Jay Reinhart’s insisting he needs to get to London ahead of us and make arrangements.”

“But what arrangements?” the President asked. “Campbell will have already presented the warrant to a judge somewhere in London. There’s almost no question they’ll be waiting wherever we touch down.”

She shook her head. “He just wants to get there first, and that’s eleven hours from now.”

“How long for us to fly to London?” he asked.

“An hour and a half, about,” she replied. “He said he expects we should take off about four P.M. tomorrow. That will give him most of the day to get things arranged.”

“To surrender to the British authorities?”

“That’s… what he’s thinking.”

“It’s always possible,” John Harris began, tapping his fingers on the side of his face, “that the British Foreign Office may decide to find a way to slow Stuart down just long enough for us to gas up and go.”

“Yes, sir, but where do we go?” Sherry asked, easing into the seat next to him. “Captain Dayton tells me we can make Iceland or maybe Canada, but we can’t make it all the way home from London without refueling, because this model seven thirty-seven doesn’t have long-range fuel tanks. Campbell would surely know that. One of his henchmen will be waiting in Iceland too, and London’s probably a far better place to battle this.”

“Words of wisdom, Sherry,” he said, falling silent for a few moments. “Unless Jay has some fantastic brainstorm to pluck us out of here, London it is.”

“The British PM would never send you to Lima, right?”

“I knew Maggie Thatcher, John Major, and even Tony Blair. I don’t know the current occupant. So I can’t be sure. All we can depend on is that the fight would take at least as long as Pinochet’s battle, which was more than a year. Hell, I’ll probably turn as senile as Pinochet before they get to that point.”

David Carmichael stood in the doorway of the Signature Flight Service private terminal and watched a United Airlines 777 begin its takeoff roll on runway 17R. It accelerated slowly, pulled by two giant engines straining against the considerable weight of a planeload of passengers and baggage and a fuel load sufficient to power them through the 4,700 nautical miles separating Denver and London.

He glanced at his little Cessna 172, safely chocked in front of the private terminal, the ice now gone from its wings and windshield. He thought of the incredible difference in weight between the two metallic birds. The one approaching liftoff would leave the ground at a hundred fifty knots, weighing nearly three quarters of a million pounds. The 172 could barely hit a hundred fifty knots in cruise flight or lift more than twelve hundred pounds.

The triple seven’s nose rose majestically, the bulk of the aircraft lifting effortlessly into the air and almost immediately disappearing into the fog as the muted sound of the engines rolled over him.

He knew it was Professor Reinhart’s flight. He’d checked and monitored the tower’s takeoff clearance on his portable aviation scanner once his rubber legs had stopped shaking long enough to walk.

David turned and reentered the lounge.

I need another few minutes to wind down, he told himself. Then he’d ask for a ride to the nearby hotel he’d called and get a much needed night of sleep. Tomorrow he’d rent a car to get back to Laramie, unless the sky was crystal clear.

He looked back at his bird, feeling a strong determination to ferret out all he’d done wrong and make certain it never happened again.

And he would undoubtedly hear from the FAA, if they weren’t already on their way to talk to him.

Jay Reinhart turned off his computer and ended the modem connection with the seat phone.

Thank God for modern communications and computers and databases, he thought. A little more than two hours of paging through the Pinochet decisions in Britain and studying British civil procedure, and the Treaty on Torture itself had led to a quick and dirty conclusion: Britain was the right venue.

Jay took a deep breath and leaned back in his seat, feeling relaxed at having made that decision. He glanced out the window to his right and suddenly the fact they were in flight and he wasn’t afraid in the least became a jolting realization.

The departure from Denver had triggered a beginning of the usual gut-wrenching fears as they taxied to the end of the runway, but amazingly enough, his apprehension had evaporated on the takeoff roll. The contrasts between the gentle motions of the flying living room he was occupying and what had occurred a short while before in David Carmichael’s tiny Cessna had tamed the terror, reducing it to a numbed acceptance, a psychological acquiescence and knowledge that nothing about being airborne could ever scare him quite as profoundly again, especially in the benign environment of a luxury jetliner.

Amazing! he thought. All these years all I needed to cure my fear of flying was a near-death experience in a single-engine kite.

He looked around the plush first-class cabin of the Boeing 777, taking in the alluring feminine form of a young flight attendant handing a drink to an aging British rock star he’d recognized two rows ahead.

But he had work to do and calls to make. He tore his concentration away from an instantaneous daydream involving the raven-haired flight attendant and focused instead on the first call he was about to make.

I say it here and it happens there! he thought to himself, any feeling of power overwhelmed by the sense of urgency and responsibility and risk of getting it wrong. He was, after all, up against perhaps the smartest international lawyer on the planet, a man who’d lived and breathed little else besides international law and treaty law for the past thirty years.

Stuart Campbell’s confident, smiling face swam into his mind’s eye, sending a jolt of adrenaline through his bloodstream. The close encounter with the fog-shrouded surface of northeastern Colorado had numbed his fears somewhat, but the thought of Campbell honed the sharp edge of his apprehension once again. Was London a naive choice? Worse, was it a stupid choice, playing right into Campbell’s plans?

Jay closed his eyes and shook the thought from his mind as best he could. He couldn’t be making decisions based on fear instead of logic. Campbell was, after all, just a lawyer, as was he. It was a matter of reading the law and the procedures of each country and deciding where John Harris would be most protected while he built his case against the warrant.

Jay picked up the phone and ran his credit card again before dialing Sherry Lincoln’s GSM phone. She answered on the second ring.

“Go to London, Sherry. Please tell the President. On second thought, let me brief him directly, okay?”

There was a brief delay as she passed the word to John Harris and handed him the phone. His warm and friendly voice betrayed none of the tension or the peril he was in.

“John, I have to warn you of something,” Jay said.

“Go ahead.”

“It’s not likely, but… the current government and the current prime minister have not been tested on this issue, and they seem to think quite differently from their predecessors.”

“Meaning?”

“Well, it’s not impossible that their stance toward rapid compliance with the warrant could dramatically change from that of the Pinochet situation.”

“You mean, uphold sovereign immunity as a bar to the warrant?”

“No, John. I mean they could decide that they have a duty to hear the extradition case immediately with no interference from the Law Lords.”

“But you don’t think so?”

“Highly unlikely, but that’s why I need to get there first.”

“And if not Britain, Jay?”

“I don’t know,” Jay said at the very moment a new possibility flashed across his mind. “I don’t know, but I’m working on alternatives. Don’t leave until I call you from London in about nine hours.”

“I heard you hesitate,” Harris said. “What are you thinking?”

Jay snorted on the other end. “Something… an idea… completely off the wall and not worthy of discussion right now.”

“In my experience, Jay, those usually turn out to be the best of all.”