Headwind

THIRTY-SIX

“Outer marker, altitude checks, no flags,” Alastair reported as Craig Dayton clicked off the Boeing 737’s autopilot and eased the yoke forward to capture the instrument landing system glide path in a steady descent.

“Intercepting glide slope. Flaps twenty-five, landing gear down, Before Landing Checklist,” Craig ordered.

“Roger,” Alastair echoed. “Flaps coming to twenty-five, and… landing gear down.” He positioned the landing gear lever to the down position and pulled the laminated checklist into his lap to read through the items, verifying Craig’s response to each one.

“Flaps to go, Craig.”

“Roger. Field in sight, flaps thirty,” Craig reported as the approach lights loomed large four miles ahead of the aircraft.

“Flaps are coming to thirty. Flaps are thirty. Gear and flaps rechecked down, and we’re cleared to land. You’re on speed, marker plus five, ground speed one hundred twenty-four knots.”

The jetliner crossed the threshold of Runway 10 fifty feet above the boundary as Craig flared, stopping the descent with the tires a few inches above the surface before letting the bird gently settle to the concrete with a squeal and a stream of rubber smoke unseen in the darkness.

Craig’s hand shot forward to gather the speed brake handle and try to pull it back before the automatic deployment system did the job, a race he never won, but which provided a human backup to the system.

He grabbed the thrust reverse levers, redirecting the air moving through the jet engines and slowing the big Boeing.

“EuroAir Ten-Ten, exit at Taxiway Bravo, contact ground,” the tower controller said.

“Ten-Ten, roger, and sir, would you please check to make sure Dublin Center relayed to London Center that we’re okay?”

“They already know, Ten-Ten. There’s rather considerable commotion about you tonight.”

“The subtext,” Alastair said as his hands ran through the after-landing sequence, “is: ‘You blokes have a whale of a lot of explaining to do.’ ”

“I’m sure that’s true,” Craig said, completing the runway turnoff while Alastair switched to the ground control frequency and checked in, turning to Craig after releasing the transit button.

“Our esteemed chief pilot will just love our latest trick,” Alastair added.

“Maybe he didn’t hear about it,” Craig said, smiling, his eyes on the taxiway.

“And maybe tomorrow the sun will rise in the west, Captain, sir. This will be the final straw, I have no doubt.”

“Ten-Ten, Dublin Ground. Taxi to the Island, hard stand eighty-three, please. That’s off Taxiway Papa.”

“Why on earth do they call a simple parking spot with a refueling hydrant a ‘hard stand?’ ” Alastair mumbled to himself.

Craig guided the Boeing to a stop and set the parking brake. He could see a set of portable stairs approaching the left front as they ran the shutdown checklist and Jillian unlocked the cockpit door.

“May I open the front door, Craig?”

“If it’s okay with Matt Ward and Sherry,” Craig said.

“It is.”

“Then let’s get the heck out of here.”

Sherry Lincoln stepped into the Irish night at the top of the airstairs and breathed deeply, loving the cool, damp air, and eagerly anticipating the feel of a real bed for the first time in forty-eight hours.

Matt Ward emerged right behind her.

“Beautiful night, huh?” he said.

“Yes. And no sign of police, soldiers, or anything particularly threatening.”

“Not yet, at least,” Matt added, pointing to four men who were walking around the nose of the Boeing toward the foot of the airstairs. Matt bounded down the stairs and stopped the group. Sherry heard the name “Jay” spoken as Craig Dayton and President Harris emerged, with Jillian, Ursula, and Elle behind them.

Sherry descended the stairs with her eyes on the two men in the front now in conversation with the Secret Service agent, wondering which one owned the steady, metered voice that had been so reassuring during the ordeal.

The first of the two men was fairly short and somewhat rotund with a huge smile under a shock of silver hair, the second athletic and just under six feet in height with a full head of black hair and a well-sculpted face set with large, dark eyes.

Sherry felt a tiny shudder of inner relief when the second one stepped forward with his hand outstretched.

“Miss Lincoln, I presume?”

“Mr. Reinhart?”

“Or should I say ‘Ms.’?”

She smiled. “ ‘Miss’ is accurate, ‘Ms.’ is better, and ‘Sherry’ is preferred.”

“It’s great to meet you at last, and get you here safely,” Jay said, taking her hand gently and looking beyond her as John Harris reached the bottom of the airstairs and hurried over.

“Jay!”

Jay smiled as he squeezed Sherry’s hand and released it to greet Harris. “You’re even more trouble than you were as my senior partner, Mr. President.”

“At the White House they teach you how to be a burden to everyone simultaneously,” the President said, turning to introduce Craig Dayton and Alastair Chadwick.

Jay in turn introduced Michael Garrity before gesturing toward the other two men who had hovered in the background.

“These gentlemen are from Irish Immigration.”

One of the officers smiled and pointed to the group. “So, which one of you fine people happens to be a former President of the United States?”

When the formalities and paperwork had been completed, John Harris caught Jay’s attention and pointed to another parked aircraft. “I see Campbell’s here.”

“You… recognize the airplane?” Jay asked.

Harris nodded with a frown. “From Sigonella. Yes. It was parked in the distance, but the colors are very distinctive.”

“He got here almost an hour ago,” Jay said. “I’m completely perplexed how he found out you were coming to Dublin, let alone how he knew you hadn’t gone down.”

The President began walking the group toward the terminal. “Never underestimate Stuart Campbell, Jay. As trite as that sounds, it’s a survival manual in a phrase.”

“I believe it,” Jay replied. “And I imagine he’s hard at work with his people right now trying to find a judge. Michael will fill you in on the realities of that process on the way to the hotel, but the bottom line is, I think we’re reasonably secure until morning. In fact, they might be incapable of perfecting their warrant before Thursday morning, since tomorrow’s St. Patrick’s Day. But, John, if we can get you out of here in the morning on a commercial airline, we need to do it. Urgently.”

“Is that possible?” the President said as Jay held the terminal door open for him and Sherry.

“I haven’t had time to work on it,” Jay said when he caught up with them after handing off the door to Garrity and the others, “and frankly, I was reluctant to make a reservation in your name for fear Campbell’s team would be watching.”

“You have a list of the flights, though?” Sherry asked.

Jay nodded. “Yes. Aer Lingus and Delta are the direct ones, although Delta makes a stop in Shannon. I was thinking you could use my passport, John…”

The President had come through the door and stopped, shaking his head “no” as he cast a sideways glance at Sherry. “I’m not going to do it that way, Jay. I’ve got to draw the line somewhere. Besides, my using your passport would be a criminal offense in almost any nation on earth. You know that.”

“I… yes, but I just want to get you home.”

“Well, I want to get me home, too, but not by pulling some cheap stunt.”

He saw Jay wince and hastened to put his hand on Jay’s arm. “That wasn’t a shot at you, Jay. You’re doing exactly what I need you to do by looking at every option, but I’ve got to ride herd on my own panic.”

Jay nodded. “I understand.”

“I’m very concerned,” Harris continued, inclining his head toward Craig Dayton and Alastair Chadwick, who were waiting at a respectful distance, “that I’ve let these two wonderful pilots put themselves in great professional jeopardy for me. If they lose their jobs, I’ve got to fix it.”

“We had to get you out of Italy, John.”

“I know. But I’m getting more nervous about this by the hour, because I’m finally beginning to appreciate the gigantic scope of the dragnet Miraflores has cast around the globe to snare me. I’m sure Stuart has unlimited funds and unlimited numbers of people to help him.”

Another pulse of self-doubt shot through Jay’s head. In contrast to the legal juggernaut captained by Stuart Campbell, John Harris’s legal team consisted of a single barrister of unknown capability, a solicitor he had yet to meet, and a failed Texas jurist trying to reclaim his long-dormant stripes as an international lawyer. The odds were shameful, and he would need every minute to prepare for battle in the Irish courts.

Craig Dayton caught Jay just before he climbed into the first of two vans hired to take them to the nearby hotel.

“Where do we go from here, Mr. Reinhart?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Are you going to need us, I mean? My airplane and my crew?”

“I don’t know. Can you stand by through tomorrow?”

Craig looked around at Alastair, who was approaching with his bags, then back at Jay. “Look, we’re probably about to be fired, and… the reason I need to know, is that if the charter is continuing, I can probably get EuroAir to let us keep on going. I know the only reason they agreed to this charter is the pressure the White House put on them, but once it’s over, the money’s stopped, and the political pressure is off, we’ll be ordered to deadhead the bird to Frankfurt.”

“Tell them the charter continues and the money won’t stop,” Jay said immediately.

Craig nodded. “Good. I… may need some help from Washington again if the stunt we pulled over the English Channel has too many people calling for our heads. They thought we’d gone down, and there was a rescue effort.”

“Let me know. I’ll make the calls to D.C. and do my best.”

“One other thing. We may need more pressure from D.C. anyway to go back Stateside with the airplane.”

“You can make it Stateside? Without a fuel stop in Iceland or Canada?” Jay asked, his eyebrows up a notch. “I thought…”

Craig nodded as he glanced at Alastair once more. “Let me put it this way. Dublin to Presque Isle, Maine, is about twenty-eight hundred nautical miles, but the maximum range of this airplane is just a tiny bit over three thousand nautical miles. That means that if the headwinds aren’t too bad, and if we fly at what’s called maximum endurance airspeeds, and if the airports in Iceland and Greenland and Canada aren’t socked in as alternate fields, we might be able to make it safely, although there’s one big legal hitch.”

“I should say!” Alastair chimed in.

“What?” Jay asked.

“This isn’t an ETOPS bird.”

“That’s… alphabet soup to me,” Jay replied, leaning against the van and willing himself to believe he wasn’t tired.

“We love esoteric acronyms in aviation,” Craig was saying. “ETOPS means extended twin-engine overwater operation, and to reach the U.S. mainland from here we’d be way, way out over the Atlantic, instead of staying within three hundred miles of a suitable airfield, which is the normal limit.”

“So… you’d be doing something illegal?”

“More… against regulations than illegal… in a criminal sense,” Craig added.

“Mr. Reinhart,” Alastair interjected, “what my partner here is trying to say with practiced understatement is that technically we’re not allowed to fly passengers straight out over the Atlantic, even though we are equipped with all the required overwater gear: life rafts, life jackets, survival gear, and such. You see, there’s a certain procedure for officially blessing twin-engine jets for such operations, and this one hasn’t yet qualified. We’re already in terrible trouble with our company, but even if we weren’t, I guarantee you EuroAir would never approve such an illicit route.”

“They wouldn’t have to,” Craig said. “We’ll file by way of Keflavík, Iceland, and Gander, Newfoundland, then to Presque Isle, Maine. Only we’ll change the routing in flight and go direct, or as close to direct as they’ll let us. There is a specific system of tracks across the North Atlantic.”

“I think I understand,” Jay said.

“I’m assuming you still don’t want to touch down in any country other than the U.S., including Canada.”

“That’s right… you can navigate over water?” Jay asked.

“Piece of cake,” Craig answered, noticing the pained expression on Alastair’s face.

“I hate that phrase,” Alastair muttered.

“He hates that phrase,” Craig repeated, arching a thumb at the copilot. “We’ve got two GPS’s, global positioning satellite systems. We know our position within three feet at every moment.”

“Yes, indeed,” Alastair said. “For instance, at this moment we know our careers are precisely within three feet of the intersection of Unloved and Unemployed. So why not enjoy the trip and push on some more?”

“In other words…” Jay started to say, completely confused.

“In other words,” Craig replied, “we can do it if the President needs us. Provided the winds aren’t ridiculous.”

“Try to arrange it, fellows,” Jay said. “If I can’t get him out any other way, we’ll do it your way.”