Passenger 19

FORTY-TWO

McBain was the first to spot the airfield. He pointed to a gap in the trees, and said, “Yeah, that one looks familiar. We did a joint raid with the Colombian Army — two, maybe three years ago. We showed up a day late and everyone was gone. Word of our arrival often precedes us when the army gets involved. At any rate, we got the enemy to pull up stakes. It’s hard to run a processing factory when you’re moving every two weeks.”

Davis glanced at the airfield, but largely kept his eyes on the sky. There was a drone out here somewhere. According to Jorgensen it was loitering above their altitude, however, there were no air traffic controllers to sort things out, and a midair collision would ruin everyone’s day. He was flying the Comanche much like he’d flown on his first-ever lesson — a small airplane, no autopilot, and operating on the see-and-avoid concept when it came to air traffic.

The sat-phone chirped, and McBain relayed the highlights of a message from Jorgensen. “The jeeps have stopped — we know where they’re holed up. It’s about five miles south down the airfield road. There are a few secondary trails, but we shouldn’t have any trouble finding the place. It’s an abandoned plantation we’ve had our eye on before, three buildings in marginal shape. According to Jorgensen there are four vehicles altogether, roughly twenty hostiles.”

“Hostiles?” said the engineer in back. “That is not a word I like.”

“And not a number I like,” agreed Davis. He spotted the road easily because there were no others in sight — just a single brown ribbon through the carpet of green. He flew over the airfield and they all saw the single-engine Cessna that had delivered Martin Stuyvesant’s courier. It had fat tires and a big high wing, the signature features of an airframe built to operate on short, soft fields. The pilot looked up at them. He didn’t wave.

“Okay, Jammer, this is your rodeo. What now? Do we fly south for a little reconnaissance?”

“No, that would only spook them — if I take this crate within two miles of the compound they’ll hear our engines. Besides, it doesn’t add anything. As long as the drone is overhead we’ve got eyes on target. What we need is boots on the ground.”

Davis sized up the landing strip, and what he saw wasn’t encouraging. It appeared rough, certainly not the kind of surface that the engineers at Piper Aircraft had in mind when they designed the Twin Comanche. But then, a few days earlier a Colombian named Blas Reyna had landed a regional jet here, and subsequently taken off again. Davis thought, If he can do it…

He tried to get a feel for the wind at ground level, but the jungle air seemed to be only heating and rising, no measurable vector in either direction. He made one last pass over the clearing, scouting for the smoothest surface and picking an aim point for touchdown that was just beyond the most obvious obstacle — a broad puddle that was one good downpour away from pond status. The pilot of the Caravan watched them closely, standing motionless under one wing. A good sign, Davis thought. It meant he was more concerned with shade than issuing a warning with the radio in his cockpit.

He set up on final approach and cinched his seat belt tight. McBain noticed, and did the same without being told. Fifty feet above the ground Davis spotted a pair of long grooves in the surface, likely made by TAC-Air Flight 223 days earlier. He adjusted his flight path to straddle one of the tracks, reasoning that any ground solid enough to support a twenty-ton regional jet would hold up fine under the much lighter Comanche. If nothing else, a comforting thought. His touchdown was reasonably smooth, and as they coasted to a stop Davis sensed exhales of relief behind and to his right.

He did a pirouette at the far end of the field, a turn just wide enough to avoid bogging down in the soft earth. Davis shut down the engines as soon as the nose was reversed and pointed down the runway, a trick he’d picked up from an old Africa hand on an equally dodgy mission. Be ready to go on a moment’s notice.

The propellers chugged to a halt and everything went quiet, the only sounds that of cooling fans and gyros spinning down in the instrument panel. Davis actuated switches to shut off the battery, and all three men turned their attention to the other airplane. The Cessna was fifty meters away, the pilot still standing under the port wing. He looked interested but not concerned. He’d parked his own aircraft close to the road, oriented to provide the shortest possible walk for his passenger. A pilot accustomed to clients who didn’t want to get their shoes dirty. This reinforced McBain’s earlier assessment. They were looking at a local charter pilot who’d been hired for a morning’s work. He probably had no idea what he was doing here, who he was working for, and likely didn’t care. He was just out flying a charter with one eye closed, somewhere south of propriety, a guy happy with a five-hundred-dollar morning.

“How do you want to handle this?” McBain asked.

“I don’t see a lot of options,” Davis answered. He outlined a simple plan, one born quite literally on the fly. There were no objections, and they all disembarked and walked casually toward the pilot. All three men smiled, and Delacorte even waved. When they were ten steps away, McBain greeted the pilot because he was the best Spanish speaker. Davis heard something along the lines of, “Is this the road that leads to the Colombia Rain Forest Project?”

Everyone knew it wasn’t. It had been McBain’s suggestion, an airfield and service road that did exist, but one they’d missed by forty miles. The charter pilot smiled condescendingly. He looked at Davis as if he’d just met the worst navigator in the world. The mood was easy and loose when the charter pilot began to reply. Then Delacorte and Davis lunged the last few feet and trussed the Colombian firmly by his elbows.

Go find the ax.

Kehoe sat patiently with his hands crossed on top of the briefcase, perhaps subconsciously the one with the handcuff underneath. He hadn’t liked the handcuff routine to begin with, thinking it amateurish and dangerous, but Strand had insisted. Kehoe didn’t like to wear anything that restricted his movement — belts, ties, overcoats. Not in his closet. A Kevlar vest was the only exception, and that hadn’t seemed appropriate for this mission. The key to the cuffs was in his shoe. Not particularly clever, but what the hell was he supposed to do?

His senses were still keen under the hood. He heard shuffling nearby, multiple sets of boots, and suddenly Kehoe was dragged off the jeep and thrown to the ground. The case flew from his grasp, and at least two men held him down. He saw little point in resisting — not until someone took his arm, the one chained to the briefcase, and forced it out wide. The briefcase was pulled until the chain went taut, and then everything stopped moving, his forearm pinned to the ground. The next Spanish command he translated instantly. “Do it — cut it off.”

“Wait!” Kehoe yelled. “I have a key! Let me—”

His protest was cut short by a boot to the head. An instant later, he was sure he heard a whoosh of air as the ax swung down.

The Cessna pilot didn’t bother to struggle, in Davis’ view a display of sound judgment as he was outweighed by a hundred pounds on either side. The look on his face was one of intense concentration, the factors of his situation no doubt multiplying in his head. Delivering an American passenger with a heavy briefcase. Two jeeps full of paramilitaries. Another airplane with three men, also American, but who were clearly on a different team. Men whose mission did not dovetail with his own. That fast, like flying into a box canyon, his easy money trip had disappeared.

McBain patted him down, but found nothing. The DEA man stood with his hands on his hips, a dubious look on his face. “No,” he said. “Nobody flies to a place like this without protection.” He went to the airplane, and in five seconds found what he was looking for under the left seat — a 9mm Beretta. McBain turned the piece in his hand and said, “Now we have a real gun.” His expression of victory evaporated when he ejected the magazine and pulled back the slide. “One round,” he announced weakly.

“One?” repeated Davis. He looked disbelievingly at the Colombian. “Don’t you know there are dangerous people out here?”

McBain said roughly the same in Spanish, and the pilot only shrugged. He didn’t look worried, which Davis took to mean that he either had faith that someone would come to his rescue, or that he’d been in difficult situations before. The latter seemed more likely.

McBain went over the airplane more thoroughly, but found nothing useful. “Now what?” he asked. “We’ve got one bullet, one gun, and five miles between us and twenty heavily armed soldiers.”

“No,” said Davis, “we’ve got five miles between me and my daughter. That’s the closest I’ve been in a long time.”

“So, how do we get her back?” Delacorte asked.

“We wait,” McBain said. “That guy delivering the ransom will be back soon. His airplane and pilot are right here, which means he’s leaving the same way he came in — delivered by two jeeps and a half a dozen guys. He’ll have his girl, and maybe your daughter too.”

Davis had already made similar calculations, only to hit a stop when it came to Jen. “I don’t think so. If he’s delivering a payoff, it’s for the vice president’s daughter. There’s no incentive for these people to release Jen. And if that’s the case, as soon as Kristin is clear, they’re going to move. I say we go in now while we know where she is.”

Davis looked at Delacorte, then McBain. Both nodded.

Delacorte said, “How will we do it? If we leave this pilot alone he might create trouble. He could make an unwanted radio call or disable our airplane.”

“We have one bullet,” said McBain.

Davis looked at him closely and saw the threshold of a smile. At least he thought it was a smile.

“Okay, just kidding,” said McBain. “We don’t have anything to truss him up with, and there’s a chance somebody else might show up. One of us has to stay here to watch him, make sure he behaves.”

They both looked at Delacorte.

“D’accord,” the Frenchman replied. “It only makes sense that I am the one to stay.”

“All right, tell him,” Davis said. He released the pilot’s arm and Delacorte did the same. McBain began talking, and pointed to Delacorte. The pilot looked at the Frenchman who was ten inches taller, twice his weight, and staring with a newfound menace. The pilot’s expression said he wished he’d stayed home today.

Davis retrieved the canvas bag with the facsimile MP-5s, tossed in the sat-phone, and on a whim added the Comanche’s government-issue survival kit. Finally, he took in hand the flight control locking bar and key. The Colombian watched closely as they went to the Caravan’s cockpit and tried to secure the bar across the control yoke. Unfortunately, the design was different and the locking bar didn’t fit. Davis backed outside, put his hands on his hips, and soon saw a better solution. The pilot protested vehemently as Davis secured the locking bar around a very expensive Hartzell propeller.

Davis said, “Tell him we’ll be back in an hour with the key. All he has to do is sit tight and relax with his new friend from France.”

McBain translated, and the pilot acquiesced by sitting on the ground.

“You sure you’re okay with this?” Davis asked Delacorte.

“Absolument!”

With that, Davis and McBain moved out, the DEA man shouldering the canvas bag. The sun was getting higher, the temperature rising. Davis felt his shirt already clinging to his back, and sweat beaded his forehead.

“How far did you say it was?” he asked.

“According to Jorgensen, five miles.”

“Sounds like about half an hour.”

“Half an hour?” McBain repeated. “How the heck can we—”

Davis broke into a run before he could finish.

Kristin started to cry out when the ax came down, but squelched her outburst. The girls froze in place, as still and silent as twin toppled statues, fearful that their concealment had been compromised. They waited for a finger to be pointed in their direction, for a shout of alarm. None came.

After a full five minutes Jen, who was unable to see outside, asked what had happened. Kristin gave a hushed account, and Jen maneuvered onto one side, a tolerable position from which she could glimpse the scene outside. She saw six soldiers standing in a semicircle, all of them laughing. A man wearing a hood was seated on the ground, rubbing one hand over his opposing wrist where half a set of handcuffs dangled. She saw the other silver cuff and a severed chain on the handle of a suitcase. Carlos had it on the hood of one of the jeeps and was trying to pry it open with the ax.

“That’s Carlos,” Kristin whispered.

Jen said, “I’ve met him. He came to the room where they were holding me yesterday.”

“What did he want?”

“First he told me about the airplane crash, probably to frighten me. Then he said he needed information. He wanted something only my father and I would know, details to convince him I’m still alive.”

“And did you give it?”

“I did, but for my own reasons. My father is an aircraft accident investigator. If that airplane crashed, and my dad believed I was on it — I’m sure he’s in Colombia right now trying to find us.”

“Does he have a strange first name?”

“His name’s Frank, but everybody calls him Jammer.”

“That’s it,” said Kristin. “I heard Carlos talking to his father on the phone. There’s a big guy stirring up trouble in Bogotá.”

“Yep. That would be my dad.”

They both watched the big soldier — who Kristin confirmed was Pablo — explain something to Carlos with a lot of gesticulating.

“Carlos looks furious,” said Kristin.

“I think you put yourself in a bind by helping me.”

Carlos looked around the compound, and as his gaze swept past their position, both girls instinctively dropped their heads. When they looked up again they saw Carlos double down on his mistake — he ordered everyone back into the jungle for another search.

Jen whispered, “That man sitting on the ground — do you know who he is?”

“No, I’ve never seen him before. My father must have hired him to deliver the payment. Or maybe he’s with the Secret Service.”

“Do you really think there’s seven million dollars in that case?”

Kristin said, “According to Carlos, that was the deal.”

“So the ransom is paid. They’ll have to let you go.”

Kristin hesitated. “I’m not so sure. Carlos wasn’t happy when you showed up with me. I made him promise that you and I could leave together when the payment came, but today he changed his mind. He said only I would be released.”

“Why? Do you think he wants a second ransom for me? My dad doesn’t have that kind of money, he’s only a retired military officer.”

The two girls exchanged a long look in the dim light.

“He’s not going to let me go,” said Jen.

Kristin shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Is that why you came for me?”

Kristin nodded. “Yeah… I guess it was.”

“Thanks for that.”

A half smile from the vice president’s daughter before she turned serious. “This whole damned thing is my fault,” she said. “What happened to Thomas, the people on that airplane. You’re my last chance to do something right. I’ll get you out of here, Jen. I swear it.”