Headwind (2001) Read online

  “And what, pray tell, are you planning, oh captain, my captain?”

  “Just a little F-15 maneuver.”

  “I see. You will keep in mind won’t you, old boy,” Alastair said, “that this little bird from Seattle doesn’t maneuver quite as well as that overfed F-15 you used to fly?”

  “Sure it does,” Craig replied, his eyes boring into the clouds they were about to penetrate.

  Rome Air Traffic Control Center, Italy

  The controller in charge of EuroAir 42 forced himself to stub out his cigarette and concentrate. With several supervisors hovering over his shoulder, the uncomfortable task of watching the hijacked aircraft as its data block crawled southbound across his scope had become an agony of trying not to forget any procedures. The sudden left turn had been worrisome, but he’d resisted the temptation to ask the pilots what was going on. Who knew what was happening up there, and how the wrong word at the wrong moment might infuriate a hijacker holding a gun or a bomb? Fortunately, he noted, the aircraft was still in the sky, so hopefully there was no struggle going on in the cockpit. He remembered the videos of a Boeing 767 crashing into the water off the Seychelles years before amidst a monstrous struggle for control on the flight deck. Hopefully nothing so dramatic would occur today.

  The data block for the Boeing 727 cleared to Malta had closed on EuroAir 42 by a half mile because of the sudden unexplained turn, but the spacing between the two jets was still legal.

  EuroAir 42 was just crossing the shoreline of Sicily when the data block began to coast, the computer displaying the last readout of position and altitude in the absence of any updated information. The controller came forward slightly in his seat, watching for the aircraft’s transponder to resume “talking” to the ATC computer. But nothing was happening, and the warning symbol that told him the data from the aircraft had been lost was now flashing.

  “What’s happening?” one of the supervisors asked with a self-importance that disgusted the controller.

  “I’ve lost his transponder,” the controller said simply.

  “What does that mean?” a visiting ATC manager who had never been a controller asked.

  “It means, sir, that we may have just temporarily lost the signal, he could have turned it off, or something catastrophic could have happened to stop its transmissions.”

  He toggled his transmitter. “EuroAir Forty-Two, Rome Control. We’ve lost your transponder, sir.”

  No reply.

  He tried again.

  “There! You’ve got a skin paint!” his supervisor said, the man’s breath fetid and heavy over the controller’s shoulder.

  There was in fact a faint return, but it wasn’t traveling in a straight line. It was off to the right of the original course, now disappearing, then returning as the controller changed the display’s polarization control. Suddenly the area was blanked by the appearance of rain echos, and he switched back. The “skin paint” echo, if that’s what it was, had all but reversed course now and seemed to be spiraling.

  The controller realized he was holding his breath. Jetliners didn’t just spiral out of altitude without a word, their data block suddenly going blank. But airliners that suddenly broke up in flight would look exactly like what he was seeing.

  Oh my God, he thought to himself, imagining an explosion in the cockpit. We’ve lost them.

  Sigonella Naval Air Station, Sicily, Italy

  A sudden rain squall had approached from the southwest and blanketed the field for the past ten minutes, obscuring the usually magnificent vista of Mt. Etna to the north, and most of the east-west runway. The two U.S. Navy controllers manning the control tower had watched with amusement as some of their fellows went dashing across the ramp below to reach the military passenger terminal, their khakis completely soaked. A four-engine Navy P-3 Orion submarine hunter, the military version of the Lockheed Electra, sat on the ramp below the tower, its crew off somewhere enjoying local pleasures. Next to it a twin-engine E-2 Hawkeye had just arrived from the Kennedy, one of the carriers currently on patrol in the Mediterranean. The pilots had shut down just as the squall hit and were waiting it out. The controller working the tower frequency saw the door opening now that the rain was ending, then raised his field glasses for a routine sweep of the airport at the same moment a blaze of landing lights appeared over the eastern end of the runway.

  “Who the hell is that?” the controller asked his partner as the radio speaker came alive.

  “Sigonella Tower, EuroAir Forty-Two on short final to runway two seven for an emergency landing.”

  The controller yanked the microphone to his mouth, his mind embracing the regulations the approaching aircrew might have violated by not contacting him sooner, and discarding the thoughts just as quickly. The word “emergency” overrode all other considerations.

  “Ah, EuroAir Forty-Two, you’re cleared to land runway Two Seven, wind two four zero at seven, gusts to fifteen, altimeter two nine eight eight, rainstorm over the field and in progress. Runway is wet.”

  “Roger,” was the only response. A British accent, the controller noted, wondering what on earth could have happened that would have sent them a commercial flight with no advance warning from Rome.

  The controller turned to his partner again. “Did you have anything on him?”

  “Hell, no. Nothing!”

  “Call Rome Control and at least let them know he made it in.”

  The landing lights had coalesced to a Boeing 737, a late-model design, he could tell, with the larger CFM-56 engines with the oval openings in the front. Whoever was flying made a smooth touchdown and deployed his thrust reversers quickly, slowing the aircraft at midfield, where he made a sharp right turn off the runway, following the taxiway toward the tower.

  “Ah, do you need any assistance, Forty-Two?” the tower controller asked.

  “No,” was the monosyllabic reply.

  “Contact ground . . . no, stay with me. Where do you want to park?”

  “Which ramp is under U.S. Navy control?”

  The tower controller hesitated, wondering why anyone would ask that question. The pilot of the 737 was making a beeline toward the parked P-3.

  “Ah, sir, the whole base is U.S. Navy, and you’re heading to the passenger ramp now. Do you have authorization?”

  “We do now” was the response, this one a different voice, and one that sounded American.

  The controller reached over to the crash phone and hesitated, then pulled up the handset and punched the button to alert the security police. The 737 taxied rapidly behind the P-3 and turned to pass between the Orion and the Navy terminal, coming to a stop with its right wingtip practically touching the building.

  “Sigonella Tower, EuroAir Forty-Two. Please listen closely. No one is to approach this aircraft except the commander of this Navy installation. Do you understand?”

  “Forty-Two, I will relay that request, but what is your circumstance, sir? If there’s a problem, please . . . ah . . . tell me what. Do you need assistance of some sort?”

  The other controller had been on hold on another line. Suddenly he lowered his receiver, his eyes wide. “Rome says this bird’s hijacked, and they thought she’d exploded a few minutes ago in midair.”

  “Jesus!” the first controller said, his hand mashing the crash alarm button at the same moment to summon the entire base to alert.

  THIRTEEN

  Rome, Italy—Monday—4:15 P.M.

  When it became apparent that John Harris was not going to land at Da Vinci International, Stuart Campbell returned to his temporary hotel-based office in central Rome to wait for word on EuroAir 42’s ultimate destination. From the back of his car in the middle of midday Roman traffic he ordered his staff in Brussels into action, directing a quick profile on Malta’s legal structure, and making sure the young lawyer he’d dispatched to the island as a remote contingency was actually in the airport with the warrant. Back in his suite and satisfied that all possible preparations had been made, h
e ordered coffee and sat back, watching the clock and wondering why he still felt vaguely unprepared.

  The coffee arrived with the news that EuroAir 42 had engineered a disappearing act and turned up on the ramp at Sigonella.

  “What?” Campbell barked, startling the airport manager, who had just found out and phoned. “Surely you’re joking!”

  “No, signore. Sigonella is a U.S. Navy base in Sicily,” the man offered.

  “I know that,” Campbell replied, trying and failing to suppress a chuckle.

  Clever thinking, Harris! he thought. Won’t get you out of this, of course, but not a bad move under pressure. I wonder how you talked the commercial pilots into it?

  The bizarre thought that a former U.S. chief executive might have actually hijacked the commercial aircraft fluttered across his mind, bringing an even broader smile. Whatever had occurred, that certainly wasn’t the explanation.

  He thanked the manager and ended the call, then summoned his secretary.

  “Isabel, have the car brought around to take me back to the airport, and have my pilots ready to go to this place in Sicily,” he handed her a page of yellow legal paper with the information. “Call Minister Anselmo and tell him I will wait if he or one of his people wants to come along. Ask him to prepare the local Carabinieri commander in Sicily to meet me at Sigonella, and to please arrange diplomatic clearance or whatever’s necessary to get my aircraft onto that airport. Also, they need to clear that charter aircraft to the base as well. If the pilot of that charter calls . . . a Captain Perez . . . patch him through to the car or my GSM immediately.”

  She finished the shorthand transcription of his orders almost as soon as he finished speaking. “Anything else, sir?”

  Campbell hauled himself effortlessly to his feet and smiled at her. “That’s all for now. Tell the driver I’ll be down in five minutes. Oh, first, get the American Embassy here in Rome on the line, and ask for the Naval attaché.”

  His GSM phone rang and he flipped it open as she turned to make the embassy call.

  “Mr. Campbell, this is Captain Perez.”

  “Yes, Captain. Where are you, and I trust you’re going to say Sigonella.”

  “No, sir,” the charter captain replied, relating the fact that for nearly ten minutes he and Rome Control had lost track of EuroAir.

  “So where are you?”

  “In holding near Sigonella. They are refusing to let me land.”

  “Stand by, Captain. That clearance will come in about ten minutes. Land and park wherever they tell you and just wait. I’m on my way. I’ll be arriving within an hour and a half in a Learjet thirty-five and will park beside you.”

  He folded the GSM phone as the secretary reappeared at his side to report the attaché was unavailable.

  “Relay the call to the car if you can get the attaché before I take off, Isabel,” Campbell said. He scooped up his briefcase and headed for the door, stopping in the hallway to concentrate on the dilemma rapidly evolving in his mind. The equation, he thought, might well be more complicated than he’d initially estimated. Sigonella was Italian soil, but now he was going to have to navigate through legal difficulties and diplomatic complications raised because he was a British lawyer representing a South American nation trying to assert Italian jurisdiction over a leased American military installation in order to arrest a former U.S. President under an international warrant!

  His esteem for his adversary went up a notch.

  U.S. Air Force C-17 70042, Call Sign “REACH 70042,” in Flight

  The aircraft commander of Reach 70042, like all pilots for the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command, had been thoroughly trained on how to handle an unexpected message suddenly received in flight ordering them to divert somewhere other than the original destination. There was always the chance that the message could be bogus, even if the radio link it came in on was satellite-based or otherwise secure. Whoever was sending the diversion order had to stand by to be challenged by the aircrew from an ever-changing code table. If the ground station answered with the right coded response, the aircrew would obey and change course.

  The call from the main AMC command post at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois had come as a complete surprise to the crew of Reach 70042. Cruising at flight level four one zero in a brand-new Boeing/Douglas C-17 Globemaster III on a routine nonstop flight from Spain to Daha-ran, Saudi Arabia, Aircraft Commander Ginny Thompson had taken an embarrassingly long time to dig the “secrets” out of her flight suit ankle pocket, and even more time to find the right table and extract the right codes. They were passing south of the southeastern edge of Italy by the time she made the appropriate transmission and received the answering authentication.

  “They match,” she announced. “It’s real.”

  “And that would mean?” the male first lieutenant in the copilot’s seat asked.

  “Punch in the identifier for Sigonella NAS and get us a revised clearance. The orders are to proceed immediately at best speed, and I think we’re only about a hundred miles out.”

  “Close. We’re ninety-eight miles,” the copilot said, finishing the task of reprogramming the flight management computer.

  When Rome Control had cleared them to reverse course and descend, Major Thompson molded her right hand to the control stick and disconnected the autopilot, smoothly bringing the huge transport around in a left bank as she started the descent and pulled the power back on all four engines.

  “Bill, go back and brief the loadmasters,” she told the copilot. “Make sure they’re awake.”

  “Did I hear that right?” the lieutenant asked. “Did he say a former DV code 1 pickup?”

  “That’s what I thought I heard, but that couldn’t be right.”

  “That would be a former President of the United States, right? A ‘DV 1’?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Although I don’t think I’ve ever heard the word former used with a distinguished visitor code before. Anyway, we’re supposed to be ready to go instantly. Be sure they understand that.”

  “Roger.”

  “We’ll be there in twenty minutes,” she added, wondering what the nature of the emergency might be. If there was a former chief executive at Sigonella, was it a medical problem? Were they supposed to fly him out as a medevac? If so, they should have been told. It took time for the loadmasters to set up the cabin. No, she thought, that wouldn’t make sense. More than likely someone other than a former President needed a fast, free ride home.

  They obviously got the DV code wrong.

  Laramie, Wyoming

  The wait was becoming excruciating by the time John Harris phoned to confirm they were on the ramp in Sicily.

  “Great,” Jay replied.

  “Now what?” the President asked gently.

  “Well, now I talk to the White House. Is anyone trying to leave or come aboard?”

  “No,” Harris said, his voice deep and concerned. “The doors are closed, and we have a lot of very unhappy commercial passengers aboard, but right now the engines are still running and we’re just sitting here. No one’s approaching as far as I can see.”

  “John, whatever you do, do not get off that aircraft until I tell you, okay?”

  “Very well. I think I understand.”

  “I’m gambling a bit, but while the Italians might be inclined to come into a leased military installation, they will be very slow to actually invade a foreign flag carrier to remove anyone. Stand by, now. Let me call the White House on the cell phone. If the line goes dead, phone me back at five-minute intervals.”

  Jay put the receiver of the house phone back on the counter and picked up the cell phone, punching in the number he’d been given to the White House Situation Room.

  “This is Jay Reinhart,” he announced when a male voice answered. “I need to speak to . . .”

  “Stand by, sir.”

  There were a few electronic clicks before another male voice filled the earpiece.

  “Mr. Reinhart?”
r />   “Yes.”

  “This is Lieutenant General Bill Davidsen. I’m Deputy Chief of Staff of the Air Force. I asked that you be put through to me if you called.”

  “Thanks, General. I want to let you know that President Harris has landed at Sigonella Naval Air Station in Sicily and is currently sitting in the commercial aircraft on the Navy ramp.”

  “Yes, we know, Mr. Reinhart. We got the information just ten minutes ago from Italian Air Traffic Control.”

  “General, you need to know that I have President Harris holding on another line,” Jay said. “I’ve advised him to stay on the airplane. I think I need to coordinate with the commander of that Navy facility.”