Headwind Page 14

  “The main reason the President canceled the operation, Mr. Reinhart, was the damaging message it could have sent. I doubt a little temporary charade would be a problem for him, as long as we clear it up at the other end.”

  “Thank you. What will you say?”

  “Don’t know, but I’d better get off this line and stop any releases. They’re headed for the press room as we speak.”

  Aboard EuroAir Flight 42

  Sherry Lincoln returned to her seat and sat down heavily, her head swimming with a mélange of hope and worry. She picked up the receiver to ask Jay Reinhart to wait while she briefed the President, but there was no answer—although she could hear Jay talking in the background against the slight hiss of the satellite connection. The bill for all the calls would be in the thousands, she figured, but Harris could afford it, and the thought of trying to deal with this nightmare without instant communication was a nightmare in itself.

  She turned to John Harris and explained Jay Reinhart’s idea and what they were doing to support it.

  “You are kidding?” he asked at last with a skeptical expression.

  “Not in the least. Why?”

  He smiled as he stroked his chin and looked away. “I suppose it could buy us some time, Sherry, but I’m still in the crosshairs of that warrant. And there’s the not so insignificant matter of the other passengers.”

  “The passengers are going to be off-loaded here in a minute as soon as we have you stashed in the forward galley.”

  “Why don’t I just duck into the cockpit?”

  “Italian journalists have telephoto lenses, too, and even through a cockpit window your face is familiar.”

  “Good point.” He looked around carefully over his left shoulder before turning back to her. “Now? Should I go up there now?”

  Sherry rose up to see over the seatbacks behind them. She nodded. “Go, sir. Keep your back to the curtain when you’re in there, in case anyone tries to peek.”

  “I’ll brief Matt and have him stand guard.”

  The President got to his feet quickly and moved toward the galley, motioning to Matt Ward to follow as he slipped past.

  Jillian had remained in the rear cabin with the other two flight attendants trying to keep tempers under control. Craig briefed her by interphone, then quickly left the cockpit to talk to Captain Swanson.

  “I need to get these folks off the plane, sir. We’ve hidden the President in the galley.”

  “We have a military terminal right next to the ramp, you know,” Swanson replied. “We can keep them in there for at least a few hours until you tell me what your company wants to do.”

  “Can some of your guys get their baggage off?”

  “Sure. I can make that happen.”

  “How soon can I off-load the people, then?”

  “Right now, if you like.”

  “In five minutes, then.”

  “You got it,” Swanson said.

  “Thanks, Captain,” Craig said, starting to turn away as the senior Navy officer placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “Look. The objective here is to protect the President. Unless I’m ordered to do something else, I’ll support you any way I can, but I’ve got to warn you . . . and I know you’re former Air Force . . .”

  “Current Air Force, sir. I’m a major and a pilot in the active reserves. That’s . . . kind of why I got myself into this to begin with this morning. Protecting the President. I’ve essentially lost my job for doing all this.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, but I respect your sense of duty, Major. I just wanted you to understand that I could be ordered by my commander to change course and do anything from impound this airplane to God knows what. If it’s legal, I’ll have to obey.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  Craig moved quickly back to Sherry Lincoln’s seat and knelt down. “Are you ready for us to off-load them?” he asked.

  She nodded. “But one other favor, please. We want to charter the aircraft, but instead of the President being the client, it would be his staff doing the chartering. Tell your company we’ll either wire money to them or use an American Express.”

  “I’ll make the call, but that’s a lot of money, Sherry. We could be talking thirty, forty, fifty thousand dollars, depending on how long and where.”

  “Not a problem. Just . . . don’t say anything to diminish the idea that he’s hanging over the Atlantic on the way home.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t. But I’ve still got to figure out what to do about the passengers after they’re off the airplane.”

  “I don’t know. Can you charter another aircraft to take them back to Rome? We’ll pay for that, too.”

  Craig sighed and inclined his head. “Maybe. Let me talk to the company once everyone’s off.”

  He got to his feet and stopped, turning back to her. “What’s the plan now, Sherry? I mean, where else can he go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I thought he’d be safe if we landed here because it’s a U.S. base, you know? You are aware, by the way, that we can’t make it back Stateside in this aircraft?”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “I mean, we could hop to Iceland, then to Canada I suppose, and maybe even make it safely from Iceland to the old Loring Air Force Base in Maine, but Iceland is a foreign country and if anyone gets wind of the President being on board, we may be back to square one.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know what the next step will be. His lawyer is literally making it up minute by minute and we’re all trying to figure out what’s next. I don’t even know if they’ll let us leave here.”

  Craig smiled and arched a thumb in the direction of the forward door. “Captain Swanson told me that the Carabinieri have left the base, and Campbell is on his way back to his Learjet. I’m not sure how, but they took the bait.”

  Craig returned to the cockpit, stopping at the forward galley to check on the President. Matt Ward intercepted him as he touched the curtain. The Secret Service agent moved back as soon as he recognized the captain.

  “Is he ready?” Craig asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Jillian’s coming forward to help guard the curtain and the galley.”

  “Good,” Ward replied. “I’ll be just inside.”

  Craig stepped into the cockpit and slid into his seat to brief Alastair before pulling the PA microphone out of its cradle.

  Ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain. I promised that as soon as that C-17 left and we had this problem resolved, we would let you get off the airplane. We’re ready now. Please bring all your personal belongings and deplane through the forward left door, the same one you came in. I will be in the passenger lounge in a few minutes to answer questions and tell you how we’re going to get you to your destinations.

  Craig did the same announcement in French and German before turning around to lock the cockpit door.

  “Get the company back on the line, Alastair, if you would please. We’re going back to the let’s-charter-ourselves chapter.”

  NINETEEN

  Sigonella Naval Air Station Flight-Line Ramp—Monday—6:40 P.M.

  For a man with a six-foot-four-inch frame, climbing into the compact cabin of a Learjet Model 35 was always a minor challenge. But Stuart Campbell eased himself into one of the leather seats of his Lear with practiced ease and unfolded a wall-mounted table. In his peripheral vision he saw the Navy car that had brought him from the NAS-One part of the base to his aircraft pull away to a respectable distance and park.

  He reached for the onboard satellite phone and stopped, his hand hovering just short of picking it up.

  You’re moving too fast, your tubship! he thought to himself, specifically using the derogatory pet name a former lover had given him when he purchased an estate in Northumberland, which came with the amusing title, “lordship of the manor.”

  “Tubship, I should think,” his lady decided.

  He’d been a few pounds heavier then,
as well as thoroughly unfamiliar with the institution of regular exercise, but the intervening years of workouts had shed the once-developing pot belly, along with the young woman who’d declared it unlovable. Only the epithet remained, and for some reason it still amused him.

  Campbell leaned forward, intertwining his fingers on the small desk as he concentrated on the flaw in his thinking. The shock of apparently losing Harris to an American rescue had obscured the fact that he had no real confirmation yet that the rescue had actually occurred.

  Could that sly old bastard still be on that 737? he wondered. Probably not, but he should put off the call to Lima until he was certain.

  The captain of the Learjet came in the door as his employer hauled himself out of the seat and back onto the ramp.

  “You and Gina stay here, Jean-Paul,” he said, smiling at the female copilot, who was also Jean-Paul’s wife. “I’ll be back.”

  As his feet touched the concrete, the Navy staff car lurched into gear and headed back toward the Lear. The driver’s mission, Campbell was sure, being to keep him under tight control.

  Aboard EuroAir Flight 42, on the Ground, Sigonella

  Naval Air Station, Sicily

  One hundred eighteen passengers trundled down the airstairs and across the leased Sicilian ramp as the last vestiges of twilight faded around Sigonella, casting an unearthly glow about the summit of Mt. Etna to the northeast. All the helicopters had departed, the two from competing Italian television outlets leaving the moment their assignment editors had learned that the American mission was complete and the former American President was on his way back to the United States—a myth propelled and perpetuated by several key interviews given by an unnamed source at the White House. John Harris’s presence on the Air Force jet had not been confirmed by the source, but the fact that an official reception was being planned for the C-17’s arrival in D.C. had been happily relayed and was entirely true. There was, of course, the small, unmentioned detail that the assigned reception committee consisted of a low-ranking White House aide and a steward, both of whom were expecting to “receive” only a tired aircrew on arrival at Andrews AFB. The resulting misunderstanding by the media had flashed around the globe: “Arrest of American Ex-President Foiled by Air Force Rescue!” The headlines instantly lowered the news value of Flight 42’s displaced passengers.

  In the cockpit of EuroAir Flight 42, Captain Craig Dayton watched the exodus of his passengers as he waited for EuroAir’s director of operations to answer the satellite line. It was not a call he’d been looking forward to.

  “They want to do what?” the director of operations, Helmut Walters, asked from Frankfurt.

  “Two things, sir. First, charter this aircraft for at least two days. Second, pay for whatever charter you can get together to take the passengers out of here and bring them back to Rome. They also want to pay for any additional expenses this diversion has cost.”

  “Captain Dayton, you call that a diversion? None of us yet knows what you were doing! Were you hijacked?”

  “No,” Craig sighed as he rubbed his forehead and tried to choose the right words.

  “At one time Rome Control thought you’d crashed. We thought you’d crashed! Wait . . . I’m putting you on speakerphone. The chief pilot is here, too. We all want to know what you were doing.”

  “All right, here’s the deal,” Craig began. “I had a situation in Athens where I thought we were about to be either hijacked or attacked. I wasn’t sure whether we were facing the outfall from a Greek coup d’état or a direct assault because of the presence of the former U.S. President.”

  He could hear consternation on the other end.

  “Captain, operations said they told you to hold at the gate, and yet you started and blew over all sorts of things backing out,” the operations director said.

  “And you may have hurt the engines with foreign object damage, Dayton,” the chief pilot added, “not to mention the fact that backing out violated all our procedures.”

  “Gentlemen,” Craig countered, “if I’d stayed there and been the victim of some bloodbath and lost our passengers and the airplane, would you feel the same? Keep in mind that I had no way of knowing whether someone was holding a gun to the head of the operations agent or not.”

  “But that was not the situation, eh, Captain Dayton?” the director of operations said.

  “No, but it’s all too easy for you to declare that now, in hindsight, Herr Walters, and to thump me on the head with the news that there was no real threat. But I perceived a threat! I perceived a major, immediate threat. And I was the one in command, right there, right then, who had to make a decision, and I’m always going to err on the side of safety. Would you want me to act otherwise? Certainly our passengers wouldn’t.”

  There was sudden silence from the other end, and Craig could tell they’d been momentarily halted by the logic of his argument.

  “Very well, Captain, but why did you then fail to land in Rome, fly to Sicily, keep your passengers cooped up, and make Rome Control think you were crashing?”

  “Same reason, sir. Whatever or whoever was after us at Athens appeared to be lying in wait in Rome for reasons I absolutely cannot discuss on a nonsecure telephone connection.”

  Craig could see Alastair stifling a laugh in the right seat as he continued.

  “I was completely convinced that everyone aboard was at risk, and I chose Sigonella because it was an American base, I had an American ex-President aboard being chased by God knows who, and I felt my passengers—who included an American tour group of forty-four, by the way—would be far safer here than anywhere else. I don’t know the Italian military bases. I do know this one. And, okay, why the sudden descent without the transponder into here? Because, if you didn’t know it, we were being literally followed by another aircraft and several fighters, and I wanted to lose them. I wasn’t interested in being shot down on final approach when I’m most vulnerable and have no countermeasures or missiles on board.”

  At the mention of missiles, Alastair lost it, laughing quietly in the right seat as he covered his mouth and shook his head. Craig looked at him and almost lost control as well, holding his voice barely in check as he listened to the increasingly befuddled response from Frankfurt.

  “That’s . . . what do you mean, shot down, Captain Dayton? Why would you think, for heaven’s sake, that anyone would be trying to shoot you down?” the operations manager sputtered as the chief pilot weighed in.

  “Dayton,” the chief pilot snarled, “that is without a doubt the most delusional nonsense I’ve ever heard from an airline captain!”

  “When you gentlemen hired me, you knowingly hired an experienced pilot with thousands of hours in top-of-the-line military fighter jets. In fact, Herr Wurtschmidt, I recall you yourself saying that was a very valuable commodity to this airline. As a veteran fighter pilot, I’m very sensitive to airborne threats that you may not even know exist, and if I overreacted here, then please explain to me who was chasing us and why.”

  “Well . . . we do not know that yet . . . it’s still early . . .”

  “Look,” Craig said, “you can fire me or give me an award for bravery later. Right now, let’s just get to the heart of what we need to do while we’ve got the crew duty time left to do it. Do we let these folks charter this aircraft or not? And before you answer, I’ve got a number for you to call in Washington, D.C.”

  “What number?”

  He passed the name and telephone number. “That’s the Chief of Staff of the White House. The call will be confidential. The United States Government is formally requesting our assistance.”

  “But . . . but I thought you said this would be paid for by credit card or a wire transfer? Now the American government is trying to charter us?”

  “No. President Harris’s staff is trying to charter us. Herr Walters, have you ever had experience in the world of intelligence operations or security matters?”

  “No.”

  “Then j
ust trust me. There are reasons for paying for certain things by personal credit card or check or wire that are sometimes necessary for political and security reasons. Again, I can’t explain over a nonsecure line.”

  More silence on the other end, and in the cockpit, except for the sound of the air-conditioning and the muffled chuckling from Alastair, which increased with the phrase “nonsecure line.”

  “Well,” Walters said at last, “do you have any idea where they want to go?”

  “Not yet. They may just want to stay here. Give them a price that covers everything.”

  “Very well. We will call you back. This is very irregular.”

  “Please, gentlemen. Call the White House first.”

  “We will. Thank you, Captain. And . . . you’re correct. We want you to exercise your judgment for safety. We did not mean to imply we don’t. We will need to discuss this at length when you return, but . . . very well. We accept your explanation.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Craig said, as deferentially as he could manage.

  He disconnected the call and turned to the copilot with his eyebrows raised in feigned innocence as Alastair audibly exploded in laughter.

  “That . . .” Alastair said, pointing to his captain, “was by far the funniest . . . dishing of basic bull I’ve . . . ever heard!”

  “I beg your pardon?” Craig managed, a huge, involuntary smile on his face as he tried in vain to look offended. “What do you mean, ‘bull’?”

  “A nonsecure line! HAH!” He wagged an index finger at Craig again. “Missiles? Blinking MISSILES, for Chrissakes? Good Lord, you’re a bloody bullshit champion, Dayton!”

  “I’m a fighter pilot. The terms are synonymous.”