Headwind (2001)

by John J. Nance

  The response had puzzled the man thoroughly. Rome? Why would someone hijack an airliner and force the crew to fly to their scheduled destination?

  Craig disconnected the link before more awkward questions could be asked.

  All Mediterranean air traffic controllers had been notified of the presumed hijacking, and despite the fact that Flight 42 wasn’t squawking the right transponder code to confirm an act of air piracy, they were giving the pilots anything they asked for.

  Craig pulled the PA microphone from its bracket and glanced at Alastair as he pushed the transmit button.

  Folks, this is your captain. I apologize for the sudden and . . . unusual departure back there in Athens. We . . . were not able to get a push-back tug, and the airport was going to close and prevent us from getting to Rome on schedule, so I elected to go a bit early and use reverse thrust to get us backed up. I’m sorry if we startled you. None of the bags you saw blowing around the ramp were yours, by the way. Yours were already loaded. Thanks, and we should arrive in Rome on schedule.

  He repeated the announcement in German and a shorter version in passable French before replacing the microphone.

  “I’m going to go back and talk to Harris,” Craig said, watching Alastair’s response as the copilot winced and looked to his left, a haunted expression on his face.

  “I truly am worried, Craig,” Alastair said. “We made a real hash of it back there, legally.”

  “I know.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “Why?”

  “Yes. Why?” Alastair asked. “Why on the mere strength of a rumor and the presence of a few policemen you elected to imperil an aircraft full of passengers and blow through a half dozen regulations, including the registering of a false hijacking report?”

  “I never said we were hijacked. The controller said that.”

  Alastair was shaking his head, his face reddening as his anger rose against the background of fear and confusion. “Don’t split hairs! You used that, and we’re still using it. There will be hell to pay when they find out no one’s forcing us to do anything!”

  “I am. I’m forcing us.”

  “And I’m your culpable copilot. Good heavens, man. Why?”

  “I’m an Air Force officer, Alastair.”

  “Well, bloody hell, so was I, for the Royal Air Force and the Queen, of course, but that doesn’t make me a guard at Buckingham Palace.”

  “I’m a reservist. I’m still a commissioned officer sworn to protect the President of the United States.”

  “I hate to break it to you, Craig, but the gentleman in the back isn’t President any longer.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Once and always.”

  “We’ll never explain this to Frankfurt. You know that? They’re operating on a shoestring with this upstart airline as it is. If they don’t hand our heads to the Greeks on a pike, they could be denied future landing rights in Athens. We’re . . . what’s that phrase you use? We’re toast.”

  Craig shook his head energetically. “Don’t count on it. As I said, it was all my idea.” He slid the seat back and climbed out, patting Alastair on the shoulder as he opened the door. “Be back in a few minutes. Keep us flying.”

  “Indeed,” Chadwick said, sadly. “I’d better enjoy it. Could be my last time at the controls.”

  Sherry Lincoln saw the cockpit door open and was already on her feet and moving forward to catch the captain as he came out. She intercepted him by the forward galley, introducing herself and Matt Ward, the Secret Service agent who’d remained by the forward door on takeoff.

  “You’re President Harris’s aide?” Craig asked Sherry.

  “Aide, assistant, advisor, and secretary,” Sherry said, “and we want to thank you for getting us out of there in time.”

  Craig looked at them in turn. “You . . . understood what I was doing?”

  Matt Ward nodded. “I know that seven thirty-seven’s don’t back out of gates under their own power, Captain. Jillian told us about the arrest warrant.”

  “That was quite a show with the baggage carts,” Sherry Lincoln chuckled. “You took one heck of a risk for him.”

  Jillian appeared beside them. “I told them about your Air Force background, Craig,” she explained.

  The captain nodded, inclining his head toward the chief flight attendant. “This is a German airline, by the way, but Jillian is a U.S. citizen, too.”

  A smile flickered across Jillian’s face as she glanced at Craig.

  “Ms. Lincoln,” Craig said as he touched Jillian’s arm in response to her smile, “who, exactly, might have been trying to arrest the President? All we were told was that a government delegation was on its way to the airport to take him into custody, and I couldn’t allow that. They wouldn’t tell us why.”

  Sherry took a deep breath and leaned back against the forward bulkhead, shaking her head. “I don’t know for certain, Captain, but I strongly suspect you just earned a medal. I think you just prevented what some at the State Department call the second-tier nightmare scenario for an ex-president.”

  “Second-tier?” he asked.

  “The first is a kidnapping. The second is a Pinochet warrant.”

  “Pinochet, as in the Chilean dictator?” Craig asked.

  “Absolutely. The general who personally ordered thousands of Chileans tortured and killed for political reasons.”

  “Wait. . .” Craig interrupted, smiling and holding his hand up. “What does Pinochet have to do with President Harris?”

  “In the eighties,” she replied, “most nations signed a treaty that made the infliction of torture in any form by any official of any country a borderless crime. In other words, you can be tracked down anywhere on earth and prosecuted by any country. Pinochet was one of the first major challenges for that treaty.”

  “I do recall some fuzzy details about that case,” Craig said.

  Sherry stopped and looked at her watch. “How long do we have before landing?”

  “A little over an hour and twenty minutes,” Craig replied. “But please finish what you were saying about Pinochet.”

  “Okay. I’ve got some urgent calls to make, but in a nutshell, a Spanish judge issued a warrant for the general’s arrest and they snagged him when he came to London for medical care. But it took the British courts over a year to rule that Pinochet must be extradited to Spain to stand trial.”

  “But . . . he was sent back to Chile,” Jillian said.

  “True,” Sherry agreed, “but only because he was finally judged too sick to stand trial anywhere. The key British ruling, that a former head of state has no protection from criminal responsibility, no sovereign immunity, was a great step forward with a big problem attached. What happens if the bad guys use it against the good guys?”

  “You mean,” Craig began, “someone like President Harris?”

  “Exactly. Instead of having a bloody dictator arrested, suppose country Y misuses the treaty’s legal procedures to capture an innocent government official from country X, because country Y is angry with or at war with country X?”

  “Who, though?” Craig asked. “Who was country Y in Athens? The Greeks?”

  She glanced at Matt Ward and shrugged. “I doubt it. I haven’t a clue which country was responsible back there. There are a lot of countries in the so-called family of nations that still hate us. Fidel doesn’t have a corner on that market.”

  They all fell silent for a few moments as the sound of the slipstream outside filled the small entry alcove with white noise. The aroma of warmed sweetrolls wafted from the galley, along with the pungent scent of fresh coffee.

  “The nightmare,” Matt Ward interjected, “is that someone like Saddam Hussein or Milosevic or Muammar Gaddafi could trump up a warrant based on accusations that U.S. military strikes authorized by the President tortured their people, or other such garbage.”

  Sherry was nodding agreement and looking at her watch again as she spoke. “Under the treaty—which Greece ratified,
by the way—they could theoretically have John Harris arrested in Athens and extradited to face a kangaroo court, and a gallows, in Baghdad.”

  Jillian’s hand went to her mouth. “You’re kidding!”

  “No, I’m not. It’s a real threat, and thank God, Captain, you were thinking fast. President Harris doesn’t want to believe it, but I’ll bet that’s what almost occurred, although Iraq’s probably not behind it.”

  “Any country can issue a warrant, then?” Craig asked.

  “Any one of them,” Sherry affirmed. “Any judge in any obscure corner of the world could come up with a list of charges and issue an international arrest warrant, and once issued, that warrant can be used virtually anywhere to apprehend anyone, even if the name is John Harris, Jimmy Carter, George Bush, or Jerry Ford.”

  “Good Lord!” Craig replied.

  “At the very least,” she continued, “they could keep an American ex-President under arrest for a year or two, causing the U.S. great embarrassment.” She paused and checked her watch again. “I’ve got to get on the phone. My GSM cellular doesn’t work in flight.”

  “Me, too,” Matt Ward added. “All of my cell phones are inoperative.”

  Craig let his eyes wander to the third row of seats in first class to President Harris, who had his reading glasses on. He was studying something intently. One hundred eighteen other passengers were aboard, most of them reading or dozing.

  Craig turned back to Sherry Lincoln. “You can find out when we get to Rome what that was all about, can’t you?”

  He could see the sudden cloud drift across her face as she thought about an answer.

  “Rome is your destination, isn’t it?” he pressed.

  She looked staggered and he could see the blood drain from her face.

  “I’m sorry . . . what?” Sherry asked.

  “You folks did want to go to Rome, right?”

  She nodded, licking her lips and looking at Matt Ward. “Yes, but . . . oh my God, I hadn’t had time to think this through!”

  “What?” the Secret Service agent asked.

  “If there’s a warrant in Greece,” Sherry Lincoln replied, “there could be a warrant waiting in Italy, too. Italy also ratified the treaty.”

  “Are there any countries that haven’t ratified?” Craig asked.

  “None we’d want to fly to,” she said. “Of course the United States didn’t get around to ratification until nineteen ninety-four?” She turned to Jillian. “Is there a satellite phone aboard? I need one desperately, and I’ve got to get my Palm Pilot out of my purse.”

  “Any of the seat phones,” Jillian replied. “They’ll automatically switch to satellite if they can’t get a normal signal. But . . . wait, use the phone up here.”

  Sherry started to turn, but Craig gently caught her arm.

  “Ms. Lincoln, wait a minute. Are you . . . are you saying he could be arrested in Rome, too?”

  “Call me Sherry. I don’t know. How much time did you say until we land?”

  “About an hour and ten minutes.”

  “If I can reach the right people . . .” She hesitated, looking him in the eye and sighing. “I’m very much afraid I already know the answer. If some country’s gone to the trouble to issue a warrant for the arrest of an American President, you can bank on the fact that they won’t give up easily. Yes, they’ll be waiting.”

  “And you’ve no idea who’s behind it?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe we should land somewhere else,” Craig said. “Of course we have the other passengers to consider . . .”

  “Where else could you land?” Sherry interrupted, her tone suddenly hopeful.

  Craig shook his head. “I don’t know. We have enough fuel for Switzerland, France, maybe Spain, and Germany. Of course, I’m already in serious trouble with my company. Everyone thinks we’ve been hijacked. There will be hell to pay when they find out otherwise.”

  “Really?” She shook her head again. “Oh, man! That could make one thing easier, though.”

  “How so?”

  “You say air traffic control thinks we’ve been hijacked?”

  “Yes. And my company does, too.”

  “Then Washington will already know about it.”

  Jillian was holding out the telephone receiver, and Sherry Lincoln almost lunged for it.

  “Excuse me, Mr. President?” Craig Dayton was leaning over from the aisle.

  “Ah! Captain. I know Sherry was talking to you, but I want to thank you for . . . well, getting me out of there.”

  “You’re entirely welcome, sir.”

  “I seriously doubt it was necessary, but she seems to think so.”

  Craig squatted down to meet Harris at eye level. “Sir, they told us a delegation was on the way in from town with a warrant for your arrest. There were no minced words, and we had seven cops on the jetway.”

  John Harris chewed his lower lip for a second as he looked Craig in the eye. “There is a concern we’ve all had . . .”

  Craig nodded. “I know. The Pinochet warrant. She was briefing us.”

  “What degree of trouble have you created for yourself?” Harris asked.

  “Don’t worry about it, sir,” Craig replied.

  “Well, I am going to worry about it. And if they try to come down on you, I’ll do my very dead level best to halt the process.”

  “Thanks, Mr. President.”

  “If you’re laying over in Rome, would you let me take you and your crew to dinner tonight?”

  Craig smiled. “If it works out, sir, we’d be honored.”

  FIVE

  The White House—Monday—8:05 A.M. Local

  News that a commercial airliner carrying a former President of the United States had been reported hijacked in Athens, Greece, arrived almost simultaneously at the Federal Aviation Administration’s command post in Washington and the Central Intelligence Agency just across the Potomac in Langley, Virginia. In another five minutes, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the FBI, and the National Reconnaissance Office had also independently received the same report.

  The routine intramural scramble to be first to notify the White House with the most correct information sent staff members scurrying in each agency, but the first call received in the White House Situation Room came from Langley—a fact that the CIA staffer duly noted with both pride and premeditated intent to brag.

  The President’s daily briefing had been printed and sent from Langley to the White House overnight, so the late-breaking report was quickly reduced to a couple of paragraphs and hand-delivered to the Chief of Staff’s secretary, who brought it into the Oval Office during the first few minutes of the President’s 8 A.M. meeting with the Chief of Staff and the Press Secretary.

  “What’s that, Jack?” the President asked, noting the sudden silence.

  Jack Rollins, the Chief of Staff and a former senator from Maine, had put down his coffee mug, scanned the paper with rising eyebrows, and whistled under his breath before handing it to his boss.

  “It appears that John Harris, in the process of running around Europe and giving speeches, has gotten himself hijacked.”

  “Hijacked?” The President took the report and read it before handing it to Diane Beecher, the Press Secretary. “What do you think, Diane?” the President asked.

  “I think . . . ,” she began, “that this will divert a lot of attention from the Vice President’s little problem this morning. This will be the lead on all the networks tonight, especially if it goes on for a while.”

  “And what do we think?” the President prodded.

  “Well, sir,” Diane said, “I think that we think that we’re monitoring the situation very closely and with great concern . . .”

  “Right. And?”

  “And . . . ,” she continued, “we’re standing by to provide the appropriate authorities any necessary assistance to get our former President back safely.”

  “Guarded alarm, in other words?”

  “Yes,
sir, but ‘guarded alarm’ is your pet phrase. Sir.”

  “I like my pet phrase. I’ll let you use it.”

  “Frankly, Mr. President, I don’t want it,” she said, with a smile. “And I know you’re pulling my chain, but I do pray quietly every evening that you will never, ever use it in a press conference.”

  The President smiled easily and turned to Rollins. “And privately, Jack? What do you think?”