Headwind (2001)

by John J. Nance

  “It’s a chess analogy, Henri. It’s amazing how often I find them useful in law.”

  A shapely young woman in a tight-fitting little black dress appeared in the hallway, her jet-black hair bouncing luxuriantly and her face brightening at the sight of Stuart Campbell. She hurried in the office door.

  “Sir William? There’s an urgent call for you in operations, just down the hall.”

  “How very kind of you to come find me, my dear. Thank you,” Stuart said, turning on his brightest smile and watching her blush slightly under his penetrating gaze as she turned to leave. “Deirdre, wasn’t it?” he asked.

  She looked back over her shoulder and smiled. “Yes, it is. Thanks for remembering.”

  “How could I forget the lovely name of such a lovely lady,” Stuart said, crossing to the desk and watching in admiration as she flowed like a feminine wave around the corner.

  He raised the receiver. “Stuart Campbell here.”

  The voice on the other end was instantly recognizable.

  “Mr. Prime Minister! I appreciate your calling back. We need to talk most urgently.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  EuroAir 1010, in Flight—Tuesday—6:05 P.M.

  The hard pull up required to level the 737 just above the surface of the English Channel had profoundly frightened Alastair.

  “Good Lord, Craig!”

  “There’s one hundred! I’m level. Easy, Alastair! I’m trained to do this.”

  “Yes, in a blinking fighter! Not a seven thirty-seven! I thought we were dead.”

  “Altitude?”

  “Back to a hundred.”

  “Heading?”

  “Ah . . . zero six zero degrees.”

  “Okay . . . look at the GPS display and give me headings that will keep us moving just about up the center of the channel and way clear of the coast, then north up the north sea. We’ll round the shoulder of Scotland and come in from seaside to Inverness. Keep your eyes on the radar altimeter. Not an inch under a hundred feet, and, unless we get into fog, keep an eye out for any ships that might be sporting a mast over that height.”

  “Oh, too right! I can do all that! Do you have any idea what you’re planning? That’s hundreds of miles trying to evade radar!”

  “What? I’m stressing you out, old buddy?”

  The copilot sighed and shook his head, his expression deadly serious.

  “You are bloody crazy, Dayton!”

  “Maybe, but while I’m losing it, we need to get Reinhart on the phone,” Craig Dayton said as he took his right hand off the throttles long enough to rub his right eye. The task of holding the Boeing precisely one hundred feet above the water—a distance less than the wingspan of the jet—had already become tedious, making him seriously consider climbing back up a few hundred feet even if they did risk being seen by air traffic radar.

  “This is very dangerous, Craig!” Alastair reminded him.

  “When we’re another ten miles or so, we can come up a bit.”

  “There are ships with superstructures taller than this, you know.”

  “But we’ve got a cloud ceiling far enough above us to see ahead, Alastair. We spotted that other boat.”

  “Still steady at one hundred,” Alastair said, his hand firmly on his copilot’s control yoke, shadowing Craig’s every movement.

  “You think we’ve fooled them?” Craig asked.

  “Probably. For a while. Until they find no wreckage. You know this is liable to reach our respective families with devastating results?”

  “I know it. I figure you should call home as soon as we get on the ground,” Craig said.

  “I’ll wager even at one hundred feet we’re being tracked by at least one military radar.”

  “As long as Air Traffic Control can’t see us and we’re not streaking toward a British city . . .” Craig said.

  “. . . we should be all right.” Alastair finished. “I ran a quick fuel calculation, and we’re okay at this fuel consumption rate to Inverness. We’ll land with an hour’s fuel remaining.”

  Lights loomed in the distance directly ahead, seeming to close on them rapidly in the gloom.

  “What’s that?” Craig asked, his eyes moving constantly from the attitude display to the radar altimeter to the vertical velocity indicator and back to the ADI with an occasional glance out of the windscreen ahead.

  “Probably a ship.”

  “I see a lot of lights,” President Harris chimed in, startling Alastair, who’d almost forgotten they had a guest on the cockpit jumpseat. “It’s tall, fellows, whatever it is.”

  “Craig, let’s climb.”

  “Just a second,” he replied.

  “No, dammit! Not just a second, I mean now!” Alastair barked.

  “Look . . .”

  “Craig, you’re going too far! You’re into reckless flying and I’ll have no more of it!”

  “I know what I’m doing,” Craig snapped.

  “No, you bloody well don’t! You’re tunneling in on a single objective. That trait kills even testosterone-soaked fighter pilots like you! This is foolhardy.”

  Craig studied Alastair with a quick glance and began easing the yoke back to start a shallow climb.

  “Five hundred okay?”

  “For now, yes.”

  “All right,” Craig said quietly.

  “All right,” Alastair echoed, watching the radar altitude increase until Craig leveled at five hundred.

  “Sorry,” Craig said as the lights of the ship ahead swam safely beneath their nose.

  Craig looked at Alastair, noting the alarm still in his eyes.

  “You still with me, man?” Craig asked.

  “Barely,” was the reply.

  Heathrow Airport, London, England

  Jay found a small bench just outside the door of the private terminal before punching in the first of several numbers. The reassuring voice of Michael Garrity answered on the third ring.

  “This is Jay Reinhart again.”

  “Hello! A bit early to have answers for you, Mr. Reinhart, but . . .” Garrity said.

  “I need just one,” Jay said, interrupting. “If I bring the President’s plane into Dublin tonight, and if the opposition arrives with their warrant, how quickly could they have the warrant perfected and arrest him?”

  “Tomorrow’s St. Patrick’s Day here in the Republic of Ireland, and no one will be working at the Four Courts. Mind you, we don’t get as carried away as you Americans do celebrating, but St. Patrick’s Day is a grand excuse for an official holiday. So, unless your President commits an act heinous enough to attract the Garda’s attention, I’d say he’s a free man until the following day, Thursday. Certainly no one in the judiciary’s going to pay any attention until then.

  “Really?”

  “It’s the district court that would handle such an Interpol warrant, Mr. Reinhart, and Scotland Yard couldn’t ferret out one of our district judges on a national holiday. Especially not St. Paddy’s Day. They go in hiding, I’m all but convinced.”

  “So . . . we could safely get the President a hotel room?”

  “I don’t see why not. But wouldn’t he prefer to stay at your American Ambassador’s residence here? It’s really quite large, and I know they have quarters fit for a U.S. president.”

  “No,” Jay said. “Better to have no official involvement, I think. Besides, that could be misinterpreted as an attempt at asylum and create a diplomatic mess.”

  “Very well, a hotel it shall be. Do you have a credit card number I can use?”

  “Ah . . . yes.” Jay struggled to pull out his American Express and read the number and expiration date.

  “Very good, Mr. Reinhart. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I’ll call you back, then,” Jay said. “I’m going to change the plan.”

  He rang off and dialed the 737’s satellite phone, relieved to get a rapid answer. “Captain Dayton? Good job! Whatever you did out there fooled everyone. Campbell and Byer think you’ve
crashed.”

  “This is the copilot, Mr. Reinhart . . . and as the old saw goes, rumors of our demise have been greatly exaggerated.”

  “They certainly have,” Jay said. “This buys us time, but I’ve got a different plan.”

  Jay could hear deep concern and tension on the other end. “Go ahead.”

  “First, where are you?”

  “Heading up the north sea at barely five hundred feet in an insane attempt to sneak into Scotland.”

  “We need to change the destination.”

  Alastair looked over at Craig, then back over his shoulder at John Harris, and repeated Jay’s words, adding: “And where would you like us to go now, Mr. Reinhart?”

  “Dublin, Ireland. Can you make it?”

  “Certainly we can, but how we get there is the question.”

  Craig turned to Alastair, mouthing the word, “Where?”

  “Now he wants us in Dublin,” Alastair replied, turning back to the receiver. “Look, Mr. Reinhart, Dublin’s a big, controlled airport. We can’t sneak in there. A little airport like Inverness, Scotland, doesn’t have a control tower to worry with us, but Dublin’s impossible. We’d be as subtle as a battleship in a bathtub.”

  “I don’t really care how you do it, as long as you’re safe,” Jay said. “The fiction that you’ve crashed was to give you time to get to Scotland and refuel to go on to Iceland or Canada before they could show up with the arrest warrant. But that’s no good now. We can’t have President Harris land anywhere in Great Britain.”

  “And no one’s going to come after the President in Ireland?” Alastair asked.

  “Not for a few days. Let me speak with the President, please, while you fellows figure out how to do this.”

  Alastair handed the phone over his shoulder.

  “Yes, Jay?”

  “I’ve hired a legal team in Dublin, John. Ireland has ratified the treaty, but tomorrow’s a holiday, so there won’t be any judges around to sign a warrant. Besides, Ireland is a good friend of the U.S., as you know, and they, unlike the British, have no special axe to grind regarding Pinochet, so in my judgment we’re far better off there.”

  “I’m in your hands, Jay.”

  “I’m doing my best, but I’m more or less having to turn on a dime here as I find out new things.”

  “Understood.”

  “We’ll get you a hotel room near the Dublin airport so you can rest up. Our barrister thinks it will be the day after tomorrow before Campbell can hope to get the warrant converted. And I’m thinking, John, that we might be able to just buy you a ticket and get you on a direct commercial flight back to New York.”

  “I like that idea, Jay. About the hotel . . . we also need rooms for our two pilots and three flight attendants, plus Sherry, me, and my secret service agent.” There was a long pause. “You really think I could just get on Aer Lingus or someone else and fly home?”

  “It’s possible, but if not, maybe we can refuel your bird, extend the charter, and make it to Maine. I haven’t talked to the pilots about that, yet. All I know is I can’t bring you down anywhere in the U.K. now.”

  “Hold on,” the President said, cradling the phone as he leaned forward. “Craig? Alastair? Can we do this, and if so, how?”

  Craig nodded. “I think we’ll keep going the way we started and just skirt around the northern coastline of Scotland, then turn southwest and contact Dublin Center for a clearance into the airport when we’re fifty miles out. We’ve already caused a massive, unnecessary search. If we try to go back into positive control now, we’re liable to draw the RAF out with orders to force us to land.”

  John Harris looked at the copilot, who was nodding assent.

  “What time do you expect to arrive?” Jay asked.

  Harris leaned forward again. “How long to Dublin?”

  “Around two hours and twenty minutes flying like this,” Alastair said, and the President repeated the estimate.

  “When you land,” Jay said, “if I’m not there, call a Mr. Michael Garrity. He’s our barrister.” Jay passed the number. “I’ll be there as quickly as I can find a flight.”

  “Charter a jet, Jay,” John Harris said.

  “If I can’t find a commercial flight, I will,” Jay said, “as long as it has a minimum of two engines and all the instruments money can buy.”

  “I take it there’s a story there,” the President said.

  “I’m not sure you want to know,” Jay replied. “I’ll call you back when I’ve arranged a flight to Dublin.”

  Jay disconnected and dialed the Savoy Hotel, arranging to have his bag put in a taxi and sent immediately to Heathrow and the private terminal.

  A quick call to Aer Lingus reservations turned up a departure to Dublin in less than an hour from Heathrow. Relieved, he decided against booking a seat under his name and called the hotel back to redirect his bag to the Aer Lingus ticket counter.

  “Just in time, sir,” the concierge said. “I have it in my hand and the driver is waiting.”

  “How long, do you suppose?”

  “This time of evening, thirty minutes, if we’re lucky.”

  One of the ramp attendants from the Metro facility agreed to shuttle him to Terminal 4, and Jay slipped into the car quietly, wanting to avoid the possibility of being seen by Stuart Campbell or his people.

  “Aer Lingus terminal, please.”

  The driver nodded and accelerated away, obscuring Jay’s view of a man in a dark business suit who had been watching from a dark corner of the entryway. As the car carrying Jay disappeared, the man quickly returned to the lobby.

  The fact that the taxi carrying his bag actually arrived when and where it was supposed to at the curb of Terminal 4 surprised Jay. He thanked and paid the driver before racing through security and an interminable series of concourses to board the Dublin flight with ten minutes to spare. The possibility that Campbell already knew his plan flitted across his mind, but it made little difference. Thanks to the holiday, he knew they’d be okay in Dublin until Thursday regardless of when Campbell showed up, as he ultimately would.

  The lights of Heathrow were falling away from the climbing jetliner before he realized that for the second time in his life, a takeoff sequence in a commercial jet had failed to scare him. Jay pulled one of the legal pads out of his briefcase and placed it on his lap, his pen at the ready, before remembering that he hadn’t obtained hotel rooms for the crew. Nor had he remembered to alert the Irish customs and immigration officials.

  He’d already noticed the lack of in-flight phones on the 737, and he knew the flight crews tried to prohibit the use of cellular phones on the unproven assumption that they could interfere with the aircraft’s navigation system—an absurd premise, according to a knowledgeable friend in telecommunications. But in this case he had no choice.

  The calls had to be made.

  The flight was half full, and he waited until the flight attendants had wheeled their service cart past him before arranging a blanket against the sidewall of his window seat to hide the GSM phone he was leaning against after punching in Michael Garrity’s number once more. There was a form of digital static before Garrity answered.

  “I hate to bother you again, Mr. Garrity,” Jay said.

  “For heaven’s sake, man, call me Michael!” Garrity replied. “The only person in the world who calls me ‘Mister Garrity’ is my wife, and then only when she’s angry with me.”

  “I’m sorry, Michael.”

  “So am I,” Garrity said, chuckling. “Seems to happen a lot lately.”

  “Look, I need to impose on you to get hotel rooms for the folks on that plane, not just the President, and alert customs and immigration.” He passed the basic information.

  “I’ll take care of it, Jay, provided your credit card lasts,” Garrity said cheerfully.

  “Okay. I’ll be on the ground in an hour.”

  “I’ll be there,” Michael Garrity said.

  Metro Business Aviation Terminal, Hea
throw Airport, London, England

  Stuart Campbell had changed his location, appropriating a small conference room as their makeshift command post, and Henri Renoux sat down in one of the swivel chairs, watching him carefully. Background music from recessed ceiling speakers—a Vivaldi concerto—accompanied the elegant decor, and Henri realized the lights had been turned down to half strength, giving the well-appointed room a rich and palatial feel.