by Tom Clancy
“How, Arnie?”
“Jack, I thought you’d never ask.”
THE NEXT STOP was the airport. There it was confirmed that, yes, a privately owned, Swiss-registered G-IV business jet had indeed lifted off with a flight plan taking it to Paris via Libya, for refueling. The chief controller had a Xerox copy of the airport records and the aircraft’s manifest ready for the visiting Americans. It was a remarkably comprehensive document, since it had to allow for customs control as well. Even the names for the flight crew were on it.
“Well?” Chavez asked.
Clark looked at the officials. “Thank you for your valuable assistance.” Then he and Ding headed for the car that would take them to their aircraft.
“Well?” Ding repeated.
“Cool it, partner.” The five-minute ride passed in silence. Clark looked out the window. Thunderheads were building. He hated flying in the things.
“No way. We wait a few minutes.” The backup pilot was a lieutenant colonel. “We have rules.”
Clark tapped the eagles on his epaulets and leaned right into his face. “Me colonel. Me say go, air scout. Right the fuck now!”
“Look, Mr. Clark, I know who you are and—”
“Sir,” Chavez said, “I’m only an artificial major, but this mission’s more important than your rules. Steer around the worst parts, will ya? We have barf bags if we need ’em.” The pilot glared at them, but moved back into the front office. Chavez turned. “Temper, John.”
Clark handed over the paper. “Check the names for the flight crew. They ain’t Swiss, and the registration of the aircraft is.”
Chavez looked for that. HX-NJA was the registration code. And the names for the flight crew weren’t Germanic, Gallic, or Italian.
“Sergeant?” Clark called as the engines started up.
“Yes, sir!” The NCO had seen this man tear the driver a new asshole.
“Fax this to Langley, please. You have the right number to use. Quick as you can, ma’am,” he added, since she was a lady, and not just a sergeant. The NCO didn’t get it, but didn’t mind, either.
“Cinch those belts in tight,” the pilot called over the intercom as the VC-20B started to taxi.
IT TOOK THREE tries because of electrical interference from the storm, but the facsimile transmission went through the satellite, downlinked to Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and reappeared in Mercury, the Agency’s communications nexus. The senior watch officer had his deputy run it to the seventh floor. By that time, Clark was on the phone to him.
“Getting some interference,” the watch officer said. Digital satellite radio and all, a thunderstorm was still a thunderstorm.
“It’s a little bumpy at the moment. Run the registration number and the names on that manifest. Everything you can get on them.”
“Say again.”
Clark did. It got through this time.
“Will do. Somebody’s got a file on this. Anything else?”
“Back to you later. Out,” he heard.
“SO?” DING ASKED, reefing his belt in tighter as the G took a ten-foot drop.
“Those names are in Farsi, Ding—oh, shit.” Another major bump. He looked out the window. It was like a huge arena, a cylindrical formation of clouds with lightning all over the place. It wasn’t often he looked down at that. “The bastard’s doing this on purpose.”
But he wasn’t. The lieutenant colonel on the controls was scared. Air Force regulations not to mention common sense prohibited what he was doing. The weather radar in the nose showed red twenty degrees left and right of his projected course to Nairobi. Left looked better. He turned thirty degrees, banking the executive jet like a fighter, searching for a smooth spot as he continued the climb-out. What he found wasn’t smooth, but it was better. Ten minutes later the VC-20B broke into sunlight.
One of the spare pilots turned in her front row seat: “Satisfied, Colonel?” she asked.
Clark unbuckled his belt in defiance of the sign and went to the lavatory to splash water in his face. Then he knelt down on the floor next to her and showed her the paper that had just been transmitted. “Can you tell me anything about this?” She only needed one look.
“Oh, yeah,” the captain said. “We got a notice on that.”
“What?”
“This is essentially the same aircraft. When one breaks, the manufacturer tells everybody about it—I mean, we’d ask anyway, but it’s almost automatic. He came out of here, flew north to Libya, landed to refuel, right? Took off right away, practically—medical flight, I think, wasn’t it?”
“Correct. Go on.”
“He called emergency, said he lost power on one engine, then the other, and went in. Three radars tracked it. Libya, Malta, and a Navy ship, destroyer, I think.”
“Anything funny about it, Captain?”
She shrugged. “This is a good airplane. I don’t think the military’s ever broke one. You just saw how good. A couple of those bumps were two and a half, maybe three gees, and the engines—Jerry, have we ever lost an engine in flight on a -20?”
“Twice, I think. First one there was a defect on the fuel pump—Rolls-Royce sent out a fix on all of those. The other one, it was in November, a few years back. They ate a goose.”
“That’ll do it every time,” she told Clark. “Goose weighs maybe fifteen, twenty pounds. We try to keep clear of them.”
“This guy lost both engines, though?”
“They haven’t figured out why yet. Maybe bad fuel. That happens, but the engines are isolated units, sir. Separate everything, pumps, electronics, you name it—”
“Except fuel,” Jerry said. “That all comes out of one truck.”
“What else? What happens when you lose an engine?”
“If you’re not careful you can lose control. You get a full shutdown, the aircraft yaws into the dead engine. That changes airflow over the control surfaces. We lost a Lear, a VC-21, that way once. If it catches you in a transition maneuver when it happens, well, then it can get a little bit exciting. But we train for that, and the flight crew on this one, that was in the report. They were both experienced drivers, and they go in the box—the training simulator—pretty regular. You have to, or they take your insurance away. Anyway, the radar didn’t show them maneuvering. So, no, that shouldn’t have done it to them. The best guess was bad fuel, but the Libyans said the fuel was okay.”
“Unless the crew just totally screwed up,” Jerry added. “But even that’s hard. I mean, they make these things so you really have to try to break ’em, y’know? I got two thousand hours.”
“Two and a half for me,” the captain said. “It’s safer ’n driving a car in D.C., sir. We all love these things.”
Clark nodded and went forward.
“Enjoying the ride?” the pilot in command said over his shoulder. His voice wasn’t exactly friendly, and he didn’t exactly have to worry about insubordination. Not with an “officer” wearing his own ribbons.
“I don’t like leaning on people, Colonel. This is very important shit. That’s all I can say.”
“My wife’s a nurse in the base hospital.” He didn’t have to say more. He was worried about her.
“So’s mine, down in Williamsburg.” The pilot turned on learning that, and nodded at his passenger.
“No real harm done. Three hours to Nairobi, Colonel.”
“WELL, HOW DO I get back?” Raman asked over the phone.
“You don’t for now,” Andrea told him. “Sit tight. Maybe you can help the FBI with the investigation they have running.”
“Well, that’s just great!”
“Deal with it, Jeff. I don’t have time for this,” she told her subordinate crossly.
“Sure.” He hung up.
That was odd, Andrea thought. Jeff was always one of the cool ones. But who was cool at the moment?
52
SOMETHING OF VALUE
EVER BEEN HERE BEFORE, John?” Chavez asked as their aircraft descended to meet its shadow
on the runway.
“Passed through once. Didn’t see much more than the terminal.” Clark slipped off his belt and stretched. Sunset was descending here, too, and with it not the end of a very long day for the two intelligence officers. “Most of what I know comes from books by a guy named Ruark, hunting and stuff.”
“You don’t hunt—not animals, anyway,” Ding added.
“Used to. I still like reading about it. Nice to hunt things that don’t shoot back.” John turned with part of a smile.
“Not as exciting. Safer, maybe,” the junior agent allowed. How dangerous could a lion really be? he wondered.
The rollout took them to the military terminal. Kenya had a small air force, though what it did was a mystery to the visiting CIA/Air Force “officers,” and seemed likely to remain so. The aircraft was met, again, by an embassy official, this one the Defense attaché, a black Army officer with the rank of colonel, and a Combat Infantryman’s Badge that marked him as a veteran of the Persian Gulf War.
“Colonel Clark, Major Chavez.” Then his voice stopped. “Chavez, do I know you?”
“Ninja!” Ding grinned. “You were brigade staff then, First of the Seventh.”
“Cold Steel! You’re one of the guys who got lost. I guess they found you. Relax, gentlemen, I know where you’re from, but our hosts do not,” the officer warned.
“Where’s the CIB from, Colonel?” the former staff sergeant asked on the walk over to where the cars were.
“I had a battalion of the Big Red One in Iraq. We kicked a few and took a few.” Then his mood changed. “So how are things at home?”
“Scary,” Ding replied.
“Something to remember, bio-war is mainly a psychological weapon, like the threat of gas was against us back in ’91.”
“Maybe so,” Clark responded. “It sure as hell’s got my attention, Colonel.”
“Got mine, too,” the Defense attaché admitted. “I got family in Atlanta. CNN says there’s cases there.”
“Read fast.” John handed over the last data sent to them on the airplane. “This ought to be better than what’s on TV.” Not that better was the right word, he thought.
The colonel rated a driver, it seemed. He took the front seat in the embassy car and flipped through the pages.
“No official greeting this time?” Chavez asked.
“Not here. We’ll have a cop where we’re going. I asked my friends in the ministry to low-profile this one. I have some pretty good contacts around town.”
“Good call,” Clark said as the car started moving. Getting there only took ten minutes.
The animal dealer had his place of business on the outskirts of the city, conveniently located to the airport and the main highway west into the bush, but not too close to much else. The CIA officers soon discovered why.
“Christ,” Chavez observed, getting out of the car.
“Yeah, they’re noisy, aren’t they? I was here earlier today. He’s getting a shipment of greens ready for Atlanta.” He opened a briefcase and handed something over. “Here, you’ll need this.”
“Right.” Clark slid the envelope into his clipboard.
“Hello!” the dealer said, coming out of his office. He was a big man and, judging by his gut, knew his way around a case of beer. With him was a uniformed police officer, evidently a senior one. The attaché went to speak with him, and move him aside. The cop didn’t seem to object. This infantry colonel, Clark saw, knew how the game was played.
“Howdy,” John said, taking his hand. “I’m Colonel Clark. This is Major Chavez.”
“You are American Air Force?”
“That’s right, sir,” Ding replied.
“I love airplanes. What do you fly?”
“All sorts of things,” Clark answered. The local businessman was already half in the bag. “We have a few questions, if you don’t mind.”
“About monkeys? Why are you interested in monkeys? The chief constable didn’t explain.”
“Is it all that important?” John asked, handing over an envelope. The dealer pocketed it without opening it to count. He’d felt how thick it was.
“Truly it is not, but I do love to watch airplanes. So what can I tell you?” he asked next, his voice friendly and open.
“You sell monkeys,” John said.
“Yes, I deal in them. For zoos, for private collectors, and for medical laboratories. Come, I will show you.” He led them toward a three-sided building made of corrugated iron, it looked like. Two trucks were there, and five workers were loading cages onto it, their hands in thick leather gloves.
“We just had an order from your CDC in Atlanta,” the dealer explained, “for a hundred greens. They are pretty animals, but very unpleasant. The local farmers hate them.”
“Why?” Ding asked, looking at the cages. They were made of steel wire, with handles at the top. From a distance they appeared to be of the size used to transport chickens to market ... viewed closer, they were a little large for that, but ...
“They ravage crops. They are a pest, like rats, but more clever, and people from America think they are gods or something, the way they complain on how they are used in medical experiments.” The dealer laughed. “As though we would run out of them. There are millions. We raid a place, take thirty, and a month later we can come back and take thirty more. The farmers beg us to come and trap them.”
“You had a shipment ready for Atlanta earlier this year, but you sold them to someone else, didn’t you?” Clark asked. He looked over to his partner, who didn’t approach the building. Rather, he separated from Clark and the dealer, and walked on a line away from it. He seemed to be staring at the empty cages. Maybe the smell bothered him. It was pretty thick.
“They did not pay me on time, and another customer came along, and he had his money all ready,” the dealer pointed out. “This is a business, Colonel Clark.”
John grinned. “Hey, I’m not here from the Better Business Bureau. I just want to know who you sold them to.”
“A buyer,” the dealer said. “What else do I need to know?”
“Where was he from?” Clark persisted.
“I do not know. He paid me in dollars, but he was probably not an American. He was a quiet fellow,” the dealer remembered, “not very friendly. Yes, I know I was late getting the new shipment to Atlanta, but they were late in paying me,” he reminded his guest. “You, fortunately, were not.”
“They went out by air?”
“Yes, it was an old 707. It was full. They were not just my monkeys. They had gotten them elsewhere, too. You see, the green is so common. It lives all over Africa. Your animal worshippers need not worry about extinction for the green. The gorilla, now, I admit that is something else.” Besides, they mainly lived in Uganda and Rwanda, and more was the pity. People paid real money for them.
“Do you have records? The name of the buyer, the manifest, the registration of the airplane?”
“Customs records, you mean.” He shook his head. “Sadly, I do not. Perhaps they were lost.”
“You have an arrangement with the airport officials,” John said with a smile that he didn’t feel.
“I have many friends in the government, yes.” Another smile, the sly sort that confirmed his arrangement. Well, it wasn’t as though there was no such thing as official corruption in America, was it? Clark thought.
“And you don’t know where they went, then?”
“No, there I cannot help you. If I could, I would gladly do so,” the dealer replied, patting his pocket. Where the envelope was. “I regret to say that my records are incomplete for some of my transactions.”
Clark wondered if he could press the man further on this issue. He suspected not. He’d never worked Kenya, though he had worked Angola, briefly, in the 1970s, and Africa was a very informal continent, and cash was the lubricant. He looked over to where the Defense attaché was talking to the chief constable—the title was a holdover from British rule, which he’d read about in one of R
uark’s books, and so were the shorts and kneesocks. He was probably confirming that, no, the dealer wasn’t a criminal, just creative in his relationships with local authorities who, for a modest fee, looked the other way when asked. And monkeys were hardly a vital national commodity, assuming the dealer was truthful about the numbers of the things. And he probably was. It sounded true. The farmers would probably be just as happy to be rid of the damned things just to make the noise stop. It sounded like a riot in the biggest bar in town on a Friday night. And they were nasty little bastards, reaching and snapping at the gloved hands transferring the cages. What the hell, they were having a bad day. And on getting to CDC Atlanta, it wouldn’t get much better, would it? Were they smart enough to know? Damned sure Clark knew. You didn’t ship this many to pet stores. But he didn’t have enough solicitude to waste on monkeys at the moment.
“Thank you for your help. Perhaps someone will be back to speak with you.”
“I regret that I could not tell you more.” He was sincere enough about it. For five thousand dollars in cash, he thought he should do more. Not that he’d return any, of course.
The two men walked back toward the car. Chavez joined up, looking pensive, but not saying anything. As they approached, the cop and the attaché shook hands. Then it was time for the Americans to leave. As the car pulled off, John looked back to see the dealer take the envelope from his pocket and extract a few bills to hand over to the friendly chief constable. That made sense, too.
“What did you learn?” the real colonel asked.
“No records,” John replied.
“It’s the way they do business here. There’s an export fee for those things, but the cops and the customs people usually have an—”
“Arrangement,” John interrupted with a frown.
“That’s the word. Hey, my father came from Mississippi. They used to say down there that one term as county sheriff fixed a guy up for life, y’know?”
“Cages,” Ding said suddenly.
