Top Hook

by Gordon Kent

  Anna!

  He didn’t need to check the photo Harry had taken at Pompeii. There was no question.

  “Harry—!”

  Noise, noise, “—to hear you.”

  “Harry, she’s here! She’s just boarding a plane for—” He checked the board. “Tashkent. Tashkent!” Jesus, what was she heading to Tashkent for?

  “Her? You’ve been in touch with her?”

  Suddenly, the phone was clear, and Dukas could even hear the sound of the engines. “Harry, she’s just going down the gangway to an aircraft for Tashkent!” He grabbed his VIP escort. “Get me on that plane! That one—Tashkent—!”

  “Mike, what the hell are you saying? Alan lost her last night—you see her?”

  “I saw her; now she’s gone on board a plane. I’m trying to get on—” The attendant was closing the gate. Dukas looked at the VIP guide, who was standing by the desk, hands spread in the universal sign of resigned helplessness, shaking his head. “Shit! The plane’s going—!”

  “Mike, she’s going to meet him. We know she is.”

  “I gotta follow her—!”

  “Mike, no, what’d you say about Pakistan?”

  As he told Harry again that he’d e-mail Valdez, Dukas saw what was happening. He knew where Tashkent was; he knew that Anna had been born in one of the Stans. With Shreed heading for Pakistan, the likeliest plan was for her to go there via her home territory, and the likeliest place for them to meet was the comm plan from Chinese Checkers—and at this point, all he could do was play the likelihood. His own best move was to go where the comm plan led. “I’m following.”

  “You’re starting to break up. You’re going to Tashkent?”

  “No, no—Where he’s going. Where’s Alan?”

  “He’s here…me. Are…sure…—stan?”

  “As sure as I am of anything. Harry? Harry?”

  But there was only the high hiss and a sound like ticking. Dukas handed the phone to Buse. “Keep that at your ear for one minute and see if he comes up again; if he doesn’t, hang up and wait.” He turned to the VIP guide, who had joined them. “Get me on a plane to Islamabad. Now. Okay? Go!”

  He turned back to Buse. “Anything?”

  Buse shook his head.

  “Keep listening. Can you listen to me at the same time? Okay, did you get me some money?” Buse nodded and reached inside his golf jacket for a sheaf of papers. He handed them over and followed them with a pen, made a writing motion. The papers were receipts for the ten thousand for Khouri and the ten thousand in cash. Dukas began signing, using the vertical wall as a desk.

  “Zip,” Buse said. He punched the cellphone off. “I’m Jack Buse. I know who you are.”

  They shook hands. Dukas was signing papers. “You lay on the VIP guy?”

  “Thought it would move the shit faster through the pipe.”

  “Good man.” Dukas found which copies were his and handed the rest to Buse. “You got my money?”

  “Kind of a bundle. Would you believe we had some Navy guy leave half a million in cash with us last night? Christ, in a suitcase!” He was unfastening a waist wallet, wriggling out of it and dragging the belt from his pants like a snake. “Better count it.”

  Dukas began to push the thing down inside his own pants. “No time, I hope. That my satellite phone?”

  “Yes, sir. Six thousand bucks’ worth.”

  “Want me to sign?”

  “From stock.”

  Dukas pushed the wallet down and dragged it around to the rear so that it rode on the slope of his buttocks. It made him look as if he had an even bigger butt, which he didn’t need, but it was pretty well hidden.

  “Buse.”

  “Sir.”

  “I gotta go to Islamabad. What have we got there?”

  “Zip. Nada. Pakistan’s out of bounds. There’s also a State advisory. I don’t recommend Islamabad, Mike—that’s a war zone. Try Karachi.”

  Dukas shook his head. “I get to Karachi, the Paks shut down their airlines because there’s a war on, I’m stuck. You know anything about getting a gun up there?”

  “Just holler. They’re up to their ass in guns.” He came close, lowered his voice. “Tell you what I’ll do. We might have a contact in Islamabad. Can’t provide any muscle, only information, maybe a little—” He rocked his hand back and forth; he could have meant women, dope, guns. “You call me every hour on the hour until you get there—just press 1 on the cellphone; it’s already programmed in. Okay?” He held up a computer disk. “This is yours, too. It’s unclassified, but it’s got some stuff on it you might want—contact numbers, e-mail addresses here and DC, stuff like that. Jeez, if I’d known where you were going, I’d have thrown in a dictionary.”

  “Pakistani?”

  “There isn’t a Pakistani. They speak a bunch of languages. You’re going north of Islamabad? Up there, it’s Baluch.”

  Dukas eyed him. “How come you know that?”

  Buse shrugged, grinned. “I’m smart.”

  The VIP man joined them at that point and told Dukas that he was on a flight to Islamabad if he could pay in the next ten minutes. “And I suggest you do, sir—it may be the last one.”

  Dukas started walking in the direction the man led him. “Can you get me a Baluch dictionary?”

  The man frowned. “I can get you a computerized phrase book of languages used on the Indian subcontinent, sir. It would include Baluch. However, a dictionary—”

  “That’d be great! Do it, okay? Meet me at my gate—you’re really super—Hey, Buse!”

  “Sir.”

  “That phone call I got—did they give you a way to call them back?”

  “He gave me a number in Dubai, said it was his office—it’s 2 on your phone.”

  Shreed was heading for Pakistan. Anna was heading for Tashkent. Harry and Alan were heading for—where? Could they land a Navy aircraft in Pakistan under current conditions? The way he saw it, Anna would make her way down from Tashkent, probably to Islamabad, by air—between the two cities was the Hindu Kush, mountains towering almost as high as Everest; she wasn’t going to walk. Shreed would make his way up from the coast. If the comm plan was followed, they would meet in front of an ancient mosque in a tiny village called Jolcut. In an area that was now a war zone on the border of Kashmir.

  Dukas bought the International Herald-Tribune. Chinese troops were massed on the Kashmir border, and some Chinese aircraft, including helos capable of carrying special forces, were reported actually over western Kashmir, close to Jolcut.

  Well, Dukas said to himself, that seems to leave it up to me, doesn’t it. Thank God I’m a super-hero.

  Over the Indian Ocean 0143 GMT (0443L) Monday.

  Harry turned off the cellphone and clipped it to his palmtop. “Mike says Shreed’s going to Pakistan to meet Anna.”

  “How the hell does Mike know?”

  “He’s going to message me via Valdez, then we’ll know. Valdez already said Shreed and Anna have a meeting set for—twenty-six hours from now.” He was pushing buttons on the palmtop. “I’m trying to get Valdez.”

  “We’re fucked. We can’t follow him to Pakistan.”

  Harry looked at the cockpit.

  “Your pilot any good?” Alan read his intent in the glance.

  “Harry, you’re out of your gourd!”

  “You want George Shreed, or not?”

  “What do you think!”

  “I think that we take this plane and we land somewhere. When we get Shreed, we send for the plane. Dukas can’t do this, Al.”

  “Stevens will have a cow.”

  “He can leave the meter running, for all I care.”

  Contact eight had merged with the Pakistani coast. If that was Shreed, he was now ashore. Contact eleven was still a few miles out, well into Pakistani territorial waters and moving at an astonishing sixty knots. Alan stared into the simple green geometry on the screen and made his call. He switched his intercom to full cockpit.

  “Pau
l, let’s hit the tanker.”

  “About time.”

  “Get a full bag, Paul. We’re going to Pakistan.”

  “Like fuck we are!”

  “We think we know where Shreed’s going. We aren’t beaten yet and I’m not going to give up.”

  “Is getting my ass shot off by a Pak SAM going to save the world?”

  “You want to live the rest of your life as a passedover O-4? Come on, Paul! Soleck knows the Pak radar coverage. We can do this. Nobody can do this right now but you. You want to make a difference, Paul? We have one shot, and it’s right now.”

  “Are you fuckin’ nuts? Look, you said yourself we were in a state of near war with Pakistan. You want to take this giant radar reflector right in there?”

  “Yup. And I want you to fly it.”

  Soleck cut in, his voice pitched high with excitement.

  “I say we should go!”

  “Fuck, that clears it all up. The teenager wants to go.” Stevens sounded a little manic himself.

  Alan felt the plane turning toward the tanker. He thought of his failure with Anna, his other failures in a chain that bound him to that moment and Stevens.

  Harry was massaging the laptop, making little grunting noises as it did what he wanted. Then he grabbed his GPU and started fingering that. He slapped his leg and shouted, “Got it!”

  Alan switched to rear-seat comm. “What’s the word?”

  “A comm plan, forget the details for now. Jolcut—some two-bit town with an antique mosque where the meeting is. It’s north of Islamabad, up in the bad country, man—close to Kashmir, mountainous, I mean, that’s goat country. We can put down at a little importexport field in the mountains and head north in a truck.”

  Alan switched back to full comm.

  “What’s it going to be, Paul?”

  “I’m still thinking it over. We have to tank either way. You going to tell the CAG?”

  “I’m still thinking it over.” Alan tried to match Stevens’s tone. Stevens laughed without mirth.

  Alan switched to communicate with the other S-3. “Ranger Two, this is Ranger One, over?”

  “Roger, Ranger One.”

  “Play Catch, Ranger Two, and Dodge Ball.” The comm card said that Play Catch meant they were coming in to tank. Dodge Ball meant they were going to go to emissions control, or EMCON. They would no longer talk on the radio or run their radars. They were close enough to the Pakistani coast to make such precautions sensible.

  “So you’re not going to tell him.”

  “I’m not going to ask him to order you, if that’s what you mean. I’m not going to lay this one on him.”

  “You’re laying it on me, instead.”

  “That’s right.”

  Stevens was quiet while he pulled the flashlight off his flight gear and pulled abreast of the other S-3, a dark bulk against the starlit sky. He cycled the running lights and turned his flashlight on.

  “I’ve never done this before,” said Soleck.

  “Yeah, I remember my first beer, too,” said Stevens, and he throttled down and dropped into trail below the other plane. The basket of the refueling line became visible well above them and began to descend. Stevens handed his flashlight to Soleck and flexed his fingers like a gunfighter preparing to draw.

  “We pull alongside and flash our lights. That means we’re ready. He flashes back and starts the hose. When we’re done, we do the same again so he knows we’re clear.”

  “Cool.”

  “What the hell do they teach you guys at the RAG, anyway?”

  “Tactics,” said Soleck with some pride.

  “Mostly, in S-3s, we give gas,” said Stevens with a sour pride of his own and pushed the throttle forward.

  “Paul, have you ever missed the basket?”

  “Not that I can remember.”

  Bang, and they were in.

  Alan leaned out into the center aisle and watched the JP-5 pour into their tanks. He had the radar off, but he didn’t need it to tell him that contact eleven was well in with the coast, perhaps even in port. When the fuel passed thirteen thousand pounds, he was pretty sure that Stevens had decided to take them to Pakistan. “Evan, do they have their FLIR camera on us?”

  “Sure. It’s SOP during tanking.”

  Alan pulled out his kneeboard pad and scribbled, erased, scribbled some more. Then he pushed up into the front cockpit and crouched behind the throttle panel of the central console. He looked up until he could see the nose of the FLIR pod pointed at them. Then he put the red cap on his flashlight and started flashing it.

  Stevens’s concentration was on the plane and its relationship to the aircraft above him. Soleck was more curious. “What are you doing, sir?”

  “Signaling in EMCON, Mister Soleck.”

  He finished his signal and crawled back into his seat. He switched the intercom to the back. “Harry, where’s this airfield?”

  “Are we going?”

  “I think so.”

  “Didn’t we used to give people orders in the military?”

  “Harry, I can’t order this guy to do this.”

  “I know. Just talkin’ trash. The field is north of Bela.”

  Alan fiddled with his keyboard and raised the overlay that showed the coast of Pakistan.

  “It’s about here,” said Harry, leaning over and putting his finger on the screen.

  “I’d be happier if you could call it closer than that.”

  “Sure.” He handed his GPS unit across, the readout startlingly clear in the dark. There was a latitude and longitude on the screen, as well as altitude, and range, and bearing.

  “Nice.”

  “Surely you’ve got a GPS in this thing.”

  “It’s four times the size and works half the time.”

  Alan felt the plane rise under him, and he watched as they came alongside Rafe’s plane. This time Soleck flashed the lights. Rafe waved from the other cockpit, and his landing lights came on and went off. When they began to fall away to the north, Alan could no longer contain himself. “What’s it going to be, Paul?”

  “Oh, we’re going to Pakistan.”

  Soleck shouted, “Way cool!”

  “Paul, I’m giving Evan a GPS unit with the coordinates and altitude of the field where we want to land.”

  “You have a plan for crossing the coast?”

  “I’m looking at the radar coverage now.”

  “You sent something to the other plane in Morse?”

  “Yeah. Chances are they won’t even read it for a couple of hours. The TACCO has other things on his mind.”

  “So you knew I’d go.”

  “No, I hoped.”

  “We’re going in low, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “Then why don’t I call Karachi Air Traffic Control and declare an emergency?” Declaring a false emergency was a crime in international law, but it seemed pretty pale besides violating another nation’s airspace.

  “And?”

  “And we drop like a rock, slip under the coverage, and hope they don’t see us. If they do, we claim the old hydraulics leak and say we need an immediate landing. Better than nothing.”

  “Better than anything I thought of. Do it.”

  Forty seconds later, Rafe heard Stevens’s voice calmly announce a total hydraulics failure and declare an emergency on the Guard frequency. He thought through his years in S-3s, their little quirks, and the likelihood that one would lose its hydraulics after a five-hour flight, especially a plane that had so recently had a total hydraulics refit. He looked out over his port wing at the faint line of gray that marked where dawn would soon be coming, and he did not smile, although one of his eyebrows twitched.

  “Alan fucking Craik,” he muttered.

  34

  Gwadar, Pakistan 0215 GMT (0515L).

  George Shreed pulled himself up the pier with his hands, his weak legs barely capable of supporting his weight. He was forcing himself to wait twelve hours between doses no
w, and the pain kept him focused on his goal. He reached the last rung on the ladder and hauled himself onto the pier, and one of the two men who had brought him over handed him his bag with enviable effortlessness. Then they both clambered up beside him, so close that Shreed could smell their breath in the pre-dawn stillness. They would see him as a weak old man, and probably demand more money. He looked down the pier to the lights of the railway station, just visible through the morning cooking smoke.

  “You promised another ten thousand dollars.” The man’s English was very good, and the old George Shreed would have tried to recruit him on the spot. Unlimited access to the whole Persian Gulf via the boat and command of several languages added up to a natural spy. Probably, he was already working for somebody. Shreed smiled, reached into his bag with unfeigned weariness, and came out holding a large automatic pistol.

  “No, I didn’t. But if you want to get me to the train station, I’ll give you another thousand. Or we can stand here until I get tired and shoot you.”

  “This is a misunderstanding, surely.” The other man pushed the first one aside. “It seems fair that we get more. What if someone saw us in Oman? It may ruin our trade.” Neither seemed alarmed by the appearance of the gun in Shreed’s hand—respectful, but not frightened. Probably a regular event on this run. This seemed like a bargaining tactic, not a direct threat; they didn’t strike him as the right kind of men to just kill him for his bag.

  “Train station. Okay? Good. Please walk in front of me.”

  “My brother needs to stay with the boat.”

  Brother was a term tossed about with some ease in these regions, and Shreed was unsure whether the older man would really do as a hostage to prevent a shot in the back. It was dark, however, and both men seemed satisfied with the thousand-dollar bonus, and Shreed didn’t have a lot of options.

  “Okay, friends, we’ll all walk down to the end of the pier together, and then your brother can walk back while I can see him. You get another thousand. Everybody walks away happy. Ready?”

  The two Pakistani smugglers shrugged and began walking down the pier. The set of their shoulders said it all. Inshallah.