By Order of the President

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Your copilot is here,” the man said. “You may look into the passenger compartment.”

  MacIlhenny didn’t move.

  “Look into the fuselage, Captain,” the man with the Uzi said, sternly, and something hard was rammed into the small of MacIlhenny’s back.

  He winced with the pain.

  That wasn’t a knife and it certainly wasn’t a hand. Maybe the other guy’s got an Uzi, too. A gun, anyway.

  MacIlhenny stepped past the bulkhead and looked into the passenger compartment.

  All but the first three rows of seats had been removed from the passenger compartment. MacIlhenny had no idea when or why but when LA-9021 had left Philadelphia on a sixty-day, cash-up-front dry charter, it had been in a full all-economy -class passenger configuration—the way it had come from Continental Airlines—with seats for 189 people.

  Lease-Aire had been told it was to be used to haul people on everything-included excursions from Scandinavia to the coast of Spain and Morocco.

  MacIlhenny knew all this because he was Lease-Aire’s vice president for Maintenance and Flight Operations. The title sounded more grandiose—on purpose—than the size of the corporation really justified. Lease-Aire had only two other officers. The president and chief executive officer was MacIlhenny’s brother-in-law, Terry Halloran; and the secretary-treasurer was Mary-Elizabeth MacIlhenny Halloran, Terry’s wife and MacIlhenny’s sister.

  Lease-Aire was in the used aircraft business, dealing in aircraft the major airlines wanted to get rid of for any number of reasons, most often because they were near the end of their operational life. LA-9021, for example, had hauled passengers for Continental for twenty-two years.

  When Lease-Aire acquired an airplane—their fleet had never exceeded four aircraft at one time; they now owned two: this 727, and a Lockheed 10-11 they’d just bought from Northwest—they stripped off the airline paint job, reregistered it, and painted on the new registration numbers.

  Then the aircraft was offered for sale. If they couldn’t find someone to buy it at a decent profit, the plane was offered for charter—“wet” (with fuel and crew and Lease-Aire took care of routine maintenance) or “dry” (the lessee provided the crew and fuel and paid for routine maintenance)— until it came close to either an annual or thousand-hour inspection, both of which were very expensive. Then the airplane was parked again at Philadelphia and offered for sale at a really bargain-basement price. If they couldn’t sell it, then it made a final flight to a small airfield in the Arizona desert, where it was cannibalized of salable parts.

  Lease-Aire had been in business five years. LA-9021 was their twenty-first airplane. Sometimes they made a ton of money on an airplane and sometimes they took a hell of a bath.

  It seemed to Vice President MacIlhenny they were going to take a hell of a bath on this one. Surf & Sun Holidays Ltd. had telephoned ten days before their sixty-day charter contract was over, asking for another thirty days, check to follow immediately.

  The check didn’t come. A cable did, four days later, saying LA-9021 had had to make a “precautionary landing” at Luanda, Angola, where an inspection had revealed mechanical failures beyond those which they were obliged to repair under the original contract. And, further, that inasmuch as the failures had occurred before the first contract had run its course, Surf & Sun Holidays would not of course enter into an extension of the original charter contract.

  In other words, your airplane broke down in Luanda, Angola. Sorry about that but it’s your problem, not ours.

  When Terry, who handled the business end of Lease-Aire, had tried to call Surf & Sun Holidays Ltd. at their corporate headquarters in Glasgow, Scotland, to discuss the matter, he was told the line was no longer in service.

  On his first trip to Luanda, MacIlhenny had stopped in Glasgow to deal with them personally. There had been sheets of brown butcher paper covering the plate-glass store-front windows of Surf & Sun Holidays Ltd.’s corporate headquarters, with FOR RENT lettered on them in Magic Marker.

  In Luanda, he had quickly found what had failed on LA- 9021: control system hydraulics. It was a “safety of flight” problem, which meant MacIlhenny could not hire a local to sit in the right seat while he made a “one-time flight” to bring it home. He had also found that most of the seats were missing. Parts—from seats to hydraulics—were often readily available on the used parts market, if you had the money. Lease-Aire was experiencing a temporary cash-flow problem.

  Terry had wanted to go after the Surf & Sun bastards for stealing the seats and abandoning the aircraft, make them at least make the repairs so MacIlhenny could go get the sonofabitch and bring it home. MacIlhenny’s sister had sided with her husband.

  The cash-flow problem had lasted a lot longer than anyone expected, and the price of the needed parts was a lot higher than MacIlhenny anticipated, so thirteen months passed before he and four crates of parts finally managed to get back to Luanda and he could put the sonofabitch together again.

  As he took the few steps from the cockpit door to the passenger compartment, MacIlhenny had an almost pleasant thought:

  If these guys steal this airplane, we can probably collect on the insurance.

  And then he saw the local pilot who had come on board LA-9021 expecting to pick up a quick five hundred dollars sitting in the right seat for an hour or so while MacIlhenny took the plane on a test hop. He was sitting in the third— now last—row right aisle seat. His hands were in his lap, tightly bound together with three-inch-wide yellow plastic tape. His ankles were similarly bound, and there was tape over his eyes.

  “We will release him, Captain,” the first man with the Uzi said, “when, presuming you have cooperated, we release you.”

  “I’m going to do whatever you want me to do, sir,” MacIlhenny said.

  “Why don’t we get going?” the man with the Uzi said.

  He stepped out of the aisle to permit MacIlhenny to walk past him.

  MacIlhenny went into the cockpit, and, for the first time, could see the second man.

  I guess there’s only two of them. I didn’t see anybody else back there.

  The man now sitting in the copilot’s seat looked very much like the first man with the Uzi, and he was also wearing an open-collared white shirt with Air Crew shoulder boards.

  The right ones, too, with the three stripes of a first officer —formerly copilot.

  The copilot gestured for MacIlhenny to take the pilot’s seat.

  As he slipped into it, MacIlhenny saw that the copilot had the checklist in his hand and that there were charts on the sort of shelf above the instrument panel. MacIlhenny couldn’t see enough of them to have any idea what they were.

  And I can’t even make a guess where we’re going.

  MacIlhenny strapped himself into the seat, and then, feeling just a little foolish, raised his right hand.

  “You have a question, Captain?” the man with the Uzi asked.

  “Am I going to fly or is this gentleman?”

  “You’ll fly,” the man with the Uzi said. “He will serve as copilot, and you can think of me as your ‘check pilot.’ ”

  It was obvious he thought he was being amusing.

  The man with the Uzi unfolded the jump seat in the aisle into position, sat down, fastened his shoulder harness, and rested the Uzi on the back of MacIlhenny’s seat, its muzzle about two inches from MacIlhenny’s ear.

  The man in the copilot’s seat handed MacIlhenny the checklist, a plastic-covered card about four inches wide and ten inches long. MacIlhenny took it, nodded his understanding, and began to read from it.

  “Gear lever and lights,” MacIlhenny read.

  “Down and checked,” the copilot responded.

  “Brakes,” MacIlhenny read.

  “Parked,” the copilot responded.

  “Circuit breakers.”

  “Check.”

  “Emergency lights.”

  “Armed.”

  There were thirty-four items on the BEFORE S
TART checklist. MacIlhenny read each of them.

  When he read number 9, “Seat Belt and No Smoking signs,” the copilot chuckled before responding, “On.”

  When MacIlhenny read number 23, “Voice recorder,” the copilot chuckled again and said, “I don’t think we’re going to need that.”

  And when MacIlhenny read number 28, “Radar and transponder,” the copilot responded, “We’re certainly not going to need that.”

  And the man with the Uzi at MacIlhenny’s ear chuckled.

  When MacIlhenny read number 34, “Rudder and aileron trim,” the copilot responded, “Zero,” and the man with the Uzi said, “Fire it up, Captain.”

  MacIlhenny reached for the left engine ENGINE START button and a moment later the whine and vibration of the turbine began.

  “Ask ground control for permission to taxi to the maintenance area,” the man with the Uzi ordered.

  MacIlhenny nodded and said, “Luanda ground control, LA-9021, on the parking pad near the threshold of the main runway. Request permission to taxi to the maintenance hangar.”

  Luanda ground control responded twenty seconds later.

  “LA-9021, you are cleared to taxi on Four South. Turn right on Four South right three. Report on arrival at the maintenance area.”

  “Ground control, LA-9021 understands Four South to Four South right three.”

  “Affirmative, 9021.”

  MacIlhenny looked over his shoulder at the man with the Uzi, who nodded. MacIlhenny released the brakes and reached for the throttle quadrant.

  LA-9021 began to move.

  “Turn onto the threshold,” the man with the Uzi said thirty seconds later. “Line it up with the runway and immediately commence your takeoff roll.”

  “Without asking for clearance?” MacIlhenny asked.

  “Without asking for clearance,” the man with the Uzi said, not pleasantly, and brushed MacIlhenny’s neck, below his ear, with the muzzle of the Uzi.

  As MacIlhenny taxied the 727 to the threshold of the main north/south runway, he looked out the side window of the cockpit and then pointed out the window.

  “There’s an aircraft on final,” he said. “An Ilyushin.”

  It was an Ilyushin II-76, called “the Candid.” It was a large, four-engine, heavy-lift military transport, roughly equivalent to the Lockheed C-130.

  The man with the Uzi pressed the muzzle of the Uzi against MacIlhenny’s neck as he leaned around him to look out the window at the approaching aircraft.

  “Line up with the runway, Captain,” he ordered, “and the moment he touches down begin your takeoff roll.”

  “Line up now or after he touches down?”

  “Now,” the man with the Uzi said and jabbed MacIlhenny with the muzzle of the Uzi.

  MacIlhenny released the brakes and nudged the throttles.

  “LA-9021, ground control,” the radio went off. The voice sounded alarmed.

  The man with the Uzi jerked MacIlhenny’s headset from his head.

  MacIlhenny lined up 9021 with the runway and stopped.

  A moment later the Ilyushin flashed over, so close that the 727 moved. It touched down about halfway down the runway.

  The Uzi muzzle prodded MacIlhenny under the ear.

  He understood the message, released the brakes, and shoved the throttles forward.

  My options right now are to pull the gear, which will mean I will have my brains blown all over the cockpit a full twenty seconds before the gear retracts. Or I can do what I’m told and maybe, just maybe, stay alive.

  “Will you call out the airspeed, please?” MacIlhenny asked, politely.

  “Eighty,” the copilot said a moment later.

  Unless that Ilyushin gets his tail off the runway, I’m going to clip it.

  “Ninety.

  “One-ten.

  “One-twenty.”

  “Rotate,” MacIlhenny said and pulled back on the yoke.

  “What you will do now, Captain,” the man with the Uzi said, “is level off at two-five hundred feet on this course.”

  "That’s going to eat a lot of fuel,” MacIlhenny said.

  “Yes, I know. What I want to do is fall off their radar. The lower we fly, the sooner that will happen.”

  MacIlhenny nodded his understanding.

  Five minutes later, the man with the Uzi ordered, “Maintaining this flight level, steer zero-two-zero.”

  “Zero-two-zero,” MacIlhenny repeated and began a gentle turn to that heading.

  That will take me over the ex-Belgian Congo. I wonder what that means?

  Ten minutes after that, the man with the Uzi said, “Ascend to flight level two-five thousand, and turn to zero-one- five.”

  “Course zero-one-five,” MacIlhenny repeated. “Beginning climb to flight level two-five thousand now.”

  “Very good, Captain,” the man with the Uzi said.

  Not quite two hours after they left Luanda, the man with the Uzi said, “Begin a thousand-feet-a-minute descent on our present heading, Captain.”

  MacIlhenny nodded his understanding, adjusted the trim, retarded the throttles, and then said, “We are in a thousand-feet -a-minute descent. May I ask where we are going?”

  “We are going to take on fuel at an airfield not far from Kisangani,” he said. “Once known as Stanleyville. Kisangani has a radar and I want to get under it, so level off at twenty- five hundred feet.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  MacIlhenny checked his fuel. His tanks were a little under half full.

  Kisangani is in the northeast Congo, not far from the border of Sudan.

  We could have made it to Khartoum—almost anywhere in Sudan—with available fuel. Sudan has a reputation for loose borders, and for not liking Americans. So why didn’t we go there?

  If we keep on this northeasterly flight path, we’ll overfly Sudan. And on this heading, what’s next is Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.

  The Americans are all over Saudi Arabia and Israel with AWAC aircraft.

  They’re sure to see this one.

  For that matter, it’s surprising that there hasn’t been a fighter—or three or four fighters—off my wingtip already.

  You can’t just steal an airplane and fly it a thousand miles without somebody finding you.

  Where the hell are we going?

  Lease-Aire 9021 had been flying at twenty-five hundred feet at four hundred knots for about fifteen minutes when the copilot adjusted the radio frequency to 116.5 and then called somebody.

  Somebody called back. With no headset, MacIlhenny of course had no idea what anybody said. But a moment after his brief radio conversation, the copilot punched in a frequency on the radio direction finder and then pointed to the cathode display.

  “Change to that heading?” MacIlhenny asked, politely.

  “Correct,” the man with the Uzi said. “We should be no more than 150 miles from our refuel point.”

  Twenty minutes later, MacIlhenny saw, almost directly ahead, a brown scar on the vast blanket of green Congolese jungle beneath him.

  The copilot got on the radio again, held a brief conversation with someone, and then turned to MacIlhenny.

  “The winds are negligible,” he said. “If you want to, you can make a direct approach.”

  “How much runway do we have?”

  “Fifty-eight hundred feet,” the copilot said. “Don’t worry. This will not be the first 727 to land here.”

  MacIlhenny brought the 727 in at the end of the runway. He could see some buildings, but they seemed deserted, and he didn’t see any people, or vehicles, or other signs of life.

  He touched down smoothly and slowed the aircraft down to taxi speed with a third of the runway still in front of him.

  “Continue to the end of the runway, Captain,” the man with the Uzi said.

  MacIlhenny taxied as slowly as he could without arousing the suspicion of his copilot or the man with the Uzi. He saw no other signs of life or occupancy, except what could be recent truck tire marks
in the mud on the side of the macadam runway.

  “Turn it around, Captain, and put the brakes on. But don’t shut it down until we have a look at the refueling facilities.”

  "Yes, sir,” MacIlhenny said and complied.

  “Now, here we’re going to need your expert advice,” the man with the Uzi said. “Will you come with me, please?”

  "Yes, sir,” MacIlhenny said.

  He unfastened his shoulder harness, got out of his seat, and saw that the man with the Uzi had put the jump seat back in the stored position and was waiting for him to precede him out of the cockpit and into the fuselage.

  “In the back, please, Captain,” the man with the Uzi said, gesturing with the weapon.

  MacIlhenny walked into the passenger compartment.

  The local pilot was still sitting taped into one of the seats.

  MacIlhenny glanced down at him as he walked past. It looked as if something had been spilled in his lap.

  Spilled, hell. He pissed his pants.

  At the rear of the passenger compartment, the man with the Uzi ordered, “Open the door, please, Captain.”

  MacIlhenny wrestled with the door.

  The first thing he noticed was that warm tropical air seemed to pour into the airplane.

  Then someone grabbed his hair again and pulled his head backward.

  Then he felt himself being pushed out of the door and falling twenty feet to the ground. He landed hard on his shoulder, and in the last conscious moment of his life saw blood from his cut throat pumping out onto the macadam.

  He was dead before the local pilot was marched—still blindfolded with yellow tape—to the door and disposed of in a similar fashion.

  Then the rear door of Lease-Aire 9021 was closed and the airplane taxied to the other end of the runway, where a tanker truck appeared and began to refuel it.

  [TWO]

  Quatro de Fevereiro Aeroporto Internacional Luanda, Angola 1410 23 May 2005

  Quite by accident, H. Richard Miller, Jr., a thirty-six-year-old, six-foot-two, 220-pound, very black native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was not only there when what he was shortly afterward to report as “the unauthorized departure of a Boeing 727 aircraft registered to the Lease-Aire Corporation of Philadelphia, Pa.,” took place but he actually saw it happen.