Final Flight jg-2

by Stephen Coonts

  Jake’s smile faded. “Well …”

  “She needs us, Jake. Both of us. She needs love and understanding and a place of her own and a man who can be a loving father.”

  Jake took a deep, deep breath, then exhaled through his nose. Callie had mentioned adoption casually in the months before the United States sailed on this cruise, but it had been so tentative — newspaper clippings left for him to see, occasional dinner conversations, all of it casual and distant, a social phenomenon worthy of a few minutes of notice. And she had been testing the water! He sat now slightly baffled, trying to recall just when and how he had lost sight of the pea. The little girl at the next table caught his eye. She had tomato sauce smeared all over the lower half of her face and running down her fork, which she held like a sword in her right fist.

  “Amy Carol Grafton. When do we get her?”

  “Oh, Jake,” Callie exclaimed and dashed around the table. She sat on his lap and enveloped him. People at the neighboring tables applauded enthusiastically as Callie gave him a long, passionate kiss. After all, this was Italia.

  * * *

  Qazi leaned back against the sink. Noora and Ali sat at the kitchen table with Youssef and the senior helicopter pilot.

  “So Sakol and Yasim are dead?”

  “The police radio says they are.”

  “Sakol is no loss,” Ali sneered. “But Yasim is. Who were these people?” Ali asked the question of Qazi.

  “I don’t know. I heard the silenced automatic weapon in the courtyard. I heard them speaking English. I looked. One of them was a woman, perhaps Judith Farrell. We had finished listening to the tapes Yasim had flagged, and Sakol had left.”

  “Why did you let him leave?” Ali asked. “He could betray us.”

  “My judgment. My decision. We shook hands and he left. A few moments later we heard the shots and I looked out the window. We ran toward the stairwell and started down. Then we heard someone running up. So I went up onto the roof. Yasim must have decided to go back through the corridor and take the elevator down to the lobby. He probably figured it would be safe with all the people there.”

  “So they killed him in the lobby.”

  “Apparently. He isn’t here and the police are telling each other there are two bodies.”

  “Yasim is a martyr,” Youssef said. “He’s on his way to paradise.” Youssef was a Palestinian, the senior man in the PLO contingent that El Hakim had foisted on Qazi. Political considerations. The PLO needed a success just now, and El Hakim would need the PLO if this operation was to pay the kind of dividends the dictator hoped it would. So the PLO should earn a share of El Hakim’s glory. Not too much of it, of course, but an expedient little bit of the shine. Too bad, Qazi thought bitterly, that the Palestinians’ primary asset was enthusiasm.

  “What do the Americans know?” Ali asked.

  “This afternoon Captain Grafton and his wife discussed the fact Farrell is not a native English-speaker. Apparently they were worried she would entrap Lieutenant Tarkington, one of the officers from the ship. Grafton had the Americans searching for Tarkington this afternoon, apparently without success. Then the Graftons went out. Grafton is suspicious and worried, but he really knows nothing.”

  “Someone knows something,” Ali said. “If that assassination team is waiting at the helicopters or the Americans are warned or the Italians are alerted, we won’t succeed.”

  “At last,” Qazi said acidly, “you begin to appreciate some of the basic facts.”

  Ali said nothing.

  “I’m worried about the weather,” the pilot said. “The winds are going to get gusty, and we’ll have rain showers under a low overcast. It may get very rough in the air tonight.”

  “Is it possible to fly?”

  “Yes, it’s possible, if the forecast is accurate. But if the weather is worse than forecast, it will be dangerous. There will be no margin for error.”

  “And in Sicily?”

  “The weather should be better there. That is the forecast, anyway.”

  “So there are many factors we cannot control. We knew that when we were planning.”

  Youssef spoke. “The PLO does not want this mission to fail. The chairman has given the orders. My men and I are ready to proceed regardless of the danger.”

  Qazi ignored him.

  “Could we wait a day?” Noora asked. “The weather might improve.”

  “They may dispose of the crate on the ship. The carabinieri or the GRU or the CIA or the Mossad or the Mafia may catch on.” Qazi ticked them off on his fingers. “There is already at least one assassination team out there on the hunt. And Yasim or Sakol may still be alive, and the police-radio conversations just a ruse. If either is alive, he can be made to talk. The risk increases every minute we wait. It’s now or never. Do we go?”

  Noora and Ali looked at each other, then back at Qazi. They both nodded yes.

  Qazi slapped his hands together. “Okay. Youssef, load the vans. Noora, get Jarvis to supervise the loading of the trigger. Then line the men up for inspection. Ali and I will check every man. When that is done, we’ll pull in the guards and be on our way.” He looked at his watch. “We leave in twenty-seven minutes. Go!”

  19

  Qazi and Ali sat in the front seat of the van and stared through binoculars at the gate in the chain-link fence and the helicopter pad beyond. Nothing moved under the lights on the corner of the hangars. Qazi aimed his binoculars through his open window at the guard shack. The old man was inside. He still had a two-day growth of beard.

  The colonel turned in his seat and examined the tops of the warehouses across the street. No heads or suspicious objects in evidence. He scanned the windows.

  “What do you think?” Ali asked.

  Colonel Qazi laid the binoculars in his lap and sat watching the scene. “Go,” he said at last.

  Ali stepped from the van and eased the door shut. He walked past the edge of the nearest warehouse and on across the street, where he was limned by a streetlight. Qazi could hear his footsteps fading. He raised his binoculars and scanned the warehouses again, trying to detect movement. There was none. He swung the glasses to the guard shack and watched Ali walk up to the window. The guard opened it. Ali reached through the window. Qazi knew he was cutting the telephone wire. Then Ali walked on toward the hangar.

  “Sentries out.” Qazi told the people in the back of the van. He heard the rear door open and saw, in the rearview mirror, a man in black clothing with a submachine gun post himself against the large metal trash box on the edge of the alley. Another man dressed similarly trotted past the front of the van and disappeared around the corner; his post was opposite the gate.

  “Anything on the scanner?” Qazi asked over his shoulder.

  “No.” It was Noora. She was monitoring the police and carabinieri frequencies.

  Through his binoculars Qazi could see Ali working on the doorknob to the office of the helicopter company. The hangar windows were all dark. Then Ali opened the door and disappeared inside. In a moment the lights in the office shone through the windows. Since this was normal when the company was waiting for a late-night passenger, it should arouse no comment. One of the two hangar doors slowly slid open.

  Qazi raised a hand-held radio to his lips. “Van two, go.”

  In a few seconds he heard the engine of the other van. It came down the street past the alley and turned in at the gate. Qazi had instructed the driver to pause at the guard shack, and he did so. Then he drove past two parked helicopters and through the open hangar door.

  “Van three, go.”

  Almost a minute lapsed before this van passed the alley where Qazi sat. It also came to a brief halt at the gate, then threaded between the helicopters and entered the hangar. Now the door slid shut.

  They waited.

  “Nothing on the scanner,” Noora told him.

  At last the door to the office opened and a man appeared. Qazi could see that he wore the same uniform as the gate guard. Th
is man walked the hundred feet across the tarmac to the guard shack.

  Qazi turned in his seat. “Noora, it’s time,”

  She took off the earphones and gathered her shoulder bag.

  “Don’t kill any Italians unless absolutely necessary. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shoot any Palestinian the instant he disobeys. And watch Ali’s back for him.”

  She nodded.

  “Go.”

  She stepped between the feet of the men sitting in the back of the vehicle and exited out the rear door. Qazi watched her. The man behind the wheel of the sedan parked behind the van got out and Noora took his place. The engine of the sedan came to life and the car eased past the van, stopping at the sidewalk as Noora looked both ways. Qazi could see the black outline of Jarvis’s head above the top of the backseat. Then Noora accelerated into the street and turned left toward the gate. Behind him Qazi could hear the rear door of the van being closed.

  In a few minutes five men emerged from the hangar and walked to the helicopter furthest from the guard shack. They began to preflight it with flashlights.

  A small two-door sedan came down the street. As it went by Qazi could see a man and woman in the front seat. It passed the entrance to the airfield without slackening its pace and disappeared around the far corner.

  Sound carried and echoed through the alleys. He could faintly hear a man and woman shouting at each other, and through some fluke of acoustics, snatches of television audio.

  The gentle breeze felt good after the sticky heat of the day. Qazi sat and watched the flashlights move around the helicopter, erratically and haphazardly.

  The five men on the other side of the fence spent five minutes examining the first helicopter. When they left it and moved to the next one, a voice came over Qazi’s radio. “It’s okay. Fuel sample satisfactory.”

  “Roger.”

  A small pickup truck came down the street from the north, its headlights almost lost in the black evening. It shot down the street at full throttle, slowing slightly as it passed Qazi so it could make the next corner, which it tore around. He could hear the sound of its engine fading for half a minute after it had passed. A moment later he heard the engine of a large truck. Thirty seconds later it came into view, engine laboring, and drove up the street with its diesel engine snorting.

  “This one’s okay.”

  “Roger.”

  What had he forgotten? What was left undone? As he sat there behind the wheel of the van Colonel Qazi reviewed the operation yet again. He glanced at his watch from time to time, and turned once to check on the men sitting patiently behind him. They looked scruffy in their worn, dirty jeans and short-sleeve knit and pullover shirts. Most of the shirts were filthy. Some of them were torn. Most of the men wore dirty tennis shoes. Satisfied, Qazi resumed scanning the warehouses with his binoculars.

  * * *

  The camel thieves were two young boys, about eleven and twelve years of age. Orphans. His uncle had forced them to deepen the water holes and fill the bags for the camels, which were let out on hobbles to graze. When the work was done, the boys were fed. They had no food of their own. Then the men had lain in the shade as the sun scorched the earth. The two thieves huddled together against a stone below where Qazi and his cousin sat with their rifles across their knees. The old man found a place further away, where he could keep an eye on the camels. Qazi wandered over in late afternoon and found him reading the Koran.

  They tied up the thieves for the night. At dawn the next day the animals were watered again and the last of the dried dates and bread were shared.

  “Who is the eldest?” the old man asked.

  One of the thieves acknowledged that he was.

  The old man looked at his son and Qazi. “Seize him. Put his right hand against that rock.” He pointed at a large stone.

  “No! Allah be praised, have mercy. No! Kill me instead.” Qazi had helped drag the sobbing boy to the indicated stone.

  The old man took his sword from the saddle of his camel. “You have violated Allah’s law. And you know the law.”

  The sword made a sickening sound as it bit into the boy’s wrist. It took the old man three chops to sever the hand. He bound the wrist with a tourniquet and his own undershirt.

  They set the two on their own camel a beast suffering so badly with the mange that it had only half its hair. The old man jammed their rifle into its scabbard and slapped the beast into motion. The young boy held his brother in the saddle as the animal climbed slowly out of the wadi and disappeared over the rim.

  “Uncle …”

  The old man’s face was like chiseled stone. He gathered the camels that had been taken and roped them together.

  The three had ridden for several miles when they heard the faint echo of a shot.

  The old man reined his camel in and looked about wildly. He turned in the saddle and looked toward the west, where the shot must have been fired. Then he dropped the lead rope and beat his mount into a gallop.

  Qazi and the cousin followed. They found the lone camel standing amid a patch of lava stones and thorn bushes in a shallow depression. The boy with the missing hand lay on the ground, the barrel of the rifle in his mouth, his toe on the trigger. His brains lay in the sand above the body.

  His younger brother sat at his feet.

  The old man prostrated himself toward the rising sun.

  The sun rose higher and higher into the cloudless sky.

  “Allah, I have believed in the words of your Prophet all my days. I have read the book and followed the book. I have kept the faith of my fathers. I have obeyed the law. I have raised my sons to obey the law. But it is not enough.”

  “Uncle,” Qazi said. “Do not blaspheme. He hears everything.”

  The old man rose from the ground. His face was lined and his beard was gray. “The book is not enough for a simple man like me. Allah knows.” He had looked about him at the stones and sand and the merciless sky and the twisted body. “Not enough.”

  They buried the dead boy. They took the other boy home with them and he was taken in by the old man’s eldest son.

  Three years later the old man sent Qazi north to the city to join the army.

  * * *

  The small radio crackled to life. “This one is okay.”

  “Roger.”

  Qazi started the engine and put the van in gear. As he drove away he looked in the driver’s mirror at the hangar lights and the ungainly machines. The rotors were spread now, and they flapped gently in the rising breeze. The wind was gusting.

  The book is not enough. His uncle had been right about that. But perhaps, Qazi thought, the Prophet was right and paradise will be better than this life. Perhaps not. Wherever the old man was, that was where Qazi wished to be. If tonight’s scheme went awry, he well knew, he would join the old man very soon. Ah well, perhaps it was time.

  * * *

  “You’re really serious about adopting?”

  Jake and Callie were walking past the Royal Palace, under the white marble statues of the medieval kings of Naples. They looked, Jake thought, appropriately hairy and fierce, clad in their armor with swords in hand. Across the street, around the fountain in the Piazza del Plebiscito, clusters of teenage girls were flirting with the swarms of boys cruising on their Vespas and motocross bikes. Every now and then a girl hiked her skirt up, swung onto the back of the seat, and the boy blasted off into traffic. Apparently this was the place if you were young and growing up in Napoli.

  “I went to see the agency about four months ago. We would have to wait years for a baby. And these older children who need special love and care, they spend their lives bouncing from foster home to foster home.”

  “So if we ask for a baby, we really won’t be helping.”

  “Oh, Jake.” She squeezed his hand. “That’s precisely it. I’ve met Amy Carol about five times, and she needs a family. And we can be that family for her.”

  “Tell me about her.”r />
  Callie began with a physical description. They rounded the corner of the castle and picked their way through the parking lot, past the entrance to the Galleria Umberto, and around the scaffolding on the front of the opera house. Jake noticed several prostitutes standing on the steps to the Galleria, but Callie was describing the little girl’s emotional problems and paid no attention.

  A hundred feet further on he saw a tall, willowy woman in spike heels and a black dress standing under the light on the corner across the street. Her low-cut, strapless dress clung to her figure like cellophane and only came down to midthigh. She was busy adjusting her bosom. Callie was reciting Amy Carol’s family history.

  Callie stopped dead on the sidewalk, in midsentence, and Jake jerked his head from the far corner. Directly in front of them on the sidewalk a woman with exposed breasts stood talking to a man leaning from a car. She wore high heels and some type of black lingerie, but her breasts were completely bare. A transparent robe was draped around her shoulders.

  “Keep walking,” Jake urged.

  Callie looked the woman up and down and gave the man in the car a piercing glance, which he ignored.

  Ten paces further on three motor scooters drew to the curb. The young male drivers each had a teenage girl behind him. They chatted excitedly, looking back at the working hooker. Jake and Callie kept walking. The boys eased the scooters into motion and made a U-turn. Jake looked back over his shoulder. The scooters made another U-turn and swung into the curb where the car had been. The woman surveyed the teenagers with disdain and the Italian came loud and fast, audible even above the traffic.

  “Stop gawking, Grafton,” Callie ordered. “She’s a 36 C-cup and needs dental work.”

  She’s lying about the teeth, Jake told himself. Not even Callie had been looking at her mouth. “I wonder where we could get you an outfit like that?”

  “Oooh, you men! You like that, huh?” She began to sashay along, rolling her shoulders and hips.

  “Just admiring the local color.” Callie was still doing it. Pedestrians were staring. “Stop that!”