by Tom Clancy
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 Ruark’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.
“Huh?” Clark asked.
“Didn’t you see, John, the cages! We seen ’em before, just like those—in Tehran, in the air force hangar.” He’d kept his distance in order to duplicate what he’d seen at Mehrabad. The relative size and proportions were the same. “Chicken coops or cages or whatever in a hangar with fighter planes, remember?”
“Shit!”
“One more indicator, Mr. C. Them coincidences are piling up, ’mano. Where we goin’ next?”
“Khartoum.”
“I saw the movie.”
NEWS COVERAGE CONTINUED, but little else. Every network affiliate became more important as the “name” correspondents were trapped in their base offices of New York, Washington, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and the news devoted a great deal of time to visuals of National Guardsmen on the major interstate highways, blocking the roads physically with Hummers or medium trucks. No one really tried to run the blockades there. Food and medical supply trucks were allowed through, after each was inspected, and in a day or two, the drivers would be tested for Ebola antibodies, and given picture passes to make their way more efficiently. The truckers were playing ball.
It was different for other vehicles and other roads. Though most interstate highway traffic went on the major highways, there was not a state in the Union that didn’t have an extensive network of side roads that interconnected with those of neighboring states, and all of these had to be blocked, too. That took time to accomplish, and there were interviews of people who’d gotten across and thought it something of a joke, followed by learned commentary that this proved that the President’s order was impossible to implement completely, in addition to being wrong, stupid, and unconstitutional.
“It just isn’t possible,” one transportation expert said on the morning news.
But that hadn’t accounted for the fact that National Guardsmen lived in the country they guarded, and could read maps. They
were also offended by the implied statement that they were fools. By noon on Wednesday there was a vehicle on every country road, crewed by men with rifles and wearing the chemical-protective suits that made them look like men (and women, though that was almost impossible to tell) from Mars.
On the side roads, if not the main ones, there were clashes. Some were mere words—my family is right over there, give a guy a break, okay? Sometimes the rule was enforced with a little common sense, after an identification check and a radio call. In other cases, the enforcement was literal, and here and there words were exchanged, some of them heated, and some of those escalated, and in two cases shots were fired, and in one of them a man was killed. Reported rapidly up the line, it was national news in two hours, and again commentators wondered at the wisdom of the President’s order. One of them laid the death on the front steps of the White House.
For the most part, even those most determined to make their way to their cross-border destinations saw the uniformed men with guns and decided that it wasn’t worth the risk.
The same applied to international borders. The Canadian military and police closed all border-crossing points. American citizens in Canada were asked to report to the nearest hospital for testing, and there they were detained, in a civilized way. Something similar happened in Europe, though there the treatment differed from one country to another. For the first time, it was the Mexican army which closed America’s southern border, in cooperation with U.S. authorities, this time against traffic mainly moving south.
Some local traffic was moving. Supermarkets and convenience stores allowed people in, mainly in small numbers, to purchase necessities. Pharmacies sold out of surgical masks. Many called local hardware and paint dealers to get protective masks made for other uses, and TV coverage helped there by telling people that such masks, sprayed with common household disinfectants, offered better protection against a virus than the Army’s chemical gear. But inevitably, some people overdid the spraying, and that resulted in allergic reactions, respiratory difficulties, and a few deaths.
