Cloudburst (35 page)

“She’s holding,” Buzz reported, turning to the captain. The corner of his mouth twitched with mischievous glee.

The
Maiden
was responding, her dead engine now compensated for. Now, they flew, and waited…and listened.

*  *  *

“Four-Two-Two, do you copy?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Buzz, is our fuel okay?” the captain asked, slipping the answer into the conversation. Buzz also heard the call.
All right!

“Looks good,” the first officer answered.

“Four-Two-Two, this is Springer Seven-Three. Confirming that you copy and transmission is secure. Do you confirm?”

“Roger that, Buzz.”

“Four-Two-Two, that’s great. We assume you have some unwelcome company with you.”

“Uh-huh. We’re holding good, even with that drag,” Buzz said, trying to keep the words relevant to the situation.

“Understand, Four-Two-Two. We didn’t want to spook your company with a broadcast. Good work. Understand you have a malfunction: Your number three engine is out?”

“Number three is totally down now, Cap. Down for the count. Just spinnin’ in the wind.”

“Good. Watch the temp on the others.”

“Roger,” Buzz said, straining to hold in a smile.

“We copy. Number three engine is out. Stand by on this channel. Call out any changes if you can. We’re with you, Four-Two-Two. Hang in there.”

The silence on the channel was disquieting after the first contact with the outside world in two days, yet they had to be optimistic. There had been contact. Someone was listening. No mention was made of who exactly was contacting the
Clipper Atlantic Maiden
, but both pilots knew that somewhere in the vicinity a United States Air Force aircraft was watching over them as best it could.

Thunder One

He thought he had heard it all in his long Army career, but no longer. Blackjack sidestepped past the first Humvee and the miscellaneous gear stowed on both sides of it, emerging after the rearmost vehicle. Graber saw him first, noticing the look on the major’s face. Something was up.

Of all the team members, Graber and McAffee were the most in sync, despite the difference in rank. It was a closeness, an understanding, that come from chasing ‘it.’ ‘It’ was death. Knowing that a car or a bus could hit you any day, or wondering if the food you ate was so laced with chemicals that cancer was a
probability
, that was
facing
death. Chasing it was throwing yourself at the grim reaper with your teeth clenched tight and your HK hot to fire, its Streamlight beam striking all before it with the light of a coming death. Sean had chased it. So had McAffee.

Years before, in Thailand, Graber had been the second one into a hijacked aircraft, following the Thai commando leader. His job was relatively simple—throw flash-bangs as the Thai commander hit the carpet, then do the same. Two more native commandos, good men trained in the United States for precisely this type of mission, then literally ran over him and their leader, who came up from prone and cleared the front half of the aircraft. Sean brought up the rear.

The exact sequence happened at the same time, one door back on the opposite side, as the doors blew in. McAffee filled out that group. They went aft to secure the back of the airliner.

It was a picture-perfect raid. A success. The satisfaction and experience gained by the two Delta men was invaluable to the team, giving them firsthand experience to draw from. Graber was happy to share it with his peers, as was the major, but it was easier, Sean believed, for him to relate the fear they had experienced. Blackjack might have to lead them into an assault some day, and fear, though useful in many battles, was detrimental in the lightning fury of a takedown. Both, though, understood and accepted the peculiarities and advantages of each other’s place in the team, and they, with unspoken agreement, did not infringe upon that domain.

This was the closeness, born from successfully chasing death, that allowed Captain Sean Graber to connect with his leader, to read his face as he returned from the flight deck of the Starlifter.

The entire team was silent, but not the aircraft. It creaked and moaned, then roared as it began a gentle bank to the left, correcting itself back to straight and level after a turn of only twenty degrees. The engines pushed harder in an obvious move to bring the huge cargo jet up to max speed. There was something going on. They had all been subdued since the stand-down order, but heads came up, looking around to each other, and the eyes of those who were napping opened to join the others.

Blackjack leaned against the port fuselage frame, across and in front of Graber. “The go order is reinstated. We go from Jose Marti,” the major said, still not sure of the authorization himself. “If the Cubans give us a go ahead, then we go.”

Joe Anderson had a hard time fathoming this. A short time ago he was in his sedate, sterile office in Washington. Now, if what he heard was correct, he was going to be part of an American military operation on Cuban soil.

Flight 422

Neither the captain nor his first officer could have seen, heard, or sensed it happening, though neither would have been surprised considering the abuse the flaps had undergone. The event was, as yet, unnoticed in any performance-affecting way.

The massive flaps, used to give the aircraft added lift during takeoff and to slow it when landing, were moved by synchronized hydraulic sliders, activated and controlled by a lever between the pilots. Normally they would be set at the beginning of a takeoff roll and retracted during the climb-out to altitude. But the added weight carried by the Maiden, compounded by the degraded performance of the number three engine, had necessitated their use as a rapid ascent tool, requiring them to be lowered after the aircraft had gained sufficient speed on its takeoff run. It was a radical use of the control surfaces, one not recommended for reasons obvious to any pilot or engineer. The added stresses were liable to cause catastrophic damage: the uncontrollable, instantaneous failure of the flaps, and possibly the wing as a whole.

The flaps and wings, however, were proving to be stronger than could have been hoped for, withstanding the stress of two jump takeoffs. That was not so for the primary inboard hydraulic slider, which bore the brunt of the stress when it was commanded to extend, lowering the flaps under its control. Inside the solid-cast casing a three-inch sliver of metal sheathing, which formed the smooth surface the slider arm made contact with, separated from the rest of the cylinder’s interior. It came loose as the flaps were retracted during climb-out. Pressed between the slider arm and the casing, it slid out of place as the arm pulled back in, causing the casing to deform at its top. No fluid was released, as the base remained sealed and intact, and the rest of the unit was not opened by the defect.

The only effect of the mishap was yet to be felt.

Fourteen

THE WHITE HATS AND THE BLACK HATS

Rock Island Army Munitions Depot

Sammy knew his big brother would take care of everything once he got to California. Three more hours. He had to remain cool. His shift ended at 2230, leaving him free for a late night on the town, but he wasn’t planning for that.

*  *  *

“So he’s alone?” the FBI agent asked. He was a huge man, reminiscent of a hockey goalie who had played too many years without a mask.

“Absolutely,” the Army lieutenant answered.

The agent nodded and looked to the three others with him. They all wore the familiar blue windbreakers with the bright yellow FBI stenciled on the back, and two had their high-capacity 10mm autos in hand, locked and loaded. At the back of the Watch Office two MPs stood waiting. They wore full combat gear, flak vests and Kevlar helmets, and carried their M-16s ready to fire.

“Okay. Everybody ready?” All the parties nodded.

Their location, one building away from Private Sammy Jackson’s post at the base armory, also housed the base telephone exchange, an ancient piece of equipment by standards of the day. Its antiquity would be useful, though, in the trickery they were about to attempt.

No calls had come through for the armory yet this evening, and Sammy had made none, making the operation all that much easier. One of the agents was from the Technical Services arm of the Bureau. He had with him two devices, both of which were plugged into the telephone-switching system, specifically the lines to the armory. One of the devices blocked all inbound calls, but recorded their origin.

The other suitcase-size apparatus would display any number dialed, but would not allow it to go through. “We’re ready,” the bespectacled agent announced, looking the part of a computer nerd.

The lieutenant waited for a go-ahead from the lead agent before buzzing the armory.

*  *  *

“Armory, Private Jackson.”

“Jackson, you get any calls?”

“Nah. Not tonight, Lieutenant.”

“Son of a… Your brother called and the switchboard couldn’t put it through. Goddamn ancient fucking wires!”

“When’d he call, sir?”

“A few minutes ago. He wants you to call him back, pronto.” That was a gamble. Did Sammy know where to contact his brother Marcus?

“Yeah, okay. Thanks for the message, sir.”

The scar-faced agent smiled with a crooked mouth of teeth. “That was good. Get moving.” The other two Bureau men and the MPs left for the armory.

“Hey,” the lieutenant said. “Go easy. Nothing’s been proven. He’s innocent until, right?”

“Yeah, sure,” one of the arrest team answered sarcastically before closing the opaque-windowed door behind himself.

“The phone’s up.” Attention turned to the digital readout connected to the line and the agent sitting on the floor next to it. “He took a few seconds to pick up. Maybe he’s spooked.”

“Or maybe he was just getting the number,” the leader responded. The TS agent agreed with a look.

“Dialing.”

“Whiskey One, copy?” Scar-face called on his portable.

“Whiskey One, go.”

“You in position?”

“Ten seconds.”

“Ten-four, stand by.”

The phone number’s eleven digits came up on the display as dialed, and the outgoing line was locked out. All Sammy Jackson heard after dialing the last number was a dial tone.

“Whiskey One, move in.”

*  *  *

The stupid phone had to act up now! Sammy dropped the receiver into its cradle and took a deep breath. He just wanted his shift to be over so he could get to the airport.

He jumped when the door opened hard and swung back against the wall. Within a few seconds there were two men behind him with their guns pressed against his back as they pushed his nearly bald head down on the desk.

“Fucking traitor,” one of the MPs mumbled, incorrectly labeling his onetime comrade.

“Stow that crap, soldier,” one of the agents ordered. “Samuel J. Jackson, you are under arrest for murder, and for conspiracy to assassinate the president. Do you understand?” The handcuffs clicked shut.

“Yes,” he answered in a quiet voice. The nineteen-year- old high school dropout hadn’t expected this. His big brother promised him that everything was going to be fine. All he had to do was sit tight for a few days. He had done that.
What went wrong?
Sammy wondered.

“I’m going to read you your rights, Sammy.”

“Go ahead,” he said, with no hint of defiance in his shaking voice.

*  *  *

Scar-face had already transcribed the phone number onto a cipher pad for transmission to the L.A. office when the word came from the arrest team that Sammy was in custody. This had been easy, but then most busts were, contrary to popular, uninformed belief. This perp was just a stupid, scared kid, who had no idea what he had gotten himself into—wrong: what someone had gotten him into.

Los Angeles

Los Angeles is a city unlike any other, especially its weather. Seasons rarely follow a pattern of normalcy. Summer, the predominant and most miserable of all, usually began its reign in March and continued all the way into November, autumn being just a week or two of pseudo- summer with the added humidity of the coming winter.

One level above the Bureau’s parking garage the city was winding down from another day of choking heat and smog.

The thermometer still read ninety-two and was expected to drop only nine degrees before midnight. It was cool in the basement lot, and in the cars. Four rows of nondescript government sedans filled the area to the right of the elevator, but Art and Eddie exited and turned left, to the row of “boss’s” cars parked parallel to the gray cement wall.

“You wanna pack anything bigger for this?” Eddie asked.

Art opened the trunk. They discarded their jackets and took the dark gray flak vests from the compartment.

“Nope.” Art patted his gun, as much for reassurance as for demonstration.

“It’s gonna be hotter than hell in these things,” Eddie observed, pulling the Kevlar one-piece vest over his head. It hung down in front to cover his groin area. Velcro straps cinched it snugly around his sides. “We’ll crank up the A/C, right?”

“You bet.” Art looked down into the trunk. There was a stockless semi-auto shotgun and a fully automatic CAR-15 on the floor. He held his hand out and down, gesturing for Eddie to choose one.

“Me neither, boss. Too much noise,” he explained, then closed the lid.

One nice thing about pursuit vehicles was their reliability. Art’s car was serviced every three weeks, as were the others. The Chevy started up immediately and its tires squealed when Art cranked the wheel full to the left to pull out of his spot. On the way up and out they passed the cover cars, ones that few agents would
choose
to drive. They served the purpose of looking like ordinary cars, unlike the official sedans with their small hubcaps and dull one-tone paint jobs.

“You ever drive that old Torino?” Eddie asked. Art shook his head. “The sucker hauls. Mostly duct tape for upholstery, though.”