The Rule of Nine (25 page)

I wait until the end of the ramp reaches the ground, like a yawning mouth, and then I snap the picture.

It's a footrace for the car, with Joselyn out in front. Herman is already behind the wheel, with the engine running.

We jump in the back and Joselyn yells, “Move!”

“Do you think he saw us?” I ask.

“I don't, but I think we better find another way out of here,” she says.

T
here's a map in the glove compartment,” says Herman.

He is ripping along the dirt road doing at least fifty miles an hour, fishtailing in the sandy soil. Joselyn and I are bouncing around in the backseat. My head hits the ceiling of the car.

“Get the map,” he says.

“I'm trying. Slow down or you're going to kill us. We won't have to worry about Thorn,” I tell him.

“Where does this road lead?” says Joselyn.

Herman is driving farther into the brushy hillside, away from the pavement we came in on.

“It'll take us back to the highway,” says Herman. “There's a turn, but I'm not sure where.”

“How do you know?” I ask.

“'Cause I checked the map to make sure I had a way out before I parked,” he says. “But I don't want to make a wrong turn.”

He slows for a few seconds and I reach over from the backseat, into the glove compartment, and pull out a folded single-page Avis map.

Herman glances over. “No, not that one. The one underneath.”

I fish around inside and find another, thicker map. As soon as I slump into the backseat I unfold it and it opens up like an accordion, enough paper to seal off the backseat. It's a geodetic survey map showing the island in sections. “Did this come with the car?”

“No. Bought it yesterday while you guys were napping,” says Herman. “One of the little shops next to the hotel. Look for the exit off the highway you came in on and find the dirt road.”

Joselyn and I search for it until we find the right quarter section and then home in. “Here it is.” She points with her finger. “Let me have it.” She plucks it out of my hands.

We are climbing higher on the hillside, well above the trees at the end of the airfield. The plane is no longer visible down below, lost in the morass of foliage and the camouflage. But in the distance behind us I can see a trail of dust in the air. “Somebody's on our tail,” I tell him.

“I see him,” says Herman.

“I hope you're right about there being a way out of here.”

“He is,” says Joselyn. “There's a fork up ahead, take it to the right.”

“Good girl,” says Herman. He gooses the engine and we start to slide around in the backseat.

“There's another turn to the right about a quarter of a mile beyond that,” she tells him. “Then it looks like it turns to pavement. You take it all the way to the highway.”

“That's the one,” says Herman. “It's Thorn behind us. I got a glimpse of the pickup when he rounded one of the bends back there.”

I turn and look. I see the dust, maybe half a mile behind us and closing fast, like a cyclone.

Herman takes the fork to the right and a quarter of a mile beyond it takes a sharp right, nearly lifting the car up on two wheels.

“Maybe he'll take the wrong cut at the fork,” I tell them.

“No,” says Herman. “He's still behind us.”

I turn to take a peek. Herman's right. The looming dust devil is still behind us and getting closer.

A hundred feet beyond the turn, the wheels grind over gravel and onto solid pavement. The road smooths out and Herman pushes the pedal to the floor. The midsize four-cylinder picks up speed, but we'll never make it to the highway. The minute Thorn hits the pavement, the big Ford V-8 will run us down in less than a mile. And I am guessing that Thorn is probably armed to the teeth.

We swing around a curve, coming down the hillside. I can see the highway in the distance, maybe two miles off. The road we are on rolls over the hillocks like a ribbon leading right to it.

“Hang on,” says Herman. Suddenly the car swings to the right, skids on the pavement, and rolls onto a gravel road.

“Where are you going? It's a dead end,” I tell him.

“I know,” says Herman. He pulls up about fifty feet and turns to the left into some heavy brush, then slams on the brakes and turns off the engine. “Get out of the car.” Herman grabs the field glasses and opens his door.

Joselyn and I follow him over the rough ground into the brush.

“Come on,” says Herman. He leads us toward a small rock outcropping, kneels down, and sets up with the glasses.

Joselyn and I really don't need them, we can see the ribbon of paved road leading down to the highway just off to our left.

“Shhh…” Herman holds a finger to his lips and listens.

I hear the high-speed rush of rubber on the road, and a second later the rush of air as a vehicle races past the gravel turnoff. An instant later I see the Ford pickup as it blasts into the open and races down the road toward the highway. I'm guessing that he's doing close to a hundred miles an hour. It takes Thorn less than a minute to reach the intersection on this side of the highway. You can see the truck's tail end lift up as the brake lights come on. Thorn screeches to a complete stop right in the middle of the road.

There's a little chuckle next to me. Herman is looking through the field glasses. “That's the problem with the dust when you're
chasing somebody. You can't be sure how far behind you are. It's not like being out in front. That's why I pulled off,” he says. “The curve back there. Once he rounded it we were dead. He woulda seen us and run us down before we got to the highway. Now he's sitting there getting whiplash, lookin' both ways 'cause he can't be sure which way we went, right toward Ponce or left toward San Juan. Wanna look?” He hands me the glasses.

“I'll take your word for it. I'm still trying to keep my breakfast down,” I tell him.

“You got a bad inner ear. There he goes.” Herman is back looking through the field glasses.

As I look toward the highway, I see the pickup truck speed across the double lanes and turn left, heading north.

“He figures we're running for the big city and the airport,” says Herman.

“Aren't we?” says Joselyn.

“Not till we make a phone call,” says Herman.

 

Part of what Thorn was being paid for was to think on his feet, and to do it quickly. He'd raced no more than three miles north on the highway before he realized that he'd lost them.

He turned around and sped back to the airfield. Thorn knew that by now the trio on the hillside would be calling the cops.

He and the two Mahdi pilots loaded the jet with four empty fifty-gallon paint drums, along with two others that were half full of the diesel fuel used to run the compressor. They strapped everything down so it wouldn't move.

They grabbed as much of the large brown masking paper as they could and tossed it on board, and then ripped off what was left on the side of the plane.

Most of the painting was done, though not all of it. They would have to finish the rest when they got where they were going. They
threw the air hoses and spray guns inside the plane. Thorn grabbed the large attaché case containing the little brown bat and the laptop that controlled it as well as the battery-charging unit that was in the cardboard box. He put it all on board the plane. The only thing he couldn't get was his luggage at the Hotel Belgica. He would have to take care of that later by phone. He was confident there was no way the authorities could connect the mysterious missing jetliner to the Charles Johnston who checked out of the Hotel Belgica by telephone.

All the heavy work on the plane was done. The bomb in the tail section was strapped down and concealed inside the closed airstairs. Anyone looking at the plane from the outside would conclude that the rear ramp that once existed was now sealed up and no longer functional. This was the fate of many of the ramps on the old planes, most notably those that weren't equipped with a Cooper Vane.

The two pylons were problematic, but they were relatively small, designed for jet fighters. They were lost under the large wings of the big airliner. On the ground, especially without attached ordnance, no one would notice them.

The two small air-to-air missiles were still in crates in the back of the plane. They had been easy to obtain, and relatively cheap. Whereas a shoulder-fired ground-to-air missile could cost upward of two hundred thousand dollars on the black market, an air-to-air missile like the two old French Magic heat seekers, which were now considered obsolete, could be picked up for a few thousand dollars. They weighed less than two hundred pounds each and required no sophisticated target-tracking system to use them.

A well-armed terrorist with an airframe like the 727 could have armed it with a load of obsolete Magic missiles under each wing, set out over the Atlantic beyond ground-based radar, and in a single day taken down a score of commercial jetliners flying in and out of the East Coast.

Thorn had already trained the two Mahdi pilots in how to mount the missiles on the pylons and how to pull the arming
ribbons before they took off. And where they were headed, it wouldn't matter, because there would be no one around to see them do it.

 

I start calling from my cell phone before we reach the rental car still parked behind the bushes near the dead-end gravel road. I call 911 and wait for the dispatcher's voice to come on. Then I explode all over her in a litany of information, drowning her in details, everything we've seen during the last hour.

“Wait, wait, wait,” she says. “Is this an emergency? Is someone injured?”

“No,” I tell her. “But a lot of people are going to be dead real soon if you don't send somebody out here now.”

“I don't understand. Slow down, calm down, and tell me one more time,” she says.

I take a deep breath and then in a calm voice tell her about the plane, the bomb, the camo netting, and the grassy airstrip. I tell her what we know about Thorn and, halfway through what must sound like an incredible tale she stops me and says, “Who are you? What's your name?”

I tell her.

“Where are you right now?” The way she says this makes me wonder if she's about to dispatch a few male nurses from a local mental institution to come and pick me up.

“We're standing on a hillside about fifteen miles south of Ponce, just off the main highway.”

“And you're telling me you've seen all of this?”

“Yes, damn it!”

“Just a minute,” she says. She puts me on hold.

Herman, Joselyn, and I stand by the car.

“What are they saying?” says Joselyn.

“Nothing. I'm on hold.”

 

In less than half an hour, Thorn and the two Madhi pilots had buttoned up the plane, turned it around, and were jetting down the runway, leaving the welder to load up his equipment in the back of Thorn's pickup and disappear.

The jet had enough fuel for about three hours of flight time. Thorn intended to make the most of it. He needed a cover story, one that would fit like a glove into everything his visitors were about to report to the cops. If it worked, it would put a quick end to the search for the plane.

As soon as the wheels cleared the runway, he lifted the landing gear, started to climb to altitude, and reached down and turned on the mode C transponder. He dialed in a number at random.

This immediately gave away their location. The instant the plane showed up on radar in the control tower at Mercedita Airport, three miles outside Ponce, the controllers in the tower went nuts.

Thorn was flying directly into the approach pattern of incoming planes and he knew it.

Frantically they tried to reach him by radio using the squawk number from the transponder. “Unidentified 2416, come in! You are entering controlled air space. Come in!”

Thorn ignored them as the two Mahdi pilots looked on, fear and puzzlement written all over their faces.

“Not to worry,” said Thorn. “I thought you were prepared to die.”

The 727 continued to climb. Off in the distance Thorn could see a large wide-bodied jet, its wheels and flaps down, its landing lights on. It was descending, steaming this way on a clear approach to Mercedita.

Thorn gently eased the 727 to the right until it was virtually nose on to the incoming plane. By now the chatter on the radio was frantic. “Do me a favor, turn that off,” said Thorn.

Ahmed, the Saudi flyer now sitting in the right-hand seat, looked as if he was about to wet his pants. He reached over and
turned off the radio, then turned his gaze, his eyes wide like saucers, back toward the front windscreen.

“Put your hands on the throttles,” said Thorn.

Ahmed looked at him and tentatively reached for the throttle controls.

“Gimme full power, when I tell you. Not before! You got it?”

Ahmed said nothing. He was frozen with fear.

“Answer me. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” Ahmed's fingers turned white strangling the plastic tops of the throttle controls as the nose of the giant wide-bodied plane suddenly filled the glass panel in front of him. He looked down and winced, and hunched up his body for the impact as Thorn yelled: “Now!”

Ahmed pushed the throttles all the way forward as Thorn pulled the yoke back hard. The nose of the 727 soared upward. The colliding air turbulence from the massive jet hit them like a brick wall. It rattled the old airframe and shook it nearly to pieces. Thorn could feel the pressure on the foot pedals as the two rear elevators flapped like bird wings. “God damn, that's a rush!” he yelled. The old plane jolted as if it were strapped to the back of a bucking bull.

“They don't make 'em like that anymore, hey, Ahmed?” He looked over at the Saudi. “What am I asking you for? You wouldn't know.”

Ahmed glared at the infidel and then gave him a ghost of a smile and nodded. It was always best to humor those who were insane. God often protected them.

 

“I talked to my supervisor. We can dispatch a squad car from Ponce but it will take a while for them to get there,” she tells me.

“We don't need a squad car!” I say. “We need a tactical unit. You send a cop out to that field alone, he's going to get killed.”