Top Hook (41 page)

Stevens's concentration was on the plane and its relationship to the aircraft above him. Soleck was more curious. “What are you doing, sir?”

“Signaling in EMCON, Mister Soleck.”

He finished his signal and crawled back into his seat. He switched the intercom to the back. “Harry, where's this airfield?”

“Are we going?”

“I think so.”

“Didn't we used to give people orders in the military?”

“Harry, I can't order this guy to do this.”

“I know. Just talkin' trash. The field is north of Bela.”

Alan fiddled with his keyboard and raised the overlay that showed the coast of Pakistan.

“It's about here,” said Harry, leaning over and putting his finger on the screen.

“I'd be happier if you could call it closer than that.”

“Sure.” He handed his GPS unit across, the readout startlingly clear in the dark. There was a latitude and longitude on the screen, as well as altitude, and range, and bearing.

“Nice.”

“Surely you've got a GPS in this thing.”

“It's four times the size and works half the time.”

Alan felt the plane rise under him, and he watched as they came alongside Rafe's plane. This time Soleck flashed the lights. Rafe waved from the other cockpit, and his landing lights came on and went off. When they began to fall away to the north, Alan could no longer contain himself. “What's it going to be, Paul?”

“Oh, we're going to Pakistan.”

Soleck shouted, “Way cool!”

“Paul, I'm giving Evan a GPS unit with the coordinates and altitude of the field where we want to land.”

“You have a plan for crossing the coast?”

“I'm looking at the radar coverage now.”

“You sent something to the other plane in Morse?”

“Yeah. Chances are they won't even read it for a couple of hours. The TACCO has other things on his mind.”

“So you knew I'd go.”

“No, I hoped.”

“We're going in low, right?”

“Yep.”

“Then why don't I call Karachi Air Traffic Control and declare an emergency?” Declaring a false emergency was a crime in international law, but it seemed pretty pale besides violating another nation's airspace.

“And?”

“And we drop like a rock, slip under the coverage, and hope they don't see us. If they do, we claim the old hydraulics leak and say we need an immediate landing. Better than nothing.”

“Better than anything I thought of. Do it.”

Forty seconds later, Rafe heard Stevens's voice calmly announce a total hydraulics failure and declare an emergency on the Guard frequency. He thought through his years in S-3s, their little quirks, and the likelihood that one would lose its hydraulics after a five-hour flight, especially a plane that had so recently had a total hydraulics refit. He looked out over his port wing at the faint line of gray that marked where dawn would soon be coming, and he did not smile, although one of his eyebrows twitched.

“Alan fucking Craik,” he muttered.

George Shreed pulled himself up the pier with his hands, his weak legs barely capable of supporting his weight. He was forcing himself to wait twelve hours between doses now, and the pain kept him focused on his goal. He reached the last rung on the ladder and hauled himself onto the pier, and one of the two men who had brought him over handed him his bag with enviable effortlessness. Then they both clambered up beside him, so close that Shreed could smell their breath in the pre-dawn stillness. They would see him as a weak old man, and probably demand more money. He looked down the pier to the lights of the railway station, just visible through the morning cooking smoke.

“You promised another ten thousand dollars.” The man's English was very good, and the old George Shreed would have tried to recruit him on the spot. Unlimited access to the whole Persian Gulf via the boat and command of several languages added up to a natural spy. Probably, he was already working for somebody. Shreed smiled, reached into his bag with unfeigned weariness, and came out holding a large automatic pistol.

“No, I didn't. But if you want to get me to the train station, I'll give you another thousand. Or we can stand here until I get tired and shoot you.”

“This is a misunderstanding, surely.” The other man pushed the first one aside. “It seems fair that we get
more. What if someone saw us in Oman? It may ruin our trade.” Neither seemed alarmed by the appearance of the gun in Shreed's hand—respectful, but not frightened.
Probably a regular event on this run
. This seemed like a bargaining tactic, not a direct threat; they didn't strike him as the right kind of men to just kill him for his bag.

“Train station. Okay? Good. Please walk in front of me.”

“My brother needs to stay with the boat.”

Brother
was a term tossed about with some ease in these regions, and Shreed was unsure whether the older man would really do as a hostage to prevent a shot in the back. It was dark, however, and both men seemed satisfied with the thousand-dollar bonus, and Shreed didn't have a lot of options.

“Okay, friends, we'll all walk down to the end of the pier together, and then your brother can walk back while I can see him. You get another thousand. Everybody walks away happy. Ready?”

The two Pakistani smugglers shrugged and began walking down the pier. The set of their shoulders said it all.
Inshallah
.

They were below one thousand feet, with enormous ridges rising well above them on either side. Alan had the ESM gear up in the back, and, although his stomach lurched every time he got a hit, none of them had proven to be radars. Perhaps the unknown signals were radio-repeating towers or cellphones or microwave dishes; none met the computer's parameters for an air search radar.

The GPS unit had sounded several alarms, and Harry was now unstrapped, leaning forward between Stevens
and Soleck and peering out into the pre-dawn gloom. Somewhere off to the east, beyond the ridge, the sun was rising on Karachi. They were in the foothills of the Pab, according to Harry.

“Khyber Pass up north another three hundred miles. We're on the edge of the hill country. The Brits fought here, Alexander fought here, and the CIA fought the Russians here.”

Stevens snorted. “Thanks for the history lesson. I'd rather have an airfield.”

“Airfield's about twenty-five miles. Keep following the valley over that range of hills. I have to call ahead.”

“Harry, how well do you know these guys?”

“Well enough.”

He took his helmet off and tucked his head against his neck, covering his right ear with one hand while his outstretched elbows kept him wedged in the doorway between the cockpit and the after cabin. He kept pulling the cellphone from his ear and staring at the screen, clearly trying to wish a connection into being.

When he got through, he spoke in Arabic for several minutes. Alan had no idea that Harry spoke Arabic—not the touristic mangle that Alan managed in the souk, but real Arabic—although it made sense for a man whose business was in the Middle East. Again, he was reminded how Harry had changed, and how little he really knew him.

“Do we have twenty thousand in cash?” Harry said now.

“Yes.” In fact, Alan had several hundred thousand; he had deposited only half the money with the NCIS in Bahrain.

Harry went back to the phone.

“You landed here before?” Stevens wasn't taking his eyes off the ground, but his voice was level.

“Twice,” Harry said.

“What's the approach?”

“Come in from the west and fly down the runway. They'll set fires to mark the approach.”

“That's a mighty big chunk of rock for a blown approach.” Stevens sounded almost happy.

The airstrip was a tiny ribbon of gravel under a mountain, the first true mountain of the central Makhan. It took up the full length of a valley, with a cluster of huts and a single hangar at the far end. The vegetation was sparse at this altitude, and the first kiss of the sun revealed a Martian landscape of jagged red rock. Terraced fields showed as wide green steps climbing the shoulders of the ridges, and dots of dark green in the red-gray indicated where trees grew among the rocks.

“Get in your seat and strap in.” The cliff had grown to fill the whole windscreen.

Harry tumbled back into the after compartment and fumbled with the toggles until Alan forced them into the seat's harness. They began a sharp turn.

“It's going to be a bumpy night?” Harry's gentle sarcasm stayed with them through a turn as tight as the break on approach to a carrier. The nose lifted and dropped like a bucking horse. The cliff face generated serious wind-shear effects.

“Any problem if I just land now?”

“They won't have the lights on.”

“Screw that. I'm here and I don't want to play games with that cliff again. There's enough light to land.”

Alan heard the engine noise drop away and felt the loss of altitude. They seemed to be gliding down and down and down. Alan's window showed the first
glimmer of sunrise over the eastern ridges, Harry's the blur of the cliff face passing them. From Alan's seat, the cliff seemed to be a few feet beyond the wingtip. That
had
to be an illusion.

Soleck and Stevens had begun to exchange landing checks. It sounded so normal that for a fraction of time Alan imagined they were landing on a carrier. Still the feeling of weightless descent. Each buffet of wind threatened to push them into the cliff, but Stevens's compensations were precise. Alan wondered what their angle of attack would be after such a steep descent, and then he thought of the landing in Sigonella and tried not to worry. Stevens knew what he was doing.

His view of the sunrise was gone, now, blotted out by the last ridge that defined the edge of the valley. They had descended from early morning into the end of night. Alan risked a peek at the windscreen, but all he could see was the ridge at the end of the airstrip. And then he saw Stevens's hand on the throttle, and he snapped upright and into his ejection position. The throttle went forward. The plane roared with life. The rapid descent slowed, slowed, and they met the ground with a hard thump.

The gravel was uneven, and the plane vibrated for several seconds.
It's like landing in Africa,
thought Alan. Then they began to slow, and, well before they ran out of gravel strip, they had made the invisible transition from dumping speed to rolling taxi. They were down.

“Hey, civilian guy, what kind of plane did you bring in here?”

“Call me Harry.”

“Okay, Harry. What kind of plane did you bring in here?”

“A Cessna 184.”

“That's what I thought. Don't list this as a bingo field for S-3s, okay?” Stevens was high on life, happy in a way that Alan had never seen. Soleck was silent.

“Where do I park?”

“Roll it right into the hangar. We don't want to be seen, and it's paid for.”

“Gas?”

“They're looking into it.”

“Hotels?”

“The best that money can buy. A little above per diem. Alan, we have a four-by-four waiting to take us north. We'll take turns sleeping in the truck.”

“How far?”

“Five hundred miles. Maybe twenty hours. Could be more.”

Alan unstrapped, found his bag, and started stripping his flight gear.

“Money?”

“Leave some for the pilots. We may need the rest.”

Alan had changed before the auxiliary power was cut and the pilots had finished their checklists. He took his time, methodically cutting labels from every item of clothing. He made up a packet with one hundred thousand dollars and handed it to Soleck.

“You still got a gun?”

“Yes, sir!”

“You're responsible for that money. Don't spend it all in one place.”

“Roger that.”

“If Pakistani brass come, you had an emergency declared and you landed at the first field you could find.”

Stevens laughed.

“Hell, we only glided three hundred miles.”

“Let them worry about that. Don't mention us. Here's my cellphone. If you can charge it, do so. If not, only turn it on every hour on the hour.”

“I hear you.”

“Thanks for getting us here, Paul.”

“No problem. Just don't get your ass shot off. If you guys die, I'll
never
get out of here.”

“Paul, I may have to ask you to fly farther into Pakistan and land at another unknown field. Maybe at night.”

Stevens smiled, a slow, wicked smile that transformed his face from that of a dopey, overweight jet jock to a Basil Rathbone villain.

“I heard you.”

“No argument?”

“Cowboy, I'm in for the whole ride now. Getting this far was worth an Air Medal. Getting you out, if you make it, will be worth a Silver Star. Full commander. Another look at command. Right?”

“Yeah, I expect so.” It seemed crass to Alan. But maybe one man's crass was another man's heroic.

Stevens must have seen his expression. “Fuck you, Craik. You think I'm blind to what we're doing?” Stevens shook his head, as if disappointed in Alan again. “We're saving the world. I'm almost happy to be here. Get your ass in the truck before I sing the ‘Star-Spangled Banner.'”

Alan stuffed the rest of the cash into his sleeping bag sack and pushed the bag in on top.

“Guns?”

Harry patted his shoulder bag.

“A shotgun for me and an Uzi for you. And some other precautions. Give me some of your cash. I'll need to pay the landing fee up front.”

Alan handed him a bundle of bills.

“Get a receipt.”

Harry rolled his eye, but when he came back he had a scrap of envelope with writing in Arabic. Alan scrawled the amount, the date, and a counter-signature at the top and handed it to Soleck. Ten minutes later, buried in the back of a large, military-looking Toyota truck driven by a hillman named Kamil, they were bouncing into the sunrise on a dirt road headed east.

The villages along the track were cubist dreams, long strips of brightly colored boxes set against a landscape of sand and blowing trash. Children stood and watched the trains go by, even the youngest girls swathed from head to toe in printed muslin. They showed only enough interest to raise their heads, their eyes devoid of curiosity, their faces blank.

When he saw that the ticket collector was checking identity cards, Shreed had a moment of panic—which passport was safe here?

He elected to use the one with his own name on it. The power of its American seal should be enough to send the ticket collector on his way. Perhaps an element of unaccustomed fatalism had entered him by osmosis from the country he raced through.

He took the passport out and held it open to the man when he paused at the seat. The ticket collector glanced at the cover without interest, noted the presence of a US five-dollar bill, and moved on.