Assassin's Silence: A David Slaton Novel (43 page)

“What? You mean a fighter to shoot this thing down?”

“No. At least not yet. Do you have a link to Air Force and Navy flight ops? I want to see everything we’ve got flying in the area right now.”

A technician in the corner answered, “We don’t have a standing DOD feed, but I can access air traffic control data from the region and then filter which returns are ours.”

“Do it!” Davis barked.

Coltrane sent Davis a severe gaze, but apparently decided this wasn’t the time for a power trip. “What are you after?” he asked.

“Anything that flies,” Davis said. “Right now we probably have a hundred military aircraft flying over the Middle East—fighters, tankers, helicopters. If we can find one within ten, maybe fifteen minutes of that airfield, we can divert it to land on the runway and act as a roadblock.”

The monitors at the front of the room blinked as they began building an air traffic controller’s image of the airspace over and around Lebanon. “Give me ten, maybe twenty more seconds for the feed,” the technician said.

“Let’s not waste it,” Davis said, glancing at Coltrane. “We need comm links set up to the Air Force and Navy, CENTCOM, whoever has operational control.”

This time Coltrane added the emphasis. “Do it now!”

As those lines were being run, the data arrived, a God’s-eye view of every United States military aircraft within five hundred miles of Lebanon. Within seconds every set of eyes in the Ops Center was fixed on one white square floating serenely over the Eastern Mediterranean.

The call sign was Reach 41.

SIXTY-THREE

Slaton peered over the crest of the hill. The second set of HighGround images showed the guards still in place, neither having moved. The man on the western perimeter, the closer of the two, wore a heavy jacket and was backed into a rock outcropping, meaning he had a limited field of view. The man to the east was caught in the second image still looking through some kind of scope. In a minor venture of probability, Slaton decided the easternmost of the two white blobs was Zan Ben-Meir. He was about to power down the phone when a message blinked to the screen. The subject line read: CRITICAL.

He read the rest.

AIRCRAFT PREPARING TO TAKE OFF. DELAY IF POSSIBLE. INTERVENTION TEAM ON WAY TO AIR BASE. ETA 19 MINUTES.

He considered a reply, but they were asking the impossible. Delay a wide-body airliner from taking off? The only methods that came to mind did not fall in the category of delay. Explosives, rocket-propelled grenades—any of which would precipitate a radioactive catastrophe. Shoot out the tires? Not practical given the gun he was carrying at a range of a mile and a half—downright suicidal with two armed men ready to respond.

No. Slaton had to deal with Ben-Meir and the other guard first, two of the remaining four conspirators. If the aircraft managed to get airborne, the Americans would simply have to deal with it.

He sidestepped down behind the ridge, turned north, and moved quickly in the light of the low moon. The brambles were thick, but on a goat trail that ran below the ridgeline he made good time. Roughly three hundred meters from the western guard’s position Slaton crawled once more to the crest. Through the green hue of his starlight scope he scanned the surrounding area.

It took thirty seconds, and no small amount of patience, to locate his target. He was sitting on a rock, his gun leaning against a tree five paces away. Slaton had guessed right. This was the amateur. For a full minute he searched the opposite hillside, but didn’t see Ben-Meir.

He cursed under his breath, then settled the gun’s reticle on the amateur. He was sitting still, his knees pulled up to his chest to retain warmth. From three hundred yards with a calibrated weapon, a simple shot. Even with the gun in hand, which he’d never fired, the probability of a kill was very high. His finger hovered over the trigger, but then came off. Once he took the shot, Ben-Meir would be alerted. Slaton lowered the barrel.

There
was
a better way.

*   *   *

Reach 41, a Mississippi Air National Guard C-17, was cruising smoothly at twenty-five thousand feet when a chime sounded on the secure sat-com. Lieutenant Colonel Gus Bryan stirred briefly in his bunk aft of the cockpit, but then quickly drifted off again.

“Skipper,” came a vague voice.

Bryan’s eyes blinked open. “Can’t a man get no sleep ’round here?” he mumbled in his Deep South drawl.

They had taken off from Frankfurt six hours earlier, enroute to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with a brief logistics stop at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. Nearing the end of a six-day run, and having traversed nine time zones, everyone was dead tired. The copilot, Captain Bob McFadden, was running the show in the right seat, and Staff Sergeant Roy Willis, the loadmaster, had crashed somewhere in back. McFadden brought up the message, read it once and said, “Skipper, you need to take a look at this.”

Bryan ambled forward, banging his knee on the center console as he arrived. “Dang it!” He recovered and admonished McFadden, “I told you to quit with that
skipper
stuff. Do it one more time and I’m gonna give you a mop and make you swab the deck.” McFadden was a former Marine, and a Connecticut Yankee to boot. But he was a damned good pilot, which was why the 183rd Airlift Squadron had hired him out of active duty last year.

“All right,” Bryan said, “where’s the fire?”

McFadden pointed to the message, and Bryan saw an amended tasking order: they were to divert to a new destination at maximum practical speed. He’d never seen anything like it. He’d also never heard of the airfield. “What the hell?”

“What do you make of it, sir?”

“No idea. I’ve diverted for bad weather or to deliver troops to a hot spot … but this is strange. That mission priority is one they talk about on checkrides, but outside nuclear war I never figured I’d see it. So where is—” he double-checked the message, “Wujah Al Hajar Air Base?”

The ever-efficient McFadden began scrolling through navigation charts, but came up empty. “I don’t see it.”

“Look here,” Bryan said, pointing to the message, “they gave us a lat-long.”

McFadden typed in the coordinates, and a manual waypoint symbol lit to the aircraft’s map display. “Fifty-two nautical miles east,” he said.

“
East?
You mean—”

“Yep,” McFadden said, seeing the problem. “Smack in the middle of Lebanon.”

Bryan, wide awake now, slid into the left seat. “I got the airplane. You start typing. Find out if this is for real or if one of our old bar buddies is yankin’ our chain.”

SIXTY-FOUR

Tuncay watched Walid start the number three engine. A pneumatic starter spun the big fan, and when Walid raised the start lever to idle, fuel sprayed into the engine’s combustion chamber. Nothing else happened.

“Something is wrong!” Walid said in a clipped voice. “Number three is not lighting off.”

“Stop the start!” Tuncay commanded.

Walid moved switches and the big turbofan wound down, its signature hum lowering in pitch until silence reigned. “What now?” he asked.

Tuncay frowned severely.

“We need a mechanic,” Walid said.

“Yes, I will call right away!” Tuncay replied sharply. “A power-plant specialist who is familiar with General Electric CF6 engines. That should be simple enough on a deserted Lebanese airfield in the middle of the night. Oh, and we must warn our mechanic not to go near the fuselage amidships because that’s where the radiation is.”

Walid went silent.

A fuming Tuncay pondered the problem. They were not excessively heavy—the aircraft had a minimum fuel load—so it was possible they could take off on two engines. Unfortunately, that would require a great deal of runway, and their best chance of not crashing on takeoff to begin with was to use as little of the rutted concrete as possible. There was also the matter of the thrust asymmetry introduced by a dead but windmilling starboard engine. Would it be manageable? Would the craft yaw to one side and careen into the hills? There was no way to tell.

He was mulling it all when the increasingly useless Walid said, “Look! The circuit breaker for the number three engine ignition has popped.”

Tuncay looked at the vertical panel above and behind his copilot where hundreds of circuit breakers were arrayed. Sure enough, the tiny round button through which power flowed to the number three engine ignition system had popped, removing DC current from the igniters.

Walid looked at Tuncay, who nodded. He turned in his seat and reset the breaker by pushing it in.

They went through the start sequence a second time, and both men held their breaths. The starboard engine lit off and spun to life perfectly.

Walid sat with a smile etched on his face.

Tuncay could have kissed him.

*   *   *

“NVGs?” Lieutenant Colonel Bryan said. “They want us to land at some place we’ve never been using night vision gear?”

“That’s what the order says,” said McFadden, who’d been exchanging a continuous stream of messages with CENTCOM. “They want our approach to be lights-out until just before landing. We’re supposed to block the runway so an MD-10 that’s parked there can’t take off.”

“Well now ain’t that just fresh! Is there any kind of instrument approach I can use to line up with this runway?”

“Uh … no, sir. I asked about that, and it seems the reason I couldn’t find this airport in our nav database is because it’s closed.”

“Closed?”
Bryan exclaimed.

“As far as I can tell, it shut down over twenty years ago.”

Bryan gave his copilot a look that caused the ex-Marine to freeze. He rang the loadmaster on the intercom.

A sleepy voice answered, “What’s up, Colonel?”

“Willis, tell me again what we’re carryin’ back there.” After nearly a week of trash-hauling, the manifests had run together in Bryan’s sleep-deprived brain.

“Only nine pallets, but it’s heavy stuff. A couple of replacement engines for Seventh Corps armor, and a load of gear for a Special Forces unit—I’m not exactly sure what it is, but the hazmat log lists a thousand pounds of high explosives.”

“We’ve been diverted and we’ll be landing in ten minutes—be ready!”

“Ten mi—”

Bryan snapped the switch that removed Sergeant Willis’ voice from the intercom. He checked the navigation display and saw they had thirty-nine miles to go. “A night diversion to land at a closed airport with NVGs … and I’m carrying half a ton of high explosives! Christ on a bike, can it get any better?”

At that moment, the Lebanese air traffic controller sounded on the radio.
“Reach Four-One, I show you off course. You are approaching Lebanese airspace! Turn right heading two two zero immediately!”

The pilots stared at one another.

McFadden said, “If we don’t say something they might try to intercept us.”

“No, Lebanon doesn’t have any fighters … at least, I don’t think they do.”

“They have surface-to-air missiles.”

Bryan keyed his microphone, “Lebanon Control, Reach Four-One is declaring an emergency! We’ve lost two engines and require an immediate diversion!”

The air traffic controller started to say something, but Bryan took off his headset. From here on out, the radio would be nothing but a distraction. “Thirty-two miles. Get in the box and build me an approach as best you can to that runway.”

“How do I know which way is into the wind?”

“To hell with the winds. Go with whichever side has the least terrain.” McFadden started typing on the navigation computer. “When you’re done, go and dig out the NVGs—and while you’re at it, say a little prayer that the batteries are good.”

*   *   *

There was no mistaking the sound of the engines.

Being an experienced soldier, Ben-Meir only glanced at the MD-10 as it prepared to move. From his position on a tree-shrouded promontory, and without the use of his optics, the aircraft was no more than a dim outline. The jet’s navigation lights remained extinguished, which meant the only manufactured light was a pale white glow from the cockpit windows.

Ben-Meir turned away and surveyed the hills one last time. After months of planning and preparation, his part of the mission would be complete in a matter of minutes. It had not been easy—he’d lost three men, the entire assault force he’d recruited. The
kidon
had been better than he’d imagined. Or perhaps more fortunate. Their original intent had never been to eliminate Slaton. Indeed, quite the opposite. But then he’d lost Kieras in Malta, followed by Stanev in Zurich. By the time of the encounter in Wangen, all bets were off as far as he was concerned. Still the
kidon
had survived.

It hardly mattered. Ben-Meir pulled his collar up against the cool night air.
This time next week, I will be in a very warm and pleasant place.

Through his optics he saw nothing to the east or south, his primary areas of responsibility. Of course, with Ghazi standing watch on the opposite hill, Ben-Meir knew he was effectively responsible for the full swing of the compass. He searched farther afield and saw a distant herd of goats, and in a wadi at the bottom of the valley the abandoned hulk of a car, its metal losing heat more quickly than the surrounding earth. He lowered his night scope, breathed a sigh of relief, and was trying to recall the check-in time for his morning flight out of Beirut when the report of a shot echoed through the hills.

Ben-Meir snatched up his optics and checked Ghazi’s position. More shots rang out, one of them sounding a different pitch. A second weapon. He spotted two figures. One was unfamiliar, staggering and leaning on a tree. The outline of a hot-barreled rifle lay on the ground nearby. The second figure was moving, making awkward but steady progress toward the runway. Ben-Meir recognized Ghazi’s bulky parka, marked with the IR reflective tape he had wrapped around each wrist.

Ben-Meir scrambled down the hill, stopping periodically to scan for other threats. The man in Ghazi’s abandoned position had gone still, his back propped against a tree. Ben-Meir realized that Ghazi was heading directly for the aircraft.
Idiot.