Assassin's Silence: A David Slaton Novel (44 page)

They didn’t have a communication link set up—there had been no time to acquire the hardware, nor to train a chemist on the fundamentals of tactical communication. When he’d heard the first shot Ben-Meir feared he would see a strike force, a dozen or more commandos ghosting in from all directions. Yet things seemed quiet, no more shots, no darting movement through the hills. Someone had stumbled across Ghazi’s position, he reasoned, and the nearsighted chemist had actually gotten the better of an armed shepherd or a smuggler—Mohammed, the demolition man he’d hired, had warned him the hills were thick with both.

Ben-Meir neared the man leaning against the tree trunk with his weapon trained. His senses were keen, sight and sound filtering for the slightest deviation. He saw only a shoulder at first, and then the side of a watch cap. The head inside the knit cap was rolling, like a man about to lose consciousness. Ben-Meir saw a weapon on the ground, an unusual make but vaguely familiar—a high-end marksman’s rifle. Which meant he was looking at more than an errant goat-herder or a black-market smuggler.

The man shifted against the tree, and Ben-Meir took no chances. From twenty meters he sent a round into the shoulder joint. A scream of pain, and the figure fell writhing to the ground. Both hands were in view now, comfortingly empty, and Ben-Meir lowered his gun to his hip over the last few steps. His target, facedown in the dirt, emitted a weak, liquid-filled groan. Ben-Meir rolled the man with his boot and saw a contorted face covered in blood and dirt. Saw the eyeglasses on the ground next to him.

His chest tightened, and all too late Ben-Meir realized his mistake.

He was looking at Ghazi.

He spun and lunged sideways in the same motion. It didn’t save him.

The first bullet struck squarely in his upper chest, an explosion of pain like nothing he’d ever experienced. The second round hit lower, a gut shot, and put him on the ground. Ben-Meir tried to focus. His weapon was in the dirt, just out of reach, and he thought with an odd detachment,
So this is what it’s like
. He had been on the other end of this exchange many times, and it was curiously illuminating to see things from the target’s perspective. He straightened his back long enough to meet his executioner.

He was standing in Ghazi’s jacket, the chemist’s weapon poised in his hand. It was the
kidon,
of course, twenty meters away.
After a completely silent approach,
thought Ben-Meir appreciatively. The pain was excruciating and he hoped, in a mercy he had not always visited upon others, that the assassin would end things sooner rather than later.

It was Zan Ben-Meir’s last thought of this world.

SIXTY-FIVE

Five thousand miles away, twenty-three men and women sat motionless in the Langley Ops Center. For eight minutes they had watched in silence, mesmerized, as three pixelated images moved through the scrub-filled hills of central Lebanon. In an extraordinary game of cat and mouse, they saw the Israeli stalk one perimeter guard, disable him at close quarters, and then, for reasons no one could fathom at the time, trade clothing with his victim. Few in the command center held tactical experience on their resumes, and so the run of the ensuing sequence of events was unclear until the final, decisive shot. When the end came, as viewed from a satellite feed without sound or commentary, it was surreal. From half a world away, they had witnessed an assassin at work. A veritable theater of death.

It was an NSA imagery tech, on loan from Ft. Meade, who finally broke the silence. “I would say those are confirmed kills.”

Sorensen related the math, “Of the seven on our list, he’s now removed five.”

Another voice asked the question on everyone’s mind. “Who
is
this guy?”

Sorensen eyed the director, who nearly said something, but then demurred. She remembered the meeting in his office when he’d reacted to the name they had uncovered.
David Slaton
.

“Sir, the MD-10 is on the move,” said the imagery tech.

On two adjacent screens, everyone watched the massive jet pull out of its parking spot.

“Where is that C-17?” Coltrane demanded.

“Fourteen miles out.”

“Will it get there in time to block the runway?” Coltrane asked.

“It’ll be close,” said Davis, “but probably not.”

The imagery tech said, “We may not need it.”

All eyes went to the thermal image on the central monitor. The assassin was two kilometers from the runway. He was running fast with a rifle in his hand.

*   *   *

Tuncay steered the big jet carefully over the narrow taxiway, and decided that Wujah Al Hajar Air Base must have been built long ago—probably when propellers were used for propulsion, and certainly before aircraft had two-hundred-foot wingspans.

“I hope this taxiway is stressed for a half-million-pound aircraft.”

As if to answer, he sensed the jet’s main wheels begin to mire in the asphalt. Tuncay advanced the throttles to keep up momentum, but it felt as if they were taxiing through beach sand.

“The runway is concrete,” Walid said. “Once we reach it we will be fine.”

“Flaps twenty-five,” Tuncay commanded.

“Twenty-five?” Walid questioned.

“It is a higher than normal setting, but allows us to use less runway and lift off at a lower speed.”

Walid nodded at this logic, and moved the flap lever to the gate marked 25. The wing flaps obliged, both men watching the gauge to be sure they extended properly. The two pilots ran a pre-takeoff checklist, and on reaching the runway Tuncay pirouetted the MD-10, pointing its nose toward the far end.

“Landing lights?” Walid inquired.

“No, there is just enough moonlight. I can see the runway.”

“But why not turn on the lights?”

“We don’t want to draw attention, Walid. Our landing lights can be seen for thirty miles, and if anyone sees us taking off they might alert the authorities. Besides, we don’t have to worry about other air traffic. This field hasn’t been used in thirty years.”

Tuncay pushed up the throttles, and the three General Electric engines surged to full thrust. Even with the dense load amidships, they were nowhere near the aircraft’s maximum gross weight. Acceleration was brisk, the cool night air and sea level pressure drawing maximum performance from the turbofans.

Walid called out, “Eighty knots.”

Tuncay made a brief cross-check of his own airspeed indicator. He had little trouble seeing the outline of the runway, the desert left and right discernable in the faint light. The big jet bounced and rattled over the beaten runway, and Tuncay prayed that none of the ten tires would fail. At 100 knots, Tuncay felt the controls stiffen in his hands as aerodynamic forces began to take hold. At 150, Walid called, “Rotate.” Tuncay began firm back pressure on the control column, pulling two hundred and fifty tons of metal into the air. At 170 knots, he instructed, “Landing gear up.”

Walid was reaching for the gear handle, the jet no more than fifty feet in the air, when a light as brilliant as the sun appeared directly in front of them. It was absolutely blinding.

“Pull up!” Walid screamed.

On raw survival instinct, Tuncay did exactly that.

*   *   *

The disaster unfolded right in front of Slaton.

He had been barely a hundred meters from the runway, standing in a shallow wadi etched during the airfield’s years of disuse, when his path reached the closest point to the lumbering jet on its takeoff run. He’d done his best to establish good footing and shoulder his weapon—he had hopefully retrieved the SVDS—but the futility was instantly clear. It was like pointing a BB gun at a two-hundred-mile-an-hour elephant.

Slaton had dropped the gun to his side and stood helplessly. He felt the ground shake under his feet, felt the reverberations of three giant turbofans violating the still air. And then—the most amazing thing happened.

The night sky came alive with light.

He watched the big jet lurch upward in an outrageous maneuver, heard its engines surge to a thunderous, more desperate pitch. The massive outline seemed to hover for a moment, illuminated like a snapshot in the blackened sky.

Only then did Slaton recognize the second jet.

Its landing lights were ablaze as it dove for the ground. Two behemoths traveling in opposite directions seemed to merge above the runway, and Slaton tensed for a momentous collision, expecting a fireball like a supernova.

Nothing happened.

The roar of turbines reached a crescendo, quite literally tearing apart the night air. The second aircraft passed just underneath the MD-10, and the prospect of cataclysm faded as quickly as it had arrived. The MD-10 nosed forward and faded into darkness. The second aircraft, almost as large, wasn’t so lucky. It was destined for the ground, a crash imminent, until the nose rotated upward at the last instant. The murderous rate of descent eased, and the wheels slammed onto the runway in a storm of dust. The big jet bounced twenty feet into the air, more a carnival ride than a landing, but the wings remained level and its wheels met the earth again, this time with a degree of control.

In a flurry of dust and noise the thrust reversers deployed, and the new jet came to rest at the far end of the runway. Its silhouette, reflected in its own landing lights, was enough for Slaton to make an ID: dark gray paint, distinctive T-tail, and a subdued emblem on the rear empennage to settle any doubt. He was looking at a United States Air Force C-17.

Slaton ventured one last look skyward. He saw nothing but black. The aircraft carrying Moses Nassoor’s cache of cesium was riding the wind.

SIXTY-SIX

Slaton made his weapon safe and sprinted downhill, hurdling rocks and weaving through tangled undergrowth. Twice he nearly fell, and on reaching the concrete runway he took up a dead sprint to the far end, slowing only when he approached the C-17.

The jet’s four engines seemed to be shut down, but he recognized the high-pitched whine of an auxilliary power unit. The aircraft was eerily still, shrouded in a dissipating cloud of dust with its landing lights still on, illuminating the desert ahead like a massive flashlight.

Slaton was walking under the port wing when the crew entry door opened and a ladder extended. A lieutenant colonel in a flight suit came down the boarding steps, cussing a blue streak all the way to the ground. The man noticed Slaton, who still had a rifle in his hand, just as his feet hit the ramp.

“Are you with the embassy?” the pilot yelled.

Without hesitation, Slaton said, “Yeah.”

“Well I don’t know what’s going on here, but this is bullshit! Somebody almost got me killed just now, and my jet is probably damaged.” He strode back and began inspecting the C-17, paying particular attention to the landing gear. “The governor of Mississippi is
not
gonna be happy about this!”

A second pilot, this one a captain, descended to the tarmac, followed by an enlisted man who Slaton assumed was the loadmaster. Both looked pale and shaken. Slaton continued watching the door, expecting a Special Forces squad to follow. There was no one else.

The captain said, “Colonel, I just got off the line with command post. I told them we almost had a midair collision trying to land.”

“What did they say?”

“They pushed me to another channel and said stand by for further orders.”

“
Further
orders? I’ll tell ’em exactly where they can put their further orders!” The livid aircraft commander strode to the boarding stairs, but halfway there he stopped and veered to a course that ended one step in front of Slaton. The light colonel was about to say something when he seemed to register for the first time that he was addressing a man with a gun. Together with the civilian clothes, it implied that he and this stranger were not necessarily part of the same organizational food chain.

With the good sense of an old soldier, the pilot—Lieutenant Colonel Gus Bryan, according to his name tag—ratcheted down.

“I will assume,” Bryan began, “that the airplane we nearly met at two hundred feet was the one we were trying to keep on the ground?”

Slaton considered this. The CIA must have realized its intervention team wasn’t going to arrive in time. “So that’s what you were trying to do? Block the runway?”

The Mississippian nodded as his crewmen circled the aircraft for their own inspections.

“Too bad you didn’t get here sixty seconds sooner,” Slaton said. “It would have worked.”

“So who the heck are you?”

“Not relevant.”

“Would it be relevant to tell me what that airplane was doing here? They closed this airfield around the time I was partying at Ole Miss.”

“I don’t see much more than a strip of concrete, but apparently that still works. As for the airplane you almost ran into—it’s carrying a load that’s making a lot of people nervous.”

Bryan eyed him seriously, probably because what Slaton said made sense. “What kind of load?”

“Radiological.”

The lieutenant colonel’s anger subsided.

The loadmaster and captain came back from their walk-around inspections of the jet. “It all looks in one piece,” the loadmaster said. “The brakes are hot but they should be fine after maybe thirty minutes of cooling.”

“Thirty minutes?” the colonel remarked. “They’re gonna have a lot longer than that to cool. This runway is a mess.” With a boot toe he turned over a chunk of loose concrete. “Potholes and cracks everywhere. Flying this jet out isn’t going to happen until a team of civil engineers shows up and makes some serious repairs.” He surveyed his airplane, then turned back toward the stranger. “Radiological you say?”

Slaton nodded.

“Who was flying it? Lebanese Air Force? Terrorists of some kind?”

“I’m not exactly sure. In this part of the world, things like that can be a little hard to nail down.”

“Where is it headed?”

“I don’t know that either. But I’m going to find out.”

“How do you propose to do that?”

“Easy—I’m going to use your radios.” Slaton shouldered his weapon and headed for the boarding stairs.