Fly by Night (30 page)

“It’s a start. But there might be more to it.”

“Such as?”

“FBN Aviation is a shady operation. Aside from delivering supplies to people like you, they deliver a lot of things that are … well, less helpful to the world.”

“Weapons?” she suggested.

“I’m sure you’ve seen them. For my investigation that brings a lot of possible causes into play. This crash might not even have been an accident. At least not in the usual sense.”

Antonelli pulled her glass from her lips in mid-sip. “Are you saying FBN might have sabotaged the airplane?”

Davis shrugged to say it was a possibility.

“What about the pilots? I knew one man fairly well, the one who helped at our clinic.”

Davis studied her for a moment, wondering how far to go. He relented. “I probably should have leveled with you earlier about that. I told you that I found the crew, the two Ukranians.”

She looked perplexed. “Yes?”

“Actually, I found their bodies in the desert a few days ago. They had been executed.”

Antonelli gasped. “Executed?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“But who would do such a thing?”

“My guess is FBN Aviation. Imam Khoury has his own private army. And I suspect it goes higher than that. In a place like this, Khoury would never be able to operate without support from someone in the government.”

She said nothing for a long time. The same woman who had served them last night arrived with food and a smile.

When she was gone, Antonelli said, “The world can be a cruel place.”

“Yes it can,” he agreed. “But it can also be a good place.”

She raised her glass. “To the good.”

He tapped his against it. “To the good.”

The meal was fish, well seasoned, accompanied by couscous. It was even better than the previous evening. Or maybe Davis had only worked up a greater hunger by getting dragged through the Red Sea all day.

Midcourse through dinner, Antonelli offered up her phone for another call to Jen. Davis had also been contemplating a call to Larry Green. The general might have new information, although more likely he’d just order Davis home again. In the end, neither idea got off the ground for the most basic of reasons—her handset was low on power and wouldn’t hold a connection. Davis was disappointed, because he really wanted to talk to his daughter. He had fewer regrets about the call to D.C. After his dive tomorrow, he’d find a way to get back to Khartoum. Then he’d find a phone and check in.
What difference could a day make?
he reasoned.

Davis made Antonelli tell him about her day at the clinic, and that subject lifted the mood considerably. Or perhaps it was the wine. They pulled a second cork before finishing, and still had half a bottle left when the server took away their plates. Both agreed that a walk on the beach was in order. She grabbed the glasses. He grabbed the bottle.

On reaching the water, they turned left, and meandered toward the dim orange glow. The sun was finally gone, resting after another twelve-hour shift spent beating the earth into submission. Waves
slapped gently onto shore, and above the tideline a warm offshore breeze rustled through a thin stand of palms. With the village behind them, they followed a strand of sand that curved out toward sea, then disappeared at a point miles in the distance. They strolled side by side, their steps irregular, arms swinging carelessly. It might have been the wine or it might have been the mood, but for the first time in days Davis found he wasn’t thinking about crashes or drones or thieving soldiers. It felt good.

Antonelli looked skyward, and said, “It’s such a clear evening. We should look for shooting stars.”

“You can’t. They only come when you’re not looking for them.”

She frowned in mock disappointment.

“But I’ll watch just the same.”

She said, “Tell me, Jammer, will you go back to Washington as soon as you have solved the mystery of this crash?”

“Yes.”

“Are you looking forward it?”

“Washington? Not really. But home—yes. When Jen gets back, I’ll be there for her. I promised her that a long time ago.”

“When your wife died?”

“Yes. And I meant it. What about you? Are you looking forward to going home?”

“Milan? No, not really.”

Davis didn’t reply.

“Does that sound strange?” she asked.

“I guess not.”

“Here I work hard, but the rest of my life is simple. In Milan it is somewhat the reverse.”

“I know what you mean. E-mails and meetings.”

“Divorce lawyers,” she said.

Davis stopped.

Antonelli began to laugh. “There is probably not a lawyer within a hundred miles of this place.”

“Probably not.”

She held out her empty glass and ordered him to fill it. He pulled
out the cork and did as instructed. When her glass was half full, the bottle ran dry. Davis held up the empty, and said, “Too bad we don’t have something to write with. We could send a message.”

“And what would this message say?”

“I don’t know. I’m not much of a poet.”

“Most of us aren’t.” Antonelli took a long draw on her wine before looking contemplatively out to sea. She said, “You know, Jammer, I have three wonderful bathing suits back in Milan.”

“I’ll bet you do.”

“But none here.” She finished her wine, wound up, and threw the empty glass out to sea. “Sad, is it not?”

“Very,” he said. It truly was.

Antonelli took the empty bottle from his hand and launched herself running into the Red Sea, ending in a headlong dive. When she surfaced, she started wriggling, and seconds later threw her wet shirt at him. It hit Davis on the shoulder and stuck there. Her shorts came next, flying past his head and splattering into the sand.

Davis said nothing. He just stood there, hoping she’d see him as the strong silent type. Not the befuddled speechless type. She began twirling a pair of wet red panties on her finger. He was debating the merits of ducking when she stuffed them into the bottle and shoved the cork in place.

“We have nothing to write with, but perhaps this will make our message clear, no?”

“Crystal,” he replied.

She giggled before tossing the bottle over her shoulder and out to sea.

“Come in,” she said, “the water is wonderful.”

“I don’t have a bathing suit either,” he reasoned weakly.

“Precisamente!”

Davis thought,
What happens in Sudan stays in Sudan
.

He stripped off his shirt, and was reaching for the button on his trousers when a voice called from down the beach.

“Doctor Antonelli!”

It was a young girl Davis had never seen. She was running and
waving her arms frantically. She blurted something to Antonelli in Arabic. The doctor issued what sounded like instructions, and the girl did a quick about-face and began running back to the village.

Antonelli looked at Davis forlornly.

“Bad news?” he queried.

“Actually, good news. A young woman has gone into labor.”

“Now?”

“These things do not wait.” She pointed to her clothes lying in the sand. Davis retrieved them, rolled up the legs of his pants to the knee and walked out to sea to hand them over. There was more wriggling as Antonelli reapplied her top and bottom.

“But …” he hesitated, “are you okay to deliver a baby?” “After a few glasses of wine, you mean? I would never do it if there was a choice. But here, and at this moment, there is not. I am the only physician they will find.” Antonelli stood up, her clothes dripping with saltwater and clinging to her body in amazing ways. “Besides,” she said, “such things have a way of sobering one up.”

“Yeah. I’ll bet they do.”

They waded ashore, and Antonelli started back to the village on a brisk jog. He let her go ahead, and called out, “Is this what it’s like being married to a doctor?”

“Yes,” she shouted over her shoulder.

Standing ankle deep in the Red Sea, half naked, Davis looked up to the sky. He saw a shooting star streak overhead.

CHAPTER THIRTY

“Where the hell is he?” Darlene Graham shouted.

Larry Green had been summoned to the West Wing Annex for a second time, only this meeting was distinctly less enjoyable. He’d never seen the DNI rattled before, so he was sure she was getting pressure from above. For her that meant only one person.

“I don’t know,” Green said. “My last two calls to Davis went unanswered.”

“Well let me give you an idea of what he’s been up to. We got a complaint from the Sudanese embassy. Apparently there was a fight at a security checkpoint outside the airport two nights ago. A big American beat the hell out of a squad of soldiers. Two are still in the hospital. The Sudanese ambassador is not happy. He insists it was the air crash investigator we sent over.”

Green said, “Jammer would never do something stupid like that.” He thought,
Damn it, Jammer. Why do you always do something stupid like that?

“He was supposed to keep a low profile,” Graham continued. “How will he get anything done if they throw him in jail?”

“Darlene, Jammer doesn’t see the world like we do. You have to understand how he works.”

The director only stared.

“Let me tell you a story. A long time ago, he and I were scheduled to fly out to the range to drop some practice bombs. In the briefing, he told me he could hit a target without even using his heads-up display. I said bullshit, so we bet a beer. We went out and flew, and sure enough on his first pass, shack. He hits the truck. Then the second and
the third. I didn’t believe it, so in the debriefing afterward I looked at his gun camera film. No heads-up display data, no death dot or dive scale. No calculation of any kind. All he used was a visual sight picture and intuition. Somehow the man flew over a target at four hundred knots and dropped his bombs at precisely the right millisecond. Three bull’s-eyes.”

“And you’re telling me that’s how he’s going to operate here? Intuition?”

Green spread his arms, palms up. “My point is, I don’t understand how he works. All I know is that he gets results.”

Her tone softened, “Okay, listen. We haven’t heard from our source in two weeks. Our communications link seems to have failed.”

“Could the source have been compromised?”

“It’s a possibility. But it means that right now Davis is our only set of eyes in that country, and in less than two days the most important meeting in a generation is going to take place in Egypt. If there’s something in that hangar, something that could throw a wrench in the works in any way, I have to know what it is. The
president
has to know.”

“I understand. I’ll do everything I can to get in touch with Jammer. But let me make a suggestion.”

“Go.”

“Even if we get in touch with Jammer, I don’t know how much he can do. We should defend against the worst-case scenario.”

“Which is what?” Graham queried.

“Let’s assume FBN Aviation is a front for some kind of attack. We know they’ve acquired airplanes, telemetry equipment, and flight control hardware. It’s not out of the question that they’re trying to turn a DC-3 into some kind of flying bomb. Or there could be suicide pilots involved—Davis told me FBN has been training Sudanese kids from scratch. We’ve been worried about that kind of thing for a long time.”

There was a long pause before Graham said, “What do you think the target would be?”

“In that part of the world it seems obvious enough—something in Israel. And since terrorists love symbolism, they’ll probably hit on
the very day that the Arab countries are meeting to discuss a wider peace. It would steal the headlines, trash the whole process.”

“You’re right about that.”

Green realized his thinking had reverted—he was talking less as a crash investigator and more as a general. “We need to put the Israelis on alert so they can establish strict air cover. They’re good at it—no sixty-year-old airplane would ever get through one of their defensive counter-air screens. Not even if FBN launches their whole fleet.”

“All right,” the DNI said. “I’ll put that forward to the Joint Chiefs. If they agree, well pass it across.”

“And we can help out,” Green said. “We need a carrier nearby.”

“Two already in the neighborhood.”

“So there you are. With all that surveillance, there’s no way anything could get into Israeli airspace without being seen. Not a chance.”

“Where the hell is he?”
General Ali’s voice cannoned over the speakerphone.

Khoury was in his office, Hassan hovering at his side. Khoury was exhausted, having been up most of the night. A few fitful naps had done nothing to refresh his outlook. Now, at six in the morning, the general was sounding reveille.

Khoury answered, “We have not found him yet.”

A stream of obscenities assailed the air. Khoury waited for the tirade to pass, then said, “But we have discovered that a truck he has been using was seen a number of times at an aid clinic outside town. It is the same clinic from which your soldiers were …” he paused, “acquiring supplies.”

“So get over there and track him down, you fool! This is no time to have an American spy running free!”

The line went dead.

Khoury took a long, tired breath. One word clattered in his head—spy. Could it be true? Having met Davis, Khoury had trouble envisioning the American as any kind of secret agent. A soldier, perhaps. Even a killer like Hassan. Certainly nothing more. Still, the general was in a dangerous mood, the pressure clearly getting to him.
There was no choice. All it took was a nod, and the huge Nubian turned on a heel and strode purposefully outside.

As soon as he was gone, Khoury began to think more positively. If Hassan could learn where Davis was, Khoury would simply forward this information to General Ali. The army was best suited for that kind of hunt. If Davis was found, they would have one more American to parade in front of the world. And if not? Nothing changed, as far as Rafiq Khoury could see. No one could stop events now.

Hassan arrived at the Al Qudayr Aid Station in a flurry of dust and noise. He jumped out of the Land Rover and was immediately flanked by two Kalashnikov-toting young men. Hassan led to the biggest tent, where an old woman in nurse’s clothing came forward to challenge him. She was rail thin but had steel in her eyes, the kind of confidence often displayed by matrons who thought they’d seen every trouble life had to present.