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.”

“Are you telling me that they’re armed?” she says.

“Lady, they’ve got a bomb. What do you call that?” I ask. As I am talking, I hear the jet engines approaching from the distance.

“You don’t have to yell,” she says. “I’ll see what I can do. But I will tell you that the nearest tactical unit is in San Juan. It would take them at least an hour to get there, maybe longer.”

“Isn’t there a military base at this end of the island that can scramble planes?”

“There was, but no more. There’s a DEA unit at Ramey,” she says.

“Well, then, damn it, tell them there’re drugs on board that plane,” I tell her.

“You didn’t say nothing about drugs before.”

“I am now.”

“Listen,” she says. “It’s a serious matter to make a false report. You can get into a lot of trouble. Do you understand?” As she is talking I see the giant airliner already in the air heading straight up over our heads. I can no longer hear her on the phone. For almost half a minute the noise of the jet engines drowns her out.

“Yes, and if there’s a tape of this conversation and Thorn drops that bomb on a population center, somebody is going to want to boil you and your supervisor in oil,” I tell her. “Never mind, it’s too late.”

“We have limited resources. There’s only so much we can do,” she says. “And as I tol’ you, we don’t have no tactical unit at that end of the island. I’ll do what I can.”

“Thank you,” I tell her. “In the meantime, do you have the local number for the FBI?”

“You can get that through information,” she says. She tells me that we should wait out on the highway for the police to show up.

I hang up and tell Herman what’s happened and he laughs. “Maybe we should just go home,” he says.

“At least one of you is beginning to talk sensibly,” says Joselyn.

FORTY

By the time the cops show up and we get to the airfield, everything is gone, including the plane, Thorn, and his comrades. All that is left is some abandoned equipment-a generator, a compressor, some spray rigs, and a lot of trash.

I try to show them the photo taken on my cell phone but they are not impressed. You have to use your imagination to make out the plane, and the bomb is virtually invisible.

There is a large empty wooden crate marked MACHINE PARTS. I try to convince them that the bomb must have been shipped in it. The crate looks about the right size.

The cops tell me it could have been drugs. They will bring the dogs out in the morning and have them sniff around. If there are drugs or munitions, the dogs will pick up the scent.

They tell us they will make a report and conduct an investigation.

Before they could even get started, a call comes in on their radio that a large multiengine jet has gone down out over the ocean following a near collision with another plane.

I look at Herman. “There goes our only lead to Liquida.”

“Look at it this way,” says Joselyn. “At least Thorn’s dead. And that bomb is gone.”

“There was no bomb,” says one of the cops. “According to the tower, the pilot admitted there were drugs on board.”

“If you say so,” says Joselyn.

A half hour of driving, and an hour of paperwork, filling out and signing reports at the police station in Ponce, and we finally make it back to the Hotel Melia. The steady flow of adrenaline has left us exhausted, strung out, and depressed.

We put everything we saw in the police report, though the cops virtually dismissed any thought of a bomb. They told us that the Coast Guard would search the waters until dark and go back out in the morning, but that hope of finding anything was slim. The plane had gone down over the Puerto Rico Trench, one of the deepest areas of ocean in the world.

Joselyn, Herman, and I sit around in the bar downstairs having drinks, trying to figure out what to do next. It was a stone wall. With no leads, there was nothing left.

“I’m gonna have to call Sarah and tell her,” I say.

“Tell her what?” says Herman.

“I don’t know.”

“You think it’s safe to bring her home?” he says.

“No.”

“Then what are you going to do?” says Joselyn.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I know what I have to do,” says Herman. “I’m not sleeping over at the Belgica after what’s happened today. Is that extra room still open upstairs?”

“Yeah,” I tell him.

“I gotta go over and pick up my stuff,” he says.

“I’m going to head up and take a shower,” says Joselyn.

I give her the room key. “Guess I’ll go with Herman to pick up his bags.”

“Where are you sleeping tonight?” she says.

“I don’t know, any ideas?” I ask.

“See you upstairs,” she says.

“Bless you,” says Herman.

She laughs and heads the other way.

Herman finishes his drink and we head for the car.

From years of experience Thorn had learned that in his line of work, you never did anything without a backup plan. And if you were smart, you had more than one.

After the near midair collision Thorn took the plane up to twenty thousand feet and flew due west until he was about thirty miles out over the ocean. He turned on the radio and called in a mayday. He reported damage from the near collision and acknowledged that there were drugs on board. He told the air-traffic controllers he was having engine trouble and reported a hydraulic leak.

A couple of minutes later Thorn nosed the plane into a steep dive, but not before lowering his flaps and dropping his wheels to slow his speed. At a thousand feet he turned off the transponder and leveled off. With his speed still reduced and watching his fuel, Thorn lowered the ramp at the back.

The bomb was bolted in place. The rollers that released it from its cradle wouldn’t move unless the safety bolts were pulled and the two metal straps holding the bomb in place were removed.

The drag on the plane from the shifting weight and the air resistance from the lowered ramp were considerable. Thorn put the plane into a mild turn, dipping the port wing and adjusting the throttles to give the plane enough power to keep it in the air. Thorn checked the altimeter.

He turned the flight controls over to Ahmed and told him to maintain altitude at five hundred feet and to hold the turn.

Over the horizon and under the radar, the controllers in the tower at Mercedita would assume that the plane went into the water.

“Okay?” He looked at Ahmed, who glanced at him nervously and nodded as he gripped the controls.

Thorn watched him for a few seconds until he was satisfied, then he and the other pilot went to the back of the plane. They gathered all of the brown paper masking panels from the paint job and tossed them out through the open airstairs in the back. The empty paint drums followed. Thorn was careful not to allow any of them to strike the area near the tail of the bomb where the snap-out fins deployed.