“You can and you will. Radio your captain that we will catch up with his ship. Tell him to stay fifty miles off until we get there.” That would put the ship well beyond Isle de Foree’s territorial sea and contiguous zone.
“I don’t know how long he can stall. There are schedules, rendezvous.”
“He can wait eight hours,” said Janson, and Hagopian’s agent nodded cold agreement.
Back in the car on the way to the airport, Janson said nothing until Hagopian’s agent finally broke the silence. “The tanks?”
“What shape do you suppose they are in?” Janson asked.
“Usable,” said the agent. “And, of course, as everyone knows, Isle de Foreens are excellent mechanics.”
Janson nodded. Island people were always good mechanics. “Who will drive them?”
“The presidential guard are Angola veterans. They are no strangers to Russian tanks.”
Janson pondered that. Not that he was looking for a fight with the dictator’s forces, but if he ran into them he had to be prepared.
“May I propose a thought?” the agent said.
“Please.”
“It is possible that Dr. Hagopian might know of some respectable, trustworthy individual at the airport who might have access to some RPG-22s.”
“I would rather Dr. Hagopian know of someone who has access to AT-4s.” The excellent AT-4, a powerful anti-tank recoilless rifle made by Saab, was capable of stopping the Russian-built T-72s. Six warheads and launchers would weigh ninety pounds, the absolute limit they could carry in on top of the rest of their gear.
“I would strongly doubt that AT-4s could be available in time for a rendezvous in eight hours.”
“Would there be any already on the ship?”
“Sadly, no. She is not an arsenal, but mainly conveying legitimate cargo.”
The Russians made the less powerful RPG-26 and there was no shortage of Russian and older Soviet arms in Angola. “Do the gunrunners have any?”
“Not on this run. All they’re carrying are machine pistols, ammunition, and drugs for malaria and infection.”
“Would Dr. Hagopian know anyone in Angola with access to six RPG-26s?”
The agent shrugged. “Perhaps he could find one or two.”
“With HEAT?” A shaped-charge warhead to penetrate the tanks’ armor.
“Yes. But his associate would possibly be forced to complete the order with RPG-22s.”
An older version, out of production since Jessica was in elementary school. Janson frowned. Hagopian’s agent said, “In perfect condition, recently uncrated and thoroughly inspected.”
“I would expect no less of a trustworthy associate of Dr. Hagopian,” Janson said sternly.
Back at the airport twenty-five minutes later, Janson ordered, “Port-Gentil soon as we load up.” The seaport was on the coast of Gabon, which lay north of Congo, and closer to Isle de Foree. Mike and Ed already had their course punched in.
Within the hour a truck with a noisy refrigeration unit backed up to the Embraer and unloaded six dripping crates onto the tarmac in the shade of the plane. Ed and Mike began humping them aboard.
“This is a hell of a lot of lobsters, Boss.”
“Nothing like Angolan seafood,” said Janson.
The pilots carried the crates into the plane before locking up and taking off for Gabon. “How’d you do?” Janson asked Jessica.
“Found a helicopter. How about you?”
“Found out the dictator got tanks.”
SIX
The Sikorsky S-76 had worked long and hard in the oil patch.
Fresh from the factory, the twin-turbine machine had flown ChevronTexaco executives out to the seismic vessels exploring Angola’s deepwater blocks. When the company started drilling, they replaced the fancy leather seats with aluminum ones and used the S-76 to ferry crew to the floating rigs. Long hours and salt water took their toll, as had dicey landings on sloped and slippery helipads. Eventually the company downgraded the helicopter to cargo runs before common sense dictated they sell it to an independent Italian company that traded it after several hard years to settle a debt to an equipment-leasing outfit. AngolLease ran it until a near-fatal hard landing bent its landing gear and shoved one of the struts through the cabin floor, which had led to jury-rigging the retraction mechanism. AngolLease passed it twelve hundred miles up the coast to Port-Gentil, Gabon, into the hands of LibreLift, a service operation owned by the pilots: an anorexic Frenchman with a sun-blasted face and a nicotine-yellowed walrus mustache, and a beefy Angolan wearing a patchwork of army uniforms, who also served as the helicopter’s mechanic.
Janson had no desire to take the panels off to confirm how worn its guts were. Judging only by loose rivets, oil streaks along its tail boom, and crazed Plexiglas, he figured he had flown in a lot worse. Jessica Kincaid had not and she mentioned as soon as they had their headsets on that she smelled a fuel leak.
“No problem,” said the pilot.
“You’re smelling the extra tanks in the cargo bay,” Janson explained. But the co-pilot/mechanic was quick to defend his brand-new composite tanks with crashworthy fuel cells that LibreLift would inherit after the job along with their mounting rafts. “Not auxiliary,” he assured Kincaid. “Main tank leak. No problem.”
She looked at Janson. “Am I supposed to be relieved?”
Janson pointed at the instrument panel. “You can relax unless you see one of these chip sensors light up.”
“Chips of what?”
“If they sense chips broken off the main bearings floating around the oil pan, the manual says: ‘Land while you still can.’ ”
“Glad to hear it.” Kincaid checked their rigid inflatable boat, the RPGs they’d separated from the lobsters, and her personal weapons, then strapped in and closed her eyes. The S-76 got clearance and lifted off with a racket of loose turbine bearings. Despite the ominous sound effects, Janson and Kincaid exchanged an approving glance. The pilot had a nice smooth touch. By the time his helicopter was whining and thudding west making 130 knots at four thousand feet above the Atlantic Ocean both agents had fallen asleep. They awakened simultaneously in one hour.
“ Bateau délesteur,” said the Frenchman, pointing down at a little gray ship plodding through the murky sea. Janson glassed her. She was rust stained and heaped with cargo, a two-hundred-foot former OSV converted to freighting up and down the African coast. The main deck was crowded with used cars, pallets of bottled water, and lumpy shapes covered in blue poly tarps. With a three-deck wheelhouse sticking up in front and a fixed cargo crane in back, it offered no place to land a helicopter.
“Fast rope,” Janson said, and handed the glasses to Kincaid. The wheelhouse roof, the highest point on the ship, was the safe choice for the helicopter to hover while they went down the rope. But it was small, and in the middle spun a horizontal four-foot radar dish.
Janson radioed the ship’s captain on the short-range VHF channel the Angolan had specified to avoid transmitting on the general marine channel that anyone could monitor. The captain spoke only French. Janson passed the radio to Kincaid.
“Démonter la radar antenne, sil vous plait?”
The radar dish stopped spinning. While seamen climbed to the roof with tools and removed it, Janson and Kincaid attached the helicopter’s cargo hook to the inflatable’s harness. Then Janson and Kincaid put on their packs and rifles and rope gloves and snap-linked the bitter end of the fast rope to a cable donut ring anchored to the helicopter floor. Janson instructed the pilot to hover twenty meters above the wheelhouse.
The machine approached obliquely, angling in from the side. By now it was clear that the Frenchman was an exceptional pilot with light feet on his pedals, applying and reducing power smoothly. But unlike a ship captain, whose first responsibility was to his passengers, a helicopter pilot’s priorities were machine and crew first, customers second. The Frenchman would do anything he had to to keep from crashing, which would include a sudden departure while Janson or Kincaid was still on the rope.