Janson’s sat phone chimed the bell-like note that indicated Quintisha Upchurch was calling. “Yes, Quintisha.”
“Acting President Ferdinand Poe would like to speak with you, urgently.”
Janson called Poe. The old man answered in a voice high-pitched and anxious. “Do you have Iboga?” he shouted.
“I did, Mr. Acting President. I’m afraid I lost him. I’m working at getting him back.”
“I told you he would escape.”
“Yes, I know and—”
“You don’t understand. They killed Mario Margarido.”
“Who killed him?”
“Who knows,” Poe said, adding bitterly, “He supposedly drowned in his swimming pool.”
“Where is Chief of Security da Costa?”
“I don’t know.”
“I will be there in thirteen hours.”
“Iboga is coming back. I know it.”
“I will be there ahead of him. I guarantee it.”
THIRTY-NINE
Janson telephoned Doug Case. “Anything new underground?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’m forty thousand feet aboveground on a company jet drinking champagne and thirty-year-old Bordeaux and eating beef Wellington.”
“You’ll miss that luxury in your new government job.”
“It was great the first hour; now all the guys and the too-few gals are text messaging their kids at home. Folks don’t know how to party anymore.”
“Where are you headed?”
“Isle de Foree. We’ve got a big media shindig aboard the Vulcan Queen. Where are you?”
“Italy.”
“Italy? What are you doing in Italy?”
“Talking my way out of a jam. What’s the media thing about?”
“It was supposed to be a public signing of ASC’s exploration agreement with Ferdinand Poe—ASC and the new acting president shaking hands for the world to see. Only I just heard that Mario Margarido died. God knows what monkey wrench that will throw into it. Mario was pretty much the voice of sanity in the rebel regime— Listen, I gotta go. I got calls stacked up.”
“Doug. Any new information on GRA?”
“Ground Resource Access? No.”
Janson put down the phone and looked across the engine control pedestal at Kincaid. “How’s old friend Doug?” she asked.
“Closemouthed,” answered Janson. “Why don’t you get some shut-eye? I’ll babysit the autopilot while I make some calls.”
“I’m not that tired.”
“I need you rested.”
“What’s up?”
“Can you land this plane in the Canaries, take off again the second we refuel, and land it again on Isle de Foree?”
“I just aced a takeoff. Any luck, I can ace another. They’re ten times simpler than landings: push straight down the runway, rotate on the right speed. But landings, if you get too slow, you undershoot; too fast, you might overshoot. The plane wants to keep on flying unless a wind shift punts you sideways or a wind sheer drops you like a rock. What I’m telling you, Janson, there’s a reason Mike never let me land her myself. Twice will be pushing my luck.”
“How’d you do on the simulator?”
“Two out of three.”
“So you’re getting better.”
“Why do you ask?”
“It’s going to be tough finding a pilot we can trust to join us in the Canaries on short notice. Besides, with all the crap I’ve added to the plane, the most we can carry without burning too much fuel to make Isle de Foree is eight people and gear, including the pilot.”
“So?”
“I’d rather put the additional weight into another shooter than a pilot who can’t do anything but fly. Particularly if I can’t find one I can believe in.”
“We’re going to war?”
“Add it up. Poe’s chief of staff drowned in his swimming pool. American Synergy Corporation brass are heading to Isle de Foree for a ‘media event.’ And Iboga is loose because I blew it. I’m obliged to fight him when he shows up in Isle de Foree.”
“It’s the kind of war you hate: off-the-cuff; decisions on horseback; flying by the seat of your pants; winging it.”
“It wasn’t your screwup. You are not obliged to fight it.”
“You’re right about one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I better get some sleep.” She stood up. “Your airplane.”
Janson slid into the left-hand seat. “Got it,” he said. “Sleep fast.”
* * *
WHENEVER MIKE, A former Naval aviator, would touch his wheels to the ground early on the landing strip as if replicating the carrier landings of his youth, he warned Jessica Kincaid never to try the stunt. There was simply too much danger of landing short.
She let two thousand feet of tarmac on the southeast coast of the Canary Island of Fuerteventura race under her tires to be sure she had the runway made before she pulled the power back clear to idle. The Embraer dropped hard, bounced, and swerved. The swerve was a deadly invitation to overcorrect. But she steadied the beast with a race car driver’s sure hands, confident that the eleven-thousand-foot runway built for 747s packed with tourists gave her a mile more run-out room than she needed.
Things went as well at the terminal. Freddy Ramirez’s employees at Protocolo de Seguridad had worked miracles with the airport’s general aviation assistant operations manager. Money changed hands, and the Embraer was refueled and ready to fly even before Freddy himself drove up to the boarding stairs in a windowless airport security van with four men carrying trombone, double bass, keyboard, and guitar cases. Uncommonly fit-looking for middle-aged musicians, they turned out to be retired Spanish Navy Special Operations Unit officers.
Freddy Ramirez apologized for having come up short one shooter. Janson acknowledged the scant lead time, told him not to worry about it, as the weight of one less man would translate to a few more miles of fuel, and thanked him warmly for rushing directly from the action in Corsica.
As expected, no trustworthy pilot had been found.
Kincaid calculated her V 1and rotate speeds—both higher owing to the comfortingly longer runway and the weight of the passengers and their weapons—and got cleared for takeoff using the Embraer’s legitimate November-Eight-Two-Two-Romeo-Papa call sign and a flight plan filed for Praia, Cape Verde Islands. Both transponder and AFIRS (Automated Flight Information Reporting System) operated normally until Janson disabled them in international airspace over the open ocean three hundred miles south of the Canaries and west of Africa, out of ground-based radar range.
Janson continued working his phone. He spoke with the arms merchant Hagopian in Paris; Dr. Hagopian’s half-Portuguese, half-Angolan agent in Luanda; Neal Kruger, whom he tracked down to Cape Town, where he claimed to be “on holiday”; and Agostinho Kiluanji and Augustus Heinz, the “Double A” gunrunners whose agent was desperate to get back into Hagopian’s good graces after forcing Janson to catch up with the freighter in a helicopter. After repeated attempts, he finally made contact with the pilots who owned LibreLift in Port-Gentil, Gabon.
“All right, that’s the last of them,” he told Kincaid, satisfied that he had made every contact he could for the moment yet sharply aware that not all would bear fruit on such short notice. “We’re good to go.”
“Catch some sleep. You look a hundred years old.”
Janson closed his eyes on a bunk across the narrow aisle from Ed’s and Mike’s shrouded bodies. As Doug had reminded him in Houston, “Devoted followers have a habit of getting killed in our line of work.”
Whatever happened to Janson Rules? He should have taken better care of Mike and Ed. Weren’t Janson Rules about innocent civilians? He should have warned his pilots that Paul Janson’s good works put them at risk of dying for the paradox of atoning for violence with violence. Were the murders of Ed and Mike “punishment” for his murdering Hadrian Van Pelt? How would he make amends for this?
“You look worse,” said a weary Kincaid, when he relieved her on the flight deck.
“How we doing on gas?”
She reported good news. The Flight Management System, which was monitoring fuel burn and the latest winds, had found a fuel-saving route above the jet stream that would allow them to fly direct to Isle de Foree.