“Okay, folks—we’re into hostile territory. This is where it gets interesting.”
In the White House Situation Room, Ted Jaworski let out a cry of triumph: “Gotcha, you bastard!”
Within the past quarter-hour, an MQ-1 Predator drone from the Tuzla Air Base had arrived over Slatina and begun broadcasting real-time infrared imagery, via the ground-control station at Tuzla, back to the United States. It had spotted the helicopter’s arrival, and then the vivid flare of light as the hangar blast doors opened to admit it. Now that they knew where McCabe was hidden, the mission had become a lot simpler. Within minutes, an army general was in contact with Dave Gretsch, in the lead Black Hawk, updating his orders. Meanwhile, U.S. Air Force officers were readying fighter squadrons across the Balkan theater of operations and the Middle East to intercept and destroy McCabe’s plane, in the event that it took off before the Black Hawks reached Pristina, no matter where in the region it was heading.
When the general had finished with Gretsch, Jaworski got on the line.
“Major, this is Ted Jaworski, from the Agency. Just wanted to inform you that the Brits may have a man inside the airport facility where you will be deploying. He was tasked to get inside, but we don’t know if he made it. The man’s name is Carver. He’s kind of unofficial, not on any list. So don’t hurt him if you can manage it. But it’s no big deal if you do. Take it from me—he won’t be missed.”
95
C
arver walked across the underground hangar thinking, At last, I’m doing my job. After all that had happened, he was back to what he understood: drifting imperceptibly into the lives of very bad people, removing them from the planet, then slipping away again.
The different groups of people scattered about the hangar played right into his hands. Darko’s militiamen mingled with Yugoslav Air Force personnel, while McCabe’s bodyguards looked on, and mechanics and air crew went about their business. No one noticed, still less cared about, Carver.
He’d ripped the two CD player earphones apart and stuck one of them in his ear, letting the wire run down inside his shirt. He was back in his civilian clothes, shades on his face, his gun stuck in the waistband of his trousers, the fisherman’s bag slung over a shoulder. He could be anyone.
His luck just kept getting better. There was a mechanic standing on a ladder at the rear of McCabe’s plane, with his head and shoulders inside the rear equipment bay, pouring hydraulic fluid from a plastic jerry can. Carver stood at the bottom of the ladder and called up, “Hey you!”
The mechanic turned and looked down at him with a puzzled frown.
Carver held up a hand.
“Hold on there,” he said, making the other man wait while he held a finger up to his earpiece, as if trying to hear over the noise in the hangar, then spoke into the wristband of his shirt. “Uh-huh, yeah, I’m on it. . . . I’m there right now. . . . Yeah, I’ll do that. Out.”
He looked back up the ladder.
“Okay now—you speak English?”
The man shook his head.
“Right, well, see if you understand this. . . . You”—He pointed at the mechanic—“off the plane.” He jerked his finger down toward the hangar floor, then repeated the motion, clearly indicating the man should get off the ladder.
The mechanic stayed where he was, uncertain how to respond.
Carver gave a theatrical sigh of irritation.
“All right, then. . . . Plane . . .” Now he gestured at the aircraft. “American. Me”—he tapped his own chest—“American.”
Could a Serb who couldn’t speak English tell the difference between a real American accent and a bad English fake? Carver would have to hope not.
He repeated his little mantra: “Plane American, me American,” then added, “Me go into plane. You . . . off the plane.”
The mechanic looked at him, puffed his cheeks, exhaled heavily, then shrugged. He didn’t need to say a word to convey his message: He thought Carver was a jerk, but he couldn’t be bothered even to attempt to argue with him. He climbed down off the ladder.
“Here, I’ll take that,” said Carver, taking the jerry can from the man’s hand.
He went up the ladder into the bay. Laying his bag on the fuselage floor, he finished topping off the hydraulic accumulator. Then he got out his tools: a wrench to loosen the connections of the hot-air pipes, and a wire cutter to strip as much plastic insulation as possible off the wiring bundles in the same. He wasn’t going to hand McCabe another lifeline. This plane was going down hard. And just to underline the point, he left the jerry can, still half filled with inflammable fluid, its top unscrewed, in the equipment bay when he closed up and left.
He made his way back to the truck, sorely tempted just to put that Serb uniform back on and drive out the way he had come, get out before anyone even knew he’d been there. The urge to stay, though, was stronger. He wanted to see McCabe get on the plane, watch it as it roared down the runway, follow its path into the sky. This time he had absolute confidence in the work he’d done. The aircraft was a death trap. The moment the pilot switched on the jets, its fate was assured. He just needed to know that his prey was aboard.
A movement caught his attention. The over-handsome, Italianate man Carver thought of as Loverboy was emerging from the office at the side of the hangar. Behind him came one of Darko’s men, pushing the cart on which the brown suitcase was resting. They walked over to the aircraft, and as they did so, the door in the underside of the fuselage opened to meet them, swinging down until it hung vertically from the aircraft. A metal frame, like a cradle, was lowered though the doorway, coming to a halt about four feet above the ground. There was already a military-green bundle filling the top half of the cradle, which looked to Carver like a parachute in its sack. It took two men to lift the case from the cart and put it into the cradle, while Loverboy supervised the operation. He checked that the case was secure and had been strapped onto the parachute, then signaled to someone inside the plane, and the cradle disappeared back up into the fuselage again, followed by the closing door.
The bomb was loaded.
96
F
rancesco Riva returned to the office where Waylon McCabe was waiting. On his way, he passed the Serbian, Darko, who was leaving with a contented smile on his face, like a hyena who has fed well. Riva opened the office door and went in, followed by the two armed guards who’d been standing outside.
“You done?” rasped McCabe.
It was apparent to Riva that this was a very sick man, one close to death. His face, always lean, now seemed little more than a skull, barely covered by skin stretched so tightly over the bone that it seemed it might split open at any moment. From time to time an involuntary grimace would cross his face as another spasm of pain shot through him. His shoulders were hunched, his fists clenched. Yet his eyes burned with wild conviction and the men under his command, any one of whom could have killed him with a single blow, were still held completely in his sway.
“Yes,” said Riva. “The weapon is securely loaded in the bomb bay at the rear of the aircraft. It is not yet armed, but the radio control has been set with the correct code sequence. Once the plane has taken off, simply press the control switch and it will arm the bomb. When you reach your target, open the door and release the weapon. It will fall to a height of five thousand feet, at which point the parachute will deploy. As you saw, I fitted an air-pressure sensor to the device earlier, before it was loaded. At three thousand feet, this will send an electrical charge that will begin the detonation process. Your target, you said, was just below twenty-five hundred feet. It will, I assure you, be devastated by the air burst from this weapon.
“Now, if you will excuse me, I will depart. You have been very generous, Mr. McCabe. I would like to start enjoying my money.”
McCabe nodded at one of his guards, who stepped across the door, blocking Riva’s way.
“I can’t allow that,” said McCabe. “My conscience would not permit me to deny you the chance of salvation and everlasting life, in the company of Christ and all His angels. You know where we’re headed today? To heaven itself.”
McCabe’s guards murmured, “Amen,” as Riva looked on, too shocked to respond. The next thing he knew, one of the guards was twisting his right arm behind his back with one hand, and pointing a gun at him with the other.
“But you let Darko go!” Riva protested, his voice rising almost to a squeal as his arm was gripped even more fiercely.
“I sure did,” replied McCabe. “The man is facin’ damnation in the fires of hell for his sins of violence, theft, and fornication committed here on earth. His only hope of redemption is to stay here and fight the forces of the Antichrist in the battle that is to come.”
“You’re mad!” Riva cried, twisting his head this way and that in search of anything or anyone that could save him.
Lieutenant General Vermulen had been dumped in one corner of the room. He seemed defeated and demoralized. His wife was sitting right next to him, her body almost touching his, and yet she was a world apart, looking away, her eyes anguished and unfocused, lost in her private thoughts.
“Let’s go, folks,” said McCabe. “Dr. Riva, I want you to know that I’ll be prayin’ for your soul, despite your grievous lack of faith. And, General, I want you to think real hard, in case you got any plans to try to fight. I know you’re a brave man. I guess you ain’t scared of takin’ a bullet. But take a good look at your pretty little wife. ’Cause if you try anything, my boys are under orders to shoot her first, off the aircraft or on it. And believe me, these boys don’t miss.”
Twelve miles out from Slatina, the Black Hawks were preparing for their final approach into Pristina airport. The fighting troops were getting ready to lock and load. The bomb-disposal experts were checking their gear one last time. Kady Jones’s stomach had been doing backflips since they crossed the border from Bosnia. Now she concentrated on steadying her breathing and relaxing her muscles, just as she had done that afternoon on Gull Lake. She had gone head-to-head with a nuclear bomb. After that, she could surely cope with anything.
97
C
arver watched Dusan Darko stride toward his men with a look that suggested he’d just made a very sweet deal. Darko shouted a few words at the men hanging around the parked trucks and the Land Cruiser and they started gathering their gear and loading up their vehicles with a barrage of whoops, cheers, shouts, and backslaps that suggested the bars and brothels of Pristina were in for a busy, but profitable night.
Carver wasn’t one for celebrating once a job was done. He liked to get as far away as possible, find some peace, try to come to terms with what he did: earned his living by making other people die.
Nothing more happened for a minute or so, then the door of the office opened, maybe eighty feet away. A cadaverous, twisted figure emerged and made his way with a pained, shuffling gait right across the hangar toward the airplane. It took Carver a couple of seconds to realize this was Waylon McCabe. The last time he’d set eyes on him, at another airport, on the far side of the world, McCabe had exuded the tough, bullying, loudmouthed power of a malevolent alpha male. Now he looked like a dead man walking. Whether Carver killed him or not, he wouldn’t last till the end of the month. For a moment, Carver felt a twinge of disappointment, almost as if he’d been cheated. He had to tell himself that McCabe wasn’t the issue: What mattered was the bomb hidden inside that suitcase. That was what had to be stopped.
The jets started up, filling the hangar with their high-pitched roar. Carver thought of the air pipes heating up, the temperature slowly starting to rise. The aircraft had become a ticking bomb, counting down to disaster.
And then his world fell apart.
Immediately behind McCabe came Loverboy, held in the grasp of one of the bodyguards. The next pair consisted of Vermulen and his guard. But Carver gave none of them more than a fleeting glance. His entire attention was focused at the end of the line, on Alix.
He whispered to himself, “You’re not supposed to be here.” And then he repeated himself, banging both hands against the steering wheel. “You’re not . . . supposed . . . to be here!”
So now what was he going to do?
He could rescue her. If he moved quickly and quietly enough, he could close on the man who was holding her, double-tap to the head. Use a silencer, so the other guards took a fraction longer to react. Hit them, too. Maybe he’d hit the other two prisoners—that couldn’t be helped. With any luck he’d have time to take out McCabe as well.
If no one spotted him running across the hangar with a gun in his hand . . .
If none of the three armed guards were alert enough to react to his attack . . .
If McCabe didn’t make it onto the plane and simply fly away alone . . .
If Darko didn’t object to him blowing away a valued client . . . And if Darko didn’t take this as the ideal opportunity to take McCabe’s money and his bomb . . .
Well, then, his plan might just work.
But if any of those possibilities occurred, then he would certainly die, Alix would probably die alongside him, and, far more important than that, the bomb would still be loose in the world.
The American, Jaworski, had told him what was at stake. McCabe was planning to start a war that would lead to Armageddon. Carver did not believe, for a fraction of a second, that the heavens were going to open and Christ would descend to earth just because a religious maniac like Waylon McCabe asked Him to. But he was absolutely certain that thousands, maybe millions of people might die in the chaos McCabe could cause.
Without making any conscious choice, he found himself getting out of the truck, walking around it to where there was a clear line of sight between him and the group following McCabe. They had almost reached the steps to the aircraft. For a second, Carver thought he might have a clear shot as McCabe walked up them. But then one of the air crew emerged from the door of the plane and came down to meet McCabe, taking him by the arm, blocking the line of fire.