It took Greg nearly ten minutes to reach the summit, and, when he did, the back of his shirt was soaked through with perspiration, and he could feel the bald spot on the crown of his head parboiling. He vanished from sight for a moment, dragging the wire behind him.
When he reemerged, he shouted down to the other two, “I looped the wire around an outcropping of rock. Give it a try, and pick up my hat on the way up.”
The winch could be controlled from inside the truck’s cab, so Alana fetched the hat before it blew away and hopped back into her seat. Mike jammed the transmission into first, fed the engine some gas, and engaged the winch’s toggle. While not especially powerful, the winch’s motor ran through enough gears to give it the torque it needed. The truck started a slow, stately ascent up the bank. Alana and Mike exchanged grins, while above them Greg gave a triumphant shout.
The flick of a shadow crossing her face drew Alana’s attention. She glanced skyward, expecting to see a hawk or vulture.
A large twin-engine jet was passing overhead at less than a thousand feet. Incongruously, Alana could barely hear the roar of its exhaust. It was as if the engines were shut down and the jet was gliding. She knew of no landing fields in the area, at least on this side of the Libyan border, and guessed correctly that the plane was in trouble.
She noticed two details as the jet banked slightly away. One was a jagged hole near the tail that was stained with what she guessed was hydraulic fluid. The other thing she saw were words written along the aircraft’s fuselage: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
Greg had stopped whooping. He placed his hand above his eyes, shading them from the sun, and he turned in place, tracking the path of the crippled government jet.
Alana gasped aloud when she realized what plane that was and who was on it.
Concentrating on getting the truck up the hill, Mike Duncan hadn’t seen a thing, so when Alana sucked in a lungful of air he thought something was happening with the tow cable, and asked, “What is it?”
“Get to the top of the hill as fast as you can.”
“I’m working on it. What’s the rush?”
“The Secretary of State’s plane is about to crash.”
Of course, there was nothing Mike could do. They were at the mercy of the slowly turning winch.
Alana shouted up to Greg, “Can you see anything?”
“No,” he replied over the rig’s snarling engine. “The plane flew over some hills a couple miles from here. I don’t see any smoke or anything. Maybe the pilot was able to set it down safely.”
For eight agonizing minutes, the truck climbed up the hill like a fly crawling over a crust of bread. Greg kept reporting that he saw no smoke, which was a tremendous relief.
They finally emerged from the dry riverbed. Greg unsnapped the tow hook from the cable and unwound it from a sandstone projectile the size of a locomotive. The cable had cut deeply into the soft stone, and he had to brace his foot against the rock to pull it free.
“It could have come down in Libya,” Mike muttered.
“What was that?” Alana asked.
“I said the plane could have come down across the border in Libya.” He spoke loudly enough for Greg to hear as well.
Alana was the team leader but she looked to Chaffee for validation, her suspicions that he was from the CIA making him the expert in this type of situation.
“We could be the only people for fifty or more miles,” Greg said. “If they managed to land, there could be injuries, and we have the only vehicle out here.”
“Who do you really work for?” asked Alana.
“We’re wasting time.”
“Greg, this is important. If we have to cross into Libya, I need to know who you work for.”
“I’m with the Agency, all right. The CIA. My job is to keep an eye on you three. Well, the two of you, since the good Dr. Bumford hasn’t left camp since we arrived. You recognized the plane, didn’t you?” Alana nodded. “So you know who’s on board?”
“Yes.”
“Are you willing to let her die out here because you’re afraid we might run into a Libyan patrol? Hell, they invited her. They aren’t going to do anything to us if we’re trying to rescue her, for God’s sake.”
Alana looked over at Mike Duncan. The rangy oilman’s face was a blank mask. They could be discussing the weather, for all the concern he showed. “What do you think?” she asked.
“I’m no hero, but I think we should probably check it out.”
“Then let’s go,” Alana replied.
They started off across the open desert. It was like driving on the surface of the moon. There was no hint of human habitation, no inkling they were on the same planet even. From the river to the string of hills Greg mentioned was nothing but a boulder-strewn plain devoid of life. This deep in the desert, only a few insects and lizards could survive, and they had the good sense to remain in their burrows during the torturous afternoons.
As they drove, Greg tried unsuccessfully to reach his superiors on his satellite phone. His had a dedicated government communications system, the same one used by the military, so there was no reason he shouldn’t get through but he couldn’t. He replaced the chargeable battery with another he carried in a knapsack.
“This piece of junk,” he spat. “Thirty-billion-a-year budget and they send me out with a five-year-old phone that doesn’t work. I should have known. Listen, you guys, you ought to know that this wasn’t really a priority mission. If we found Al-Jama’s papers, great. But if not, the conference was going ahead anyway.”
“But Christie Valero said—”
“Anything to get you to agree to come. Hey, Mike and I both know from playing the ponies that long shots sometimes pay, too, but this has been a farce since day one. For me, this mission is punishment for a screwup I made in Baghdad a few months ago. For you guys . . . I have no idea, but they sent me out here with crap equipment, so you figure it out.”
After Greg’s revealing outburst, the team drove on in silence, the mood in the truck somber. Alana was torn between thinking about what Greg had said and what they would find when they came across Secretary Katamora’s plane. Both options were grim. She had never met Fiona Katamora, but she admired her tremendously. She was the kind of role model America needed. To think of her dead in a plane crash was just too horrible to contemplate.
But to consider Greg’s words was painful, too, so she decided he was simply wrong. Who knew what baggage he carried that made him so jaded. Christie Valero and St. Julian Perlmutter had laid out a convincing case. Being able to undercut the justifications Islamic radicals used to validate their murderous actions would be perhaps the greatest stride yet in the war on terror. More than ever, she was certain that this mission, while admittedly a long shot, was critical to the upcoming peace talks, and she didn’t care what Greg said about it.
Mike steered them into a canyon between the hills, shaded and much cooler than the open desert. It snaked through the low mountains for a half mile before they emerged on the other side. There still wasn’t any evidence that the Secretary’s plane had crashed, no column of black smoke rising up into the sky. Considering how low the plane had been flying, it had to be on the ground by now, so Alana let herself hope it had landed safely.
They continued on for another hour, knowing that they had passed the unmarked border at some point and were now in Libyan territory illegally. Her only solace was Greg’s fluency in Arabic. If they ran into a patrol, it would be up to him to talk their way out of trouble.
The desert rose and fell in unending dunes of gravel and dirt that sent off shimmering curtains of heat. It made the distant horizon look fluid. The truck crested another anonymous hill, and Mike was about to take them down the far side when he braked suddenly. He rammed the gearbox into reverse and twisted in his seat to look behind them.
“What is it?” Alana cried as the vehicle plunged back down the hill they had climbed moments earlier.
Her answer came not from Mike
but from Greg. “Patrol!”
Alana looked ahead as a military vehicle came over the hill, a soldier propped up in a hatch in the truck’s roof. He was hanging on to a wicked-looking machine gun. With its tall suspension, balloon tires, and boxy cab, the truck looked perfectly suited for the desert.
“Forget it, Mike,” Greg shouted over the keening engine. “Running from them is only going to make it worse.”
Mike Duncan looked undecided for a moment, then nodded. He knew Chaffee was right. He eased off the gas and applied the brake. When the truck came to a stop, he killed the engine and left his hands on the wheel.
The Libyan patrol vehicle stopped twenty yards away, giving the roof gunner an optimal position to cover the trio. Back doors were thrown open and four soldiers dressed in desert fatigues rushed out, their AKs at the ready.
Alana had never been so frightened in her life. It was the suddenness of it all. One second they had been alone and the next they were looking down the barrel of a gun. Multiple guns, in fact.
The Libyan soldiers were shouting and gesturing with their weapons for them to get out of the truck. Greg Chaffee was trying to speak to them in Arabic, but his efforts had no effect. One soldier stepped back a pace and raked the ground with automatic fire, the bullets kicking up geysers of sand that blew away on the wind.
The sound was staggering, and Alana screamed.
Mike, Greg, and Alana threw their hands over their heads in the universal signal of surrender. A soldier grabbed Alana’s wrist and yanked her from the open cab. Mike made a move to protest the rough treatment and had the butt of an AK slammed into his shoulder hard enough to numb his arm to the fingertips.
Alana sprawled in the dirt, her pride injured more than her body. Greg jumped from the rear seat, keeping his arms pointed skyward.
“Please,” he said in Arabic, “we didn’t know we had traveled into Libya.”
“Tell them about the plane,” Alana said, getting to her feet and dusting off her backside.
“Oh, right.” Chaffee addressed the soldiers again. “We saw an aircraft that looked like it was about to crash. We were trying to see if it had.”
Though none were wearing insignia on their uniforms, one of the soldiers was clearly their leader. He asked, “Where did you see this?”
Greg was relieved he had opened a dialogue. “We are part of an archaeological expedition working just across the border in Tunisia. The plane flew over where we were working at no more than a thousand feet—ah, three hundred meters.”
“Did you see the plane crash?” the unshaved soldier asked.
“No. We didn’t. We think it might have actually found someplace to land in the desert, because we haven’t seen any smoke.”
“That is good news for you,” was his non sequitur reply.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Greg asked.
The Libyan ignored the question and stepped back to his patrol vehicle. He came back a moment later with something in his hands. None of the Americans could tell what he had until he handed them over to one of his men. Handcuffs.
“What are you doing?” Alana demanded in English when one of the soldiers grabbed her shoulders from behind. “We haven’t done anything wrong.”
When the warm steel snapped around her wrist, she turned and spat in the face of her captor. The man backhanded her hard enough to send her sprawling.
Mike pushed aside a soldier, getting ready to cuff him, and had taken two strides toward where Alana lay semiconscious, when the group’s leader reacted to the aggressive move. He drew a pistol from a holster at his hip and calmly put a bullet between the oilman’s eyes.
Mike Duncan’s head snapped back, and his body toppled a couple of feet from Alana. Dazed by the blow, she could do nothing but stare at the obscene third eye in Mike’s forehead. A trickle of dark fluid oozed from it.
She felt herself lifted to her feet but could do nothing to either resist or assist when she was manhandled into the back of the patrol truck. Greg Chaffee, too, seemed to be in shock as he was placed on a bench seat next to her. The interior was hot, hotter than even the open desert, and it was made worse when a soldier threw a dark cloth bag over her head.
The material absorbed Alana Shepard’s tears as soon as they leaked from her eyes.
NINE
CORINTHIA BAB AFRICA HOTEL, TRIPOLI, LIBYA
Ambassador Charles Moon stood from behind his desk as soon as his secretary opened his office door and stepped aside. In a show of respect, Moon met his guest halfway across the carpeted room.
“Minister Ghami, I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to come see me in person.” Moon’s tone was grave.
“At a time like this, President Qaddafi wishes he could have expressed our government’s concern in person, but affairs of state wait for no man. Please accept my humble presence as a sign that we share your anxiety at this disastrous event.” He held out his hand to be shaken.
The U.S. Ambassador took his hand and motioned to the sofas under the glass wall overlooking the sparkling waters of the Mediterranean. Near the horizon, a tanker was plowing westward. The two men sat.
Where Moon was short in stature and wore his suit like a gunnysack, the Libyan Foreign Minister stood a solid six feet, with a handsome face and perfectly coiffed hair. His suit had the distinctive tailoring of Savile Row, and his shoes were shined to a mirror gloss. His English was nearly flawless, with just a trace of an accent that added to his urbane sophistication. He crossed his legs, plucking at his suit pants so the fabric draped properly.
“My government wants to assure you that we have scrambled search-and-rescue teams to the area, as well as aircraft. We will not stop until we are certain what happened to Secretary Katamora’s plane.”
“We deeply appreciate that, Minister Ghami,” Charles Moon replied formally. A career diplomat, Moon knew that the tone and timbre of their conversation was as important as the words. “Your government’s response to this crisis is everything we could wish for. Your visit alone tells me how serious you feel toward what could turn out to be a terrible tragedy.”
“I know the cooperative relationship between our two nations is in its infancy.” Ghami made a sweeping gesture with his hand to encompass the room. “You don’t even have a formal embassy building yet and must work out of a hotel suite, but I want this in no way to jeopardize what has been a successful rapport.”
Moon nodded. “Since May of 2006, when we formalized relations once again, we have enjoyed nothing but support from your government, and at this time don’t believe anything, ah, deliberate has occurred.” He emphasized the word, and drove the point home further by adding, “Unless new information comes to light, we view this as a tragic accident.”
It was Ghami’s turn to nod. Message received. “A tragic accident indeed.”
“Is there anything my government can do to help?” Moon asked, though he already knew the answer. “The aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln is currently in Naples, Italy, and could aid in the search in a day or two.”
“I would like nothing more than to take you up on your kind offer, Ambassador. However, we believe that our own military and civilian search units are more than up for the task. I would hate to think of the diplomatic consequences if another aviation accident occurred. Further, the people of Libya have not forgotten the last time American warplanes were flying in our skies.”
He was referring to the air strikes carried out by Air Force FB-111s and carrier aircraft on April 14, 1986, that leveled several military barracks and severely crippled Libya’s air defense network. The strikes were in response to a spate of terrorist bombings in Europe that the U.S. had linked to a Libyan-backed group. Libya denied they had been involved, but history notes that there were no further such bombings until Al-Qaeda emerged a decade later.
Ghami gave a little smile. “Of course, we accept that you have most likely retasked some of your spy satellites to overfly our nation. If you happen to spot the plan
e, well, we would understand the source of that information should you choose to share it.” Moon made to protest, but the Libyan cut him off with a gesture. “Please, Mr. Ambassador, you need not comment.”
Moon smiled for the first time since the transponder on Fiona Katamora’s plane went silent twelve hours earlier. “I was just going to say that we would doubtlessly share such information.”
“There is one more thing we need to discuss,” Ghami said. “At this time, and with your approval, I see no reason to cancel or even delay the upcoming peace conference.”
“I spoke with the President this morning,” Moon informed him, “and he expressed the same sentiment. If, God forbid, the worst has happened, it would do Secretary Katamora’s memory a disservice by canceling what she believed was the greatest opportunity to achieve regional stability. She more than anyone, I believe, would want us to proceed.”
“In the event that, well, as you say, the worst has occurred, do you know who would represent your government at the conference?”
“Frankly, no. The President refused to even speculate.”
“I understand completely,” Ghami said.
“He and Secretary Katamora were particularly close.”
“I can well imagine. From what I’ve read and seen on the news, she was a remarkable woman. Forgive me, is a remarkable woman.” Ghami stood, clearly irritated at his gaffe. “Mr. Ambassador, I won’t take up any more of your day. I simply wanted to express our concern in person, and you have my word that as soon as I hear anything I will call you regardless of the time.”