The Rule Of Nine Part 29

"No. Bought it yesterday while you guys were napping," says Herman. "One of the little shops next to the hotel. Look for the exit off the highway you came in on and find the dirt road."

Joselyn and I search for it until we find the right quarter section and then home in. "Here it is." She points with her finger. "Let me have it." She plucks it out of my hands.

We are climbing higher on the hillside, well above the trees at the end of the airfield. The plane is no longer visible down below, lost in the mora.s.s of foliage and the camouflage. But in the distance behind us I can see a trail of dust in the air. "Somebody's on our tail," I tell him.

"I see him," says Herman.

"I hope you're right about there being a way out of here."

"He is," says Joselyn. "There's a fork up ahead, take it to the right."

"Good girl," says Herman. He gooses the engine and we start to slide around in the backseat.

"There's another turn to the right about a quarter of a mile beyond that," she tells him. "Then it looks like it turns to pavement. You take it all the way to the highway."

"That's the one," says Herman. "It's Thorn behind us. I got a glimpse of the pickup when he rounded one of the bends back there."

I turn and look. I see the dust, maybe half a mile behind us and closing fast, like a cyclone.

Herman takes the fork to the right and a quarter of a mile beyond it takes a sharp right, nearly lifting the car up on two wheels.

"Maybe he'll take the wrong cut at the fork," I tell them.

"No," says Herman. "He's still behind us."

I turn to take a peek. Herman's right. The looming dust devil is still behind us and getting closer.

A hundred feet beyond the turn, the wheels grind over gravel and onto solid pavement. The road smooths out and Herman pushes the pedal to the floor. The midsize four-cylinder picks up speed, but we'll never make it to the highway. The minute Thorn hits the pavement, the big Ford V-8 will run us down in less than a mile. And I am guessing that Thorn is probably armed to the teeth.

We swing around a curve, coming down the hillside. I can see the highway in the distance, maybe two miles off. The road we are on rolls over the hillocks like a ribbon leading right to it.

"Hang on," says Herman. Suddenly the car swings to the right, skids on the pavement, and rolls onto a gravel road.

"Where are you going? It's a dead end," I tell him.

"I know," says Herman. He pulls up about fifty feet and turns to the left into some heavy brush, then slams on the brakes and turns off the engine. "Get out of the car." Herman grabs the field gla.s.ses and opens his door.

Joselyn and I follow him over the rough ground into the brush.

"Come on," says Herman. He leads us toward a small rock outcropping, kneels down, and sets up with the gla.s.ses.

Joselyn and I really don't need them, we can see the ribbon of paved road leading down to the highway just off to our left.

"Shhh..." Herman holds a finger to his lips and listens.

I hear the high-speed rush of rubber on the road, and a second later the rush of air as a vehicle races past the gravel turnoff. An instant later I see the Ford pickup as it blasts into the open and races down the road toward the highway. I'm guessing that he's doing close to a hundred miles an hour. It takes Thorn less than a minute to reach the intersection on this side of the highway. You can see the truck's tail end lift up as the brake lights come on. Thorn screeches to a complete stop right in the middle of the road.

There's a little chuckle next to me. Herman is looking through the field gla.s.ses. "That's the problem with the dust when you're chasing somebody. You can't be sure how far behind you are. It's not like being out in front. That's why I pulled off," he says. "The curve back there. Once he rounded it we were dead. He woulda seen us and run us down before we got to the highway. Now he's sitting there getting whiplash, lookin' both ways 'cause he can't be sure which way we went, right toward Ponce or left toward San Juan. Wanna look?" He hands me the gla.s.ses.

"I'll take your word for it. I'm still trying to keep my breakfast down," I tell him.

"You got a bad inner ear. There he goes." Herman is back looking through the field gla.s.ses.

As I look toward the highway, I see the pickup truck speed across the double lanes and turn left, heading north.

"He figures we're running for the big city and the airport," says Herman.

"Aren't we?" says Joselyn.

"Not till we make a phone call," says Herman.

Part of what Thorn was being paid for was to think on his feet, and to do it quickly. He'd raced no more than three miles north on the highway before he realized that he'd lost them.

He turned around and sped back to the airfield. Thorn knew that by now the trio on the hillside would be calling the cops.

He and the two Mahdi pilots loaded the jet with four empty fifty-gallon paint drums, along with two others that were half full of the diesel fuel used to run the compressor. They strapped everything down so it wouldn't move.

They grabbed as much of the large brown masking paper as they could and tossed it on board, and then ripped off what was left on the side of the plane.

Most of the painting was done, though not all of it. They would have to finish the rest when they got where they were going. They threw the air hoses and spray guns inside the plane. Thorn grabbed the large attache case containing the little brown bat and the laptop that controlled it as well as the battery-charging unit that was in the cardboard box. He put it all on board the plane. The only thing he couldn't get was his luggage at the Hotel Belgica. He would have to take care of that later by phone. He was confident there was no way the authorities could connect the mysterious missing jetliner to the Charles Johnston who checked out of the Hotel Belgica by telephone.

All the heavy work on the plane was done. The bomb in the tail section was strapped down and concealed inside the closed airstairs. Anyone looking at the plane from the outside would conclude that the rear ramp that once existed was now sealed up and no longer functional. This was the fate of many of the ramps on the old planes, most notably those that weren't equipped with a Cooper Vane.

The two pylons were problematic, but they were relatively small, designed for jet fighters. They were lost under the large wings of the big airliner. On the ground, especially without attached ordnance, no one would notice them.

The two small air-to-air missiles were still in crates in the back of the plane. They had been easy to obtain, and relatively cheap. Whereas a shoulder-fired ground-to-air missile could cost upward of two hundred thousand dollars on the black market, an air-to-air missile like the two old French Magic heat seekers, which were now considered obsolete, could be picked up for a few thousand dollars. They weighed less than two hundred pounds each and required no sophisticated target-tracking system to use them.

A well-armed terrorist with an airframe like the 727 could have armed it with a load of obsolete Magic missiles under each wing, set out over the Atlantic beyond ground-based radar, and in a single day taken down a score of commercial jetliners flying in and out of the East Coast.

Thorn had already trained the two Mahdi pilots in how to mount the missiles on the pylons and how to pull the arming ribbons before they took off. And where they were headed, it wouldn't matter, because there would be no one around to see them do it.

I start calling from my cell phone before we reach the rental car still parked behind the bushes near the dead-end gravel road. I call 911 and wait for the dispatcher's voice to come on. Then I explode all over her in a litany of information, drowning her in details, everything we've seen during the last hour.

"Wait, wait, wait," she says. "Is this an emergency? Is someone injured?"

"No," I tell her. "But a lot of people are going to be dead real soon if you don't send somebody out here now."

"I don't understand. Slow down, calm down, and tell me one more time," she says.

I take a deep breath and then in a calm voice tell her about the plane, the bomb, the camo netting, and the gra.s.sy airstrip. I tell her what we know about Thorn and, halfway through what must sound like an incredible tale she stops me and says, "Who are you? What's your name?"

I tell her.

"Where are you right now?" The way she says this makes me wonder if she's about to dispatch a few male nurses from a local mental inst.i.tution to come and pick me up.

"We're standing on a hillside about fifteen miles south of Ponce, just off the main highway."

"And you're telling me you've seen all of this?"

"Yes, d.a.m.n it!"

"Just a minute," she says. She puts me on hold.

Herman, Joselyn, and I stand by the car.

"What are they saying?" says Joselyn.

"Nothing. I'm on hold."

In less than half an hour, Thorn and the two Madhi pilots had b.u.t.toned up the plane, turned it around, and were jetting down the runway, leaving the welder to load up his equipment in the back of Thorn's pickup and disappear.

The jet had enough fuel for about three hours of flight time. Thorn intended to make the most of it. He needed a cover story, one that would fit like a glove into everything his visitors were about to report to the cops. If it worked, it would put a quick end to the search for the plane.

As soon as the wheels cleared the runway, he lifted the landing gear, started to climb to alt.i.tude, and reached down and turned on the mode C transponder. He dialed in a number at random.

This immediately gave away their location. The instant the plane showed up on radar in the control tower at Mercedita Airport, three miles outside Ponce, the controllers in the tower went nuts.

Thorn was flying directly into the approach pattern of incoming planes and he knew it.

Frantically they tried to reach him by radio using the squawk number from the transponder. "Unidentified 2416, come in! You are entering controlled air s.p.a.ce. Come in!"

Thorn ignored them as the two Mahdi pilots looked on, fear and puzzlement written all over their faces.

"Not to worry," said Thorn. "I thought you were prepared to die."

The 727 continued to climb. Off in the distance Thorn could see a large wide-bodied jet, its wheels and flaps down, its landing lights on. It was descending, steaming this way on a clear approach to Mercedita.

Thorn gently eased the 727 to the right until it was virtually nose on to the incoming plane. By now the chatter on the radio was frantic. "Do me a favor, turn that off," said Thorn.

Ahmed, the Saudi flyer now sitting in the right-hand seat, looked as if he was about to wet his pants. He reached over and turned off the radio, then turned his gaze, his eyes wide like saucers, back toward the front windscreen.

"Put your hands on the throttles," said Thorn.

Ahmed looked at him and tentatively reached for the throttle controls.

"Gimme full power, when I tell you. Not before! You got it?"

Ahmed said nothing. He was frozen with fear.

"Answer me. Do you understand?"

"Yes." Ahmed's fingers turned white strangling the plastic tops of the throttle controls as the nose of the giant wide-bodied plane suddenly filled the gla.s.s panel in front of him. He looked down and winced, and hunched up his body for the impact as Thorn yelled: "Now!"

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 ma.s.sive 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. "G.o.d d.a.m.n, that's a rus.h.!.+" 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. G.o.d 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, d.a.m.n 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 s.h.i.+pped 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.