By Order of the President tpa-1 Read online

  By Order of the President

  ( The Presidential Agent - 1 )

  W. E. B. Griffin

  W. E. B. Griffin

  By Order of the President

  Chapter I

  SPRING 2005

  Quatro de Fevereiro Aeroporto Internacional

  Luanda, Angola

  1445 23 May 2005

  As he climbed the somewhat unsteady roll-up stairs and ducked his head to get through the door of Lease-Aire LA-9021-a Boeing 727-Captain Alex MacIlhenny, who was fifty-two, ruddy-faced, had a full head of just starting to gray red hair, and was getting just a little jowly, had sort of a premonition that something was wrong-or that something bad was about to happen-but he wasn't prepared for the dark-skinned man standing inside the fuselage against the far wall. The man was holding an Uzi submachine gun in both hands, and it was aimed at MacIlhenny's stomach.

  Oh, shit!

  MacIlhenny stopped and held both hands up, palm outward, at shoulder level.

  "Get out of the door, Captain," the man ordered, gesturing with the Uzi's muzzle that he wanted MacIlhenny to enter the flight deck.

  That's not an American accent. Or Brit, either. And this guy's skin is dark, not black. What is he, Portuguese maybe?

  Oh come on! Portuguese don't steal airplanes. This guy is some kind of an Arab.

  The man holding the Uzi was dressed almost exactly like MacIlhenny, in dark trousers, black shoes, and an open-collared white shirt with epaulets. There were wings pinned above one breast pocket, and the epaulets held the four-gold-stripe shoulder boards of a captain. He even had, clipped to his other breast pocket, the local Transient Air Crew identification tag issued to flight crews who had passed through customs and would be around the airport for twenty-four hours or more.

  MacIlhenny started to turn to go into the cockpit.

  "Backwards," the man ordered. "And stand there."

  MacIlhenny complied.

  "We don't want anyone to see you with your hands up, do we?" the man asked, almost conversationally.

  MacIlhenny nodded but didn't say anything.

  Something like this, I suppose, was bound to happen. The thing to do is keep my cool, do exactly what they tell me to do and nothing stupid.

  "Your aircraft has been requisitioned," the man said, "by the Jihad Legion."

  What the hell is the "Jihad Legion"?

  What does it matter?

  Some nutcake, rag-head Arab outfit, English-speaking and clever enough to get dressed up in a pilot's uniform, is about to grab this airplane. Has grabbed this airplane. And me.

  MacIlhenny nodded, didn't say anything for a moment, but then took a chance.

  "I understand, but if you're a:"

  Someone behind him grabbed his hair and pulled his head back. He started to struggle-a reflex action-but then saw out of the corner of his eye what looked like a fish-filleting knife, then felt it against his Adam's apple, and forced himself not to move.

  Jesus Christ!

  "You will speak only with permission, and you will seek that permission by raising your hand, as a child does in school. You understand?"

  MacIlhenny tried to nod, but the way his head was being pulled back and with the knife at his throat he doubted the movement he was able to make was very visible. He thought a moment and then raised his right hand slightly higher.

  "You may speak," the man with the Uzi said.

  "Since you are a pilot, why do you need me?" he asked.

  "The first answer should be self-evident: So that you cannot report the requisitioning of your aircraft immediately. Additionally, we would prefer that when the authorities start looking for the aircraft they first start looking for you and not us. Does that answer your question?"

  MacIlhenny nodded as well as he could and said, "Yes, sir."

  What the hell are they going to do with this airplane?

  Are they going to fly it into the American embassy here?

  With me in it?

  In Angola? That doesn't make much sense. It's a small embassy, and most people have never heard of Angola much less know where it is.

  What's within range?

  South Africa, of course. It's about fifteen hundred miles to Johannesburg, and a little more to Capetown. Where's our embassy in South Africa?

  "As you surmised, I am a pilot qualified to fly this model Boeing," the man said. "As is the officer behind you. Therefore, you are convenient for this operation but not essential. At any suspicion that you are not doing exactly as you are told, or are attempting in any way to interfere with this operation, you will be eliminated. Do you understand?"

  MacIlhenny nodded again as well as he could and said, "Yes, sir."

  The man said something in a foreign language that MacIlhenny did not understand. The hand grasping his hair opened and he could hold his head erect.

  "You may lower your hands," the man said, and then, conversationally, added: "You seemed to be taking a long time in your preflight walk-around. What was that all about?"

  MacIlhenny, despite the heat, felt a sudden chill and realized that he had been sweating profusely.

  Why not? With an Uzi pointing at your stomach and a knife against your throat, what did you expect?

  His mouth was dry, and he had to gather saliva and wet his lips before he tried to speak.

  "I came here to make a test flight," MacIlhenny began. "This aircraft has not flown in over a year. I made what I call the 'MacIlhenny Final Test':"

  "Is that not the business of mechanics?"

  "I am a mechanic."

  "You are a mechanic?" the man asked, dubiously.

  "Yes, sir. I hold both air frame and engine licenses. I supervised getting this aircraft ready to fly, signed off on the repairs, and I was making the MacIlhenny Test:"

  "What test is that?"

  "It's not required; it's just something I do. The airplane has been sitting here for more than twenty-four hours, with a full load of fuel: at takeoff weight, you'll understand. I take a final look around. If anything was leaking, I would have seen it, found out where it was coming from, and fixed it before I tried to fly it."

  The man with the Uzi considered that and nodded.

  "It is unusual for a captain to also be a mechanic, is it not?"

  "Yes, sir, I suppose it is."

  "And did you find anything wrong on this final test?"

  "No, sir, I did not."

  "And what were you going to do next if your final test found nothing wrong?"

  "I've arranged for a copilot, sir. As soon as he got here, I was going to run up the engines a final time and then make a test flight."

  "Your copilot is here," the man said. "You may look into the passenger compartment."

  MacIlhenny didn't move.

  "Look into the fuselage, Captain," the man with the Uzi said, sternly, and something hard was rammed into the small of MacIlhenny's back.

  He winced with the pain.

  That wasn't a knife and it certainly wasn't a hand. Maybe the other guy's got an Uzi, too. A gun, anyway.

  MacIlhenny stepped past the bulkhead and looked into the passenger compartment.

  All but the first three rows of seats had been removed from the passenger compartment. MacIlhenny had no idea when or why but when LA-9021 had left Philadelphia on a sixty-day, cash-up-front dry charter, it had been in a full all-economy-class passenger configuration-the way it had come from Continental Airlines-with seats for 189 people.

  Lease-Aire had been told it was to be used to haul people on everything-included excursions from Scandinavia to the coast of Spain and Morocco.

  MacIlhenny knew all this because he was Lease-Aire's vice president for Maintenance and Fli
ght Operations. The title sounded more grandiose-on purpose-than the size of the corporation really justified. Lease-Aire had only two other officers. The president and chief executive officer was MacIlhenny's brother-in-law, Terry Halloran; and the secretary-treasurer was Mary-Elizabeth MacIlhenny Halloran, Terry's wife and MacIlhenny's sister.

  Lease-Aire was in the used aircraft business, dealing in aircraft the major airlines wanted to get rid of for any number of reasons, most often because they were near the end of their operational life. LA-9021, for example, had hauled passengers for Continental for twenty-two years.

  When Lease-Aire acquired an airplane-their fleet had never exceeded four aircraft at one time; they now owned two: this 727, and a Lockheed 10-11 they'd just bought from Northwest-they stripped off the airline paint job, reregistered it, and painted on the new registration numbers.

  Then the aircraft was offered for sale. If they couldn't find someone to buy it at a decent profit, the plane was offered for charter-"wet" (with fuel and crew and Lease-Aire took care of routine maintenance) or "dry" (the lessee provided the crew and fuel and paid for routine maintenance)-until it came close to either an annual or thousand-hour inspection, both of which were very expensive. Then the airplane was parked again at Philadelphia and offered for sale at a really bargain-basement price. If they couldn't sell it, then it made a final flight to a small airfield in the Arizona desert, where it was cannibalized of salable parts.

  Lease-Aire had been in business five years. LA-9021 was their twenty-first airplane. Sometimes they made a ton of money on an airplane and sometimes they took a hell of a bath.

  It seemed to Vice President MacIlhenny they were going to take a hell of a bath on this one. Surf amp; Sun Holidays Ltd. had telephoned ten days before their sixty-day charter contract was over, asking for another thirty days, check to follow immediately.

  The check didn't come. A cable did, four days later, saying LA-9021 had had to make a "precautionary landing" at Luanda, Angola, where an inspection had revealed mechanical failures beyond those which they were obliged to repair under the original contract. And, further, that inasmuch as the failures had occurred before the first contract had run its course, Surf amp; Sun Holidays would not of course enter into an extension of the original charter contract.

  In other words, your airplane broke down in Luanda, Angola. Sorry about that but it's your problem, not ours.

  When Terry, who handled the business end of Lease-Aire, had tried to call Surf amp; Sun Holidays Ltd. at their corporate headquarters in Glasgow, Scotland, to discuss the matter, he was told the line was no longer in service.

  On his first trip to Luanda, MacIlhenny had stopped in Glasgow to deal with them personally. There had been sheets of brown butcher paper covering the plate-glass storefront windows of Surf amp; Sun Holidays Ltd.'s corporate headquarters, with FOR RENT lettered on them in Magic Marker.

  In Luanda, he had quickly found what had failed on LA-9021: control system hydraulics. It was a "safety of flight" problem, which meant MacIlhenny could not hire a local to sit in the right seat while he made a "one-time flight" to bring it home. He had also found that most of the seats were missing. Parts-from seats to hydraulics-were often readily available on the used parts market, if you had the money. Lease-Aire was experiencing a temporary cash-flow problem.

  Terry had wanted to go after the Surf amp; Sun bastards for stealing the seats and abandoning the aircraft, make them at least make the repairs so MacIlhenny could go get the sonofabitch and bring it home. MacIlhenny's sister had sided with her husband.

  The cash-flow problem had lasted a lot longer than anyone expected, and the price or the needed parts was a lot higher than MacIlhenny anticipated, so thirteen months passed before he and four crates of parts finally managed to get back to Luanda and he could put the sonofabitch together again.

  As he took the few steps from the cockpit door to the passenger compartment, MacIlhenny had an almost pleasant thought:

  If these guys steal this airplane, we can probably collect on the insurance.

  And then he saw the local pilot who had come on board LA-9021 expecting to pick up a quick five hundred dollars sitting in the right seat for an hour or so while MacIlhenny took the plane on a test hop. He was sitting in the third-now last-row right aisle seat. His hands were in his lap, tightly bound together with three-inch-wide yellow plastic tape. His ankles were similarly bound, and there was tape over his eyes.

  "We will release him, Captain," the first man with the Uzi said, "when, presuming you have cooperated, we release you."

  "I'm going to do whatever you want me to do, sir," MacIlhenny said.

  "Why don't we get going?" the man with the Uzi said.

  He stepped out of the aisle to permit MacIlhenny to walk past him.

  MacIlhenny went into the cockpit, and, for the first time, could see the second man.

  I guess there's only two of them. I didn't see anybody else back there.

  The man now sitting in the copilot's seat looked very much like the first man with the Uzi, and he was also wearing an open-collared white shirt with Air Crew shoulder boards.

  The right ones, too, with the three stripes of a first officer – formerly copilot.

  The copilot gestured for MacIlhenny to take the pilots seat.

  As he slipped into it, MacIlhenny saw that the copilot had the checklist in his hand and that there were charts on the sort of shelf above the instrument panel. MacIlhenny couldn't see enough of them to have any idea what they were.

  And I can't even make a guess where we're going.

  MacIlhenny strapped himself into the seat, and then, feeling just a little foolish, raised his right hand.

  "You have a question, Captain?" the man with the Uzi asked.

  "Am I going to fly or is this gentleman?"

  "You'll fly," the man with the Uzi said. "He will serve as copilot, and you can think of me as your 'check pilot.' "

  It was obvious he thought he was being amusing.

  The man with the Uzi unfolded the jump seat in the aisle into position, sat down, fastened his shoulder harness, and rested the Uzi on the back of MacIlhenny's seat, its muzzle about two inches from MacIlhenny's ear.

  The man in the copilot's seat handed MacIlhenny the checklist, a plastic-covered card about four inches wide and ten inches long. MacIlhenny took it, nodded his understanding, and began to read from it.

  "Gear lever and lights," MacIlhenny read.

  "Down and checked," the copilot responded.

  "Brakes," MacIlhenny read.

  "Parked," the copilot responded.

  "Circuit breakers."

  "Check."

  "Emergency lights."

  "Armed."

  There were thirty-four items on the before start checklist. MacIlhenny read each of them.

  When he read number 9, "Seat Belt and No Smoking signs," the copilot chuckled before responding, "On."

  When MacIlhenny read number 23, "Voice recorder," the copilot chuckled again and said, "I don't think we're going to need that."

  And when MacIlhenny read number 28, "Radar and transponder," the copilot responded, "We're certainly not going to need that."

  And the man with the Uzi at MacIlhenny's ear chuckled.

  When MacIlhenny read number 34, "Rudder and aileron trim," the copilot responded, "Zero," and the man with the Uzi said, "Fire it up, Captain."

  MacIlhenny reached for the left engine engine start button and a moment later the whine and vibration of the turbine began.

  ****

  "Ask ground control for permission to taxi to the maintenance area," the man with the Uzi ordered.

  MacIlhenny nodded and said, "Luanda ground control, LA-9021, on the parking pad near the threshold of the main runway. Request permission to taxi to the maintenance hangar."

  Luanda ground control responded twenty seconds later.

  "LA-9021, you are cleared to taxi on Four South. Turn right on Four South right three. Report on arrival at th
e maintenance area."

  "Ground control, LA-9021 understands Four South to Four South right three."

  "Affirmative, 9021."

  MacIlhenny looked over his shoulder at the man with the Uzi, who nodded. MacIlhenny released the brakes and reached for the throttle quadrant.

  LA-9021 began to move.

  "Turn onto the threshold," the man with the Uzi said thirty seconds later. "Line it up with the runway and immediately commence your takeoff roll."

  "Without asking for clearance?" MacIlhenny asked.

  "Without asking for clearance," the man with the Uzi said, not pleasantly, and brushed MacIlhenny's neck, below his ear, with the muzzle of the Uzi.

  As MacIlhenny taxied the 727 to the threshold of the main north/south runway, he looked out the side window of the cockpit and then pointed out the window.

  "There's an aircraft on final," he said. "An Ilyushin."

  It was an Ilyushin II-76, called "the Candid." It was a large, four-engine, heavy-lift military transport, roughly equivalent to the Lockheed C-130.

  The man with the Uzi pressed the muzzle of the Uzi against MacIlhenny's neck as he leaned around him to look out the window at the approaching aircraft.

  "Line up with the runway, Captain," he ordered, "and the moment he touches down begin your takeoff roll."

  "Line up now or after he touches down?"

  "Now," the man with the Uzi said and jabbed MacIlhenny with the muzzle of the Uzi.

  MacIlhenny released the brakes and nudged the throttles.

  "LA-9021, ground control," the radio went off. The voice sounded alarmed.

  The man with the Uzi jerked MacIlhenny's headset from his head.

  MacIlhenny lined up 9021 with the runway and stopped.

  A moment later the Ilyushin flashed over, so close that the 727 moved. It touched down about halfway down the runway.

  The Uzi muzzle prodded MacIlhenny under the ear.

  He understood the message, released the brakes, and shoved the throttles forward.

  My options right now are to pull the gear, which will mean I will have my brains blown all over the cockpit a full twenty seconds before the gear retracts. Or I can do what I'm told and maybe, just maybe, stay alive.