By Order of the President tpa-1 Page 2

  "Will you call out the airspeed, please?" MacIlhenny asked, politely.

  "Eighty," the copilot said a moment later.

  Unless that Ilyushin gets his tail off the runway, I'm going to clip it.

  "Ninety."

  "One-ten."

  "One-twenty."

  "Rotate," MacIlhenny said and pulled back on the yoke.

  ****

  "What you will do now, Captain," the man with the Uzi said, "is level off at two-five hundred feet on this course."

  "That's going to eat a lot of fuel," MacIlhenny said.

  "Yes, I know. What I want to do is fall off their radar. The lower we fly, the sooner that will happen."

  MacIlhenny nodded his understanding.

  Five minutes later, the man with the Uzi ordered, "Maintaining this flight level, steer zero-two-zero."

  "Zero-two-zero," MacIlhenny repeated and began a gentle turn to that heading.

  That will take me over the ex-Belgian Congo. I wonder what that means?

  Ten minutes after that, the man with the Uzi said, "Ascend to flight level two-five thousand, and turn to zero-one-five."

  "Course zero-one-five," MacIlhenny repeated. "Beginning climb to flight level two-five thousand now."

  "Very good, Captain," the man with the Uzi said.

  ****

  Not quite two hours after they left Luanda, the man with the Uzi said, "Begin a thousand-feet-a-minute descent on our present heading, Captain."

  MacIlhenny nodded his understanding, adjusted the trim, retarded the throttles, and then said, "We are in a thousand-feet-a-minute descent. May I ask where we are going?"

  "We are going to take on fuel at an airfield not far from Kisangani," he said. "Once known as Stanleyville. Kisangani has a radar and I want to get under it, so level off at twenty-five hundred feet."

  "Yes, sir."

  MacIlhenny checked his fuel. His tanks were a little under half full.

  Kisangani is in the northeast Congo, not far from the border of Sudan.

  We could have made it to Khartoum – almost anywhere in Sudan – with available fuel. Sudan has a reputation for loose borders, and for not liking Americans. So why didn't we go there?

  If we keep on this northeasterly flight path, we'll overfly Sudan. And on this heading, what's next is Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.

  The Americans are all over Saudi Arabia and Israel with AWAC aircraft.

  They're sure to see this one.

  For that matter, it's surprising that there hasn't been a fighter – or three or four fighters – off my wingtip already.

  You can't just steal an airplane and fly it a thousand miles without somebody finding you.

  Where the hell are we going?

  ****

  Lease-Aire 9021 had been flying at twenty-five hundred feet at four hundred knots for about fifteen minutes when the copilot adjusted the radio frequency to 116.5 and then called somebody.

  Somebody called back. With no headset, MacIlhenny of course had no idea what anybody said. But a moment after his brief radio conversation, the copilot punched in a frequency on the radio direction finder and then pointed to the cathode display.

  "Change to that heading?" MacIlhenny asked, politely.

  "Correct," the man with the Uzi said. "We should be no more than 150 miles from our refuel point."

  ****

  Twenty minutes later, MacIlhenny saw, almost directly ahead, a brown scar on the vast blanket of green Congolese jungle beneath him.

  The copilot got on the radio again, held a brief conversation with someone, and then turned to MacIlhenny.

  "The winds are negligible," he said. "If you want to, you can make a direct approach."

  "How much runway do we have?"

  "Fifty-eight hundred feet," the copilot said. "Don't worry. This will not be the first 727 to land here."

  ****

  MacIlhenny brought the 727 in at the end of the runway. He could see some buildings, but they seemed deserted, and he didn't see any people, or vehicles, or other signs of life.

  He touched down smoothly and slowed the aircraft down to taxi speed with a third of the runway still in front of him.

  "Continue to the end of the runway, Captain," the man with the Uzi said.

  MacIlhenny taxied as slowly as he could without arousing the suspicion of his copilot or the man with the Uzi. He saw no other signs of life or occupancy, except what could be recent truck tire marks in the mud on the side of the macadam runway.

  "Turn it around, Captain, and put the brakes on. But don't shut it down until we have a look at the refueling facilities."

  "Yes, sir," MacIlhenny said and complied.

  "Now, here we're going to need your expert advice," the man with the Uzi said. "Will you come with me, please?"

  "Yes, sir," MacIlhenny said.

  He unfastened his shoulder harness, got out of his seat, and saw that the man with the Uzi had put the jump seat back in the stored position and was waiting for him to precede him out of the cockpit and into the fuselage.

  "In the back, please, Captain," the man with the Uzi said, gesturing with the weapon.

  MacIlhenny walked into the passenger compartment.

  The local pilot was still sitting taped into one of the seats.

  MacIlhenny glanced down at him as he walked past. It looked as if something had been spilled in his lap.

  Spilled, hell. He pissed his pants.

  At the rear of the passenger compartment, the man with the Uzi ordered, "Open the door, please, Captain."

  MacIlhenny wrestled with the door.

  The first thing he noticed was that warm tropical air seemed to pour into the airplane.

  Then someone grabbed his hair again and pulled his head backward.

  Then he felt himself being pushed out of the door and falling twenty feet to the ground. He landed hard on his shoulder, and in the last conscious moment of his life saw blood from his cut throat pumping out onto the macadam.

  He was dead before the local pilot was marched-still blindfolded with yellow tape-to the door and disposed of in a similar fashion.

  Then the rear door of Lease-Aire 9021 was closed and the airplane taxied to the other end of the runway, where a tanker truck appeared and began to refuel it.

  [TWO]

  Quatro de Fevereiro Aeroporto Internacional

  Luanda, Angola

  1410 23 May 2005

  Quite by accident, H. Richard Miller, Jr., a thirty-six-year-old, six-foot-two, 220-pound, very black native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was not only there when what he was shortly afterward to report as "the unauthorized departure of a Boeing 727 aircraft registered to the Lease-Aire Corporation of Philadelphia, Pa.," took place but he actually saw it happen.

  Miller, an Army major, was diplomatically accredited to the Republic of Angola as the assistant military attache. He was, in fact, and of course covertly, the Luanda station chief of the Central Intelligence Agency.

  But, with the exception that his diplomatic carnet gave him access to the airport's duty-free shop, neither his official nor covert status had anything to do with his being present at the airport when the aircraft was stolen. He had gone out to the airport-on what he thought of as his self-granted weekly rest-and-recuperation leave-to buy a bottle of Boss cologne and have first a martini and then a late lunch in the airport's quite good restaurant. Since this was in the nature of an information-gathering mission, he would pay for the meal from his discretionary operating funds.

  When he went into the restaurant, he chose a table next to one of the plate-glass windows. They offered a panoramic view of the runways and just about everything at the airport but the building he was in. He laid his digital camera on the table, so that it wouldn't be either stolen or forgotten when he left, and where he could quickly pick it up and take a shot at anything of potential interest without drawing too much-hopefully, no-attention to him.

  A waiter quickly appeared and Miller ordered a gin martini.
br />   Then he took a long look at what he could see of the airport.

  Parked far across the field, on a parking pad not far from the threshold of the main north/south runway, he saw that what he thought of as "his airplane," a Boeing 727, was still parked where it had been last week, and for the past fourteen months.

  He thought of it as his airplane because when he'd noticed it fourteen months ago, he'd taken snapshots of it and checked it out.

  Without even making an official inquiry, he went on the Internet and learned that it was registered to the Lease-Aire Corporation of Philadelphia. From a source at the airfield-an air traffic controller who was the monthly re-cipient of a crisp one-hundred-dollar bill from Miller's discretionary operating funds-he had learned that the 727 had made a "discretionary landing" at Luanda while en route somewhere else.

  Miller was a pilot, an Army aviator-not currently on flight status because he'd busted a flight physical, which was why he had wound up "temporarily" assigned to the CIA and sent to Luanda-and he understood that a discretionary landing was one a wise pilot made when red lights lit up on the control panel, before it became necessary to make an emergency landing.

  Miller had begun to feel sorry for the airplane, as he sometimes felt sorry for himself. A grounded bird, and a grounded bird man, stuck in picturesque Luanda, Angola, by circumstances beyond their control, when they both would much rather have been in Philadelphia, where he had grown up, where his parents lived, and where one could be reasonably sure that 999 out of a thousand good-looking women did not have AIDS, which could not be said of Luanda, Angola.

  Still, unofficially-although after a month he had reported to Langley, in Paragraph 15, Unrelated Data, of his weekly report, that the plane seemed to be stuck in Luanda-he had learned that Lease-Aire was a small outfit that bought old airliners at distress prices (LA-9021 came from Continental); that it then leased them "wet" or "dry"; and that LA-9021 had been dry-leased to a Scottish company called Surf amp; Sun Holidays Ltd. Just to play it safe, he'd asked the assistant CIA station chief in London, whom he knew, to find out what he could about Surf amp; Sun. In two days, he learned that it was a rinky-dink outfit that had gone belly-up shortly after leaving 153 irate Irishmen stranded in Rabat, Morocco.

  That seemed to explain everything, and nothing was suspicious.

  And so every time during the fourteen months that Miller took his R amp;R and saw the once-proud old bird sitting across the field, he had grown more convinced that it would never fly again. He was, therefore, more than a little surprised when-peering over the rim of a second martini just as good as the first-he saw LA-9021 moving.

  He thought, in quick order, as he carefully set the martini glass on the table, first, that he had been mistaken, and, next, that if it was moving, it was being towed by a tug to where repair-or cannibalization-could begin.

  When he looked again, he saw the airplane was indeed moving and under its own power.

  How the hell did they start it up? You can't let an airplane sit on a runway for fourteen months and then just get in it and push the ENGINE START buttons.

  Obviously, somebody's been working on it.

  But when?

  When was the last time I was here? Last Wednesday?

  Well, that's a week; that's enough time.

  The 727 turned off the taxiway and moved toward the threshold of the runway.

  There was a Congo Air Ilyushin transport on final. Miller knew there were two daily flights between Brazzaville, Congo, and Luanda.

  Miller had two unkind thoughts.

  Prescription for aerial disaster: an ex-Russian Air Force fighter jockey, flying a worn-out Ilyushin maintained by Congo Air.

  "Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Please remain seated on the floor and try to restrain all chickens, goats, and other livestock until the aircraft has come to a complete stop at the airway. And thank you for flying Congo Air. We hope that the next time you have to go from nowhere to nowhere, you'll fly with us again."

  And then he had another thought when he saw that the 727 was on the threshold, lined up with the runway:

  Hey, Charley, the way you're supposed to do that is wait until the guy on final goes over you and then you move to the threshold. Otherwise, if he lands a little short he lands on you.

  The Ilyushin passed no more than fifty feet over the tail of the 727 and then touched down.

  Before the Ilyushin reached the first turnoff from the runway, the 727 began its takeoff roll.

  Hey, Charley, what are you going to do if he doesn't get out of your way? What do we have here, two ex-Russian fighter jockeys?

  The rear stabilizer of the Ilyushin had not completely cleared the runway when the 727, approaching takeoff velocity, flashed past it and then lifted off.

  Well, I'm glad you're back in the air, old girl.

  I wonder what kind of a nitwit was flying the 727?

  Miller picked up his martini, raised it to the now nearly out of sight 727, and then turned his attention to the menu.

  Thirty minutes later, after a very nicely broiled filet of what the menu called sea trout and two cups of really first-class Kenyan coffee, he paid the bill with an American Express card, collected the bags containing the newspapers, magazines, paperbacks, and the goodies he'd bought in the duty-free shop, and started walking across the terminal to get his car.

  What I should do is go home, get on the ski machine to get the gin out of my system, and then spend a half hour at least on the knee.

  But being an honest man, he knew that what he was probably going to do was go home, hang up the nice clothes, and take a little nap.

  On impulse, however, passing a pay telephone, he stepped into the booth, fed it coins, and punched in a number that was not available to the general public.

  "Torre," someone said after answering on the first ring.

  Having the unlisted number of the control tower, and, if he was lucky, the right guy to answer its phone, was what the monthly dispersal of the crisp hundred-dollar bill bought.

  " Antonio, por favor. E seu irmao, "Miller said.

  A moment later, Antonio took the phone to speak to "his brother," and, obviously excited, said, "I can't talk right now. Something has come up."

  "What's come up?"

  "We think someone has stolen an airplane."

  "A 727?"

  "How did you know?"

  "Antonio, you have to take a piss."

  "Please, I cannot."

  Yes you can, you sonofabitch. I hand you a hundred-dollar bill each and every month. And you know what I expect of you.

  "Trust me, Antonio. You have diarrhea. I'll be waiting in the men's room."

  [THREE]

  Office of the Ambassador

  Embassy of the United States of America

  Rua Houari Boumedienne

  Luanda, Angola

  1540 23 May 2005

  "Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Ambassador, on such short notice," Miller said to the United States ambassador and then turned to the defense attache, an Air Force lieutenant colonel. "And you, sir, for meeting me here so quickly."

  The ambassador was a fellow African American, from Washington, D.C. Miller didn't dislike him, but he did not hold him in high regard. Miller thought the ambassador had worked his way up through the State Department to what would probably be the pinnacle of his diplomatic career by keeping his nose clean and closely following the two basic rules for success in the Foreign Service of the United States: Don't make waves; and never make a decision today that can be put off until next week, or, better, next month.

  The defense attache was Caucasian, which Miller attributed to a momentary shortage of what used to be called "black" or "Negro" officers of suitable rank when the defense attache post came open.

  According to applicable regulations, Miller was subordinate to both. To the ambassador, because he was the senior U.S. government officer in Angola; and to the defense attache, because he was a lieutenant colonel and Mil
ler a major, and also because the defense attache is supposed to control the military (Army) and Naval attaches.

  But in practice, it didn't work quite that way. Miller's assistant military attache status was the cover for his being the Resident Spook and both knew it. And when he was, as he thought of it, on the job, he not only didn't have to tell the defense attache what he was doing, but was under orders not to, unless the defense attache had a bona fide need to know.

  The ambassador was, Miller had quickly learned, more than a little afraid of him. For two reasons, one being that Miller had come out of Special Forces. Like most career diplomats, the ambassador believed that Special Forces people-especially highly decorated ones like Miller-were practitioners of the "Kill 'Em All and Let God Sort It Out" school of diplomacy, and consequently lived in fear that Miller was very likely to do something outrageous which would embarrass the embassy, the State Department, the United States government, and, of course, him.

  More important than that, probably, was a photograph Miller had hung, not ostentatiously but very visibly, in the corridor of his apartment leading to the bathroom. Once a month, Miller was expected to have a cocktail party for his fellow diplomats. Anyone who needed to visit the facilities could not miss seeing the photograph.

  It showed two smiling African American officers in Vietnam-era uniforms. One was a colonel, wearing a name tag identifying him as miller. He had his arm around a young major, from whose jacket hung an obviously just awarded Bronze Star. His name tag read POWELL.

  Both officers had gone on to higher rank. Miller's father had retired as a major general. The major had retired with four stars and had been the secretary of state.

  It was not unreasonable, Miller thought, to suspect the ambassador feared that Miller had influence in the highest corridors of power, and might, in fact, be sending back-channel, out-of-school reports on his performance to Secretary Powell, who was still-according to Forbes magazine-one of the ten most influential men in the United States.