smiled dourly. “If it comes to that, I like our chances.”
CHAPTER THREE
Airspace over San Diego County, California
It was only after he’d put the Gulfstream back on autopilot that Kouri Ahmet began to come down off the adrenaline rush that had powered his desperate ploy to thwart his extradition to Los Angeles. As he sat back in the jet’s cockpit, waiting for his pulse to return to normal, the Lebanese expatriate thought back on the past several minutes, savoring details that, at the time, had flashed by in a blur.
The small government transport jet had hit a pocket of turbulence shortly after crossing the Mexican border and when the Gulfstream had begun to rock, Ahmet had taken note of the U.S. Air Marshal’s distraction and made his move. Bolting from his seat, the terrorist had lunged across the aisle and burrowed his shoulder into the other man’s solar plexis, knocking the wind from his lungs. That had bought Ahmet the time necessary to draw his shackled hands beneath his waist and wriggle them forward until his arms were no longer pinned behind his back. The marshal was still disoriented when Ahmet had rendered him unconscious, using the handcuffs as a makeshift garrote. It had all happened in a matter of seconds, and by the time the plane had cleared the turbulence, Ahmet was on his feet, the officer’s 9 mm Colt pistol clenched in his fist. The door to the cockpit had been locked, but two well-placed rounds had given him access to the pilot. The pilot had been armed, but Ahmet had put a bullet through his skull before he’d had a chance to reach his gun. Though hindered by his ankle cuffs, the prisoner had managed to drag the other man from his seat and take over the controls long enough to bring the plane to a lower altitude. Once he’d set the Gulfstream on autopilot, he’d hauled the pilot back into the main cabin. By then, the marshal had regained consciousness, but Ahmet had quickly finished him off with a gunshot to the heart. After opening the outer door, he’d disposed of the bodies—first the marshal, then the pilot. Suddenly, in a matter of moments, the terrorist’s doomed future had taken a dramatic turn.
Ahmet had boarded the plane back in La Paz with no set escape plan, but now, with the plane back up to twenty thousand feet on a diverted course toward Riverside County, Ahmet reflected that it was unlikely that any orchestrated attempt could have succeeded any better than the gambit he’d just executed. Some would have attributed such good fortune to serendipity, but for Ahmet it was the guiding hand of God that had intervened on his behalf. He offered up a quick prayer of thanks, then ceased his ruminations. There was, after all, work to be done. Ahmet was still in shackles, dressed in a telltale prison-orange jumpsuit at the controls of a plane that soon, no doubt, would be the object of an intense aerial manhunt. Yes, he’d overpowered his captors and placed himself more in control of his fate, but the renegade knew that he was still a long way from being free.
Stony Man Farm, Virginia
H AL B ROGNOLA AND Barbara Price were halfway through the tunnel leading back to the main house when the Stony Man director received the news on his earbud transceiver.
On Brognola’s signal, Price turned the electric cart around and headed back toward the Annex. Brognola, meanwhile, wrapped up his long-distance call with Able Team’s interim pilot, Jack Grimaldi, who was on the other side of the continent, manning the controls of a loaner F-16 fighter jet he’d just lifted off the runway at Edwards Air Force Base.
“Yes, by all means intercept him if you can,” Brognola said, reaching into his trench coat for a plastic-wrapped cigar. “With any luck, he’s still airborne.”
“He doesn’t have much of a jump on us,” Grimaldi replied. “Hell, we were already out on the runway waiting for him when we got the word.”
“Still, there’s a lot of airspace between Barstow and San Diego,” Brognola said. “I’ll get Camp Pendleton to send somebody up to help out.”
“Fine by me,” Grimaldi said. “But what if we get to him first?”
“We’d obviously like him alive for questioning, but do what you have to. We can’t let him get away.”
“Got it.”
When he heard Grimaldi click off, Brognola silenced his earbud transceiver and peeled the wrapper from the cigar. There’d been a time, years ago, when he smoked expensive, hand-rolled Havanas, but now cigars were nothing more to him than a prop, something to keep his hands busy at times, like this, when the going got tough and his nerves were rattled.
“Something went wrong with Ahmet’s transfer,” Price said. It was more a statement than a question. She’d already deduced what had happened from listening to Brognola’s side of the conversation.
“Afraid so,” the big Fed replied, rolling the cigar between his fingers. “Some college kids near San Diego just came across two bodies that dropped out of the sky at a park near there. One’s the pilot of the transfer plane and the other’s the federal Air Marshal who was guarding Ahmet. They’d both been shot with the marshal’s pistol. We have to assume Ahmet’s behind it, which means he’s on the loose in a Gulfstream 100.”
“It shouldn’t have happened.” Price parked the cart and both she and Brognola retraced their steps to the Computer Room. “You’d think they would have had the guy chained to his seat with more than one guard watching him.”
“You’d think so,” Brognola conceded. “But apparently the idea was to go easy on the restraints in hopes of buttering him up. Not a great idea in my book, and I’m sure somebody’s being called on the carpet about it as we speak.”
“As well they should,” Price said. “Now, instead of having Ahmet dropped in their lap, Able Team has to go out and find him.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Airspace over San Bernardino and
Riverside counties, California
“This is more like it,” Jack Grimaldi said, speaking through his headset microphone with Able Team commander Carl Lyons, seated behind him in the gunner seat of the F-16 fighter jet.
“Yeah, I’ll take a weapons pylon over those damn recliner seats any day,” Lyons said, staring out the gunner window at the rugged desert terrain below. “Now let’s just hope we can track this scumbag down. The longer he stays off our radar, the better his chances of getting away.”
“Pedal’s to the metal,” Grimaldi said, opening the jet’s throttles. “If he’s still in the air when we spot him, he won’t be able to outrun us.”
“The Marines are closer,” Lyons said, “but at this point I don’t care who gets him, as long as he’s taken out of the mix. Finding the rock al Qaeda’s hiding under is hard enough without splitting our focus.”
Able Team’s search for the sleeper cell in Barstow had produced only limited results. They’d managed to secure an address linked to Army Gideon, the paramilitary group rumored to be offering explosives to the al Qaeda team, but when they’d raided the site, located a few miles to the south in Oro Grande, they’d found the place deserted. There’d been traces of gunpowder on the property, and a day-old newspaper had been found stashed in a trash barrel along with scraps of fast food that had yet to spoil, convincing Lyons and the others that the compound had been only recently evacuated.
A visit to the burger franchise matching the food wrappers had determined that the meals had been purchased by Gideon members rather than the al
