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THIS time Rapp was in the left seat of the CIA’s Gulfstream G550. The negotiations to get this meeting set up had been short but contentious. The President of the United States had threatened to use his political clout to cut off every dime of foreign aid to Pakistan. Irene Kennedy, for her part, had made a number of more subtle threats that included General Shirani’s home address and a new class of stealth drone.
No negotiation was completely one-sided, though, and the U.S. had been forced to compromise on a few points. Unfortunately, the first thing to be sacrificed was Rapp’s team. Shirani had made it clear that he would walk if Rapp didn’t come alone. They’d managed to get him to allow a pilot, but R
app had decided to forgo someone competent at the controls in favor of Joe Maslick, who was parked nervously in the copilot’s seat.
Beyond Rapp’s questionable ability to safely fly the G550, the airstrip below them was hardly the quiet, abandoned field that they would have liked. Instead of descending into a few blowing plastic bags and a herd of goats, they were about to land on a strip crawling with soldiers.
“Looks like about two hundred men total,” Maslick said, peering through the windscreen with a pair of binoculars. “Call it a hundred west of the strip and a hundred east. Tanks, artillery, and fixed machine gun placements just for starters. Looks like they’re using the runway as some kind of half-assed demilitarized zone.”
“Can you tell who’s who?”
“Based on the uniforms you’ve got Shirani’s guys west. Chutani’s presidential guard is east, backed up to the only four buildings still standing. Our intel was right. They look like they haven’t been used in twenty years but they’re still solid enough to provide some cover if everyone starts shooting.”
“What about SAMs?”
“Nothing visible, but you know they’ve got handheld stuff down there somewhere. If the shit hits the fan, we’re probably better off running away from the plane, not toward it.”
Rapp eased forward on the yoke and started their descent while Maslick continued to examine the opposition. They were only a couple hundred feet above the ground when Maslick looked around the side of his binoculars.
“Mitch. You’re too high.”
Rapp ignored him.
“Mitch. Seriously, man. You’re too fucking high. We’re going to overshoot the runway.”
“You want to fly this thing?”
“Oh, shiiiiit!” Maslick shouted in response, putting his feet up on the instrument panel to brace himself.
The landing gear slammed into the runway two-thirds of the way down. Rapp applied the brakes and reversed the engines, but they were still going a good twenty knots when they jumped the end of the tarmac and headed off into the sunbaked mud beyond. The plane bounced wildly over the rough terrain while Rapp fought to keep the tips of the wings from hitting the ground and sending them cartwheeling across the desert. They finally came to a stop in a cloud of dust thick enough to blot out the sun.
“I told you we were too high!” Maslick said. “Why didn’t you just come around for another approach?”
“Where are we?” Rapp asked, calmly shutting down the engines.
“What? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Simple question, Mas. Where are we?”
The former Delta operator thought about it for a moment, an expression of understanding slowly spreading across his features. “Not parked right in the middle of two hundred guys with itchy trigger fingers?”
Rapp thumbed toward the back. “Start unstrapping that thing and let’s get this over with.”
• • •
When Rapp jumped down to the desert floor, the dust haze had cleared just enough to see a black SUV speeding toward them with a single armored vehicle right on its tail. Both skidded to a stop fifteen feet away and one man got out of each. The first was a captain from the Black Storks, a spec ops group controlled by General Shirani. The other was a member of President Chutani’s elite guard. Undoubtedly, every detail of this operation, including who would meet the plane, had been carefully negotiated by the two men vying for control of Pakistan.
“Do you have the warhead you stole from us?” the soldier demanded, while Chutani’s man struck a more respectful pose.
“Right here,” Maslick said, rolling it to the plane’s door. “Enjoy!”
He gave it a hard kick and it dropped the four feet to the ground with an ominous clang that made both men jerk back in fear.
“Load it up,” Rapp said, slipping into the passenger seat of the SUV. The air-conditioning was running and he pointed the vents at himself while the two men looked at each other in confusion. Finally, they were forced to work together to drag the warhead to the army transport. Rapp flipped the radio on and searched for a decent station while they wrestled it into the back.
It was a solid ten minutes before Chutani’s sweat-drenched man finally climbed into the driver’s seat. He started the engine and led out as Maslick watched from the open door of the G550.
“We weren’t informed that you were going to land like that,” the man said nervously.