overtime: the exfiltration had taken longer than anticipated. The small boat
rose and fell with the waves like driftwood while its powerful outboard motor
kept them moving in a more or less straight line. Now the aircraft came into
view. It was resting on a flotational helipad, an expanse of self-inflating
black rubber. The downwash from the rotors caused the sea to bowl around it.
Hennessy, who would be piloting the return flight as Honwana rested, was merely
readying the hydraulics.
Now the craft’s matte resin body was outlined in the first glimmers of the new
day, a pink tendril over the horizon. A few minutes later, the tendril had
become something indistinct but intense, like an arc light glimpsed through
closed fingers. Dawn was breaking, into what was now an almost clear sky. A dark
violet, shading swiftly into an intense cerulean. Dawn on the Indian Ocean. The
first dawn that Peter Novak had seen for some days.
Hennessy opened his window and called out to Janson. “And who’s the woman, now?”
he asked, his voice tense.
“Ever hear of Donna Hedderman?”
“Mary, mother of God, Janson. This extraction was for one. This craft can’t seat
another person. Dammit, we’re already at the limit of our fuel capacity. We
can’t take another hundred pounds of cargo without running out of fuel before we
reach the landing zone. That’s how fine the tolerances are.”
“I understand.”
“You should. It was your plan, bejaysus. So give me an alternative LZ.”
Janson shook his head. “There’s no place nearer that’s safe, or it wouldn’t be
an alternative.”
“And what does your plan call for now?” the Irishman demanded.
“I’ll stay behind,” Janson said. “There’s enough fuel in the RIB to get me to
Sri Lanka.” Hennessy looked incredulous, and Janson added, “Using reduced speed,
and taking advantage of the currents. Trust me, I know what I’m doing.”
“Sri Lanka’s not safe. You said so yourself, be the holy.”
“Not safe for Novak is what I said. I’ll make do. I’ve prepared contingency
plans, in case something like this came up.” He was only half bluffing. The plan
he had specified would work, but it was not an eventuality he had foreseen.
Now Donna Hedderman, gasping and sputtering, was brought on board the aircraft.
Her face was flushed, her clothes drenched from the spray of the ocean.
“Mr. Janson?” The Hungarian’s voice was reedy and clear, even through the
pulsing rumble of the nacelles. “You’re a very brave man. You humble me, and I’m
not easily humbled.” He clasped Janson’s upper arm. “I won’t forget this.”
Janson bowed his head, then looked straight into Peter Novak’s brown eyes.
“Please do. In fact, I’m going to have to ask you to do so, for reasons of my
security, and that of my team.” It was the professional response. And Janson was
a professional.
A long pause. “You’re a good man,” the humanitarian said. Katsaris helped Peter
Novak up the ramp and into the aircraft and then walked back down it.
The Greek’s face was stern as he faced Janson. “I stay. You go.”
“No, my friend,” Janson said.
“Please,” Katsaris said. “You’re needed there. Mission control, yes? In case
things go wrong.”
“Nothing can go wrong at this point,” Janson said. “Novak’s in capable hands.”
“Alone on the open sea in an inflatable boat—that’s no joke,” Katsaris said
stonily.
“You’re saying I’m too old for a little sailing?”
Katsaris shook his head, unsmiling. “Please, Paul. I should be the one.” His
black hair gleamed in the dawn light.
“Goddammit, no!” Janson said, in a burst of anger. “My call, my screw-up, my
foul. No member of my team takes a risk that should be mine. This conversation
is over.” It was a point of pride—of what passed for manhood or honor in the
shadowy world of secret ops. Katsaris swallowed hard, and did as he was
instructed. But he could not erase the worry from his face.
Janson downshifted the RIB’s motor: fuel efficiency would be increased at a more
moderate speed. Next he verified his direction with the compass on his watch
face.
It would take him three or four hours to reach the coastal plains of
southeastern Sri Lanka. There, he had a contact who could put him on a fast
lorry to Colombo International Airport, assuming that the place wasn’t in the
hands of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam again. It wasn’t the ideal; only,
once again, the best of the available alternatives.
He watched the small turquoise-bodied aircraft rise into the air, describing
something like a ziggurat pattern as it started its ascent to an altitude suited
to extended flight, taking advantage of the prevailing winds for the long trip
to Katchall.
The early-morning sky was now a beautiful azure, almost matching the resin skin
of the rotorcraft, and Janson was filled with a sense of growing calm and relief
as the craft glided through the sky.
He allowed himself a brief moment of pride. It had been a triumph against nearly
impossible odds. Peter Novak was free. The murderous fanatics would be bereft of
their glorious captive and would have gained nothing but humiliation. Janson
leaned back in the boat and watched as the aircraft rose a little higher, its
three-axis movement making it look almost like a thing of nature, a darting
insect.
In the small boat, the approach toward the coastal plains of Sri Lanka would
call for some care on his part; there were sometimes unexpected sandbars that
made things treacherous. But from Colombo, there was a direct flight to Bombay,
and from there the return stateside would be straightforward. He had committed
Marta Lang’s private telephone number to memory, and so had Katsaris; it would
reach her wherever she was. Though the RIB lacked the requisite
telecommunications, he knew that Katsaris would assume command. In a few
minutes, Katsaris would notify Novak’s deputy that the mission had been
accomplished. It was a call that Janson had hoped to be able to make, but
Katsaris had every bit as much a right to it: he had been extraordinary, and
absolutely integral to the long-odds triumph.
If Janson knew the Liberty Foundation, they would probably have assembled an
aerial flotilla by the time the BA609 had returned to Katchall. Janson continued
to watch as the aircraft climbed, soaring and magnificent.
And then—no! it couldn’t be, it had to be a trick of the light!—he saw the
flash, the dazzling, fiery blast and plume of a midair explosion. A pulse of
white bleached the early-morning sky, followed immediately by a vast secondary
flare, the yellow-white of combusted fuel. Small pieces of fuselage began to
drift toward the sea.
No! Oh, Christ, no!
For several long seconds, Janson felt perfectly numb. He closed his eyes and
reopened them: Had he imagined it?
A detached propeller twirled lazily before it crashed into the sea.
Oh, dear God.
It was a catastrophe such as none he had ever witnessed. At once, his heart felt
squeezed, hard, harder. Theo. Theo Katsaris, the closest thing he had to a son.
A man who loved him, and whom he loved. “Let me stay behind,” Theo had begged
him, and—out of vanity, out of pride—Janson had refused him.
Dead. Incinerated before his eyes.
In a kaleidoscope, he saw the faces of the others. Taciturn, even-tempered
Manuel Honwana. Andressen: loyal, methodical, reliable, soft-spoken—easily
underestimated precisely because he was so devoid of self-regard. Sean Hennessy,
whom he had spirited out of an English prison cell, only to serve with a death
sentence. Donna Hedderman, too—the luckless American do-gooder.
Gone. Dead because of him.
And Peter Novak. The greatest humanitarian of a new century. A giant among men.
The peacemaker. A man who had once saved Janson’s life. And the object of the
entire mission.
Dead.
Cremated, three thousand feet above the Indian Ocean.
An incredible triumph had turned, now that day broke, into a nightmare.
It was no accident, no engine malfunction. The double explosion—the blast that
preceded, by a few crucial seconds, the burst of combusted fuel—was telltale.
What had occurred was the result of craft and design. Such craft and design that
four of the best men he knew had been murdered, along with one of the best men
anybody had ever known.
What the hell had happened? Who could have planned such a thing? When had the
plans been laid?
And why? For God’s sakes, why?
Janson sagged to the floor of the RIB, paralyzed by grief, futility, rage; for a
moment, in the open sea, he felt as if he were in a crypt, with a heavy weight
on his chest. Breathing was impossible. The very blood that sluiced through his
veins seemed to congeal. The heaving sea beckoned, with its antidote of
everlasting oblivion. He was harrowed, tormented, and deeply afraid, and he knew
just how to put a stop to it.
But that was not an option.
He would have given his life for any of theirs. He knew that now.