Fly by Night (6 page)

“Okay,” Schmitt said. “What do you want?”

“For starters, a few answers—since you
are
the chief pilot.”

“Chief pilot?” Schmitt gestured toward the door. “Of that bunch? I’m more like a parole officer.”

Davis thought,
He still has his people skills
. Yet there was a grain of truth in the comment. The pilots here would be journeymen, a global collection of the adventurous, furloughed, and malcontent.

Schmitt picked up, “I’ve got fourteen pilots to run seven airplanes. It’s my job to keep them in line.”

Davis couldn’t resist. “It’s your job to keep them operationally safe. Last month you had sixteen pilots and eight airplanes.”

“Go to hell.”

“Right. And now that we’ve settled that, tell me what you know about the crash.”

“It was a maintenance check flight. They’d just rerigged the flight controls, done some work on the aileron mechanism. The airplane took off at nine o’clock that night. By ten thirty, we realized it was overdue. We tried to raise the flight on our company radio frequency, but there was no reply, so we reported it to the Sudanese aviation authorities. They couldn’t find the airplane either. It was officially declared missing at around midnight. There were no reports of a landside crash, so we figured it went down off the coastline. According to the flight plan that’s where they’d been headed for the checkout work.”

“How far off the coastline?”

“I don’t know. An air traffic controller said he remembered seeing the airplane over the water for a while, but then it just disappeared. He figured the crew had dropped down to screw around at low level.”

“Your guys do that a lot?”

“Never to my knowledge.”

Schmitt and Davis locked eyes again.

Davis asked, “Do the Sudanese authorities keep records of their radar data?”

Schmitt laughed. “In this country? They can’t keep track of who’s born and who dies. Sudan’s Civil Aviation Authority isn’t exactly the FAA. Sometimes you can’t even raise the air traffic controllers on the radio. They just disappear, walk away to get a cup of tea or pray or whatever. We don’t worry about stuff like that. We fly, with or without them.”

“Should I put that in my report?”

“I don’t care what you put in your damned report. That threat rings hollow with me, Davis. If the Sudanese government steps in and shuts down FBN Aviation, it’ll be up and flying again inside a week. Same airplanes, same pilots, new name. You know what FBN stands for?”

“It’s a Bahamian law firm. Franklin, Banks, and Noble.”

Schmitt shook his head. “That’s what’s on the letterhead, but the pilots know the real name—Fly by Night Aviation.” He chuckled. “A limited liability corporation.”

Davis actually saw the humor in that. “Right. So tell me, when this airplane was discovered to be missing, was there a search?”

“According to the government there was. I saw a couple of the helicopters down the street launch. As far as I know they didn’t find anything. That airplane just disappeared into a big, deep ocean. Things like that happen.”

“Is that what you told the pilots’ next of kin? ‘Things like that happen.’”

Schmitt’s eyes glazed over to his trademark glare.

“Was there any record of a mayday call?” Davis asked.

Schmitt shrugged. “Not that I ever heard about. If I was you, I’d call back to D.C. If there was any call for help on 121.5, the good old U.S. Navy probably has a record of it.”

Schmitt actually had a point. The U.S. Navy was plowing continuously over the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, every day and night. If there had been any transmission on 121.5 MHz, the international distress frequency, they’d have it on record.

Davis asked, “What kind of voice and data recorders do your airplanes have?”

“You kidding me? These airplanes are Third World military surplus. We get them because places like Burkina Faso and Antigua figure they’re past their useful lives. If they have any recording devices, we don’t keep them up.”

Davis was no expert when it came to equipment requirements for civil aircraft, but he was sure this was some kind of regulatory violation. He let it go for now.

Schmitt suggested, “If you really want to figure out why that airplane went down, you should start looking for the wreckage. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to dredge it up.”

Easy to say,
Davis thought.
Not so easy to do
. “Tell me about the pilots. Who were they?”

“A couple of Ukrainian guys.”

“Ukrainian?”

“I hire captains from all over the world. The only requirement is lots of DC-3 pilot-in-command time. No choice, really.”

“Why is that?”

“Because the Sudanese government, as an informal condition of our operating certificate, has dictated that we hire local copilots.”

“Sudanese pilots?”

“Unfortunately. It’s basically an ab initio program. The government supplies candidates, usually some big shot’s brat kid. They fly a few hours in light airplanes, then get sent to us to build time as first officers.”

“Which means your captains are essentially flying solo.”

“Like I said, I have to get experienced guys. I just had another of these damned Sudanese kids show up last week, which brings me to three.”

“But the accident involved two expatriate pilots,” Davis said, “Ukrainians. Neither of them was paired with one of these local copilots?”

“That crew was an exception. Neither spoke very good English, so I kept them together. I figured they could at least talk to each other.”

Davis realized that Schmitt would likely regard this as a sound management decision. He asked, “You have any records on these guys?”

Schmitt got up and went to his filing cabinet.

As he began to dig, Davis said, “And while you’re at it, check for the rest. The usual stuff—flight plan, logbook records, weather.”

“This will probably surprise you,” Schmitt said sarcastically, “but I’ve already collected all that. Damnedest thing—I actually like one of those stupid Cossacks.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

While Schmitt was busy at his filing cabinet, Davis studied the room. From a practical standpoint, it was standard issue for a chief pilot. A big desk for sorting papers. A cheap carpet for tap dancing. Two chairs facing the boss’s desk that looked uncomfortable, no arms to grip when you were getting your butt chewed. But if the furniture was conventional, the décor was something else.

Davis was no expert when it came to interior design, but it didn’t take a professional to see that Schmitt’s office was a testosterone-fueled calamity. There was a deer’s head mounted on the wall over his desk—or, to be exact, something called a springbok. On the file cabinet was some kind of medium-sized creature, like a Tasmanian devil or something. It was presented standing on its hind legs, baring pointed teeth, and had stitch marks up the gut as if Dr. Frankenstein had done the taxidermy. A bandolier of 7.62-mm rounds was hanging from a hat rack. Altogether, it was like some kind of half-assed rod and gun club. What the room lacked was anything personal. There was the obligatory government-issue portrait of Sudan’s glorious leader, but no awards or plaques of commendation, no family pictures. Davis remembered that Schmitt had been single with no kids, and he doubted that had changed. The closest thing to a personal touch was a hand-carved wooden nameplate, the same trinket every Air Force pilot who’d ever been stationed in Korea had planted on his desk.

Schmitt sent a manila folder spinning across the desk and sat down.

“There,” he said, “that’s everything I’ve got. Take it if you want.”

Davis did. But instead of opening it, he said, “Tell me about your maintenance program.”

“I’ve got two mechanics, a Jordanian and an American.”

“Are they good?”

“They have their licenses.”

“Where do they work? Is there a hangar somewhere?”

“There’s a remote hangar, but we don’t use it.”

“I think I saw it,” Davis said. “Why would anybody build a hangar way out there in the scrub like that?”

“Around here? Probably because somebody’s brother had the asphalt contract. And if you’re thinking about taking a look, you can forget about it.”

“Why’s that?”

“The place is off-limits. Khoury and his bunch don’t give tours.”

“That seems a little secretive,” Davis suggested. “Is that where Khoury hides the cargo he doesn’t want people to see?”

“Damned if I know.”

“And would you tell me if you
did
know?”

There was a long silence, until Schmitt crossed his thick forearms on the desk, and said, “You know what I think, Davis? I think you’re going to make this whole thing personal. I don’t think you even care about this accident.”

“You’re half right.”

Schmitt sat there looking like a well-shaken beer, pressure building, just waiting to blow.

“I want two things,” Davis said. “First, a place to stay. Second, I want a good look at the flight line. I need to see how things run around here.”

“All right. I’ve got one empty room.”

Davis wanted to make a crack that he likely had two empty rooms, but he held back.

“And as for the flight line tour,” Schmitt said, “help yourself.”

“I don’t need any clearance? An ID or something?”

Schmitt fished into his drawer and pulled out a small plastic card. He tossed it over the desk and Davis caught it. It was Schmitt’s FBN Aviation ID.

“Try that. Staple your own picture on if you want. I haven’t used it since I got here.”

Davis dropped it back on the desk.

Schmitt chuckled. “Welcome to Africa, Jammer.”

Schmitt gave Davis directions and a key—not a plastic card with a magnetic strip, but the old-fashioned metal kind with teeth. Davis went to find his room, and as he walked through the operations building, people stopped what they were doing and stared at him. Maybe they’d been briefed that somebody was coming to perform an investigation. Maybe they’d been told to look professional or pretend to help. Rumors had to be swirling by now—Davis had been here all of twenty minutes, which was plenty of time. Whatever the case, the looks weren’t much different than those he’d gotten in a hundred other places.

A short hallway ran from the operations building to the residence area, and Davis took the stairs to his third-floor room. When he walked in, the air conditioner was blowing at hurricane force, the room chilled to the level of a meat locker. The place stank of sweat and nicotine. Davis went to the thermostat and saw it had been turned full cold, probably by the cleaning staff. People did things like that when they weren’t paying the electric bill. He turned it off and took stock of the place. It was a studio with an attached bathroom. There was one window, one chair, but no desk. A nightstand carried a cheap alarm clock. The bed was shoved against a wall that had to be common to the elevator shaft. Just then, the window began to rattle as a jet outside thundered to takeoff power. Davis figured Schmitt had given him the most uncomfortable room of those available, maybe hoping he wouldn’t get any sleep. Truth was, the bed looked better than most to Davis. There was no headboard or footboard. For a guy his size, that was a home run.

Davis went to the window. The cheap curtains had clothespins clipped to the inner edges. He pulled them off, and bright light streamed in. He could see the runway in the distance, and one corner of the main passenger terminal. Closer in was a parking lot, half asphalt
and half dirt, that would hold a hundred cars. There were three. Right under his nose was a recovering swimming pool, bone dry, two men slapping Spackle in the deep end. What wasn’t there—and what he’d hoped to see from the third floor—was FBN’s hangar. He knew from the satellite photos that it was roughly a mile east of here, but his internal compass kicked in and told him that east was at his back.

Davis retrieved the file Schmitt had given him. It seemed thin, weighed almost nothing. Even so, there might be something useful inside, one golden nugget that could be a pretext for gaining access to the hangar. He opened the folder, spread the contents on the bed, and started to read.

When the helicopter landed at Khartoum International Airport, Rafiq Khoury was collected by his ragtag security detail. The motorcade consisted of three vehicles—a well-worn Land Rover sandwiched between a pair of teknicals. The teknicals were both small Toyota pickups, one brown and the other probably white, though it was hard to tell through the shell of dust and grime. Armed with Soviet PK 7.62-mm machine guns, the two makeshift fighting vehicles were fast and mobile fixtures of warfare in North Africa.

The procession moved quickly—always preferred here—and snaked up the mile-long ribbon of asphalt that led from the main airfield to FBN Aviation’s hangar. The pavement was unusually high quality, as it had been laid down not as a road but rather a taxiway, a logistical tributary that connected the remote hangar to the main airfield. The hangar was no different from ten others that dotted Khartoum International, if one could ignore the fence and the armed men stationed around the perimeter. Roughly a square, it was two hundred feet in each dimension and fronted by a wide asphalt pad that fed the main doors, two massive sliding panels designed to accept aircraft as large as a Boeing 737. As had been the case for some months, however, the doors remained closed.

Khoury undertook his usual inspection as they approached the hangar. Two months ago, the place had been busier. Trucks, equipment, and crates moving in a regular flow. Now things were quieter, the only
constant being his men. For the moment, he saw them positioned correctly and looking alert. But then, they had known their imam was coming. He doubted they were so vigilant at other times, when his signature parade was not bearing down. A few likely remained watchful, held in line by the constancy of their faith, but they were the exceptions. It all mattered little to Khoury, because in his mind they were guarding against a threat that could not possibly exist. The Americans might search from above with their spy satellites, or—he mused—their high-tech drones, but there was no chance of enemy agents infiltrating this place. Khoury had far greater worries.