The History Thief: Ten Days Lost (The Sterling Novels) (82 page)

Instantly, the cabin was filled with the noise of a train; a horribly cold wind circled viciously throughout. Door covered his eyes with his forearms and watched in horror as Sheila put a small oxygen tube into her mouth and then jumped from the plane.

Senator Faust screamed out, “You can’t, Sterling! Don’t do this!”

But no one heard his cries; the torrent of wind and noise made it impossible.

Door was frozen to his seat, unable to fathom what he was witnessing.

York was already in the plane’s opened doorway; he put in his oxygen tube, but before leaping, he looked back at Door and Faust and gave them both one very emphatic gesture with his waving middle finger.

He jumped.

Michael rolled his eyes at York’s immaturity but smiled slightly, too; he lowered the protective goggles and inserted his oxygen tube. He looked back at the two men; they both wore the blank expressions of men both sure and unsure of what was happening.

Michael looked at a horrified Francis Q. Door, took the oxygen from his mouth, and shouted, “You were wrong; I do have it in me!”

Michael jumped.

Both men sat in the plane and stared at the opened door. The currents of the tornado-like wind were throwing the contents of the salon into a spinning frenzy.

Michael, York, and the flight attendant were gone.

A loud, heavy metallic banging noise drew their attention. Over and over again, the overbearing collision of metal on metal added to their fear.

Up ahead, the cockpit door violently swung left and right slamming into the wall on either side of it; Door stood with difficulty and lurched awkwardly toward the cockpit.

There, he grabbed onto the flapping door and looked inside.

All he saw was two empty chairs and a mix of dangling wires. The radio had been ripped out.

His face went white.

He had never felt so much fear.

He fell to his knees.

But it wasn’t in prayer.

CHAPTER NINETY-SIX

BELIEVING ISN’T THE
SAME AS TRUSTING
OUTSIDE OF LANGLEY

M
ichael floated through the dark sky.

There was no light; the sun had not yet come up. A small display on the inside of his goggles told him his path was true. The green hue from the night vision made the fall more surreal.

He closed his eyes.

Gravity played with his senses.

He loved it—jumping was the thing he had loved the most about special operations.

The air was frigid, but the polypropylene knit undergarments he wore were doing their job effectively.

He fell through the clouds as wind and little droplets of moisture rushed over his hands, his face, and his ears.

They stung a bit against the small amount of exposed skin.

The past days had been so loud, so full of anger and violence.

Now, all was quiet.

He thought of nearly nothing.

Bliss.

It always felt this way—he was alone in the sky, separated from everything physical.

The moment of peace was far too short. The reminder from the altimeter buzzed against his wrist. It was time; all good things must end.

He opened his eyes.

Michael pulled the ripcord and used the digital display and night vision in his goggles to track expertly his path to the drop zone and guided the RAM air chute to it.

A small array of chem-lights outlined the place to land.

Michael made out four figures: Sheila and York were already there, rolling up their chutes. A third man, their contact, was standing next to a vehicle. The fourth figure was rolled into a ball in the back of the black F-350 heavy duty truck, which demarcated the drop zone. Its driver was leaning against the hood watching as Michael tiptoed his landing five yards from him.

Quickly, Michael pulled in his chute, rolling it arm over arm.

The sun had started to rise.

“Glad to have you back, sir; nice landing,” said Jorge Garrido as he grabbed Michael’s rolled up chute and set it into the opened bed of the truck. “Langley has been apprised of your situation; the information that you downloaded onto the servers while in Portugal was invaluable. I’ve been given a message from the director himself.”

“What is it?”

“‘Good job’ and ‘let’s play golf this Sunday’ to discuss. His treat.”

It was back to business for both the director and Michael.

Without warning, Michael grabbed Garrido by his collar and threw him against the hood of the truck and then dragged him to the ground. There, Michael shoved his boot into Garrido’s neck; Garrido wanted to cough, but the pressure was too much.

“Mr. Garrido, I’m the deputy director of the National Clandestine Services. I don’t have room in my organization for an officer whose allegiances are elsewhere.”

Michael released the pressure somewhat. “So, tell me, Mr. Garrido; whom do you serve?”

Jorge coughed violently but looked directly into Michael’s eyes. “Sir, I’m a Watchman, but I swear, I belong to the CIA—just like the colonel; he was the head of the Swiss Guard and a Watchman, but his loyalty was to the pope. I’ve done nothing that contradicts my oath!”

“How can I believe that?” spat Michael.

“In the bed of the truck,” Jorge coughed, “under the blue tarp.”

Michael nodded at York who went to the truck and pulled back a blue plastic tarp. “Hey, Doc, you friends with a short and chunky bald guy that looks like George from
Seinfeld
?”

Michael glanced at Jorge who said, “A gift, sir. He’s been playing both sides. He’s the one that broke into our database and extracted the information on Operation Merlin; he’s the one that leaked it to the Intelligence Oversight Committee.”

“Can you prove that, Mr. Garrido?”

“Yes, yes, I can. I traced the IP that pinged the servers. It took some doing, but I eventually got through all of his backdoors, traps, and firewalls. The IP address went straight to his terminal in his office. I’ve made a backup of his computer; it shows everything: dates, times, files—everything that he’s been doing for the past three years.”

York pulled Stanford from the bed of the truck. His mouth was gagged, and a trickle of dried blood marked the place between his nostrils and upper lip. Behind his gag, Stanford glared at Garrido.

“Bring him here, kid.”

York complied.

Stanford was in front of Michael. When Michael yanked out the gag, Stanford spat a bit. He looked at both Michael and York before saying, “I see that you both aren’t dead. How nice for you two.”

“He killed the section chief, sir,” offered Garrido.

“I should’ve killed you!” an angered Stanford yelled. “We had a deal!”

Michael grabbed Stanford’s arm and yanked up the sleeve. On his forearm was a purple and red, bruised bite mark. “Seems you’ve been busy.”

It was the bite from his wife. Michael had seen it on the recording he had been shown before the Yukon cleaved a small vehicle in half and then flipped with him still in it.

Michael could feel the anger beginning deep within him; at his core, a small pit of pure hatred began to swell. He clenched his teeth and narrowed his eyes at the man who had put his hands on his wife, at the man who had kidnapped and delivered her to that sociopath.

Michael moved closer to Stanford.

“There’s not a thing you can do to me that will stop us. The Order is everywhere, Sterling. Have your moment, but we’ll be back.”

His moment would be had, but not this way.

Michael put his mouth to Stanford’s ear. “The Order may be back, but you won’t.” His next words were a command. “Gag him and put him back in the truck, kid.”

“Gladly.”

York shoved the gag back in, not all too kindly; Stanford shouted muffled protests in vain. With a knee to the man’s belly, York doubled him over and then picked him up over his shoulder like a sack of dirtied clothing. With a very loud thud, Stanford was slammed into the bed of the truck.

He was knocked unconscious.

Michael ignored York’s manhandling of the man; there were more important matters to attend.

“Now get your ass off the dirt and show me what else you have, and, Mr. Garrido, you’d better impress me. I’m not yet convinced that I should trust you. We’re about ten clicks from anyone; no one would hear the bullet.”

Jorge swallowed dryly and pulled himself to his feet. “Sir, I’m with the Watchmen, but I’m CIA first. The Watchmen’s role is to only step in when the Order appears. That’s all I’ve done; all I will ever do. I would not betray my country; and I would not betray the CIA. Stanford approached me; he said he knew I was a Watchman and that he wanted to leave the Order. I never believed him, but I saw my chance to smoke out more of them.”

York eyed him cautiously, Michael and Sheila, too.

Michael nodded toward the truck.

Pleasantries aside, Jorge opened up the rear door of the truck’s crew cab; on the seat was an opened laptop.

York moved closer to Michael and whispered, “Do you believe him?”

“He brought us Stanford, and he’s going to find that Antonov. He’s also the one that got us on the Gulfstream. Yeah. I believe him, but, kid, make no mistake and learn this fast: in this business, believing someone and trusting them are two completely different things.”

York nodded.

Michael walked away from York and stood behind Garrido as he typed. York and Sheila followed.

“It took some doing, sir, but I cross-referenced the Antonov-225’s fueling patterns. The plane’s parent company, Volga Dnepr, is based out of the UK. They regularly position and deposition the 225 out of Sweden, but the last time the plane was fueled, it was in the northeastern corner of Russia.”

“That’s a bit of hop from Sweden.”

“Yes, sir, it is.”

“When, Mr. Garrido?”

“About four hours ago, sir.”

York interrupted, “But it could fly anywhere, right?”

Garrido replied, “Yes, Staff Sergeant, you are correct. So, I cracked into Volga’s servers and found the most recent invoices and flight plan for the 225. The problem was, the invoices didn’t make a lot of sense.”

“How so?” asked Michael.

“Sir, the 225 fueled last in Russia, a few hundred kilometers north of Magadan. The plane doesn’t have enough fuel to make a trip safely to Afghanistan, and the flight plan was ambiguous—it listed the flight as
maintenance.
The flight plan shows the cargo’s weight along with the plane’s just north of 600,000 kilos; it’s impossible that the 225 could land in Afghanistan—any part of it—with the amount of fuel and cargo it took on.”

“It’s going to refuel somewhere else then?”

“Negative, sir; Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan lie between Russia and Afghanistan. There’s no airport or landing strip friendly to a Russian tail number,” Garrido replied.

“China?” asked York.

“No way is that plane going anywhere near Chinese airspace, Staff Sergeant; China’s friendly only to China. They’d put a SAM right up its tail in a heartbeat.”

Michael stood upright and turned away from the computer and the truck; he walked away a few feet and then stopped. His hands were on his hips as he thought.

The moments passed slowly by.

Garrido looked at York, who just shrugged.

Finally, Michael asked, “How close, Garrido; how close can that plane get?”

“One hundred clicks, sir. And that’s if they fly at the most fuel-conserving speed.”

One hundred clicks. Sixty-two miles.

Michael looked up into the sky.

So did York and Sheila.

The sun had crested.

The Gulfstream that they had jumped from was on a path to the horizon. It was already gone. The only thing left was a fading contrail.

The plane was on a trajectory to being no more.

But he wasn’t thinking about the Gulfstream. His mind was on the Antonov-225 cargo plane; it was carrying, into the hands of terrorists, uraniumenriching centrifuges and the blueprints to build a nuclear weapon.

Michael spun around and closed the distance between himself and the other intelligence officers. “It’s not going to land.”

“What?” asked Garrido.

York understood immediately. “A heavy drop! They’re going to dump the plane!”

Michael nodded. “Mr. Garrido, what’s the cruising speed of the Antonov?”

“Around eight hundred kilometers per hour, sir.”

Michael squinted his eyes and did the math. “At that rate, and after all fuel is exhausted, the Antonov would need to glide for about seven and a half minutes to be in Afghanistan’s airspace—is this possible, Mr. Garrido?”

Garrido squinted heavily and did his own unspoken calculations. “With the right pilot, yes, and I mean the
right
pilot, along with the most favorable tailwind imaginable, I believe that it is possible—but not much more.”