Mission Liberty (22 page)

“What do you mean?” Gabrielle said. “Where is he?”

“Somebody took him,” Sykes said, trying the door to the helicopter, which opened. “Let’s get inside. I’m feeling a bit conspicuous,
standing out here in the open.”

Sykes closed the helicopter door behind him. It was cool inside with the air-conditioning running, which meant MacArthur had
left the auxiliary power unit on. An alert on his CIM informed him that a convoy of LPLF trucks was speeding toward the airfield
and would arrive in ten minutes.

“Can we take the limo?” Gabrielle said.

“Negative,” Sykes said, trying to think. “It’s out of gas.” He saw a pair of Jeeps parked on the apron by the hangar door.
It would take him a while to steal one.

“What about this?” the actress asked him. “Can you fly this?”

“Can I fly a helicopter?” Sykes said. “No, I can’t.”

“You said you’ve flown in them hundreds of times,” she argued.

“In the back,” Sykes said. “It’s not like a car—Daddy doesn’t let you sit on his lap and pretend.”

“What are our alternatives?” she asked.

“Unfortunately, none,” Sykes said. He eyed the cockpit’s control panel, picking up the checklist he’d seen MacArthur referring
to. It was written in a language he didn’t recognize. The labels on the dials and instruments were in English. As far as he
could tell, the fuel tanks were full. He dialed a number on his SATphone, then took a radio headset and wedged the phone next
to his ear so that his hands would be free. The meter on the face of the telephone, indicating remaining battery power, was
down to a single bar.

“Scottie,” he said when he got through. “This is urgent. Patch me through, ASAP, with a chopper pilot—somebody who knows the
Chinook. Forty-six, I think. Maybe forty-seven. I’m going to need some help.”

Thirty seconds later, Sykes heard a voice, a pilot named Captain Evans who asked him what the problem was.

“The problem is, I’m not a pilot.” Sykes said, “but we have no other means of evac.’”

“All right,” Evans said hesitantly. “I suppose if we take it slow…”

“Let’s take it fast,” Sykes said. “We’re going to have company soon.”

“Okay,” Evans said. “Why don’t you start by telling me what you’re sitting in?”

“I’m in a Chinook.”

“What model?”

“I don’t know,” Sykes said. “Where would I find the model number?”

“Oh, Jesus,” the actress said, rolling her eyes.

“It should be painted on the tail, on the aft pylon, below the service numbers,” Evans said. “Why don’t you get out of the
helicopter and check? It’s rather important.”

When Sykes returned, he told Evans they were in a CH-47D, which Evans told him, sounding relieved, was a good model to fly
solo, with a FADEC or Full Authority Digital Engine Control system that made it something like starting a car.

“I gather the APU is on and you’re in ground idle. There are two levers on the console above you. Those are your engine condition
levers. They’re about eight inches long with knobs on the end. Advance them forward simultaneously until they lock. The rpm
gauge on the instrument panel in front of you should read 100 percent. Do you see it? It’s a white needle…”

“One hundred percent,” Sykes said. The engines thundered as the aircraft began to vibrate.

“Next to the engine condition levers, to the left, you’ll see three switches. These are your generators. Push the two leftmost
switches forward to shut them off. You’ll also see two switches to the right of the condition levers marked PTS—these are
your power transfer switches. You need to turn them off to pressurize your flight controls…”

“What’s he saying?” Gabrielle shouted above the roar.

“Be with you in a minute,” Sykes told her.

“Now you can turn the APU generator off,” Evans said. “That’s the switch next to the two generators you already turned off.
Now, on the center console, you should see a rotary knob marked AFCS in the off position. That’s your Automated Flight Control
System. I want you to look at the controls. Do you see the artificial horizon indicator?”

“Got it,” Sykes said.

“Your airspeed indicator is to the left and your altimeter is to the right. The circle below it is your compass. Above it,
you should see the Master Caution Panel. Do you see a pair of lights marked AFCS? I want you to turn the rotary knob to the
position marked ‘both on.’ The two AFCS lights on the Caution Panel should extinguish.”

“Got it,” Sykes said. The rotors on the bird were turning at full speed, three in the front and three in the back, spinning
in opposite directions. He gave Gabrielle Duquette one of the MAC-10s and told her to cover the hangar if someone came out
and tried to stop them. She took the weapon reluctantly. He saw a line of white trucks in the distance, pausing at the airport
gates.

“Now I need you to lock down the aft wheels,” Evans said. “You should see a swivel switch on the rear left portion of the
center console. I want you to pull that back…”

“Got it,” Sykes said.

The trucks approached.

“Excellent,” Evans said.

“Any way we could expedite would be appreciated,” Sykes told Evans, watching the trucks as the gate swung open.

“There’s a lever on your left, mounted to the floor,” Evans said. “That’s the collective. It changes the pitch on the rotor
blades…”

“You can tell me everything you want about how helicopters work later,” Sykes said, the trucks approaching. “We really have
to be going.”

“Pull up on the collective and hold it at the point where you achieve lift,” Evans said. “When you’re twenty or thirty meters
up, you can nudge the cyclic forward a few inches. That’s the stick between your legs. You’ll feel the aircraft tilt slightly
…”

Sykes throttled up as the massive aircraft rose clumsily into the sky. He saw below him where soldiers trying to aim rifles
at them were knocked to the ground by the rotor wash. If anybody fired on them, it was too loud in the cockpit to hear it.
Following Captain Evans’s instructions, he turned the aircraft and accelerated just as the lead truck in the convoy chased
them across the tarmac. Then they were fully airborne and flying, with the distance between them and the airport increasing.

“So far so good,” Sykes said. “Captain Evans? Hello?”

The battery in his SATphone was dead.

It was going to make landing a bit tricky.

DeLuca, Vasquez, and Asabo had returned to the Hotel Liger in Baku Da’al earlier that morning, spending the night in the rain
forest canopy and descending the ropes at first light. The Park Motel was deserted when they returned to it, the bar looted,
as was the lobby and all of the guest cottages. On the banks of the pond, they saw three crocodiles that had been shot to
pieces and coarsely butchered, their heads and claws taken, the rest bloated in the sun and infested with flies and coprophagia.
The Cressida had been shot to pieces as well, the passenger compartment filled with debris and broken glass, and it had been
set on fire, too, but the tires were intact and, to DeLuca’s amazement, the vehicle started when he turned the key.

“You gotta love Toyotas,” he said.

“The guy at the rental desk isn’t going to like it,” Vasquez said.

As they drove, they listened to the radio. They heard a DJ who seemed to be ranting and raving, a lively reggae tune playing
in the background as he spoke. DeLuca asked Asabo to translate.

“This is a Muslim station,” Asabo said. “He is saying to kill all the Christians and all the white people. That the Ligerian
People’s Liberation Army cannot do the job alone, so they need the help of every patriotic Muslim and Kum and Da. He says
the Fasori have oppressed them for too long. Now is the time to strike and strike hard, until your arm is weary, but Allah
will give you new strength. That sort of thing.”

DeLuca turned the dial until he stopped at a different station, where a different DJ was speaking with equal vehemence. Again,
Asabo translated.

“This is a Christian station,” Asabo said. “He’s saying that the Fasori and the Da have been friends for a hundred years and
that the Kum are cold-blooded killers who’ve tried to drive a wedge between them. He says the Da and the Fasori people must
kill the Kum. And that the government will try to help them, but the government cannot do it alone.”

Asabo stopped.

“I’m sorry,” he said at last. “It’s hard to listen to these statements. They’re both saying the same thing. My country is
insane.”

When they arrived, they saw that the hotel’s front courtyard was crowded with refugees, women and children crying and huddled
on blankets beneath makeshift tarps, guarded by AU and UN soldiers who were too few to resist any sort of significant attack.
There were two buses in the driveway, each painted white with the blue United Nations logo on the front, back, and sides and
the letters UN large enough to be unmistakable. UN soldiers loaded whites and Europeans onto the buses for evacuation. DeLuca
noted that Tom Kruger and Roddy Hamilton and the journalist he’d met at the poker game and knew only as Kurt had boarded the
bus as well.

DeLuca was standing on the porch when a slender white man carrying a small suitcase approached him.

“Excuse me?” the man said. “Would you happen to know where I might find any American military personnel?”

“Military?” DeLuca said. “I don’t think they’re here yet. Is there something I could do for you?”

“I’m a bit confused,” the man said. “My name is Andrew Rowen. I haven’t been able to make any phone calls for over a week,
and then I heard there was fighting. I’m not sure what’s going on. I’ve been sitting at my house, waiting for someone to call.”

“Join the club,” DeLuca said. “Reverend Andrew Rowen, from Humboldt, Texas?”

“Yes,” the man said, smiling. “I was hoping maybe there’d be some sort of transportation available.”

DeLuca pointed to the buses in the courtyard.

“That’s about all that’s available,” he said.

“Going to Port Ivory?”

“Straight to the airport, I believe,” DeLuca said.

“Thank you,” the man said

DeLuca knew he probably should have made special arrangements for the president’s friend, but didn’t—he could take his chances,
with everybody else.

DeLuca found his weapons in his room where he’d left them. Both his phone and his CIM had succumbed to the moisture from submersion.
He had backups in his room as well. He considered telling somebody that the president’s personal guru was alive and well,
but with all the journalists on the bus, the news would spread soon enough, and it was the kind of political media nonsense
DeLuca stayed out of, whenever possible. He turned on his backup CIM. Once he was uplinked, he saw that there’d been heavy
fighting in the northern suburbs, according to IMINT, government columns of tanks and troop transports meeting a force of
rebels armed with RPGs that were effective against the armored vehicles. The airport had been taken, but the road south was
still open. DeLuca could see plumes of smoke on the horizon from his balcony, and he heard the distant rumble of artillery
fire.

“What’ve you got on my people?” he asked his son.

“I wish I had better news,” Scottie said. “Sykes is on a Jolly Green, flying north to Kumari. Mack hasn’t reported in and
doesn’t answer, but we have her signal, south of Kumari and moving. I think she’s okay. We have Dennis’s signal, but it hasn’t
moved since yesterday. That might just mean he dropped his phone. Or he could be hurt.”

“Update me as soon as you hear anything,” DeLuca said.

“What are your plans?” Scott asked. “I was worried about you.”

“Spent the night in a tree,” DeLuca said. “I need to brief the general at his earliest convenience. After that, unless he
has any further need for us here, I was thinking maybe we’d mosey off into the sunset. I’m not sure what else we can do. But
now I’m going to have to go get Dennis, unless he can move on his own power.”

“I’ll do my best,” Scott said. “LeDoux’s at a briefing, I believe. I’ll pass your message on.”

“Appreciate it,” DeLuca said. “Pass this on, too—we strongly recommend taking out the radio stations. They’re not doing anybody
any good right now. We’ll have to rebuild them, once this is over.”

“I’ll pass it on,” Scott said.

DeLuca paused to send a brief e-mail to MacKenzie, tapping with his stylus on the tiny onscreen keyboard on his pocket computer.
He’d been meaning to tell her in person. He wrote:

Mack,

Ackroyd does not check out. Be careful. No record of publishing, etc. No Google. Past suspiciously blank. I suspect identity
a cover. CIA? MI-6? Just a thought.

D

DeLuca went to the lobby, a few minutes early—he and Vasquez and Asabo were going to rendezvous there. He hadn’t eaten anything
in twenty-four hours and had ventured into the dining room to see if there was anything left from the continental breakfast
when he saw a familiar face, a woman sitting at a table next to a man he didn’t recognize.

“
There
you are,” Evelyn Warner said. “I was going to give it a few more minutes and give up on you. Your friend Mary Dorsey told
me I’d find you here, and here you are. Donald Brown, I’d like you to meet my ex-husband, Hewitt Lloyd. Call him Hugh. But
don’t be too nice to him because he’s being something of a shit.”

“Perhaps you could help us,” Lloyd said. “We’re trying to settle an argument. I say it’s a good idea, when you’re caught in
the middle of a war about which you can do not a thing, and the enemy troops are bearing down on you, and if they catch you,
they’re quite certain to kill you and quite possibly do any number of nasty things to you first, to take flight and move to
a safe place when you have the chance. Evelyn, on the other hand, seems to think it’s a good idea to stay where you are, solely
because the person advising her to flee is someone she’s always had a hard time admitting could ever possibly be right. What
do you think?”

“I think if I had to choose between which war I want to be in the middle of, yours or Liger’s, I’d prefer to step out into
the courtyard and take my chances,” DeLuca said.