W. Griffin - The Hostage

Ambassador Silvio, Alex Darby, and their wives came back through the fuselage.

Darby wordlessly offered his hand, and then, after the wives had done the same, started to help the high-heeled women down the ramp. Ambassador Silvio put out his hand.

"I expect we'll be seeing more of one another?" he asked.

"Yes, sir, I'm sure we will," Castillo said, and then remembered something. "I won't be needing this anymore, sir. Thank you."

He took the 9mm Beretta from the small of his back, cleared its action, and handed it to the ambassador, who matter-of-factly stuck it in his waistband.

"Muchas gracias, mi amigo," Silvio said. "And I don't mean only for the pistol."

Then he touched Castillo's shoulder and walked quickly down the ramp. The moment he had cleared it, the Air Commandos who had been on perimeter guard came trotting up to it. The moment the last of them had cleared the door, there was the whine of an electric motor and the ramp started to retract.

Castillo saw Chief Master Sergeant Dotterman with his hand on the ramp control, and then a moment later heard his voice on the headset.

"All aboard and closing the door, Colonel."

"Roger that," Torine's voice came over the headset. "Starting Number Three."

Five seconds after that, Dotterman reported. "All closed, Colonel."

"Roger that. Starting Number Two."

Castillo looked at Dotterman.

Dotterman, smiling, was bowing him into the fuselage in an "After you, Gaston!" gesture.

Castillo smiled back.

What I should do now is give Mrs. Masterson her husband's medal.

Fuck it. I don't want to see her right now.

Castillo sat down in the nearest aluminum pipe-framed nylon seat, next to one of the Air Commandos, and fastened the seat harness. Then he moved the switch on the headseat to the RADIO position.

"Ezeiza, U.S. Air Force Zero-Three-Eight-One," Torine's voice called. "Ready to taxi."

Ten seconds later, the Globemaster III began to move. They were still climbing to cruise altitude when Castillo unfastened his harness and made his way through the fuselage and up the stairs to the airliner seats. He stopped, took the Grand Cross of the Great Liberator from his pocket, folded the silk ribbon as best he could, and then walked to Mrs. Elizabeth Masterson.

"Mrs. Masterson," he said, extending it to her. "The officer in charge of the honor guard unpinned this from the colors and asked me to give it to you."

She took it from him, looked at it for a long moment, softly said, "Thank you," then put the medal in her purse.

When she looked up again, Castillo had moved to the head of the stairs.

"Mr. Castillo!" she called.

He stopped. When she realized that he was not going to come to her, she unfastened her seat belt and walked to him.

"I wanted to thank you for everything you've done," she said. "And to tell you how sorry I am about Miss Schneider and the sergeant."

Castillo didn't reply. He looked past her for a long moment, told himself to keep his thoughts private. But when he looked back at Mrs. Masterson, the scene of the shot-up embassy BMW fresh in his mind, he said, "His name was Sergeant Roger Markham, Mrs. Masterson. He was twenty years old. And in my judgment, that very nice young man would still be alive and Special Agent Schneider would not be in a hospital bed with three bullet wounds-and her jaw wired shut-if you had been truthful about the people who abducted you."

"How dare you talk to me in that manner?"

"My orders are to protect you and your children, Mrs. Masterson. I have done that to the best of my ability- and will continue to do so-until I am relieved of the responsibility. But there is nothing in my orders requiring me to politely pretend I think you were telling the truth to the officers investigating your abduction and your husband's murder when you and I both know you were lying."

He met her eyes for a moment, then nodded, and went down the stairs to the cargo section of the fuselage. Twenty minutes later, Chief Master Sergeant Dotterman walked up to Castillo, who was sitting on the floor of the fuselage-a good deal of experience in riding Globemasters had taught him the floor was far more comfortable than the aluminum pipe-supported nylon seats-and mimed that Castillo should put the headset back on.

When he had done so, Dotterman leaned over him and flipped the switch on the headset to INTERCOM.

"Castillo, you on?" Torine's voice asked.

"Yes, sir."

"You want to come up here, please?"

"Yes, sir."

Well, I put Jake Torine on the spot, didn't I?

In addition to flying the airplane and his other worries, he's had to contend with a furious female who didn't like being called a liar and wasted no time whatever to complain to the most senior officer she could find.

And he didn't need that. Torine is one of the good guys.

But am I sorry I told her what I thought?

Not one goddamn little bit!

Castillo pulled himself to his feet and went through the fuselage again and up to the cockpit. There was no way he could avoid seeing Mrs. Masterson, but if she saw him, she gave no sign.

He walked between the pilot's and copilot's seats, and when Colonel Torine didn't seem to be aware of his presence, leaned down and touched his shoulder.

Torine turned and looked up at him, smiling.

"Dotterman told me you were on the floor back there," Torine said. "If you want to lay down, Charley, and God knows you have every reason to be tired, just pull the armrests out from one of the seats. I've even got a blanket and pillow I'll loan you."

He's neither pissed nor embarrassed, which he would be if the Widow Masterson had complained to him about me.

Well, maybe she's waiting to tell the President what a cold-hearted bastard I am.

And I really don't care if she does.

"Thanks, but I'm not sleepy, sir."

"Well, then, maybe you'd like to sit in the right seat for a while and see how real pilots aerial navigate over the Amazon jungle?"

"Is that where we are, over the Amazon jungle?"

"I don't know where we are," Torine said. He nodded at the copilot. "I'm relying on him, and my painful experience with him has been that he often gets lost in a closet. How about getting out of there, Bill, and we'll see if this Army aviator can find out where we are?"

The copilot smiled and unfastened his harness.

When Castillo had taken his seat and strapped himself in, the copilot leaned over him and pointed out a screen on which their location was shown. A well-detailed electronicmap showed that they were about two hundred miles from Buenos Aires, a few miles north of Rosario. The screen also showed their altitude, airspeed, course, and the distance and time to alternate airfields. Castillo was familiar with the equipment. There was a civilian version of it in the Lear Bombardier. Guided by data from three-or more-satellites fed through a computer, the location and ground speed provided on the screen was accurate within six feet and three miles per hour.

I wonder if Tom got Fernando permission to land at Keesler?

"That gadget takes all the fun out of flying," Colonel Torine said. "It was much more fun when you could stick your head out into the slipstream and see if the highway was still under you." [FOUR] Keesler Air Force Base Biloxi, Mississippi 2035 25 July 2005

As Castillo sat in the jump seat while Torine lined the Globemaster up with the Keesler runway and then smoothly sat the huge airplane down, he could see, bathed in the light of maybe a dozen pole-mounted banks of high-intensity floodlights, the Boeing 747-the Air Force called it the VC-25A, which when the President of the United States was aboard became Air Force One-parked at the end of the taxiway paralleling the runway. It was being protected not only by sentries but also by a half dozen Humvees with.50 caliber machine guns.