John Nance - Headwind

“Not a problem. Just… don’t say anything to diminish the idea that he’s hanging over the Atlantic on the way home.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t. But I’ve still got to figure out what to do about the passengers after they’re off the airplane.”

“I don’t know. Can you charter another aircraft to take them back to Rome? We’ll pay for that, too.”

Craig sighed and inclined his head. “Maybe. Let me talk to the company once everyone’s off.”

He got to his feet and stopped, turning back to her. “What’s the plan now, Sherry? I mean, where else can he go?”

“I don’t know.”

“I thought he’d be safe if we landed here because it’s a U.S. base, you know? You are aware, by the way, that we can’t make it back Stateside in this aircraft?”

“I’m aware of that.”

“I mean, we could hop to Iceland, then to Canada I suppose, and maybe even make it safely from Iceland to the old Loring Air Force Base in Maine, but Iceland is a foreign country and if anyone gets wind of the President being on board, we may be back to square one.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what the next step will be. His lawyer is literally making it up minute by minute and we’re all trying to figure out what’s next. I don’t even know if they’ll let us leave here.”

Craig smiled and arched a thumb in the direction of the forward door. “Captain Swanson told me that the Carabinieri have left the base, and Campbell is on his way back to his Learjet. I’m not sure how, but they took the bait.”

Craig returned to the cockpit, stopping at the forward galley to check on the President. Matt Ward intercepted him as he touched the curtain. The Secret Service agent moved back as soon as he recognized the captain.

“Is he ready?” Craig asked.

“Yes.”

“Jillian’s coming forward to help guard the curtain and the galley.”

“Good,” Ward replied. “I’ll be just inside.”

Craig stepped into the cockpit and slid into his seat to brief Alastair before pulling the PA microphone out of its cradle.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain. I promised that as soon as that C-17 left and we had this problem resolved, we would let you get off the airplane. We’re ready now. Please bring all your personal belongings and deplane through the forward left door, the same one you came in. I will be in the passenger lounge in a few minutes to answer questions and tell you how we’re going to get you to your destinations.

Craig did the same announcement in French and German before turning around to lock the cockpit door.

“Get the company back on the line, Alastair, if you would please. We’re going back to the let’s-charter-ourselves chapter.”

For a man with a six-foot-four-inch frame, climbing into the compact cabin of a Learjet Model 35 was always a minor challenge. But Stuart Campbell eased himself into one of the leather seats of his Lear with practiced ease and unfolded a wall-mounted table. In his peripheral vision he saw the Navy car that had brought him from the NAS-One part of the base to his aircraft pull away to a respectable distance and park.

He reached for the onboard satellite phone and stopped, his hand hovering just short of picking it up.

You’re moving too fast, your tubship! he thought to himself, specifically using the derogatory pet name a former lover had given him when he purchased an estate in Northumberland, which came with the amusing title, “lordship of the manor.”

“Tubship, I should think,” his lady decided.

He’d been a few pounds heavier then, as well as thoroughly unfamiliar with the institution of regular exercise, but the intervening years of workouts had shed the once-developing pot belly, along with the young woman who’d declared it unlovable. Only the epithet remained, and for some reason it still amused him.

Campbell leaned forward, intertwining his fingers on the small desk as he concentrated on the flaw in his thinking. The shock of apparently losing Harris to an American rescue had obscured the fact that he had no real confirmation yet that the rescue had actually occurred.

Could that sly old bastard still be on that 737? he wondered. Probably not, but he should put off the call to Lima until he was certain.

The captain of the Learjet came in the door as his employer hauled himself out of the seat and back onto the ramp.

“You and Gina stay here, Jean-Paul,” he said, smiling at the female copilot, who was also Jean-Paul’s wife. “I’ll be back.”

As his feet touched the concrete, the Navy staff car lurched into gear and headed back toward the Lear. The driver’s mission, Campbell was sure, being to keep him under tight control.

One hundred eighteen passengers trundled down the airstairs and across the leased Sicilian ramp as the last vestiges of twilight faded around Sigonella, casting an unearthly glow about the summit of Mt. Etna to the northeast. All the helicopters had departed, the two from competing Italian television outlets leaving the moment their assignment editors had learned that the American mission was complete and the former American President was on his way back to the United States – a myth propelled and perpetuated by several key interviews given by an unnamed source at the White House. John Harris’s presence on the Air Force jet had not been confirmed by the source, but the fact that an official reception was being planned for the C-17’s arrival in D.C. had been happily relayed and was entirely true. There was, of course, the small, unmentioned detail that the assigned reception committee consisted of a low-ranking White House aide and a steward, both of whom were expecting to “receive” only a tired aircrew on arrival at Andrews AFB. The resulting misunderstanding by the media had flashed around the globe: “ Arrest of American Ex-President Foiled by Air Force Rescue !” The headlines instantly lowered the news value of Flight 42’s displaced passengers.

In the cockpit of EuroAir Flight 42, Captain Craig Dayton watched the exodus of his passengers as he waited for EuroAir’s director of operations to answer the satellite line. It was not a call he’d been looking forward to.

“They want to do what ?” the director of operations, Helmut Walters, asked from Frankfurt.

“Two things, sir. First, charter this aircraft for at least two days. Second, pay for whatever charter you can get together to take the passengers out of here and bring them back to Rome. They also want to pay for any additional expenses this diversion has cost.”

“Captain Dayton, you call that a diversion? None of us yet knows what you were doing! Were you hijacked?”

“No,” Craig sighed as he rubbed his forehead and tried to choose the right words.

“At one time Rome Control thought you’d crashed. We thought you’d crashed! Wait… I’m putting you on speakerphone. The chief pilot is here, too. We all want to know what you were doing.”

“All right, here’s the deal,” Craig began. “I had a situation in Athens where I thought we were about to be either hijacked or attacked. I wasn’t sure whether we were facing the outfall from a Greek coup d’état or a direct assault because of the presence of the former U.S. President.”

He could hear consternation on the other end.

“Captain, operations said they told you to hold at the gate, and yet you started and blew over all sorts of things backing out,” the operations director said.