John Nance: Headwind

And, of course, there was the basic strength of the case.

Stuart Campbell smiled to himself, imagining the impending legal battle that in some ways he’d been preparing for – spoiling for – for nearly two decades.

The satellite phone in the cockpit of Flight 42 had begun ringing almost as soon as the 737 reached cruise altitude. EuroAir’s operations center in Frankfurt had been informed by Greek authorities that the flight was being hijacked, which would explain their damaging departure from the gate as described by Athens operations.

“Is that true, Forty-Two? Are you being hijacked?” the dispatcher wanted to know.

“I can’t talk right now,” Craig replied. “I’ll call you on the ground in Rome.”

The response had puzzled the man thoroughly. Rome? Why would someone hijack an airliner and force the crew to fly to their scheduled destination?

Craig disconnected the link before more awkward questions could be asked.

All Mediterranean air traffic controllers had been notified of the presumed hijacking, and despite the fact that Flight 42 wasn’t squawking the right transponder code to confirm an act of air piracy, they were giving the pilots anything they asked for.

Craig pulled the PA microphone from its bracket and glanced at Alastair as he pushed the transmit button.

Folks, this is your captain. I apologize for the sudden and… unusual departure back there in Athens. We… were not able to get a push-back tug, and the airport was going to close and prevent us from getting to Rome on schedule, so I elected to go a bit early and use reverse thrust to get us backed up. I’m sorry if we startled you. None of the bags you saw blowing around the ramp were yours, by the way. Yours were already loaded. Thanks, and we should arrive in Rome on schedule.

He repeated the announcement in German and a shorter version in passable French before replacing the microphone.

“I’m going to go back and talk to Harris,” Craig said, watching Alastair’s response as the copilot winced and looked to his left, a haunted expression on his face.

“I truly am worried, Craig,” Alastair said. “We made a real hash of it back there, legally.”

“I know.”

“May I ask why?”

“Why?”

“Yes. Why?” Alastair asked. “Why on the mere strength of a rumor and the presence of a few policemen you elected to imperil an aircraft full of passengers and blow through a half dozen regulations, including the registering of a false hijacking report?”

“I never said we were hijacked. The controller said that.”

Alastair was shaking his head, his face reddening as his anger rose against the background of fear and confusion. “Don’t split hairs! You used that, and we’re still using it. There will be hell to pay when they find out no one’s forcing us to do anything!”

“I am. I’m forcing us.”

“And I’m your culpable copilot. Good heavens, man. Why?”

“I’m an Air Force officer, Alastair.”

“Well, bloody hell, so was I, for the Royal Air Force and the Queen, of course, but that doesn’t make me a guard at Buckingham Palace.”

“I’m a reservist. I’m still a commissioned officer sworn to protect the President of the United States.”

“I hate to break it to you, Craig, but the gentleman in the back isn’t President any longer.”

“Doesn’t matter. Once and always.”

“We’ll never explain this to Frankfurt. You know that? They’re operating on a shoestring with this upstart airline as it is. If they don’t hand our heads to the Greeks on a pike, they could be denied future landing rights in Athens. We’re… what’s that phrase you use? We’re toast.”

Craig shook his head energetically. “Don’t count on it. As I said, it was all my idea.” He slid the seat back and climbed out, patting Alastair on the shoulder as he opened the door. “Be back in a few minutes. Keep us flying.”

“Indeed,” Chadwick said, sadly. “I’d better enjoy it. Could be my last time at the controls.”

Sherry Lincoln saw the cockpit door open and was already on her feet and moving forward to catch the captain as he came out. She intercepted him by the forward galley, introducing herself and Matt Ward, the Secret Service agent who’d remained by the forward door on takeoff.

“You’re President Harris’s aide?” Craig asked Sherry.

“Aide, assistant, advisor, and secretary,” Sherry said, “and we want to thank you for getting us out of there in time.”

Craig looked at them in turn. “You… understood what I was doing?”

Matt Ward nodded. “I know that seven thirty-seven’s don’t back out of gates under their own power, Captain. Jillian told us about the arrest warrant.”

“That was quite a show with the baggage carts,” Sherry Lincoln chuckled. “You took one heck of a risk for him.”

Jillian appeared beside them. “I told them about your Air Force background, Craig,” she explained.

The captain nodded, inclining his head toward the chief flight attendant. “This is a German airline, by the way, but Jillian is a U.S. citizen, too.”

A smile flickered across Jillian’s face as she glanced at Craig.

“Ms. Lincoln,” Craig said as he touched Jillian’s arm in response to her smile, “who, exactly, might have been trying to arrest the President? All we were told was that a government delegation was on its way to the airport to take him into custody, and I couldn’t allow that. They wouldn’t tell us why.”

Sherry took a deep breath and leaned back against the forward bulkhead, shaking her head. “I don’t know for certain, Captain, but I strongly suspect you just earned a medal. I think you just prevented what some at the State Department call the second-tier nightmare scenario for an ex-president.”

“Second-tier?” he asked.

“The first is a kidnapping. The second is a Pinochet warrant.”

“Pinochet, as in the Chilean dictator?” Craig asked.

“Absolutely. The general who personally ordered thousands of Chileans tortured and killed for political reasons.”

“Wait…” Craig interrupted, smiling and holding his hand up. “What does Pinochet have to do with President Harris?”

“In the eighties,” she replied, “most nations signed a treaty that made the infliction of torture in any form by any official of any country a borderless crime. In other words, you can be tracked down anywhere on earth and prosecuted by any country. Pinochet was one of the first major challenges for that treaty.”

“I do recall some fuzzy details about that case,” Craig said.

Sherry stopped and looked at her watch. “How long do we have before landing?”

“A little over an hour and twenty minutes,” Craig replied. “But please finish what you were saying about Pinochet.”

“Okay. I’ve got some urgent calls to make, but in a nutshell, a Spanish judge issued a warrant for the general’s arrest and they snagged him when he came to London for medical care. But it took the British courts over a year to rule that Pinochet must be extradited to Spain to stand trial.”

“But… he was sent back to Chile,” Jillian said.

“True,” Sherry agreed, “but only because he was finally judged too sick to stand trial anywhere. The key British ruling, that a former head of state has no protection from criminal responsibility, no sovereign immunity, was a great step forward with a big problem attached. What happens if the bad guys use it against the good guys?”

“You mean,” Craig began, “someone like President Harris?”

“Exactly. Instead of having a bloody dictator arrested, suppose country Y misuses the treaty’s legal procedures to capture an innocent government official from country X, because country Y is angry with or at war with country X?”