John Nance - Headwind

“He says he just found out. It’s the Carabinieri. They just came barreling onto the field. He says they smashed through a back gate.”

Alastair turned back to the phone. “Yes, sir?” He listened, nodding at intervals. “I understand. We’ll hold on.”

“What?” Craig asked.

“He’s trying to call Rome and find out what’s happening. He says his orders haven’t changed.”

The car closest to the 737 began moving toward them again, accelerating toward the head of the runway, where it turned off and stopped, the headlights pointed at the cockpit. Craig could see the doors of the police car open and several men get out, each of them carrying what appeared to be automatic weapons.

Deputy Foreign Minister Rufolo Rossini had been on his way home when summoned. He raced to his boss’s office to be confronted by the white-hot anger of a blind-sided bureaucrat.

“He misunderstood, Giuseppe!”

Giuseppe Anselmo’s secretary physically leaned around the corner and flagged his attention.

“Sir, I think you should talk to Captain Swanson at Sigonella.”

Anselmo turned with a finger in the air to rebuke her for the interruption, then thought better of it.

“Why?”

“The Carabinieri are overrunning his base.”

“The… what ?”

She motioned to the phone and Anselmo launched himself at the instrument as he pointed Rossini to a chair. “Is this your work, too?”

Rossini had turned chalky-white and was having trouble getting a complete sentence out. “I… ah… don’t know how…”

Anselmo motioned him into a chair disgustedly as he yanked up the receiver and listened to Swanson’s complaint.

“I want you to stand by on this line, Captain. This is not being done on our orders. In fact, I just ordered Air Traffic Control to let them depart.”

He replaced the receiver and bellowed around the corner for his secretary to get a connection with the Carabinieri commander nearest to the leased Navy base, then turned his full fury on Rossini.

“What, exactly , did you say to them?”

“You mean the…”

“You know exactly what I mean! Why are they overrunning an American base?”

“All I said was that we… appreciated their help, and were still trying to find a way to detain Mr. Harris and his plane.”

“Wonderful! You said this to a Sicilian commander?”

“Yes.”

“A Sicilian commander who was left red-faced yesterday when told to leave that base? Are you insane?”

The phone rang and Anselmo scooped up the receiver with his right hand in a rapid, fluid arc which ended at his face.

“Is this the commandant? Good. This is the foreign minister of Italy. Listen very, very closely!”

Four armed men wearing uniforms of some sort had arrayed themselves in front of EuroAir 1010, one of them making a lateral gesture across his throat and pointing to each wing.

“He wants us to shut down,” Alastair translated.

“Like hell I’ll shut down!” Craig replied.

“Right. He’s waving an Uzi.”

“Let him wave it. I’m not shutting down.”

Alastair pressed the satellite phone to his ear, waiting for some sign that Captain Swanson had returned to the line.

“Alastair, check the runway diagram. Taxiway Bravo, the next one down. How much runway available from there?”

“Enough,” Alastair answered.

Craig’s left hand hauled the nosewheel steering tiller to the right immediately as he goosed the throttles and sent the four men ahead scrambling backwards. The 737 turned sharply right and reversed course as he guided the nosewheel back to neutral and then left to head back down the taxiway as if they were returning to the ramp. Craig glanced over his left shoulder, straining to see the reaction.

“No shooting, then?” Alastair asked evenly.

“No… no, they’re standing there looking stunned.”

“Craig, they still have three cars on the runway.”

“You’ve heard of the good old American game of ‘chicken’ haven’t you?”

“Dear me, you’re not serious?”

“Am I serious?”

“Never mind!” Alastair said quickly. “Stupid question.”

Craig let the 737 accelerate to thirty knots before braking and turning sharply left onto the second runway entrance. He barreled to the middle of the runway and turned right, aligning the nose of the jetliner with the runway heading. The roof lights of three police cars flashed defiantly in their faces at intervals down the concrete ribbon.

Craig advanced the throttles while holding the brakes, bringing the engines up to full power, the 737 straining and lurching against the locked friction of the tires barely holding the runway surface.

“Flash the landing lights three times, then tell the tower we’re rolling.”

Alastair complied as Craig released the brakes smoothly, feeling the craft leap forward.

In the landing lights, he could see the first car several thousand feet ahead as it sat in the middle of the tarmac pointing toward the moving jet. There were no doors open.

“They’re still there,” Alastair said. “Thirty knots.”

“They’ll move.”

“Fifty, sixty… a thousand feet away from him.”

“I know it.”

Suddenly the car ahead jumped into motion and careened off to the right side of the runway, safely clearing the concrete before they rolled over the spot he had occupied.

“Eighty knots, Craig. Two cars to go.”

“Roger.”

The jet’s acceleration began to slow slightly as aerodynamic drag began working against the smooth passage of the aircraft, but the lights of the next car were steady in the middle of the runway surface two thousand feet ahead, and the onrushing Boeing was covering the distance at a far greater rate.

“Move, damn you!” Alastair said under his breath, as that squad car lurched into gear and moved sharply off the surface to the left.

“The last one’s going as well!” Alastair said, his voice almost gleeful. “Vee one, and rotate!”

Craig nursed the control yoke back, lifting the angle of attack of the wings until the lift exceeded the weight, and the powerful aircraft lifted clear of the runway surface heading west.

“Positive rate, gear up,” Craig ordered.

“Right you are, positive rate, and the bloody gear is coming up. Well done, mate! But how did you know they’d get out of our way?”

“This is Italy. If one of those guys let’s his car get smashed, he’d have to pay for it out of his own pocket. No way would they have left one on the runway.”

Jay Reinhart left the courtroom dazed and struggling to hide it. A dull ache in his middle was protesting his failure to eat or drink anything for hours. He tuned out the discomfort and turned on the rented GSM phone.

It rang almost immediately, with Sherry Lincoln on the other end.

“We just lifted off from Sigonella,” she told him, relating the ninety-minute takeoff delay and her call to the Italian foreign minister that had apparently shaken the air traffic clearance from Rome Control.

“I thought you might already be on approach to Heathrow,” Jay said, holding a finger in his other ear against the noise around him and mouthing the word “wait” to Nigel White and Geoffrey Wallace, who nodded and moved off to confer while he talked.

“No,” she replied, “it’ll be about an hour and forty-five, I’m told. What’s your situation?”

He relayed the result of the hearing, but omitted any mention of Stuart Campbell’s chilling revelation that a clandestine videotape existed that might implicate the President.