John Ringo - Ghost

He stood up, quietly, and worked his joints, then got down on his knees and took a quick peek, upside down, out of the nose section. Group of guys in blue jumpsuits, like airport workers, unloading the plane from the back, using another one of those lift-trucks. Another cargo truck the coffins were being stacked in. A couple of military-uniformed guards hanging around watching. Two or three civvies watching as well, maybe muj. No guards on the front of the hangar. Why weren’t there guards on the front of the hangar?

He looked at his clothes and rubbed his chin. Not enough stubble, clothes not shabby enough, hair too long. For that matter, the clothes were too well made; the reason everybody in the third world wanted American jeans was that Levis were just better than anything made overseas. But they didn’t “look” right. He couldn’t really pass for a local. A T-shirt was not a normal item to wrap around the head. It disappeared into the jump bag. Jump bags weren’t normal items, nor were MP-5s. Too frickin’ bad.

He took another look, then lowered himself out of the nose assembly and onto the pavement, keeping the nose assembly between him and the work at the rear. The front of the plane was in darkness, probably deliberately to try to keep the Americans from noting it by satellite and wondering.

He shifted his bag to his left and just slowly sauntered towards the doors. Once he was past them, nobody in the group at the rear was going to see him. And, still, no guards in view. Maybe they were trying to act like it was no big deal, unloading a plane in the dark of night with no lights on.

Past the doors he headed for the side of the hangar, MP-5 down. The worst possible thing he could do was kill someone. If the terrorists, and whoever was supporting them, knew the op was blown, they might kill the girls on a whim. Or speed up whatever their plans were. Al Qaeda generally killed their hostages if their demands weren’t met quickly. Nick Berg had found that out. The Philippines had caved but he couldn’t imagine the American government doing the same. Especially since Al Qaeda would make the demands high . And he was pretty sure that they wouldn’t simply slit their throats in front of a camera. There were other things they could do to make the experience more uncomfortable for both the girls and the American public.

But they were being transported, again, “somewhere else.” He had to find out, somehow, where the truck was going. If he called it in they might be able to track it on satellite, but satellites had to be in just the right basket to get a good view. Probably they were retasking all the Keyholes for just that reason, but they still had to be in the right basket.

There was another hangar next to the one where the girls were being unloaded, also unlit and unguarded. He could see guard towers in the distance and a control tower bulking against the sky. He cautiously checked the corner of the hangar, but there wasn’t anyone in the dead space between the two, just a slight channel for water run-off and a bunch of litter. Typical.

He moved down the wall of the hangar cautiously. There would be, were from what he had seen, guards on the far end of the hangar. That end of the hangar, north from looking at the stars which were bright in the clear sky, was near the perimeter fence of the airport. Like most in the gomer zone it looked as if it had been put up in the 1950s and never repaired: sagging and rusted chain link with a single strand of concertina tacked on the top that dangled almost to the ground in places. He slowly moved out from the wall of the hangar, moving over to the adjacent hangar, hunting for a glimpse of what was happening at the front. What he saw, first, was that there was a guarded gate about fifty meters from the back of the hangar. He squatted down and considered the view, thinking. The girls were probably going to be driven out there. The road beyond the gate curved to the left, his direction, then climbed up some low hills towards barely glimpsed mountains. At least that was how it looked from the darkness between the hangars.

There were side doors on the hangars and he was just considering backing up and trying one, to get out of sight and call in if nothing else, when one of the blue clad workers walked around the corner and lit up a cigarette. The man was no more than thirty meters from him and glanced down the narrow alley but didn’t register his squatting figure in the dark. Moving, however, was out of the question. All Mike could do was squat there, catching a faint whiff of tobacco smoke and BO, and hope like hell the guy never spotted him.

One of the guards eventually drifted over and cadged a smoke, the two of them talking in low tones as they puffed on their vile local cigarettes. If there had been a roving guard he would have been done, but the security all seemed to be focused on the rear of the plane and, probably, the perimeter of the airport. As he was squatting there in the dark a small truck drove past, just inside the fence. He guessed that there were more guards out in the other direction, looking for a reaction. But a small team could infiltrate this place in a heartbeat and take down the guards by the plane. Holding the spot would be tough, though, and he considered Panama and rethought the situation. In Panama, in a similar situation, two really good shooters had managed to take down most of a SEAL platoon and had more or less stopped it cold when the SEALs tried to advance across the runway. Fighting on airports needed a special assault mindset, given their lack of cover, and such an assault would probably kill some or all of the girls.

Finally the two gomers left the corner and Mike backed up to the door of the unused hangar. It was locked but the blade of his folding knife sufficed to force the lock and let him in without too much noise. The hangar was dark as pitch and he waited for his eyes to adjust as much as they could. There was some sort of jet, a fighter he thought, in the hangar with various parts pulled off. It looked as if the engine had been yanked. There were a lot of parts strewn around the floor and he moved across the big room carefully. He had to get in a position to cross the open area between the hangars and the perimeter fence. If he could get onto the hills, by the road, he might be able to hitch a ride on the truck as it slowed to climb the first hill. At least he could if he hurried. Still no time to call in. Maybe once he was in position, given time.

He crossed the hangar and found another door on the opposite side. He cautiously opened that one and saw that there was a blank building face on the far side. Not a hangar, maybe a maintenance area or something. No windows on the alley, though. He moved cautiously down the alley and checked the far side. No guards in that area but the open area was a great place to get spotted.

He considered the crossing carefully and really didn’t like it. But. The area was built on a slight rise and he could, vaguely, see that there was a dip between the fence and the hills. And it looked as if it was designed for rainwater run-off. The alley was dipped in the middle to catch water, but it would form a pond if there wasn’t a way out. And he’d seen some storm-water grates in the alley. Probably there was a culvert that led from the alley to the dip.

He backed up and found one of the grates, pulling it up cautiously to avoid too much noise then looked in the hole. Given third world maintenance he really wasn’t looking forward to getting in that hole. The culvert was probably going to be at least partially blocked. He might miss the truck and never know it until he got out. But it was a way out of the airport that was less likely to get him caught, and the mission blown, than even a slow creep across the open area. If he had time for a slow creep.