“Too long to tell you on the phone. Basically, it’s a shit show. The Ghost is gone, and he’s taken the Israeli prime minister and Amanda Croft as hostages. I don’t know if he’s going to kill them, release them and run, or what, but I need you to call Veep and get a fix on his phone—if he’s still got it on.”
“How on earth did he manage to take them hostage from that fortress?”
Shoshana grabbed my arm and I said, “Stand by.”
She said, “He got in a car and drove away. They literally let him drive away.”
I nodded, pointed at the door, and said on the net, “Koko, we’re coming to you. Get that fix. The Ghost is mobile in a vehicle.”
She said, “Roger all,” and we raced out the door, seeing another scrum of security debating what had just happened.
Our vehicle was right where we’d left it when we’d come screeching up to the ceremony. It had been a little bit of a fight to get inside, and if I hadn’t had Shoshana speaking Hebrew and her Israeli cred, we’d have been left outside waiting while the Ghost successfully assassinated the Israeli primeminister. As it was, if they’d let us in as soon as we’d arrived, instead of me having to fight past them, we would have prevented all of it, because the prime minister would have never taken the stage.
We jogged to our car, ignoring a guy in civilian clothes who was demanding we stop.
Shoshana hit the gas and I called Jennifer, saying, “Koko, Koko, we’re inbound. Meet us on the street. Bring a radio to talk to Veep.”
She said, “Coming down now. Phone is still active and Veep says he’s headed to the airport.”
The airport? What does he think he’s going to do, waltz onto a commercial flight with a bomb strapped to his ass?
I said, “He’s literallyatthe airport, or is he on the road that leads to it?”
“He’s turned off onto the road that goes to the airport. It doesn’t go anywhere else.”
“Roger all. I’ll be at your location in three minutes.”
Shoshana drove like she had lights spinning on top of our car, weaving and bobbing around the traffic. She pulled in front of our hotel and Jennifer and Aaron jumped into the back seat.
Jennifer said, “The cell stopped at the general aviation section. It didn’t continue to the commercial terminal. Have you checked your phones?”
“What do you mean?”
“The hostage-taking has made the news. This is about to blow up.”
I pulled out my phone and went to an aggregate news site, seeing one story after another about car bombs, suicide vests, and the kidnapping of the Israeli prime minister and the US secretary of state. While I was staring at it, another breaking news story appeared. I read the headline and said, “Call Veep. Tell him to land the Rock Star Bird.”
Jennifer did, and Shoshana said, “Why?”
“Those assholes just hijacked a plane. They’re in the air.”
Chapter 68
It took us another fifteen minutes to get to the general aviation section, and I used that time to get Jennifer and Aaron up to speed. By the time we arrived there were enough flashing lights to make the entire area look like a ’70s disco, with one flight management company the center of the activity.
Known as FBOs or fixed-based operators, the general aviation area was the place where the swanky people got on their private jets while the rest of us slogged through TSA security and were crammed into commercial airliners like cattle. It turned out that the Ghost was two steps ahead of us. He wasn’t planning on trying to board a commercial flight, he’d just decided to steal a private one, although how he managed to do that with a bomb strapped to him in such a short amount of time was beyond me.
Luckily for us, because we’d flown down in the Rock Star Bird, we’d also used an FBO, and ours wasn’t the one that had just been hit. We drove past all the lights, continuing to the second to last FBO, seeing the Rock Star Bird patiently waiting.
Jennifer said, “You want to ask someone what’s going on before we just load up and lift off?”
“No. Nobody will be able to tell us anything more than what the pilots know. I guarantee there was a ton of chatter all the way around, and I want to get airborne before they shut down this airport, because that’s what’s about to happen.”
We parked outside of the FBO headquarters and went inside, findingVeep and the pilots waiting in a lounge. Knowing he’d both heard all the radio chatter while in the air and had already pimped the personnel at our FBO on the ground, I asked the captain, “What do you know about the situation?”
“It was a chartered Learjet with a flight plan to São Paulo, Brazil. The charter was paid to be on strip alert because the customer was unsure when he would be able to leave, but he didn’t want to wait around for it to be towed once they arrived. Instead, those yahoos we’ve been tracking all day showed up with suicide vests and guns and commandeered the whole thing. Luckiest damn thing I’ve ever seen. Nobody pays to have a plane sitting hot because it’s expensive as shit. Well, nobody but you guys. If he’d have pulled up with all that weaponry and demanded a plane on any other day, it would have taken about two hours to get him one.”
I said, “It wasn’t luck. It was their escape plan.Theychartered the plane, only they showed up with hostages and bombs instead of pretending they were businessmen. Why Brazil, though? Why not up north, to the Triple Frontier, where they have support? Brazil will just shut them down when they get there.”
