I looked out and saw a parade of flashing lights, behind the vehicles row upon row of men in green uniforms holding rifles. In the rear, next to a hangar, was a tanker truck.
The copilot came racing back to us and said, “They think we’re the hostage plane! They think we’re holding hostages!”
I said, “What?”
Creed came back on and said, “It’s a helicopter charter service in Ushuaia.”
I ignored the copilot and focused on what Creed had said. “Is the charter service out of the Ushuaia international airport?”
“No. It’s at the old airport. The one that’s used by private pilots now.”
I hung up, my head spinning with the information.
Shoshana said, “If they think we’re the hostage plane, where did that aircraft go?”
Chapter 77
Sitting in the seat right behind the pilot, the Ghost felt the cold begin to penetrate his bones, the thin clothing he’d worn in Buenos Aires no match for the subfreezing temperatures of Ushuaia. It would have been an hour’s drive to the safe house with the four-by-four vehicles, but at least then he’d have had heaters.
He’d known it was the dead of winter, and Ushuaia was literally the last outpost before the Antarctic, but he’d figured that he’d just have to suffer for fifteen or twenty minutes of the helo flight before getting to the safe house. He’d been right on the time, but wrong on the effects to his body. His hand holding the detonator was so cold he was losing feeling in it and beginning to fear he would set off the device accidentally.
The exit from the private strip had taken longer than he had wanted, with the sun dropping lower every second they were on the ground. Omar had successfully reached the pilot and gained control, but he had fought them verbally, insisting that the fifth person would put them overweight.
The woman had seen Omar’s weapon, and then seen the Ghost pushing the two hostages out of the aircraft, both with their hands tied. She’d immediately fled inside the terminal, and there was nothing the Ghost could do to prevent it. He was sure she was calling the authorities, but had no idea of the response time.
He’d rushed the hostages to the helicopter, hearing the pilot screaming about the weight. He’d placed the prime minister in a back seat, then instructed the secretary of state to climb into his lap.
Omar had begun to panic, shouting in Arabic, “I’m killing the prime minister! I’m killing the prime minister! He can’t take off!”
The Ghost had slapped him in the face, shouting back, “Get ahold of yourself! Hecancarry us. He’s bluffing. I’m slight, the woman’s slight, the prime minister’s slight. The three of us are the same as two fat tourists.”
Shocked, Omar rubbed his face and said, “Ghost, listen to him. He’s the pilot. We need to kill the prime ministernow.”
The Ghost ignored his protest, turning to the pilot and showing him the vest. In English, he said, “This is a bomb. If we stay here, the authorities will shoot us.”
He saw the pilot’s eyes go wide, his lower lip beginning to tremble. The Ghost said, “If I’m to die, I’m bringing all of you with me. You can die here, or take your chances of dying in the air.”
The pilot climbed into his seat without saying another word. In two minutes, the rotors were turning and they lifted off. The noise was deafening, the vibration of the helicopter alarming. Omar put on a headset, and the Ghost found one in a hook next to the door.
They’d raced to the east, heading to the snow-topped mountains of Patagonia and the cold had begun to sink in. Not wanting the hostages to see him, he surreptitiously disarmed the detonator, but kept it in his hand. They entered a valley, and the mountains blocked what remained of the dying light.
Through the headset, the pilot said, “I can’t fly at night. I don’t have the navigation ability, and the mountains are dangerous just using GPS.”
The Ghost said, “Keep going.”
The pilot said, “Are you listening? If I follow the GPS, I’ll run into a mountain! I can’t see.”
The Ghost looked out the window in the twilight, seeing a ribbon of road beneath them, the tail end of the vaunted Pan-American Highway. He said, “Follow highway three until it stops, then take a right, going up the river.”
The pilot said nothing else, and the Ghost realized he had been bluffing again. Five minutes later he felt the helicopter slow and said, “What are you doing?”
“The river is here. I no longer have the road to follow.”
The Ghost felt the helicopter lower, then turn, slowly moving up the valley. He looked out the window and saw the treetops about two thousand feet below them, the river nothing more than a slash of black in the gloom.
They flew about a kilometer, then crossed over a flat island with a single copse of trees on the south end. The Ghost said, “This is it, this is it. Set it down.”
The pilot turned on his landing light and slowly hovered, delicately trying to land the skids on solid terrain, the wind coming down the valley from the north buffeting the thin frame back and forth, the mountains towering above them.
