Getting out of Argentina clandestinely had proven a little bit of a challenge. Shoshona had landed back at the old airport and found a couple of police cars on the tarmac. She’d seen four officials, two in uniforms and two in suits, questioning the manager of the helicopter tour company about the hijacking of her helo.
Astonished at the arrival of the Rock Star Bird, they’d immediately wondered if she had something to do with the other private jet on the tarmac. The one that had stolen the helicopter.
They started suspiciously questioning her, and with the prime ministerand SECSTATE arriving on the stolen helicopter within the next ten minutes, she’d used her judgment to solve the problem, which was to pull out a gun and run the officials into the tour company’s office, outside of view of the airstrip. She kept them there until Jennifer arrived, flabbergasted at the turn of events.
Jennifer had loaded the PM and SECSTATE on our bird, then waited on the helicopter turnaround. After we arrived, it was my turn to be flabbergasted. Needless to say, it was most decidedly not how I would have handled the situation, but it served its purpose. We loaded up on the Rock Star Bird and took off, leaving behind a helicopter pilot with a fantastic story to tell and a group of bewildered police.
Because of Shoshana’s antics, we determined that landing in Buenos Aires might not be the best solution, instead deciding to fly the hell out of the country. We didn’t have enough fuel to reach the United States, but I figured any gas station outside of Argentina would do.
Wolffe had made some calls, and we were headed to the US side of Soto Cano airfield in Honduras, home of Joint Taskforce–Bravo. It was the primary American outpost in Central America, and hosted a slew of weird flights coming and going, from the DEA to straight up military, so we could get in and get out without too much scrutiny.
Before I’d decided to rack out, I’d of course informed George Wolffe that I had the Israeli prime minister and our own secretary of state on our aircraft. I’d given him a quick synopsis of what I knew about the threat in the West Bank, to include that it was a dirty bomb.
He’d immediately shit a brick and called the principals of the Oversight Council—minus Amanda Croft. Fifteen minutes later, I was on with them, surprised at how quickly they’d come together. Usually getting those assholes to talk to me was like pulling teeth, but it turned out they were all already together to discuss the ramifications of something Knuckles had done.
I was itching to find out what that was, but patiently waited while I was dutifully quizzed about everything I knew, and then forced to listen toan egghead tell them the ramifications of a radiological dispersion device, which ranged from a nuisance designed to instill fear, with the blast being more dangerous than the radiation, to a Chernobyl level extermination event.
After about two hours of questioning, I was told to turn over the feed to our VIPs, and I gladly did, moving across the aircraft to another computer to talk to Knuckles.
He came on and I smiled, saying, “Looks like you got your high adventure.”
He said, “Yeah, no doubt. I hear you’ve been banging caps too.”
“Nope. I’m so stealthy I managed to conduct the rescue without a shot being fired.” I told him the entire saga, ending with the Ghost’s disappearance.
He said, “Man, that guy is one slippery son of a bitch. Are we going after him again when this is all done?”
I said, “I don’t know, but honestly, I’m good with it. He left the hostages alive and gave me a breadcrumb to find to save them. He can go live a life somewhere. What about you?”
He told me the entire story, and I patted him on the back for his force of will. Anybody else would have given up at the lost license plate. In fact, everybody else had done precisely that.
I said, “So the guy you captured ended up being the Sardar that the Israelis said was the commander of Unit 840?”
“Yeah, chalk one up for their intelligence, and give an F to ours. They were right. He’s talking, but of course, being evasive. He claims he doesn’t know anything about a dirty bomb, he’s just a low-level minion, he thought the tanker was full of grape soda or lemonade, yada, yada. The only thing he’s let slip is the town of Jenin. Apparently, it’s a hotbed of militants, and that’s where Israel is focused.”
“Well, hopefully that’s enough. The one thing we’ve got going for us is that they have to give the word to initiate, and you have the guy who’s supposed to do that.”
“Yeah, we got his computer too. Taskforce is digging into that right now.”
“What’d they decide to put out about the attempted attack in DC? Anything? Are they telling everyone not to brush their teeth this morning?”
“Believe it or not, no. They aren’t saying shit about it. They decided the panic created would be worse than just keeping quiet. Wolffe had the site cleaned up, taking the truck and the bodies. They analyzed what was in it, and it was pure liquid fentanyl. The truck holds six thousand gallons, and they measured. It looks like we got there just as they started and only about fifty to a hundred gallons made it into the system. With the size of the water usage in DC, some scientist told them it wouldn’t be a threat.”
I said, “Wow. That’s going to cause a conspiracy theory down the road. I can see it now, ‘chemtrails introduced into water supply.’?”
“Yeah, well, us being there sort of complicated things. If that had gotten out, it really would have caused some conspiracy theories—and they’d probably be correct.”
“What are they doing about the gunfight?”
“Pretty simple, actually. The DEA is going to get in a shoot-out with a motorcycle gang from Utah tied to the cartels in Mexico. Two men killed and the biggest load of fentanyl ever seized discovered. It’ll play well.”
“Unless someone gets in a car wreck high as balls on fentanyl and claims all he did was have a cup of coffee brewed with his tap water.”
Knuckles laughed and said, “What about you? What are you going to do about Shoshana’s clown fest?”
“The Israeli prime minister has gladly offered to take the blame. In fact, he’s going to take the blame for the entire rescue, making Israel look like they just did another Operation Thunderbolt at Entebbe.”
He said, “How is that going to work?”
