Finally the shooting died down.
Reaching in, they hauled out the dead pilot and copilot. Their inert bodies slid and slithered down the wheeled staircase.
Maddas Hinsein saw the tight yellow knots around their throats. They contrasted sharply with the purplish-blue of their congested faces.
He frowned, his face a thundercloud of annoyance.
"What is this?" Maddas demanded of his defense minister.
"I have no idea," the general gulped.
Maddas drew his sidearm, a pearl-handed revolver. He placed the immaculate muzzle to General Azziz's sweating temple.
"If this is a trap," he uttered venomously, "you will soon have no brain."
General Razzik Azziz stood very, very still. He hoped that this was not a trap too.
The security men crawled into the cockpit. Soon the hatch popped open.
When a new staircase rolled into position, Maddas Hinsein ordered his Renaissance Guard to storm the plane. No shots were fired. Only when they called back that it was safe to board did Maddas Hinsein mount the stairs personally.
Just to be certain, he marched his defense minister into the plane at gunpoint.
When the man was not gunned down, Maddas Hinsein stepped in, towering over his men.
The crew sat in their seats, tongues out like those of parched dogs, their faces horrible purple and blue hues. Their stink was not that of corruption, but of bowels that had released in death.
Maddas Hinsein had no eyes for the dead. He wanted the American servicewoman who had promised his patrol the secret American order of battle.
But a two-hour search produced no American servicewoman, even though General Azziz repeatedly assured him that she had been aboard."
"She must have escaped," General Azziz swore. "Before I arrived here," he added.
"Have the responsible parties stood before a firing squad," Maddas Hinsein told his defense minister.
"But, Precious Leader, they are already dead. You see them about you. All of them."
Maddas Hinsein fixed General Azziz with his deadly gaze.
"Shoot them anyway. As a lesson to others. Not even the dead are safe from the firing squad."
"It will be done as you say, Precious Leader," General Azziz promised eagerly.
"And have the CIA spy-for that is obviously what she is-captured alive if possible. I will accept dead. No doubt, she is an assassin."
"As you command, Precious Leader."
As he was whisked from the airport, Maddas Hinsein was thinking of the yellow silk scarves and how much they resembled the yellow ribbons that American farmers had tied around their coarse western trees.
And he wondered what fate had truly befallen his ambassador to the United States.
The Americans were sending him a message, he decided. Perhaps their patience was not inexhaustible, after all.
Chapter 23
The Reverend Juniper Jackman took great pride in his blackness.
It was his blackness that enabled him-despite a complete lack of credentials-to run for the office of the presidency and convince the media and a sizable but electorally insignificant portion of the American voters that he might actually win.
It was such a convincing con that on his last foray into national politics, Reverend Jackman himself actually caught the fever and fell under the sway of his own hypnotic speechmaking.
He came to believe he had a chance to become the nation's first black President.
He had no chance, but he clung to the whiff of victory straight through the primaries. The aftermath of his party's convention, where he wowed America with an arresting speech about catching the best bus, was a bitter comedown.
There was talk of Reverend Jackman running for mayor of Washington, D.C. Many of his constituents practically demanded it. But the Reverend Jackman declined the offer, saying he saw himself as a player in a larger area-global politics.
The truth was, he understood better than anyone else that if he won the mayor's race, he was sunk. What did he know about running a city? And he didn't want to end up like the last disgraced mayor of Washington. As the Reverend Jackman saw it, his only chance was to grab that presidential brass ring and hold on for dear life. They wouldn't dare impeach him. Not him. His blackness would get him in the door and his mouth would keep him in the Oval Office-even after the nation realized it had been scammed.
But the calls for the Reverend Jackman to run for some elected office were too strong for even him to ignore. Especially when, in the wake of the last election, the pundits began calling him irrelevant. So he had allowed himself to be drafted into the meaningless role of shadow senator.
It was perfect. No responsibilities. No downside. He could phone his work in. Often did.
Which, after he had launched his TV talk show-the reverend's latest scheme to acquire a national platform-was exactly what he needed.
Now, with an actual political office on his resume, they stopped calling him irrelevant.
He was once again branded by the press as a shameless opportunist. The Reverend Jackman hated that tag, but it was better than being irrelevant. A shameless opportunist was at least a player. And if there was anything the Reverend Jackman needed to be, it was a player.
So it was that he sat in the plush cabin of his former campaign jet, the Rainbow Soundbite, winging his way over the Middle East to a rendezvous with destiny.
"I'll show 'em," the Reverend Jackman said, sipping a tumbler of pepper vodka.
"Yeah," his chief adviser slurred, hefting a tall rum and Coke, "those jerks in Washington are gonna sit up and take notice of you now."
"I don't mean them," Reverend Jackman snapped. "I mean those glory hounds at BCN. I ain't forgotten how they scooped me on Maddas. I had the first interview with that date-muncher all sewed up. And they sent in Don Cooder to beat me to the punch."
"We should never have broadcast our intentions. Secret diplomacy. That's what we gotta learn. Secret diplomacy."
"Damn Cooder is scoop-crazed. I hate people like that," Reverend Jackman said with a surly twist of his upper lip. His mustache contorted like a worm on a pin.
"Well, the Arabs got him now, and if this works, Juni, you gonna make that guy look as dumb as the time he promised to put a live neutron bomb on TV and ended up showing a twenty-year-old rerun about saving the humpback whale."
"I'll talk of Maddas into letting him go in my custody, and that ass-kisser Cooder will be kissing my ass all the way home. You seen him on TV? Man's scared. Never seen a man so scared. Probably has to change his underwear three times a day."
The two men laughed. Reverend Jackman looked out the porthole. Endless sand rolled beneath the starboard wing.
"What do you think, Earl? Maybe when I step off, I'll announce that I've come to trade places with Cooder. Think that'll work?"
"It might. But what if they take you up on it?"
"They wouldn't dare. I ran for President twice. Which is more than you can say for JFK, LBJ, and Ford. And Ford got in without even runnin'."
"Maybe you're right. We are brothers, us and the Arabs."
" 'Cept we got more sense than to dress up in our bed linen." Reverend Jackman sneered. "Then that's what I'll do. I'll offer myself in trade. We'd better work up a speech."
"What kind you want?"
"One that doesn't say anything but sounds good."
"I know that, but what do you want to be sayin', Juni?"
"As little as possible. That's how people like it. Just make sure it rhymes. I'm gonna hit the head. All this sand is making me thirsty and all this vodka is making me leakier than the State Department."
The Rainbow Soundbite touched down at Maddas International Airport after being cleared by Iraiti air-traffic control. It taxied up to Terminal B, where a wheeled ramp was pushed into place.