“Have the bad people finally arrived?” he asked.
“Flammarion has spotted an Air Service maintenance truck off the end of zero-eight.
He wants to know what we have on it.”
Bellus glanced up at the situation board.
“We show nothing,” Marie-Lure said. “And now there is no answer from security out there.”
“Who is on duty this morning?”
Marie-Lure brought up the information on her computer. “Capretz and Gallimard.”
Bellus grunted. “Have you called Air Service?”
“I didn’t want to alarm anyone yet.”
“Well, call them, and I’ll try the guard hut again,” Bellus said and he picked up the operations phone.
Marie-Lure telephoned the Air Service Dispatch Office across the field at the Air France Service Hangar. The dispatcher answered on the first ring.
“Air Service.”
“This is Orly Security. What are your people doing out at the inner marker off zero-eight this morning? We’re showing nothing on our board.”
“There shouldn’t be anyone there, so far as I know,” the young man replied. “Moment.”
Marie-Lure could hear the shuffle of papers, and a couple of seconds later the dispatcher was back.
“The work order is here. Apparently some mec
stuck it in the wrong order. Looks like an unscheduled adjustment on the marker frequency.
Sorry, but I didn’t know a thing about this. Someone will get the axe.”
“Send a runner over with a copy of the work order, would you?”
“As soon as possible. We’re busy this morning.”
“Merci.” Marie-Lure hung up.
Bellus shook his head and hung up. “Still no answer. What’d Air Service have to say for itself?”
“The work order was apparently misplaced. They’ll send it over as soon as they can.”
“Have we got anybody nearby this morning?”
“I think Dubout might still be over by one-eight. He could get over the back way, but he’d have to cross the runway.”
“Get him on the radio, and then get authorization from the tower.”
“Do you want to delay air traffic for a few minutes?” she asked.
Bellus pondered the suggestion for a moment, but then shook his head. “As long as it’s a legitimate Air Service order, I don’t think that’s necessary.”
“Yes, sir,” Marie-Lure said, and she got on the airport security frequency to raise Sergeant Dubout.
The passengers on Swissair 145 would be in the final boarding process by now. Boorsch stood out of sight from anyone who might be looking this way from the tower or the terminal, and studied the plane with the binoculars. The boarding tunnel was still in place, but the baggage compartment hatches in the belly of the Airbus had been closed, and the baggage handlers had withdrawn.
The air was suddenly very still and thick with the odors of the airport and of Paris.
French smells, somehow, that Boorsch found offensive. Frogs were filthy people, even worse than the sub-human Polaks or Kikes, although France itself was a pleasant enough country.
Boorsch lowered the glasses, then raised them again to study the tower, and then the maintenance hangars across from the main terminal. Normal activity, so far as he could see. Nothing out of the ordinary. If any alarms had been sounded, they were not outwardly visible.
Sooner or later, of course, airport security would realize that something might be wrong with their access road guards out here, though the presence of this van would cause no real questions. He’d personally taken care of that earlier this morning during the shift change at the Air Service Dispatch office.
Someone would come out to investigate. That was why his timing had to be so tight.
Only minutes now and he would be finished here and he could make his escape.
Laying the glasses aside, Boorsch carefully removed the Stinger missile and its handheld launcher from its metal container. The unit, which was about four feet long and a little less than four inches in diameter, weighed thirty-one pounds, including the reusable launcher and the rocket with its solid-fuel propellant, high-explosive warhead and infrared heat-seeking guidance system.
In theory the missile was simple to use. Point it at a heat-emitting target. Uncage the firing circuits, and when the missile’s sensing circuitry locked on to a viable target a steady tone would sound in the operator’s ear. At that moment the user pushed the fire button, and the Stinger was away, accelerating almost immediately to a speed of one thousand feet a second, with an effective range of four thousand yards.
In practice however, first-time users almost always missed even the easiest of targets.
Like using a shotgun to shoot clay pigeons, the operator needed to lead the target … especially an accelerating target such as a jetliner taking off.
Of the six ex-STASI comrades who’d trained with the Stinger in Libya, Boorsch had been the best, so when this emergency had developed, he’d been the natural choice for the assignment.
“Don’t let us down, Karl,” he’d been instructed. “This is important to the project.
Very important.”
The walkie-talkie in the front of the van came to life. “Three,” the man patrolling the N7 transmitted.
Carefully laying the missile down, Boorsch hurried around to the front, and snatched up the walkie-talkie. “Three, go,” he radioed.
“Trouble on its way across the field from one-eight.”
“ETA?”
“Under five minutes.”
“Understand,” Boorsch responded. “One?”
“Clear.”
“Two?”
“Clear.”
Boorsch laid the walkie-talkie down and went to the rear of the van where he grabbed the binoculars and scanned the field in the vicinity of the end of north-south runway.
A jeep was just crossing the runway itself.
He turned the glasses toward the Swissair flight. The boarding tunnel had still not been withdrawn. There was time. But not much of it, he thought as he laid the binoculars down and pulled out his pistol.
Chapter 5
McGarvey had to show his passport to follow Marta through security to the boarding gate, and it struck him that everyone out here seemed a little tense. It was probably another terrorist threat. The French took such things very seriously.
Most of the passengers for the Swissair flight had already boarded, leaving the waiting area empty except for one flight attendant and two boarding gate personnel, one of whom was making the boarding announcement over the terminal’s public address system.
“Ladies and gentlemen. All passengers holding confirmed seats for Swissair flight 145, non-stop service to Geneva, please board now. Flight 145 is in the final boarding process.
Mesdames et messieurs…
“I don’t want to go like this, Kirk,” Marta said, looking up into his eyes. “I have a feeling I’ll never see you again.”
“I’m not what you think I am, Mati. I never was.”
“I knew what you were from the beginning,” she said earnestly. “And I love you despite it.”
McGarvey had to smile. “Not a very good basis for a relationship.”
The flight attendant was looking pointedly at them as the gate person finished the final boarding call in German.
“I’m not proud. I’ll take you any way I can get you.”
Something was wrong. Some internal warning system was ringing bells at the back of McGarvey’s head. It was the CIA car outside, he couldn’t put it out of his mind.
What were they doing here now? Watching him?
“Listen, Mati, do me a favor and wait right here. I don’t want you getting aboard that plane for a minute. I need to make a call first.”