The planned stilt homes would be self-service. The tourists could clean their own rooms.
Truitt caught the last flight out on Easter day.
HANLEY was staring at a satellite image of Tibet as he spoke on the telephone.
“You’re sure, Murph?” he asked. “He’s fit to fly?”
“It was like magic,” Murphy said over the secure line. “Gurt looks better than before he was shot. He’s outside doing repairs on the chopper as we speak.”
“Hold on,” Hanley said from the Oregon. “I’ll call off the cavalry.”
Reaching for a scrambled radio, he called the rescue helicopter. “Stop where you are,” Hanley said, “and wait. If my fuel calculations are correct, you should have more than half tanks right now. Wait until you see the other Bell pass nearby, then follow her home to Gonggar.”
“Understand,” the pilot answered. “What’s the ETA?”
“They’re about an hour away,” Hanley noted, “but I’ll monitor the situation and report to you when they are near.”
“We’re touching down now,” the pilot said, “and standing by.”
IN Washington, D.C., hands-off was becoming handson.
Langston Overholt sat in a room off the Oval Office, waiting for the president to reappear. Truitt had notified Hanley of his successful mission. Hanley had faxed the details to Cabrillo in Tibet. Once that was done, he had telephoned Overholt and reported the news.
Overholt then made his way to the White House to report to the president.
“For someone who was supposed to be outside the loop,” the president said, entering the room, “I’m as wrapped up in this as a kitten in a yarn ball.”
It was early morning in Washington, and the president had been preparing for bed when he had been summoned. He was dressed in gray sweatpants and a blue T-shirt. He was drinking a glass of orange juice.
He stared at Overholt, then grinned. “You must know I stay up late and watch Saturday Night Live.”
“Don’t all politicians, sir?” Overholt asked.
“Probably,” the president said. “It was always the rumor that it cost Gerald Ford the election.”
“How did it go, sir?” Overholt asked.
“Qatar was a gimme,” he said easily. “Me and Mr. al Thani are old friends. Brunei was not such a pushover. The sultan needed a few concessions—I gave them, and he agreed.”
“I’m sorry we needed to involve you, sir,” Overholt said. “But the contractors were short of both men and time.”
“Have you got the last vote?” the president asked. “Is Laos in the bag?”
Overholt glanced at his watch before answering. “Not yet, sir,” he said, “but we will have it in about fifteen minutes.”
“I’ll instruct the ambassador to the United Nations to call for a special vote in the morning,” the president said. “If your guys can hold down the fort for six hours or so, we’re home free.”
“I’ll notify them immediately, sir,” Overholt said, rising.
“Good,” the president said. “Then I’m going to catch a few hours of shut-eye.”
A Secret Service agent led Overholt down the elevator and into the secret tunnel. Twenty minutes later he was in his car and on his way back to Langley.
THE white 747 cargo plane slowed to a stop at the end of the runway in Vientiane, then taxied over to a parking area and shut down the engines. Once everything was shut down, the pilot began the process of raising the entire nose cone in the air, opening up the immense cargo area. Once the nose was in the air, cargo ramps were attached to a slot in the open front of the fuselage.
Then, one by one, cars were driven out onto the tarmac.
The first was a lime-green Plymouth Superbird with a hemi-engine. The second, a 1970 Ford Mustang Boss 302 in yellow with the shaker hood, rear slats over the window and the quarter-mile clock in the dashboard. The third was a 1967 Pontiac GTO convertible, red with a black interior, red-line tires and air conditioning. The last was a 1967 Corvette in Greenwood green, with the factory speed package and locking rear differential.
The man who carefully removed the cars from inside the 747 was of medium height with thick brown hair. As soon as the last car, the Corvette, was on the runway, he reached into the glove box, removed a letter, then climbed out and lit up a Camel filter.
“You must be the general,” he said to a man approaching followed by a dozen soldiers.
“Yes,” the general said.
“I’m Keith Lowden,” the man said. “I was told to give you this.”
The general scanned the letter, folded it and placed it in his rear pants pocket. “These all original?”
“They are,” Lowden said. “The serial numbers all match.”
Lowden then motioned to the general to walk over to the Superbird and started explaining the car, the documentation and the rare options. By the time Lowden had finished with the second car, the Boss 302, the general stopped him.
“You want—” he started to say just as Lowden’s cell phone rang.
“Sorry,” Lowden said as he answered. He listened for a minute, then turned to the general.
“They want to know if it’s a deal,” he said, placing his hand over the telephone.
The general nodded his head in the affirmative.
“He said okay,” Lowden said.
A second later he hung up the telephone and turned back to the general. “Now, what were you about to ask me?”
“I was wondering if you had time to spend the night here in my country,” the general said, “so we might talk about the cars.”
“I don’t know,” Lowden said, smiling. “This country have any beer?”
“Some of the best,” the general said, smiling back.
“Good,” Lowden said. “’Cause you can’t talk cars when you’re thirsty.”
PO and his team were searching throughout Lhasa, but they had yet to turn up a single U.S. or European citizen. The six members of his team were all Tibetan, and Po didn’t care for them much. First of all, like most people, he hated traitors—and any way you sliced it, Tibetans that worked for the PSB had sold out to the Chinese. In the second part, the men appeared lazy; they did the questioning in a haphazard fashion and didn’t seem to be committed to finding the people Po was seeking. Thirdly, for being members of the country’s crack police service, they didn’t seem to have much training in police procedures.
Po, for his part, had little choice, so he doubled his own efforts and hoped for the best.
“THE son-of-a-bitches,” Cabrillo said angrily, “it’s like putting an atomic bomb in the Vatican.”
Zhuren had just given them the site of the poison gas. It was in Potala, the home of the Dalai Lama, and one of the most sacred of structures in all of Tibet. The Chinese plan was evil, but ingenious. Potala sat on a hill outside of town; if one waited until the winds were right, you could blanket Lhasa in a matter of minutes.
Seng nodded, then reached for his beeping radio. “Go ahead, Oregon,” he said.
“Is Cabrillo there with you?”
“Hold on,” Seng said, handing him the radio.
“Juan,” Hanley said quickly, “we have the votes. All you need to do is keep it together for another few hours and help will be on the way.”
“What’s the latest on the Russians?” Cabrillo asked.
“They’re five hours from the Mongolian-Tibetan border,” Hanley said, staring at the large monitor on the wall, “give or take.”
“Call and have them slow the tank column down,” Cabrillo said. “If they reach the border before the vote, we could have World War Three on our hands.”