He toggled his transmitter. “EuroAir Forty-Two, Rome Control. We’ve lost your transponder, sir.”
No reply.
He tried again.
“There! You’ve got a skin paint!” his supervisor said, the man’s breath fetid and heavy over the controller’s shoulder.
There was in fact a faint return, but it wasn’t traveling in a straight line. It was off to the right of the original course, now disappearing, then returning as the controller changed the display’s polarization control. Suddenly the area was blanked by the appearance of rain echos, and he switched back. The “skin paint” echo, if that’s what it was, had all but reversed course now and seemed to be spiraling.
The controller realized he was holding his breath. Jetliners didn’t just spiral out of altitude without a word, their data block suddenly going blank. But airliners that suddenly broke up in flight would look exactly like what he was seeing.
Oh my God, he thought to himself, imagining an explosion in the cockpit. We’ve lost them.
A sudden rain squall had approached from the southwest and blanketed the field for the past ten minutes, obscuring the usually magnificent vista of Mt. Etna to the north, and most of the east-west runway. The two U.S. Navy controllers manning the control tower had watched with amusement as some of their fellows went dashing across the ramp below to reach the military passenger terminal, their khakis completely soaked. A four-engine Navy P-3 Orion submarine hunter, the military version of the Lockheed Electra, sat on the ramp below the tower, its crew off somewhere enjoying local pleasures. Next to it a twin-engine E-2 Hawkeye had just arrived from the Kennedy, one of the carriers currently on patrol in the Mediterranean. The pilots had shut down just as the squall hit and were waiting it out. The controller working the tower frequency saw the door opening now that the rain was ending, then raised his field glasses for a routine sweep of the airport at the same moment a blaze of landing lights appeared over the eastern end of the runway.
“Who the hell is that?” the controller asked his partner as the radio speaker came alive.
“Sigonella Tower, EuroAir Forty-Two on short final to runway two seven for an emergency landing.”
The controller yanked the microphone to his mouth, his mind embracing the regulations the approaching aircrew might have violated by not contacting him sooner, and discarding the thoughts just as quickly. The word “emergency” overrode all other considerations.
“Ah, EuroAir Forty-Two, you’re cleared to land runway Two Seven, wind two four zero at seven, gusts to fifteen, altimeter two nine eight eight, rainstorm over the field and in progress. Runway is wet.”
“Roger,” was the only response. A British accent, the controller noted, wondering what on earth could have happened that would have sent them a commercial flight with no advance warning from Rome.
The controller turned to his partner again. “Did you have anything on him?”
“Hell, no. Nothing!”
“Call Rome Control and at least let them know he made it in.”
The landing lights had coalesced to a Boeing 737, a late-model design, he could tell, with the larger CFM-56 engines with the oval openings in the front. Whoever was flying made a smooth touchdown and deployed his thrust reversers quickly, slowing the aircraft at midfield, where he made a sharp right turn off the runway, following the taxiway toward the tower.
“Ah, do you need any assistance, Forty-Two?” the tower controller asked.
“No,” was the monosyllabic reply.
“Contact ground… no, stay with me. Where do you want to park?”
“Which ramp is under U.S. Navy control?”
The tower controller hesitated, wondering why anyone would ask that question. The pilot of the 737 was making a beeline toward the parked P-3.
“Ah, sir, the whole base is U.S. Navy, and you’re heading to the passenger ramp now. Do you have authorization?”
“We do now” was the response, this one a different voice, and one that sounded American.
The controller reached over to the crash phone and hesitated, then pulled up the handset and punched the button to alert the security police. The 737 taxied rapidly behind the P-3 and turned to pass between the Orion and the Navy terminal, coming to a stop with its right wingtip practically touching the building.
“Sigonella Tower, EuroAir Forty-Two. Please listen closely. No one is to approach this aircraft except the commander of this Navy installation. Do you understand?”
“Forty-Two, I will relay that request, but what is your circumstance, sir? If there’s a problem, please… ah… tell me what. Do you need assistance of some sort?”
The other controller had been on hold on another line. Suddenly he lowered his receiver, his eyes wide. “Rome says this bird’s hijacked, and they thought she’d exploded a few minutes ago in midair.”
“Jesus!” the first controller said, his hand mashing the crash alarm button at the same moment to summon the entire base to alert.
THIRTEEN
When it became apparent that John Harris was not going to land at Da Vinci International, Stuart Campbell returned to his temporary hotel-based office in central Rome to wait for word on EuroAir 42’s ultimate destination. From the back of his car in the middle of midday Roman traffic he ordered his staff in Brussels into action, directing a quick profile on Malta’s legal structure, and making sure the young lawyer he’d dispatched to the island as a remote contingency was actually in the airport with the warrant. Back in his suite and satisfied that all possible preparations had been made, he ordered coffee and sat back, watching the clock and wondering why he still felt vaguely unprepared.
The coffee arrived with the news that EuroAir 42 had engineered a disappearing act and turned up on the ramp at Sigonella.
“What?” Campbell barked, startling the airport manager, who had just found out and phoned. “Surely you’re joking!”
“No, signore. Sigonella is a U.S. Navy base in Sicily,” the man offered.
“I know that,” Campbell replied, trying and failing to suppress a chuckle.
Clever thinking, Harris! he thought. Won’t get you out of this, of course, but not a bad move under pressure. I wonder how you talked the commercial pilots into it?
The bizarre thought that a former U.S. chief executive might have actually hijacked the commercial aircraft fluttered across his mind, bringing an even broader smile. Whatever had occurred, that certainly wasn’t the explanation.
He thanked the manager and ended the call, then summoned his secretary.
“Isabel, have the car brought around to take me back to the airport, and have my pilots ready to go to this place in Sicily,” he handed her a page of yellow legal paper with the information. “Call Minister Anselmo and tell him I will wait if he or one of his people wants to come along. Ask him to prepare the local Carabinieri commander in Sicily to meet me at Sigonella, and to please arrange diplomatic clearance or whatever’s necessary to get my aircraft onto that airport. Also, they need to clear that charter aircraft to the base as well. If the pilot of that charter calls… a Captain Perez… patch him through to the car or my GSM immediately.”
She finished the shorthand transcription of his orders almost as soon as he finished speaking. “Anything else, sir?”
Campbell hauled himself effortlessly to his feet and smiled at her. “That’s all for now. Tell the driver I’ll be down in five minutes. Oh, first, get the American Embassy here in Rome on the line, and ask for the Naval attaché.”
His GSM phone rang and he flipped it open as she turned to make the embassy call.