Applegate stopped walking; no one knew he was there, not Kiley, not Larkin. “Don’t lose her,” he warned the others as he dropped off to take the call.
He had no doubt it was Shepherd.
The numerous courtesy phone locations eliminated the possibility that Shepherd might be waiting for him. Still, as a precaution, Applegate selected the one near the ticket booths, which was in an open area.
“May I help you?” a woman’s voice asked the instant he lifted the receiver.
“This is Major Applegate. I was paged.”
“Ah yes, Major,” she enthused cheerily. “You have a call; please hold. Go ahead, sir,” she said when the connection was made.
“Applegate, this is Shepherd,” Shepherd said in a hard, commanding tone. He was curled in a phone booth just inside the colonnade where Stephanie had entered the station. “I don’t know what you’re up to, Major, and I don’t want to know. I wouldn’t blow the whistle on you if I did. My point is—”
“Where the hell are you, Shepherd?” Applegate interrupted. “What do you think you’re—”
“Shut up and listen, dammit. The point I’m making is you have no reason to kill me. My wife and kids are all I care about. Now, I want you to bring me in; I want me and my family to be given new identities and relocated. You know, like they do with witnesses? That’s what I want. You arrange it?”
“I don’t know,” Applegate replied, caught off guard. “I mean, I’d have to clear it. My people would need assurances that—”
“Then let’s meet somewhere and work it out.”
“Sure, sure we can. How about—”
“Hard Rock Cafe in Mayfair,” Shepherd shot back, beating him to it. “Fifteen minutes.” He hung up and hurried from the booth.
“Shepherd? Shepherd, dammit!” Applegate groaned, slamming the phone onto the hook. He began shouldering his way through the crush of travelers in the terminal to the street, then he sprinted to his car and clambered behind the wheel. He was reaching for the microphone to contact the agents when his eyes darted to the rearview mirror, to the face that had suddenly appeared directly behind him.
“Don’t move, Major,” Shepherd barked, jabbing the pistol Spencer had given him hard against the back of Applegate’s skull. “Hands on the wheel and keep them there.” He reached around from the backseat, where he had been concealed, slipped his free hand inside Applegate’s jacket, and took the Baretta from his shoulder holster.
“What the fuck is this, Shepherd? You said—”
“I lied,” Shepherd retorted. He kept his pistol against Applegate’s neck and pushed the Baretta into his waistband, then leaned over the seat, grabbed the microphone cable, and yanked it out of the dash. “Get moving. Make a left at the next corner.”
“Fuck you; go ahead shoot; shoot me right here.”
“Listen up, Major. One of us is going to do the driving; if it’s me, you wake up with a nasty lump on your head and an even nastier headache. Your move.”
Applegate muttered an expletive, started the car, and drove off into the night.
27
The F-111 that had once had AC MAJ SHEPHERD stenciled on the nose gear door was streaking down Okba ben Nafi’s south runway at 145 knots when the Libyan pilot eased back the stick and the sleek bomber rose into the balmy North African darkness. Its Vietnam-era camouflage had been painted over with a pattern of soft desert browns; all U.S. markings had been replaced by the bold green square of the Libyan Air Force.
“It would be best if they remained unmarked, sir,” General Younis had counseled when Qaddafi gave the order.
“Have you no national pride?” Qaddafi exploded, launching into one of his tirades. “You’re too easily cowed by the Americans. Did you know they sold dozens of these aircraft to the Australians? Dozens. So who’s to say where we got them?” He threw his copy of The Military Balance at Younis and added, “Now you know where to go for spare parts.”
Younis had no choice but to console himself with the knowledge that the F-111s would be flown only at night.
The two aviators in the cockpit were the cream of a mediocre crop from which Younis had selected four crews. Like test pilots in an unfamiliar aircraft they were coping with a barrage of flight and mission data. Twenty minutes after takeoff, the fast-moving bomber was 250 miles from base and closing on its target.
“Thirty miles,” the pilot reported.
“Attack radar engaged,” the wizzo replied, eyes riveted to the Pave Tack monitor, as he manipulated the control handle that swings out from the right sidewall.
Qaddafi and Younis were in the tower at Okba ben Nan with the East German avionics expert, hovering over one of the radar screens, listening to the pilot and wizzo.
SHK Chief Abdel-Hadi sat off to one side, the Akita heeled patiently next to him.
Moncrieff paced nervously behind them. He wasn’t thinking about F-111s, water shortages, or pipelines, but about getting Katifa to Saudi Arabia, where she could safely convalesce. Rejecting commercial flights as too vulnerable to attack by Nidal’s hit squads, he had gone to his family for assistance and one of the Royal DC-9s was due to arrive at Okba ben Nafi shortly.
Qaddafi and Younis flinched as the crackle and hiss from the radio was suddenly broken.
“Twenty miles,” the F-111’s pilot reported. He pushed the throttles to the stops, beginning a high-speed bombing run designed to minimize the time that the plane would spend in hostile airspace.
“They should have acquisition by now,” the bony East German groaned, avoiding Qaddafi’s angry glare.
“Ten miles,” the pilot announced. “Five… four…”
“Blank screen,” the wizzo reported, his eyes darting between the columns of alphanumeric data.
Younis snatched a microphone from the tower radar console. “Save the ordnance,” he ordered, knowing the bombs would miss the target — a defunct oil pumping station in the desert, selected because it was the same distance from Okba ben Nafi as Nefta Dam in Tunisia.
This was the third training sortie in as many nights and, each time, despite the F-111’s being right on target, the Pave Tack program invariably wasn’t.
“I thought you had this solved,” Qaddafi challenged the East German.
“So did I,” the flustered engineer replied. “We’ve checked and double checked every sequence point; the data is accurate and precise; it’s the entry key that we haven’t been able to crack.”
“We’ll just have to wait until the Americans get their hands on the hostages,” Younis counseled softly.
“What about the Palestinian?” Qaddafi demanded, shifting his glowering eyes to the secret police chief.
Abdel-Hadi’s thick brows went up apprehensively. “Nothing. He has a strong will, and I’m concerned we’ll—”
“Find a way to break it,” Qaddafi retorted angrily. He was still smoldering when the pilot of the Saudi jetliner radioed the tower for landing clearance.
Moncrieff had been paying no attention to the others; now, he came to life. “They must have immediate clearance,” he exhorted in an urgent tone.
The air traffic controller glanced at Qaddafi.
Qaddafi nodded sharply. Then making one of his legendary mood shifts, he turned to Moncrieff with a warm smile. “Allah be with you,” he said, embracing him. “Both of you.”