Then a second set of blinking lights appeared in the distance.
AL-KHALIFA WAS AN excellent helicopter pilot. A falsified student visa and $100,000 in fees, as well as a year at the South Florida flight school he had attended, ensured that. Looking through the windshield, he carefully scanned the terrain on Mount Forel. He had just caught sight of an orange snowcat off to the side of the mountain when the other helicopter came into view.
Fate is funny—five minutes later and he would have missed his chance.
A second later, Al-Khalifa had assessed the situation and formed his plan.
CABRILLO SLID CAREFULLY out of the cave and then flopped down behind a rocky outcropping. He needed to make it to the Thiokol and recover his rifle, but the second helicopter was facing him directly. Sliding the satellite telephone from his pocket, he glanced at the readout. Now that he was outside the cave he was receiving a signal again. He hit the speed dial and waited until Hanley answered.
“It looks like the fall of Saigon up here,” Cabrillo said. “I arrived to find a helicopter on site, and now another one has just arrived. Who are these people?”
“Stony just identified one,” Hanley answered. “It’s a charter from western Greenland owned by a Michael Neilsen. We ran the owner for ties to any organizations but no hits yet, so I’d guess he’s just a pilot for hire.”
“What about the second one?”
Stone had been furiously typing on the keyboard. “It’s a Bell Jet Ranger leased by a Canadian mineral company.”
“The second one’s a Bell Jet Rang—” Hanley started to say.
“I’m staring at it right now,” Cabrillo said. “It’s not a Jet Ranger, it looks more like a McDonnell Douglas 500 series.”
Stone typed in some more commands and a second later a picture of a wrecked helicopter filled the monitor. “Someone has stolen the registration and ident to avoid detection. Can Mr. Cabrillo see any tail numbers?”
“Stone says we have a stolen registration,” Hanley noted. “Can you see any tail numbers?”
Cabrillo removed a pair of small binoculars from his pocket and stared through the darkness. “Two things,” he said slowly. “The first is that there’s a weapons pod hung under the fuselage. The second is that the tail numbers aren’t visible, but I can make out letters painted on the side. There is an A, followed by a K, followed by a B.
Then the rest are covered in ice. The next is maybe an A, I can’t be sure.”
Hanley related to Cabrillo what they had uncovered about the yacht named Akbar.
“It’s that son of a bitch Al-Khalifa?” Cabrillo blurted. “Who’s in the other helicopter? Al Capone?”
NEILSEN HAD THE rotor blade up to speed and he pulled up on the collective, taking the Eurocopter into a hover just as the other helicopter appeared in the windshield.
“Look there,” he said through the headset to Hughes.
“Take off, now,” Hughes shouted.
“I think we’d better set down and see what’s up,” Neilsen said.
With a lightning-fast move, Hughes pulled a pistol from his pocket and pointed it at Neilsen’s head. “I said take off.”
One look at Hughes and the pistol was enough; Neilsen moved the cyclic and the Eurocopter lurched forward. At that instant a flame erupted from the bottom of the other helicopter and a missile streaked toward where they had been hovering. The missile went wide and veered out into the frozen wasteland.
STONE BROUGHT UP an image on the monitor in the Oregon’s control room. “This is a DOD satellite shot one hour ago,” he said quickly. “Helicopter number two came from a location offshore of eastern Greenland on a straight course for Mount Forel.”
Just then Adams walked into the control room. “Our helicopter is armed and ready.”
“Do you have enough range to make it from here and back?” Hanley asked.
“No,” Adams admitted, “we’ll be thirty to forty gallons short on the return.”
“What kind of fuel do you burn?”
“One hundred octane low-lead.”
“Mr. Chairman,” Hanley said over the satellite phone, “we have Adams ready to go, but we’re short fuel for the return trip. Do you have extra fuel on the snowcat?”
“I have a hundred gallons or so left,” Cabrillo said.
Hanley looked up at Adams, who had listened to the transmission carefully.
“If I take along some liquid octane booster, we can bump the gas up so it might work. One way or another, I want to get over there and help the boss.”
“I’ll call the mechanical shop and have the booster delivered to the flight deck,” Hanley said quickly. “You do your preflight and take off as soon as possible.”
Adams nodded and raced for the door.
“I’m sending in the cavalry, Juan,” Hanley said into the telephone. “He’ll be there in a couple of hours.”
Cabrillo watched as the second helicopter lined up on the Eurocopter to take another shot. “That’s good,” Cabrillo said, “because the helicopter with the fake registration just fired a missile at the chartered ship.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Hanley said in amazement.
“That’s not all, my friend,” Cabrillo said. “I haven’t had a chance to deliver the really bad news yet.”
“What could be worse?”
“The meteorite is inside the chartered helicopter,” Cabrillo said. “They grabbed it before me.”
INSIDE THE EUROCOPTER, Hughes was holding the pistol to Neilsen’s head with one hand and a satellite telephone in the other.
“Fly west toward the coast,” he said, “there’s been a change in plans.”
Neilsen nodded and made the adjustment.
At the same time, Hughes pressed a button on the speed dial of the phone and waited.
“Sir,” he said as Neilsen sped up and raced over the snowy terrain, “I’ve recovered the object and fired the caretaker, but now there’s a snag.”
“What’s the problem?” the man said.
“We’re under attack from an unidentified helicopter.”
“You’re headed for the coast, right?”
“Yes, sir, just like we planned.”
“The team is there and waiting,” the man said. “If the helicopter follows you out to sea, they can deal with the problem nicely.”
Before Hughes could answer, a second missile struck the tail of the Eurocopter and severed a blade on the tail rotor. Neilsen fought with the controls but the Eurocopter started into a death spiral toward the ground.
“We’re going down,” Hughes managed to shout before the centrifugal force of the spinning Eurocopter flung his hand against the side window, cracking the glass and breaking the phone.
AS THE HELICOPTERS had retreated into the distance, Cabrillo had made his way to the spot on the mountain above where he’d left his snowshoes. He was attaching them to his feet when the sound of the missile striking the Eurocopter caused him to look up. It was dark and he had a hard time making anything out for a second. Then, a few seconds later, a bright pulsing light appeared on the ground in the distance. It danced on the ground like an evil Northern Light, and then started to fade.
Cabrillo finished attaching the snowshoes then made his way over to the Thiokol and drove it in the direction of the light. Ten minutes later, when he arrived at the site, the fires were still smoldering. The helicopter itself was lying on her side like a broken pinwheel. Cabrillo climbed out and forced the jammed door on top of the wreckage open. Both the pilot and the passenger were dead. Removing what identification he could find from the bodies and the helicopter, he searched the wreckage for the box containing the meteorite.
But he found nothing. Only a set of footprints from parties unknown.
AFTER THE LINK to Hughes had gone dead and could not be reestablished, Hughes’s employer called another number.