“This is not a hospital,” Badira reminded her.
The tiny ceramic pipe was no bigger than Sandra’s thumb, made of fired white clay. Badira put the opium pellet into the bowl and gave it to her. Then she lit the candle and told Sandra to scoot closer to the table. “Get the pipe close to the flame,” she told her. “Breath the flame into the blow and inhale the vapor.”
Sandra did as she was told, sucking the vapor deep into her lungs, desperate to kill the pain in her leg. She inhaled twice and was rapidly transported to a separate reality. Every muscle in her body went limp, and her head suddenly seemed to weigh fifty pounds. Badira caught her and helped her to lie back on the bed, covering her with a blanket as she drifted off on the opium cloud.
Badira knew this was the beginning of Sandra’s opium addiction, but if Aasif Kohistani arrived before Naeem returned to take her back to the Americans, addiction would be the least of her worries. For now, it was better to keep her doped up and out of pain. This way she would hardly realize what was happening, should Naeem choose to violate her again.
CHAPTER 9
Gil stood in the tail section of the Boeing 727 looking down the short staircase extending from the rear of the aircraft to the tarmac six feet below. Chief Steelyard stood at the base of the stairs looking up at him with his hands on his hips, chewing pensively at the unlit Cohiba caught in the corner of his mouth.
“Now I know how D. B. Cooper musta felt,” Gil remarked, recalling the story of the legendary D. B. Cooper who hijacked a 727 in November 1971, demanding a $200,000 ransom for the passengers. After the ransom money was delivered to the plane, along with four parachutes, Cooper ordered the jet back into the air, ostensibly en route to Mexico. But this was merely a ruse. Cooper bailed out the tail end of the 727—exactly as Gil was about to do — somewhere between Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, never to be seen again. The FBI had insisted ever since that Cooper could not have survived the jump. As far as Gil knew, no one had ever attempted such a jump before or since.
Steelyard snatched the cigar from his teeth, pointing at the fuselage over his head. “This shit right here comes real close to being beyond the call of duty. You’ve got three Pratt & Whitneys right over your goddamn head. If those pilots aren’t flying this crate straight and level when you jump, the jet blast will tear you apart.”
Gil trotted down the stairs. “They’ll bring the airspeed down as close to two hundred knots as they can get it without stalling.”
“I still don’t like it.”
“They never found Cooper’s body, Chief. I believe he made it. I’ll make it, too.”
The older SEAL shook his head, adjusting his cap. “SOG really cooked one up this time. What about the passengers? Seems to me they might notice a sudden loss of cabin pressure.”
“Lerher’s techs already killed the feed to the emergency oxygen masks in the passenger compartment,” Gil said. “The flight won’t be full, only nineteen passengers. Three minutes before I jump, the pilot’s gonna drop the cabin pressure to three psi and knock everybody out. My stewardess and I will already be on oxygen by then, hiding in the rear compartment. The passengers go unconscious within sixty seconds, and that gives us a minute to lower the stairs and for me to hit the silk. The cabin should be resealed and back under pressure inside of three minutes. A couple of minutes after that, everybody wakes up again — scared shitless but none the wiser.”
Two CIA technicians rolled up in a maintenance truck and parked directly beneath the tail of the 727. They climbed into the back where a TIG welder rested against the cab. One of them switched on the welder, and the other opened a stepladder. The welder then donned a pair of thick leather gloves and dark goggles, climbing the ladder to place a couple of spot welds on the first of two pivoting metal airfoils, not much smaller than a ping-pong paddle, located on the fuselage on either side of the stairwell.
“What the hell are those things?” Steelyard asked.
“They’re called Cooper vanes,” answered the technician holding the ladder. “They’re spring loaded. When the aircraft is in flight, the airflow rushes over the foils and turns them to lock the stairs in the up position. Once the plane slows down again, they automatically open back up. We’re welding them open so the stairs can be lowered during flight.”
Steelyard looked at Gil. “Learn something new every day.” He lifted his chin. “Who’s she?”
Gil turned to see a husky-looking woman stalking across the tarmac dressed in dark pants, a maroon turtleneck, and a purple headscarf. She had a rough complexion and a hard look in her obsidian eyes. She was intercepted briefly by an Army sentry who reviewed her credentials and allowed her to pass.
“She’s an operative with MIT,” Gil said. Turkish Intelligence. “The stewardess I just mentioned.”
“Jesus,” Steelyard muttered. “I’m sorry to hear that, little buddy.” Little buddy was a takeoff on Gil’s nickname — Gilligan.
The woman approached, staring at Gil without as much as a glance at Steelyard. “Does the aircraft meet with your approval, Master Chief Shannon?” Her voice was deep, and her accent was thick, but her English was easily understood. She was obviously very proud to be working with DEVGRU on such an intrepid mission.
“It does, Melisa, thank you.”
“We’ll be taking off for Kandahar the moment the aircraft is ready,” she said. “I understand you will be following a few hours behind.”
“That’s right,” he replied. “I have to prep my gear for the jump.”
“Very well,” she said, offering her hand. “Until we meet in Kandahar.”
Gil took her hand. “Until Kandahar,” he said with a curt nod, resisting the ironic temptation to click his heels together, a gesture that he was sure she would not have found humorous.
They watched her go.
Steelyard took the cigar from his mouth and spit. “Too bad she’s not jumping with you. She could probably take ten of the bastards with her bare hands.”
Gil chuckled. “Let’s go have a look at the gear Lerher brought me.”
The gear Lerher had supplied waited for him in the same hangar SOAR was using to keep their hi-tech helicopters out of sight. The kit itself was stowed in an aluminum case not much larger than one of Gil’s own cruise boxes now stacked against the wall. There was no one else around as Gil and Steelyard unlocked the double padlocks at either end.
The first item Gil removed from the crate was a hard plastic gun case containing the Dragunov sniper rifle (SVD) with a Russian PSO-1 optical sight. He set the case down on a workbench and opened it up. The rifle’s wooden stock was weathered, but it had recently been hand-rubbed with linseed oil and was in good condition. Gil disassembled the rifle at once without difficulty. The weapon was of high-quality Russian manufacture, not a Chinese or Iranian licensed production.
“At least it’s an Izhmash,” he said with a glance at Steelyard, naming the Russian manufacturer.
“I guess Lerher couldn’t afford a synthetic stock,” Steelyard muttered.
“Well,” Gil said, knowing that Steelyard couldn’t stand Agent Lerher, “if you think about it, how many hajis are running around inside of Iran with brand-new SVDs?” He stuck a curved plastic light into the breach of the weapon and looked down the muzzle to see the rifling was pristine. “The pipe is brand new. They put rounds through it to sight it in, but that’s it.”
“Goddamn better be.” Steelyard looked around to see if anyone was nearby, then struck a wooden match from his pocket to light the cigar. “If I blow us up, don’t worry. They’ll know who to blame.”