His shaved head, tanned to a deep leathery brown by years in innumerable jungles, desert training camps, and killing grounds, revealed scores of scratches, dents, and blemishes that he hadn’t obviously been bom with. The face was ruggedly handsome, with bright, quick green eyes, a masculine, oft-broken nose, prominent cheekbones, and a thin mouth that clamped down hard on the stub of a cheroot. His baggy flight suit could not hide a well-muscled body. Thick forearms and deeply callused hands gripped the AK-47 as if it weighed only a few ounces. He could have been a model for a cologne or cigarette ad, except for the scars and punctures, most never properly sutured or dressed, that spoiled an otherwise photo-perfect physique. The ex-Belgian Special Forces warrior kept his body tense and his eyes darting to any face that might dare to turn on him, but inwardly Cazaux relaxed.
Cazaux had been an infantry soldier for almost all of his adult life. That was his profession, but his first love was flying. Basic fixed- and rotary-wing pilot training was standard for most Belgian Special Forces cadre, and Cazaux found he had a real aptitude for it. Once out of the Special Forces and into the dark world of the professional soldier, le mercenaire, he became a pilot who could handle a gun and who knew explosives, assault tactics, and the other arcane arts of killing — a very valuable commodity. Cazaux held an American Federal Aviation Administration commercial pilot’s license, kept current as part of his “above-ground” life, but he had thousands of hours in hundreds of different aircraft, with landings all over the world that would never see the inside of any pilot’s logbook or FA A computer database.
The plane was almost loaded; they would be airborne in less than a half-hour. The workers were just about finished loading three narrow wooden pallets aboard the rear cargo ramp of a Czechoslovakian-made LET L-600 twin-turboprop transport. The L-600 was one of the thousands of old aircraft bought on the open market after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when anyone could get an old Soviet military transport, spare engines and parts, and even experienced pilots for a song. This thirty-year-old bird had been purchased from a Greek broker for only five hundred thousand dollars, including a spare Motorlet engine, some other miscellaneous spare parts, and even a ferry pilot. The LET was in good condition — unlike the ferry pilot, who was an old alcoholic ex-Romanian Air Force colonel who flew this beast from Prague to the United States. The Romanian was overheard discussing his boss, Cazaux, with some bar bimbo one night — a fatal error in judgment. Henri Cazaux used the old fart and his new American girlfriend as a moving target when he was zeroing in a new sniper rifle several weeks ago, then buried them both under five thousand tons of gravel at a quarry near Oakland. Cazaux was in the weapons business, and the first standing order for all of his employees was strict secrecy.
Henri Cazaux was the LET L-600’s one and only pilot, as well as its loadmaster, engineer, crew chief, and security officer. Cazaux entrusted the duties of copilot to a young Cuban-trained Ethiopian pilot named Taddele Korhonen, whom Cazaux called “the Stork,” because of his very tall, thin body and his ability to sit still for an incredible length of time. Cazaux had even seen Korhonen standing on one leg once, like some large dark swamp bird.
Satisfied that the six loaders were sufficiently cowed and working as hard as they could, Cazaux stepped through the L-600’s forward port doorway into the cargo bay to inspect the goods. He had just a few inches to squeeze through between the fuselage and the three cargo pallets that occupied the bay — no fat boys on this crew — and Cazaux had to be careful to step over the thick canvas anchor straps securing each pallet to the deck.
The cargo hold smelled like gun oil and machined metal, like sulfur and gunpowder, like terror and death — and money, of course. Lots of money.
The first pallet was just forward of the cargo ramp, and it held the big prize, a cargo worth more than the aircraft that carried them and probably all the humans nearby — three “coffins” of Stinger shoulder-fired heat-seeking antiair missiles stacked aboard, with nine cases to go. Nine coffinshaped cases each held two Stinger missiles, preloaded into disposable fiberglass launch tubes, and four cylindrical “bean can” battery units. The other three cases held two launcher grip/sight assemblies and four battery units. The missiles had been stolen from a National Guard unit in Tennessee shortly after the unit returned from Desert Storm, and scattered in various hiding places across the country while the sales deals were cut. Cazaux had managed to stay well ahead of the authorities as long as the missiles were hidden and off the market. But as soon as the missiles came out of hiding — which meant hiring loaders, truckers, middlemen, guards, and bankers — the U.S. Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agency, the Army Special Investigations Unit, and the FBI were howling at his heels. Cazaux was certain there was an informant in his operation, and he would ferret him or her out soon. Killing the informant would be his pleasure.
The next forward wooden pallet contained shipment crates of various military field items, ranging from fatigues and boots to U.S. Army MREs (Meals Ready-to-Eat, or more popularly known as Meals Rejected by Everyone), from medical supplies to tents, from power generators to five-pound bundles of cash worth at least two thousand dollars a bundle. When it came time to bribe a customs official in Mexico, the Bahamas, Bermuda, or at the cargo’s destination in Haiti, just one discreet toss, and the plane, five pounds lighter, would be on its way within moments. Each bundle of cash was worth about ten times what a Haitian Customs officer legitimately earned in a year, and Cazaux rarely encountered anyone who would turn down a bribe.
The third pallet, secured closest to the front of the cargo bay, held the really nasty stuff — almost five thousand pounds of ammunition, high explosives, detonators, claymore mines, demolition gear, and primacord. Most of the stuff was stable and fairly safe to ship, except for the stuff in the center of the pallet, surrounded by Styrofoam shock absorbers — five hundred pounds of pentaerythritol tetrani- trate, or PETN, the primary component of detonating cord and used as a booster in large demolition charges. For the flight, the crystalline PETN was mixed with water to form a gray sludge, then packed in cases surrounded by wet sponges to keep it cool and protect it from shock — it had a detonation temperature of only 350 degrees Fahrenheit. PETN was the most sensitive of the primary military explosives, almost as bad as nitroglycerin — the friction of two crystals rubbing against each other could be enough to set it off.
The explosives-laden pallet was placed toward the front of the plane to keep it closer to the L-600’s center of pressure, where aerodynamic forces were more balanced — no use whipping the pallet around unnecessarily. Cazaux was not the best pilot in the world, but he had not lost a shipment of weapons yet in over ten years. Although his copilot, the Stork, always checked the security of each holddown strap in his cargo bay several times before and during each flight, Cazaux himself triple-checked the security of all the straps on the third pallet, then double-checked the security of the middle pallet.