“Very well. I hope you hurry back. Your next delivery will be waiting.”
“Keep the rum chilled,” Vasko said, but Hendriks had already hung up.
As the sky turned black, he retrieved the toolbox and slipped into the fatigues. He tucked the silencer into the box and returned to the road. A few miles north of Vasylkiv, he located a military air base. Avoiding the front gate, he drove to the opposite side of the tarmac and parked near some houses in clear view of the main runway.
Hendriks had informed him that an American transport plane was making twice-weekly deliveries of civilian aid to the Ukrainian government while en route to a NATO air base in Turkey. If the schedule hadn’t changed, then a flight was due tonight.
Hendriks’s information was soon proven accurate. The screaming whine from four turbofan jet engines fractured the night air as a massive gray aircraft descended to the runway. It was a C-5M Super Galaxy transport, operating from the 9th Airlift Squadron based in Dover, Delaware.
The big plane taxied to a stop near an open hangar and its rear loading ramp was lowered. Vasko grabbed the toolbox, crossed a ditch and short field, and approached a tall chain-link fence. He made quick order of snipping an opening and crawling onto the base. Walking quickly, he strode across an unlit section of the runway and approached the main hangar. A handful of Ukrainian MiG-29s were parked inside, next to a growing mountain of pallets being unloaded from the American plane.
Vasko pulled his cap low over his eyes and approached the C-5. He waited for a loaded forklift to slip by, then climbed up the loading ramp and entered the cavernous plane. A pair of Ukrainian airmen stood by the nearest pallets, checking an inventory list. Wearing the same green fatigues, they ignored Vasko as he moved forward with his toolbox.
He moved past the pallets to a pair of Humvees secured to the deck in the middle of the plane. His eyes grew big at the sight beyond. Several rows of antitank missiles were secured in low metal racks, bound for Turkey. Hendriks was a lucky man, Vasko thought.
He threaded his way to the last rack and knelt behind it. From the toolbox he removed the brown-wrapped package, which contained a block of PPV-5A plastic explosives favored by the Russian military. He taped the block to one of the missiles and began to insert the detonator.
“Can I help you, pardner?” said a voice with a thick Oklahoma accent.
Vasko looked up to see a hefty American gazing at him from across the bay. On his shoulder he wore a starred insignia surrounded by a thick band of chevrons.
“Hydraulic leak, Sergeant,” Vasko said.
“Sorry, friend, but I’m the flight engineer on this bird and I didn’t authorize any local repairs.” He stepped closer, eyeing Vasko with suspicion.
Vasko set down the detonator and pulled the silencer from the toolbox. He casually raised the gun and pumped three shots into the airman. The sergeant gasped, then looked at his wounds in shock, before falling dead to the cargo floor. Inside the huge airplane, it all went unnoticed.
Ignoring the dead man, Vasko wired the detonator to the timer and powered it on. Setting the timer for ten minutes, he tucked the package under the missile rack, then dragged the sergeant’s body alongside. He was making his way to the rear of the plane when a crash sounded ahead of him.
The forklift operator had knocked over a pallet, which had burst and spilled its contents of portable radios. A Ukrainian officer had appeared and was admonishing the forklift driver as Vasko tried to slip by.
“You there,” the officer said, waving at Vasko. “Help clean up this mess. I’ll go get a cart.”
Vasko nodded and set down the toolbox, keeping his head low. As the officer set off down the ramp, he began gathering up the loose radios, waiting for the forklift to depart with another load. But the forklift driver dithered with caution, and by the time he started to remove the next pallet, the officer was returning with a cart.
Vasko quickly picked up the radios and threw them in the cart, his mind on the high explosives preparing to detonate. With the cart full, he began wheeling it down the ramp.
“Hey, wait a minute,” the officer called.
“Yes, sir?” Vasko said. Despite the cool night air, sweat was beginning to drip down his temple.
“You forgot your toolbox.”
Vasko nodded and scooped up the toolbox, avoiding eye contact with the officer. “Thank you, sir.” He scurried down the ramp.
He ditched the cart inside the hangar and ducked outside, rushing down the flight line and away from the airplane. He reached the end of the hangar, cut around the corner, and checked his watch. It was too close now to be in the open, so he backed to the wall and waited.
As the antitank missiles erupted in succession, a ripple of concussions shook the ground. Vasko peeked around the corner as the entire midsection of the plane evaporated in a ball of black smoke. Debris rained down across the airfield, and he waited for the pelting to subside before stepping onto the tarmac.
As fire alarms rang through the night air, he crossed the runway, stopping only to pick up a charred gray fragment of aluminum from the C-5’s fuselage. He ducked through the hole in the fence, threw the toolbox and aluminum shard into the rental car, and drove away, not bothering to look back at the billowing inferno he had just created.
68
The Sofia office of Europol occupied a corner section of the Bulgarian Criminal Police Directorate’s headquarters, housed in a drab concrete building in the capital city’s center. Wearing a patterned skirt and silk blouse that showed the wrinkles of too many hours at her desk, Ana was rifling through yet another stack of border patrol reports when something caught her eye. She glanced up to see Pitt and Giordino standing in the hallway, smiling at her through the window of her office door.
Ana rushed into the hall and gave each man a hug. “I didn’t expect to see you two again before you left.”
“We booked our flight to Washington from Sofia so we could see you,” Pitt said.