By Order of the President (Presidential Agent 1)

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Fernando gets left out here with the aides? No fucking way!

“Unless there’s some reason he shouldn’t, I’d like Mr. Lopez with me,” Charley said.

“Yes, sir, of course,” McNab said, putting out his hand. “My name is McNab, Mr. Lopez.”

“Yes, sir”? What the hell is that all about?

“How do you do, sir?” Fernando said.

“I may have to kill him, General,” D’Alessandro said as they walked across the hangar. “Charley’s told him everything. ”

“Hold off on that until we don’t need him anymore,” McNab said.

The Air Force officer—the leather patch on his flight suit was silver-stamped with command pilot wings and the legend COL J.D. TORINE, USAF—smiled and shook his head.

When they were inside the office, McNab sat down at a desk as D’Alessandro closed the door.

“For the benefit of Mr. Castillo and Mr. Lopez,” McNab began, “Colonel Torine commands the Seventeenth Airlift Squadron at Charleston Air Force Base, South Carolina. Before the Air Force—scraping the bottom of the barrel—promoted him, he was in charge of our C-22 here. When General Naylor laid this requirement on the 117th, Torine couldn’t find enough sober Air Force types to drive the C-17 and had to do it himself.”

Torine put out his hand to Castillo. “Were you really the worst aide-de-camp in the Army?” he said with a smile.

“If General McNab said so, it must be true, sir,” Castillo said.

Torine and Fernando shook hands.

“I like your airplane, Mr. Lopez,” he said.

“Thank you,” Fernando said.

“If you would, Mr. Castillo,” McNab said, “fill us in. General Naylor being General Naylor, we’re all still pretty much in the dark.”

What’s with the “Mr. Castillo”? Everybody knows I’m a major.

“The airplane you were looking for in Abéché, sir, was— we’re pretty sure—stolen by a Somalian terrorist group called the ‘Holy Legion of Muhammad’ . . .”

“The name doesn’t ring a bell,” McNab interjected. He looked at the others, all of whom shook their heads.

“. . . who plan on crashing it into the Liberty Bell.”

“Where’d you get this, Mr. Castillo?” McNab asked.

“From a Russian, an arms dealer. One of the names he uses is Aleksandr Pevsner. Another is Vasily Respin.”

“I know the gentleman by both names. He’s a genuine rascal,” McNab said. “This sounds like a CIA fantasy. You said you got it? Where?”

“From Pevsner. In Vienna.”

“What’s in it for him? Don’t tell me altruism.”

“He wants attention diverted from some of his business activities.”

McNab grunted.

“Anyway,” Castillo went on, “the last word we had was that the airplane—now repainted with the registration numbers of Air Suriname—was last seen in N’Djamena, Chad, after a flight from Khartoum. Khartoum has no record of Air Suriname 1101 in Khartoum in the last six months.”

“That could happen,” Colonel Torine said and made a gesture with his fingers suggesting a bribe.