“Well, there’s one really good one, Major Castillo,” Sergeant Orson said. “If I do have to say so myself. And Sergeant Stedder thought it would be a good idea if he took his rifle along when he went out to climb on the roof. How many do you think you’re going to need?”
“What I’m thinking . . .” Castillo said and stopped when he saw the look on McNab’s face.
“Go on, Charley,” McNab said. “Let’s see how much you remember of all that you learned with me as your all-wise mentor.”
“What I was thinking, sir, is that I don’t think the other two are pilots. Which means if we can take out the two pilots, the airplane couldn’t be flown.”
“And how do we get the pilots—or any of these people— to obligingly line themselves up for the attention of Sergeants Orson and Stedder?”
“A diversion,” Castillo began, thoughtfully.
XIX
[ONE]
Tomas Guardia International Airport Liberia, Costa Rica 1415 10 June 2005
Major C. G. Castillo, now wearing a black flight suit with subdued insignia that included the wings of a master Army aviator and identified him as CWO-5 B.D. SHINE, lay beside a small concrete-block building hoping he was further concealed by a fifty-five-gallon drum full of aromatic waste. His face was streaked with brown, black, and green grease. He had binoculars to his eyes and wore a headset, putting a small receiver in his right ear and a microphone at his lips. A CAR-4 lay on the ground beside him.
Immediately to his left, the other side of the reeking garbage drum, was Sergeant First Class Paul T. Orson, who was armed with a dull black bolt-action rifle based on the Remington Model 700 .308 Winchester caliber hunting rifle. About the only things that hadn’t been changed were the caliber —known in the Army as “7.62×51mm NATO”—and the action. It now had a carefully chosen and tested barrel and, in place of glossy walnut, a matt black stock made up of fiberglass, Kevlar, and graphite. A dull black 10×42 Leupold Ultra optical sight was mounted on top.
Immediately behind them—literally, behind the garbage drum—and also armed with a CAR-4, was Colonel Jake Torine, USAF, now wearing a black flight suit whose subdued insignia identified him as CWO-3 P.J. LEFKOWITZ, a senior Army aviator.
A good deal was about to happen—Sergeant Orson thought of this as all hell was about to break loose—but there was no indication of this on the tarmac in front of them.
Another open-bodied Ford one-and-a-half-ton truck was pulled up close to the 727. A man on the truck handed down, four at a time, long, thin cardboard boxes to two men on the ground. They carried the boxes to the movable stairs rolled up to the front door and to the lowered rear stairway of the airplane. There they were passed to men wearing short-sleeved white shirts with captain’s and first officer’s shoulder boards and quickly carried up the stairs into the airplane.
Castillo had recognized the face of one of the aircrew as the guy had run up and down the stairs. He had seen his photographs in Philadelphia. He had not seen the second Philadelphia mullah nor had he recognized the two men who had also carried flowers into the aircraft up the rear stairs. But they had intelligent faces and he wondered if he had been wrong, that everybody was a pilot.
How the hell can you calmly load an airplane—with flowers, for Christ’s sake—knowing you’re going to die in it?
“Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one,” General Mc-Nab ’s voice said in Castillo’s earpiece. “Showtime!”
“Heads up,” Castillo said softly and, a moment later, realized it was entirely unnecessary. Sergeant Orson had his eye to the Leupold scope and the rifle was trained on the rear stairs of the 727.
The first thing to disturb the peace and tranquillity of Tomas Guardia International Airport was that of artillery simulators detonated near a small concrete-block building, painted in a red-and-white-checkerboard pattern, to one side of the runway. The simulators were intended to sound exactly like that of a 105mm howitzer shell coming through the air and detonating on contact. And they did.
At precisely that moment, two Little Birds popped up past the end of the runway where Castillo, Sherman, and Torine had fallen down the hill. Rocket fire exploded from the left Little Bird and a stream of 40mm grenades from the other. The rockets struck a fuel truck parked out of line of sight of the 727, causing an immediate explosion, and the grenades exploded in a line parallel to, and a few feet the other side of, the runway.
The face of the man near the bottom of the rear stairway was familiar to Castillo through his binoculars.
“Take him,” he ordered.
There was an immediate crack as the sniper rifle fired. There was no question in Castillo’s mind that Orson would hit his target.
I have just killed that guy as surely as if I had pulled the trigger myself.
This philosophical observation was immediately challenged whe
n the man in his binocular view, though obviously disturbed and surprised by what was happening—he was now looking up the stairs—was obviously still very much alive.
I’ll be a sonofabitch, he missed!
Castillo looked over at Sergeant Orson just as the rifle fired again.
Castillo hastily put the binoculars to his eyes again.
The man on the rear stairway was now sliding, facedown, down the stairs.