The Outlaws (Presidential Agent 6)

Castillo pointed across the tarmac and ordered: “Put those three on the helo coming in, and then get on yourself.”

Castillo then ran twenty yards—with Max bounding happily after him—so that Colonel Kingsolving could see him clearly from the cockpit of the Policía Federal Preventiva UH-60. Then he made hand signals telling Kingsolving to take off.

The helicopter immediately broke ground, lowered its nose, and moved away, gaining speed.

Kidnapper Two stopped, still not touching the ground, where an ex-Spetsnaz stood waiting with the remaining Spetsnaz men bound with plastic handcuffs. Roscoe J. Danton’s camera was at the ready to capture what happened next: As soon as the first of the handcuffed Spetsnaz had been assisted aboard, a black-suited special operator jumped out of the Black Hawk and helped the Spetsnaz throw the other two aboard.

The ex-Spetsnaz looked again at Castillo for guidance.

“Get aboard,” Castillo shouted, and then signaled to the pilot to take off.

As it did, Roscoe J. Danton made a photographic record.

There was a change in the pitch of the Tu-934A engines and Castillo turned to see that it was moving slowly out of the hangar. Castillo took one last look around, ran to Roscoe J. Danton, and tried to lead him to the ramp of the Tu-934A.

Mr. Danton was not sure he wished to go at this time. He resisted. Castillo grabbed the strap of Roscoe’s camera, jerked hard on it, breaking it, and then, when Roscoe started to protest, grabbed the camera itself, ran to the open ramp of the Tu-934A, and threw the camera aboard. Roscoe then jumped onto the airplane to retrieve his camera.

While he was so engaged, Castillo grabbed Sweaty’s arm and led her to the ramp of the Tu-934A. She leapt nimbly onto it.

So did Max, after considering for ten seconds the wisdom of doing so. In that time, the airplane moved away, rolling faster.

For a very terrifying moment, Castillo was afraid he wouldn’t be so nimble as the love of his life and his dog. He ran after the plane and made a running dive onto the ramp, landing on his stomach.

Max got to him first and licked his face as he was trying to get up. Mr. Danton recorded for posterity Max licking his master’s face as he lay on the ramp. Then Sweaty pulled Castillo to his feet, and he moved as fast as he could toward the cockpit. Max chased after him.

When Castillo got to the cockpit, he saw that Torine had lined up the airplane on the runway. He dropped into the right seat and quickly clamped on a headset.

“Closing the ramp,” Torine’s voice came matter-of-factly over the earphones. “Throttles to takeoff power.”

The Tu-934A began to move.

“Call out airspeed for me, First Officer, if you’d be so kind,” Torine said.

Castillo found the airspeed indicator in the split second when the needle jumped off the peg and pointed to forty. The landing gear began rumbling.

That’s kilometers. The pilots told us rotation speed was one-fifty.

That’s not quite a hundred knots.

You can rotate this great big sonofabitch at a hundred knots?

Is that what you call misinformation?

Was that Russian pilot lying to us?

“Seventy,” Castillo called out. “That’s klicks, Jake.

“Ninety ...

“One-ten . . .

“One-thirty . . .

“One-fifty.”

“Rotating,” Torine said calmly.

A moment later, the rumble of the landing gear died.