Golden Buddha (Oregon Files 1)

The Challenger CL-604 had been purchased from a broker in London using CIA funds and outfitted with advanced electronics at a shop in Alexandria, Virginia, near Bolling Air Force Base. The large Canadian-made business jet seated ten people, had a cruise speed of 487 miles per hour and a range of 4,628 miles.

The distance from Virginia to Paris was just over 3,800 miles, where the jet was refueled and provisions were loaded aboard. The second leg of the trip, Paris to New Delhi, would cover 4,089 miles. The first leg of the journey required eight hours to complete; the second leg was made with a favorable tailwind and took just over seven hours. Within an hour of receiving word from Cabrillo at 6 A.M. Macau time that the Corporation was in possession of the Golden Buddha, Overholt had left U.S. soil. Virginia time had been 6 P.M. Good Friday. By the time the Challenger touched down, the time changes and flight time made it 9 A.M. Saturday.

The trip by turboprop to Little Lhasa in northern India took just over two more hours, so it was almost exactly noon on Saturday when Overholt finally met with the Dalai Lama again. The revered leader of Tibet had made it clear that if there was to be a coup d’etat, it needed to take place on Easter Sunday, March 31, exactly forty-six years after his being forced into exile.

That gave Overholt and the Corporation twenty-four hours to make a miracle happen.

CARL Gannon had been earning his keep the last several days. After procuring the truck in Thimbu, Bhutan, and plotting a route into Tibet, he had received a shopping list of tasks from the control room on the Oregon. As the Corporation’s head scrounger, Gannon was used to accomplishing the impossible. To obtain what was required, Gannon would have to use the vast network of contacts he had carefully nurtured over the years.

The funding would come from the Corporation’s bank on the island of Vanuatu in the South Pacific Ocean, and the Oregon had made it clear that time, not cost, was the object. Gannon loved it when he received directives like this. Using a laptop computer linked to a cell phone, he began typing in a stack of telephone numbers, codes and passwords from memory at seventy words a minute.

Eighty Stinger missiles were bought from a friendly Middle Eastern nation, with delivery arranged to Bhutan using a South African company that had never failed to comply. Eight Bell 212 helicopters with extra fuel pods from an Indonesian company that specialized in offshore oil work arrived to deliver the load of missiles and small arms. Eighteen mercenary pilots from throughout the Far East were recruited, sixteen to fly, two extras in case someone got sick. Fuel pods, food for all the participants, and a series of hangars manned by Philippine Special Forces guards were secretly arranged.

Gannon’s last item was the strangest. The Oregon wanted to know if he could procure a large but slow-moving plane in Vietnam. That, and a winch with a hundred feet of thin but strong steel cable that could be mounted on the floor of the plane. It took Gannon a couple of telephone calls, but he found a 1985 Russian-built Antonov AN-2 Colt owned by a Laotian company that had a logging contract with the Vietnamese government. The big biplane, with a wingspan of fifty-eight feet, a cruise speed of only 120 miles an hour and a stall speed of 58, could best be described as a flying pickup truck. The large interior was mainly cargo space and she could carry nearly five thousand pounds of payload.

The winch he bought new from a dealer in Ho Chi Minh City on a company credit card.

After finishing the arrangements for the plane and winch, Gannon slurped the last drop from a bottle of Coca-Cola and dialed the Oregon on the satellite telephone. He waited as the number beeped and popped while the signal was scrambled.

“Go ahead, Carl,” Hanley said a minute later.

“I’ve got the plane, Max,” he said, “but you didn’t ask for a pilot.”

“One of our guys will be flying,” Hanley said.

“It’s a Russian Antonov,” Gannon noted. “I doubt we have someone typed in this model.”

“We’ll download some manuals off the Internet,” Hanley said. “That’s about all we can do.”

“She’s fueled and waiting at the airport in old Saigon,” Gannon said. “The mechanic should be finished bolting the winch in place in the next hour. I’m faxing a picture.”

“We’ll be seeing you soon,” Hanley said. “Everything okay in the meantime?”

“Smooth as a baby’s bottom,” Gannon said easily.

ON the Zapata Petroleum rig off Vietnam, Delbert Chiglack took the sheet that had just printed out of the fax machine, then called once more to the incoming helicopter. When finished, he returned to the lunchroom on the rig and handed the sheet to Gunderson.

“This just came for you.”

“Thanks,” Gunderson said quickly, staring at the picture of the biplane the Oregon had sent, then folding it and placing it in his flight-suit pocket.

Just then, a siren on the rig sounded twice.

“Your ride’s here,” Chiglack said.

Walking the trio out to just below the helicopter pad, Chiglack waited until the helicopter touched down, then shouted over the noise.

“Up the ladder, heads down, the door should be open,” he said.

“Thanks for the hospitality,” Michaels shouted.

“Watch your hair, ladies,” Chiglack called as they started up the stairs.

Four minutes later the helicopter was airborne again, heading back toward land. Chiglack shook his head as the helicopter retreated in the distance. Then he walked back to his office to report his guests had left the rig.

GUNDERSON handed the photo of the biplane to the copilot. “She’s on the north side of the airport,” he said as the copilot clipped the photo to a strap around his knee. “If you can land nearby, we’d sure appreciate it.”

The copilot replaced his headset over his ears, then relayed the information to the pilot, who made an okay sign with his fingers. The copilot smiled at Gunderson, nodded yes, then motioned for him to sit back in his seat.