The Threat

An interdiction display flickered up on the right-hand display. It showed the target aircraft and the interceptors. The fighters were covering the last mile to the Falcon now. No way it could escape the much faster, more maneuverable military jets.

“Closing … closing … you’re edging ahead, lose ten knots … Yeah, that rattled his drawers. Okay, Hawk One is now going Christmas tree.” The same voice seemed to move about five feet, to directly above Dan’s head; emerging from a different speaker, slower, speaking to someone who might not understand English well. “Unlighted aircraft bound three-zero-zero at 240 knots, approximately twenty-three degrees north, eighty-five degrees twenty minutes west. This is U.S. Air Force interceptor off your starboard wing. Over.”

They waited: Dan, Quintero, the pilots, the men and women around them at consoles. But no answer came.

“Settle back in…,” the pilot was saying over his cockpit-to-cockpit, to his wingman.

“Light in the cockpit. Flashlight, looks like. Guy’s waving at us.”

At the same moment another speaker between Dan’s and the admiral’s chairs hissed to life. “Clear View, this is Hawk Two. That’s not the right tail number.”

“Say again?”

“What’s he mean by that?” Quintero snapped. “What’s he reading? Have him read back what he’s seeing.”

The tracker pilot read off six digits, using military phonetic code. Dan jotted HK 4016 on his palm with his ballpoint. On the command center floor an analyst called out, “He’s right. That’s not Nuñez’s tail. I can go into the database here … stand by.”

“What, he’s altered his tail number?” Dan asked Quintero. “Repainted it?”

“The Viper has a spotlight on the port side of the nose,” someone put in. “He can illuminate.”

“Not necessary,” Quintero said. “Who else is it going to be, flying dark out of Bucaramanga?”

“Negative radio contact,” said the flight leader. “All right, blinking our lights, waggling our wings. As soon as he confirms, will commence a slow level turn to … Holy shit!”

The controller’s voice: “Say again?”

“Oh my holy shit. He just fireballed! Fuck, fuck, that hurts! Did you see that?… Clear View, this is Hawk flight leader, our A-toy just fireballed.”

Every head in the command center snapped around. The controller said, “Flight leader, say again your last.”

“He’s going down now … there’s a tail surface coming off. He’s on fire. Bright orange, fuel-type flame. I’m turning to port to follow him down. Stay clear of me … still falling.”

Quintero was on the circuit now, voice taut. “Flight leader, Clear View actual. Did you shoot him down?”

“Negative. Arming switches were off here. Confirm — off. Frank, confirm you didn’t fire.”

The wingman attested to it in a voice as shocked and puzzled as his flight leader’s. Dan rubbed his mouth, shaken. If neither fighter had fired, who had? The only other aircraft on the plot was seventy miles away. Could a vortex from the fighters have jarred a fuel line loose? Struck a spark, where a spark could not be afforded?

“We need more details here,” the command duty officer was telling the flight leader. Who was breathing hard, apparently in a tight turn.

“Frank, stay clear of me to the west.… You getting anything here?”

“Negative, flames too bright, blanked my display.”

“I’m following him down. Clear View, take a fix on my posit … that will be crash datum. Doesn’t look like there’ll be any survivors. There’s the wing … a fuel tank or something. It’s just a fireball. There … impact. I have no idea what happened to this guy. It wasn’t anything we did. Flames on the water … We did this right, goddamn it. That’s all I can see now. Flames on the water.”

The words hung in the cold air. Beside him Admiral Quintero was, Dan thought, as pale as he must be himself. Of course Don Juan Nuñez was a bad guy. If anyone deserved death, it was the chief of the Cali cartel. But still the voices leaping across space had conveyed the horror of watching men fall, burning.

“Everybody with wings, in the conference room,” Quintero said, swinging down from his seat.

He was halfway across the JOCC when one of the analysts beckoned. The admiral bent. They conferred in tones too low to overhear.

Quintero put out a hand to steady himself. He stared at the printout the man held out.

Dan stepped up. “What is it?”

“This could be bad,” Quintero muttered.

Tail number HK 4016 was a twin-engine Lear 55 owned by a company called Central Charter de Colombia, SA. It was roughly the same size and type, with the same engine location and control surface conformation, as the jet Nuñez flew. Another watchstander handed them photos of both aircraft, still damp from the printer. Dan looked from one to the other. At night they’d be indistinguishable. But he didn’t understand. What was this other aircraft doing en route to Miami, without clearance, without IFF, without radio, without lights?

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