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“She said to give this to you verbatim, Charley,” Miller said, uncomfortably.
“Well, let’s have it.”
“She said, ‘Don Juan: I should have known better. Signature, Sergeant B. Schneider.’ ”
“Oh, shit!”
“What the hell did you do to her, Don Juan?”
“Is that all, Dick?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll be in touch,” Castillo said and handed the telephone to D’Alessandro.
I guess that Highway sergeant finally got around to telling Frankie Break-My-Legs, “Ha-ha, you know what the Secret Service calls Castillo, Lieutenant? ‘Don Juan.’ ”
Goddammit to hell!
Castillo sensed McNab’s eyes on him.
“That was Miller, sir,” Castillo said. “We have confirmation that the two Somalis who were in Philadelphia were at Spartan —the Spartan School of Aeronautics—in Tulsa and are qualified in 727s.”
“Well, then I guess the ka’ba’s safe from these lunatics,” McNab said. “Is that good or bad?”
“I crunched the numbers for ten 500-gallon bladders, 5,000 gallons,” Colonel Torine said. “At 7 pounds a gallon, that would be 35,000 pounds. That would add 1,130 nautical miles of range—a total of 3,305—and still leave it 22,295 pounds under max gross takeoff weight.”
“So they can fly just about any place they damn well please,” McNab said. “What about direct to Philadelphia?”
“No,” Torine said. “That’s about 3,500 nautical miles. But let’s be sure.” He stabbed at the computer with the stylus. “3,361 nautical miles. Too far. Not even factoring in a reserve, that’s 65 miles short. And even factoring in more bladders, why would they want to arrive in Philadelphia with nearly empty tanks?”
“Good point,” McNab said. “Presuming they learned from 9/11, they want to arrive with as much fuel, as an explosive, as possible. Or possibly—always look on the dark side—with as much trinitrotoluene as they can carry.”
Torine started stabbing with the stylus again.
“Hold off on that,” McNab ordered, touching his arm. “Okay, let’s go with the assumption the airplane is somewhere in the upper east quarter of the South American continent, maybe even in Suriname. I’m presuming the CIA has been told what your friend the ex-FBI agent told you, Mr. Castillo?”
“They haven’t been told where it came from.”
“Okay, they already have egg on their face about this, so I think we can assume there’s been satellites all over that part of the globe, just as soon as they could be redirected. They were probably spinning their wheels during the night, but at daylight I think we can assume they’re going to find it.”
“Kennedy says he knows where it is and will tell me when I go down there.”
“Go down where?” McNab asked.
“Cozumel, off the Yucatán Peninsula.”
“I know where it is,” McNab said. “Why won’t he tell you on the telephone?”
“I don’t know,” Castillo replied. “But we have to play under his rules.”
“When are you going down there?” McNab asked.
“As soon as we finish here,” Castillo said, “and I report to Secretary Hall how you plan to neutralize the 727.”
McNab looked thoughtful for a moment and then said, “Gentlemen, will you give Mr. Castillo and me a moment alone?”
Not looking very happy about it, everybody filed out of the room. McNab closed the door and turned to Castillo.
