Chapter 76
I saw the captain leave his seat in the cockpit and come into the cabin. At first, I thought he was coming to tell me we had
our own personal fighter escort. I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket and pulled it out, seeing a text from Creed:
Compromised credit card used in Ushuaia.
The pilot reached me, and I put the phone away, saying, “What’s up?”
“The hostage aircraft landed at Ushuaia. I heard the conversation between him and that lone A4. He’s demanding gas and saying
he’d release the SECSTATE if he gets it. What do you want to do?”
“He’s already there? I thought we were closer to him.”
“Yeah, I did too, but his transponder is off, which means the aircraft is shut down.”
I said, “Follow them in, I guess.”
He went back to the cockpit and, to the team I said, “Looks like this is the end of the road for the vaunted hybrid Mossad–Taskforce
team.”
Shoshana said, “What about our prime minister?”
“I don’t know, but one thing I’m sure of is that plane is going to have one hell of a reception committee. If they launched
a fighter jet to bring him to the airport, there’s going to be a battalion of folks waiting on it when it arrives.”
“We should still remain close.”
“We are. We’re landing now, but this is going to the big boys now. It’ll be out of our hands. I’m sure there will be some sort of standoff while both your hostage rescue guys and mine make the trip here.”
She didn’t like what I said but knew it was true. I pulled out my phone, seeing the text again, and decided to give Knuckles
a call.
He answered on the third ring, saying, “It’s too late to ask for my help. I have my own mission going.”
I laughed and said, “Don’t need it anyway. I think we’re done here.”
I gave him a quick synopsis of what had happened, asking him to pass it along to Wolffe, then said, “What’re you up to? Have
you made any progress?”
“Yeah, a little. We managed to find our target here in DC. He had a meeting at the National Zoo with two others, presumably
the Americans he talked about in the Signal chat. We’ve got a good image of both and are using that to see what else we can
find.”
“You don’t have anything besides a picture?”
“No. Not yet, anyway. It turns out that to enter the zoo you had to get a ticket virtually, most likely using a phone. If
we can find their ticket, we can get their phone.”
“I take it you didn’t find the target’s phone?”
“No. We need real information, and everything he used was apparently different from the fake driver’s license we had, but
we now have two others.”
“Do they take a picture for the ticket?”
“No, what we need is a true name and then hope that they used it for the ticket. Brett had a pretty good idea and that’s what
we’re working now. The Signal chat mentioned a truck the Americans were bringing, which means one of them might have a commercial
driver’s license. We’re currently throwing those faces against a few different databases that track CDLs.”
That was pretty smart. I patted myself on the back for sending them to DC. I said, “I’m assuming you have access to the federal
databases?”
“Yeah, we do. Creed’s got access like he’s a DHS employee, so all doors are open.
The problem is the federal database doesn’t include pictures.
It just has the very information we’re trying to find.
Name, CDL number, date of birth, that sort of thing.
For the picture we need to query the state that actually issued the license, so we’re going through each state with each picture. It’s taking forever.”
I felt the landing gear break free and glanced out Aaron’s window, seeing the Ushuaia airport coming closer. I took the seat
next to the cockpit and buckled up, saying, “Better than nothing, which is what the rest of our government has found.”
He said, “We’ll see. We started with Utah because that’s where the Ghost was broken free, but it was a dry hole. That took
an hour for both pictures. We’re now expanding out to Colorado, with Nevada next. At this rate, they’ll execute their mission
before we find anything.”
We hit the ground and began taxiing. I said, “Keep at it. Look, we’ve landed at Ushuaia. I think my best effort here is going
to be liaison for Wolffe and the Oversight Council. Let ’em know I’m here.”
He said, “Will do,” and I almost hung up the phone, then remembered the text. I said, “Is Creed there? He sent a message.”
Creed came on and said, “What’s up?”
“You sent me a text about the credit card used in Buenos Aires. What’s the story?”
He said, “That was automated. I set it up earlier to send you notification whenever that card was used. Hang on.”
We continued taxiing and I saw Jennifer put her hands against her face, peering out the window. Then Shoshana leaned over
her, trying to see something as well.
Creed came back and said, “Yeah, it was a huge charge there in Ushuaia.”
“Well, that can’t be my guys. They’re on an airplane here at the airport. Where was it used?”
“Some place called Heli . . . helishuwhy . . . I can’t pronounce it. Someplace spelled H-E-L-I-U-S-H-U-A-I-A.”
I said, “What is it? What did they buy?”
Shoshana turned to me and said, “Pike, you need to see this.”
My seat had no window, so I unbuckled and went to Aaron’s seat. He said, “We’re being ringed with police cars.”
I looked out and saw a parade of flashing lights, behind the vehicles row upon row of men in green uniforms holding rifles. In the rear, next to a hangar, was a tanker truck.
The copilot came racing back to us and said, “They think we’re the hostage plane! They think we’re holding hostages!”
I said, “What?”
Creed came back on and said, “It’s a helicopter charter service in Ushuaia.”
I ignored the copilot and focused on what Creed had said. “Is the charter service out of the Ushuaia international airport?”
“No. It’s at the old airport. The one that’s used by private pilots now.”
I hung up, my head spinning with the information.
Shoshana said, “If they think we’re the hostage plane, where did that aircraft go?”