Chapter 77
Sitting in the seat right behind the pilot, the Ghost felt the cold begin to penetrate his bones, the thin clothing he’d worn
in Buenos Aires no match for the subfreezing temperatures of Ushuaia. It would have been an hour’s drive to the safe house
with the four-by-four vehicles, but at least then he’d have had heaters.
He’d known it was the dead of winter, and Ushuaia was literally the last outpost before the Antarctic, but he’d figured that
he’d just have to suffer for fifteen or twenty minutes of the helo flight before getting to the safe house. He’d been right
on the time, but wrong on the effects to his body. His hand holding the detonator was so cold he was losing feeling in it
and beginning to fear he would set off the device accidentally.
The exit from the private strip had taken longer than he had wanted, with the sun dropping lower every second they were on
the ground. Omar had successfully reached the pilot and gained control, but he had fought them verbally, insisting that the
fifth person would put them overweight.
The woman had seen Omar’s weapon, and then seen the Ghost pushing the two hostages out of the aircraft, both with their hands
tied. She’d immediately fled inside the terminal, and there was nothing the Ghost could do to prevent it. He was sure she
was calling the authorities, but had no idea of the response time.
He’d rushed the hostages to the helicopter, hearing the pilot screaming about the weight. He’d placed the prime minister in
a back seat, then instructed the secretary of state to climb into his lap.
Omar had begun to panic, shouting in Arabic, “I’m killing the prime minister! I’m killing the prime minister! He can’t take off!”
The Ghost had slapped him in the face, shouting back, “Get ahold of yourself! He can carry us. He’s bluffing. I’m slight, the woman’s slight, the prime minister’s slight. The three of us are the same as two
fat tourists.”
Shocked, Omar rubbed his face and said, “Ghost, listen to him. He’s the pilot. We need to kill the prime minister now.”
The Ghost ignored his protest, turning to the pilot and showing him the vest. In English, he said, “This is a bomb. If we
stay here, the authorities will shoot us.”
He saw the pilot’s eyes go wide, his lower lip beginning to tremble. The Ghost said, “If I’m to die, I’m bringing all of you
with me. You can die here, or take your chances of dying in the air.”
The pilot climbed into his seat without saying another word. In two minutes, the rotors were turning and they lifted off.
The noise was deafening, the vibration of the helicopter alarming. Omar put on a headset, and the Ghost found one in a hook
next to the door.
They’d raced to the east, heading to the snow-topped mountains of Patagonia and the cold had begun to sink in. Not wanting
the hostages to see him, he surreptitiously disarmed the detonator, but kept it in his hand. They entered a valley, and the
mountains blocked what remained of the dying light.
Through the headset, the pilot said, “I can’t fly at night. I don’t have the navigation ability, and the mountains are dangerous
just using GPS.”
The Ghost said, “Keep going.”
The pilot said, “Are you listening? If I follow the GPS, I’ll run into a mountain! I can’t see.”
The Ghost looked out the window in the twilight, seeing a ribbon of road beneath them, the tail end of the vaunted Pan-American
Highway. He said, “Follow highway three until it stops, then take a right, going up the river.”
The pilot said nothing else, and the Ghost realized he had been bluffing again. Five minutes later he felt the helicopter
slow and said, “What are you doing?”
“The river is here. I no longer have the road to follow.”
The Ghost felt the helicopter lower, then turn, slowly moving up the valley. He looked out the window and saw the treetops
about two thousand feet below them, the river nothing more than a slash of black in the gloom.
They flew about a kilometer, then crossed over a flat island with a single copse of trees on the south end. The Ghost said,
“This is it, this is it. Set it down.”
The pilot turned on his landing light and slowly hovered, delicately trying to land the skids on solid terrain, the wind coming
down the valley from the north buffeting the thin frame back and forth, the mountains towering above them.
The skids touched down, then sank into the sand as the pilot dropped the rpms of the rotors, the silence overpowering after
the flight. The Ghost exited the helicopter and felt the slap of the wind, the cold biting through his clothes. He instructed
the hostages to do the same, telling Omar to bring the pilot.
Omar led them to the northern end of the small island, then said, “We have to cross the river branch here.”
The Ghost looked at the tree line thirty feet away and said, “How deep is it?”
“Shouldn’t be over your thighs right here.”
“You go first, get on the far side with the pistol, and I’ll send them one by one.”
He’d watched them cross, and then went himself, the water leaving his teeth chattering in the cold. After they’d reconstituted
on the far side, the Ghost said, “Where is this place? We’re going to get hypothermia out here.”
Omar said, “Follow me.”
He led them through the trees until he crossed a small dirt path, then followed it to a glade, the trees falling away to reveal
an old logging cabin, the roof missing shingles and the windows broken out.
The Ghost hurried them inside, seeing two footlockers next to a fireplace. He lined up the hostages against a wall, now at three with only the pilot dressed for the weather, and said, “Tell me you stashed cold weather gear.”
“Yes.”
The Ghost removed his explosive device and set it next to the footlockers, saying, “Distribute some coats or blankets. I’m
going to make a fire.”
Omar said, “We have no need for that. I’ll give you a coat, but they don’t need one. It’s time.”
The Ghost looked at him, knowing why he was so adamant that the hostages die, but he hadn’t explored the information Mr. Pink
had given him. He said, “Give them something to keep warm. There is no need to add to the suffering before they die.”
After taming the cold with a change of clothes and a roaring blaze in the stone fireplace, the Ghost said, “Okay, now tell
me about this final attack.”