Page 124 of Tom Clancy Line of Sight
“You must be in some kind of shit, all right, cuz. Look, the air traffic controller just put us on hold. They’re not allowing any flights in or out until they can assess the situation on the ground. We’ve got enough fuel to loiter for another forty minutes, but if it gets beyond that, we’ll have to land somewhere else and then come get you by car.”
“Dude, I gotta go—”
“Hold on, Jack! The whole point of us coming to get you was to get your ass out of the fire. Don’t you go running back into it, or Gerry’ll have my hide.”
“Why did he send you all the way over here to pick me up, anyway?” Jack glanced at the burning black cloud mushrooming in the distance.
“He didn’t send us just to pick you up. We’re over in this neck of the woods chasing leads on this outfit called the Iron Syndicate.”
“Yeah, Gerry mentioned it. Something to do with that crazy woman in Slovenia that tried to kill me.”
“One and the same. Maybe they’re the ones that fired that missile.”
“Don’t think so. They’ve got a thing about collecting my head.”
“Unless they changed their thing.”
“I gotta go.”
“Stay put, Jack. We’ll be there in a few.”
“Can’t wait. Track my phone if you want to find me.” Jack killed the call and dialed Aida again. The phone rang until it went to voice mail.
“Aida, it’s me, Jack. Call me back as soon as you get this. I need to know you’re okay.”
He hung up.
Jack wasn’t clear in his own mind who had done it. Serb nationalists? The Mafia? The Russians? Maybe even Kolak?Shit,Jack thought. It was like the fucking Star Wars cantina around here.
They all had it in for her.
Jack called the refugee center. Another voice mail. He hung up, called the Happy Times! tour office. Voice mail again.
Jack’s anxiety spiked.
Shit!
Now what?
He could drive to the tour office or the refugee center, but traffic was miserable going back into the city. No point in trying to navigate that if he couldn’t be sure she would be at either location.
But her place out in the country was west of here, away from the traffic. That was his best bet. Chances were she’d turn up there eventually, if she was okay.
He patted the keys in his pocket, glad he hadn’t tossed them into the trash yet, and ran back toward the parking lot, praying the Škoda hadn’t been towed.
—
The Škoda hadn’t been towed, fortunately, and Jack sped out of the lot as fast as he could without breaking the law, grateful for the Bosnian marks he still had in his pocket to pay the ticket to leave.
Jack hit the main road, heading west, driving the speed limit. He didn’t want to get pulled over for any reason, let alone the MP7 that was now stashed underneath his seat, locked and loaded. He found an English-language news station on the radio. It was already reporting the jet crash.
“Authorities believe the Vueling Embraer E-170 aircraft was destroyed with a shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile. As many as sixty-six passengers may have been on the flight, though the number has not yet been confirmed. No survivors are expected. The Serbian National Front for the Liberation of Bosnia and Herzegovina has claimed credit for the attack on social media sites...”
“Sonsofbitches,” Jack said out loud, his anger boiling over at the Serb nationalists who could murder innocent people like that.
But in his head he heard Kolak’s “three narratives” lecture again. Three sides to every fact. There had been a lot of local attacks by all sides lately, and all of them escalating. It was hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys.
Jack wondered if the Serbian National Front really was behind the attack.
