‘Tighter.’
Kulac winced as the metal bit.
‘Round the seat stanchion. And to the right wrist.’
‘Ten million. You’re a fool to say no.’
The answer was a second pair of cuffs . . .
‘Left wrist, through your friend’s chain, then right wrist. Back up. Stay in my vision or you’re the one saying adios to the kneecap.’
The two men crouched, side by side, on the floor, tethered to each other and the assembly holding the seat to the floor, which Dexter hoped would be stronger even than the giant bodyguard.
Avoiding their grip he stepped round them and walked to the cabin door. The captain presumed the opening door was his owner coming forward to ask for progress. The barrel of the gun nudged his temple.
‘It is Captain Stepanovic, isn’t it?’ said a voice. Washington Lee, who had intercepted the email from Wichita, had told him.
‘I have nothing against you,’ said the hijacker. ‘You and your friend here are simply professionals. So am I. Let’s keep it that way. Professionals do not do stupid things if they can be avoided. Agreed?’
The captain nodded. He tried to glance behind him, into the cabin.
‘Your owner and his bodyguard are disarmed and chained to the fuselage. There will be no help coming. Please do just as I say.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Alter course.’ Avenger glanced at the Electronic Flight Instrument System just above the throttles. ‘I suggest Three-One-Five degrees, compass true, should be about right. Skirt the eastern tip of Cuba, as we have no flight plan.’
‘Final destination?’
‘Key West, Florida.’
‘The USA?’
‘Land of my fathers,’ said the man with the gun.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The Rendition
Dexter had memorized the route from San Martin to Key West, but there was no need. The avionics on the Hawker are so clear that even a non-flier can follow the liquid crystal display showing intended course and line of track.
Forty minutes out from the coast he saw the blur of Grenada’s lights slip under the starboard wing. Then came the two hours of over-water haul to make landfall on the south coast of the Dominican Republic.
After two more, between the coast of Cuba and the Bahamas’ biggest island, Andros, he leaned forward and touched the Frenchman’s ear with the tip of the automatic.
‘Disconnect the transponder now.’
The co-pilot looked across at the Yugoslav who shrugged and nodded. The co-pilot switched it off. With the transponder, designed to pulse out an endlessly repeated identification signal, disconnected, the Hawker was reduced simply to a speck on the radar screen of someone looking very closely indeed. To anyone not looking that closely, it had ceased to exist. But it had also announced it was a suspect intruder.
South of Florida, reaching far out over the sea, is the Air Defence Identification Zone, designed to protect the southeastern flank of the USA from the continuous war of the drug smugglers. Anyone entering ADIZ without a flight plan was playing hide and seek with some very sophisticated metal.
‘Drop to four hundred feet above the sea,’ said Dexter. ‘Dive and dive now. All nav and cabin lights off.’
‘That is very low,’ said the pilot as the nose dropped through thirty thousand feet. The aircraft we
nt dark.
‘Pretend it’s the Adriatic. You’ve done it before.’