Basically, Clyde realized, Vitaly was in the middle of the biggest deal of his life and had dollar signs in his eyeballs even as he was shitting his pants with anxiety. Clyde’s presence on the plane was a problem; if he could make the problem go away by jettisoning two of his crew members, so be it.
The stack of fuel tanks made a sort of jungle gym within which it was possible for Clyde and Fazoul to move around to whatever vantage point they wanted and get a clear view down the fuselage toward the open nose of the aircraft. They climbed up to near the top of the stack and watched the conclusion of the regulatory ballet down on the tarmac.
The federal official who had shown up in the big government sedan came out of the terminal building with a sheaf of papers and did a slow walk around the red tank, then waved his clipboard at it dismissively and began to scrawl on some forms.
“You must get out of the plane now, Khalid,” Fazoul said. “After this there is no other chance.”
“And leave you here all by yourself?”
“Yes.”
“What are you going to do then?”
Fazoul didn’t answer.
The Commerce official finished writing on his clipboard, handed the yellow copy to Vitaly and the pink copy to one of the Iraqis, and then got back into his car and drove away, hoping he could return to what was left of his Christmas before the roads got totally snowed in. While this was happening, the two crew members wearing Clyde’s and Fazoul’s clothes went down the ramp with the empty sleeping bag and vanished into the blizzard.
“What did you say on the walkie-talkie, Fazoul?”
“In order to reach Baghdad, this plane will have to fly over the Caucasus, and then over some parts of Turkey and northern Iraq where my people are. My people have ways of making airplanes crash.”
“You’re going to make the plane crash on your own territory? How’s that any better than letting Saddam drop the stuff on you later?”
A blast of wind, ice, and snow hit the Antonov broadside, rocking it on its suspension. The Iraqis—three of them—ran onto the plane to get away from the weather, laughing and joking at the viciousness of the storm, snowflakes caught in their lacquered black hair. Clyde recognized the important one, Mohammed, whom he had given the Welcome to Wonderful Wapsipinicon package. One of Vitaly’s crew had started up the little tractor and was driving it up the loading ramp, towing the red tank behind it.
“You’re going to sabotage this plane somehow—blow it up over the North Atlantic and kill everyone on board. Aren’t you?” Clyde said. “That’s the only thing you can do. Because there’s only one of you, and there are three Iraqis.”
“Four,” Fazoul said, and nodded toward the ramp. A fourth Iraqi came running in from the car with the tinted windows, carrying a small black box with an antenna sticking out of it—the radio detonator, presumably. Clyde was only half-surprised to see that this person was none other than al-Turki, whom he had last seen driving a Ryder truck loaded with corn oil toward Chicago. Al-Turki must have ditched it there and made his way back last night.
“But if there’s two of us on the plane, and we have the advantage of surprise,” Clyde said, “we can wait until we’re someplace safe, like over Greenland, and we can subdue the Iraqis, and Vitaly can land it safely somewhere. You don’t have to die, and the Russians don’t have to either.”
Fazoul glared at him. “Get off the plane, Khalid. You should not be worrying about what happens to these Russians. They are cockroaches.”
“Too late,” Clyde said. “The Iraqis think I’m a crew member. If I leave, they’ll know something’s up.”
“They probably know something’s up already,” Fazoul said, “but they know they will have plenty of time to kill us in the air.”
The whine of a hydraulic pump could be felt through the structure of the plane and the stack of fuel containers. The cargo door was closing, even as the crew members were securing the tank and the tractor in place. Either they had brought the little tractor with them, or else they were simply ripping it off from the Forks County Regional Airport.
One by one, they heard the engines start up. The crescent of blue light coming in from outside grew narrower and narrower, like a moon in eclipse, and finally vanished, leaving nothing but yellow indoor light. The cargo door was sealed.
“I am angry with you, Khalid,” Fazoul said. “The correct thing would be for me to kill you. Because your plan is much less certain to work.”