The fighters touched down, offloaded their passengers and were gone again within a few minutes.
A number of airport security officials, as well as local and Chilean federal police, were waiting. Garner spoke to them alone for ten minutes, while Travis sat aside with the agents. He watched Garner make his case. No doubt it was a fairly big deal to land in someone’s country and ask permission to personally detain the passenger of an incoming private jet—and to request that it all be kept secret. Travis wondered how many people of lesser clout than a former American president could’ve pulled it off.
They sat in the lounge overlooking the tarmac. They waited. Garner called his brother and got an update from satellite and ground-based tracking stations monitoring Finn’s aircraft. It was right on schedule.
From the airport lounge Travis could see the city in one direction and the desert in the other. Arica was a beautiful place. In the predawn its structures stood silhouetted against the pink ocean. Most of its streetlamps were still on, their light softened by the breaking day. Toward the south end of the city’s shoreline, a giant stone formation punched up out of the ground, shaped like an overturned ship’s hull. It was at least four hundred feet high.
Then there was the desert. Which was simply empty. It stretched away south and slightly east of town, hemmed in by shallow rises of the land on both sides—these too were empty. There was just nothing out there past the city’s edge. Not so much as a lonely weed.
The sun came up and the sky went pale blue. There wasn’t a trace of cloud in it, in any direction. Travis wondered if there ever was.
Finn’s plane was on approach. Two minutes out. Travis was standing in the dim interior of a mechanical room, just inside a door that accessed the tarmac.
He was holding an HK MP7 that’d been provided by airport security. So were the Secret Service agents. Garner had one too, but at the agents’ insistence he wasn’t going to participate in the action. He seemed annoyed about it, but only a little. Travis guessed that he’d only agreed because he didn’t expect much action. As far as anyone could tell, Finn was traveling alone. Even if he did have security with him, a light business jet couldn’t hold enough people to counter the strength that was waiting here. In addition to Travis and the agents, the local and federal police had dozens of armed officers concealed among the airport’s structures. Garner had thoroughly convinced them that Isaac Finn was not someone they wanted on their soil.
Someone in the tower spoke over an intercom. “Ninety seconds.”
Travis glanced at Garner in the vague light. “The police are clear that we’re taking point on this, right?”
Garner nodded. “The way we’re doing this, they’d prefer their people not become involved at all, beyond providing a show of force. Makes it easier to pretend it never happened.”
“All I care about is making sure no one shoots at the plane while the cylinder’s inside,” Travis said. “It’d be the same as opening fire while Paige and Bethany were in there.”
Garner took his point. “Should be no need for any of that. Just let him open the door and exit the plane, and then move on him. He’s not prepared for it. What can he do?”
Travis didn’t answer. He wasn’t ready to relax even that much. He looked through the two-inch crack in the door. He could see most of the runway and the swath of sky through which Finn’s plane would descend.
Then he saw the plane. First a glint and then a distinct shape. A speck of a fuselage flanked by jet engines.
Nearer, he could see the idling maintenance trucks that would pull out and block the runway at its midpoint, once Finn had disembarked from the aircraft.
The plane’s details resolved by the second. Travis saw the landing gear swing down and lock when it was thirty seconds out.
There was only the faintest bark as its wheels touched the runway. It settled onto its nose gear. The engines’ thrust reversers deployed, and a moment later the aircraft was rolling slowly to a stop. It halted forty yards from where Travis was standing behind the door.
And then the maintenance vehicles moved. One went first. The rest hesitated a few seconds and then followed.
“Goddammit,” Travis said. “It’s too soon.”
He heard Garner breathe out slowly behind him, sharing the sentiment.
Then the jet did exactly what Travis expected it to do: it began to turn in place. He guessed the reason was nothing more than a courtesy to its passenger: the plane’s door was on the side opposite the terminal building. The turnaround would correct that.
The plane was most of the way through its half-rotation when it suddenly stopped. Travis had just enough of a viewing angle on the pilots to see that they’d spotted the maintenance trucks. They seemed thrown. They traded looks. Their mouths moved.
“Fuck,” Travis said.