PROLOGUE
Santa Maria Airport, Azores island chain,
1951
HUDSON WALLACE STOOD
ON THE RAMP just outside the terminal building on a cold, wet
night. His leather jacket did little to keep out the chill as a mix
of drizzle and fog shrouded the airport and the whole island around
it.
Across from him, blue
taxi lights glowed in stoic silence, doing little to warm the
scene, while above a beam of white light swung through the fog
followed moments later by a flash of green as the airport’s beacon
spun slowly and repetitively.
Hudson doubted anyone
was up there to see it, not with the clouds so thick and low, but
God help him if he were. Mountains surrounded the airport on three
sides, and the island itself was just a speck on the map in the
middle of the dark Atlantic. Even in 1951 finding such a spot was
no easy task. And if someone could find Santa Maria though this
soup, Hudson guessed he’d hit the peaks long before he saw the
runway lights through the rain.
So getting to the
island was one thing. Leaving was something else. Weather
notwithstanding, Hudson wanted to go, couldn’t wait to get moving,
in fact. For reasons he knew too well it had become unsafe to stay.
Despite that fact, and despite being the pilot and owner of the
Lockheed Constellation parked on the ramp, he didn’t have the final
word.
With little to do but
watch and wait, Hudson pulled a silver case from his coat pocket.
He drew out a Dunhill cigarette and stuck it between his lips.
Ignoring the “No Smoking” signs plastered every twenty feet, he
cradled a Zippo lighter to his face and lit the
Dunhill.
He was a hundred
yards from the nearest plane or fuel line, and the whole airport
was soaking wet. He figured the chances of causing a problem were
just about nil. And the chances of anyone bothering to leave the
warm, dry terminal building to come outside to complain? He figured
they were even less than that.
After a deep,
satisfying draw, Hudson exhaled.
The heather gray
cloud of smoke faded as the door to the terminal opened behind
him.
A man wearing
ill-fitting clothing stepped out. His round face was partially
hidden by a brown hat. His jacket and pants were made of coarse
wool and looked like surplus leftovers from the Red Army winter
catalog. Thin, fingerless gloves completed the appearance of a
peasant traveler, but Hudson knew differently. This man, his
passenger, would soon be wealthy. That is, if he could survive long
enough to reach America.
“Is the weather going
to clear?” the man said.
Another drag on the
Dunhill. Another puff of smoke from Hudson before he
answered.
“Nope,” he said
dejectedly. “Not today. Maybe not for a week.”
Hudson’s passenger
was a Russian named Tarasov. He was a refugee from the Soviet
Union. His luggage consisted of two stainless steel trunks, heavy
enough that they might have been filled with stones. Both of which
sat locked and chained to the floor of Hudson’s
aircraft.
Hudson hadn’t been
told what was hidden in those trunks, but the newly formed Central
Intelligence Agency was paying him a small fortune to get them and
Tarasov into the U.S. He guessed they were paying the Russian a lot
more than that to defect and bring the cases with him.
So far, so good. An
American agent had managed to get Tarasov to Yugoslavia, another
communist country, but under Tito there was no love of Stalin
there. A hefty bribe had managed to get Hudson’s plane into
Sarajevo and out before anyone began asking questions.
Since then they’d
traveled west, but word was out and one attempt on the man’s life
had left Tarasov limping with a bullet still in his
leg.
Hudson’s orders were
to get him to the U.S. as quickly as possible, and keep it quiet on
the way, but they never specified a route. A good thing too,
because Hudson wouldn’t have followed it.
So far, he’d avoided
all European cities of note, traveling to the Azores instead, where
he could refuel and then go nonstop to the States. It was a good
plan, but he hadn’t counted on the weather, or on Tarasov’s fear of
flying.
“They’ll find us here
sooner or later,” Hudson said. He turned to his passenger. “They
have agents everywhere, in every harbor and airport at
least.”
“But you said this
was out of the way.”
“Yeah,” Hudson said.
“And when they don’t spot us at any place that’s ‘in the way,’
they’re gonna start looking elsewhere. Probably already
have.”
Hudson took another
drag on the cigarette. He wasn’t sure the Russians would check the
Azores. But two Americans and a foreigner landing in what was
essentially an international airliner—and then waiting around for
three days without talking to anyone—was the kind of thing that
might draw attention.
“At some point,
you’re going to have to decide what you’re more afraid of,” he
said, nodding toward the plane sitting alone in the drizzle. “A
little turbulence or a knife in the gut.”
Tarasov looked up to
the churning dark sky. He shrugged and held his hands out, palms
up, like a man trying to show the world he had no money. “But we
cannot fly like this,” he said.
“Land,” Hudson
clarified. “We cannot land like this.”
He made a motion with his hand like a plane descending and flaring
for landing.
“But we can sure as
hell take off,” he continued, raising his hand again. “And then we
can head due west. No mountains that way. Nothing but ocean . . .
and freedom.”
Tarasov shook his
head, but Hudson could see his resolve faltering.
“I checked the
weather in New York,” he said, lying once again. He’d done no such
thing, not wanting anyone to guess his destination. “It’s clear for
the next forty-eight hours, but after that . . .”
Tarasov seemed to
understand.
“We go now or we’re
stuck here for a week.”
His passenger did not
appear to like either choice. He looked at the ground and then out
toward the big silver Constellation with its four massive piston
engines and sleek triple tails. He stared into the rain and the
cloak of the night beyond.
“You can get us
through?”
Hudson flicked the
cigarette to the ground and crushed it out with his boot. He had
him. “I can get us through,” he said.
Reluctantly, Tarasov
nodded.
Hudson looked out
toward the plane and made a winding motion with his hand. The sharp
sound of the starter motor rang out and black smoke belched from
the number 3 engine. The plugs fired and the big radial engine came
to life. In moments, the huge propeller was spinning at fifteen
hundred rpms, blasting rain and spray out behind the aircraft.
Seconds later the number 1 engine sprang to life.
Hudson had hoped he
would be able to convince their passenger to fly. He’d left Charlie
Simpkins, his copilot, in the plane and told him to keep her primed
to go.
“Come on,” Hudson
said.
Tarasov took a deep
breath and then stepped away from the door. He began walking toward
the waiting plane. Halfway there, a shot rang out. It echoed across
the wet tarmac, and Tarasov lurched forward, arching his back and
twisting to the side.
“No!” Hudson
yelled.
He sprang forward,
grabbing Tarasov, keeping the man on his feet and hustling him
toward the plane. Another shot rang out. This one missed, skipping
off the concrete to the right.
Tarasov
stumbled.
“Come on!” Hudson
shouted, trying to get him up.
The next bullet hit
Hudson, catching him in the shoulder, spinning him around. He fell
to the ground and rolled. The shell had knocked him downward like
someone hitting him from above. He guessed the shot had come from
the terminal’s roof.
Wincing in pain,
Hudson pulled a Colt .45 from his shoulder holster. He spun and
aimed toward the roof of the building, firing blindly in what he
guessed was the approximate direction of the sniper.
After blasting off
four shots, Hudson thought he saw a shape duck behind the lip of
the terminal’s roof. He fired another shot in that direction and
then grabbed Tarasov once again, pulling him backward toward the
plane, dragging him across the ground like a sled, until they
reached the stairs near the front of the aircraft.
“Get up,” Hudson
shouted, trying to haul him up.
“I . . . can’t,”
Tarasov said.
“I’ll help you,” he
said, lifting. “You just have to—”
As he pulled Tarasov
to his feet another shot cracked, and the man sprawled to the
ground face-first.
Hudson ducked behind
the stairs and shouted toward the aircraft’s open
doors.
“Charlie!”
No
response.
“Charlie! What’s the
word?”
“We’re ready to go!”
a voice yelled back.
Hudson heard the last
of the engines winding up. He grabbed Tarasov and rolled him over.
The man’s body was limp like a rag doll’s. The final shot had gone
through his neck. His eyes stared lifelessly up and
back.
“Damn,” Hudson
said.
Half the mission was
blown, but they still had the steel trunks and whatever was in
them. Even though the CIA was a secret organization, they had
offices and an address. If he had to, Hudson would go find them and
bang on the front door until someone took him in and paid
him.
He turned and fired
toward the terminal again. And in that moment he noticed the lights
from a pair of cars racing toward him from the far end of the ramp.
He didn’t figure they were cavalry.
He dashed up the
stairs and dove through the door as a bullet ricocheted off the
Connie’s smooth skin.
“Go!” he
shouted.
“What about our
passenger?”
“Too late for
him.”
As the copilot shoved
the throttles forward Hudson slammed the door shut, wrenching the
handle down just as the plane began to move. Over the droning sound
of the engines he heard the crackle of glass breaking.
He turned to see
Charlie Simpkins slumped over toward the center console, his seat
belt holding him up.
“Charlie?”
The plane was on the
move as Hudson ran forward. He dove into the cockpit as another
shot hit and then another.
Staying on the floor,
he reached up and slammed the throttles forward. As the engines
roared he scrambled under the pilot’s seat and pushed hard on the
right rudder. The big plane began to pick up momentum, moving
ponderously but gathering speed and turning.
Another rifle shot
hit the sheet metal behind him and then two more. Hudson guessed he
had turned far enough that the aircraft was pointing away from the
terminal now. He climbed up into his seat and turned the plane out
onto the runway.
At this point he had
to go. There was nowhere safe back on that ramp. The plane was
pointed in the right direction, and Hudson wasn’t waiting for any
clearance. He pushed the throttles to the firewall, and the big
plane began to accelerate.
For a second or two
he heard bullets punching holes in the aircraft’s skin, but he soon
was out of range, roaring down the runway and closing in on
rotational velocity.
With the visibility
as bad as it was and the shattered window on the left side, Hudson
strained to see the red lights at the far end of the runway. They
were coming up fast.
He popped the flaps
down five degrees and waited until he was a hundred yards from the
end of the asphalt before pulling back on the yoke. The Connie
tilted its nose up, hesitated for a long, sickening second, and
then leapt off the end of the runway, wheels whipping through the
tall grass beyond the tarmac.
Climbing and turning
to a westbound heading, Hudson raised the landing gear and then
reached over to his copilot.
“Charlie?” he said,
shaking him. “Charlie!”
Simpkins gave no
reaction. Hudson checked for a pulse but didn’t find
one.
“Damn it,” Hudson
said to himself.
Another casualty. During the war a half a decade back,
Hudson had lost too many friends to count, but there was always a
reason for it. Here, he wasn’t sure. Whatever was in those cases
had better be worth the lives of two men.
He pushed Simpkins
back up into his seat and concentrated on flying. The crosswind was
bad, the turbulence worse, and gazing into a wall of dark gray mist
as he climbed through the clouds was disorienting and
dangerous.
With no horizon or
anything thing else to judge the plane’s orientation visually, the
body’s sensations could not be trusted. Many a pilot had flown his
plane right into the ground in conditions like these. All the while
thinking he was flying straight and level.
Many more had taken
perfectly level planes and stalled and spun them because their
bodies told them they were turning and falling. It was like being
drunk and feeling the bed spin; you knew it wasn’t happening, but
you couldn’t stop the sensation.
To avoid it, Hudson
kept his eyes down, scanning the instruments and making sure the
plane’s wings stayed level. He kept the climb to a safe five-degree
angle.
At two thousand feet
and three miles out, the weather got worse. Turbulence shook the
plane, violent up- and downdrafts threatening to rip it apart. Rain
lashed the windshield and metal around him. The
hundred-fifty-mile-an-hour slipstream kept most of it from pouring
in through the shattered corner window, but some of the moisture
sprayed around the cockpit, and the constant noise was like a
freight train passing at full speed.
With the bullet holes
and the broken window, Hudson couldn’t pressurize the plane, but he
could still climb to fourteen thousand feet or more without it
becoming too cold to function. He reached behind his seat and
touched a green bottle filled with pure oxygen; he would need that
up higher.
Another wave of
turbulence rocked the plane, but with the gear up and all four
engines going Hudson figured he could power through the storm and
out the other side.
The Constellation was
one of the most advanced aircraft of the day. Designed by Lockheed
with help from world-famous aviator Howard Hughes, it could cruise
at 350 knots and travel three thousand miles without refueling. Had
they picked Tarasov up a little farther west, Hudson would have
gone for Newfoundland or Boston without stopping.
He turned to check
his heading. He was crabbing to the north more than he intended. He
went to correct the turn and felt a spell of dizziness. He leveled
off, just as a warning light came on.
The generator in the
number 1 engine was going, and the engine was running extremely
rough. A moment later the number 2 engine began to cut out, and the
main electrical warning light came on.
Hudson tried to
concentrate. He felt light-headed and groggy as if he’d been
drugged. He grabbed his shoulder where the bullet had hit him. The
wound was painful, but he couldn’t tell how much blood he was
losing.
On the instrument
panel in front of him, the artificial horizon—an instrument pilots
use to keep wings level when they can’t see outside—was tumbling.
Beside it the directional gyro was tumbling.
Somehow the aircraft
was failing simultaneously with Hudson’s own body.
Hudson looked up at
the old compass, the ancient instrument that was the pilot’s last
resort should everything mechanical go wrong. It showed him in a
hard left turn. He tried to level off, but he banked too far in the
other direction. The stall horn sounded because his airspeed had
dropped, and an instant later the warning lights lit up all over
his instrument panel. Just about everything that could flash was
flashing. The stall horn blared in his ear. The gear warning
sounded.
Lightning flared
close enough to blind him, and he wondered if it had hit the
plane.
He grabbed the radio,
switched to a shortwave band the CIA had given him, and began to
broadcast.
“Mayday, Mayday,
Mayday,” he said. “This is—”
The plane jerked to
the right and then the left. The lightning snapped again, a
million-volt spark going off right in front of his eyes. He felt a
shock through the radio and dropped the microphone like a hot
potato. It swung beneath the panel on its cord.
Hudson reached for
the microphone. He missed. He leaned farther forward and tried
again, stretching, and then grasping it with his fingertips. He
pulled it back ready to broadcast again.
And then he looked up
just in time to see clouds vanish and the black waters of the
Atlantic filling the horizon and rushing up toward
him.