When the Balmoral was over the horizon, McGregor packed up what was left. The converter crews and internal outfitters were long gone and their motor homes taken back by the hire company. The old Scot was living in the last of them on his diet of whisky and quinine. The brothers Kapoor had been paid off from bank accounts no one would ever trace and lost all interest in two grain ships they had converted to dive centers. The yard went back to its habitual regime of dismembering ships full of toxic chemicals and asbestos. COLLEEN KECK crouched on the wing of the Buccaneer and puckered her face against the wind. The exposed flat plains of Lincolnshire are not balmy ever in June. She had come to say good-bye to the Brazilian of whom she had become fond.

Beside her, in the forward cockpit of the fighter bomber, sat Major Joao Mendoza, making last and final checks. In the rear cockpit, where she had sat to train him, the seat was gone. Instead was yet another extra fuel tank, and a radio set that fed straight into the flier's headphones. Behind them both, the two Spey engines rumbled at the idling pitch.

When there was no point in waiting anymore, she leaned in and gave him a peck on the cheek.

"Safe journey, Joao," she shouted. He saw her lips move and realized what she had said. He smiled back and raised his right hand, thumb erect. With the arctic wind, the jets behind him and the voice from the tower in his ears, he could not hear her.

Cdr. Keck slid off the wing and jumped to the ground. The Perspex canopy rolled forward and closed, locking the pilot into his own world; a world of control column, throttles, instruments, gunsight, fuel gauges and tactical air navigator, the TACAN.

He asked for and got final clearance, turned onto the runway, paused again, checked brakes, released and rolled. Seconds later, the ground crew in the van by the tarmac, who had come to see him off, watched as 22,000 pounds of thrust from twin Speys powered the Buccaneer into the skies and saw it bank toward the south.

Because of the changes made, it had been decided Major Mendoza would fly back to the mid-Atlantic by a different route. In the Portuguese islands of the Azores is the U.S. Air Force base of Lajes, home of the 64th Wing, and the Pentagon, operating to unseen strings, had agreed to refuel the "museum piece" ostensibly heading back to South Africa. At 1,395 nautical miles, it was no problem.

Nevertheless, he overnighted in the officers' club at Lajes in order to leave at dawn for Fogo. He had no wish to make his first landing at his new home in the dark. He took off at dawn for the second leg, 1,439 miles to Fogo, well under his 2,200-mile limit.

The skies over the Cape Verde Islands were clear. As he dropped down from his cruise altitude of 35,000 feet, he could see them all with total clarity. At 10,000 feet, the wakes of a few speedboats out at sea were like little white feathers against the blue water. At the south end of the group, west of Santiago, he could make out the jutting caldera of Fogo's extinct volcano and, tucked into the southwestern flank of the rock, the sliver of airport runway.

He dropped farther in a long, curving sweep over the Atlantic, keeping the volcano just off port wing. He knew that he had a designated call sign and frequency, and that the language would not be Portuguese but English. He would be "Pilgrim," and Fogo Central was "Progress." He pressed the Transmit button and called.

"Pilgrim, Pilgrim… Progress Tower, do you read me?"

The voice that came back he recognized. One of the six from Scampton who would be his technical and support team. An English voice, North Country accent. His friend was sitting in the Fogo Airport control tower beside the Verdean traffic controller of commercial flights.

"Read you fine, Pilgrim."

The Scampton enthusiast, another retiree recruited by Cal Dexter with Cobra money, stared out of the plate-glass window of the stumpy little control box and could clearly see the Bucc curving over the sea. He delivered landing instructions: direction of runway, wind strength and direction.

At 1,000 feet, Joao Mendoza lowered undercarriage and flaps to landing setting, watched the airspeed and altitude drop. In such brilliant visibility, there was not much need for technology; this was flying as it used to be. Two miles out, he lined up. The froth of foaming surf swept under him, the wheels thumped the tarmac at the very threshold marker, and he was braking gently down a runway half the length of the Scampton strip. He was fuel light and un-weaponed. It was not a problem.

As he came to a halt with two hundred yards to spare, a small pickup swerved in front, and a figure in the back beckoned him to follow. He taxied away from the terminal to the flight-school complex and finally shut down.

The five who had preceded him from Scampton surrounded him. There were cheery greetings as he climbed down. The sixth was approaching from the tower on his rented scooter. All six had arrived by a British C-130 Hercules two days earlier. With them came rockets for RATO departures, every tool needed to maintain the Bucc in her new role and the all-important Aden cannon ammunition. Among the six, all now assured of much more comfortable pensions than they had faced six months earlier, were rigger, fitter, armorer (the "plumber"), avionics expert, air comms (radio) technician and the air traffic controller who had just talked him down.

Most missions yet to come would be in darkness, both takeoff and landing, which would be trickier, but they had another fortnight to practice. For the moment, they took him off to his quarters, where his kit was already laid out. Then he went to the main mess hall to meet his fellow Brazilian instructors and the Portuguese-speaking cadets. The new CO and his personal museum piece had arrived. The youngsters were eagerly looking forward, after four weeks of classwork and aircraft familiarization, to their first dual-controls flights in the morning.

Compared to their basic simple little Tucano trainers, the former Navy ship killer looked formidable. But it was soon towed to the steel-doored hangar and out of sight. That afternoon, she was refueled, her rockets fitted and her canno packs armed. Night familiarization was two evenings away. A few passengers trooping off the Santiago shuttle into the civilian terminal saw nothing.

That evening, speaking out of Washington, Cal Dexter had a short conversation with Major Mendoza, and, in answer to the obvious question, told him to be patient. He would not have long to wait. JULIO LUZ was trying to act normally. He had been sworn to secrecy by Roberto Cardenas, and yet the thought of deceiving the Don, even by nondisclosure, terrified him. They both terrified him.

He resumed his fortnightly visits to Madrid as if nothing had happened. On this particular trip, his first since his visit to New York and yet another utterly miserable hour reporting to Cardenas, he was again invisibly followed. He was quite unaware, as was the excellent management of the Villa Real Hotel, that his habitual room had been bugged by a team of two from the FBI, directed by Cal Dexter. Every sound he made was listened to by another hotel client, who had taken a room two floors abovehim.

The man sat patiently with "cans" over his ears and blessed the wiry ex-Tunnel Rat who had installed him in a comfortable room instead of his usual billet on stakeouts: a cramped van in a parking lot with rotten coffee and "no facilities." When the target was out at the bank, dining or taking breakfast, he could relax with the TV or the funnies of the International Herald Tribune from the lobby newsstand. But on this particular morning, the day of the target's departure back to the airport, he was listening hard with his cell in his left hand.

The lawyer's personal physician would have been completely understanding of the middle-aged patient's abiding problem. The constant cross-Atlantic journeys played havoc with his constipation. He carried his own supply of syrup of figs at all times. This had been discovered during a raid on his room while he was at the bank.