"What!"
Chapter 3
Abu Al-Kalbin watched as the navigation lights of Air Force One plummeted in the darkness of the Mexican night.
"We have done it!" he croaked, holding his kaffiyeh close to his mouth to keep out the putrid smell of the puddle slowly collecting between his squatting legs.
"It is trying to stabilize!" Jalid cried, pointing.
Air Force One dipped, then rose as if fighting to stay in the air. They could not see the damaged engine nacelle, but they spied a sputtering flare that told them of the damage their Stinger had inflicted.
"No," Abu Al-Kalbin said hollowly. "It is falling. It is doomed." The enormity of what he had done was sinking in. He felt like an ant that had brought down a tiger.
Air Force One went in. Its engines continued straining until it pancaked to the ground and the sparks spurted from its squealing underbelly. They cut off as if suddenly depowered.
From his mountainous vantage point, Abu Al-Kalbin watched Air Force One slide along the desert floor, breaking up as it went. An engine disintegrated. A wing tip snapped and cartwheeled away. The aircraft seemed as if it would slide forever. It slewed toward the base of an adjacent mountain. The nose crumpled upon impact. The tail section literally broke off. Luggage spilled from the burst holds.
The sounds were horrible, wrenching, metallic.
"Is that screaming?" Abu Al-Kalbin asked, momentarily forgetting what he was doing and standing up in awe.
"It is the tortured metal," Jalid said.
"It sounds like screams to me," Abu Al-Kalbin muttered.
"It is metallic," Walid agreed.
"Still. It reminds me of dying screams."
Air Force One lay inert in the desert far below. The lights had gone out in cabin and fuselage. One surviving engine burned with fitful yellow flames. A stinging smoke smell was already fouling the still air.
Abu AI-Kalbin and his men watched it burn in silence.
After a while, Jalid and Walid turned to their leader.
"We have done it, Abu!" Jalid cried. "We have extinguished the American President like a candle."
They noticed Abu AI-Kalbin'a naked legs.
"Are you done?" Walid asked.
Abu AI-Kalbin looked down, and very quickly he crouched down to finish what he had started.
When he stood up again, several agonizing and embarrassing minutes later, he used his kaffiyeh to wipe himself and then threw it away.
Walid and Jalid stood off to one side, watching the F-14's circle helplessly.
"They cannot see us," Jalid suggested.
"Neither can they land," Walid added.
"Then we are safe to examine the fruit of our triumph," Abu Al-Kalbin decided. "Come, take up your weapons."
Walid and Jalid followed Abu Al-Kalbin down the barren mountainside to the desert floor. The air was cool, and bitter with the smoke of the burning engine. But Abu Al-Kalbin preferred that stink to the other, which trailed him like a miasma.
Reaching level terrain, they crept to the wreckage cautiously.
"No one could survive such a crash," Walid said quietly.
"For this brave feat," Jalid said, "we will attain the prize we have for so long sought without question."
"Yes, Brother Qaddafi will not deny us this time," Abu Al-Kalbin agreed, his voice rising in exultation.
Still, they approached with raised rifles. Not that weapons would help them if the aircraft unexpectedly exploded, as they feared it might.
"We will need proof," Abu Al-Kalbin muttered. "Which one of you has the camera?"
Walid and Jalid stopped in their tracks and looked at one another, eyes widening in their kaffiyehs.
" I thought you had the camera, Abu," they said together.
"It must be back in the safe house," Abu Al-Kalbin muttered. "Maleesh. Never mind. The President always travels with the media, who are like flies around dung. There will be a camera in the plane. We will use that. Come."
The fallen Air Force One was even more impressive up close. Debris littered the crash site. The tail sat apart and almost upright like a big abstract kite with a U.S. -flag emblem on it. Except for the broken tail, the fuselage had survived largely intact.
They went in through the open-end tail. It was like entering a dark tunnel.
Abu AI-Kalbin immediately tripped over the body of a Secret Service guard, instantly recognizable by his sunglasses and coat-lapel button. Abu Al-Kalbin shot him three times in the chest to make sure he was dead. The body jerked. The sunglasses jumped off. The eyes that looked up were glassy and sightless.
Abu Al-Kalbin stepped over the body and pushed on. Faint starlight picked out details.
The next section of the plane was a roomy bedroom. The silk covers had come off the mattress. Beyond it was a private lavatory. Past the lavatory was a passenger cabin. Seats and cushions were thrown everywhere. They had to push aside uprooted seats to get into it. Here were many more Secret Service bodies.
That told them they had come to the presidential section.
"One bullet for each, to make certain!" Abu AIKalbin barked.
Walid and Jalid applied the muzzles of their weapons to every sunglass-festooned forehead, giving each a single bullet.
One agent stirred in a tangle of cushions. There the seats were mashed out of shape. The man had landed or thrown himself over the nest of compressed seating. The attitude of his body was one of protecting another. He moaned.
Abu AI-Kalbin stepped up to him and yanked his head up by the hair.
"President. . ." the agent croaked, his eyes twitching in their sockets.
"Where is he?" Abu Al-Kalbin asked urgently. "Tell us!"