Remo kicked at the door. It burst inward.The interior of the lavatory was very small. There was no way the door could go in and not catch the man.
Remo put his head in and saw that it had done exactly that.
The door was embedded in the wall behind the toilet. Two legs spilled out from under the door edges. An arm came out around each side. The arms quivered. Remo noticed a lump in the face of the door that roughly corresponded to where the seated man's head should be. He hammered out at the lump with a fist, and the quivering stopped.
On his way out, Remo noticed a wheeled tray of drinks in the rear service area. He got behind it and started pushing it up the aisle.
When he got to the closed door of the cockpit, he stopped and knocked impatiently.
"Refreshments," he called loudly. "Anyone want a drink?"
A long silence came from the cockpit.
Then a man pushed the door open and shoved the muzzle of a Kalashnikov into Remo's stomach. Remo could have avoided the weapon easily. But a rifle pointed at his stomach meant that it was not threatening someone who couldn't defend himself. And Remo could. "Who are you?"
"Don't you recognize me?" Remo asked of the man. Jamil started. His eyes froze like those of a beached fish.
"Impossible," he croaked.
"Nah, just extra-extra clever."
"What do you want?"
"You gonna surrender or what?"
"Or what?"
"That's what I said. Or what?"
"I do not understand."
"And I don't have time to teach you English. Now, what will it be-coffee, tea, or surrender?"
"I will martyr myself before I surrender."
"Fine. Go martyr yourself. Then see if anyone cares."
"I would rather martyr you," said Jamil, who then pressed the trigger on his Kalashnikov, confident that at point-blank range there was no way he could miss the thin man with the dead, dead eyes.
The Kalashnikov did not give out its customary staccato stutter. It sort of went bloosh! The relaxed face of the unarmed American did not change. Jamil frowned. He did not understand. Why didn't the man fall down? He felt a sudden tingling in his hands. And then the tingle turned to a dull pain, and almost as soon as it registered on his brain that his hands were in pain, they seemed to be on fire.
Jamil screamed. He saw that his hands were covered with blood.The whites of his finger bones poked out from the redness of raw exposed flesh. The breech of the rifle was smoking and in ruins.
Then he saw that the muzzle of the Kalashnikov was somehow blocked. It had been crimped, as if by a vise. And just before his eyes rolled up into his head and Jamil lost consciousness, he saw that the white American was rubbing his fingers on the trailing part of Jamil's own kaffiyeh as if to wipe gun grease off them.
Remo stepped over the body.
"You two all right?" he asked the pilot and copilot.
"Yes. Who are you?"
"Next question. And you guys have lost your turn. How many hijackers? I got three."
"Two more."
"They must be upstairs."
"Then we'd better evacuate the plane."
"Too risky," Remo said. "They might start shooting from the windows. Sit tight and I'll take care of them."
"Are you crazy? These people are madmen. You know what they want? They want Reverend Eldon Sluggard brought here for some kind of guerrilla trial."
"Who's Reverend Eldon Sluggard?"
"That's what we asked. They said he was the devil who declared war on Islam. They're on some kind of religious kick. Said they've declared war on Christianity."
"I hope the pope is in his summer place," Remo said. "And what I said before still goes. Sit tight. I'll handle this."
And to make sure, Remo smeared the door latch into cold solder after he closed the cockpit door.
Remo went up one of the plush stairways. He heard the tense breathing half-way up. Two sets of lungs trying to push air through cloth-covered open mouths. They sounded like they were on either side of the stairs. Probably planning to ambush him. Remo shrugged and kept coming.
When he reached the top, one stuck a pistol to his head, and the other, standing on the other side, prodded him in the ribs with a Kalashnikov rifle.
"Uh-oh," Remo said in mock concern. "Looks like you got me."
"Yes, we do have you. Do not move, please."
"I'm not the one who needs to move. It's you two who can't keep standing like that."
"We can do whatever we wish. We have weapons. We have upper hand, you see."
"And if I move, you'll shoot. Am I right?"
"Of course. Why should we not shoot you?"
"Well, because you're holding an AK-47 and your friend's got a Makarov."
"You know weapons. So?"
"So this. If the Makarov goes off, the bullet will go right through my skull, out the other side, and into your head."
The man in the line of the Makarov's fire blinked. "On the other hand," Remo added, "if you start with that Kalashnikov, your pistol-packing friend buys it."
"Then one of us will move," the rifleman said.