Logan International Airport, which sits atop a zillion-ton concrete promontory, hemmed in by runways, tunnels, and the harbor, was heaving with travelers. Thousands of them, packed into lines for tickets, lines for check-in, lines for security, lines for coffee, coke, donuts. They even had lines for cheeseburgers, and it was not yet 8 A.M. on a gloomy, freezing January morning.
South. South. The demand was always south. South to Florida. South to Antigua, Barbuda, St. Barts, south to the islands, any island, anywhere to get the hell out of this cold, snow, sleet, and ice. It was the peak of the season. High fares. Ruinous hotel bills. Nobody cared. This was the ice-bound airport of the winter-grim northeastern city of Boston, Massachusetts. Beyond the departure terminals, a bitter easterly wind howled straight off the slate-gray waters of Massachusetts Bay. A mile to the west stood the frozen granite towers of the downtown area.
All this had once been home to a battle-hardened race of New En-glanders who accepted the cold, fought it, and shrugged it off. Not any more. Modern prosperity, air travel, and a sense of indignation and entitlement pervaded. Goddammit, I don’t need this tundra crap. Get me out of here.
Thus the eager vacationers collided in a tidal surge with the already-irritated business crowd, which was, en masse, fed up with late takeoffs. As Monday mornings go, this one was up and running.
“This is totally fucking crazy,” muttered Officer Pete Mackay, adjusting his gloved hands on his light machine gun as he moved through the crowd.
“Tell me about it,” said his teammate, Officer Danny Kearns. “Osama bin Asshole could vanish without a trace in the freakin’ donut queue.”
Mackay and Kearns were buddies beyond the confines of the Boston Police Department. Each of them brought a missionary zeal to the fan base of the New England Patriots. For almost eleven months of every year, and sometimes for twelve, they believed to the depths of their souls that this year was theirs, that the glorious years of Super Bowl victories would stand before them again.
They lived football. They ate and slept football. Each of them would awake in the night, leading the blitz as the Patriots surged forward; the big, bullnecked Pete Mackay, in his dreams the greatest defensive lineman who ever lived; Danny, more modestly, the fastest running back on earth. Whenever they could, they went to the games together, taking turns bringing the kids, Pete’s Patrick and Sean, Danny’s Mikey and Ray.
Both cops were fifth-generation Boston Irish; they both lived on the south side of the city, across the water from the airport. And their great-great-grandparents had emigrated from Ireland around the same time, right after the famine. No one could remember when the Mackays and the Kearnses did not know each other. Both Pete’s and Danny’s fathers had been Boston cops.
The whole lot of them had attended the same grade school in Southie, played football together, played baseball together in the streets, got in fights with their neighbors, and endured a cheerful scrappy childhood. Pete and Danny both made it to Boston University, and both played football-though not at the highest level, however much effort they put in.
Subsequently, both men viewed the Patriots with a kind of stricken pride, a complicated self-irony that burst into an unreasoning, inflamed passion when the Barbarians were at the gate-that is, when any other team from any other city in the United States challenged the boys from Foxborough.
As a cop, the 34-year-old Pete Mackay was scheduled to go right to the top. He was ambitious, tough, and cynical, though not unreasonably. In action, he was still fast on his feet and a master at dealing with the occasional outbreak of inner-city violence. Like Danny, he was an expert marksman. Also, he packed a right hook like a jackhammer, should anyone be foolish enough to attack him.
Officer Kearns, the resident comedian of the precinct, was not quite so dedicated to the police department. He had a very beautiful Italian wife, Louise, and by the end of most days he was about ready to call it quits and get home to the family. His straight man, Pete, also had a pretty wife, Marie, but he was always looking around for crimes to investigate, chatting with the detectives, moving steadily toward the day when he would become Detective Sergeant Mackay.
They were a popular team, Mackay and Kearns, and they both spent a lot of extra hours raising funds for the families of police officers killed or injured in action.
This morning, in the jostling hub of the airport’s Terminal C, they were on high alert for anything that looked even remotely suspicious. Normally they patrolled slowly, moving from one end of the terminal to the other but never straying too far from the sightline of the security staff.
This morning it was more difficult, owing to the sheer volume of passengers. The shouts of the airline staff rose above the throng-This way, sir… I’m sorry, sir-right to the end of that queue right there… We’re moving it along, sir, just as fast as we can… just keep moving along… keep moving right along.
“Jesus, Pete,” said Danny. “I was in Greece one time, and they treated herds of fucking billygoats better’n this.”
Pete Mackay laughed, like always at Danny’s humor. But then the innate Boston cop on terrorist alert took over. “Yeah, but this is serious. We couldn’t hardly move if anything happened. I been trying to calculate, maybe a full half-minute from here to get to the security guys-unless we knock down a coupla dozen passengers.”
“You mean like Ryman against the Steelers last month-that time he took three defensive linemen with him-hell! That was some play.”
“I guess that’s the kind of thing-a head-down rush. But seriously, these are tough operating conditions, and we have to stay in view of the passengers and staff.”
“Sure as hell be better if we could move a coupla feet without crashing into someone.”
The two police officers tried to move along toward the head of the queue, but turned back. “Just don’t want to get out of sight of security, that’s all,” said Mackay.
Donald Martin was the junior vice president of a Boston brokerage house, and he was doing his level best to clear the new passport control system and get on a flight to Atlanta. He had no baggage and expected to be back home in Newton, west of Boston, by midnight.
He was traveling with the president of his corporation, a silver-haired financier, a Boston Brahmin named Elliott Gardner, thirty years his senior. Donald was quietly reading the Globe; his boss was staring somewhat aimlessly into the distance, bored sideways by the airport procedures, unamused that their first-class tickets did not allow them to bypass this unattractive closeness to the rank and file. Particularly as the queue had come to a tiresome halt.
Behind them stood one passenger, apparently alone, and behind him was a family, two very young children presumably with mom and dad. They had a lot of baggage piled on a cart. One child was screaming. Elliott Gardner hoped to god that the family was not traveling first-class on Delta to Atlanta.
“WA-HAAAAAH!” wailed the child. “Jesus Christ,” muttered Elliott Gardner. And then he felt a mild tap on the shoulder. The passenger behind him was making contact. He turned around and came face-to-face with a youngish man, well dressed, no more than thirty, of decidedly Middle Eastern appearance. He could have been Turkish or Arabian, but not Jewish or even Israeli. This was a face born and bred in desert or casbah.
The man smiled broadly. “Excuse me, sir,” he said. “I have two quite heavy briefcases here, and I’m just going over there to Starbucks for some coffee. Would you mind keeping an eye on one of them for me-kick it along if the queue moves?”
Elliott glanced down at the brown leather briefcase on the floor. A well-mannered man, unaccustomed to rudeness, he replied, “No problem. Leave it right there.”
Donald Martin absent-mindedly looked up from his newspaper and asked, “What did he want?”
“Oh, just to watch his briefcase while he went for coffee-he’s over there, heading for Starbucks. Guess I should have had him get some for us, since the goddamned queue has stalled.”
“Where is he?” said Martin, suddenly alert.
“Just over there at the Starbucks counter.”
“What’s he wearing?”
“Some kind of tan-colored jacket, I guess.”
Martin swung around and pointed, “You mean him, that guy moving down the hallway, against the crowd?”
“Yeah, dark hair, that’s him. What’s up, Don?”
“Well, he just walked straight past Starbucks, for a start.”
“Probably going to take a leak,” replied Elliott.
“Well, he just broke every rule in the book, about leaving luggage unattended. And so did you. You have no idea what’s in that briefcase. AND the guy looks like a fucking Arab.”
Elliott Gardner looked startled at this apparent brush with a dangerous corner of the outside world. And his very junior vice president threw his right arm in the air and looked straight across the crowd to the patrolling Pete Mackay and Danny Kearns.
“OFFICER!” he yelled, loudly. Very loudly. “RIGHT HERE-OVER HERE, PLEASE!”
Officer Mackay spun around. He could see Don Martin’s raised arm, and he dodged and ducked thirty yards through the crowd. Danny Kearns was right behind him.
When they arrived, Donald Martin was herding people back, away from the briefcase, which now stood in solitude like a couple of roosters in a cockfight, hemmed in by the spectators.
“Officer,” said Martin, “a guy who looked like some kind of an Arab left that case right there and said he was going to Starbucks for coffee. But he didn’t. He went right past Starbucks, and he’s on his way out of the building right down that corridor.”
Pete Mackay grabbed a small state-of-the-art stethoscope from his belt and stuck one end into each ear, the long tube onto the briefcase. “Jesus Christ!” he breathed. “Danny, there’s a slight ticking sound. Get the detector.”
Danny Kearns pulled a wire contraption from his belt and held it against the case. It immediately bleeped. “That’s metal inside, Pete, and possibly explosive. This is a fucking live one.”
“What’s he wearing?” yelled Pete. “What the hell’s he wearing?”
“Tan-colored jacket,” replied Elliott Gardner. “Black T-shirt. He’s not tall, short black hair. Looks obviously Arabian.”
“GO GET HIM, PETE! LET ME TAKE CARE OF THIS.”
Danny Kearns had patrolled for a lot of hours in Boston’s airport. And he knew the real estate. Out through the wide glass doors, there was a four-lane throughway for dropoffs, cars, limos, and buses. Officer Kearns was accustomed to making split-second decisions, but had not previously been confronted by anything quite so urgent. Whether to evacuate the terminal as fast as possible? Or to take the death-or-glory route, grab the briefcase and get it out of here, hoping to Christ the sonofabitch didn’t blow?
The latter course held another diabolical question-what to do with the damn thing once it was outside? The terminal on the departures level was surrounded by concrete parking lots, and Danny Kearns sure as hell didn’t want to be holding the goddamned time bomb for longer than necessary.
His mind raced. If he flung the briefcase into the concrete ramparts of the parking garage, he’d wreck a few cars and maybe knock down a couple of floors, maybe injure or even kill a dozen people. If he left it in the terminal while he ordered people out, it would surely kill a thousand.
No contest. Danny Kearns, Patriots fan, husband of the beautiful Louise, father of Mikey and Ray, grabbed the briefcase. He held it in the classic grip of the running back, tucked against his body, his right hand securing its underside. Instincts, honed from watching thousands of hours of NFL football, caused him to run with a slightly lower gait than normal.
He looked ahead at the glass doors, and he set off, legs pumping, running hard for the first objective, brushing aside passengers, hitting anyone in the way with a crunching shoulder charge. Ahead of him was a group of maybe six people blocking the doors-the goddamned defensive secondary, too many of ’em. Danny rammed into the first astounded air passenger, then spun away, coming back in, hard on the left, grimly hanging on to the briefcase.
The doors were open; a redcap with a luggage cart blocked his way. But Danny Kearns saw only the free safety, a deep defensive backfield man, ready to hammer the tackle home. He rammed out his left hand and caught the luggage guy right under the chin. Then he cleared the empty cart and charged out into the airport dropoff zone.
A bus braked and was hit in the rear by a taxi. Two cops on duty heard Danny yell, “CLEAR THE PARKING LOT RIGHT NOW! I’M HOLDING A FUCKING BOMB!”
The two cops saw him running for the center of the roadway and charged out into the traffic. A limo driver hit a truck. An SUV mounted the sidewalk. And Danny Kearns kept running, dodging, sidestepping, and now he was shouting, yelling over and over, “GET OUT OF THE PARKING GARAGE-VACATE THE AREA!”
In front of him was the low concrete wall of the garage’s first floor, and Danny prepared for the greatest throw of his life. He could see that the area he wanted was empty, like a yawning end zone. In Danny’s mind, Tom Brady, the Patriots’ legendary quarterback who was still going strong at age thirty-five, was urging him on. The massed ranks of the Patriot fans were roaring him home.
He adjusted his grip on the briefcase, fumbling for the handle. Then he straightened up, swiveled, spun around, and leaned back, a lot more like a javelin thrower than a quarterback. And then he let fly, hurling the briefcase into the garage, hurling it as near to the center as he could.
He watched it fly, whipping over the roof of a Cadillac and then tumbling to the concrete floor. Danny, still shouting, still imploring everyone to get the hell out of the garage, hit the deck, right under the low wall that separated the garage from the roadway. He covered his head with his arms, suspecting correctly that if the terrorist had any clue what he was doing, the timing device would be overridden by any major impact on the briefcase.
Thirty-two seconds later, the case detonated with a stupendous blast. It sent four cars into the air, blew twelve more sideways up to ten yards from their parking spaces, and knocked down four concrete- and steel-reinforced support pillars. The second floor of the parking garage collapsed onto the first. The third floor was punctured by a 25-foot-wide crater, and possibly forty cars were effectively totaled. However, only twelve people had been in the direct line of the blast and were quite badly injured by flying debris. No one was dead.
The entire area was enveloped by smoke and flames from burning gasoline, and the unmistakable smell of cordite hung on the air. Logan International Airport had been transformed into a battle zone, and Officer Pete Mackay was right in the thick of it.
While Danny Kearns had been removing the bomb, Pete Mackay had pounded through the terminal after the man in the tan-colored jacket. At the second emergency door, Pete had busted through to the sidewalk and kept running, praying that his quarry would make an exit at the next automatic door, and knowing that he, Pete, could run a hell of a lot faster outside than anyone could inside the packed terminal.
He reached the doors before the blast. And as he did so, the man who had left his briefcase in the care of Elliott Gardner came running out. It was, perhaps, the moment for which Pete Mackay had waited all of his life. He slammed that terrorist with a block that would have made a grizzly bear gasp.
The man cannoned back into the door and crashed to the ground. Pete Mackay had his hands around the man’s throat before he hit the ground, his head crashing into the sidewalk. But that was when the briefcase detonated, and as it did so a third man entered the fray, another Middle Eastern-looking character who burst out of a black limo on the sidewalk and delivered a vicious kick to Mackay’s ribs.
Pete fell back, temporarily winded, grabbing for the man’s ankle. But by now the first terrorist was up and running, heading for the black car. Pete was still on the ground when the second man tore himself away and rushed for the driver’s-side door. He piled in, revved, and accelerated. The light tan jacket could be seen right beside him.
Pete Mackay climbed to his feet, ran into the road, and leveled his machine gun. The car drove straight at him, but Pete held his ground, pumping bullets through the windshield until the last second, when he dived clear. The car veered out into the stalled traffic. The driver was dead, but he slumped forward and rammed down the accelerator. The vehicle lurched diagonally, hit the rear end of a Hertz bus, and flipped over, exploding in a fireball.
Danny Kearns was now up and heading across the traffic to help his partner. But the left-hand side of the car was an inferno. Danny kicked out the passenger window, and together they hauled clear the terrorist in the partially burned tan-colored jacket and dragged him away.
Within minutes, police cruisers from all over the city were headed out to Logan to assist with the total evacuation of the terminals. Incoming flights were diverted to Providence, Rhode Island, and only outgoing flights that had already left the gate were permitted to taxi out to the runway and take off.
Officers Mackay and Kearns assumed a loose command in Terminal C, and in effect they just turned the long passport lines and security lines toward the main doors and told everyone to leave the airport with all speed. Plainly the police department had no idea whether this was another 9/11, and the airport blast might be the harbinger of a whole series of attacks. No one was taking any chances. Logan International was history as far as this day was concerned, and according to security forces there was no possibility of its opening again for at least forty-eight hours.
The intense bush telegraph that hits local media newsrooms when something this big happens was instantly into gear, and by 8:45 A.M. the entire city knew there had been a big bang at the airport. Terrorist-related. Right now, the police were denying access to television crews, which traditionally managed to get in everyone’s way during emergency operations, as this now was.
The media on these occasions are apt to assume an air of slightly irate self-importance on the basis that they are a great deal more significant than the firemen trying to extinguish the ferocious blaze in the parking garage and the army of cops trying to stop anyone else from getting blown up, or perhaps even killed.
But how could this have been allowed to happen? How the hell could the security forces have been so incompetent? Do you expect heads to roll? The public has a right to know… what’s the status out here?
At this moment, the police decided to dispense with all that and allowed no broadcasting crews into the airport. Nonetheless, news of the terrorist bomb at Logan International had hit the airwaves in every corner of the country-and, within a few minutes, every corner of the world, regardless of time zones.
National security went to the highest level. The National Security Agency at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, was vibrating with communications, and at five minutes before 10 A.M. the president’s national security adviser was in the Oval Office to brief the boss on this latest outrage-an estimated thousand lives saved by the heroic actions of a couple of Boston cops.
Al Qaeda, however, had unquestionably struck again, even if it had turned out to be in the parking garage. Every police officer in the entire country was on heightened bomb alert.
Paul Bedford, the Democratic Party’s right-of-center president, was an ex-U.S. Navy lieutenant. As commander in chief of the United States armed forces, he still found it more comfortable to consult with the high-ranking generals and admirals of his younger days than he ever did with professional politicians.
There was a myriad of reasons for this: possibly the unquestioning patriotism of the military, perhaps their impeccable good manners and respect for high office, or maybe their clarity of thought, the military’s instant grasp of what can be done, what could be done, and what must be done. Paul Bedford admired the way the admirals and generals did not confuse the three.
Today he was due to have a private lunch in the White House with Admiral Arnold Morgan, the former head of the National Security Agency and former national security adviser to the president. Admiral Morgan had effectively put President Bedford into power a couple of years previously. And Bedford still, in unguarded moments, called the admiral “sir”-because, in the president’s mind, it was still young navigation officer to nuclear submarine commander. And it always would be. Yessir.
Admiral Morgan would arrive at noon, which was not, by the way, to be confused with thirty seconds past the hour, nor indeed with one minute before the hour. Noon was noon, goddammit. And Paul Bedford always looked forward to the moment his desktop digital clock snapped over to 1200 from 1159. The door would fly open as the admiral let himself in, unannounced, called the end of the forenoon watch, and snapped “Permission to come aboard, sir?”
The president loved it. Because it not only brought back distant memories of nights spent at the helm of a U.S. Navy guided missile frigate, racing through the Atlantic dark, but it heralded the arrival of the man he trusted most in all the world.
This morning, however, events were crowding in upon him. These half-crazed al Qaeda fanatics had apparently had a serious shot at blowing up one of the busiest airport terminals in the country, and according to the CIA this latest Islamic offensive might not be over yet.
His new national security adviser was the dark, angular Professor Alan Brett, former lecturer at both Princeton and West Point, former colonel in the United States Army, and a firm believer that in the past thirty years only George W. Bush had had the slightest idea about showing the proper iron fist to Middle Eastern terrorists.
Paul Bedford did not believe that Alan Brett considered him to be soft, but he always sensed that the former infantry colonel erred on the side of a hard, ruthless response to any actions taken against the United States. President Bedford had no problem with that. Besides, Alan Brett’s motives were unfailingly high.
A half hour ago, the professor had briefed him fully on the explosion at Logan. He had also produced a preliminary CIA report, which recommended no one drop their guard, that al Qaeda might not be finished on this day.
A nationwide security clampdown was in effect. All East Coast airports were either closed or closing, once the incoming passenger jets from the western side of the Atlantic had safely landed. Every aircraft coming from the eastern side of the ocean had been turned back to Europe. They had already shut down JFK in New York, Philadelphia, Washington Reagan and Dulles, Atlanta, Jacksonville, and Miami. Only the smaller airports were allowing transatlantic flights to land, mostly stranding thousands of passengers hundreds of miles from their destinations.
If the al Qaeda operatives had been bent on causing death and chaos, they had achieved the latter in spades. Large-scale death had been averted thanks to the actions of Pete Mackay and Danny Kearns, whose photographs were currently in the hands of President Bedford.
The president was anxious to speak to Admiral Morgan, but right now he could only listen to the incoming intelligence, and the news was not all bad. The passenger wearing the tan-colored jacket, dragged from the wreckage by Officer Kearns, had been shot in the upper arm and suffered burns on his left hand. He was alive and conscious under heavy guard in Mass General Hospital. According to the name on the Egyptian passport he was carrying, he was Reza Aghani. His cohort, the driver of the getaway vehicle, was dead.
The CIA, however, was in permanent communication with the National Security Agency over at Fort Meade, and according to Professor Brett they had a lead-one that he believed made the plot more complicated and a lot more dangerous.
Lieutenant Commander Jimmy Ramshawe, assistant to the director, was, by any standard, on the case. It was usually possible to ascertain his degree of interest in any given case, or surveillance report, by the general condition of his office. Traditionally it looked like a mildly dangerous minefield with small(ish) piles of documents placed strategically around the floor, the more pertinent ones in closer proximity to the desk. Today it looked like a medium-range guided missile had just come in.
The Ramshawe floor contained more detail on the activities of al Qaeda terrorists than you’d find in the seething cauldrons of Islamic fervor in Baghdad. That pile of data was close to the desk. Real close. The lieutenant commander had been in the building since 0500, after a heightened alert had been issued on the strength of reports from the Surveillance Office phone-monitoring section.
Ever since 9/11, the agency had insisted on strict intelligence phone observation on every single call made from any of the bin Laden family’s former residences in the city of Boston.
This stringent policy was forged in private consultations with the former NSA director, the president’s closest confidant, Admiral Arnold Morgan, who wanted it enforced-regardless of who the hell now lived there, regardless of laws about rights of privacy, human rights, last rites, or any other goddamned rights, including the pursuit of happiness.
There was one residence in particular, in the Back Bay area, that had constantly given cause for concern. The Surveillance Office had picked up so many cell phone calls that appeared to emanate from Baghdad, Tehran, or the Gaza Strip, they’d given up being startled. None of them made any sense, none of them had ever proved alarming, and none of them had ever amounted to a hill of beans.
But today’s message, received on a cell in the very small hours of the morning, seemed more specific than anything recently transmitted. The recipient was unknown to the Boston Police Department, but he was of Middle Eastern appearance, a man called Ramon Salman, who had been photographed but never interviewed. And that cell phone call had been transmitted to Syria from a block of apartments on Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue, from a suite of rooms formerly occupied by Osama bin Laden’s cousin.
This small sequence of coincidences was inflamed by the wording of the one-way transmission. Mr. Salman was the only voice. There was no acknowledgment from the other end of the line. However, that was kids’ stuff for the National Surveillance Office, which had, at the turn of the century, routinely tapped into Osama’s phone calls from his cave in the Hindu Kush, direct to his mother in Saudi Arabia.
They pinpointed this morning’s call to a position near the center of Damascus. The translation from Arabic to English read:
“D-hour Charlie Hall 0800 (local). Reza in line-exit with Ari regroup HQ Houston. Flight 62 affirmative.”
Lt. Commander Ramshawe had every code-breaking operator in the agency hitting the computer keys; fingers were flashing downward like shafts of light. The huge glassed bulletproof building quivered with activity. But, after eight hours, no one had cracked the clandestine communiqué directed, almost certainly, at one of the al Qaeda or Hamas strongholds in the Syrian capital.
Worse yet, Ramon Salman had vanished. Really vanished, that is. When Boston police had smashed their way into his apartment at 7 A.M., they had been greeted by empty cupboards, a couple of bathrooms stripped even of toothpaste, and a kitchen bereft of any form of nourishment. The phone was cut off, the television cable input was dead, and even the answering machine was disconnected. Sayonara, Salman.
As Lt. Commander Ramshawe put it on the phone to his boss at 7:30 A.M., “Beats the living shit out of me, Chief. But I don’t bloody like it. And who the hell’s Charlie Hall when he’s up and running?”
At approximately 0809, Jimmy had a clearer idea of the significance of the message. Charlie Hall was plainly code for Terminal C at Logan, right? D-hour was 0800, and a couple of right fucking nutters had just tried to blow up the freakin’ airport. Holy shit!
That apartment on Commonwealth Avenue plainly held the key to this latest terrorist assault on an American city. At least it used to. But despite the presence of a dozen forensic guys combing through the place for clues, it was now just another dead end. Ramon Salman had vanished and taken his secrets with him. Maybe the police would pick him up somewhere. Maybe not. America’s a very big place in which to get lost, and the Arab had probably taken off around 0300, six hours before the airport closures. J. Ramshawe knew the murderous little bastard could be anywhere.
He also knew that even the massive resources of Crypto City, the insiders’ name for the National Security Agency, would not be effective against a foe who had disappeared off the charts. So far as Jimmy could tell, the only chance was to get after the wounded Reza Aghani and persuade him to talk.
Meanwhile, so far as Jimmy was concerned, the rest of the message was nothing short of a bloody PITA-that’s Australian for pain-in-the-ass. And Jimmy, born in the USA of Aussie parents, retained at all times the rich Aussie accent and the quaint, colorful inflections of the outback west of Sydney, where his family traced their roots. His office was where Clancy of the Overflow met James Bond. G’day, Admiral-no worries.
Meanwhile, the second part of the transmission to Syria was giving him a whole stack of worries. Reza was accounted for, and Ari was dead. But the “headquarters in Houston” was a complete blank, and that was where Reza was supposedly headed. The Texas police were concentrating a search for Ramon Salman in the Houston area, but there was no Flight 62 on any airline going anywhere near the southern Texas area.
The number 62 of course could have meant anything, and the code-breakers in Crypto City had come up with over seven thousand computerized possibilities, which included just about every takeoff in North America that week, including the Space Shuttle.
The wording did suggest that Flight 62 was the one the terrorists were supposed to be on, and that probably had meant their leaving the country ASAP. And yet, in Jimmy’s mind, he saw that last short sentence, Flight 62 affirmative, as something separate. Like a possible second hit.
He had been ruminating for a half hour on this and had twice tried to speak to his mentor, the Big Man, Admiral Morgan himself. But Mrs. Morgan thought Arnold was in Norfolk with Jimmy’s boss, Admiral Morris, on board a carrier, but he would be at the White House later for lunch with the president if Jimmy’s business was vital.
“Might not be vital now at 11:30,” he said as he put down the telephone. “But it sure as hell might be at lunchtime.”
Meanwhile, back in the Oval Office, President Bedford had just been briefed that Reza Aghani was conscious, the bullet had been removed from his arm, and he was drinking tea, resolutely refusing to utter one word to any of the six police officers currently guarding his room both inside and out.
“How long before they charge him?” asked the president.
“Maybe twenty-four hours,” replied Alan Brett. “But the CIA thinks this cat is a really dangerous little character, almost certainly an Iranian Shi’ite, based in either Gaza or Syria, probably Hamas. They’re scared some civilian court will free him and he’ll hit back at us somehow.”
“Can we make a case that he’s military?”
“Well, he was carrying a bomb with him.”
“Can that make him military?”
“I’ll ask the Pentagon.”
“Okay, Alan. I’ll see you after lunch. I’m expecting Arnold Morgan in the next few minutes. He’ll probably want Aghani shot at dawn, no questions asked.”
The professor chuckled. “Not a bad plan, that,” he said archly, as he let himself out.
Two minutes later, the president’s clock ticked over to noon and the door opened. The president did not look up, because he found the scenario more amusing that way.
“Eight bells, sir,” rasped a familiar voice. “Permission to come aboard?”
President Bedford looked up, smiling, face-to-face once more with the immaculately dressed Admiral Morgan, clean-shaven, dark gray suit, white shirt, Annapolis tie, black shoes polished to a degree appropriate to a Tiffany display case.
“Goddamned towelheads hit us again,” Morgan growled. “How does it look?”
“Lousy,” replied Paul Bedford, who was long accustomed to the admiral’s propensity to dispense entirely with formalities like “Good morning,” or “Great to see you,” or “How you been?,” or “How’s Maggie?”
This applied particularly when there were matters on the desk that involved even the slightest problem of a Middle Eastern nature.
Straight to the gun deck was Admiral Morgan’s policy, and the president gave it total respect. “I guess the only good part, Arnie, is we have one of the two terrorists under arrest, in Mass General Hospital.”
“Is he under civilian or military guard?” The admiral’s tone was sharp.
“Civilian right now-six Boston cops.”
“Better change that immediately.”
“Huh?”
“Get those civilians outta there right now. Call in a Navy guard and move the little sonofabitch to the Navy Hospital in Bethesda. Let’s get some control right here.”
“But he might not be well enough to travel.”
“He’s well enough,” replied Arnold Morgan. “And anyway, who gives a rat’s ass? He just tried to blow up a thousand people, didn’t he? The hell with him. Let’s get him under military arrest.”
“I’m not absolutely clear why that’s so important at this time, Arnie. The guy’s plainly not going anywhere.”
“You want me to tell you why?”
“Of course.”
“Because sometime in the next twenty-four hours, a couple of highly paid lawyers are going to show up, probably paid for by bin Laden’s Saudi relatives, and announce that this poor little guy made the mistake of getting into the wrong limousine, found himself in the middle of a gunfight, got shot, burned, and shockingly ill-treated, and not only must be released, but also is entitled to massive compensation from the trigger-happy Boston Police Department.”
The president was thoughtful. But then he said, “Arnie, I am advised that there were two highly respectable Boston businessmen who will swear on oath that this was the man who abandoned the briefcase bomb, in the line in Terminal C.”
“And within a very few hours there’ll be about fifteen Arabs ready to swear to Allah that this Reza Aghani has never even owned a briefcase, never had one single conviction in his entire life, has no connection whatsoever with any terrorist organization, is a practicing Roman Catholic, and the Boston businessmen must surely be mistaken.
“And how could it possibly be Reza’s fault if some crazed Boston cop took it upon himself to blow up the parking garage at Logan, while his buddy gunned down a passing limousine driver?”
“Arnie, in front of a jury, no one could possibly get away with that…”
“O.J. did.”
Paul Bedford was silent for a moment. “What do you want me to do, Arnie?”
“Have the Pentagon announce that this atrocity was the work of some Arab outfit that constantly refers to the Islamic Jihad. That’s holy war, and since war traditionally gets fought by armies, we have deemed that this man is an illegal combatant, arrested by an eyewitness. He has thus been taken into military custody, and will face military interrogation and military incarceration until the matter is resolved.”
“Okay. I’ll get it done.”
“And remember, Paul, if anything else happens, our only lifeline to serious information is this little prick in Mass General. Let’s get him under real tight arrest. And the media the hell out of the goddamned way. We just don’t want a whole lot of bullshit being written about people being held without trial, or even charged.”
“Guess we ought never to forget, Arnie,” said the president, “the media wants only a story. They do not think the national interest has anything to do with them.”
“Just so we never forget, right here in this sacred office, the only thing that matters is the national interest and our ability to protect our people. Nothing else.”
“Sometimes, Admiral, you can be quite surprisingly philosophical.”
“Bullshit, Mr. President,” replied Arnold, briskly. “Just don’t want to take our eye off the ball, right?”
“Nossir, Admiral. Just hold everything for a minute while I brief Alan Brett to put our new operation in place. Then we’ll find some lunch.”
The commander in chief picked up the telephone and outlined his current view about Reza Aghani-“Just have the Navy take over, Alan, and get him into Bethesda, under heavy guard-and tell State, willya?”
He replaced the telephone and said, “Okay, old buddy, where do you want to eat? Right here, or in the private dining room?”
“This is not a private-dining-room day, Paul. I got a gut feeling we better stay right here on the bridge.”
“Good call. I’ll send for the butler.”
Three minutes later, the White House butler came in and mentioned two or three dishes he was already preparing for visitors.
Arnold said, “Before I answer, can I just check if Maggie is now in residence?” He referred to the svelte and beautiful Virginian horsewoman, Maggie Lomax, who had married her childhood sweetheart, Paul Bedford, just as soon as he resigned from the Navy for a political career.
“Hell, no, she’s out somewhere in Middleburg with her mother,” replied the president.
“Okay, Henry, I’ll have a roast beef sandwich on rye, mustard and mayonnaise. And coffee, black with buckshot.” The butler smiled. He’d known the admiral for many years.
“Same,” said the president. “Hold the buckshot.”
The president, having declined the little sweetener tablets the admiral used instead of sugar, watched the butler leave and then inquired, “Can you tell me why my wife’s presence affected what you ordered for lunch?”
“Sure, she’s going out with Kathy tomorrow. Some ladies’ fashion show, and I didn’t want to risk being seen eating anything except grass, dandelions, and cottage cheese, the way I’m supposed to.”
President Bedford chuckled. “You don’t think I’d be eating roast beef and mayonnaise if Maggie was anywhere near, do you?”
With eight major international airports closed down for both takeoffs and landings, this had been an extremely hectic morning. Aircraft were being diverted inland, or to smaller airfields in central Florida or the Carolinas. Large nonstop passenger jets moving north were being diverted out to the west. Herndon could put up with almost anything except congestion over the East Coast airlanes, where a national emergency red alert was currently operative at all altitudes.
Reports, which on a normal day were critical, today faded into background cackle… We got a medium system out to the southwest, not too big, moving westward… nothing on the president’s schedule… Andrews quiet… American 142, make a 32-degree left turn, divert to Pittsburgh… good morning, United 96… sorry about this… make a 40-degree left for Cincinnati… right now JFK’s closed.
Even the significant news that a United States Navy carrier was conducting a series of air-combat exercises eighty miles off the Norfolk approaches scarcely raised a ripple in the control room, save to make damn sure that nothing strayed into the path of an F-16 fighter-bomber screaming at eight hundred knots through cloudy skies.
Everyone was at full stretch, scanning the screens, checking out flight after flight, diverting, canceling, refusing permission either to land or leave. Their overriding task was to clear the decks as the airports evacuated the passengers, just in case al Qaeda was going to Plan B.
And right now, there were only two identified men who could help. One was Reza Aghani, still lying in Mass General with a sore arm and a firmly closed mouth. The other, Ramon Salman, had vanished not only from Commonwealth Avenue, but also off the face of the known world.
“SUPERVISOR! RIGHT HERE!” There was a sudden and unmistakable note of pure urgency in the voice of Operator Steve Farrell, a heavily overweight 25-year-old with a deceptively quick brain that might one day carry him straight into the director’s chair.
“I got a bolter,” he snapped.
“You got a what?”
“A bolter. Pilot’s ignored orders from the tower and pressed right along.”
“Where is he?”
“Right here, sir, ’bout three hundred miles south of us, heading north. He just crossed the Cape Fear River in North Carolina.”
“You got his last instructions?”
“Right here, sir. Ten minutes ago I sent him clear orders to make a thirty-degree course alteration to his left and to take a swing left around Cincinnati, leaving Northern Kentucky International to his starboard side.”
“Where’s he bound?”
“ Montreal, sir.”
“Start point?”
“ Trinidad, sir. Refueled Palm Beach, Florida.”
“Aircraft?”
“Boeing 737, sir.”
“Is she squawking?”
“Nossir.”
“You tried High Frequency?”
“Yessir. I went to SELCAL [selective calling] seven minutes ago. And I tried the private voice channel. I just hit the two cabin warning lights, let ’em know we’re trying. Nothing.”
“You sure she’s still flying?”
“No doubt, sir. She’s headed straight over the southern part of the state of North Carolina, slightly right of the city of Raleigh.”
“Airline?”
“Thunder Bay Airways, sir. Canadian. She has no scheduled stops in North America. Her fuel stop was not on her flight plan, according to the Miami Tower.”
“They probably ran out in Barbados.”
“Guess so. But what do we do?”
“Well, right now she’s flying over some lonely country. But I want you to alert the agencies. CIA, National Security, then White House Security… that’ll do it. They’ll take it from there.”
“What do I tell ’em, sir?”
“Tell ’em we got a fucking bolter! What else? And keep trying the cockpit, Steve. You never know. Could be an electrical problem.”
Today Lt. Commander Ramshawe was hot on the trail of anything to do with aircraft. The short, low-key signal on his screen was informing him that some nuthouse Canadian pilot was ignoring warnings from the control tower and appeared to be heading for the North Carolina swamps. This hit him like “Houston, we have a problem” had hit the NASA ops room on April 13, 1970.
Jimmy Ramshawe grabbed the phone, direct line to his assistant. “Get me Herndon on the line right now,” he snapped.
“ National Air Traffic Control Center, Operator Simpson speaking.”
“Operator, this is Lt. Commander Jimmy Ramshawe at the National Security Agency, Fort Meade. Please have the operator dealing with the Thunder Bay Airlines off-course Boeing 737 call me back right away. Military Intelligence Division.”
As always, the words National Security Agency worked their magic. Inside seven seconds, Steve Farrell had dropped his donut, mid-bite, and hit the phone.
“This is Steve Farrell, sir. You wanted me.”
“G’day, Steve,” said Jimmy. “This Thunder Bay flight. Where is it right now?”
“Sir, I’m showing it just southeast of the city of Raleigh, making around 380 knots through 35,000 feet. They’ve ignored my orders to swing left, refused to answer my signals, and stopped squawking. Just silence, sir. Like they’d gone off the charts.”
“You’re certain they haven’t.”
“Dead certain, sir. We got a radar paint on relay. They’re up there, sir. And right now they’re flying where they ain’t supposed to be.”
“They stuck to their original course all the way?”
“Nossir. After the Palm Beach refuel, they were directed out over the water and were scheduled to stay off the East Coast until they made landfall over Connecticut, and then proceed on up to Montreal. But we got a Navy Exercise in operation off Norfolk, so we redirected ’em west, back over land.”
“And they heard that okay?”
“Yessir. And obeyed it.”
“So they didn’t ignore the towers until they were diverted from their northerly course off the Carolinas?”
“Nossir. That’s when they went quiet. Soon as I told them to head for Cincinnati, Ohio.”
“Is the aircraft full?”
“Nossir. It’s not logged as heavy. But we don’t have a passenger count.”
“Who owns Thunder Bay Airways?”
“No idea, sir. They usually fly out of Downsview Airport, Toronto.”
“Where’s their home base?”
“No idea, sir. We don’t see them that often. Tell you the truth, I think this might have been a private charter.”
“Got a flight number?”
“Funny you should ask, sir. I’ve been checking. But I’ve had two different answers, 446 and 5544, almost like they filed two different flights.”
“Steve, you sound like a very smart guy. I’ll find out who owns the airline; you nail down their flight number. And keep tracking that bastard, will you? Call me in five with the flight number and gimme a projected route, okay?”
“You got it, sir. Be right back.”
Lt. Commander Ramshawe hit the line to Military Intelligence Research and instructed them to run Thunder Bay Airways to ground and find out how many were on board their flight from Barbados to Montreal this morning. “And get the name of the pilot while you’re at it.”
Then he hit his own desktop computer, which took all of two minutes to inform him that Thunder Bay was situated way up in northern Ontario, on the northwest shore of Lake Superior. The city was very small, mostly a ski resort, but it most certainly did have an airport.
Three more minutes went by, and the phone rang again: Steve Farrell, to give the pilot’s name, Captain Mark Fustok, plus the Boeing’s current projected route.
“If she doesn’t deviate,” said Steve, “this bearing will take her four miles to the right of Raleigh, North Carolina, then straight over the middle of the city of Richmond, Virginia, across the Potomac, up the eastern shore, and on over the very center of Washington, D.C. There was still no accurate flight number.”
“Gimme her last known,” snapped Jimmy.
“She’s just crossing the Virginia border,” replied Steve, “close to a little place called Greensville. Still making 380 knots, still at 35, still defying every fucking thing she’s been told to do.”
Ramshawe liked that. Farrell was an earthy character, feet on the ground, hard to fool, no bullshit, moving fast, right next to a half-eaten donut.
“Stay with it, kid,” he said.
At that moment, his screen lit up the way it did when there was incoming data from Military Intelligence Research. He swiveled around and watched the signal, which informed him that Thunder Bay Airways was about two years old, registered in Canada, excellent safety record, with servicing facilities at the local airfield. It ran regular flights to the Caribbean throughout the winter, with specialized vacation programs available throughout the year to a series of luxury hotels, all of them in the Middle East, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco.
There were no American-based directors, and only two Canadians. Ninety percent of the shares were held by an overseas trust based in the Bahamas. There was an office on the airfield at Thunder Bay, dealing mostly with their flights from Toronto and Montreal, transporting skiers. The president was listed as Mr. Ismael Akhbar, an Iranian-born naturalized Canadian, who held a master’s in engineering from McGill University.
Jimmy glanced at the phone number and called the office in Thunder Bay. He explained to the girl that he was trying to trace a passenger on the flight but could not locate a flight number.
“Well, that’s because we have no scheduled stops in the USA-it’s not necessary to file flight details if you’re going straight over. We never stop in the USA. Sir, what was the name of your passenger?”
Jimmy trotted out the name of his maiden aunt Sheila, who was currently located on a sheep station 746 miles southwest of the Great Dividing Range in New South Wales, Australia. He added that he was real anxious to make contact.
“I’m sorry, sir,” replied the girl from Thunder Bay. “I can confirm that Miss Sheila Wilson was not on that flight from Barbados. There are only twenty-seven passengers aboard, and she is not among them.”
“Okay, Miss,” said Jimmy. “By the way, what was that flight number?”
“Our nonstop Barbados-Montreal is under charter today. It’s TBA flight number 62,” she replied.
Jimmy Ramshawe’s heart stopped dead. When it restarted, he murmured, “Say again.”
“TBA 62, sir. Will that be all?”
“Just say hello to Aunt Sheila if you see her.”
He slammed down the phone and yelled into the intercom, “Get me the White House!”
It took three minutes to open his line to the Oval Office, and he told the president’s secretary that he needed to speak to Admiral Morgan urgently.
Ten seconds later, he heard the familiar growl: “Morgan. Speak.”
“It’s Jimmy here, sir. Have you yet read that intercept message from Boston to Syria?”
“Of course I have. What’s up?”
“Arnie, I’ve just found Flight 62-the one they mentioned affirmative. It’s what air traffic control calls a bolter-it’s refusing to obey orders from the tower, and right now it’s headed for the city of Richmond, Virginia. Its present route will take it straight over the center of Washington.”
“You in touch with the operator supposed to control it?”
“Yessir.”
“Is he worried? Doesn’t think it’s just a mistake or anything?”
“Hell, no. He thinks this flight is very deliberately ignoring all instructions and flying straight down the course it wants to take.”
“Where is it right now?”
“Making 380 knots at 35,000 feet. It’s 1225 now. She’s covering a little over six miles a minute, which would put Flight 62 around thirty-six miles north of the Virginia border, over Dinwiddie County, maybe fifteen miles south-sou’west of Richmond…”
“What’s Richmond from Washington, Jimmy? About a hundred miles?”
“Correct. Maybe thirty minutes from now if she slows down some, losing height.”
“Slows down! You think she’s planning a second hit?”
“Arnie, there’s no doubt in my mind. There’s only twenty-seven people on board. This is an Arab airliner, and it’s plainly intent on hitting the city. I’m assuming that, sir. And I’m staying right on it, trying to get a visual. Sir, please tell the president to scramble the fighters; we’re gonna have to shoot this fucker down.”
For the first time in his life, Jimmy Ramshawe hung up on the admiral, who was thus left holding the president’s silent phone inside the Oval Office, right in front of the boss.
“Sir,” said Arnie, “National Security believes there’s a rogue Boeing 737 heading for Washington, D.C., with a view to crashing into a major population center. Generally speaking, they believe it’s the same gang that just had a shot at blowing up Logan this morning.”
“What do we do?”
“What d’ya mean, ‘we’? You, Mr. President, scramble Langley and Andrews-battle stations, fighter jets RIGHT NOW!”
“Are you telling me to order the United States armed forces to shoot down a passenger jetliner in cold blood?”
“I’m telling you to give them permission to fire at will. That way, the military has a free hand to do as they think fit.”
“But, Arnie, what about civilian loss of life?”
“Guess that was worrying everyone on 9/11. And that’s why close to three thousand people died in the World Trade Center. If our Air Force pilots had dropped the fuckers straight into the Hudson River with a couple of Sidewinders, it would not have happened.”
“I know, I know. They didn’t get ’em into the air quick enough, right?”
“Not quick enough to nail American Flight 11, or even United 93. Military commanders were not informed of that hijack until four minutes after it crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Basically, everyone was scared shitless of shooting down unarmed passenger jets.”
“I am too.”
“Don’t be, Paul. Get the fighters in the air, and tell them to open fire on sight. The passengers die anyway. But don’t, for the sake of all that’s holy, let that fucking plane ram the Capitol or the White House. That would be absurd, given how much we already know.”
“I guess,” said the president slowly. “There’s no getting away from one simple truth: on 9/11, the only one of the four hijacked aircraft that did not reach and hit its target was the one in the field at Shanksville.”
“Spoken like a naval officer, Paul. And there’s no escaping the fact that on 9/11 the fighters were not ordered into the air in time. They were still on the ground when the Towers were hit, still on the ground when the last terrorist flight hit the field in Pennsylvania. Don’t let that happen again.”
Colonel Rick Morry came out of his desk chair like a Saturn rocket. His computer screen was showing a possible hijack or terrorist takeover of a Boeing 737 passenger jet in the area of Richmond, Virginia, heading north toward the nation’s capital. More importantly, President Bedford had already given clearance for the military to locate, engage, and if necessary shoot it down.
And these orders came straight from the Oval Office, with all commands, as usual, directed through Northeast Air Defense control, way out there in upstate New York, west of Syracuse, about forty-five miles from the freezing shores of Lake Ontario.
“MAJOR FREEMAN!” snapped Colonel Morry. “Right here we got a real-world possible hijack or takeover of a passenger jet over Virginia headed direct to Washington, D.C. We have permission to shoot it down direct from the commander in chief. LET’S GO!”
Scott Freeman picked up his phone and called out: “LANGLEY AND ANDREWS-GO TO BATTLE STATIONS RIGHT NOW-WE GOT A NO-SHIT SITUATION-BATTLE STATIONS RIGHT NOW.”
The control room at Northeast Air Defense went stone silent. Every eye in the room was on Major Scott Freeman. Two minutes went by, and then he spoke.
“Four F-16s Langley. Andrews scrambled. Copy that. In the air eight minutes. Copy that. Takeoff 1241. Will advise precise location of Boeing 737. No other passenger jets in the area, flights grounded since Logan incident 0800. Rome control over and out.”
Colonel Morry walked over to the command console on Major Freeman’s desk and informed him that the civilian flight controller monitoring the Boeing was Steve Farrell at Herndon Flight Control.
“ Langley naval fighters 160 miles to ops area south of Washington 14 minutes. Steve, give me an approximate on Flight 62 at 1255?”
“She’s already losing height and speed, sir. She’s projected over Wood-bridge, Virginia, fifteen miles south of the city at that time-that’s 38.38 North, 77.16 West. Right now she’s making 260 knots through 28,000 feet. We have her over King William County right now, approx twelve miles north of Richmond.”
“Thank you, Herndon. Copy that.”
Colonel Morry: “Rick, we got three F-16s in the air at Langley 1239-headed 335, speed 685-projected ops area 1249.”
“Roger that.”
“Herndon to ADCC Rome-we have a Navy aircraft returning Norfolk moving southeast across Virginia-just picked up a real weird transmission… foreign voice background only passenger jet-something about executing will of Allah-on you I depend. There’s a lot of screaming in the background. No visual. Suspect traveling north.”
“Copy National Security Agency. Langley Birds moving in.”
“This is Herndon-this is Herndon. All tracking techs on full alert-we got Flight 62 on scope-no course change on primary target-but he’s descending rapidly-right now 21,000 feet still descending. Not responding.”
“Langley Birds closing. Andrews fighters in the air headed directly for the city.”
“This is Herndon-emergency, emergency-Flight 62 is descending rapidly below 15,000 feet-no clearance-repeat no clearance-descending all on its own.”
“Langley-Langley to Northeast Command: leading F-16 pilots have Flight 62 on visual now heading north across Charles County, Maryland.”
“Herndon to Northeast Command: we just got another report from that Naval aircraft-picking up sounds of screams and panic on board Flight 62-someone shouted something about the will of Allah.”
“Copy that, Herndon. Ordering F-16s to close one mile astern Flight 62-port and starboard wing. F-16s reporting 11,000 feet-confirm, please.”
The president replaced the receiver. “Arnie,” he said, “we got a couple of F-16s right on ’em heading north up Charles County…”
“Both armed?”
“Yup. Air-to-air missiles. That was Langley, I guess checking once and for all that I wanted the aircraft obliterated…”
“Before it obliterates the government of the United States, right?”
“You really think it will?”
“Either that, or it’ll take a swerve at the White House, and I gotta say that doesn’t have much appeal. At least, not right now.”
“Arnie, I followed your advice. Almost three thousand people died on 9/11 because of indecisiveness. That’s not going to happen again. You heard me just say affirmative?”
“I did.”
“That was in answer to the question, Do we have your absolute permission to shoot down Flight 62, if it refuses to obey commands from the tower?”
“That’s a good decision, Paul. You may get some flak about being a little hasty. But nothing like the flak you’ll get if that sonofabitch drives straight through those ten-ton bronze doors to the Capitol and blows up the largest legislative chamber in the world.”
President Bedford shook his head half in bewilderment, half in disbelief.
“C’mon, Paul,” said Admiral Morgan. “Our first president, General Washington, laid the foundation stone for the Capitol over two hundred years ago. It’s your privilege to be the president who saved it.”
“Northeast Air Defense Rome to Air Force North: Combat Command, Florida, we’re tracking Flight 62 right now-two F-16s out of Langley, one mile astern and closing, positioned port and starboard. Permission requested for pilots to open fire at will?”
“Air Force North Combat Command, Florida, copy that, permission granted.”
“Flight 62 reduces speed to 220 knots, altitude 8,000 feet, still descending, approaching Chicamuxen Creek, appears to be following Potomac River. She’s not squawking, repeat not squawking, ignores all communications from U.S. Air Traffic Control.”
“Northeast Air Defense to Herndon: did Flight 62 just make a slight course adjustment?”
“Affirmative, Northeast: Flight 62 came three degrees left toward Wood-bridge. Speed remains 220 knots, still descending rapidly, we’re projecting 5,000 feet over city of Woodbridge-that’s 38.38 North, 77.16 West.”
“Herndon, is she still out over the river?”
“Yessir. Right over the widest part where the stream splits into the wide estuary heading northeast up Occoquan Bay. Right here we got width seven miles.”
“Northeast Air Defense, we’re gonna take her out right now. Over and out.”
“ Green Leader roger that, Langley. Weapons armed, firing both missiles starboard engine Boeing 737.”
“OKAY, CHUCK-CLEARANCE RECEIVED-HIT THE PORTSIDE ENGINE RIGHT NOW!”
The four Sidewinder missiles dropped from the wings of the two pursuing U.S. Navy aircraft. All four ignited, accelerating forward. They flashed into their heat-seeking mode, leaving fiery trails as they cleaved through the clear skies, straight toward the massive engines of the 737.
All four hit, blasting the engines to smithereens, blowing apart the wings of the big passenger jet, which lurched forward for perhaps four hundred yards and then turned turtle and plummeted out of the sky. Thunder Bay Airlines Flight 62 twisted and turned in a ball of fire until it plunged, with a thunderous crash, into the Potomac River less than a mile below.
“Target destroyed. Repeat, destroyed. Birds climbing to ten, course one-six-zero. Returning Langley, returning Langley.”
“Herndon to Northeast Air Defense-1257-Flight 62 disappeared from all screens. Last known fifteen miles south of Washington, D.C., making course north 4,000 above the Potomac River.”
“Roger that, Herndon. Over and out.”
“Jesus Christ, Arnie, they splashed it!”
“Mr. President, like we say back home in Texas, sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”
“Well, I agree that that’s a phrase heard more often in the Wild West than in Virginia, but, hell, this is going to raise all kinds of havoc in the media.”
Admiral Morgan looked quizzical. Then he said, “You mean there’s some kind of imperative, weighing down upon us, to make this all public? So far as I know, some charter flight company from north of the border misjudged his instructions from the tower to head inland, and crashed his ole Boeing 737 straight into the goddamned ocean. Lightly loaded, thank God. None of ’em Americans.”
“You mean we make some kind of a false announcement to the press?”
“Certainly not. We make a very sinister announcement about the Boston bomb. Then we allow the flight-control guys to issue a press release revealing that an overseas flight apparently ditched into the Atlantic several hours later. Bit of a coincidence really. Same day and everything. But the United States government will be making no statement until more facts are known.
“The air traffic department of Public Affairs should mention that there may have been a hydraulic problem in the 737, and the pilot was flying in a prohibited area off the coast of North Carolina, east of the Outer Banks, less than fifty miles from a U.S. Navy exercise.
“He ignored all our advice and then disappeared from all screens. No wreckage has yet been located. The military will of course say nothing, know nothing, and suggest nothing.”
“How about people who may have seen the missiles hit the aircraft over the Potomac?”
“Unlikely, Paul. The plane came down in one of the widest parts of the river, almost seven miles across. And it was certainly on fire on impact. There may be a very few claims to have seen something, but in the end it’ll be like a sighting of a UFO: interesting, but unproven.”
“Kinda like that TWA flight that went down off Long Island twenty years ago-there were a few reports that something hit it, but nothing ever was accepted as a fact.”
“You got it, Paul. And before Henry comes back, we have to do a few things-first, get the military and flight control on the same page. Then someone’s got to brief the CIA. We can leave that to the National Security Agency. Meanwhile, have Alan Brett call the Defense Department and get the Navy moving on lifting that wreck out of the river. Top secret, obviously. Last, make sure the damned towelhead has been moved out of Mass General and into Bethesda.”
At which point, Henry the butler reappeared with two king-sized roast beef sandwiches, a few potato chips, and a large bottle of fizzy water. “Just the way you like ’em, Admiral,” he said, addressing his remark firmly away from the president, as if conscious of the terrible sin he had most certainly committed in the eyes of the absent First Lady. At least he would have, had she been present.
The two men divided the spoils, the president pouring the springwater into two crystal glasses. They each took a luxurious bite from what Kathy Morgan described as the billion-calorie-an-inch sandwiches.
“Jesus, these are great,” said the president. Arnold Morgan, chewing dreamily, had a look of such supreme happiness on his face that a reply was strictly redundant.
Henry brought them coffee ten minutes later and clicked the sweeteners into Arnold’s cup from the little blue tube.
“Thanks, Henry,” said the admiral as the butler made his exit. Then Arnold turned to the president and inquired, “What time do you plan to address the nation? In time for the evening news?”
“Me?” replied Paul Bedford. “You think I have to make a formal speech?”
“Absolutely,” said Arnold. “Reveal that this nation has been attacked yet again by the rabid fundamentalists of Islam and that only the prompt and courageous action of the two Boston policemen prevented a massive loss of life inside the terminal at Logan. Tell them we have the main perpetrator captive and that a huge inquiry is under way. There will in due course be substantial U.S. retaliation.”
“And what do I say when some journalist wants to know if there is any connection between the airport bomb and the mysterious crash of the 737 into the ocean?”
“You say very simply, sir, the aircraft that went down was a lightly loaded, foreign, civilian Boeing 737 which had been overflying U.S. territory and U.S. waters. Neither the White House nor the Pentagon has been briefed about the precise circumstances of its disappearance. If and when the security agencies become involved, the media will be kept informed.”
“You think they’ll buy that?”
“Mr. President, Marlin Fitzwater, Reagan’s man, used to describe the White House press corps as ‘the lions.’ He reckoned they needed feeding late every afternoon. That bomb story and the attendant terrorist implications will be like throwing those lions fifty of these roast beef sandwiches apiece. They won’t be hungry. Just keep telling them we will seek revenge. They’ll love that.”