"How you guys doing? You're getting a hell of an introduction to the world of the air marshal, you know that?" Charley said lightly to Jon and Joan.
"We're learning a lot, too," Joan said.
"About a lot of things," Jon said, looking at her.
Joan ignored him. "No place I'd rather be. I learned more about LRBL on this mission than in all the instruction in the academy."
Don laughed. "Learned something about the pucker factor and sphincter control, too, Joanie."
"No shit," Joan said.
"We need a little blow out. After we get out of here, let's meet in the hotel bar. I'm buying," Charley said.
"You got the talking part done, homeboy," Butch said. "Let's get gone."
"Yes," Don said mournfully. "I will need copious amounts of VO to get to sleep tonight. Donald Gene will be haunted by visions of beautiful Ilona tonight."
"In her skin?" Joan asked.
"Absofuckinglutely," Don said, leering. "In three days, we'll be home. One more mission leg, and we can chill out and feast on canapés, cause we be going home."
***
A quiet Iranian man, who'd been in the shouting crowd that had taken the US Embassy in Tehran ten years earlier, sat at his desk in the small travel agency he ran in the Iranian enclave near the main train station in Frankfurt. He carefully separated out itineraries for fifteen men and women and the supporting ticket books. He sealed the tickets and itineraries into separate envelopes and addressed them, then called for his courier, his nephew.
"Take these out and deliver them today," he said.
His nephew nodded, noting that the addresses were all over Frankfurt. It was not unusual for him to make a run this time of the morning and another in the afternoon. Sometimes in the busy summer season he would make a run in the evening as well.
"Are there any others?"
"No. Just these. Go now."
By mid-afternoon the tickets were tucked into the mailboxes and door slots of nine addresses across Frankfurt. By dinner time all of them had been collected by one of Ahmad Ajai's shooters and deposited on the table in the safe house operations center, where Ahmad Ajai meticulously separated them into fifteen different piles. To each pile he added a credit card, either a Diner's Club or American Express; then a stack of US $50 bills equaling $500 each; and then inserted the pile into a passport, of which he had several varieties: several US, some German, a couple of Danish, even an Israeli one. Finally he added a 1-2 page single spaced typed biography and cover outline, with suggestions for appropriate backstops: type of books, cameras, and clothing that the cover identity might have in his or her possession.
Ahmad Ajai was aware of his team, restless and nervous, passing by his office and glancing in at him working, knowing what he was doing and knowing that the time was at hand for them. He smiled at their eagerness, their relief, and knew that his timing and his handling of them had been perfect. There was satisfaction in that; they were as ready as all the training and preparation could make them. They were well rested, well trained, well rehearsed, well motivated.
They were unstoppable, the best team ever fielded for a hijacking.
Unlike the operations before, where the plan was crafted by men who would not participate in it, who trained and briefed young, idealistic, and most importantly, expendable shooters on how to conduct the actual hijacking, this team used the best people for all the phases of the hijacking. In previous hijackings, once the plane was seized, the hijackers read off a prepared script of demands and depended heavily on guidance from people on the ground. While a back-up coordination committee stood by, the aircraft seizure and exploitation of the hostages would be coordinated on-board by Ahmad Ajai himself. He took a serious risk, but one he felt was easily manageable. Once they had taken the aircraft, captured the few surviving marshals, and diverted the plane to their prepared airfield and refueling site, they would pick up the coordination and media team. They would continue on to the airfield in Tehran, where the government would disavow their connection with the hijacking, but refuse to allow any interference with the operation. After a long and sustained and carefully managed media campaign -- with the unwitting compliance of CNN and the rest of the world television media -- they would release a few of the hostages. As for the surviving air marshals -- if any -- they would suffer lengthy debriefings on videotape. Some might eventually be turned over, broken. But no American and no one who flew an American carrier would ever feel safe again, and the hijackers of HizbAllah would be known around the world as the fighters who had summarily defeated the best the Great Satan could bring to protect their people. The American government would have its nose rubbed in its own incompetence again.
Ahmad Ajai looked up from these thoughts as Gamal Ayoush's patience finally broke and he stuck his head through the door.
"Is there anything I can help you with?" Ayoush asked hopefully.
Ahmad Ajai allowed himself a small smile. Ayoush had come in just as he had expected him to. This one was as predictable as a clock.
"Yes, my friend," Ahmad Ajai said warmly. "Call the others together, please. We have things to do."
***
Jed Loveless, Bolen, Don and Charley all sat at the table in the embassy annex conference room. George Baumgarner had just left for his embassy office to deal with yet another telephone call from Simon Dinkey, who was demanding any information that Baumgarner had.
"Nada, zip, zero, nothing, not a goddamn thing," John Bolen said.
"My guys have come up with zip. We've been watching your ops, following up on the technical take NSA and our techs have come up with, working the airports to death, and we're still not coming up with anything. Either these guys have totally compartmented their operations to a level we've never seen before, or they've called off their operation, or they never intended to actually hit you guys at all."
Jed nodded, reluctantly. "I'm going to have to agree. We don't have shit. It looks as though all of this was a provocation, something to make us show what our response would be to an actual threat. The phone calls have dropped off, we haven't made any surveillances, we've had security on the ground tighter than it has ever been, and we've had you guys on everything with wings for the last two weeks."
"That's a fucking relief. Donald Gene can't take much more of this shit. Donald Gene's body needs release of the feminine kind," Don said.
"We can't let our guard down quite yet," Charley said mildly.
Jed looked at Charley. The strain of the last few weeks was clear on his face. "It'll be good for you to get home," he said.
Charley nodded in agreement. "We'll need to finish up here. The relief team is at Quantico, getting squared away."
"Any word on who's in charge?" Don asked.
"St.-Germaine."
"He's a good one."
Charley nodded. "HD's flight should be touching down in an hour or so. Let's pick the crew up and take them to the hotel, then, what do you think? Dinner at the Basler?"
"That might be pushing it," Jed said. "You guys want to blow off some steam, stick to the hotel."
"You're right," Charley said.
"I'm sick of that fucking place. I wish somebody would try to take us off at the Basler, I'd like to get to kill somebody."
"Well, maybe you'll fuck yourself to death," Charley said. "Let's go."
***
Mary Franken was in bed with her Israeli paratrooper. They had made love and, as usual, he lay back and stared at the ceiling, a cigarette burning between his fingers. Mary liked to watch him. She often wondered what he was thinking about. It excited her to imagine him remembering the wars he had fought in, and the life he had led before he came to her. He didn't do much of anything now, it seemed; he had a little bit of money, from family he said, and he was mysterious about where he went and the people that he saw. To a girl from Calmar, Iowa it just seemed part of the exotic package she had in him.
"Mary," her lover said. "There is something I must ask you to do. But firs
t there is something I must tell you about myself."
Mary rolled up on her elbow and laid her hand on his chest.
"What is it?" she said.
"I have not been entirely truthful with you," her lover began. "I have not told you everything about myself. Do you know what the Mossad is?"
"No."
"It is the Israeli secret service. We are soldiers who work to protect Israel and Jews everywhere."
"Like a spy?" Mary said, excited. "I knew there was something about you, I knew it!"
"Not a spy," her lover said. "A spy is someone who betrays their country. I am an intelligence officer in the service of Israel. You have often told me how you were friends with a Jewish family when you were growing up...it is one of the reasons I have been so comfortable with you. We work all over the world, undercover, fighting the enemies of Israel. And I need your help in something."
Mary sat up in bed, her breasts dangling. "What can I do?"
"We have an operative, a man who will be on one of your flights, it just so happens. His job is to take funds to some of our people overseas. I have a package for him -- a package of gold bars. It is small, but heavy. You know that with the screening, if it goes through the x-ray, it will be stopped and discovered. I need you to take that package through your operations area and deliver it to him in a duty-free bag on board the plane. Can you do that?"
She thought for a moment before answering. "It's gold, just money? Nothing else?"
"Yes."
"I can do that for you. I can take it to work in my bag, and when his flight is ready, I can go through the operations area and through baggage up to the gate and get it to him. When is his flight?"
"It's on one of your work days. I have the flight number, all of that, in my pants."
Mary looked down at her lover, her heart swelling. "You must really trust me to tell me this. I love you."
"I love you too, Mary. I trust you not to betray me."
She kissed him, then slid off the bed and into the kitchen to get him a glass of water, something she knew he liked after sex. The HizbAllah operative watched her go. He was going to regret killing her. She was so good for the sex.
***
Lenny Amirkhas stood in front of his bathroom mirror and carefully shaved the dark stubble from his face. He studied the lean angles of his face, smiled, then frowned, then stared intently, then frowned again. It amused him to see how different he looked without the heavy fighter's beard he had worn when he was younger. He looked much younger without the beard. His mother would have laughed, had she still been alive and been there to see him. She would have been proud of him. It had taken him and his neighbors a day and a night and a day, using their hands, sticks, and a few borrowed shovels, to dig her body out of the wreckage of their home in Beirut after the US warships had shelled them. Something had broken in him in that thirty-six hours, but something had fused as well. His ability to play a role, any role, was an ability sought after by the quiet men who ran HizbAllah, who had put him to work in places where his ability had been of great service.
Satisfied, he ran a warm washcloth over his face. He smiled into the mirror and checked the expression for its fullness. In the bedroom he dressed in his neat blue uniform, carefully pressed (something his supervisor always noted with approval). The canvas sports bag he carried his lunch in everyday was sitting on the bed. When he carried it into the kitchen, the bottom sagged with the weight of the packages inside.
***
Gamal Ayoush led the hijacking team in exercises. They were spread out through the recreation room, where the ping pong table had been taken down to make room. After going through warm-up exercises, they broke down into pairs and practiced with their plastic Cold Steel Tanto knives. Disarming techniques, using plastic guns, came next. Their level of hand to hand skill was frightening, Ahmad Ajai thought. They were easily as good as the regular militia members, and far better than most of the commando units. Sweat dotted their faces as they practiced gun take away techniques and silent attacks from behind modified from sentry elimination drills. Handguns came out and they practiced rapid sight alignment, dry-firing the weapons at each other, and the snap snap snap of falling hammers punctuated the room, with their measured breathing as a backdrop. When they were finished, several of them set out folding chairs, and they practiced moving quickly and efficiently from point to point, exploding out of their seats, doing a disarming, and then moving quickly to their assigned locations within the aircraft.
Ayoush was impressive. His eyes narrowed and glazed, he exploded out of his seat, snatched a weapon away from one of the terrorists acting as an air marshal, turned it on the role player, and then moved quickly to a position that simulated a bulkhead, spinning rapidly to face down the aisle. His partner shook his hand out and grimaced.
"Easy," Ahmad Ajai cautioned. "Let us save our energy for our enemy."
A little more practice, and then Ahmad Ajai clapped his hands. The terrorists cleared away the chairs and seated themselves on the floor. Ayoush brought in a covered easel and set it near where Ahmad Ajai sat in a chair. Ahmad Ajai nodded to Ayoush, who pulled the cover off the easel. A carefully detailed seating schematic of a Boeing 747-300 was blown up and covered the large easel. Twelve seats were blocked out in red -- the seating assignments for the air marshals.
"An augmented team," Ahmad Ajai began. "But exhausted, and feeling safe on their way home. We are fifteen. This is the concept of the operation...
***
HD was relieved to see Charley and Don at the gate.
"Hey guys," he said.
"Easy trip, huh?" Charley said.
"Yeah. Man, I'm glad this is over. This has been the toughest two weeks of my life," Harold said with feeling.
Don didn't say anything. He just stared at Harold till HD dropped his eyes. He turned and said to Shirleen, "Hey, Shirleen, you ready to get naked with Daddy Don?"
"One of these days I'll say yes, and you won't know what to do, Nelson," Shirleen said. "You can talk all that stuff to these young girls, but a real woman would whip you down so fast you wouldn't know what hit you."
"I just want to be held, Shirleen. I'm really misunderstood, you know."
Shirleen laughed. "Donald, you will never grow up."
Ray Rydell and Dyer Shaw stood by silently. Ray had his arms crossed and stood as far away from Dyer as he could. He couldn't believe that HD had stuck him with Dyer; half the time Dyer didn't even make the pretense of doing his job. He spent his time hitting on the flight attendants, with no success.
"He's slimy," one of the girls had said to Ray when he had stopped back for a cup of coffee. "He thinks he's God's gift or something."
Ray took the cup of coffee she offered him. "He thinks he's something, that's for sure," he said. He was glad that this mission was just about over, just the repositioning flight to get them home and he could stand down. This mission had introduced some serious doubts into him; while he was impressed with some of the marshals, especially Don and Charley, he wasn't going to work with somebody like Dyer again.
"Are we taking cabs?" Ray asked.
Charley smiled warmly at him. "We borrowed a van from the embassy. You're riding in style tonight, Ray. You ready?"
"Hell yeah," Ray said. "As long as I'm riding with you guys."
"C'mon, young son," Don said. "Let Daddy Don fill you in on the ways of the world, get you away from these useless fucks you been working with. With the exception of Shirleen, who is more man than both of these other worthless hairbags."
"Fuck you, Nelson," Dyer muttered under his breath.
***
John Bolen slouched in a padded leather easy chair in the expensively appointed front room of a CIA station safe house. His shooters wandered through the house, fingering the artwork and statuary with larcenous fingers.
"My momma would like this place," Mad Max Onofrey said. "Yes, she would. She'd especially like that picture over the fireplace there."
"Leave i
t be, you thieving bastard," John said. "Go steal some of that good food they got in the other room."
"I feel like a sacrificial lamb," Rhino McGee said. "I'm not used to being treated so good."
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