The Shield of Darius

by Allen Kent

  Immediately begin a right turn and descent to 8,000 feet. Make the following announcement to the passengers:

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we are experiencing some difficulty with cabin pressure and will be descending to a lower altitude and turning back. Our destination is Tel Aviv. This is not a dangerous situation and we are returning for precautionary reasons. Please remain calm and stay in your seats during the remainder of the flight. We apologize for any inconvenience this diversion is adding to your travel plans and will make every effort to assist you once we reach Tel Aviv. ”

  At 8,000 feet, stay at that altitude until clear of the Zagros Mountains and back across the Tigris River, then descend to 2000 feet until just south of Damascus. Then climb to 9,000 feet to cross the coastal range. Inform officials at Tel Aviv that you plan to land at the airport there and will not accept alternates or diversions. I have an altimeter in my case and will be monitoring your altitude.

  The attendant again left with the message and returned moments later to bend beside Malak.

  “Captain Geyl has asked me to tell you that there are U.S. air patrols and obstructions between the Tigris and Damascus, and some of the obstructions rise above 2,000 feet. You are endangering the aircraft by putting us at that altitude.”

  “There are also routes that will allow him to stay that low,” Rajid smiled. “Contact American military authorities in Turkey and Iraq and tell them you are going to be at that altitude. Your captain is a good pilot. Tell him to descend now, and to find his way.”

  Again the flight attendant showed no emotion. “The Captain would also like to know what he should tell Tel Aviv about your intentions. He thinks they may not give us permission to land.”

  “Tell him to land anyway,” Malak said. “As the note said, no other place will be acceptable. Give him this and begin the descent. Now.”

  She opened the third note and read it hurriedly.

  My comrades and I are members of Hamas, the legitimate representatives of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. We do not wish to harm anyone but we will not stand by while our brothers negotiate the loss and destruction of our homeland with the government and soldiers of an illegal state. We have lost all but our lives, and will sacrifice them willingly to free our people and country.

  Once on the ground we will hold this plane and its passengers for exactly twenty-four hours before destroying both if the Israeli leaders do not renounce all claims to Palestinian land being walled off from the West Bank, and announce the removal of all Jewish settlements from our territory. We will accept confirmation of this agreement only from our brother, Hamad Jadid, when he has been released from prison in Israel.

  The attendant again stood and, noticing the uneasiness of passengers around her over the whispered conversation, smiled graciously down at Rajid.

  “Some of these unusual dietary requests are hard to fill,” she said. “We’ll certainly do what we can.”

  Moments later he felt the plane nose down slightly and begin a gradual turn to the right. The calm voice of Captain Geyl spoke reassuringly over the intercom.

  “Ladies and gentleman, we are experiencing some difficulty with the cabin pressure….” He followed the script exactly and Malak joined the passengers around him in a grumbling discussion about the diversion as attendants scurried back and forth through the plane attempting to identify his accomplice. By now the Americans in Iraq and Turkey had probably scrambled interceptor aircraft to look over the hijacked plane, but the jumbo jet would soon be down through the clouds and along the mountains below the broad scan radar that tracked high altitude aircraft out over the Iraqi plain. American fighters would be directed to them, but what could they do? They would certainly not want to force the airliner south to Baghdad and would probably just escort it to the Syrian border, happy to be rid of it, and advise the Syrian military that we are a civilian aircraft.

  As they descended through the clouds, Rajid saw the peaks of the Zagros range rising majestically to the east. Beyond them lay Iran, home of Shi’a Islam. Its government had done much in the last two decades to support activities such as this. But this hijacking would be one of the most dramatic.

  The flight attendant returned only once before the 747 climbed again to 9000 feet to cross the Jordan River into occupied Israeli territory. She handed him a plate of fruit and raw vegetables as other passengers were being served beef and rice. He left it untouched. As the jumbo jet rumbled low across the Jordan, she returned as Malak was watching two Israeli F-16s positioned at a cautious distance off each wing, inspect the hostage aircraft.

  “May I speak with you for a moment upstairs,” she asked pleasantly and led him to the small lounge above the first class section where a tall, lanky man with peppered gray hair and a white short sleeved shirt with striped epaulets confronted him.

  “I’m Captain Geyl,” He said in English. “I want you to know that I will do what I have to do to protect my passengers and crew, but I’m mad as hell about this whole thing. And it’s getting worse. Tel Aviv won’t give us permission to land.”

  Malak looked passively into the hard face of the pilot.

  “Land anyway,” he said.

  “I can’t just land anyway. They’ll barricade the runway.”

  “And kill all these people? I don’t think so. How far are we from the airport?”

  Geyl glanced at his watch. “Maybe twenty minutes.”

  Rajid reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a second calculator-looking trigger device. Quickly he entered a series of numbers and handed it to the captain. Its digital display showed 35:00 and was counting down with each second. Fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-seven….

  “That’s thirty-four minutes and fifty seconds. Fifteen minutes to play with. When it reaches zero, this plane will explode. As soon as we are on the ground and stopped, bring it to me and I will deactivate it. He took a seat in the lounge and looked up at the Captain.

  “One other thing. Should you attempt to play around with the keys, a wrong entry will automatically detonate the bomb. And there are two others just like it elsewhere in the plane.”

  He settled into the seat and entered thirty-four minutes into his own trigger. With twenty-three minutes and four seconds remaining, he felt the nose edge down and heard the gear and flaps grind into position. Flight 814 had started its final approach into Tel Aviv.

  . . .

  As the jumbo jet descended to 8,000 feet along the western slope of the Zagros Mountains which shaped the rugged border between Iran and Iraq, Shel Sahakian had eased the Mirage up into a gentle barrel roll away from the giant aircraft and its dangerous wake. He had expected the plane to descend, knowing that if he stayed with it until it reached the height of the mountains to the east, he could break away without being seen on radar. He pulled the nose over and dove toward the valley floor 5,000 feet below. On radar screens near Baghdad, the Turkish city of Diyarbakir, and Jerevan in Azerbaijan, the blip representing Flight 814 widened for a fraction of a second, a change that went unnoticed by controllers who were straining to differentiate the target from the general background clutter on their screens cast by the Zagros range. Shel leveled off 200 feet above the ground and checked the flight planning computer which had tracked his route from the moment his plane lifted off the runway nearly two hours earlier. It showed him 140 miles west-southwest of the starting point for his low level run and he eased the nose right to heading 055, checked the instrument panel, and engaged the terrain avoidance radar and autopilot. The electronic brain of the desert brown aircraft responded immediately, thundering the jet across the narrow rocky flats, twisting and leaping over mountain outcroppings. Around him the peaks of the Zagros towered to 14,000 feet.

  At the entry checkpoint for his target run, a coordinate just north of the border village of Halabjah, the Mirage banked gradually left to follow the Sirvan River into Iran, passing north of Hamadan and the village of Bahar before turning due east to approach Tehran from the so
uth. Beyond Nowbaran the jet roared out over open desert, kicking up twisting plumes of dust as it followed the plan in its carefully programmed memory, avoiding villages and military outposts as it closed on the Iranian capital.

  As the jet crossed the Qom highway it banked sharply north toward the southern edge of Tehran and Shel disengaged the autopilot, pulled the Mirage up to 1500 feet and activated the targeting system in the nose of the aircraft. Instantly an optical scanner surveyed the city ahead, matching the patterns and shapes of buildings with those stored in its memory from high resolution computer enhanced aerial photographs. Within seconds, the matchmaker identified and locked, displaying on a small screen just to the right of the altimeter a quarter mile square of the city, centered on Kush Avenue. In the middle of the display, two flashing dots illuminated side-by-side squares; the Caravan and Rubaiyat Hotels.

  Shel waited tensely, steadying the screaming jet as it streaked toward the targets, shaking the startled city below. A green light flashed beside the display, activating the guarded trigger switches on his console. He snapped back the red cover guards and flipped the switches. One. Two.

  Iranian buildings of the Rubaiyat’s vintage had been constructed around arched brick supports that made them sturdy as a concrete bunker from above. Knock out the footings at the bottoms of the arches and they collapsed like a house of cards. Shel’s laser homing systems were programmed to bring the bombs right through the front doors. With the bombs locked and tracking, he held until he saw the flash, then pulled up sharply and threw the stick hard right into a tight sixty degree bank turn that jarred him back into his seat and held him until the large round directional indicator approached due south.

  He rolled out heading 173, plunged again toward the barren Iranian landscape south of the city and leveled 200 feet above the ground, re-engaging the autopilot. If his fuel held and all else went as planned, he should be able to make his pickup point 200 miles due east off the coast of Muscat where he would ditch the aircraft and be picked up by a launch from a west-bound freighter, flying Liberian colors. Within minutes, the Iranians would scramble their fighters, squadrons of F-4s and F-14s purchased during the days of America’s Iranian arms sales. He would have been seen by hundreds on the ground, but the plane could not be identified. American? Israeli? Probably one of the two. But what could one do with so much uncertainty?

  . . .

  In the smothering closeness of his room in the Rubaiyat, Jim Cannon heard the roar of the approaching jet and jumped to his feet with arms spread wide, laughing aloud.

  “He’s done it, Janet!,” he shouted, turning to the woman who read silently on the bed across from him. “I’ll be damned if the little guy hasn’t brought in the cavalry!” She stood and stepped beside him, wrapping an understanding arm around his waist and pressing her cheek against his shoulder.

  With a whistling scream, the room, and Jim, and Janet and the Rubaiyat Hotel disintegrated in an orange ball of fire.

  . . .

  On an isolated pad at the east end of Tel Aviv’s main east-west runway, the blue and white KLM 747 sat in the dark of the Mediterranean night surrounded by a dozen glaring spotlights. Rajid Malak was alone in the jet’s plush blue-upholstered first class lounge, watching the seconds tick away on his electronic trigger. He had stopped it once on landing, re-entering twenty-four hours. That was eleven hours and fifteen minutes ago and he had nothing now to do but wait. He hadn’t been into the cockpit, fearing that in the confined space of the cramped compartment he might be overpowered before he could defend himself. He had spoken only to the attendant with the French roll and to Captain Geyl, who conveyed his messages to Israeli officials in the control tower.

  Below, Leah Lavi had herded all of the passengers into the rear of the aircraft and sat beside the forward bulkhead where she watched them cower in their seats as she fingered the third trigger. Had he been more alert, her accomplice overhead might have heard the murmur as the cockpit crew saw a lone figure dressed in a KLM flight engineer’s uniform step quickly into the circle of light directly in front of the plane’s nose, carrying a looped rope over his shoulder. He might also have heard the dull thud as the rope was lofted toward the cockpit window and slapped against the metal exterior by a crew member who caught the rope and tied it to the copilot’s flight controls. Had Malak entered the cockpit, he would have seen a fair-haired Israeli commando climb hand-over-hand up the rope to the two story window and squirm head first through the narrow opening. But he was too preoccupied with the countdown and with his own thoughts and looked up only fleetingly as the young flight engineer stepped out soberly into the lounge. A black flight publications case hung loosely in one hand.

  “We’re making progress,” the young man said, setting the case on the floor and sprawling into a chair, facing Rajid.

  “Half the time is gone,” the hijacker said soberly. “Something must happen soon.”

  He glanced down again at the counter in his hand and looked back up only to see the long silenced muzzle of a Beretta 22LR pistol before two dull shots smashed into his chest in a splatter of crimson.

  The young commando returned the weapon to his case and, clutching it in his left hand, walked loosely down the circular stairs to the lower level. He looked up past the bulkhead at Leah Lavi who inched out into the aisle to study him with black, suspicious eyes.

  “I think we’ve about reached a settlement,” the flight engineer said.

  “I want to see released Hamas leaders standing here, telling me in person,” she snapped back, glancing sideways at the frightened huddle of passengers in the crowded rear of the plane.

  Before she could turn again to the young officer, a shot from the Beretta caught her squarely between the breasts, hurling her backward over a seat and into the cramped space between rows. A woman screamed in the rear of the plane as the electronic trigger tumbled harmlessly into the aisle. The commando picked it up, glanced at the digital display and held it overhead for the passengers to see.

  “This says we have about twelve and a half hours to get out of here. Will that be enough time?”

  A rising murmur turned into shouting applause, then sobbing relief as the passengers and crew filed out past the blood-splattered bodies of their captors, inching away from them as they passed, as if the corpses might rise and reach out for them.

  When only the blond commando remained, he stepped out onto the high steps that had been rolled to the forward door of the 747 and beckoned to a pair of heavily padded and helmeted bomb specialists and two white-clad attendants who stood beside an open ambulance. The bomb squad drove a service truck to the side of the aircraft and hoisted a platform carrying a reinforced steel canister up to the front loading door. As they entered to begin work on the bomb, the ambulance crew clambered up the steep steps with a folded stretcher and black body bags and placed them on the floor beside Rajid Malak who stood at the bottom of the circular stairway.

  “You’d better let us zip you into one of these things while we carry you out, Agent Ishmael,” one of the attendants said. “There are TV crews all over the place out there.”

  “Don’t zip those things all the way up,” Leah said, stepping up beside him and rubbing gingerly at the spot where the exploding dye pellet had bruised her protective vest. “I can’t stand closed spaces.”

  Ishmael turned to the bomb disposal men. “Take a little time on that. It’s supposed to be sophisticated. Has anyone heard how Shel did?”

  The blond commando held up a clenched fist. “All according to plan. Bringing this plane down when you did kept him out of sight until he could slip into the mountains. No one picked him up until he hit the hotels, and he made it back to the pickup point, punched out, and let the plane crash into the ocean. But the news is already screaming “Israeli jets hit Tehran.”

  “Jets?” Leah repeated.

  The commando laughed. “According to Tehran, there were three. The sons-a-bitches claim they shot one of them down.”

 
“But the hotels are gone?” she asked.

  “Blown to hell.”

  “Let the front office know we can move forward with contingency plans for the reactor strikes,” Ishmael said, and stretched out on one of the cots, wriggling into one of the black body bags.

  . . .

  The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency walked into his office on the top floor of CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, tossed his briefcase into a chair and picked up one of two phones that sat side-by-side on his desk. It was 7:15 a.m., the best time to reach the President in his office. The Director punched in two digits and waited, knowing that if the phone buzzed more than twice, the Chief had other morning commitments. The phone was answered on the first ring.

  “Mr. President, I have a report on that Middle East situation we spoke about earlier. Are you free to talk?” The director was not concerned about line security. His office was swept daily for listening devices and everything he said into the phone was immediately encrypted and decoded by a unit in the President’s desk. Both the encrypting and decoding units and programs were checked and changed daily.

  “I’m alone. Go ahead.”

  “The operation was successful. We can give the Pentagon the green light in the Gulf.”

  “Does this have anything to do with the incident I was called about last night by the Defense Secretary?”

  “To be honest Sir, I don’t know for sure. I assume it might. I received the call just before I left for the office. My message said only that the operation was complete.”

  “If this is it, it’s created a huge international stir. I’m announcing no connection with the strikes whatsoever. I hope I’m right about that.”