58 Minutes (Basis for the Film Die Hard 2)

by Walter Wager

  The seventh was different. That had been the clue.

  The seventh wasn't a revolutionary at all. He was a greedy merchant who sold high-tech arms to an immensely rich dictator. There could be but one reason why rabid leftist terrorist Willi Staub would rescue capitalist Arnold Lloyd—a lot of money.

  Enough to fund this complex electronic assault.

  Enough to fund years of Staub's future operations.

  Lloyd couldn't provide that much cash, but General al-Khalif had billions and good reason to keep the amoral ex-CIA man from going to trial. That must be it, Malone reasoned. Sleazy Arnold Lloyd was the key card in this barbarous game.

  The odds were shifting.

  Two terrorists and their transmitters had been taken out of the war. Malone now shared one of Willi Staub's vital secrets, and the terrorist chief didn't know it. At the right time, Frank Malone would use that secret . . . would use Lloyd . . . against him.

  But there was almost no time left. The detective studied his watch. If Annie Green's estimate was right, TWA 22 Heavy would exhaust its fuel in about one and a half minutes.

  She must be wrong, Malone told himself. She had to be.

  35

  HE WAS WATCHING her again.

  The pretty woman in the nun's habit didn't dare turn her eyes to look at him. She didn't have to. She knew it.

  From the moment she boarded the Aerovias 767, she had been aware that the chief steward was paying special attention to her. His oily pretense that it was respect for a member of the clergy didn't fool her. He was probably an informer for the secret police. There would be nothing surprising about that; the airline was owned by the government and the government had spies everywhere.

  The people who had given her the package to deliver at Kennedy Airport hadn't prepared her for this. She didn't know what to do, and it was so noisy in the plane now it was hard to think. She wasn't the only one who was afraid. Many others were frightened by the unexplained delay and the storm.

  You couldn't tell by listening to them, she thought. Raised in the macho tradition of never showing doubt or distress, most of the Latin men were speaking even more loudly than usual. Radiating exaggerated assurance, some told jokes and laughed boisterously. The women nearby were quieter, concentrating on reading, repairing their nails and wondering whether there really was an afterlife.

  Now the sly steward was coming directly to her.

  "It's just a minor technical problem," he lied with an ease that reflected years of airline employment. "There's nothing to worry about, Sister."

  "Why should I worry?" she responded evasively. "We're all in His hands, aren't we?"

  "Of course," the dapper steward agreed with much more sincerity than he felt. His earnest expression changed as he walked away a moment later. He was smiling as he thought of the men and money—so much money—waiting for him in New York.

  In the British Airways 747 cruising a mile away, the buxom blond stewardess was also smiling—dutifully, not joyfully. British Airways had made it quite clear that she owed it to the company and the passengers to be cheerful at all times, especially in stressful situations.

  It was a damn sight more stressful on BA 126 tonight than most of the passengers realized, she told herself as she worked diligently to keep her smile in place. So far only the crew knew about the extraordinary situation, though there were signs that a number of travelers were getting increasingly uneasy. Most of the worried ones had stopped speaking altogether. Sitting stiff and silent, they didn't even ask any questions. A number of them avoided eye contact with her completely.

  They were controlling their tension for the moment, but she suspected that it wouldn't last much longer. Somebody— probably not a British passenger—would get a bit difficult soon. It might be one of those emotional foreigners—perhaps a person back in Economy Class, she thought. It certainly wouldn't be anyone such as Sir Brian, she reflected as she eyed the poised and patrician diplomat admiringly.

  Then a passenger seated six rows behind the U.N. delegate stood up and stepped into the aisle. It was the young man with the black attaché case. He was still holding it as he spoke.

  "I don't want to die," he announced loudly.

  A well-dressed London barrister nearby looked away, pretending he hadn't heard.

  "I don't want to die," he insisted in tones tinged with hysteria.

  "Tell the pilot to go back."

  "Now, sir—" the stewardess began soothingly.

  She didn't finish her sentence.

  "I'll tell him!" the wild-eyed man with the leather case screamed.

  "I'll make him do it!"

  Shouting incoherently, he began running forward toward the cockpit. When the stewardess tried to block his way, he hurled her aside. He knocked a gray-haired Nashville newspaper publisher down with one stunning blow of the case. Three seconds later, Miss Ellen Jenkins of the Foreign Office rose and struck the hysterical passenger in the pit of the stomach with the stiff extended fingers of her right hand.

  He gasped and staggered. Then he collapsed.

  The cabin crew rushed forward to deal with him, and Ellen Jenkins smoothed her skirt as she sat down again beside her boss.

  "You never cease to amaze me," Sir Brian Forsythe said.

  "It seemed like the right thing to do, Ambassador," she told the man she loved.

  "It was. Now where did you learn that?" he asked.

  He seemed genuinely interested as she began to tell him. He leaned forward to listen. Unaware of the fact that BA 126 would run out of fuel in minutes, she enjoyed the closeness.

  Some two thousand feet above the British jumbo jet, several passengers on the TWA L-1011 were making it clear that they weren't enjoying anything. Three movie studio executives and the "young hunk" star of this season's least obnoxious situation comedy series on ABC-TV complained aggressively about the outrageous lateness. The surly young man traveling with the Styrofoam box was even more irate.

  "If this thing doesn't get to New York soon," he told the Chinese-American flight attendant as he tapped the plastic container, "you're going to be murderers. A man's going to die because of this dumb airline."

  Suppressing a desire to set him on fire, footsore and bone-tired Samantha Wong assured him that she would communicate the urgency of the situation to Captain Pace immediately. In the cockpit, the senior pilot didn't need any reminder that he was in a life-or-death emergency. One look at the fuel gauges told it all.

  Swallowing another antacid pill to cope with the pain in his stomach, Pace decided to try the radio for the hundredth time. He grinned when he heard a human voice—loud and clear.

  "This is Kennedy Tower. Stand by for instructions."

  Then Pace felt the tingling sensation zigzag up his left arm, and the cockpit temperature seemed to escalate dramatically. His arm hurt. Now the pain coursed over to his chest, and he knew. This didn't have anything to do with financial worries or spicy food.

  It was what every pilot feared most.

  He was having a heart attack—in flight.

  He was covered with sweat and his arm was burning, and something was hurting his chest intensely. This was no minor cardiac "incident"—the veteran pilot realized that. He was aware that he needed immediate help, but there was something else that came first. Woman-chasing, tax-beating, autocratic and totally professional Lawrence Pace had to protect the passengers.

  That carne before medical care for himself.

  That came before anything.

  "Don . . . Don," he appealed hoarsely to his copilot as he released his harness. "You've got to—"

  Then he lost consciousness, falling forward against the controls. Before the copilot could intervene, the big jet went into a steep dive. There was chaos in the passenger cabin as the packed transport dropped swiftly.

  It fell a thousand feet in seconds. Screaming through the winter wind, it hurtled straight toward the Japan Air Lines cargo plane. The cool and experienced senior pilot on the freighter responded
quickly and professionally. With scant moments to react to the threat, Captain Shigeta expertly turned his plane sharply right and avoided the L-1011 by barely a hundred yards.

  It was a masterpeice of flying, copilot Kenyi Tokoro thought proudly. His wise and skillful captain had saved hundreds of lives. Why there was no telling how many people might— There was another airliner directly ahead.

  It looked like a twin-jet, perhaps one of those one-hundred-and-ten seaters used on some U.S. carriers' hourly shuttle services. Stunned, copilot Kenji Tokoro caught only a very brief glimpse of the other plane before he died.

  An instant after the freighter and the shuttle plane collided, an explosion that could be heard ten miles away boomed across the sky. A huge fireball rivaling the moon suddenly blossomed over a residential area near Kennedy Airport.

  And things began to fall from the heavens.

  White-hot things.

  Twisted things.

  Scorched and broken things.

  Metal and plastic. Bone and flesh.

  In addition to the crews of the two aircraft, fifty-seven people traveling on the passenger plane perished. So did three bowlers en route to their weekly game when an engine from the freighter dropped on their car. Flaming debris set four houses ablaze as TWA 22 Heavy finally leveled off at thirteen hundred feet.

  Still dressed in clerical attire, Willi Staub had stepped outside the International Arrivals Building to see whether the seven prisoners on his list were arriving. He saw three of them, under heavy guard, emerge from city police cars. He was wondering about the other four—the ones in federal hands—when the fireball flashed. Then the blast of the collision thundered through the night.

  He understood immediately.

  He knew exactly what had happened, and he was glad.

  It would teach them a lesson, he thought.

  Now they wouldn't dare resist. Freeing the other six would make Willi Staub a hero to the whole world of revolutionary fighters. Getting Lloyd out would bring the funds to take the armed struggle everywhere. The FBI should be delivering Lloyd and the other federal prisoners at any moment, and the DC-10 was ready to take off immediately.

  Knowing what the enemy was doing had been a great help, Staub thought smugly as he turned to start for the rendezvous. It had been vital in making this operation such a success. His meticulous planning—right down to using fighters from different groups with weapons made by various countries as a smokescreen—had worked perfectly.

  Tonight was only the beginning, of course.

  Willi Ctaub would be back.

  Warmed by this prospect, he continued toward the far end of the building. He was halfway there when he heard something overhead. It sounded like the whine of a small jet engine.

  36

  THE SNOW was falling even more heavily now, but that didn't bother Babbitt. The lights of The Cab did. He flinched when he suddenly spotted them.

  Not below.

  At the same altitude as the jet-powered rotorcraft, barely a hundred yards to the left.

  Not much more than that ahead.

  "Jeezus" the startled copilot reacted loudly.

  "I see it, Vince," Saldana assured as he turned the H-65 sharply to the right.

  The helicopter landed behind the International Arrivals Building half a minute later. Malone leaped out, crouched under the whirling rotor and ran on past a parked DC-10 to the terminal. When he reached The Cab, he saw the controllers speaking into their microphones again. Despite the fact that the jamming was over, their faces were as grim as before.

  "Midair collision," Wilber said angrily and pointed north toward a dim glow.

  Annie Green answered the question before Malone could ask it.

  "Your daughter's plane is still up there, Frank."

  He resumed breathing again.

  "Are you bringing them down?" the detective asked.

  "We can't. Radar and ILS are still out," Wilber replied.

  "But the radio's working."

  "We're using it right now to divert as many planes as we can to alternates. That's the best we can do," Wilber told him.

  "Why not all of them?"

  "Some don't have enough fuel to go anywhere else," the FAA executive explained. "If the wind hadn't changed, a couple would have run out already."

  TWA 22 Heavy had the least fuel left.

  It must be one of them.

  "You did the numbers, Annie," Malone said. "How much longer can they stay up?"

  "It's hard to say. There are a lot of variables."

  "Five minutes? Three?"

  "I don't know. I'm not God, Frank. I'm a watch supervisor. Look, we're talking to the pilots about it. They could try to land without radar."

  "And there could be another midair collision," he responded harshly.

  Then Hamilton hurried into The Cab, walkie-talkie in hand.

  "All seven are here," he reported. "Just got word the FBI convoy arrived with its four. Now what?"

  Before Malone could answer, a telephone rang.

  It was the outside line.

  "This is Number One. Are you ready to make the delivery?"

  "Yes, as soon as you stop jamming the radar," Malone replied.

  "After we're outside U.S. airspace. Don't try to bargain with me, Stupid. You've got nothing to bargain with," Staub taunted. "What about our long-range jet?"

  Malone pointed down at the big airliner on the apron near the Coast Guard helicopter.

  "Is that their plane?"

  Wilber nodded.

  "Set to go?"

  "Full tanks and the flying crew's in the cockpit."

  "There's a DC-ten waiting for you about sixty yards from the International Arrivals Building," Malone told the terrorist. "It's ready for immediate takeoff."

  "Pilots and navigator on board?"

  "In the cockpit."

  "Tell them to start the engines," Staub ordered.

  He hung up the phone and walked quickly from the terminal. As he strode through the snow to rejoin the Puerto Rican brothers in the white van, he smiled.

  "We've won!" Willi Staub said triumphantly to the storm.

  It hadn't gone exactly as he wanted, but that didn't matter much. The fact that the men assigned to operate the two jammers were not here wasn't important. They had obviously made some errors, deviated from his perfect plan. That was annoying, but Staub certainly didn't need those fools anymore. Like everyone else he knew, they were disposable. They had served their purpose.

  And he had done what he had set out to do.

  He had outwitted the reputedly impregnable air traffic control system, massed local and federal police forces and total military might of what was supposed to be the greatest power on earth.

  One man—Willi Staub—had defeated the United States.

  Delighted by that thought, he chuckled. He was still grinning when he reached the van. Juan and Paco Garcia stared at him curiously as he opened the right front door. The older brother was behind the wheel, and Paco Garcia was looking through an opening from the rear compartment. Neither brother had ever seen this cold and domineering man smile before.

  "Good news?" Juan Garcia asked as Staub settled into the front seat beside him.

  "Of course. Let's go."

  As always, Staub had considered every fact and possibility in shaping his plan. He'd expected that there would be crowds of civilians filling the International Arrivals Building. He'd also anticipated that there would be many police in the terminal by this phase of the operation. He didn't want to deal with either group, so he had decided to avoid the building.

  He had worked out another way to get out onto the airfield. Using a map and photographs, he had drilled the Garcias on exactly what to do and say. The two young FALN members had carried out his instructions efficiently in blowing up the key microwave relay towers right on schedule. Now he would make sure that the brothers performed with similar precision here.

  As Juan Garcia started the motor, Staub took out his 9-mill
imeter pistol and screwed on its silencer. He put the weapon on his lap, carefully covering the gun with part of his raincoat. The van cruised slowly down a curving service road for more than half a mile before it turned off at a gate marked AUTHORIZED VEHICLES ONLY. Juan Garcia stopped the small truck beside the guard post.

  "Your pass?" the security man asked from his booth.

  "Medical emergency. We're from Queens General," Juan Garcia told him. "Some Delta mechanic's had a heart attack. Father Shanley's with us to give the last rites."

  QUEENS GENERAL HOSPITAL was neatly stenciled on both sides of the white van. The driver wore the equally white uniform of a paramedic, and the sober-faced man beside him was garbed in the black attire and stiff white collar of a priest.

  "You're supposed to have a pass," the guard said.

  "Please" Staub appealed earnestly as he reached for the pistol. "We're told the poor man doesn't have much time."

  His fingers closed around the gun butt.

  He released the safety catch.

  Peering through the swirling snow, the guard hesitated, thought about his own uncle in the oxygen tent at Bellevue and opened the gate.

  "Bless you," Willi Staub sighed with a well-practiced hint of piety a moment before Juan Garcia stepped on the gas pedal.

  The van rolled through the portal onto the airfield.

  Within seconds, it was out of sight in the storm.

  37

  "I WANT to ask you something," Hamilton said to Malone as the tower elevator descended.

  "Ask."

  "I hear a lot of people died in that damn collision. At least seventy."

  "Is that the question?"

  The Port Authority lieutenant shook his head.

  "The question is whether you're really going to do this," he said. "Are you really going to let the bastards who murdered seventy people fly out of here?"

  "What would you do?"

  "I'd take a rifle with a scope onto the roof and blow those bastards away," Hamilton replied vehemently.

  "That wouldn't help all the people still up there. There are a lot more than seventy . . . maybe twenty times that. To answer your question, I'm going to do whatever it takes to get that radar working again. That's their only chance."