Phil replaced the handset and turned to Judy. “You’re sure Logan clubbed Abbott?”
“I saw him. I know what I saw. I’m sure.”
“Okay. There’s a crash axe on the back wall behind me, Judy. Get it.”
“What are you going to do with an axe?”
“I’ve got to fly. It’s up to you,” he said.
“What’s up to me?”
“To keep them out of this cockpit. If they get to me, we all die.” Phil looked down at the center console, trying to think. He had to communicate with the outside world, let them know he was being hijacked.
Hijacked. That was the right word, wasn’t it?
The hijacking code! He glanced at the radar transponder, the small radio that responded to any air traffic control radar beam by sending back a burst of identifying information. The little green light on the front of the unit was blinking now that he’d climbed above ten thousand feet. Someone’s radar was “watching” and the unit was working, so he could dial in the international code for hijacking. No matter how crude the African radars, the hijacking code should be seen by the controllers below.
Phil leaned over and worked the small thumbwheels, intending to enter the hijack code, but changing it to the radio failure code instead.
Okay! He thought. Squawking hijack. The whole world will know.
His eyes swept past the ACARS control head, the telemetry system that communicated constantly with the company by satellite. There was a small printer in the console that could spit out weather and gate information and messages, and a small keypad he could use to send messages. Maybe it was still working. Phil snapped on the autopilot and leaned over, slowly typing the words he needed Denver to see.
Passenger riot on board. Have been hijacked by angry passengers. First Officer Abbott apparently badly injured and dumped out on takeoff from Nigeria by passenger named Logan who is leading revolt. Have been threatened and ordered to continue to Cape Town but must secretly turn around and return to London due to insufficient fuel. Request armed intervention on arrival. Head flight attendant barricaded in cockpit with me, and she’s holding an axe. Do not know whether they have weapons, but assume they may use force. Other pilots on board threatening to take over. All radios out.
The typing completed, he hit the transmit button and watched the display until the small symbol appeared confirming the message had been transmitted to the satellites overhead.
Phil scanned the forward panel again and looked outside. There was no moon to reveal anything on the ground, just occasional lights from widely scattered African villages.
He reached up to the glare shield and grasped the heading knob, turning it a degree at a time and watching the slight left bank of the 747 as it gently and imperceptibly began turning away from the computed course to Cape Town.
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY,
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
3:15 P.M. EDT
The rapidly growing CIA team spilled into a secure conference room and reestablished the connection with the National Reconnaissance Office a dozen miles away at Chantilly. Chris Marriott, a senior analyst with twenty years of African experience, toggled the call to the speakerphone and identified himself.
“Sandra Collings here at Chantilly, Chris,” a feminine voice responded. “We’ve got the latest transmissions, and this is getting very strange, even if we weren’t watching all the air traffic in Africa. The 747 is airborne again and apparently resuming its course southbound to Cape Town, but they’re not talking to anyone on the aviation radios, and their company can’t raise them on their satellite phone. They left without an air traffic control clearance and then began transmitting the international radio failure code of seventy-six hundred on their transponder. At Katsina, the last pass showed those buses near the airport. Forty-three minutes later the buses are heading south from the airport, and it appears there are people aboard. We have several arms protruding from windows that appear to be Caucasian. Further, back at the airport, we have a discarded emergency exit slide off to one side of the runway.”
“You’re suggesting,” Chris began, watching the faces of the others in the room, “that the rebels may have off-loaded the passengers via the emergency exit slide into the buses?”
“Yes,” Sandra Collings responded. “It’s an early interpretation, of course, but all the basic pieces to the puzzle are there. The question we can’t answer is, Why did the aircraft leave if everyone aboard was taken hostage? If we’re right about the copilot having been shot, then, since this flight carried only two pilots, the captain would have had to depart on his own. The airline confirms there were no relief pilots or deadheading pilots aboard that they know about. Meridian also confirms that this captain is not a risk taker, although I guess he could have panicked and just wanted to get the hell out of there. The point I’m trying to make here is, Why the radio silence? Whether the passengers are aboard or not, why wouldn’t the crew be screaming on every available radio to tell their company what had happened back there?”
“You have the airplane live on camera, so to speak?” Chris Marriott asked.
“We do,” Sandra replied. “We’re using a number of different birds and methods for a digital composite, but we’re watching him, and now, suddenly, all four engines are apparently running just fine. Plus, we’re not sure the aircraft could have left Katsina’s relatively short runway with passengers aboard. Three hundred—plus passengers weigh nearly fifty thousand pounds. So our confidence is growing that the aircraft departed without its passengers, and maybe without its crew.”
“Without its crew?” Chris asked. “You mean, without the pilots?”
“Possibly. Remember we have enemies out there who can find someone to fly a 747 if they need to. After the World Trade Center attacks, you can be sure we didn’t train them in the U.S., but, for enough cash, it wouldn’t be impossible to find a crew.”
“Sandra, flying an aircraft for a terrorist organization has been made a universal life sentence or death penalty offense by every civilized nation on earth,” Chris said. “Just last year.”
“Yeah, but the pilots may have no idea who they’re working for, and someone’s flying that aircraft. Look, I don’t know what all this means, but we’re watching the buses, and the next bird will acquire the area with sufficient resolution to help us in about eight minutes. So I’d say that if we see a stream of people getting off those buses somewhere, we’ve most likely got a hostage situation under the control of a very clever rebel leader. Onitsa has a long history of taking no prisoners and killing hostages after receiving ransoms.”
“Right,” Chris replied. “State needs to know this immediately. They’re going to need to alert the Nigerians that they’re about to be hit with a hostage crisis and outrageous ransom demands.”
“I agree,” Sandra Collings said. “We’ll make the call and check back with you in ten minutes. And, Chris, one other thing you might need to know under the current alert from the White House and the Pentagon.”
“Go ahead.”
“We’ve called George Zoffel back in. You know George?”
“No, I don’t think I do.”
“She’s our ranking expert on the Trojan Horse scenario. Just in case this begins to look like a European threat.”
Chris hung up as one of the women in the room spoke up.
“He’s got a point, Chris. No passengers, no radio response, and a dead copilot, meaning all we need is one coconspirator pilot and we’ve got a flying terrorist bomb.”
“But, could a passengerless takeoff be the result of a hostage taking? That sounds pretty far-fetched.”
“Not a result. Part of the plan. I know Onitsa’s methods,” one of the men said. “He loves to do interlocking deals. Say some group approached him with a plan. They’ve got a well-paid cockpit turncoat who’s going to create an artificial need for an emergency landing in the middle of Africa. If Onitsa’s men are ready to take the passengers
as hostages and help load the plane with whatever weapon of mass destruction they’re using, they both win. He gets bargaining chips in the form of hostages, they get an airplane with a valid flight number to use as a flying bomb, and we’ve got a Trojan Horse.”
“Yeah, but good Lord, he’d be putting his head in a noose and declaring war on the U.S. and the world for aiding a terrorist act! The man wants to rule Nigeria and be accepted in the world community, not become another Saddam Hussein.”
“Now wait a minute, everyone,” Chris said. “Don’t forget this aircraft is now headed for Cape Town. The alert that has us all jumpy is for Europe.”
“For the moment he’s headed south,” was the reply. “For the moment we’ve just got a mystery. But if he turns north, we’ve got a Horse.”
ABOARD MERIDIAN FLIGHT SIX
9:25 P.M. Local
The wildly varying rumors that the copilot had been killed and his body either dumped or left on the runway burned through the shell-shocked passengers of Flight Six like a prairie fire.
The flight attendants had given Brian Logan and the passengers around him a wide berth. With Judy Jackson leaving her crew in the dark about what she had seen, the flight attendants had no idea what to believe. Cindy and Cathy had overheard as much of Brian Logan’s words as possible after he emerged from the electronics bay, and had huddled in the first-class galley with Elle to call Judy Jackson in the cockpit.
“What do you want?” Judy had replied flatly.
“What do we want? Judy, how about a little guidance. What in the world is happening?”
“That doctor clubbed the copilot to death and pushed his body out before takeoff,” Judy said. “We’ve got to keep him from attacking the captain.”
“The doctor?”
“Yes.”
“But … he’s up front right now telling everyone the captain did it. Left Garth back there, I mean.”
“I saw him do it!” Judy snapped, repeating the basics of what she’d witnessed.
“Judy, he said he was fighting soldiers trying to get aboard. He thinks the captain may be suicidal.”
“Bull. He’s fine.”
Silence filled the gap until Cindy spoke. “So what do we do down here, Judy?”
“Keep him from trying to get through this cockpit door. It’s supposed to be unbreakable, but the captain has me guarding it with an axe. Get some of the men, I suppose, and subdue him. We’ve got handcuffs down there in the supplies. Call me when you’ve cuffed him.”
The sound of the connection being broken ended the call and all three women pulled back, looking at one another for some clue as to what to do next.
“Okay, so whom do we believe?” Cindy said after a few moments of silence.
Elle was shaking her head. “I have no idea.”
Outside the galley curtains Brian searched through the overhead compartments until he found a battery-powered bullhorn. He pulled it from its bracket and stepped to the forward section of coach as eight other men and two women stood alongside and behind him. Brian triggered the megaphone, the electronic pop getting everyone’s instant attention.
Folks, this is Dr. Brian Logan. I know you’ve been hearing different versions of what happened back there, and I just want to … well … let you know what really happened and what’s really going on here. Most of you already know our copilot went outside through a hatch in the forward compartment. What you don’t know is that he was shot trying to come back aboard, and the captain just … left him out there to die. I was down in that compartment trying to help him get back aboard. I grabbed the interphone at one point and begged the captain to stop the airplane, but he wouldn’t. This captain is out of control. He’s a murdering maniac, and we don’t know why. What you also don’t know is that the copilot had been trying all day to get the captain under control. He told me so before he climbed down to the ground to check the captain’s fictitious claim that the same engine that caused our first emergency landing had gone bad again. His name was Garth, and we left him back there with both legs shattered by bullets, bleeding to death.
Brian’s voice choked off for a few seconds and he stood with his eyes closed, trying to regain control.
Garth was really on our side. Now there’s no one in the cockpit to keep this captain under control. We don’t know what he’s doing, and we don’t know what his motivation has been for purposefully trying to imperil all of us in Nigeria. You know, don’t you, that he landed us in the middle of a civil war? I tried to talk with this captain a few minutes ago by interphone. I told him we all were demanding he fly on to Cape Town as planned and that he could consider that we were taking over, but I have no idea if he’ll pull another stunt or not. One thing I do know: We desperately need to find any of you who are qualified pilots who could watch him up there and make sure he doesn’t try to do anything else dangerous, such as land short of Cape Town, or … or do something else crazy. Let me know if you’re a pilot. Especially any military pilots. Our lives depend on it. As long as he’s the only pilot at the controls, he could kill us all in a heartbeat.
A silver-haired man in a casual sweater two rows away raised his hand, catching Brian’s eye.
“You a pilot, sir?” Brian asked.
The man shook his head. “No, but why would you think an airline captain would try to imperil us?”
Brian met the man’s gaze. “Remember EgyptAir?”
The questioner froze, his eyes flaring slightly as he nodded quickly and lowered his hand.
In the cockpit, the call chime rang, and Phil reached to answer it.
“Yes?”
“Captain? This is Mary in the rear galley. That doctor is down here using a bullhorn to speak to the passengers.”
“What’s he saying?”
“He’s trying to find pilots to go up there and take over. He says you killed the copilot. Lori Cunningham and Barb Weston and I are hiding in the crew rest cubicle above the rear galley and we’re really scared, and we need to know what to do and where the heck Judy is.”
Phil handed the phone to Judy without comment, and she took it reluctantly.
“Yes?” she said, her voice distant and distracted as she listened. “Is anyone trying to hurt you?” Judy asked.
“No, but … what do we do? I mean we may be trained in how to handle suicidal hijackers now, but no one ever trained us how to handle a passenger riot, and these people are rioting, Judy! They hate us. I mean, I’m not sure what a riot is, but they’re all agreeing with anything that doctor says, and there are several others down here stirring everyone else up, too.”
“I can’t come down there,” Judy said. “You’ll have to take care of it.”
“Yeah, well … are you our leader or what, Judy?” Mary asked, sarcasm infusing her voice.
“I’ll tell you what I am, little girl!” Judy snapped. “I’m disgusted with all of them and I’m not about to try reasoning with them. Let the bastards riot if they want to! You two just follow the manual.”
She heard a rude sound from the other end. “WHAT manual? There’s nothing in the manual about this.”
But Judy had already handed the handset back to the Phil, who quickly replaced it in its cradle.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
3:30 P.M. EDT
David Byrd hardly noticed the drive from John Blaylock’s favorite Alexandria watering hole to Capitol Hill. He was too busy trying to digest Blaylock’s words.
I’m being groomed for general?
The thought was a thrill, and a worry. And even more bizarre than the concept of Blaylock as a personal trainer was the idea that James Overmeyer thought that highly of him. The news had triggered a sudden burst of pride immediately leavened by caution and followed by the ridiculous image of Blaylock as Yoda of Star Wars.
David suddenly realized a female driver in an adjacent car was smiling at him, reacting to the fact that he’d been shaking his head and gesturing in resonance with his thoughts as he
sat in his car. He smiled back at her and laughed, rolling his eyes in shared recognition of the humor, and gave the woman a small wave as he peeled away left at the L’Enfant Plaza exit and accelerated toward the Capitol building and his town house five blocks beyond.
Purchasing the hundred-and-fifty-year-old house had been hailed as an act of insanity by other officers at the Pentagon, but he’d banked much of his money since the divorce and could easily afford it. Besides, he could always rent it out later on. Even with the hefty and unexpected renovation costs, he’d never regretted the decision.
“We know what you’re up to, Byrd,” one of his FAA acquaintances had needled him. “Whenever a decent-looking divorced guy buys up there, it’s for one reason. Trolling for cute female congressional aides.”
“No, I’m trolling for the female congresswomen they work for,” he’d responded, a line that now rang rather strangely in light of Senator Douglass’ call and his response.
Amazingly, there was an open parking place in front of his door and David took it, bounding up the front steps with key in hand as the cell phone rang again. He opened the door on the rich, walnut-trimmed interior of his living room as he flipped the instrument open.
“Hello?”
“Well, forget dinner at the Willard, my friend. What we talked about a few hours ago is happening as we speak. They’re going off half-cocked.”
This time the voice was instantly recognizable as Blaylock’s.
“You mean the Trojan Horse thing, John?”
“You talk around secure subjects well, although you know we aren’t supposed to do that. But what the hell. Yes. Something’s happened, and they’re coming unglued at Langley and the Pentapalace. Can you get back to NRO? I think this is going to be very instructive.”
“It’s afternoon drive time, John. It’ll take me an hour even if I drive like a maniac—longer if I decide to obey any of the laws.”
“I knew you’d say that,” John replied, “So that was Plan B.”
Turbulence Page 26
