Aggressor

by Nick Cook

  Girling swallowed. ‘In case you hadn’t heard, this is working up into a pretty big news story over here.’

  ‘There are one or two things that don’t quite add up. I have to check them out.’

  ‘Stansell, it’s press day. You said you’d cracked the identity of these monsters. Let’s use it.’

  ‘I said I thought I’d cracked it.’

  ‘Who’s the source?’ Girling asked.

  ‘That’s the thing. He’s been rock solid in the past. Every one of his stories has checked out. But this time... You see, I’m sure I’ve come across this outfit before.’

  ‘Just give me the name, Stansell. If you’re worried about validity, maybe I can second-source it.’

  There was another interminable pause.

  ‘Dust off your Arabic dictionary,’ Stansell said at last. ‘But first, you must promise me something, Tom boy.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Whatever you do, don’t use this until I give you the all-clear. Even if you’re able to second-source it with your contacts. And for God’s sake don’t give it to Kelso until I say it’s OK. Have you got that?’

  ‘Yes. I understand. But why?’

  ‘I can’t go into that. I’m already late - I’m meeting someone across town who could confirm what I’m about to tell you.’

  ‘Come on, Stansell. The suspense is killing me.’

  ‘Malaak Al-Hissab,’ Stansell said.

  ‘What?’ Girling’s pen hovered over his notepad.

  ‘What happened to your Arabic? The Angels of Judgement. That’s what they’re called. They’re a hard-line, fundamentalist outfit operating from a base deep within southern Lebanon - at least, that’s what my source says. They’re supposed to be independent of all other religious and political groups which, according to my man, explains why we’ve never heard of them before.’

  ‘Except you think you have,’ Girling said, resting his pen.

  ‘Maybe. Trouble is, it makes no sense at all.’

  ‘Right now, everyone’s shooting in the dark, including the Americans. I just heard that the US Navy has lost the boat which the terrorists used to escape from the beach.’

  ‘Fucking hell. Has that broken yet?’

  ‘No, but it will. That’s why it’s important we lead with this. It’s one big break for us, Stansell, and we could use it right now.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You don’t sound very sure,’ Girling said.

  ‘If my theory about this lot is right, this information, used prematurely, could be extremely dangerous. That’s why it’s important you don’t use it until I’ve checked it out. I trust you, Tom. I’d trust you with my life, you know that.’

  ‘Hey, relax. You have my word, OK?’

  Girling could hear Stansell breathing hard over the atmospheric hiss.

  ‘Look, I want to tell you how glad I am Kelso’s tempted you back.’

  ‘Under some duress,’ Girling said.

  ‘You have talents, Tom. Don’t waste them. I’m not saying anything Mona wouldn’t have told you herself.’

  ‘Thanks, but I don’t need the lecture, Stansell. How long do you think it will take to confirm that these characters are behind the hijacking?’

  ‘Maybe a couple of hours. But remember what I said. No confirmation, no story. Look after yourself, Tom. I’ve got to go.’ And with that, he hung up.

  Girling replaced the receiver. Stansell, impossible to ruffle, had the jitters. He analysed his own feelings and realized it was like the day he had discovered as a child that his father wasn’t invincible but frail and human, just like everybody else. He looked at his watch. It was close to five o’clock. ‘Shit.’

  Mallon stopped flirting with the sub-editor and turned to him. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Lots to do and not much time to do it in. I’m expected at my parents’ place outside Oxford this evening. And I haven’t even briefed Kelso yet.’

  Girling set off for Kelso’s office. He knocked on the door and walked in.

  Kelso listened first with excitement, then disappointment, to the tale of the hijackers’ disappearance and the imminence of the news’s appearance in other media outlets. Girling promised to type up what he knew before leaving for Oxford. Some other poor sod could have his evening wrecked working it into shape for the edition.

  Girling took a step to the door, then stopped and turned.

  ‘Look, Bob, you ought to be aware, too, that Stansell has a significant lead on the terrorists’ identity,’ Girling said. ‘He just called in.’

  ‘What do you mean, ‘significant lead’?’ Kelso asked.

  Girling took his editor through the conversation slowly, leaving out the name of the terrorist organization and making it clear that Stansell’s caveat - holding off until his say-so was received - was sacrosanct.

  Kelso nodded slowly. ‘He’s cutting it mighty fine. I’d like to use it, but I can delay the printers only so long.’

  ‘I know. But Stansell said wait.’

  ‘What is he trying to prove?’ Kelso said angrily.

  ‘Maybe he wants to make sure it’s right. We do still do that, don’t we?’

  ‘Don’t break my balls, Tom. I’ve had a hell of a day.’

  ‘When do Lord Kyle and the board decide our futures?’

  Kelso rubbed his eyes. ‘Tomorrow. Shit, I wish I was a hack again sometimes.’

  Girling took two paces towards him. ‘Look, the only reason I told you about this is because, as editor, I thought you should know.’

  ‘Stansell didn’t want you to tell me at all, right?’

  ‘Everyone knows the pressure you’re under, Bob.’

  ‘So, it’s got to the point where even Stansell doesn’t trust me any more.’

  ‘He’s just protecting his investment. If he can get confirmation this could be a hell of a story.’

  ‘Mm, And he told you the name of this outfit?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me?’

  ‘I can’t. I’m sorry, Bob, but I promised.’

  ‘And what if Stansell staggers out of a bar and falls under a bus?’

  ‘Oh, come off it.’

  ‘You know what I’m talking about, Tom.’

  ‘He’s still the best.’

  ‘He’s getting... erratic.’

  ‘There’s always my notes,’ Girling said.

  Kelso stopped kneading his eyes. When he looked up, they were bloodshot and watering. ‘Maybe I’ll give the old bastard a call in a couple of hours; chivvy him along a bit. Or that new girl, the Egyptian. Maybe she can tell me when Stansell’s going to file.’

  ‘Sharifa?’

  ‘Old friend of yours, isn’t she?’

  ‘Kind of.’ He paused. ‘She was Mona’s best friend since school.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’m late for my parents and I’ve still got some work to do. Will you excuse me?’

  ‘Sure. See you tomorrow.’

  Girling went back to his desk and typed up what he had gleaned from Tech-Int about the missing hostages and the US Navy’s abortive search for them. Then he left the office, took the tube home, picked up his Alfa Romeo and was soon heading down the motorway towards Oxford, his mind free of work, the Angels of Judgement, Kelso, and Stansell.

  He was seeing his daughter again.

  Jacobson waited for the first ring of the phone, his eyes still glued to the third of five TV monitor screens set into the wall opposite him.

  He was in TERCOM’s mini-situation room, a box-like affair with no windows, making it impossible to tell - but for a digital twenty-four-hour clock - whether it was day or night. He was surrounded by every conceivable device man had ever invented for communicating covertly or otherwise with the outside world. Among the SATCOM transmitter/receivers, the VLF submarine communications equipment, and the teletype decoding machines were five ordinary TV sets, each tuned to a different station.

  His gaze was fixed on the one which belted out twenty-four-hour news coverage
in a relentless stream of bulletins.

  Cable News Network had just reported that the US Navy had lost all contact with the terrorist boat that had slipped away from the shores south of Beirut. The reporter wasn’t revealing how he had come by the information, but Jacobson guessed it had been leaked by someone in the Pentagon who was unimpressed with naval aviation’s reconnaissance efforts. That suggested the culprit to be someone senior in the Air Force. The rival services never lost a trick in pointing up the other’s deficiencies.

  The media was having a field day.

  As he looked on, the picture switched to the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, fidgeting nervously beside his podium in the DOD’s media room. When Jacobson looked at the other sets, he saw that they were also covering the event. The spokesman straightened his suit and walked to the microphone.

  At that moment the phone rang.

  ‘Are you watching this?’ Newhouse asked. ‘I’ve just had the National Security Adviser on the horn. The President wants to know why he had to learn about this from the media. For Christ’s sake, Joel, finding this fishing boat was meant to be easy.’

  ‘The Navy was over-confident, it seems.’

  ‘Then what’s happened? Has the boat sunk? Is Franklin dead?’

  Anything was a possibility, Jacobson admitted. Nothing was as it seemed in the Middle East. His exhaustive studies of the area, its history and culture, had provided him with that much, gratis.

  ‘But the Soviets believe he’s alive,’ Jacobson said.

  ‘They’ve communicated again?’

  ‘Aushev called a few minutes ago. Same message. They have specific intelligence on the whereabouts of Franklin and the rest of our people.’

  ‘Well, where the hell are they?’

  ‘That’s all the Soviets are saying, sir. They’re pressing us to respond.’

  Newhouse fell silent for a few moments. ‘Has the NSC contacted you about this yet?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Then it seems we’re in time. We’ve got to pull ourselves out of this shit.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Contact Aushev on the Romeo channel and tell him we accept his offer. We await his further instructions.’

  Jacobson smiled.

  ‘Do it quickly,’ Newhouse said. ‘We’ll worry about the consequences later.’

  CHAPTER 7

  Shabanov flexed his upper arms in a vain bid to restore their failing circulation. With both his hands clamped to the top of his head for something over two hours - although not having access to his watch it was impossible to be precise about elapsed time - he had long lost the ability to feel any sensation in his muscles, which was probably a blessing. The pain was focused in his shoulder joints instead. He began to imagine that the limbs had been wrenched from their sockets, but chastised himself as soon as he became conscious of these wild and irresponsible thoughts; it was best not to drift.

  ‘Move again and I’ll shoot, you Russian son of a whore,’ the woman screamed in Arabic. He understood enough to stop the movement.

  Shabanov raised his eyes to hers. The .45 was pointing straight at the centre of his forehead. He held her gaze and noticed the deep brown eyes flash angrily again. She was startlingly attractive. Her long black hair had tumbled over her face, but she made no effort to sweep it aside. Beneath those soft dark strands, the silky complexion, full lips and perfect straight nose were strangely at odds with the bitch’s demeanour.

  ‘You haven’t got the guts to use that thing,’ he said, the edges of his mouth breaking into a smile. ‘It is just a toy in your hands.’ He spoke a dialect different from hers, but it was good Arabic none the less.

  He saw the confusion sweeping her face. She brushed the hair away from her eyes, cocked the gun, and rammed the barrel up against his jawbone.

  ‘Keep your mouth shut,’ she screamed, ‘or I’ll blow it off.’

  She adjusted her stance. Out of the corner of his eye, Shabanov could see her wiggling her hips as she settled into the new position against the bulkhead of the airliner. He was captivated by the shape of her body. He could picture every inch of it beneath the rough texture of her combat fatigues.

  Rarely had Shabanov felt so alive. They had told him at training school that the feeling was not uncommon during moments of acute danger. But they had not prepared him for this. He felt he could do anything, he was better than all of them. And he would take that bitch afterwards for his pleasure.

  About three seat-rows behind him one of his fellow hostages, a woman, groaned. Her husband asked the man known as Mahmoud for water again. He was greeted with the light sound of the Kalashnikov’s safety catch slipping off.

  ‘No water till the aircraft is refuelled,’ Mahmoud shouted in English.

  Shabanov thought there were four of them, but he couldn’t be sure. There was Mahmoud, the girl Layla, a lanky gun-toting youth at the back of the aircraft and another man with a grenade on the flight deck. There was always a chance that there were others, but because he had not been able to turn round since the beginning of the ordeal, it was impossible to tell.

  Layla pulled the .45 away from his face and leant back. Although the blinds were still pulled down over the windows, Shabanov could see the last rays of sunlight slipping behind the horizon beyond the cockpit windshield. It was probably three hours since the terrorists had made their move. Something had to break soon.

  He heard a brief commotion on the flight deck, then saw the man with the grenade beckon Mahmoud up to the front of the airliner.

  The tower on the line again.

  ‘Fuel, I want fuel,’ Mahmoud screamed, pressing a communications set to his head. ‘If we do not receive it within the next five minutes, another hostage will be killed.’

  Shabanov had not seen the execution. He had heard the man’s screams and the sharp crack of the Kalashnikov on single shot; that had been enough. From the way Layla was looking at him, he reckoned he was up next.

  Mahmoud walked down the gangway towards his position, roughly in the centre of the airliner. The manual said to avoid eye contact with these people. You had to believe you were invisible to avoid being singled out for special attention. Shabanov met Mah-moud’s gaze and held it. Fuck the book.

  Mahmoud looked at Layla, then nodded to Shabanov. She grabbed him by the collar and pulled him out of his seat. Shabanov twisted and wrested her grip from him. For a moment she seemed captivated by his appearance. He was wearing the full uniform of a Guards airborne assault colonel in the Soviet Army. There were three rows of medal ribbons on his chest. He was tall, lean faced, with cropped black hair that accentuated the lines of his skull. A small scar on the bridge of his nose marked the point where an Afghan tribesman had slashed him during hand-to-hand fighting in the hills above Jalalabad. Shabanov knew that his greatest strength in a hostage situation where there were women among his captors lay in his looks. They could gain him vital seconds in any confrontation. He gave her a half smile and let her catch a fleeting glimpse into the depths of his blue eyes. She seemed to draw back a little, until a low growl from Mahmoud stopped her in her tracks.

  She thrust the gun up against his temple. ‘Move,’ she hissed, ‘to the front of the plane.’

  Shabanov was about to take a step forward when the lights in the roof went out. He knew what was happening. The next moment he was on the ground, his hands clamped over his ears, his eyes screwed shut. A split-second later the two doors over the wings, about four rows forward from him, blew into the airliner. Even though his eyes were shut, he saw the intensity of the flashes through his eyelids.

  Shabanov looked up to see a figure clad in black, clutching a machine-gun/flashlight combination, his outline faintly illuminated by the sidelobes from the torch beam.

  ‘Everybody stay down, stay down,’ the figure shouted, voice muffled by the gas mask.

  Layla was still standing in the aisle. Shabanov saw a look, like that of a frightened animal caught in a car’s headlights, etched on her face. The Heckle
r and Koch jumped twice in the hands of the assault commando and she fell to the ground, a deep red stain over her T-shirt.

  Behind the lead commando, a second figure fired two shots into the prostrate body of Mahmoud, who had been knocked off his feet by one of the doors.

  The first commando probed the smoke with the beam of his flashlight and fired twice again. That took care of the stick insect behind him.

  There was another explosion at the front of the aircraft, the flash and blast catching Shabanov unawares. When his vision and hearing returned, the man with the grenade lay sprawled on the floor by the forward toilet. The commando who shot him kicked the grenade from his hand out into the dawn air through the still smoking doorway.

  The man behind him tried to move. His wife began screaming.

  ‘Keep down,’ a remote voice shouted.

  The black figures roamed up and down the aisle, the light from their torches stitching across the seats and the startled faces of the passengers.

  ‘Everybody make their way to the escape chutes,’ a muffled voice said. It was calm, but authoritative.

  Shabanov got to his feet and helped the woman in the row behind to hers. He ushered her to the nearest exit, picked her up and threw her on to the chute, which had already been fully deployed from the fuselage to the ground. Then he jumped himself.

  He ran across the tarmac to the minibus, which had not moved from its position at the outset of the incident, and rapped on the door. There was a brief pause, some muffled sounds from within, then it slid back on its rails.

  Shabanov found himself staring into the face of a USAF officer.

  ‘How long?’ the Russian asked him.

  Colonel Elliot Ulm, commander of the USAF’s 1725th Combat Control Detachment, better known as the Pathfinders, looked again at the stop-watch. ‘One minute thirty-five seconds from the moment the doors blew to your knock.’

  ‘Congratulations, Colonel,’ Shabanov said. ‘That’s quick.’

  Ulm jumped down onto the tarmac. ‘Thanks.’

  He looked over to the airliner, an old Boeing 727 the unit had managed to scrounge off one of the airlines for next to nothing. It was in the airlines’ interest for the Pathfinders to get it right. One day soon it would be for real. The Gulf War had shown what terrorism, or even the threat of it, could do to revenue.