by Alan Zendell
“You’re probably right,” Henry said, “but I’d feel a lot better if we had the helicopters.”
Helicopters would have been invaluable in the event we lost the suspect’s vehicle in traffic, but there just hadn’t been time. The local police could quickly organize highway surveillance and traffic diversions on the fly if need be.
Henry’s cell phone rang while we were checking the arrivals board. It was William, ready to melt the phone lines to Langley over the date screw-up. Realizing no one at Langley would even know about it until Thursday, Henry handed me the phone.
“William,” I said, trying not to sound desperate, “you don’t want to blast Langley for this. It wasn’t their fault. It was some contract agent in Singapore.”
“You know who takes the heat if you screw up?” he shouted.
“You do, I guess.”
“Damn right!”
“I get it, William, but no harm’s been done. They caught the mistake and warned us.”
“I thought Henry said it was you who figured it out.”
“I was just guessing; Langley confirmed the error. And we may need their help in the next few weeks. Let’s not alienate them.”
William ended the debate. “We’ll see how today goes. Make sure you keep me informed.”
Henry checked his watch. We didn’t have long to wait; the plane was on time today.
“Everyone take your positions,” Henry said into his phone, when the plane touched down. By 10:35, people were streaming through the gates. Twenty passengers came through the jetway, and there he was. Beard trimmed short, hair cut European style, dressed like an English banker, complete with umbrella, and traveling without entourage, passenger twenty-one was, unmistakably, Azim Husam al Din.
Samir and Rod had devised a little charade. Dressed down in jeans and tee shirts, they stood in line behind our quarry, speaking softly and rapidly in Arabic. I could hear them clearly in my earpiece. I didn’t understand a word they said, but I knew the script. Samir acted nervous and agitated, talking about a problem with his entry visa, afraid the passport control people wouldn’t let him into the country. I didn’t know how to say “those fucking Americans” in Arabic, but I was sure that was included in his angry diatribe.
Rod pretended to try to calm Samir, warning him not to attract attention, but Samir wouldn’t stop. Watching through a glass wall from the balcony above, I saw Husam al Din becoming agitated. He had no desire to be near the center of the customs officers’ attention. Finally, he turned to look at Samir. Through my earpiece, I distinctly heard, in English, “Listen to your friend. He is giving you good advice. You need to relax and act naturally, or you’ll get both of you thrown into prison.”
Samir shut up, and Rod offered Husam al Din his hand and introduced himself, assuring him that Samir would behave. Samir said nothing, but concentrated on the target’s words and body language.
Nice work, I thought, as Rod continued to engage Husam al Din in conversation, the latter appearing to visibly relax as they spoke softly and inconspicuously in English. Rod spun him a story about visiting cousins who had jobs for them, trying to get him to talk about his own activities. No one expected him to say he was there to kill Americans, but he might offer a clue about where he was headed.
He was cordial, but he evaded Rod’s questions, revealing only that he was here on business that would take him to both New York City and New Jersey. The final act of Rod and Samir’s drama occurred at Passport Control. We’d planted one of our people at a review station. Rod and Samir walked to that desk, and the bogus officer told Samir his visa was missing a required stamp and a signature. Samir protested loudly, and the officer warned him that he was risking arrest. Rod acted as if he was going to Samir’s aide; Husam al Din grabbed his elbow.
“Do not intervene, my friend. Once we are through customs, you can contact your family members, who will be in a better position to help him.” Rod nodded and stepped back, walking away so he could speak sotto voce into his microphone.
“Subject is fully engaged.”
Excellent. Rod now had an excuse to stay by Husam al Din’s side; we didn’t have to worry about losing him in the crowd. Under our watchful gaze Rod made his way to baggage claim alongside Husam al Din, who stopped to make a cell phone call, nodding affirmatively at what he heard. They discussed Samir’s options until Husam al Din’s baggage arrived, whereupon he apologized, saying there were people waiting for him. He shook Rod’s hand and said he had to go.
Rod looked convincingly crestfallen. “You are an important businessman. I know I have no right to ask, but I hoped you could help my friend.”
We all held our breaths as Husam al Din considered that. Finally, he asked, “Is there a number at which I can reach you? Tell your friend to request a hearing. That will keep him here for a few days. I will check with my associates and let you know if they have any advice.” Husam al Din was too smart to leave a trail anyone could follow, but at least that was something. We’d have a trace on the burner phone we’d acquired for Rod. He wrote down the number and thanked him.
Husam al Din hurried out of the terminal and looked around. Two middle-Eastern men approached him and they each embraced him. They led him to a waiting taxicab and were gone in seconds, trailed discreetly by two unmarked police cars in the weaving, unrelenting airport traffic. Samir, Rod, Mary, and I ran for Henry’s car, a hundred feet away. The plan was for our three cars to play leap frog, staying a reasonable distance behind the taxi, but even outside the airport, in New York traffic, that could be chancy. Henry would stay in contact with police dispatchers in the area in case we needed assistance keeping the cab in sight.
Our car had barely started moving when Henry’s radio chirped. It was the cop in charge of the detail, who was riding in the lead car. “The subject vehicle is leaving the terminal area, Agent White. Wait a minute, they’re slowing down. They’re exiting the freeway, taking the cloverleaf. Where the hell are they going? They’re turning onto the west service road, heading north. There are several buildings and hangars up ahead on the left. Okay, they’re turning left, now toward a smallish building. It’s the general aviation terminal.”
That was totally unexpected.
Henry told the cop to keep the primary subject discreetly in sight. Given the traffic patterns in the large airport complex, we were two minutes behind them.
“The CIA report specified New York as his final destination, didn’t it?” I asked. “Or did it simply say he was flying from Manila to New York?”
“No, it was definite that his destination was New York,” Henry said. “What the hell are they up to?”
I could see the cloverleaf up ahead. Samir figured it out first as we were looping around. “They’re headed for the heliport.”
Henry barked into his radio. “You still have the suspects in view?”
The cop we’d heard before came back on the line. “Yeah, we got ’em. They’re entering the building. If we get any closer they’ll know we’re trailing them. It’s a very small building. We can see clear through it to a helipad.”
“We think that’s where they’re going. Don’t lose them, but don’t let them know you’re following them. I’ll catch up to you,” A couple of minutes later, we screeched to a stop and Henry jumped out.
“Cover all the exits, just in case,” Henry told the lead cop.
Unlike the passenger terminals, there was no security at general aviation, and no gates or jetways. By the time Henry entered the building, Husam al Din and his friends were already hurrying onto the tarmac, toward a waiting helicopter. We could see the crew on board, apparently primed to take off. The blades began turning even before all three were aboard.
Henry ran toward the helipad exit, shouting to me. “Dylan, find out if there’s a way we can stop them from taking off.”
I ran to the commercial helicopter service’s ticket counter. When I asked, the attendant shrugged her shoulders. “It’s a private aircraft; we have no contr
ol over it. The only way to keep them from taking off is for the tower to deny clearance. You can get airport security to contact them, but you’d better hurry. That helicopter’s been parked out there waiting for nearly an hour. The pilot probably requested clearance while they were on their way here. He doesn’t have to taxi, so as soon as the tower says go, he’ll be off the ground and on his own.”
Henry had heard the end of that exchange. He ran out the front, looking for the lead cop, as the whine of the helicopter engine increased in pitch. I saw Henry gesticulating, and the cop spoke into his phone. Just then, the helicopter left the ground, and took off to the south, climbing to a few hundred feet. He’d be over the Atlantic in a couple of minutes. Henry slapped his phone against his leg in frustration and started back toward the building.
“How can I get hold of his flight plan?” I asked the attendant.
“Helicopters don’t have to file them,” she said. “If it’s not a scheduled service like ours, only the pilot and the passengers know where they’re going.”
Henry ran up just in time to hear her answer, again.
“We’re fucked!” he said.
The cop arrived a few seconds later, still talking into his radio.
“I’m talking to the tower,” he said. “They’re tracking him on radar. I told them there’s a suspected terrorist on board and requested that they order the pilot back to the pad.”
We waited, feeling precious seconds tick by. The helicopter would have reached its maximum speed by now. It could be almost three miles further away every minute we waited. Given the upside-down-wedding-cake shape of the radar controlled airspace around the airport, if they stayed close to the water, they’d soon be out of radar range. The cop’s radio squawked.
“Shit! ATC says the pilot turned off his transponder.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Henry demanded.
The cop handed him the phone, setting it on speaker so we could all hear it, and Henry asked the same question to the Air Traffic Control supervisor, in different words.
“It means we can’t see him on our screens any more,” the controller replied. “The radar’s still tracking him and continuously recording his position, but we don’t see raw radar data on our screens. We only see computer images based on the transponder signals.”
“You mean we can’t track them?” Henry sounded like he was about to blow.
“Not in real time. We’ll have to pull the radar tapes and review them later. It’ll take a while.”
I checked my watch. It was 12:06. The helicopter had lifted off at 11:57. It was more than twenty miles away, by now, and invisible to JFK’s radar.
Henry was still on the radio. “What do we do now?” he said, then stopped to listen. “How long will that take? Okay, I’ll send an official request as soon as I’m back in the office.”
41.
Wednesday afternoon, we were all in the Agency conference room.
“Would it be fair to say harm has been done now?” William glared at me.
“I still don’t see what there is to gain by blasting the analyst at Langley.”
“I agree with Dylan,” Henry said. “It’s not worth wasting time on. Besides, our first priority is fixing this.” Henry didn’t take failure well.
William had arranged a conference call with the Port Authority and the Federal Aviation Administration office at JFK. “How the hell is this possible?” he demanded, when the call was connected. “Are you telling me a helicopter pilot can do anything he wants to and there’s no way to hold him accountable?”
“Those are two different issues,” said Philip Patella, the FAA rep. “There’ll be consequences when we catch up with him. We can pull his pilot’s license, fine him, or prosecute him if he did anything criminal. But there’s no way to stop a pilot from doing something if he’s willing to take the heat afterward. That’s the way most regulatory violations are handled.”
“What about post-nine-eleven flight restrictions?” William demanded.
“They generally only apply to scheduled airlines and cargo carriers. General aviation and helicopters are still relatively unregulated.”
“You mean a terrorist could load a helicopter or a small plane with explosives and fly it into any target he chose?”
“Pretty much, unless he entered a heavily-patrolled area like lower Manhattan, and we intercepted him first.”
“Unbelievable!” William snorted.
“We propose new regs every year,” Patella said, “but we’ve had anti-regulatory Administrations since 1981. They talk a lot about domestic security but don’t do much.”
Henry made eye contact with William, who quickly deferred to him.
“It’s more important that we find these guys than point fingers,” Henry said.
Rafe Rodriguez, the Port Authority supervisor at JFK, spoke for the first time. “I talked to the tower a few minutes ago. You have a couple of problems. We ran the FAA identification number the pilot gave us. It was phony.”
“Phony?” William was still livid from before. “You mean a helicopter landed and took off from the JFK heliport with a faked ID and no one checked?”
We heard an intake of someone’s breath on the line. Then, Rodriguez said, “ID verification isn’t standard procedure. The tower’s a busy place. Its job is traffic control, preventing mid-air collisions, getting everyone safely into the air and on the ground. We can’t have our people distracted with non-essential issues.”
“He’s right,” Patella said. “Providing a false aircraft ID is a law enforcement matter. The tower doesn’t have enough staff to handle things like that.”
“So anyone could land and take off and you wouldn’t know?”
“Airliners, freight carriers, and corporate aircraft have no reason to misrepresent themselves. Neither do scheduled helicopters, charters, or law enforcement. This sort of thing doesn’t come up much.”
“Most drivers don’t hand cops fake driver’s licenses,” William retorted. “When they do, they’re nailed on the spot.”
Rodriguez said, “Look, we’re trying to help you track this guy. I don’t have time to argue about FAA policy.”
“Right,” Henry said. “We can address those concerns later. What’ve you got?”
“The pilot turned off his transponder fifteen miles off shore. He could have flown in any direction, but chances are he went east to avoid air patrols. They completely blanket the area between JFK, La Guardia, and Newark, the harbor, and the financial district.”
“Does that mean we can’t identify his flight path?” Henry asked.
“Theoretically, we can track him from radar images, but it’ll be difficult. Every experienced pilot knows where the controlled airspace boundaries are. If he was trying to avoid detection, he’d have been invisible for most of the flight.”
“So once they’re off JFK’s radar, we’re dead?” William broke in.
“Not necessarily. There are radars all around New York City. If their destination is in the metropolitan area, they’re bound to fly close enough to be seen by some of them. The question is whether we can identify the right images from different radar records and piece them together. And since we don’t know his ultimate destination, we’ll have to collect tapes from every radar in the area and get someone to analyze them.”
“How long will that take?” Henry asked.
“Could be several days, and there’s no guarantee we’ll find anything useful.”
“All right, thanks,” William said, seeing no point in antagonizing them further. “I’m assigning our in-house science geek as liaison with you.”
That was me, of course. He introduced me, and they invited me to participate in the radar analysis. Rodriguez said he’d call me when they were ready to start.
The mood in William’s office was dark after the conference call, until William, his anger spent, went back to doing what he did best, leading and infusing people with confidence.
“All right everybody
, we have work to do. There’s no time to waste brooding. Mary, you’ll keep monitoring email and cell phone traffic. Have you set up the trace on Rod’s phone in case Husam al Din’s people call? Sam, we need to go all out interrogating the people we have in custody. See what the Jersey Police have on the guys who used the submersible.”
“They’re going through all the cell phone records for the number your friend at APL gave us. They’ll call us when they have something.”
“I think it’s time to revisit the two seamen from Al Khalifa,” William went on. “It’s a long shot, but you never know. And stay in touch with Henry’s team in Baltimore. Rod, I assume you’ll tap into all your sources. If we don’t stop them here, no one’s safe, anywhere.”
“You might also monitor hospitals between here and Washington,” I added, “to see if anyone turns up with symptoms of radiation sickness. One of the canisters may have leaked, and they might have been careless preparing the smoke bombs, last week.”
William told me to handle that myself. “Anything else?”
Henry said his New York field office had authorized him to draw on the additional manpower he’d requested. William drew a deep, dramatic breath.
“Track every lead back to its source. From here on, we do whatever’s necessary. Anyone have a problem with that?”
No one did, but his fierce expression and dogged tone intensified the morbid urgency I’d felt all morning. I’d barely spoken since before the conference call.
Rod noticed my unease when he and I met with Henry, later. “Why so glum, Dylan?”
Henry said, “He’s just in a funk because his winning streak’s broken.”
He’d nailed me. I’d been getting used to winning every round. After flying high for weeks, my confidence in the crazy mission I was on was flagging.
“It’s more than that,” I said. “I’m scared. You’re right, Henry. I’ve been kidding myself. I was actually believing I could turn things around all by myself. What if we don’t find Husam al Din and the next attack succeeds? You know what’s at stake. You heard the President after Union Station. This isn’t some idiotic television show. He threatened to nuke Iran’s military bases and research facilities. Did either of you doubt that he meant it? Has he ever backed down once he’s made up his mind? That kind of thinking scares the shit out of me. He scares the shit out of me.”
