Just outside his window the logo lights were out on the Quantum-United 747, but the sodium-vapor terminal lights clearly illuminated the Quantum Airlines logo on the huge tail, and lit the registration number of the aircraft, N47475QA.
The glow of the TV screen flashed on suddenly, the face of the CNN anchor in Atlanta intoning yet another series of headlines. It was the wrenching story he had followed earlier of the American airliner full of people exposed to one of the worst human viruses in history. The virus had been confirmed. The people aboard were almost certainly going to die, and no country in the world had been brave enough to take them in. Not even their own country. Such a virus, if unleashed on a major population, could kill millions. He remembered feeling terrible for those poor people, and frightened of them at the same time. And then had come the news flash that they had crashed, and a rumor that the 747 might have been shot down.
A small box above the anchor’s shoulder appeared, containing the picture of the 747 as it had appeared in Iceland that morning. There was a Quantum logo on the tail, and as the cameraman had zoomed in, he brought the registration number fully into view: N47475QA.
Lizarza stepped back in shock. There was an airplane now sitting on his airport ramp with the same registration number and color scheme—and a missing engine!
They had survived an attack and landed at his airport without permission! They were alive, after all!
But … were they? This was the death ship, a flying scourge the media had said was extremely dangerous to human life. They were imperiling everyone! His wife and kids lived a few miles away. So did his neighbors, and thousands more!
In complete confusion, Lizarza moved to his desk and grabbed the phone. The number of the police was in red under the glass top, and he dialed it with a shaking hand, not knowing whom else to call.
Dick Robb and James Holland had taken turns leaving the cockpit to visit the restroom and walk around for a few minutes while the fuel quantities increased. Suddenly Robb’s voice was on the PA:
“Captain to the cockpit immediately, please!”
Holland looked at Rachael, with whom he’d been sitting in the upper deck compartment, and sighed.
“What now?”
“May I … come up there with you?” she asked.
The shadow of a smile crossed his features. “I’d feel abandoned if you didn’t.”
Together they walked the few steps to the flight deck.
Dick Robb swiveled his head around as they entered.
“They’ve figured out who we are, James! The fueling’s stopped. We have less than half a load. Several cars have pulled up under our nose, other trucks have backed off, and a nearly hysterical voice on the interphone asked if we were Quantum Sixty-six.”
“What’d you say?” Holland asked.
Robb shrugged. “I told him I couldn’t understand what he was asking.”
Two cars with rotating red beacons on top came racing onto the ramp now and screeched to a halt a hundred feet in front of the nose. Several armed guards could be seen holding weapons and standing near the arriving officials, and within a minute a more measured voice returned to the interphone, speaking a lightly accented English.
Holland turned on the overhead speaker so Rachael could hear as well.
“Captain, are you there?”
“Yes,” Holland replied.
The man gave his name and identified himself as the airport manager.
“You did not have permission to enter our country! You are carrying a dangerous illness. You must not open any doors, do you understand?”
“I understand,” Holland said, “and if you’ll simply finish fueling us, we’ll get out of here.”
“I am asking my government what to do, Captain. I do not have the authority to release your airplane. We have asked for instructions. Our customs and immigration chiefs are also on the way here, and they, too, are very upset by your actions.”
“We have a damaged airplane and we were losing fuel. I had no choice. This is an exercise of emergency authority by the captain of a vessel or aircraft in international airspace. I’m entitled to land.”
“Captain, you are endangering everyone on this island. We must decide what to do, and I cannot make that decision alone.”
“That decision has already been made. We want to leave as quickly as you do, if not more so. Please continue the fueling.”
Lee Lancaster’s words were whirling in his mind. The situation would spin out of his control now, with governments and military elements getting involved.
“Captain, my government certainly knows about your disease. My government will talk to your government, and who knows? I’m just a little manager. All I can do is call Madrid, and I have done that.”
“And you won’t continue the fueling?”
“No, Captain. I have no authority.”
James Holland stared out the windscreen, imagining the face of the man some forty feet below on the ramp. They were trapped again unless he moved fast. A plan had already formed in his mind in case this happened. It was almost a daydream, a bizarre twist of roles that had seemed mildly amusing at the time.
Now it seemed the only way out.
Holland thought through the idea. Every commercial pilot knew about hijackings. They read about them, they studied them, they and their carriers and the FAA had formulated methods of dealing with them. In fact, Holland thought, commercial flight training in the United States could serve as a virtual school of hijacking: how to plan it, how to do it, how to survive it.
But James Holland would never think of engaging in such conduct, James Holland reminded himself. He was the beaten-down and often victimized company man trying to stay invisible.
“I don’t trust you,” the elderly woman downstairs had said. “I don’t trust you because you’re not thinking for yourself.”
Holland shook his head at the thought. She had been right at the time, but now the situation had changed. He had changed!
And he was tired of being the victim.
“Dick, flip on all the exterior lights, including landing lights,” Holland ordered.
Dick Robb looked over at him, puzzled, and hesitated.
“Now, please!”
“Okay. Okay. Could I ask why?”
“Watch,” Holland said as he adjusted his headset and keyed the interphone.
“Señor Ignacio, are you still there?”
“Yes, Captain, I’m here.”
“Now listen carefully to me,” Holland began. “As you have figured out, we’re not a United flight, we are Quantum Sixty-six, and you’re right, we’re all infected with a virus which, if let loose here on Tenerife, would kill the entire population within four days. We ourselves will begin falling ill with this in less than twenty-four hours. We’ll all be dead within two days. Do you understand this?”
There was a long hesitation from below, and finally the sound of the transmit button being pushed was followed by the suddenly cautious voice of the airport manager.
“Sí, señor, I understand this. It is a great tragedy. I am so sorry for—”
“Cut the crap, Ignacio. I don’t care whether you’re sorry or not. The fact is, we’re a major threat to you, do you agree?”
“Yes, Captain, I agree.”
“You would not want us to expose your airport workers or the islanders, is that correct?”
“That is correct, Captain.”
“Okay, then understand this quite clearly. At this very moment I have stationed my flight attendants at every one of our ten exit doors. Each exit has an emergency escape slide. If I give the word—and make no mistake about it, I will give the word if I have to, because this is no bluff—if I give the word, they will immediately open all ten exits, deploy the slides, and push all two hundred forty-three infected, contagious passengers onto the ramp into the damp air of your island. The virus will go everywhere with each breath from each mouth. You don’t have enough fire power to kill us fast enough to prevent this, and even if you did
, the first contaminated person out that door will infect your island. Do you clearly understand what I’m going to do if you don’t comply with my demands?”
“Yes, Captain, but that would be a murderous act! Why would you kill more people? Why—”
“Shut up and listen! The why is not important. This is all you need to know: Unless the refueling begins immediately and continues until my tanks are full, except for the number three reserve tank, I will give the order and Tenerife in four days will become a depopulated rock with nothing but skeletons. We’ll all die together. You got that?”
“Captain, Captain … please! You must understand—”
Holland cut him off.
“I don’t have to understand anything. I’m in charge here. Your life, and that of everyone on this island, will be exchanged for full fuel tanks and a full water tank, and for following my orders to the letter. If you comply, we’ll simply fly away. If you don’t, you die. And get those damn cars away from my airplane! When I’m ready to fire off these engines and taxi, there will be no attempt to stop me, understood?”
“I don’t have the authority to make such decisions …”
“Then you’ll be the authority who assassinated the entire population of Tenerife by failing to act. Have a backbone, man. What I’m demanding is simple. My flight attendants are standing by. What’s your answer? I don’t see my fuel gauges increasing yet, and you have precisely thirty seconds to restart the fueling.”
The button was pressed on the microphone below, but Holland could hear only frantic exchanges in Spanish. Then Ignacio returned.
“We are doing as you ask, Captain, but we must reconnect the hose, and …”
The predictable delay tactic. He knew it, expected it, and anticipated it.
But it wasn’t going to work.
“Okay, doors one left, one right, two left, and two right, prepare to open and deploy slides and passengers,” Holland said.
“No, no, no!” Ignacio yelled. “We are complying, Captain, we are reconnecting the hose!”
“Flight attendants, in thirty seconds if you don’t hear from me, open the doors and deploy. If you hear any gunshots, do the same thing.”
Ignacio, convinced the message was being heard by a cadre of waiting crew members with their hands on the door levers, fairly screamed into the microphone. “WE ARE REFUELING, CAPTAIN! WE ARE DOING AS YOU ASK!”
Holland purposefully let fifteen seconds of silence fill the interphone before replying. As he punched the transmit button, the fuel gauges began winding upward again.
“Okay, Ignacio, I see the fuel starting,” he said. “Understand this clearly. If there is a single gunshot at this airplane, especially this cockpit, everyone will leave the airplane. Any attempt to impede us in any way will result in the same thing.”
“Captain, I do not understand the word ‘impede’!”
“‘Impede’ means to try to stop us or get in our way. ¿Comprende?”
“Yes, sir! We will not impede you!”
“Start moving those cars away from my airplane. NOW!”
“Yes, sir!”
Holland felt a gentle hand on his right shoulder and turned to see Rachael Sherwood smiling at him.
“You should have been on the stage!” she said. “You had me convinced. I was wondering when you’d talked to the flight attendants.”
“I hadn’t,” he said.
Holland glanced at Robb, who looked stunned.
Holland sighed. “The fuel trucks are on the right side. As soon as we’re within five thousand pounds of full, we’ll start engines one and two. They’ll panic, but that’s exactly what I want.”
Robb had begun shaking his head. “Jesus Christ, James! I’m never, and I mean never, playing poker with you!”
The sound of motors firing up and cars being hastily withdrawn from the vicinity of the 747 could be heard through the skin and the windows of the cockpit. There were sixty thousand pounds of additional fuel to be loaded. It would be a race, Holland knew, between the fuel pumps and the closing net of officialdom. If they could beat the inevitable orders from Madrid to call his bluff, they might make it.
TWENTY-FIVE
LAS PALMAS AIRPORT, CANARY ISLANDS—DECEMBER 24—12:10 A.M. (0010Z)
When the tanks of the Gulfstream were full, a car appeared from nowhere carrying two men intent on talking to the fueler. They stood apart from the man’s truck and exchanged animated bursts of Spanish too fast for Yuri Steblinko to follow. Yuri felt himself tense as he saw the fueler turn suddenly and point at the Gulfstream. Earlier he had watched the fueler trying to peek inside. The Spaniard’s curiosity had been too great for comfort, and now something new had happened.
But the two men jumped back in their car and sped away as fast as they’d come, leaving the fueler alone with Yuri with no offer of an explanation.
The fueler scribbled figures on a handwritten invoice and passed it over to the pilot he presumed was a Saudi. Yuri paid in American dollars and included a two-hundred-dollar tip, knowing what the reaction would be. He could tell what the fueler thought of Arabs. The man would be inwardly contemptuous of the tip—but he would take it.
The fueler counted the money and pocketed the tip with a small thank-you. He began to turn away, but Yuri caught his shoulder and turned him back.
“¡Señor! ¿Qué es la problema con sus amigos?”
The man looked trapped.
“¿Qué?”
“Sus amigos, en el automóvil. ¿Que dicenos ellos a usted?”
The man shook his head, puzzled.
“Can you speak English?” Yuri asked.
The man nodded. “A little, yes.”
“Okay, let’s try English. Your friends were excited about something. What was it?”
“My … friends?”
“Amigos, in the car.”
“Ah, sí!” The expression brightened slightly. “There is a … a … strange happening at Tenerife. My friends are telling me this.”
Yuri cocked his head. “What’s happening at Tenerife?”
The man nodded again. “A large airplane landed there with illness aboard. They land without warning and want fuel. It is a siete … uh, a seven-four-seven. ¿Comprende?”
“Sí,” Yuri replied. “I understand what a seven-four-seven is.”
“A seven-four-seven is a four-engine airplane, but this one has only three. One has fallen from the airplane.”
The words hit Yuri like a lightning bolt. He struggled to maintain composure, but his head was reeling. A 747 with an engine missing and full of sick people. The only possible explanation was Flight 66! Somehow, they had escaped, and all his missile had done was remove an engine.
The fueler was still talking. “They are calling threats to the airport manager if fuel is not loaded.”
“Threats?”
“Sí. If the airport doesn’t give fuel, they will unload their sick passengers and infect everyone.”
Yuri grabbed the man by the shoulders. “Is the airplane still there?”
The man looked startled. “I … do not understand, señor.”
“The seven-forty-seven. Is it still on the ground at Tenerife?”
The fueler raised his hands slowly, palms up. “I do not know.”
“Do you have a radio? Do you have contact with your superior—your jefe?”
“Sí.”
“Call him!” Yuri thrust two hundred-dollar bills in the man’s hand and watched him look at it with raised eyebrows. “Call him and ask him to find out whether the airplane has taken off yet from Tenerife. ¿Sí?”
The man smiled slightly.
“¡Sí, señor!”
The urge to return to the Gulfstream and start the engines and get airborne immediately was nearly overwhelming. He had seen Tenerife on the map. It wasn’t far. He remembered the name from the terrible collision in 1986 of two 747s on the ground. He could be there inside of thirty minutes, though he’d still have to figure out what to do on arrival.
>
His whole future—his and Anya’s—depended on his destroying that aircraft!
The fueler pulled a large walkie-talkie from his truck cab and spoke rapidly to his dispatcher. There was a long silence from the other end, then an answer. The fueler turned to Yuri.
“He is telling me he has heard radio reports. The airplane is there now, but he is ready to leave and has started his engines.”
“¡Muchisimas gmcias, señor!” Yuri said as he turned toward the open door of the Gulfstream and broke into a sprint.
The fueler watched with growing curiosity as the man with the turban dashed off toward his Gulfstream. The Arab’s English sounded more like that of an American. And it was strange, he thought, that the news of the 747 would cause such a reaction. What was his hurry? The man scratched his head in puzzlement.
SITUATION ROOM, THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.—7:10 P.M. (0010Z)
The President of the United States leaned on the communications console with folded arms and tried to focus on the fact that the American airliner supposedly attacked by terrorists and downed in the Atlantic was in fact now reported on an airport ramp in the Canary Islands, and missing an engine. The presence of an American-registered biological nightmare on Spanish soil had not gone unnoticed. A rapidly accelerating diplomatic earthquake was lashing out with shock waves from the epicenter in Madrid, and a collection of State Department officials were milling around in the Situation Room along with an Air Force three-star general and CIA Deputy Director Jon Roth, who had filled him in on the latest.
“Mr. President,” Roth began, “there’s a C-17 leaving the Mauritanian airfield at this moment for Tenerife. They’ve got some of the medical team on board with the biologically safe space suits. As General Lawson here can elaborate, one of the C-17 pilots is a reservist who’s also an airline pilot in civilian life and seven-forty-seven–qualified. If worse comes to worse, he can fly the damned airplane to the desert himself.”
The President raised his hand to stop Roth. “Are you telling me the captain of Flight Sixty-six refuses to fly any farther?”
Roth shook his head. “We don’t know, sir. The crew has turned off all their satellite radios and refuse to talk with anyone but the airport authorities. They’re demanding fuel, and threatening to release their infected passengers if they don’t get it. The Spanish government is scared to death.”
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