by Marcus Wynne
The pilot repeated his request for all passengers to return to their seats. Sean looked back down the aisle, glanced at Hunter. Four Syrians strode forward. Sean spun out of his seat, and Hunter saw the adrenal dump in Sean’s face: white around the edges, the clenched jaw, narrowed eyes, hunched posture as his head came down and jutted forward of the shoulders. The ex-SEAL stepped back with his right foot, blading his body at a forty five degree angle, his back to the cockpit door, blocking the aisle. He held his left hand out while his right hand went to his pistol butt, all pretense at cover discarded, because the experienced Naval Special Warfare operator knew what was happening now.
“Stop!” Sean boomed, his voice driven by adrenaline. “Right there!”
14
Bill Dillon, the battered old Border Patrol Supervisor on his second federal career, veteran of many gunfights with drug and human smugglers along the Rio Grande, a fearless man who’d faced down as many as twenty armed smugglers alone, he died first. He knew it was coming; he had the same sense as Hunter, a sense honed by years on the sharp edge with a gun at his side, as often as not in his hand, a sense honed from reading people and situations under circumstances that spelled life and death for those involved. Till now, he’d been the one dealing out death. But the things that made him formidable also made him stand out. He didn’t look natural in his blazer and cheap off the rack slacks from Penny’s; he looked as though he should be wearing a battered Stetson, a shirt with button studs and crisp blue jeans tucked over cowboy boots. He would have been just another older man in the crowd then, but the regs, those damn regulations, they put him into an outfit he was itchy and scratchy in, and it didn’t make any sense to anyone who looked at him. Why wouldn’t he take his jacket off if he was so uncomfortable? That drew unwanted attention. The way he clocked the passengers around him, his narrowed eyes, all those physiological cues he had that spelled out to the well-trained: “switched on.” It was as though he wore a sign.
It made him the first target.
The first terrorist grabbed his left arm and tugged him hard, pulling him halfway out of his aisle seat. The second grabbed his head and yanked it back, exposing his throat. Bill went right for his holstered pistol, but the third terrorist pressed down on his shoulder and smothered his draw as Bill twisted against the hands holding him. Then the fourth one lunged forward and stabbed his plastic knife into Bill’s throat, twisting it in a half-circle to cut it out of the tissue, then stabbed it in again. Hani Hanjour crowed in triumph as Bill struggled, his life blood spraying out of his throat. Then Hani reached over and plucked Bill’s pistol from his holster, and grabbed the spare magazines from his belt pouches.
Now the terrorists were armed.
Three rows ahead, Kristy Wang heard the screams and turned and saw Bill die. She’d been riding the tripwire of adrenaline for a long time and now the switch was tripped. She did just as she was trained to do. She dipped her left hand between her breasts, into her bra sheath, and looped her index and middle finger into the capsule of her Hideaway Knife and tugged it out. The motion drew the attention of the terrorist beside her, but Kristy knew what to do. She stabbed across her body into the terrorist’s thigh, ripped out through the back of his leg as she used her body motion to twist her small form in the seat. Her right hand blurred towards the holstered pistol and then it was out, tucked in a tight pectoral index as she popped one two three rounds in less than a second into the terrorist, then hooked him out of the way with her knife, thrust the pistol into the temple of the next terrorist and pulled the trigger. The spray of his brain matter and hair and blood dotted her face as he collapsed and fell out of her sight picture. Her vision shrank into a black tunnel, just as she’d been warned it would under life threatening stress, and she snapped her head from side to side to break that physiological state and restore her baseline vision and now, in the slow motion that comes with massive adrenaline dump, the other terrorists surged towards her, knives in their hands. Kristy was up on her feet and the welcome rage flowed through her, releasing all her skills, and she braced her left hand, the knife still worn on the two fingers, beneath the right hand and went to work, double tap double tap double tap, retreat back towards the cover of the galley, moving with her back open she knew but she had to deal with the fight in front of her. Double tap bang slide locked back but they kept coming, one reached for her gun as she slashed out with the Hideaway and one of his fingers came right off, a scream of rage, and she hit him in the face with the empty pistol and knocked him back, slashed with the knife, then the knife hand flashed back for the spare magazine, the wonder of the superbly engineered Hideaway was that you could do a reload with it laced on your fingers and then someone snatched her by the hair and kicked her knee out from behind. She stabbed behind her with the knife even as she felt the ragged edge of the plastic knife at her throat and even with him sawing at her she kept fighting, furious, though now she felt the wet and knew what that meant. The dark hovered at the corner of her eyes and a sudden weakness went through her but even as the darkness closed in Kristy fought and fought…
June Huizar watched the woman Air Marshal die. It kept her frozen in her seat for a long moment, as it would most people not inured to sudden shocking violence. But the deaths of the two Air Marshals set her off. A terrorist raced down the aisle towards her on his way forward. June chambered her right hand, clenching the Mont Blanc pen, across her chest. As the terrorist came even with her, she stabbed the pen into his groin.
He screamed, a shrill sound, that brought her to her feet. June hit him hard in the head with the rolled up magazine, again and again, till he fell down.
“Get up!” she screamed at the other passengers. “Get up and fight! Help me!”
15
Nawaf Alhazmi watched the fight surge down the aisle. He was surprised, and a not a little dismayed, by the passengers standing up to fight. He hadn’t expected the American passengers to fight back; he’d expected them to do as they’d always done, and let their hard men do the fighting for them.
Nawaf bellowed, “Get back in your seats! We will kill you if you don’t sit down right now! Get down!”
His men took up the cry as they forced their way forward. “Get down! Get down!”
Khalid Alnawi snatched a woman up out of her seat. “Watch me!” he screamed. He cut her throat. “Her blood is on your…”
Khalid’s head snapped sharply to the side from bullet impact, and he sank cross legged into the aisle. From the forward cabin, facing back, twenty-seven year old John Valentine stood braced in a good combat Isosceles, having just killed his first man, and mastered his terrible fear even as he drew fire from the two pistols taken from Kristy Wang and Bill Dillon. John stood and fought, careful to avoid the panicked passengers, doing his best to keep his sight line clear till he fell, slowly, like a tower crumpling into itself, and was crushed beneath the feet of Syrian terrorists rushing over him to the cockpit.
It was one minute into the hijacking.
16
The words were hardly out of his mouth when Sean heard the shots in the cabin. It’s quite distinct, the close range blast of a handgun in an enclosed space; Sean felt the air pressure on his face, or so he thought as the shots cracked and rang in his ears. His right hand already on the butt of his pistol, he went smoothly into his draw stroke, the weapon clearing his Milt Sparks holster and then indexing off his right pectoral muscle, meeting his off hand there and punching out, his finger already taking the slack out as he roughly aligned his weapon with center of mass on the first terrorist, only a few feet away when he fired. In his slowed down vision he saw the white cloth of the Syrian’s shirt flutter and start red around two small, neat holes, and then the man was almost on him, even with Hunter…
…and Hunter, hunched in his seat like a terrified passenger, thrust his left hand into the aisle, the Hideaway Knife ringed on his left hand and cut into the groin of the terrorist who’d caught two in the chest but was still rushing forward, his k
nife upraised. Hunter swung in his seat, his own pistol coming up one handed one two three shots in less than a second, the longest one five feet away, three headshots just like that, and the terrorists dropped, surprise on their suddenly dead faces. That was a personal best for time and accuracy; he’d never shot as well in practice, but Hunter knew he only worked at his peak when it was for real and this was the moment he’d trained for all his life…
17
Christy Confetti cowered in her seat as shots rang out and people screamed. Then the man she’d talked to at the boarding gate, a lifetime ago, grabbed her by her hair and tried to yank her out of her seat.
“My seat belt! The seat belt!” Christy screamed. She fumbled at the belt that held her in place. The terrorist jerked her up and shoved her in front of him, his plastic knife to her throat, and marched her down the aisle towards the Air Marshal blocking the cabin door.
“Put down your gun! I’ll cut her throat!” the terrorist shouted.
Sean Young kept his weapon level and burned in his sight focus on the little sliver of terrorist head behind the terrified face of the pretty young girl with the blade to her throat, forced himself to concentrate on what he had to do…
“Her blood is on your hands!” the Syrian shouted. He sliced the blade hard across Christy’s throat. Both her small hands clasped at the sudden gaping wound as though she could press it shut, hold back the life rushing out in torrents, and it seemed strange, as her life swirled down a drain of blackness, that she could think only of sun and water and ferries on Puget Sound.
The terrorist let the dying girl drop while he fumbled at another woman in her seat. But Sean got the shot he’d waited for; he put away his feelings about what he’d just seen, like the warrior he was, and focused on what he was there to do, and he pressed the trigger at just the precise moment and the .357 Sig round cracked out on a tongue of flame and spat itself precisely into the exposed mid-skull just above the ear of the terrorist’s turned head, and the Syrian terrorist, Ahmed Fayez by name, faithful husband of Imam, devoted father of two and the murderer of many Israelis, dropped cross legged as his brain was destroyed and his life snuffed out, just like that.
18
Hamza Saleh punched the male passenger who reached for Hamza’s pistol, snatched up from the dead woman Air Marshal, and cleared his line in time to see Ahmed Fayez fall. Hamza was a good shot, one of the reasons his primary job was to recover a weapon from the slain Air Marshals immediately and put it to use. He’d been well schooled in the training camps, done well at the point shooting curriculum first developed by the British and the Americans during World War 2, and freely available in excellent training books and video tapes. During his time in America, he’d attended several shooting schools, where he’d been treated with suspicion. But as a legal American resident, green card and all, with no criminal history, his check had cleared and he’d been tutored by the same people who taught the American military and law enforcement. He gripped the pistol in a solid two-handed grip, tucked tight into his pectoral muscle, and as his fellow fighter fell into the aisle, Hamza punched the pistol straight out, locked into a solid Isosceles and broke the trigger, focused on the front sight pinned to the Air Marshal’s chest, tracked it up through the recoil cycle and back down as he pulled the trigger again and again till the Air Marshal fell out of Hamza’s sight picture.
19
Sean felt the bullets strike him, red hot pokes into his chest and abdomen, the shooter was good, he was shooting below Sean’s outstretched pistol and hands, and that took a cool head to do that, gun against gun at close range, Sean knew that, he’d been here before…he staggered back a step, brought his gun up, c’mon SEAL, you can do this, every day is Hell Week remember that, you can do this, keep the weapon aligned and do your job, don’t pay attention to the sudden weakness, the sense that all your energy is rushing out of you like a balloon with a fast leak, collapsing inward on yourself, you have a job to do, Sean Young, this is what you do, you’re the last line of defense and killers are coming and the innocent are screaming, Sean, and you are the warrior, it’s your job to stand in front and take what comes because that’s what you are, that’s who you are, don’t pay attention to the blood running down your front, okay, so you’re on your knees, keep the gun up, keep shooting Sean, c’mon SEAL, pain is just weakness leaving your body, use the pain to stay focused, c’mon Sean, c’mon SEAL, don’t pay attention to the darkness coming Sean, front sight, press, front sight press, acquire/fire, acquire/fire, see him fall, you’re doing your job, okay the carpet feels rough against your cheek, keep your goddamned eyes open, Sean, c’mon SEAL, it’s not the dark water you’re swimming through now, you can do this, you’re the last line, there are women and children screaming for help Sean, this is what you do, and…
His last word was “Hunter…?”
Hunter James, the last living Air Marshal on board American Trans Air Flight #923, swung out of his seat as his friend and partner Sean Young fell. Hunter stepped over his friend’s body and button hooked into the narrow galley space right outside the cockpit door. The terrorist who’d shot Sean fell into the aisle, his torso riddled with Sean’s last shots. But there were others storming up the aisle.
20
Nawaf Alhazmi rallied the remaining hijackers. “Leave them and move forward!”
Knots of passengers fought with the hijackers in the mid and rear cabin. The Hispanic woman shouting at them was their leader, and Nawaf ran straight at her, his blade held out like a fencer’s sword. Her eyes swelled large when she saw him and she froze, and then he drove the knife hard into her soft belly, doubling her over. He yanked the knife out and pushed her down into the carpet, stepped on her and then past her, waving the bloody knife over his head.
“Forward! Forward!”
Just ahead of Nawaf, Jimmy Cline, a 50 year old ex-Marine with a bad leg, kicked out his foot and tried to reach the pistol that had fallen from Hamza Saleh’s hands, but it slipped beneath the seat. Two terrorists rushed past him, followed closely by Nawaf Alhazmi, and Jimmy struck futilely at them as they rushed past, ignoring him and the other hands grasping at them as they cut their way forward towards the last remaining Air Marshal.
21
Hunter James was in the zone, the zone where warriors live, that place where they control time and ride the adrenaline rush, that hormonal cocktail that rises up from all the glands inside and carries those fighters to a place where it seems as though everything is in slow motion, and all the skills cut into the neural pathways after years of training and practice are lit up by the energy flowing from the hippocampus and the amygdala, the little switchboards of the limbic system that kick in when the organism is in danger, and the conscious mind shrinks to a tiny observer that watches as the subconscious mind, so much faster, so much more skilled, so much more deadly when engaged, leaps forward to take charge in the fight. Decisions are made faster than conscious thought, movements calibrated, and the impossible happens as though commonplace. His firearms instructors would have told Hunter it’s impossible to make three killing headshots in less than a second, but he did; his combatives instructor would have told him it was unlikely that he could take on two attackers with knives at close range simultaneously, but he did…as one grabbed for his gun hand, Hunter cut his arm out of the way with the Hideaway in his left hand, banged his head forward in a savage head butt, courtesy of his combatives mentor, Dennis Martin in Liverpool, then bulled the stunned terrorist around and used him as a shield to keep off the second one, slashing at him with his knife, push the body and kick it hard in the direction of his opponent, clear the knife arm out of the way with the Hideaway, cutting clean down to yellow-white bone, then stick the pistol in his face and pull the trigger, only once, save your ammo, the fight is on and the others are down, the fighter grabbing for his knife even as he fell and now Hunter’s line of fire was clear, clean shots, bam, bam, bam, and three more fell into the aisle, and it’s impossible to make those kind of hea
d shots some theorist might say, but Hunter was an Air Marshal, by definition one of the finest combat shots in the US arsenal, and he was an old hand, and an instructor, and he was sudden death with bullet and blade and empty hand when he rode the adrenaline rush into the zone, and so the terrorists fell as the brass scattered around Hunter’s feet and his slide locked back and he speed loaded his pistol with his Hideaway still in place, a bloody whirl of steel and then, just for the briefest instant, he wished that Raven were still alive to see him, his prize pupil, and how well he did at the moment of greatest need.
There was a sudden lull, one of those moments that come in combat, when silence falls, and the stink of burnt gunpowder and the brassy stench of hot blood and the sour reek of fear fill your nostrils, when the screams of terrified children and women ring out loud, as though in a church, when the moans of the wounded and dying filter through, and the fighters stand and take stock of how the battlefield has changed.
In the aisle, Nawaf Alhazmi stood behind his last fighter.
He pushed him forward and shouted, “Kill him!”
Rashid Ahmed had seen his previous three companions die one two three. He knew the Air Marshal was a good fighter, but he was an American, and Americans, no matter how fierce, had a core of softness in them. Much of the training in the camps had focused on how to take advantage of that. One way was through the use of hostages, so Rashid snatched up a frail old woman, slashed at the young man trying to hold him back, then held her in front of him as he pushed her down the aisle, hunkered down behind her like a shield. He closed with the Marshal, and he stepped right over the body of the dead Marshal laying in the aisle and over the bodies of his fellow terrorists and right at the Marshal and he shoved the old woman forward and followed with his knife…
