The Ghost of Flight 666

by Christopher Anderson

  “Yes sir.”

  Jeremiah Slade walked out of the operations building a broken man. He’d followed the rules, done his job and done it well. This is what he got for it? “I’m done. Twelve years down the tubes. What the Hell do I do now?” He felt the physical weight of bills piling on his head.

  Slade went to the Officer’s Club and took a seat at the bar, wondering just how he was going to deal with this sudden change of events. He had six months to solve the problem, then the money stopped. What could he do? Slade was a pilot, but he loathed the idea of the airlines. It wasn’t an option anyway—the major airlines were all in bankruptcy. With that reminder he got out his wallet.

  With a bitter laugh, Slade mocked himself. “Ten days to payday and I haven’t got enough for a beer!”

  The bartender came over. Humiliated, Slade held up his hand. “Sorry, I can’t stay.”

  A voice from behind him said, “Two of whatever the captain is drinking—on me.”

  “Yes sir,” the bartender said, looking expectantly at Slade.

  Slade turned around to see a man in a suit with a government haircut holding a briefcase. He shrugged and motioned to the seat next to him, answering, “Michelob.”

  The man sat down. “You move fast Captain Slade. I didn’t even have a chance to catch you at the squadron before you bugged out.”

  “I didn’t have much incentive to stay.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” the man said with a shadow of a smile. He held out a hand. “I’m Joe Wilson. I’m an old friend of Lt. Colonel Wilkins. He called me and told me about your situation—the whole story—I’m sorry. The service hates to lose good men.”

  “They have a funny way of showing it,” Slade replied suspiciously, but he shook the man’s hand. Lt. Colonel Wilkins last bit of advice rang in his head.

  Wilson shrugged. “The Air Force’s loss is the CIA’s gain. That’s who I work for.”

  “The CIA? Why would you be interested in me?” Slade said as the bartender set down two bottles. “I’m a pilot. I don’t have any training in whatever it is you guys do.”

  “We always need pilots—good ones—we challenge our people,” Wilson said, tipping back the Michelob. He looked at Slade with a penetrating all-knowing expression. “You’re more than just a pilot though Slade. You’re an expert marksman; you earned your black belt; you earned a Master’s degree and your loyalty factor is off the charts. You’re what we call a suitable candidate.”

  He paused and took another swig of his beer. Turning to look at the soon to be ex-Air Force officer, the CIA recruiter put the question to Slade. “What if I were to tell you that your service to your country didn’t have to end here?”

  “I’m still coming to grips with my career spiraling down in flames,” Slade said with a sigh. “Do you need an answer right now?”

  “Let me put it to you in a practical sense Captain Slade,” Wilson said firmly. “Windows only stay open for so long. We want, no, we demand dedicated individuals. The reasons are obvious. We have needs, but so do you. Your—lifestyle—isn’t cheap Captain Slade. Your salary barely covers expenses. What’s going to happen in a few years? Well, by my reckoning, considering your responsibility oriented character and your special needs, well your expenses are going through the roof.”

  “You know a lot about me,” Slade admitted.

  “Our file on you is fairly comprehensive.”

  “You’re right,” Jeremiah sighed, but then he glanced at Wilson and his eyes narrowed. “Money isn’t much of a reason for loyalty. Wouldn’t that make me even more of a risk?”

  “If that were all there is to it we wouldn’t be talking,” Wilson replied dryly. “You’re the kind of guy who takes pride in serving your country. You demand responsibility; hence your money problems. You also need the adrenaline rush.”

  “You know about that do you?”

  The man nodded. “On one of your missions over Bagdad you flew over an Iraqi helicopter at Mach 1.2. The report said you overflew him by less than twenty feet.”

  “Ten—my wake turbulence caused him to depart controlled flight,” Slade smiled thinly. “I got credited with a kill; the only one by a Recce pilot that I know of.”

  “You have courage with a splash of nasty thrown in for good measure,” the agent said.

  “I was frustrated because I was flying an unarmed Recce bird in the middle of a shooting war,” Slade sighed.

  “Yet you still did your job,” the agent smiled, swigging his beer but not taking his eyes off Slade. “We can use men like you.” His expression turned deadly serious. “Understand me Slade, this isn’t James Bond and Specter. We’re in the middle of a war on terror. These people are not as sophisticated as your Hollywood villains, but they are crueler than you can ever imagine. Your job will take you into hostile territory.”

  Slade shrugged and said, “As long as I have a good life insurance policy, we’re set.”

  “May I take that for a yes?” the agent smiled, holding out his half empty bottle toward Slade.

  Slade thought about it. “To windows,” he muttered, and then he reached over and clinked the bottom of his bottle with Wilson. The deal was done.

  CHAPTER 1: Sowing the Seeds

  A decade later, on the island nation of Malaysia, Abdullereda Hussein was late to the hospital. It wasn’t because he’d landed late. Although he was an A380 captain for Malaysia Airlines he hadn’t been flying; he’d been whoring.

  During his latest visit to the brothels outside of Kuala Lumpur, his favorite being a walled estate overlooking the Strait of Malacca, Hussein received an urgent phone call from his son Abdulla. His wife Safrina was in the hospital with severe abdominal pains.

  “It cannot be labor yet,” Abdullereda complained. “She’s only six months pregnant. She’s simply got morning sickness that’s all. Why is she in the hospital; that sounds expensive?”

  “As expensive as your whores?” the seventeen year boy asked viciously. The sound of the intercom in the hospital made it hard to understand his son’s words, but it wasn’t hard to understand his feelings.

  “You will not talk to me that way!” the airline captain said angrily, defensively. “You have no idea how good you have it!”

  That was Abdullereda’s excuse for everything; especially his personal failures. He was a rarity in Malaysian society; the upper part of one percent among earners, and he took that seriously. The fact that his wife and children did not understand how successful he was, and that they didn’t allow for it and so ignore his faults, constantly grated on his nerves.

  “Stay away then, you’ll probably do more harm than good,” his son said and hung up.

  Furious, Abdullereda left the brothel and drove to town. It took two hours to get to the hospital through a driving rain. His way through the city of Kelang was slowed by flooded streets and snarled traffic, which only became worse when he entered Kuala Lumpur. When the wayward husband finally arrived at the maternity ward, angry at what was obviously an over-reaction by his family, he entered in a huff. His son and daughters, three of them, were waiting at the entrance to the ward.

  “You’re too late,” his son informed Abdullereda. “The baby, our brother is dead.”

  “What on earth do you mean?” he replied, angry and shocked.

  “Mother had a miscarriage,” he told his father. “She’s lost a lot of blood. She may die. They won’t know more until tomorrow.”

  As he told the news to his father a doctor stepped up, and asked, “You are Mr. Hussein, Safrina’s husband?”

  “Yes, yes, what happened?” he stammered, still registering the fact that he’d lost a son and his wife was now battling for her life. “Is it her age? Did she over-exert herself, fall—what happened?”

  “No, Safrina’s only thirty-two and she was doing everything right,” the doctor said, and then his eyes grew hard, accusatory. He clutched the pilot’s arm, and his voice dropped to a low, angry whisper. “It is for you that I have questions.”


  “Me, what do you mean?” he retorted.

  “I have been told by your family, not just your wife, that you have many relationships beyond you’re your marriage. Is that true?”

  Abdullereda took the doctor aside, away from his son and daughters. “What of it? What has that to do with anything?”

  “How long have you had Syphilis?” the doctor asked sternly.

  “A few years—so what?” he sneered.

  “You gave it to Safrina and that caused the miscarriage,” the doctor said harshly. “It may cost your wife her life. The miscarriage is a hard process for the body to go through to begin with, much like natural birth, but in this case she hemorrhaged severely. She’d lost a lot of blood by the time we got to her.” He sighed, and finished, “You will have to prepare yourself. Even if she survives she will never again be able to bear children.”

  Abdullereda was too stunned to speak.

  “So, it was you who did this to her!” Abdulla said from the door, furious, eyes glaring at his father.

  “Shut up!” his father told him.

  “You pig!” the boy said, using the most terrible way for a Muslim to describe another Muslim. “You pig. You’ve killed our mother!”

  “Shut up boy!” the father shouted, but when Abdulla opened his mouth to speak again he struck him, knocking the teenager to the ground. “I said shut up! You will obey me!”

  The doctor and the staff got between them and two attendants ushered him out of the ward. Abdulla shouted at his father, “We hate you! You pig! Go away, far away, and don’t you ever come back!”

  That was the last time Abdullereda saw his son. When they discharged his wife from the hospital she returned to her parent’s home in Borneo. She took the children with her. As much as Abdullereda believed that this was wrong, that a Muslim woman had no right to take his children and leave, no right to make a decision on her own, he could not stop her. Safrina’s father came to collect the family personally and Abdullereda could not face his father-in-law.

  It wasn’t only that. Abdullereda, even in his most angry moments, had no idea how he would face his son.

  The next few months deteriorated into long bouts of drinking and angry rants at the world. Abdullereda blamed his debauchery on others, on the materialistic poison of the West. On the sluts in China. On the Jews. On everyone but himself.

  The precipitous decline of his life crept into his performance at work. Hussein’s chief pilot summoned him to the office. It wasn’t the first time his supervisor had seen the effects of a broken marriage on his pilots. The men spent a great deal of time away from their families and there were always temptations, especially for the older men.

  “Take a month off Hussein,” he told Abdullereda in a communicative but serious tone of voice. “You have vacation coming up; I’ll move it so that no one will ask any questions.” When Abdullereda began to protest the chief pilot held up his hand and stopped him. “Don’t start. Take some time off; solve this before it becomes a problem I can no longer deal with. You should know, that after the Asiana crash in San Francisco the company has made it clear that our pilots are to be held to higher standards.”

  The supervisor sighed, looking at his desk as if troubled. He let Hussein know, “There is even talk of hiring Western pilots directly into the captain’s seats, outside our seniority list, right over you; over all of our senior captains. Don’t assume your job is safe. Take care of this now before it consumes you! Go to your mosque, Hussein. Talk to your imam. Put your life back together.”

  In desperation, Hussein took his chief pilot’s advice. He drove straight to his mosque and saw one of the imams. The prospect of losing his job was terrifying. If he were fired from the country’s national airline no one would touch him; his piloting skills would be worth nothing. With such a black mark on his name he’d be finished.

  That didn’t release the fury of his self-induced crisis. Hussein raged to his imam about the Western pilots who would be recruited to replace him. These wouldn’t be the best pilots in the West, but those who weren’t flying for the major airlines in the United States or Europe. Hussein knew Western pilots, even the castoffs, were considered superior to Hussein and his peers. It was humiliating!

  The imam listened patiently, finally telling Abdullereda, “This is a sign of the times. It is the inevitable encroachment of the West on our civilization. This is just the beginning Abdullereda.”

  “How do we stop it?” he asked automatically, even more furious.

  The imam smiled and introduced him to other men, men with similar experiences. Men who were underappreciated, victims of forces they could not control, victims of the West and the decadence of the outside world. “You see how the West targets you first. You are the best and the brightest. If you fall what is to become of the rest?”

  Other imams chimed in with variations of the same message: they were not recognized for the great people they were and it was not their fault. It was the West.

  For weeks he went to his mosque and prayed, but even though Abdullereda made friends with these men all he wanted was to get his life back; especially his son. He never realized how important that world was until he lost it. He’d do anything to get it back.

  When he found that Abdulla left Malaysia he was devastated. Safrina would not tell him where Abdulla was or how to get a hold of him. In one month Abdullereda lost his unborn son and his namesake. The prospect of dying and not having a son to speak well of his father, to carry on his line, was sobering; it put everything in perspective—but how to salvage his life and legacy?

  “Perhaps we can help,” said his new friends at the mosque.

  “Really?” pleaded Abdullereda. “What can you do?”

  “We can find out where your son is and what may cajole him to reconcile with you as is proper,” they told him. He readily accepted any help they could give him.

  A few days later Abdullereda’s friends brought a man with them to their daily gathering for talk and tea. The man was an Arab and horribly disfigured, but his friends treated him with great reverence.

  “This is Khallida, he has sacrificed a great deal for the cause. He has been fighting America and the West since before Nine-Eleven.” Khallida held out his right hand. Abdullereda took it, shaking the cold, clammy, limp thing. It reminded him of a hand cut off by the Sharia swordsman and then sown back on for looks only; it was still dead. Yet Khallida’s eyes burned.

  “I have talked to your son,” Khallida said, taking a cigarette from one of Abdullereda’s friends. “He is in Paris.”

  “Paris! What on earth is he doing there?”

  “He is one of our young lions and is set to take apart the Western world from within,” Khallida smiled, taking a long drag from his cigarette and blowing out a plume of blue smoke. “Although you are not yet reconciled I can see that he gained a great many positive lessons from his father; you have taught him to honor the jihad. That is commendable for both of you.”

  “Is he happy and healthy?” Abdullereda asked.

  “As happy as he could be without a father to look up to,” the Arab said sharply.

  Hussein’s head hung low. He closed his eyes in shame.

  Khallida continued in a softer tone. “I understand also that you have had a difficult time recently; but that you are looking for guidance. Is that so?”

  “Yes, yes, I have been lost,” Abdullereda admitted. “But I would do anything to win back the respect of my son—anything.”

  “Anything?” Khallida smiled, which was gruesome, and he segued shrewdly to his point, “I understand you are a pilot.”

  CHAPTER 2: Hook, Line and Sinker

  For the next few days Abdullereda spent a great deal of time with his new friends and Khallida. He found that he could pour his heart out to the Arab, who had heard so many stories like his that Khallida’s empathy was like a warm comforting blanket around the shoulders of a shipwrecked man.

  He read Hussein’s need and offered the soluti
on. “My friend, your life has been one of materialistic debauchery; it’s meant nothing to the people you love and it has done nothing to celebrate the glory of Allah. What has it been worth?”

  “Nothing,” Hussein admitted. “My whole life has meant nothing.”

  “We cannot let it end that way,” Khallida told him. “Look at me. I too have suffered, but Allah is not finished with me. I cannot go to paradise while he still has use for me. Therefore I persevere. I will continue the fight as long as Allah wills it. However, you are a fortunate man, very fortunate.”

  “How so, I’m miserable, and I see no way to redeem myself in the eyes of my family, most especially my son,” Abdullereda complained. “It is too late for me!”

  “It is never too late in the eyes of Allah, who can forgive all, but you must serve him,” Khallida told the wretch emphatically. “You know who I represent do you not? I do the holy work for al Zawahiri and Al Qaeda. We are always looking for men like you; men who have lost their way but seek the path of holy redemption.”

  “I do seek that path,” Abdullereda admitted. “I cannot continue the way I am. It has been a nightmare; there is not enough alcohol, there are not enough women to fill the void in my heart. Yet I have done such terrible things.”

  “Terrible sins require a great holy act to reconcile them; that is why I say you are such a fortunate man,” Khallida told Hussein, placing his good hand on the airline pilot’s shoulder. “I have just such an act that will set you above even the martyrs of Nine-Eleven!”

  Abdullereda looked up and his eyes glistened. “A martyrdom operation; yes, my son would respect that. What desire have I for the material things in this world anyway?”