The Ghost of Flight 666

by Christopher Anderson

  “It is a split across the tread,” he explained, meaning the tire. “There are two red cords showing. I’ll write it up, but it will take some time to change it.” Jaren brought up the maintenance reports page in the ACARS.

  “No, we’ll write it up in Beijing,” the captain replied firmly. When Jaren looked at him in surprise, he qualified the statement. “Operations already let me know about it. Maintenance caught that during the walk around but they don’t have a tire. We’ll get it in Beijing; they already know about it.”

  “We don’t have a spare tire?” Jaren said incredulously.

  Abdullereda stiffened with real anger, and bristled, “Are you questioning my authority as captain or as a Muslim?”

  The first officer didn’t look satisfied, but he didn’t dare argue with the captain. In Asia that was simply not done. There was a strict caste system even amongst pilots. When Korean Air 007 flew into Russian airspace both first officers were well aware that their captain had erroneously programmed their Flight Management Computer, but neither of them had the courage to violate the cockpit protocol. They flew right into a Russian missile, fully aware of their captain’s mistake but too smothered by the caste system to violate tradition.

  Malaysia and Korea were worlds apart, but where their artificial caste systems were concerned they were hauntingly similar. Beyond that was the overt and covert oppression of the majority Muslims over the religious minorities in the region. It wasn’t always that way in Malaysia, but with the rise of Al Qaeda and the indifference of successive American and European administrations Muslim power and influence increased. Jaren said nothing. He went about his business sullen and silent.

  Their checklists complete, the tug pushed the big jet back from the gate. Twenty-three minutes later the captain shoved the power up and the million pound machine lifted into the warm, moist air.

  “Positive rate, gear up,” the captain ordered, easing the nose up to almost twenty degrees high. The landing gear whirred and clunked, folding itself in the fuselage. The aircraft accelerated quickly.

  “Climb power,” he commanded. The first officer hit the switch which then lit up with a bright golden light.

  “Engaged,” Jaren said mechanically.

  “Flaps to one, flaps up!” Abdullereda called as he accelerated through the flap retraction schedule. “After takeoff checklist.”

  “Gear off; flaps up, after takeoff checklist complete,”

  Abdullereda reached up and pressed the center autopilot command switch. Unlike Western pilots he didn’t hand fly the airplane any longer than was necessary. Like most Third World pilots he was almost completely dependent on the automation of the jet.

  They climbed out of three thousand feet, heading north over the island. The first officer switched from departure control to center. Center directed them, “Climb to and maintain flight level one-nine-zero.”

  “Climb to and maintain flight level one-nine-zero,” Jaren parroted, confirming the cleared altitude of nineteen thousand feet. Passing six thousand feet he leaned forward and changed his altimeter setting to the standard high altitude setting of one-zero-one-three Hecto-Pascals, a common altimeter setting that ensured all aircraft in high altitude airspace were flying at the desired altitudes.

  As he leaned back in his seat Abdullereda saw movement out of the corner of his right eye. His head snapped that direction to see Muhammad, who’d been standing behind Jaren and looking out of the window, suddenly grab the first officer from behind, cupping his left hand around the young man’s chin. Muhammad’s right hand disappeared behind Jaren’s head, but remerged holding something that flashed in the cockpit lights, something metal.

  Jaren cried out in surprise at the unexpected assault, but his voice changed in an instant. He gave a short, sharp cry that changed into a horrible keening, gurgling wail. Muhammad’s right arm ripped back viciously. In answer, a fountain of blood splashed the first officer’s flight instruments. His white shirt turned a bright crimson. Jaren reached out instinctively for his neck, but then grappled for the flight controls, flailing wildly. The autopilot clicked off and the aircraft lurched to the left.

  Abdullereda grabbed the stick, but the aircraft kept bucking to Jared’s spasmodic inputs. It wasn’t until he punched the override that Hussein could bring the big jet under control. The stricken first officer and father grew weaker, his eyes impossibly wide, his skin turning pallid. The dying first officer grabbed the throttles either by accident or instinct and pulled them back, perhaps a desperate desire to get back to the ground.

  Muhammad wrapped his arms around the first officer’s torso, pinning them to his side. As Abdullereda shoved the throttles back up—his stomach heaving at the sensation of the warm, wet, slick blood of his first officer on the plastic handles—he stared dumbstruck at the young man.

  He was no longer human. Jared was a marionette jerking and gasping. His white eyes vacuous, it was obvious that the young man’s brain was no longer processing information, it, like the rest of him, was slowly dying. The blood pumping out of his ripped throat completely covered his shirt and the terrorist’s arms, but it was coming out ever more slowly. Finally, with a gurgling rattle Jared slipped into unconsciousness and death.

  “Allahu Akbar!” said Muhammad triumphantly.

  Abdullereda felt sick.

  “Quick! Inform the brothers! Get them up here!” he ordered.

  Automatically Abdullereda cycled the “No Smoking” signs off and then on twice. A moment later there was a chime. The flight attendant was calling the cockpit.

  “Answer it,” Muhammad told him, adding with a macabre laugh. “The first officer is busy going to Hell!”

  Swallowing hard, Abdullereda answered the call. It was Suri. “Is everything all right up there? You didn’t mention any turbulence.”

  “We hit someone’s wake,” the captain replied. Just like hitting the wake of another boat on a lake aircraft caused invisible waves in the air that could rock a following aircraft. The explanation apparently sufficed. Suri told him two other men wanted to come up into the cockpit. There was a note in her voice that asked for an explanation. This was unusual, but Suri was not about to question a flight officer and a male.

  Whatever Jaren’s hesitancy due to the Asian caste system the gulf between men and women, both in Asian and especially Islamic culture, was much greater and fraught with more dire consequences.

  “It’s all right, they are sent by the company, and talked to me about it earlier. I should have let you know. I’ll let them up,” he told her soothingly. He turned the door switch to “UNLKD.” An electronic switch clicked and the door opened. Two men tumbled in and quickly slammed the door shut behind them.

  For a moment, the captain’s bearing returned to Abdullereda and he put the horrifying events behind him, but only for a moment. As soon as he got the autopilot back on and the aircraft back on its flight path he looked over to see the terrorists unceremoniously dragging Jaren’s body from the seat.

  The young man’s dead eyes looked at him, damning him, or so he thought, and then they were gone. They dumped him in the back by the door, leaning his dead body against the doorframe. Jaren’s head slumped over his crimson chest like a disjointed doll.

  Muhammad slid into the wet first officer’s seat and the other two terrorists strapped into the jump seats. They all donned their oxygen masks. Abdullereda followed suit. The Al Qaeda leader nodded to him and said sharply over the interphone, “Implement the plan!”

  They continued out on the flight planned route. The flight plan called for them to cruise at thirty-three thousand feet. Hussein requested and was granted a higher altitude, and they levelled off at forty-one thousand feet. As the peninsula disappeared into the darkness the last Malaysian controller—unaware that the aircraft had been hijacked—said goodnight and passed on Malaysian flight 666 to Oceanic Control.

  “Good night,” said Abdullereda, but instead of calling oceanic he turned off the transponder.

 
“Now they cannot see us correct?” asked Muhammad.

  “No, their radars can only see us through what we call ‘skin paint.’ That means they have to see us by bouncing radar off the aircraft, but civilian radars aren’t designed to do that. They’re designed to ping us with radar which triggers our transponder to reply with position, airspeed and altitude.”

  “Only you turned that off right?”

  “Yes,” he assured them.

  “Good, very good. Continue with the operation!”

  A calmer Abdullereda selected “Route 2” on the FMC and executed it. The aircraft began a turn to the left, heading out from Malaysia and into open sea. He was in control now and that made him feel better. Abdullereda took a deep breath, reached up and turned the Cabin Altitude switch clockwise to manual.

  “Go ahead, we are on Oxygen; we are ready,” Muhammad told him, nodding. His wild eyes and bloody clothes were made more macabre by the proboscis of the Oxygen mask. He looked surreal and terrifying.

  Reaching up to the Cabin Altitude Control knob Abdullereda touched the smooth, cold plastic—he’d never killed anyone before—he’d never even contemplated it. As soon as he turned the switch five hundred people would die of Oxygen starvation. He couldn’t even comprehend that number.

  “Do it!”

  Abdullereda turned the packs off first, stopping the aircraft from pumping in preconditioned air. Then he shut off the engine bleed valves. Now the engines would not supply pressurized air to the ducts. The last step was to let the air pressure inside the aircraft escape into the atmosphere.

  The airplane was like a balloon. The air pressure inside was greater than the air pressure outside; it wanted to get out. However, like a submarine the airplane’s hull was sealed, keeping the air pressure inside the hull and thereby keeping all of the people inside alive. People could survive at ten thousand feet or even twenty thousand feet, but there was so little Oxygen at forty-one thousand feet that most people would black out in a matter of seconds. Death would take longer but no one would be awake to experience it.

  Turning the Cabin Altitude Control Switch clockwise, Abdullereda opened the pressure relief valve. He felt the lightening of pressure on his chest. It wasn’t an explosive decompression but it was noticeable and uncomfortable. At once a red alarm light illuminated and a horn sounded. The air pressure kept dropping, as the interior of the airplane spit out all of its air, naturally flowing outward through the open valve and trying to equalize the inside pressure with the outside.

  The temperature dropped. An EICAS message informed him that the Oxygen masks in the back had deployed. He pointed to it and hacked his clock. The second hand started running, smoothly five hundred and forty-four people, passengers and flight attendants, had left to live.

  “The passengers have twelve minutes of Oxygen,” he said through the intercom.

  “We will stay up here long enough to ensure they are all dead,” the Al Qaeda terrorist told him.

  The twelve minutes were among the longest of Abdullereda’s life. The chime from the back, the flight attendants desperately trying to call the cockpit, never stopped. Someone was pounding on the door. Abdullereda could hear a woman yelling, screaming, pleading through the door—Suri. Even after the twelve minutes were up it didn’t stop.

  “I thought you said they only had twelve minutes of Oxygen?” Muhammad asked scathingly.

  Abdullereda’s mind whirled. No answer came to him. It wasn’t until he heard the sound of metal pounding on the door that he understood. “There are walk-around bottles,” he said quickly. “There are five or six bottles of Oxygen as well as a few fire-fighting hoods. They won’t last long at this altitude though, not with them expending themselves!”

  One of the terrorist got up and looked through the peep hole. “He is right,” he said, lifting his mask to shout out what he saw. “There are four or five women—” he slumped to the floor, dropping like a stone.

  “What happened to Fariz?” came the surprised voice of the other terrorist in back.

  “The idiot took his mask off!” Abdullereda shouted over the intercom.

  “I will put it back on!” the other terrorist said, leaning over and struggling with the inert body of his companion.

  “Be careful! At this altitude it only takes a few seconds to black out without your mask!” Abdullereda warned. It was no use. In his effort to save his companion, who was already turning purple, the other terrorist twisted and pulled at his Oxygen mask just enough to break the seal of his mask. He could still have saved himself when he felt the first wave of light headedness or nausea hit him, but instead he continued to struggle with the mask of his comrade.

  The end result of his stupidity was that he fell out of his seat and onto the prostrate form of his partner.

  “Do you want me to descend or repressurized?” Abdullereda asked desperately, thinking maybe, just maybe he could at least save Suri, who was still pounding weakly at the door.

  “No! If it is Allah’s will that they die as well then they will be martyrs!”

  They stayed at altitude for another half an hour. The banging on the cockpit door grew weaker and weaker and finally disappeared altogether. The cockpit grew colder. Finally, a shivering Muhammad allowed the captain to start the air conditioning packs and descend. He pressurized the cabin and descended to ten thousand feet; that would keep them out of radar coverage. Then he turned south, heading toward Indonesia.

  When they finally reached ten thousand feet Abdullereda took off his mask. The stench of shit and piss from the two dead terrorists mixed with the sharp metallic smell of blood. Looking back over his shoulder, Abdullereda saw the ashen face of Jaren looking disapprovingly at the two terrorists who’d collapsed on his lap.

  He threw up into the pubs bin next to his seat.

  Miserable and tired, Abdullereda flew the flight plan to Soekarno International, Jakarta, Indonesia. He didn’t make a single call, but he switched to approach frequency and heard the controllers vectoring people around, clearing the airspace so that he could come in and land. He felt like a robot, not trusting himself to land the airplane but instead hooking up the autopilot to fly the ILS into the airport.

  After landing he followed a truck across the field and into a hanger. At long last Abdullereda shut down the airplane. Even then it wasn’t over. It took both of them to move the rigid bodies away from the door so that they could open it. When they did open the cockpit door Abdullereda was met with Suri’s dead eyes.

  She lay back against a pile of other flight attendants. They were all huddled by the cockpit door. The Oxygen mask was still on her face. She stared at the door as if still wanting an answer as to why—why?

  He had to climb over her to get to the aircraft door, trying not to look back in the cabin which was eerily silent and yet stank of death. Reaching the door he had to clear another few bodies away, and then he almost forgot to disarm it, but he remembered, and threw the latch.

  Abdullereda was exhausted, but unlike a normal flight he didn’t go to a hotel. He was given a cot in a cold room with a concrete floor. On the floor next to the cot was a cup of cold tea and a Quran. He collapsed onto the cot still in his uniform which was stained with sweat, blood, urine and vomit, ignoring everything.

  CHAPTER 8: Rogues Gallery

  The meeting took place in a nondescript brick and mud house just inside the Syria-Iraq border. There was a single large table made of local wood, old beyond knowing, with rough edges and a top worn smooth from innumerable hands, clay bowls, and the like.

  The owner of the house, a large structure for the area, furnished tea for gathering and otherwise tried to play host. It was an important opportunity for his future and his family, but it had its risks as well.

  There were three groups of players gathered in his dining room, chosen because of the large size and the large window overlooking the outside terrace. Light was more important than security. This far north into Iraq and this close to the Syrian border meant there
were virtually no security risks.

  One of the groups present, a knot of four men, strangely they were literate, even well educated, but arrogant and brutal, represented ISIS. The ISIS killers wore their loose fitting clothing with proud rusty brown stains, bragging of how many non-conforming Muslim heads they piled on the side of the road or played soccer with. They appeared to have purposefully left civilization behind; they were grimy, unwashed, their teeth were yellow and their fingernails had suspicious detritus packed beneath them.

  Brutal beyond understanding, vicious to the point where they had even the hardline Al Qaeda operatives nervous, they were the new burgeoning power in Iraq and Syria, but their goals were much larger.

  Even the Al Qaeda terrorists, the pathfinders in the macabre art of internet friendly beheading had some semblance of awareness when their blood lust cost them more than it gained. The ISIS boys, as they whispered, fearful that they too would end up on the lists, were nothing more than blood drunk murderers.

  The third group present were the most nervous of the lot; they were the Iranian Shia, and it was their people who bore the brunt of the Muslim-on-Muslim slaughter. They had a right to be nervous. As incoherent as their policies and actions were there was at least a façade of legitimacy. At least when the Iranian Shia hung their homosexuals by cranes during lunch there was a maniacally driven, terrifyingly self-righteous and completely irrational Fatwa behind it.

  “I am Colonel Nikahd,” announced the only man, an Iranian, in a military uniform. Unlike the others, his demeanor was neither maniacal nor nervous. He was calm and in charge. “Welcome brothers. I send greetings from Ayatollah Hayayi and President Aliaabaadi of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

  He introduced a young man from the Iranian party, explaining, “Although he is in our company this young jihadi is not of Iran but of Turkey.”