The Ghost of Flight 666

by Christopher Anderson

  “There’s nothing here,” he said in a low guttural growl, his frustration making him forget he was speaking directly with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, not that it mattered to a Special Operations grunt. “I’m telling you that the workers, cranes and trucks are expecting a shipment of three large boxcars of sand—sand, nothing else. We’ve been through the entire facility; our people are here questioning the workers. None of them are on the Al Qaeda watch lists. Where did Slade say he was?”

  “We got cut off, Captain, I don’t know where he is now,” Mertzl replied, equally frustrated. “He was with the cargo before we got cut off. He thought it was heading to Jakarta; we’ve got nothing that tells us anything different.”

  “Damn it, he’s expecting help when he lands,” Kincaid said, stifling another curse. An Indonesian man stepped up to him, a CIA operative. Killer listened to him for a second and then relayed the information to Sorensen. “Hey, I got one of CIA’s people here. He’s telling me the workers are all of Soekarno’s boys—they’re clean—however, they tell a story about some of their relatives working at Soekarno International Airport being strong-armed by some Jemaah Islamiyah thugs. I’m heading over there to check it out.”

  “Well hurry, because Slade is landing within the next half hour,” Mertzl told him. “The chopper has a limited range. So wherever he is, he’s about to land.”

  “On my way!”

  #

  The Sikorsky started to descend. Slade couldn’t see forward but he could see to the sides. There was a city glow ahead of the chopper, a big city glow, but something wasn’t quite right. If they were flying to Jakarta then the dark mass of Sumatra should be on his right; inexplicably it was on his left. Was he then headed north and not south?

  Slade knew where the ship had been: east of the island of Sumatra about two hundred and fifty miles from Jakarta. So to get to Jakarta the chopper had to fly south and along the coast of Sumatra to the island of Java. Any way he looked at it the chopper had to come from the north; it had to.

  He decided he must be turned around, it could happen, but if he was the big island of Sumatra was on the wrong side of the aircraft.

  The Sikorsky turned. The city lights came into view and then the airfield. Slade’s stomach turned to ice. That explained it. His gut instinct was right—again. The Sikorsky was flying north. It wasn’t going to Jakarta; it was going to Singapore. That airport wasn’t Soekarno International; it was Changi.

  Everyone was in the wrong place. Slade’s help was five hundred miles to the south, and Slade had no way to let them know. He was on his own. “Damn! If I’d known that I’d have tried to get rid of this pallet,” he muttered to himself. “It’s too late now; we’re descending.”

  The Sikorsky was in a left hand descending turn, heading toward the hangar complex north of runway zero-two-right. As they approached it he could see the hanger doors open. Even at a mile away Slade could make out the distinct, bloated, ungainly shape of an A380—suddenly everything fell into place.

  “They’re flying the uranium out of here; it’s only a question of where.” The several hundred armed jihadists waiting on the tarmac confirmed it. He couldn’t stay where he was. Landing on that tarmac surrounded by hundreds of jihadists was going to mean a quick, painful end to his life.

  Thinking fast, Slade guessed the flight path of the pilot and got ready to exit the Sikorsky. Crawling onto the back of the cargo pallet, he stepped off the aircraft.

  Slade was still on his rappelling line. Quickly he let himself down, gauging his altitude by the waves breaking on the shore of the beach. Slade guessed he was under fifty feet and that the chopper had slowed to around sixty knots. He ran all the way to the end of his line, waiting for the chopper to slow even further. He waited as long as he dared before releasing the brake.

  Slade felt the freedom of nothing but air beneath him; he’d never liked that feeling even during a safe jump. Plummeting from a guessed at altitude, in the dark, into water of unknown depth at a guessed at speed was not comforting. He assumed his entry position with legs slightly bent, ready to absorb the shock of contact with the bottom or a reef—hopefully neither.

  His last thought before hitting was landing on a hungry shark.

  The water engulfed him and all Slade heard was the sound of bubbles. He stopped in the water without hitting bottom. That was a good sign. Nothing hurt. Nothing appeared dislocated. Good! He struck upwards, controlling his fear. For all Jeremiah Slade had been through he’d never gotten over night dives; he hated them, absolutely, positively hated them. He didn’t even like to wade in the ocean at night.

  To panic, however, was the last thing you wanted to do in the water. Panic meant prey; it attracted unwanted guests faster than anything except an open wound.

  That reminded Slade of the fight on board. He was going to bleed, no doubt about it. The faster he got to shore the better.

  Slade got to the surface and took in a lungful of air, getting his bearings. The sound of the surf on shore was clear. He turned and looked, heading for the white line of foam and the airport lights. Slade had to hurry, but he had to swim smoothly.

  The shore was a hundred yards away, but it seemed a mile. He kept swimming, regulating his breathing, everything was going fine. He was halfway there. Thirty yards to go. He reached down and touched the bottom with his foot. It felt strangely firm but yielding—then it moved—a thrill of panic hit Slade.

  Something blunt and rubbery hit him on his left side. Slade reacted instinctively, and that meant he reacted angrily, through fear, firing back with his left elbow, feeling it contact a big, heavy, rubbery object. The object didn’t move because Slade moved it, it was too big. His head whipped around and he saw a shiny black, blunt nose turn to the left at his counter-strike.

  The shape and size of the nose left him thinking one thing: tiger shark!

  CHAPTER 39: My Kingdom for a Phone

  Slade hated many things: jihadists, the Dallas Cowboys, Hippies, former members of the Weather Underground, and right at the top of the list were tiger sharks.

  He hated tigers; hated them with a visceral all-encompassing hatred. They were ugly, dead-eyed, trash eating, Great White wannabes who had a taste for people. They didn’t hit you like Great Whites; tigers mouthed you, looking at you with those zombie-eyes. They gnawed you and ate you slow. They made Slade’s skin crawl.

  After everything he’d been through, Slade was not about to be eaten by the second-most-dangerous shark in the oceans. He ripped his P90 around and fired it underwater in the direction of the tiger shark. He didn’t hope the bullets would hit or hurt it, but the flash and sound might scare it away.

  Slade emptied the magazine and then struck out for shore as fast as he could swim. The remaining distance took an interminable time. He didn’t try to swim smoothly, the shark knew where he was; it was just a question of whether the shark thought he was worth it anymore. Every stroke took forever, every breath rang in his ears. Slade’s heart pounded so hard every shark in the Indian Ocean must have heard it.

  Boom, scrape! His knee hit something. Scrape! His other knee hit something. Then his windmilling hands scooped up a fistful of sand, beautiful, yielding, fluffy sand! Slade’s feet touched the bottom and he was up, kicking off his fins, and running, sprinting through the surf. He didn’t stop until he was above the surf line surrounded by soft white sand that gleamed dully under the stars.

  He threw himself down, gasping for breath. Slade didn’t wait, running up the beach, but made a silent promise, “Never, never again will I swim at night—never again no matter what. The president can take a quick trip to Hell before I do that again!”

  Slade made his way off the beach and through the jungle, heading for the hangers. There was a thin stretch of forest between him and the hangers, which were lit up like mid-day. It took five minutes to reach the fence line. There were armed patrols on the inside and on the outside of the fence. It was very well organized, especially for jihadists.r />
  He waited, timing their patrols, until he had a large gap. Then it was a matter of running to the fence and cutting an entry slit close to the ground where the guards wouldn’t notice it. This he accomplish using a battery operated rotary saw with a tungsten blade the size of a small flashlight. In thirty seconds he was through, shoving the loose end of the fence below the thick bladed grass so the gap wouldn’t show. Then he was off to the hangers.

  Although the area was well lit, there were plenty of shadows in the heavy moist air. Slade melted into the darkness moving from one hanger to another before he found what he sought. Looking through the window next to a back door he spied an A380, he was guessing the A380, in Singapore livery being attended to by over a hundred jihadists.

  It was a well-run operation. The cargo doors for the A380 were open and already a loading truck was driving up to the open bay with the three containers on board. It stopped in front of a loading platform. The first container rolled from the truck onto the platform. Once they were locked into place the scissor lift engaged and raised the container to the level of the cargo compartment. The container was rolled into the compartment and secured. The platform lowered and the same routine ran its course for the second and third containers.

  To his consternation the huge aircraft was already hooked up to a tug. It looked as though the jet was ready to go and just waiting for its deadly cargo.

  From his vantage point Slade could see the entire operation. Everything was laid out, as behind the aircraft there was an operations center that took up the entire back corner of the hanger. A bank of four big screen LCD’s, large enough for a small stadium were set up like a NASA launch control center. There were mimicking screens set up all over the hanger so that the support personnel and even the military guards could see what was going on. Inset in the screens were a constant stream of clerics and jihadist commanders giving speeches, urging the jihadists forward to the culmination of their cause.

  The monitors told Slade everything he needed to know.

  One monitor showed the interior of the flight deck where a captain was preflighting the aircraft. It showed three other men wearing jihadist uniforms, presumably his guards.

  Another monitor showed the loading of the containers in the cargo hold. The containers were bracketed by wooden pallets holding scores of smaller packing crates; each labelled with three letters: TNT, tons of it. Slade whistled at the dark genius behind the plot. “They’re not usinf the Uranium for a thousand dirty bombs, this thing is one huge dirty bomb; it’s a poor man’s neutron bomb. With the aircraft as a trigger and a few tons of TNT to disperse the Uranium an entire city could be made uninhabitable.”

  The next large screen had a flight plan on it. The flight plan looked as though it took off from Singapore and landed in Paris.

  Paris was the target!

  Slade admitted it was a juicy target. Why not destroy the City of Light and revenge themselves on Charles ‘the Hammer’ Martel for his stopping the jihad at Tours in 732? That was how Islamists thought. The cultural center of modern Western Europe would be a big target, but then again, he thought, wouldn’t Rome be better? The Eternal City was the center of the Islamists biggest religious rival in the world, but then again that would quite possibly unite Catholics and all the Christian world against Islam.

  Still, the A380 could reach anywhere in the world. Why not finish off what they started in New York or even take out Washington D.C.? Slade was frustrated and mystified. Strategically, no Western City gained the jihad anything. They’d feel awfully good about themselves but they’d most likely unite the world against them. They’d be annihilated—period.

  Were they that stupid? Slade had to admit they were—still, it just didn’t make sense.

  He was right. Conveniently, the face of an imam appeared on the inset to the screens. In Arabic, he explained, “It is a glorious day. Today, September 11th we launch a strike at the heart of evil in the world.” A flashing red circle appeared on the flight plan. It wasn’t Paris. The red circle was three quarters of the way along the flight plan, right on the flight path: Israel, specifically Tel Aviv.

  Slade understood. “Everyone thinks they’re flying a simple passenger flight from Singapore to Paris—it happens every day at 11:55 pm with Singapore 334—only they’ve rerouted to avoid ISIS airspace—with the cease fire with HAMAS conveniently in effect they can fly over Tel Aviv. Israel isn’t worried about a civilian Singapore jet flying over their airspace. It’s the perfect cover. When they get over Tel Aviv they pull an Egypt Air, put the nose on the Knesset, and boom! Tel Aviv becomes the world’s first radioactive city.”

  The imam continued in extreme animation, waving a scimitar over his head and banging the podium with it. “On September 11th, a Holy Day in the new Caliphate, we will strike the head off of Zionism. We will ask the rocks and the trees to deliver up the Jew and they will cry, “Here he is! Come slay him!” We will strike them on the necks even as the Prophet did, sending their heads into the trench of history! First Zion and then the West. We will, by Allah, celebrate our inevitable victory in the White House and spread Islam through the world as the Prophet, the Blessed One, said, Slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them.” He slammed his sword upon the podium, shouting in frenzied, maniacal emotion, “Kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out. And Al-Fitnah is worse than killing! Fight them until there is no more Fitnah and worship is for Allah alone! Remember the words of our Prophet, Peace be upon Him. Hold them in your hearts and go forward to jihad with joy!”

  Slade shuddered, knowing the passages from the Quran, knowing that the “Fitnah” reference included him, Helen, the kids, his friends and his civilization.

  He had to get to the aircraft—but how?

  Slade needed a miracle, a small one, but a miracle.

  It came in the form of an off-key wail that made Slade cringe. “Sounds like a cat with a blow torch up his ass!”

  The offending noise came over the loudspeakers of the hanger complex: a call to prayer.

  Obviously the operations were behind schedule because they were only halfway complete with loading the Uranium. Despite that the crews stopped what they were doing, climbing down from the loaders, the cargo pits, the fuel trucks—whatever—they proceeded quickly to retrieve their rolled up prayer rugs and gathered at the front quarter of the A380 to pray.

  The captain and his guards left the flight deck and climbed down the stairs. Prayer rugs awaited them at the foot of the stairs. The video screens switched from the operations within the hanger to a prayer service.

  Slade saw his chance. Shaking his head at the irony of it. He rushed to the door. While the entire jihadist force blinded themselves to his presence, he muttered, “If I get this done and it’s because they had to take time off for prayers; well, I think I’ve got all the answers I’ll ever need. There’s a price to pay for everything, including misplaced piety!”

  He had maybe five to fifteen minutes; it all depended on what reading from the Quran they used. A voice began reciting over the hanger speaker—good—it was a long verse, about fifteen minutes then. Slipping through the door, Slade slunk through the equipment, vehicles and sundry things to the aircraft. Sneaking up the airstairs was out of the question. The captain and his guards were at the foot of the stairs and there were literally dozens of jihadists crowded around him.

  He headed to the forward cargo pit. With every jihadist facing the other way he climbed the loader and slunk into the cargo pit.

  Slade made his way further forward. There, just as on the Airbus tour in Paris, was an access hatch to the electronics and equipment bay beneath the flight deck. He opened the hatch and crawled into the darkness. He went to the ladder with the intention of getting onto the passenger deck and hiding there but the prayer ended.

  Shouting resumed and the loaders were turned back on. Boots thumped on the deck above his head. He w
as stuck, but at least Slade was on the aircraft. Half an hour later the aircraft was towed out of the hanger and the engines started. Soon the huge jet lifted off with Slade on board as well as three tons of highly enriched Uranium, and twenty-five tons of TNT.

  He waited for the gear and the flaps to come up. Slade wanted to capture the aircraft while the pilot was busy climbing out, but he wanted a little altitude above the ground. If it involved a fight he wanted time to recover the aircraft before it crashed. Unlike the jihadists Slade had no intention of being a martyr unless there was absolutely positively no recourse.

  He firmly believed in Patton’s doctrine of making the other dumb bastard die for his country. The jihadists wanted to die; Slade was more than willing to help them along.

  After five minutes, he climbed the ladder to the lower deck. He’d done this in Paris. There wasn’t any trick to it, other than making sure no one saw him climb up out of the floor.

  Slade was careful, cognizant that unlike the other jumbo aircraft in the sky, the Boeing 747, the cockpit was adjacent to the lower deck instead of on the upper deck. He knew the layout for the A380. Besides being incredibly ugly it had a galley between the E&E deck and the cockpit.

  Atop the short ladder, Slade reached up and took hold of the flush mounted lever, rotating it counterclockwise. That released the latch and he lifted up the hatch just a few inches. Bracing his shoulder against the hatch, holding his P90 with the other hand left Slade balanced precariously on the ladder.

  That was coincident with the A380’s climb over the Titiwangsa Mountains, and the turbulence always present at the knees of those hills. The roiling mass of rough air shook the huge aircraft like a leaf, propelling Slade off the ladder and back onto the metal floor of the E&E compartment. That was all he remembered.

  CHAPTER 40: Descent Into darkness