* * *
Captain David Becker completed his line check of Concorde 02. He stood in the shadow cast by the drooping nose cone. A squad of infantry stood around the aircraft and glanced at him from time to time. An El Al security man, Nathan Brin, approached. “How’s it going, Captain?”
“Good.”
“We’re satisfied. You?”
Becker looked at the plane and nodded.
“See you upstairs.” He walked off.
“Right.” Becker stared up at the craft. This white bird of peace looked like anything but a dove. It was a sea bird of some sort, Becker decided. A stork. A gull, maybe. It sat up high on long legs because of the high-pitch angles you had to use with a delta wing. If it weren’t for the long legs, it would drag its ass on the ground when it took off or landed. God made sea birds with long legs for that reason. The technicians at British Aircraft Corporation and Aérospatiale had come to the same design conclusion. So had the Russians when they built their supersonic airliner, the TU-144. Brilliant. It was good to see that God was right, thought Becker.
Then there was the nose cone. The beak. It stayed down during takeoffs and landings, like a bird’s, for better visibility. It was raised during flight for aerodynamic streamlining. The British, French, Russians, and God—not necessarily in that order—had independently found the same solutions for the problems of flight. Aircraft had started off as rigid structures and their performance was, therefore, confined to rigid parameters. Birds were flexible. Man started making aircraft flexible with movable ailerons and rudders. Then came the retractable landing gear. Then the swing-wing jets. Now there were noses that dropped.
Becker looked down the length of the plane. It was not really a big aircraft. The fuselage was fifty-two meters long and the delta span was only twenty-seven meters. Gross weight with passengers and fuel was 181,000 kilograms, about half as heavy as a 747.
One of the last refuges of the old English system of weights and measures was to be found in the cockpit of an airplane. All the world’s pilots had been trained in both the English language and the English system of measurement. It was a world standard, and it was not easy or necessarily desirable to do away with it altogether. Most instruments were dual marked and pilots shifted easily from one system to the other in their conversations. Next to the Mach air speed indicator in the Concorde was the quaint knot indicator. To Becker, it was a fixed point in a rapidly changing world. He pictured an old square-rigger bravely trying to make five knots against a headwind.
Becker began a final walk-around. He stood under the portside delta and looked up. No, it wasn’t built to move a couple of hundred tourist-class passengers around. It was built to move seventy VIP types faster than sound to their peace missions, oil deals, and foreign lovers. An elitist aircraft. Maximum speed was Mach 2.2—about 2,300 kilometers per hour, depending on air temperature. The speed of a high-velocity rifle bullet. And at that speed, flying was an aeronautical limbo where many of the standard rules of flight were suddenly changed.
There were a lot of peculiar demands at supersonic speeds. There was the big drag factor at the speed of sound. The delta wings helped there, but deltas had poor handling characteristics. They yawed and rolled and the plane became difficult to fly. Delta wings had to approach at high angles of attack, and if you got on the back of a thrust curve, air speed management was very difficult.
If you lost an engine in a regular commercial jet, nobody got too upset. Lose one at supersonic, and you could easily lose control of the aircraft. Then the plane would flip-flop and disintegrate.
The skin temperature could get up to 127 degrees Celsius at Mach 2. If you got above that, the plane wouldn’t immediately become unglued, but you would weaken the structure and you might pay for it on another flight.
At Mach 2.2, you have to think fast. If you wanted to level at 19,000 meters, for instance, you had to start doing it at 17,000. If you corrected too fast, you’d have the passengers hanging from the baggage racks.
Then there was the thing that had bothered Becker from the first day he had taken the Concorde up to 19,000 meters. It was the problem of sudden cabin decompression of the type that can happen if you are hit by a missile, or if there is a small explosion on board, or if somone shatters a window with a bullet. In a conventional commercial aircraft, flying at relatively low altitudes, about 9,000 meters, cabin decompression was not a critical problem. The crew and passengers put on overhead oxygen masks and breathed until the aircraft descended into thicker air. But at 19,000 meters, you needed a pressure suit to make breathing possible, even with an oxygen mask. Lacking pressure suits, you had only a few seconds of usable consciousness to get down to where you could breathe with a mask. There was no way to do that at 19,000 meters. You put the mask on, but you blacked out anyway. The on-board computer sensed the problem and brought the plane down nicely, but by the time you got down to where you could breathe with the mask, you woke up with brain damage.
Becker had a recurring nightmare: a brain-damaged crew coming out of their blackout—sucking on the oxygen masks, if they still had the wits to grasp that simple necessity—trying to figure out what all those funny lights and dials in front of them were, while their eyes rolled and saliva drooled from their mouths. And all the while, the computerized Concorde held steady, waiting for a human hand to guide it. Neanderthals in Apollo. And in the back, seventy idiot passengers, in different states of mental debility, making faces and grunting. In his nightmare, the Concorde always landed and there were people on the observation deck waving. Won’t they be surprised when their friends and lovers come down the stairway? Becker closed his eyes. He knew it wasn’t possible to bring it home from those altitudes after more than thirty seconds’ loss of oxygen. It was only an irrational nightmare. Yet he kept feeding a simple command to the conditioned-response part of his brain: If nothing in the cockpit looks familiar anymore, touch nothing. The fuel would eventually run out.
Becker wiped the sweat from his face and looked out across the field. Fifty meters away, Avidar was looking up at Concorde 01. He wondered if Avidar had nightmares like that. No, not Avidar.
5
Miriam Bernstein sat in the VIP lounge, drinking coffee with Abdel Jabari. Jabari saw the other Arab delegate, Ibrahim Ali Arif, come in, and he excused himself to speak with him.
Bernstein saw Jacob Hausner sitting alone at the bar. She stood up, hesitated, then walked toward him, but he didn’t turn. “Hello.”
He glanced over his shoulder. “Oh. Hello.”
“Look, I’m sorry if I made some people uncomfortable before.”
He stirred his drink. “No problem.”
“Good.” She stood silent for a moment. “So. Are you coming with us?”
“Yes. I just heard from the PM. I’ll be on 02.”
She didn’t know why that should be good news, but she felt a sudden surge of something like well-being before she could sublimate it. “I’ll be on 02 also.”
There was silence.
She forced a smile and spoke again. “Do you want to change planes—or do you want me to?”
Why did he feel so strongly that the remark was made to provoke him? Hausner had a gut feeling that she was repressing some strong emotion and that it had to do with him. He looked at her. There was absolutely nothing in that face to reinforce his feeling, but it persisted. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”
She looked into the mirror. Her eyes drifted between her own expression and Hausner’s as if to make sure no one’s mask had slipped. Her expression was all right, but she could see the tension in her body. She realized that she was almost standing on tiptoes. He always had that effect on her. She relaxed and smiled neutrally. “Nice of you to come. Can they spare you here?”
Hausner drained off his drink. “They had their choice of keeping me here for a crucifixion or letting me go and hoping I’d go down with the ship if something happened.”
She nodded. “So you chose to go down with t
he ship.”
“They chose. I think they’d like to see me go down and the ship stay up. But you can’t have it both ways. Buy you a drink?”
“I don’t drink, but—”
“Nobody in this goddamn country drinks. When I was in the RAF, nobody flew unless they were blind.” He pushed his glass toward the bartender. “Well, see you on board.”
She looked at him. “Right.” She turned and walked off.
Matti Yadin came up to the bar when he saw Miriam Bernstein move away. “That bitch giving you a hard time again, boss?”
Hausner thought a moment. “I’m not sure.”
* * *
Teddy Laskov walked into the VIP lounge, looking for Tom Richardson. He had some things to ask him. He was also supposed to give Richardson the alternate tactical frequency that he and Talman had just selected. He considered calling it into the American air attaché office, then thought better of it. For a reason that he couldn’t fully explain, even to himself, he decided to keep the information from Richardson. If the Americans really needed it when he got airborne, they could get it from Talman at The Citadel.
Laskov saw Hausner and Miriam speaking at the bar. He saw her turn and walk off. If he didn’t know that they detested each other, he’d have to say that she looked hurt by something Hausner had said. He was surprised at the jealousy he suddenly felt. Laskov watched her. She didn’t see him. They had already said their good-byes. He turned and walked with his bearlike gait down the back stairs where a jeep waited to take him to his squadron.
* * *
General Benjamin Dobkin stood near the coffee bar, speaking with Isaac Burg.
Dobkin looked at Burg. “So you’re coming to New York with us?”
Burg nodded. “I think I should check on my agents in New York. Also, I have a lady friend there and she is going to feel the Wrath of God in about seven hours.” He laughed and his eyes twinkled.
Dobkin stared into his cup, then looked down at Burg. “It’s their last chance, isn’t it? I mean, if ever they were going to strike, it would have to be now. If they don’t, they are completely washed up in the eyes of their supporters. This is the biggest and most important target they have ever had. It is now or never for them, isn’t it?”
Burg gave a slight nod. “Yes.” He looked at Dobkin. “You know, when I got out of that meeting before, I was very confident. But human beings are very resourceful and cunning creatures. If they have the will, they will find the way. That much I know, after dealing with the Arabs for all these years. They are not the buffoons the press makes them out to be, as you and I know very well.” He nodded again. “Yes, I’m worried.”
* * *
Concorde 01 and Concorde 02 stood in the sunlight with their doors thrown open. Already on board each craft were six men from Hausner’s security squad. Matti Yadin sat with the six men in 01 and briefed them. They each carried a Smith & Wesson .22 caliber automatic pistol The .22 caliber round wasn’t supposed to go completely through a human body and puncture the cabin. In theory, it looked safe, but shooting guns in small pressurized cabins was never a good idea.
The security men also had on board, as standard equipment, an old American M-14 rifle which had been fitted to accept a starlight scope for night shooting and a 10X Crossman sniper scope for day shooting. There was also on board an Israeli-made Uzi submachine gun. This was a very small weapon, forty-six centimeters long, and weighing only four kilograms but capable of firing a magazine of twenty-five 9mm rounds with much effect. The M-14 and the Uzi were to be used only outside the aircraft.
There was another piece of ordnance on board that none of the people in the airplanes knew about. In the tail of each Concorde was a half-kilo of plastic explosive stuck to the fuel trim tank, put there over a year before by two now-deceased Algerians, in faraway St. Nazaire and Toulouse. When the aircraft accelerated, fuel would be pumped into the empty tank in order to change the aircraft’s center of gravity, making supersonic flight possible. If and when the explosive was detonated, the aircraft would be blown out of the sky.
* * *
Teddy Laskov sat in the cockpit of his F-14 and played with a pocket calculator, figuring his flying range based on such variables as fuel consumption, gross weight, expected maneuvers, and air temperature. Laskov, the old dogfighter, wanted very much to keep his 20mm cannon rounds, but he had to concede that they were not only too heavy but redundant as well. Missiles. That’s what it was all about today. Maybe Richardson had been right about that. He called out of the open cockpit to the armorers. “Take out the twenty millimeters.”
When the cannon rounds had been removed from each craft, he looked to his left and right and spoke into his headset. “Start your engines.”
Twenty-four Pratt and Whitney engines, with over 9,000 kilograms of thrust each, exploded into a ground-shaking, ear-piercing wail.
A minute later, Laskov held up his thumb and shouted into his microphone. “Zanek!” Scramble.
The twelve fighters rolled toward the runway.
* * *
Tom Richardson realized too late that he hadn’t gotten Laskov’s alternate frequency. It wasn’t the kind of information he could solicit from The Citadel over the phone and, for some reason, his own office hadn’t gotten it yet. Also, the change in takeoff time, although he’d expected it, had caused him some inconvenience. He wondered if Laskov had taken his suggestion about not carrying the cannon rounds. It wasn’t that critical, one way or the other, he decided.
The Peace Delegation was filing out of the lounge, down the back stairs, and into the waiting buses. Richardson ducked into a phone booth near the bar and dialed a number in Jericho, in the occupied West Bank. He didn’t trust telephones, but he had little choice and less time.
* * *
Jacob Hausner stuck his head into his outer office. “Did the French SDECE call back yet?”
His secretary looked up. “No, sir.”
“Damn it.” He looked past her toward the window. The buses were almost filled. “I have to go. I’ll probably fly back with one of the Concordes tomorrow. If anything important comes in while I’m in the air, call The Citadel and they’ll put it out to the Concorde over the scrambler. I’ll be on 02.”
“Have a good trip. Shalom.”
“That’s what this whole goddamned thing is all about. Shalom.” He walked quickly down the corridor.
* * *
Matti Yadin looked out the window of the bus that was going to Concorde 01. He saw Hausner hurrying by below him. “Boss!”
Hausner turned and looked up.
Yadin leaned out. “If you don’t want to ride with—you know—I’ll switch with you.”
Hausner shook his head. “No. That’s all right. It’s a short flight. Besides, it’s bad luck to change flight plans.” Hausner hesitated. He was still worried about something, but he didn’t know exactly what. He’d developed a bad feeling about this flight, all of a sudden, and he could see in Yadin’s eyes the same uneasiness. “Remember Ahmed Rish?”
“How could I forget him?” said Yadin.
“How, indeed? Just think about him and radio me if anything clicks. See you in New York.”
Yadin forced a smile. “Shalom.”
Hausner reached up and grasped Yadin’s hand, something he had never done before.
* * *
Chaim Mazar stood in the control tower of Lod Airport with a pair of field glasses to his eyes and looked out at the buses approaching the Concordes. A glint of light from the roof of an apartment house in Lod caught his eye and he swung the glasses toward it. He grabbed for his field radio as he kept his glasses trained on the building. He spoke rapidly into the mouthpiece. “Chopper Control, this is Tower. I saw a flash of light in quadrant thirty-six. Pink stucco apartment house. The roof. Get somebody up there.”
Mazar watched as a Huey helicopter descended on the roof of the house within seconds. Four of his men jumped out with Uzi sub-machine guns before the helicopter landed. A few sec
onds later, a voice sounding out of breath came over his squawk box. “Tower, this is Huey seven-six.”
“Roger, seven-six. Go ahead.”
“No problem, Tower. Young lady with a sun reflector.” There was a pause. The voice sounded amused. “Sunbathing in the nude, over.”
Mazar wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead and sipped from a glass of water. “Roger. There’s supposed to be an air-raid drill in progress. Get her something to wear and place her under arrest. Keep her in the chopper until you can turn her over to the police.”
There was a long pause. “Roger, Tower.”
“Tower, out. Mazar slumped back into his chair next to the air traffic controllers. He turned to one of them. “That was a little rough, but it’s been a long day.”
* * *
Sabah Khabbani lay at the crest of the hill and looked hard through his field glasses. The day was bright and clear, but nine kilometers was a long distance. It appeared as though the Concordes were loading. This was as good a time as any. He raised his hand. He waited until a helicopter passed over.
Behind him, in the pines, the three men knelt a few meters from each other. They each held a mortar round poised above the small hole in the ground. Next to each man were three additional rounds. They would each alternate two high explosive rounds with two white phosphorus rounds. The twelve rounds should blanket the entire area between the terminal and the Concordes. If one piece of incendiary matter punctured a fuel tank—and there was no reason why that shouldn’t happen—no one would survive.
By the Rivers of Babylon Page 7