Twenty

by James Grippando

  “Good enough,” said Carter. “The FBI was able to obtain fingerprints of those two hijackers. Those are the only fingerprints the US government has for any of the nine-eleven hijackers. Before nine-eleven, fingerprinting wasn’t part of routine visa applications under US Immigration laws.”

  With the mention of fingerprints, it all clicked for Andie. “Are you saying the unidentified fingerprint on Amir Khoury’s gun belongs to . . .”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” said Carter. “It belongs to the Lebanese-born pilot of Flight Ninety-Three.”

  “How did it get there?”

  “We don’t know. But there’s no question about the match. It appears they first met in Germany. Jarrah was a student at Hamburg University of Applied Sciences when he joined al-Qaeda’s Hamburg cell. Amir did a semester abroad in Germany while he was at Wharton. We assume they reconnected when Jarrah came to Florida to take flying lessons.”

  She was angry at Carter but directed her response to the ASAC. It was one of incredulity.

  “You approved this operation, using my husband, without telling me or him about a direct link between Amir and one of the nine-eleven hijackers?”

  “Andie,” said Schwartz, fumbling for words. “Would it have made a difference if I had told you?”

  She took his point. “You’re right. Jack would have done it. But maybe he would have finally listened to me and kept a gun in his office to protect himself. I’ve always told him he’s a sitting duck. Maybe this time he would have been in a position to protect himself instead of ending up a hostage.”

  “Now is not the time for finger-pointing,” said Schwartz. “You heard Amir. We’re on the clock.”

  “I can talk to him,” said Andie.

  “I can’t imagine why you would want to do that,” said Carter.

  It wasn’t a question of “want.” It had started with the way he’d tormented her with his accusations of cowardice, and it had continued on through the threat against her husband. “I need to talk to him,” said Andie.

  “This could go very badly,” said Carter.

  “Carter’s right,” said Schwartz.

  The quick decision against her came as a surprise. “You heard Amir,” said Andie. “He threatened to kill a hostage—my husband—if I’m not on the line in ten minutes.”

  “That’s one interpretation,” said Schwartz.

  “You have another one?”

  He looked at the tech agent. “Play back that last sentence.”

  The techie tapped away on the computer, then brought up the audio recording and played it for all to hear.

  “If she doesn’t call me in ten minutes, tell her she’s lost the chance to say good-bye.”

  The recording ended. Having heard it a second time, Andie understood Schwartz’s concern, and she voiced it for both of them.

  “He’s going to kill him either way,” she said.

  Schwartz elaborated. “If you don’t call, you lose your chance to say good-bye. Either way, you lose Jack.”

  Carter put a finer point on it. “And the idea that he’s gracious enough to let you say good-bye is bullshit. He’s a fucking terrorist. He’s probably going to blow Jack’s brains out while you’re on the line, so you can hear it.”

  “I get the picture,” said Andie, meaning that it was hardly necessary for Carter to have painted it so graphically.

  “Then we all understand what we have to do?” asked Schwartz.

  Andie nodded.

  “All right,” said Schwartz. “I’m giving SWAT the yellow light. In T minus five it’s green.”

  Chapter 61

  Jack was pacing more than walking, his mind working furiously to drill down on what exactly Amir had meant by that last warning: tell her she’s lost the chance to say good-bye.

  As a lawyer, Jack argued constantly as to whether words were ambiguous. If the language in a statute or agreement was susceptible of more than one meaning, lawyers were allowed to drone on endlessly about what was really meant. But if the language was plain on its face, that ended the matter. Judges would shut down any arguments about the true intent behind the words or any discussion of what the speaker had really tried to say. The plain language spoke for itself.

  Amir’s words were not ambiguous: whether Andie got on the phone or not, Jack was a dead man. He figured he might as well take Amir down with him.

  “Ever see that movie?” Jack asked. “Flight 93?”

  Jack had. The true story of how the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 were able to overcome the hijackers and prevent them from achieving their terrorist mission was well known. But he probably wouldn’t have recognized the name “Ziad Jarrah” as that of the pilot if he hadn’t seen the film.

  “Most of the nine-eleven hijackers were Saudi. Jarrah was Lebanese, as I recall. Aren’t you of Lebanese descent?”

  “I’m American,” said Amir. “Born in this country. Fucked by this country.”

  Jack was glad Molly didn’t fan the flames with another chip-on-the-shoulder comment. He wanted to keep this focused. He talked while he walked, his tone somewhere between the peripatetic delivery of a college professor and the cross-examining technique of a trial lawyer.

  “Jarrah was part of the notorious Hamburg cell. You ever spend any time in Germany, Amir?”

  “He was a college student there,” said Molly.

  Jack moved on quickly, not wanting to make this a three-way conversation.

  “I remember for sure that Mohammed Atta, the pilot of the first plane to crash into the World Trade Center, took his flight training in Florida. I don’t recall specifically about Jarrah. I’m guessing he trained in Florida, too. For every disaster, there’s always a Florida connection.”

  Amir checked the time on his cell phone. “They got seven minutes. Talk all you want, Swyteck. I’m not extending the deadline.”

  “I remember—not just from the movie, but from everything I’ve read—all of the planes hijacked on nine-eleven had five hijackers except for one: United Flight Ninety-Three. There were only four on that flight, including Ziad Jarrah.”

  “So?”

  “I’ve never talked to anyone who thinks that having only four hijackers on Flight Ninety-Three was part of the plan. Either somebody backed out or didn’t get through immigration. There was some kind of problem with the fifth guy.”

  “Old news,” said Amir. “What’s it matter?”

  “It matters because, until now, I’ve never heard anything about al-Qaeda trying to replace the missing guy.”

  “Guess he was just lucky. The others are all dead now.”

  “Yeah,” said Jack. “Fifteen on the three planes that hit their target. Four on the one that didn’t get there. All dead. All nineteen of them.”

  Jack stopped walking. He locked eyes with Amir, who stared right back at him.

  “Were you twenty?”

  Chapter 62

  Andie took a sip of water. Her mouth was desert dry. Her stomach was in knots.

  Schwartz had made the call. An FBI tactical team armed with M16 rifles and outfitted in black SWAT regalia—helmets, night-vision goggles, and flak jackets—was ready, eager, in fact, to go on a moment’s notice. Andie felt anything but ready. Definitely not eager. Negotiation was by far the preferred way to end a hostage crisis. If something went wrong, she’d never forgive herself for standing down and letting her ASAC pull the trigger, so to speak, on the tactical team option.

  And the very last thing she needed was to be caught in the middle of a disagreement between Carter and Schwartz.

  “I need you to tell SWAT to stand down,” said Carter.

  “The team is already moving into position,” said Schwartz. “We can’t change the plan every two minutes.”

  “I’ve seen SWAT called back later in the game than this—as late as the breacher’s boot in the air, ready to kick the door down.”

  “With good reason, I presume.”

  “There’s good reason here,” said C
arter.

  “Look, Carter—”

  “I want to hear it,” said Andie. “If there’s good reason to think this is not the best way to get the hostages out alive, I want to know.”

  “Losing your nerve is not a reason,” said Schwartz, a little too harshly, but they were all under stress. He adjusted his tone. “To revisit a decision like this, something in the calculation has to have changed.”

  “It has,” said Carter. “We all just heard it on the audio feed.”

  “You mean Jack and Amir talking?” asked Andie.

  “Yes.”

  “Mostly what I heard was Jack talking,” said Schwartz. “And Amir listening.”

  “Exactly,” said Carter. “Jack essentially accused him of being linked to the worst terrorist attack in history, and Amir didn’t shut him down. I think he’s ready to talk.”

  “What I heard,” said Andie, “is that the clock is still running no matter how much Jack talks.”

  Carter directed his response to the ASAC. “We need to keep this dialogue going. Everything we’ve learned so far tells us that Riverside was job one—the North Tower, if you will. If Amir knows something that could stop the next attack, we lose that the minute SWAT sets foot in the room.”

  Andie took a deep breath, recalling Carter’s warning to her outside the command center: If I have to lose the Riverside School shooter’s mother and his lawyer to stop the next school shooting . . .

  “This is the moment I’ve been working toward for nearly a year,” Carter added.

  “You actually had me,” said Andie. “Until you made it about you.”

  Schwartz was of like mind. “What you just said goes double for me, Andie. But Carter’s first point still has merit.”

  Andie couldn’t disagree. “We can’t just let the deadline pass. We need an extension.”

  “I can get it,” said Carter.

  “Or maybe I could,” said Andie.

  “No,” said Carter. “So far, talking to you has been his only demand. Once we put you on the line, there’s no leverage to string this out.”

  For an instant, all Andie could think of was Jack in that motel room, the clock ticking on the five-minute deadline. “What if he shoots him?”

  They seemed to understand that it wasn’t really a question. Just her fears, out loud.

  “You know something?” said Schwartz. “Most people in Jack’s position right now would probably be begging for their life. I don’t know Jack well, but well enough. He wouldn’t have started this dialogue and gone down this road if he wasn’t on board with what Carter is proposing.”

  Those were kind words, and Andie knew her ASAC wasn’t just blowing smoke.

  “Okay,” said Andie, and then Schwartz gave the order.

  “Do it, Henning. Get us more time.”

  Andie did a double take, but it was Carter who put her thoughts into words.

  “You said Henning,” he pointed out. “You meant me.”

  “No,” said Schwartz. “I definitely meant Andie.”

  Chapter 63

  Jack had one eye on the bed frame.

  There were two of them in the pile of furniture that was their makeshift barricade, but the one that had caught Jack’s attention was broken. It had been broken before Amir had given the order to turn the beds on their sides and shove them up against the front window with the couch, the dresser, and all the other stuff that, throw in a few “angry men,” reminded Jack of the battle scene out of Les Misérables. The one in good condition had a crossbeam bolted to the frame that kept the full-size mattress from sagging in the middle. The other had lost its crossbeam, probably to children jumping on the bed, or perhaps something more X-rated. The replacement beam was a flat strip of metal; it looked as though the motel’s handyman had cut it to order and just shoved it into place, no bolts. Cut was the operative word, as it appeared that maintenance had used metal-cutting shears instead of a hacksaw, leaving a jagged end to a six-foot length of metal that was sharp enough to draw blood if applied with enough force. With enough courage. At the right opportunity.

  “Why’d you back out, Amir?”

  Jack was still walking as he spoke. Molly was seated cross-legged on the floor, her back against the wall. Amir was on the other side of the room. He checked the time on his cell phone, offering no response.

  Jack was slowly shifting into cross-examination mode, which was comfortable territory for him, or at least as comfortable as he could be under the circumstances.

  “I’ve heard it said that not all the nine-eleven hijackers knew they were on a suicide mission. Is that true, Amir?”

  Amir rose from the armchair. He seemed agitated, but Jack’s read was that it was something other than his questions that had the hostage taker so wound up. Time was running out, and maybe Amir didn’t know what to do when the deadline inevitably arrived. Or maybe he knew exactly what needed to be done, and he was coming to terms with it. Jack kept talking.

  “Some people think the reason Ziad Jarrah failed is that he had only three muscle hijackers to keep the passengers out of the cockpit. If there had been a fourth, who knows what might have happened?”

  Amir checked his phone again. Time was ticking.

  Jack had exhausted his knowledge of facts and theories about Flight 93. But if he followed his cross-examination instincts and climbed farther out on this limb—if he could tie Amir to Ziad Jarrah’s failed mission in a way that would cause Amir to let his guard down for just a moment—maybe Jack’s opportunity to draw blood, literally, would present itself.

  “The argument could be made that the missing hijacker is what caused the mission to fail,” said Jack. “And just imagine if, after all the years of planning and training, someone who’d promised to be the fifth hijacker backed out at the last minute. Wow. That would have to piss people off.”

  Amir returned to the armchair, took a seat, and breathed in and out. He looked mentally exhausted, and not just from the stress of a hostage standoff. Maybe Jack’s initial read had been wrong. Maybe his questions were getting to Amir. Tormented was the word that came to Jack’s mind. Tormented by Jack’s words. And the past.

  “I didn’t go looking for this,” said Amir.

  Molly bristled. Jack kept walking. He didn’t prompt Amir with another question. He just let the man say what he apparently wanted or needed to say. He was looking at his wife.

  “Sometimes the past comes back to bite you,” said Amir. “Out of nowhere, someone steps into the life you’ve worked so hard to build for yourself and your family and says, ‘You owe us. Pay up. Make this right. Or we ruin you.’”

  Molly looked right back at him. “You could have gone to the police.”

  “Yeah, sure. Like they’d cut a deal with—” He stopped short of saying the twentieth hijacker. “With me.”

  It wasn’t clear what reaction Amir was trying to draw from his wife, but whatever it was—pity, understanding—Jack wasn’t feeling it. He did what any trial lawyer would do when cracks appeared in the target. He moved in for the kill.

  “You owed them,” said Jack, again following his intuition. “So you gave up the one thing that would forever make you and al-Qaeda square. Radicalize your own son.”

  Amir was still looking at his wife, but slowly his expression changed, as there was not an ounce of pity or understanding coming his way from Molly’s direction, either.

  “Her son.”

  Jack seized on it. “And Xavier failed, didn’t he? The shooter’s tactical gear didn’t disappear because his mother burned it. It disappeared because the real shooter got away.”

  Amir checked his ammunition one more time, then shoved the magazine back into place. The stress drained away from his face, as if he were satisfied that he had both the bullets and the nerve to get the job done. “Crazy thing is, if he hadn’t met Maritza, they might have actually talked him into doing it.”

  “Who’s they?” asked Jack.

  He glanced at Molly. “The same people who put
the footie in our mailbox when they thought the Khoury family might step out of line. A not-so-subtle reminder that they had us by the short hairs.”

  “Who’s they?” Jack asked again.

  Amir smiled, but only slightly. “Well, if I told you that, then I’d have nothing to negotiate with. That’s my ticket to Cuba.”

  His cell phone rang. He rose, pointed his gun at Jack, and said, “This better be your wife.”

  Jack hoped it wasn’t. Not yet.

  Amir starting pacing. “That you, Henning?” he said into the phone.

  Jack couldn’t hear, but he knew from Amir’s reaction that it was indeed Andie on the line.

  “Let me put you on speaker,” said Amir, a hint of sarcasm in his tone. “This is America. We’ll do this democratically. Say it again, Carter.”

  The agent’s voice filled the room. “I’m willing to negotiate. But first I need to talk to Jack.”

  “I vote no,” said Amir. “Swyteck, how do you vote?”

  Jack stopped walking. “I vote yes.”

  “Molly?” said Amir. “It’s up to you.”

  The look of distress on her face was something on the order of what Jack had seen back in his office when the beating from her husband had chased her out of their home. She didn’t answer.

  “See?” Amir said into the phone. “It doesn’t work. This democracy you presume to force on every culture in the entire world—it doesn’t even work.”

  “Come on, Amir,” said Andie, her voice carrying over the speaker. “You put in a tall order when you asked the FBI to put me on the line. We gave it to you. All I’m asking in return is to hear Jack’s voice on the phone. And then Molly’s.”

  Jack was certain that the FBI had already heard their voices through listening devices. Clearly Andie was just getting the hostage taker in a bargaining frame of mind.

  “Sounds like you think my demands are negotiable,” said Amir.

  “We haven’t heard your demands,” she said. “What if I get you some food? Or maybe I can get the power turned back on. Is it getting hot in there?”