by Ward Larsen
“TLAR,” Bryan suggested.
It was a term Slaton was familiar with: That looks about right. “TLAR,” he agreed.
“Fair enough. Be warned, I can’t hear you very well—too much wind noise on your mike.”
Slaton adjusted the thin boom microphone closer to his lips. “That better?” he asked.
“It’ll have to do.”
Slaton moved aft where Sergeant Willis was studying the situation. They stood ten steps from the edge of a loading ramp that was wide enough to accommodate an M1 Abrams main battle tank. And beyond that—a half-mile drop to an unseen ocean of sand swales. The wind swirled mightily, whipping Slaton’s hair and snapping at his shirtsleeves.
As a trained sniper, he had worked with countless weapons in hundreds of situations. Never had he encountered anything like this. The wind, the engine noise, the intercom, a target and a shooting platform that both moved in three dimensions. What other challenges would arise? What complications had he not foreseen? His was a mind-set of preparation and routine. What he was about to do—shoot two men piloting a weapon of mass destruction—verged on madness.
The sergeant pointed behind the rear door. “Since we’re coming from underneath,” he said, “you won’t see the jet until we’re almost in position—our big-ass tail is gonna block your view.”
Slaton saw the problem—the C-17’s massive T-tail hovered high behind them. “How far back should I go?” he asked, gesturing to the ramp’s aft edge where the heavy-gauge steel floor gave way to an abyss.
“The farther back you go, the sooner you’ll see him. Take it as far aft as you can stand.”
Slaton sighed. “Yeah … I was afraid you’d say that.”
* * *
He settled into a prone shooting position, two sandbags provided by Willis giving support to his weapon. He tried to project an image in his mind: the nose-on silhouette of an airliner falling into view. How many times had he lay planted on his stomach trying to visualize a shot, trying to assimilate in advance all possible variables? Tonight those variables were simply unknowable.
He was traveling at roughly three hundred miles an hour, his target slightly less. His standard 7.62mm round would have to penetrate a multi-ply windshield that—according to Bryan—was tempered to withstand a strike from a large bird at two hundred and fifty miles an hour. The windscreen he had to breach was also angled roughly 30 degrees upward and canted to the side. To further complicate things, the glass in front of one of his targets would slant to port, the other to starboard. Would his round penetrate cleanly or deflect? Would his sight picture be subjected to refraction, as when one looks into water at an angle?
How would the atmospheric conditions affect his bullet path? In sniper school, the instructors had quibbled over relative humidity and temperature. A three-mile-per-hour crosswind was a serious concern. Here Slaton was dealing with a tailwind of three hundred miles an hour, some small, incalculable component of which would be from the left or the right—no way to tell which. Bryan had also warned to expect aerodynamic turbulence at the nose of the MD-10, like the bow wave from a freighter plowing through heavy seas. Only this bow wave was invisible, no way to tell where it began and ended. In essence, he was facing the mother of all ballistic puzzles.
So Slaton did what all good shooters did. He took a deep breath and relaxed.
The shot would come naturally, as it always did. The hard part was the waiting.
SEVENTY-FOUR
He lay on his belly in total darkness, his legs wide for stability. Slaton was three feet from the edge of the ramp, a lip of dull steel that gave way to a half-mile drop. He had positioned slightly closer to the edge moments ago, but the turbulent airflow induced movement on the gun’s barrel, and so he’d pulled back.
The swirling night air was cold, countered by hot engine exhaust that shredded the slipstream on either side. Through his planted elbows he felt vibrations in the airframe, a constant thrum conducted through the ramp’s thick steel into flesh and bone. If all that wasn’t distracting enough, Sergeant Willis had walked through the cargo bay and disabled every source of illumination. The sparse desert outside shone an occasional light, and seemed to blend perfectly with the odd star peering through the clouds above. Altogether it gave Slaton the discomforting sensation that he was flying, but with no orientation of up or down. Simply hurtling feet-first through a hurricane-swept void.
He forced away the distractions and concentrated on his scope, elevated to where his target would soon appear.
“Climbing now,” said Bryan over the headset, his tone hushed like a soldier patrolling enemy territory. “We’re one mile in front, speed matched. Five hundred feet below.”
Slaton saw something, blinked once, and there it was. The engines stood out most prominently, their hot sections evident in the low-light scope. He pressed the sight firmly to the orbit of his eye—at this range it didn’t matter, but there was undeniable comfort in the fact that no light whatsoever could escape to highlight their position. He increased the magnification and settled his sight on the cockpit. Fortunately, the instrument lighting inside had been toned down, and even from a mile Slaton could distinguish two melon-like heads behind the angled windscreen.
The pilots were talking.
Bryan again over the headset, “We’re level now, one hundred feet below the target’s altitude. Beginning to slow. Range fifteen hundred yards.”
Slaton sensed a drift to the right. He was about to issue a correction when he realized he was facing backwards and would have to invert every command. A complication he should have foreseen. “Five degrees right,” he murmured into his headset. He felt the C-17 bank ever so slightly, and the drift was arrested.
At this range both targets were in the field of view of his scope. All things being equal, Slaton decided to take the captain first—an earlier discussion with Bryan had convinced him that the control mechanism for the drop system was likely on that side of the cockpit.
When Bryan called, “One thousand meters,” Slaton began shifting between his two targets. He wanted to take the first shot from as close as possible, hoping that minimum range would overcome the long list of ballistic variables. Too close, however, and they might be seen. So far the pilots seemed focused inside, talking and referencing their instruments. Slaton shifted his optic to the belly of the MD-10, and had just enough angle to discern the irregular shape of the clamshell doors. They were still closed. But for how long?
“Five hundred meters,” said Bryan, his voice growing tense. “We’ll be over the top of the oil field in five minutes.”
Slaton swung his sight back to the cockpit. What he saw was not good.
* * *
“I have to pee,” said Walid, rising from his seat.
“Do it quickly, we are almost there.”
Tuncay watched his copilot head toward the back, knowing he would be quick because the holding tank was in plain view from the lavatory door. He checked the navigation computer. Twelve miles to go. He reached down to the switch that activated the belly doors—it had been fitted with a red safety guard, lest anyone bump it by accident while reaching for a dropped pencil. In what could only be a reaction to stress, Tuncay found himself fantasizing, wishing he could release his five thousand gallons of radioactive sludge on the headquarters of Arabian Air, the airline that had discarded him after eighteen good years. The thought of having such vast lethality poised under a fingertip was remarkably empowering. It made him think of the end of World War II, when the crew of an American bomber—the name escaped him—dropped the world’s first nuclear weapon on Japan. Was this how those men had felt? All-powerful? In truth, he was happy no mass casualties would result from what he was about to do. A few oil workers, perhaps some Bedouin—that would be the worst according to Ghazi. Maybe a handful of others in the cleanup effort. Casualties were not his intent, only an unavoidable side effect. Tuncay was no crazed jihadist—he was simply a man trying to reach a dream.
He
flicked up the guard and saw a simple silver toggle switch. With one tap, a rain of radioactive hell would devastate the House of Saud’s cash machine. Tuncay gazed through the forward windscreen. He saw nothing but a pitch-black night.
* * *
“One hundred meters! Shoot dammit!”
“One of the targets left the flight deck!” Slaton responded.
“I’m pushing up the power to match his speed,” Bryan announced. “We can’t risk getting any closer.”
Slaton felt a change in vibration, then a surge of acceleration as the C-17’s big turbofans spun faster.
“The second pilot might have gone to activate the release mechanism,” Bryan said.
“I know,” Slaton replied, having already reached the same damning conclusion. His finger touched the trigger, beginning the deadly pressure. At the range of one football field the captain’s head looked like a pumpkin in his sight.
“We’re two minutes from the expected drop point.”
Slaton hesitated, then eased his trigger pressure. “If I take one down and the other guy comes back—he’s going to find a body and a nice neat hole in the windscreen. He might move to a place where I don’t have a shot.”
“He might also be in back with his hand on a release lever,” Bryan argued over the intercom.
There was no good answer. The entire plan rested on taking out both men. Only then could the autopilot transform the jet into a massive drone that would, with any luck, continue harmlessly into the southern ocean. Slaton tried to think of a way to make both men show themselves, and an idea came to mind. He turned and explained it to the loadmaster.
“You want me to what?” Willis responded.
“No time to explain—just do it!”
SEVENTY-FIVE
It was the oddest thing, Tuncay thought as he stared out the front windscreen in wonder. Through his years in the sky he had seen a great many sights. Shooting stars, continuous displays of lightning, the Star Wars effect of traveling through snowflakes at 300 knots with landing lights ablaze. He had seen the aurora borealis and St. Elmo’s fire. Never had he seen anything like this.
“Walid!”
He heard banging from the aft cabin, but got no reply.
He shouted a second time, “Walid!”
“What? Is it time for the release?”
Tuncay turned around and saw his copilot holding a Styrofoam cup with steam rising from the top.
“The coffeemaker still works,” Walid said. “Do you want some?”
“No!” Tuncay barked. “Come here!”
“What’s wrong?”
“Look out the window and tell me what you see.”
Walid took a cursory look out front. “I see a dark desert. Is it the oil field?”
“No, higher, just ahead in the sky. I see a light.”
Walid leaned forward, put his head over the glare shield. “Yes … I do see something. Turn down the lights.”
Tuncay rotated a series of knobs and the lights on the instrument panel dimmed. He too leaned forward and saw it more clearly—flashing lights and movement, as if a tiny motion picture were floating in the sky. Then he registered something more ominous, a counterpoint to the tiny square of light. A massive shadow all around it.
Tuncay said, “It looks like another—”
The last word of the revelation never escaped his lips. Behind an explosion of glass and a rush of air, the Turk flopped back into his sheepskin-covered seat. Walid froze in place, stunned to see his partner splayed motionless, his head a bloody mess.
Walid’s lower jaw dropped down, as if to speak. No words came before the second bullet arrived.
* * *
“Two down,” Slaton said evenly into his microphone.
Through his scope he scanned the cockpit back and forth. The man in the left seat was clearly hit, slumped and motionless, but the second target was no longer in view. The damage to the windscreens was as he’d predicted, two cleanly riveted holes, spiderweb cracks around each for a six-inch radius. There had been no explosive decompression. This point had also been discussed during the course of their eastbound chase—due to the low cruise altitude, it could be assumed that the pressure differential inside the cabin would be minimal. Indeed, according to Bryan, the MD-10’s cabin had likely been depressurized in order to vent the drop tank. Apparently, a valid assumption.
Everything seemed to have gone as planned, yet Slaton, ever the perfectionist, wanted confirmation. Had he struck the second target a lethal shot?
“Get me closer,” he said into the intercom, “I need to confirm the kill. Climb so I can see the cockpit floor.” The last thing Slaton wanted was a surprised but unharmed, or possibly wounded, copilot crawling to activate the drop release mechanism.
He heard the C-17’s engines again rise in pitch. The cockpit of the MD-10, backlit by its fight instruments in a jaundiced yellow hue, came gradually closer until the magnification of the scope was no longer necessary. Slaton gave a series of commands until Bryan had them flying no more than a hundred feet in front of the MD-10, perhaps fifty feet above. Finally, Slaton got his confirmation. He saw the second pilot sprawled motionless on the flight deck floor, his bloody face ghastly in the amber light.
“All right, two confirmed kills.” He was considering whether a follow-up was justified for either target when the MD-10 banked to its right. The geometry and closure suddenly changed, and the two jets began to merge.
“Climb!” Slaton shouted. “Climb now—their autopilot is maneuvering and we’re getting too close!”
Bryan reacted sharply on the controls, the frayed nerves of a pilot who was flying a heavy jet in formation with another he couldn’t see. The C-17’s engines whined to full power, and a surge of positive Gs pressed Slaton’s body to the deck as they bucked upward. He watched the MD-10 slide harmlessly underneath.
Bryan’s voice chimed over the intercom seconds later. “All right, gentlemen—job done. I’m relaying a report to headquarters. Now we sit back and watch—and hope to hell we’ve got this right.”
Behind Slaton, Sergeant Willis held up his iPad, which was still playing the animated Disney movie Frozen. “Can I turn this off now?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
Willis did so, and said, “Man, I am not telling my daughter what I just did.”
SEVENTY-SIX
Christine couldn’t say why she woke—she only knew it was abrupt. The kind of tense, alert stir derived from an unaccustomed noise in the middle of the night.
By a mother’s instinct, she knew it wasn’t Davy. There had been no gathering cry, no coo, no sound of the crib mattress being used as a trampoline. She sat up in bed and saw the usual stray light at her open hallway door. The television downstairs had gone quiet, but wind still rattled the window. Had that been it? A stray gust?
She went to the hallway, but saw and heard nothing unusual.
“Yaniv?” she called out.
No answer. She crossed the hall to the nursery. Davy was not in his crib. The first stab of fear.
“Yaniv!”
A terrible silence. Nothing but the wind.
She went cautiously to the staircase and looked down. Nothing amiss. Then she heard a knock. No, an intermittent banging noise. Clunk, clunk. She descended into the living room. The TV was on a news channel, but muted. “Yaniv?” Her tone was less demanding. Hopeful. “Davy?”
No response.
Clunk, clunk. The kitchen.
She edged that way, and before turning the corner Christine felt a cool gust. She found the back door swinging freely in the wind, battering against the house. Clunk, clunk. Davy was nowhere to be seen. Nor was Stein. Full-blown panic clutched her gut. She hurried to the door and looked outside, saw no one. In the old snow, however, were three sets of footprints. One coming toward the house, two going away—they ran up the driveway to the street, and then across on a diagonal.
“God, no!”
She ran for her phone but it wasn’t on the c
ounter where she always left it. Through the window she saw that Annette’s place was dark—Tuesday night was chorus practice. She had to call for help. She went out the kitchen door and looked up and down the street, trying to calculate who might be home. That was when she noticed the garage door of Ed Moorehead’s house—it was raised, and inside was the silhouette of a car. Could that be where Davy was? Inside, about to be taken away?
She reversed back inside and ran upstairs. In the nursery she rushed to the closet and flung open Davy’s circus-theme toy chest. She tossed aside layers of Fisher-Price plastic and stuffed animals, and scooped out a layer of brightly colored wooden blocks. She tipped the heavy box on its side to reveal the false bottom. At the time she’d objected mightily, but of course David had been right. It’s the last place in the world anyone will look. She removed the trigger lock on a Beretta 9mm and slipped it into her back waistband.
She darted downstairs, and out to the driveway. The driver’s door was open on the car in Ed’s garage. Had it been earlier? She couldn’t remember. Christine went back to the kitchen and ripped a spare key from a hook by the door, then dashed to her own garage. A light flashed on, causing her to freeze like an escapee caught in a prison-yard spotlight. Then she remembered—Stein had rigged it that way. She entered her garage through the side door, disengaged the opener, and heaved the big door up. Christine tumbled into the Ford. The engine cranked hesitantly, laboring in the cold, but soon the car was running. She slammed it into gear and hit the gas hard. The Ford lurched outside in reverse, slid into the street. She spun the wheel hard, slammed the gearshift into drive, and the car bounded up airborne over the opposite curb. She took out Ed Moorehead’s mailbox, and closer to the house a snow-encrusted plant pot, but the car came to rest right where she wanted it—sideways in the driveway, blocking the garage entrance. Christine put the car in park. Removed the keys. Set the parking brake. What else? She pressed the keys into a gap in the backseat upholstery.