Flight 741

by Don Pendleton

  It rankled him to watch the gunners in their trench coats, hovering above the frightened passengers. Under other circumstances, Blanski would have treated them to sudden death, but the odds were all against him now. He swallowed anger, unaccustomed impotence. And waited.

  Skyjacks played according to a formula. The early moments were the worst, surprise and sudden terror working at the nerves on either side. If there was trouble, violence, it would happen soon. Statistically, he knew that airline pirates were less likely to dispose of captives after several hours, even several days. Once their plane was on the ground, negotiation could offer focus for the minds of captors and their hostages alike. The terrorists and terrorized would come to share a common goal: release.

  Mike Blanski settled back into his cushioned seat, relaxing with an effort of will. When they were down, when a facsimile of calm had been restored, there would be ample opportunity to make his move.

  When they were safe... at least, as safe as they would ever be beneath the gun.

  The passenger named Blanski took a breath and held it, willed his pulse to stabilize at normal levels. He could feel the tension melting, giving way to something like the old, accustomed calm.

  He visualized the nearest gunner dead, the other stretched beside him in the narrow aisle like hunting trophies, knew it could be done.

  In time.

  But first they had to find the earth again.

  Chapter Three

  The upper lounge had not attracted many visitors so far. Emerging from the spiral staircase with the Ingram's muzzle pressed against his spine, Steve Korning scanned the room and almost overlooked a solitary figure standing to the rear, beside the lavatories. It took a second glance to reassure him that his eyes had not deceived him, that he wasn't in the middle of some hallucination.

  No. He wasn't seeing things.

  The man beside the lavatories looked like Richard Nixon.

  It was a mask, of course, he saw that now. The kind that covers face and head and all, available from any one of several thousand magazines or party shops. The likeness was incredible, particularly at a distance, but up close, the latex Nixon smile was inflexible.

  Steve's captor never flinched at their encounter with the Nixon look-alike. The Arab was expecting someone, obviously, and the mask told Korning he was in the presence of the skyjack's mastermind. The only one of seven gunners with the sense — or the desire — to preserve his anonymity.

  A chilling thought intruded on the flight attendant's consciousness. Suppose the others didn't hide their faces from the passengers and crew because they had no hope of coming out of this alive? Suppose they were some kind of ape-shit suicide brigade, intent on taking out the 747 in a fiery final gesture to their adversaries of the moment?

  If they planned to crash the aircraft or to instigate some kind of massacre, why would the leader hide his face? It didn't play, and Korning drew some solace from the fact that one of them, at least, had plans for living past the present confrontation. If the bastards planned that far ahead, there might be hope for everyone aboard.

  His captor jabbered briefly in some singsong dialect, then hauled out a pistol from beneath his coat, passing it to the masked man with a flourish. San Clemente's finest nodded briefly, jiggling the tip of his exaggerated latex nose, and led them in the direction of the flight deck.

  Korning's thoughts were racing. He could try to stop them now, but it would certainly be a suicidal exercise. There was no hope of wrestling a gun from one of them before the other intervened. Still, he could provoke them into shooting him, and thus alert the flight deck crew.

  To what advantage?

  They'd lock the door — would have it locked already, more than likely — but the damned door wasn't bulletproof. If the leader and his sidekick had to shoot their way inside, they stood a chance of knocking out controls and slaughtering the only persons qualified to keep the plane aloft.

  It was a frigging no-win situation, Korning thought, but the lesser of two evil choices still kept everyone alive. In theory, anyhow.

  They reached the cockpit access door, the gunners flanking Korning, prodding him with weapons from behind.

  "Go on," the Nixon face instructed him. And then, incongruously, "Please."

  The sound of rubber Nixon's pistol being cocked beside his ear made up the flight attendant's mind. His knuckles drummed the cockpit door. Jay Stevens opened it without inquiring who or what might lie beyond.

  "My man, what's happening?"

  Confronted by the guns, by the Nixon face, by Korning's battered countenance, the flight engineer lost his usual smile.

  "What the hell?"

  Korning lowered his eyes.

  "Take your seat," the leader commanded, his weapon jabbing at Stevens for emphasis. Crowding past Korning, he entered the cockpit. "Remain as you are. I am taking control of this aircraft."

  "Like hell."

  Captain Murphy was glowering at the intruders, examining the situation and weighing the odds. To his right, Marty Reese, the first officer, seemed to be racking his brain for a prayer.

  "You are the prisoners of the Islamic Jihad," pseudo-Nixon informed them. "From this moment on you will do as I say."

  "And supposing we don't?"

  Korning's escort was trembling now, knuckles white as he clutched the machine gun. Steve sensed the terrorist was losing it, nearing the edge.

  "They've got five more below, Captain. Armed. I think they could blow."

  Pseudo-Nixon was watching him, keeping his gun trained on Murphy. His eyes glittered darkly through slits in the mask.

  "Your servant speaks truly," he said. "We are seven, committed to justice for Lebanon."

  "Sweet heaven."

  "You will please bring the aircraft around to this heading," he ordered, producing a note card from one of his pockets and handing it over to Murphy.

  "Now, listen..."

  "No more!" The sudden shriek made Korning jump, and Captain Murphy flinched as the masked leader thrust the pistol toward his face. "You will obey, or watch your passengers and crew begin to die."

  "Goddamn it!"

  But the captain had his hands on the control yoke now, prepared to take the 747 off its scheduled course. He rattled out the new coordinates, provoking startled looks from Reese and Stevens as they went to work.

  No navigator, Korning knew enough of latitude and longitude to recognize that they were shooting for a clean 180 here. Their destination lay behind them, slightly to the south, but what the hell?

  And suddenly, he had the answer. As if the grinning Nixon face had spoken it aloud.

  Beirut.

  * * *

  Mike Blanski riffled through the pages of the inflight magazine, pretending to examine each in turn. He had already weighed the possibility of rolling up the magazine, converting it into a lethal weapon. Tightly rolled, it could be thrust against an unprotected throat or abdomen with force enough to traumatize internal organs, bring about a hemorrhage, death...

  Blanski stowed the magazine inside the pocket of his seat. He could accomplish equal damage with his own bare hands, but he would stick with his resolve to make no moves while they were airborne. There was risk enough to all the innocents around him, without compounding danger through some reckless action of his own.

  He scrutinized the gunners, listened to them muttering among themselves. The ones he'd seen had all been Arabs, certainly. He could not understand their dialect, nor place it geographically with any more precision than the Middle East, but it reminded him of something he had heard before.

  Algeria, perhaps? Or Lebanon?

  The latter seemed more likely, if he played the odds. The recent spate of skyjacks had been perpetrated by a hard-core Shiite Muslim cadre, seeking sympathy, publicity — whatever — for their internecine war in Lebanon. They had already turned Beirut into a slaughterhouse, with some assistance from the "Christian" opposition, and there seemed to be no end in sight. Demoralized by months and years
of stalemate, fighting house to house, they had of late begun a cruel, selective exportation of their war.

  The battlefield was everywhere these days. The target: any innocents who crossed their twisted path.

  The skyjacks were a calculated risk with the potential for disastrous backlash on the terrorists, but their anachronistic ploy had worked so far. The great democracies were talking tough and taking certain steps to back their words with action, but the President of the United States could ill afford to blithely sacrifice his people by the hundreds.

  The aroma from a wholesale massacre would linger through election year, and if appeasement was the price of several hundred lives, if half a dozen terrorists must be released to bring the captives safely home, it was a price the Oval Office was prepared to pay.

  The gunners would be Shiites, certainly. Blanski felt it as a hunter feels his prey beyond the thicket. He had hunted others like them in the past, and he could recognize the smell.

  But he was not the hunter now. If anything he was the game, trussed up and ready for the kill if something should spark a shooting frenzy in the cabin. They could only kill so many, and he stood a better chance of hanging on to life than others in the seats around him, calling on the training that had kept him more or less intact so far.

  But it would not be worth the risk.

  Not now.

  Not while they were in flight.

  He was aware that they had doubled back some time ago, and now he tried to puzzle out their destination, checking off the possibles. Three recent skyjacks, and he couldn't even play the odds; there had been no pattern. One flight was hijacked on the ground in Rome by overanxious gunners who could not contain themselves. The plane had never taken off, and everyone had been released unharmed once amnesty was granted to the terrorists.

  A second hostage flight had landed in Beirut, where government negotiators feigned surprise and acted out their roles as intermediaries for the West. They had secured the release of prisoners in fits and starts, encouraging the terrorists to ask for more concessions as they went along, and there had been a death among the passengers before the situation was at last resolved.

  The third flight went to ground in Libya, the terrorists protected by Khaddafi's warped regime, and they had settled for publicity, together with some cash to fill their coffers back in Lebanon. The aircraft was demolished by explosives once the hostages were clear.

  And Blanski put his money on Beirut. It made good sense in terms of distance, flight time, past success. The Western threats to boycott Beirut airport had been empty until now; with the exception of Israeli strikes, no serious reprisals had been undertaken toward the Lebanese nongovernment. Another skyjack, more or less, would make no difference in the long run.

  It made the kind of sense that terrorists would readily appreciate. They had a haven in Beirut, and once their various demands were met, it was a short drive from the airport to the urban killing grounds, to pick up where they had left off.

  Except that they might be faced with some surprises this time out. The President might not accede to their demands. There might be some effective counteraction for a change. Perhaps a small surprise or two on board the plane itself.

  Perhaps one large surprise.

  Once they were on the ground.

  He could afford to wait, unless they forced his hand.

  He had the time, and none of them were going anywhere, for now.

  * * *

  Bobby Maxwell recognized a golden opportunity when it arrived, and he knew that he was looking at one now. If he played his cards right, he could ride it all the way to freedom.

  The goddamn cuffs and shackles wouldn't hurt him any when he made his move. He knew about these freaked-out bastards and their hang-ups on the penal system. Every time you turned around, they were demanding freedom for some asshole, breaking someone out of jail in Germany or Israel, even down in South America.

  The victims of oppression.

  The way he saw it, Bobby fit the bill precisely. He had felt oppressed for days now, since the goddamn German cops had stopped him on a traffic beef, discovering the guns and other shit he carried in his bags. It hadn't taken long to run a make through Interpol, the FBI — whatever — and the feds were on his back before he had a chance to turn around.

  They wanted him in Massachusetts, on that beef about the armored car. Two cops had bought the farm on that one, and a third was hanging on the edge with worse than fifty-fifty odds. The murder charge was nothing; Massachusetts had an execution statute on the books, but they had never used it. He had also been in for life before — in California — and had walked in seven years, with good-behavior time deducted from his term.

  It wasn't Massachusetts that depressed him now, but rather Texas. They were looking for him there, although they might not know it yet. They had a fair description, but extradition out of Germany would have him on the evening news, and any one of several surviving witnesses might catch a glimpse of Bobby Maxwell's likeness on the tube.

  They kept the death house busy down in Texas, for sure. He knew about the latest fad in executions, how they strapped you to a gurney, let you ride the last few yards in style, before they jammed a poison needle in your arm. It was humane, they said. So much more merciful than lethal gas, the chair, a firing squad.

  But dead was dead, and Bobby had a lot of living left to do.

  The hijack was a blessing in disguise, a final chance to pull it out before his fat was really in the fire. If he could make it work, ingratiate himself with one or two of these manure-minds, he might persuade them to begin their liberation of the helpless here, on board the 747.

  Starting with yours truly.

  His escort might have other thoughts, but Bobby knew there would be ways around him. He was armed, of course, a snubby .38 secured on his hip, but he would be reluctant to produce the piece with frigging Ingrams pointed at his face. And this guy was no hero. His escort was a civil service type, secure enough behind his badge and his authority when it was one-on-one, but looking rather shaky now.

  It was the best — the only — break that Bobby could expect. He had to make it count, or run the risk of taking one last ride aboard that Texas gurney.

  And it was risky. He knew that much. The gunners had a jumpy look, like convicts in the middle of a prison riot, waiting for the heat to come down hard on them. They were nervous and any sudden moves might spark a massacre, with Bobby numbered among the dead.

  His plan did not include some Arab blowing off his ass at thirty thousand feet, and Bobby knew that he would have to bide his time, feeling out the wisest course of action as he went. It wouldn't do to push his luck too far, too fast... especially since he had so little left to push around at all.

  It would be tricky, but he had a con man's skills to see him through, and his incentive was no less than life itself. The most important thing was timing.

  And Bobby realized that he would have to wait until they landed somewhere, anywhere, to touch base with the press. When they were safely down, once tempers had a chance to cool a fraction, he would make his move.

  Before he finished with these jerk-offs, they would volunteer to waste his escort for him. Hell, they just might make him an honorary A-rab of the month.

  He knew that he could pull it off.

  Chapter Four

  The shattered Beirut skyline was obscured by a drifting pall of smoke, the residue of a society incinerated in a crucible of hate. Beneath the dirty haze, commandos, regulars and armed civilians scuttled through the ruins of a once-great city, bent on a perpetuation of anarchy.

  Mike Blanski watched the distant fires dispassionately, drawing little satisfaction from the fact that he had been correct about their destination. They were parked outside the shaky boundaries of a charnel house, with borderline psychotics in control of all their fates, and anyone deriving satisfaction out of that would be a goddamn fool.

  The passengers in coach had calmed themselves to some degree, the
hours of their flight providing enough time to make some sense of what was going on. In whispered conversations they summoned up the recent skyjack histories, recalling that the single innocent fatality had been a serviceman who balked at following the orders of his captors.

  Aboard Flight 741, the terrorists had grudgingly allowed their captives access to the lavatories singly, under guard. If children couldn't wait their turn, they wet themselves and squalled until a glare or gesture from the nearest gunner galvanized their parents into action, silencing the tiny outrage with a muzzling hand. Among the adults, there were those who wept, and not only women. Terror was a universal constant, and the lucky ones were those who still remembered how to pray.

  Mike Blanski knew the words, the motions, but a lifetime in the killing grounds had worked its metamorphosis upon his view of life and death, the deity and afterlife. He knew from grim experience that Truth and Justice didn't necessarily come out on top in any given confrontation with the other side. He recognized that men and women dead were men and women gone, no matter what their destination. And while he had already come to terms with death, Mike Blanski had no pressing wish to die.

  The Shiite gunners — he was still convinced of their identity, despite the lack of an announcement from the enemy — would hesitate to kill their hostages while they had anything at all to gain. Negotiations might drag on for days — three weeks, if he recalled, had been the maximum so far — with tempers fraying as the time wore on. There might be ugly incidents, depending on the individual proclivities of those who held the weapons, but it should be possible for everyone aboard to come out on the other side alive.

  Unless this team had been intent on suicide from the beginning. It was possible, of course, that they would seek a ground-side audience in lieu of blowing up the 747 over France or Germany, away from television's searching eye. They might be more inclined to tossing bodies out the door than other airline pirates in the recent past. And at the bottom line, they might have nothing left to lose.