The Med

by David Poyer

  And the police. There weren’t many. A handful of men in khaki, sitting in open vehicles in the drizzle, about two hundred yards away. They were faced on her side of the square by four of the terrorists, bareheaded, wet, and armed. The file of Americans turned as they came into the open, away from the motionless soldiers, and headed for the buses. The guards kept them to a slow walk. It was as if they were being displayed.

  In the distant gray, behind the police cordon, she caught the slow pan of a lens.

  The buses were silver-and-blue Mercedes, new. The same ones that had been waiting, diesels idling, to ferry Japanese and German tourists around the island, when she and Nan had arrived at the Nicosia airport. Now their route signs said, cheerily, PRIVATE PARTY.

  As they came abreast of the police, still distant, she noticed the terrorists move closer to the Americans, pointing their weapons at their heads. It was done without words, visually, but the message was unmistakable. Keep back, they were telling the police. Do as we say. Or these people die.

  She felt ice touch her spine. They weren’t being held in secret. People outside knew. But they couldn’t help.

  No one could help.

  * * *

  The plane was a three-engine jet. Beyond that she could not tell, nor did she much care. But she was briefly heartened to see the big red letters gleaming shiny-wet on the vertical tail. TWA. At least, she thought, it should fly all right.

  They were herded aboard quickly, single file, forced to run across the tarmac. The drizzle broke long enough for her to see the mountains to the west.

  “So long, Cyprus,” muttered Moira as they bent at the top of the ramp.

  The interior was a madhouse. Screaming, the terrorists (now, she wondered, were they hijackers, too?) shoved their way through the aisles, pushing men and women into seats with the butts of their rifles. She half-sat, was half-thrust into a seat midway along the fuselage, right side, just aft of the wing. She held Nan on her lap. Moira was two seats back, Freed a few forward of her; she’d lost sight of the others. The seat beside her was empty and she wondered why. She found out when one of them sat down beside her. He was one she hadn’t encountered yet, a rotund fellow with quite a bit of stubble. She knew immediately he had been doing some sweating. By no means pleasant company, but he neither struck anyone for the time being nor gave Nan more than a single uninterested glance.

  They sat on the ground for about half an hour. Midway through that the seated passengers heard voices raised from the flight compartment. At last two men in blue uniforms came down the aisle, still arguing, and being shoved by the Majd himself. He spoke in English, as he had the night before, and this time she caught a slight British intonation.

  He jerked open the hatch and shoved them out. One pilot almost fell, saving himself only with a grab for the ramp handrail. “And tell them we want others within five minutes!” he shouted after them.

  Ah, she thought, imagine the headlines in Time: PLO DEMANDS BETTER-QUALIFIED CREWS. “Latest from embattled Nicosia is word of a safety initiative by terrorist leaders—”

  Get a grip on yourself, Susan.

  When the new pilots (this time in lighter blue and looking more frightened than the first pair: Turkish? she wondered) came aboard there was more palaver. At last the door to the cockpit closed. Susan glanced the length of the passenger compartment. There must be no more than a dozen of them, she thought then. No room for more than three in the cockpit, and she could count eight spaced along the aisle. They had reserved seats for themselves, but most were still standing, scanning the ranks of heads and filling the air of the compartment (still unventilated) with cigarette smog.

  The announcement system came on at last, and simultaneously with it the engines began to whine. Through her window she caught a glimpse of a man in coveralls pulling away a cable. Yellow trucks trundled back. “THIS IS CAPTAIN SPEAKING,” it began.

  Then came a yelp. A crackle, and then the voice resumed.

  “WE WILL BE HAVING ABOUT A ONE HOUR OF FLIGHT EN ROUTE TO THE DESTINATION. THE LEADER HERE TELLS ME YOU WILL NOT BE BEING HARMED UNLESS YOU MAKE THE NOISE OR MOVEMENT. UNDERSTAND? NO THE NOISE, NO THE MOVEMENT, VERY GOOD.

  “WE WILL BE TAKING OFF SHORTLY.”

  But, she thought then, for where? She glanced at the man sitting beside her. Then she lowered her head again.

  * * *

  For the first fifteen minutes their flight was smooth. She held Nan’s head against her breast and smoothed her hair, over and over. Beneath the wing Nicosia dropped away and then vanished, dissolved into mist. The mountains dropped away. Then all was white, as if they were flying through milk. Long minutes later the plane emerged from a zone of turbulence into sudden brightness and blue sky. Below them cumulus bloomed like vast lush flowers in instant, brilliant splendor, and then began slowly rolling back toward the tail.

  An hour, she thought, cuddling Nan. Where can we go in that long? These planes made something over five hundred miles an hour, she knew that. Moira might be able to guess; Michael seemed to know things, but her own ideas of distance in this part of the world were sketchy. Besides, she didn’t even know the direction they were headed in.

  She decided she had so much to wish for now, she might as well wish for a compass, too.

  One of the men came down the aisle, his arms laden with Pepsi-Cola and grenades. He handed a dew-beaded blue and white can to the man beside her. Her seatmate pulled the tab with his teeth and sucked at it noisily. She was hungry—none of them had eaten since the toast and coffee the previous morning—and was growing thirsty, too. Yet she dared not speak. He seems human, she thought, watching his reflection in her window. For the second time that morning she felt a flash of hope.

  It disappeared again when the identification check began. The tall man appeared and stood quietly by the first-class compartment, watching as his men moved slowly down the aisles row by row. Most of the passengers had blue U.S. passports, a few United Kingdom, lion and unicorn stamped in gold. Susan readied hers, then began to sweat. Did it say anywhere in there … holding it low by her thigh she paged through it. No, there was nothing about the military in it—

  Their vaccination certificate! From the base dispensary. She worked it cautiously from beneath its paper clip with small movements of her fingers and slipped it under the seat cushion. After a moment’s thought she opened her purse, pretended to be rummaging. The man beside her glanced at it, then away when she pulled out a chapstick. She thought for a crazy moment of offering it, then was afraid he might take offense. If she did, or if she didn’t? At last she did not. While he was looking away she found and hid her dependent’s ID card as well.

  She sat back then, shaken, but feeling safer. If they searched her thoroughly they would find something, a receipt from the commissary, a credit union card … but if they search us all, she thought, it will take them hours. We should be down by then.

  I am Susan Lenson, housewife. My husband is an insurance salesman, or no, what would they like better—

  Ahead of her they came to Ms. Freed. It was the boy, the youngest one, who was checking the right row of seats. The passport she held up to him was red. Susan saw it shaking in her hand.

  The boy snatched it from her, and Susan saw his eyes widen. He called in Arabic to the others. They converged on Freed, three of them, and jerked her up from her seat. Over the whisper of the engines she could hear them clearly.

  “Red passport. You CIA?”

  “No. State Department. I’m just—”

  “Yes, CIA. You admit now.”

  Susan caught a glimpse of her face. It was white as the clouds. One of the men jerked her hands into the air, holding them crossed at the wrists. Another—she saw it was the one with bad teeth—ran his hands over her clothes, under them. With an exclamation he pulled out a package, ripped it apart. It contained several chocolate bars. Thrown contemptuously to the floor, they were trampled gradually to brown pulp as the interrogation proceeded.

  Freed d
id not struggle. They shouted at her, slapped her face, but she responded in the same low trembling voice. One of them hit her in the stomach and Susan caught her breath, feeling the blow in her own.

  When the snaggletoothed man put his pistol to her head, the Majd held out his hand, palm down. There was a quick spatter of conversation among them, almost in whispers. At last they left, shoving her back into the seat. She bent there, head downward, and Susan heard her quietly using an airsick bag.

  A moment later they came back and led Freed forward. The curtains of the first-class section fell shut behind her. From the far side, a few minutes later, she saw Mr. and Mrs. Stanweis being pushed forward as well.

  Susan stared out the porthole, holding Nan between her and the outer skin of the plane. Above the sunlit convexities the blue sky was empty. At long intervals the heavy cover would thin, and she glimpsed for just a moment something shiny and vast far below, like tinfoil crumpled and then resmoothed.

  The sea. But it too was empty. For a moment, craning backward to watch the brilliance slide over it again, she wished for something else up here. For other planes. She imagined them riding alongside, escorting them, reassurance if not protection. Did no one know where they were? Where they were going? Or did anyone care?

  Numbly she reached for the seat pocket and took out the ditching instructions. For a long time she stared at the overwing exit sign. It was only a reach away for her, two red handles that led to the outside. To death, here, far above the clouds. She fantasized holding those trip levers half-open, threatening their captors with sudden decompression unless they surrendered their weapons.

  Behind her she heard them begin to question Moira Lieberman.

  * * *

  Later Nan began to wriggle. When Susan looked at her, she whispered shamefacedly that she had to pee.

  “Can’t you hold it, Bunny?”

  “Been holding it.” Nan would not meet her eyes.

  She felt helpless. There were no containers, and she did not dare draw attention by asking to use the toilet. Nor had anyone else so far in the flight. At last Susan held her as she urinated over the edge of the seat, on the carpet. She had just set her back up and drawn up her jeans when there was a sudden jolt, not loud, but sharp. It seemed to come from forward, though she could not see past the curtain. But a moment after there were yells, then a strange acrid stench seeping back, tanging the air.

  The plane tilted down, and people began to scream.

  “Silent!” shouted the man beside her. He tripped his belt and got half to his feet, waving his rifle threateningly. Susan wrapped her arms around Nan, unthinking reflex, as the slant steepened and then, all at once, the plane seemed to slide off of one wing. They’ve shot us down, the idiots, she thought, frozen with terror.

  From her window she looked straight down into the clouds.

  The youngest guard came running down the slanting aisle, screaming something. His face was livid. The smell grew stronger, and she saw a curl of blue smoke grope out of the ventilators.

  “Mommy, my ears hurt.”

  “Swallow, baby.” She held her daughter close, rubbed her throat. Suddenly, then, the terror left her. She knew they were going to die here, now, in the next few seconds. Nan, she thought. If I could have saved you I would. My life, nothing. I would give it for you. I’m sorry. We should have stayed with the rest—

  “I love you, Bunny,” she whispered into her child’s ear. “You were always good.”

  The world went dim, and she blinked for a moment before understanding: they’d entered the overcast. White, blank, the window glowed like a snow-filled television screen. The lights flickered. She felt pressure in her ears, swallowed again. The plane suddenly rolled wing over wing, juddered, and then gave a savage buck. Around her people screamed. The terrorist beside her was knocked to the floor. His rifle skidded away under the seat. She stared out the window, holding her daughter tight.

  The cloud cleared, and she saw below them sea, and then, instantaneously afterward, land. Low, bare hills, dun-brown. A huddled village, fields. They flashed by, so close she could see goats on the hillsides.

  The nose came up a little, and then a little more.

  The lights went out. The plane reeled, digging the belt painfully into her stomach. The sign at the front of the cabin winked on and off redly, a picture of a buckle closing, over and over.

  “PREPARE FOR LANDING,” said the cabin speaker. “I TRY TO LAND—PREPARE—SEAT BACKS UPRIGHT—”

  The plane staggered down from the sky. She watched the hillsides grow. Now she could see scrub, no, it was in rows, a man with a donkey, both of them looking up, lines of olive trees. They flashed over a parked truck and a group of women in black, carrying bundles; over a pond with drinking cattle; then the hills rose again, the engines bellowed outside the aluminum walls, and the earth rushed up to meet them.

  The plane slammed down, the wheels shrieking. She felt it reject the earth, leap upward, then slam down harder. Dust flew up from the carpet. The engines roared. Deceleration pulled at the child in her arms and she wrapped herself tightly around her. Nan whimpered, deep in her throat, but did not cry out.

  If we land safely, Susan thought then, I’m not going to be afraid of anything that happens after that.

  The engines screamed in reverse thrust. She glanced out, but brown dust veiled vision. On the floor the man who had fallen scrabbled between her legs for his rifle, dragged himself up by the seat-back. He glared around, looking frightened.

  “WE ARE LANDED,” stated the intercom. “PLEASE TO STAY AT YOUR SEATS.”

  Someone else spoke then, rapidly, in the language she had to assume was Arabic. The plane slowed, jolted as if it had run over something, and the brakes squealed.

  They stopped, rocking slightly from side to side.

  The engines wound down. Beside her the chubby one slung his rifle and leaned forward. He struggled with the handles for a long moment, and then the window popped and fell outward, banging on the wing. She saw the other terrorists working at the forward and aft exits, and a moment later there was a whoosh and she saw something orange unroll downward. When it began to inflate she realized it was the emergency slide.

  “Up! Move forward.”

  “PASSENGERS WILL GO TO THE STATION FOR EMERGENCY DEPLANE,” said the pilot in his strange English.

  Suddenly everyone in the compartment was on his feet. The terrorists shouted, clubbed here and there, and restored some measure of order. But still she was shoved and battered as she dragged Nan into the aisle. The forward exit, or over the wing? It was solved for her by the press of people. Like toothpaste in a tube she was squeezed forward. When they reached the hatch she had eyes only for the smooth plastic. She seated Nan between her legs, squatted, and tobogganed downward to a rough contact with the ground.

  When she got up, the snaggletoothed man was pointing his pistol at them. He did not waste words, only motioned to his left. She jumped to her feet, not bothering to brush her clothes off, and snatched up the baby. Carrying her, not noticing the weight, she followed the others at a near-run around the plane.

  They were in the desert.

  Nothing around them but the bare brown hills, low, weather-worn. And sand. Where had they landed? On open desert—but no, there was asphalt under her feet, cracked and faded to gray, but still a strip of sorts—

  They rounded the wing, and she saw the buildings. A small group, one low, two others, behind it, taller. They looked lonely against the empty hills.

  The knot of hostages came to a halt a hundred yards from the jetliner. Two of the men motioned them down with gun barrels. She squatted on the hot tarmac and looked back. The plane squatted too, two of its tires shredded, all of them smoking. Otherwise it looked unharmed. From the rear exit people were still tumbling out. She looked forward, and a fine sweat broke on her as she saw that they had stopped a hundred feet short of the end of the strip. Beyond that was bare sand.

  We’re down, she thought numbly. A
live. Beyond that, for the moment, she could not think at all.

  * * *

  Two guards waited by the portico of the central building, the tallest, five stories high. As they neared it she saw that it was ornate, old, not a glass-and-concrete box. Two lions of black stone flanked the entranceway.

  Moving up in the world, Susan, part of her said tentatively. But no humor came through the strange paralysis she had felt since seeing Cook struck down that morning.

  The lobby was deserted. The interior, decorated in pale blue, was dark, the chandeliers unlighted. It looked almost new, unused, yet the curtains drooped dusty and faded as if abandoned for years. What must have been a souvenir shop was dark, iron grating drawn across its glass. The desk was empty. Wires dangled from an unlit switchboard. A key lay on the dusty marble of a desk. It was as if ghosts had lived here, and vanished as quickly and completely as ghosts do with the coming of the sun.

  The elevators didn’t work. The hostages stood crowded together in the hot, still air of the lobby, surrounded by armed men, until the tall man came. He began shouting angry orders. Not ten feet away, she had a chance to observe him.

  The man they called the Majd was young, yes, but older than she had thought the night before. Twenty-five? No more than twenty-eight. With a sleepless night and black stubble his romantic picturesqueness had faded, but his motions were still brisk, commanding, electric. The eye sought him like the focal point of a painting. Someone objected; he swung to face him, moving closer to speak, and she realized with a small surprise that he was nearsighted.

  He seemed to be placing his men at ground level. The hostages would be on the second and third floors. Ah, she thought. So escape would be more difficult. Not that she had given it even a passing thought. So far there had been no chance, especially with Nan.

  Seeing what had happened to Persinger, to the employee in the gray suit, to the two marines—and the unhurried, brutal way they had interrogated Freed—she did not feel like being the first to try.