Air Marshals

by Wynne, Marcus

  Butch grinned and turned away. "C'mon, Don. I'll buy you a drink in the bar."

  "Good night, kiddies," Don said indifferently. He followed Butch into the lobby bar, and sat himself down in an overstuffed armchair beside a lush potted palm. "VO and Seven-Up, Butchie."

  "I know what you drink."

  The man who had been following them entered the lobby, lingered for a moment in front of the registration desk, then crossed through the bar to the shopping arcade on the other side.

  "So, homey," Butch said, handing Don his drink. "Here we are."

  "And there it is."

  "Yes."

  They sipped at their drinks, sprawled in the chairs where they could see the entire lobby and the man looking in the windows of the darkened shopping arcade.

  "Maybe I should get my camera," Butch said.

  "No. No need to draw attention, just let him think that we're that oblivious."

  Don waved the waiter over. "Two more for my friend and me, please."

  "So you think the kids are doing the nasty?" Butch asked.

  "Are you senile or just stupid?"

  "I'd like some of that."

  "Your heart would stop and I'd have to fill out all kinds of paperwork. She's too young for you. You need one like that," Don said, nodding at the stooped old woman wrapped in a black dress with a black scarf around her head sweeping the lobby. "She'd be kind to you. She'd be grateful. She'd be..."

  "Don, you're sick. I don't know why I talk to you about anything."

  "Because I am your team leader, and it's my job to set an example for you."

  "So what are you going to do? Go up, go to bed?"

  Don stretched, grinned. "Yep. Let's go."

  The two finished their drinks. They left a small tip for the waiter and crossed the lobby to the elevator. The man in the shopping arcade waited until the elevator door closed, and he watched the lighted floor numbers stop at eight. Then he walked out the door and across the street, where he looked up at the lighted windows on the eighth floor. He referred to a room map in his hand, and penciled in the location of the lit windows. He turned and walked away, his worn loafers clicking loudly in the silent street.

  ***

  Donald Gene opened his curtains and looked out over Athens. The view was spectacular. The Parthenon was lit up with spotlights, and despite the surrounding metal gantries and catwalks from the restoration project, it was still awesome and glorious in its beauty. The city sparkled like a moon-lit sea under the stars. The lights lapped up along the hillsides that ringed Athens. Maybe it was all the water here that made him feel so much at home. But there were hunters out there, and he could feel them pressing on his consciousness, the way they had pressed on his consciousness when he was leading patrols deep into Indian country in Viet Nam. He could feel the desire to harm him, to know him so as to kill him, pressing on him like an invisible streamer.

  He checked the security of his door, then sat in front of the sliding glass door with a fresh VO and Seven from the minibar. He ran through the events of the day in his mind, cataloguing the particulars of the surveillance he had spotted. He went to the desk and got paper and pen and returned to his seat to make careful notes. Warmed by his drink, he opened the sliding glass door to let in some air.

  "Joan..." he heard from the room next door. He grinned and leaned against the open glass door.

  "Joan..." It was Jon's drunken voice. "Joan...don't go. Stay."

  "I'm not going to stay, Jon," Joan said. "Just get into bed."

  Don struggled to stay silent.

  "Joan, stay. Please stay. We don't have to do anything."

  Joan laughed. "Jon...look at you. You're a wreck."

  "Joan, please stay. Don't go. You don't have to fuck me. Just hold me."

  Don shoved his hand into his mouth to stop from breaking into huge laughter. He quietly shut the glass door, tears in his eyes from suppressed laughter.

  "Don't go," he snorted. "Just stay. Just hold me, Joan."

  ***

  At the airport the next morning, Don moved his crew quickly and efficiently through the check-in procedures. Jon and Butch stood away from him and Joan. The boys prowled the terminal, past the ticket counters, eyeballing everyone, looking for suspicious passengers or visitors. Don and Joan met with the station manager, got the tickets expedited, then met Butch and Jon on the far side of the security checkpoint.

  "We good to go?" Don asked Butch.

  "Yeah, we're clean," Butch said.

  "Well, let's not stay. Let's go," Don said. He burst out laughing as he led the puzzled marshals towards the jetways.

  ***

  FRANKFURT, GERMANY:

  Ahmad Ajai was dreaming of the camps. He remembered his father telling him stories of their home in Palestine, in a little village they had left for what was supposed to be only a short time. They had never returned. The war that swept over it, and all the wars since that time, had reduced their little village to a huddle of charred foundations and a dried up well in the middle of nowhere. When he was older, he gravitated to the boys who were tasked, in the way of the action groups, to throw the rocks, to clean the guns, to load the ammunition into the magazines for the men, the fighters. He'd found something for himself there, a purpose beyond the endless contemporizing and philosophizing that his passive father invoked, something beyond the bitter learned helplessness of his mother.

  He'd made his name early by placing bombs. He'd come to the attention of the training staff for his easy way of leadership among the boys. Even the older ones would listen to him and follow his lead. After he had gone through the training camps, he was sent to assist their Iranian brothers in the last days of the Shah. He had paraded with the rest when the US Embassy was taken, and he had seen the charred remains of the US DELTA Force commandos who had died in the desert. When HizbAllah was formed, he was one of the trainers. His dislike for bombs, despite his early start, had led him into the direct action wing. Now, almost fifteen years later, he thought of himself as an Iranian. He was a Shiite, and always had been; he had an Iranian wife and an Iranian son, and he took his guidance personally from an imam who was an Iranian cleric. He lived and breathed his religion, and received a special dispensation for the sins he committed out of operational necessity: the drinking of alcohol to maintain his cover, the inability to pray as often as he might. These things were forgiven the fighters, the men who went out to do what needed to be done in the name of Islam.

  He hid a secret shame, though. There was a part of him that loved his clandestine existence, loved the luxury he traveled in, the perquisites he enjoyed as a man of rank and experience. After his last successful operation he returned home after a long absence. His wife and child greeted him, and the part of him that was steeped in his religion welcomed them. The part of him he'd created to sustain him in the West when he went forth to do battle with the infidels and agents of the Great Satan was uneasy. He looked critically upon his wife, the memory of women in Germany and France in his mind, and his son, denied the opportunities taken for granted by children in the West. He settled momentarily in his life, a restless visitor in his own home, he who had spent his life in dusty desert camps, hotel rooms and airports. Then he left to prepare for the mission that would be the culmination of his operational career.

  He would kill these air marshals and take their plane away from them.

  That thought woke him, and he lay still in his bed. The even breathing from the other bed told him that one of his companions was asleep. The glow and flicker and smell of a cigarette from near the door told him that the other was on watch, seated beside the door.

  "Farouk," Ajai called softly.

  "Yes."

  "Is there anything new?"

  "They are watching them in Athens and Istanbul. Nothing else, not yet."

  "Good," he said. "Good." He lay back down and closed his eyes, and dreamed of blood falling, falling from the sky.

  ***

  ISTANBUL, TURKEY:

>   The Presidential Hotel in Istanbul is nowhere near as elevated as its name. Situated within two blocks of the famous Kapali Carsi, the Great Bazaar, the Presidential is a faded memory of a hotel that had its heyday in the 1950s. The rooms are small and dank, the carpet water stained, and it's not unusual to find the cracked toilet seats duct taped together -- complete with a few stray black hairs from previous occupants. The bar is close and dark, cluttered with relics of American pop culture from the 70s. At night, it's full of middle-aged Turks who remembered the bar as a swinging place in their youth and tourists traveling on the low end. The marshals favored it because it was out of the way, had direct bus service to the airport, and was conveniently located near the Bazaar for the cheap shopping.

  Charley Dey stood under the front entrance awning of the Presidential and looked up at the graying sky. Rain, maybe. The newspaper kiosk next to him displayed half-page spreads of grainy black and white photos showing the latest carnage wreaked by the PKK terrorist car bombs. Stacy and Karen, accompanied by Steve, had already taken off for the bazaar in search of leather jackets. Charley had stayed behind to do paperwork. He planned to meet them for dinner at a good restaurant in the Eski Bedestan, the old market at the core of the Great Bazaar.

  Charley started walking, his big shoulders and relaxed stride a subtle warning to the Turkish rough-off artists lingering in the doorways. The streets were narrow, the sidewalk greasy with old dirt and rain. In spite of what he preached to the marshal trainees about always traveling with a buddy, Charley enjoyed his solitary walks on foreign soil. He had worked in over fifty countries as a marshal, undercover in the airports surveilling potential hijackers, on board the aircraft, and in the embassies as a liaison officer. For a blue-collar kid from Minneapolis, Minnesota, he'd come a long way, and seen a lot of things he'd never dreamed he would see.

  He liked Istanbul, as he liked most of the foreign cities he had worked in. There was always something to like, something to keep his soul refreshed while his one part of his mind kept scanning like radar, the operational mind cautious and calculating, even while he played the tourist. He liked the sense of history here, at the crossroads of so many civilizations in what had been the city of Byzantium. He liked the bustle and he liked the Turks. He respected them for the toughness of their culture, and he liked their friendliness. He even liked their deep-seated proclivity for violence, whether it was their soldiers and police, or whether it was the bold and blatant rip-off artists who worked the streets.

  Charley remembered when he and Donald Gene and somebody else, who was it, Mac Collier? had taken a cab, all three of them drunk as hell, down to Sultan Ahmet Camii, the famous Blue Mosque, in the middle of the night. The Anti-Terrorist Police had confronted them there and held them at gun point, while Charley stammered out an explanation of how, even as a child, he had dreamed of seeing the famous Blue Mosque. Swayed by his act, the grinning Anti-Terrorist Police had slung their G-3 assault rifles and showed them around, even though the mosque was closed for the night. Charley laughed at the memory. He'd had some times, that's for sure.

  Almost a full block behind Charley, a man followed. It was easy to keep track of the marshal team leader in the crowded street; his was the only blond-gray head in the crowd. The man followed on the opposite side of the street, where he could watch Dey as he strolled along, hands in his pockets. The man was cautious; word of Rashid's disappearance had reached even the surveillance cell here in Istanbul. Dey was no amateur, he could see. The American used the reflecting shop windows to check his surroundings; he paused occasionally to look back over his route and he often changed speeds, from quick to slow, as he walked.

  The terrorist watched Dey cross a busy street against the light. He followed. It was almost night fall and the lights of the covered bazaar glowed ahead. Hurrying, the terrorist watcher touched the six-inch knife concealed inside his pants, his eyes on Charley Dey's back.

  ***

  Steve "T-Man" Paulson leaned against the greasy brick wall of the Hurriyet Meydani entrance to the Great Bazaar and watched the early evening shopping crowd. A quiet man, as he was so often teased about, Steve could be voluble with people he liked on the subjects he was passionate about: guns and shooting, good food and coffee, and his few friends. He counted Charley Dey among the latter. Charley had been one of the few who had seen past the quietness and near obsession with firearms to Steve's core, to the discipline and keen intellect and fierce privacy there -- and he had shown his respect for that. In Steve's experience that was rare. Most people looked to change something about people who were different. 'You're so quiet,' his girlfriend complained. 'Get a life,' some of the marshals said about his passion for shooting. Charley had always taken Steve for what he was. Charley sent Steve to all the top shooting schools: Jeff Cooper's American Pistol Institute, Bill Roger's elite school in Georgia, Massad Ayoob's Lethal Force Institute. He pulled strings and cashed in favors to get a slot for Steve in the Special Operations Training Course at Fort Bragg.

  It wasn't long after Steve returned from Mott Lake that Charley was assigned to the training branch. His patronage of Steve continued. He made sure that Steve was top on the list of guest firearm instructors, and gave him the chance to shine at what he did best. So when Steve heard Charley Dey was a team leader again, he made sure he was on the new team they put together. He knew that Charley relied on him, relied on him to steady the team, and that was important to him.

  He saw Charley slipping easily through the crowd of early evening shoppers. Charley raised his hand and said, "What's up, T-Man?"

  "Not too much, partner. The gals are in a shopping frenzy."

  "They buy it, they carry it."

  "Roger that."

  The two men passed beneath the huge arched entrance gate into the crowded bazaar. The dark and cautious man followed behind them.

  Steve said, "You check your six on the way in, Charley?"

  "Yeah. Why?"

  "There's some guy followed you in here, giving you the serious eyeball."

  Charley stopped to look at some brassware displayed in a tiny shop just inside the bazaar. He used his peripheral vision, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. "Where?" he asked.

  Steve murmured, "Leaning against the wall, having a smoke, just left of the entrance arch."

  The dark and cautious man was dressed in a leather car coat, with an open necked white shirt beneath, plain dark slacks and broken down black loafers. He was still, and alone, in contrast to the evening time shoppers who swirled and eddied around him like a human tide, and seemed unduly interested in the smoldering tip of his cigarette.

  Charley rolled his neck to prevent himself from shaking his head in disgust. "I must be getting old, T-Man. It's a good thing I've got you to watch my back."

  "You want to move on him?"

  "No. Let's do a route and check him out, see if he's got any friends. Then let's get the hell off the street."

  "We better find the girls ASAP."

  ***

  "So what's the deal?" Stacy demanded, her hands on her hips. Karen stood off to Stacy's left, her hands full of shopping bags.

  "We'll just work a route back from here," Charley said.

  "I think we should just take a goddamn cab back to the hotel. This is fucking Istanbul, Charley, not Frankfurt. We can get hurt playing this shit. We need to go to ground and let the right people know about this," Stacy said in a low voice.

  Charley looked at her, then at Karen. Steve stood by silently, watching the crowd, looking for the man they all knew was out there.

  Charley looked down and said, "You're right. We'll split up, take two cabs back to the hotel. Karen, you ride with me. Let's do it."

  He stalked off, and the others fell in quickly behind him. They went out the main bazaar entrance to the cab stand there, where Charley struck a quick deal with two drivers. He showed the drivers the matchbook with the hotel address on it. The marshals got into the cabs and took off. The cautious man watched them go from h
is vantage point near the entrance arch.

  Karen looked over at Charley, who stared silently out the side window and occasionally glanced up at the rear view mirror. The cabby, meeting Charley's eyes there once, turned away and kept his eyes on the road in front of him. She was uncomfortable. Charley Dey had been nothing but scrupulously fair to her, in training and ever since she had been on the team. She had her ambitions, which is why she had agreed to compile a report of his activities for Simon Dinkey, but she also had scruples and a sense of fair play under her insecurity. It made her feel bad about the notes she kept in her little green notebook. She didn't fully understand what was going on around her. Her training was not such that she could always see the things that the older and more experienced marshals commented on, but she was starting to, and that frightened her badly. The focus and intensity of the other marshals made her feel even more inadequate and that fueled her anger, and there was a part of her that recognized that and hated herself for it. But she kept on detailing her notes, the things Dinkey told her would be of interest:

  "Just put down your thoughts, and what specifics you observe. When you get back, you can put together a full and detailed report and go over it with me. I'm most interested in your view point of how Dey operates as a team leader. He has a tendency to cut corners, go his own way...and you know we can't have that." Dinkey had smiled down on her in his paternal way. "This could be a real help to me, and I'll let the right people know about your part in it when it comes time that it would be appropriate to do so. Do a good job for me, Karen."

  She was doing that, but as the mission went on, she found it harder and harder to bring out that green notebook. Everything Dey did seemed to be motivated by one thing: taking care of his people, of whom she was one. It seemed a particularly foul betrayal to gather information she knew would be used against him when he was so obviously concerned with her well-being.

  "Charley?" she said.

  He looked tired. "Yes, Karen?"

  "Things are getting pretty heavy, aren't they?"

  He looked at the driver's back and said, "Yes. They are."