Air Marshals

by Wynne, Marcus

  ***

  PARIS/ISTANBUL/BEIRUT/CYPRUS/FRANKFURT:

  At Orly Airport in Paris, at midnight, a janitor whose family in Beirut relied on the slim wages he sent home emptied the trash in the office of the Western Airlines station manager. The trash went into his wheeled bin. He swept the floor, wiped the desk and counter surfaces with a rag, and closed the door behind him when he was finished. He pushed his cart to the next counter down. The terminal was deserted. He pushed his cart into the next office, turned on the light and sorted through the trash he had just dumped into his bin until he found what he was looking for. He picked up the phone and called a man who lived near the Parc Monceau.

  That man listened to the message and hung up with muttered thanks. Gathering his bathrobe around him, he went and sat in front of a computer work station set in the window of his expensive apartment. Powering the machine up, he drafted a concise message which he sent through the INTERNET to an electronic mail address in Istanbul. A graduate engineering student at Istanbul's Ataturk University got the on-screen prompt he had been waiting half the night for. He printed out the report and sent it as a fax to Beirut.

  In the early pre-dawn hours, the old man who received the fax around it took the sheet of thermal paper, sealed it into an envelope, and gave it to his youngest son. The twelve-year old slipped the envelope into the inner pocket of his vest, picked up his rifle and combat harness, and went out the back door and made the perilous crossing through the rubble to a basement not far from the US embassy. He handed the envelope to the hard looking man in the leather jacket who guarded the basement door.

  The guard handed it to a runner, who went down the stairs into a warren of interconnected tunnels and rooms that ran beneath the rubble of the streets above. In one of those rooms a man with sad eyes sat at a table in an otherwise empty room, his hands steepled before him. The runner entered and laid the envelope down on the table and left without a word. The man picked up the envelope and took the fax out of it. After reading it, he closed his eyes and thought for awhile. Then he left the room, and went down the dirt passageway to another room, where quiet men sat and listened to radios. There was a television, its antenna aerial poking through the rubble far above; several phones and a fax machine. On a table in the corner was a typewriter. The man took a piece of paper with the letterhead of a company headquartered in Syria and laboriously pecked out a message. He put it into the fax machine and sent it to another fax machine in Cyprus.

  In Cyprus, the secretary, first into her office early in the morning, picked up the fax and studied it. She took one of her company's letterhead sheets and retyped the message word for word. She faxed it to a number in Frankfurt, Germany. In the early morning light, as Ahmad Ajai and his team members went through their exercises with the Filipino instructor, the fax machine in the warehouse office rang.

  ***

  PART THREE

  DECEPTION PLAN

  FRANKFURT, GERMANY:

  Charley watched the other passengers blink, owl-like, in the bright morning light that filled the cabin as the plane descended into Frankfurt. It had been a pleasant flight. He'd found his book interesting and, after his initial discomfort with not prowling the plane as he was used to, he'd enjoyed just being a marshal again. He had profiled all his passengers, identified any potential bad guys (none); looked for anyone who might interfere if something was to go down (one bulky and buzz cut college athlete or GI who looked like a want to be hero); and walked his route to his cover position often enough so he could do it in the dark. After that he just relaxed in his seat and worked on thinking through his cover story (a pool chemical salesman on vacation in Germany to visit his brother stationed at Bad Tolz).

  Butch looked over at him and grinned. "Don't get too used to it, Charley. Vacation's not going to last forever," he said.

  Charley said, "I don't believe they pay us for doing this. I'd forgotten how much fun you guy have."

  The plane taxied to the terminal, and the flight attendants took their door positions. Luann stood by the forward door in front of Charley and Butch and winked.

  "Dinner, boys?" she said.

  "Absolutely," Butch said.

  "What about you, Charley?" Luann asked.

  "Wouldn't miss it," he answered.

  "Good," she said.

  The few Business Class passengers looked quizzically at the interplay. One of them, a silver-haired executive, said to his wife, "Those guys must have made some time with the stewardess."

  The plane came to a full stop and the wholesale rush for the door began. People filled the aisles, rummaged under the seats and in the overhead compartments for their coats and carry-on bags. Charley and Butch stayed in their seats and watched the passengers file by. Once the aircraft was empty except for marshals and flight crew, they moved forward into the First Class section, where the other marshals stood with George Baumgarner.

  "Hey Charley," George said. "What's the deal here? They giving you vacation or what?"

  "Harold was good enough to fill in and cut me some slack," Charley said easily.

  "Humph," Stacy said.

  "Well," George said, looking around at the marshals, noting those who avoided his eyes. "We'll talk. Let's go." He led the marshals down the jetway and into the terminal. When they got into baggage claim, George stood off to one side with Harold, Don, Stacy, and Charley while the other marshals went to claim their bags.

  "It's been a while since you've been a team leader, hasn't it?" George asked Harold.

  "Yeah," Harold said.

  "How come you're working here?" George asked, reaching for his cigarettes.

  Harold looked at Charley. "I don't really know why, George," he said honestly. "The story I got is that I'm supposed to be getting some experience with a strong team and that Charley needed some slack time. I'm grateful for the first and glad to do the second. I try to keep out of the politics."

  "That's a good thing to do," Don said. He was unusually quiet.

  "That's one thing about working with this outfit. It's better than the circus: you never know what you're going to see next," George observed. He puffed his cigarette to life and went on. "The situation is pretty much as we left it. The surveillance teams you guys made have gone to ground. The air carriers have reported some suspicious requests for information recently: an unusual number of people have called up and asked what the procedures are for shipping handguns and explosives, asked for people's itineraries, that sort of thing."

  "When did that start?" Don asked.

  "After the surveillance stopped." George said glumly. He drew on his cigarette. "There's a lot of activity with the Agency and DOD. I'm not sure what they're up to , but they're keeping a close eye on things. It's pretty tense. The new security advisories are out and the carriers are working hard to keep in compliance."

  "It feels tense," Stacy observed.

  "Lot of the air crews are asking me where you guys are. The word'll be out all over the airport that you guys are back on the block," George said.

  "I guess that's a good thing," Harold said.

  "Maybe," Don said. He looked around. "The kids got their stuff. Let's get out of here." He joined the other marshals filing out past the customs officers towards the cab stands. George hung back and waited for Charley to fall into step with him.

  "What's the deal, Charley?" he asked.

  "A lot of silly politics and point making," Charley said. "Harold's okay. He's trying to do the best he can and you can't ask anything more than that." He watched Harold try to engage Don and Stacy in conversation and fail miserably.

  "You might want to talk to Jed while you're here," George said.

  "I plan to. Have you seen him lately?"

  "We had drinks the other night. He told me to tell you to look him up when you got here."

  "Did he know about the deployment?"

  "Hell, you can never tell with Jedi Jed."

  ***

  John Bolen leaned on the rail of the mezzani
ne level above the terminal floor and watched the air marshal team come out of customs and line up at the cab stand. He saw Charley Dey and Donald Nelson come out with George Baumgarner behind all the others. It surprised him how they operated, but he had to remind himself that air marshals weren't technically covert operators. They were here as US federal law enforcement agents with the full permission of the host country. Still, they were better than many of the military teams he worked with, who looked as out of place as football linebackers at a ballet recital when they came through. One of his operators, "Mad Max" Onofrey, bumped into one of the marshals, a good looking young woman. Mad Max spoke with the woman, to the obvious discomfiture of her male partner, a young kid who stood by fuming at the blatant pick up attempt. After a minute Mad Max went on his way, strolling down the cab stand past the other marshals. John watched him go, then went down the stairs to meet him.

  "How you doing?" John said.

  "That's my kind of woman," Max said. "Good shape, good attitude, good job, and she must be a good shooter. Did you see the body on that girl?"

  "Uh, huh. Back to business, Maxwell my boy. Where they going?"

  "Marriott, like we thought. Her name is Joan. Dick cheese her wanna be boyfriend is Jon. I think she wants to dump him and do pony tricks with Mad Max."

  John reached out and put his hand on Max's head. "Heal him, Lord," he intoned.

  "Not till after I have her, okay?" Max said.

  ***

  After the post-mission debrief in Harold's hotel room, Charley and Don went across the hall to Charley's room. "You want a beer, Donnie, or you gonna catch some bag time?"

  "I'll drink a beer."

  Charley opened a Dortmunder and handed one to Don, who drained off half the bottle in one long swallow. "Weren't thirsty, were you?"

  "A little bit," Don allowed. "Feel better now, though. How'd you like not having to work for once?"

  "It was actually pretty damn good, once I got over not prowling around. I heard you making time in back."

  "Luann was tormenting me with the young nubile bodies of her trainee sky goddesses," Don said.

  "It was good to see her."

  "When do you want to hook up with Jed?"

  "I called the Annex a little while ago; he's out. I left a message with my room number on it. He'll get back to us."

  There was a knock on the door. Charley went to it and said, "Who is it?"

  "Stacy and Steve."

  Charley opened the door and let the two of them in. "How about a beer?" he said. He looked at their grim looks and said, "What's wrong?"

  Stacy came right to the point. "Karen is a snitch planted by Dinkey."

  "What?" Charley said.

  "I heard her talking to him in the office at the FOB. She's been taking notes on the team, but mostly you, and giving them to Dinkey."

  "That fucking bitch," Don snarled. "Did she set us up at the airport?"

  "Probably," Stevey said. "What are we going to do about this?"

  "I really don't want to believe that," Charley said. He shook his head. "I never imagined things could get to this...somebody on the team?"

  "What do you want to do, Charley?" Stacy pushed. "We can't let this go on."

  Charley was stymied. His first instinct was to call Karen aside and talk to her -- but if he was to do that, he'd have to do it as a team member and not as a team leader. The team's already strained working relationship would be torn apart. The unit integrity, already compromised by Dinkey's heavy hand, would be shattered at a time when teamwork was absolutely essential.

  "I'll talk to her," he said. "Just me, marshal to marshal. The rest of you are going to have to sit on this until I find out what's going on with her." He asked Steve and Stacy, "Are you sure of this? Is it possible you misunderstood what was going on?"

  Steve was silent. Stacy said, exasperated, "Hey, Charley, this is Stacy talking, remember? I heard what I heard."

  "Okay. Don't say anything to anybody else until I talk to her."

  "I don't want to work with the bitch, Charley," Stacy snapped. "If I can't trust her to deal with us in a straight up fashion, I sure as shit don't trust her to talk care of business when things go down. I want to send her home."

  "Give me some time to get to the bottom of this, Stace," Charley said.

  "Do it quick, Charley, or I'm going to. This disgusts me, I can't tell you how much." Stacy turned to Nelson. "Give me a goddamn beer, Donald."

  The phone rang. "Now what," Charley muttered picking up the receiver. "Hello?"

  "Hey son," came the gravely voice of Jed Loveless. "We need to talk. You need some time to nap, or can you get away right now?"

  "I won't be doing any sleeping . I'll meet you now," Charley said.

  "Be in front of the hotel in fifteen minutes." The phone buzzed loudly as Jed hung up.

  "I've got to go," Charley said.

  "I'll go with you," Don said. "Let me get my jacket." He got up and went out the door. Steve and Stacy followed him out.

  Stacy said over her shoulder, "See you guys for dinner?"

  "Later," Charley said. He stood alone in the room, then bent and picked up the empty beer bottles and set them in the waste can. He looked out the window at the Main River. What else could go wrong?

  ***

  "This is John Bolen. I think you guys have met before," Jed said.

  "Yeah," Charley said, sticking his hand over the back of the passenger seat and shaking John's hand. "It's been awhile, John." He turned to Donald and said, "We met down at Bill Rogers' shooting school, in Georgia."

  "Yeah, old Charley kicked my ass on the final shoot off," John drawled.

  "Seems to me that you beat everybody else in the class...I got lucky," Charley said.

  "Still don't make me feel better," John said, grinning. He looked over at Don. "So you're Donald Gene Nelson, huh? I heard a lot about you."

  "I deny everything, I know nothing," Don said.

  "John's got some info for you," Jed said. He kept his eyes on the road, as he drove through the narrow streets winding around the old Frankfurt Army Headquarters.

  John's voice dropped into the flat, steady tone of an experienced briefer. "I'm in charge of the follow up to information provided by your unit. We've made a positive ID of one Ahmad Ajai, a known leader in Hizbollah's direct action units. Ajai met with a known logistics coordinator in Paris. We have our eyes on the logistics coordinator. Ajai dropped out of sight in Paris and hasn't surfaced. There have been no identified surveillance on your units since your last report. There was none in the airport when you arrived today. We have been monitoring incoming calls to key stations at the airport to see what we can pull up on these suspicious phone calls. We've had three different suspicious calls, all of which originated from public phones in widely scattered parts of the city. This information leads us to believe that the operation may still be on-going, but that the shooters may be out of the country or in isolation. Some limited information gathering is still being attempted. Our best read at this point is that the failure for them to go undetected has at least delayed if not completely deterred them from acting on their presumed mission profile: executing a hijacking operation."

  Don looked at the young man in awe. "Damn, you're good, son!"

  Charley said, "Is your part an on-going one?"

  John looked at Jed before he answered. "Yeah. You can think of me and my guys as Charley's Angels."

  "That's good," Don said. "Charley's Angels."

  "There's a thought," Jed said. "The three of you off someplace, running around with guns without adult supervision. I think I'm going on leave."

  "What do you hear about Simon Dinkey?" Charley asked Jed.

  "Nothing since the last time we talked," Jed said. "Why?"

  "I like to keep tabs on the boy," Charley said.

  ***

  On the warehouse floor, Ahmad Ajai's hijackers paced out distances and put down tape on the floor to outline an aircraft configuration. Folding chairs be
came aircraft seats. They stepped off the distances from the seats to the simulated bulkheads, then began to practice knife techniques and handgun presentation from the seats and the aisles. Ahmad Ajai sat in the warehouse office above them. On the chipped wooden table in front of him were several soft bound airline schedule books, along with the most recent edition of the Airline Seating Guide. He cross referenced the aircraft noted in the airline schedule routes for Athens, Istanbul, Frankfurt, and New York with the Airline Seating Guide. He made notes on each of the airplane configurations used on each route and put a yellow post it note on each of the specific configurations for copying later. The fax in front of him held the tentative marshal coverage plan, which had made a circuitous journey from Paris to Frankfurt. As required by law, the FAA had to inform the air carriers of the proposed marshal coverage: it was the biggest operational security loophole in the whole program. Team leaders dealt with it by utilizing their authority to shift seats, even whole flight schedules, and introduced variables and random changes into the schedule to protect their people. Ahmad Ajai's surveillance had indicated as much. The information and the people he had in place were sufficient to give a reasonable amount of notice when the marshals would cover a particular flight.

  The marshal teams were covering an unprecedented number of flights. That meant they had augmentation or additional teams deployed or some standing by. Ahmad Ajai frowned and looked at his draft operational order. He would have to task additional assets to counter surveillance. He shook his head and thumbed through the schedule book again, lingering on the routes to Athens.

  ***

  The marshals and their party were stretched out along two long tables in the back room of the Basler Eck, under the gigantic elk horns mounted on the back wall. Dinner plates and dozens of empty beer steins littered the table. The party was split into several smaller groups. As usual, Don dominated his end of the table with ribald laughter. Luann sat between Don and Charley, and constantly slapped at Don's wandering hands. Her flock of young flight attendants was spread up and down the table, clustering near the young men. Harold sat next to Karen; he was more relaxed after a few beers. There was a lot of laughter and sexual posturing going on where Jon, Joan, Ray, Dyer and several of the flight attendants were huddled in a convivial semi-circle.