Air Marshals

by Wynne, Marcus

  ***

  "We get off here," Joan said to Max in front of the Mariott.

  "What, no invite up for coffee?" Max said.

  "No, no coffee, Max," Joan said. "Nice meeting you." She held out her hand. Jon stood off a bit, his arms crossed.

  Max shook her hand and his head at the same time. "Well, you can't blame me for trying. Could I see you again?"

  "I don't know when I'll be back..."

  "I could call you."

  "No, I'll call you," Joan said.

  Max shrugged defeat and handed her an Aramco business card. Joan turned to walk into the hotel lobby and Max called after her, "Hey, you never did tell me what you do!"

  Joan grinned wickedly over her shoulder. "If I tell you, I'll have to kill you."

  Max laughed.

  "Good night, Warren!" Joan called.

  Warren waved at her and watched as she and Jon disappeared into through the glass and brass doors into the lobby. "She's too good for you, Mad Max," he observed.

  "She's damn good, buddy. How come you didn't move on the flight attendants?" Max said.

  "I was too busy watching your back."

  "I'd like to watch hers."

  "I think it's already being watched, by young Jon whatever there."

  "He's a kid...a woman like that needs a man to get up against."

  Warren walked off and said, "And your point is?"

  "I can't believe the opsec on this bunch," Max said, lighting up his first cigarette of the night. "They may as well wear signs."

  "They're not spooks. Not supposed to be. They're cops. Nearest thing to them is an airborne stake out squad," Warren said. He was familiar with the concept; he had taken classes at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center from the famous Jim Cirillo, the former head of the New York City Stake Out Squad.

  "Did you see Nelson and Dey checking us out?" Max said.

  "They're spooks. Either still or once upon a time," Warren replied laconically. "They still got the moves. I heard of them. They got a higher body count between the two of them than some third world nations."

  "I don't know, they're old dogs."

  "Jedi Jed is an old dog, and you sure as shit wouldn't want him sniffing your tail."

  "That's Jedi Jed."

  "Fucking smartass," came a voice from the corner of the hotel, behind the shrubbery. The two of them spun and saw Don Nelson grinning at them. "Old dogs? Nobody teach you respect for your elders?"

  The two young operators didn't know what to say. Don laughed out loud. "Don't fuck with an old dog, boys. It's the gray hairs that'll get you."

  He walked off, leaving the two looking at each other.

  ***

  Ahmad Ajai pointed to the flip chart mounted on the easel. The carefully sketched in airplane seating schematic was overdrawn with red crisscrossing lines like a diabolic basketball play sheet.

  "Seizing these positions is the key. If you hold these positions, you hold the entire aircraft -- and even if there are some air marshals we miss, they will be unable to move effectively, and we will discover them in the control and consolidation phase," he said. "Remember that," he said. "We must take the key positions quickly and violently. Are there any other questions?"

  "Yes," Ayoush said. "Do we have sufficient assets available to execute the deception plan?"

  Ahmad Ajai turned to the fashionably dressed Lebanese man sitting in a wooden chair turned backwards, his arms draped over the chair back.

  "That is my concern," Michel Neberi said. "And I will tend to it. It will be executed properly or, as your leader has said, the operation will not go forward."

  Ayoush was silent. Ahmad Ajai said, "Anything else? Very well then. Prepare to sterilize the warehouse. We have two hours."

  ***

  "What do you mean you lost him!" Jed said.

  John Bolen was furious with himself. "I'm not a miracle worker, Jed. I've got guys strung out all over the place watching the goddamn air marshals, and after they get done following them around they've got to pull a shift on the tango surveillance too. I only had two guys on Neberi, and Neberi is good, he was working a route, and he got clear before we could get back up in place. He'll show up, and we'll take care of him."

  "You hope he shows up," Jed snapped, as he stood up. His executive chair rolled back and bounced off the wall. He stalked to a framed Monet water lily on the wall and glared into it as though he might find an answer in the purple flower.

  "Neberi's got too much invested in Paris to blow out forever. Nobody's got enough money to get him out of here. He's a Parisian trapped in a Lebanese body. We've got all the other bases covered, the marshals go operational today, in a couple of hours we'll be fine. There's no movement, no players working the airport, we've got things covered. If they have an operation running, their running a long ways from the airport," John said. Right now he wished he was a long ways away, too.

  "I hope you're right, John. Goddamn it, I wish we knew where he was. I'm ready to take that son of a bitch out of play and sweat him like they did Leigh. I'll fry his fucking nuts and find this Ahmad Ajai," Jed said. His voice shook with barely controlled fierceness.

  "Calm down, Jed. Charley can handle it in the air, and we can handle it down here. "

  "Goddamn it, John!"

  ***

  Lenny, the newest member of the US air carrier cleaning crew, used the $50 prize money he won for finding the concealed test device to buy coffees for his crew members. All his co-workers raised their cups to him.

  "So, if you win the big money for finding a real device, will you be so generous?" one of the crew, big Amir the Turk, asked.

  "I can only pray," Lenny said in his quiet and modest way.

  ***

  Mary Franken had worked for DELTA Airlines for 16 years. At 38, she was still very much an attractive woman. Her taste in men ran to the dark and exotic. A child of the late sixties and early seventies, she enjoyed the Turkish and Israeli and occasional Arabs that filled her bed. Her latest beau was a darkly handsome and muscled Israeli ex-paratrooper. She loved to run her hands over the scars on his chest, but he refused to speak of how he got them. He spoke very little about himself, except to say that he came from a small village in what used to be Palestine, a village that no longer existed. In fact, he was not Israeli at all, a fact that amused him as much as the woman did. He was Palestinian, and an intelligence operative for HizbAllah.

  "One of my friends is an air marshal for El Al," he said carelessly, his hands crossed behind his neck, the rumpled bed sheets pulled over his groin. "He thinks that I should go to work there as well. They make pretty good money, get to fly."

  "You can fly with me, honey," Mary said, combing out her hair with her fingers.

  "It is not the same...they like us paras for that kind of work."

  "The US Air Marshals are like that. They have lots of military guys working with them. I know a couple."

  "I didn't know there were American air marshals."

  "Oh, yeah." Mary reached for a cigarette from the night stand, but her lover pushed her hand away.

  "I don't like you to smoke," he said.

  "Oh, all right," Mary said.

  "Tell me about the American air marshals. Do you think I could work for them?"

  "I think you have to be a US citizen. Probably."

  "I would like to see them, see what they look like."

  "There's a team coming through tomorrow, I mean this afternoon. Come by the counter around three and I'll point them out. I know a couple you can talk to."

  "I don't want to bother them. I just want to see them," her lover said softly.

  ***

  Michel Neberi spoke to the burly man who stood with him in the front room of a safe house on the outskirts of Frankfurt. "We already had that information. We got it from reservations," Neberi said. "But that's fine. Tell him to stand-by."

  The burly man nodded, and said, "Do you need me to put anything else in here?"

  "Is there
food in the kitchen?"

  "Yes."

  Neberi looked outside at the early morning light. "There's nothing else, then. Make sure our man is where he is supposed to be."

  "Yes."

  "I don't think I will ever fly again," Neberi said.

  ***

  Charley sat on his bed and munched a croissant and sipped coffee. There was a knock on the door. He got up and left Donald in. Don went into the bathroom and washed his face without saying a word. When he came out, Charley handed him a cup of coffee.

  "How's Luann?" Charley asked.

  "She's great," Don said. He sipped at his coffee. "Don't you have any sugar?"

  "Over there."

  Don poured three bags of sugar into his coffee cup and stirred it vigorously.

  "I'll work with Karen today," Charley said.

  "You talk to her?"

  "We're straight now. I'll back her up today."

  "Whatever. You tell Stacy?"

  "Not yet. Figure I'd give her time to get over you."

  "Leave me alone, Charles, before you piss me off."

  ***

  Lenny Amirkhas joked in the locker room with his co-workers. They were all more comfortable with him. His generosity with the coffee and his unexpected sense of humor had eased his entrance into their tight-knit circle. The supervisor waved him and the other cleaners over and gave them their assignments for the day. Lenny stood quietly, listened and then looked at the list of departure aircraft. He found the one he was looking for.

  "Amir," he said to his Turkish friend. "Might I trade assignments with you today?"

  "Why?"

  "I have not worked on this type of aircraft before, and I would like to see one."

  "Seen one, seen them all."

  "Just this one, for today."

  "Sure, Lenny, if you like. It will cost you a good coffee, though."

  Lenny laughed. "As you like it."

  ***

  Charley carefully packed his black cordura carry-on bag. He wore his Second Chance body armor under a baggy sweatshirt that also served to conceal his Sig-Sauer P-228 9mm, two spare 20-round magazines, a small Mini-Mag flashlight and a Spyderco fighting knife. He pulled his black leather jacket on over it all, and checked out himself in the mirror, looking for any tells . Satisfied, he swept through the room quickly one more time, looking for anything he might have left behind. He was ready. He went down into the lobby and checked out, then seated himself in the coffee shop and ordered a cup while he waited for the rest of the crew. He and Stacy and Karen and Steve had the Frankfurt to Athens run today; Harold and the augmentees had Frankfurt to Istanbul; Don had Frankfurt to Rome.

  Stacy was at the front desk, checking out. When she finished, she came over to his table. "Ein kaffe mit kreme," she said to the waitress.

  "Morning, Stace," Charley said.

  "Did you take care of business?"

  "Yeah. I'll work with her. You and Stevey team up."

  "That's fine with me." Stacy sipped at her coffee. "What did she have to say for herself?"

  "She was used, Stacy," Charley said. "She didn't know any better. She does now. Give her a chance."

  Stacy shrugged. "We'll see, home boy."

  The rest of their action cell showed up. Steve and Karen checked out and came over to sit with them. Karen was stiff and nervous, looking around at the carefully impassive faces at the table.

  "We ready to go? You need coffee?" Stacy said to Karen and Steve.

  "I'll get some at the airport," Stevey said. "They got that good little espresso stand."

  "I'm fine," Karen said.

  "Then let's get gone," Stacy said.

  They split into buddy teams, got into separate cabs, and left.

  ***

  ATHENS, GREECE:

  In a taverna in the Plaka, the old shopping area in the heart of Athens, two men worked their way methodically through a heaping platter of grilled lamb.

  "You understand fully what to do?" one asked the other, as he placed another bone on the plate.

  "It is not difficult. There is no danger to me, right?"

  "None at all."

  "I know the hotel. They must have lots of money."

  "Americans always have lots of money."

  The other grunted as he worked another chop between his teeth.

  ***

  FRANKFURT, GERMANY:

  Donald Gene stood at the ticket counter talking with the ground security coordinator and the station manager. Spread out in the crowd behind him, their backs against walls, were the other members of his action cell: Jon, Joan, and Butch. Butch was running the counter-surveillance, working the crowd, looking for anyone looking too hard, too much, or too little at his crew.

  "What's the weather like in Roma today, Dieter?" Don asked the ground security coordinator.

  Dieter, a thin and intense German whose passions were American country music and four-wheel drive vehicles, said "Beautiful, Don. Clear, a little breezy, high sixties, low seventies. Perfect."

  "Be a good day to find me a bella donna and drink wine in the plazas. I love this milk run," Don said. "Any new threat info?"

  "Nothing, " Dieter said. "Those phone calls..." He lowered his voice, looked around. While the counter was busy, the background noise in the crowded terminal was so loud that no one could hear them. "...there haven't been any for awhile. Just the usual things."

  "That's good." Don took the tickets for his crew. "See you when we get back, Dieter. You can buy us some beers."

  "Okay, Don. Have a safe flight."

  ***

  Charley and his crew got into the DELTA Airlines crew bus with Rainer, the on-duty ground security coordinator. From the thick glass window in the concourse above, Mary Franken tugged at her boyfriend's arm when the bus pulled away from the flight operations center out onto the tarmac.

  "See," she said. "There they go. They take them right out to the plane, just like the El Al crews."

  Her boyfriend patted her bottom absently while he watched the crew bus roll along the rows of parked planes and stop before one. He watched the four marshals climb the stairs up into the plane, and he noted the tail number of the aircraft.

  "Where is that plane going, I wonder?" he said idly.

  "I can find out," Mary said brightly. "Probably Athens."

  ***

  VECTOR AIRLINES FLIGHT #127, FRANKFURT TO ISTANBUL:

  Shirleen and Dyer stood back near the galley and watched Harold give his briefing to the flight and cabin crew. "What's he so nervous about?" Shirleen said.

  "He's got a bad case of the creeps working with Nelson and Dey," Dyer said, yawning. "Nelson kicked his ass a couple of years ago and Harold never forgot about it."

  "He was fucking up like this, he deserved an ass kicking," Shirleen said, shaking her head in disgust as Harold stammered through the briefing.

  "Like you can do any better?"

  "Maybe," Shirleen said. She watched Ray standing in a modified parade rest behind Harold. "We got to get young Ray laid. He's taking this shit entirely too seriously."

  ***

  DELTA FLIGHT #102, FRANKFURT TO ATHENS:

  On board the 727, Charley and his crew crowded into the small first class section. The cleaning crew was still on board, doing their last minute tidying up. Charley stood to one side and nodded as the crew supervisor squeezed by him, apologizing.

  "I'm sorry, we're running a little late," the supervisor said nervously.

  "No problem," Charley said. He looked the cleaning crew over. They were the normal cross-section of immigrants the Germans allowed in their country to do work the natives shunned. The cleaners were nervous around the marshals. Some of them knew what the marshals were there for, and others did not. The way these early-boarding passengers carried themselves precluded any questions from the cleaning crew.

  Stacy and Steve squeezed by the cleaning crew and went to the rear of the aircraft and stood in the galley near the lavatories.

  "You want to se
arch the lav?" Stacy said.

  "Put her in charge and she starts dumping the shit jobs on her buddies," Steve grumbled. He opened the lav door and inspected the small space. He knelt and took out the trash bin, looked behind it, looked into the cabinets behind the paper towels, flashed his light in the spaces behind the mirrors. "Clear," he said.

  Stacy worked her way through the galley, looking behind the bins of food and drinks and inside the various nooks and crannies of the storage units. She pulled out and opened a bottle of orange juice and poured two glasses.

  "Stevey, want some juice?"

  "That'd be good. Thanks."

  They paid no attention to the quiet cleaner straightening pillows in the seats at the back of the aircraft.

  ***

  WESTERN AIRLINES FLIGHT #223, FRANKFURT TO ROME:

  "I think you have had too many women, Mr. Don," Ilona, the lead flight attendant said.

  "There is no such thing as too many women, beautiful Ilona," Don replied.

  The beautiful Hungarian woman laughed with delight. She enjoyed her constant flirting and fencing with Donald, who she had known for two years. She had never given in and slept with him. On some crews, she was the only one who never had slept with the infamous Don Nelson. It amazed her that he got away with what he did; the women all seemed to love him no matter how outrageous or how blatant he was in the pursuit of other women. Still laughing, she walked away from Don. She enjoyed him.

  "You'll never get her, Don. That woman is the nearest thing to an angel on earth there is," Butch said. He sniffed at the air. "She even leaves the air smelling better. I bet her farts smell like rose petals."

  "Don't you talk about my future wife like that, you pig."

  "She can't marry you, her name isn't Debbie."

  "For her I'd make an exception."

  The two marshals lounged in the first class cabin while the flight attendants bustled around them, putting the cabin in order, setting up trays, making coffee and warming the ovens, preparing for the passengers. The captain and co-pilot came up the stairs and stopped when they saw the marshals.

  "About time we saw you guys again," the captain said, a short, fat and balding four striper. "Things haven't been the same without you."

  The co-pilot looked quizzically at him.

  "Welcome aboard," the captain said. "Anything you got to tell me?"