Air Marshals

by Wynne, Marcus

  "Hey," Don said. He pressed a large cup of coffee into Charley's hand. "Here. Walk with me, man. Let's get some blood stirring."

  "Thanks, Donnie," Charley said gratefully. He sipped at the hot coffee, and followed his partner through the crowd, careful not to bump into anyone.

  "We're really slipping, buddy," Don said conversationally. "I think we might be the only ones working today. Everybody's ass is dragging. I know we got eyes on us, but there's still no excuse for going admin."

  Charley shrugged, and then caught himself. He was tired, tired of the whole damn thing. This mission had made him realize just how little he was getting out of this job anymore. "You're right as usual, Donnie. You're right. Let's circulate around and kick a few of these dragging asses."

  "Now you're talking," Don said. "That's my Charley boy, you betcha, ahuh, ahuh, that's the way I like it, ahuh, ahuh." He shuffled along like he was on a disco floor.

  "You're out of control, Donnie," Charley said, his humor restored. "Completely out of control."

  ***

  Lenny Amirkhas stood out on the airfield and looked down the row of parked planes to the big 747. A baggage handler, a man he'd introduced to the others as his cousin, stood next to him with a suitcase in his hand. The bag was tagged with a bright DCA label, which stood for Dulles International Airport. Lenny nodded to the man and said, "I will meet you later." The other man nodded, put the bag on the back of his baggage cart, and drove away.

  Lenny went back into the cleaning crew office where his co-workers lounged around. The supervisor was gone.

  "I think we should get up to the plane and do the walk through now. My cousin tells me they are ahead of schedule. Perhaps we can be done earlier, what do you think?" Lenny asked.

  "I think getting through early sounds good to me," one of the others said, getting up. "Let's get it done and surprise the boss, eh?"

  Lenny lagged behind. "I'll be right there, I want a windbreaker," he called.

  "We don't want you breaking any wind!" shouted one, to the amusement of the crew. Lenny laughed obediently, then knelt quickly at his locker and pulled several flat, heavy packages out and stuffed them into a canvas vest he wore beneath his blue coveralls. He jogged after the others to catch up.

  ***

  Harold had all the tickets. He'd put himself in First Class, with Karen and Shirleen. Nelson, Dey and Slice he stuck upstairs in Business, right outside the cockpit door. Stacy, Ray and Dyer went into the lower floor Business, while Butch, Steve and Jon went into coach. He told Shirleen to gather up all the marshals and he went to go find George Baumgarner, who he found leaning against a pillar, smoking a cigarette.

  "You ready to go?" Baumgarner said.

  "Yeah, I've got the tickets. We setting up in the regular place?"

  "No, I've got you in the crew operations area across the hall. Get your people together and we'll go."

  HD looked back and saw Shirleen leading the marshals towards them. They all fell in behind George and followed him through a side door and down into the bowels of the airport.

  ***

  Gamal Ayoush watched the marshals go. For him and some of the others, it was their first opportunity to see in the flesh the people they had come to kill. He saw Nelson and Dey and knew them to be formidable. There were some passengers they would have to deal with harshly: some American servicemen, easily identified by their short hair and military bearing. Many were traveling with their families, which gave him an easy lever by which to move them. Ayoush felt the rush of exhilaration he had been holding back; he knew they were going to be successful. The marshals were careless in their fatigue. While they appeared to be profiling the crowd, not once had they been drawn to him. Most of the hijackers were through screening. One had had his bag opened to display a radio with the batteries out. With the right passports and the right answers to the questions, they passed easily through the first part of the multi-layered screening process.

  Things were going well.

  Ayoush looked back in line for Ahmad Ajai, who stared back at him impassively, then broke eye contact. Ayoush turned and looked forward at the counter, where Mary Franken was working her way through a pile of computer print-out and manifests.

  ***

  "Have you seen him?" Spider snapped at Rhino. "Where the fuck is he?"

  The two men hurried through the crowd, looking for John Bolen up on his perch on the mezzanine.

  "Call him on the fucking cellular," Rhino said.

  Spider stopped, pulled a cellular phone out of his bag, and punched a speed dial number. The phone buzzed and John answered.

  "Hello?"

  "Boss, this is Spider. We have a possible sighting, meet to confirm at RP 1."

  "Roger, out," came the terse reply, and then a dial tone.

  RP 1 was a set of chairs in front of the EL Al counter, near a video monitor displaying directions and maps of the terminal. A pre-designated Rally Point, it gave an easily identifiable location to move to or from during a surveillance. John and Max were already there, leaving Warren on overwatch up on the mezzanine.

  "What have you got?" John said.

  "I think this guy Ahmad Ajai is in line for the marshal flight," Rhino said. "He sure looks like the database photo, and he feels funny."

  "Where is he in line?" John said.

  "Come with me. The rest of you hang back," Rhino said.

  John followed Rhino around the corner where the Delta ticket counters were. They strolled along like other passengers, seemingly at ease.

  "There, at the counter right now," Rhino said.

  John saw only the back of the man's head. He was dressed in a good black suit and carried a briefcase. The man's checked bag was already tagged and the check-in agent lifted it onto the conveyor belt. John angled through the crowd till he could get a good look at the man's face. The man was clean shaven and wearing plain glasses. He certainly looked like the photos, but there is a lot of similarity between middle eastern men in their forties -- especially from a distance.

  "I'm not sure. Let's check that photo again. You keep an eye on him. It looks as though he's about to move out." John said. He hurried back to where Spider and Max stood by. "Max, go back up Rhino. Spider, crank up that picture for me again."

  Spider pulled out the laptop, opened the lid, and hit a button to wake the machine. Nothing happened.

  "What the fuck?" Spider swore. He stabbed the keyboard several times, then hit the power button. The screen remained dark. He pushed the restart button but the screen still remained dark. "The battery must be dead," he said, pulling his pack off. "Let me get the damn adapter out."

  "Don't you got a back up battery?" John snapped.

  "Yeah, I got one, hold on, where is the goddamn power adapter!" Spider hissed in frustration. He pulled out a power adapter and cord. "Now I got to find a plug," he muttered, looking around.

  "You need a European prong adapter, Spider!" John said. "You're not going to plug anything in without that."

  Spider looked at the American style plug dangling from his power cord. "I'll go get one at the travel store," he muttered, his face flushed red. "I'm sorry, boss. Christ I'm sorry.

  "Just get it done!" John said. He swore as Spider took off for the travel store. It was these little things that fucked up the best operations -- a glitch in a computer battery locking up the keyboard, a forgotten power adapter. Max came to the corner and signaled to him, and John sighed in acceptance of the fact that everything was going to shit.

  "What is it?" John asked.

  "Target's moving," Max said tersely. "Rhino's on him. Can you get George up here to find out where the guy is sitting?"

  "I'll do it myself," John said. "Find Spider and get that damn computer back up. We need to look at the picture to be sure." John strode directly to the counter and asked the ticket agent, "That man who just checked in? The older gentleman with the dark suit, what was his name?"

  Mary Franken looked at John suspiciously. "Who are you, s
ir?"

  "I work with George Baumgarner, at the embassy."

  "Could I see some ID?"

  "Sure," John pulled out his Department of Defense ID, which identified the bearer as a special security consultant for the Department of Defense.

  "And you work with George?" Mary asked.

  "Yes, please, it's important that I know that man's name." John said.

  "Abraham Rosenbaum," Mary Franken said reluctantly. "Seat 11B, in business. Traveling on an Israeli passport."

  "Israeli?" John said.

  ***

  Federal Air Marshal Unit 10 (Augmented) slouched in a storage room converted to office space in the crew operations center. The marshals showed every bit of their exhaustion after almost six weeks of daily tension and grueling travel. It showed in their bonelessness when they slumped into the available chairs, the glazed eyes, the pale complexions, the silence where the normal kibitzing would be on a routine flight going home.

  They were beat and they had an eight hour flight ahead of them.

  Harold didn't even try to motivate them. He just sat and stared into a bottle of mineral water he had gotten from the machine in the hall way. The rest of the marshals ignored him. George Baumgarner shook his head and said to Donald Gene and Charley, "You guys want to step outside for a smoke?"

  "Sure," Don said. "Anything's better than sitting around in this fucking funeral parlor. Hey people!" he shouted. "We're going home! Wake up!"

  No one said anything.

  The three men stepped outside into the hall and then down the corridor to a door that opened out onto the tarmac. George lit up his and Don's cigarettes.

  "That's a sorry looking bunch in there," George observed.

  "It's a good thing we're getting out of here now," Charley said.

  "No shit," George said. His pocket cellular phone buzzed. He pulled out the Motorola flip phone and held it to his ear. "Hello?" George listened for a few minutes, then snapped it shut. "I got to go upstairs. I'll be back."

  "What's up?" Don asked.

  "It's John Bolen. They got a suspicious pax. Nothing definite. I'll check it out and let you know what I find out." George bent his angular frame forward and walked off.

  "Simply delightful," Donald Gene said.

  "I just want to get the fuck out of here," Charley said bitterly.

  ***

  "There's a few stragglers, but right now we've got about 90% of the pax checked in. Most of them are through screening and in the departure area or duty free," the ticketing supervisor told George. "It's going to be heavy today. Lots of people taking advantage of the promotion prices to the states."

  "Where's the woman who checked this guy in?" George said, glancing at John Bolen.

  The supervisor looked over his shoulder at the counter. "Mary? She's probably headed down to the gate, or else taking a break. She came in on her own today, swapped some time with one of the other girls."

  George thought for a minute, then said to John, "Your guy sure?"

  "No," John said. "It wasn't a good look, and the picture we have is an enhancement of another one. The quality's not great."

  "Let's find her and have her take a look. While we're doing that I'll ask the El Al station manager to do a quick run on the guy's passport number," George said. "Larry?" he said to the ticketing supervisor. "See if you can find this Mary Franken for me, will you?"

  "Sure, George," Larry said.

  "That's a good idea," John said. "It's probably nothing, but it won't hurt to be sure."

  "Yeah, the El Al guys are okay...for a bunch of murdering Mossad guys."

  "They can keep murdering those fucks all they want, and I'll keep buying them drinks," John said.

  "Amen," George said.

  ***

  At the departure gate, the over three hundred passengers for Flight 107 to Washington-Dulles filled every available seat and spilled over into the next waiting area and the corridors between. Ahmad Ajai and his fourteen hijackers were spread out, invisible to the other passengers, yet connected to each other like the knots in a large, deadly net. While they were too well trained to constantly look at each other, or bunch up together, their isolation time together had established an eerie sort of rapport, common among people who lived and worked in close contact under stress. They'd often shift in their seats at the same time, stand up, glance away from each other. It would be clear to on-lookers that there was something about them, if they were all together, but spread out in the crowd, they were just faces: faces buried in books and magazines, people watching, aimlessly wandering, the faces of people everywhere waiting for a plane, minds everywhere else, maybe some of them wondering and apprehensive about the flight to come, others looking forward to it, some uncaring, some haunted by dark doubts, others thinking of blood, others wondering what movie was going to be shown.

  Faces in the crowd: an attractive, muscular young woman, a student by the looks of her in her jeans, sweatshirt and book bag over one shoulder; if you were to dress her in a chic black dress and hose, she would look very much like a woman who flew in First Class to Istanbul with Harold and Dyer; an intense looking student who shifted in his seat and, after looking around, tugged at something beneath his shirt; two men, one middle aged, the other older, well dressed in business suits, speaking to each other for a moment and then going their separate ways; another man standing alone, watching a young American couple's children playing unconcerned at the feet of the parents, the man thinking of his own children, long dead; a man and a woman, a prosperous young couple traveling together, but nervous and tense with each other -- perhaps they had been fighting, and this vacation was a chance for them to make up with each other; and so it went, the faces in the crowd, the faces in the crowd, the happy and the sad, the players and the played, the murderers and the victims to come.

  ***

  "Passenger Abraham Rosenbaum, Passenger Rosenbaum, please come to the ticket podium please."

  Ahmad Ajai looked up from his magazine. He pushed himself out of his seat and walked briskly to the ticket podium.

  "Hello, Mr. Rosenbaum. I have something here for you," Mary Franken said. She handed him a duty-free bag. Several presentation boxes of Johnny Walker whiskey protruded from the top of the heavy bag. "I believe you overlooked this," she said, smiling nervously. "I know my friend would want you to have this."

  "Thank you, young lady," Ahmad Ajai said with great courtesy. "I thank you, and others would thank you if they could."

  Mary pressed her hands together like a proud schoolgirl. "I'm just glad to help."

  Ahmad Ajai nodded and went back to his seat.

  "Who was that, Mary?" one of the other ticket agents asked.

  "A friend of mine," Mary said off handedly. "I'll see you later."

  "Bye."

  The counter phone rang and the ticket agent picked it up. "Hello?" she said. "No, Mary just left, I think she's on a break. No, I don't know where she went, you might try down in the lunchroom or the employee cafeteria. If I see her, I'll tell her you're looking for her, Larry. Okay. Bye." She hung up the phone. Mary was sure popular today.

  ***

  "Crew bus is here," Don announced. "Let's get gone. If that's all right with you, Harold," he added sarcastically.

  HD ignored him and brushed past him to get to the bus. Everyone else filed along behind.

  "This is a sorry ass bunch," Stacy said on her way out the door. "May as well ride in the goddamn baggage compartment for all the good we're going to do."

  ***

  Eli Cohen was short and stocky and tan, with brown hair poorly cut and an irreverent grin. He was supposedly the security director for the El Al Airlines station, but the players knew him as a particularly ruthless 'katsa' or Israeli intelligence officer. Cohen had started in the business with the General Staff Command's Sayaret Maktal commandos. He went from there to the Mossad training course, where after graduating at the top of the class he had been assigned to the 'kidon' or bayonet units. The kidon repre
sented the long arm of Israeli justice; they were the "wet workers", the state sponsored assassination teams who struck out at the enemies of Israel and the murderers of Jews. After a long and very wet career, he was assigned as the security director for El Al's Frankfurt station, where under thin cover he coordinated the Mossad paramilitary operations in Europe. He was a fierce whiskey drinker, a prodigious lover of women, a formidable poker player and absolutely deadly at hand to hand combat.

  John Bolen liked him just fine.

  "Of course we poor Israelis will be glad to lend the last remaining superpower what feeble assistance we can," Cohen said, grinning at George Baumgarner. "We know that America would never stoop to spying on her loyal ally in the Middle East and tap her sovereign internal files so that she might check her own goddamn passport files. What is this, George, you have no telephone working? What awful trade craft you practice!"

  Cohen lounged with his feet up on his desk in his disorganized office. His beautiful secretary sat outside the door, smiling in at him over her cup of coffee. Cohen was notorious for his 'nooners', which he took all over the airport. He had been discovered with his secretary several times: in offices, lounges, once on a pile of unclaimed baggage. Bolen grinned at him, having heard many stories of the man.

  "And you, Mr. John Bolen of ISA, you can't check out a poor Israeli passport without having to compromise your operational security? Tsk, tsk, I thought better of the man who tended to that nasty business with the Red Brigades!" Cohen grinned even larger as he dropped that classified tidbit.