by Walter Wager
There was something beneath the Hispanic accent. It was a minute trace of central or northern Europe. Even though Frank Malone couldn't pinpoint the country, he felt a little better. This was the first step toward identifying the son of a bitch who threatened the survival of Katie Malone and four thousand others.
"I'm listening," the detective said.
"Have a long-range jet ready for immediate takeoff."
Where were they going?
The destination might tell what the names had not. Ma-lone decided not to ask. He'd say nothing to hint at resistance or pursuit. In this war of deception and disguise, he'd let Number One believe that their surprise attack had won them complete dominance.
"I'll try," Malone said, "but all this may take a while."
"You don't have a while, Stupid. Until that jet's out of U.S. airspace, we won't let a single one of your planes land. They're burning fuel fast, so you'd better hurry."
"Now wait a minute," the detective began.
"Not a second," Staub broke in harshly. "I'll call back."
When Malone heard the dial tone, he hung up the phone and started across The Cab to the hot lines. On the ground floor of the International Arrivals Building sixty yards away, Sidney Stern rechecked the positions of the television news crews and their cameras. Senator Bono's press secretary, a thirty-nine-year-old workaholic with less hair than his employer but just as much ambition, saw that the CBS correspondent was taping "human interest" comments from a rabbi, the NBC unit was getting a wide-angle crowd shot of the throng and the ABC producer was tapping his wrist-watch.
As a dedicated civil servant, Stern understood the reason for the newswoman's concern. In fact, he shared it. This was a very serious situation. If BA 126 was much later and the snow continued to slow traffic, the welcoming of the Kiev Grandma might not make the eleven o'clock news at all.
15
IN THE CAB, Malone scooped up the beige phone that was a direct link to 26 Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan.
"FBI," a midwestern male voice announced crisply.
"Carl Wheeler," Malone said.
There was no such person in this unit of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The name was the code phrase for the Antiterrorist Task Force, an elite group whose office was manned around the clock . . . 365 days a year.
"Wheeler," a Task Force agent said five seconds later.
"This is Captain Frank Malone, New York City Police. We've got an emergency, and I'm calling an alert."
"Numbers?" the FBI man requested as he tapped a button on the computer terminal beside his desk.
Malone recited the digits on his Social Security card and his badge before giving his birth date. The federal agent studied the computer screen and noted the correct match.
"What kind of alert?" he asked quickly.
"Heavy Metal. Repeat—Heavy Metal."
Washington had established four levels of alert.
Heavy Metal was the highest and most urgent: imminent danger of major loss of life to terrorist action.
"What's the situation, Captain?"
"Critical," Malone replied and swiftly spelled out the crisis.
"Four of the seven they want delivered to Kennedy are in federal custody here: Ibrahim Farzi, Carlos Arroza, Julio Sanchez and Arnold Lloyd," Malone told him. "Phone the attorney general in Washington immediately."
"This could take a couple of hours to organize," the FBI man warned.
"We don't have a couple of hours. Every minute counts. Tell him there may be four thousand people up in those planes, and he's got to save them now."
"I'll call. Isn't there something else we can do?"
Malone hesitated. He looked around The Cab, eyed the FAA team and made his decision. He could not discuss his plan. The risk was too great.
"I'll get back to you," Malone said curtly.
Moments after he hung up Malone was speaking on another "hot line" to Sergeant Grady in the police commissioner's office.
"The PC's not here," Grady reported.
"Find him. He's got to reach the mayor. We'll have a goddam massacre if you don't."
He explained what was happening and identified the three prisoners who had to be driven from the municipal jail to JFK at once. As Malone named them, he saw the longhaired controller return from his coffee break. The young controller stopped dead in his stride as he noticed that none of the others were "working" aircraft. He'd never seen The Cab like this.
"What's happening?" he asked Annie Green.
Frank Malone didn't wait for her reply.
"Get them out here fast," he told Grady. "Radio cars up front; sirens all the way."
"In this storm?"
"Do it!" Malone ordered harshly and slammed down the phone.
Then he gestured to Wilber.
"Come on," Malone said as he hurried toward the stairs. The FAA executive blinked in surprise but followed immediately.
"Where are we going?" he blurted when he caught up with Malone at the elevator door a floor below.
"Your office," Malone answered as he pushed the button to summon the car.
The gleam in the police captain's eyes was cold and sure, and Pete Wilber recognized it at once. It was the completely focused and purposeful look of a man who knew exactly what he was doing.
Wilber wondered what it was, but decided not to ask. If he didn't explain now, he had a reason. It was probably—like Frank Malone—clever, complicated and practical. The grim-faced detective would spell it out only when he was ready, not a second before.
Both men remained silent as the elevator arrived. Neither uttered a word until they reached Wilber's office. Malone unbuttoned his jacket as he sat down, and Wilber saw the holstered .38 Police Special as the detective picked up the telephone and dialed swiftly.
"Washington, D.C.," an information operator announced.
"The Pentagon, please."
There were several moments of silence before the soulless recorded voice of a computer's memory bank replied.
"Five . . . four . . . five . . . six . . . seven . . . hundred."
Malone broke the connection and dialed the number. Some forty seconds later he was speaking to an army colonel in a subbasement of the huge headquarters building near the Potomac. Floor-to-ceiling maps of every region of the world covered one wall of the large subterranean chamber where seventy-two uniformed men and women worked at computers, teletype machines and other communications gear.
Electronically "swept" every month for concealed "bugs," this was a "maximum security facility." Military police with automatic weapons guarded every door, and no one could enter without Top Secret clearance. This blastproof, gasproof, germproof bunker was the interservice Operations Center. The burly middle-aged colonel to whom Malone spoke was the duty officer.
It was a short conversation.
"We're under a major terrorist attack," Malone reported after he identified himself. "They've crippled our airports, and we urgently need immediate military assistance."
"How big is the terrorist force?"
"I don't know. It doesn't matter. I need an air force plane—right away."
"A plane? What for? I'll have to get a senior officer to authorize sending a military aircraft, so you'd better give me the complete picture. Then I'll tell him—"
"No time," Malone interrupted. "I'll tell him myself. While I'm doing that, you can check the facts with the FBI in New York."
You and the facts, the duty officer thought.
"Okay," he agreed.
Since the 1941 sneak attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines caught the U.S. armed forces napping, there has always been a flag rank officer—a general or admiral—on duty at the Pentagon to deal with emergencies. Tonight it was a rangy and prematurely gray air force officer with one star on each shoulder and very recent memories of commanding a B-52 wing based south of Miami.
"General Sloat," he said. "What the hell's going on?"
Malone told him how a thus far unidentified terrorist group had k
nocked out the radar, radio and instrument landing systems for the three major airports serving New York and Newark.
"We've got dozens of airliners trapped up there in a four-star snowstorm," Malone concluded.
"And they're running out of fuel," Sloat reasoned aloud.
"Exactly. That's why I need one of your aircraft immediately."
"You want to call in an air strike in a snowstorm? On an unfamiliar target? That could kill hundreds of civilians nearby if the bombardier is just three seconds off, dammit."
"Not if you do it my way. I'm talking about a special kind of air strike. No bombs. I want one of the Sentries from Langley."
Brigadier General Sanford Sloat frowned in an unpleasant mixture of surprise and concern. The Sentry was a modified Boeing 707-320B transport plane that carried several pieces of highly classified equipment. Officially designated the E-3A Airborne Warning and Control System, it flew at more than five hundred miles an hour. That made it—in Pentagon and NATO parlance—"a mobile and survivable surveillance and command platform" that offered no fixed target. Even the most accurate Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles couldn't hit it.
The E-3AS were state-of-the-art war machines that cost $150 million each. They were worth it. Russian intelligence had made repeated efforts to find out how they worked, and almost everything about the Sentries and their operations was Top Secret.
Who had told this stranger that there were E-3AS at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia?
Was the man on the telephone really a New York cop or a daring KGB agent on some devious mission?
Whoever he was, what else did he know about this security-shrouded weapons system?
"How could a Sentry help?" Sloat tested.
"You know damn well," Malone replied angrily. "Don't play games with me, General. You can't afford it. If those planes go down, you're going down with them."
"What does that mean?"
"It means I'll be on all three networks tomorrow telling the country you could have saved those people—and let them die."
"That's insane!"
"Civilians . . . men, women and children . . . thousands of them."
Shaken, the general managed to regain his self-control.
"Even if I get an okay, it'll take time to collect a crew and fuel the bird," he reasoned earnestly. "Then there's over an hour flight in a major storm. I can't promise that we'll deliver an E-3A in time."
"I don't want your promise. I want that plane!"
Then Malone hung up the telephone.
"Not a word about this to anyone," he told Wilber.
"For the same reason you came down here to call?"
"I thought you'd figure it out," the detective said coolly.
"Nothing else made sense. Why don't you trust our people in The Cab?"
"Because I know that this operation was meticulously planned by a very clever son of a bitch," Malone said. "If Number One is as careful and tricky as I think, he'd have an inside man."
"Or woman?" a female voice behind them asked.
Annabelle Green stood in the doorway with a large audiocassette in her hand. Malone wondered when she'd arrived and how much she'd heard.
"Or woman," he agreed. "What are you doing here, Annie?"
"I came to give you this," she said as she handed him the cassette."
Wilber nodded in recognition and approval.
"All radio and phone talk to and from The Cab is recorded," he explained. "Number One's voice is on this tape."
"That could help," Malone said. "Thanks, Annie."
"Don't go overboard, Frank," she advised in a voice aglow with sarcasm. "The spy could still be me, right?"
"We'll talk about it later," he told her.
"You haven't changed at all," she said bitterly and left.
Wilber shook his head in disbelief.
"You know her, Captain," he reminded. "You know she couldn't work with those maniacs."
"I know who she was, not who she is. A lot could have happened to her head in thirteen years."
"She's no terrorist," the FAA executive insisted.
"Maybe not. Maybe she's in love with one of them. Widows can be lonely and vulnerable. Maybe it isn't politics or love. Maybe it's blackmail or hard cash. If career navy and CIA men can sell out their country for money, why not air traffic controllers?"
"Maybes aren't good enough," Wilber said firmly.
Not in your world, the detective thought. It was different where Frank Malone fought his war. In that dark land of pious psychotics and viciously virtuous assassins, deception was the state religion and maybes were the national currency.
"Spare me the goddam sermon," Malone replied grimly, "and find Number One on this—now."
Pointing to the cassette player atop a file cabinet, he handed Wilber the recording. The FAA official frowned as he put it in the machine and pressed the fast-forward switch. A shrill babble gushed from the cassette player.
Wilber stopped the tape, played it at normal speed for several seconds and accelerated it once more. He repeated this again and again. The room was filled with samples of many voices. None of them was that of Number One.
Ignoring the cataract of sound, Malone thought about what he'd do when Wilber found it. Having analyzed reports from many countries on hundreds of terrorist assaults, the detective knew that a key reason for their success was complete surprise. If his counterattack was to work, it had to be equally unexpected. The longer he kept his battle plan to himself the better.
His strategy was simple.
He would strike at the terrorists with their own weapons: not guns but modern electronics.
His tactics would be like theirs: multiple complex and sophisticated attacks.
He'd use the same methods the army had taught him in Vietnam: search and destroy. It didn't matter that this war was half a world away from Indochina. This black night and fierce snowstorm were only another kind of jungle, and he was a first-class jungle fighter.
That was why he had survived and others hadn't.
There was one thing that was different about this fight.
The armed struggle for Indochina had raged on for years.
This war would be won or lost in less than ninety minutes.
He couldn't afford to make a single mistake. There'd be no way to turn back the clock or try again.
Frank Malone looked at his wristwatch. It was 8:19. He wondered how much time he had. How soon would the first airliner fall from the sky?
Another thought suddenly filled his mind.
Would that plane be TWA 22 from Los Angeles?
16
SOME NINETY MILES SOUTH . . . thirty seconds later.
"Philadelphia Tower to all aircraft. New York Center reports Newark, La Guardia, Kennedy and Westchester are closed by heavy snow and electrical storms causing radio interference."
This was the story FAA headquarters had just teletyped to Cabs across the country. The purpose of the rapidly improvised fabrication was to avoid, for as long as possible, panic in the skies and on the ground.
There was also another reason.
It might be possible to contact and peel free some planes on the outer edge of the jamming area where the electronic assault was weakest.
"Aircraft inbound to Newark, La Guardia, Kennedy and Westchester must divert immediately," the man in the Philadelphia Cab continued. "Proceed directly to alternates specified in your flight plans. Please check in now for altitude assignments."
It wasn't only FAA teams at Philadelphia's airport and others near the electronically besieged New York City area that were relaying the order to divert. From the towers of nearly two hundred municipal and armed forces airfields in every part of the nation, controllers were broadcasting similar instructions. So were their colleagues in Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean.
In Miami, Montreal, Chicago and Boston, airliners already on taxiways were ordered to return to terminals and unload their passengers. In Atlanta, St. Louis, Toronto and
Nashville, irate travelers waiting to board planes grumbled when delayed departures were announced. At Los Angeles International, a graying grandmother who wrote a syndicated column on manners expressed her indignation in a stream of loud and startling obscenities.
It was quieter in Wilber's office in the JFK Tower.
The only sounds there came from the cassette player.
"Delta one-zero-three, turn left on—"
Click. Fast-forward gibberish. Click.
"United sixty-five Heavy to—"
Click. More babble. Click.
"We will knock out your radar."
"That's him!" Malone erupted and reached for the telephone.
He dialed the FBI office in Manhattan. Within moments he was talking to the antiterrorist agent with whom he'd spoken earlier.
"This is Malone. I need the secure line to Washington."
"The Bureau?"
"No, Sea Sweep."
The secret U.S. Navy unit code-named Sea Sweep was the American intelligence community's joint library for all data on global terrorism. Its computers held millions of pieces of information from counterespionage and police organizations around the world. Sea Sweep might have the answer, Malone thought as he waited.
Well, one of the answers.
"Two two hundred," a male voice said suddenly.
Standard security procedures. No name, just part of a phone number.
"I want the senior officer on duty," Malone announced.
He heard three long buzzes.
Then a woman, crisp and midwestern, spoke.
"Data Control."
"This is Captain Malone of the New York Police Department. We have a critical situation, and I need an immediate audio probe."
"Your account number?"
"Don't have one, but you can phone General Sloat at the Pentagon for authorization."
"I need an account number," she said firmly.
"This is an emergency—Heavy Metal—not a test. We've got a couple of thousand people in goddam mortal danger. Call the FBI if you want confirmation."
"I'm sorry, Captain, but I must have an approved number."
"You're going to be a lot sorrier. I'm taping this conversation," Malone lied. "If one person dies because you won't bother to make a call, the tape goes straight to the U.S. attorney."