by Walter Wager
"So the bastards walk?"
"Unless something changes," Malone replied as the elevator door opened. As they stepped out, Malone recognized the face of the man walking toward them. It was Inspector Barry Kincaid of the FBI's local antiterrorist unit. Concisely and swiftly, Frank Malone briefed him on the urgent situation.
"Okay, we'll take it from here," Kincaid said.
The FBI was asserting its authority.
"No way," Frank Malone said quickly. "They've been dealing with me, and there's no time to change players. It would be too dangerous."
"Better let the captain finish this," Hamilton advised.
"Who the hell are you?"
"Lieutenant Benjamin Hamilton, Port Authority Police. I'm in charge of security at this airport tonight, Mister."
"Federal law says terrorism's ours," the FBI inspector reminded.
"All yours—the minute those planes up there land," Malone proposed. "If anything goes wrong before then, I'll be responsible."
And the Bureau wouldn't be blamed.
"Okay," Kincaid agreed.
"Good. We're delivering the seven prisoners on the apron behind the International Arrivals Building," Malone told him. "Bring your four around there—on the double."
"We have a problem," Kincaid replied. "There was an accident on the way out. Some idiot slammed his car into one of ours. A prisoner was seriously injured."
"Bring him out on a stretcher, if you have to. We need all seven."
The federal agent shook his head.
"I'm sorry, Frank. About five minutes ago, just as we reached the terminal, he died."
Malone tensed.
"Who was it?"
"Arnold Lloyd."
Now he really had nothing to bargain with.
With Lloyd dead, there was no telling what the homicidal Willi Staub might do.
Or not do.
Denied his prize, the frustrated terrorist might not turn off the radar jamming at all.
"We've got a problem all right," Malone said.
He thought ... he made his decision.
"We promised seven and we'll deliver seven," he announced.
"Here's what I want you to do."
Kincaid listened, and left to carry out the instructions. As he walked away, Malone tapped Hamilton's walkie-talkie.
"Pass the word to bring the other three to the apron," the detective said. Hamilton lifted the radio and swiftly relayed the message.
"Tell the cops it's an order," he concluded. "Right, Captain Malone . . . I'll tell him. . . . Anything else? . . . You're sure? . . . You better let The Cab know."
He was visibly troubled as he turned to Malone.
"Men from your own unit are on the way from the terminal," he reported.
"But that's not what's bothering you."
"No. There was a radio message from the Jersey State Police. They found one of their patrol cars off the highway near a microwave relay tower. The two cops working the car were shot to pieces, and the tower blasted into scrap. Then they found another one wrecked. I'd bet there are some more blown-up towers in New York," the Port Authority lieutenant said harshly.
"What does it mean?"
"Those towers relay radar signals for miles from sensors to the controllers' screens at airports," Hamilton explained. "No microwave towers, no radar images in The Cab, no air traffic control."
"And no way he can turn the radar back on," Frank Ma-lone reasoned inexorably. "The bastard never intended to. He meant to kill them all."
The door to the bridge from the terminal opened, and nine plainclothes policemen from Malone's antiterrorist unit entered the tower lobby. Two officers carried submachine guns, another held one of the very accurate scope-equipped M-14 rifles used by snipers and a third grasped an automatic shotgun. Malone nodded to his team, walked forward and took the rifle.
"See you later," he said to Hamilton evenly.
Then he gave him the rifle.
38
"TWA TWENTY-TWO HEAVY to Kennedy Tower. Our cardiac patient is hardly breathing now. Is that medical team we requested ready?"
"Kennedy Tower to TWA twenty-two Heavy. Ambulances, fire engines and other emergency service units are standing by to assist."
The two men pacing the apron behind the International Arrivals Building were both dressed in dark overcoats. Properly attired in accord with Bureau policy, the FBI inspector also wore a neat gray fedora. Malone walked bareheaded beside him, indifferent to the snow.
"Where are they?" Kincaid asked uneasily.
"They'll be here."
"How will they get out on the apron?"
"He'll do something cute," Malone predicted. "It's Venom, Barry.
He's always cute."
"Venom?" Kincaid erupted. "Why didn't you say so?"
Malone pointed off to the left. Through the snow, they could see the lights of a vehicle moving slowly toward them. It stopped about fifty yards away, engine throbbing and headlights beaming. Peering through their glare, Malone made out the boxy shape of a white panel truck or van.
Now the lights flared to maximum strength.
The driver had turned on his high-intensity "brights" to blind them.
Very cute, Frank Malone thought as he waited for the terrorists to emerge from the dazzling beams.
They didn't.
Instead, a voice boomed out over an electric bullhorn.
"Where are they?" Staub demanded in Number One's fake Hispanic accent.
Malone pointed to the terminal a dozen yards away.
"Bring them out," the terrorist ordered. "No tricks."
The detective gestured, and eight members of his antiterrorist unit emerged from the building. They lined up carefully, four on each side of the door. They stood at least five yards apart, spread out to offer minimum targets for automatic weapons.
Then another half dozen people came out.
They all wore handcuffs.
There were five males and one female.
"Power to the people!" the woman shouted enthusiastically.
Despite her sincerity, no one else on the apron paid any attention to her. Willi Staub couldn't. He was counting.
"I only see six," he said menacingly over the bullhorn.
Malone waved at the glass door behind him again, and two uniformed policemen pushed out a wheelchair. The middle-aged male it carried was wrapped in a blanket up to his shoulder. The top of his head was swathed in a bandage.
Staub studied the man through his night binoculars.
It was Lloyd.
"What's wrong with him?" Staub challenged.
"He had a stroke. Fell down and hurt his head," Malone yelled over the whine of the DC-10's engines.
Staub assumed that this was a lie, but he wasn't angry.
The tortures that the American had undoubtedly inflicted on the renegade were irrelevant to this operation. The sole issue was the terms of the deal.
Dead or alive, the Soraqi ruler had said.
General al-Khalif would pay the second half of the fee without argument so long as Lloyd was "spared the indignity" of a trial in an operation that could not be linked to Soraq. Staub had accomplished that, and in a way that would humiliate the Americans, whom al-Khalif hated. There might even be a bonus, the terrorist told himself as he stroked the reassuring grenade in his coat pocket.
Now it was time to finish the operation.
"Unlock those handcuffs," he commanded over the bullhorn.
Malone nodded, and the uniformed police took out keys to comply.
"TWA twenty-two to Kennedy Tower. We're showing empty. Repeat, empty. Number Four engine has just died, and we've shut down Number One to stretch the last few gallons. I think we'll have to come in blind."
Free of the handcuffs, the six terrorists rubbed their wrists and looked toward the DC-10 some fifty yards away.
"Everyone to the plane," Staub ordered.
As the newly liberated revolutionaries started to walk, most of the police watched
them. Frank Malone's eyes remained fixed on the headlights. Then he saw what he was waiting for. Three figures emerged from the glare. Two were in white, the third in darker clothes. Malone watched the trio advance toward the airliner.
Which one was Staub?
Malone had to get closer to find out.
"I'll take the chair," he said. The uniformed police who had rolled it out stepped aside, and Malone got behind and began to push it toward the airliner. Moving nearer to the big jet, he glanced furtively to the left.
There were still only three men coming from the direction of the van. This was it—Staub's entire force. This was all Willi Staub had left.
They were getting closer now.
Thirty yards.
Twenty.
Light was streaming from the airliner's window. Staub could barely control his elation as he looked up at it. He had done it. Another fifteen steps and he'd be at the stairs. He'd lead the six up, and the Garcias could carry the motionless body of Arnold Lloyd into the plane.
In another two minutes the DC-10 would start rolling down the runway. Six or seven minutes after that, they would be out of U.S. airspace—safe. The trapped planes would come tumbling down behind him. The whole world would be stunned.
He glanced at the steps, then up at the open door.
That was when Frank Malone knew.
The shaft of light pouring down had made something gleam in the face of the man in black.
His right eye.
It wasn't real.
This man in clerical garb, the "priest" Malone had spoken to a little more than an hour ago, was Willi Staub.
The detective took out his pistol.
All the other police nearby immediately drew their weapons.
Resisting panic, Staub forced himself to smile.
"I wouldn't do that," he said. "If you want that radar turned on—"
"It won't work," Malone interrupted. "We know about the towers. Now you're the one who has nothing to bargain with. It's over, Willi."
No, it wasn't, the terrorist told himself.
It couldn't be.
His fingers touched the grenade for strength, but this time it didn't come.
He felt his heart pounding. Desperately, his eyes swung back and forth—and then he regained control. He didn't need the damn grenade. Willi Staub didn't need anyone or anything. He'd show them all. They would pay for this—and soon. The planes would start falling any minute. That would be his victory.
"Frisk him and cuff him," Malone said.
A sergeant stepped forward with the metal bracelet. Staub shrugged and put out his hands. The he lifted both fists swiftly to smash the policeman under the chin. As the cop reeled, Staub dove to the apron and rolled under the airliner. He was on his feet seconds later, running.
He heard the shouting and then gunfire. He hoped the Garcia brothers were trying to get away. They might distract the police for a minute or two before they were shot down. That could buy him time to reach the van—his key to escape. Once he got out of the airport in that van, they would never find him in this major storm.
More gunfire.
Someone cried out in agony.
Another three shots.
Staub was panting as he ran around the DC-10's tail and raced toward the vehicle that would save him. Avoiding the beams of its headlights, he felt invisible in the snowy night. He wasn't. A man at an open third-floor window of the terminal was watching him intently. Looking down through the M-14's telescopic sight, Lieutenant Benjamin Hamilton squeezed the rifle's trigger.
The 7.62-millimeter slug slammed into Staub's bullet- proof vest, pounding his chest like a hammer. He staggered, stumbled, then regained his balance and kept running. The van was barely a dozen yards away. He was only a step from it when the pistol champion of the New York Police Department fired twice.
Aware of body armor, Malone didn't aim at Staub's torso.
He broke both of the terrorist's legs, just below the knees.
Staub screamed as he fell. He was still screaming when he pulled the grenade from his pocket and jerked out the pin. He looks like a rabid animal, Frank Malone thought as he shot Staub in the forehead. The detective dropped flat on the concrete apron an instant before the grenade exploded in the dead terrorist's hand.
"TWA twenty-two Heavy to Kennedy Tower. Three engines are out and the fourth is sputtering. Correction: it's gone. All engines dead."
"Can you see the field?"
"Negative. Airspeed falling . . . Losing altitude . . . sixteen hundred . . . fifteen hundred . . . Get those crash trucks ready.
We're coming down!"
There was silence in The Cab.
Then one of the Federal Aviation Administration's most efficient watch supervisors began to cry.
39
IT HAPPENED five seconds later.
Everyone listening to the frequency was startled.
"Hot Rod Four to TWA twenty-two. Hot Rod Four to TWA twenty-two. I have you on my screen. Bear left, thirty degrees."
"What screen? Who are you?" the surprised airline pilot blurted.
"U.S. Air Force airborne warning and command aircraft," the stranger replied in tones as Southern as pecan pie.
Mature, dignified Peter Wilber jumped to his feet.
"It's the cavalry!" he shouted in an uncharacteristically loud voice. "Goddammit, he did it!"
The E-3A Sentry—the AWACS plane loaded with Top Secret radar gear that Frank Malone had demanded so stubbornly had arrived.
"Move your ass, Boy," the controller on the air force plane pressed. "Left, thirty degrees, now"
Wilber grabbed a headset and microphone.
"This is Kennedy Tower. Do it!" he pleaded.
"Left, thirty," the TWA pilot agreed. "Losing altitude."
"Our screen shows you're at eleven hundred."
"Your screen's right. Now what?"
"Now I know which one of the blips is you, Boy. That turn just told me. New heading: fifty degrees right."
"Fifty, right. Down to nine hundred. How far from the field are we?"
"Not far. Maybe a mile."
"Seven hundred feet. Airspeed falling ... I don't think we can make it."
Listening in the cockpit of Aerovias 16 three miles away, the captain looked at his own fuel gauge and wondered whether you'd really go to hell for sleeping with your sister-in-law.
"You're gonna make it, Boy," the radar officer said firmly. "Ten more to the right."
"Five hundred feet."
"Hang in there. You're doin' fine."
As the British Airways stewardess announced that an emergency landing was imminent, Sir Brian Forsythe did something quite unusual. He reached over and took Miss Ellen Jenkins's hand.
"Approaching stall speed . . . three hundred feet . . . controls getting mushy."
"You're right on the money," the lushly Southern voice assured.
"Water! I see water! My God, we're over the bay!"
"Easy now. Runway's just a spit ahead."
"I see the lights . . . one hundred feet. . . . We're going into the water. Send out the boats!"
"You got it made, Boy. Ten more seconds and you're home."
The TWA pilot saw the water looming closer . . . closer.
"We don't have ten seconds," he said.
At that instant, the wind over Jamaica Bay grew stronger. A powerful gust suddenly lifted the falling L-1011. Its airspeed jumped fifteen miles an hour. The awed pilot stared at the indicator incredulously.
"Maybe we do," he said.
Like the hand of God, the wind was still carrying the L-1011, providing lift. The big jet was twenty feet above the water when it reached the shoreline. The airliner's front wheels touched the Runway Four-Right a scant yard from where the grooved-and-crowned asphalt strip began. Blinking into the high-intensity lights that framed his path, the sweating pilot guided the plane along the runway silently for several seconds before he could speak.
"TWA twenty-two on the ground and roll
ing. Thanks a lot, Hot Rod Four—and one more thing. Knock off that boy crap, will you?"
Everyone in The Cab had been rigid with fear.
Now they all stood up and cheered.
"Just doin' my job, Boy" the air force officer replied cheerfully.
Then he began directing the other planes down to safety.
40
THE BIG L-1011 had to be towed in slowly. That was why a much faster ambulance was sent out to the runway to collect the heart attack victim and rush him to a hospital. It was also why people on planes that landed after TWA 22 Heavy reached the terminal first.
Waiting for his daughter in a corridor through which those arriving would pass, Frank Malone puffed on a cigar and listened to the noise. There had been instant uproar when the media mob and others in the lobby heard about the bloody little battle on the apron. It had grown louder when they learned about all those held hostage in the sky until a few minutes earlier.
Now it was the press pack making most of the noise—for solid journalistic reasons. The first major terrorist attack inside the United States . . . scores of corpses from a midair collision and the airport confrontation . . . notorious Willi Staub putting thousands in peril.
Prominent people—a prince and the British member of the United Nations Security Council, important Hollywood figures and the newly celebrated Kiev Grandma—snatched from death by the handsome son of a dead police hero, the FBI and a secret and sophisticated U.S. Air Force plane that cost $150 million.
Photo opportunities, gory details, touching accounts of courage and drama, interviews with poignant quotes and misquotes, pungent rehashes of the crimes of those Staub tried to free, word and picture accounts of the master terrorist's own gruesome deeds, speculation on air traffic and airport security—there was enough sensational material for a week.
And not a moment to waste. Pending arrival of the passengers and crews, hard-working journalists were briskly interviewing Senator Joseph A. Bono, FBI Inspector Barry Kincaid, New York City's articulate and well-dressed police commissioner, who always gave great quotes, and Lieutenant Benjamin Hamilton. After the 128th "probing question," Hamilton excused himself and walked away to rejoin Ma-lone.