58 Minutes

by Walter Wager

  Click. Dial tone.

  "He didn't answer," she reported a moment later.

  "He wants us to sweat. Terrorists have standard procedures, too," Malone said, "and keeping the authorities uncertain is one of their basic tactics. What did he tell you?"

  "They're going to take out our radio and ILS next."

  "That's crazy," Wilber judged scornfully.

  At that moment, the woman controller whom Annabelle Green had assigned to alert the TRACON walked toward them. She was shaking her head in distress.

  "We won't be getting any help from La Guardia or Newark," she said.

  "Why not?" Wilber asked incredulously.

  It was Frank Malone who answered.

  "Their radar's down, too," he thought aloud.

  She nodded.

  "How the hell did you know that, Captain?" Wilber asked.

  "All I know is that we're up against professionals who must be familiar with your whole operation, including the backup systems. If that's true, your radio and ILS might go any minute."

  It was shocking but logical.

  "You could be right," Wilber said. "Annie, we'd better switch to ILS procedures immediately. And advise the TRACON to divert any traffic more than twenty miles out."

  Then he saw the concern in Frank Malone's eyes.

  "Don't worry, Captain. We'll get those planes down all right,"

  Wilber said.

  Annabelle Green moved quickly from controller to controller with word to start instrument landings now. There was quiet urgency in her voice. She knew that Frank Malone was probably right. He was almost always right, she remembered as she walked back to report to Wilber.

  "They should have the first one down in three or four minutes, Pete," she said.

  As she spoke, she wondered whether they had three or four minutes before the next attack. If Malone was correct, it might come at any moment.

  "Fine," Wilber replied. "Now that that is moving along—"

  Then it happened.

  It was invisible. No one in The Cab could see it. The controllers speaking to the inbound "traffic" were the first to know. They heard it over their headsets.

  They grimaced.

  It hurt their ears.

  One controller immediately lunged for the volume control dial. Another pulled off his headset to end the pain. The Kennedy air traffic manager and tonight's tower watch supervisor had thirty-one years of FAA experience between them. Neither Peter Wilber nor Annabelle Green had ever seen anything like this.

  "What is it?" he called out loudly.

  Before any of them could answer, Annie Green suddenly pointed off to the left. Through the falling snow, the people in The Cab saw a pillar of orange-red piercing the black night. Its exact shape was blurred by the curtain of snow, but its location was unmistakable.

  "Oh, my God!" Wilber gasped.

  Malone turned to Annie Green.

  "The ILS gear?" he asked.

  She nodded.

  The glow grew larger. Within seconds, the building housing the key equipment of Kennedy Airport's instrument landing system was a roaring pyre.

  13

  THE SHOCK in The Cab was almost tangible.

  No one spoke or moved for several seconds.

  Then Annie Green stepped forward purposefully. This was her watch. It was her responsibility as supervisor to know exactly what was happening. She grasped the headset the controller had tugged off and raised it swiftly to her ear. Frowning in acute discomfort, she forced herself to listen for ten seconds before she put it down.

  "Major electrical interference. Extremely strong," she reported.

  "Could it be temporary? The storm?" Wilber asked.

  "They're jamming" Frank Malone said flatly.

  "That's what it sounds like, Pete," she agreed.

  Wilber thought of the decades of engineering and billions of dollars that made U.S. air traffic control the most advanced in the world. Outsiders such as this well-meaning police captain wouldn't understand its awesome complexity and sophistication. Whoever was naive enough to challenge it and whatever they were doing to attack it, the system could cope with the assault.

  Every possibility had been considered.

  There were procedures for dealing with equipment breakdowns and other communications crises.

  "Okay, maybe they've screwed up this frequency for the moment," Wilber said in a loud determined voice, "but we've got others. The pilots know them. Switch to the emergency frequency and tell those planes to divert to their alternates."

  Now the policeman would see how wrong he was about the vulnerability of the system, Wilber thought as the controllers adjusted their radios to Kennedy's primary emergency frequency. Wilber was startled a few seconds later when they pulled off their headsets and turned.

  "Same damn thing," one of the controllers said.

  "Try the other emergency frequencies!" Wilber ordered impatiently.

  They did—one by one.

  It took the controllers nearly a minute to test all the secondary and tertiary emergency frequencies. After that they swept up and down the airwaves probing every frequency that might reach the radio bands built into modern airliners. Then one controller shook his head and another simply turned to give a thumbs-down gesture of defeat.

  "The ILS and the radio—the son of a bitch kept his promise," Malone said.

  "It's impossible," the veteran air traffic manager insisted. "Nobody can blot out all of our frequencies."

  "Somebody just did," Malone replied bluntly.

  Then he thought about TWA Flight 22.

  Before he could catch his breath, he wasn't a skilled, sure police captain anymore. He wasn't the tough and clever head of the elite antiterrorist unit.

  He saw his daughter's face, and suddenly he was just a desperately concerned father. While Mike Malone had been widely admired for his lusty lack of fear, it was no stranger to his son. Frank Malone was fighting its numbing embrace right now . . . silently, secretly. His face gave no hint of the struggle within him. It had been a long time since Frank Malone had let such feelings show.

  After a dozen bitter seconds, the fear vanished.

  Intense anger took its place. Malone felt a surge of rage at the threat to the life of his only child, and he was furious that some faceless terrorist had frightened him. The effects were instantaneous. Suddenly Captain Frank Malone was functioning at full and fierce efficiency.

  With their electronic eyes, ears and mouths devastated, the baffled controllers sat helpless at their consoles. They didn't know what to do. Malone did. He had to learn three things before he could counterattack.

  The scope of the terrorists' attack.

  The purpose of the operation.

  The identity of the enemy.

  "Annie, we've got to find out whether it's just here or they're hitting airports in other cities, too," he said. "That will tell us how big a force we're up against. It could give a clue as to what those bastards want."

  "Shall we start with the East Coast?"

  "Sure. Boston to Washington. Try Pittsburgh and Chicago too. I have a hunch it's only where the weather's bad."

  She turned, looked at the phone on which Number One had delivered his warnings and shook her head.

  "Keep that line open," she told the others. "He may call in again."

  Then she instructed the controllers to use other phones and the teletype to query other airports.

  "And if they are under attack?" Wilber asked.

  "Then we're fighting a major enemy—maybe a government."

  "The Russians?"

  "Who the hell knows?" Malone answered impatiently and pointed to the row of six phones on the wall beside the water cooler. "Can I reach my office on any of those?"

  "Try the third from the left."

  They were emergency hot lines—direct connections. The one on the far left was marked PONY POLICE, a link to the Port Authority cops on the airport. The next one was beige and was labeled FBI. The yellow ins
trument beside it was designated NYC POLICE-NYC FIRE. Twenty seconds after he picked it up, he was speaking to one of his men in the antiterrorist unit at Police Headquarters in downtown Manhattan.

  "Sergeant Bolivar."

  "This is Captain Malone. I'm in the air traffic control center on the tenth floor of the Kennedy Tower. We've got a critical situation," he announced and swiftly described it.

  He ignored the sergeant's startled curse.

  "I need a dozen men, full combat gear, out here, right away," Malone continued. "I want everyone else in the unit—everyone—standing by in cars waiting for instructions. I don't know yet what these bastards will demand, or where they'll want delivery."

  "Anything else, Captain?"

  "Contact the precinct nearest here. Tell them to rush over every radio unit and foot patrolman they've got. I don't give a damn if they strip the streets. When people waiting in the terminals here find out what's happening, we'll need at least a hundred men for crowd control."

  "A hundred men ... in a snowstorm? I'll try," the sergeant vowed.

  "Tell the commissioner's office we're facing a major disaster. That should get us lots of cops," Malone predicted. "Send another hundred to La Guardia, and phone the Newark police to roll extra units to their airport."

  He heard Bolivar suck in his breath tensely.

  "Captain, I know your daughter's up there. I don't know how to say this."

  "Try straight."

  "Do you think . . . would you want ambulances?"

  And hearses.

  Bolivar didn't speak those words, he didn't have to. As professionals in the life-and-death business, both policemen knew that this situation could produce many casualties. The killed or crippled or burned could run as high as a thousand.

  "Good idea," Malone replied in as cool a voice as he could muster. "Ambulances and emergency medical teams. Some fire trucks wouldn't hurt either. I'll be in touch."

  Next Frank Malone phoned the Port Authority Police on the airport.

  "What's up?" Lieutenant Benjamin Hamilton asked. "I'm just heading home for dinner."

  "Better make it breakfast," Malone advised and described the crisis.

  "Our emergency plan goes into operation immediately," Hamilton responded. "We'll have a command post set up in fifteen minutes."

  "In The Cab," Malone urged. "This is where they've been calling. The Cab has hot lines, teleprinters, radio—the best communications gear at Kennedy."

  "We're equipped to run a CP here," the Port Authority lieutenant said firmly, "and our people are well trained for defense of this airport."

  "Against a normal bomb-or-gun attack. This is different," Malone reasoned. "We're in a nasty new kind of combat. This is an air traffic war, so we'd better fight it from the air traffic control center."

  "Maybe. The Cab does have the best view of the whole airport," Hamilton thought aloud.

  "Exactly. In military terms, it's the High Ground. That's just about the only advantage we've got."

  "And it may not be worth much in an electronic battle in a snowstorm," Hamilton calculated.

  "It may be worth nothing," Frank Malone admitted, "but you and I are going to nail these bastards anyway."

  There was neither arrogance nor desperation in his voice. His tone was one of simple naked fact. Whatever the odds, the obstacles or the price, it would be done.

  "How soon will you be here?" Malone asked.

  "About eight minutes."

  As Malone hung up the telephone, he heard Annie Green call out his name.

  "What is it?" he asked.

  "We checked with all those towers," she replied, "and I spoke to Miami and Los Angeles as well. Not one of those airports has any radio or radar problem."

  So it was only here.

  Nobody was starting World War III.

  A local attack ruled out any attempt to cripple the United States.

  It couldn't be a foreign government—not even the hate-filled regime in Teheran. This certainly wasn't a Russian operation.

  So now Frank Malone knew who it wasn't.

  He still didn't know who it was, or what they wanted.

  Without those answers, it would be much harder to find them and their jamming equipment. Until he did, the thousands of people in those airliners—including TWA 22 Heavy, would be helpless hostages in the sky.

  Those big jets were burning fuel every second.

  What the hell were the terrorists waiting for?

  Why didn't they call with their demands?

  14

  "KENNEDY TOWER, this is BA one twenty-six Heavy," the British Airways captain said in the rich burr of his native Glasgow.

  The ear-jarring interference continued. The red-bearded Scot suffered it for a dozen seconds before he tried again.

  "Kennedy Tower, this is BA one twenty-six Heavy."

  He winced at the torrent of inhuman sound. After several moments, he shook his head and pulled down the earphones.

  "Nothing but bloody noise," he grumbled.

  The pilots of some other large jets circling nearby were also attempting to communicate with The Cab.

  "Kennedy Tower, this is Tarman two Concorde requesting landing instructions."

  "Aerovias sixteen to Kennedy Tower."

  "Kennedy Tower, this is TWA twenty-two Heavy."

  There was no reply.

  The only thing the fliers heard was the battering clatter of the relentless jamming. With each plane isolated by Takeshi Ito's electronic wall, none of the pilots suspected that something invisible and "impossible" was threatening their lives.

  So they weren't afraid. They were skilled and sensible professionals with thousands of hours of multiengine flying time. This was a big storm, but they had dealt with worse ones. Soon the competent JFK controllers would answer and bring them down safely as they always had.

  But the seconds ticked away and there was no word. There was no indication of how long the delay would last. The passengers would blame the pilots for the lateness, of course. The men in the cockpits began to feel annoyed—and a little uncomfortable.

  In The Cab below, Annie Green leaned over the teleprinter as it rattled out a message from the FAA's New York Center. Malone was looking intently at the telephone near her. The terrorists would call with their demands at any moment. Wondering what they'd ask, he turned to stare up at the sky, searching the snowy night in some irrational effort to find TWA 22.

  After a few seconds, he swung his glance to the hot-line phones. His eyes swept from the black instrument labeled WHITE HOUSE to the beige one marked FBI. Holding primary responsibility for U.S. internal security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was supposed to be informed immediately about any terrorist incident.

  Malone could not wait to find out who the attackers were or what they wanted. He had to notify the antiterrorist unit in the FBI's Manhattan office that the battle had begun—now. Like the FAA and other government units, the Joint Task Force on Terrorism that united the NYPD and the FBI had its procedures too. Malone reached for the hot-line phone linked directly to the Bureau.

  Another telephone rang a few yards away.

  It was the one on which the terrorists had spoken earlier.

  There was a sudden silence in The Cab. Everyone realized that this could be Number One again. Malone pointed a finger at the watch supervisor.

  "If it's the same man, I think it's time I talked with him," Malone told her.

  Annabelle Green nodded and picked up the telephone.

  "Kennedy Tower," she said.

  She listened for five seconds before she nodded again.

  It was the man who had called before.

  "Excuse me. Frank wants to talk with you," she announced and quickly handed the phone to Malone. In the booth six miles away, Willi Staub was startled and suspicious.

  "Who's Frank?" he demanded angrily.

  "The person you'll be speaking with from now on," Malone replied.

  "To, not with," Staub corrected arrogantl
y. "I'll talk, Stupid, and you'll listen."

  Malone refused to respond to the provocation. He'd never let a terrorist or any other criminal trick him into an ego struggle. Staying cool and focused was critical, a key factor in the unspoken invisible battle for psychological dominance. Malone decided to take control by saying nothing.

  "You hear me?" Staub erupted impatiently.

  "Yes."

  "Then listen good. You know how many planes are trapped up there and how many people are in them. We know that we'll destroy them if you don't give us what we want."

  "What's that?"

  "The liberation of seven prisoners of war from your filthy imperialist prisons!"

  As Staub spoke, Malone carefully weighed every word, every inflection, every tone. This was standard procedure in dealing with terrorists. The tiniest sliver of information could be extremely important.

  There was something in the way Number One spoke.

  What the hell was it?

  "Seven? Who are they?" Malone asked evenly.

  These names would be crucial.

  Now he'd know who was behind this attack.

  "Comrades Thomas Makumbo and Simba Brown of the Afrikan People's Army; Julio Sanchez and Carlos Arroza of the FALN; Sandra Geller, Arnold Lloyd and Ibrahim Farzi."

  Malone recognized the names instantly.

  Black revolutionaries Makumbo and Brown had killed two bank guards in a Queens robbery.

  Arroza and Sanchez were Puerto Rican extremists arrested for half a dozen fire bombings.

  Chubby Sandra Geller was awaiting sentence for driving a getaway car in the March 13th Brigade's attack on an armored car, and former CIA man Lloyd was going on trial the following week for selling poison gas to the piously homicidal ruler of Soraq. Tarzi had tried to murder Jordan's U.N. delegate.

  These names did not supply the answer. They seemed to suggest some sort of coalition, but didn't indicate who was controlling this complex operation. That was as unusual as the attack itself. Terrorists' demands almost always identified them. This list didn't.

  "All seven must be brought to Kennedy at once," Staub continued.

  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.