58 Minutes

by Walter Wager

  Wilber looked at the detective, waiting for curse or comment.

  Malone said nothing.

  "We've got to do something" the FAA official erupted. "When will that Coast Guard chopper get here?"

  "I don't know," Malone replied.

  Wilber shook his head in frustration, and turned to the nearby cluster of controllers. They didn't look cool or confident anymore. It was the uncertainty in their faces that troubled Wilber the most. No air traffic operation could survive if the controllers didn't believe, totally, in the system and themselves.

  "I'll be right back," he told Malone and hurried to speak to the worried controllers.

  Malone watched him and wondered.

  When Pete Wilber left The Cab, had he phoned only the two airports?

  Had he made a third call?

  And there was the other question, Malone thought with a frown. Annbelle Green saw the clouded look in his eyes.

  "What is it?" she asked.

  "Nothing."

  "You don't lie that well, Frank."

  "A lot better than I used to," he replied bitterly.

  Maybe it was the terrible stress of the nightmare situation.

  It could have been annoyance with his endless free floating suspicion and security obsession.

  Whatever it was, her patience and tolerance were exhausted.

  "Don't waste your time, Frank," she told him. "I don't treat out-patients anymore, so just tell me what's wrong."

  Malone considered her angry demand for several seconds.

  "It's the helicopter," he said. "Wilber wasn't here when you sent the request on the teleprinter. How did he know?"

  "I told him while you were on the hot line."

  The detective frowned again.

  "You weren't supposed to tell anyone," he reminded.

  "For God's sake, Frank, I've known him for years."

  "Not anyone," Malone insisted.

  "Okay, mark it down to human error," she replied defensively. "Being so damn perfect yourself, I guess you wouldn't know anything about human error."

  "I'm a cop, Annie. Human error is my business. As for having all the answers, I don't even know half the questions. Please don't fight me," he appealed. "I need your help."

  Maybe he had changed. He was admitting that he was vulnerable, she thought. Suddenly she felt vulnerable herself. She hadn't done that in a long time. In the three hard years since her husband died, she had been wary and safe—and quite alone.

  Leaning closer, Malone spoke again in a low intense voice.

  "You've helped so much already. Please don't stop now."

  She looked into his wide blue eyes, and she remembered.

  A split second later, she found herself wondering about his wife. Then Annie Green felt embarrassed—and a little afraid. In this situation, such thoughts could be very dangerous.

  Who his wife was and what she was like were none of Annie Green's business. Her business was officially defined in a bulky FAA manual under Air Traffic Control: Tower Watch Supervisor. That was all she really was to Captain Frank Malone tonight. And there wasn't going to be any tomorrow for Annie Green and Frank Malone, she reflected. There couldn't be.

  Misinterpreting her silence, Malone thought she was resisting.

  "Please" he pressed.

  She forced herself to smile.

  "All right, Frank," she sighed a moment before the teleprinter started stuttering again.

  Some 180 yards away, Robert Raymond and Jeffrey Raymond were ignoring each other in a public lavatory. It wasn't the usual avoidance of eye contact that prevails in men's toilets around the globe. This was the age thing. Lanky Robert Raymond was nearly sixteen. Peering into the large mirror, he was much more interested in parting his flaxen hair just right than in paying attention to his precocious nine-year-old brother. Their father would arrive any minute now on British Airways's Flight 126 from London, and the teenager wanted to look neat.

  The younger boy wasn't thinking about his appearance. He was facing the toilet stalls, not the mirror. As usual, he was focused on the calculator he held in his left hand. Now chubby Jeffrey Raymond tapped the device's keys once more. As he considered the numbers, his lips parted just enough to expose the gleaming metal of his dental braces.

  "Uh huh," he said.

  Then he heard the loud thump.

  Something heavy had fallen—nearby.

  He glanced around the chamber, saw nothing on the floor and noticed that one stall's door was closed. Whatever fell had to be inside there. He studied the door for several seconds before he called to his brother.

  "Robby?"

  Humming softly to himself, the teenager continued fine-tuning the part in his hair.

  "Robby!"

  "What is it?" the older boy asked impatiently.

  Comb in hand, Robert Raymond turned. He saw his brother pointing at the bottom of the closed door. Something was protruding out from under it. After a few seconds, the teenager recognized it as the tip of a black shoe.

  "He's probably had too much to drink," the almost-six-teen-year-old announced authoritatively. "Just sleeping it off. Nothing to worry about."

  Then he wasn't so sure.

  A very thin stream was oozing slowly from the closed booth out onto the tile floor. Recalling his brief glimpse of a gory corpse in the safe-driving film shown at his high school last month, Robert Raymond stared at the dark red rivulet uneasily.

  The colors matched.

  Yes, this could be blood.

  26

  IN THE COCKPIT of the crown prince's Concorde, Captain Pierre Bersoux studied the instrument panels again, very carefully.

  Pressure altimeter and radio altimeter.

  Horizon and control surface angle displays.

  Turbine temperatures, engine horsepower and airspeed gauges.

  Rate of turn display and stall warning indicator.

  Fuel gauge for the fifteen collector, trim and main tanks.

  "Merde!" the former Air France pilot whispered tensely.

  It wasn't easy here in the cockpit's left seat now. This was the place of command and, of course, responsibility. The thin, forty-three-year-old Parisian usually had no trouble with either, but tonight was different. Guiding a Concorde through a nasty winter storm at only ninety miles an hour above stall speed made him acutely uncomfortable, almost irritated. Cruising so slowly saved fuel, he thought, but this supersonic machine really wasn't designed for that sort of flying.

  Being so late tonight also troubled Pierre Bersoux—a lot. The Tarmani prince who employed him at $12,000 a month had very rigid ideas about promptness, notions that seemed more North American than Near Eastern. Bersoux suspected that Omar had acquired this attitude at business school in the United States. Wherever he got it, Omar saw on-time arrival as an essential part of the perfect service that was his royal due and he'd accept nothing less.

  Insisting on perfect service was a family tradition. Omar's famous and old-fashioned grandfather had ordered that limbs be severed from servants who disappointed him, the French pilot recalled as he eyed the fuel gauge once more. Being a sophisticated modern prince with an M.B.A., Omar simply amputated the offender's salary and comprehensive major medical coverage—firing instantly any employee who didn't do everything as and when expected.

  Bersoux had no idea as to where he might get another $144,000 a year job, let alone that excellent health insurance. He also had no way to predict how soon the Concorde could land at Kennedy. What he did know was that he'd never been even half this late before.

  The threat to his job was growing every minute.

  No, every damn second.

  Pierre Bersoux decided that he had to do something right now. He had to demonstrate his professional poise and expertise before the prince lost his temper. It must be done adroitly, of course. The pilot silently rehearsed his words twice before he pressed the intercom switch. Some thirty seconds later, Omar's secretary put him through to the prince.

  "Yes,
Captain?"

  "Your Highness, I'm sorry to interrupt you but there's still no communication with Kennedy. Since our radio was re-checked completely only four days ago, it has to be this storm or their transmitters."

  Blaming the Americans might deflect Omar's wrath.

  "Go on, Captain."

  "Two things, Your Highness. First, it is not clear when this unusual situation might be corrected," Bersoux said. "To buy us flying time, I've been cruising at much reduced speed to stretch out our fuel. But even at this low speed, our tanks have only enough for forty minutes more."

  "Second?" the prince asked coolly.

  "We are not alone up here, Your Highness. There could be twenty-five or thirty other planes circling within a few miles. In this storm, we can't see them and they can't see us. A pilot in one of those aircraft might make a mistake that could affect us."

  "Are we in danger?"

  Bersoux paused to recall the words that he had selected.

  "Let me put it this way, Your Highness. Being totally committed to your safety," he declared virtuously, "I believe that it might be prudent—oui, très prudent—to proceed at once to an airport where weather and radio conditions are normal."

  "Which airport?"

  "The scheduled alternate in our flight plan is Philadelphia."

  Omar weighed the choices for several seconds.

  "I'd rather not," he said. "I have a meeting at our U.N. mission in New York tonight, and breakfast with the U.S. delegate at the Waldorf tomorrow at nine. Driving the hundred miles up from Philadelphia at night through a snowstorm might be almost as risky anyway. Let's try it here for another fifteen minutes."

  That would be cutting it unpleasantly close, but one did not argue with the crown prince of Tarman. Well, Pierre Bersoux didn't.

  "As you wish, Your Highness," the worried pilot replied through clenched lips.

  Some half a mile below on a back street in the industrial section of Long Island City, a large truck eased to a stop beside a telephone booth. With the recently-tuned and lubricated engine purring, the driver sat silent in the cab, enjoying the warmth of the heater. He liked it a lot more than the ugly sounds of Ito's jammer spewing from the radio on the seat next to him.

  The swarthy man behind the wheel was twenty-seven years old, both strong and determined and quite skilled in techniques of causing death and destruction. He had left dental school in Lebanon to learn covert warfare at the secret South Yemen training camp where he met Willi Staub. The driver's middle-class parents didn't object to his giving up dentistry for arson, explosion and murder. They couldn't. They had been dismembered six weeks earlier by a huge car bomb that massacred fifty-three people.

  They were all buried outside Beirut on the day before the beginning of Ramadan, four years ago. The driver had been to many countries since then. This was his first visit to the United States. He despised it, of course, but he was pleased that Hugo had chosen him for this bold operation. He still thought of Willi Staub as Hugo, the name Staub had used while teaching terrorist tactics in Yemen.

  The man behind the wheel looked at the dashboard clock, and saw that it was time to report. He shuddered in the winter blast as he got out of the truck, and he shuddered as he hurried through the flailing snow to the booth. He stepped inside a dozen seconds before the telephone bell sounded.

  Four rings. Then it stopped, as he expected.

  It sounded again a few moments later, and he lifted the receiver.

  They spoke in Arabic.

  "Early," the driver said.

  "Grave," Staub replied in correct countersign.

  Then he asked about the truck.

  "Operating perfectly," the former dental student told him.

  The vehicle and the equipment in its large cargo compartment were important to Staub's plan. Staub didn't inquire about the equipment. They had retested it, briefly, only a week earlier in a rural area 160 miles from Kennedy Airport.

  "Good. Continue listening and keep to the schedule," Staub ordered.

  When the driver reentered the truck, he started the motor and turned on the special radio tuned to the main JFK Tower frequency. He scowled under the impact of the torrent of endless electronic chaos roaring from Takeshi Ito's powerful transmitter. The man behind the wheel had never heard of either Ito or his jammer. All he knew was what he himself had to do and when he must do it.

  He studied the clock again. According to the schedule, it was time to move on. The conscientious young terrorist put his heavily loaded vehicle in gear and set off on the next leg of his journey. He felt quite confident despite the terrible driving weather. The clever and efficient man whom he knew as Hugo had planned the truck's exact route and timetable all the way to the triumphant escape. They had done three test runs with stopwatches in the past ten evenings to check out every detail and possible problem. It all worked perfectly, so there was nothing to worry about tonight.

  At the Coast Guard air station, Ensign Vincent Babbitt was much less optimistic. When the Aerospatiale helicopter failed to rise, Lieutenant Ernesto Saldana had led copilot Babbitt and Survivalman King to a second H-65. Now they were completing the preflight instrument check.

  Everything seemed all right, but that meant nothing.

  The motors on this chopper could fail, too.

  Either now or, much worse, up at three thousand feet in the storm.

  There was no point in arguing anymore with Saldana, Babbitt brooded. Top man in his class at the Coast Guard Academy, the good-looking young Hispanic had as much nerve as he had charm. Even more important, he had the authority, the command, as senior officer.

  They finished the checklist.

  "I don't suppose that. . ." Babbitt began, then hesitated.

  "Forget it, Vince. You can't really be scared," Saldana told him.

  "Coast Guard's not afraid of anything."

  "Suppose we find this damn transmitter. How are we going to tell anybody?" Babbitt demanded. "It's got all our frequencies jammed."

  "Good thinking, Vince. I'm proud of you," Saldana replied in a cheerful voice.

  "You didn't answer my question, Ernie."

  "Ready for takeoff," Saldana said briskly.

  The conversation was over, Babbitt realized. Some forty-five seconds later, the engines poured power and the rotors began to turn. They were moving faster . . . faster. Finally, Saldana pulled the control to lift the big search-and-rescue machine off the runway.

  Saldana took the H-65 up slowly, guiding the machine in a wide arc toward Kennedy as it rose higher. Strong gusts of wind pushed and jarred the helicopter, and the unrelenting snowfall cut visibility to a scant hundred yards.

  "You can't fly a chopper in this," Babbitt insisted.

  "I know that," Saldana answered.

  But he kept climbing, nursing the Aerospatiale with a sure skill through the buffeting storm. When the altimeter showed twenty-eight hundred feet, he leveled off and flicked the radio switch. Then he began to twist the dial.

  It was just as Babbitt had warned.

  All the FAA and Coast Guard aviation frequencies were jammed.

  "Now what do we do?" the copilot demanded.

  "What we're paid to do: search and rescue," Saldana replied evenly. "Commence search."

  Babbitt sighed and shook his head.

  Then he turned on the radio direction finder.

  The electronic counterattack had begun.

  27

  IT WAS a standard "security" formation.

  The same one was routinely used to protect Very Important People.

  There was, however, one difference.

  The four VIPs being escorted tonight were all wearing handcuffs.

  The eight FBI sedans rolled through the blizzard in a tight column. They were bunched up with a scant dozen yards between cars so no other vehicle could slip into the convoy. The first and last cars in the column were crowned with flashing lights to warn off anyone else traveling from the city on the Grand Central Parkway tonight.
>
  Seated beside the driver in the convoy's point car, Inspector Barry Kincaid looked out at the billowing storm. There was only one third the usual midevening traffic on this major artery. It was moving at twenty-five miles an hour, half the speed that normally prevailed on this multilane highway.

  Going any faster on this slush- and ice-spattered road would be more than risky, Kincaid thought. It would be stupid. Only fools, drunks or people with some extraordinary need to travel would be out on the parkway this night.

  Kincaid was a cautious and competent FBI veteran whose intelligence was matched by his self-control. As the column rolled on, he didn't waste a moment on anger or principle or honor. He focused his intelligence on the question of who were the terrorists behind this operation. The prisoners whom the terrorists had demanded represented a variety of interests.

  The FALN was skilled with explosives, but the Puerto Rican militants had never used electronic assault before.

  The Afrikan People's Army was an urban guerrilla warfare outfit with neither the money nor organization for anything like this.

  And the fiery March 13th Brigade was now down to a ragged handful. Recent counterintelligence reports strongly indicated that those few fanatics were on the run.

  Maybe it was one of those shadowy Near Eastern groups backed by Iran or Libya or Syria, Kincaid speculated. According to Sea Sweep, those organizations had both ample funds and sophisticated weapons, plus foreign advisors to teach them how to use the gear.

  Half a dozen of those outfits had recently been threatening to attack the U.S. mainland. It was hard enough to sort out their grandiose and ambiguous names, the FBI inspector reflected, distinguishing their diverse political causes was even more difficult.

  In the next car, forty-eight-year-old Arnold Lloyd wasn't thinking about politics. Since leaving the CIA, he saw himself as a canny businessman, an efficient entrepreneur whose simple cause was Cash. He had sold the poison gas and assassination hardware to Soraq and trained that nation's hit teams purely for money—a great deal of it.

  There was $3,410,000 in his secret Swiss account.