Bolt Action

by Charlie Charters

  These young militants, unthinking in the totality of their hatred, are drawn from the scurrying mass of the poor and half educated. Forty in total, packed tight by the warehouse’s towering boxes of crockery and children’s clothing and footwear. Each had ten Motorola handsets and three plastic drinking cups. In each cup fifteen different SIM cards. One thousand eight hundred SIM cards in total, each one programmed with 250 mobile phone numbers spanning the big networks of Ufone, Mobilink, Paktel, Waridtel, Telenor and Insta Phone. The subscribers’ phone numbers have been harvested from various content providers. Not from people who download the latest jokes, funny wallpapers or cricket scores, too secular. No, the 1,800 SIM cards are prepped with the contact details of believers, both fanatics and those teetering on the edge of fanaticism. Those who can’t be without the sound of their muezzin and download MP3 files of the Azaan, or call to prayer. Or the Islamic devotionals of singers like Muhammad Rashid Azam. Or those who subscribe to the many SMS services fanning the latest radical rage against Coca-Cola, Danish cartoonists or British oppressors in Afghanistan.

  So. Forty sets of fingers to send text messages. Four hundred handsets, 1,800 SIM cards, each with its pre-programmed field of 250 mobile numbers. Almost half a million text messages a minute. Tens of millions of people to be touched by this fantastic evil with the speed of gods.

  And the first message will read: ‘Beware. 300 Muslim Innocents To Be Slaughtered By Infidel Warplanes. Pakistan Aircraft. Developing story. Please forward urgent.’

  Followed five minutes later by: ‘Do You Know Anyone On PIA Boeing 777 To New York? To Be Shot Down Off Coast Four Hours From Now. Developing story. Please forward.’

  Next message: ‘Confirmed. PIA Boeing 777. Flight No. PK412. 300 Muslims To Be Killed. 90 Females. 44 Children. Please forward.’

  This to be tagged five minutes later by a well-known Koranic verse at the heart of the Islamic law of jihad:

  ‘Murder of 300 Muslim Innocents. Koran 22: verses 39–40: Permission to take up arms is hereby given to those who are attacked because they have been oppressed – Allah indeed has power to grant them victory – those who have been unjustly driven from their homes, only because they said: “Our Lord is Allah”.’

  It’s all so intoxicating.

  Like caged animals, the bright, shiny faces looking at Hamza Khan share a burning desire to get to work on this. To stoke the fire’s flames as big and as hot as they can. To bring Pakistan, the Middle East, the whole axis of Western imperialist power to their knees.

  All they need is the signal. From their leader . . .

  Hamza closes his eyes, rolls his bony shoulders again and again. Here it comes, here it comes, pulling up from the deep, a fiery religious frenzy. A species of mania.

  He sweeps forward towards the nearest of the tables, his audience already rapt in their own delirium, and slowly raises his scrawny arms, his fingers trembling like talons, feeling for his father’s spirit, entreating it to enter him. And he thunders: ‘O you who believe! Fight those of the disbelievers who are close to you, and let them find harshness in you.’

  And on the word harshness, the first mobiles are lifted. The first text messages formed . . . and the first terrible sting of Operation Macchar is released.

  Outside the cockpit

  On board PK412

  Three minutes late

  The sole female passenger in first class is exiting the aircraft toilet. It’s a tight squeeze so she waits with the door half open. Zaafir, in the gangway leading to the cockpit, motions her forward. You go first. There’s a half-length mirror to the left of the passage and it’s his observation that all women stop to look at themselves. This one doesn’t.

  Strange.

  Zaafir is carrying a tray with drinks for the cockpit crew. In addition to the business with the mirror, there’s something about this woman that strikes him as odd. Out of place. They each move to one side so the other can pass. He nods to her, still trying to work out what it is about her. She smiles. Blue eyes. Lovely white teeth. And slides past.

  The passenger, Zaafir’s list says her name is Ms Tristesse Merritt, moves to the left and out of sight. Presumably back to her seat in the front of the first-class section. No matter. More important things to worry about.

  Two glasses.

  Zaafir grips the edge of the tray to make sure there’s no chance of spillage. He has to laugh, gallows humour. If he spills the drinks now, there will be no Operation Macchar. Simple as that. His every last grain of Dushuqiang has been used.

  Zaafir runs his spare hand over the cockpit door fascia. It hides its secrets so well. He doesn’t understand the intricacies but this much he knows: accessing a plane’s cockpit has never been harder. Nobody knew for sure – not even he – how the heroic martyrs got into the cockpits of those four famous 9/11 flights, American 11 and 77 and United 93 and 175. The story kept mutating. One whispered version of mosque gossip was that they threatened the flight attendants to get hold of the key. Another, that they’d cut up one of the hostesses to draw the captain out of the cockpit. Who knows? Whatever the truth, the events of 9/11 changed cockpit doors for ever.

  First step for Zaafir is keying the correct four-digit code. Facing him is a thin blackened LED screen about the size of a cigarette lighter, and below that the number pad, with numbers zero to nine in green, and a red Enter pad. Eleven keys in total, arranged two across and six down.

  Matching the correct code is not enough, for the cockpit crew check who is at the door. Above his eye level, to his left and right and behind him, are a series of bug-eye cameras that give the pilots a field of vision of the area beyond the door as well as the passageway and galley areas. Only the cockpit crew can disengage the four hardened steel locks that hold the door firm. The latch body itself is machined from treated aluminium and features a dummy knob on the cabin side. Only on the cockpit side is the knob actually fitted to the latch bolt.

  Zaafir knows the door will withstand repeated blows from an axe, stop a clip of 9mm bullets, and barely be scorched by a standard M26 fragmentation grenade placed right up against it.

  A ‘smart door’, they call it, because it also has to be light. As little metal as possible to save on overall plane weight.

  Four-one-two-nine is this month’s code, set by ground engineers in Karachi. He moves his fingers from button to button, noticing a slight tremble as he presses each key.

  The steward looks in the camera to the right . . . the one focused on him. Remembers to smile. Look friendly. Unthreatening. He runs a hand across his hair. Tidy too. It’s as he hears the bolt-action metal locks thwunk into the open position, and the door rise fractionally out of its frame towards him, that he realises. Damn it. The female passenger had dark hair when she boarded and he settled her into her seat. Curled over her shoulder. But now, coming from the toilet, she was blonde. Cropped, ash-blonde hair.

  Super-fast, this tiny inconsistency churns through his mind. His synapses firing off an exchange of questions about the woman in seat 1D. Hair colour. Significance? Important. Or not important? Then he draws the cockpit door open and suddenly this concern seems like nothing.

  From the gloom of the gangway, Zaafir is startled by the flash of light. The sun pouring through the expanse of windscreen and bouncing piercingly off all the glass surfaces. In the background, the deep blue of never-ending sky. It’s an apparition, surely. The young steward’s mind, so febrile and overwrought, takes this sudden burst of radiance as an omen. Paradise. And all thoughts of Ms Merritt in 1D vanish in a puff of fevered revelation . . .

  It is sparkling light, aromatic plants, a lofty palace, a flowing river, ripe fruit, a beautiful wife and abundant clothing, in an eternal abode of radiant joy, in beautiful, soundly constructed high houses . . .

  Already he senses Paradise.

  He steps forward past the thick, reinforced door. Doesn’t even register that it seals shut behind him. Bolt-action locks click back into place. Secure. With him inside.

&nb
sp; And on the Internet, the information superhighway where you never need let the truth get in the way of a good story, three – no, five, suddenly twelve, jumping to nineteen – extremist Pakistan-based websites report that PK412 has been hijacked.

  The truth is that neither of the two captains, Iqbal Hussain and Imtiyaz Jamal, have much time for Zaafir. Once they see his aquiline nose and the sharp features of his face on their internal TV monitor, they want him in and out. As quickly as possible.

  ‘Come. Come . . .’ Hussain motions Zaafir forward. The steward looks a little stunned. His eyes squinting against the sunlight. The flight deck is silent. No radio transmissions. ‘What have you got for us there?’

  Hussain and Jamal had traded stories about the steward with fellow captain Harry Salahuddin while the Boeing 777 was still on the ground. Both a bit crestfallen that he would be the one serving them, for the man carried an uncomfortable air about him in keeping with a hair-trigger sense of injustice. The three pilots had agreed that he bristled with wrong-headed woes and warped anxieties.

  Salahuddin had crossed swords with Zaafir before: a cat had somehow got on board a PIA flight out of Manchester that he was due to command. There had been a small window of resolution at the start of the drama when the animal appeared trapped, though docile. But Zaafir had seen some unimaginably small breach of health and safety regulations: neither he nor the cabin crew could possibly participate in the animal’s capture. Regulations. Hard to believe, Salahuddin had said, but by the time professional handlers had been called in the cockpit crew were out of hours. Not allowed to fly. The plane took off twenty-six hours late.

  And here he is now, Zaafir: clearing his throat as he looks down at the clear plastic cups he’s offering in the cockpit. ‘A Malawi shandy?’

  ‘Malawi shandy?’ The two pilots look at each other, puzzled. ‘Never heard of it,’ says Captain Jamal in the left-hand seat, craning round to look at the tray of fizzing drinks. He pushes back his seat to the limit of its runners. ‘No alcohol?’

  Zaafir shakes his head fiercely. ‘It’s a tonic. Kind of a pick-me-up.’ The steward more at ease now. ‘I made a jug. Dash of orange cordial. Splash of bitters. The rest is half ginger beer. Half lemonade. And lots of ice, of course.’

  Jamal takes his glass. The bubbles are still jumping and popping, and prickle his nose as he sniffs. He looks concerned . . . then happy, his face resolving into a broad smile. ‘Sort of like a Chapman’s.’

  Zaafir chews his bottom lip. ‘I suppose . . . but unlike Chapman’s this is very important to serve quickly.’

  Iqbal Hussain, in the co-pilot’s seat, reaches across to take his. His chair also as far back as he can push it. ‘Why so important?’

  ‘If you lose the bubbles, you lose the layers of flavour. It goes flat. Like tap water.’ Then with a look of petulance, ‘All that hard work . . . might as well throw the jug away . . .’ and his words trail off.

  In the calm of the cockpit there’s the unwanted threat of an emotional outburst. Drama.

  The pilots look at each other. An unspoken thought passes between them. If they drink this quickly, Zaafir will leave. If they don’t, he’s sure to see the hand of some conspiracy at work.

  Captain Jamal tips his head imperceptibly towards his copilot. Raises his eyebrows. Let’s get this over with. And the two of them neck their drink. One go. Down the hatch.

  Not too shabby. Both of them are pleasantly surprised. It is a very refreshing drink. Uplifting almost.

  And fifteen seconds later both pilots are dead.

  The smell is awful. Sharp and toxic. Sprays of bloody vomit slide down the windscreen, glare-shield and electronic fascia of the cockpit. It changes the light. The sun now dapples through what looks like a froth of marmalade. Beneath this strange tincture the six liquid crystal display screens keep on blinking their information. Engine performance. Heading. Air speed. Weather radar. The two captains are clutched in the painful rictus of death. Fingers clawing against straps. Eyes open and bulging.

  Zaafir is thrilled. Absolutely pumped. Super-quick, he gets to work. He doubles back to the cockpit door. Tugs on it to make sure it is absolutely secure. Good.

  Takes out his biro and, using the point, stabs it at the soft reset button to the side of the door’s combination-lock mechanism. Blanking the previous code from its memory. He pads in a random four-digit code, his fingers moving too fast for him even to register what it was. When the LED screen shows the numbers, he holds down both the reset and entry buttons for five seconds. The new code flashes. Flashes. Flashes. Then blank. Zaafir’s combination is locked in. Good work. The door is secure.

  Next. Look up . . .

  Above the pilots are a series of overhead panels. Those in closest reach relate to important features of the aircraft in use during every flight. Punch-button switches that control a range of things from cross-feeding fuel from one wing to another, to the plane’s air-conditioning system, the ignition switches for the two engines, and the famous ding-dong seat-belt signs. Farther back is a panel devoted solely to the circuit-breakers that back-stop this complex array of electronics. The overhead maintenance panel. That’s what Zaafir is interested in.

  His head tilted backwards, his eyes straining, Zaafir walks his fingers down the array of circuit-breakers. Little, round, black buttons with an ampage printed in white. Everything from the tiny half-amp circuit-breaker for the motor of the alternate landing-gear extension system, to the meaty twenty-five-amp breakers needed for the big display screens that show basic flight information to the pilots.

  Two and a half amps . . . two and a half, Zaafir mumbles to himself. Two and a half . . .

  He stops. In a line of two-and-a-half-amp breakers, and between something labelled GLOBAL POS and another CAPT CLOCK, is one marked simply DOOR. Delicately he pulls the little head, no thicker than the cross-section of a pencil, towards him.

  It falls into his hand. And in an instant rush of power to his ego he pointlessly crushes it under his heel. Pointless because whether the circuit-breaker is in one piece or a thousand makes no difference. So long as it’s not lodged in the correct slot in the overhead maintenance panel, the door is immobilised. No circuit-breaker means no power to operate the bolt-action locking mechanism . . .

  . . . assuming, of course, that somebody could first work out Zaafir’s new, random four-digit combination. ‘A four-digit code has ten thousand possible combinations. Ten thousand to one.’ And, in his briefing with Zaafir, General Ali Mahmood Khan had started a list on a whiteboard to prove that point: 0001. 0002. 0003. 0004. By the time the general got to 0051, Zaafir had understood.

  Last job. From his pocket he brings a small MP3 player with a curious array of wires that lead to something like a suction cup. It takes a moment to untangle. To do it, Zaafir sits in the jump seat immediately to the rear of the central instrument pedestal between the two pilots. Captains Hussain and Jamal face one another. Mouths open. Aghast. Their faces forever frozen.

  Zaafir reaches behind Captain Jamal for his headset. It’s hooked just below the left windscreen panel. He fastens the suction cup against the mouthpiece and runs his fingers down the length of red audio cable to the MP3 player, making sure there are no kinks or snags.

  This bit will be tricky. With the MP3 player and headset in one hand, he loosens the over-shoulder straps in the captain’s seat and rolls Jamal’s corpse forward and to the side. Pushing the fleshy figure down towards his left. If he stretches, really stretches, Zaafir can now reach over and key the plane’s radio, using the talk button on the left-hand grip of the captain’s control column.

  But first he takes out a white handkerchief and wipes down the mess of guts, phlegm-spray and blood that is congealing on the W-shaped flight column.

  ‘Allahu Alam . . .’ Allah Knows Best, he mumbles to himself, and clicks down. To transmit . . .

  And the story jumps from the extremist fringes of the Internet to the mainstream as someone on Twitter sets up an outraged tweet
under the inflammatory heading #PakistanHijackCrisis.

  Shanwick Oceanic Area Control Centre Prestwick, Ayrshire

  The chocolate-coated Hob Nob biscuit is halfway to the controller’s open mouth. Has been for almost thirty seconds now.

  ‘. . . you must read the Koran, it is the word of truth. To enjoy the blessings of our Lord, Allah requires us to die and kill in his name. Read the Koran and you will find this truth, this absolute truth and never again can you deny this because the Koran says so, and the messenger of Allah, prayers and peace upon him, who told his believers this, and so we cannot allow your laws to push us from this path until you leave our lands, until you hurt like we are hurting . . .’

  ‘Can you believe this?’ the controller hisses to the handful of colleagues who’ve wheeled their chairs across the bright blue carpet from their various grey blinking consoles. ‘One of my planes. Bloody hijacked.’

  ‘Any change to the transponder?’ asks one of the junior officers. He’s querying the secondary radar pulse which pilots normally set up to transmit the plane’s altitude to flight controllers. At the first opportunity pilots will surrepetitiously dial their transponders across to the code 7500, the international signal for unlawful interference, otherwise known as a hijacking.

  ‘Not a thing, and no way of knowing what’s going on out there, except what we’ve just heard,’ mutters Hob Nob, in a mournful Scottish brogue. ‘Two hundred and fifty miles is as far out as our wee radar can reach.’

  Major Operations Room

  MI5 Headquarters

  Thames House

  VHF radio doesn’t work out there, in the wild reaches of the mid-Atlantic. So the live audio feed is spotted with crackles and hisses typical of any long-distance high-frequency transmission. Like an old wireless set. Even though the words are burning up and bouncing about in the ionosphere, the intent is very clear. You could hear a pin drop . . .