Tristie hears herself asking the most stupid question. ‘Is there anything wrong?’ This to the sobbing, panda-eyed stewardess, heavy mascara streaking her cheeks, clutching the internal phone, desperately trying to dial a number . . .
By the cockpit door a young, muscular steward in a bright blue tailored jacket is hammering at the lock with the bottom of a three-foot-long fire extinguisher. Thud-thud-thud. Some way back, watching with detached bemusement, the one passenger she recognises from first class. A Pakistani. He’s taken off the grey pullover he had been wearing. Underneath is a crisp white pilot’s uniform with four gold braids on each shoulder and an immaculately woven four-in-hand tie-knot. He has a trimmed goatee and pointed moustache.
‘My name’s Captain Harry Salahuddin. On behalf of the airline . . .’ He answers Tristie’s question almost impishly, before extending a hand. ‘I can promise you we have perhaps the strictest security protocols in the world . . . but . . . ’, and he opens up his palms in apology, ‘. . . but we appear to have no pilots and no way to get into the cockpit.’
Pilots’ humour . . .
Sky News newsroom
Isleworth, Middlesex
1253 UK time, 1753 Islamabad time, 0753 Washington time
The duty producer is playing pencil cricket with his son via a telephone wedged against his ear. Pencil cricket gets played in the newsrooms of major satellite broadcasters only on public holidays. They are terribly cruel shifts for rolling news shows. The big-name presenters are still rostered, everybody works their usual hours, but why bother? None of the branches of government works, the courts and City are closed, the great PR machine is asleep and almost nothing is moving. And today’s is a public holiday that stretches across the whole of the UK, most of Europe and the US and Canada. Instead of hard, vivid stories, the newsrooms pick their way through pap. Mindless drivel that they have to expand on and flesh out. In the background, the producer can hear one of the station’s lady presenters simpering on air over fresh pictures of a new polar bear born in Berlin. What is it with polar bears and Berlin? ‘Another three minutes on this, I’m afraid . . .’ he had said into her earpiece. Major news on a public holiday. Shame of shames.
He rolls the pencil. Each of the six sides has numbers dotted into it with the point of a schoolboy’s compass. One through six, except for five, which has W for wicket. On the other end of the phone is his nine-year-old son, keeping score. ‘England on ninety-three for no wicket, Dad.’
The duty producer, a New Zealander, rolls the pencil. Six. And his heart bleeds for the little boy his English ex-wife is raising to be an Englishman. ‘Six runs, Billy.’
‘Yes. Get in there.’ And he can hear the sound of his boy scribbling into the scorebook. Giggling to himself about how crap New Zealand are. ‘That’s over, Dad. Change of end. Pietersen facing . . .’
It’s then that the eye of the duty producer is caught by a flashing pulse on his computer screen. Urgent news breaking from one of the wire agencies. The queue of stories jumps, and he clicks his cursor across. Rolls the pencil at the same time as he opens the file . . .
URGENT. PIA Plane in Hijack Scare . . . May 31. Agence France Presse. ‘Hold on, son,’ he mumbles. Dateline Islamabad. Just three paras, as most flashes tend to be. His eyes skim through the copy. Blah. Blah. Blah. Boeing 777. Three hundred sixty-two passengers and crew. Blah. Blah. Blah. Ex-Manchester to New York . . . his heart stops. Ex-Manchester . . . ?
‘Son . . . gotta go.’ And he drops the phone. Just like that. Desperate to rush this on air, this thin sliver of something. Break it now, he thinks to himself, live on air . . . Some considered Agence France Presse a bit wild and racy. He glances to feeds from the BBC, CNN and Fox. Nothing. Fucking pussies were nowhere . . . break it now, then tease the story to the top of the hour: a big, sexy package with all the expert talking heads he could lay his hands on, larded with file footage off YouTube and airliners.net. Then it hits him like a hard-on. There will be crying relatives, and where else will they be doing their weeping than Manchester Airport. Magic fucking TV.
‘Look at your screens . . . Hijack out of Manchester,’ he barks into the microphone, standing like Captain Kirk on the bridge of his ship. In command. And the two presenters touch their earpieces, start fiddling with their keyboards. ‘Kill the fucking polar bear now . . .’ and Operation Macchar becomes the live world story.
Sky News is first to break the story in the conventional sense, but on the internet the Twitter site CNNbkr is the first to tweet that a PIA Boeing 777 is believed under the control of terrorists. Over the mid-Atlantic. More to follow.
More than two million CNNbkr readers feel a horrible sinking feeling, knowing full well what this has to mean.
On board PK412
Eight minutes later
The steward is still hammering away, getting nowhere. Even though Tristie’s off to one side, in the forward galley, she can feel the thud-thud shaking through the fibreglass panelling.
‘I told him it was no use before he even started. It’s not even a real door lock he’s trying to break.’ Stirring sugar into his paper cup of coffee, Salahuddin adds with his voice raised above the racket, ‘Don’t worry, he’ll get bored soon.’
‘Captain . . .’ Tristie finds herself lost for words, too shocked to think straight, and ends up talking with anxious hand movements. After everything that has happened today, this last fortnight . . . now this?! She tries to get something going in her head. She manages, ‘You seem awfully calm.’
He flicks his hand dismissively towards the crew seat. ‘I’ve got one stewardess out of commission . . .’ Panda-eyes is still dialling through to the cockpit, so tearful she can’t see the buttons. ‘. . . one steward who’s going to pop a shoulder soon. And you want me to add myself to that casualty list? Why? Tell me, why, when I’m the only person who can fly this plane.’ From across the tight little galley, his eyes glare. She’s half a head taller but he seems a bigger presence. Perhaps it’s the reassurance of the uniform. In spite of the rising sense of panic among his fellow crew members, he exudes a strong sense of command, waiting for the idiots to run their panic dry. ‘The plane is perfectly safe for the moment. It will take care of itself for another six, possibly seven hours.’
Finally it coughs out of her mouth . . . ‘Is this a hijack?’ There, she’s said it. The word she’s tried to avoid. ‘Are we being hijacked?’
His face changes. The irritation that had flared moments ago vanishes. Mellow again. ‘We’ll know shortly. I’ve asked the crew to do a headcount. If someone’s in the cockpit, some passengers . . . then, yes, this probably is a hijacking.’ He explains all this as cool as. No drama. Breaks a crumbly biscuit in two and dunks it into his coffee. ‘I have to say it feels that way to me.’
‘Feels that way? W-why do you say that?’
Salahuddin appraises her for a second, chewing with the right side of his mouth, his arm resting on the high metal work surface. He’s trying to work Tristie out. Can she actually help, or will she run away screaming, knock-kneed at the first sign of some trivial scare?
The galley has an internal phone. Salahuddin barks a sharp command in Urdu to the stewardess, who reluctantly couches the handset and slumps down, putting her head between her hands, keening. ‘We’re . . . all . . . going . . . to . . . die . . .’ A flash of anger towards the hostess whips through Tristie. At least do your mourning in a language I can’t understand.
Taking the phone, Salahuddin dials into the cockpit with his thumb. He raises the earpiece to Tristie. Listen . . .
She has no idea what to expect, what she’s going to hear. There’s a high-pitched yowling. It takes a moment for her brain to click. An Islamic call of some sort mixed in with soft music, heavy instrumentation. And a syrupy voice starts to croon in English.
Salahuddin takes back the phone, listens himself. ‘From a CD, it sounds like. The guy singing is Sami Yusuf. Very popular. My granddaughters love him. I think this song is called “The Day of Eid
”.’
‘What’s the significance?’
Salahuddin touches the point of his goatee. ‘The two pilots in there, Hussain and Jamal, are professionals. Or were, anyway. Quality pilots. And good men. But also they wouldn’t be fans of Sami Yusuf.’ He points past the galley’s shiny aluminium inserts and convection ovens towards the cockpit. ‘Someone must have taken control of the flight deck. Every time we dial in, this is what we get. “Day of Eid” or “Who Is the Loved One?” Or “Allah o Allah Hasbi Rabbi” . . .’
That’s all we need, thinks Tristie. Muslim radicals in a cockpit.
She knows it’s time to put her cards on the table. ‘Captain. If I can be of any help. I’m ex-British Army. My two colleagues in first class also.’
‘Not the Dental Corps, I hope.’ He laughs at his own joke, putting his coffee cup to his lips, eyeing her carefully.
‘No, not the Gob Docs. The Paras.’ And just saying that makes her feel good. The Paras. Talk to them together or individually and any Para will swear blind they can do anything, no scrap or shit-fight they can’t bulldoze their way through. The spirit of Market Garden and Goose Green, fighting against overwhelming odds, all those guys tabbing across the top of the Falklands. Just two silly little syllables, Pah Ra, and the whole thing puts some starch in her backbone.
Salahuddin looks intrigued. Slips out of the galley to look at Whiffler and Button snoring. Probably not at their best. Certainly not Utrinque Paratus. Ready for Anything.
The captain reappears, brushing aside the curtain. ‘But you are not a Para?’
‘No,’ she replies with a friendly half-laugh, thinking of the only woman she knew who tried for a red beret and broke her leg in two places. ‘I started with the Adjutant General’s Corps . . . sort of human relations. But . . .’ she adds as enigmatically as possible ‘. . . the army taught me all the good stuff.’
Of course, she should have seen what is coming next. The big trap she’d walked into. With a long face, he wants to know just one thing: ‘You have killed Muslims, then. In Iraq, perhaps Afghanistan . . .’ Not a question, more like a statement.
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you . . .’ and he narrows his eyes like a card sharp ‘. . . and them?’
Every bone of her body screams for her to lie. It’s what all that 14 Coy. training was all about, the deception and spy-craft. She could lie now and he’d never know . . .
‘I can’t speak for them. We don’t really swap scores.’ Look him in the eye, Tristie. Make him understand ‘. . .But I’ve killed. I presume they were Muslims, so yes. While I was in Basra. Yes. Afghanistan too. But let me tell you they were killed because of what they were doing. Not because of their religion . . .’
‘How many?’
‘Does this have anything to do with getting out of this mess?’
More insistent. ‘How many?’
‘Six. All men.’ Tristie shrugs her shoulders. ‘I think six.’ A couple of the faces flash through her mind. No regrets there. ‘It was kill or be killed.’
Perhaps this was only an opening gambit for Salahuddin looks . . . unmoved. Hard to read this pilot. Neither happy or sad. Another steward arrives, saves her further scrunity. A short, portly-looking man with a five-string comb-over who is clutching a passenger manifest.
Distressed. He looks down at the print-off. Up at the captain. Then down again. His mouth opens . . .
‘What is it?’
The steward seems to be gulping for air. The only sounds are the despairing thud-thud-thud and the pathetic mewling of the stewardess.
‘All the passengers accounted for, Captain. Three hundred and forty-five passengers, including . . .’ and he nods towards Tristie ‘. . . including this lady.’
No passengers missing? Both of them frown. What does that mean?
‘But . . .’ and the tubby steward seems to shrink in size, his face cringing, like he’s going to get walloped for bringing bad news ‘. . . one crew member is absent.’
She makes a mental note of that. Absent . . . great use of vocabulary. Not attending a place or event, especially when expected to. In response, Salahuddin’s voice is loud, disbelieving. ‘One of the pilots?’
‘No,’ and the steward wipes at the line of sweat on his top lip. ‘Cabin crew.’
‘Who?’
The steward cowers, speaks in a soft voice. ‘Zaafir . . .’
‘ZAAFIR DID THIS?’ the pilot bellows. He thumps his fist down on the galley work surface, rattling a tray full of clear plastic cups, toothpicks, slices of lemon. ‘Zaafir . . .’
Tristie is just about to ask the obvious question, who is this Zaafir, when a mad, possessed skriek starts up. Like an exorcism. Coming from way back to the rear of the plane. Panda-eyes’ yowling is nothing to this. A terrible, nail-scratching-blackboard sort of agony. Suddenly the worry becomes about panic. And the officer in Tristie wonders despairingly what it would be like controlling a whole planeload of similarly out-of-control passengers?
Without thinking, she’s running behind Salahuddin. Down the aisle. Her heart thumping. Bewildered faces rub sleep out of their eyes, craning round to find out what’s the matter. This awful sound gets louder and louder.
USS Dwight D. Eisenhower . . . the Ike
CVN-69
Mid-Atlantic
Thirty-six thousand feet below and a pair of Navy FA-18E Super Hornets are sitting patiently, engines running. Cockpit hoods still high in the air. Two pilots, call-signed Cletus and Sneaker, go through final pre-flight checks.
Their 1,100-foot long aircraft carrier is racing to line up into the wind, going full bore to swivel almost 90,000 metric tonnes of ship as quickly as possible. The flash had come through from USNORTHCOM command, a military structure created after 9/11 with responsibility for securing the air, land and sea approaches to the continental United States and Alaska. NORTHCOM and the satellite and air sovereignty programme NORAD share the same commander, as well as operational headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs. The signal had come through highest priority. Operation Noble Eagle. Get two jets up there. NOW.
In the dark of the ship’s Combat Direction Centre, on the blue-light radar screens, they had already located PK412 and listened in to the Shanwick controllers trying repeatedly to raise some kind of answer. Then, by scrolling back through a series of hard drives that download and store all the radio transmissions hereabouts, that one very distinct broadcast from the plane had been identified. ‘ . . . If you do not leave our lands your lives will forever be filled with pain. There are so many more like us, thirsting to strike until the law of Allah rules this earth . . .’
Picked out, and passed on, this scratchy High Frequency recording, to the admiral on the flag bridge, plus the carrier’s captain, and to the squadron leader in charge of the Jolly Rogers, the Fighting 103rd, the naval attack unit from which pilots Cletus and Sneaker are assigned.
Things were supposed to move quickly on the order to scramble, but with the ground crew doing their deck-walk, and the USS Ike still rolling around the seas, the 103’s squadron leader had time to escort the two pilots out to their side-by-side planes. Letting them know that after something like 45,000 regular sorties and 2,200 ‘scrambles’, this Operation Noble Eagle call-out is the one. For real. ‘I tell you this because I know it’s every pilot’s worst nightmare . . .’ and being a basically chummy guy, he’d taken his time with them, lots of sincere eye contact, letting them know he understood any nerves they might feel ‘. . . wouldn’t be surprised if it were your worst nightmare too.’
‘But . . .’ the squadron leader had reached out to squeeze the backs of their necks, a gesture he hoped conveyed understanding and compassion ‘. . . consider what a different place this world would be if we’d had two pilots like you guys behind each of those planes on 9/11 . . .’ He had pivoted from one to the other, searching for any hint of weakness.
Cletus and Sneaker had gone awfully quiet as they clutched their flight helmets on that windswe
pt deck, pitching this way and that, as the Ike tried to turn on a penny. There was no joshing or backslapping about this mission. They hadn’t thought to ask, nor had it been volunteered, just how many people are on the flight they are to hunt down.
Perhaps they hadn’t enquired because in that final face-to-face conversation, while the world seemed at once complicated and layered, yet it was very simple. After fist-bumping the senior officer, both headed to their planes. Wearing looks that were both fierce and piercingly serious.
The Combat Direction Centre had plotted the plane about 350 miles to the north-east of Ike’s position and moving westwards at just under 600 miles an hour. At maximum speed of Mach 1.8, these two birds should be on station, by the hostile, in under twenty-five minutes.
Once in their Super Hornets the two pilots look off to their right. This is the first flight of the day, so a line of colourcoordinated ground crew has been rushed on deck, to check for Foreign Object Debris. Maintenance men in their green roll-neck tops, the guys and girls who handle bombs and armaments wearing red, and the refuellers in purple. Around the two planes are green-shirted crew chiefs doing their final checks and a knot of ground handlers in yellow, waiting for the OK to start directing them by way of hand signals, on to the catapult ramp for the launch sequence.
From the top level of the Ike’s island, the above deck area, comes the call from the duty Air Boss, himself a former naval pilot. ‘Two minutes to launch . . .’
As the Shooters who run the catapult system prep their equipment, steam leaks out of the long slit-like track in front of the two Hornets. Just as it does for any other day of flying. In fact almost everything about today is the same as on any other day of practice, training and relentless self-improvement. The same, and yet definitely not the same.
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