The Tarmac loomed before the windshield. Forty feet, Hotchkins judged—ten seconds. Out the side window, he glimpsed fire trucks racing down the opposite runway, their lights flashing and sirens warbling.
“We’re still losing fuel,” said the copilot.
That decided it. Their best chance was to lay the wing into the grassy median; if the gear held, good, but if not, the ploy might just keep the wing off the concrete.
“Tower, nineteen, be advised, I’ve got a fuel leak. I’m putting her down in the grass.”
“Rog, Delta,” was the reply.
“Help me, Chuck. …” called Hotchkins.
Altitude dropping through 30 feet, Hotchkins forced the 160-foot, 125-ton Boeing laterally through the air toward the median. Hotchkins eyed the blue border lights as they whipped under the wing. Almost there … steady … steady … Now!
Hotchkins cut power and flared the jet, lifting the nose slightly as the starboard gear thumped down with a screech. The port gear followed a moment later. Hotchkins held his breath. The gear trembled, then held. The plane shuddered as the wheels plowed through the grass. With a rhythmic ca-chunk, ca-chunk, the wingtip sheared off the border lights. Hotchkins could hear screaming from the cabin.
“Speed?” he called.
“Eighty … seventy-five …”
“Braking … reverse thrust … ! Help me … step on ’em!”
At that moment, the port gear snapped.
The 737 lurched sideways. Hotchkins was slammed against the window. He pulled himself upright, hands white around the yoke, the veins in his neck bulging. He scanned the gauges. Sixty knots … 300 feet of runway left. Past the end of the Tarmac stood a row of maintenance sheds. In the middle of the runway a lone Cessna was desperately trying to taxi clear.
“Come on, come on,” Hotchkins chanted. “Stop, baby. …”
Slowly, the 737 began slowing, yawing to port as the wingtip plowed through the grass, bulldozing soil before it. Hotchkins fought to keep the nosewheel out of the ditch. He watched, transfixed, as the speed gauge wound down through thirty knots, then twenty-five, then at last to ten. Zero.
The aircraft shuddered to a stop.
Hotchkins exhaled. Down safe.
Outside, emergency trucks were pulling alongside. Workers raced toward the plane as the firefighters began laying hoses.
Hotchkins took a moment to force some spit into his mouth, then switched on the intercom. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain. We are on the ground and safe, but as a precaution, we’ll be deplaning rapidly. Stay calm and follow the flight attendant’s instructions. Flight crew, proceed with emergency egress.”
He switched off the intercom and laid his head back against the seat. He cast a wan smile at the copilot and navigator. They were both pasty white.
Wonder what the hell I look like, Hotchkins thought.
Two hours later, the crippled Boeing was sitting in a hangar at the east end of the airport, illuminated by the overhead fluorescent lights. Fire-suppression foam dripped from the wings and struck the ground with fat plops.
The oblong blast hole measured ten feet and extended from under the wing mount to just below the cabin windows. Through the hole, the passenger cabin and baggage compartment were plainly visible.
Despite the bustling activity, the hangar was eerily quiet. Outside, Port Authority Police held back the already-assembling media. Each time the door opened to admit a worker, flashbulbs popped and reporters shouted questions.
Beside the plane stood a Delta Airlines vice president, a regional VP from Boeing, La Guardia’s airport manager, and the maintenance manager. An inspector from the National Transportation Safety Board stood staring into the hole.
“Hey,” he called to one of the workers, “nobody touches any baggage. Got it? Leave everything.” He turned and walked over to the group. “Gentlemen, can I assume you agree this damage was not caused by a routine malfunction?”
“Well, Jesus!” said the airport manager, “what the hell do you think!”
The NTSB man smiled. The question did sound idiotic. Everyone knew what had made that hole. Still, procedure was procedure. Somebody had to make it official. “Please understand: My initial finding will determine where this investigation goes. It’s awful hard to unring a bell.”
With that, everyone looked to the maintenance manager. The man removed his ball cap and scratched his head. “Ain’t too tough a call. Nothing that was supposed to be aboard that bird could have done that.”
The NTSB man nodded. “Okay, gentlemen, I have some calls to make. Stick around. In a few hours, this place is going to be a full-fledged circus.”
Two hours later, the hangar’s population had tripled. Now reinforcing the rapid-response NTSB team was a full investigative team made up of two dozen men and women. Next came a smaller team from the ATF, or Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms, followed by representatives from the governor’s office, as well as the state attorney general’s office. And finally came the FBI, represented by Harry Owen, the SPAIC of the New York Field Office, and Charlie Latham.
Owen and Latham sat in the maintenance office overlooking the hangar. They watched in silence as dozens of figures crawled under, over, and through the crippled Boeing. There was a lot to do, Latham knew, and it had only just begun.
There was luggage to be checked for additional devices; debris to be collected and sorted; samples to be taken, the most important of which would likely come from blast residue, and hopefully, from the bag that held the device—and better still, from the device itself. Considering the nature of the blast, Latham considered this unlikely. It could have been much worse. If the plane had been at altitude, that much explosive would have been overkill. The pilot had done a hell of a job.
Carl Hotchkins had already been debriefed, as had the flight crew and passengers. Their statements would be combined with those of the tower personnel, then checked against the 737’s black box recorder. According to the FAA’s snapshot report, there was no indication of malfunctions, no weather problems, no air control or approach miscues, and no pilot error.
That left one possibility: Somebody got a bomb aboard the 737 and blew a big hole in it.
Latham was guessing the device had malfunctioned. Though landings and takeoffs were vulnerable times for an aircraft, nothing was surer to kill one than violent depressurization while flying 500 miles an hour at 35,000 feet. Pan Am 103 was proof of that.
But instead of hundreds dead, this one had cost only five lives.
Only, thought Latham.
The dead had already been tentatively identified from the plane’s manifest. Visual identification was going to be impossible, since the bodies had skidded along the concrete for more than a quarter mile. There wasn’t much left to look at. Of the other 175 passengers, only 7 were injured.
“So tell me again,” Latham said to Owen. “Why’d you call me? Hasn’t your office got its own—”
“C’mon, Charlie, it was headed for your desk anyway. I just speeded things up,” Owen replied. “To the regular guy on the street, this is the kind of thing that happens in Europe or the Middle East. It happens here, it’s different. Once the media gets its teeth into it, it’s going to turn into a big, ugly circus.” Owen grinned. “Your circus, pal.”
“Thanks a bunch.”
Among its many other responsibilities, the Criminal Investigations Division was tasked with all of the Bureau’s counterterrorism efforts, and Latham was the best they had. CT work was not that different from CE and I, and with Latham, the FBI had the best of both worlds.
Short, wiry, and bald save a fringe of salt-and-pepper hair, Latham was patient and tenacious and flexible—all qualities that made him not only a great spy hunter, but an even better hunter of terrorists.
Latham started out in CI eighteen years before as a brick agent from the academy and immediately fell in love with spy hunting. Playing cat and mouse with superbly trained KGB and GRU
officers was hugely satisfying, and through the years he’d been involved in some of the biggest cases: Pollard, Walker, Koecher … and Vorsalov. KGB Colonel Yuri Vorsalov.
In the beginning, Vorsalov had been just another “legal” assigned to the Russian embassy, but four years after being arrested and “persona-non-grata-ed” from the country for attempting to recruit a Raytheon employee, he returned to the U.S. as an “illegal”—a spy working without diplomatic cover. This was the most dangerous kind of agent, for if caught, they face prison rather than deportation.
Latham knew all this, but it hit home one night in Rock Creek Park when the ambush they’d set for Vorsalov went bad. To everyone’s shock, the Russian had bolted and run straight into the arms of one of Latham’s agents.
The memory was still vivid for Latham: sitting in the rain, cradling the agent as he stared at the oozing puncture in his sternum. He’d never had a chance. Vorsalov had been good with the ice pick, a KGB favorite, and it had taken only a split second.
Though an inquiry said otherwise, Latham knew the agent was dead because of something he’d missed, a detail he’d overlooked, and he’d spent the last ten years trying to figure out what it was.
The door opened and Latham’s partner, Paul Randal, entered with a clear plastic bag; inside was a piece of charred suitcase material.
“That it?” asked Latham.
“Yep. Plus a few pieces of what looks like a device.”
“What kind?”
“Hard to tell, but it’s complex … not an egg timer and dynamite, that’s for sure.”
“What about explosive?”
Randal opened the evidence bag and held it in front of Latham’s nose.
“Plastique,” said Latham. The odor was distinctive. Now the trick was to determine its kind and origin. He was betting it was Czech Semtex, a favorite of terrorists.
“And the owner of the luggage?”
“Should have that within a couple hours.”
Owen said, “Good news, bad news.”
“Yeah.”
Latham was both relieved and frightened. Frightened because it took a fair amount of sophistication to not only design such a device but also get it aboard an aircraft. Relieved because that same sophistication would narrow their list of possible suspects.
Langley
DDO George Coates stepped off the elevator and into Mason’s outer office. Ginny looked up. “He’s on the phone, Mr. Coates. He should be done in a couple minutes.”
“Okay.” Coates sat down.
On his lap Coates cradled a file labeled DORSAL. Containing all the nuts-and-bolts details of an ongoing operation, it was what case officers called “the book.” So restricted is a book’s information that it is traditionally off-limits to everyone but the case officer, his division chief, and perhaps a handful of others. This restriction extends even to the DCI and his deputies. However, the summons from Mason had been unambiguous: “Get the book on DORSAL and come on up.” Next to SYMMETRY, DORSAL was his directorate’s most important ongoing operation.
Ginny said, “Okay, Mr. Coates, you can go in.”
Mason waved Coates to the seat in front of his desk. The television was tuned to a CNN report of the crash in New York. Coates watched for a moment. “How bad?”
“Five dead, seven injured.”
“Accident?”
“Don’t know yet. I’ve got a call in to the FBI director. I meant to ask: How was your heart-to-heart with Smith and the IOC?”
“Manageable,” replied Coates. “He’s a prick, but there’s not much to him. I think he gets a thrill out of seeing himself as part of the spy business.”
“That was my impression, too.” Mason muted the TV. “Does the name Umako Ohira mean anything to you?”
“Not offhand.”
“Check.”
Coates opened the DORSAL file to the bio section. There was only one agent, the primary: “Code name, Kingfisher. Identity, Umako Ohira.” Coates turned the file for Mason to see.
Mason nodded. “Ohira was murdered two days ago outside Osaka.”
“What?”
“A shooting. The report just landed on the embassy LegAt’s desk. Aside from the fact that an American saw the whole thing, it didn’t mean anything to him or the station chief.”
“No, it wouldn’t.” Kingfisher—Ohira—had been working alone, with no controller. “That’s where we got it, the LegAt?”
“No. Blessing or curse, the witness is—or used to be—an operator.”
“Used to be?”
“I’ll explain later. He’s one of Dutcher’s people.”
Coates nodded. “I know Dutch. Good man. You’ve lost me though. How—”
“Dutcher’s man claims there’s more to it. The car Ohira had been driving was shot up, and the next day Dutcher’s man—”
“What’s his name?”
“Tanner. The next day he was followed by the same kind of truck used in the shooting.”
“That’s a problem.”
“Understatement of the year. In a span of forty-eight hours, two of our biggest ops have been gutted.”
“You think they’re connected?”
“Doubtful, but we can’t rule it out till we know more. I want you and Sylvia to dissect this thing from top to bottom, just like we’re doing with SYMMETRY. All the product, all the OpSec.” Mason pushed a file across the table. “Dutcher’s report.”
Coates scanned it, then said, “We’re worse off here than with SYMMETRY. Ohira ran the network. We don’t know much about it—next to nothing, in fact.”
Mason heard the self-reproach in his deputy’s voice. “It was the only way, George. Running an op on Japanese soil is about as dicey as it gets. It was either let him run it or get nothing. Besides, we may have a trump: Tanner. He’s on the ground. He might be able to—”
“Dutcher’s guy? I don’t know—”
“It’s a possibility.”
“Not unless I sign off on it, it isn’t.”
Mason wasn’t offended. In all things operational, Coates was king unless Mason decided to overrule him, and that wasn’t his style. You didn’t give your people the authority unless you trusted them, and trust was not something you awarded and withdrew capriciously.
“Understood,” Mason said. “Before we take that route, you’ll know everything you need to know about him.”
Tunis, Tunisia
In the city’s old quarter Ibrahim Fayyad stood on his veranda at the Hotel M’Rabet and watched the bustle of the souk market below. Here, not five miles from the heart of Tunis proper, few tourists ventured into the mazelike medina without a guide. He did not blame them.
For thousands of years, Roman, Turk, and Arab conquerors had built and rebuilt the streets and alleys of the medina, each hoping not only to memorialize their supremacy but also to thwart invaders. The result was Old Tunis, the epitome of ancient Arabism.
Fayyad enjoyed Tunis not only for the anonymity it provided him but also for the irony. Here he was, hiding just a few miles from the one-time headquarters of al-Fatah, where Arafat himself had signed Fayyad’s death warrant. Back then, as the PLO was growing cozier with the Israelis, certain activities and individuals—like Fayyad—became unpopular, and al-Fatah decided his execution would make a wonderful sign of goodwill.
Fayyad turned away from the window. On the television, CNN was repeating the top story of the day. He turned down the volume and watched the images of the crippled plane sitting on the Tarmac.
The bomb had malfunctioned. The engineer had come highly recommended, a well-trained former Egyptian soldier. Apparently his reputation was ill-deserved. No matter, Fayyad thought. He’d done his part; he was safe. She would not remember his face as clearly as she would remember her feelings for him. It would confuse her, this fuzziness.
Fayyad knew the female mind: Once in love, a woman’s emotions color everything. Appearance becomes subjective. It would
all become random bits of memory: the way he smiled, the sparkle of his eyes, his way of making love to her.
Yes, he was safe.
Still, something bothered him. He stared at the TV. Five dead, seven injured. Suddenly, from nowhere, the thought came: Was she one of the dead?
“Stop,” he muttered.
Why was he thinking about her? And then another unbidden thought: If alive, what must she be feeling now? Betrayed … heartbroken?
Enough. He stood up, turned off the TV.
A knock came at the door.
From the nightstand drawer, Fayyad removed a Browning nine millimeter, palmed it behind his back, and crept to the door. “Yes?”
“A message, effendi, for a Mr. al-Kabar.” A boy’s voice.
Fayyad opened the door a crack; the boy was alone. “Give it to me.”
The boy handed him the note. Fayyad gave him a dinar and closed the door.
The note instructed him to go to the Café Afrique on Bourquiba Avenue. There would be a public phone that would ring in precisely two hours. Fayyad knew the cafe, and such a time limit would not have been chosen by the authorities; it gave him too much time to reconnoiter. Who, then?
An hour later he was sitting in a cafe across the street from the Afrique. The table he’d chosen was perfect, casting him in shadow.
Fayyad, a Jordanian, was just shy of fifty years old but looked fifteen years younger. He had smooth olive skin and chiseled features offset by an easy smile. More often than not, he was mistaken for being Italian, which suited him perfectly.
For the next hour, he drank tea and watched the Afrique, searching for repeat customers; customers who lingered too long over their cups. He saw nothing. Cars and motor scooters came and went, none routinely.
He checked his watch. Almost time. He paid the bill and walked across the street. As he drew even with the booth, the phone rang. He lifted the receiver. “Yes.”
“Do you recognize my voice? We met four months ago in Sidi Damah.”
Fayyad remembered. “Yes.”
End of Enemies Page 7