To the Death am-10

by Patrick Robinson

  “How long before they charge him?” asked the president.

  “Maybe twenty-four hours,” replied Alan Brett. “But the CIA thinks this cat is a really dangerous little character, almost certainly an Iranian Shi’ite, based in either Gaza or Syria, probably Hamas. They’re scared some civilian court will free him and he’ll hit back at us somehow.”

  “Can we make a case that he’s military?”

  “Well, he was carrying a bomb with him.”

  “Can that make him military?”

  “I’ll ask the Pentagon.”

  “Okay, Alan. I’ll see you after lunch. I’m expecting Arnold Morgan in the next few minutes. He’ll probably want Aghani shot at dawn, no questions asked.”

  The professor chuckled. “Not a bad plan, that,” he said archly, as he let himself out.

  Two minutes later, the president’s clock ticked over to noon and the door opened. The president did not look up, because he found the scenario more amusing that way.

  “Eight bells, sir,” rasped a familiar voice. “Permission to come aboard?”

  President Bedford looked up, smiling, face-to-face once more with the immaculately dressed Admiral Morgan, clean-shaven, dark gray suit, white shirt, Annapolis tie, black shoes polished to a degree appropriate to a Tiffany display case.

  “Goddamned towelheads hit us again,” Morgan growled. “How does it look?”

  “Lousy,” replied Paul Bedford, who was long accustomed to the admiral’s propensity to dispense entirely with formalities like “Good morning,” or “Great to see you,” or “How you been?” or “How’s Maggie?”

  This applied particularly when there were matters on the desk that involved even the slightest problem of a Middle Eastern nature.

  Straight to the gun deck was Admiral Morgan’s policy, and the president gave it total respect. “I guess the only good part, Arnie, is we have one of the two terrorists under arrest, in Mass General Hospital.”

  “Is he under civilian or military guard?” The admiral’s tone was sharp.

  “Civilian right now — six Boston cops.”

  “Better change that immediately.”

  “Huh?”

  “Get those civilians outta there right now. Call in a Navy guard and move the little sonofabitch to the Navy Hospital in Bethesda. Let’s get some control right here.”

  “But he might not be well enough to travel.”

  “He’s well enough,” replied Arnold Morgan. “And anyway, who gives a rat’s ass? He just tried to blow up a thousand people, didn’t he? The hell with him. Let’s get him under military arrest.”

  “I’m not absolutely clear why that’s so important at this time, Arnie. The guy’s plainly not going anywhere.”

  “You want me to tell you why?”

  “Of course.”

  “Because sometime in the next twenty-four hours, a couple of highly paid lawyers are going to show up, probably paid for by bin Laden’s Saudi relatives, and announce that this poor little guy made the mistake of getting into the wrong limousine, found himself in the middle of a gunfight, got shot, burned, and shockingly ill-treated, and not only must be released, but also is entitled to massive compensation from the trigger-happy Boston Police Department.”

  The president was thoughtful. But then he said, “Arnie, I am advised that there were two highly respectable Boston businessmen who will swear on oath that this was the man who abandoned the briefcase bomb, in the line in Terminal C.”

  “And within a very few hours there’ll be about fifteen Arabs ready to swear to Allah that this Reza Aghani has never even owned a briefcase, never had one single conviction in his entire life, has no connection whatsoever with any terrorist organization, is a practicing Roman Catholic, and the Boston businessmen must surely be mistaken.

  “And how could it possibly be Reza’s fault if some crazed Boston cop took it upon himself to blow up the parking garage at Logan, while his buddy gunned down a passing limousine driver?”

  “Arnie, in front of a jury, no one could possibly get away with that. ”

  “O.J. did.”

  Paul Bedford was silent for a moment. “What do you want me to do, Arnie?”

  “Have the Pentagon announce that this atrocity was the work of some Arab outfit that constantly refers to the Islamic Jihad. That’s holy war, and since war traditionally gets fought by armies, we have deemed that this man is an illegal combatant, arrested by an eyewitness. He has thus been taken into military custody, and will face military interrogation and military incarceration until the matter is resolved.”

  “Okay. I’ll get it done.”

  “And remember, Paul, if anything else happens, our only lifeline to serious information is this little prick in Mass General. Let’s get him under real tight arrest. And the media the hell out of the goddamned way. We just don’t want a whole lot of bullshit being written about people being held without trial, or even charged.”

  “Guess we ought never to forget, Arnie,” said the president, “the media wants only a story. They do not think the national interest has anything to do with them.”

  “Just so we never forget, right here in this sacred office, the only thing that matters is the national interest and our ability to protect our people. Nothing else.”

  “Sometimes, Admiral, you can be quite surprisingly philosophical.”

  “Bullshit, Mr. President,” replied Arnold, briskly. “Just don’t want to take our eye off the ball, right?”

  “Nossir, Admiral. Just hold everything for a minute while I brief Alan Brett to put our new operation in place. Then we’ll find some lunch.”

  The commander in chief picked up the telephone and outlined his current view about Reza Aghani—“Just have the Navy take over, Alan, and get him into Bethesda, under heavy guard — and tell State, willya?”

  He replaced the telephone and said, “Okay, old buddy, where do you want to eat? Right here, or in the private dining room?”

  “This is not a private-dining-room day, Paul. I got a gut feeling we better stay right here on the bridge.”

  “Good call. I’ll send for the butler.”

  Three minutes later, the White House butler came in and mentioned two or three dishes he was already preparing for visitors.

  Arnold said, “Before I answer, can I just check if Maggie is now in residence?” He referred to the svelte and beautiful Virginian horsewoman, Maggie Lomax, who had married her childhood sweetheart, Paul Bedford, just as soon as he resigned from the Navy for a political career.

  “Hell, no, she’s out somewhere in Middleburg with her mother,” replied the president.

  “Okay, Henry, I’ll have a roast beef sandwich on rye, mustard and mayonnaise. And coffee, black with buckshot.” The butler smiled. He’d known the admiral for many years.

  “Same,” said the president. “Hold the buckshot.”

  The president, having declined the little sweetener tablets the admiral used instead of sugar, watched the butler leave and then inquired, “Can you tell me why my wife’s presence affected what you ordered for lunch?”

  “Sure, she’s going out with Kathy tomorrow. Some ladies’ fashion show, and I didn’t want to risk being seen eating anything except grass, dandelions, and cottage cheese, the way I’m supposed to.”

  President Bedford chuckled. “You don’t think I’d be eating roast beef and mayonnaise if Maggie was anywhere near, do you?”

  1206 Same Day National Air Traffic Control Center Herndon, Virginia

  With eight major international airports closed down for both takeoffs and landings, this had been an extremely hectic morning. Aircraft were being diverted inland, or to smaller airfields in central Florida or the Carolinas. Large nonstop passenger jets moving north were being diverted out to the west. Herndon could put up with almost anything except congestion over the East Coast airlanes, where a national emergency red alert was currently operative at all altitudes.

  Reports, which on a normal day were critical, today faded
into background cackle. We got a medium system out to the southwest, not too big, moving westward. nothing on the president’s schedule. Andrews quiet. American 142, make a 32-degree left turn, divert to Pittsburgh. good morning, United 96. sorry about this. make a 40-degree left for Cincinnati. right now JFK’s closed.

  Even the significant news that a United States Navy carrier was conducting a series of air-combat exercises eighty miles off the Norfolk approaches scarcely raised a ripple in the control room, save to make damn sure that nothing strayed into the path of an F-16 fighter-bomber screaming at eight hundred knots through cloudy skies.

  Everyone was at full stretch, scanning the screens, checking out flight after flight, diverting, canceling, refusing permission either to land or leave. Their overriding task was to clear the decks as the airports evacuated the passengers, just in case al Qaeda was going to Plan B.

  And right now, there were only two identified men who could help. One was Reza Aghani, still lying in Mass General with a sore arm and a firmly closed mouth. The other, Ramon Salman, had vanished not only from Commonwealth Avenue, but also off the face of the known world.

  “SUPERVISOR! RIGHT HERE!” There was a sudden and unmistakable note of pure urgency in the voice of Operator Steve Farrell, a heavily overweight 25-year-old with a deceptively quick brain that might one day carry him straight into the director’s chair.

  “I got a bolter,” he snapped.

  “You got a what?”

  “A bolter. Pilot’s ignored orders from the tower and pressed right along.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Right here, sir, ’bout three hundred miles south of us, heading north. He just crossed the Cape Fear River in North Carolina.”

  “You got his last instructions?”

  “Right here, sir. Ten minutes ago I sent him clear orders to make a thirty-degree course alteration to his left and to take a swing left around Cincinnati, leaving Northern Kentucky International to his starboard side.”

  “Where’s he bound?”

  “Montreal, sir.”

  “Start point?”

  “Trinidad, sir. Refueled Palm Beach, Florida.”

  “Aircraft?”

  “Boeing 737, sir.”

  “Is she squawking?”

  “Nossir.”

  “You tried High Frequency?”

  “Yessir. I went to SELCAL [selective calling] seven minutes ago. And I tried the private voice channel. I just hit the two cabin warning lights, let ’em know we’re trying. Nothing.”

  “You sure she’s still flying?”

  “No doubt, sir. She’s headed straight over the southern part of the state of North Carolina, slightly right of the city of Raleigh.”

  “Airline?”

  “Thunder Bay Airways, sir. Canadian. She has no scheduled stops in North America. Her fuel stop was not on her flight plan, according to the Miami Tower.”

  “They probably ran out in Barbados.”

  “Guess so. But what do we do?”

  “Well, right now she’s flying over some lonely country. But I want you to alert the agencies. CIA, National Security, then White House Security. that’ll do it. They’ll take it from there.”

  “What do I tell ’em, sir?”

  “Tell ’em we got a fucking bolter! What else? And keep trying the cockpit, Steve. You never know. Could be an electrical problem.”

  1213 Same Day National Security Agency Fort Meade, Maryland

  Today Lt. Commander Ramshawe was hot on the trail of anything to do with aircraft. The short, low-key signal on his screen was informing him that some nuthouse Canadian pilot was ignoring warnings from the control tower and appeared to be heading for the North Carolina swamps. This hit him like “Houston, we have a problem” had hit the NASA ops room on April 13, 1970.

  Jimmy Ramshawe grabbed the phone, direct line to his assistant. “Get me Herndon on the line right now,” he snapped.

  “National Air Traffic Control Center, Operator Simpson speaking.”

  “Operator, this is Lt. Commander Jimmy Ramshawe at the National Security Agency, Fort Meade. Please have the operator dealing with the Thunder Bay Airlines off-course Boeing 737 call me back right away. Military Intelligence Division.”

  As always, the words National Security Agency worked their magic. Inside seven seconds, Steve Farrell had dropped his donut, mid-bite, and hit the phone.

  “This is Steve Farrell, sir. You wanted me.”

  “G’day, Steve,” said Jimmy. “This Thunder Bay flight. Where is it right now?”

  “Sir, I’m showing it just southeast of the city of Raleigh, making around 380 knots through 35,000 feet. They’ve ignored my orders to swing left, refused to answer my signals, and stopped squawking. Just silence, sir. Like they’d gone off the charts.”

  “You’re certain they haven’t.”

  “Dead certain, sir. We got a radar paint on relay. They’re up there, sir. And right now they’re flying where they ain’t supposed to be.”

  “They stuck to their original course all the way?”

  “Nossir. After the Palm Beach refuel, they were directed out over the water and were scheduled to stay off the East Coast until they made landfall over Connecticut, and then proceed on up to Montreal. But we got a Navy Exercise in operation off Norfolk, so we redirected ’em west, back over land.”

  “And they heard that okay?”

  “Yessir. And obeyed it.”

  “So they didn’t ignore the towers until they were diverted from their northerly course off the Carolinas?”

  “Nossir. That’s when they went quiet. Soon as I told them to head for Cincinnati, Ohio.”

  “Is the aircraft full?”

  “Nossir. It’s not logged as heavy. But we don’t have a passenger count.”

  “Who owns Thunder Bay Airways?”

  “No idea, sir. They usually fly out of Downsview Airport, Toronto.”

  “Where’s their home base?”

  “No idea, sir. We don’t see them that often. Tell you the truth, I think this might have been a private charter.”

  “Got a flight number?”

  “Funny you should ask, sir. I’ve been checking. But I’ve had two different answers, 446 and 5544, almost like they filed two different flights.”

  “Steve, you sound like a very smart guy. I’ll find out who owns the airline; you nail down their flight number. And keep tracking that bastard, will you? Call me in five with the flight number and gimme a projected route, okay?”

  “You got it, sir. Be right back.”

  Lt. Commander Ramshawe hit the line to Military Intelligence Research and instructed them to run Thunder Bay Airways to ground and find out how many were on board their flight from Barbados to Montreal this morning. “And get the name of the pilot while you’re at it.”

  Then he hit his own desktop computer, which took all of two minutes to inform him that Thunder Bay was situated way up in northern Ontario, on the northwest shore of Lake Superior. The city was very small, mostly a ski resort, but it most certainly did have an airport.

  Three more minutes went by, and the phone rang again: Steve Farrell, to give the pilot’s name, Captain Mark Fustok, plus the Boeing’s current projected route.

  “If she doesn’t deviate,” said Steve, “this bearing will take her four miles to the right of Raleigh, North Carolina, then straight over the middle of the city of Richmond, Virginia, across the Potomac, up the eastern shore, and on over the very center of Washington, D.C. There was still no accurate flight number.”

  “Gimme her last known,” snapped Jimmy.

  “She’s just crossing the Virginia border,” replied Steve, “close to a little place called Greensville. Still making 380 knots, still at 35, still defying every fucking thing she’s been told to do.”

  Ramshawe liked that. Farrell was an earthy character, feet on the ground, hard to fool, no bullshit, moving fast, right next to a half-eaten donut.

  “Stay with it, kid,” he said.

/>   At that moment, his screen lit up the way it did when there was incoming data from Military Intelligence Research. He swiveled around and watched the signal, which informed him that Thunder Bay Airways was about two years old, registered in Canada, excellent safety record, with servicing facilities at the local airfield. It ran regular flights to the Caribbean throughout the winter, with specialized vacation programs available throughout the year to a series of luxury hotels, all of them in the Middle East, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco.

  There were no American-based directors, and only two Canadians. Ninety percent of the shares were held by an overseas trust based in the Bahamas. There was an office on the airfield at Thunder Bay, dealing mostly with their flights from Toronto and Montreal, transporting skiers. The president was listed as Mr. Ismael Akhbar, an Iranian-born naturalized Canadian, who held a master’s in engineering from McGill University.

  Jimmy glanced at the phone number and called the office in Thunder Bay. He explained to the girl that he was trying to trace a passenger on the flight but could not locate a flight number.

  “Well, that’s because we have no scheduled stops in the USA — it’s not necessary to file flight details if you’re going straight over. We never stop in the USA. Sir, what was the name of your passenger?”

  Jimmy trotted out the name of his maiden aunt Sheila, who was currently located on a sheep station 746 miles southwest of the Great Dividing Range in New South Wales, Australia. He added that he was real anxious to make contact.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” replied the girl from Thunder Bay. “I can confirm that Miss Sheila Wilson was not on that flight from Barbados. There are only twenty-seven passengers aboard, and she is not among them.”

  “Okay, Miss,” said Jimmy. “By the way, what was that flight number?”

  “Our nonstop Barbados-Montreal is under charter today. It’s TBA flight number 62,” she replied.

  Jimmy Ramshawe’s heart stopped dead. When it restarted, he murmured, “Say again.”

  “TBA 62, sir. Will that be all?”

  “Just say hello to Aunt Sheila if you see her.”

  He slammed down the phone and yelled into the intercom, “Get me the White House!”