by Tom Clancy
You wanted a degree of predictability in situations like this. Even terrorism had rules. There was almost a liturgy to it, steps everyone had to take before something really bad happened, which gave the good guys a chance to talk to the bad guys. Get a negotiator down to establish rapport with them, negotiate the little stuff at first—come on, let the children and their mothers off, okay? No big deal, and it looks bad for you and your group on TV, right? Get them started giving things up. Then the old people—who wants to whack grandma and grandpa? Then the food, maybe with some Valium mixed in with it, while the response team’s intel group started spiking the aircraft with microphones and miniature lenses whose fiber-optic cables fed to TV cameras.
Idiots, Clark thought. This play just didn’t work. It was almost as bad as kidnapping a child for money. Cops were just too good at tracking those fools, and Little Willie was sure as hell boarding a USAF transport at Pope Air Force Base right now. If they really landed at Lajes, the process would start real soon, and the only variable was how many good guys would bite the big one before the bad guys got to do the same. Clark had worked with Colonel Byron’s boys and girls. If they came into the aircraft, at least three people would not be leaving it alive. Problem was, how much company would they have in the hereafter? Hitting an airliner was like having a shoot-out in a grammar school, just more crowded.
They were talking more, up front, paying little attention to anything else, the rest of the aircraft. In one sense, that was logical. The front office was the most important part, but you always wanted to keep an eye on the rest. You never knew who might be aboard. Sky marshals were long in the past, but cops traveled by air, and some of them carried guns . . . well, maybe not on international flights, but you didn’t get to retire from the terrorist business by being dumb. It was hard enough to survive if you were smart. Amateurs. Rogue mission. Bad intelligence. Anger and frustration. This was getting worse. One of them balled his left hand into a fist and shook it at the entire adverse world they’d found aboard.
Great, John thought. He turned in the seat, again catching Ding’s eye and shaking his head side to side ever so slightly. His reply was a raised eyebrow. Domingo knew how to speak proper English when he had to.
It was as though the air changed then, and not for the better. Number 2 went forward again into the cockpit and stayed for several minutes, while John and Alistair watched the one on the left side, staring down the aisle. After two minutes of frustrated attention, he switched sides as though in a spasm, and looked aft, leaning his head forward as though to shorten the distance, peering down the aisle while his face bounced between expressions of power and impotence. Then, just as quickly, he headed back to port, pausing only to look at the cockpit door in anger.
There’s only the three of them, John told himself then, just as #2 reappeared from the front office. Number 3 was too hyped. Probably just the three? he wondered. Think through it, Clark told himself. If so, that really made them amateurs. The Gong Show might be an amusing thought in another context, but not at 500 knots, 37,000 feet over the North Atlantic. If they could just be cool about everything, let the driver get the twin-engine beast on the ground, maybe some common sense would break out. But they wouldn’t be very cool, would they?
Instead of taking his post to cover the right-side aisle, #2 went back to #3 and they spoke in raspy whispers which Clark understood in context if not content. It was when #2 pointed to the cockpit door that things became worst of all—
—nobody’s really in charge, John decided. That was just great, three free-agents with guns in a friggin’ airplane. It was time to start being afraid. Clark was not a stranger to fear. He’d been in too many tight places for that, but in every other case he’d had an element of control over the situation—or if not that, at least over his own actions, such as the ability to run away, which was a far more comforting thought now than he’d ever realized. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
Number 2 headed aft to look at the woman sitting next to Alistair. He just stood there for a few seconds, staring at her, then looking at Alistair, who looked back in a subdued way.
“Yes?” the Brit said finally, in his most cultured accent.
“Who are you?” Number 2 demanded.
“I told your friend, old man, Alistair Stanley. I have my passport in my carry-on bag if you wish to see it.” The voice was just brittle enough to simulate a frightened man holding it together.
“Yes, show it to me!”
“Of course, sir.” In elegantly slow movements, the former SAS major slipped out of his seat belt, stood, opened the overhead bin, and extracted his black carry-on bag. “May I?” he asked. Number 2 replied with a nod.
Alistair unzipped the side compartment and pulled the passport out, handed it over, then sat down, his trembling hands holding the bag in his lap.
Number 2 looked at the passport and tossed it back into the Brit’s lap while John watched. Then he said something in Spanish to the woman in 4A. “Where is your husband?” it sounded like. The woman replied in the same cultured tones that she’d used just a few minutes earlier, and #2 stormed away to speak with #3 again. Alistair let out a long breath and looked around the cabin, as though for security, finally catching John’s eye. There was no movement from his hands or face, but even so John knew what he was thinking. Al was not happy with this situation either, and more to the point, he’d seen both #2 and #3 close up, looked right in their eyes. John had to factor that into his thought processes. Alistair Stanley was worried, too. The slightly junior officer reached up as though to brush his hair back, and one finger tapped the skull above the ear twice. It might even be worse than he’d feared.
Clark reached his hand forward, enough to shield it from the two in the front of the cabin, and held up three fingers. Al nodded half an inch or so and turned away for a few seconds, allowing John to digest the message. He agreed that there were only three of them. John nodded with appreciation at the confirmation.
How much the better had they been smart terrorists, but the smart ones didn’t try stuff like this anymore. The odds were just too long, as the Israelis had proven in Uganda, and the Germans in Somalia. You were safe doing this only so long as the aircraft was in the air, and they couldn’t stay up forever, and when they landed the entire civilized world could come crashing in on them with the speed of a thunderbolt and the power of a Kansas tornado—and the real problem was that not all that many people truly wanted to die before turning thirty. And those who did used bombs. So, the smart ones did other things. For that reason they were more dangerous adversaries, but they were also predictable. They didn’t kill people for recreation, and they didn’t get frustrated early on because they planned their opening moves with skill.
These three were dumb. They had acted on bad intelligence, hadn’t had an intel team in place to give them a final mission check, to tell them that their primary target hadn’t made the flight, and so here they were, committed to a dumb mission that was already blown, contemplating death or life-long imprisonment . . . for nothing. The only good news, if you could call it that, was that their imprisonment would be in America.
But they didn’t want to contemplate life in a steel cage any more than they wished to face death in the next few days—but soon they’d start to realize that there was no third alternative. And that the guns in their hands were the only power they had, and that they might as well start using them to get their way . . .
. . . and for John Clark, the choice was whether or not to wait for that to start. . . .
No. He couldn’t just sit here and wait for them to start killing people.
Okay. He watched the two for another minute or so, the way they looked at each other while trying to cover both aisles, as he figured out how to do it. With both the dumb ones and the smart ones, the simple plans were usually the best.
It took five minutes more until #2 decided to talk some more with #3. When he did, John turned enough to catch Ding’s eye, swipin
g one finger across his upper lip, as though to stroke a mustache he’d never grown. Chavez cocked his head as though to reply you sure? but took the sign. He loosened his seat belt and reached behind his back with his left hand, bringing his pistol out before the alarmed eyes of his six-week wife. Domingo touched her right hand with his to reassure her, covered the Beretta with a napkin in his lap, adopted a neutral expression, and waited for his senior to make the play.
“You!” Number 2 called from forward.
“Yes?” Clark replied, looking studiously forward.
“Sit still!” The man’s English wasn’t bad. Well, European schools had good language programs.
“Hey, look, I, uh, had a few drinks, and—well, you know, how about it? Por favor,” John added sheepishly.
“No, you will stay in your seat!”
“Hey, whatcha gonna do, shoot a guy who needs to take a leak? I don’t know what your problem is, okay, but I gotta go, okay? Please?”
Number 2 and #3 traded an oh-shit look that just confirmed their amateur status one last time. The two stews, strapped in their seats forward, looked very worried indeed but didn’t say anything. John pressed the issue by unbuckling his seat belt and starting to stand.
Number 2 raced aft then, gun in front, stopping just short of pressing it against John’s chest. Sandy’s eyes were wide now. She’d never seen her husband do anything the least bit dangerous, but she knew this wasn’t the husband who had slept next to her for twenty-five years—and if not that one, then he had to be the other Clark, the one she knew about but had never seen.
“Look, I go there, I take a leak, and I come back, okay? Hell, you wanna watch,” he said, his voice slurred now from the half glass of wine he’d drunk alongside the terminal. “That’s okay, too, but please don’t make me wet my pants, okay?”
What turned the trick was Clark’s size. He was just under six-two, and his forearms, visible with the rolled-up sleeves, were powerful. Number 3 was smaller by four inches and thirty pounds, but he had a gun, and making bigger people do one’s wishes is always a treat for bullies. So #2 gripped John by the left arm, spun him around and pushed him roughly aft toward the right-side lavatory. John cowered and went, his hands above his head.
“Hey, gracias, amigo, okay?” Clark opened the door. Dumb as ever, #2 actually allowed him to close it. For his part, John did what he’d asked permission to do, then washed his hands and took a brief look in the mirror.
Hey, Snake, you still got it? he asked himself, without so much as a breath.
Okay, let’s find out.
John slid the locking bar loose, and pulled the folding door open with a grateful and thoroughly cowed look on his face.
“Hey, uh, thanks, y’know.”
“Back to your seat.”
“Wait, let me get you a cuppa coffee, okay, I—” John took a step aft, and #2 was dumb enough to follow in order to cover him, then reached for Clark’s shoulder and turned him around.
“Buenas noces,” Ding said quietly from less than ten feet away, his gun up and aimed at the side of #2’s head. The man’s eyes caught the blue steel that had to be a gun, and the distraction was just right. John’s right hand came around, his forearm snapping up, and the back of his fist catching the terrorist in the right temple. The blow was enough to stun.
“How you loaded?”
“Low-velocity,” Ding whispered back. “We’re on an airplane, ’mano,” he reminded his director.
“Stay loose,” John commanded quietly, getting a nod.
“Miguel!” Number 3 called loudly.
Clark moved to the left side, pausing on the way to get a cup of coffee from the machine, complete with saucer and spoon. He then reappeared in the left-side aisle and moved forward.
“He said to bring you this. Thank you for allowing me to use the bathroom,” John said, in a shaky but grateful voice. “Here is your coffee, sir.”
“Miguel!” Number 3 called again.
“He went back that way. Here’s your coffee. I’m supposed to sit down now, okay?” John took a few steps forward and stopped, hoping that this amateur would continue to act like one.
He did, coming toward him. John cowered a little, and allowed the cup and saucer to shake in his hand, and just as #3 reached him, looking over to the right side of the aircraft for his colleague, Clark dropped both of them on the floor and dove down to get them, about half a step behind Alistair’s seat. Number 3 automatically bent down as well. It would be his last mistake for the evening.
John’s hands grabbed the pistol and twisted it around and up into its owner’s belly. It might have gone off, but Alistair’s own Browning Hi-Power crashed down on the back of the man’s neck, just below the skull, and #3 went limp as Raggedy Andy.
“You impatient bugger,” Stanley rasped. “Bloody good acting, though.” Then he turned, pointed to the nearest stewardess, and snapped his fingers. She came out of her seat like a shot, fairly running aft to them. “Rope, cord, anything to tie them up, quickly!”
John collected the pistol and immediately removed the magazine, then jacked the action to eject the remaining round. In two more seconds, he’d field-stripped the weapon and tossed the pieces at the feet of Alistair’s traveling companion, whose brown eyes were wide and shocked.
“Sky marshals, ma’am. Please be at ease,” Clark explained.
A few seconds after that, Ding appeared, dragging #2 with him. The stewardess returned with a spool of twine.
“Ding, front office!” John ordered.
“Roge-o, Mr. C.” Chavez moved forward, his Beretta in both hands, and stood by the cockpit door. On the floor, Clark did the wrapping. His hands remembered the sailor knots from thirty years earlier. Amazing, he thought, tying them off as tight as he could. If their hands turned black, too damned bad.
“One more, John,” Stanley breathed.
“You want to keep an eye on our two friends.”
“A pleasure. Do be careful, lots of electronics up there.”
“Tell me about it.”
John walked forward, still unarmed. His junior was still at the door, pistol aimed upward in both hands, eyes on the door.
“How we doing, Domingo?”
“Oh, I was thinking about the green salad and the veal, and the wine list ain’t half bad. Ain’t a real good place to start a gunfight, John. Let’s invite him aft.”
It made good tactical sense. Number 1 would be facing aft, and if his gun went off, the bullet was unlikely to damage the aircraft, though the people in Row 1 might not like it all that much. John hopped aft to retrieve the cup and saucer.
“You!” Clark gestured to the other stewardess. “Call the cockpit and tell the pilot to tell our friend that Miguel needs him. Then stand right here. When the door opens, if he asks you anything, just point over to me. Okay?”
She was cute, forty, and pretty cool. She did exactly as she was told, lifting the phone and passing along the message.
A few seconds later, the door opened, and #1 looked out. The stewardess was the only person he could see at first. She pointed to John.
“Coffee?”
It only confused him, and he took a step aft toward the large man with the cup. His pistol was aimed down at the floor.
“Hello,” Ding said from his left, placing his pistol right against his head.
Another moment’s confusion. He just wasn’t prepared. Number 1 hesitated, and his hand didn’t start to move yet.
“Drop the gun!” Chavez said.
“It is best that you do what he says,” John added, in his educated Spanish. “Or my friend will kill you.”
His eyes darted automatically around the cabin, looking for his colleagues, but they were nowhere to be seen. The confusion on his face only increased. John took a step toward him, reached for the gun, and took it from an unresisting hand. This he placed in his waistband, then dropped the man to the floor to frisk him while Ding’s gun rested at the back of the terrorist’s neck. Aft, Stanley start
ed doing the same with his two.
“Two magazines . . . nothing else.” John waved to the first stew, who came up with the twine.
“Fools,” Chavez snarled in Spanish. Then he looked at his boss. “John, you think that was maybe just a little precipitous?”
“No.” Then he stood and walked into the cockpit. “Captain?”
“Who the hell are you?” The flight crew hadn’t seen or heard a thing from aft.
“Where’s the nearest military airfield?”
“RCAF Gander,” the copilot—Renford, wasn’t it?—replied immediately.
“Well, let’s go there. Cap’n, the airplane is yours again. We have all three of them tied up.”
“Who are you?” Will Garnet asked again rather forcefully, his own tension not yet bled off.
“Just a guy who wanted to help out,” John replied, with a blank look, and the message got through. Garnet was ex-Air Force. “Can I use your radio, sir?”
The captain pointed to the fold-down jump-seat, and showed him how to use the radio.
“This is United Flight Niner-Two-Zero,” Clark said. “Who am I talking to, over?”
“This is Special Agent Carney of the FBI. Who are you?”
“Carney, call the director, and tell him Rainbow Six is on the line. Situation is under control. Zero casualties. We’re heading for Gander, and we need the Mounties. Over.”
“Rainbow?”
“Just like it sounds, Agent Carney. I repeat, the situation is under control. The three hijackers are in custody. I’ll stand by to talk to your director.”
“Yes, sir,” replied a very surprised voice.
Clark looked down to see his hands shaking a little now that it was over. Well, that had happened once or twice before. The aircraft banked to the left while the pilot was talking on the radio, presumably to Gander.