Cloudburst (13 page)

“Yes, sir. You will know the moment I do.”

Muhadesh returned a salute and turned the jeep sharply around, putting one wheel on the soft side of the road before heading back the way he had come. Already he was trying to figure out what was going on. Something was, that was certain. He wasn’t a good analyst of inferences or subtle intelligence tidbits—that was not his way. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong.
Hajin…what are you up to?

Flight 422

Mohammed Hadad felt at peace and in control. All had gone so well. The attack by the martyrs in America had dealt a crushing blow, the beginning of a greater deed that would teach not only the Americans, but also their unholy allies and puppets, the power of Allah. And they would be powerless to stop it. The blessing of the Great One brought strength and determination to the righteousness of his purpose. His own life was meaningless when compared with the purpose. It was what drove him now. It was his reason to go on. The only reason. The power was awesome. None could resist it. The Greek infidel could not. He had placed the weapons on the plane for a simple, meager bribe, and he would surely be discovered. And soon, Hadad knew, the final dagger would be unsheathed.

Hadad looked ahead. The pilots were intent on their flying, almost as if the concentration could mask their fear. Oh yes, they feared him, even in their arrogance. That was why he made them fly so low. He saw that they feared that too. They were comfortable in their routines and familiar procedures, precisely why he commanded them to do what he wanted. He was in control. At one point he had ordered them to fly just three hundred feet above the water. They were very nervous then. I am in control.
They fear me.

He looked at his watch. It was time to begin the taunting. Now he would captivate not only these people, but the entire world. Hadad reached into his pocket while holding the Uzi under his arm.

“Broadcast this,” he commanded, handing the message—typed in perfect English—to the pilot.

Captain Hendrickson took the paper in hand and scanned it. The message was short. He half turned in his seat, a task made difficult by the harness and semi form-fitting cushions, and faced the hijacker. He was young, very handsome, and neat-looking with his nicely cut dark hair. There were tan lines along his temples where glasses had been. Odd, the captain thought. The hijacker looked like he had spent some time at the beach. And what could cause a young man like this to do what he was doing? He didn’t fit the terrorist profile: nervous, loud, violent. He could have been fresh out of some corporate training program by appearance. The man was calm, almost serene, though his eyes bore no doubt that he would use his weapon. But the bomb? Was he suicidal? Would he release the switch and kill everybody, or was it a bluff?

“Buzz, send this,” the captain said, handing the paper over. “My stick.”

“Roger, your st—”

“No!” Hadad shouted, displaying agitation for the first time. “
You
send the message!
You
do it as I ordered!”

The captain turned again. “Listen,” he began, his voice raised noticeably. “I am flying this aircraft. If you want to get wherever it is you’re planning to go, then I suggest you let me do my job.”

Hadad glared into the pilot’s wide eyes.
Yes, I need you to fly, infidel. It is all right that you think you have won.
He shifted his look to the copilot and stepped back, sitting down in the jump seat. “Go ahead.”

Buzz took the paper and, after a quick look over it, pressed the column-mounted mike switch.

Hammer Two-Seven

One hundred and twelve miles to the west the Frisbee-topped E-2C Hawkeye from the USS
Carl Vinson
had just finished topping off its tanks from its tanker. Two F-14 Tomcats, with their own tanker support, were loitering seven thousand feet below the Hawkeye, designated Hammer Two-Seven. The Tomcats were just a precaution. Flight 422 was paralleling the North African coast some three hundred miles offshore, and Hammer Two-Seven was equally close, following the 747’s westerly course.

The crew of the Hawkeye, an early-warning aircraft with a powerful radar in its top-mounted rotating dome, were mostly young, but highly trained and vigilant. Not only were they monitoring the hijacked aircraft, a task they performed with great seriousness, they were also keeping an eye open for any of Qaddafi’s ‘aerial submarines,’ as they called the hopelessly ill-manned Libyan fighters. The colonel had been crazy enough to send his warplanes after U.S. forces in the area before, hence the derogatory nickname as the jets became proficient at subsurface maneuvers. The crew of the unarmed radar plane were nonetheless pleased that the two F-14s were nearby.

On the radar officer’s screen the 747 was a clearly painted target. The altitude of the target—non hostile aircraft were targets, hostile ones were bandits—was fuzzy, but certainly below two thousand. That was an altitude quite uncomfortable for the pilots of large aircraft, as it left little room for error or recovery in the event of a power loss. The radar officer tried to picture it, lumbering over the ocean, its four turbofans leaving a trail of thunder on the water. The altitude readout had actually ceased at one point, a sign that the target had dropped below five hundred feet.
Crazy fuckers!

“Sir! Target is transmitting!” the communications officer, a lieutenant, announced. Both hands were pressing the black headphones against his ears.

Commander Jack Polhill, Hammer Two-Seven’s commanding officer, ordered Com to put it on speaker. ‘On speaker’ meant through the intercom feed to the other crew members. It was a term that had stuck, though it was something of a misnomer, like Polhill’s title; he commanded the aircraft, but didn’t fly it.

“
Four-Two-Two heavy to any station.
” The broadcast was on the international civilian aircraft emergency frequency.

“Com, don’t reply,” Polhill instructed. “Let’s ride it out and see what’s up.”

“Aye, sir.”

“
Four-Two-Two heavy to any station.
”

The commander knew that several stations would be listening to the transmission. “Everyone is hesitant. That figures.” Contact could be more than its worth to any uninvolved government.

“
Four-Two-Two heavy…this is Cairo Tracon…go, uh, go ahead.
”

“Not a popular conversation partner, sir,” Com observed.

“Never are.”

“
Four-Two-Two heavy to station responding…you are faint…repeat.
”

The commander turned to Radar. “Plot.”

The information was instantly available. “Target bearing zero-one-eight, relative; one-zero-eight, true; angels three; speed four-zero-zero knots; course, two-five-zero, true.”

The air traffic controller in Cairo did not respond immediately to the call. Flight 422 was a scant three thousand feet above sea level and having difficulty reading the transmission from the land-based station. It was a simple matter of radio line of sight.

“Coming up, sir,” Radar said excitedly. “Angels three and a half. Bearing and course steady. Distance one-one-zero miles.”

“Keep it coming, Radar.” An uneasy feeling materialized in Commander Polhill’s stomach, like something wasn’t quite right. Why was Cairo answering instead of…? “Com. Move the Tomcats twenty miles south…fast.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Sir, target climbing from angels three and a half.”

“
Cairo Tracon…this is Four-Two-Two heavy.
”

“Sir, angels four. Everything looks steady.”

“
Four-Two-Two heavy
,” the controller acknowledged in non-native English, the international air traffic language,
“this is Cairo Tracon. You are coming in clear. Go ahead.
”

“
Cairo, this airplane is under the control of the Avengers of the Islamic Brotherhood. The lives of the hostages are meaningless. They will live or die depending on the actions of the godless American government. We have no hatred of the oppressed peoples who must live in the homeland of the Great Satan, but we can not ignore the deeds of their leaders. Our brothers have been killed by the soldiers of the Great Satan and their Zionist lackeys for too many years. The victims of this unwarranted barbarism have been unable to defend themselves. They have no weapons. But now they do in us. The Americans will be made to pay. If they do not cooperate, the hostages will die. In the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful, tell the Americans we are coming.
” The air went dead.

Cairo tried to raise the aircraft several times, unsuccessfully.

Polhill’s face was contorted in thought. “Com, what’d you hear?”

The redheaded lieutenant brought the boom mike closer to his lips. “He sounded pissed—just like a pilot would.”

“Pilots don’t call their rides ‘airplanes’; it’s ‘aircraft.’ But you’re right, he was not a happy camper having to read that.” The commander noted the time and other observations of the message. “Hijacked out of Athens, a crackpot message…another A-rab terrorist.”

“Aye on that, sir.” The lieutenant leaned way back in his seat. There was another damn animal playing a game with the lives of hundreds of people, and not a thing they could do about it.

“Go ahead and get that off,” Polhill ordered. Within a minute the message was encrypted and sent by burst transmission up twenty-three thousand miles to a Navy communication satellite which would relay the message, condensed to less than half a second’s duration, back down to a Pentagon receiving station. Polhill wasn’t brass, nor did he have much intelligence experience behind him. He could tell, however, that this situation was probably going to develop into a first-class pain in the ass.

“Aircraft sets!” Radar shouted. At petty officer’s rank he was the junior member of the five-man crew. “I’ve got two…yeah, two sets at one-seven-nine. Search stuff. Wait…two more!”

The commander turned to his own screen, which duplicated the radar officer’s readout. The emissions gave only a bearing to their platforms—aircraft in this case—but little else. “Radar, do you have them on active?”

“Negative, sir,” Radar answered, adjusting his controls for sensitivity. “They’ve got to be on the deck. Checking bands now. Jesus! Their strength just came way up. They must be burning like there ain’t no…Got ‘em!”

“Plot!”

“Two…three…four. All of ‘em!”

“True bearings only, Radar.” Polhill switched his radio selector to the Vinson’s CAG frequency. “Rowboat, this is Hammer Two-Seven. I have four bandits. Stand by.” Four obviously military aircraft popping out of nowhere weren’t considered even remotely friendly.

The radar officer scribbled furiously on his console’s notebook. “Sir, I have Bandit One, two MiG-31s it looks like, bearing one-five-zero; speed nine-zero-zero; course zero-zero-zero. Bandit Two, looks like Foxhound emissions, too, bearing one-four-nine; speed nine-zero-zero; course—shit!—three-five-zero; distance one-three-zero miles.”

“Rowboat, I have four Libyan MiG-31s inbound. Two on me, two on the big bird.” He switched all his channel selectors to open. “Com, get the Tomcats on Bandit One. They’re heading for the 747.” The com officer acknowledged the order and sent the F-14s flying.

“
Hammer Two-Seven, this is Rowboat. Two ‘Cats are on the way, and the ready-fives will be up in two.
”

“Roger, Rowboat.” The commander saw that the two Tomcats nearest him were now racing at full afterburning speed directly at the two MiG-31 Foxhound interceptors directed against Flight 422. The other two just shot from the carrier were gaining altitude and speed as they moved to intercept the other pair of MiGs. It was not a comfortable feeling knowing that the F-14s assigned to protect him were going to cover another aircraft—a civilian one—while Libyan Foxhounds with their Amos air-to-air missiles were coming right at him. But he had no choice. He had to keep them off that airliner. Lord knew what they’d do.

“Sir, CIC designates our ‘Cats as Viper One, the new ‘Cats as Viper Two,” Com reported.

“Radar, distance to Bandit Two.”

“Sir, one-one-five miles to us; eight-two miles to Viper One.”

It was too damn close. The Amos missiles had a range of sixty miles, roughly forty miles less than the Phoenix missiles on the F-14s, and weren’t as accurate. Russian- trained pilots didn’t have a habit of popping missiles off at extreme ranges, or so the intel boys said. The Tomcats weren’t likely to fire their Phoenixes at similar ranges either. It wouldn’t matter much, though, with the MiGs moving at a mile every four seconds. Practical range would come in under two minutes. And Viper One. Polhill knew he’d have to order them to literally fly by the MiGs to get to Bandit One. The passing distance would be under ten miles. With a closing speed of over twenty-one hundred knots, the seconds of indecision were a precious commodity, one he couldn’t afford to waste.

“Com, order Viper One to paint Bandit Two.”

“Aye, sir.”

The commander gave his neck a quick roll to shake some of the tension. He was hoping that the Libyans racing toward him would find it unsettling to hear their radar-warning receivers go off as the F- 14s “painted” them with their powerful AWG-9 fire control radars. The same tactic had worked in most other confrontations with Qaddafi’s fighters.

“Com, does Viper One have Bandit Two?”

“That’s an affirm, sir. They have lock-ons. Viper One leader reports a red light on one of his Phoenixes.”

That meant they had only three of the long-range Phoenixes and eight of the shorter-range Sparrows between them.

“Rowboat, this is Hammer Two-Seven … request permission to order weapons-free rules of engagement to Viper One.” The CAG didn’t need to be told who the targets might be. He could see the same radar picture via data link that the Hawkeye was privy to.

“
Permission granted.
”

“Com, send it.”

The message was relayed to the Tomcats. They now had the authority to fire if they perceived a threat to be real. It was an order with a great deal of latitude. Polhill had been in the Navy for going on twenty-three years, and he knew fighter jocks; they were cocky, and arrogant, and above all, disciplined. Their job was to protect the Hawkeye and, by the nature of the mission, the 747. Two MiGs aimed directly at the radar aircraft could only be perceived as one thing: a threat. It wouldn’t be long.