Miles To Go Before I Sleep (5 page)

This can't be! This can't be happening. Why isn't somebody doing something? Why are we all just sitting around? We have to do something!

I was seized with fear and panic. It was the worst feeling of my life.

I turned around again to confirm the terrible scene, desperately hoping I'd imagined it. But it was no mirage. The curly-haired man was still there, grimacing with fear and anger. The nightmare was real. We were being hijacked.

People panicked and started getting up out of their seats and reaching into the overhead bins to check their money or carry-on bags.

“Sit down and shut up! Get back in your seats!” the hijacker screamed at a group of Filipinos sitting in the back.

We froze from the horror of it all.

“Are we going to be okay?” I asked my Egyptian seatmate, desperate for reassurance. His head was bowed in prayer, and he said nothing.

Time seemed to stand still. It was as if I had entered a completely different type of reality—my worst nightmare was being played out right in front of my eyes.

“Don't move!” the curly-haired hijacker shouted in Arabic and English.

To protect myself, I instinctively leaned forward and covered my face with my hands and silently whispered, “Oh, my God!”
This is it
, I thought,
I'm going to die.
My whole life was suddenly and unexpectedly about to end.

In quick succession, two sharp blows landed on my head. Slowly, I lifted my head. The curly-haired man was standing over me, digging the cold, hard steel of his six-shooter revolver into my skull.

“Are you scared, lady?” he asked in a mocking tone.

I held my breath, trying to control my quavering voice and shaking hands.

“No, I'm not,” I gulped.

On that cue, my Egyptian friend snapped out of prayer and began shouting at the hijacker in Arabic. The hijacker yelled back in Arabic. I didn't understand what they were saying, but knew the old Egyptian was trying to protect me.

With the gun still at my temple, I put my hand on the Egyptian's knee. “It will be okay. Don't do this,” I said.

In my mind, I saw the hijacker saying, “Look buddy, don't argue with me”—then Bang! The curly-haired hijacker left my side when the old Egyptian stopped arguing and returned to prayer.

A second hijacker with straight hair stood up and forced his way into the cockpit and confronted the EgyptAir copilot, Imad Bahi-El-Din. At first, Bahi-El-Din thought it was a prank. He half smiled at the hijacker—his entrance was so theatrical. On taking a second glance at the grenade in his left hand and the pistol in his right, however, the copilot knew this was no joke.

The group hijacking the plane called itself the “Egypt Revolution.” They ordered the pilot to change course for Libya. But the captain, Hani Galal, warned there wasn't enough fuel to make it.

The captain radioed several countries, asking permission to change course and land—but every request was refused.

The situation was desperate. Galal and his copilot warned the hijackers that the plane would crash into the sea unless it landed on the Mediterranean island of Malta, a tiny country about the size of Rhode Island, between Sicily and North Africa. He radioed Malta and was initially denied permission to land. After explaining our dangerous position and pleading with Maltese officials, they reluctantly gave in.

In the main cabin, one of the hijackers ordered a flight attendant to translate his instructions. “Nobody does anything but what I say,” the hijacker's helper told us. “Do what I tell you, and nobody gets hurt.”

On our way to Malta, the hijackers donned black masks and moved passengers sitting in the front of the plane to the rear of the plane. I was the last passenger from the front section to change seats, and I was moved to the last row aisle seat, next to another hijacker. I could see he had glasses on underneath the mask.

From my new position, I could see some of the children standing up in their seats and facing toward the back of the plane. These sweet, innocent little faces staring back at me were the same ones I'd seen in the airport terminal just a few minutes ago.

I looked over and saw two attractive women sitting right across the aisle from me—the pair appeared to be a mother and her daughter. I later learned that Mrs. Guadelupe Palla de Ortiz De Pinedo and her daughter, also called Guadelupe, were two very popular and famous actresses who had appeared in numerous Mexican film, television, and stage productions. They were ending a two-month European holiday which had taken them to Britain, France, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, and Greece.

After we were settled in our new seats, the hijackers began rounding up our passports. In shock and stunned silence, we raised our hands over our heads as ordered.

One hijacker forced a crew member to assist him in collecting our passports. In twos, they systematically approached each of us. The hijacker held a gun to our bodies while the flight attendant frisked us for possible weapons. They threw each passport into a briefcase.

I sensed a sinister purpose behind this move and considered ways to disguise my citizenship. I remembered the earlier conversation I'd heard between the two Mexican women. Maybe I could pretend to be Spanish. I had short, black, curly hair, a dark tan, and, in Texas, people often mistook me for Mexican. I studied Spanish in elementary and high school and remembered a few basic words and phrases. It might work.

My appearance might fool the hijackers. Yet my Levi jeans and Nike running shoes pegged me as distinctly American….

The hijackers approached a well-dressed, broad-shouldered man near the front of the plane and demanded his passport. He reached into his jacket pocket—and pulled out a gun. He was a plainclothes EgyptAir security guard assigned to our flight as a safety precaution.

Bang! The first shot rang out. More followed. In the chaos and confusion, twenty-two bullets were fired; some hit the passengers and the aircraft, others ricocheted in all directions. I hid behind the seat in front of me to escape the hailstorm. The bullets badly damaged the plane's cabin and fuselage, and, in a matter of seconds, we dropped like a rock, losing twenty thousand feet of altitude. This caused the cabin to depressurize and left us gasping for air. It was pure pandemonium. Passengers were screaming and shouting amid total chaos.

During the descent, there was a sudden swoosh as the orange oxygen masks dropped from above. I pulled mine over my face, but no air came out. I couldn't get it to work—and I was suffocating. I kept hitting the thing, desperately trying to make it work. The hijacker wearing glasses underneath his mask was standing beside me. He saw me hitting my mask, coughing, and suffocating because I couldn't get any air.

Because I hadn't been listening to the flight attendant's instructions, I didn't know that you have to yank the cord to get air flowing through the mask.

The hijacker hit the male EgyptAir flight attendant sitting next to me on the shoulder and muttered something in Arabic. A week before, I'd started learning Arabic, but I didn't understand what he was saying. Instantly, the Egyptian man gave me his oxygen mask and I could now breathe. The hijacker had ordered him to help me. The two of us shared the mask from then on.

I turned to thank the hijacker. He said nothing.

In the blaze of gunfire exchanged by the hijackers and guards, several passengers were wounded. One of the hijackers, the curly-haired man I'd noticed shortly before takeoff, was killed in the gunfire; the EgyptAir security guard lay bleeding near the front of the plane. It turned out that there were three other security guards on board, but they were not able to get to guns that were stowed in the overhead compartments.

Our pilot brought the aircraft to an altitude where breathing was possible. And when the smoke cleared, the terrorists had total control of the aircraft. They continued confiscating our passports. Since I was sitting way in the back, I was the last passenger on the plane to surrender my passport. I was scared and trembling when they approached me.

To retrieve my passport, I'd have to get out of my seat and walk all the way down to the front of the plane. It was packed away in the carry-on bag I'd stowed above my assigned seat. I was terrified of being shot if I made the slightest false move.

I stood up, shaky, and took one step forward toward the third row. Then I felt a sudden lurching of the plane and stopped dead in my tracks. “We're about to land,” I said. I quickly returned to my seat and buckled my seatbelt.

The hijackers were also caught off guard by the sudden, rough landing.

Although they had given us permission to land, Malta still hoped to avoid hosting a hijacking on their soil, so they turned off all the runway lights at Luqa Airport in Valletta, Malta, the nation's capital. Captain Galal managed a rough emergency landing, guided only by the faint lights of another plane. The pilot of the grounded plane had seen us coming in and, on realizing we had no landing lights, positioned his plane to illuminate part of the runway.

At the time, of course, none of us passengers knew where we were. All I knew was that it wasn't Egypt.

After the plane rolled to a stop, I still had to get my passport. I was so scared my hands and my whole body shook as I walked down the aisle to the front of the plane. On my way, I stepped through splattered food and garbage, and—worst of all—had to climb over the dead body of the curly-haired hijacker, the man who had rapped me on the head with his gun.

My hands were trembling as I fished the passport out of my carry-on bag. I was still afraid that if I made the slightest wrong move, I'd be killed.

“Are you scared, lady?”

The hijacker's words still haunted me. He could have pulled the trigger. Maybe next time I wouldn't be so lucky….

Don't draw any attention to yourself. Don't even look at the hijackers. Keep your head down. Don't make eye contact.

I handed my passport to one of the hijackers. He looked at the blue cover with the embossed silver eagle, the Great Seal of the United States of America, then, staring me straight in the face, spat out the letters, “U-S-A,” with obvious disgust.

The hijackers made me get up and change seats again. This time, they moved me from the rear of the plane to an aisle seat near the middle of the plane. Scarlett Marie Rogencamp, the other American woman on board, sat next to me in the middle seat. Alfons DeLaet, a Belgian man, sat by the window.

Scarlett told us she was working as a civilian employee at a U.S. military base in Athens. I overheard her tell Alfons that she was worried about the money in her purse. By that time, my thought was,
They don't care about our money. We're not going to be alive very long—who cares about money?

Scarlett and I didn't talk much. Most of the time, I kept to myself. I focused on every little detail of what was happening around us. Though I was strapped into my seat, my body was always moving. I kept hoping to spot a chance to escape.

We were all in a state of shock.

As I looked around the plane, it was clear that people were coping with the tragedy in different ways. One young man sitting a few rows back just sat and stared out the window. A Palestinian woman tried to comfort her three young children. She slowly rocked her baby back and forth in her arms. She was softly singing. Every few minutes, she wiped the tears from her eyes.

I turned to Scarlett.

“Do you have any idea where we are?” I asked.

“Someone said something about Malta,” she replied.

While Scarlett and Alfons continued quietly talking, I found a map of Malta in the seat pocket in front of me and studied it carefully.

Shortly after landing, the hijackers opened communication with the airport control tower. By this time, Maltese Prime Minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici and members of his cabinet were assembled there. The hijackers demanded enough fuel to reach Libya, an ambulance, and a doctor. The government agreed to the medical requests but refused to provide fuel unless the passengers were released.