Path of the Assassin (11 page)

A million things passed through Meg Cassidy’s mind as she pondered what the hijackers had in store for her and the several hundred other passengers. There was no question that if provoked, these men would kill any or all of them. They had already proven that. They had also proven that they would act even when not provoked. The flight attendant who had been so badly beaten at the beginning of the hijacking now lay on the floor of the galley not far from where Meg sat. Over the past few hours his breathing had grown more shallow and rapid. Though she was no doctor, Meg suspected that the hijackers had broken at least one of his ribs, which had punctured his lung. The man might very well be dying right before her eyes.

Concentrating on someone else’s plight temporarily took her mind off of her own incredible fear. Meg knew that she was an attractive woman. Today though, her good looks were working against her. Though she tried to lean away from the aisle whenever he passed, the masked hijacker who had accosted her earlier found ways to brush up against her. Usually, he would do it by coming up the aisle from behind her, so that she couldn’t see him approach. All of the passengers had been told to sit facing forward, or else. No one had to guess at what the
or else
meant.

She had always wondered what the people on the hijacked planes on September 11 must have felt. She had heard recordings of the desperate cell phone calls made to loved ones from passengers who knew they were going to die. There was also the valiant struggle of the passengers on the fourth plane, which was brought down in a field in Pennsylvania. After the well-publicized heroism of those passengers, surely these hijackers would be alert to a passenger uprising. Of course they were. That’s why the men worked in shifts and never took their eyes off them, not even for a second.

Meg looked at her watch. Before taking off, she had set it ahead to local Cairo time. It read four
A.M.
She computed the time difference and realized it was nine o’clock in the evening back in Chicago. She tried to relax, but she couldn’t help wondering if she would ever see her home again.

Meg thought about her small band of employees back in Chicago. No matter how many magazine or newspaper interviews she did, Meg never forgot to mention the people who had really made Cassidy Public Relations a success. “Family” was the best way Meg could describe them. In particular, Meg thought about her assistant, Judy, who not only was the most efficient person she had ever met and helped keep Meg’s frantic life in order, but doted on her as if she were her own daughter. Judy arrived at the office every morning before any of the other staff to make coffee and often set out her own home-baked cookies or brownies. Though her baking was fabulous, her coffee was terrible, and Meg made it a point to stop in at a local coffee shop on her way each day to fill her stainless steel thermos.

Thinking of her morning routine drew Meg’s mind back to her apartment and the nine millimeter pistol she kept beside her bed. Never once since her father had given it to her had she had reason to use it, but now she wished she had it with her.

Fearing that the hijackers could somehow read her thoughts, Meg self-consciously looked up, but no one was watching her. She closed her eyes again and saw the smiling face of Judy floating in front of her. She wanted to believe that it was a sign that somehow, thousands of miles away in Chicago, Judy was her guardian angel watching over her. Meg’s seatmate, Bernard Walsh, stirred from his restless sleep and reached across the armrest to place a reassuring hand atop hers. Meg wanted to appear strong and began to smile at the gesture, but the smile was short-lived. From behind her in the aisle a strong hand reached out and jerked her roughly to her feet. She tried to turn to see who it was, but was punched in the back of her head. She saw stars, and her knees almost buckled as she was pushed forward. Meg didn’t really need to see the face to know who the person was. It could only be the masked hijacker who had accosted her earlier. Her worst fears were coming true. She had known he was going to come back for her sooner or later. The specter that had haunted Meg’s dreams for several years had taken on a new incarnation, and he was shoving her toward the stairway for the upper deck.

Part of her wanted to die right then and there. Silently she implored God to take her, to not make her relive what no human being should have had to experience, even once in a lifetime.

At that same moment, Bernard leapt from his seat and made a run at the masked hijacker. With the fingers of both hands interlaced, he swung and came down hard upon the man’s back. The hijacker grunted in pain, then spun full force and caught Meg’s protector in the mouth with his elbow. Bernard was knocked unconscious from the powerful blow and fell down hard across his seat as blood trickled from his split lip. The hijacker removed his silenced pistol and shot him twice in the chest.

The killer then turned to face the rest of the nearby passengers, daring anyone else to try something. Not a single passenger moved. Meg, whose blood now ran as cold as ice, was paralyzed with fear. The masked hijacker once again pushed her toward the stairs. She could tell by the intensity of the man’s shoving that he had no intention of being interrupted again. This time, he expected to get what he wanted.

Meg refused to move until the man put his gun back in his jumpsuit and produced a long, razor-sharp blade. He reached over her shoulder and placed it across her throat. What inner force propelled Meg forward, she did not know. When she prayed to God again to bring her death, a voice resonated from deep within her body with but one word,
No
.

Meg Cassidy’s will to live was proving even stronger than her fear of reliving her worst nightmare. Without consciously knowing why, she placed one foot in front of the other as she and the hijacker climbed the stairs and finally found themselves alone in the upper-deck lounge.

The man sheathed his blade, but not before warning Meg in his thickly accented English what he would do with it if she cried out or made any trouble. He then wrenched her arm in a quick and painful twist to further make his point. A slight cry, more out of fear than pain, escaped her lips even though she fought to hold it back. She didn’t want to give this bastard the satisfaction.

The man ran his hands over her body once again, appraising it, before pushing her down onto the floor. He hesitated a moment, then reached up and removed the ski mask from his head.

My God,
Meg thought to herself as she looked at his face. She knew that the man had remained disguised so that no one would be able to identify him. Removing his mask in front of her left no room to doubt that once he had had his way with her, he was going to kill her.

As the man tore off her jacket and ran his hands over her breasts, Meg tried to struggle, but the man struck her again. Blood began to pour from her mouth. He had her outweighed and pinned to the floor of the lounge. Her eyes frantically scanned the area around her for anything that might help. All she saw were drink stirs, peanuts, and crumpled United cocktail napkins scattered across the floor. There was nothing she saw that could help her.

Again she struggled, this time trying to bite her attacker’s wrist. The attempt was met with the loud slap and numbing sting of the man’s hand once more striking her face. In a flash, he had his long blade unsheathed and placed under her chin with the tip resting behind her ear.

“If you resist me further, I will cut your throat. Do you understand me?” he said.

Meg responded by spitting in his face.

The man lifted the blade ever so slightly away from Meg’s throat and swung his other hand, which he’d balled into a heavy fist, in a swift arc. He delivered a searing blow to Meg’s abdomen, knocking the wind out of her. She heaved and gasped for air. She could tell he enjoyed watching her writhe beneath him. As he moved the tip of his knife blade toward the button on Meg’s pants, there was a sudden shattering noise from the other end of the lounge.

The hijacker spun just in time to see Mayor Fellinger’s second bodyguard, who had been handcuffed and locked in one of the upper-deck lavatories, barreling down on top of him. With his wrists secured behind him, the best weapon the guard had was his massive square shoulders. Tucking his chin in to the left, he led with his right shoulder and rammed it into the hijacker. As he did, the cold steel of the man’s blade sliced deep into the guard’s stomach and flayed him open to the sternum.

Meg, whose breath had just barely returned, knew this was her only chance. While the hijacker struggled to get out from underneath the dying weight of the bodyguard, she frantically looked around again for some sort of a weapon. There was nothing. The only thing she had were her bare hands. Primal instinct took over. Her long nailed fingers immediately curled into talons and she leapt for the hijacker. Just as she was about to close in on his throat, the butt of his pistol, protruding from his jumpsuit, caught her eye.

The hijacker must have sensed what Meg had seen because he stopped trying to get out from under the dead bodyguard long enough to grab her wrist as she lunged for the gun. She managed to slip the man’s grasp and grabbed his gun. She pointed it at him and felt her hand tighten around the weapon’s grip. She found herself shaking with rage and fought to get control of herself. Though she tried to ease up on the trigger, her finger tightened upon it still further. There was a loud burst of fire followed immediately by another.

It amazed her that a silenced pistol would make so much noise. Just downstairs, when the hijacker had shot Bernard Walsh, the weapon had made nothing more than the sound of two muffled spits. It was then that Meg realized her pistol hadn’t even so much as twitched and that the shots she heard hadn’t come from the weapon she was holding.

Meg spun just in time to see two hijackers who had mounted the stairs to the upper-deck lounge quickly closing the gap with her. She hit the deck and, remembering what she had been taught by her father, aimed and fired at each man. She watched as they fell to the floor and came to a sliding stop only feet away.

Meg knew that she needed to make sure that they were not just playing dead. As she rose to her feet and was about to make her way over to the fallen hijackers, she felt a searing pain across her ankle. Looking down, she saw her would-be rapist was still alive and moved back before he could swing at her again with his deadly blade.

The man had almost freed himself from beneath the enormous bodyguard. He was going to kill her. She was certain of it. Without a moment’s hesitation, she raised the pistol and shot him in the head. As he slumped back to the floor, the blade tumbled from his hand.

Meg examined the wound on her on ankle. The cut was bad, but could have been much worse. She needed to stem the flow of blood, and though she was loath to do it, she reached for the hijacker’s ski mask and used his knife to rip part of it into a makeshift bandage, which she tied tightly around her ankle. She knew there was no time to rest. She could hear the dead hijackers’ radios crackling with calls in what she assumed was Arabic, probably instructing the men to report on the cause of the gunshots. Though the weapon Meg carried was silenced, the weapons carried by the men shooting at her were not.

She stole a glance behind where she had been standing and saw that the hijackers’ shots had not been as wildly placed as she had thought. They had blown out two of the windows on the left-hand side of the aircraft, and from what Meg could see, the remaining shots had just narrowly missed hitting her. Maybe Judy was somehow watching out for her, after all, or maybe, just maybe, her father really had taught her “everything” he knew about shooting.

“We’re not done yet,” Meg said half to herself as the smell of gunpowder hung in the quiet air of the upper deck. She knew that the decisions she made in the next seconds would undoubtedly mean the difference between life and death not only for her, but for the entire crew and passengers as well.

Carefully, Meg removed two Italian-made, nine-millimeter Beretta model 12S submachine guns from the dead hijackers.

She slung both over her shoulder and, with the silenced pistol carefully gripped in both hands, crept toward the stairwell. Before she could get there, another hijacker emerged from it halfway up. Meg crouched in the ready position, and when he made it to the top of the stairs, she hit him with two shots to the chest. Despite the adrenaline, or maybe because of it, she was dead-on accurate.

As the hijacker fell to the floor, he came dangerously close to sliding backward and falling down the stairs. Meg ran to him and caught him by his collar just in time. The last thing she wanted to do was tip off his friends that she was coming, and bringing hell with her.

Slinging the third hijacker’s weapon over her shoulder, she now felt as if she weighed a thousand pounds. Stepping around the dead man’s body, she slowly made her way down the stairs. Meg swept her pistol from side to side, just as she had been taught, alert for any movement.
It’s only a matter of time,
she told herself.
Be ready.

By the time she hit the bottom step, Meg knew what her next move would be. Both Mayor Fellinger and United CEO Bob Lawrence were ex-military. If anyone could make a difference here, it was them. Based on the men she had killed upstairs and what she had observed during the hijacking, Meg figured there were
at least
two hijackers left in business class and two more in first.

With her pistol at the ready, she swung out from the stairway into the aisle on the port side of the aircraft. No more than five feet away was one of the hijackers guarding the business-class passengers. He saw Meg and was quick in raising his weapon, but not quick enough. Meg hit the man with a shot in the throat, and he fell in a heap on top of the body of Bernard Walsh. In a flash, a nearby passenger, whom Meg recognized as Dan LeHay from United’s ad agency, stripped the newly departed hijacker of his weapon. Meg instructed him to proceed parallel with her up the opposite aisle toward first class. She told him not to shoot unless absolutely necessary. If there was any shooting to be done, she wanted to do it with the silenced pistol.