Strike Force Alpha (27 page)

“I’m not saying ‘hold off,’” Martinez replied, not quite as calm as a moment before. “I’m saying that we use our heads. Sure, if we go in shooting, there’s a chance we’ll nail these particular monkeys. But we also might miss something going on somewhere else. We’re not even sure if these guys are the real hijackers or just messenger boys. And let’s face it. We’ve been trigger-happy since this whole thing began. We nailed those guys in Saudi, we nailed Zoobu in the electronics store, and we just nailed six more in that hotel and that Jamaal character before that. If any of them still had a pulse, he might have been a fountain of information.”

He paused, as if to reach for a can of beer that wasn’t there.

“Now, I know we’re out here to mess these guys up, whenever and wherever we can,” he went on. “But so far, going in with guns blazing has just made things more complicated. And besides, we’re so strung out now, we’re only going to have one last shot at them. We’ve got to make it a good one….”

Curry was still furious. “But you might be letting them slip through our fingers!” he said. “This could be the only chance we have to redeem ourselves!”

Martinez finally exploded—something that was long overdue. He fired his newly lit cigar over their heads and against the far wall. It went by Ryder and Phelan like a rocket.

“It isn’t about us anymore!”
he roared back at Curry. “Man, when are you going to get that through your head? The time to think about saving our own sorry asses passed long ago. This is different. This is about saving the lives of the people those greasy assholes want to kill. Innocent lives.
American lives
. And God knows how many this time. In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve come full circle here, Red. You had to convince me earlier, but now I’m finally onboard. They sent us out here to stop these guys—and that’s what we’re going to do, even if it means they’ll be giving us our medals in jail. But, damn it, we’ve only got one bullet left in the chamber and we’ve got to be absolutely certain of when to pull the trigger. If not, then this whole thing really
will
have been a Chinese fire drill.”

He took a moment, calmed down, and caught his breath.

“Now we still don’t know what they are up to exactly,” he began again. “But we know it’s starting soon. If we can just get a hook into whoever is going to use those tickets, without their knowing it, we just might be surprised at what we find at the other end. It will also buy us time until the Spooks can break into the next level of the CD….”

An uncomfortable silence descended on the room. Curry just stared at the floor. Gallant put his head in his hands. Ryder and Phelan slumped farther into their seats. It was impossible to tell if any of them were thinking straight. They were too tired, too drained, too punch-drunk.

“So, what you’re suggesting,” Ryder finally said, “is that we play it cool for once?”

Martinez just shook his head wearily, then began dialing Hunn again.

“There’s a first time for everything,” he said.

Manama, Bahrain
6:00
A.M.

The capital city police received the trouble call shortly after dawn.

There was something wrong at a domestics shop downtown, in an alley called al-Zakim Place. Customers arriving just before sunrise found the store locked and shuttered, unusual, as the owner was known to open at 5:00
A.M.
every day.

A small crowd of women was waiting outside when the police van arrived, anxious to get material for the day’s sewing. The cops were both fat and lazy, though, and insisted on having a smoke before they took any action. One did look underneath the shuttered window and saw the store’s main products hanging from hooks on the other side of the glass. Bolts of black, white, and gray material, gold chains, cell phones, and sandals. The shop was dark within.

The cops finished their cigarettes, not any more quickly despite the murmured protests from the gaggle of women. Then one policeman retrieved a tire iron from the van’s trunk and, after much grunting and groaning, snapped the shop’s padlock in two. The front door slowly swung open.

A rush of incense and body odor flooded out. The cops waited for it to pass, then turned on their flashlights and tentatively stepped inside. Hearing muffled cries coming from the back room, they pulled their pistols and slowly walked to the cluttered storage area. Here they found the owner—an 80-year-old man named Barook Qadeen—and his three daughters. They’d been tied to chairs facing one another in a tight circle around a slowly boiling teapot, the steam from which had kept them warm for the past two hours.

The policemen untied the old man first. He began sputtering something about being robbed but got caught up in a hacking cough and could not be understood. The police then untied his oldest daughter. She was able to spit out only a few words before collapsing in tears. The next daughter was in no better shape. Soon the crowded storeroom was filled with coughing, moaning, and wailing.

The policemen finally untied the youngest daughter and at last found someone who could tell them what happened.

“The Crazy Americans were here!” she gasped. “They nearly scared us to death!”

But her story seemed unlikely from the start. She said she, her father, and her sisters opened the shop at 4:00
A.M
. When they walked in, she claimed, two soldiers were waiting for them. They were soon joined by several more. Each soldier was carrying a huge weapon and was wearing a black uniform with a black helmet. Their faces were masked.

The daughter recognized the stars-and-stripes patch on each soldier’s shoulder, though. It was the American flag.

And these Americans were indeed crazy….

Why?

“They wanted to be fitted,” the daughter said.

“Fitted? For what?” the police wanted to know.

“For women’s clothing,” was the improbable reply.

This made no sense of course, least of all to the two policemen. By this time, the father had managed to catch his breath. To the cops’ astonishment, he confirmed his daughter’s bizarre story.

“They wanted to be fitted with gowns of our material,” he said. “Ten of them in all.”

The police settled the man down, then asked him to explain what happened again, and this time very slowly. And honestly.

But the man did not budge from his tale.

“Ten of them came in,” he said, voice still raspy. “Each one wanted us to sew a new
madras
for them—head to toe, one long piece of cloth. And we did it, quickly, and at the point of a gun. Then they tied us up, took a bunch of our cell phones and some money, and left.”

He took a deep breath, collected himself again, and then said: “The Crazy Americans came in as soldiers. But they left as women….”

London

Heathrow Airport was like a ghost town.

It was raining, cold and foggy, as was usually the case at the huge international airport. It was inside the overseas terminal buildings where things were unusual. No bustling crowds. No long lines. No baggage stacked to the heavens. Just a couple bobbies, a dozing TV crew, and some cleanup men.

So many flights from America had been canceled due to the cyber-attack on the U.S. airline system, this part of the huge airport was all but deserted. This was particularly ironic because a week before the place had been a madhouse, with thousands of people stranded and sleeping on benches, countertops, and even the baggage carousels. The rest rooms and toilets had overflowed, food had run out at the concession stands, and tensions had become so high, the Army had been called in at one point to restore order.

This untidy situation had been the result of a massive transcontinental chain reaction. When the impact of the over-booking cyber-attacks first hit, the airlines could not muster enough airplanes to carry every American stranded in England back home again. The lines in Heathrow grew longer and the baggage piled up. One day passed, then two. Then three. Still no additional planes came. With every hotel in London already booked, many travelers had no choice but to camp out at the airport. Tempers were quickly shot, and fistfights between passengers and airline employees became routine. Eventually some people were lucky enough to catch a ride out on the few flights available, while others wound up flying to other destinations, like Canada and Mexico.

But many others simply did not want to fly at all, as it seemed like something catastrophic was going to happen over the Atlantic at any moment. Those who could found refuge in smaller hotels scattered throughout the United Kingdom to wait out the crisis. Others even booked passage on cruise ships and were waiting to sail home.

The crowd slowly petered out. By the sixth day of the crisis, the airport was virtually empty.

So it
was
a rare occasion that an airliner from America touched down here anymore. But one arrived at Heathrow around 11:45
P.M.
local time this lonely night. It was United Flight 333—from Chicago.

It had carried essential businessmen, some government people, and a few celebrities across the Pond. The sleepy news crew was on hand to interview the passengers as they got off, especially the celebrities, so there was a flood of TV lights at the arrival gate. The policemen watched the commotion from across the terminal with bored indifference. The janitors hardly noticed at all.

Deplaning along with the people in the last four rows was Tom Santos. No one took his picture when he got off the flight though, thank God.

The international travel situation was so desperate, even Santos’s tight-lipped government handlers had had trouble booking him a ticket to where he had to go. And still, he was only halfway there.

He’d finished his last flight-simulator exercise the day before. He hadn’t graduated with flying colors exactly; it was more that the time frame for his training had run out. He wouldn’t miss the long hours or the stuffy
faux
cockpit. But had he learned anything? It was hard to say.

If the question was, Could he start right away as an airline pilot? then the answer was, No. But could he take a big airliner off the ground and fly it safely?

Probably.

He arrived at British customs to find there was no waiting. Every station was open and there were more than enough agents to handle the people getting off the newly arrived plane. This was good. Santos wasn’t feeling too well today. His stomach was acting up and his legs were weak. Standing in a long line would not have helped at all.

He almost lost his balance when he walked up to the open customs station. The customs agent did a quick search of Santos’s bags and found nothing restricted. However, his eyes were drawn to the bottle of bright yellow pills that Santos pulled from his pocket. He asked Santos about them, and Santos explained he had a medical condition and these pills were helping to cure him. As proof, Santos swallowed one dry and claimed to feel better instantly. The customs man was unfazed. He was more concerned that the pill bottle did not have a prescription label or number for the medication within. If the pills were narcotics, then technically, carrying them into Britain unmarked was against the law.

But the customs agent could tell that despite his enthusiasm, Santos was unwell. Just to cover himself, he confiscated two of the pills with Santos’s OK. He would have them analyzed later. Then he took down Santos’s personal information, including his passport data, and let him go.

Santos thanked him, retrieved his bags, and wearily started off for the other end of the airport.

Once he was gone, the customs agent studied the two yellow pills. He broke one in half, wet one end, and sniffed it. It had no odor. He scraped a few particles off of it and put the granules to his tongue.

Tastes like nothing but sugar to me,
he thought.

By the time Santos made his way over to the other side of the airport, where flights for the Middle East were leaving, he was barely able to walk. He was so tired, he was having trouble breathing. But he caught a break here, too. There were no lines at these counters, either. No customs, no security.

He walked right up to the ticket desk for Arab Gulf Air and bought a first-class seat to his next destination: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

He boarded the half-empty flight and took two more yellow pills shortly after takeoff.

But for the first time ever, they really didn’t do him much good.

Near Bahrait City, Bahrain

The new el-Salaam International Airport was nearly as empty as Heathrow.

The airport, the largest in this tiny Persian Gulf nation, had opened only three months before and was not yet up and running full-time. It did not have its night-flight instrumentation on-line, and it was operating off only two of its four major runways.

Nevertheless, when the airport
was
open it could handle a fair number of flights. On a typical morning, between the hours of eight and ten, roughly a dozen planes would depart, with about half that number coming in. Afternoons were usually much slower.

It was now 8:00
A.M.
and passengers had begun loading for the morning flights out. A traditional month of prayer had just ended, so today was a busy travel day for Muslims, especially local women who could afford to go abroad. The first 10 planes, all regional Arab carriers, were flying to 10 different locations in Europe. The first four were going to Vienna, Bucharest, Munich, and Madrid. The middle four were going to Cyprus, Crete, Athens, and Rome. The ninth plane was bound for Istanbul. The tenth plane was going to Prague. Even if any were flying, there were no direct flights out of el-Salaam to the United States; the FAA hadn’t rated the new airport yet. The destinations of these ten aircraft were typical for people connecting to flights to the United States, though. Nearly 100 percent of the people loading on them were Muslim, most of them women.

Just about the entire el-Habazz terrorist cell was here this morning, too. Nineteen members were on hand; Jamaal el-Habini, the odd man out, was missing. They were sitting far apart from one another in the large waiting area close by the loading gates. Some were dressed like businessmen; others were trying hard to look like tourists. At best, though, they all might have passed for elderly religious students. Abdul Kazeel was not among them.

Due to the flood of airline tickets the cell’s moneymen had secured over the past two weeks, each man was now holding a golden pass of sorts: an actual ticket that had been purchased to use on a connecting flight to America. The thousands of others had been bought, cancelled, then bought again, over and over, to simply obscure the group’s master plan, part of a long line of misdirections meant to throw off anyone who might be on to them. This elaborate, expensive smoke screen only had to last a little while longer.

Each cell member had checked in luggage that was appropriate for someone traveling a long distance. Each was also carrying a Saudi passport (courtesy of Prince Ali Muhammad), a high-powered satellite cell phone, and at least two weapons, including handguns, box cutters, banana knives, and old-fashioned razor blades. These weapons were either in their bags or on their persons, but this caused them no concern. There weren’t any security checkpoints at el-Salaam International Airport. They hadn’t been built yet. As it was, security was barely given lip service at many of the airports in the Arab Middle East. At el-Salaam, passengers walked directly from the waiting area to the airplane. They were not searched; their luggage was not screened.

The cell members rose calmly as their individual flights were called. Two men for each of nine flights; one man, Jamaal el-Habini’s partner, would be flying alone. They barely looked at one another as they left to board their planes. They were composed but also very cautious, as they’d been trained to be. Still, none of them noticed that a lone woman, tall but stooped, in a black
madras
and
burka,
followed each pair onto their flight. But then again, why would they? Of the hundreds of people moving around the vast airport, many were wearing the traditional head-to-toe garb.

By 9:00
A.M.
, the first 10 flights of the morning had left. All of them were jet airliners, some bigger than others. Some filled near to capacity, others almost empty.

The weather was clear, with few clouds and very little wind.

It was a perfect day for flying.