The Shield of Darius (22 page)

“This other man…this Benjamin Sager. He has escaped.”

He pronounced Sager as if the “g” stuck in his throat and had to be coughed up. “You remember when you first came? We warned you about this. If anyone escapes, all will be shot.” He spit the final word up into Jim’s face in a garlicky spray.

A full night of worry had exhausted Jim’s supply and his calm surprised him.

“He didn’t escape,” he said slowly. “They came and took him.”

The officer’s right hand shot up and slapped Jim hard across the jaw, knocking him sideways onto his bed. The woman shrieked from the wall and hid her face behind bony hands.

“Impossible!,” the officer snapped. “The man escaped!”

Jim sat up slowly, gingerly fingering the top of his cheekbone.

“He may have escaped, but he left this room with three guards.”

“We
know
he escaped,” the officer repeated. “This woman saw him outside her window.”

Jim looked again at the frail figure pressed like a wilting plant against the wall.

“In the condition she’s in, I think she’d probably admit to seeing just about anything. But if she’s telling the truth and he did escape, it happened after he left here. Maybe the guards weren’t guards.”

The officer looked back at his civilian companion and spoke rapidly in their native language. The second man shook his head emphatically and argued back, pointing left and right down the hall to indicate that no one could leave the building unobserved.

The officer in front of Jim turned his attention to the quailing woman.

“Tell him what you saw,” he demanded thickly.

She clasped her hands in front of the gray breast of her plain smock dress and looked at Jim imploringly. “I had to tell them. They said they’d kill me,” she whimpered.

Jim reddened as a wave of anger swept through his chest into his face. He wanted to grab the garlic-breathing officer and throw him headfirst into the painted window glass, but clenched his teeth tightly and drew in a deep breath.

“It’s alright,” he said. “What did you see?”

“I saw him standing over by the wall,” she whispered.

Jim remained expressionless. “If he did get out, it had nothing to do with either of us. Someone helped him from inside.”

The officer and civilian again argued loudly, then grasped the woman’s arm and began to leave.

“Wait!” Jim jumped suddenly to his feet and faced his retreating captors. “Leave the woman here with me.”

The men turned back to him, looked at each other slyly and the man with the garlic breath began to make slow, gyrating movements with his hips.

“You miss your other man?” he laughed. Jim strained to keep from springing forward onto the filthy little bastard.

“Is she down there in the room by herself?” he demanded.

The officer with the garlic breath repeated the question to his companion who nodded.

“Look at her,” Jim said. “She’s wasting away. I can at least get her to eat something. She won’t be any good to you dead.”

The officer shrugged, spoke again mainly to himself and pushed the woman back into the room. The men laughed, exchanged knowing glances, and left.

She looked at Jim with wide desperate eyes and he sat again on the bed, indicating Ben’s cot across the room. Instead she walked toward him slowly, hunching over as if searching for something on the floor. As she reached him she dropped to her knees and leaned across his lap, her stick arms wrapped about his legs and her face buried against his hip. Gently Jim placed a large hand on the woman’s frail back and with the other, brushed strands of limp hair away from her colorless face.

“Come up here,” he said and she rose and sat facing him with legs and hips curled under her on the bed. He pulled her to his chest and rocked her slowly.

“Sing to me,” she whispered in a child’s voice, and he rocked in silence for a moment, then lifted his white head and like the purr of a great shaggy kitten, began to murmur a lullaby learned as his own mother rocked him to sleep.

My pigeon house I open wide and let my pigeons free.

They fly so high they reach the sky, and light in the tallest tree.”

As he sang, he held again in his arms the tender childhood warmth of his daughters, and tears ran freely down his creased cheeks and ragged beard onto the neck of the still nameless woman. She wrapped her arms around him and sobbed and together they rocked and cried and listened to the halting murmur of Jim’s lullaby, waiting for Ben Sager to bring their deliverance.

TWENTY-TWO

A skilled intelligence analyst with all of the information in front of him might have been able to piece the plan together. None did. Even Christopher Falen who had anticipated the result could not figure out how David Ishmael and his Mossad colleagues pulled it off. Falen did recognize, however, that the hijacked KLM Flight 814 bound from Athens to Bombay had something to do with the strike.

To all but a single air traffic controller monitoring activity over the Mediterranean north of Cyprus, the takeoff and climb out of Flight 814 appeared to be purely routine. Ten minutes after takeoff as the giant blue and white 747 climbed over the Cyclades toward twenty-five thousand feet, the controller noticed an Israeli four-ship formation of American built F-16s on a routine training mission above the south Aegean, closing rapidly on the commercial airliner.

“Red Flight Leader, confirm altitude at flight level three three zero,” The controller said, watching the small coded blocks converge on his scope.

“Affirmative, Athens. Level at three three zero.”

“Red Flight Leader, be advised your transponder is not indicating altitude information. You have converging traffic at ten o’clock climbing to flight level two five zero.”

“Roger, Athens. We have him in sight. He’s well below us. We’ll check the transponder.”

The altitudes confirmed, the controller watched without concern as the two data blocks merged, then separated, unaware that the blip representing Red Flight was now just a three ship formation. The fourth aircraft had broken off and was now tucked tightly in above and to the right of the tail of the giant commercial aircraft. It was not an F-16, but a desert camouflaged French built F-1 Mirage without national markings. Its standard 1136 gallon fuel tanks were supplemented with two wing tanks that could be jettisoned, each carrying an additional 300 gallons of fuel. Below its belly hung another 580 gallon tank. The extra fuel added just over 600 nautical miles to its range, enough to reach Tehran, release its twin AS-30 L laser guided bombs, and fly southeast to the Indian Ocean.

As Flight 814 was cleared from twenty-five thousand feet up to its assigned cruising altitude of thirty-nine thousand, the 317 passengers aboard leaned back comfortably to sip cocktails or gaze over the cottony layer of stratus clouds that blanketed the eastern Mediterranean 20,000 feet below.

In a row by himself in the first class section, passenger Rajid Malak stood and stretched casually, checking his watch. He was a stocky, swarthy complexioned man of medium height and were it not for the oil money of the Middle East, would have looked strangely out of place in his expertly tailored suit and first class accommodation. The watch was a gold Rolex, adding to the air of new found wealth. It was 10:32 a.m.  He turned and walked past the bulkheads that separated first class from economy and looked down the aisle on the left side of the aircraft to Row 27 where Leah Lavi sat in the inside aisle seat, thumbing through an in-flight magazine. Though she too was olive skinned with black hair and eyes, she seemed to have little else in common with the middle-aged businessman who stood forward in the cabin. She was in her early twenties, strikingly attractive with a finely featured face and long graceful neck that reminded one at first glance of the bust of Nefertiti. She wore a blue denim skirt, white blouse covered by a light blue windbreaker and woven sandals, and seemed to be traveling alone. The two looked at each other without apparent recognition and Rajid turned and walked quickly back to his seat. Leah too looked at her watch. There was nothing to do for another hour. Then Rajid would put things into motion.

At 11:20 Malak again checked his Rolex. Though clouds still obscured the ground, he knew they had crossed most of upper Mesopotamia and were over Al-Mawsil, the ancient city of Nineveh. One hundred twenty miles ahead was the Iran-Iraq border and the western slope of the Zagros Mountains. He reached up casually and pressed the attendant button overhead, smiling as an attractive flight attendant with brown hair pulled tightly back into a French roll peered out of the forward service compartment and hurried toward him.

“Will we be receiving lunch soon?” he asked pleasantly.

“We’re about to start the luncheon service. I should get to you in about ten minutes. Can I bring you something while you wait? A snack of some kind?”

“No, thank you. I thought if you were beginning to open the meal containers up there you might want to look at this.” He handed her a folded note.

She opened it and read it quickly, her face changing so slightly that Malak could not help but be impressed. This woman was a true professional. The note read:

Please check the food containers that have been loaded into the forward compartment. One of them contains a very sophisticated explosive. This device is powerful enough to blow this plane completely apart and is wired to detonate if tampered with. Do not touch it in any way. I have the triggering device in my right hand where you can see it clearly, and an associate has one farther back in the plane, should you try to disarm me. Please take this note to the captain and let me know when you are ready to follow my instructions.
   

The attendant looked down at Malak’s hand and he opened it to reveal what looked like a small calculator. She turned and hurriedly climbed the stairs to the upper level and the flight deck. Moments later, two other attendants rushed back down the stairs and into the forward storage compartment, disappearing for only a moment before stepping back into the aisle and looking at Malak with ashen faces. One walked hastily to the rear of the plane while the other returned upstairs to report that she had found the bomb.

Rajid smiled faintly. Despite the rigid security in Athens, his people had succeeded in getting the device onto the catering truck and into the plane undetected.

In less than five minutes the attendant returned to his seat and bent beside him in the aisle.

“What would you like?” she asked quietly, a smile frozen on her strong, attentive face.

Rajid knew that on the flight deck, the pilot had now dialed the emergency hijack code into his transponder, alerting controllers on the ground to his plight. He had probably also spoken to the ground and other pilots in the vicinity, explaining the nature of the emergency. Malak handed the attendant the second note.

Immediately begin a right turn and descent to 8,000 feet. Make the following announcement to the passengers:

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are experiencing some difficulty with cabin pressure and will be descending to a lower altitude and turning back. Our destination is Tel Aviv. This is not a dangerous situation and we are returning for precautionary reasons. Please remain calm and stay in your seats during the remainder of the flight. We apologize for any inconvenience this diversion is adding to your travel plans and will make every effort to assist you once we reach Tel Aviv. ”

At 8,000 feet, stay at that altitude until clear of the Zagros Mountains and back across the Tigris River, then descend to 2000 feet until just south of Damascus. Then climb to 9,000 feet to cross the coastal range. Inform officials at Tel Aviv that you plan to land at the airport there and will not accept alternates or diversions. I have an altimeter in my case and will be monitoring your altitude.

The attendant again left with the message and returned moments later to bend beside Malak.

“Captain Geyl has asked me to tell you that there are U.S. air patrols and obstructions between the Tigris and Damascus, and some of the obstructions rise above 2,000 feet. You are endangering the aircraft by putting us at that altitude.”

“There are also routes that will allow him to stay that low,” Rajid smiled. “Contact American military authorities in Turkey and Iraq and tell them you are going to be at that altitude. Your captain is a good pilot. Tell him to descend now, and to find his way.”

Again the flight attendant showed no emotion. “The Captain would also like to know what he should tell Tel Aviv about your intentions. He thinks they may not give us permission to land.”

“Tell him to land anyway,” Malak said. “As the note said, no other place will be acceptable. Give him this and begin the descent. Now.”

She opened the third note and read it hurriedly.

My comrades and I are members of Hamas, the legitimate representatives of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. We do not wish to harm anyone but we will not stand by while our brothers negotiate the loss and destruction of our homeland with the government and soldiers of an illegal state. We have lost all but our lives, and will sacrifice them willingly to free our people and country.

Once on the ground we will hold this plane and its passengers for exactly twenty-four hours before destroying both if the Israeli leaders do not renounce all claims to Palestinian land being walled off from the West Bank, and announce the removal of all Jewish settlements from our territory. We will accept confirmation of this agreement only from our brother, Hamad Jadid, when he has been released from prison in Israel.

The attendant again stood and, noticing the uneasiness of passengers around her over the whispered conversation, smiled graciously down at Rajid.

“Some of these unusual dietary requests are hard to fill,” she said. “We’ll certainly do what we can.”

Moments later he felt the plane nose down slightly and begin a gradual turn to the right. The calm voice of Captain Geyl spoke reassuringly over the intercom.

“Ladies and gentleman, we are experiencing some difficulty with the cabin pressure….” He followed the script exactly and Malak joined the passengers around him in a grumbling discussion about the diversion as attendants scurried back and forth through the plane attempting to identify his accomplice. By now the Americans in Iraq and Turkey had probably scrambled interceptor aircraft to look over the hijacked plane, but the jumbo jet would soon be down through the clouds and along the mountains below the broad scan radar that tracked high altitude aircraft out over the Iraqi plain. American fighters would be directed to them, but what could they do? They would certainly not want to force the airliner south to Baghdad and would probably just escort it to the Syrian border, happy to be rid of it, and advise the Syrian military that we are a civilian aircraft.

As they descended through the clouds, Rajid saw the peaks of the Zagros range rising majestically to the east. Beyond them lay Iran, home of Shi’a Islam. Its government had done much in the last two decades to support activities such as this. But this hijacking would be one of the most dramatic.

The flight attendant returned only once before the 747 climbed again to 9000 feet to cross the Jordan River into occupied Israeli territory. She handed him a plate of fruit and raw vegetables as other passengers were being served beef and rice. He left it untouched. As the jumbo jet rumbled low across the Jordan, she returned as Malak was watching two Israeli F-16s positioned at a cautious distance off each wing, inspect the hostage aircraft.

“May I speak with you for a moment upstairs,” she asked pleasantly and led him to the small lounge above the first class section where a tall, lanky man with peppered gray hair and a white short sleeved shirt with striped epaulets confronted him.

“I’m Captain Geyl,” He said in English. “I want you to know that I will do what I have to do to protect my passengers and crew, but I’m mad as hell about this whole thing. And it’s getting worse. Tel Aviv won’t give us permission to land.”

Malak looked passively into the hard face of the pilot.

“Land anyway,” he said.

“I can’t just land anyway. They’ll barricade the runway.”

“And kill all these people? I don’t think so. How far are we from the airport?”

Geyl glanced at his watch. “Maybe twenty minutes.”

Rajid reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a second calculator-looking trigger device. Quickly he entered a series of numbers and handed it to the captain. Its digital display showed 35:00 and was counting down with each second. Fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-seven….

“That’s thirty-four minutes and fifty seconds. Fifteen minutes to play with. When it reaches zero, this plane will explode. As soon as we are on the ground and stopped, bring it to me and I will deactivate it. He took a seat in the lounge and looked up at the Captain.

“One other thing. Should you attempt to play around with the keys, a wrong entry will automatically detonate the bomb. And there are two others just like it elsewhere in the plane.”

He settled into the seat and entered thirty-four minutes into his own trigger. With twenty-three minutes and four seconds remaining, he felt the nose edge down and heard the gear and flaps grind into position. Flight 814 had started its final approach into Tel Aviv.

.  .  .

As the jumbo jet descended to 8,000 feet along the western slope of the Zagros Mountains which shaped the rugged border between Iran and Iraq, Shel Sahakian had eased the Mirage up into a gentle barrel roll away from the giant aircraft and its dangerous wake. He had expected the plane to descend, knowing that if he stayed with it until it reached the height of the mountains to the east, he could break away without being seen on radar. He pulled the nose over and dove toward the valley floor 5,000 feet below. On radar screens near Baghdad, the Turkish city of Diyarbakir, and Jerevan in Azerbaijan, the blip representing Flight 814 widened for a fraction of a second, a change that went unnoticed by controllers who were straining to differentiate the target from the general background clutter on their screens cast by the Zagros range. Shel leveled off 200 feet above the ground and checked the flight planning computer which had tracked his route from the moment his plane lifted off the runway nearly two hours earlier. It showed him 140 miles west-southwest of the starting point for his low level run and he eased the nose right to heading 055, checked the instrument panel, and engaged the terrain avoidance radar and autopilot. The electronic brain of the desert brown aircraft responded immediately, thundering the jet across the narrow rocky flats, twisting and leaping over mountain outcroppings. Around him the peaks of the Zagros towered to 14,000 feet.