Air Marshals Read online

  "We're working this end of it as hard as is humanly possible. Bucky had a lot of friends."

  The CIA Director crossed his arms. "What about the Air Marshals?"

  "They've got some good people over there. We've passed the word. Charley Dey is over there, has been since the beginning."

  "Dey. He and Leigh..."

  "Viet Nam," the operations man said.

  "Make sure those people get everything they might possibly need."

  "It's kind of a closed shop over there, but we'll make it known."

  "Make sure. They need to be up to speed. We're going to need them soon."

  ***

  PART ONE

  MISSION PREP

  MARANA, ARIZONA:

  Melissa Harding looked out over the coach cabin of the 747 and then back to the passenger manifest on her clipboard. She had been a flight attendant for only six months and she had never worked a flight like this. This was the strangest collection of passengers she had ever seen. While most of them looked like your regular back-of-the-bus customers, there were quite a few that stood out. There was one young guy, pretty cute, who kept tugging at something under his sport coat. He didn't look like he wore a coat and tie very often. An old woman, someone's grandmother by the look of her, was talking his ear off about her fear of flying. A girl in her twenties, Melissa's age, was sitting bolt upright in her seat, her eyes cutting left and right at the passengers around her. She looked scared to death. There were some real rough looking guys with big muscles and shaggy hair, dressed in scroungy work clothes. They were the kind of guys you'd keep an eye on if you were out dancing and drinking in Tucson, where Melissa lived.

  Two of the rough looking guys stood up and walked briskly to the rear of the cabin and entered separate lavatories. After a moment, the lavatory doors burst open and the two men came out brandishing handguns.

  "This is a hijacking!" the men shouted. "Put your heads down now! Now! Get down! Get your heads down now!"

  The hijackers stalked down the aisle, waving their pistols, striking at the passengers with their free hands. The young guy in the sport coat started up out of his seat. The old woman next to him tightened her lips and produced a handgun from her purse, put it to his side, and pulled the trigger. Another man, across the aisle, looked astonished as one of the hijackers pressed his pistol to the young man's head and pulled the trigger. The young woman with the darting eyes lunged at the hijacker nearest her, but he pulled his weapon in close and pulled the trigger several times.

  "End exercise!" Charley Dey shouted. He strolled up the aisle from the rear of the aircraft, a clipboard under his arm. He was short and muscular, with gray close-cropped hair, a weather-beaten face rich with lines that were drawn now into a relaxed, amused look. Charley scratched his head, then asked the young man who had been shot by the elderly woman, "You ever play poker?"

  The young air marshal trainee, picking the red remains of a Simunitions paint bullet out of his side, slid his protection goggles up and said, "Yeah."

  "You probably lost a lot of money at it, didn't you?"

  "Well, I won some too," the trainee said.

  "You know what a tell is?" Charley asked.

  "Like when you look at your cards and smile or...?"

  Charley nodded slowly and indulgently. "Okay, what do you tell anybody that's watching you when you start fiddling with your gun underneath your coat?"

  "Who's going to know it's a gun?" the trainee said.

  "Another gunfighter, that's who," Charley said patiently.

  "Well, pus-nuts, I guess we know what happened to you," Donald Gene Nelson, a tall, lanky former SEAL with the face of a starved Satan, said to the student who had been shot in the head.

  The embarrassed trainee shrunk down in his seat and murmured, "Uhh..."

  "Listen carefully to that sound, class." Donald Gene spun and dropped a quick wink at Charley. "Uhh..." he mimicked mercilessly. "That is the unmistakable sound of a deadly serious brain fart, the passing of gas in an otherwise unremarkable brain housing group." He stalked up and down the aisle, the students shrinking from his glare. "It is also the last sound you'll hear when you die, assholes. That's the sound of your last breath slipping between your teeth. You think this is all fun and games? You think in the real world you're just going to dust red paint off and hang your head and say, 'Uhh...I fucked up?' Is that what you think?"

  "No," the trainee said.

  Charley played good cop to Donald Gene's bad cop. "You assumed you knew who the bad guys were. Terrorists aren't all 21-35 year old athletic middle eastern males. You don't have to be a commando to pull a trigger...

  "It helps," Donald Gene said.

  "...you just have to have the mind set to do it and be close enough to hit the target. The terrorists have the mindset. You are the targets. You need to understand that. You need to find your mindset, because when you graduate from here, you are going to stand between innocent people and terrorists who want to hurt those people. If you can't handle that, you better deal with it now. It'll be too late once you get out there." He waved the students back to their seats. "Let's run the scenario again."

  The students and the hijacker role players returned to their seats in the aircraft. The other role players, many of them airline personnel assigned temporarily to assist the Air Marshal training program, looked at each other wide eyed at their first exposure to the realistic scenario training. Melissa felt like she had really been in a hijacking; those guys were scary. 'But I guess that's what it's all about,' she thought to herself. 'Better to be scared now and get it right.'

  ***

  In the small instructor's office he shared with Donald Gene Nelson, Charley Dey leaned back in his chair and kicked his feet up onto his desk.

  Above his head on the wall was a display board. Mounted beneath glass were his master sergeant's stripes, the Combat Infantryman's Badge, the Special Forces crest, the Military Assistance Command Vietnam Studies and Observations Group patch, Master Parachutist and Pathfinder badges, and all his decoration ribbons. Among them were the Distinguished Service Cross and the Silver Star. Next to it on the wall was a plaque from Seal Team Two, and a picture of a much younger Donald Gene, with an enormous cigar stuck in his grinning mouth, surrounded by other young warriors brandishing CAR-16s and MK-23 Stoners. Two of them were holding an NVA flag up for the camera.

  "I just don't know what they're sending us anymore, Donald Gene," Charley said.

  Charley's partner was braced against the window frame, staring out at the students on the training field. "Cannon fodder, pus-nuts, and products of affirmative action," Donald said. "We got secretaries, we got stockbrokers, we got gun-nut wannabes and military washouts. And we will, by God, make high-speed, low-drag counter-terrorists out of them."

  "They're good kids, but..." Charley started.

  "Look at the ass on that Joan," Donald interrupted. "I'd like to introduce her to Donald Gene and his love machine and engage in about two hours worth of hip thrusts and horizontal squats." He spun from the window and pointed at his friend. "Don't get wrapped around the axle about the kiddies, Chuckie. We got to do the best we can with what we got. Ours is not to reason why, ours is just to fly and die."

  Charley gestured at the life-sized mannequin propped in the chair next to Donald Gene's desk. The female mannequin, a blond wig askew on its head, was dressed in black lingerie and had DEBBIE written across its forehead in red felt pen. "Why don't you take the love of your life here out for a walk around the compound?"

  "I believe I will, brother. I believe I will do that very thing." Donald Gene picked up the dummy, set her wig in place, and marched out the door with her pressed against his side. Several of the students who saw him come out tried to scatter, but it was too late.

  "And what are you pus-nut wannabes looking at? You're not eye-raping my date, are you, you filthy minded perverts? Get down and give me twenty pushups for even thinking the thoughts you were thinking! Get down, get down and do pushups
until I get tired!" Donald bellowed in his SEAL instructor voice.

  Charley laughed and turned to his endless paperwork.

  ***

  BEKAA VALLEY, LEBANON:

  In the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, there are villages and hills as old as time itself, where shepherds and their flocks have wandered since before the time of Christ. The sun beats down on gray-brown hills as convolute as the folds of a man's brain, and as full of hidden secrets. Far from any village, there is a compound of weathered old structures and tent cabins with the canvas sides rolled up to allow what breeze there is to blow through. On one side of the compound is a mock-up of a 747 aircraft, made of a wooden framework overstretched with tarpaulins, with aircraft seats placed in the seating configuration of a commercial airliner. There are gun ranges and a large pit where trainees practice hand to hand combat. This facility is run by the training cadre of HizbAllah, and it offers the world's most up to date curriculum in the art and science of aircraft hijacking. Under an awning, Bucknell Leigh's interrogator and another man -- large, dark and intense, with a heavily scarred face -- looked out at the students exercising.

  The scarred man, the director of training, stood up and shouted, "Start the break-down! Overpass in thirty minutes!"

  The students broke from their training and, with the smooth economy of actions long rehearsed, broke down the aircraft mock-up. The tarps were drawn taut over the top of the mockup, and canvas rolls were dropped along the sides, forming the semblance of walls. Within minutes, the mock-up no longer resembled an aircraft: it had become a long covered storage building. Other students broke down the target frames on the open range and ran them into an underground bunker.

  "They know the drill well," the interrogator observed.

  "They should. Twice a day we get a satellite overpass," the scarred man said, watching the students. "What else do you have for me on how the air marshals will be deployed?"

  "Nothing new. We had already wrung everything out of him. It was an act of mercy to finish him."

  The scarred man looked at the interrogator. "I didn't know that you had."

  "We have kept the body...there are negotiations."

  "I see."

  The interrogator studied the scarred face of the trainer. "I don't understand why you see it necessary to target a flight that you know has security on it."

  The trainer stood up and walked to the edge of the tent, just beneath the canvas, and stared up at the sky, as though he could see the American satellite passing overhead. "Because we must make the point that they are not safe anywhere. We killed their best people in their own embassy. We took a station chief of the CIA and wrung him dry. And we will take a plane away from them and rub their faces in their own incompetence. We will take their air marshals and those we do not kill we will parade before the cameras for all the world to see." He squinted up at the sky. "We may even do it in America. America itself."

  ***

  Because of the terrorist training camps there, military and intelligence units from all over the world follow the activities in the Bekaa Valley with great interest. One of the organizations that made Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley an area of special interest is the British Special Air Services. The SAS specializes in, among other things, the covert insertion of operational units to gather hard intelligence on terrorist activities. Their extensive operations in Ireland provide them with a proving and training ground for refining their technique. One of their most seasoned and experienced units, a four man patrol, was hidden in a cunningly concealed hide overlooking the HizbAllah hijacking camp.

  "What have you got, then?" SAS Trooper Martin said to the signaler, Trooper Marshal.

  "Lot of bloody fucking interference, that's what," Marshal muttered, fine tuning a knob on his equipment. "All broken up...some bit about the bleeding rags are gonna hijack an American plane."

  "The headshed will want that, then," Martin said.

  "You're a wanker, know that? Bloody right they'll want that."

  "All right, girls," said Sergeant Mullin, the team leader. "Let's do it proper like."

  Trooper Allen, quiet, shy, all of 22 years old, took the floppy diskette that Marshal handed him and inserted it into the burst transmitter. "It's off now," Allen said. He pushed the button and the entire morning's recordings, gathered by concealed microphones and augmented by the portable computer in the hide hole, shot up out of the concealed mini satellite dish to the satellite passing overhead and then down to SAS Headquarters in Hereford, England.

  ***

  HEREFORD, ENGLAND:

  In a secure briefing room in the headquarters of the 22nd Special Air Services Regiment at Hereford, Regimental Sergeant Major John "Lusty" Wideman brewed himself a cup of tea on his battered camp stove. One of the green slime -- regimental slang for an intelligence specialist -- and the Regiment Commander, Colonel Lilly, sat across the table from him.

  Colonel Lilly looked up from the transcript received from the Bekaa Valley surveillance team.

  "You have a contact there, this Charley Dey?" he asked Wideman.

  "He's an old mate," said Wideman. "Left the Special Forces after Viet Nam, did some time with their CIA, then he went round to the Air Marshals when they started up. He's a good lad, he's the trainer now."

  The Colonel took the cup of tea Wideman handed him. "Cheers, Lusty." He sipped at his brew, then said, "We'll send this over to the liaison officer, but let's send it through the back door as well. They'll need to know this right away."

  Lusty Wideman nodded, grinning. "Call him at home, I will. We'll have a 'non-conversation.'" Even the green slime had to laugh at that.

  ***

  TUCSON, ARIZONA:

  Charley Dey was dreaming of Bucknell Leigh. He'd enjoyed the long talks with his Agency handler in the clubs of Saigon and around the table in the team house. Leigh was slightly older than Charley Dey and had seen more of the world. Bucky enjoyed his role of mentor in the ways and means of the intelligence game, and relished Charley's sharp mind and aptitude. Their talks had ranged from the latest developments in the VC intelligence networks to the merits of San Miguel beer to the taut young thighs of Miss Vuoc, the latest addition to the local brothel. Charley dreamed he was sitting across from his old friend, and that Bucky's face was changing like the portrait of Dorian Gray. It grew older and more beaten before his eyes, and that aging and injured face had a voice of its own, a voice that croaked out, "...help me...help me..."

  The phone ringing brought him up out of that dark dream, his heart pounding. He looked at the clock. It was five in the morning. He picked up the phone and murmured, "Charley Dey."

  "Cheers, lad! Why aren't you up for fitness training?" said Lusty Wideman.

  "Lusty? Is that you?"

  "None other, lad. Had a brew yet?"

  "I'm a civilian these days, Lusty...I'm not out of bed yet."

  "That's bad for you, lad. You'll be taking up with those filthy, nasty women and doing that filthy, nasty drinking soon as well."

  Charley laughed at the rich Livepudalian accent of the coal-miner's son gone legendary special operator. "That was last night, Lusty. I still stink of it."

  "Right, then."

  "Lusty, what's up? The family OK?" Charley asked. It was highly unusual for his friend, the highest ranking enlisted man in the SAS, to call him, especially at this time of the morning and at home.

  "Everything's fine here, Charley. Just pretend there's a knocking at your back door, heh?"

  Charley sat up and reached for the notepad and pen beside his bed. "I remember that," Charley said, referring to the phrase they used to tip the other to information passed along unofficially.

  "Remember that hornet's nest, back of your valley?" Lusty said in a relaxed, storyteller's voice.

  Charley wrote down Bekaa Valley. "Remember it well," he said.

  "Just like a school there for all those airborne vipers, buzzing around, causing a nuisance."

  "That's right," Charley said, writing HIJACK
ING CAMP in capital letters.

  "Had to swat a few, as I recall."

  "One or two."

  "Sometimes we'd send the lads out to listen to them, remember?"

  "Sure."

  "You know the lads, they hear things, they come up with stories too crazy to be made up like?" Lofty said.

  "Yeah, you got great kids."

  "One of my youngest, he tells me the hornets went and took an extermination man. They stung him and stung him till he died. But before he died, they found out all about how the exterminators work. And so all the hornets, they got together and practiced, because they were tired of the exterminators swatting them. And they were going to go where the exterminators lived and get into a truck and sting them. Sting them to death," Lusty said.

  "Is that little Den telling that story?"

  "Just the one. You know what else he told me?"

  "What's that, Lusty?" Charley said.

  "He said the exterminator the hornets caught was really a deer. A big buck. Did you know that?"

  Charley Dey stared out his bedroom window. As the desert sun came up over the outskirts of Tucson and began to break the desert chill, he felt a deep coldness come over him. "I'd heard rumors, Lusty. We were friends."

  "Careful, laddie. No Such Agency might be listening to you."

  "Right," Charley said softly.

  "I'm off, Charley. I think it's time to draw your hunting license. There will be some bumf coming through the front door for you soon enough, but I thought you'd want to hear little Den's story for yourself and soon."

  "I owe you, Lusty."

  "Time for a proper job, Charley. Watch for yourself. If you need something, call. Cheers, lad. I'll ring off now."

  "Good bye, Lusty."

  Charley quietly replaced the phone in its cradle. He lay back in his bed and stared up at the slow procession of sunlight across his bedroom ceiling. He thought of Bucknell Leigh, his wife and two daughters, and shivered for no conscious reason as the images of his most recent dream played themselves again. He got up out of bed and went into the front room. He took his rolodex out of his desk and sorted through the cards till he came to the one he wanted. He sat on the couch and punched the Virginia area code and number into the keypad of his portable phone.