The Gambit

XXVI

Captain Rouhani’s team arrived at the Hyatt at Logan International about seven thirty in the evening. As Rouhani had hoped, their room provided an excellent vantage point from which he could survey both the harbor as well as the entire airport and the cargo terminals. He and three of his men had taken up positions to scout out the airport terminals as well as the Inner Harbor. They were very confident that their mission had not been discovered but Rouhani had taken up their over watch position to survey the area just in case. He would have the next couple hours to watch over everything just to make sure. The rest of his men had broken up into three different groups and stopped in at the Hyatt’s restaurant for dinner. They all had very official looking fake ID’s and credit cards to match so Rouhani remained confident that their cover would hold, and it only needed to hold for two more hours.

By nine fifteen, Rouhani called all of his men up to the room; it was time to go. Each of his men changed into the uniform of a Fed Ex pilot or copilot’s uniform; over that, they each wore the overalls worn by the cargo handlers. By nine thirty, Rouhani and ten of his men left for the Fed Ex cargo terminal. He left his lieutenant at the hotel in an over watch position. Each man had a radio, a Glock 19 with suppressor, and a K-bar knife; they left their M-4 carbines in the trucks.

Rouhani knew he had a real tactical problem and he’d need more than a little bit of luck to pull this off: He needed to steal four 757 cargo jets without anyone alerting the authorities. The first plane was scheduled to leave at 10:14 and the second one, seven minutes later with all four airborne by 10:43. Rouhani and his men arrived to find all four aircraft parked side by side at the terminal with the push carts attached to all four jets ready to push them back on to the taxiway. Rouhani and his men blended in perfectly with their cargo uniforms, and with four cargo planes in various stages of being loaded, all the grounds crewmen remained preoccupied with their own duties so that no one noticed the additional men. At precisely 9:50, three of his men grabbed the cargo manifests for each of the first three planes from another of the grounds crewmen. With the cargo manifests in hand, the raiders broke up into three parties of three men each and nonchalantly proceeded up the stair carts that led to the cockpits of each of the first three Fed Ex cargo jets. Once inside the plane, the pilots were killed by two of the hijackers while the third member of the raiding party stood in the entranceway of the plane blocking the view of anyone who might either try to see what was going on or try and climb up to the cockpit. Rouhani and one of his sergeants remained on the tarmac keenly watching to see if any alert had been given. His lieutenant remained keeping an over watch on the entire area from the Hyatt, ready to alert them all if he noticed any threat to their little operation.

By 9:55, Rouhani was pleasantly surprised that the first three jets had been taken and no one had noticed a thing.

“Lieutenant Najafi,” Rouhani radioed to his executive officer, “we have the first three. Have you seen anything that would indicate we’ve been discovered? This was way too easy; these Americans are way too complacent.”

“I haven’t seen anything that would indicate we’ve been compromised. Everything looks like it is going to plan, sir,” replied Najafi.

“Very well; the first plane is backing out as we speak. The second one is hooked up and ready to go. Get over here as soon as you can. The last one is scheduled to leave at 10:43 so we’ll need you over here in a few minutes. We just might pull this off yet.”

“Be right there, sir,” replied Najafi.

At precisely 10:14, Fed Ex 820 took off; seven minutes later, the second one followed. The third one was being pushed back away from the terminal and onto the taxiway. Rouhani now needed to grab the fourth plane if he was going to succeed.

As the third plane backed out onto the tarmac, Rouhani, Najafi and their last remaining soldier climbed the steps to enter the cockpit of Fed Ex 1003. As with the first three, the initial deception went very well: they had the cargo manifest and no one challenged them as they proceeded up to the cockpit. However, the pilot of this plane had been an Air Force pilot who had seen service in Operation Enduring Freedom and had been stationed at Bagram for a couple tours. He immediately recognized Najafi’s accent and, upon looking at the three men coming up towards the cockpit, realized something was amiss. He keyed his mic and asked them what they wanted — he had never had three men approach his cockpit like this before.

“Just wanted to go over the manifest with you, Captain,” Rouhani replied.

“It doesn’t take three of you to do that. Tell the other two to head back down or I’ll be calling security.”

“That’s fine. These guys are new and aren’t familiar with all of the procedures we have,” Rouhani pointed out, trying to reassure the pilot.

“Yeah, well, I still don’t want them up here. Have them get down or I’m calling security; I won’t tell you again.”

Air Traffic Control had been listening in on this and immediately asked if everything was okay with the plane. The copilot replied that everything seemed to be in order at present but to hang on for a bit.

“Okay, okay; I’m sending them down,” Rouhani claimed. At this, he turned towards his compatriots as if to tell them to get down. However, as soon as he had turned towards them, he pulled out his Glock, which was now hidden from view from the pilot, and suddenly turned back towards the pilot and fired two rounds into both the pilot and co-pilot, killing both of them instantly. However, the pilot had kept the radio mic on the entire time. The Controllers in the tower immediately heard the four suppressed gunshots.

“Fed Ex, Ten-Oh-Three, is everything okay over there? I thought I heard some gunshots.”

As soon as Rouhani heard the tower calling, he grabbed the headset from the pilot.

“Tower, everything is fine. We had a mix-up with the cargo manifest but we’ve straightened that out.”

“Are you sure?” the controller responded. “I thought we heard some gunfire.”

“Gunfire?” Rouhani replied. “Must have been static over the radio, control. We didn’t hear anything over hear.”

“Okay, as long as you’re sure everything is okay,” Control replied. However, to be on the safe side, the tower alerted the airport police to check out the plane and the terminal without warning the Fed Ex terminal. The controller was sure he had heard four separate shots; they had been muffled, but he thought they were gunshots just the same.

“Lieutenant, let the ground crew know that we are ready to depart and running behind schedule. We need to get this plane out of here before the police show up.”

Before Najafi took his seat, he took his overalls off, stuffed them in the restroom with the bodies of the pilot and copilot and stood out the doorway yelling at the ground crew to get them pushed onto the taxiway. With that, he stepped back in the plane with his two compatriots and shut the door. For now, anyway, no one on the ground was the wiser.

With the door shut, the ground crew began pushing Fed Ex 1003 onto the taxiway.

“Well, at least we’ve made it this far,” Najafi proclaimed. “You were right, Captain. We might just pull this off.”

“We have a long way to go before we can call this a success, Lieutenant. The police are on their way. We need to get on the runway before they get here and, as big as this airport is, it will not take them long to get here — especially since the controller indicated he heard gunshots over the radio. I’m surprised they aren’t here already,” Rouhani exclaimed as he hit the throttles on the plane to head towards the flight line. As they approached the runway, Rouhani noticed that they had an empty runway — not a single plane was waiting to take off.

“Tower, this is Fed Ex Ten-Oh-Three,” Rouhani spoke over the radio, “requesting take off.”

“Ten-Oh-Three, just hold on a second. We’ve had a report of a disturbance over there and the police are en route to check it out. We don’t have anyone else in the pattern right now so hold tight for a minute while we sort this out.”

“Tower, what was the disturbance? We were just over there and didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.”

“Ten-Oh-Three, hold on. We’ll get back to you.”

“Lieutenant, let’s get ready to go, just in case they tell us to return to the terminal. If they tell us to return, we’re taking off but not until we hear from the tower.”

“Understood, sir.”

Waiting is one of the hardest things anyone can be asked to do and for Captain Rouhani, this was no exception. He was absolutely certain that no one had seen anything with any of the four planes his men had taken. The ground crews had all been very busy and, while the facility had been fully lighted, shadows remained and his men had made the most of these in gaining access to the terminal. The only thing that worried him were the four gunshots that were transmitted over the radio when the pilot had keyed the mic; they were suppressed and, he hoped, could be attributed to static over the radio but he was not sure of that. Forty five seconds later, he had his answer.

“Ten-Oh-Three, can you head back to the terminal? Looks like there’s something that needs to be checked out. Once we get that cleared up, you’ll be on your way.”

“Tower, what’s going on? I have a deadline to meet,” Rouhani replied. While responding to the tower, he motioned to his lieutenant to take off immediately. In unison, they fire-walled the throttles and headed down the runway.

“Ten-Oh-Three, you are directed to abort your take off and return to the terminal. Is that clear?”

“Ten-Oh-Three, do you copy?”

“Ten-Oh-Three?”

In the tower, the manager on duty, who was already monitoring the situation, picked up his phone and hit the speed dial for EADS.

“Huntress, Sergeant Forrest,” answered the tech at the Eastern Air Defense Sector.

“Huntress, this is Boston Center, TMU. We have a suspected Fed Ex cargo jet that has been hijacked.”

“Excuse me, sir; did you say Boston Center TMU?”

“Yes, that’s correct. Why? We just had Fed Ex Ten-Oh-Three take off without authorization. We initially had a report of gunfire over the cockpit radio. The police were dispatched but the plane managed to make it to the runway before they got there. The pilot was told to return to the terminal but took off instead.”

“Boston, we have an active alert notice that JFK could have been a target for a hijacking but not you. Confirm, this is a Fed Ex cargo plane?”

“Huntress, that is correct; Fed Ex Ten-Oh-Three is presumed to be hijacked.”

“Boston, is this the only suspect plane? We have an alert out for possibly three more.”

“Huntress, we launched four Fed Ex planes within a thirty minute span; this was the last one and the only suspicious one of which we know. The police are still at the terminal. I’ll let them know to do some snooping. If they were going to take four planes, something must have been left behind.”

“Tower, this is Sergeant O’Rourke of the Airport police. We’ve done some looking around here and found three pickup trucks in the Fed Ex parking lot. All three are licensed in Texas; found a dozen M-4 automatic rifles in them. We just ran the plates for these; turns out the FBI has a nationwide APB on them. Are you sure we only have the one hijacked airplane?”

“Huntress, did you hear that? You better watch all four of those Fed Ex planes.”

“Roger that, Boston. We’re on it.”

“This is Huntress scrambling Yankee Five-Six and Yankee Five-Seven, I repeat Huntress is scrambling Yankee Five-Six and Yankee Five-Seven. Time is 0245 Zulu. All parties acknowledge.”

“Yankee Five-Six, Yankee Five-Seven, scrambling,” came the response from SOF Captain “Blackjack” Brady.

In the lounge, the klaxon announcing the scramble alert pierced the relative calm of the evening to such an extent that Thor thought his wife could hear it at their new home clear out in rural Huntington. When Thor received word of the CAP that Huntress had put up, he told the flight crews to add a large centerline fuel tank to both of the alert Eagles just in case they received orders to scramble. He figured that since they were already in uncharted territory with the CAP, he might as well make sure the Eagles had as much fuel as possible for any extended action they might see. He also put his flight suit on so that he’d be ready himself should the klaxon go off. A minute after receiving the scramble order, both pilots were in their F-15’s practically ready to head out — as an Alert pilot, they are to be airborne within five minutes of the alert, and Thor knew they were going to beat that!

“Huntress, Yankee Five-Six, what is the mission?” Thor asked, identifying himself as the lead pilot.

“Yankee Five-Six, we have a hijacked Fed Ex cargo plane out of Boston, initial flight to Memphis. Be advised, we could have up to four hijacked Fed Ex flights all out of Boston en route to Memphis. Storm Two-Two and Two-Three are on CAP out of Langley currently over Baltimore and will be heading north to intercept.”

“Huntress, do we have any call signs for these flights?” Storm two-two asked.

“Storm Two-Two, the call signs are Fed Ex Eight-Two-Zero, Six-Eight-Three, Twelve-Sixteen, and Ten-Oh-Three. Ten-Oh-Three is the flight of immediate concern as he took off from Boston without authorization.”

“Do we have a fix on any of these planes?” Yankee Five-Six asked.

“Eight-Two-Zero is currently located at 41.980868/72.943726; Six-Eight-Three is currently at 42.074718/72.449341; and Twelve-Sixteen is currently at 42.262002/-71.757202. Ten-Oh-Three is just leaving Boston airspace at 42.43657/-71.169434. All planes are currently on course. Storm Two-Two and Two-Three, proceed with intercept of Fed Ex Eight-Two-Zero and Six-Eight-Three; Yankee Five-Six and Five-Seven take Fed Ex Twelve-Sixteen and Ten-Oh-Three.”

“Roger that; Storm Two-Two and Two-Three taking Fed Ex Eight-Two-Zero and Six-Eight-Three; ETA to intercept fifteen minutes.”

“Roger; Yankee Five-Six and Five-Seven taking Fed Ex Twelve-Sixteen and Ten-Oh-Three; ETA to intercept two minutes.”

“Jim, we have a report of at least one hijacked Fed Ex plane out of Boston; destination unknown, though EADS is watching it, as well as three other Fed Ex planes — all of which took off, on schedule, within half an hour. They have directed two of the fighters from the CAP we had over Washington and scrambled two more out of Barnes. Local police at Logan have also found three of the pickups we were looking for at the Fed Ex terminal parking lot. Looks like this was one stop on their target list.”

“Boston?” interrupted Director Steve Youngblood. “Tom told us that the information he had so far only referenced JFK.”

“Yeah, but he also told us that they still had several files to decrypt. Plus, we don’t know what the Quds commander had for operational flexibility. He could have had several airports scouted out and selected Logan at the last minute,” Carmichael added. “Let’s get Tom on the phone and see what all they have by now.”

“Tom, this is Director Youngblood. We’ve got some developments out here. Have you learned anything new?”

“Yes, we have, sir. We have decrypted everything on Major Zarin’s laptop and are looking through everything; trouble is, he has a lot there. There’s a lot of good intel but we haven’t come across anything yet regarding an attack on Washington. Other than the initial threat on JFK, we haven’t found anything more on that, either.”

“Have your staff search the files for anything dealing with Boston or Logan International. We have a report that a Fed Ex cargo plane has been hijacked out of Logan; EADS is monitoring this. Local police also found three of the pickup trucks on your APB so it looks as Boston plays a key role in their next attack.”

“Okay, that’ll help narrow our focus. I’ll let you know as soon as we find anything.”

“Omar, this is Captain Rouhani. Where are you?”

“We’re on course, approaching the Connecticut-New York border.”

“Our flight has been discovered. We had a problem taking off. I would expect that we will have an American fighter on our tail in a couple minutes. Since you are already at the New York border, I want you to proceed to Indian Point. If we can bluff our way past the American fighters, we’ll take Peach Bottom. If you are already at the border, you should be able to hit Indian Point in less than five minutes.”

“That’s correct, sir. We’re about thirty miles out so we could hit Indian Point in about four minutes. We’ll start our descent now.… It’s been an honor to serve with you, sir.”

“The honor is all mine. Good luck, Omar.”