The Ghost of Flight 666

CHAPTER 38: Phase Two

Abdullereda Hussein awakened to someone shaking his shoulder violently. He awoke with a start, disturbing the two Western slaves that had serviced him the night before.

“What is it, what is it!” he stammered, covering his eyes, shielding them from the light shining in his face. The light of the room snapped on and he focused on a man, the man shaking him, and the two men in black uniforms behind him.

The girls shrank away in fear, but the man addressed Abdullereda again. He wasn’t angry or judgmental, he was excited. “Captain!” That’s what they all called him. “Captain, it is time! It is time!”

“Time for what?” he complained groggily, looking at the clock. “It’s three in the morning. What can it possibly be time for?”

“Paradise!” the man said emphatically.

“Oh!”

“Come, we’ve brought your uniform,” he said, helping Abdullereda out of bed. “Quickly, go in and shower and shave. We have men getting the aircraft ready as we speak.”

“Excellent!” he said, still groggy. He stumbled into the bath. The girls were herded in behind him.

“Wash him thoroughly,” the man ordered. “He is a Holy Warrior! He must be cleansed for his mission.”

The girls did as they were told, scrubbing him down from head to foot, shaving him, and even brushing his teeth for him. When he was cleaned and dried they dressed him. Only when they had him perfect did they open the door and allow him out.

The man surveyed Abdullereda with satisfaction and nodded, “Perfect! Come with me. It is time to go.”

Abdullereda followed the man outside. There was a limousine waiting for them. The man opened the door and let Abdullereda in first. He got in and sat down. As he did so the sound of two shots could be heard in the house. A moment later the two jihadists came out. They got in. The smell of cordite was strong in the car. As the limousine pulled away Abdullereda could already see flames licking at the windows and smoke rising up into the sky.

They arrived at the airport in twenty minutes. The limousine drove straight to the hanger where guards stood outside the hanger doors. Stopping in front of the doors, the driver opened his window. When the guard approached he said simply, “We have the captain!”

“Allahu Akbar!” saluted the guard and he stepped away.

The hanger doors opened and the limousine pulled into the brightly lit area. A freshly painted A380 sat there in the white, blue and gold of Singapore Airlines. Around the aircraft in orderly ranks were hundreds of jihadists. They drove past the men. The stare of their dark eyes was palpable; he could feel their envy. Every man wanted to be him at this moment. His heart swelled with pride.

The limousine drove him right up to the airstairs. Waiting there were several men and imams. The driver got out and opened the door, standing at attention when Abdullereda stepped out. He went up to the men waiting for him, all of whom he either had met or knew. They offered their best wishes, kissing his cheeks and shaking his hand.

“Everything is ready then,” he said with finality.

“The cargo should arrive momentarily,” the imam said. “We need to be ready to go as soon as it is loaded.”

“I understand,” he answered. He climbed the stars and entered the aircraft. Turning left he walked into the cockpit. Everything was clean. The carpet even smelled new. Everything was as it should be. It suddenly hit Abdullereda that he would never leave this aircraft as a living man.

Slade found himself dangling in the darkness on the end of his rope. Fortunately he wore a five point harness over his wetsuit. If he just had a belt the shock might have broken him in two. As it was the helicopter snatching him from the deck of the freighter qualified as a very nasty carnival ride.

The freighter was dwindling in the distance. Everything else was black. He could hardly see the helicopter. It was flying without lights. The only illumination was the ruddy red glow of the jet exhaust from the twin Pratt and Whitney engines.

Slade grabbed hold of the rope and then splayed his legs out, steadying himself. Slowly he climbed the rope, feeding the line through the brake and working his way back up to the payload. When he finally reached the platform he climbed onto it, but there was little or no rest there. Despite the relatively slow speed of the Sikorsky its forward movement still created a vacuum in the slipstream which constantly tried to pull Slade off the platform.

He had to find a better solution. That turned out to be climbing atop the containers. There was about eighteen inches of room between Slade and the bottom of the Skycrane’s spine. It got him out of the slipstream and allowed him to rest; and to think.

His phone buzzed. Cradling his arm around his mouth to cut down the wind noise he answered. It was the director.

“Slade where are you?”

“I’m on the chopper, can’t you hear it?”

“Are you with the cargo?”

“Yes, I’m lying on top of all three containers. I’m guessing we’re on the way to Jakarta.”

“The Delta’s are leaving the ship and heading to Jakarta,” he said. “They cleaned up the freighter without too much trouble. All the terrorists have been neutralized. The ship is back in the hands of Captain Fletcher and he has a Navy security detail and escort to Jakarta. What’s your plan?”

“Sir, I didn’t know I had a plan.”

“The Delta’s should be waiting for you. There shouldn’t be any more need for heroics. Ride it out and let them secure Nikahd and the cargo.”

“That works for me!”

“We’ll follow your flight,” the director told him. After a long pause the director told him, “Slade, we’re not getting a signal through your GPS.”

“I’m not surprised, the voice transmission is omnidirectional, but the GPS requires line of sight with several satellites. I’m under the chopper’s fuselage on top of the containers. ”

“Can you get me a hit?”

Slade crawled to the edge of the container, warning Gann, “It’s going to get noisy!” He held the phone out from under the fuselage, expecting the noise from the rotorwash to drown out all sound. What he didn’t count on was the force of the rotorwash catching the phone and flinging it out of his hand.

There was a sinking feeling reaching all the way down into the pit of Slade’s stomach. He could only call himself stupid for so long before the business of terrorism and survival focused his mind on the near term future.

He tried to convince himself it didn’t matter. The chopper was obviously heading to Jakarta, probably to the loading docks where the cargo would be unloaded and dispersed amongst the Al Qaeda cells. From there the terrorists could attack dozens of cities or venues worldwide with terrible effect.

Nikahd had an ingenious back up plan with the Sikorsky, but it was too late. They’d been found out. When he landed the helo Killer and his Deltas would be there to greet them. Game over. Still, something nagged at Slade. No matter how he analyzed it he couldn’t shake the suspicion that he’d missed something.

Killer scowled. He’d hopped on an Osprey as soon as the fight was over. The Osprey could fly over twice as fast as they Sikorsky so the idea was to get ahead of Slade and be waiting for him in Jakarta.

That part worked perfectly. Killer was in his battle fatigues at seaport; he was an imposing sight. Once the White House talked to the Indonesian President everything was smoothed over and he had the run of the place. There was only one problem, and he told General Mertzl about it.

“There’s nothing here,” he said in a low guttural growl, his frustration making him forget he was speaking directly with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, not that it mattered to a Special Operations grunt. “I’m telling you that the workers, cranes and trucks are expecting a shipment of three large boxcars of sand — sand, nothing else. We’ve been through the entire facility; our people are here questioning the workers. None of them are on the Al Qaeda watch lists. Where did Slade say he was?”

“We got cut off, Captain, I don’t know where he is now,” Mertzl replied, equally frustrated. “He was with the cargo before we got cut off. He thought it was heading to Jakarta; we’ve got nothing that tells us anything different.”

“Damn it, he’s expecting help when he lands,” Kincaid said, stifling another curse. An Indonesian man stepped up to him, a CIA operative. Killer listened to him for a second and then relayed the information to Sorensen. “Hey, I got one of CIA’s people here. He’s telling me the workers are all of Soekarno’s boys — they’re clean — however, they tell a story about some of their relatives working at Soekarno International Airport being strong-armed by some Jemaah Islamiyah thugs. I’m heading over there to check it out.”

“Well hurry, because Slade is landing within the next half hour,” Mertzl told him. “The chopper has a limited range. So wherever he is, he’s about to land.”

“On my way!”

The Sikorsky started to descend. Slade couldn’t see forward but he could see to the sides. There was a city glow ahead of the chopper, a big city glow, but something wasn’t quite right. If they were flying to Jakarta then the dark mass of Sumatra should be on his right; inexplicably it was on his left. Was he then headed north and not south?

Slade knew where the ship had been: east of the island of Sumatra about two hundred and fifty miles from Jakarta. So to get to Jakarta the chopper had to fly south and along the coast of Sumatra to the island of Java. Any way he looked at it the chopper had to come from the north; it had to.

He decided he must be turned around, it could happen, but if he was the big island of Sumatra was on the wrong side of the aircraft.

The Sikorsky turned. The city lights came into view and then the airfield. Slade’s stomach turned to ice. That explained it. His gut instinct was right — again. The Sikorsky was flying north. It wasn’t going to Jakarta; it was going to Singapore. That airport wasn’t Soekarno International; it was Changi.

Everyone was in the wrong place. Slade’s help was five hundred miles to the south, and Slade had no way to let them know. He was on his own. “Damn! If I’d known that I’d have tried to get rid of this pallet,” he muttered to himself. “It’s too late now; we’re descending.”

The Sikorsky was in a left hand descending turn, heading toward the hangar complex north of runway zero-two-right. As they approached it he could see the hanger doors open. Even at a mile away Slade could make out the distinct, bloated, ungainly shape of an A380—suddenly everything fell into place.

“They’re flying the uranium out of here; it’s only a question of where.” The several hundred armed jihadists waiting on the tarmac confirmed it. He couldn’t stay where he was. Landing on that tarmac surrounded by hundreds of jihadists was going to mean a quick, painful end to his life.

Thinking fast, Slade guessed the flight path of the pilot and got ready to exit the Sikorsky. Crawling onto the back of the cargo pallet, he stepped off the aircraft.

Slade was still on his rappelling line. Quickly he let himself down, gauging his altitude by the waves breaking on the shore of the beach. Slade guessed he was under fifty feet and that the chopper had slowed to around sixty knots. He ran all the way to the end of his line, waiting for the chopper to slow even further. He waited as long as he dared before releasing the brake.

Slade felt the freedom of nothing but air beneath him; he’d never liked that feeling even during a safe jump. Plummeting from a guessed at altitude, in the dark, into water of unknown depth at a guessed at speed was not comforting. He assumed his entry position with legs slightly bent, ready to absorb the shock of contact with the bottom or a reef — hopefully neither.

His last thought before hitting was landing on a hungry shark.

The water engulfed him and all Slade heard was the sound of bubbles. He stopped in the water without hitting bottom. That was a good sign. Nothing hurt. Nothing appeared dislocated. Good! He struck upwards, controlling his fear. For all Jeremiah Slade had been through he’d never gotten over night dives; he hated them, absolutely, positively hated them. He didn’t even like to wade in the ocean at night.

To panic, however, was the last thing you wanted to do in the water. Panic meant prey; it attracted unwanted guests faster than anything except an open wound.

That reminded Slade of the fight on board. He was going to bleed, no doubt about it. The faster he got to shore the better.

Slade got to the surface and took in a lungful of air, getting his bearings. The sound of the surf on shore was clear. He turned and looked, heading for the white line of foam and the airport lights. Slade had to hurry, but he had to swim smoothly.

The shore was a hundred yards away, but it seemed a mile. He kept swimming, regulating his breathing, everything was going fine. He was halfway there. Thirty yards to go. He reached down and touched the bottom with his foot. It felt strangely firm but yielding — then it moved — a thrill of panic hit Slade.

Something blunt and rubbery hit him on his left side. Slade reacted instinctively, and that meant he reacted angrily, through fear, firing back with his left elbow, feeling it contact a big, heavy, rubbery object. The object didn’t move because Slade moved it, it was too big. His head whipped around and he saw a shiny black, blunt nose turn to the left at his counter-strike.

The shape and size of the nose left him thinking one thing: tiger shark!