The Ghost of Flight 666

CHAPTER 5: The Operation

Abdullereda was having second thoughts. He felt like a trapped animal, but there was really very little he could do about it. He wasn’t dealing with a local gang of thugs. This was Al Qaeda. Any squeamishness on his part would result in his ignoble and painful death and the death of his estranged family as well. He had no illusions as to who he was dealing with.

The would-be terrorist found himself sweating, shaking, opening a bottle of whiskey — one hidden deep in his cabinet and only brought out when the blinds to his windows were shuttered — he didn’t remember how much he drank.

Sometime the next day, feeling miserable and guilty, Abdullereda found himself in front of the American Embassy. He didn’t like America; he hated Americans and everything they stood for. However, America was perhaps the only place in the world that might take him in, perhaps even his family. The Great Satan was his only way out of this devilish conspiracy.

“Can I help you sir?” the marine guard asked him.

Funny, he thought, how the American’s were always polite, even with people who hated them; especially with people who hated them. Far from being “Ugly Americans,” Abdullereda found Westerners were always ready to help; the more you hated them the more eager they were to spend money on you trying to make you like them. Strangely, despite their depravity, they were less decadent than the imams who railed against them, imams who preached that rape of women and girls was all right so long as it was in the name of Allah; imams, who on one hand whipped the crowds into frenzies to hang or stone gay men to death, and on the other hand encouraged their Holy Warriors to bugger each other when there weren’t any women to rape.

The more whiskey he drank the more these thoughts infiltrated Abdullereda’s besotted mind. He wondered, could it be because this was American whiskey? Was that why he suddenly doubted his course of action? If it were, then the Americans were clever.

So Abdullereda stood there dumb, with a torrent of thoughts going through his head, and the marine repeated the question. “Can I help you sir?”

“I want asylum,” he prepared to say, but out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of two men who seemed to have no other business than to stare at him. Al Qaeda! The shock jarred him out of his original intention and right into self-preservation. He had enough self-control not to look at them, and instead pretend to be talking with the marine. He shouted in broken English, “What are you doing here; you’re not wanted.”

Abdullereda began to rant at the marines, who simply watched impassively. That spurred real anger and Abdullereda was able to carry off his act convincingly — or so he hoped — finishing by spitting at the marines. They levelled their M-16’s at him and Abdullereda wisely backed away.

Striding purposefully, angrily down the street, he passed the two men without even looking at them, muttering to himself. One of the men called out to him from behind.

“Brother, wait for us!”

Hussein froze, looking back at them, and trying not to show he was frightened. Indeed, he was terrified they’d found him out. “Salaam brothers, salaam!” he said trembling.

“You seem troubled brother, perhaps we can help?” said one of the men. His voice was friendly, but it had an edge to it.

“I’m sorry, do I know you?” he replied carefully.

“No, but we know you as a brother,” the man said.

“Come, you need some tea! That will settle you down!” the other man said, guiding Hussein firmly toward the café across the street from the embassy.

Khallida was sitting there at one of the outside tables. He smiled that gruesome Death’s head grin of his.

“Salaam brother Hussein, salaam!”

“Salaam brother Khallida!”

Khallida motioned for Abdullereda to sit, but it was more like the two Al Qaeda men forced him into the chair.

Khallida reminded Hussein, “The captain of a Malaysian A380 should be careful not to draw attention to himself; especially from the Americans. They are ignorant and weak, but they are still dangerous. It is unwise to highlight yourself.”

“I understand,” Abdullereda sighed, sensing their suspicion. It was a dangerous moment for him and for his family. That spurred a thought. Hussein he got out his phone. Safrina sent him pictures of his girls — that might save him. He showed Khallida the three girls, all in Western type clothing. “I am so angry! The Americans polluted the minds of my family, driving them from me! Look at my daughters in American blue jeans — blue jeans — like they were saloon prostitutes! I burn for vengeance; holy vengeance!”

Khallida’s voice became more soothing. Even his grizzled minions looked upon Abdullereda with what might be construed as compassion. He said, “We understand all too well; thus the need for the warriors of jihad to steel themselves to the accomplishment of their mission. We have only two choices: martyrdom and paradise or failure and the fires of Hell. There is no escape for the holy warrior.”

“Nor should there be,” Abdullereda lied.

“That’s the spirit,” Khallida said with his hideous smile. “Come, we will have tea with you and then walk you home. It’s the least we can do for a brother.”

Abdullereda knew better than to argue, or even appear to argue. He simply nodded and drank tea with them. When he reached his home he knew what he had to do. Khallida was right. There was no turning back. He would never have a chance to escape again. The possibility of returning to his old life, reconciling with his wife and starting anew was nil; he’d end up on a beheading video alongside his family.

The only way to escape the Hell he’d boxed himself into was to do the Devil’s bidding. He sat down at his computer and Abdullereda returned to flying flight simulations to dozens of islands in the Chagos Archipelago.

Three days went by. Abdullereda was fastidious, flying hundreds of approaches to the small airfields carved onto the atolls. After checking with Khallida, he put himself back on flight status. Malaysia Airlines happily assigned him a Beijing flight.

On the day of the flight, Abdullereda went through his pre-flight routine, packing his bags and driving to the airport with a firm resolve to do nothing that would highlight himself. He was resigned.

When he got to work and entered flight operations, a young man greeted Hussein. It was his first officer, Jaren. Hussein had flown dozens of trips with him. Jaren was a Christian, not unusual in Malaysia, and had the cheery disposition and chronic fatigue of a brand new father.

“Well, how does it look Jaren?” Abdullereda asked, glancing at the paperwork.

“Nothing much to worry about, just some turbulence over Vietnam from the evening thunderstorms, nothing out of the ordinary.” He handed the captain the flight plan with a smile, “Suri is the lead flight attendant. She’s already talking about what a good time you two had in Beijing last time you flew there!”

“She’s a sweet girl,” he smiled sheepishly. “Yes, we had a good time!” They both laughed, but then Abdullereda saw an extra name on the manifest. A thrill of fear coursed through his veins. His smile turned to a frown of confusion. “Who is this?”

“Oh, we have a deadheading pilot,” Jaren told him. “He’s at the plane already.”

The name wasn’t familiar, Abdullereda calmed down. There were always pilots deadheading around the system, replacing pilots who got sick during trips or gaps in coverage for crews. It wasn’t Muhammad, so this didn’t mean anything.

Forcing himself back into the routine, he asked, “So how’s the new baby Jaren?”

“I’m hoping to finally get some sleep on this layover,” he admitted.

“I’ll take care of the girls then; you’re still married and in love!” Abdullereda laughed.

After going over the paperwork, checking the weather, signing for the aircraft and approving the fuel load and flight plan, the captain handed the stack of papers to the first officer and picked up his hat.

“Let’s go!”

The terminal at Kuala Lumpur was a bright, airy and incredibly busy place of steel and glass. As the twelfth busiest airport in the world it fit in with the tall modern skyscrapers of the city but contrasted sharply with the squalor away from the financial district.

Similarly the airport didn’t fit the passengers. While there were men and women in business suits a plenty the majority of passengers were the shabbily dressed and poorly washed masses setting off on might be the only trip of their lives to visit relatives in China, Indonesia, India and any other place on the planet. Fifty years earlier Malaysia had virtually no ties to the outside world, now it was trying to become a player.

Abdullereda approached the gate with an easy manner, looking forward to the boring, easy flight to Beijing. There was the usual busy atmosphere of the passengers waiting to board and the customer service agents trying to deal with their innumerable questions, many of them spoken in Chinese or broken English since most of the Chinese didn’t speak the many different languages and dialects of Malaysia.

The senior agent stopped working with her Chinese customer in order to show Hussein the final manifests. “Good evening captain, you will have five hundred and twenty-seven passengers tonight. Everything is on time so far.” She held out the documents.

“Thank you,” he smiled, reaching for the paperwork. He looked beyond her to survey the passengers. There were a lot of Chinese, in fact the majority of the passengers were Chinese. He was about to comment about that when he marked two familiar faces. The two Middle Eastern men stared at him with coal black eyes; their expressions grave with intent. It was the two men who accosted him at the American Embassy a few days ago; the two men with Khallida. They must be the Iranians!

Hussein started. It must be coincidence, he lied to himself. They might be travelling to Beijing to meet with their Turkic Uighur counterparts. Yes, that must be it.

“You also have a deadheader sir,” she told him, pointing to a man in uniform. A shudder coursed down Abdullereda’s spine when the deadheader went over and talked with the Iranians. The deadheader was none other than Khallida’s man, Muhammad.

“Is everything all right captain?” the gate agent questioned, a concerned look in her eyes. “You just turned so pale.”

The moment was upon him, and there was nothing to do but go with it. He snatched the manifest from the agent and walked into the jetway without answering her question.

His footsteps thumping in his ears, blood rushing to his head, Abdullereda had to gather himself, to focus on the minutia of the job. He didn’t look ahead, that was too hard; he had to concentrate on every aspect of his job no matter how routine.

“Hello Captain Hussein, nice to see you again,” said a woman’s voice.

Abdullereda looked up and saw Suri. She smiled knowingly at him. The recollection of their time together chilled his blood. Soon, this sweet, attractive twenty-eight year old woman with her whole life before her would be slowly choking to death.

“Stop it!” he scolded himself silently. There was no point in thinking about it!

He forced a smile. “Good evening Suri, good to see you too.” Hussein found refuge in his routine. “It’s going to be five hours and fifty-three minutes. Weather should not be a factor but there’s a chance for some turbulence over Vietnam, the normal things. We’ll wait a few hours for our meals but coffee would be nice.”

Footsteps followed behind. He looked back to see Jaren with the deadheader coming up behind — he’d completely forgotten about them. He pointed back at the deadheader, and started off to the cockpit, saying, “He’s coming along so take good care of him!”

The extra pilot smiled at Suri, “Don’t worry about me, I’ll just sit up front tonight.”

“What, all that way?” Suri asked. Pilot’s as a rule didn’t want anything to do with the cockpit if it wasn’t to fly the airplane, especially on a long flight. “Wouldn’t you rather sleep? We have seats in the back.”

“I’ll be fine, thanks,” he said, following Abdullereda and the first officer up front.

The captain listened to the exchange, but did not interfere. He led the way to the cockpit. Passing the galley, he exchanged pleasantries with the flight attendant in charge of their meals and repeated his order for coffee. The important part of the flight being taken care of — getting the coffee going — he entered the cockpit and stowed his bag to the left, beside the first observer’s seat.

Sliding into the captain’s chair, Abdullereda started to load the flight management computer, the “box,” entering the flight plan, aircraft weight and takeoff data. The printer started spitting out the information he requested over the ACARS, the aircraft’s datalink system: weather, takeoff data, aircraft loading and clearances amongst other things.

As he did the preflight programing the first officer left the cockpit with his flashlight to do the walk around inspection. That left Abdullereda alone with Muhammad.

“You seemed nervous when we got to the gate,” Muhammad said softly.

Abdullereda snapped angrily, “How many times do you think I’ve done this before?”

Muhammad reddened, admitting, “Never, of course; all right I get it. Just be yourself.”

“Is there anything special I should be doing?” Hussein mentioned, turning back and punching data in the box.

“No, keep everything normal,” he replied. “Everything should go just as it always does. Don’t do anything you wouldn’t normally do.”

“What about Jaren? He’s not in on this is he?”

“A Christian?” Muhammad exclaimed softly. “Are you kidding? Of course not!”

“What are we going to do about him?”

“That’s why I’m riding up here,” Muhammad said.

“What are you going to do with him; he’s an innocent kid,” Abdullereda said with a hint of fear in his voice.

“He’s not Muslim; he’s not innocent,” Muhammad replied roughly. “None of them are!”

“By Allah!” Abdullereda felt his resolve weakening.

“Calm down!” the terrorist warned, but he stopped short of saying more as someone was coming up from the galley.

Suri came up to the cockpit with their coffee. She looked at them with a worried frown. “Is everything all right? You two look so serious. Captain are you feeling well?”

“Just tired Suri, just tired, that’s all,” he said quickly, taking the proffered coffee.

The deadheader thanked her as well, trying his best to seem like everything was fine.

“You’re sure that’s all?” She didn’t look convinced.

Abdullereda pointed to the instrument displays, and explained, “We had a momentary malfunction in a hydraulic pump. It would have delayed us. Last week the company docked a captain a month’s pay for too many late departures! Fortunately, I recycled the pump and it came back on. We’re fine now; we’re good to go!”

“A month’s pay!” she started. “That would make me nervous too! Okay, as long as everything is all right. Let me know if you need anything else!”

“Thank you Suri!”

She left. The captain sighed and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

“Well handled captain,” Muhammad nodded. He seemed as relieved as the captain. “Remember, everything should go as normally as possible.”

Abdullereda chuckled grimly to himself, “Yes, like you know what normal is up here!” The captain’s momentary sense of superiority swept over him and then disappeared as quickly as a surfer’s missed wave, leaving him frustrated and anxious. Whatever his technical superiority over the Al Qaeda thug it was the uneducated terrorist who controlled the situation and Abdullereda’s life.

He finished programming the route. In the alternate routine, called “Route 2” in the Flight Management Computer, Abdullereda was able to program his mission. This gave him the ability to switch from one route to the other by executing a few keystrokes.

He trembled. A few keystrokes and his life would be irrevocably different. No — he reminded himself — that wasn’t true. As soon as he contacted these people his life was set upon an inevitable course. He had no choice. His only solace was that his children would be taken care of, no, he couldn’t think of that now. The Al Qaeda agent was noticing his nervousness. Fortunately, before he spoke up Jaren entered the cockpit again.

“I hate to break up your little plot but the jig is up,” he said seriously. His eyes narrowed and he pointed to Abdullereda. “I know all about it captain; I know everything.”