The loadmaster is on the ground. He attaches the cargo hook to the load. The men in the aircraft cannot close the hook by remote control. It must be done on the ground. In an emergency, the pilot can drop the load instantly by pressing a red button on the control stick. Fasil learned this in conversation with the pilot during a brief break in the lifting. The pilot had been pleasant enough—a black man with clear, wide-set eyes behind his sunglasses. It was possible that this man, introduced to a fellow pilot, might allow Awad to go up with him on a lift. A fine opportunity for Awad to further familiarize himself with the cockpit. Fasil hoped Awad was personable.
On Super Bowl Sunday he would shoot the pilot immediately, and any of the ground crew that got in the way. Awad and Dahlia would man the helicopter, with Fasil on the ground as loadmaster. Dahlia would see to it that the craft was positioned correctly over the stadium and, while Awad still waited for the order to drop the nacelle, she would simply touch it off under the helicopter. Fasil had no doubt that Dahlia would go through with it.
He worried about the red drop button though. It must be rendered inoperative. If Awad, through nervousness, actually dropped the device, the effect would be ruined. It was never designed to be dropped. A lashing on the cargo hook would do it. The hook must be lashed tight at the last second before the lift, when Awad could not see what was going on beneath the helicopter. Fasil could not trust some imported front-fighter to take care of this detail. For this reason, he himself must be the loadmaster.
The risk was acceptable. He would have much more cover than he would have had at Lakefront Airport with the blimp. He would be facing unarmed construction workers rather than airport police. When the big bang came, Fasil intended to be driving toward the city limits, toward Houston and a plane to Mexico City.
Awad would believe to the last that Fasil was waiting for him in a car in Audubon Park beyond the stadium.
Here was the garage, set back from the street just as Dahlia described. Once inside with the door closed, Fasil opened the rear of the truck. All was in order. He tried the engine on the forklift. It started instantly. Well and good. As soon as Awad arrived and his arrangements were complete, it would be time to call Dahlia, tell her to kill the American and come to New Orleans.
23
LANDER MOANED ONCE AND MOVED in the hospital bed. Dahlia Iyad put aside the New Orleans street map she was studying and rose stiffly. Her foot was asleep. She hobbled to the bedside and put her hand on Lander’s forehead. The skin was hot. She sponged his temples and cheeks with a cool cloth, and when his breathing settled into a steady wheeze and rattle she returned to her chair under the reading lamp.
A curious change came over Dahlia each time she went to the bedside. Sitting in her chair with the map, thinking about New Orleans, she could look at Lander with the steady, cool gaze of a cat, a look in which there were many possibilities, all determined solely by her need. At his bedside, her face was warm and full of concern. Both expressions were genuine. No man ever had a kinder, deadlier nurse than Dahlia Iyad.
She had slept on a cot in the New Jersey hospital room for four nights. She could not leave him for fear he would rave about the mission. And he had raved, but it was about Vietnam and persons she did not know. And about Margaret. For one entire evening he had repeated, “Jergens, you were right.”
She did not know if his mind was gone. She knew she had twelve days until the strike. If she could salvage him, she would do it. If not—well, either way he would die. One way was no worse than the other.
She knew Fasil was in a hurry. But hurrying is dangerous. If Lander was unable to fly and Fasil’s alternate arrangements did not suit her, she would eliminate Fasil, she decided. The bomb was too valuable to waste in a hastily contrived operation. It was far more valuable than Fasil. She would never forgive him for trying to get out of the actual operation in New Orleans. His weaseling had not been the result of a failure of nerve, as was the case with the Japanese she shot before the Lod airport strike. It was a result of personal ambition, and that was much worse.
“Try, Michael,” she whispered. “Try very hard.”
Early on the morning of January 1, federal agents and local police fanned out to the airports that ringed New Orleans-Houma, Thibodaux, Slidell, Hammond, Greater St. Tammany, Gulfport, Stennis International, and Bogalusa. All morning long their reports filtered in. No one had seen Fasil or the woman.
Corley, Kabakov, and Moshevsky worked New Orleans International and New Orleans Lakefront airports with no success. It was a glum drive back toward town. Corley, checking by radio, was told that all reports from Customs at entry points around the country and all reports from Interpol were negative. There had been no sign of the Libyan pilot.
“The bastard could be going anywhere,” Corley said as he accelerated onto the expressway.
Kabakov stared out the window in sour silence. Only Moshevsky was unconcerned. Having attended the late-late show at the Hotsy-Totsy Club on Bourbon Street the previous evening instead of retiring, he was asleep on the backseat.
They had turned on Poydras toward the federal building when, like a great bird flushed from hiding, the helicopter rose above the surrounding buildings to hover over the Superdome, a heavy square object slung close under its belly.
“Hey. Hey. Hey, David,” Corley said. He leaned over the wheel to look up through the windshield and slammed on his brakes. The car behind them honked angrily and pulled around them on the right, the driver’s mouth working behind his window.
Kabakov’s heart leaped when he saw the machine, and it was still pounding. He knew it was too early for the strike, he could see now that the object hanging under the big helicopter was a piece of machinery, but the image fit the imprint in his mind too well.
The landing pad was on the east side of the Superdome. Corley parked the car a hundred yards away, beside a stack of girders.
“If Fasil is watching this place, he’d better not recognize you,” Corley said. “I’ll get us a couple of hardhats.” He disappeared into the construction site and returned in minutes with three yellow plastic helmets with goggles.
“Take the field glasses and move up into the dome, where that opening overlooks the pad,” Kabakov told Moshevsky. “Keep out of the sunlight and sweep the windows across the street, anywhere high, and the perimeter of the loading area here.”
Moshevsky was moving as he spoke the last word.
The ground crew trundled another load onto the pad, and the helicopter, rocking gently, began its descent to pick it up. Kabakov went into the construction shack at the edge of the pad and watched through the window. The loadmaster was shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand and talking into a small radio as Corley approached him.
“Ask the chopper to come down, please,” Corley said. He cupped his badge so only the loadmaster could see it. The loadmaster glanced at the badge and then at Corley’s face.
“What is it?”
“Would you ask him to come down?”
The loadmaster spoke into the radio and yelled at the ground crew. They rolled the big refrigeration pump off the pad and turned their faces away from the blowing dust as the machine gingerly touched down. The loadmaster made a cutting motion with his hand across his wrist and beckoned. The big rotor slowed and began to droop.
The pilot swung himself out and dropped to the ground in one motion. He wore a Marine flight suit, weathered until it was almost white at the knees and elbows. “What is it, Maginty?”