“How long until we reach twenty thousand feet?”
“An hour.”
So they would reach the desired altitude. Good. Hadad wanted nothing more to hinder him beyond then. “When we reach that altitude, stay there.”
“Whatever you say,” Hendrickson replied with just a hint of sarcasm.
Hadad ignored the pilot’s tone. Instead he kept a finger outside the Uzi’s trigger guard, just in case. The Americans were getting arrogant. He might have to sacrifice another passenger in the air, if the pushing did not stop. He cradled the gun on his lap and hoped that they would behave. Then he said a silent prayer to Allah.
He had no way of knowing that it fell on deaf ears.
The MiGs turned left and right, away from the F-106, and headed for the haven of their base.
Cooper didn’t notice. “Repeat, Springer Seven-Eight.”
“Your target has broken protocol. There was a transmission, then no response to our inquiry. I don’t know if it means anything, but mission parameters dictate informing you.”
It wasn’t good. It couldn’t be. Major Cooper bore the burden of his mission, to an extent the controllers on the AWACS couldn’t imagine at this point. The pilot of the hijacked jet had broken the instructions given to him less than an hour ago. With that the major knew that he had an authorization to fire.
He could move in and fire immediately.
The 747 was six miles ahead, its position marked by its bright anti-collision lights. Was something going wrong on board? If the pilot were trying to contact him he couldn’t hear it. Only the AWACS was dialed in on the plane’s frequency: the civil emergency air net. The F-106 was on military. The AWACS was his only direct link to the jet.
Positioning himself was a simple matter. He throttled up and brought the F-106 level with and three miles behind 422. The old visual sight for the Genie swung down into position at his touch. It was an old one, but then none had been used in twenty years, just as the Genie itself had been relegated to curious relic status. He took his first look through the sight, the eyepiece and first-stage magnifier of which resembled a modem starlight sniper scope. It was nothing so fancy, and had no light-amplification property at all.
Fortunately the target—the target? — was lit. Cooper adjusted the Delta Dart’s heading and pitch slightly to bring the 747 into the aiming reticle. In the sixties he had been one of the first pilots to fly operational missions with a ‘hot’ Genie in the racks, and had even fired three training rounds. That was a luxury given to few pilots of the era. It had made him the prime candidate for this mission. He felt comfortable in the old bird, and the layout, at first foreign, was completely familiar again. Everything was where it was so long ago. He was the right man for this, and it made him angry to believe that.
Should he fire? Now? It wasn’t time. Whatever was going to happen onboard shouldn’t have gone down by now. But the radio call?
“What is going on?” Cooper added a silent curse in the name of compartmentalization. Need to know. Shit! His orders were brief. Four minutes past 0900 Zulu—0400 local — he was supposed to open his bay doors and fire the Genie at flight 422 and the couple hundred people who just happened to be on her. Only the proper code phrase broadcast from the hijacked aircraft would belay the shoot-down order.
That was cut-and-dry enough, Cooper figured. He wasn’t going to kill hundreds of people just because some pilot forgot his instructions. If the time came, he would do his duty as ordered. He was a soldier, and he was a doctor. It was an uncomfortable and wholly incompatible combination of ideologies, one that he had to live with.
His left hand moved to the side console and moved the Genie’s arm switch from safe to fire. The bay doors opened behind and below him. Only a touch on the stick-mounted fire button was required now.
Antonelli and Quimpo were closest to the charges, and they would be the first through. Not much of the blast should hit them. There was, however, always some shock factor when shaped charges were used, even in the low power they were employing.
McAffee and Graber were behind the big Italian, just five feet from where the left-side entry hole would be. The major checked the time.
“Weapons ready.” Everybody had their SIGs in hand, pointed upward with their fingers off the trigger. The two point men held the HK-69s two-handed.
Graber had his free hand on the frame charge detonator taped to the cargo hold floor.
“This is a go, troops,” McAffee yelled. “Everybody on your toes. Let’s smoke some bad guys.”
“Right on,” Buxton said back.
A last look at the watch. McAffee’s free left hand reached back. Three. Two. “Cover!” One.
His hand slapped Graber’s knee at the count of zero.
Twenty Two
EXECUTION
The Egyptians had tried something similar during their attempt to rescue hostages from an EgyptAir flight on the ground in Malta, though the type and amount of explosives used were totally inappropriate. The charges were so overpowered that when one of the Unit 777 commandos detonated them, in much the same way Delta was going to, an entire row of seats above was blown into the roof and six passengers were instantly killed. It was a lesson of the past. One well learned.
Over six hundred tiny-shaped charges on each of the frames detonated simultaneously upon receipt of the electrical firing command. Each one sent a tiny jet of white-hot explosive gas upward into the aluminum. The result was quite similar to an instantaneous rupture of the cabin floor in perfect squared sections, as if a blowtorch had cut symmetrically identical openings to the hold below. A millisecond after the first detonation a second row of charges, aligned inward of the cutting charges, fired. These were pure blast, and they worked perfectly. Each panel of ruptured aluminum, along with the insulation and carpeting, was blown upward. A slight increase on the blast charges at the center of the frames tilted the panels as they were blown clear, sending them to one side in addition to upward.
The door was now open.
Hendrickson’s hand was already moving upward to the overhead panel when the shudder hit the cockpit. There was an accompanying pop, like distant firecrackers, and the lights on the flight deck dimmed for just a second. His finger found the safety latch and the switch in one quick flick.
“Wha—” Hadad’s hasty word was cut off.
The claxonlike buzzer was very loud, and red and amber lights started flashing all over the panel in front of and over the pilots.
“Blowout! We have emergency depressurization!” Buzz feigned worry, grabbing onto a harmless small lever overhead and working it back and forth furiously.
“On oxygen!” The captain took his mask from the lower left panel and slid it over his face. “What’s wrong? What did we lose?”
“I don’t know!”
Hadad stood. He pointed the Uzi at the pilots and screamed at them for an answer. The noise was too much, he thought. They couldn’t hear him. Or were they ignoring him. He caught the co-pilot as a glance came his way. That wasn’t right. That wasn’t right!
Buzz knew he had been seen. A worried pilot wouldn’t care about some raghead pirate if the plane was going down. The jig was up.
A second later it mattered not at all.
The charges had worked perfectly. Two openings led upward, into the smoky light of the cabin.
Antonelli was through first, just a second ahead of Quimpo. Four troopers below boosted the pair and held them. Once the upper halves of their bodies were through, each leaned toward their respective aisle — Quimpo left and Antonelli right.