Musaf Atef wondered why Komari should call to the Almighty at such a time. “Commander, what is it?”
“Look, even a fool’s eyes can see who God has delivered to us.”
“I don’t understand.”
“They are Americans.”
“Yes.”
“And the leader of the great Satan is among them.” He yelled to the soldier on the lamp. “There!” The light settled directly on Morgan Taylor.
Next, Komari gave Atef very specific instructions. If he followed them, Atef might redeem himself.
Atef had his men toss nets over to the president’s raft. Komari shouted out in halted English, “Come aboard! Yes, yes, come aboard!”
In the distance, the last of the flames turned to smoke as Air Force One slipped beneath the surface. With the backlight gone, the only illumination on the ocean was from the trawler. It held on the first raft until each of the seventeen men and two women were safely onboard.
Atef gave the soldier aiming a light a slicing motion across his throat. The beam went dark. At the same moment, the engines kicked in and the boat moved away 20 yards, then idled.
“Wait!” shouted one of the American officers. “The others!” He stepped forward. “You can’t leave…”
“Oh?”
A dozen guns were on the people pulled out of the boat. Three Secret Service officers automatically surrounded the president. Taylor dropped back.
“Who the hell are you?”
“Commander Umar Komari, leader of October 12. Right now your superior.”
“Bullshit!” the officer stepped forward. Shots rang out from three guns. He and the two other agents directly behind him were cut down.
Atef screamed another order. The light turned on again. It lit up the closest raft. The gunmen filled it with bullets. When they had done their work there, they turned on the remaining raft. In the course of a minute, both were gone, along with the thirty-one men and women aboard.
The fourteen remaining prisoners stood in silence, hardly believing what they had just witnessed. At that moment, the F-15 swooped overhead, rocking the trawler. Two terrorists fell overboard. Another Secret Service agent pushed the president behind him, thinking for an instant that they could use the jet’s distraction to strike, but the guns were right on them again.
“Atef!”
“Yes, commander.”
“How well have you trained your men?”
He completely understood the question. The lieutenant screamed out to two subordinates who didn’t have military rank yet. They readied their shoulder-fired Stinger. It took another moment to calibrate the targeting. The shooter turned in the direction from which the American plane was likely to come. He brought the missile tube up and prepared to fire. But he was wrong. The F-15 cut across at a perpendicular angle this time. It took a moment to adjust, then he whipped around and fired. The Stinger flamed across the sky in a race to catch up with the Eagle.
The F-15′s defensive systems came alive. An unmistakable alarm alerted Pike. His heads-up display revealed the full picture. Twenty-two seconds to impact. “Under attack!” he radioed out. There was no time to say anything more.
He quickly ran through a set of maneuvers designed to shake and distract the Stinger. He was so low to the deck that he had to confine his defensive flying to lateral moves. There was no down, and up would burn off too much speed. He sharply dodged left, then right, releasing countermeasures at the same time, including a new towed decoy system, dubbed “soap on a rope.” The decoy proved effective over the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanistan. What about the South Pacific at low altitude? Another left turn. A right. A sharper right.
Dweedle dweedle. The sound of the missile alarm. More chaf. Dweedle dweedle. The missile was still on him.
An explosion, about five kilometers away on the horizon, illuminated the sky for the second time that night. Komari’s men cheered.
“You have fallen into the wrong sea,” the commander told his captives in English. “I will decide what to do with you soon. But first, the American president step forward.”
Everyone stood still. The Secret Service agents blocked Morgan Taylor.
“I will only ask one more time. Then the first row will die.” He gave the order for the guns to take aim. “Now.”
The president pushed his protectors aside and walked forward. “I’m Morgan Taylor.”
“And so you are,” Komari observed. “You are a much smaller man than I imagined. Older.”
Taylor did not engage the terrorist.
“Older and weaker, too.”
“I believe that you will not find any of us weak.”
Komari laughed. “Like your supersonic jet? We plucked it from the sky like a kite.”
Don’t be so sure, Taylor thought. Heat from the flares had drawn the Stinger’s sensors. Experience told him the missile had detonated, not the fully armed Eagle. The F-15 was gone, but there were still eyes and ears overhead.
“Are we prisoners of war, commander?” Taylor asked.
“War? I suppose so,” Komari boasted. “Your own well-publicized ‘War on Terror.’”
“Then we shall be afforded proper treatment under the Geneva Accords.”
The terrorist laughed, as Taylor was certain he would. “No, Morgan Taylor. You shall suffer the same fate as the Christian infidels who, for too long, have controlled my country.”
The lunatic plans to attack Jakarta!
“Take them under. Kill anyone who resists.” The instructions were in Bahasa, but the captives understood the threat.
There was another raft.
The fourth inflatable raft, the last to get clear of Air Force One, was out of view when the trawler came upon the others. Secretary of State Norman Poole ordered it to stay back when he heard the yelling and gunshots. Twenty-nine men and women were safely on board. Another eleven clung to the side. They escaped by diving off their rafts when the terrorists fired their rounds.
Poole, the de facto captain, instructed everyone to remain low and quiet. Help would come. The ELT, or emergency locator transmission, should be doing its job. Based on what the survivors of the attack told him, the terrorists knew who they had in hand.
Pike kept his plane on the deck and flew ten miles due west before climbing to 10,000 feet.
“Roger that,” Major Pike radioed to J3. “Assumption is that Top Gun is aboard.” His pictures would confirm that fact when he landed at Andersen Air Force Base on Guam. Command redirected him there after the Stinger launch.
He hoped that his presumed death could buy the president and USAPACOM needed time.
Not such a good reporter, thought the cabbie. He didn’t comment that the man pictured in the license had a moustache. The driver didn’t. He gazed into his rearview mirror. He should have sensed that we never got on the East Side Drive. But he’s sleeping. The cab kept heading north into the Bronx, missing the last exit for the Triboro Bridge. And he failed to notice that the bulletproof glass between the front and back seats was gone. Very foolish. No, he just sleeps.
The taxi continued to drive north, taking turns slowly. The cabbie came to a gradual, almost imperceptible stop in an alley. Why wake him? He reached to his right and quietly put his hand under a copy of The New York Times and raised a 9 mm Glock. The silencer was already attached. Just let him sleep.
He actually wondered what it would be like not to wake; not to know that you had fallen asleep, never to breathe again. No fear. No knowledge. No goodbyes.
Just let him sleep. “Very good.”