He had maybe five to fifteen minutes; it all depended on what reading from the Quran they used. A voice began reciting over the hanger speaker — good — it was a long verse, about fifteen minutes then. Slipping through the door, Slade slunk through the equipment, vehicles and sundry things to the aircraft. Sneaking up the airstairs was out of the question. The captain and his guards were at the foot of the stairs and there were literally dozens of jihadists crowded around him.
He headed to the forward cargo pit. With every jihadist facing the other way he climbed the loader and slunk into the cargo pit.
Slade made his way further forward. There, just as on the Airbus tour in Paris, was an access hatch to the electronics and equipment bay beneath the flight deck. He opened the hatch and crawled into the darkness. He went to the ladder with the intention of getting onto the passenger deck and hiding there but the prayer ended.
Shouting resumed and the loaders were turned back on. Boots thumped on the deck above his head. He was stuck, but at least Slade was on the aircraft. Half an hour later the aircraft was towed out of the hanger and the engines started. Soon the huge jet lifted off with Slade on board as well as three tons of highly enriched Uranium, and twenty-five tons of TNT.
He waited for the gear and the flaps to come up. Slade wanted to capture the aircraft while the pilot was busy climbing out, but he wanted a little altitude above the ground. If it involved a fight he wanted time to recover the aircraft before it crashed. Unlike the jihadists Slade had no intention of being a martyr unless there was absolutely positively no recourse.
He firmly believed in Patton’s doctrine of making the other dumb bastard die for his country. The jihadists wanted to die; Slade was more than willing to help them along.
After five minutes, he climbed the ladder to the lower deck. He’d done this in Paris. There wasn’t any trick to it, other than making sure no one saw him climb up out of the floor.
Slade was careful, cognizant that unlike the other jumbo aircraft in the sky, the Boeing 747, the cockpit was adjacent to the lower deck instead of on the upper deck. He knew the layout for the A380. Besides being incredibly ugly it had a galley between the E&E deck and the cockpit.
Atop the short ladder, Slade reached up and took hold of the flush mounted lever, rotating it counterclockwise. That released the latch and he lifted up the hatch just a few inches. Bracing his shoulder against the hatch, holding his P90 with the other hand left Slade balanced precariously on the ladder.
That was coincident with the A380’s climb over the Titiwangsa Mountains, and the turbulence always present at the knees of those hills. The roiling mass of rough air shook the huge aircraft like a leaf, propelling Slade off the ladder and back onto the metal floor of the E&E compartment. That was all he remembered.
CHAPTER 40: Descent Into darkness
“General, it’s not here!” Killer told Mertzl, nearly shouting with frustration. He was standing in an empty hanger at Soekarno International Airport in Jakarta. His team and a company of marines from the Enterprise had gone over the hanger with military thoroughness. They found that jihadists had been there with what they could only assume to be the hijacked A380 but they were long gone.
“We’ve interviewed Soekarno’s people. They’re confirming what we feared. The jihadists pulled hundreds of bodies off the A380 and dumped them in the ocean. The jet was here, but it’s been gone for a week.”
“Where the Hell is Slade?” Mertzl snapped. “He was with the Uranium — right?”
“We lost contact with him somewhere around Sumatra,” he explained. “He thought he was heading to Jakarta. Obviously he was wrong.”
“Well damn it, where could he be? That Skycrane doesn’t have the speed or range to get much farther than Jakarta.”
“He’s probably on one of the thousands of islands around here,” Killer sighed.
“That can’t be where that airplane is. The A380 was obviously in Jakarta, the ship was heading to Jakarta — there has to be a connection.”
“General, we know they want the Uranium for dirty bombs, but an A380 isn’t a very good way to disperse it. Why not just ship it out in parcels on smaller airplanes. Unless—”
“Sweet Mother Mary three tons of Uranium in the A380!” the general finished. “The A380 is the dirty bomb! Where? We need to know where!”
“The Skycrane was part of the Iranian plan all along, probably as a backup,” Killer guessed. “They probably bugged out when Slade became a problem on the freighter. It has to be close general.”
“If they are going to mate the airplane and the Uranium then they have to be somewhere that thing can land. There just aren’t that any airports that can handle an A380.”
Killer took out his chart, marking the spot where the chopper escaped the Galaxus. “They could get to Jakarta, we know that.” He drew an imaginary circle around the escape coordinates with the radius being the distance to Jakarta.
Together they answered their own question: “Singapore!”
The general swore again. “We sent our Singapore assets to Jakarta! Turn it around! Get everyone to Changi International Airport, Singapore! I’ll get on the horn with the Enterprise and see if they can scramble some F-18’s up there! Go!”
“We’re on our way!” Killer replied, already yelling for his men to get back to their planes.
Sweat beaded on Abdullereda’s forehead as the hijacked Airbus A380 reached the Top of Descent point. This was it; all of the training over the past few weeks, really all of his aviation career culminated in this moment. All of Abdulleraeda’s life came into focus at this time. As he turned off the transponder and disconnected the autopilot he saw two things: the pride of his family that their ne’er-do-well father would wash his sins away by becoming a martyr, and that his peers, who tormented him as an adolescent would finally envy him.
The lights of Tel-Aviv rotated up into the forward windscreen. The rush of air buffeting the windows made normal conversation in the cockpit impossible.
“Allahu Akbar!” Abdullereda shouted as the adrenaline rushed into his head.
There was the capital of the Little Satan. The Jews would get their just deserts! Their government would crumble. The promise of the Arabs finally recapturing Al Quds and driving the Zionists into the sea would be realized!
The rumbling of the slipstream grew louder. The airspeed clacker sounded, meaning they were now exceeding the maximum airspeed of the aircraft. He eased the power back; Abdullereda didn’t want the aircraft to break up and veer off course. He wanted to bury it in the Knesset! Over the radio the Israeli controllers were shouting at him, vectoring fighters their way.
Abdullereda kept the dive going. No one could catch them now. Even a Surface to Air missile — even the American Patriot couldn’t hit them now; and even if it did it wouldn’t matter. Their momentum would take the radioactive debris field directly over the city. The lights of Tel Aviv grew brighter, larger, closer, “Die Zionists — die!
So excited was Abdullereda that he didn’t hear his copilot shouting at him, not that he could hear anyway! What did it matter? They were hurtling earthward doing Allah’s work! It wasn’t until Zafar clutched his arm that Abdullereda paid attention to him. He looked to the sweating face of the co-terrorist. Zafar was yelling but Abdullereda couldn’t understand him over the roar. The man’s face was straining, sweating; his large white teeth stood out against the dark slick skin and black stubble.
“Use your microphone!” Abdullereda demanded, keying his mike and shouting into it. These half trained terrorists didn’t even know the basics of the cockpit. Of what worth were they, joining in the honor of martyrdom but adding nothing to the operation!