Jack Du Brul - Charon's landing

“Are you sure about this?” She eased the Bentley up to the curb before one of the numerous British Airways doors, tucking neatly behind a motor coach disgorging dozens of poorly dressed people finishing their whirlwind European package tour. “I can take you to a different hospital or maybe to the trauma station here at the airport. I’m sure they have a doctor on duty.”

From his pants’ pocket he pulled a twist of tissue, which he opened to reveal a few capsules. “I’m sure,” he said, swallowing them in a quick movement. “I’ve been saving these, Percodans, I believe. They should see me through.”

“Wait, shouldn’t there be some security people waiting for us here?” she asked.

“That was a bluff on Trevor’s part to get you to cooperate. He wouldn’t have had the time to set up something like that. I have to go now.” Khalid opened the passenger door. “Thank you, Lady Gray. I think very soon you will see the results of your act this morning.”

He stepped from the car, gingerly testing his strength before taking the first tentative steps to the terminal building, oblivious of the throngs jostling around him. Once within the building, he was swallowed by the crowds, invisible, just another face to the thousands of passengers and well-wishers milling and queuing up. His legs trembled and the clothing touching his back and shoulders scalded the multiple wounds even through their thick bandages. If the pills didn’t kick in soon, he would collapse.

It took him a few minutes to secure a seat on the next flight to Abu Dhabi by way of a British Airways flight to Riyadh. He need only produce his passport at the VIP lounge to get his ticket. It was the first time he’d ever used such a diplomatic privilege, and he vowed that he wouldn’t ever make a habit of it — but it was reassuring to know he could.

Trevor had thoughtfully placed a handful of twenty-pound notes in the pants pocket, one of which he used to buy a stout umbrella and a pair of sunglasses. He used the umbrella like a cane so he could keep his weight off the worse of his two legs. While the large glasses didn’t hide all the wounds on his face, they camouflaged a couple of them, and with his hair raked forward, he could almost pass as the victim of a recent auto collision.

At the top of an escalator, just before the security X-ray machines, a young woman in a blue uniform approached him.

“Minister Khuddari, my name is Vivica Smith.” The British Airways hostess smiled brightly. She was young, barely in her twenties, with bobbed blond hair and soft eyes. She checked his passport against the information given to her by the airline’s executive ticketing service. Seeing how he hobbled, Vivica Smith called over one of the airport’s electric carts to carry them to where a Boeing 767 was waiting for its final passenger.

“Thank you for your prompt attention, this is really quite welcome,” Khalid said. The painkillers were finally beginning to take effect, blunting the edges of his sharper wounds. While they trundled down the carpeted hallways, he borrowed Vivica’s cellular phone to call Colonel Wayne Bigelow in Abu Dhabi. The old desert rat wasn’t in his cluttered bachelor’s apartment, but Khalid left word on his answering machine that he would be arriving in a few hours, giving the particulars of the flight and asking Bigelow to pick him up at the airport.

Heavily burdened passengers parted before the cart as they glided past the duty-free shops, countless magazine stands, and elegant boutiques that were the pride of Terminal 4. It took just a few minutes for them to reach Khalid’s gate. Vivica Smith jumped from the cart and swung around a wheelchair that had been left by the gate’s entrance. With a minimum of fuss, he was wheeled to the aircraft and led to his first class seat. To get such a seat on this short notice and to have the plane delayed until he was aboard cost nearly ten times the regular ticket price. Privilege wasn’t cheap.

No longer able to remain awake, Khalid fell into the blissful sleep he’d been fighting as the big jet lumbered away from its hard stand.

The delaying fuse of a Czech-manufactured RGD-5 grenade had been altered from its normal four seconds to a full sixty, making it an ingenious terror weapon for crowded areas where more sophisticated devices could be detected if left for too long. Waiting until the second hand of his watch made the final tick of their schedule, Tariq slurped down the remainder of a container of soft drink, pulled the grenade from his coat pocket, and dropped both items into the trash bin he’d been waiting near for fifteen minutes. Calmly, he meandered back out of the airport and headed toward his car stowed in short-term parking. Even if someone recognized him as the man who’d planted the device, this was his first action outside the Middle East and it was improbable his description would lead the authorities to him.

Fifty-nine-point-eight seconds after the grenade’s handle released, the 120 grams of TNT within its rounded body exploded, embedding the lid of the trash container in the terminal’s ceiling. The concussive force also blew outward, the weapon’s fragmentation liner dicing the weapon’s outer casing into hundreds of tiny shrapnel shards. A nineteen-year-old Norwegian au pair returning home caught the brunt of the blast, larger portions of her dismembered body landing yards from the explosion. Eight other people were wounded by the blast. One of them, a Nigerian priest, would later die in the airport’s medical facility.

Even before panic could ripple through the large building, the phone in the airport administrator’s office rang. Already in a foul mood because of the traffic reroutings caused by the El Al emergency landing at Gatwick, Geoff Wilberforce didn’t want to answer his extension.

“What?” he barked, expecting some spineless air traffic controller at Gatwick.

“At the precise moment your phone rang, an explosive was set off in Terminal Four’s main concourse. The blast was small in comparison to what we have planted throughout the airport, including several of the aircraft waiting clearance to take off.

“If any planes attempt to leave Heathrow after two minutes of the termination of this call, I will detonate the rest of the bombs. The blood of the innocents will be on your hands. I will allow aircraft to land for the next hour, but if any planes attempt to do so after that, I will detonate the remaining explosives. Heathrow Airport is shut down on order of Kurdistan United.”

The caller cut the connection, leaving Wilberforce listening to the steady drone of a dial tone, much like the flat-line sound on a heart monitor. He was just getting to his feet when his secretary burst into his office. She was near tears.

“Geoff, there’s been an explosion.”

The big engines of the British Airways Boeing 767 were still idled to a low whine as the huge craft moved across the taxiways behind a New York-bound jumbo. They were fourth in line for takeoff when suddenly the engines were cut to dramatic silence. The cabin lights dimmed and the air-conditioning units switched to their much weaker internal power.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. I’m afraid there is a mechanical problem here at Heathrow. The main radar unit just died and took the computers with it. We may be stuck here for a little while until they can sort everything out. On behalf of British Airways, I and the rest of the crew apologize for this slight delay, and I will certainly pass on any information as I receive it. In the meantime, I’ve authorized the flight attendants to start a complimentary beverage service. Thank you.”

Khalid Khuddari slept through the entire announcement.