Jack Du Brul - Charon's landing

“No. We’re taking a short detour to drop off my prisoner first, and then we’ll go to Valdez.”

Walking back up the road to the waiting helicopter, Kerikov called Ted Mossey at the Alyeska Marine Terminal on another cell phone. The computer genius assured him that the original KGB program was now installed and just needed the activation code to cycle through the system. As soon as Kerikov sent the code into the computer, they would have complete control of the entire eight hundred miles of pipe and the ten pump stations. Once in their control, there would be no way to stop the preprogrammed series of events.

There was no earthly reason for Khalid Al-Khuddari to come awake. His body was so battered and racked with pain that a normal person would have been in a coma for at least twenty-four hours. Yet something had brought him to consciousness, something that cut through the layers of pain and fatigue and drugs and dragged his mind back from the coveted bliss.

He kept his eyes closed, but slowly, too slowly, his other senses began to feed him information. A minute passed before he realized he couldn’t hear the comforting whine of the jet’s engines, nor could he feel any sensation of movement, none of the tiny dips and corrections autopilots must make to keep their charges on an even keel.

Startled, he looked out the window of the aircraft. Expecting to see open skies and the scrolling sand waves of the Sahara Desert, he saw instead terminals and huge maintenance hangars. Across the open vista of the taxi ramp, he saw a long line of gaily colored aircraft parked nose to tail, like elephants performing a circus trick. Dishwater gray clouds clung to the ground, allowing only a few rays of sunlight to strike the earth.

Khalid turned to the passenger next to him, a heavily built woman working furiously at a laptop computer, her hundred-dollar manicured nails tapping a fast-paced tattoo. He could tell that she was trying desperately not to notice that he was awake. Considering the state he must look, he didn’t blame her.

“I’m sorry, but I fell asleep just after boarding. Why are we still on the ground?” he asked solicitously, forcing out his best upper-class British accent.

She turned to him with distaste and sighed heavily. When she spoke, she did so as if each word cost her personally, as if she’d been given only a finite amount of them and didn’t want to waste a single one on him. “As I understand it, we are being held hostage.”

She affected the studied nonchalance of a woman who thought that to make it in a man’s world she must suppress herself to the point of becoming an automaton.

“What?” Khalid’s heart flopped in his chest.

The woman saved the file she was working on and turned to him, speaking slowly, as if to an idiot. “Terrorists have seized Heathrow and ordered that aircraft not be allowed to take off or land. Otherwise they will set off the bombs they have planted, supposedly on some of the aircraft as well as within the terminal.” She spoke with an eerie, unnatural calm. Khalid found it hard to believe what he was hearing.

“At first, the pilots tried to tell us that it was some mechanical problem with the radar,” she continued. “But after I noticed that planes were still landing for the next hour, I knew it wasn’t true. I pointed this out to the stewardess, and after a couple of exchanges between me and the pilot — a dreadful man, I must add — he told the passengers what had actually happened. A bomb had gone off in Terminal 4, killing two people. So far, security has yet to turn up any more explosives.

“I believe that this is a hoax.” Once the woman decided to talk, there was no stopping her. “It’s surely some lunatic, a foreigner no doubt, trying to ride the coattails of the attack at the British Museum last night. As Melville said in Moby Dick , ‘Madmen beget madmen.’ One terrorist attacks and suddenly everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon. I suppose after Lockerbie, officials must take every precaution, no matter how inconvenient.”

Khalid was appalled by the woman’s callousness. Two people were dead, and she was bothered by the inconvenience of the situation. He would never understand Westerners, and for that he was grateful. Looking at his watch and trying to remember what time his plane was supposed to take off, he realized that he didn’t know how long they had been stuck on the ground. He asked the woman.

“Four hours now,” she complained after looking at the slim diamond-encrusted watch she wore.

Khalid’s mind began to come around, letting him think clearly, at least for a little while. The pain in his back and shoulders was no more than a dull ache that he could almost ignore. He caught the attention of a nearby flight attendant. “Is there a reason why we haven’t been allowed to deplane?”

“I’m sorry, sir. This is part of the terrorists’ demands. None of the planes on the taxiways are allowed to move. A second communique from them came shortly after the first one. They said that if any aircraft attempted to move or let off the passengers, they would detonate all the bombs simultaneously. They claimed to have the airport under observation. I’m very sorry for this, Minister Khuddari. I’ve heard what you’ve been through. Is there anything I can do for you? I’m afraid that I don’t have anything stronger than Midol, but maybe you’d like a drink?”

“Nothing right now, thank you,” Khalid demurred quickly.

For the first time in his life, he was tempted to break the dictates of the Koran and have liquor. It wasn’t to dull his pain but to deaden the realization that Rufti was going to win.

Khalid realized that fat bastard must have known that he was trying to get back to the United Arab Emirates, probably had him tailed from the hospital. He didn’t even want to consider the consequences if Rufti knew that Trevor and Millicent Gray had helped him. Both were in grave danger. Considering the four hours he’d been asleep, it was probably too late to help them.

Khalid thrust aside his concern for the lovers and considered what was really at stake. Rufti was surely well on his way back to the UAE. Once there, he would immediately start his plan to overthrow the government. The Crown Prince was vulnerable right now, trapped between appeasement of the United States and the militancy of more reactionary forces within the Gulf, old enemies made newly volatile by the shifting world oil situation.

Rufti could take the Emirates so easily that the coup would certainly be called “bloodless” by the international media. And then, Iran and Iraq would advance, and the Gulf would fall under a tight dictatorship. Using oil as an economic weapon, the conspirators would bring Europe, Asia, and America to their knees in a matter of weeks.

“I need a phone.” Khalid didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud until the woman next to him looked at him strangely.

He called the stewardess again and explained that he needed to make an important call. She said emphatically that no phones could be used while the aircraft was on the ground. The authorities feared that any outside electronic interference, such as a radio or a cellular phone, might detonate the explosives.

“There are no more explosives, I assure you. I must have a phone, now.”

Again she shook her head and turned away.

“Then let me talk to the captain,” he demanded harshly. With more stability than he thought he possessed, he pushed himself from his seat and faced the young attendant.

“I’m sorry, Minister, but that isn’t possible, either,” she replied as strongly as she could in the face of Khalid’s insistence.

“Now, goddamn it!” he shouted. She backed away silently as Khalid moved into the aisle, his feet thudding against the deck like Frankenstein’s monster. The stiffness of his wounds had robbed him of nearly all coordination.