Nelson Demille - The Lion's Game

Koenig said, "I didn't think runways were assigned until the flight was close to the airport."

Jim replied, "Correct, but the pilots generally know what runways are being used. The pre-programming is not meant to take the place of a pilot landing by hand and by radio instructions. It's just a procedural backup. The pilot I talked to tells me that it makes their onboard computer calculations more accurate en route." He added, "And as it turned out, Runway Four-Right-the pre-programmed runway-was still being used yesterday at Flight One-Seven-Five's arrival time."

Amazing, I thought. Absolutely amazing. I need a computer like that for my car so I can sleep behind the wheel.

Jim continued, "I'll tell you what else the perpetrators knew about. They knew the Emergency Service procedure at JFK. It's pretty much the same at all American airports. The procedures at JFK are more sophisticated than at a lot of airports, but this is not top secret stuff. Articles have been written about Guns and Hoses, and manuals are available. None of this is hard to come by. Only the hijack security area is not well known, but it's not top secret either."

I think Jim and Jane needed a break from me, and when Jim finished, Jane said, "Take a fifteen-minute break. Rest rooms and coffee bar at the end of the corridor."

We all got up and left quickly, before they changed their minds.

Ted, Kate, Jack, and I chatted awhile, and I discovered that Jim and Jane were actually named Scott and Lisa. But to me, they would always be Jim and Jane. Everyone here was Jane and Jim, except Bob, Bill, and Jean. And they all wore blue, and they played squash in the basement, and jogged along the Potomac, and had houses in suburban Virginia, and went to church on Sundays, except when the turds hit the turbines, like today. The married ones had kids, and the kids were terrific, and they sold candy bars to raise money for soccer equipment, and so forth.

On one level, you had to like these people. I mean, they did represent the ideal, or at least the American ideal as they saw it. The agents were good at their jobs, they had a worldwide reputation for honesty, sobriety, loyalty, and intelligence. So what if most of them were lawyers? Jack Koenig, for instance, was a good guy who just happened to have the misfortune of being a lawyer. Kate, too, was all right for a lawyer. I liked her lipstick today. Sort of a pale, frosty pink.

Anyway, so maybe I was a little envious of family- and church-oriented people. Somewhere in the back of my mind was a house with a white picket fence, a loving wife, two kids and a dog, and a nine-to-five job where no one wanted to kill me.

I thought again of Beth Penrose out on Long Island. I thought of the weekend house she'd bought on the North Fork, near the sea and the vineyards. I wasn't feeling particularly well today, and the reasons why were too scary to contemplate.

Asad Khalil looked at his fuel gauge, which read one-quarter full. His dashboard clock said 2:13 P.M. He had traveled nearly 300 miles since Washington, and he noted that this powerful automobile used more fuel than any vehicle he had driven in Europe or Libya.

He was neither hungry nor thirsty, or perhaps he was, but he knew how to suppress these feelings. His training had conditioned him to go for long periods without food, sleep, or water. Thirst was the most difficult need to ignore, but he had once gone six days in the desert without water and without becoming delirious, so he knew what his mind and body were capable of.

A white convertible automobile came abreast of him in the left lane, and he saw in the automobile four young women. They were laughing and talking, and Khalil noted that they were all light-haired though their skin was brown from the sun. Three of them wore T-shirts, but the fourth, in the rear closest to him, wore only the top of a pink bathing suit. He had once seen a beach in the south of France where the women wore no tops at all, and their bare breasts were exposed for the world to see.

In Libya, this would have gotten them a whipping and perhaps several years in jail. He couldn't say precisely what the punishment would be because such a thing had never happened.

The girl with the pink top looked at him, smiled and waved. The other girls looked, too, waved and laughed.

Khalil accelerated.

They accelerated with him and kept abreast of him. He noted that he was traveling at 76 miles per hour. He eased off the accelerator and his speed dropped back to 65. They did the same and kept waving at him. One of them shouted something to him, but he could not hear her.

Khalil didn't know what to do. He felt, for the first time since he'd landed, that he was not in control of the situation. He let off on the accelerator again, and they did the same.

He considered getting off at the next exit, but they might follow. He accelerated, and they kept up with him, still laughing and waving.

He knew he was or would soon be attracting attention, and he felt sweat forming on his brow.

Suddenly, a police car with two men in it appeared in his sideview mirror, and Khalil realized he was traveling at 80 miles per hour and the car with the women was still right beside him. "Filthy whores!"

The police car veered into the outside lane behind the convertible and the convertible sped up. Khalil let off the accelerator and the police car drew up beside him. He put his right hand in his jacket pocket and wrapped his fingers around the butt of the Glock, keeping his head and eyes straight ahead on the road.

The police car passed him, then moved into his lane without signaling, and accelerated up to the convertible. Khalil eased off more on the accelerator and watched. The driver of the police car seemed to be speaking to the young women in the convertible. They all waved and the police car sped off.

The convertible was a hundred meters in front of him now, and its occupants seemed to have lost interest in him. He maintained a speed of 65 miles per hour, and the distance between the two cars widened. The police car, he noticed, had disappeared over a rise in the road.

Khalil took a deep breath. He thought about the incident, but only vaguely comprehended it.

He recalled something Boris had told him. "My friend, many American women will find you handsome. American women will not be as openly and honestly sexual as European women, but they may try to strike up an acquaintance. They think they can be friendly to a man without being provocative and without calling attention to the obvious differences between the sexes. In Russia, as in Europe, we find this idiotic. Why would you want to speak to a woman if not for sex? But in America, especially with the younger women, they will talk to you, even make sexual talk, drink with you, dance with you, even invite you to their homes, but will then tell you that they will not have sex with you."

Khalil found this difficult to believe. In any case, he'd told Boris, "I will have nothing to do with women while I'm on my mission."

Boris had laughed at him and said, "My good Muslim friend, sex is part of the mission. You may as well have some fun while you're risking your life. Surely, you have seen James Bond movies."

Khalil had not, and told the Russian, "Perhaps if the KGB had paid more attention to the mission and less attention to women, there would still be a KGB."

The Russian had not liked this reply, but told Khalil, "In any event, women can be a distraction. And even if you do not look for them, they may find you. You must learn to handle such situations."

"I have no intention of getting into such situations. My time in America is limited, and so are my occasions to speak to Americans."

"Still, things happen." Khalil nodded to himself. Such a situation just occurred, and he had not handled it well.