Warren Murphy: Terror Squad

As usual, the airport traffic was insufferable, but that was America and there were some things even training couldn't overcome. Unless, of course, he wanted to run over car roofs to get to the airport. He watched the sun set bloody red through its filter of pollution and knew that somewhere above him an airplane was heading for Los Angeles Airport with terrified people on board, being held as hostages by the hijackers. To some people it was a moment of terror. To the professional, it was only a link in a chain, and Remo was a professional. him assignment was to jump the line to the top. That meant, move into the terrorists' system and kill his way to the top, destroying the system. And his way into the system might be circling the airport at this very moment.

Remo honked the horn of the Rolls, a clear, resonant sound that did absolutely nothing to the clog of cars except instigate more horn honking. America. Remo wasn't sure sometimes why Smith was so gung ho to save it. What was even more puzzling was Smith's current strange excitement about the terrorists, even to the point of babbling on an open line. If they were as much a danger as Smith obviously thought, then it was even more important that CURE be careful. More reason to be calm. But then, something had felt wrong with this terrorist business right from the beginning.

CHAPTER THREE

FBI agent Donald Peterson was worried. He was harassed, tormented and worried. Now someone who claimed official connections had talked his way through the local police, airport police, and FBI cordon, and wanted to see him. All this, while a planeload of passengers was speeding toward the airport under control of machine-gun-wielding members of the Black Liberation Front.

It was not bad enough that the reporters and the television cameramen had to be kept at bay or that the legions of the curious were growing and threatening to almost guarantee casualties if shooting broke out. But some man without any identification was tagging at Peterson's sleeve and the guards seemed unable to budge him. Three guards, one man, and he stood right in the control tower as if his feet were cemented to the floor-and he had the awesome nerve to tell agent Peterson to phone him own headquarters.

"Mister," said Peterson, spinning angrily around, "you get out of this control tower right now or you're under arrest for obstructing justice."

"And you'll be stationed in Anchorage," answered the man coldly. "That plane was rerouted to this airport so that I, personally, could go on board and deliver the ransom."

Well, didn't that beat it all? That was the capper. Peterson had been called suddenly from Chicago to take command of the airport in a Situation Blue-hijacking, political-and now this stranger knew more about it than he did. Peterson was sure of that. The airplane actually had no business in Los Angeles. It had been an East Coast flight and there had been dozens of airports where it could have landed.

So just before starting from Chicago, he had asked headquarters why Los Angeles had been chosen as the payoff site, and indeed, why they were paying off at all when the latest national policy was not to pay off. "I thought the policy was to hang tough," Peterson had told his superior's telephone voice.

"The policy is for you to go to the airport. The money will be ready there."

Orders, as always, had been orders. A military fighter had sped Peterson to L.A. and as soon as he had started setting up his men and arranging the airport for emergency action, the crowds began to form. The reporters, with that special news sense, began breaking police lines and before he knew it, the radio was announcing that the plane was headed for Los Angeles.

"Call headquarters," said the man without identification.

Peterson looked at the man, estimating him. him eyes were cold and still, with a strange, vague Oriental quality, a deadly coldness Peterson had seen only once, long before, when he had witnessed an execution in Korea. But this man was white.

"What's your name?" Peterson asked.

"Remo."

"Mr. Remo, who are you with and what's your business here?"

"Remo's my first name and you have instructions concerning me. I'm sorry they haven't gotten through yet."

"All right," said Peterson. "I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to phone my headquarters. And if there is no instruction concerning you, you are under arrest. And if you resist arrest, I'm going to shoot you dead."

"Make the phone call. And when you're through, get those snipers out of the hangar entrance. They're too obvious. They may get someone killed and I don't want any stray bullets flying. I don't like sloppiness."

The snipers were four hundred yards away and hidden by tarpaulin. Remo had seen the tarpaulin flap but in a direction against the wind. He saw the surprise on Peterson's face that anyone had noticed his concealed snipers from such a distance.

Peterson signalled for a telephone. He stood before the banks of darkened radar screens and dialled, looking at Remo, then glancing down at the screen on the far left. He was a handsome man, with a strong, black face that was now taut with frustration.

"That our blip?" asked Remo.

Peterson refused to answer.

Remo felt a guard tighten his grip on a bicep. While looking at Peterson, Remo expanded the muscle, filling it with constant pressure as he had been taught, then suddenly, like a balloon being punctured, releasing the pressure. He didn't look at the guard but he felt the hand searching around warily for the muscle, and for a few moments as he watched Peterson's face tighten, he played hide and seek with the guard, weaving the bicep full, then relaxing it, then expanding the tricep, then contracting it, so the guard felt as if he had a sleeveful of hard hamsters in his grip.

"Are you sure?" said Peterson into the phone. "Would you repeat that? Yes. Yes. Yes. But with what department... ? Yes, sir." Peterson hung up the phone and sighed. He turned to Remo.

"All right. Do you have any suggestions? Or orders?"

The guards, knowing whence power flowed, released their hold on Remo.

"No," Remo said. "Nothing much. Keep everyone out of the way. Give me the money in sacks and I'll go on board and talk to the hijackers."

"But how about the passengers? We should negotiate for their release."

"Worry, worry, worry. Why are you worried?" Remo said.

"A lot of people could get killed," said Peterson angrily.

"So," said Remo.

"That would be a disaster," said Peterson. "If a lot of people get killed. That is a bad thing. That is a very bad thing whether you know it or not."

"Could be worse," said Remo.

"Yeah? How?"

"We could be incompetent, that's worse. You have no control over fate, but you do have control over your competence."

"Jeezus. They really send them all to me," growled Peterson, shaking his head.

Peterson was instructed to get all snipers away from the runways. Remo, the money and Peterson would wait at the end of the runway the hijacked plane was to land on. Remo would deliver the cash. It was waiting for them in two white canvas sacks in the back of an armoured car.

"Did you want to keep the incident from the press for the time being?" Remo asked.

Peterson nodded.

"Having an armoured car come to the airport isn't the way to do it."

"So that's how the newsboys found out. Well, we'll know better next time."

"You planning on institutionalizing hijacking?" Remo said.

As they waited on the runway, Peterson and Remo in a closed car with the two sacks on the hood of the car so the hijackers could see it from the plane windows, Peterson outlined the problems.

"This is no ordinary group of hijackers. We don't know their destination yet And, get a load of this, they have a .50 calibre machine gun aboard. We believe it is mounted at the entrance to the cockpit, controlling the seats. A .50 calibre machine gun."