He was looking for other things, though. He was certain the third attack was going to be airborne. It was the best way to kill the most people with VX. So while he wasn’t watching the sky, he was looking for people who were. People in Disney didn’t spend a lot of time looking up; they were looking at the rides, at the shops, at maps. Anybody who was occasionally glancing at the sky was a potential terrorist. And if he found a guy with a canister in his backpack who had been looking at the sky, well…
So far, though, no joy. He’d walked down Main Street, turned through Future Land and headed back on the loop through Fantasyland and up through Adventureland. In all that walking he hadn’t seen anyone who really twigged his jitter meter. There were a fair number of Muslim-looking people, including women in dhimmie scarves and men with the shuffle. But all of them were accompanied by kids. While it was conceivable that a terrorist would use kids for cover, so far none of the ones they’d taken down had been so accompanied.
Pity that Orange County had collected the one terrorist they’d found. He could have gotten everything they needed out of the guy. So far, Orange County was getting nada. But he was pretty sure there was at least one that had gotten through. And he was going to find him.
Jamal sipped a cup of Coke in the Main Street Café, trying to look inconspicuous. He’d picked up enough of the conversation around him to know that most of the rest of the team had been taken down at security.
He glanced at his watch, knowing that it made him slightly conspicuous, and wished the time would go faster. Another forty minutes.
Farzad checked the connections again then nodded at the two fedayeen at the pumps. They turned on the pumps and started filling the converted Piper Cub.
Farzad had chosen the plane because it was ground transportable. It had been purchased in North Florida and driven to the industrial building near Eva where it had been parked for the last week. The doors of the building were large enough that the wings would clear when they were rolled up and there was a straight stretch of little used road in the industrial park. As soon as the plane was filled he could take off. But he was going to wait just a little longer. Everything wasn’t in place, yet.
Joe Pallozzi had been a security guard at the Clearwater Air Park for about three months.
A former deputy sheriff from New York, he had come down to Florida hoping to get a job with either the State Patrol or one of the local departments. But a lot of cops got tired of the winters up north and the waiting list for slots was pretty long. While waiting for something to open up, he pulled down various security gigs working an average of sixty hours a week to keep ahead of the bills. He’d thought that upstate New York had a pretty bad cost of living until he’d moved to Florida. All sorts of people drifted to the Sunshine State expecting every day to be the beach. And a lot of them were young people willing to work for peanuts if they didn’t have to go back to Bumfuck, Missouri. So wages were low unless you had a serious degree, while the cost of living was awful.
So Joe hung out, hoping to get a sheriff’s slot or something, and humping his tail off in security in the meantime.
Despite only being at the airport gig for a few months, he’d come to know the regulars, and their planes, pretty well. He occasionally scagged rides and was half thinking about getting a pilot’s license. A couple of the regulars had even let him take the controls for small bits.
One of them was a judge, a former corporate lawyer, who lived up in Dunnellon. So when Joe saw a crew working around Mr. Morris’ plane he got a little suspicious. He knew it wasn’t up for maintenance any time soon. And sure as hell it wasn’t supposed to be going anywhere. So when the guys pulled the chocks he started trotting towards it.
One of the guys, both of whom were wearing blue coveralls, pulled out a device and opened the door. But it wasn’t keys to the plane, it was a pick gun, a device used by locksmiths and car thieves. The fuckers were stealing Bob’s plane!
“Hey,” he shouted, drawing the lousy .38 he was forced to carry. “Stop!”
The guy still on the ground reached down to the big toolbox they’d carried over and pulled out a Czech Skorpion submachine gun.
Joe realized he was totally fucked as he dropped to one knee. There wasn’t a bit of fucking cover anywhere. He triggered two rounds from the crappy little revolver and was glad to see them hit.
On the other hand, the fucker with the Skorpion had fired at the same time. The last thing Joe Pallozzi saw was the flash from the suppressor.
“Kildar.”
“Go,” Mike said, looking around Adventureland. Families with kids. Teenage girls. Teenage boys watching the teenage girls. Fucking nada. Disney security was starting to clear the road for the afternoon parade and moving through the crowd was getting harder.
“A plane has just been stolen from the Clearwater Air Park in Clearwater, Florida. That is just across the bay from MacDill Air Force Base. The plane is being tracked on radar and is heading for MacDill. SOCOM believes that this is the next attack.”
“Fuck,” Mike snarled, drawing a look from a passing tourist. “What about the CAP?”
“The current combat air patrol is four F-16s, operating out of MacDill. Two were over the Tampa Bay area but are east of the contact and are turning west. The other two were south of Orlando, covering the Orlando area. They are actually closer to the contact, so they have been vectored to intercept.”
Mike had heard the sonic booms in the distance a minute or so ago and filtered them out. Now he wanted to curse again.
“It’s a feint,” Mike said. “Call SOCOM and get the damned CAP turned around. You can’t rig a regular plane in a few minutes to drop this shit. It’s a damned deception plan. Is there an AWACS up?”
“Yes,” Greznya said. “And we’re getting the take from their local screens.”
“Keep an eye out for a liftoff soon,” Mike said. “And make sure that Dragon is aware of the situation. Put all the teams on high alert; we’re going to get hit soon.”
He looked around and blanched. The rides were emptying out as people gathered to pack along the street in anticipation of the parade.
“Oh. My. God.”
“Kildar, what?” Greznya said.
“The parade,” Mike said, stepping under one of the barriers and starting to trot down the road towards Fantasyland. “Call Fisher. Tell him the target is the parade.”
Farzad started the engine of the Piper as soon as the three-man ground crew pushed him clear of the big doors and turned onto the empty stretch of pavement. He had gotten the word that Gibron had gotten into the air. He would soon be a martyr. But they were all martyrs, now. He did not expect to survive the flight.
The Piper nearly didn’t make it into the air but it managed to claw upwards at the end of the road and over the low pines surrounding the industrial park.
The flight time to the Magic Kingdom was only four minutes. It was a good time to pray.
“Kildar,” Greznya said. “A contact has just appeared that is not a cleared aircraft. It took off from just off Florida Highway 33 and is headed for Disney.”