The only thing the Task Force team could do now was wait in the hangar for further developments.
TWA 847 landed once again in Algeria early Saturday morning, and they would remain there this time for just over twenty-four hours. During the just-completed Beirut to Algiers leg of the 847 odyssey, the hijackers had systematically robbed everyone else on the plane.
Soon after the aircraft landed, the hijackers made another demand. They wanted the Greek government to release Ali Atwa, their accomplice who had been arrested at the Athens airport the day before. If he was not released, the hijackers promised, they would kill the plane's Greek passengers. If he was, the Greek passengers would be freed. The Greeks caved in, and that afternoon, an Olympic Airways jet took off from Athens bound for Algeria with Ali Atwa on board.
The Algerians, however, managed to use the release of Atwa to extract a few more concessions from the terrorists, who agreed to free everyone on the plane except the American male passengers and crew. According to Michael Newlin, the Algerians negotiated a brilliant deal. "They were absolutely superb," he said. "They made the terrorists pay for everything."
What the terrorists "paid for" was not obvious to Stiner. The terrorists had been in total control all along — and still were.
Newlin later recalled that when he left the airport early Sunday morning, he was certain that the Algerians and the International Committee of the Red Cross would resolve the crisis without further bloodshed. Armed with that conviction, he went to sleep.
A few hours later, an Embassy officer called him: The hijackers were again demanding fuel.
Newlin then called the Secretary General of the Algerian Presidency, the Algerian executive's chief administrative officer, and reiterated the American position: "Everything possible should be done to keep the plane on the ground," he told him, "even if it means shooting out the tires."
Moments later, the Embassy officer reported to Newlin that TWA 847 was taking off. Newlin again got on the phone with the Secretary General.
"We had to let them go," the Algerian told him. "The hijackers threatened to blow up the plane." Later, the Algerians offered a second excuse: "The hijackers undoubtedly heard radio reports that U.S. Special Forces were on the way," they explained.
That statement was disingenuous. Whether or not the hijackers had heard such reports (most of which were, as it happened, inaccurate), their actions had proved they were worried about a rescue attempt from the very start. They didn't need a news report to tell them that they'd been on the ground too long in Algeria.
In the meantime, the U.S. government had failed to gain Algerian approval of a rescue operation, but even if they had gotten it, the situation had become agonizingly complex. Unlike the first time TWA 847 had landed in Algeria, the terrorists were clearly in control. Not only had their numbers grown, but they'd unloaded a total of thirty-one hostages in Beirut, at least nineteen of whom had been disbursed among the heavily armed militias holed up in the labyrinthine southern suburbs of Beirut. It was now impossible to rescue all the hostages in a single attempt.
TWA 847 took off for Beirut shortly after 8:00 A.M., after spending more than twenty-five hours on the ground in Algeria. A half hour later, an Air Alger plane arrived from Marseilles, carrying David Long and five members of his emergency support team, too late to affect the outcome of the TWA 847 hijack drama. TWA 847 was gone from Algiers forever.
Meanwhile, as TWA 847 was winging once again toward Beirut, Captain Testrake managed to listen in as the terrorists were making further plans. Their new idea was to take on more fuel in Beirut, then move on (he thought) to Tehran. That was definitely not what Testrake wanted. Once they landed in Beirut this time, he decided, he would see to it that they did not take off again. Testrake and Zimmerman, the flight engineer, then worked out a plan of their own, and when the plane touched down in Beirut, Zimmerman shut off the fuel valve and switched off the electrical power to one of the engines. Lights began flashing like mad on the instrument panel.
"TWA 847 can't go anywhere," Testrake explained to Mugniyah, "until a new engine can be brought in from the States."
It was now Sunday afternoon in Beirut, Sunday morning in Washington.
By this time, Carl Stiner had reached the conclusion that the two Combat Talons and the TWA 727 were no longer useful, and with Pentagon approval, released them. IIe then loaded up the rest of the force and headed to Cyprus, where he was later joined by David Long and his emergency support team. Stiner still had sufficient capability to conduct a rescue operation — and he still hoped that as this thing played out, an opportunity might present itself.
This was going to be far from casy. Beirut was a much tougher nut to crack than Algeria. Thirty passengers remained on the plane. Their location, at least, was known, but the nineteen taken off the plane earlier were almost impossible to locate. The armed militias that controlled south Beirut were now holding them in separate locations there (mostly in basements).
They might as well have been at the bottom of the sea.
Reliable intelligence information was scarce in Beirut in those days: U.S. national overhead systems (satellites) could not, for example, intercept militia communications, since they communicated by handheld, low-level frequency radios or by messenger. Far worse, the American intelligence network had been tragically blown after the recent kidnapping and torture of the CIA station chief, William Buckley. The U.S. had no choice but to assume that Buckley had revealed his network of agents and that they had all been "neutralized."
As soon as Stiner reached Cyprus, he called Reggie Bartholomew, the American ambassador in Lebanon, brought him up to date, and asked how JSOTF could help.
Though the two men had not seen each other in over a year, they knew each other well, having been together in 1983 and carly 1984 when the heaviest fighting had taken place in Beirut. The two men had been on the receiving end of many shellings and had met many times with the factional leaders now holding at least nineteen of the TWA 847 hostages. These experiences had built up considerable mutual respect.
"What I'd like you to do," Bartholomew told Stiner, "is fly over here with a couple of your people and a couple of people from the EST. Once you're in Beirut, we'll decide the best course of action. Then you can go back to Cypress and set things up."
Stiner immediately loaded Lieutenant Colonel "Pete," the two ranking members of the EST team (one from the State Department and one from the CIA), and a SATCOM radio and its operators onto a helicopter and set off for Beirut. TWA 847 was clearly visible on the Beirut International Airport tarmac as they made their final approach to the landing pad near the Ambassador's residence.
Bartholomew's first priority, not surprisingly, was to keep TWA 847 under surveillance.
"We have a superb surveillance capability with us," Stiner told him. "As soon as I get back to Cyprus, I'll send it to you."
Meanwhile, the rest of the team Stiner had brought with him from Cyprus, including the SATCOM and operators, stayed in Beirut with the Ambassador, so there'd be constant communication.
The surveillance team Stiner sent back to Ambassador Bartholomew consisted of four people, bringing with them day and night long-range surveillance capability. An hour after their arrival in Beirut, he had them positioned in a house on a ridge overlooking Beirut International Airport.