The 747 now sat on ruined tires. It wasn't going anywhere. Remo hadn't wanted the craft to take off while he figured out the best way into the aircraft.
Normally he would have simply gone into the hatch, fast and furious, and taken out anyone who got in his way. But a 747 usually carried about five hundred passengers on its two decks. There was no telling how many hijackers there were or how they were deployed. Even Remo couldn't clean them all out without bullets flying and grenades detonating. The kaffiyehs told him he was dealing with Middle Eastern hijackers. The worst kind. They might be prepared to martyr the entire craft to make some obscure political point.
So Remo opted for a careful approach. The popping tires would make them jumpy, but there was no way around that.
Remo crouched down under a hull wheel assembly. Years ago, when skyjackings became a popular expression of political discontent, Dr. Smith had made Remo sit through a droning lecture about the structural plans of modern aircraft. Bored, Remo made paper airplanes with the briefing papers and sailed them so they nicked Smith's earlobes, alternating right, left, right, left. Smith, although his pinched face tightened, kept on reading from his prepared notes and showing slides on a big screen until Remo had run out of paper. The experience had convinced him that his superior was not normal, and the realization soured Remo's mood for a month.
Remo tried to remember that lecture now. Some aircraft, Smith had told him, could be accessed through the wheel wells if a person had the right tools. Was the 747 one of those?
Remo stared up the wheel well. He couldn't tell by looking. But he started yanking bolts and undoing screws anyway. He got a panel half-loose. Then he carefully pried it free so that it made no noise.
A woman's travel case fell down. Remo caught it and set it aside. Good. That meant the luggage compartment was above him.
Remo slithered up the wheel well, shrinking his ribs so that he passed through the tightest spot easily.
He found himself lying on rows of tagged luggage. Above his head, feet moved softly, erratically.
Placing both sets of fingers against the ceiling, Remo waited until his questing hands picked up the pressure of moving feet. When he made contact, he moved with the feet, keeping them just above him. The feet stopped. Remo sensed a casual shifting of one foot to the other. Nervousness. But not panic. Good. That meant a hijacker and not a passenger.
Remo withdrew one hand and went to work on the plate above his head. He sheared the heads of the bolts with the edges of his free hand. With the other, he balanced the plate in place, elbow locked against the weight of the hijacker.
Carefully he tested the plate. When he dropped his hand, it lowered a millimeter. Not enough for the man standing on it to notice, but enough for Remo to know that the only thing keeping the plate in place was his hand.
Remo set himself. He heard no other footsteps. But that didn't mean there weren't other hijackers nearby. Remo jumped back.
Light spilled into the hold. The plate smashed down. A man in khaki and kaffiyeh tumbled down with it. Remo leapt for the opening. It just happened that Remo's right foot used the man's head for a launch point. His skull shattered under the recoil of Remo's kicking leap.
Remo went straight up. He grabbed the overhead molding and spread his feet so that when he let go, they landed on either side of the missing plate.
"Who the hell are you?" a male passenger gasped. Remo shushed him.
"Part of the replacement crew," he whispered. "The airline's tired of paying this crew's overtime."
"You're kidding," the man said, serious-faced.
"Where's the nearest hijacker?" Remo asked.
"In the john. Back of the plane. I think he has the runs. There's another one in the cockpit."
"Any others?"
"On the upper deck," a woman hissed. "Please be careful. My sister is up there."
"I'll try not to wake her," Remo promised. "Anyone know how many hijackers in all?"
"Six."
"No. Only four."
"I think I counted eight."
"Never mind," Remo said, working his way toward the john. "I'll count them myself."
Remo knocked on the lavatory door.
"What is it?" a voice asked in heavily accented English.
Remo said, "Need to use the john. Could you pick it up in there?"
"Who? Who is that speaking?" the man hissed shrilly.
"Hold it down in there," Remo warned. "Passengers are trying to sleep. Now, are you coming out, or do I come in?"
Remo heard a safety click off and gave the hijacker points for being smart enough not to sit on the john with a primed rifle across his lap.
Remo kicked at the door. It burst inward.The interior of the lavatory was very small. There was no way the door could go in and not catch the man.
Remo put his head in and saw that it had done exactly that.
The door was embedded in the wall behind the toilet. Two legs spilled out from under the door edges. An arm came out around each side. The arms quivered. Remo noticed a lump in the face of the door that roughly corresponded to where the seated man's head should be. He hammered out at the lump with a fist, and the quivering stopped.
On his way out, Remo noticed a wheeled tray of drinks in the rear service area. He got behind it and started pushing it up the aisle.
When he got to the closed door of the cockpit, he stopped and knocked impatiently.
"Refreshments," he called loudly. "Anyone want a drink?"
A long silence came from the cockpit.
Then a man pushed the door open and shoved the muzzle of a Kalashnikov into Remo's stomach. Remo could have avoided the weapon easily. But a rifle pointed at his stomach meant that it was not threatening someone who couldn't defend himself. And Remo could. "Who are you?"
"Don't you recognize me?" Remo asked of the man. Jamil started. His eyes froze like those of a beached fish.
"Impossible," he croaked.
"Nah, just extra-extra clever."
"What do you want?"
"You gonna surrender or what?"
"Or what?"
"That's what I said. Or what?"
"I do not understand."
"And I don't have time to teach you English. Now, what will it be-coffee, tea, or surrender?"
"I will martyr myself before I surrender."
"Fine. Go martyr yourself. Then see if anyone cares."
"I would rather martyr you," said Jamil, who then pressed the trigger on his Kalashnikov, confident that at point-blank range there was no way he could miss the thin man with the dead, dead eyes.
The Kalashnikov did not give out its customary staccato stutter. It sort of went bloosh! The relaxed face of the unarmed American did not change. Jamil frowned. He did not understand. Why didn't the man fall down? He felt a sudden tingling in his hands. And then the tingle turned to a dull pain, and almost as soon as it registered on his brain that his hands were in pain, they seemed to be on fire.
Jamil screamed. He saw that his hands were covered with blood.The whites of his finger bones poked out from the redness of raw exposed flesh. The breech of the rifle was smoking and in ruins.
Then he saw that the muzzle of the Kalashnikov was somehow blocked. It had been crimped, as if by a vise. And just before his eyes rolled up into his head and Jamil lost consciousness, he saw that the white American was rubbing his fingers on the trailing part of Jamil's own kaffiyeh as if to wipe gun grease off them.
Remo stepped over the body.
"You two all right?" he asked the pilot and copilot.
"Yes. Who are you?"
"Next question. And you guys have lost your turn. How many hijackers? I got three."
"Two more."
"They must be upstairs."
"Then we'd better evacuate the plane."