McCracken took a heavy swallow of air as the loader neared the red and white jet. He had come to Orly Airport as soon as word of the seizure had reached his small office cubicle — over AM radio, not cipher. Officials had no reason to involve him in such pursuits any longer. And, in fact, Blaine had driven to Orly determined to remain merely an observer, until examination of the runway area and obvious procrastination on the part of officials involved convinced him that asses were being dragged, as usual, and that other asses were going to become chopped meat as a result.
Didn’t they understand what they were dealing with? Didn’t they realize you couldn’t keep playing with terrorists and expect to win? Not these anyway, not Bote and whatever stooges he had brought along this time.
A raid on the plane was the only chance the passengers had to survive. And since the French were too busy picking their nails, McCracken would take it upon himself to do the dirty work. A one-man operation. Much better that way. The terrorists’ request for food had provided his cover.
He might have been able to walk away from the whole episode if it weren’t so clear history was about to repeat itself and innocent lives were going to be lost again. Five years ago in London, authorities had twiddled their fingers while terrorists squeezed triggers with theirs. McCracken wasn’t about to let that happen again. His mistake in London had been to go after a statue’s balls after it was over. He should have gone after the testicles of the damned officials who couldn’t make up their minds in time. Flesh and blood would have made his point better than ceramics.
The galley door opened and Blaine backed the loader into position, then climbed on top of the bay next to the steel casing which held 150 microwave-warmed stuffed-chicken dinners. He pressed a button and the lift began to rise, stopping when it was even with the open galley door. He had started to wheel the cart inside when a hand grasped his hair and yanked him viciously backward. Blaine tumbled to the galley floor and found his eyes locked on the barrel of Bote’s machine gun. The terrorist’s wild hair and beard seemed all one piece. He was grinning malevolently.
Dinner is served, sir, Blaine wanted to say but stopped himself because being too cute would get him thrown off the plane or shot, and either way his plan would be ruined. So he just gazed up, trying to look helpless.
“Ari, search this bastard!” Bote ordered.
A dark-skinned, black-haired boy little more than sixteen loomed overhead and shoved Blaine onto his stomach. Thin hands ruffled his person up and down, satisfied finally he wasn’t carrying a gun.
“He’s clean,” the boy named Ari said, and Bote grabbed Blaine by the collar and yanked him back to his feet.
“You a cop?” Bote asked.
“Yes,” McCracken answered, because that was the way something like this would be done.
“They send you to check us out?”
“No,” Blaine replied. “They’ve already got a hundred pictures of the plane’s inside. I’m here just to fill your request for the food.”
Bote seemed impressed with McCracken’s apparent honesty. “An unfortunate assignment all the same.”
“I volunteered.”
“You know I can’t let you leave the plane.”
Blaine nodded. “I figured as much, but it would be a good gesture on your part if you released a few passengers in my place.”
Bote raised his rifle as if to strike him, features flaring. “I am not interested in gestures. In forty minutes, when your people fail to give in to our demands, I will blow up this plane and everyone in it.” A pause. “That means you, too, now, asshole.”
Blaine stood his ground. “They plan to meet your demands,” he told Bote, again because that was what the man he was pretending to be would have said.
Bote snickered and slammed him against the galley wall, a hand full of sweater tight under his chin. The terrorist was bigger than McCracken had remembered. His body stank of perspiration and his breath reeked.
“You will pay for your lies,” Bote said softly. “You will all pay for your lies. But first you are going to distribute the dinners to our nervous passengers in need of reassurance. Ari will guide you the whole way, and if you make one move that doesn’t look right, he will kill you.” Bote nodded to the boy, who nodded back.
McCracken pulled the food cart inside the jet and then, obeying Bote’s orders, latched the heavy door behind him. He maneuvered the cart forward and swung it gingerly so it was facing the rows and rows of terrified passengers, many of them children. Blaine gazed out and seemed to meet all their stares at once. With Ari holding an Uzi a yard behind the cart, he started to pull it down the right-hand aisle.
Bote remained in the front of the cabin, poised before the movie screen, which was still in position.
Blaine knew that the third terrorist, a woman, was seated somewhere among the passengers, finger ready to press a button that would trigger the explosives. He could see the wires looped across the ceiling and peeking out from the overhead baggage compartments, where the plastique must be stored. The wires strung the explosives together, but the detonator would be transistor-powered; no wires to give the female terrorist’s position away. Determining her location was the centerpiece of McCracken’s plan, though. That a second terrorist would be so close when he acted was a godsend, but nothing mattered if he could not find the woman.
Blaine stopped the cart a bit down the aisle and continued distributing the chicken dinners that had been kept warm within the heated slots. Most of the passengers weren’t hungry but took a plate anyway just to have something to do. McCracken’s eyes strayed always a row or two ahead, seeking out the eyes of all women, in search of the pair belonging to the one holding the detonator. Most of the front rows were occupied by the children from New Jersey, which gave his eyes plenty of opportunity to roam, but the high seat backs blocked him from seeing too far ahead.
In the tenth row a woman smiled and accepted the dinner gratefully. Their eyes met and Blaine felt a gnawing in his stomach. There was something wrong about her. He broke the stare and handed a tray to the man seated next to her. The man’s eyes darted sideways toward the woman, a nervous signal — inadvertent perhaps but nonetheless confirming Blaine’s suspicions. This woman had to be the one he sought.
“Hurry up,” the boy terrorist urged, poking at the steel cart with his rifle. The boy never should have let McCracken position the cart between them, of course, but in this case fortune proved more useful than design.
Blaine reached inside the cart for another tray and let his hand wander deep into the back, where he had taped the Browning pistol. It came free easily and he moved it under a tray he was already maneuvering out with his left hand. The result was to make it appear as if he were holding the tray sandwichlike, with both hands. No reason for either of the terrorists to be suspicious.
He pulled the tray from the cart and started to lower it toward a man sitting two seats away from the female terrorist on the aisle.
As the man waved off the dinner, Blaine fired the Browning twice. The woman’s head snapped back, rupturing, and showered passengers with blood and brains.
A small black transmitter slipped from her lap onto the floor.
The boy terrorist let the shock consume him for just an instant, but an instant was all it took for McCracken to turn the gun on him, the tray that had been covering it flying to the side. He placed two bullets in the young chest before the boy could squeeze the trigger of his Uzi.
He grasped it as he fell and the bullets stitched a jagged design in the jet’s ceiling. Passengers screamed, jostled, collapsed against one another.
“Stay down!” Blaine screamed, but the last part of his warning was drowned out by Bote’s machine gun.