Black Sunday (28 page)

"If the pilot leads you to the rest of them, then that's it," she said.

"If we get the plastic and we can get all of them, yes."

Rachel started to ask another question and bit it off.

"How long can you stay?" Kabakov asked.

"Four or five days. Longer if I can help you. I thought I'd go back to New York and catch up on my practice and then come back on, say, the tenth or the eleventh---if you'd like me to."

"Of course I'd like you to. When this is over, let's really do New Orleans. It looks like a good town."

"Oh, David, you'll see what a town it is."

"One thing. I don't want you to come to the Super Bowl. Come to New Orleans, fine, but I don't want you around that stadium."

"If it's not safe for me, it's not safe for anybody. In that case people should be warned."

"That's what the President told the FBI and the Secret Service. If there
is
a Super Bowl, he's coming."

"It might be canceled?"

"He called in Baker and Biggs and said that if the Super Bowl crowd cannot be adequately protected, himself included, he will cancel the game and announce the reason. Baker told him the FBI could protect it."

"What did the Secret Service say?"

"Biggs doesn't make foolish promises. He's waiting to see what happens with this pilot. He isn't inviting a damned soul to the Super Bowl and neither am I. Promise me you won't come to the stadium."

"All right, David."

He smiled. "Now tell me about New Orleans."

Dinner was splendid. They ate beside the window and Kabakov relaxed for the first time in days. Outside, New Orleans glittered in the great curve of the river, and inside was Rachel, soft beyond the candles, talking about coming to New Orleans as a child with her father and how she had felt like a great lady when her father took her to Antoine's, where a waiter tactfully slipped a pillow onto her chair when he saw her coming.

She and Kabakov planned a mighty dinner at Antoine's for the night of January 12, or whenever his business was concluded. And full of Beaujolais and plans, they were happy together in the big bed. Rachel went to sleep smiling.

She awoke once after midnight and saw Kabakov propped against the headboard. When she stirred he patted her absently, and she knew he was thinking of something else.

__________

The truck carrying the bomb entered New Orleans at 11 P.M. on December 31. The driver followed U.S. 10 past the Superdome to the intersection with U.S. 90; turned south and came to a stop near the Thalia Street wharf beneath the Mississippi River Bridge, an area deserted at that time of night.

"This is the place he said," the man at the wheel told his companion. "I'm damned if I see anybody. The whole wharf is closed."

A voice at his ear startled the driver. "Yes, this is the place," Fasil said, mounting the running board. "Here are the papers. I've signed the receipt." While the driver examined the documents with his flashlight, Fasil inspected the seals on the tailgate of the truck. They were intact.

"Buddy, could you let us have a ride to the airport? There's a late flight to Newark we're trying to catch."

"Sorry, but I can't," Fasil said. "I'll drop you where you can get a taxi."

"Christ Jesus, it'll be ten bucks to the airport."

Fasil did not want a row. He gave the man $10 and dropped the drivers off a block from a cab stand. He smiled and whistled tunelessly between his teeth as he drove toward the garage. He had been smiling all day, ever since the voice on the pay phone at the Monteleone Hotel told him the pilot was coming. His mind was alive with plans, and he had to force himself to concentrate on his driving.

First he must establish complete dominance over this man Awad. Awad must fear and respect him. That Fasil could manage. Then he must give Awad a thorough briefing and include a convincing story on how they would escape after the strike.

Fasil's plan for the strike itself was based largely on what he had learned at the Superdome. The Sikorsky S-58 helicopter that had attracted his attention was a venerable machine, sold as surplus by the West German Army. With its lift capacity of 5,000 pounds, it could not compare with the new Skycranes, but it was more than adequate for Fasil's purpose.

To make a lift requires three persons---the pilot, the "belly-man," and the loadmaster---as Fasil had learned while watching the operation at the Superdome. The pilot hovers over the cargo. He is guided by the belly-man, who lies on the floor back in the fuselage, peering straight down at the cargo and talking to the pilot via a headset.

The loadmaster is on the ground. He attaches the cargo hook to the load. The men in the aircraft cannot close the hook by remote control. It must be done on the ground. In an emergency, the pilot can drop the load instantly by pressing a red button on the control stick. Fasil learned this in conversation with the pilot during a brief break in the lifting. The pilot had been pleasant enough---a black man with clear, wide-set eyes behind his sunglasses. It was possible that this man, introduced to a fellow pilot, might allow Awad to go up with him on a lift. A fine opportunity for Awad to further familiarize himself with the cockpit. Fasil hoped Awad was personable.

On Super Bowl Sunday he would shoot the pilot immediately, and any of the ground crew that got in the way. Awad and Dahlia would man the helicopter, with Fasil on the ground as loadmaster. Dahlia would see to it that the craft was positioned correctly over the stadium and, while Awad still waited for the order to drop the nacelle, she would simply touch it off under the helicopter. Fasil had no doubt that Dahlia would go through with it.

He worried about the red drop button though. It must be rendered inoperative. If Awad, through nervousness, actually dropped the device, the effect would be ruined. It was never designed to be dropped. A lashing on the cargo hook would do it. The hook must be lashed tight at the last second before the lift, when Awad could not see what was going on beneath the helicopter. Fasil could not trust some imported frontfighter to take care of this detail. For this reason, he himself must be the loadmaster.

The risk was acceptable. He would have much more cover than he would have had at Lakefront Airport with the blimp. He would be facing unarmed construction workers rather than airport police. When the big bang came, Fasil intended to be driving toward the city limits, toward Houston and a plane to Mexico City.

Awad would believe to the last that Fasil was waiting for him in a car in Audubon Park beyond the stadium.

Here was the garage, set back from the street just as Dahlia described. Once inside with the door closed, Fasil opened the rear of the truck. All was in order. He tried the engine on the forklift. It started instantly. Well and good. As soon as Awdd arrived and his arrangements were complete, it would be time to call Dahlia, tell her to kill the American and come to New Orleans.

CHAPTER 23

Lander moaned once and moved in the hospital bed. Dahlia Iyad put aside the New Orleans street map she was studying and rose stiffly. Her foot was asleep. She hobbled to the bedside and put her hand on Lander's forehead. The skin was hot. She sponged his temples and cheeks with a cool cloth, and when his breathing settled into a steady wheeze and rattle she returned to her chair under the reading lamp.

A curious change came over Dahlia each time she went to the bedside. Sitting in her chair with the map, thinking about New Orleans, she could look at Lander with the steady, cool gaze of a cat, a look in which there were many possibilities, all determined solely by her need. At his bedside, her face was warm and full of concern. Both expressions were genuine. No man ever had a kinder, deadlier nurse than Dahlia Iyad.

She had slept on a cot in the New Jersey hospital room for four nights. She could not leave him for fear he would rave about the mission. And he had raved, but it was about Vietnam and persons she did not know. And about Margaret. For one entire evening he had repeated, "Jergens, you were right."

She did not know if his mind was gone. She knew she had twelve days until the strike. If she could salvage him, she would do it. If not---well, either way he would die. One way was no worse than the other.

She knew Fasil was in a hurry. But hurrying is dangerous. If Lander was unable to fly and Fasil's alternate arrangements did not suit her, she would eliminate Fasil, she decided. The bomb was too valuable to waste in a hastily contrived operation. It was far more valuable than Fasil. She would never forgive him for trying to get out of the actual operation in New Orleans. His weaseling had not been the result of a failure of nerve, as was the case with the Japanese she shot before the Lod airport strike. It was a result of personal ambition, and that was much worse.

"Try, Michael," she whispered. "Try very hard."

Early on the morning of January 1, federal agents and local police fanned out to the airports that ringed New Orleans---Houma, Thibodaux, Slidell, Hammond, Greater St. Tammany, Gulfport, Stennis International, and Bogalusa. All morning long their reports filtered in. No one had seen Fasil or the woman.

Corley, Kabakov, and Moshevsky worked New Orleans International and New Orleans Lakefront airports with no success. It was a glum drive back toward town. Corley, checking by radio, was told that all reports from Customs at entry points around the country and all reports from Interpol were negative. There had been no sign of the Libyan pilot.

"The bastard could be going anywhere," Coney said as he accelerated onto the expressway.

Kabakov stared out the window in sour silence. Only Moshevsky was unconcerned. Having attended the late-late show at the Hotsy-Totsy Club on Bourbon Street the previous evening instead of retiring, he was asleep on the back seat.

They had turned on Poydras toward the federal building when, like a great bird flushed from hiding, the helicopter rose above the surrounding buildings to hover over the Superdome, a heavy square object slung close under its belly.

"Hey. Hey. Hey, David," Corley said. He leaned over the wheel to look up through the windshield and slammed on his brakes. The car behind them honked angrily and pulled around them on the right, the driver's mouth working behind his window.

Kabakov's heart leaped when he saw the machine, and it was still pounding. He knew it was too early for the strike, he could see now that the object hanging under the big helicopter was a piece of machinery, but the image fit the imprint in his mind too well.

The landing pad was on the east side of the Superdome. Corley parked the car a hundred yards away, beside a stack of girders.

"If Fasil is watching this place, he'd better not recognize you," Corley said. "I'll get us a couple of hardhats." He disappeared into the construction site and returned in minutes with three yellow plastic helmets with goggles.

"Take the field glasses and move up into the dome, where that opening overlooks the pad," Kabakov told Moshevsky. "Keep out of the sunlight and sweep the windows across the street, anywhere high, and the perimeter of the loading area here."

Moshevsky was moving as he spoke the last word.

The ground crew trundled another load onto the pad, and the helicopter, rocking gently, began its descent to pick it up. Kabakov went into the construction shack at the edge of the pad and watched through the window. The loadmaster was shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand and talking into a small radio as Corley approached him.

"Ask the chopper to come down, please," Corley said. He cupped his badge so only the loadmaster could see it. The loadmaster glanced at the badge and then at Corley's face.

"What is it?"

"Would you ask him to come down?''

The loadmaster spoke into the radio and yelled at the ground crew. They rolled the big refrigeration pump off the pad and turned their faces away from the blowing dust as the machine gingerly touched down. The loadmaster made a cutting motion with his hand across his wrist and beckoned. The big rotor slowed and began to droop.

The pilot swung himself out and dropped to the ground in one motion. He wore a Marine flight suit, weathered until it was almost white at the knees and elbows. "What is it, Maginty?"

"This guy wants to talk to you," the loadmaster said.

The pilot looked at Corley's ID. Kabakov could detect no expression on his dark brown face.

"Can we go in the shack? You too, Mr. Maginty," Corley said.

"Yeah," the loadmaster said. "But look, this eggbeater costs the company $500 an hour, can we sort of hurry this up?"

In the littered construction shack, Corley took out the picture of Fasil. "Have you---"

"Why don't you introduce yourselves first," the pilot said. "That's polite, and it'll only cost Maginty here $12 worth of time."

"Sam Corley."

"David Kabakov."

"I'm Lamar Jackson." He shook their hands solemnly.

"It's a matter of national security," Coney said. Kabakov thought he detected a glint of amusement in the pilot's eyes at Corley's tone. "Have you seen this man?"

Jackson's eyebrows raised as he looked at the picture. "Yeah, three or four days ago, while you were rigging the sling on that elevator hoist, Maginty. Who is he anyway?"

"He's a fugitive. We want him."

"Well, stick around. He said he was coming back."

"He did?"

"Yeah. How did you guys know to look here?"

"You've got what he wants," Corley said. "A helicopter."

"What for?"

"To hurt a lot of people with. When is he coming back?"

"He didn't say. I didn't pay too much attention to him to tell you the truth. He was kind of a creepy guy, you know, coming on friendly. What did he do? I mean you say he's bad news---"

"He is a psychopath and a killer, a political fanatic," Kabakov said. "He has committed a number of murders. He was going to kill you and take your helicopter when the time came. Tell us what happened."

"Oh, Christ," Maginty said. He mopped his face with a handkerchief. "I don't like this." He looked quickly out the door of the shack, as though he expected the maniac momentarily.

Jackson shook his head like a man making sure he is really awake, but when he spoke his voice was calm. "He was standing by the pad when I came over here for a cup of coffee. I didn't particularly notice him, because a lot of people like to watch the thing, you know. Then he started asking me about it, how you make a lift and all, what the model designation was. He asked if he could look inside. I said he could look in through the side door of the fuselage, but he shouldn't touch anything."

"And he looked?"

"Yeah, and let me see, he asked how you go back and forth from the cargo bay to the cockpit. I told him it's awkward, you have to lift one of the seats in the cockpit. I remember I thought it was a funny question. People usually ask, like, how much will it pick up and don't I get scared it will fall. Then he told me he had a brother who flies choppers and how his brother would love to see it."

"Did he ask you if you work on Sundays?"

"I was getting to that. This dude asked me three times if we were going to work through the rest of the holidays and I kept telling him yeah, yeah. I had to go back to work, and he made a point of shaking hands and all."

"He asked you your name?" Kabakov asked.

"Yes."

"And where you are from?"

"Right."

Instinctively, Kabakov liked Jackson. He looked like a man with good nerves. It would take good nerves to do Jackson's job. He also looked as though he could be very tough when he needed to be.

"You were a Marine pilot?" Kabakov asked.

"Right."

"Vietnam?"

"Thirty-eight missions. Then I got shot up a little and I was 'ree-tired' until the end of the hitch."

"Mr. Jackson, we need your help."

"To catch this guy?"

"Yes," Kabakov said. "We want to follow him when he leaves here after his next visit. He'll just come and bring his fake brother and look around. He mustn't be alarmed while he's here. We have to follow him for a little while before we take him. So we need your cooperation."

"Um-hum. Well, it so happens I need your help too. Let me see your credentials, Mr. FBI." He was looking at Kabakov, but Coney handed over his identification. The pilot picked up the telephone.

"The number is---"

"I'll get the number, Mr. Corley."

"You can ask for---"

"I can ask for the head dick in charge," Jackson said.

The New Orleans office of the FBI confirmed Corley's identity.

"Now," Jackson said, hanging up the telephone, "you wanted to know if Crazy Person asked me where I'm from. That means him locating my family if I'm not mistaken. Like to coerce me."

"It would occur to him, yes. If it was necessary," Kabakov said.

"Well, I'll tell you. You want me to help you by playing it straight when the man shows up again?"

"You'll be covered all the time. We just want to follow him when he leaves," Corley said.

"How do you know his next call won't be time for the shit to go down?"

"Because he'll bring his pilot to look at the chopper in advance. We know the day he plans to strike."

"Um-hum. I'll do that. But, in five minutes I'm going to call my wife in Orlando. I want her to tell me there is a government car parked out front containing the baddest four dudes she has
ever
seen. Do you follow me?"

"Let me use your telephone," Corley said.

__________

The round-the-clock stakeout at the helipad stretched on for days. Corley, Kabakov, and Moshevsky were there during working hours. A three-man team of FBI agents took over when the helicopter was secured for the night. Fasil did not come.

Each day Jackson arrived cheerful and ready to go, though he complained about the pair of federal agents that stayed with him during off-duty hours. He said they cramped his style.

Once in the evening he had a drink with Kabakov and Rachel at the Royal Orleans, his two bodyguards sitting at the next table dry and glum. Jackson had been a lot of places and had seen a lot of things, and Kabakov liked him better than most of the Americans he had met.

Maginty was another matter. Kabakov wished they had avoided bringing Maginty into it. The strain was telling on the loadmaster. He was jumpy and irritable.

On the morning of January 4 rain delayed the lifting, and Jackson came into the construction shack for coffee.

"What is that piece you've got back there?" he asked Moshevsky.

"A Galil." Moshevsky had ordered the new type of automatic assault rifle from Israel at Kabakov's indulgence. He removed the clip and the round from the chamber and passed it to Jackson. Moshevsky pointed out the bottle opener built into the bipod, a feature he found of particular interest.

"We used to carry an AK-47 in the chopper in Nam," Jackson said. "Somebody took it off a Cong. I liked it better than an M-16."

Maginty came into the shack, saw the weapon, and backed out again. Kabakov decided to tell Moshevsky to keep the rifle out of sight. There was no point in spooking Maginty any further.

"But to tell you the truth. I don't like any of these things," Jackson was saying. "You know a lot of guys jerk off with guns---I don't mean
you
, that's your business---but you show me a man that just loves a piece and I'll---"

Corley's radio interrupted Jackson. "Jay Seven, Jay Seven."

"Jay Seven, go ahead."

"New York advises subject Mayfly cleared JFK customs at 0940 Eastern Standard. Has reservation on Delta 704 to New Orleans, arriving 12:30 Central Standard." Mayfly was the code name assigned Abdel Awad.

"Roger, Jay Seven out. Son of a bitch, Kabakov, he's coming! He'll lead us to Fasil and the plastic and the woman."

Kabakov gave a sigh of relief. It was the first hard evidence that he was on the right track, that the Super Bowl was the target. "I hope we can separate them from the plastic before we take them. Otherwise there will be a very loud noise."