Bolt Action (25 page)

On board PK412

T
here are three of them in the galley. Whiffler, Tristie and the captain, who’s pinched a number of first-class menus and on the blank cover pages is scribbling out diagrams. A sort of catharsis. Schematics of the cockpit door, the plane’s fuselage and cockpit in elevation, side elevation and cross-section, and so on. He’s got a good eye for detail.

Whiffler, expert in explosives, and their number-one guy on mechanical stuff, is leaning in towards Salahuddin. Peppering him with questions as he draws, questions that an amateur like Tristie would never think of. ‘So the power connections are through the L-plates in the door frame . . . what happens when the delta pressure changes? . . . This is DC current, right?’

She leaves the two of them going hard at it, trying to work out a way into the cockpit. The shape of an even bigger idea, the very barest glimmer of an outline, is beginning to form in her mind. A real crapshoot.

A fifth-storey penthouse

Overlooking Regent’s Canal

Islington, London

1347 London time, 0847 Washington time, 1847 Islamabad time

T
he packaging on the steak-and-mince pie with the nice lattice pastry had said ‘Serves Three’ but it was gone in four bites and only one person was involved. The Weasel. The pie is now warming his insides nicely, just as the soapy bathwater is thawing out his exterior. He had woken up freezing cold in a strange bed.

He sucks on a lit cheroot, sinks into the depth of bubbles and tries to blow smoke rings. Bring some character to this antiseptically fancy bathroom.

Happiness is a cigar . . .

The mobile rings. His Ward 13 phone. A look of irritation streaks across his face. But he turns quickly, sloshing the water, in time to see the damn thing ringing and vibrating all at the same time, skittling across the black marble washbasin surround. Moments from tumbling to the floor.

He lunges sideways from the bath, a hand stretched out, just in time to miss the phone tipping over the edge. It tumbles. Hits the rim of the toilet bowl and for a shocking second pirouettes on the white porcelain, spinning on its end, before disappearing out of sight.

‘Shit,’ and with the movement of his lips, the cheroot drops to the wet floor. Sizzling quietly. But the phone is still making
a noise. A sort of chirping. Damaged but not destroyed. He levers himself out of the tub with a big slop of bathwater, grabs the handset and presses Answer. Soap and shampoo suds still plugging his ear . . .

Moments later Weasel is standing in front of a TV set, dripping wet, a white towel cinched around his waist.

‘Jesus, Tristie . . .’ He points the remote at the satellite box. ‘You mean . . . you guys are on
that
plane?’

‘
Just tell me what they’re saying.
’

‘Well, CNN is showing a map of the Atlantic. You’re pinpointed on it, about halfway across. Some link to a website called openatc.com.’ Weasel pauses to listen to the CNN commentary. ‘The correspondent in Islamabad is talking about unconfirmed reports out of Pakistan that the plane has been hijacked by Islamic terrorists. That they’re in control. There’s talk that probably a list of demands has been sent to the US embassy there and the State Department. That’s all uncorroborated. The guy says the country has gone mad with rumour, he’s quoting from blogs and Twitter and all sorts of crap, says frankly he doesn’t know what to think at the moment. The caption reads . . . “At This Hour: US Cabinet Reviews Shoot-Down Option” . . . oh fuck, Tristie . . .’

Her tone is almost wooden
.
‘
Tell me what the other channels have.
’

‘Sky News . . . Sky News, where are you?’ He fiddles with the remote, his fingers slick with soap.

‘
What did you say?
’

‘Nothing . . .’ Weasel’s phone is wedged into his shoulder as he tries using two hands to dial in number 501. ‘I’m in a girl’s flat. Somebody I met last night. A city trader.’

Sky’s coverage jumps around wildly and to begin with it’s impossible to make out what’s going on. A white-on-red caption indicates this is LIVE footage from Manchester Airport. Slowly the picture resolves to a shot of the check-in area in Terminal 2. Six counters. Each one is protected by a phalanx of policemen in stab jackets, crash helmets and short-sleeve shirts; every so
often one of them chops at the angry crowd with extendable batons. Behind them, serried ranks of firearms officers, looking dead serious, cradle their Heckler & Koch firearms. The protesters are mostly but not all Asian, all hopelessly ill suited to running at lines of tough, well-trained policemen. But they’re desperate for news. Pathetic . . . Like any of this is going to make a difference.

After painting a word picture of all this, Weasel’s voice is full of dread and a chilling sense of awe. ‘The country’s going to pull itself to pieces over this.’

‘
That bad?
’

‘Woeful. Woeful. So bloody woeful . . . and the tear gas at the airport can’t be too far away.’

‘
How many involved?
’

‘Couple of hundred at the airport, it looks like. Poor sods.’ It’s sickeningly compelling TV. This isn’t just grief, it’s raw anger too. ‘Wait. There’s a news bar scrolling . . . saying . . .’ Weasel reads directly from the screen ‘. . . “Police Confirm Outbreaks of Rioting, Property Damage in” . . . here it comes . . . Leeds. Bradford. Oldham. Manchester. Hell’s bells . . . various parts of London: Southall, Newham, Hounslow, Tooting, Balham . . . Bastard . . . Birmingham suburbs: Small Heath, Aston and Moseley. Leicester . . . shit. It doesn’t stop.’

‘
At least that gives us a chance.
’

‘A chance . . .’ Weasel says the words mutely, only half paying attention because back at Manchester Airport, Sky’s cameraman has picked out one little scene amid all the chaos. A white kid, perhaps fifteen, has got up around the shoulders of a policeman and is pounding his riot helmet with his fists. The only thing his red, tear-streaked face knows is that a parent or loved one is on the plane, and going to die. The police are losing their rag . . . and the audience is rooting for the child. ‘Tristie . . . what do you mean “that gives us a chance”?’

She explains herself. Quickly and with a minimum of fuss and emotion. First thing is she’s travelling without any of her phone numbers and she needs to get hold of someone in
Northern Ireland. Urgently. A Mary Sweeney, she says, widow of Dara Sweeney. Probably still living in Newry, County Armagh. If not try Jonesboro, Forkhill or Killeen. She had sisters there, and would have stayed close by, says Tristie.

‘Christ alive, there must be a million Sweeneys in Northern Ireland.’

‘
But only one whose husband was killed by a bomb set by someone who went on to win a seat in the Irish parliament.
’

‘That does narrow it down . . . Christ, Tristie, what have you been up to?’

‘
Just get the number and . . .
’ there’s a crackle of satellite static on the line ‘. . .
you’ve got to be on your A-game if this has any chance of working.
’

On board PK412

T
he mad woman in Row 33 may have been silenced but that hasn’t stilled the passengers. The ghastly truth about which she had been shouting had rippled from seat to seat right to the back of the plane, mistranslated or garnished with each retelling. Soon everybody has a fragment of what’s going on. The Chinese whispers leave no one in doubt of their likely fate.
We are going to die. They shoot down hijacked planes.

After a brief address from Captain Harry Salahuddin, who tries in three languages to make this emergency sound prosaic, as all pilots do, there is an explosion of calls from passengers who know better. Six dollars a minute. Whack it on the credit card. Nobody thinks for a moment they’re going to be alive to pay this off.

Scrambling to listen in to flight PK412 is the Echelon programme, the technological muscle of the National Security Agency, based at Fort Meade, Maryland, and its British equivalent, GCHQ.

Tasking their various listening posts, the Echelon people triangulate the power of vast dishes in Fort Gordon, near Augusta, Georgia, the Canadian base at Leitrim, south of Ottawa, and Morwenstow on the north Cornish coast. It’s a slow process trying to get a bead on what’s happening on board this plane so that their political masters can make informed decisions.

What they pick up is ninety per cent emotion. Mothers saying goodbye to their children, drawing out each and every word,
Remember what I always told you
. . . husbands trying to
reassure wives,
Be brave. I’m fully insured
. . . and so on. The listening posts also suck out of the ether a good amount of what seems like practical detail, which, as eavesdroppers, they can’t cross-examine. Little snatches of operational detail: first class seems to be cordoned off. The bad guys are in the cockpit, or perhaps they’re in first class. Or both. The cabin crew is moving through the plane asking where people come from, what languages they speak, would they prefer to be seated with their own people . . .

The calls are heart-breaking. Seat 32C, for instance. A young female Pakistani lawyer, attending the Denver symposium on sexual politics and Islamic ideology, is quietly crying into the handset. Imagining the scene in Lahore. Her mother ululating in the background while her father and eldest brother rampage in brutal anger through the family house. Against this, the pleadings of her teenage sister register barely, as a whisper. Wailing how, to keep her memory alive, she will never eat sweet foods again. Nor fried foods . . . From behind her hand, the lady in 32C sobs, ‘I don’t care about what you eat, Rasheeda. Promise me only that you will study hard. You need to be smart. And be a good girl too . . .’ Just rice and roti and dhal, that will be all that I eat, pledges Rasheeda. And I will only sleep on the floor. So I feel your pain too. So I can be with you. Forever ‘. . . I don’t want you to sleep on the floor my beautiful sister . . . you will always be with me, and I with you . . .’

In a rambling monologue, a Welshman from Swansea relays to his already grieving son in Sketty something he’d heard and now passes on as fact. ‘The terrorists have locked themselves in the cockpit. They’re going to fly this thing on to New York, boy. Perhaps have another crack at the Big Apple. So. This is it, lad. I really feel it . . . Don’t be cut up about me. Put a couple of pounds behind the bar at the Vivian Arms. Remember me to my mates, even the hopeless bloody twats. I tell you. Bit of Green, Green Grass of Home wouldn’t go amiss right now.’

Audio file after audio file paints the same picture, people saying their farewells, knowing they’re caught between death
and . . . well, death. A scenario that seems all too real and recently lived through, for those NSC and GCHQ analysts who still remain in the shadow cast by 9/11, and who are desperately trying to make sense of this flight for everybody in the situation room.

Bob and Judy Morrow from Sandpoint, Idaho, are the first passengers to achieve a degree of fame. Trying to get hold of their son Trace on his mobile phone, a little bit frantic because who knows when this in-seat phone will get disconnected. Trace is a wayward son, thirty next month and yet to show any interest in leaving home. He was busy chasing the morning line on today’s running of the Indy 500 so his parents’ call goes to voicemail. Their message, when he finally gets to it, knocks him into a cold sweat. He can hear their fear as they swallow hard on their feelings, trying to stay calm. His mother’s reedy voice: ‘Little bit of a problem with the flight, Trace. Thought we should speak in case we don’t get another chance.’

In the coffee shop, in front of a half-eaten stack of pancakes, Trace is overwhelmed with sadness and guilt, for deeds done and not done. He tries redialling but is told by an anodyne female voice prompt that no such call can be connected. Impotent, embarrassed and angry, he calls through to a cousin who’d just started at KTRV Channel 12 over in Nampa. The local Fox network affiliate. Warns her that he’s forwarding a voicemail. Within minutes the Morrows are all over the Fox News Channel, in eighty-five million homes across the country, the first American victims of Operation Macchar to be revealed.

Within the next half-hour, voicemails from at least twenty other passengers are being forwarded to the language-relevant news networks. BBC, CNN, Sky, Fox, the Middle East news channels of Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya and Al Resalah, and Pakistan World TV and Geo TV.

Different languages, same story. Little pleading voices, creased with fear, being broadcast across the world to an audience aghast, unable to turn away from the coming conflagration.

The White House situation room

Five minutes later

I
t’s almost an hour and a quarter since the alarm was first raised, and the room is becoming restless. There’ve been briefings galore. A few facts, leavened with a lot of analysis and supposition.

Even Bill Lamayette is silenced. On one of the plasma screens there is a live feed of the CIA station chief. The sound is muted for the moment, with Lamayette seen in medium close-up, in a darkened room in a hangar at the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan. Tongue lolling, slipping and slopping in a high-back chair, out of his head with drugs. From off-camera, busy hands fuss over him, trying to revive with cold compresses, cups of coffee and even lit cigarettes. A nudge or two to his bald head, perhaps a slap.
Waaake uuupp, Bill
. . . but the hero of the moment is out for the count.

In an eerie way, Lamayette hangs over the room like a spectre. His warnings about Qissa Khawani and Operation Macchar – this General Ali Mahmood Khan – now seem prescient, even though nobody really knows why. He was trying to tell us something, wasn’t he?
But what?
If only we’d listened.
Listened to what?
The information is so damned shapeless and muddied.

This sense of time passing and nothing being achieved had already prompted some raised voices. The Secretary of Homeland Security, a bear of a man named Salazar, who had spoken, for added emphasis, with his fists tightly clenched and
shaking slightly, ‘. . . whatever counsel these foreign leaders might wish to offer, I beseech you, Mr President, remember, your number-one priority is the safety and security of the American people. Preserve. Protect. And Defend.’ But it feels too theoretical. So when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs announces they can pick up live pictures of the hijacked plane, there’s an intense buzz of excitement. Everybody’s dead keen to see this plane, the focus of this nightmare, and a hush quickly settles as the picture jumps on screen.

Silence. Studied, contemplative silence . . .

The shots from the lead navy FA-18H Super Hornet are not as dramatic or helpful as they had hoped. Just another Boeing 777 doing its thing at 36,000 feet. A gigantic aircraft, ploughing across the Atlantic with its wings level, looking like, frankly, any other plane. Two long lines of fluffy white contrails against a stunning deep blue sky.

As pilot Cletus guides his navy plane carefully forward along the length of the Boeing’s port side, there’s a bump of turbulence that rocks the picture. Everybody in the situation room jumps too, before craning forward to get a closer look. The livery is white, with huge green PIA letters over the forward section of passenger windows. Most of the window blinds are down, but that quickly changes. The picture is just detailed enough to see them being raised in a rush, suddenly, one after another, and the outline of hands and a few faces pressed tight against the glass.

The live feed is projected up on to a vast screen, as big and wide as a pool table. Despite the size of the image and the extent of interest there’s no obvious killer piece of detail. At least at first. You can almost hear people willing there to be an explosion, or a burst of gunfire. Something dramatic and evil. This, however, feels a touch . . . wrong. By comparison, the hijacked planes on 9/11 had slewed all over the skies, obviously flown by amateurs, terrifying those passengers who’d been able to phone out.

President Charles Hannah gets up from the head of the table,
walks to the screen and taps the pixels representing the windows of the cockpit with his black HB pencil. ‘Why can’t we see in there, Jim? Into the cockpit?’

Jim is the admiral, James Badgett, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. ‘Those grey sort of panels . . . well, it looks like the blinds are drawn, Mr President.’

‘Is that usual?’ The president turns to the room. ‘Doesn’t that tell us something?’

No soothsayers come forward, but the Federal Aviation Administration watch officer, Todd Packway, raises his voice from the ring of seats to the back of the room. ‘The cockpit windows on a 777 are made up of six separate panels of glass. Two main windshields, one in front of each pilot, and to the side of that, each crew has a sliding window. Then there’s the fixed aft window, which is . . . fixed in place. It’s not unusual to have the blinds drawn on the sliding
and
aft windows during cruise.’

On a separate video link, one of the shift supervisors at the National Security Council’s Fort Meade centre interrupts to report tonelessly, like a speaking clock, that the passengers have seen the Super Hornet. There’s a huge jump in people using the in-seat phone system. ‘Lot of distress . . . we’re picking up . . . anxiety . . .’ his voice sounds distracted, he’s trying to precis several live transmissions at once ‘. . . “Is this the shoot-down?” Some degree of panic, it sounds like. A few background screams.’

One or two faces swivel instinctively towards yet another giant television, where six live, but mute, TV news networks are squeezed on to the one screen. There’s an obvious ripple of excitement among the presenting anchors, perhaps some of those calling from the aircraft are themselves live on air . . .

The feed from the Super Hornet goes pure sky blue for almost a minute, as Cletus climbs then flips his jet on to the starboard side of the Boeing. A similar slow overtaking manoeuvre up the right-hand line. The two blinds drawn down on this side of the cockpit as well.

‘Surely you wouldn’t draw the shades on both sides of the
same cockpit?’ asks the president, still standing by the screen. ‘I mean, does that make sense?’

No contradiction there. And Packway, uncomfortably cast as cockpit window expert to those gathered, feels obliged to nod his agreement. ‘Correct, Mr President. That would not be expected.’

‘So, can we get to see inside the cockpit, Jim?’ and the president works his hands, as if he is re-enacting a dogfight. ‘Our guy flying across his bow, like at ninety degrees?’

‘Mr President, we can do that, sir . . . but the equipment, the video equipment is not, well, it’s just an ordinary digital video camera operated by the pilot. It doesn’t have the sophistication of the combat heads-up display or a surveillance or satellite camera.’

‘So he can’t fly that manoeuvre?’ A hint of disbelief in President Hannah’s question.

‘No. He can, sir,’ and Admiral Mallan, frustrated, shifts his weight in his high-backed chair. ‘To see all the way inside, into that gloom, you have to be on the same level, not above or below, like that . . .’ He demonstrates with the image they’re watching at the moment. ‘There are two ways: the Super Hornet crosses close to the nose, but he’ll need either to be fast, like
boom
, and might miss what we need because he’s filming and flying at the same time. Or, he can go slower, but the plane’ll have to be some distance farther out. Perhaps too far to see anything.’

The atmospherics in the room are getting stilted, embarrassed even. This has become rather small-time. Momentous things are afoot, lives at stake, and they’re chasing shadows, literally. Someone who vividly appreciates this is the Attorney General, a razor-sharp Texan called Jenna-Lee Braddock. She’s serious no-nonsense, and once succeeded in throwing out a final deathrow petition because it was filed twenty minutes after the court’s 5 p.m. closing time. She has the dark tanned skin of a snake and glasses like pebbles. She cups her chin in thought, just as she had done when she was a state and then a federal prosecutor. Build the case. Build the case. She raises her hand.

‘Perhaps, Mr President, we can review what we have . . .’

From one of the screens an interruption, a lieutenant colonel in uniform from the NORAD headquarters in Colorado Springs. ‘Excuse me, ma’am. Mr President, you wanted to know when the plane crossed longitude Thirty West . . . it did so just now. Seconds ago.’

‘Just hold that thought, Jenna-Lee, please, will you.’ President Hannah moves back towards his seat. ‘Still nothing on the radio, Colonel? No call-in?’

‘Aside from that first communication, there’s been complete radio silence. Nothing. They’ve missed two scheduled reporting points. And, as you’ll see from your screen track, the flight has now passed into the western zone of the relevant flight information region, controlled out of Gander, Newfoundland.’ The implication being that the flight is getting closer and closer . . . like a missile.

‘I see . . .’ The president is sitting down, his eyes somewhat distant and glazed by all of this reality. ‘I see . . .’ Bar Charles Hannah, the room’s attention swings to the live map plotting the inexorable journey of PK412 across the North Atlantic. There’s rising chat among the staffers around the table, those who’ve worked out the maths. Ninety minutes, two hours tops, and that Boeing will be crossing the Canadian coast. As abstract as a line of longitude is, with the plane now in their half of the ocean, it feels as if the great white has somehow slipped inside the shark net.

The Attorney General is leaning back in her seat and taps her leather-bound folder on the edge of the table, like a judge with a gavel. ‘Mr President. Speaking on behalf of law enforcement, I think now’s a good time to be clear in our thoughts.’ President Hannah waves her on, giving the Texan the floor.

‘Nine/eleven was a failure of two things: our intelligence and our systems. Now y’all look at what we’ve got here and you can see things are working fine. Our functionality is fine, going just great. The CIA . . .’ she tips her head towards the acting
director, who bobs appreciatively ‘. . . were able to forewarn us of this pending incident. Albeit . . .’ and here Braddock takes a deep breath, for they’d all heard a great deal about the erratic Bill Lamayette, and had listened to his unorthodox calls to the Ulsterwoman called Sheila Davane at British intelligence ‘. . . albeit that the call came from an employee under suspension, who’d rigged his own death, destroyed a heap of government property, and then chose to share his information with MI5 instead of through his usual reporting channels.’ Breathe. Breathe. Continue. ‘So, score one for our intelligence. And score one, too, for our systems.’

She beams. ‘NORTHCOM. Operation Noble Eagle. We got us two planes aloft in double-quick time, just like the manual says. Sidewinders, or whatever they’ve got, are primed. So we remain ahead of the curve, be in no doubt about that. Now that we have some time, let’s make sure we get this decision right.’

There’s nodding on this point around the table; even President Hannah looks relieved, while the Secretary of State holds up a hand, asking to be excused, to take another call in one of the booths.

‘You must excuse me, Mr President, if I crab sideways a little to get to my point . . .’ Unseen, on the video links from the two air force VIP planes, both the vice-president and Defense Secretary roll their eyes. Braddock has a proverb or hee-haw story for every occasion. They call it ‘slow-playing’ in the South. Makes them think you’re dumb.

‘Now, my daddy rose to be chief judge on the Fifth Circuit, the pinnacle of a good and proper career in the law. But he never forgot his first client, back when he started out in private practice in Nacogdoches, Texas. It was 1936, and as a token of thanks this Chinaman gave him a piece of bamboo with some itty-bitty carved characters. Said it would bring good luck to my daddy in his chosen vocation. He kept it in his office his whole life. And you know what the writing meant . . . ?’ She swivels her little glasses around the room, peering intently, and, of course, nobody knows. ‘. . . them little Chinese words said,
“Though The Sword of Justice Is Sharp, It Will Not Slay The Innocent”.’

A few puzzled faces. ‘And what’s your point?’ asks the president, hopefully.

‘Mr President, this is a capital case. The highest standards of evidence must apply, because people will die today because of the things you do, or don’t do. Yet in all we have listened to this morning, only two things need our utmost attention. Motive . . . I see motive, how hateful America is, how we are disbelievers,
kuffars
, and need to be punished. And I see opportunity. Just like in Nine/eleven, this plane’s cockpit has been commandeered. Same modus operandi, we can hear that much from the calls made by the passengers. They’re terrified. The flight crew aren’t responding to calls from within the plane, or from air traffic controllers. Probably they’ve been killed. We know that the flight has not maintained radio contact for at least two hours . . .
two hours.
And that’s hardly likely to be simple equipment failure. The goddam thing was only delivered by Boeing . . .’ she glances at her notes ‘. . . in March of ’08.’

President Hannah pulls irritably at the knot of his red-and-white striped tie. ‘But where does that leave us in terms of the law? We can’t just be making it up as we go along. How would that look to the rest of the world?’

‘Mr President, if the plane was twenty miles out and closing, we wouldn’t be playing this pretty little game, this moot-court session. Remember, the time we have is a blessing. Let’s not turn it into a curse . . .’

‘The law, Jenna-Lee . . . please.’ This from the video link with the silver-haired, silver-moustachioed Defense Secretary, flying back from Elmendorf Air Force Base, near Anchorage, Alaska. ‘No homilies about frogs in downpours, and walking in tall cotton. Just tell us about the law.’

‘Anticipatory self-defence.’ Braddock smiles grimly, turning to the monitor showing the image of the Defense Secretary juxtaposed with that of the vice-president. ‘The law is clear, Mr Secretary . . . and I say this too, not only is the law clear,
it is also clearly on our side. I’m surprised at you, Mr Secretary. I would have thought you would know that self-defence is the first law of nature.’

Hannah had been looking towards one of the navy aides standing by the door, making signals like, has it suddenly got hot in here? He senses the friction developing and cuts quickly away from this. ‘Perhaps, just so we are all on the same page, you could tell us about this. Your read on anticipatory self-defence.’

‘My pleasure . . .’ and to the surprise of those listening, sitting in a state-of-the-art communications centre, all manner of spaceage technologies at work, decrypting voices, encoding data and bringing in satellite feeds from the other side of the world, the Attorney General walks her audience back to 1837. A time of muskets and cutlasses, and a scrap between Britain and the United States over a speck of land in the middle of the Niagara river, just above the famous falls. A thousand rebels, fighting British dominion in Canada, were using Navy Island as a base for their raids, and they were being supplied by Americans crewing an American ship, the
Caroline
. One night, says Braddock, even though Washington was trying to be scrupulously neutral in this matter, the British commandeered the
Caroline
when she was tied up at a landing on the New York state side of the river. The Royal Navy set the ship alight and let her drift downstream, over the falls. Two were killed, including a cabin boy.