Rogue Warrior: Holy Terror Part 16

As I started to leave I discovered there was a third option: a janitor's closet behind the door. As I was testing the lock, Trace showed up with two plainclothes members of the airport security team. I couldn't understand their heavily accented English, but they understood mine well enough to call for someone with a key.

No, the security people don't have master keys at Bangkok International Airport. Then again, they don't at most airports. At least they knew how to find the janitor, who arrived in two minutes. Try that at LAX.

Guns drawn, they pulled the door open, revealing a thick stack of brooms, mops, and one very suspicious looking floor waxer.

"The roof tiles are missing," said Trace, pointing upward. "He got into the ceiling."

The security people got out their radios. I started climbing the walls.

Or rather, the stepladder leaning against the side of the closet. Poking my head through, I saw that the tiles hung on a network of straps and aluminum runners. Ordinarily, this wouldn't have been strong enough to support anyone, but a double row of steel cables had been added to the straps near the opening to the closet. Plywood had been laid over the runners to form a crude walkway.

One of the security people jabbered at me below, speaking English so heavily accented that I couldn't understand what he was saying. Finally, I realized he was trying to hand me a flashlight. I grabbed it, then pulled myself up into the ceiling. Girders, metal vents, and thick plastic pipes and metal tubes filled the eight-foot-high s.p.a.ce, which stretched far beyond me. I felt like Dorothy at the edge of the Enchanted Forest in the Wizard of Oz.

There were only two plywood panels, but the steel cables continued well into the distance, a Yellow Brick Road to Tango City. The aluminum tracks they held up were about eight inches wide and were s.p.a.ced roughly two feet apart. I followed them for about thirty feet, the aluminum sagging ever so slightly. Then suddenly the cables in front of me disappeared; it took a few moments for me to realize that the path turned here to my right. I followed, finding myself twisting and turning in a z-pattern before reaching another piece of plywood. A small backpack sat at the edge. I found a pair of night goggles inside and put them on. They were high-quality civilian jobs, close to the gen-3 devices our military uses. There were also six big magazines for a weapon that had become Saladin's calling card: the Minimi machine gun.

Trace and one of the Thai security people caught up with me as I inspected the pack. As I started out again, Trace started haranguing me, saying she ought to be the one to take the point. I guess Apaches never are comfortable unless they're in the lead. I did what I always do when a subordinate makes a dumb-a.s.s suggestion-I ignored it.

The trail ended at a firewall made of plasterboard, intended to slow down the building's destruction in the case of a catastrophe. The board immediately in front of the reinforced ties was firmly anch.o.r.ed to whatever girders were behind it. The one to the left, however, was merely propped in place, and moved as soon as I put my hand against it.

"Why don't you lend me your pistol?" I said to the Thai officer.

Either he didn't understand or he pretended not to. Instead, he motioned for me to go ahead; he'd be right behind.

Thanks.

By now, the security people were moving to shut off access to the entire terminal. That was no small feat, given the large number of people who travel in and out of the airport every day. I wasn't there to watch, but I know generally what happened. The security gates were shut, planes were towed away from the building, and one by one the pa.s.sengers for each flight were taken to different areas, including the tarmac, where they could be researched before being allowed to board. At the same time, specially trained a.s.sault troops-your basic SWAT team-began taking up positions around the terminal in preparation for an a.s.sault.

Let me stop here for a second and give the Thai military an unsolicited round of hoo-hah and general applause. The Thai army is not very large, but it's dedicated, and with the help of the U.S. and SEATO, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, they train regularly to deal with crisis. I'm not saying they could beat Navy SEALs in a fair fight, but they have the capacity to make a fair fight interesting.

Not that SEALs would ever fight fair.

"Stay behind the wall," I told Trace and the Thai security agent. "I'm going to drop the panel and see what happens."

I kicked the bottom of the panel and it flipped down. As the ceiling shook I rolled through the opening, half-expecting to fall through into the gate area below. That didn't happen, nor did the ceiling hum with machine-gun bullets.

I'd landed on a metal grille, which had probably been installed during the initial construction. The grille stretched along a set of girders at my right where the wall was anch.o.r.ed. Another firewall ran along my left about eight feet away; it was as if I were in a long hallway in the ceiling. It turned out to be a narrow pa.s.sage between two different sections of the building.

My tango friend wasn't here, nor was it obvious where he had gone. I began moving along the grill-work-it looked like the metal decking on the side of a train bridge-deciding the most obvious path was the most likely one he had taken.

About thirty feet from where I'd come in, the decking stopped. The thick girders and strut work on the right continued, however, and I found that I could move along by holding onto the struts above and sticking my b.u.t.t out like a fat woman doing a conga line.

What a glamorous business SpecWar is.

As I moved along the girder, I noticed a dim trace of yellow light filtering into the wires and thin metal ahead. The light came from a pa.s.sage in another firewall dead ahead. This one was large enough to drive a truck through, and opened into a machinery s.p.a.ce filled with ductwork.

"What do you see?" Trace asked behind me. She's practically a monkey, and had no trouble keeping up even in the dark.

"Not much. Where are our reinforcements?" I leaned around her and whispered to the Thai security man, asking him to find out where his comrades were. He whispered something back; for all I knew he could have been proposing marriage to Trace.

"Radio," I told him, miming the actions of using one. "Where are your troops?"

"I think he's saying they're on their way," said Trace.

"We don't want them ambushing us," I said.

Trace repeated that, more or less, a few times in very slow English to our Thai friend. After the third time, he started nodding his head vigorously. He said something into his radio, then looked at her and held his palm up. That seemed to be mean we were good to go, and so I did.

A spiderweb of ductwork, plastic pipes, and thick bands of wire extended about thirty feet beyond the opening. The area beyond that was relatively open. Light poured upward from three rectangular holes in the distance-s.p.a.ces where ceiling tiles had been removed.

I was about fifteen feet from the nearest one when I caught a shadow moving at the far left. I froze, unsure whether it was my quarry or a member of the Thai airport security force. It disappeared to my left. As I moved forward to try to keep it in view, I spotted another knapsack and piece of plywood ten feet away to my right. I went to it, and below the knapsack found a Minimi machine gun, loaded and ready to fire. Someone had been planning one h.e.l.l of a bon voyage party.

I took two magazines from the backpack and stuffed them in the front of my pants. There was another set of goggles in the ruck, so I handed it to Trace.

"There," I said, pointing to where I had seen the shadow. "You wait."

Three steps later, I felt the framework sag beneath my weight. Thinking I had made a wrong step, I leaned back, reaching for the last solid cable to get my bearings. As I did, a beam of light flared from the direction of the shadow.

"Down!" I yelled, and a second later a freight train plowed across the ceiling s.p.a.ce. It was either a train or a spray of Minimi machinegun bullets, the sound compressed by the enclosed s.p.a.ce.

I returned fire, but as I did, the ceiling began to give way, one or more of the cables severed by the other gunman's bullets. For a spit of a second I hung in midair, supported by curses and wishful thinking. But gravity is one mean mother, and in the next spit of a second I plunged through the roof of a newsstand, upending a rack of Clancy novels and tumbling into a section of romance novels. Two middle-aged Western women who'd been looking at the display blinked at me. I'm not sure if they thought I was some sort of book promotion or the answer to their dreams.

Maybe neither. They started to scream, then decided fainting was safer.

Back on my feet, I reloaded the machine gun, grabbed a nearby shelf and used it as a ladder, climbing up and poking the ceiling tiles off with the b.u.t.t of the gun. I couldn't see very well; the gla.s.ses had been pushed half off my head and one of them had been damaged in the fall. A fresh spray of bullets gave me a rough idea of where my opponent was. I fired back, hoping to at least keep him occupied while Trace and the Thai security man with her retreated.

Up until now, the terminal had been relatively calm; my bet is that most of the people inside figured this was just some BS alert over misplaced luggage. The gunfire changed all that. People ran screaming and shouting in every conceivable direction. The sound from the gate hallway just outside the store was even louder than the gunfire, an eerie mix of pounding feet and high-pitched yelps. The stampede shook the floor, and my bookshelf ladder started to slide; I pushed myself up into the ceiling just as it began to fall.

The other gunman had stopped firing, probably to reload. I looked to my right, expecting to see Trace. Instead, a shadow crossed in front of a white blotch of light, a large gun in his hands.

Good guy or bad guy?

All I knew was, the shadow didn't have enough curves to be Trace. So I followed the SpecWarrior's rule of survival: Shoot 'em all and let G.o.d do the sorting.

Good decision. It turned out to be the b.a.s.t.a.r.d I'd followed into the ceiling in the first place. My first bullet caught him on the left side of his neck. My last hit the right side. The ones in between ripped through his throat like a Sawzall through an old two-by-four. His body slumped against one of the ceiling cables, holding him upright. His head flopped back, a few strands of skin and tissue keeping it from dropping completely off.

Beheading is too good for these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. If I'd been thinking, I would have shot only halfway through so he could writhe in pain for a bit before going to his version of h.e.l.l. But I prefer to not dwell on what might have been.

"d.i.c.k!" Trace was right behind me, yelling in my ear.

"You all right?"

"f.u.c.k you, I'm fine."

Well, excuse me for asking.

By the time we climbed down out of the ceiling, the Thai security people had secured the terminal, killing four other terrorists in the process. What exactly they were planning wasn't clear, though obviously it was something that required fairly heavy weaponry and had been in the works for quite a while. My bet is that they wanted to seize one of the gate areas and maybe blow it up with the help of a nearby fuel truck from the tarmac. The Thais don't like this theory, because it implies that there were more tangos there that day-you'd need at least a dozen, I think-which means that they missed a bunch.

I explained this to the head of airport security, who seemed about as interested in my reasoning as in catching a case of typhoid. He gave me the Thai version of a brush-off, staring at the floor and nodding "yes, yes, yes" when his body language said "no, no, no." Finally he looked at me, smiled, then told his aide in Thai to help me catch whatever flight I had come to catch.

Fine with me. I wasn't being paid to hang around. Or get shot at, for that matter.

Our flight had been boarding when the fun began. The aircraft had been backed away from the gate, then left there for more than two hours by the time we came out. The air crew was coping by spreading drinks around; the only people still annoyed by the time we came aboard were teetotalers.

The aide to the airport security chief made sure the air crew knew who we were, and the stewardesses treated us like royalty, insisting on giving us seats in first cla.s.s even though the ever-frugal Trace had booked coach. Truth was, the 777 was only about half-full, so it wasn't exactly a sacrifice on the part of the airline, but it's the thought that counts.

About the time I settled in for my first Bombay Sapphire, the copilot came out and introduced himself. He said he was a big fan of the books, and wanted to get a picture with me when we landed, and even offered a tour of the c.o.c.kpit. Before I could find a way to tactfully refuse-the word no came to mind-the pilot announced that they had just been cleared to proceed and the copilot retreated up front, promising a rain check for later in the flight.

Around about my third drink, the satellite phone came back in range of the satellite network, or whatever allows it to communicate. I checked back in with Rogue Manor, where Sean was now covering the fort. The news networks were just starting to report what had happened in Bangkok; I gave him a few details and told him to call over to our friends at Homeland Security, the DIA, and the rest of the alphabet to give them a heads-up. After that, I wanted him to make sure that Danny and Doc had gotten my earlier message to meet me in Rome; he should follow as soon as things were secure at home.

I left a message on Karen's machine: "I'm all right, no matter what you hear on the news." Then I pushed my seat back and took a quick nap.

Somewhere over the coast of Korea, I opened one eye and saw two bearded men standing up near the entrance to the c.o.c.kpit, glancing around nervously. They were too ugly to be part of a dream.

They were also in the wrong spot to be waiting for the lavatory, which in that 777 was located on the left-hand side of the forward cabin.

s.h.i.t.

Calmly but with purpose, I stretched, twisting my head around as if it were kinked and stiff from the seat. I couldn't see anyone else standing in the first-cla.s.s cabin; most if not all of the rest of the pa.s.sengers here were dozing. A curtain blocked my view of coach.

Maybe I was still dreaming, but neither of the ugly mugs morphed into J. Lo or a reasonable facsimile.

Trace mumbled something in the seat next to me, talking Apache in her sleep. I stretched my foot over and kicked her.

"Hey," I said.

"f.u.c.k yourself," she grumbled. Trace is always at her best first thing in the morning.

I leaned my head over and tugged on her sleeve beneath her blanket, pretending to be looking for a little nookie with a fellow pa.s.senger. But the sweet nothings I whispered into her ear were anything but sweet: "I think we have a problem here. There are two jokers up by the c.o.c.kpit who look like they want to take flying lessons but aren't interested in landing. Check what's going on in coach. I'm going to make like I'm looking for the bathroom."

"Mmmph," answered Trace. "f.u.c.king wild-goose chases." But she got up.

Both a.s.sholes burned holes into the back of Trace's head as she left the aisle. I'm not sure what I would have done if one had followed her; probably coldc.o.c.ked the son of a b.i.t.c.h and just dealt with whatever followed.

Trace got about two steps, then turned and came back to get her bag, as if she'd forgotten it. She leaned down and gave me a token peck on the cheek.

"I see what you're saying," she whispered. "Trouble follows you like a bad penny."

I watched her waltz her pretty b.u.t.t toward the next cabin, then made a show of scratching my head and deciding what was good for the goose was good for the gander. I got up, looked after her as if I were calculating how long she'd be, then spun and walked to the front.

The lavatory on the left was empty. A stewardess stood near it in the galley area, a nervous look on her face-and a tall, thin fellow with a knit cap very close behind her.

"I'm sorry, sir," she told me. "This lavatory is out of order."

"Oh, that's okay, I wasn't coming to take a leak," I said. "The copilot offered me a tour and I thought maybe I'd take him up on it."

The stewardess and I locked eyes. She knew who I was but didn't know what to do.

"Perhaps you could call the copilot for me," I told her.

The man behind her stepped forward. "Is there a problem?" he said in very stilted English, as if he hadn't heard what we had been saying.

"Not that I know of." I smiled broadly. One of his hands was behind the stewardess's back, and the other was in his pocket. "Are you with the airline?"

"Yes, as a fact," said the man.

"A fact? Really?"

The c.o.c.kpit door started to open. The man glanced in the direction of the two men with the beards, though he couldn't see them through the bulkhead.

I kind of wish he hadn't-it meant my fist struck him on the side on the cheek bone rather than dead-on in the face.

The son of a b.i.t.c.h fell back against the galley, a plastic-sheathed razor-knife clattering to the floor. I leapt forward as the door to the c.o.c.kpit opened, pushing past the crewman coming out and shouting to the pilot to alert the authorities that someone was trying to take over the plane. I spun back to slam the door home, figuring the best bet was to lock the c.o.c.kpit.

As I did, though, I realized that the person I pushed past wasn't a crew member at all, but one of the hijackers. And he wasn't armed with a razor: he had a shiny Sig 9mm pistol in his hand, aimed squarely at little ol' me.

Part Three.

Crashing In.

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility-I welcome it.

-JOHN F. KENNEDY.

12.

There's nothing that p.i.s.ses me off more than seeing a good handgun misused. Which by definition means any pistol pointed at me.

I slapped at the gun with my left forearm, pushing it away as he fired. The aircraft plunged to the left and I lost my balance. Instead of my fist hitting his jaw my whole body crashed against him, squeezing him against the side of the cabin. The Sig pistol flew upward, sailing out of his hand and caroming against the ceiling of the c.o.c.kpit as the aircraft's nose hunkered downward. I managed to chop at the tango's jaw with my left arm two or three times before the plane pulled up abruptly, veering on its right wing and sending us tumbling back across the cabin. As the 777 lurched more or less level, the tango and I did a quick waltz to the floor. I landed my knee on his chest so hard his ribs cracked. Blood spewed from his mouth. I gave him two hard pops to the head with my right fist, then scooped up the pistol from the floor nearby and fired a shot pointblank into the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's skull.

Pulling myself up, I made sure the door to the c.o.c.kpit had locked. The pilot was hyperventilating at his controls, struggling with himself more than the plane. The copilot sat slumped in his seat, blood covering his shoulder, neck, and the lower portion of his head. A stewardess lay in the corner behind his seat. She, too, had been shot in the head and was dead.

Alerts and alarms were sounding. According to the instruments the cabin was losing pressure, and it appeared that one of the bullets had sliced through the skin. Only the monitoring system had been damaged, but we didn't know that at the time. There was a bullet hole directly behind the pilot's seat. Thinking I was stopping the plane from decompressing I pulled off my shirt and stuffed it in, the Dutch boy plugging the dike. The shirt draped down like a blue flag, the latest in c.o.c.kpit decor.

"Are you all right?" I asked the pilot. He'd stopped hyperventilating and we were descending under steady control.

"OK. OK. Yes, OK. He pointed gun at my head." The pilot took his hands off the airplane's yoke to demonstrate.