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Author’s Note

The fictional Anti-Terrorist Task Force (ATTF) represented in this novel is based on the actual Joint Terrorist Task Force (JTTF), though I have taken some dramatic liberties and literary license where necessary.

The Joint Terrorist Task Force is a group of hard-working, dedicated, and knowledgeable men and women who are in the front line in the war against terrorism in America.

The characters in this story are entirely fictitious, though some of the workings of the law enforcement agencies portrayed are based on fact, as is the American air raid on Libya in 1986.

Introduction

It’s often easier to write an introduction to a book that’s been around a while; the introduction becomes, in a sense, more of a thoughtful retrospective on the book, written with the advantages of hindsight and history.

The Lion’s Game was written in 1999 and published in January 2000. I make this point because of the events of September 11, 2001. Many readers of this book believe that there are references in The Lion’s Game that predict that horrific day, and many people have called The Lion’s Game prescient and even prophetic. And while this is flattering to any writer, I don’t claim to be a bestselling Nostradamus. Bestselling, yes, Nostradamus, no.

How then did I apparently predict some of the events of September 11, 2001, without a crystal ball? The answer is simple: The handwriting was on the wall for all to see. The facts of the first attack on the North Tower of the World Trade Center, which occurred on February 26, 1993, were obviously well known when I wrote The Lion’s Game, and are even mentioned in the book. That attack by Islamic extremists, using a truck bomb parked in the underground parking garage of the North Tower, should have been a wake-up call to America. But we, the American public and the media, did not see this attack as a warning of what was to come.

The men and women who work in the field of anti-terrorism, however, did understand the implications of what happened. When I began researching The Lion’s Game, I was fortunate to have an entrée into the workings of the Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York City, which is made up mostly of FBI agents and NYPD detectives, as well as retired detectives, such as my character of John Corey. You’ll meet some of these men and women in this work of fiction, though names, titles, and procedures have been changed for obvious reasons of confidentiality and national security.

But back to 9/11. While conducting interviews with JTTF personnel for The Lion’s Game, I kept hearing about “the next attack,” and here is what I heard almost two years before the actual events of September 11, 2001: The World Trade Center would again be targeted, and the attack would be carried out by suicide pilots, flying small private jets loaded with fuel and explosives, which would be flown into the North and South Towers of the Trade Center.

This was eerily close to what actually happened, so when the events of the morning of September 11, 2001, unfolded, I was not taken completely unaware. And neither were the people who had spent years investigating terrorist threats to this country.

By the evening of 9/11, I’d gotten dozens of phone calls and e-mails, many from the media, asking me how I “knew” this was going to happen. Well, I didn’t know, but things that I learned while researching The Lion’s Game had obviously worked their way into my mind and into this story.

If The Lion’s Game is at all prescient, it is so because of the job I gave to my main character, John Corey.

We first met John Corey in Plum Island, where the book opens on the North Fork of Long Island and Corey is recuperating from bullet wounds, which will ultimately force him into early retirement from his job as an NYPD homicide detective.

Plum Island was meant to be a stand-alone book—not the beginning of a series—but reader reaction to John Corey was so positive that I decided to bring him back, which I did here in The Lion’s Game. The problem I’d created, however, was that at the end of Plum Island, Corey is no longer with the NYPD.

My first thought was to somehow get him back on the job as a homicide detective and use that as the basis for a series. But a chance encounter with a guy I knew who was a former NYPD detective gave me another idea—something more original. This man had taken a job as a contract agent with the Federal Joint Terrorism Task Force and had begun a new career in counter-terrorism—and that sounded like a good way to bring John Corey back.

At first, however, I wasn’t sure about having my former NYPD character working with the Feds in a job that he had no experience in nor apparent aptitude for. But as it turned out, the Joint Terrorism Task Force (which I fictionalized as the Anti-Terrorist Task Force) worked out well for John Corey and for a continuing series—and thus the follow-up book to Plum Island was The Lion’s Game, in which we see John Corey reincarnated as a contract agent working for the FBI in counterterrorism.

When I made this decision about Corey working for the Task Force, this was a relatively unknown organization, but post-9/11 the Task Force was very much in the news, and Corey’s new job, as well as the plots of the John Corey books, had become the stuff of headlines. So, maybe that was prescient—or just fortuitous.

The Lion’s Game is based on an historical event—the American air attack on Libya of April 15, 1986. This attack was in retaliation for a Libyan terrorist bombing of a German nightclub frequented by American military personnel. And our retaliation bombing of Libya by the U.S. Air Force in 1986 led to the Libyans planting a bomb on Pam Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, on December 21, 1988, killing 270 people.

The Lion’s Game is basically about a further Libyan retaliation for the 1986 air raid on that country. What I try to show in The Lion’s Game, and also in The Lion (the sequel to The Lion’s Game), is the circle of worldwide violence that has been set in motion by attacks and retaliations that have taken place for nearly thirty years. This has become, as I say in my John Corey books, a war without a clear beginning and a war without an end in sight.

For action/adventure novelists, the war on terrorism is the new Cold War, providing what seems to be a reliable supply of plots, villains, heroes, and, unfortunately, victims. Like most Americans, I was very happy when the Cold War ended, and I will be just as happy if the war on terrorism ends someday; I will find other things to write about.

But until then, global terrorism will remain in the news, and as with every war, novelists will attempt to give some insights and try to make some sense of the violence and mayhem that journalists report.

As I said earlier, a new introduction to an old book is less of an introduction and more of a historical perspective, and hopefully interesting to my readers who’ve followed the career of John Corey in five of my novels, including the newest, The Lion.

The Lion’s Game has survived in print for over a decade and hopefully will survive many more decades because it is as timely today as when it was written. Or if you think this book is prescient or prophetic, then it may be more timely now than when I wrote it.

But I leave that judgment to you, the reader. Enjoy!

Nelson DeMille

New York, 2010

BOOK ONE

America, April 15, The Present

Death is afraid of him because he has the heart of a lion.

—Arab proverb

Chapter 1

You’d think that anyone who’d been shot three times and almost become an organ donor would try to avoid dangerous situations in the future. But, no, I must have this unconscious wish to take myself out of the gene pool or something.

Anyway, I’m John Corey, formerly of the NYPD, Homicide, now working as a Special Contract Agent for the Federal Anti-Terrorist Task Force. I was sitting in the back of a yellow cab on my way from 26 Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan to John F. Kennedy International Airport with a Pakistani suicide driver behind the wheel.

It was a nice spring day, a Saturday, moderate traffic on the Shore Parkway, sometimes known as the Belt Parkway, and recently renamed POW/MIA Parkway to avoid confusion. It was late afternoon, and seagulls from a nearby landfill—formerly known as a garbage dump—were crapping on the taxi’s windshield. I love spring.

I wasn’t headed off on vacation or anything like that—I was reporting for work with the aforementioned Anti-Terrorist Task Force. This is an organization that not too many people know about, which is just as well. The ATTF is divided into sections which focus on specific bunches of troublemakers and bomb chuckers, like the Irish Republican Army, Puerto Rican Independence Movement, black radicals, and other groups that will go unnamed. I’m in the Mideastern section, which is the biggest group and maybe the most important, though to be honest, I don’t know much about Mideastern terrorists. But I was supposed to be learning on the job.

So, to practice my skills, I started up a conversation with the Pakistani guy whose name was Fasid, and who for all I know is a terrorist, though he looked and talked like an okay guy. I asked him, “What was that place you came from?”

“Islamabad. The capital.”

“Really? How long have you been here?”

“Ten years.”

“You like it here?”

“Sure. Who doesn’t?”

“Well, my ex-brother-in-law, Gary, for one. He’s always bad-mouthing America. Wants to move to New Zealand.”

“I have an uncle in New Zealand.”

“No kidding? Anybody left in Islamabad?”

He laughed, then asked me, “You meeting somebody at the airport?”

“Why do you ask?”

“No luggage.”

“Hey, you’re good.”

“So, you’re meeting somebody? I could hang around and take you back to the city.”

Fasid’s English was pretty good—slang, idioms, and all that. I replied, “I have a ride back.”

“You sure? I could hang around.”

Actually, I was meeting an alleged terrorist who’d surrendered himself to the U.S. Embassy in Paris, but I didn’t think that was information I needed to share with Fasid. I said, “You a Yankee fan?”

“Not anymore.” Whereupon he launched into a tirade against Steinbrenner, Yankee Stadium, the price of tickets, the salaries of the players, and so forth. These terrorists are clever, sounding just like loyal citizens.

Anyway, I tuned the guy out and thought about how I’d wound up here. As I indicated, I was a homicide detective, one of New York’s Finest, if I do say so. A year ago this month, I was playing dodge-the-bullets with two Hispanic gentlemen up on West 102nd Street in what was probably a case of mistaken identity, or sport shooting, since there seemed to be no reason for the attempted whack. Life is funny sometimes. Anyway, the perps were still at large, though I had my eye out for them, as you might imagine.

After my near-death experience and upon release from the hospital, I accepted my Uncle Harry’s offer to stay at his summer house on Long Island to convalesce. The house is located about a hundred road miles from West 102nd Street, which was fine. Anyway, while I was out there, I got involved with this double murder of a husband and wife, fell in love twice, almost got killed. Also, one of the women I fell in love with, Beth Penrose by name, is still sort of in my life.

While all this was going on out on eastern Long Island, my divorce became final. And as if I wasn’t already having a bad R&R at the beach, I wound up making the professional acquaintance of a schmuck on the double homicide case named Ted Nash of the Central Intelligence Agency who I took a big dislike to, and who hated my guts in return, and who, lo and behold, was now part of my ATTF team. It’s a small world, but not that small, and I don’t believe in coincidence.

There was also another guy involved with that case, George Foster, an FBI agent, who was okay, but not my cup of tea either.

In any case, it turns out that this double homicide was not a Federal case, and Nash and Foster disappeared, only to reappear in my life about four weeks ago when I got assigned to this ATTF Mideastern team. But no sweat, I’ve put in for a transfer to the ATTF’s Irish Republican Army section, which I will probably get. I don’t have any real feelings about the IRA either way, but at least the IRA babes are easy to look at, the guys are more fun than your average Arab terrorist, and the Irish pubs are primo. I could do some real good in the anti-IRA section. Really.

Anyway, after all this mess out on Long Island, I get offered this great choice of being hauled in front of the NYPD disciplinary board for moonlighting or whatever, or taking a three-quarter medical disability and going away. So I took the medical, but also negotiated a job at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan where I live. Before I got shot, I’d taught a class at John Jay as an Adjunct Professor, so I wasn’t asking for much and I got it.

Starting in January, I was teaching two night classes at JJ and one day class, and I was getting bored out of my mind, so my ex-partner, Dom Fanelli, knows about this Special Contract Agent program with the Feds where they hire former law enforcement types to work with ATTF. I apply, I’m accepted, probably for all the wrong reasons, and here I am. The pay’s good, the perks are okay, and the Federal types are mostly schmucks. I have this problem with Feds, like most cops do, and not even sensitivity training would help.

But the work seems interesting. The ATTF is a unique and, I may say, elite group (despite the schmucks) that only exists in New York City and environs. It’s made up mostly of NYPD detectives who are great guys, FBI, and some quasi-civilian guys like me hired to round out the team, so to speak. Also, on some teams, when needed, are CIA prima donnas, and also some DEA—Drug Enforcement Agency people who know their business, and know about connections between the drug trade and the terrorist world.

Other team players include people from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms of Waco, Texas, fame, plus cops from surrounding suburban counties, and New York State Police. There are other Federal types from agencies I can’t mention, and last but not least, we have a few Port Authority detectives assigned to some teams. These PA guys are helpful at airports, bus terminals, train stations, docks, some bridges and tunnels under their control, and other places, like the World Trade Center, where their little empire extends. We have it all pretty much covered, but even if we didn’t, it sounds really impressive.

The ATTF was one of the main investigating groups in the World Trade Center bombing and the TWA 800 explosion off Long Island. But sometimes we take the show on the road. For instance, we also sent a team to help out with the African embassy bombings, though the name ATTF was hardly mentioned in the news, which is how they like it. All of this was before my time, and things have been quiet since I’ve been here, which is how I like it.

The reason the almighty Feds decided to team up with the NYPD and form the ATTF, by the way, is that most FBI people are not from New York and don’t know a pastrami sandwich from the Lexington Avenue subway. The CIA guys are a little slicker and talk about cafés in Prague and the night train to Istanbul and all that crap, but New York is not their favorite place to be. The NYPD has street smarts, and that’s what you need to keep track of Abdul Salami-Salami and Paddy O’Bad and Pedro Viva Puerto Rico and so on.

Your average Fed is Wendell Wasp from West Wheatfield, Iowa, whereas the NYPD has mucho Hispanics, lots of blacks, a million Irish, and even a few Muslims now, so you get this cultural diversity on the force that is not only politically cool and correct, but actually useful and effective. And when the ATTF can’t steal active-duty NYPD people, they hire ex-NYPD like me. Despite my so-called disability, I’m armed, dangerous, and nasty. So there it is.

We were approaching JFK, and I said to Fasid, “So, what did you do for Easter?”

“Easter? I don’t celebrate Easter. I’m Muslim.”

See how clever I am? The Feds would’ve sweated this guy for an hour to make him admit he was a Muslim. I got it out of him in two seconds. Just kidding. But, you know, I really have to get out of the Mideast section and into the IRA bunch. I’m part Irish and part English, and I could work both sides of that street.

Fasid exited the Shore-Belt-POW/MIA Parkway and got on the Van Wyck Expressway heading south into JFK. These huge planes were sort of floating overhead making whining noises, and Fasid called out to me, “Where you going?”

“International Arrivals.”

“Which airline?”

“There’s more than one?”

“Yeah. There’s twenty, thirty, forty—”

“No kidding? Just drive.”

Fasid shrugged, just like an Israeli cabbie. I was starting to think that maybe he was a Mossad agent posing as a Pakistani. Or maybe this job was getting to me.

There’s all these colored and numbered signs along the expressway, and I let the guy go to the International Arrivals, a huge structure with all the airline logos, one after the other out front, and he asked again, “Which airline?”

“I don’t like any of these. Keep going.”

Again, he shrugged.

I directed him onto another road, and we were now going to the other side of the big airport. This is good trade craft, to see if anybody’s following you. I learned this in some spy novel or maybe a James Bond movie. I was trying to get into this anti-terrorist thing.

I got Fasid pointed in the right direction and told him to stop in front of a big office-type building on the west side of JFK that was used for this and that. This whole area is full of nondescript airport services buildings and warehouses, and no one notices anybody’s comings and goings, plus the parking is easy. I paid the guy, tipped him, and asked for a receipt in the exact amount. Honesty is one of my few faults.

Fasid gave me a bunch of blank receipts and asked again, “You want me to hang around?”

“I wouldn’t if I were you.”

I went into the lobby of the building, a 1960s sort of crap modern architecture, and instead of an armed guard with an Uzi like they have all over the world, there’s just a sign that says RESTRICTED AREA—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. So, assuming you read English, you know if you’re welcome or not.

I went up a staircase and down a long corridor of gray steel doors, some marked, some numbered, some neither. At the end of the corridor was a door with a nice blue-and-white sign that said CONQUISTADOR CLUB—PRIVATE—MEMBERS ONLY.

There was this electronic keycard scanner alongside the door, but like everything else about the Conquistador Club, it was a phony. What I had to do was to press my right thumb on the translucent face of the scanner, which I did. About two seconds later, the metrobiotic genie said to itself, “Hey, that’s John Corey’s thumb—let’s open the door for John.”

And did the door swing open? No, it slid into the wall as far as its dummy doorknob. Do I need this nonsense?

Also there’s a video scanner overhead, in case your thumbprint got screwed up with a chocolate bar or something, and if they recognize your face, they also open the door, though in my case they might make an exception.

So I went in, and the door slid closed automatically behind me. I was now in what appeared to be the reception area of an airline travelers’ club. Why there’d be such a club in a building that’s not near a passenger terminal is, you can be sure, a question I’d asked, and I’m still waiting for an answer. But I know the answer, which is that when the CIA culture is present, you get this kind of smoke-and-mirrors silliness. These clowns waste time and money on stagecraft, just like in the old days when they were trying to impress the KGB. What the door needed was a simple sign that said KEEP OUT.

Anyway, behind the counter was Nancy Tate, the receptionist, a sort of Miss Moneypenny, the model of efficiency and repressed sexuality, and all that. She liked me for some reason and greeted me cheerily, “Good afternoon, Mr. Corey.”

“Good afternoon, Ms. Tate.”

“Everyone has arrived.”

“I was delayed by traffic.”

“Actually, you’re ten minutes early.”

“Oh…”

“I like your tie.”

“I took it off a dead Bulgarian on the night train to Istanbul.”

She giggled.

Anyway, the reception area was all leather and burled wood, plush blue carpet, and so forth, and on the wall directly behind Nancy was another logo of the fictitious Conquistador Club. And for all I knew, Ms. Tate was a hologram.

To the left of Ms. Tate was an entranceway marked CONFERENCE AND BUSINESS AREA that actually led to the interrogation rooms and holding cells, which I guess could be called the Conference and Business Area. To the right, a sign announced LOUNGE AND BAR. I should be so lucky. That was in fact the way to the communications and operations center.

Ms. Tate said to me, “Ops Center. There are five people including yourself.”

“Thanks.” I walked through the doorway, down a short hallway, and into a dim, cavernous, and windowless room that held desks, computer consoles, cubicles, and such. On the big rear wall was a huge, computer-generated color map of the world that could be programmed to a detailed map of whatever you needed, like downtown Islamabad. Typical of most Federal facilities, this place had all the bells and whistles. Money is no problem in Fedland.

In any case, this facility wasn’t my actual workplace, which is in the aforementioned 26 Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan. But this was where I had to be on this Saturday afternoon to meet and greet some Arab guy who was switching sides and needed to be taken safely downtown for a few years of debriefing.

I kind of ignored my teammates and made for the coffee bar, which, unlike the one in my old detective squad room, is neat, clean, and well stocked, compliments of the Federal taxpayers.

I fooled around with the coffee awhile, which was my way of avoiding my colleagues for a few more minutes.

I got the coffee the right color and noticed a tray of donuts that said NYPD and a tray of croissants and brioche that said CIA and a tray of oatmeal cookies that said FBI. Someone had a sense of humor.

Anyway, the coffee bar was on the operations side of the big room and the commo side was sort of elevated on a low platform. A lady duty agent was up there monitoring all the gidgets and gadgets.

My team, on the operations side, was sitting around somebody’s empty desk, engaged in conversation. The team consisted of the aforementioned Ted Nash of the CIA and George Foster of the FBI, plus Nick Monti of the NYPD, and Kate Mayfield of the FBI. WASP, WASP, Wop, WASP.

Kate Mayfield came to the coffee bar and began making herself tea. She is supposed to be my mentor, whatever that means. As long as it doesn’t mean partner.

She said to me, “I like that tie.”

“I once strangled a Ninja warrior to death with it. It’s my favorite.”

“Really? Hey, how are you getting along here?”

“You tell me.”

“Well, it’s too soon for me to tell you. You tell me why you put in for the IRA section.”

“Well, the Muslims don’t drink, I can’t spell their f-ing names on my reports, and the women can’t be seduced.”

“That’s the most racist, sexist remark I’ve heard in years.”

“You don’t get around much.”

“This is not the NYPD, Mr. Corey.”

“No, but I’m NYPD. Get used to it.”

“Are we through attempting to shock and appall?”

“Yeah. Look, Kate, I thank you for your meddling—I mean mentoring—but in about a week, I’ll be in the IRA section or off the job.”

She didn’t reply.

I looked at her as she messed around with a lemon. She was about thirty, I guess, blond, blue eyes, fair skin, athletic kind of build, perfect pearly whites, no jewelry, light makeup, and so on. Wendy Wasp from Wichita. She had not one flaw that I could see, not even a zit on her face or a fleck of dandruff on her dark blue blazer. In fact, she looked like she’d been airbrushed. She probably played three sports in high school, took cold showers, belonged to 4-H, and organized pep rallies in college. I hated her. Well, not really, but about the only thing we had in common was some internal organs, and not even all of those.

Also, her accent was hard to identify, and I remembered that Nick Monti said her father was an FBI guy, and they’d lived in different places around the country.

She turned and looked at me, and I looked at her. She had these piercing eyes, the color of blue dye No. 2, like they use in ice pops.

She said to me, “You came to us highly recommended.”

“By who? Whom?”

“Whom. By some of your old colleagues in Homicide.”

I didn’t reply.

“Also,” she said, “by Ted and George.” She nodded toward Schmuck and Putz.

I almost choked on my coffee. Why these two guys would say anything nice about me was a total mystery.

“They aren’t fond of you, but you impressed them on that Plum Island case.”

“Yeah, I even impressed myself on that one.”

“Why don’t you give the Mideast section a try?” She added, “If Ted and George are the problem, we can switch you to another team within the section.”

“I love Ted and George, but I really have my heart set on the anti-IRA section.”

“Too bad. This is where the real action is. This is a career builder.” She added, “The IRA are pretty quiet and well behaved in this country.”

“Good. I don’t need a new career anyway.”

“The Palestinians and the Islamic groups, on the other hand, are potentially dangerous to national security.”

“No ‘potentially’ about it,” I replied. “World Trade Center.”

She didn’t reply.

I’d come to discover that these three words in the ATTF were like, “Remember Pearl Harbor.” The intelligence community got caught with their pants down on that one, but came back and solved the case, so it was a draw.

She continued, “The whole country is paranoid about a Mideast terrorist biological attack or a nuclear or chemical attack. You saw that on the Plum Island case. Right?”

“Right.”

“So? Everything else in the ATTF is a backwater. The real action is in the Mideast section, and you look like a man of action.” She smiled.

I smiled in return. I asked her, “What’s it to you?”

“I like you.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“I like New York Neanderthals.”

“I’m speechless.”

“Think about it.”

“Will do.” I glanced at a TV monitor close by and saw that the flight we were waiting for, Trans-Continental 175 from Paris, was inbound and on time. I asked Ms. Mayfield, “How long do you think this will take?”

“Maybe two or three hours. An hour of paperwork here, then back to Federal Plaza, with our alleged defector, then we’ll see.”

“See what?”

“Are you in a rush to get somewhere?”

“Sort of.”

“I feel badly that national security is interfering with your social life.”

I didn’t have a good reply to that, so I said, “I’m a big fan of national security. I’m yours until six P.M.”

“You can leave whenever you want.” She took her tea and rejoined our colleagues.

So, I stood there with my coffee, and considered the offer to take a hike. In retrospect, I was like the guy standing in quicksand, watching it cover my shoes, curious to see how long it would take to reach my socks, knowing I could leave anytime soon. Unfortunately, the next time I glanced down, it was up to my knees.

Chapter 2

Sam Walters leaned forward in his chair, adjusted his headset-microphone, and stared at the green three-foot radar screen in front of him. It was a nice April afternoon outside, but you’d never know that here in the dimly lit, windowless room of the New York Air Traffic Control Center in Islip, Long Island, fifty miles east of Kennedy Airport.

Bob Esching, Walters’ shift supervisor, stood beside him and asked, “Problem?”

Walters replied, “We’ve got a NO-RAD here, Bob. Trans-Continental Flight One-Seven-Five from Paris.”

Bob Esching nodded. “How long has he been NO-RAD?”

“No one’s been able to raise him since he came off the North Atlantic track near Gander.” Walters glanced at his clock. “About two hours.”

Esching asked, “Any other indication of a problem?”

“Nope. In fact…” He regarded the radar screen and said, “He turned southwest at the Sardi intersection, then down Jet Thirty-Seven, as per flight plan.”

Esching replied, “He’ll call in a few minutes, wondering why we haven’t been talking to him.”

Walters nodded. A No-Radio status was not that unusual—it often happened between air traffic control and the aircraft they worked with. Walters had had days when it happened two or three times. Invariably, after a couple of minutes of repeated transmissions, some pilot would respond, “Oops, sorry…” then explain that they had the volume down or the wrong frequency dialed in—or something less innocuous, like the whole flight crew was asleep, though they wouldn’t tell you that.

Esching said, “Maybe the pilot and co-pilot have stewardesses on their laps.”

Walters smiled. He said, “The best explanation I ever got in a NO-RAD situation was from a pilot who admitted that when he laid his lunch tray down on the pedestal between the pilots’ seats, the tray had pressed into a selector switch and taken them off-frequency.”

Esching laughed. “Low-tech explanation for a high-tech problem.”

“Right.” Walters looked at the screen again. “Tracking fine.”

“Yeah.”

It was when the blip disappeared, Walters thought, that you had a major problem. He was on duty the night in March 1998 when Air Force One, carrying the President, disappeared from the radar screen for twenty-four long seconds, and the entire room full of controllers sat frozen. The aircraft reappeared from computer-glitch limbo and everyone started to breathe again. But then there was the night of July 17, 1996, when TWA Flight 800 disappeared from the screen forever… Walters would never forget that night as long as he lived. But here, he thought, we have a simple NO-RAD… and yet something bothered him. For one thing, this was a very long time to be in a NO-RAD status.

Sam Walters punched a few buttons, then spoke into his headset microphone on the intercom channel. “Sector Nineteen, this is Twenty-three. That NO-RAD, TC One-Seven-Five, is coming your way, and you’ll get the handoff from me in about four minutes. I just wanted to give you a heads-up on this in case you need to do some adjusting.”

Walters listened to the reply on his headset, then said, “Yeah… the guy’s a real screwup. Everyone up and down the Atlantic Coast has been calling him for over two hours on VHF, HF, and for all I know, CB and smoke signals.” Walters chuckled and added, “When this flight is over, this guy’s going to be doing so much writing, he’ll think he’s Shakespeare. Right. Talk to you later.” He turned his head and made eye contact with Esching. “Okay?”

“Yeah… tell you what… call everyone down the line and tell them that the first sector that makes contact will inform the captain that when he lands, he’s to call me on the telephone at the Center. I want to talk to this clown myself so I can tell him how much agro he’s caused along the coast.”

“Canada, too.”

“Right.” Esching listened to Walters pass on the message to the next controllers who would be getting jurisdiction of Trans-Continental Flight 175.

A few other controllers and journeymen on break had wandered over to the Section 23 console. Walters knew that everyone wanted to see why Supervisor Bob Esching was so far from his desk and out on the floor. Esching was—in the unkind words of his subordinates—standing dangerously close to an actual work situation.

Sam Walters didn’t like all these people around him, but if Esching didn’t shoo them off, he couldn’t say anything. And he didn’t think Esching was going to tell everyone to clear out. The Trans-Continental No-Radio situation was now the focus event in the control center, and this mini-drama was, after all, good training for these young controllers who had pulled Saturday duty.

No one said much, but Walters sensed a mixture of curiosity, puzzlement, and maybe a bit of anxiety.

Walters got on the radio and tried again. “Trans-Continental Flight One-Seven-Five, this is New York Center. Do you read me?”

No reply.

Walters broadcast again.

No reply.

The room was silent except for the hum of electronics. No one standing around had any comment. It was unwise to say anything in these kinds of situations that could come back to haunt you.

Finally, one of the controllers said to Esching, “Paper this guy big-time on this one, boss. I got off to a late coffee break because of him.”

A few controllers laughed, but the laughter died away quickly.

Esching cleared his throat and said, “Okay, everybody go find something useful to do. Scram.”

The controllers all wandered off, leaving Walters and Esching alone. Esching said softly, “I don’t like this.”

“Me neither.”

Esching grabbed a rolling chair and wheeled it beside Walters. Esching studied the big screen and focused on the problem aircraft. The identity tag on the screen showed that it was a Boeing 747, and it was the new 700 Series aircraft, the largest and most modern of Boeing’s 747s. The aircraft was continuing precisely along its flight plan, routing toward JFK International Airport. Esching said, “How the hell could all the radios be non-functioning?”

Sam Walters considered for a minute, then replied, “They can’t be, so—I think it has to be either that the volume control is down, the frequency selectors are broken, or the antennas have fallen off.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah…”

“But… if it was the volume control or the frequency selectors, the crew would have realized that a long time ago.”

Walters nodded and replied, “Yeah… so, maybe it’s total antenna failure… or, you know, this is a new model so maybe there’s some kind of electronic bug in this thing and it caused total radio failure. Possible.”

Esching nodded, “Possible.” But not probable. Flight 175 had been totally without voice contact since leaving the Oceanic Tracks and reaching North America. The Abnormal Procedures Handbook addressed this remote possibility, but he recalled that the handbook wasn’t very clear about what to do. Basically, there was nothing that could be done.

Walters said, “If his radios are okay, then when he has to start down, he’ll realize he’s on the wrong frequency or that his volume control is down.”

“Right. Hey… do you think they’re all asleep?”

Walters hesitated, then replied, “Well… it happens, but, you know, a flight attendant would have come into the cockpit by now.”

“Yeah. This is too long for a NO-RAD, isn’t it?”

“It’s getting to be a little long… but like I said, when he has to start down… you know, even if he had total radio failure, he could use the data link to type a message to his company operations, and they’d have called us by now.”

Esching had thought about that and replied, “That’s why I’m starting to think it’s antenna failure, like you said.” He thought a moment and asked Walters, “How many antennas does this plane have?”

“I’m not sure. Lots.”

“Could they all fail?”

“Maybe.”

Esching considered, then said, “Okay, say he’s aware of a total radio failure… he could actually use one of the air-to-land phones in the dome cabin and call someone who would have called us by now. I mean, it’s been done in the past—you could use an airphone.”

Walters nodded.

Both men watched the white radar blip with its white alpha-numeric identification tag trailing beneath it as the blip continued to crawl slowly from right to left.

Finally, Bob Esching said what he didn’t want to say. “It could be a hijacking.”

Sam Walters didn’t reply.

“Sam?”

“Well… look, the airliner is following the flight plan, the course and altitude are right, and they’re still using the transponder code for the transatlantic crossing. If they were being hijacked, he’s supposed to send a hijacking transponder code to tip us off.”

“Yeah…” Esching realized that this situation didn’t fit any of the profiles for a hijacking. All they had was an eerie silence from an aircraft that otherwise behaved normally. Yet, it was possible that a sophisticated hijacker would know about the transponder code and tell the pilots not to touch the transponder selector.

Esching knew he was the man on the spot. He cursed himself for volunteering for this Saturday shift. His wife was in Florida visiting her parents, his kids were in college, and he’d thought that going to work would be better than sitting around the house alone. Wrong. He needed a hobby.

Walters said, “What else can we do?”

“You just keep doing what you’re doing. I’m going to call the Kennedy Tower supervisor, then I’ll call the Trans-Continental Operations Center.”

“Good idea.”

Esching stood and said, for the record, “Sam, I don’t believe we have a serious problem here, but we would be lax if we didn’t make some notifications.”

“Right,” Walters replied as he mentally translated Esching’s words to, We don’t want to sound inexperienced, panicky, or too incompetent to handle the situation, but we do want to cover our asses.

Esching said, “Go ahead and call Sector Nineteen for the handoff.”

“Right.”

“And call me if anything changes.”

“Will do.”

Esching turned and walked toward his glassed-in cubicle at the rear of the big room.

He sat at his desk and let a few minutes pass, hoping that Sam Walters would call him to announce they’d established contact. He thought about the problem, then thought about what he was going to say to the Kennedy Tower supervisor. His call to Kennedy, he decided, would be strictly FYI, with no hint of annoyance or concern, no opinions, no speculation—nothing but the facts. His call to Trans-Continental Operations, he knew, had to be just the right balance of annoyance and concern.

He picked up the phone and speed-dialed Kennedy Tower first. As the phone rang, he wondered if he shouldn’t just tell them what he really felt in the deepest part of his guts—something is very wrong here.

Chapter 3

I was sitting now with my colleagues: Ted Nash, CIA Super Spook; George Foster, FBI Boy Scout; Nick Monti, NYPD good guy; and Kate Mayfield, Golden Girl of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We’d all found swivel chairs from unoccupied desks, and everyone had a ceramic coffee mug in his or her hand. I really wanted a donut—a sugar donut—but there’s this thing with cops and donuts that people find funny for some reason, and I wasn’t going to have a donut.

We all had our jackets off, so we could see one another’s holsters. Even after twenty years in law enforcement, I find that this makes everyone’s voice a couple of octaves lower, even the women.

Anyway, we were all leafing through our folders on this alleged defector, whose name was Asad Khalil. What cops call the folder, by the way, my new friends call the dossier. Cops sit on their asses and flip through their folders. Feds sit on their derrières and peruse their dossiers.

The information in the folder is called the book on the guy, the information in the dossier is called, I think, the information. Same thing, but I have to learn the language.

Anyway, there wasn’t much in my folder, or their dossier, except a color photo transmitted by the Paris Embassy, plus a real short bio, and a brief sort of This-is-what-we-think-the-prick-is-up-to kind of report compiled by the CIA, Interpol, British MI-6, the French Sûreté and a bunch of other cop and spook outfits around Europe. The bio said that the alleged defector was a Libyan, age about thirty, no known family, no other vitals, except that he spoke English, French, a little Italian, less German, and, of course, Arabic.

I glanced at my watch, stretched, yawned, and looked around. The Conquistador Club, in addition to being an ATTF facility, doubled as an FBI field office and CIA hangout and who knew what else, but on this Saturday afternoon, the only people there were us five of the ATTF team, the duty officer whose name was Meg, and Nancy Tate out front. The walls, incidentally, are lead-lined so that nobody outside can eavesdrop with microwaves, and even Superman can’t see us.

Ted Nash said to me, “I understand you might be leaving us.”

I didn’t reply, but I looked at Nash. He was a sharp dresser, and you knew that everything was custom-made, including his shoes and holster. He wasn’t bad-looking, nice tan, salt-and-pepper hair, and I recalled quite distinctly that Beth Penrose got a little sweaty over him. I had convinced myself that this was not why I didn’t like him, of course, but it certainly added fat to the fires of my smoldering resentment, or something like that.

George Foster said to me, “If you give this assignment ninety days, then whatever decision you make will be given serious consideration.”

“Really?”

Foster, as the senior FBI guy, was sort of like the team leader, which was okay with Nash, who was not actually on the team, but drifted in and out if the situation called for CIA, like it did today.

Foster, dressed in his awful blue-serge-I’m-a-Fed suit, added, rather bluntly, “Ted’s leaving on overseas assignment in a few weeks, then it will only be us four.”

“Why can’t he leave now?” I suggested subtly.

Nash laughed.

By the way, Mr. Ted Nash, aside from hitting on Beth Penrose, had actually added to his list of sins by threatening me during the Plum Island thing—and I’m not the forgiving type.

George Foster said to me, “We have an interesting and important case that we’re working on that involves the murder of a moderate Palestinian by an extremist group here in New York. We need you for that.”

“Really?” My street instincts were telling me that I was getting smoke blown up my ass. Ergo, Foster, and Nash needed a guy to take the fall for something, and whatever it was, I was getting set up to go down. I felt like hanging around just to see what they were up to, but to be honest, I was out of my element here, and even bozos could bring you down if you weren’t careful.

I mean, what a coincidence that I wound up on this team. The ATTF is not huge, but it’s big enough so that this arrangement looked just a little suspicious. Clue Number Two was that Schmuck and Putz requested me on this team for my homicide expertise. I was meaning to ask Dom Fanelli how he’d heard about this Special Contract Agent thing. I’d trust Dom with my life and I have, so he was okay on this, and I had to assume that Nick Monti was clean. Cops don’t screw other cops, not even for the Federal government—especially not for the Federal government.

I looked at Kate Mayfield. It would really break my cold, hard heart if she was hooked up with Foster and Nash to do me.

She smiled at me.

I smiled back. If I was Foster or Nash and I was fishing for John Corey, I would use Kate Mayfield as bait.

Nick Monti said to me, “This stuff takes some getting used to. And you know, about half the cops and ex-cops who sign on here leave. It’s like we’re all one big happy family, but the cops are like the kids who didn’t go to college, live at home, do odd jobs, and always want to borrow the car.”

Kate said, “That’s not true, Nick.”

Monti laughed. “Yeah, right.” He looked at me and said, “We can talk about it over some brews.”

I said to all assembled, “I’ll keep an open mind,” which means, Fuck you. But you don’t want to say that because you want them to keep dangling the bait. It’s kind of interesting. Another reason for my bad manners was that I was missing the NYPD—The Job, as we called it—and I guess I was feeling a little sorry for myself and a little nostalgic for the old days.

I looked at Nick Monti and caught his eye. I didn’t know him from The Job, but I knew he had been a detective in the Intelligence Unit, which was perfect for this kind of work. They supposedly needed me for this Palestinian homicide case and I guess other terrorist-related homicide cases, which was why I was given a contract. Actually, I think they have a contract out on me. I said to Nick, “Do you know why Italians don’t like Jehovah’s Witnesses?”

“No… why?”

“Italians don’t like any witnesses.”

This got a big laugh out of Nick, but the other three looked like I’d just had a brain fart. The Feds, you have to understand, are so very politically correct and anal retentive, so very fucking frightened of the Washington Thought Police. They’re totally cowed by the stupid directives that come out of Washington like a steady stream of diarrhea. I mean, we’ve all gotten a little more sensitive and aware of our words over the years, and that’s good, but the Federal types are positively paranoid about offending anybody or any group, so you get stuff like, “Hello, Mr. Terrorist, my name is George Foster, and I’ll be your arresting officer today.”

Anyway, Nick Monti said to me, “Three demerits, Detective Corey. Ethnic slur.”

Clearly Nash, Foster, and Mayfield were somewhere between annoyed and embarrassed that they were indirectly being made fun of. It occurred to me, in a sensitive moment, that the Feds had their own issues with the NYPD, but you’d never hear a word of it from them.

Regarding Nick Monti, he was about mid-fifties, married with kids, balding, a bit of a paunch, and sort of fatherly and innocuous-looking, the kind of guy who looked like anything but an Intell man. He must have been good or the Feds wouldn’t have stolen him from his NYPD job.

I perused the dossier on Mr. Asad Khalil. It appeared that the Arab gentleman moved around Western Europe a lot, and wherever he had been, some American or British person or thing had met with a misadventure—a bomb in the British Embassy in Rome, bomb in the American Cathedral in Paris, bomb in the American Lutheran Church in Frankfurt, the ax murder of an American Air Force officer outside of Lakenheath Airbase in England, and the shooting death in Brussels of three American schoolkids whose fathers were NATO officers. This last thing struck me as particularly nasty, and I wondered what this guy’s problem was.

In any case, none of the aforementioned stuff could be directly linked to this Khalil guy, so he had been put under the eye to see who he associated with, or to see if he could be caught in the act. But the alleged asshole seemed to have no known accomplices, no ties to or affiliations with anybody or anything, and no known terrorist connections, except Kiwanis and Rotary. Just kidding.

I scanned a paragraph in the dossier, written by a code-named agent in an unnamed intelligence agency. The paragraph said, “Asad Khalil enters a country openly and legally, using his Libyan passport and posing as a tourist. The authorities are alerted, and he is watched to see who he makes contact with. Invariably, he manages to disappear and apparently leave the country undetected, as there is never any record of his departure. I highly recommend detention and interrogation the next time he arrives at a point of entry.”

I nodded. Good idea, Sherlock. That’s exactly what we were going to do.

The thing that bothered me about this was that Asad Khalil didn’t sound like the kind of perp who would show up at the American Embassy in Paris and give himself up when he was way ahead on points.

I read the last page of the dossier. Basically what we had here was a loner with a bad attitude toward Western Civilization, such as it is. Well, okay, we’ll see what the guy is up to real soon.

I studied the color photostat from Paris. Mr. Khalil looked mean, but not ugly mean. He was the swarthily handsome type, hooked nose, slicked-back hair, and deep, dark eyes. He’d had his share of girls or boys or whatever floated his boat.

My colleagues chatted about the case at hand for a moment, and it seemed like all we were supposed to do today was take Mr. Khalil into protective custody and bring him here for a quick preliminary interrogation, a few photos, fingerprints, and all that. An asylum officer from the Immigration and Naturalization Service would do some questioning and paperwork, too. There are a lot of redundancies built into the Federal system so that if something goes wrong, there are no fewer than five hundred people passing the buck around.

After an hour or two here, we’d escort him to Federal Plaza, where, I suppose, he would be met by the appropriate people, who, along with my team, would determine the sincerity of his defection to Christendom and so forth. At some point, a day, a week, or months from now, Mr. Khalil would wind up in some CIA place outside of Washington where he’d spill his guts for a year and then get some bucks and a new identity, which, knowing the CIA, would make the poor guy look like Pat Boone. Anyway, I said to my colleagues, “Who has blond hair, blue eyes, big tits, and lives in the south of France?”

No one seemed to know, so I told them, “Salman Rushdie.”

Nick got a good laugh out of that and slapped his knee. “Two more demerits.”

The other two guys smiled tightly. Kate rolled her eyes.

Yeah, I was being a little over the top, but I didn’t ask for this gig. Anyway, I only had one more bad joke and two more obnoxious comments left.

Kate Mayfield said, “As you may have read in our assignment memo from Zach Weber, Asad Khalil is being escorted by Phil Hundry of the FBI, and Peter Gorman of the CIA. They took charge of Khalil in Paris, and they are flying Business Class in the dome section of the 747. Mr. Khalil may or may not be a government witness and until that’s established, he’s in handcuffs.”

I inquired, “Who gets the frequent flyer miles?”

Ms. Mayfield ignored me and continued, “The two agents and Mr. Khalil will deplane first, and we will be in the jetway, at the door of the aircraft, to meet them.” She glanced at her watch, then stood and looked at the TV monitor and said, “Still inbound, still on time. In about ten minutes we should get moving toward the gate.”

Ted Nash said, “We certainly don’t expect any trouble, but we should be alert. If anyone wanted to kill this guy, they have only a few opportunities—in the jetway, on the way back here in the van, or in transit to Manhattan. After that, Khalil disappears into the bowels of the system, and no one will see or hear from him again.”

Nick said, “I’ve arranged for some Port Authority police officers and NYPD uniformed guys on the tarmac near the van, and we have a police escort to Fed Plaza.” He added, “So if anyone tries to whack this guy, it’ll be a kamikaze mission.”

“Which,” said Mr. Foster, “is not out of the question.”

Kate said, “We slapped a bulletproof vest on him in Paris. We’ve taken every precaution. Shouldn’t be a problem.”

Shouldn’t be. Not right here on American soil. In fact, I couldn’t recall either the Feds or the NYPD ever losing a prisoner or a witness in transit, so it looked like a walk in the park. Yet, all my kidding aside, you had to handle each one of these routine assignments as though it could blow up in your face. I mean, we’re talking terrorists, people with a cause, who have shown they don’t give a rat’s ass about getting a day older.

We verbally rehearsed the walk through the terminal, to the gate, down the jetway service stairs, to the aircraft parking ramp. We’d put Khalil, Gorman, and Hundry into an unmarked van with Kevlar armor inside, then, with one Port Authority police car in the lead, and one as a trail vehicle, we would head back to our private club here. The Port Authority police cars had ground control radios, which, according to the rules, we needed in the ramp area and in all aeronautical areas.

Back at the Conquistador Club, we’d call an Immigration guy to get Khalil processed. The only organization that seemed to be missing today was the Parking Violations Bureau. But rules are rules, and everyone has their turf to protect.

At some point, we’d get back in the van, and with our escorts, we’d take a circuitous route to Manhattan, cleverly avoiding Muslim neighborhoods in Brooklyn. Meanwhile, a paddy wagon with a marked car would act as decoy. With luck, I’d be done for the day by six and in my car, heading out to Long Island for a rendezvous with Beth Penrose.

Meanwhile, back at the Conquistador Club, Nancy stuck her head in the room and said, “The van is here.”

Foster stood and announced, “Time to roll.”

At the last minute, Foster said to Nick and me, “Why don’t one of you stay here, in case we get an official call?”

Nick said, “I’ll stay.”

Foster jotted down his cell phone number and gave it to Nick. “We’ll keep in touch. Call me if anyone calls here.”

“Right.”

I glanced at the TV monitor on my way out. Twenty minutes until scheduled landing.

I’ve often wondered what the outcome would have been if I’d stayed behind instead of Nick.

Chapter 4

Ed Stavros, the Kennedy International Airport Control Tower Supervisor, held the phone to his ear and listened to Bob Esching, the New York Center Air Traffic Control Shift Supervisor. Stavros wasn’t sure if Esching was concerned or not concerned, but just the fact that Esching was calling was a little out of the ordinary.

Stavros’ eyes unconsciously moved toward the huge tinted windows of the control tower, and he watched a big Lufthansa A-340 coming in. He realized that Esching’s voice had stopped. Stavros tried to think of something to say that would sound right when and if the tape was ever played back to a roomful of grim-looking Monday morning quarterbacks. Stavros cleared his throat and asked, “Have you called Trans-Continental?”

Esching replied, “That’s my next call.”

“Okay… good… I’ll alert the Port Authority Police Emergency Service unit… was that a 700 series?”

“Right,” said Esching.

Stavros nodded to himself. The Emergency Service guys theoretically had every known type of aircraft committed to memory in regard to doorways, escape hatches, general seating plans, and so forth. “Good… okay…”

Esching added, “I’m not declaring an emergency. I’m just—”

“Yeah, I understand. But we’ll go by the book here, and I’ll call it in as a three-two condition. You know? That’s potential trouble. Okay?”

“Yeah… I mean, it could be…”

“What?”

“Well, I’m not going to speculate, Mr. Stavros.”

“I’m not asking you to speculate, Mr. Esching. Should I make it a three-three?”

“That’s your call. Not mine.” He added, “We have a NO-RAD for over two hours and no other indication of a problem. You should have this guy on your screen in a minute or two. Watch him closely.”

“Okay. Anything else?”

“That’s it,” said Bob Esching.

“Thanks,” said Ed Stavros and hung up.

Stavros picked up his black direct-line phone to Port Authority Communications Center, and after three rings, a voice said, “Guns and Hoses at your service.”

Stavros did not appreciate the humor of the Port Authority police officers who doubled as firemen and Emergency Service personnel. Stavros said, “I have an incoming NO-RAD. Trans-Continental Flight One-Seven-Five, Boeing 747, 700 series.”

“Roger, Tower. Which runway?”

“We’re still using Four-Right, but how do I know what he’ll use if we can’t talk to him?”

“Good point. What’s his ETA?”

“Scheduled arrival time is sixteen-twenty-three.”

“Roger. Do you want a three-two or a three-three?”

“Well… let’s start with a standard three-two, and we can upgrade or downgrade as the situation develops.”

“Or we can stay the same.”

Stavros definitely did not like the cocky attitude of these guys—and they were mostly all guys, even the women. Whoever had the bright idea of taking three macho occupations—Emergency Service, firemen, and cops—and rolling them all into one, must have been crazy. Stavros said, “Who is this? Bruce Willis?”

“Sergeant Tintle, at your service. To whom am I speaking?”

“Mr. Stavros.”

“Well, Mr. Stavros, come on down to the firehouse, and we’ll put you in a nice fireproof suit and give you a crash ax, and if the plane blows, you can be among the first to get on board.”

Stavros replied, “The subject aircraft is a NO-RAD, not a mechanical, Sergeant. Don’t get overly excited.”

“I love it when you get angry.”

Stavros said to Tintle, “Okay, let’s get this on the record. I’m going to the Red Phone.” Stavros hung up and picked up the Red Phone and hit a button, which again connected him to Sergeant Tintle, who this time answered, “Port Authority—Emergency Service.” This call was official and every word was recorded, so Stavros stuck to procedure and said, “This is Tower Control. I’m calling in a three-two on a Trans-Continental 747-700, landing Runway Four-Right, ETA approximately twenty minutes. Winds are zero-three-zero at ten knots. Three hundred ten souls on board.” Stavros always wondered why the passengers and crew were called souls. It sounded as though they were dead.

Sergeant Tintle repeated the call and added, “I’ll dispatch the units.”

“Thank you, Sergeant.”

“Thank you for calling, sir. We appreciate the business.”

Stavros hung up and rubbed his temples. “Idiots.”

He stood and looked around the huge Tower Control room. A few intense men and women sat staring at their screens, or talking into their headsets, or now and then glancing out the windows. Tower Control was not as stressful a job as that of the actual air traffic controllers sitting in a windowless radar room below him, but this was a close second. He remembered the time two of his men had caused the collision of two airliners on the runway. It had been his day off, which was why he was still employed.

Stavros walked toward the big window. From his height of over three hundred feet—the equivalent of a thirty-story building—the panoramic view of the entire airport, bay, and Atlantic Ocean was spectacular, especially with clear skies and the late afternoon sun behind him. He looked at his watch and saw it was almost 4:00 P.M. He would have been out of here in a few minutes, but that was not to be.

He was supposed to be home for dinner with his wife at seven, with another couple. He felt fairly confident that he could make it, or at least be no more than fashionably late. Even later would be okay when he arrived armed with a good story about what had delayed him. People thought he had a glamorous job, and he played it up when he’d had a few cocktails.

He made a mental note to call home after the Trans-Continental landed. Then he’d have to speak to the aircraft’s captain on the phone, then write a preliminary report of the incident. Assuming this was nothing more than a communications failure, he should be on the road by six, with two hours of overtime pay. Right.

He replayed the conversation with Esching in his mind. He wished he had a way to access the tape that recorded his every word, but the FAA wasn’t stupid enough to allow that.

Again, he thought about Esching’s phone call—not the words, but the tone. Esching was clearly concerned and he couldn’t hide it. Yet, a two-hour NO-RAD was not inherently dangerous, just unusual. Stavros speculated for a moment that Trans-Continental Flight 175 could have experienced a fire on board. That was more than enough reason to change the alert from a standard 3-2 status to a 3-3. A 3-4 was an imminent or actual crash, and that was an easy call. This unknown situation was a tough call.

And, of course, there was the remote chance that a hijacking was in progress. But Esching had said that there was no hijacking transponder code being sent.

Stavros played with his two options—3-2 or 3-3? A 3-3 would definitely call for more creative writing in his report if it turned out to be nothing. He decided to leave it a 3-2 and headed toward the coffee bar.

“Chief.”

Stavros looked over at one of his tower controllers, Roberto Hernandez. “What?”

Hernandez put down his headset and said to his boss, “Chief, I just got a call from the radar controller about a Trans-Continental NO-RAD.”

Stavros put down his coffee. “And?”

“Well, the NO-RAD began his descent earlier than he was supposed to, and he nearly ran into a US Airways flight bound for Philly.”

“Jeez…” Stavros’ eyes went to the window again. He couldn’t understand how the Trans-Continental pilot could have missed seeing another aircraft on a bright, cloudless day. If nothing else, the collision warning equipment would have sounded even before visual contact was made. This was the first indication that something could be really wrong. What the hell is going on here?

Hernandez looked at his radar screen and said, “I’ve got him, Chief.”

Stavros made his way to Hernandez’s console. He stared at the radar blip. The problem aircraft was tracking unmistakably down the instrument landing course for one of Kennedy’s northeast runways.

Stavros remembered the days when being inside an airport Control Tower meant you’d usually be looking out the window; now, the Control Tower people mostly looked at the same electronic displays that the air traffic controllers saw in the dark radar room below them. But at least up here they had the option of glancing outside if they wanted to.

Stavros took Hernandez’s high-powered binoculars and moved to the south-facing plate glass window. There were four stand-up communications consoles mounted ninety degrees apart in front of the wraparound glass so that tower personnel could have multiple communications available while standing and visually seeing what was happening on the runways, taxiways, gates, and flight approaches. This was not usually necessary, but Stavros felt a need to be at the helm, so to speak, when the airliner came into view. He called out to Hernandez, “Speed?”

“Two hundred knots,” Hernandez answered. “Descending through fifty-eight hundred feet.”

“Okay.”

Stavros picked up the Red Phone again. He also hit the Control Tower emergency speaker, then transmitted, “Emergency Service, this is Tower, over.”

A voice came over the speaker into the silent Tower Control room, “Tower, Emergency Service.”

Stavros recognized Tintle’s voice.

Tintle asked, “What’s up?”

“What’s up is the status. It’s now a three-three.”

There was a silence, then Tintle asked, “Based on what?”

Stavros thought that Tintle sounded less cocky. Stavros replied, “Based on a near-miss with another aircraft.”

“Damn.” Silence, then, “What do you think the problem is?”

“No idea.”

“Hijacking?”

“A hijacking doesn’t make the pilot fly with his head up his ass.”

“Yeah… well—”

“We have no time to speculate. The subject aircraft is on a fifteen-mile final for Runway Four-Right. Copy?”

“Fifteen-mile final for Runway Four-Right.”

“Affirmed,” Stavros said.

“I’ll call out the rest of the unit for a three-three.”

“Right.”

“Confirm aircraft type,” Tintle said.

“Still a 747, 700 series, as far as I know. I’ll call you when we have visual.”

“Roger that.”

Stavros signed off and raised his binoculars. He began to scan from the end of the runway and methodically out from there, but his thoughts were on the radio exchange he just had. He recalled meeting Tintle a few times at the Emergency Committee liaison meetings. He didn’t particularly like Tintle’s style, but he had the feeling that the guy was competent. As for the cowboys who called themselves Guns and Hoses, they mostly sat around the firehouse playing cards, watching TV, or talking about women. They also cleaned their trucks a lot—they loved shiny trucks.

But Stavros had seen them in action a few times, and he was fairly sure they could handle anything from a crash to an onboard fire and even a hijacking. In any case, he wasn’t responsible for them or the situation after the aircraft came to a halt. He took a little pleasure out of the knowledge that this 3-3 scramble would come out of the Port Authority budget and not the FAA budget.

Stavros lowered the binoculars, rubbed his eyes, then raised the binoculars and focused on Runway Four-Right.

Both rescue units had rolled, and Stavros saw an impressive assortment of Emergency Service vehicles along the perimeter of the runway, their red beacons rotating and flashing. They were spaced far apart, a procedure designed to avoid having a monster aircraft like a 747 wiping them all out in a crash landing.

Stavros counted two RIVs—Rapid Intercept Vehicles—and four big T2900 fire trucks. There was also one Heavy Rescue ESU truck, two ambulances, and six Port Authority police cars, plus the Mobile Command Post, which had every radio frequency of every affiliated agency in New York as well as a complete phone center. He also spotted the Hazmat—the Hazardous Material Truck—whose crew had been trained by the United States Army. Parked in the far distance was the mobile staircase truck, and the mobile hospital. The only thing missing was the mobile morgue. That wouldn’t roll unless it was needed, and there was no rush if it was.

Ed Stavros contemplated the scene—a scene he had created simply by picking up his red telephone. One part of him didn’t want there to be a problem with the approaching aircraft. Another part of him… he hadn’t called a 3-3 in two years, and he became concerned that he’d overreacted. But overreacting was better than underreacting.

“Seven miles,” Hernandez called out.

“Okay.” Stavros began another patterned search of the horizon where the Atlantic Ocean met the New York haze.

“Six miles.”

“I got him.” Even with the powerful binoculars, the 747 was hardly more than a glint against the blue sky. But with every passing second, the airliner was growing in size.

“Five miles.”

Stavros continued to stare at the incoming aircraft. He’d watched thousands of jumbo jets make this approach, and there was absolutely nothing about this particular approach that troubled him, except for the fact that even now the aircraft’s radios were eerily silent.

“Four.”

Stavros decided to talk directly to the person in charge of the rescue teams. He picked up a radiophone that was pre-set to the Ground Control frequency and transmitted, “Rescue One, this is Tower.”

A voice came back on the speaker. “Tower, this is Rescue One. How may I help you today?”

Oh, God, Stavros said to himself, another wise-ass. It must be the qualification for the job. Stavros said, “This is Mr. Stavros, Tower Supervisor. Who is this?”

“This is Sergeant Andy McGill, first guitar, Guns and Hoses. What can I play for you?”

Stavros decided that what he didn’t want to play was this idiot’s game. Stavros said, “I want to establish direct contact with you.”

“Established.”

“Okay… subject aircraft is in sight, McGill.”

“Right. We see him, too.”

Stavros added, “He’s on track.”

“Good. I hate it when they land on top of us.”

“But be prepared.”

“Still NO-RAD?”

“That’s right.”

“Two miles,” said Hernandez and added, “Still on track. Altitude eight hundred feet.”

Stavros relayed this to McGill, who acknowledged.

“One mile,” said Hernandez, “on track, five hundred feet.”

Stavros could clearly make out the huge jetliner now. He transmitted to McGill, “Confirm a 747-700. Gear down, flaps seem normal.”

“Roger that. I got a fix on him,” McGill replied.

“Good. You’re on your own.” Stavros ended his transmission and put the radiophone down.

Hernandez left his console and stood beside Stavros. A few other men and women with no immediate duties also lined up at the windows.

Stavros watched the 747, mesmerized by the huge aircraft that had just passed over the threshold of the runway and was floating down toward the concrete. There was nothing about this aircraft that looked or acted any differently from any other 747 touching down. But suddenly, Ed Stavros was certain that he wouldn’t be home in time for dinner.