The Lion's Game

  The aircraft entered the ramp and came to a stop not more than ten meters from him. Within moments the aircraft lights had been extinguished, both engines shut down, and the night was again dark and quiet.

  Khalil watched and waited. He heard a few creaking sounds from the aircraft, then he saw the airstair door on the left side of the fuselage swing down, and a moment later a man stepped out and descended the stairs.

  There was little illumination in the ramp area, and Khalil could not be certain that this pilot was Wiggins, but this was the aircraft he flew, and it was his vehicle in the parking lot, and his arrival time was correct. Khalil would not have been troubled if he killed the wrong man, except that would alert Wiggins--and the authorities--that he, Asad Khalil, was back.

  The pilot was carrying something--wheel chocks on ropes--and he turned and bent down to place the first chock into position behind the aircraft's left tire.

  Khalil grabbed the canvas carrying case and sprang forward, covering the ten meters between him and the aircraft in a few seconds.

  The pilot was now placing a second chock in front of the left tire, but he heard a sound, turned, and stood.

  Khalil was right on top of him, and in an instant he recognized the face from photographs as that of Chip Wiggins.

  Wiggins stared at the man and said, "Who--?"

  Khalil had dropped the canvas bag and was now holding the crowbar in both hands, and he swung the heavy steel bar around in an arc and smashed it down on top of Wiggins's left shoulder, shattering his clavicle.

  Wiggins let out a bellowing cry of pain, staggered backward, then fell to the ground.

  Khalil swung again and shattered Wiggins's right kneecap, then again, smashing his left shin bone, then a final swing that broke his right shoulder.

  Wiggins's cries of pain were barely audible now, and Khalil could see that the man was passing into unconsciousness.

  Khalil looked around quickly, then threw the crowbar and the carrying case with the saw up into the plane's cabin. He knelt beside Wiggins and pulled him up by the front of his shirt into a sitting position. Khalil hefted the semi-conscious man over his shoulder, stood, then made his way quickly up the stairs, which he closed behind him.

  The freight cabin was dark and the ceiling was low, so Khalil moved in a crouch toward the rear bulkhead, where he dropped Wiggins into a sitting position with the man's back against the wall.

  Khalil retrieved his butcher's saw, then knelt astride Wiggins's legs. He took an ammonia ampoule from his pocket and broke it under Wiggins's nose. The man's head jerked back, and Khalil slapped him across both cheeks.

  Wiggins moaned and his eyes opened.

  Khalil put his face close to Wiggins and said, "It is me, Mr. Wiggins. It is Asad Khalil who you have been expecting for three years."

  Wiggins's eyes opened wider, and he stared at Khalil but said nothing.

  Khalil put his mouth to Wiggins's ear and whispered, "You, or perhaps one of your deceased squadron mates, killed my mother, my brothers, and my sisters. So you know why I am here."

  Khalil drew back and looked at his victim. Wiggins was staring straight ahead, and tears were running down his cheeks.

  Khalil said to him, "Ah, I see you are sorry for what you did. Or perhaps you are just in physical pain. Surely you have never experienced the mental pain I have carried with me since I was a boy. And, of course, you never experienced the physical pain of a house collapsing on you and pressing the life out of your body."

  Wiggins's lips moved, but all that came out was a soft moan that trailed off into a whimper.

  Khalil could tell that the man was about to pass out again, so he slapped him hard and said loudly, "Listen to me! You escaped me once, but now I have a very unpleasant death planned for you, and you must be awake for it."

  Wiggins closed his eyes and his lips trembled.

  Khalil reached back and drew the butcher's saw from the carrying case. He held it in front of Wiggins's face and again slapped him.

  Wiggins opened his eyes and stared at the saw with incomprehension, and then he understood. His eyes widened, his jaw dropped, and he managed to wail, "No... !"

  Khalil shoved a handkerchief deep into the man's open mouth and said, "Yes, a butcher's saw. You are an animal, and I am your butcher."

  Wiggins tried to defend himself, but both arms and legs were useless. He began shaking his head from side to side, but Khalil grabbed him by his hair, then put the teeth of the saw against the left side of his neck.

  Wiggins let out a muffled scream through the handkerchief as Khalil drew the saw across his neck. He continued his screams as Khalil slowly and patiently sawed into his flesh and muscle.

  An increasing amount of blood began to pour from the open neck wound, and it ran over Wiggins's white shirt and began puddling on the floor of the cabin. Wiggins's movements and sounds grew weaker, though Khalil knew he was still experiencing the pure pain and terror of having his head cut off.

  Khalil kept the saw blade toward the rear of the man's neck to avoid severing the carotid artery or the jugular vein, which would kill Wiggins too quickly. Khalil now felt the teeth of the saw scrape the man's vertebrae. There were unfortunately no more cuts to be made that would cause pain without causing death.

  Khalil had done this once before, in Afghanistan, where a Taliban fighter had instructed him on the finer points of beheading. The victim was a Western aid worker, and the instrument used was a large Afghani knife that Khalil admitted he had difficulty with, especially in severing the neck bones. This was much easier, and therefore more enjoyable for him--though not for Mr. Wiggins.

  Khalil pulled Wiggins's head back by his hair and looked at him. His face was chalky white, and his eyes, though open, seemed dull and lifeless.

  There was no more pleasure to be drawn from this, so Khalil sawed quickly, first severing Wiggins's left carotid and jugular vein, which gushed blood over Khalil's hands and arms. Then he sawed through Wiggins's windpipe, then his right carotid and jugular, until only the man's vertebrae connected his head to his body. Amazingly, Wiggins's heart still pumped blood, but soon it stopped.

  Khalil pulled straight up on Wiggins's hair and sawed through his vertebrae, lifting his head from his body. He held the head by its hair and stared at Wiggins's face as the head swung slightly from side to side. He said, "You are in Hell now, Mr. Wiggins, and my family rejoices in Paradise."

  Khalil threw the saw aside, then stood and carefully placed Wiggins's head in the man's lap. He then took the crowbar and shoved it down into Wiggins's open neck until it was half into his body.

  Khalil left the aircraft and closed the airstairs behind him. He took the time to complete Wiggins's job of putting the two remaining chocks under the other wheel so the aircraft would attract no attention.

  If his information had been correct, this aircraft would sit here until Sunday evening when Mr. Chip Wiggins, who was unmarried and lived alone, was to report back for his scheduled flights. Mr. Wiggins would be late--or one could say early since he had never left the aircraft--and by the time Wiggins was discovered, he, Asad Khalil, would have crossed the continent and crossed more names off his list before anyone even knew he had returned to America.

  Khalil walked quickly across the ramp, passed through the security gate, and within a few minutes he was in his car, driving out of the airport.

  He returned to the Best Western hotel and disposed of his bloody clothing under the bed, where Farid Mansur lay.

  Khalil showered and changed into another sports jacket, trousers, and shirt, then spent a few hours reading the Koran. At 6 A.M., he prostrated himself on the floor, faced east toward Mecca, and recited the Fajr, the predawn prayer in remembrance of God.

  He then collected his luggage, left the room, and exited the hotel through the rear. He put his suitcase and duffel bag in the trunk and his overnight bag on the passenger seat and made the ten-minute drive back to the airport.

  There was more activity at this
hour, and Khalil parked in a space near Sterling Air Charters. He gathered his luggage, locked the car, and walked into the Sterling office.

  A young man looked up from his desk and inquired, "Can I help you, sir?"

  Khalil replied, "I am Mr. Demetrios, and I have reserved a charter flight to New York."

  The young man stood and replied, "Yes, sir. Your billing information is here and ready, the pilots are here and ready, and the aircraft is ready. We can take off anytime you're ready."

  Khalil replied, "I am ready."

  PART III

  Upstate New York

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Skydiving.

  I've done a lot of stupid things in my life, and it would be hard for me to list them in order of stupidity. Except for Number One. Skydiving. What was I thinking? And I couldn't even blame this one on my dick.

  But I could blame my wonderful wife, Kate. When I married her three years ago, I didn't know she had once been a skydiver. And when she confessed this to me about six months ago, I thought she said "streetwalker," which I could forgive. What I can't forgive is her getting me to agree to take up this so-called sport.

  So, here we were--Mr. and Mrs. John Corey--at Sullivan County Airport, which is basically in the middle of nowhere in upstate New York, a long way from my Manhattan turf. If you're into nature and stuff, the Catskill Mountains look nice, and it was a beautiful Sunday in May with clear skies and temperatures in the mid-sixties. Most important for what lay ahead, it was a nearly windless day; a perfect day to jump out of an airplane. Does it get better than this?

  Kate, looking good in a silver jumpsuit, said to me, "I'm excited."

  "Good. Let's go back to the motel."

  "This is my first time jumping from a Douglas DC-7B," she said.

  "Me too," I confessed.

  "This is a fabulous addition to our jumper's logbook."

  "Fabulous."

  "This is the last flying DC-7B in the world."

  "I'm not surprised." I looked at the huge, old four-engine propeller aircraft taking up most of the blacktop ramp. It had apparently never been painted, except for an orange lightning bolt running along the fuselage, nose to tail. The bare aluminum had taken on a blue-gray hue, sort of like an old coffee pot. To add to the coffee pot image, all the windows of this former luxury airliner had been covered with aluminum--except, of course, the cockpit windshield, which I guess could be thought of as the little glass percolator thing... well, anyway, the plane looked like a piece of crap. I asked my wife, "How old is that thing?"

  "I think it's older than you." She added, "It's a piece of history. Like you."

  Kate is fifteen years younger than me, and when you marry a woman that much younger, the age difference comes up now and then, like now when she continued, "I'm sure you remember these planes."

  In fact, I had a vague memory of seeing this kind of aircraft when I went to Idlewild--now JFK--with my parents to see people off. They used to have these observation decks, pre-terrorism, and you'd stand there and wave. Huge thrill. I reminisced aloud and said, "Eisenhower was president."

  "Who?"

  When I met Kate three and a half years ago, she showed no tendency toward sarcasm, and she had once indicated to me that this was one of several bad habits that she'd picked up from me. Right, go ahead and blame the husband. Also, when I met her, she didn't swear or drink much, but all that has changed for the better under my tutelage. Actually, she'd made me promise to cut down on the drinking and swearing, which I have. Unfortunately, this has left me dim-witted and nearly speechless.

  Kate was born Katherine Mayfield in some frozen flyover state in the Midwest, and her father was an FBI agent. Mrs. Corey still uses her maiden name for business, or when she wants to pretend she doesn't know me. Kate's business, as I said, is the same as mine--Anti-Terrorist Task Force--and we are actually partners on the job as we are in life. One of our professional differences is that she's an FBI agent, like her father, and a lawyer, like her mother, and I'm a cop. Or as I said, a former cop, out of the job on three-quarter disability, which is not actually disabling, but good enough for a steady check every month. This disability, for the record, is a result of me taking three badly aimed bullets up on West 102nd Street almost four years ago. Actually, I feel fine, except when I drink too much and Scotch spurts out of my holes.

  Kate interrupted my thoughts and said, "The ATTF should give us jump pay, like the military does."

  "Write a memo."

  "This is an important skill."

  "For what?"

  She ignored my question and turned her attention to the sixty or so skydivers who were milling around aimlessly in silly colored jumpsuits, giving each other dopey high fives or checking one another's pack and harness. No one, and I mean no one, touches my rig, not even my wife. I have literally trusted her with my life, and she's trusted me with hers, but you never know when the ladies are having a bad day.

  Kate belatedly replied, "My theory is that mastering difficult skills like skydiving or mountain climbing gives you confidence on the job even if the skill is not directly related to your work."

  My theory was that the FBI should first master some basic police skills, such as how to use the subway system or how to follow a suspect without getting hit by a taxi. But I didn't verbalize that.

  The concept of this joint task force is to create synergy by joining Federal agents--who all seem to be from Iowa, like Lisa Sims, and who think mass transit means driving to church--and NYPD, who know the city intimately and do a lot of the street work. The concept, in practice, actually works in some weird way. There is, however, some tension and a few small misunderstandings among the men and women of these two very different cultures, and that, I suppose, is reflected in my marriage. And maybe in my attitude.

  Anyway, while Kate was checking out our fellow skydivers, I looked at the pilot standing under the wing of the DC-7B. He was peering up at one of the engines. I don't like it when they do that. I observed, "The pilot looks older than the plane. And what the hell is he looking at?"

  She glanced toward the aircraft, then asked me, "John, are you getting a little... ?"

  "Please don't question my manhood." In fact, that's how she got me to agree to skydiving lessons. I said to her, "Be right back."

  I walked over to the pilot, who had a close-cropped beard the color of his aluminum plane. He looked even older up close. He was wearing a Yankees baseball cap that probably covered a bald head, and he had on jeans and a T-shirt that said "Beam Me Up, Scotty." Funny.

  He turned his attention away from the possibly problematic right outboard engine and asked, "Help ya?"

  "Yeah. How's your heart?"

  "Say what?"

  "Do you need a part?"

  "Huh? Oh... no, just checking something." He introduced himself as Ralph and asked me, "You jumpin' today?"

  What was your first clue, Ralph? The black-and-blue jumpsuit? Maybe the parachute rig on my back, or possibly the helmet in my hand? I replied, "You tell me."

  He got my drift and smiled. "Hey, don't let the looks of this old bird fool you."

  I wasn't sure if he was referring to the aircraft or himself. I pointed out, "There's oil dripping out of the engines." I drew his attention to the puddles of oil on the tarmac.

  Ralph agreed, "Yep. Oil." He informed me, "These old prop planes just swim in oil." He assured me, "When it's time to add more, we just pump it up from fifty-five-gallon drums. Problem is when you don't see oil."

  "Are you making that up?"

  "Hey, you people have parachutes. I don't. All you got to worry about is getting up there. I got to land this damn thing."

  "Good point."

  "This was once an American Airlines luxury liner," Ralph confided.

  "Hard to believe."

  "I bought it for peanuts and converted it to haul cargo."

  "Smart move."

  "This is my first time hauling skydivers."

  "Well, good luck."


  "You weigh less, but cargo don't ask questions."

  "And cargo doesn't unload itself at fourteen thousand feet."

  He laughed.

  An even older guy ambled over, and Ralph and he spoke for a minute about things I couldn't understand, but which didn't sound good. The older gent shuffled off, and Ralph said to me, "That's Cliff. He's my flight engineer."

  I thought he was Ralph's grandfather.

  Ralph further informed me, "No computers on this aircraft, so it takes three cockpit crew to fly this old bird." He joked, "One to fly and two to flap the wings."

  I smiled politely.

  He continued, "Cliff works the engine throttles, the mixture controls, and all that stuff. He's a dying breed."

  I hoped he didn't die after takeoff.

  Before I could ask him if he and Cliff had new batteries in their pacemakers, a girl wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, who looked about twelve years old, came up to us and said to the pilot, "Ralph, Cliff and I did the walk-around. Looks okay."

  Ralph replied, "Good. I'm gonna let you do the takeoff."

  What?

  Ralph remembered his manners and said to me, "This is Cindy. She's my copilot today."

  I must have heard him wrong, so I ignored that and walked back to Kate, who was in a conversation with one of the guys in our so-called club, a putz named Craig who desperately wanted to fuck my wife.

  His stupid smile faded as he saw me approach, and Kate said to me, "Craig and I were discussing the scheduling for our jumps in the next few weeks."

  "Is that what was making Craig smile?"

  After a moment of silence, Craig said to me, "Kate was just telling me that you had some concerns about the plane."

  "I do, but I could reduce the takeoff weight by sending you to the hospital."

  Craig thought about that, then turned and walked away.

  Mrs. Corey said to me, "That was totally uncalled for."

  "Why did you tell him I was concerned about the plane?"

  "I... he asked why you were talking to the pilot, and I..." She shrugged, then said, "I'm sorry."