They watched Khabbani closely. His arm dropped. With shaking hands, each of the men let his round slip out of his fingers. They could hear the rounds slide down the long tubes. They covered their ears and opened their mouths to equalize the pressure of the impending blast.
* * *
Brigadier General Itzhak Talman stood in the Operations Room of The Citadel and looked at the radar and visual displays from the E-2D Hawkeye. He could see Laskov’s twelve F-14’s as they maintained a holding pattern off the coast. Indicated on other display consoles were scheduled airline traffic, a few private planes, and ships at sea. A computer flashed several messages on various cathode ray tubes and printed readout tapes. Talman turned up the volume on one of the radios and heard Laskov speaking to his squadron. So far, so good. He poured a cup of coffee and took a seat. All he could do now was wait.
* * *
Captain Ephraim Dinitz waited until he heard the dull thud of the rounds striking the firing pins at the bottom of the tubes. That should satisfy the military court if there should be a question later concerning intent. He and his men ran out from the trees and rocks. Dinitz shouted in Arabic. “I arrest you under military law! Place your hands on your heads!”
The three Palestinian gunners stared alternately between the silent mortars and the closing Israeli soldiers. Slowly they rose to their feet and placed their hands over their heads.
Khabbani looked back over his shoulder and watched the whole scene unfold thirty yards behind him. His heart sank and a lump came to his throat. He saw himself in Ramla Prison staring vacantly through the barbed wire for the rest of his life. He would never touch his wife or children again except through that barbed wire. He got up and leaped from the crest of the hill. A soldier shouted. Khabbani ran stumbling over the rocks, the wildflowers going by in a blur beneath his feet. Another shout. The staccato report of an automatic weapon. He saw the bullets hit around him and it was several seconds before he realized he was no longer running but lying on the ground, bleeding quickly to death.
* * *
Chaim Mazar picked up his field radio. From the tower he could see the hills where it had all happened. He nodded. “All right, Dinitz. Interrogate them immediately and call me back.” He sat back in his chair. He realized that those miserable Palestinian peasants knew less than he did about who was behind that pathetic attempt. Those mortars had been spotted ten years before and left there to see who would come around and use them. The detonators had been removed from the rounds, of course. He’d had the spot watched more closely than usual for the last week. In addition, someone had tipped off one of his agents earlier in the day.
It was such a clumsy and foolhardy attempt that Mazar couldn’t believe it was meant to succeed. All he could think of was the English expression, red herring, or the Hebrew words, sacrificial lamb. That’s what those unfortunate Palestinians were. Everyone was supposed to relax their guard now that the great terrorist attempt had been foiled. But Mazar didn’t see it that way. If this was a red herring, then that could only mean that there must still be an undiscovered plot to sabotage this peace mission. But for the life of him, he couldn’t imagine what it could be. He shrugged.
The Air Traffic Controller looked up from his radio. “Concordes are ready to roll, sir.”
Mazar nodded. “Then give them clearance and get them the hell out of here.”
* * *
The flight crew of El Al Concorde 01 completed their checklist. The Concorde rolled out to the edge of the 4,000-meter runway. The radio crackled. “Cleared for takeoff, El Al 01 and 02. Two-minute intervals. Have a good flight.”
“Roger.” Avidar pushed the throttles forward and the big bird screamed down the runway.
* * *
David Becker sat in the left-hand seat and watched through the windshield as 01 lifted gently from the earth. He turned to Moses Hess. “Count off two minutes for me, will you, Moses?”
Hess nodded and looked at his watch.
Behind them, on the port side of the flight deck, Peter Kahn sat in front of the flight engineer’s long control console. The lights and gauge needles were all steady. He turned to Becker and said in English, “All systems still go.”
Becker smiled at the English idiom. “Right.”
“One minute.”
In the cabin, the passengers and flight attendants spoke in low voices. The manifest showed ten delegates and twenty-five support personnel. There were also two stewards and two stewardesses, plus the Chief Steward, Leiber. They sat in a group, immediately behind the flight deck. Scattered among the passengers were six security men with Jacob Hausner in charge. Tom Richardson had found a seat next to John McClure and was carrying on a one-sided conversation with the taciturn man. General Dobkin was reviewing the notes he would present to the Pentagon brass. Isaac Burg sat by himself, reading a newspaper and sucking on his unlit pipe. Rabbi Levin had picked a religious argument with one of the delegates. The total manifest, with crew and flight attendants, numbered fifty-five. The extra baggage allowance had placed the Concorde very near its maximum takeoff weight, especially considering the existing air temperature.
Miriam Bernstein sat behind Abdel Jabari, who was sitting with Ibrahim Arif, the other Arab delegate on board 02. A nervous young Security man, Moshe Kaplan, stared at the two black and white checked kheffiyahs from across the aisle.
The cabin was small and the seats were two-and-two across, with barely enough room for a man 180 centimeters tall to stand. But the French had designed the interior with their typical flair for such things, and the appearance was one of luxury. The lack of space didn’t matter much because the Concorde was seldom airborne for more than three and a half hours at a time.
A final touch to the decor was provided by a large wall-mounted Machmeter which let the passengers see the aircraft’s speed. The red neon lights read MACH 0.00.
In the cockpit, Hess looked up from his watch. “Let’s go.”
Becker released the brakes and pushed the throttles forward. The aircraft began to move. It gathered speed as it rolled down the long, shimmering runway.
“Sixty knots,” Hess announced.
“Everything’s good,” called Kahn, as he ran his eyes across his panel.
Becker called for the afterburners.
The flight engineer moved his poised fingers to ignite the two outboard afterburners, then the inboard pair. “Afterburners—all four,” he called. Simultaneously, there was the sound and sensation of a two-phased thud that made the procedural words unnecessary.
“One hundred knots,” said Hess.
The runway was already half-gone and the undulating waves of heat that rose from the blacktop made the remaining length look even shorter than it was. Pools of mirage water formed and evaporated with increasing speed. Becker blinked his eyes. Concentrate on the instruments. Forget the visual. But he kept staring out of the windshield. The heat waves mesmerized him. They also distorted and foreshortened the end of the runway. It looked as though they had run out of blacktop. He felt beads of sweat form on his forehead and hoped Hess wouldn’t notice. He pulled his eyes away from the sunlit windshield and stared down at the console. The air-speed needles were moving rapidly now. His left hand squeezed more tightly on the wheel as he nudged the column slightly rearward. Involuntarily, the muscles in his buttocks tightened and he rose imperceptibly from his seat. Up, up, damn you!
“V-one,” said Hess. His monotone masked the significance of his words as the air speed rose through 165 knots. They were now committed to fly, even if a blinking light or flickering gauge indicated otherwise. “V-R,” he said.
Becker began tugging more earnestly on the control column. The nose tire of the aircraft lifted off the hot blacktop. The Concorde’s wings canted themselves skyward, biting into the air flow at a greater angle. They were eating up runway at the rate of 75 meters a second, and for a brief moment Becker felt his nerve slip away. All the old demons of doubt that had haunted him since flight school began c
hattering in his brain. Why should it fly? There’s something wrong, Becker, and no one has the balls to speak up. Why is the gauge over there flickering? Who built this plane, anyway? Why do you think you can fly it? Becker! Abort! Abort! You’re going to die, Becker! Abort! He felt his neck muscles tighten and his hands and knees were shaking.
“V-two,” said Hess with what Becker thought was just a hint of anxiety in his voice.
Becker felt the wheel loosen in his hand as the main wheels rose from the runway. He looked down at the console. Two hundred twenty knots on the air-speed gauge. The rates of climb were moving rapidly and the altimeter was winding even faster. Becker held the airplane by the palm and fingers of one hand. He smiled and cleared his throat. “Gear up.” The sound of his own voice, steady and even, seemed to chase the perverse imps from the cockpit. But he heard their familiar parting promise. We’ll kill you next time, Becker. He waited out a sequence of lights, then said, almost too loudly, “Climb power.” He lowered his voice. “After-takeoff check.” He banked the aircraft slightly to follow in the flight path of his sister ship. “And when you get a chance, Peter, ring the cabin for some coffee.” He settled back and his muscles loosened. There would be a landing and takeoff at Orly and then again in New York. He would be back at Lod within twenty-four hours. Then he would resign, effective immediately. He knew it had been coming for a long time. He felt it every time his sphincter tightened on takeoff and landing, every time his loins went loose when he hit an insignificant air pocket, every time he had to wipe the sweat from his palms when he flew through a line of thunderstorms. But it was all right. It had happened to better pilots than himself. The trick was to look it in the eye and say, “I quit.”
“Quit what?” asked Hess.
Becker swung his head and stared at him. “What?”
“Quit what? What do you quit?” Hess was going over his checklist as he spoke.
“Quit . . . drinking coffee. Coffee. I forgot. I don’t want any.”
Hess looked up from his checklist and stared at him. His eyes met Becker’s and they both knew. “Right.” He called out to Kahn. “Only two coffees, Peter.”
Becker wiped his palms and face openly. It was all right now. Hess had a right to know. He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.
6
Concorde 02 began its steep, graceful climb. The long landing gear assemblies had already risen into the belly of the craft. Hess pulled another hydraulic lever, retracting the flaps and activating the droop-nose to its streamlined position. The flight deck became very still, with only the murmur of electronic noises in the background. Becker banked the craft 30 degrees and put it on a due west heading over Tel Aviv. The dual altimeter indicated 6,000 feet and 1,800 meters and air speed was 300 knots. He lit another cigarette. So far, so good.
Becker rolled the Concorde out of its turn and sat back in his seat. His eyes took in all the instruments. The Concorde was an electronically controlled aircraft, somewhat like a space capsule. When the wheel or rudder pedals were moved, for instance, an electrical signal was sent to the hydraulic control activators. It was this, rather than cables or rods, that moved the exterior control surfaces. The computer would feed artificial stability and resistance back into the controls for the pilot to sense. Without this pressure to fly against, there would be nothing for the pilot to feel as he moved his controls. Pilots weren’t used to that, and so the men at Aérospatiale and British Aircraft Corporation told the computer to put artificial resistance into the control movement. It was all psychological, reflected Becker, and all very strange and becoming stranger with each new technological breakthrough. Long before he felt the fear, he had felt this alienation in the cockpit. Yes, it was time to let the next generation take the controls.
They were over the beach outside of Tel Aviv. Becker took a pair of field glasses out of his flight kit and scanned the ground. Normally, the beach would he covered with thousands of bikinis, but the air-raid drill had sent everyone indoors. Becker saw his home in Herzlya, as he always did. He saw the empty chaise longue in his yard and wondered if his wife knew that he was part of the reason that everyone had to interrupt their first spring sunbathing. Ahead of him stretched the dark blue Mediterranean and a cloudless azure sky. Becker eased back on the wheel a bit more and gave it more throttle. The aircraft picked up speed and altitude.
Ahead, he could see 01. The Concorde might be an ungainly looking bird on the ground, but in flight it was the technocrats’ contribution to pure aesthetics. It was a beautiful aircraft to fly, also, but Becker always had the uneasy feeling that the computers would fail him someday. Not really fail so much as betray. Those marvelous computers that could do a thousand things simultaneously; things that three human crewmen could not do, no matter how hard they worked. Those computers would lure him up to 60,000 feet—19,000 meters—and Mach 2.2 one day, and then quit. A message would flash on the cathode tube: Fly It Yourself, Stupid. Becker forced a smile. Two more takeoffs and three more landings.
He hit the transmit button on his console and spoke into his headset microphone. “Air Traffic Control, this is El Al Concorde 02. Over.”
“Go ahead, 02.”
“Roger. Company aircraft in sight. I’m at 380 knots, indicated. Accelerating to point-eight-zero, Mach.”
“Roger. Level off at 5,000 meters.”
“Roger.” He pushed the selector switch to the company frequency. “El Al 01, 02 here. I have you dead ahead, I’m about eight kilometers back. I’ll close to about five and get a little below you. Don’t stop short.”
Avidar acknowledged. They spoke for a while and coordinated speeds.
Becker got to 5,000 meters and closed in on Avidar. He spoke to Air Traffic Control. “El Al 01 and 02 in formation. Holding at 5,000 and now at point-eight-six, Mach. Waiting for unrestricted clearance to 19,000.”
“Roger. Stand by. There’s an Air Iran 747 at flight level six-zero-zero. Maintain 5,000 meters.
Avidar called Becker on the company frequency. “El Al 02, this is 01. See if you can raise our sheep dog. I don’t see him.”
Becker switched to 134.725. “Gabriel 32, this is Emmanuel.”
Teddy Laskov had been monitoring the El Al and ATC frequencies and switched to channel 31 to meet Becker. “Emmanuel, this is Gabriel 32. I hear you fine. I can see you and Clipper at my eleven o’clock low position. Leave one radio on this frequency.”
“Roger, Gabriel. When we get unrestricted clearance from ATC, we’re climbing to 19,000 and accelerating to Mach 2.0 on a heading of 280 degrees.”
“Roger. I’ll be with you. So far, so good.”
“So far. I’m going back to company frequency. The copilot will monitor you.”
“Roger—break—Hawkeye, this is Gabriel 32. How are your blips?”
The E-2D Hawkeye was almost five kilometers directly above the Concordes and F-14’s. It had been simultaneously monitoring all three frequencies. The Air Control officer on board picked up his radiophone. “I have you all spotted and plotted, Gabriel. Do you see a craft approaching from a bearing of 183 degrees? About 180 kilometers distance from you? Not a scheduled airliner.”
Laskov spoke into the intercom to his flight officer behind him. “See anything, Dan?”
Daniel Lavon looked down at the combined television and cathode ray tube. “Possible. Something’s at the southwest edge of our radar. A little over 160 kilometers and approaching our intended flight path at right angles.”
The E-2D Hawkeye, with a crew of five and a cabin full of the latest electronic equipment, was in a better position to detect and classify aircraft than the F-14’s. The flight technician on the Hawkeye spoke to Laskov. “We’re trying to contact this craft, but we can’t raise him.”
Laskov acknowledged.
The E-2D command information controller got on the phone. “Gabriel, the unidentified craft is moving at approximately 960 kilometers per. He is on a course and speed that will bring him across your intended flight path, but at 1,800
meters below you and Emmanuel and Clipper at your present altitude.”
“Roger, Hawkeye. Contact the son-of-a-bitch and tell him to change course and speed, or both.”
“Roger, Gabriel. We’re trying.”
Laskov considered. In about a minute, the unidentified craft would be within the 160 kilometer range of his Phoenix. If this craft had a pair of Russian Acrid missiles, it couldn’t engage the Concordes until it was within 130 kilometers. This 30-kilometer difference in range between the Russian Acrid and the American Phoenix was all the difference in the world. It was the reason why the F-14 was king of the sky. It had a longer reach. It was like two knights, one with an eight-foot lance and one with a ten-foot lance. In a few more minutes, though, Laskov would no longer have the advantage. “Hawkeye, I’m going to engage this target before he gets within 130 kilometers, unless you can identify him or he identifies himself.”
General Talman rose from his chair in the Operations Room of The Citadel. He grabbed a radiophone and cut in quickly. “Gabriel, this is Operation Control. Look—you’re the man on the spot. You have to make the decision, but for God’s sake, consider all the angles.” He paused. “I’m behind you, whatever happens. Out.” Talman didn’t want to tie up the radio net with a political discourse. It had all been argued long before this. He stood and watched the converging radar blips on his screen as he stroked his mustache.
What Laskov had wanted from Talman was an unequivocal order to fire at will. But he knew better.
“Gabriel, this is Hawkeye. Listen. He is not—repeat, not—military because we do not pick up any sophisticated radar emissions from him.”
“Then what the hell goes 960 kilometers per hour?”
“Probably a civilian jet, Gabriel. Wait one. I have something coming in on the radio.”