CHAPTER SIX.
Flight OA-269, September 22nd.
Casually, and without any acknowledgement of each other, as soon as the “fasten seat belts” sign went off the terrorists visited the aircraft toilets. Whilst inside, each removed the slim razor-sharp blade from within his shoe and transferred it to a leather sheath sewn inside his jacket. Then one at a time they resumed their seats.
The cabin staff began to serve drinks to the passengers, pushing the serving trolleys down the length of the aircraft. Abu Asifah chose the moment well. Once the drinks trolleys were far enough down the aisle to be past the two members of the team sitting in the centre of the aircraft, he gave a nod. His partner went forward and entered the toilet at the front of the aircraft. Abu Asifah stood outside as if waiting for the toilet to become free. Casually he surveyed the cabin, and then quickly he gave a sharp double rap on the door, stepped forward and drew the curtain across to screen off the galley and storage area.
The stewardess working there started to turn round to explain that passengers were not permitted in that part of the aircraft. Before she could complete the turn or speak she was grabbed from behind, Abu Asifah’s left hand was clamped firmly over her mouth, her head held against his chest and neck. She felt the cold edge of a steel blade pressed against her throat. ‘No scream,’ Abu Asifah hissed into her ear.
The girl was too shocked to make any attempt at resistance. Helpless, she watched as another man came out of the forward toilet and went swiftly to the units where the meals for the flight were stored. He opened the first storage unit and pulled out a trolley. It had bits of red insulation tape stuck across its corners. The man pulled out the top tray of meals - foil containers with blue lids. Ripping the lid off the container, he pulled out an automatic pistol. Checking that the magazine was fully inserted he pulled back the action and, looking in through the ejector opening, made sure that there were rounds in the magazine. He released the action with a snap, feeding a round into the breech and, leaving the weapon fully cocked, handed it to Abu Asifah who held it to the stewardess’s head. The terrorist opened another blue food container, taking out, checking and cocking a weapon for his own use. Seconds later two spare magazines were unwrapped. The man pushed one into Abu Asifah’s pocket and one into his own pocket. He then opened more packs with blue lids and took out four more pistols and spare magazines.
With perfect timing, just as he had finished, two more members of the team stepped through the curtains. Each was handed a loaded pistol and a spare magazine. One of the men pushed the pistol into the waistband of his trousers at the small of his back and covered it with his jacket. The spare magazine went into his pocket, and he took a floral patterned zip top wash bag from under his coat. The two remaining loaded pistols and magazines went into this. He stepped through the curtain and, making his way down the aisle, politely passed the cabin staff serving drinks and went to the rear of the aircraft as though going for a wash and shave. The remaining two of the six-man team were surreptitiously armed with the weapons and magazines from the wash bag.
The three men now at the rear of the plane watched the curtain screening the front of the aircraft. Behind the curtain more activity was taking place. Another of the prepared dummy food containers had been opened and some of the disposable nylon cable ties were taken out.
Abu Asifah covered the stewardess with his automatic whilst the other secured her hands and feet. None too gently she was pushed to the floor and bundled out of the way into a corner. Abu Asifah turned to cover the door through to the flight deck with his automatic. He looked at his watch; they were on schedule, all his men were armed and in position, three at the rear of the cabin, himself and the other two at the front, and ready to take control.
Paddington, September 22nd.
Dawn St. Pierre’s healthy young body healed quickly with no infection and almost no scar, but she found the days in the hospital bed long and tedious. The high point of her day was visiting time. She was beginning to think of the police officer who had come to her aid as more than just a friend, and she began making a special effort for him. Brushing her long blonde hair until it gleamed she put on a touch of make-up and arranged her silk kimono just so.
Jim appreciated the end result, and it made him feel good, but he had never been involved with such a glamorous woman before and found he had somewhat mixed feelings about it. At first he could not believe his luck, then he felt financially inadequate, then he couldn’t keep away.
At the end of a week Dawn was told that she could go home. She broke the good news to Jim, expecting him to be as thrilled as she was, but to her surprise he received the news coolly and with obviously mixed feelings.
Dawn, as a girl in hospital, was, to Jim, a different proposition to Dawn in her own setting. Jim couldn’t come to terms with the difference between her financial position and his own.
‘What’s the matter? You don’t seem very pleased at the news,’ Dawn pouted at him.
‘Yes I am, honestly. It’s great news,’ Jim protested.
‘Come off it, your face dropped a mile when I told you.’ A thought struck her. ‘Oh, there’s someone else isn’t there?’
‘No! No, there’s no one else. I’d tell you if there were. It’s just, oh, I don’t know, I can’t explain it.’
‘You’re ashamed to be seen out with me, is that it, because I’ve posed nude?’
‘No, don’t think like that. It’s nothing like that at all.’
‘Oh, so you do know what it is then. So why not tell me?’
Jim was trapped, and said nothing. A silence grew between them. Jim looked at his feet. Dawn looked unhappily at Jim. Jim eventually looked up. He saw a tear trickle unheeded down Dawn’s cheek. He felt guilty and then ashamed. He took her hand.
‘Don’t cry, please don’t cry. It’s only me being stupid,’ he said lamely.
Dawn shook her head mutely; she didn’t trust herself to speak.
Koropi, September 22nd.
The afternoon sun was throwing long shadows and the scene was quiet and peaceful as Detective Lieutenant Georgiou and Detective Sergeant Joanidies drove into the yard of the Kosovos farm. An old van was parked near the neat whitewashed house. The house door was open, but no one came out. No dogs barked.
The two police officers got out of their car and walked over to the open door. They knocked but there was no response. They called out loudly but there was no reply. The lieutenant went in first. After the glare of the mid-afternoon sunlight outside he could see nothing, but he could hear a continuous buzzing noise. The sergeant, following him in, heard it too. Their eyes not yet adjusted to the light, they took off their sunglasses in order to be able to see. Together, they saw what once had been Roula. Then they realized what the noise was; flies, thousands of them.
The lieutenant, the younger and less experienced of the two men, felt his stomach begin to churn. The sergeant went through to the rooms beyond. Moments passed during which the young lieutenant couldn’t take his eyes off the horror before him.
‘In here, sir,’ the sergeant called.
Reluctantly, the lieutenant went through. The pathetic blasted remains of the two children covered in more flies were too much for him. He ran out retching, and threw up into the yard.
The sergeant, older and more experienced, came outside. ‘Better not touch anything, we’re going to need forensic,’ he said pragmatically. ‘I’ll radio for help.’ He stepped over to the car and made the call. That job done he came back to the lieutenant. ‘You okay?’
‘Yeah, sorry about this, I’m not very good with this sort of thing. What a mess!’
‘Looks like shotgun wounds to me,’ the sergeant answered, ‘maybe we have a maniac on the loose, the husband, the guy called Dimitris, we’d better look around some more.’
The lieutenant took out his pistol and checked it. ‘Cover me when I move,’ he said, ‘I’ll do the same for you.’
The sergeant nodded and took up a fire position behind the car, h
is forearms resting on the roof.
The lieutenant ran forward to start searching the buildings. Dimitris, when they found him, was past harming anyone. The sergeant looked carefully at the dreadful scene, the slumped body and the shredded head. He looked at the fallen shotgun and the forked stick. ‘Out of his mind,’ he said. ‘Killed his family and then shot himself. Couldn’t face what he’d done.’ He spat on the floor with disgust. Flies buzzed.
Lieutenant Georgiou walked outside looking pale but thoughtful. He was remembering the contents of the note delivered by the girl. ‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘maybe not.’ He hurried over to the car, and called control.
Flight OA 269, September 22nd.
Mike Edge felt uneasy. He didn’t know why he felt uneasy but he trusted his instincts, they’d served him well in the past. He looked around trying to pin down the reason for his disquiet. There were several men moving about the aircraft, using the toilets and waiting outside the doors. Could that be the reason? No, Mike dismissed the idea. People always looked slightly awkward when waiting outside the toilets. Still, it nagged at the back of his mind. Some of them had been away from their seats for rather a long time.
The stewardesses were serving drinks. Mike asked for fresh orange juice when the drinks trolley reached his row, but the stewardess had run out. She pressed the service button above Mike’s head to call the girl in the galley area for more, and served the people across the aisle. Mike waited. The call light was still on, it had been on now for nearly a minute and no one had appeared. More passengers were asking for orange juice and the stewardess serving drinks was getting impatient. Mike looked up to speak to the stewardess. She was going forward to fetch the orange juice herself, and from the look on her face she was going to have words with her colleague in the galley area, who still hadn’t responded to the call from the service bell. She pulled back the curtain, and stepped through to the galley. The curtain was quickly pulled back across. In that brief instant Mike saw a man with a gun.
Flight OA 269, September 22nd.
Abu Asifah looked at his watch. In a few moments flight OA 269 would be leaving the ground station controlling air traffic in the Athens area and moving into the next control area. It was time to make his next move. He opened the door to the flight deck and stepped through, pistol cocked, a round in the chamber ready, the safety catch off. He tapped the captain on the shoulder and stepped back. The captain, a steady, grey-haired, experienced pilot turned expecting coffee, and found himself looking into the muzzle of a gun. His first reaction was anger; the possibility of a hijack was one that pilots lived with but in common with all pilots, he had thought that it would never happen to him. His training took over; his first duty was to his passengers. Resignedly but with irritation he realized that he was in for a period of considerable pressure and discomfort. He moved his headphones to hear what the man with the gun had to say.
Abu Asifah spoke in accented but clear English. ‘You will obey my orders; I am in control of this aircraft in the name of Allah and the People of Palestine. There are armed men at each end of the aircraft and we have explosive charges on board.’ He told the literal truth and omitted to mention the fact that the explosive charges were not yet wired up for detonation. ‘Any attempt to circumvent my absolute control and I will have one of your cabin crew shot,’ he continued, ‘put the aircraft on to Auto-pilot and listen carefully to my instructions.’
The captain turned to the co-pilot. ‘Do as he says, no heroics, we have a planeload of people back there.’ The co-pilot switched to autopilot and sat back.
Abu Asifah spoke again, ‘When you leave Athens ground control you will not immediately contact the next ground station. You will sign off with Athens and then change altitude and course. This is the new course and altitude you will use.’
The captain started to object.
Abu Asifah cut him short. ‘There is no risk of collision,’ he said, ‘we have done our homework carefully. You will turn out to sea and drop down low enough to confuse the radar screens. When you are out of their range I will give you further instructions. Now give me a set of earphones so that I can monitor your words. I can monitor your actions from the instruments.’
The captain shrugged and, taking a spare set of earphones plugged them into an unused jack on the radio console. He handed them carefully to Abu Asifah who put them on and heard the air traffic controller on the ground inform the captain of OA 269 that he was leaving his control, giving him the next frequency to switch to. He heard the captain’s response and dug the muzzle of his gun into the back of the captain’s neck. The captain switched the radio off.
‘Now,’ Abu Asifah told him, ‘make a cabin announcement.’ He thrust a piece of paper at the captain. ‘Use these words.’
The captain read the piece of paper. He switched the radio on and turned to the intercom setting. ‘This is the captain speaking, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘we are experiencing a technical problem, we appear to be losing a small amount of cabin pressure. I am cleared to descend to a lower altitude and we may have to return to Athens to have the problem fixed. I hope this will not inconvenience you too much. I will keep you informed. There is no cause for alarm. Thank you for your attention.’
Abu Asifah removed his pistol barrel from the captain’s neck. ‘Good, you keep doing exactly as I tell you and no one will get hurt. Now start reducing height and turn onto the bearing I gave you.’
The captain, with the safety of his passengers his paramount consideration, resignedly made the necessary adjustments and the plane began to drop down towards the Mediterranean, turning out over the sea away from Greek airspace.
Koropi, September 22nd.
Thoughtfully, the police lieutenant walked back to the door of the house where his sergeant was sitting on a bench. He sat down beside him. ‘There’s more to this than you know,’ he said, ‘you’d better read this.’ He gave him the note Dimitris had written.
The sergeant read it and looked at the lieutenant. ‘The family was taken hostage?’
‘Looks like it,’ the lieutenant replied, He jerked a thumb in the direction of Dimitris’s remains. ‘He was forced to put some substitute meal containers on to an Olympic Airways passenger jet. I’ve just told control to notify the company so they can check the aircraft, and I’ve asked for a full homicide team to come out here and go over this place with a fine-tooth comb. I’ll stay here and keep an eye on things. You take the car down to the village and look out for them. Show them the way here.’
‘Okay, looks like this is going to be some case.’ The sergeant walked over to the car. The radio came to life as he reached it. He listened and then acknowledged the call. He walked back over to the lieutenant. ‘We’re too late,’ he said, ‘the airline has just had a call from air traffic control, an Olympic flight, number OA 269, has gone off the radar screens and off the air.’
‘Shit!’ the lieutenant swore, ‘well let’s hope it’s a hijack and not a bomb.’
Flight OA 269, September 22nd.
As Mike’s mind retained the image his brain went into overdrive. ‘A hijacking? It must be.’ Suddenly everything that had gone on before fell into place. The plane had been taken over and was being diverted. His next thought was for the microfilm he carried. He must keep it safe. Opening his briefcase he quickly took out the small brown envelope containing the microfilm. Then, undoing the belt and the top of his trousers, he pushed it into a small zipped pocket sewn into the inside of the waistband of his trousers. Doing up his trousers and belt he looked up into the quizzical gaze of the girl he had seen accompanying his brother.
Anna Sutherland, on her way forward to the toilet, had slowed as she approached the seat of the intriguing stranger, the man about whom Alan had denied all knowledge. He was stuffing a small brown envelope into the waistband of his trousers. Involuntarily she stopped, and raised an inquiring pair of eyebrows over a pair of beautiful green eyes.
Mike looked away and saw two men, guns in hand, st
ep through the curtain from the forward galley and enter the cabin. There would be more, he knew. He swung round and looked to the rear of the aircraft. Three more men stood up. All three held leveled pistols. He grabbed the standing girl by the wrist and pulled her down into the empty aisle seat next to his own.
‘What on earth...?’
‘Be quiet! And sit very, very still,’ Mike hissed in her ear.
As the other passengers saw the menacing guns a rising level of hysteria filled the cabin, screams, cries and a stampede towards the rear of the aircraft began, then as the hijackers at the rear were spotted the aisle jammed, the rush stopped, and a frightened silence descended. There was nowhere to go.
Koropi, September 22nd.
A police vehicle pulled into the yard of the Kosovos farmstead in the late afternoon. No sign of the horrors recently perpetrated there were evident. The forensic team had arrived, guided in by the sergeant. The forensic officer in charge was a very experienced man. He listened carefully to what the lieutenant and the sergeant had to say then he deployed his men with specific instructions. There were terrorist connotations and there would, by the nature of things, be political aspects to this case.
Leaving the forensic officer in charge, the lieutenant and the sergeant walked over to their car. ‘Did anything come through on that car registration number?’ the lieutenant wanted to know.
‘Yeah,’ the sergeant pulled out his notebook, ‘it came over the radio whilst I was waiting for forensics down in the village.’ He turned some pages. ‘Here it is, it’s owned by Eurocar, the big rental agency, it was rented in Athens.’
‘Right, let’s get going,’ the lieutenant said briskly, ‘by the time we get there they’ll be opening up after the afternoon break. They may just have some information on the current users of the vehicle.’ The sergeant climbed into the driving seat and they set off back to Athens. The two detectives flashed their I.D. at the Eurocar office. The girl on the desk called the manager from the back office to deal with the matter. The lieutenant gave them the car number and the girl called up the details on the computer.
‘This car was leased to a Mister Andreas Kokalis,’ she said, ‘he rented it for a month and paid cash in advance.’
‘Give me his address, please,’ the lieutenant requested.
‘I’ll run all the transaction information off onto the printer, if that’s okay?’ She looked questioningly at the manager.
The manager nodded assent. ‘Yes, that will be okay,’ he said, and turned to the two detectives. ‘Can you tell us what this is about; has the car been involved in an accident?’
‘No, no accident, but I’m afraid I can’t tell you any more at this stage,’ the lieutenant replied. ‘I presume it’s still out on hire?’
‘Just a minute, I’ll check.’ The girl tapped some keys and went to another screen of the computer program. ‘No,’ she said, ‘it was returned over two hours ago.’ She thought for a moment. ‘I remember now, just before we closed for lunch a man came in. I was dealing with another customer. He waved the keys and documents at me and left them on the counter; then he rushed off.’
‘Where are the keys now?’ the sergeant asked.
‘I put them in an envelope marked with the car number, ready for the next user.’
‘And the car,’ the sergeant asked, ‘where is it?’
The girl looked at her watch. ‘It’s probably being cleaned ready for the next customer.’
‘Do the cleaners use the keys you have here?’
‘No, they have their own keys to all the cars,’ the girl explained, ‘them and the workshop; it saves them coming in here all the time to fetch them.’
‘Right,’ said the lieutenant, ‘give me the envelope with the car keys in it – don’t take the keys out.’ He turned to the manager. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said, ‘but we are going to have to impound that car for a short period to enable our forensic people to examine it.’ The manager shrugged in resignation. ‘Come on,’ the lieutenant said, ‘let’s see how far the cleaners have got.’ The car had been cleaned, and very thoroughly. The inside had been vacuumed; the windows and dash polished, and the car had been put through an automatic car wash.
‘We make a special effort on this class of car, our customers expect it,’ the manager said apologetically.
‘Oh well, there may be some information we can glean from it,’ the lieutenant replied. ‘Sergeant, go and radio for a forensic team to go over this vehicle.’ The sergeant went off, made the call and came back. ‘A team is on its way. What next?’
‘We pay Mr. Kokalis a visit, and for that we need a search warrant and some help.’