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  He saw Arnel blink twice. “The State Department informed us that Prestone was in the Middle East conducting the first stages of a meeting between the PLO and Israel. If he’s killed, whatever chance there is for a settlement will die with him.”

  It all came together then. The hijacking centered on Prestone. “If we let Mohamad think he’s getting everything, including the prisoners, what will he do?”

  Arnel shrugged. “You had the same training as I did. We both know we can’t let him get what he wants. Even if he thinks he won, he’ll take everyone out anyway. Mohamad’s on a suicide mission. Personally, I think he wants to become a martyr.”

  Hyte felt as though he were somewhere else, not in the hallway of the control tower. He worked through Arnel’s reply until he found the error in the Fed’s logic. “Does he? The rundown you gave me earlier says he thinks he’s the best there is. Does the best commit suicide? I don’t think so. Mohamad has a big ego, so logically, we need to ask, why he would take this mission if he didn’t think there was a way to pull it off? No,” Hyte said, answering himself. “If he gets away, he becomes a bigger force in the PLO, doesn’t he?”

  Arnel studied Hyte. He nodded.

  “Mohamad isn’t after martyrdom, he’s after power.”

  “Even if that’s so, what good does it do us?”

  “We have to make him believe he’s got a shot at pulling it off. But he can’t think it’s too easy.”

  “You’re playing with Prestone’s life,” the agent said.

  “I don’t know that I am. If Mohamad wanted Prestone dead, if the whole hijacking was just to kill Prestone, it would have been done out of the country. Mohamad isn’t stupid. You made that clear enough. So why would he go to the hassle of sabotaging Prestone’s plane when it would have been simpler to blow it out of the sky? No, Mohamad’s after something else. It could be a part of his demand that the U.S. pursue an active dialogue with the PLO. Perhaps he’s trying for a public statement by our country that we’ll withdraw from any involvement with the peace talks, in exchange for Prestone’s life.”

  Arnel stared silently at him, his face devoid of expression.

  When he shrugged and started away, Hyte sensed he was on the right path.

  He found newsman Dan Carson waiting for him in the ready room. Carson was a good-looking man. Six feet two, trim, with sharp eyes and straight brown hair. The reporter was a former NYPD detective turned television journalist. His specialty was crime reporting. Hyte, like most policemen, accepted Carson on the scene. He knew the reporter wouldn’t do anything foolish for the sake of a story.

  “What’s up, Ray?” Carson asked.

  “I need your help and cooperation.”

  “It’s yours.”

  “Do you have a live feed set up or just tape?”

  “The transmitting van is out front. Got here about five minutes ago. We can go either way.”

  Hyte didn’t bother to ask how the van had gotten by the airport roadblocks. He’d learned that TV people were better at those things than the CIA. “The terrorists have demanded that a camera be set up in the plane and a live feed run to the networks. I want to give it to them, up to a point. That point,” he said, his finger indicating the media communications area in the far corner of the ready room.

  “No problem,” Carson said. “And if it becomes necessary to broadcast, we can use a time delay when appropriate.”

  “Do you have the equipment with you?”

  “All that we’ll need.”

  “I’ll be going in with you,” Hyte told him.

  Carson’s eyebrows flicked upward. “That could be risky. You don’t know your way around the equipment.”

  “I’m a fast learner.”

  Carson smiled. “You haven’t changed since you made sergeant. Okay, give me fifteen minutes to get it all worked out.”

  “You’ll have to pool everything with the rest of the media or they’ll be screaming for my scalp.”

  Carson smiled again. “That goes without saying. But I won’t have to pool our follow-up interview, will I?”

  Hyte didn’t have to answer; it was an already accepted fact. “Set up your equipment.”

  While Carson, with his cameraman and his soundman, began to set up, the rest of Hyte’s team arrived in the ready room. Cohen told him there had been no communications while he was gone.

  Hyte gathered the men in a semicircle, and then outlined his talk with Arnel. “Because of the Prestone aspect of this situation, we’ll have to break the rules we’ve been taught,” he told them. “We will appear to give the terrorists what they want, but not too easily. If they don’t have to fight for each concession, they’ll know something’s wrong.”

  He went to the mike. “Rashid Mohamad?”

  Silence for a minute, then the almost too genteel, “Lieutenant Hyte?”

  “The television crew is almost ready.”

  “There will be no crew. Only a camera and a microphone. It will be set up and left. We will guarantee the news people safe passage in and out. If they cannot control the camera remotely, then it will remain on at all times. Is that understood?”

  Hyte cursed under his breath. What was Mohamad doing? “I understand. How many men will be permitted to come on board?”

  “Two. The same restrictions. No clothing. Just underwear.”

  “We’ll also be sending a field telephone. It will give us better communication.”

  “Don’t you mean more private communication? No telephone.” Mohamad paused, then, “Yes, perhaps a telephone would be helpful. I can talk to you and watch my hostages. Now, what of our brothers?”

  “The helicopter is on its way to pick them up.”

  “Do not play games with us. The money?”

  “Being counted.”

  “Very good. Our amnesty?”

  “Working on it.”

  “You may send out the cameramen.”

  Hyte tensed. Now! He had been waiting for this moment—the first yes given by the hijacker. His hands curved around the edge of the desk in anticipation. “Not yet. We’ve been dealing in good faith. We want something in return.”

  Mohamad laughed. “You are in no position to ask for anything.”

  Hyte persisted, his voice level. “A show of good faith. Give us some hostages to prove to us that the television people will be given free passage.”

  Hyte closed his eyes. He heard the expectant breathing of his men behind him. The radio remained silent for several seconds, until: “Good faith? You sit there and judge us, do you? You look at this airplane and say to yourselves—‘There is a mad animal inside that tube of metal who is trying to hurt us. A man who cares nothing for life’.”

  “Oh shit,” someone whispered behind Hyte. He couldn’t identify the speaker.

  “But you are wrong. Our very actions this night are because we care for life. Our lives, our families’ lives, and our people’s lives. You sit in judgment of us from your self-righteous heights. Have you been thrown off your land? Have you been denied your homeland? Have Zionist killer squads murdered your families and deprived your children of their birthrights? No. So don’t you presume to judge us until you have lived in the way we have been forced to— moving from country to country, living in filthy refugee camps. Don’t think for a moment that we will stop until the Zionists who have stolen our lands and homes are gone from Palestine. Good faith? What in Allah’s name is that?”

  Hyte stared at the plane, wishing he could see through the hull. He needed to watch the man’s face as he spoke. Was the hijacker’s rhetoric an effort to throw him off? Hyte didn’t believe a word of Mohamad’s speech. True, there had been passion in the terrorist’s voice, but the words had been too mechanical.

  “PR,” he mumbled. Mohamad had a mission. Part of his mission would be to make the world think that the Palestinians were persecuted and terrorized victims.

  “It’s decency we’re talking about, Mohamad. Good faith is decency,” Hyte said. “It’s a willi
ngness to show that you’re capable of being more than those whom you seek to destroy.”

  “Very good,” Mohamad said. “You are a worthy adversary. Very well. We will show the world that Palestinians have...good faith. We will release all the people being held in the coach section.”

  Hyte sucked in a startled breath. Behind him, Junior Atkins said, “Wow.” The release of the coach passengers was a good sign, but his relief at having won some hostages free was tempered by the ease of the victory.

  Something’s wrong, nothing comes this easily. ‘I have a time schedule,’ Mohamad had told him earlier. Hyte wondered if the coach passengers would interfere with that. Yes, he told himself. That was one explanation for their release. The other was because they had J. Milton Prestone.

  “We’ll have a bus for the passengers brought to the plane. It will be empty except for the driver and the two newsmen. The interior lights will be on,” Hyte explained. “A debarking ramp will be attached and the workers will leave. You can open the door and watch them.”

  “So your snipers can pick us off?”

  “No snipers. Good faith, Mohamad. Good faith,” Hyte reminded him. That, and the fact that if a sniper were to shoot, every passenger would be at risk.

  “Agreed.”

  Hyte thought he heard a low chuckle. “Ten minutes.”

  <><><>

  While Jonah and Anita Graham sat in their first-class cabin under the watchful eyes of the terrorists, their daughter Emma paced the confines of the Trans Air VIP lounge. Her long, tapered legs moved her smoothly. Her shoulders, squared back, gave the impression of height. Her dark hair was stylishly short and businesslike. Her eyes, hard and direct when necessary, were those that romantics describe as liquid brown.

  She had strong features. Her nose was a trifle crooked but suited her face. Her mouth was generous. Her teeth were that unusual shade of almost pure white, of which models dream. Her smoothly rounded chin accented the high, well-defined cheekbones of her one-quarter Russian ancestry. In all, Emma Graham’s twenty-eight-year-old face was handsome. Not model pretty, but lovely to look at just the same. Her body, sheathed in a mauve Chanel business suit, was slim and well proportioned.

  She went to the window and looked down at the main waiting area. The terminal was mostly empty; the passengers waiting for flights when the airport closed down were shuttled to LaGuardia. Behind her, thirty or so people milled about. For the most part, their faces reflected shock. Some looked angry; others lost, or anxious, as they waited for some word about a relative or friend on board Flight 88.

  The door to the lounge opened. Emma turned. The newcomer, a man, walked in with confident powerful strides. Her breath escaped in a relieved sigh. He’d gotten her message.

  “Jerome,” she called.

  Jerome Rosenthal, formerly a Manhattan district attorney and currently the mayor’s assistant on Community Relations, turned to look for the woman who had called his name.

  Emma went to him. They embraced as friends who have survived a love affair. He held her to him for a comforting minute.

  She looked into his eyes. Her stare was direct. “What’s happening?”

  “The hostage negotiation team is talking with the hijackers. I haven’t been to the control tower yet. The mayor asked me to speak with the people waiting here first.”

  “My parents,” she whispered.

  “They’ve got the negotiating team working on it,” he repeated. “They’re good.”

  “What’s happening?” she asked. “Are they PLO?”

  “That’s the consensus.”

  Emma fixed her gaze on the toes of her beige pumps. The Grahams were Jewish.

  “Try to relax,” he said, wrapping his arm protectively about her shoulders.

  Emma choked back a fear-induced giggle. Relax? However, his voice did give her a modicum of comfort.

  She looked up at him. “Can you take me to where they’re negotiating? The control tower?”

  “They won’t let you in. I’m on my way there now, though, and I’ll keep you posted.”

  “Thank you.” Emma looked at her watch. It was ten past twelve, June twentieth. “Happy anniversary,” she whispered to her parents.

  Chapter Eight

  A small dictating machine, camouflaged as a cigarette case, lay in the breast pocket of Jonah Graham’s shirt. Strangely, he’d felt no fear since the initial rush of horror at the death of the flight engineer. He was calm now.

  When the hijacking began, he had been dictating notes about his trip, using the prototype recorder. It was a voice-activated Dictaphone style recorder using a new type of microcassette. It weighed five ounces, with a special four-hour, self-reversing tape, and had a battery life of thirty hours. Its built-in microphone could pick up words at twenty feet.

  The recording unit’s secondary appeal was its disguise as a leather-covered case. The design was integral to its value. Executives could use it during meetings and no one would know.

  Now the hijacking would be the recorder’s biggest test.

  Jonah wondered if it would be of help to the authorities, afterward.

  “Emma will be worried,” Anita said.

  “I know. But she’s strong.”

  “I’m afraid.”

  Jonah Graham drew her tighter. He had nothing to say to comfort her. He looked around the compartment. Senator Prestone was in the first row. His eyes, glazed with hatred, stared at the terrorist named Khamil.

  The rest of the passengers were silent, too. Most stared vacantly. Across the aisle from Jonah was the young, good-looking woman and her older husband.

  When Mohamad took everyone’s passports, he’d called out each name in a loud voice. The couple’s name was Mofferty. Jonah saw they were badly frightened.

  Behind him were the two stewardesses. After the plane had landed, and everything secured, the hijackers moved the bound women to the fourth row and released their hands. Across from them was the copilot. The plane’s captain sat on the floor near the lavatories. Jonah admired the calmness and determination in Haller’s eyes.

  A movement in the front drew Graham’s attention. Mohamad stepped out of the cockpit. His face showed nothing.

  “Everything is going as we planned,” the terrorist said.

  “I hope that in three hours you will all be released.” There was an almost inaudible click of the recorder when Mohamad stopped and another when he spoke again.

  “In a few minutes, two men will come onto the plane. They will set up a TV camera and leave. I am sure that one, if not both, will be policemen. If any of you attempt to do anything, they will be killed, as will whoever moves.”

  Click went Jonah Graham’s recorder. Click went Jonah Graham’s mind as a brief glimmer of relief waxed. It waned with Mohamad’s next words.

  “All the coach-class passengers will be released. They are unnecessary and could create problems. You are sufficient. I am going to the rear until the camera and men arrive. As I do, I will inspect each of your seatbelts. Keep your hands on the top of your heads. Make no move whatsoever.”

  “Mohamad,” called William Haller. Mohamad turned to look at him. “Let the girl leave with the others.”

  Although Jonah could not see Mohamad’s face, he heard the snarl in the man’s voice. “You should have left her in the rear.” Once again, click went Jonah Graham’s recorder.

  <><><>

  While the bus was heading to the control tower, Hyte briefed Jerome Rosenthal. He liked Rosenthal. They’d worked well together on several cases when Rosenthal was an assistant D.A.

  “Don’t take any chances,” Rosenthal said. “You’re more valuable here than you will be stuck in the plane.”

  “No chances, Jerry. I have to see the situation inside. I need to gauge the hostages’ conditions.”

  “Bullshit. The camera will do that for you.”

  Hyte smiled. His eyes reflected no mirth. “I have to look Mohamad in the eye. He’ll let us go. It’s a part of his overall plan. T
his is a well set up, well rehearsed hijacking. We’re dealing with pros. They’re cool and calm and they know they have the initial advantage. We need some leverage of our own.”

  “If we can,” the mayor’s assistant said. “There’s a couple on board. Jonah and Anita Graham. gray hair, a mole on his cheek on line with his earlobe. Left cheek. Anita is gray, too, short hair, pretty. They’re both in their early sixties. Let me know how they are.”

  “I will.”

  “What shall I tell the mayor?”

  “We’re doing the best we can.”

  “He knows that. He wants more.”

  “Don’t we all?” Hyte asked.

  “At least the little girl will be released. That could have become as sticky as Prestone.”

  Hyte didn’t let his surprise show. “There are no children listed on the passenger manifest.”

  “No one told you?” When Hyte shook his head, Rosenthal said, “There’s a seven-year-old, traveling alone. Her parents are waiting in the VIP lounge.”

  Hyte drew in a deep breath. “You’re sure she’s in coach?”

  Rosenthal nodded. “That’s what her parents said.”

  “I’ll watch out for her,” Hyte promised.

  “Ray, this is Billy Meadows, my cameraman. Follow his lead,” Carson said. “He’ll do all the work. Make sure the bus goes slowly. Billy will be feeding cable out the door.”

  “Okay, Dan, thanks,” Hyte said, his mind already working on the next step. He lifted his walkie-talkie, thumbed the sending switch. “Sy?”

  “Here.”

  “Call Mohamad. Tell him we’re on our way.” He started into the bus. The interior lights were on. The driver was Junior Atkins, the hostage team’s sharpshooter. In the space between the driver’s seat and the hull of the bus was a Parker-Hale M-82 rifle.

  The walkie-talkie crackled. “No response,” Cohen said just as the rear passenger door opened. A man stepped into the light. He held a pistol on another.

  “They’re ready,” Hyte said, motioning the driver ahead.

  Mohamad’s refusal to reply to Cohen’s call was just another of the terrorist’s counter maneuvers, Hyte knew. Mohamad was creating varying scenarios in an attempt to confuse Hyte and his team. By keeping radio contact to a minimum, he was impeding a negotiator’s most important tool—the ability to talk to the hijacker. Obviously, Hyte decided, Mohamad had studied the same books as he. Yet, the knowledge that the terrorist was attempting to throw off the standard negotiating maneuvers was a factor that Hyte believed he might be able to use against Mohamad.