THREE

Inside the cockpit of Northern Airlines Flight 199 at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, the copilot was reading off the preflight checklist. When he got to one item he paused. Then the copilot read it out. “Primary countermeasures.”

Pilot Bob Blotzinger, a veteran of twenty years of commercial flying, flicked the little toggle switch, and the green light on the instrument panel lit up. He said, “Check.”

“Secondary system.”

“Check.”

The copilot stopped again for a second. Then, after turning around to make sure the cockpit door was closed and they were alone, he asked, “What’s the deal with that?”

“With what?”

“The secondary. You know, the RTS?”

“Hey, I’m just the pilot. Ask Northern Airlines. I only work here.”

“Come on, Bob. Humor me. Did the FAA really approve the Return-to-Sender defense system or not?”

The pilot gave it some thought and tossed his first officer a tired look. “Okay. This is only what I heard, so don’t quote me. Apparently the FAA clears the RTS for installation in commercial jets, right? But then Homeland Security gets involved and says, ‘Whoa, wait a minute. This is national security stuff.’ So it starts getting complicated. Like it always does. Now you’ve got a battle between two agencies. So they decide, okay, leave it installed. But each airline and each airport can jointly decide whether the system gets activated. Anyway, the FAA wants to see if having it physically installed jinxes anything in your avionics — which it shouldn’t, from everything I know — but that’s their compromise.”

“But you’re not answering me. Are we able to use the RTS or not?”

“No. Not really. Not automatically. Have to call it into air traffic control. Give them the alert. Get their permission first. Ridiculous.”

The pilot waved his hand toward the preflight log in the copilot’s hand.

“All right. So, sign off on the preflight, will you? I want to get to Dallas.”

The copilot tilted his head as he listened in his headset to a message from the tower. He followed that with a nod. “Good news. They’ve moved us up. We’re on deck.”

By the time Flight 199 started taxiing down the runway at O’Hare, across the country, at JFK, Deborah’s Flight 433 to Denver was next in line for takeoff. At LAX the Los Angeles to Las Vegas flight was in the same position.

As the Chicago flight rolled toward takeoff, two men hunched together inside the Ulema Salvage Yard in Schiller Park, just outside of the O’Hare perimeter. An Indonesian man shouldered a FIM-92A Stinger missile launcher. His brother stood next to him, reading the quick-text messages from the other cell groups in Los Angeles and New York.

Just outside the Ulema Salvage Yard, the driver of the getaway van, with its engine idling, sat behind the steering wheel. He was watching the two-man Stinger team get ready.

The brother’s sat-fone rang. He took the message and seemed electrified. “Takeoff is confirmed for Flight 199 to Dallas,” he yelled. “It’s coming …” A few seconds later they could hear the big jet approaching in the distance.

While Flight 199 was taking off from Chicago, Flight 433 out of JFK was slowly rolling down the runway. The 797 straightened its alignment for takeoff. The pilot eased the throttle forward. The jet started to accelerate. Then the pilot powered it up for takeoff.

As the 797 raced down the runway, Deborah felt the familiar centrifugal force pulling her back into her seat. At that moment her purse tipped over on the floor, spilling the contents. Lipstick, compact, coin purse, Allfone cell, pens. Everything.

For a split second she tried to fight the impulse. But she did it anyway. She quickly unbuckled her seat belt so she could reach down and stuff the contents back into her purse.

For Blotzinger, this was only his third time flying the new 797. He had eighty-eight souls on board, including the crew and flight attendants, as he taxied the big jet into position for takeoff from O’Hare airport.

Moments later Blotzinger gently lifted the big jet off the runway. Their flight path took them over Schiller Park, but when the jet was directly over Ulema Salvage Yard, the copilot noticed something. A blip on the radar screen — a blip streaking right toward them. Suddenly the attack-warning buzzers went off in the cabin, and a yellow light started to flash.

The copilot blurted out, “Bob, incoming — ”

Blotzinger hit the countermeasures button. The flares designed to deflect heat-seeking missiles blew out from the underbelly, but they were not close enough to the Stinger missile to distract it. The missile kept streaking toward its target.

Blotzinger could see what was happening. “Fire the RTS!” he screamed.

The copilot hit the control for the RTS antimissile system while Blotzinger swung the big jet into an avoidance pattern.

Their eyes were riveted to the screen.

But for some terrifying reason the linear blip kept coming, closing in at a blinding speed, heading right for the belly of the jet.

The RTS should have worked. Should have instantaneously transmitted a data-capturing/data-reconfiguring laser beam aimed straight for the guidance system in the missile. Should have reversed the flight path of the FIM-92A Stinger that was streaking toward the jet and turned it around, sending it back to its source.

But something had gone horribly wrong.

The last sound on the cockpit voice recorder was a millisecond-long scream of the copilot when he got a glimpse of the long steel cylinder full of explosives momentarily flashing into sight just before it struck.

There was an unearthly blast. And in one blinding explosion they were all gone.

On the ground a man was walking his dog. He screamed and jumped at the sound of the sky exploding into fire overhead. His dog howled and cowered on the ground. When the man looked up, he saw the fireball expanding in the air. Then he screamed again. He saw the charred pieces of the fuselage, cockpit, and wing assembly falling from the sky all around him and crashing onto the streets and houses of his Chicago suburb.

Soon National Airlines Flight 433 out of JFK would be winging its way high in the sky over the warehouse where Ramzy nestled the missile launcher against his shoulder. Standing directly below the now-open retractable skylight, Ramzy peered through the clear pane of plastic on the launcher’s viewfinder, ready to line up the big 797 jet in its rectangular lines.

As Deborah bent down to stuff the spilled items back into her purse, Ethan March joked, “No seat belt? Leave it to the Army to ignore flight regulations …”

At that moment, the cockpit crew heard a shrill warning bell. The copilot pointed to a flashing light on the flight deck. An oblong object on the LCD screen was streaking toward them.

The copilot shouted, “Oh my G — ”

The pilot thrust his finger down on the primary countermeasure button. A flare shot out from the underbody of the jet toward the incoming heat-seeking missile in an attempt to detract it. But the missile kept coming.

More alarm bells rang.

The security screen flashed: “6 SECONDS TO IMPACT.”

The pilot punched the button marked “RTS.” A laser beam shot out of a small orb on the belly of the National Airlines jet. The beam struck the missile’s guidance system right behind the heat-seeking tip.

The pilot knew he had to put distance between the heat of his jet engines and the approaching missile, so he tried to bank into a twenty-degree yaw to the left. Passengers screamed as magazines, jackets, and purses flew into the air.

In an instant, Deborah, still out of her seat belt, felt herself being lifted violently into the air. She would have smashed straight into the ceiling — headfirst, with the force of an automobile crash — if Ethan March hadn’t instantly reached over her and blocked her with his arms and held on to her. Up front, a stewardess lay unconscious on the floor, having hit her head against the bulkhead before she had buckled into her jump seat.

Five hundred feet away, the RTS laser beam had triggered the guidance system of the missile into a mirror image of its trajectory. The infrared head of the missile was deactivated, and the Stinger began a turning loop away from the jet. The missile was now on a path back to earth at fifteen hundred miles per hour, returning to the warehouse where it had been launched.

On the ground, Ramzy couldn’t afford to wait even a few seconds to verify his hit. The Stinger missile left a visible plume behind it and they had to clear out of the launch area before they were sighted. He hurriedly repacked the launcher into the case. Hassan was already sprinting toward Farhat and the van.

That is when Hassan, standing outside, thought he saw the glint of something in the air — a thin metallic object streaking through the sky toward them.

It was the last thing he would see.

When the missile struck the warehouse it ignited the fuel tanks. There was a flash and a deafening roar as the warehouse disintegrated in the enveloping ball of fire. Hassan, Ramzy, and Farhat were consumed instantly. Four workers on the loading dock of the neighboring building were taking a break. They never knew what hit them. The shock wave from the blast blew them a hundred feet from the building, which imploded behind them. Its windows sprayed broken glass in a shimmering mist as the walls buckled. The sonic blast could be heard all the way to the New Jersey shore.

In the cockpit of Flight 433, the LCD screen on the flight deck was flashing “FIELD CLEAR,” and the buzzer ceased. The pilot corrected his flight path.

Deborah found herself in a heap on Ethan’s lap with his arms still locked around her. She climbed back into her seat as their hearts banged in their chests.

Deborah threw a glance up to the ceiling of the plane, realizing what might have happened. She managed a smile and turned to Ethan. “Thanks. Really.”

In the cockpit, the pilot radioed the tower. “Permission requested to use RTS secondary countermeasures per FAA rules. Over.”

“Hey, what happened? What the — ”

“Permission requested for RTS.”

“Don’t understand — ”

“Look, I’ll just take that as permission granted. Thanks, tower. Over.”

Two minutes later, the men on the roof near LAX airport were monitoring the Los Angeles flight to Las Vegas. They had already received an ecstatic voice message on their sat-fone from the Chicago cell group: “Plane down! Plane down! Allah be praised!”

Now the Chechen was helping the Arab missile expert shoulder the Stinger launcher.

“Hear it? Listen. That’s our jet!” he cried out. Then he added, “We have to bring it down like our brothers in Chicago.”

The missile man aimed his launcher. The 797 was appearing off to the left. His aim would be exact. He pulled the trigger, and the missile blew straight up into the sky, leading the approaching jet perfectly in its approach.

In the cockpit, bells went off. The copilot automatically slammed down on the countermeasures button. Two flares shot out, heading for the incoming missile.

The pilot next to him was yelling. “What is it? What is it?”

But before he could get a response, he could see it on the screen. The flares had diverted the heat-seeking missile from its trajectory slightly, but just slightly. The pilot and copilot could see the missile for a split second. The pilot prayed aloud that the missile would not hone in on the heat from his engines.

“Get away … get away…!”

The missile shot past the jet with a trail of smoke. It kept traveling due west and eventually fell harmlessly into the Pacific surf, a half mile offshore.

Three hours later, a group of Navy SEALS and the L.A. bomb squad located the missile and defused it. For some reason, the explosive never detonated.

The RTS system hadn’t been utilized.