airlines. In fact, the office had been renovated every few years as economic factors drove competition out of the market. He was pleased at the success they had enjoyed with a newer fleet of aircraft and the strongest brand in the industry. Success between airlines generally hinged on its ability to counterbalance equipment and fuel cost with customer satisfaction. If he had any major concerns, they were the cost of fuel and the greed of the unions.
It was a beautiful morning in Atlanta until Benjamin (Benny) Hopps, SVP of Aircraft Security, rushed down the hall toward his office. As Benny walked passed Adler’s secretaries, he held up a piece of paper fresh from the printer. He was agitated, “Gerry, take a look at this.”
It was a copy of email to their “customer relations” web address. As Adler read it, he turned red, then white, “Is this a hoax? This has got to be some idiot trying to disrupt operations. Ignore it. This is ridiculous!”
“Gerry, we must take this seriously. What if this maniac isn’t fooling around?”
The message read:
“To the owner of Atlantic Airlines,
Greetings from the Apostles of Islam. Today, we will shoot down one of your airplanes from the sky. We will do it again each day if you do not meet our demands. If you do not fly, we will wait until you do. Our demand is simple, deposit $100 millions of U.S. dollars in our bank account by wire transfer. I will give you the transfer information only ten minutes before you must send the money so nobody will try to hurt us. We are very serious as you will soon see.”
The Crash
Rachael was successful getting Peter reassigned from Illinois to the Guard Bureau in Washington. He would arrive tomorrow, exciting her beyond belief. She had seen him, been with him, twice in the last three months after they had recovered from the Chicago crisis. Each time, she had hated their departure. Now they could be together under the same roof.
Her bliss was interrupted when Sergeant Lucy Rice came to her office, “Sorry to bother you Ms. Aston, The UDA (Undersecretary, Department of the Army) office called and says you need to turn on the news ASAP.” Like most Washington executives, Rachael had a small LCD television on the wall of her office. As she pushed the power button on the remote control, she whispered to herself, “Not today! Not this week!” With foreboding, she turned on CNN. The scene was billowing black smoke in a residential community. Through the black undulating clouds, the tail of an airplane appeared intermittently.
She continued watching as reporters described the scene. Her intuition connected the missiles to the horror, but she needed to hear more to confirm it. The news reporter said, “An airliner has crashed shortly after takeoff from Atlanta. It was a Boeing 737, en route to Miami with a full passenger load. Preliminary reports indicate that one of two engines exploded within seconds after liftoff and the pilot lost control, plummeting into a residential area. Casualties were not known but no one survived on the airplane, and there are casualties on the ground.”
Even if there were some other explanation, there would be speculation about a missile attack as there was with the TWA flight 800 when it exploded over Long Island Sound heading for Paris in 1996. At that time, there were numerous reports of surface to air missile launches, one even cited a Navy warship firing a SAM missile at the airplane. None of it was true. The airplane had a malfunction in an electrical circuit passing through the central fuel tank, but the news stories nevertheless persisted for years that a SAM missile had been the cause. This time, she feared it would be true.
In a matter of minutes, Mark Brennan was on the phone to Rachael.
“Hello, Mark.”
“Hi, Rachael, I guess you’ve heard about Atlanta?”
“Yeah, do you think it’s one of the missiles?”
“It could be. We’re on the phone right now with the Atlanta office. We sent out an Intelligence Bulletin on Friday warning about the possibility. We’re trying to verify an attack, if we can.”
“Okay, thanks, any more Florida leads?”
“No, the trail seems to have gone cold.”
“Thanks for the call, Mark. Let me know if anything is learned. Who should I contact in Atlanta?”
“The SAC is Henry Walkens, who is probably the right person for you to call. Their main office number is: (he gave the number).”
“Thanks.”
Atlanta
Two days earlier, the missiles had been moved out of Florida. Like the illicit drug trade, Florida was only the entry point for the missiles, where they were to be transported north and west. Majiid had feared roadblocks leaving Port Charlotte if they moved too slowly. There are very few northerly routes out of Florida, and it would be easy to seal them off. Middle Eastern men would attract enough suspicion, so traveling with the missiles was imprudent. American ingenuity had provided a convenient solution: Portable On-Demand Storage (PODS). The solution was perfect. The company delivered trailer-size storage containers to any location for owners to pack with their goods, then delivered the POD to another location. Majiid had arranged for a POD to be deposited at a vacant lot near a row of storm-damaged homes that were unoccupied in Charlotte County. The dispatcher was given an address and credit card that had been approved. It was an odd location, but Majiid explained that goods were being removed for safekeeping while the home next to the lot was demolished.
The container was dropped at the Florida address in the afternoon and scheduled for pickup at eight o’clock the next morning, with shipping instructions to an Atlanta suburb. After driving the rental truck around town until midnight, it took only ten minutes to transfer the sixteen missile containers into the POD. Two men watched the street in case a police patrol came through the unoccupied neighborhood.
With the missiles and weapons locked inside the container, Majiid and two men drove north in a car purchased for them by another U.S. Muslim collaborator. The others went back to their occupations in the local communities.
Majiid’s drive north had taken ten hours with three accomplices, obeying the speed limit. Their destination was a rented house in the town of Hapeville in suburban Atlanta, adjacent to the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. The man who had rented it was a taxi driver, living in the area. He had found a house located near the end of runway 90 as instructed. Majiid didn’t know the man, but he had been recommended through a local cleric supporting their cause. He could not be fully trusted.
Late in the afternoon, the container was delivered on the driveway, but it wouldn’t be opened until late at night. Majiid and his men drove to a Moroccan restaurant located through a web search by stopping at a local Wi-Fi hot spot. The most serious threats to their success were already behind them and the men were relaxed. The delivery and recovery at sea was the most hazardous phase. Killing the boat crew was just added insurance against being caught. They had brought sixteen missiles into the U.S. without detection. The rest of the mission would surely succeed.
They stayed at the restaurant until closing, then drove back to the house around midnight. Before opening the POD, all three men stood in the driveway silently, unmoving for several seconds trying to detect anyone awake in the neighboring houses. When everything appeared quiet, they moved without talking up the driveway where they removed the missiles from the container, into the garage. The ambient light from the stars and the landing lights from aircraft was enough to work in. The process took under five minutes, without a word spoken. A few hours later, the POD container would be removed.
Late in the pre-dawn morning, three other windowless utility vans were driven to the house. They had been purchased the day before from local used car dealers and were driven by two-man teams. The men were all American citizens from “sleeper cells” around the country. None knew each other before receiving instructions for this mission. Each of the three trucks was loaded with five missiles. They departed with specific time and destination instructions from Majiid being cautioned not to attract the police. None of them knew where the others were headed. As dawn was breaking, Majiid went to a lo
cal coffee house with Wi-Fi internet access to send an email, then they returned to the house for a few hours’ sleep. Majiid dreamed peacefully.
Demonstration
The firing angle from the rear yard of the house in Hapeville was perfect. The airplane was climbing almost overhead about one thousand feet above, on schedule. As it passed over, the infrared seeker in the missile chirped repeatedly, indicating positive lock on the engine exhaust. Majiid pressed the thumb lever to fire the missile, which screamed through the sky into the rear of the starboard engine. At impact, the engine exploded and shrapnel disintegrated much of the wing. The aircraft was in a fifteen-degree nose-up attitude moving at 250 knots. It never reached two thousand feet. Momentum carried it about a half mile before it started to roll as the pilot struggled to level the wings and get the nose down. They were too low to regain control. The plane could land with one engine, but the pilot could not regain flight control quickly enough with the damaged wing.
Before it crashed, Majiid and his two accomplices had thrown the launcher inside the garage and were already driving away. They would circumnavigate Atlanta using I-285 toward I-95 heading north. As they merged onto the Interstate, there was a huge cloud of smoke in the East. In one hour, they would