Terror Squad Read online

  “You know something I don’t know?” Peterson asked.

  Remo nodded.

  “You with the CIA?”

  “No,” said Remo.

  “Aeronautics?”

  “No.”

  “Pentagon?”

  Remo shook his head.

  “Who are you with?”

  “The Insurance Association of America. Do you know that if 800,000 people were killed instantly, insurance stocks would drop almost a point on the Dow Jones? Horrifying, isn’t it?”

  “You’re a wise sonofabitch,” said Peterson, “and I hope they get you.”

  Remo squinted into the horizon.

  “That’s our baby, I think.”

  “Where?”

  Remo pointed northward.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “Wait.”

  Five minutes elapsed before Peterson could make out a faint dot in the sky.

  “Do you have binoculars in your skull?”

  “We in the insurance industry have to…”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  The plane came in on a single line approach. No circling. There was no need. Traffic had been cleared in the area. Remo watched the giant silver machine set down like a house being lowered, slowly, and then it was on the runway far away and coming toward them. He could see the twirl of propellers. The plane halted in a cough of dying engines. Remo heard fumbling and banging at the main plane door. The hijackers could commandeer a plane but they didn’t know how to open a door. Yet, they knew how to smuggle a machine gun on board. They were also, undoubtedly, weapons wise. No matter.

  The door flew open and a large man in dashiki and Afro stood in the doorway, a Kalashnikov cradled in his right hand, a megaphone in his left. Add personal weapons to the .50 caliber. All of them past the new perfect security system. Maybe they even had an elephant on board.

  “You there in the car. Come out with your hands In front of you. Open the doors and trunk so we can see inside,” came the booming voice from the megaphone.

  Not bad, thought Remo. They were careful. He nodded to Peterson, who opened the doors.

  “I don’t have a key to the trunk,” Peterson yelled up to the plane.

  “Shoot it open,” said the man in the plane doorway. Very clever. A check to see if Peterson was armed.

  “I don’t have a gun,” Peterson said.

  “Well, throw up the money.”

  Remo hopped out of the car and grabbed the two satchels of cash sitting on the hood. He held them in front of him.

  “I will bring up the money. But I want the passengers released. Now, I don’t expect you to release the passengers before I give you the money but I do expect the passengers to walk out. So let my friend here drive the car away and get a boarding platform to the plane so the people can walk off after I give you the money.”

  “No. The money now or we kill a hostage.”

  “If you kill a hostage, not one of you will leave that plane alive,” yelled Remo. “Think about it. You open fire on one hostage and we go for broke.”

  “We are ready to die and live in Paradise for Allah.”

  “Feel free,” said Remo.

  “Ah could shoot, you know.”

  “If I go, everyone goes.”

  “You lying.”

  “Try me.”

  “Ah knows your evil ways.”

  “Feel free to try me.”

  “Jess a minute.”

  The black head disappeared into the plane. All right, he wasn’t the leader. his head returned and it said:

  “Okay, but if you try any funny stuff, a hostage will die and the death will be on your hands.”

  “That’s mighty white of you,” Remo said. He watched his opponent blanch. Good. A little unnerving never did an opponent any good. He held the Kalashnikov with skill, finger ready at the trigger, but not on it.

  Peterson looked to Remo.

  “Get the car out and a platform in,” said Remo, keeping his back to the air terminal. The photographers must be blazing away and who knew who had a telephoto lens. Maybe they had a good shot of his face already.

  As the boarding platform made its slow way to the plane, Remo chatted with the man at the plane door.

  “Have a nice flight?” he asked.

  “Our flight to freedom will be the greatest flight.”

  “I mean the food. First class or tourist?”

  “When you pack weapons, you always travel first class,” said the man with the Afro.

  “How true,” Remo said. “How true.”

  As the ramp eased to the plane door, Remo watched the trigger finger move closer to the trigger. The barrel raised to just about the line where men might be hidden on the steps. The ramp touched, the black man stepped out onto the platform, Kalashnikov at the ready, and peered down. He nodded then for Remo to come on board. Like a passenger bound for a week’s vacation, Remo gingerly boarded the plane with the two sacks of money.

  “I brought a little something as a plane-warming gift,” Remo said.

  “Cool, man,” said the gunman. “Just carry those sacks to the front of the plane.”

  Heads turned to look at Remo, frightened faces, men and women, black and white, children and grownups, joined now by their common fear. At the pilot’s cockpit was what Agent Peterson had predicted. A mounted .50 caliber machine gun.

  The fear in the old prop airplane was palpable. He could smell it. It was a mix of adrenaline, perspiration, released urine—a combination of odors.

  “Heads forward,” commanded a black woman in yellow dashiki and high turban. The passengers looked forward. Remo walked up the aisle directly to the muzzle of the .50 caliber. It was pointed at his groin.

  A man squatted behind the gun and the woman stood over him.

  “Put down the bags,” she ordered.

  Remo lowered the bags.

  “Close the door, Kareem,” she yelled to the guard at the rear of the plane.

  “Just a minute,” said Remo. “You don’t need these hostages.”

  The woman looked coldly at Remo. Her face was fatty but hard and her neck rolled in darkening thickness.

  “Don’t tell me what I need and don’t need.”

  “You don’t need seventy frightened people who might do something stupid. Not when you’ve got me and the pilot and the co-pilot,”

  “And the stewardesses,” she said. Her voice was clipped and her accent was Boston or New England.

  “You don’t need the stewardesses either. A hostage is a hostage. Anything more than that is baggage.”

  “You’re very concerned with my problems,” she said.

  “I’d like to see the passengers and stewardesses out of a tense situation. I’m showing you why it’s in your interest also.”

  The woman pondered a moment and Remo could see the quick sharp calculations begin in her eyes.

  “Open the bags,” she said.

  Remo unsnapped both canvas bags and brought out two hands full of money. “Small unmarked bills,” he said.

  “Put them back. You’re not as good a hostage as seventy people.”

  “I think so. I’m vice president of the First Trust Company of Los Angeles,” said Remo nodding to the markers on the canvas bags. “You know what we capitalists think of bankers.”

  A cold smile crossed the woman’s face.

  “You don’t look like a banker.”

  “You don’t look like a terrorist”

  “You’ll be the first to die if anything goes wrong,” she said and then, waving to the back of the plane, barked an order. “Kareem, open the door.”

  She did not announce to the passengers that they would be freed, but told the rows closest to her to stand, then waved them to the rear of the plane. Shrewd enough to avoid panic, Remo thought. The plane emptied in less than three minutes. A young black boy wanted to return to his seat to get his toy fire engine, but his mother tugged him along angrily.

  “Let him take his engine,” said th
e woman in the dashiki.

  One of the stewardesses refused to leave. “I’m not leaving until the pilots leave,” she said.

  “You’re leaving,” said the woman in dashiki, then Kareem grabbed the pale neck and flung her down the aisle and out the door. He shut it behind her.

  The woman knocked on the cabin door. It opened, and a small black man with a large forehead and metal rimmed eyeglasses poked his head out. Remo saw the tip of a .357 Magnum.

  “You people wouldn’t happen to have any elephants on board this thing, would you?” said Remo.

  “Who is that?” asked the man with the Magnum.

  “A banker. Our hostage. We have the money. We can go now. How is fuel?”

  “Fuel’s adequate,” said the pistol-wielder.

  “Okay, let’s move it,” said the woman.

  The engines revved up and Remo felt the plane gather power for the takeoff.

  “Do I stand here or may I sit?”

  “Stand,” said the woman.

  “If the plane jerks, I could lose my balls.”

  “We’re willing to take that risk.”

  “If you’re willing to parachute with your bodies, why should you care about mine, right?” asked Remo.

  The woman’s face remained cold. “What makes you think we’re going to parachute?”

  “Your fuel. This is a prop job. You would have grabbed a jet if you were going out of the country. So you’re going back east, I guess. The plane wouldn’t go too far. Just for guesses, I’d say you’re headed for somewhere mid-American, cause that’s a good middle point, and for the sake of a good parachute escape, I’d say some very desolate or woody place where you’re not going to land on Main Street.”

  “You’re not a banker, are you?” asked the woman.

  Remo shrugged.

  “I hope you’ll do as a hostage. For your sake,” she said.

  “You’re pretty arrogant for a corpse,” said Remo and when the plane reached four thousand feet, he smiled at the machine gunner.

  “Guess what?” he said.

  “What?” said the machine gunner.

  “You lose,” said Remo and came down with his pinkies, shattering the machine gunner’s wrists. The black head came forward and Remo clapped flat hands against eardrums, creating skull pressure like a concussion grenade. The eyes bulged and were blank in death.

  It happened so quickly, the dashiki-clad woman barely got a hand on a pistol inside her garment. Remo squeezed the wrist and hoisted her, hand under butt like a bag of groceries, and used her as a chest-high shield as he dashed down toward the rear of the plane where Kareem was trying to get a clear shot. Instead, he got the woman, full face, bodies colliding with a whoomph against the lavatory door.

  Up front the cockpit door opened and Remo snatched his human shield again for another run. This time, he did not hurl her hefty unconscious body into the gunman, but moved forward around her just as he reached the cockpit door. A downward hand chop and the pistol fell harmlessly to the carpeted aisle, and the man tumbled over the dead machine gunner. The barrel of the .50 caliber pointed harmlessly to the ceiling.

  “You guys okay in there?” Remo yelled into the cockpit

  “Yeah, what happened?” said the pilot turning around.

  Remo moved his face away from the door so the pilot could not see him. “Nothing,” he said. “The plane is secured.”

  “We can head back to L.A. then?”

  “Not yet. Better give me ten minutes of air-time, and then head back. I’ve got some talking to do. And stay off the radio for a few minutes.” Remo reached over the two male bodies and shut the cabin door.

  He hauled the dashiki-clad woman and the pistol wielder down the aisle, like baggage, to Kareem, who was regaining consciousness. With cups of water splashed on them, they all woke up. The pistol-wielder groaned when he tried to move his right hand.

  “What happened?” said Kareem.

  The three hijackers sat, rump on aisle, back to lavatory door.

  “We’re going to play a game,” said Remo. “It’s called Truth or Consequences. I ask you questions and you answer them right or you pay the consequences.”

  “I demand a lawyer. I know my constitutional rights,” snapped the dashiki-clad woman.

  “Well, there’s a little problem with that,” Remo said. “Because of people like you, our government has an agency that works outside the Constitution. This agency employs one of the meanest sons of bitches you are ever going to meet. He wasn’t trained in legal technicalities. In fact, he only follows the law of the jungle.”

  “And that’s you, honkie, right?” said the woman. “Well, let me warn you, you try any of your police brutality and they’ll be a picket line from here to Washington looking for your ass. You hear me, honkie. Looking for your ass.”

  Remo smiled and with a fluid move of his right hand, shattered her raised kneecap.

  “Aaargh,” screamed the woman, grabbing for her knee.

  “That’s my introduction. I’m the mean son of a bitch. Now for your names, folks. Believe me. After this, you’ll welcome police brutality.”

  “Kahlala Waled,” said the woman, her face screwed in pain.

  “Your real name.”

  “That is my real name.”

  “You’ve got another knee.”

  “Leronia Smith.”

  “All right. Good. Now you, Kareem.”

  “Tyrone Jackson.”

  “And you?” said Remo to the man who had held the cockpit.

  “Mustafa El Faquar.”

  “Let’s try again,” said Remo.

  “Mustafa El Faquar.”

  “No. Not the name of the guy who sold your great grandpa to the slave traders. Your name.”

  “Mustafa El Faquar.”

  Remo shrugged. So be it. He caught the man by the fold in his neck and hoisting him off his backside dragged him the two steps to the door. With his left hand, he snapped open the plane door. A wind gust slapped his face. The pistol-wielder’s dashiki fluttered like a flag amok.

  “Okay, Mustafa. Why don’t you think about it on the way to the street?”

  “You wouldn’t throw me out. You full of shit.”

  “What do I have to do,” Remo said, “to convince you people I’m not your friendly police community relations team?”

  “You bluffing, whitey.”

  “Goodbye, sweetheart,” said Remo and flipped the neck into the wind. The body followed and disappeared without even the scream catching up to the open door.

  Kahlala Waled and Kareem suddenly realized they had not been oppressed for three hundred years, and began to think of Remo as a friend. Really a friend. They hadn’t even wanted to do the hijacking. They were just led astray.

  “Thass right, astray,” said Tyrone Jackson, alias Kareem.

  Who led them astray?

  A radical. A real rotten mother. Did they wish they had him here now. Would they tell him a thing or two. Kahlala and Kareem loved America. Loved people of all races. Loved mankind. Martin Luther King had the right idea.

  “You’re right,” Remo said. “I could never handle a Martin Luther King. But you two are right up my alley. Now what is the name of your leader and where did you get your training?”

  They didn’t know his name, but the training was at Patton College, near Seneca Falls, New York.

  “Come on now, who trained you?”

  “We never saw him. Honest,” said Tyrone.

  Remo believed him. He believed Tyrone because those were the last words on Tyrone’s lips all the way to the door and through it.

  “All right, ma’am,” said Remo. “Give me a fast rundown on your training, how many months, what methods.”

  “An afternoon,” said the woman. Her eyes were tearing from the pain in her knee.

  “Let me pay you a compliment. You’re too good for an afternoon. Too damned good. Now, let’s try again.”

  “I swear. An afternoon. You’re not going to kill me, are you
?”

  “Of course I am,” said Remo.

  “Then you go screw, you honkie bastard.”

  Remo said goodbye to the woman and ushered her to the door, shutting it behind her wind-whipped robes. She had vanished into a cloud, when Remo snapped his fingers in annoyance. Damn. He had forgotten to ask them. How had they smuggled the weapons aboard the plane? Smith would be sure to ask him that. Damn and double damn.

  Remo went to the cockpit and told the pilot to return to Los Angeles. At the airport, a team of radical lawyers were waiting for their clients. Remo told Agent Peterson, the first man to board the plane, that the lawyers should have left their briefcases at home and brought sponges instead. The parachutists tried to escape, he explained, and their chutes failed to open. Remo vanished into the crowd, and the next day, when Peterson told a superior that a man from Washington headquarters had killed the hijackers, he was brought up on quiet departmental charges. Washington, an agency spokesman said, had never sent any such man. Peterson would face a departmental hearing. Privately, he was assured that he would face nothing worse than ten years in Anchorage.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  REMO TURNED THE ROLLS OFF the Palisades Parkway onto the New York Thruway. He had driven from the coast nonstop and nonsleep, the last thousand miles of which were accompanied by Chiun’s complaints. They ceased only when the daytime serials began. Chiun sat in the back seat with his portable television rig. With Remo’s driving up front, it made it seem as if he were now the chauffeur for the Master of Sinanju. The problem was Barbra Streisand.

  When Chiun had heard Seneca Falls was in New York State, he had asked:

  “Is that near Brooklyn?”

  “No, it’s not near Brooklyn.”

  “But it is in the same province.”

  “At opposite ends.”

  “We will pass Brooklyn on our way to Seneca Falls, correct?”

  “Not exactly. It’s out of our way.”

  “A little stop in Brooklyn would not be so awesome a task for a ‘not exactly.’”

  “What’s in Brooklyn, Chiun?” Remo had asked.

  “I wish to visit the monument to Barbra Streisand who was born there.”

  “I don’t think there is a monument in Brooklyn to Barbra Streisand.”