We arrived at our destination in Feltham a few minutes later. Lodge and I met up with SO19, British Specialist Operations, who would execute the raid. Police surveillance had video monitors set up inside several nearby buildings. Tape was being shot from half a dozen different cameras.
“Like watching a movie. Nothing we can do to influence the action,” Lodge said after we’d studied the videos for a few minutes. What an impossible mess. We weren’t supposed to be there. We’d been warned against it. But how could we go away?
Lodge had a list of all the flights scheduled into Heathrow that morning. In the next hour or so, more than thirty flights would be arriving. The next few were from Eindhoven, three from Edinburgh, two from Aberdeen, then a British Airways flight from New York. Serious discussions were being held about halting all flights into both Heathrow and Gatwick, but no decision had yet been made. The jet from New York was due in nineteen minutes.
One of the police pointed.
“There’s someone on the roof! There! There he is!”
Two monitors showed the rooftop from opposite angles. A man in dark clothing had appeared. Then a second man, this one carrying a small surface-to-air missile launcher, came out of a hatchway.
“Fucking hell,” somebody hissed. Tempers were running very high now. Mine, too.
“Reroute all the flights now! We have no choice,” Lodge barked. “Do our snipers have these two bastards covered?”
Word came back that SO19 had the rooftop covered. Meanwhile, we watched the two men get into position. There could be little doubt now that they were there to bring down a plane. And we were watching the frightening scene, without being able to stop it.
“Arseholes!” Lodge swore at the monitors. “Not going to be anything for you bastards to shoot at. How do you like that?”
“They look Middle Eastern to me,” said one of the other detectives. “They certainly don’t look Russian!”
“We don’t have the go-ahead to shoot,” a man wearing headphones announced. “We’re still on hold.”
“What the bloody hell is going on?” Lodge complained in a high-pitched voice. “We have to take them out. Come on!”
Suddenly there were gunshots! We could hear them on the video. The man with the launcher on his shoulder went down. He didn’t get up, didn’t move at all. Then the second suspect was hit. Two clean head shots.
“What the hell?” someone shouted in the van where we were watching. Then everyone was cursing and yelling.
“Who gave the order to shoot? What’s going on here?” screamed Lodge.
Word finally came back, but nobody could believe it. Our snipers hadn’t made the hit. Somebody else had shot the two men on the roof.
Madness.
It was total madness.
Chapter 66
EVERYTHING WAS A WILD RIDE like nothing anyone could imagine, like nothing anyone ever had imagined. The latest deadline was hours away and nobody in the rank and file knew what was happening. Maybe the prime minister knew something? The president? The chancellor of Germany?
Every passing hour just rubbed it in for us. Then it was the passing minutes that hurt. There was nothing we could do, except pray that the ransom would be paid. Soldiers in Iraq, I kept thinking to myself. That’s what we are like. Observers of absurdity.
Back in London, at one point in the late afternoon I took a brief walk down near Westminster Abbey. There was so much powerful history on display in this part of the city. The streets weren’t deserted, but traffic was very light around Parliament Square, with few tourists and pedestrians. The people of London didn’t know what was happening, but whatever it was, it wasn’t good.
I called my house in Washington several times. Nobody answered. Had Nana moved? Then I talked to the kids at thei
r aunt Tia’s in Maryland. No one knew where Nana Mama was. Another thing to worry about—just what I needed.
There really was nothing to do but wait; the waiting was frustrating and nerve-racking. Still, no one had a clue what was going on. And not just in London—in New York, Washington, and Frankfurt. No announcement had been made, but the rumor was that none of the ransoms would be paid. In the end, the governments weren’t willing to negotiate, were they? They couldn’t give in to terrorists, not without a fight. Was that what came next? The fight?
Once again the deadline passed, and I felt as if we were playing Russian roulette.
There were no attacks in London, New York, Washington, or Frankfurt that night. The Wolf didn’t retaliate right away. He just let us stew.
I talked to the kids at my aunt’s house and then, finally, to Nana. Nothing had happened in D.C. so far. Nana had gone for a walk in the neighborhood with Kayla, she told me. Everything was fine there. Walk in the park, right, Nana?
Finally, at 5:00 A.M. in London most of us went home to get some needed rest, if we could sleep.