By the time we reach the Hotel George in downtown Washington, it’s already late. Joselyn and I are exhausted. Herman slept on the plane while Joselyn and I talked, so by the time we land, Herman has gotten a second wind. He wants to go and at least take a gander at the Washington Court Hotel, where Thorn is checked in.

“Listen, leave it alone,” says Joselyn. “Everything is under control. The FBI has already confirmed that he’s checked in, and they have him under surveillance.”

Joselyn has assured us both that her contact in the Capitol has everything in hand, and that Thorpe is on board. According to Joselyn, Zeb Thorpe has received firm instructions from the director of the FBI as well as the attorney general. They have Thorn under round-the-clock surveillance. They would pick him up, but they want to know if he is working with anyone else. So for the time being, they are watching and waiting.

Joselyn’s source has warned us to be careful, not to take any chances. He has assured her that the Hotel George, where we are staying, only half a block from the Washington Court Hotel where Thorn is booked in, is now under full protection. Both city PD and federal authorities are now watching it.

FORTY-THREE

It was five A.M. and Flannery and Son’s cement contractors were scheduled for a major pour. The framing crew was finishing up the last few forms as the cement-pumper truck set up over the site at the Fulton Street subway station.

There was already a line of seven heavily laden cement trucks queued up on the street outside the gate, each one waiting to disgorge ten cubic yards of concrete. More trucks were on the way. They would be rolling in and out all day, dropping their load into the hopper of the pumper truck as the cement crew moved the hydraulic-powered chute around, pouring the concrete as they spread and leveled it.

“Hey! You got a problem.” One of the drivers milling around outside the gate yelled over the sound of the idling diesels. He pointed to the second truck in line. Its giant mixer barrel on the back was not revolving.

The driver of the truck leaned out of his open window. “I know. Batch plant didn’t give me enough water. Had to shut my mixer down. How about I get inside to use your hose to get some more water in the mix?”

The guard at the gate looked at the officer in charge. Both private guards and transit police provided security for the construction site. The transit cop nodded, and the private security man with the clipboard wrote down the license number of the truck as well as the owner’s name and contractor’s license number from the driver’s-side truck door. He then swung open the gate and waved the truck inside.

The guard raised his hand and stopped the truck just as it was about to enter. “Two water trucks parked over there.” The guard pointed off to the left, a fair distance from the site of the giant open hole over the subway. “Tell ’em to give you a hose. They should have more than enough water.”

The driver smiled, nodded, and drove through the gate.

Ahmed sat in the left-hand seat as the 727 climbed through twelve thousand feet. He could see the white surf and the azure blue shallow waters just off the beaches on the southwest coast of Puerto Rico as he and Masud held the plane on a steady course headed north.

They had a full load of fuel. The two air-to-air missiles were now slung under the wings, attached to the pylons that Ahmed and his comrade had helped to install.

The two Saudis were mystified by how easily Thorn had managed to bulldoze his way past the inquisitive onlookers on Vieques after the plane landed. A handful of bureaucrats from the U.S. Department of the Interior who worked at Camp Garcia came by to look when they heard the plane come in.

The workers made the trek a half mile or so from the dilapidated offices at the camp to the airfield, some of them in cars and a few on foot. Thorn took charge, showing them some papers and telling them that he’d already called in the incident to the FAA, and that a Federal Aviation Administration inspector was being dispatched from Washington to Vieques to investigate. He would be there Monday morning.

This put an end to all their questions. A few of them lingered, wandering around the outside of the plane for a few minutes, and then disappeared.

As soon as everything calmed down, Thorn went back to work on the plane. He finished the spray job on the company logos just forward of the wings and skipped the big one on the tail section. He told the two pilots it wouldn’t matter.

Thorn arranged for a load of fuel. As soon as it was delivered, he started up the engines and turned the plane around so that its nose was pointed down the runway. Finally he went over last-minute instructions with them and then departed for the airport on the other side of the island.

For two nights Ahmed and his comrade slept on the plane. They were armed and instructed to kill anyone, quietly if they could, who approached the plane or tried to get on board.

Then early Monday morning before daybreak they broke out the two air-to-air missiles from their crates inside the plane, mounted them to the pylons under the wings, and armed them both. Within a half hour they had the engines warmed up and were headed down the runway. It was six thirty A.M. None of the government workers would show up at Camp Garcia for another hour and a half.

Ahmed piloted the plane on a northwest course sixty miles out to sea before heading due north. The plane climbed over puffy patches of tropical clouds casting shadows on the water below. He kept his transponder turned off and stayed well out over the ocean. The plan was to avoid ground-based radar from Puerto Rico and the frequent radio inquiries from the island’s air traffic control towers. Forty minutes into the flight, he turned ninety degrees to starboard and put the plane heading over the ocean forty miles north of Rafael Hernández Airport on the extreme north end of the island.

Formerly known as Ramey Air Force Base, the field had been turned over to civilian use as part of the base closure program a few years earlier. The Air National Guard and the Coast Guard still retained a presence there. It was also used by the airfreight carrier FedEx as its hub for the Caribbean Basin.

Ahmed climbed to twenty-five thousand feet and put the 727 into a circling pattern out over the water as Masud listened to their VHF radio receiver. They had plenty of fuel. He was scanning the frequencies, searching for their quarry.

“Federal Express flight 9303-Squawk 1423, runway two north. You are cleared for takeoff.”

“There it is!” said Ahmed. He couldn’t believe it. It was exactly as Thorn had said. The airport at Rafael Hernández usually didn’t have FedEx flights any farther north than Miami or Memphis, but today they did.

Flight 9303 was headed for Newark Liberty Airport in New Jersey. The wide-body DC-10 would dwarf the smaller 727. And anyone familiar with the FedEx flight schedule would know that the carrier never used smaller planes on such long-haul routes. But by the time anyone on the ground or in the air saw the plane, the 727 would be so close to its target that this would be the last thing on their minds.

Ahmed continued to circle, holding his altitude at twenty-five thousand feet and waiting as the huge wide-body took off and slowly climbed toward its cruising altitude.

Almost twenty minutes later Masud spied the larger plane cutting through a cloud deck eight thousand feet below them and still climbing. Ahmed continued his arc around in the circle and fell in behind them, still five thousand feet above the larger jet. He went into a shallow dive and used his altitude to pick up speed and close the distance on the other plane.