After 9/11, it became the go-to destination for transatlantic flights diverted due to terrorist concerns. Most often this applied to passengers discovered to be on the Homeland Security Department’s no-fly list once a plane was already in the air. A few other times the airport had received aircraft beset by inebriated or psychotic passengers.
The apparatus was therefore already in place, and the response team drilled and ready—but when word came that it was not merely an undesirable passenger but in fact a thwarted terrorist hijacking, the extraction proceeded with additional electricity.
Captain Granberg set down the big Airbus just after 1:00 P.M. Eastern and followed Bangor ground control orders to taxi, park, and shut down his main engines on a hardstand approximately one mile away from the passenger terminal.
Granberg watched from the cabin while a swarm of emergency vehicles—in chartreuse green, as opposed to cherry red—took positions around his plane with fluid choreography. For a silent minute, none of the fire trucks and ambulances and foamer tanks moved. Then ground control advised Granberg to open the galley access door on the starboard side of the vestibule. Granberg relayed these instructions to Bendiksen, who opened the door into the gray Maine light.
The tactical team boarded the plane from an elevated food service truck nuzzled up to the galley door. Four members of the Bangor Police Department hostage extraction team in black body armor, accompanied by two special agents from the Bangor FBI field office and two emergency medical technicians, entered the plane. Automatic weapons drawn, the team rushed past the flight crew and the remaining passengers who had captured the hijacker, through the business-class cabin curtain into economy extra, greeted by the passengers’ gasps.
Once they were aboard, Captain Granberg opened the cockpit door and emerged from the flight deck, surveying the damage in the vestibule. He followed the extraction team, showing his captain’s bars.
“We’ll take him off first, Captain,” said the team leader. “The injured attendant and those involved in the fight next.” He nodded toward them. “You will then taxi to the terminal to unload the rest of the passengers.”
Granberg acknowledged the orders and, after a quick appraisal of the would-be hijacker—anger starting to set in now—he returned to the cockpit.
With an efficiency that comes only from drills and endless rehearsals, the extraction team released the hijacker from the improvised bonds, replaced them systematically with Velcro straps around his ankles, thighs, waist, and shoulders, and pinned his arms to his sides. In a move the hijacker tried to evade with a violent shake, they covered his head with a black, breathable cloth bag and cinched it closed at his neckline. Three of them hoisted the prisoner to shoulder level like a rolled-up carpet. In step, they moved swiftly up the aisle and out onto the food service truck, into the cargo compartment.
The compartment was lowered into the driving position, and the hijacker was secured to a bare steel gurney with two thick leather belts. The truck pulled away, escorted by two police cars, roof racks alive with flashing blue and chrome-white lights.
The fourth team member led the five passengers and Maggie, the injured flight attendant, to the elevated platform of a second truck, which was similarly lowered and driven away under escort. Trude Carlson and Anders Bendiksen remained aboard the aircraft, as did the paramedics and the two FBI agents. The Airbus door was shut and secured, and Captain Granberg started up the engines again, turning the aircraft around and taxiing to the passenger terminal.
The airport detention facility was on the south end of the main terminal. The driver of the food service truck, a policeman in a black Windbreaker, backed down a sloping ramp into a subterranean garage. A corrugated steel door slammed down behind it, and the clanging reverse caution alarm of the truck stopped.
On the opposite end of the garage, wide double doors opened to a room with a steel picnic table bolted to the floor surrounded by four cells, two of them fronted by bars, two with pale green steel doors. Beyond the cells were two interrogation rooms, ten-by-ten concrete chambers with drains in the floors, all of these post-9/11 renovations paid for by Homeland Security. The extraction team rolled the would-be hijacker of Flight 903 into the first interrogation room, turned off the light, and closed the door.
The pinioned man was held fast. No room even to squirm. The straps felt like they were crushing his bones—his ribs especially. The pressure on his lungs was immense. He breathed shallowly, fighting for oxygen in the stifling blackness of the hood. Sobbing hurt too much.
After ten minutes of immobility and silence, he became convinced he had been left alone to suffocate and die. He imagined himself already buried. Even as his mind wanted to fly into panic, he fought to be strong.
The FBI’s terrorist reaction team was airborne even before SAS Flight 903 landed.
Four agents, three men and a woman, specialists in urgent interrogation techniques, flew at two hundred knots in a UH-60 Black Hawk from Boston. Covering the distance to Bangor took them a little over an hour.
The tactical assumption was that a terrorist incident is rarely a solitary event. The loose strictures of the U.S. Patriot Act allowed the team expanded interrogation tools. They could go into his head like an extraction team, removing information by force if necessary. Time was at a premium. Minutes wasted on back-and-forth exchanges with a knowledgeable suspect could mean the difference between saving or losing countless lives if a massive plot was under way.
The team entered the interrogation room and worked quickly. The subject’s head jerked to the side at the sound of the door opening; isolation had softened him up. The team carried in their own chair—steel, with plates at the feet of all four legs for bolting the chair into the floor. That was not necessary here. They manhandled him into the seat, leaving the hood covering his head.
They bound his wrists to the chair arms, his calves to its front legs, then removed the other restraints. He was fingerprinted digitally, each fingertip and full palm.
The woman rolled up his left sleeve. He tensed at the preternaturally smooth touch of a latex-gloved hand.
The hypodermic needle went in. The chamber filled with a sample of his blood. The vial was capped and taped, the puncture wound left without a bandage. A thin stream of blood rolled down to the crook of his elbow.
After the silent ministrations of physical identification, the first word came at him with the force of a slap.
“Name?”
A man’s voice, speaking in a common Saudi dialect.
The hijacker clenched his teeth within his hood.
“Name,” again. Then: “We already know who you are. We have your passport. Name?”
He gritted his teeth. His heart was leaping out of his chest.
He felt the chair go back at an angle, and was startled he was going to fall. He prayed, giving himself to God as he had every day of his life.
“We have water,” said the voice. “Would you like the water?”
They did not mean a drink. They meant torture. Waterboarding.
The hijacker held his breath, expecting a torrent at any moment.
Instead, another tugging at his left arm. He felt the prick of another needle.
Only this time—no blood was taken.
Within moments, he felt groggy and elated. He sank into a warm bath . . . or, rather, the warm bath sank into him.
His name came soon after, without much effort. Awaan Abdulraheem. The words walked out of his mouth like freed prisoners. Awaan felt a tug at his hair and the hood came off, giving way to a beam of light.