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Chapter 8
The intercom clicked on, and the head hijacker came on the air. "Ladies and gentlemen, and any children on board, may I take this opportunity to welcome you to the beautiful island they call Greenland. I realise for most of you this is the first time you will have been here, and unfortunately this isn't going to be a sight seeing tour. On the journey in we have identified those passengers that can leave the aircraft, and one of your new style attendants will be around presently to escort you to the exit, where one of our helpful ground staff will escort you to the humble airport lounge. In about twenty minutes a 727 we have borrowed from Air Canada will be landing, whereas the passengers we want from that particular flight shall be transferred to this plane, and you will be flown on to Philadelphia as originally planned."
"However I regret to inform you that your luggage will not be joining you for some time yet, and I would like to apologise for the obvious inconvenience that this causes, but the 727 just doesn't have the luggage hold, and we have no staff available to sort out the luggage we remove from this plane."
"The rest of you are going nowhere for the moment, and further instructions will be issued once we have the rest of our guests. I will take this opportunity to remind everyone, that if you haven't been picked for your connecting flight do not attempt to force the issue. Any attempts to do so will meet with death. Do not be fooled by the fact that there has been no violence so far. The gentlemen with guns will have no problems terminating you, and the person next to you. Thank you for listening."
He sat bound in his seat and thought to himself just how many times the head hijacker had watched Under Siege and whether he based himself on Tommy Lee Jones. Despite himself he sat there laughing to himself again. He heard the passenger behind him tutting to himself, and sat there shaking his head.
His mind started kicking in and questions formed. The fact that there was another hijacked plane inbound, and that the hijacker had said that there were people from that flight they wanted, made him think. Just how many people on this particular flight were "wanted", and why? This was obviously a very slick operation, to hijack two flights within a couple of hours and take them to the same destination, and when they get there have more men on the ground meant that it was well planned, and well manned. He also wondered who was in charge overall. Was it the head honcho on this plane, was there a similar person on the other plane, or was there an overall boss man.
Furthermore he began to wonder what were the chances of these two particular flights having the exact people that this group wanted on them. How many people booked far enough in advance that they would appear on the passenger lists in enough time for them to put all this together. Certainly in his case he always bought single journey tickets, mainly because the way his job was there was no set time limits on when a job or client presentation would end, or even when new jobs would come up. For this flight he hadn't booked on until the previous evening, and in speaking to people over the years found that a lot of people on these kind of flights did the same.
With this in his mind he felt himself relax, as if a great weight had been taken off. His sense of foreboding that he had felt earlier on the flight just before landing seemed to be misplaced. There was no way that this hijacking had him as a particular target. He just hoped that he got the chance to speak to the two women that had so fried his mind early in the day.
The chosen passengers were disembarking, and if he leaned over he could see them walking over to the airport buildings, with a few men keeping them under observation. It seemed that they had only just got into the building when the Air Canada flight taxied in virtually next to his plane. Within moments of it coming to a halt the men on the ground had a set of steps up to the outside of it, ready for the wanted passengers to alight, ready for transfer to this plane.
He strained to take a look out of his window as the passengers from the other plane made their way across the tarmac to his plane. They were kept in close formation by a whole host of guards that had seemed to materialise out of thin air. As they walked across he could see the fuel truck lining up under the 727 and the refuelling process start almost straight away. One of the escorted passengers broke out from the ranks as they walked across and made a run for it. Just what he was making a run for, or where he was planning to go was anyone's guess. There certainly wasn't any cover or really anywhere to run to. Whatever his plan, it came to an abrupt halt, as one of the accompanying guards turned and let loose a barrage of shots from whatever type of machine gun he had. The running man ground to a sudden and somewhat final stop, keeling over face first into the ground.
Two more guards walked over to the prostrate man, and one of them pulled out a handgun and shot the man at point blank range in the back of the head. Then the shooter and the other guard took an arm each and dragged the man off to the airport outbuildings. They opened the garbage skip and dumped the man into it, before walking back to where the no longer moving body of passengers were. Another guard took out a gun and fired it into the air, and as if someone had poked them with a pitchfork the passengers lurched into sudden motion.
He got the feeling that no one else would be making a run for it. He looked over at the skip, and despite himself shuddered. He wondered for a moment about his own mortality and hoped that his final resting place would be somewhere a bit more auspicious than a garbage skip outside an airport building.
The doors to the airport building opened, and the passengers that had been released from his own plane came rushing out of the doors, making their way to the refuelling 727. Although he couldn't pick out their faces at this distance, he was quite sure that they would be scurrying across the tarmac with looks of fear and bewilderment across their faces.
He glanced back down to where the other plane's passengers should be walking across to his plane, but found that he couldn't see them, and therefore they must already be at the plane's steps or actually boarding now. This was confirmed when in what seemed a few seconds he could here voices issuing instructions, and he could just about make out someone's voice, perhaps that of the person in overall control, ordering the new hostages just where they would have to sit.
Looking back out of the window he saw the refuelling truck retreating from the 727, and to his surprise the 727 was already taxi-ing along the runway. It was almost as if those released couldn't get away quick enough. Despite being in the cabin he could here the thrust (or at least he imagined he could) of the 727 as it sped along the runway to apparent freedom. He briefly wondered whether it was the end of the ordeal for those on the 727 or did they still have hijackers in control on that plane.
He noticed movement to his right again, and found the head hijacker coming past him to go into the cabin. He hadn't noticed him go the other way, and it struck him that despite what had gone on with passenger transfers it seemed as if the head hijacker was still in charge on this plane, which might suggest that the head hijacker was in overall control.
The intercom clicked on and he heard the head hijacker's voice come over the air. "Testing, there is no message at this time." The intercom clicked off and the head hijacker came out of the cabin.
He strained to look over his shoulder as it appeared that the head hijacker was waiting for someone, and sure enough he heard someone come through to the first class and say "Yes". At that the head hijacker's face set and he quickly turned and went back into the cabin.
From his seat he could hear voices, obviously at odds with each other, but try as he might he couldn't quite make out any words. The head hijacker stuck his head out of the door and motioned to another of the hijackers, who hurried up to the door of the cabin, where the head hijacker said something to him, before he headed off back towards the rear of the first class. Moments later the head hijacker's voice came over the intercom, with the same message as before, "Testing, there is no message at this time."
This time the head hijacker didn't emerge from the cabin, and after a short while the other hijacker came up and leant into the cabin and muttered something before heading back to his post.
The intercom clicked on again, and yet again the voice of the head hijacker was heard. "This is not a test. Now that the crew have conformed with my request, I am now addressing those of you who happen to reside in the front section of this aircraft. Those passengers in the rest of this aircraft cannot hear what I am about to say."
"If you look around you will see that there are quite a few more of my colleagues now standing in this section of this aircraft."
He heard mutterings, and as he looked around he could pick out three or four more hijackers, whereas all the time before he had only ever seen the head hijacker and one other at the most. The voice continued.
"If any attempt is made at making any noise to raise a signal to the rest of the aircraft, that person will be shot. This is no idle threat, I have no wish to kill anyone sat in the front section of this aircraft. In a few minutes everyone in this section will be leaving the aircraft. No one in the rear of the aircraft will know that you have left the aircraft, and the flight crew will not know either, as they are temporarily indisposed. In less than twenty minutes this aircraft will be taking off to head to it's original destination, and until it gets there no one will be any the wiser."
"If anyone attempts to escape during disembarkation they will be shot in the leg. I really do not want to harm any of you. If you have not guessed you are all required for something special, and my superiors would not be amused if you didn't all make it, and trust me you would not want to meet my superiors when they are in a bad mood."
His sense of dread heightened, he had felt that this was all part of a grander design regarding himself, and he hated it. At least he now knew that the head hijacker wasn't the overall head man, and wondered what kind of man would be in charge of this operation.
What he had previously thought was the head hijacker, but who it had turned out was only in charge of this particular plane and was in fact a lackey to some other mastermind, came over to him.
"Right then, it is time to untie you so that you can leave the plane with the rest of the chosen passengers. It goes without saying that what I said over the tannoy stands, if you cause any trouble you will be shot, despite the fact that you are a chosen one. What does it feel like to be wanted?"
"Strangely predictable."
"What do you mean?"
"It's been one of those days when everything has been too coincidental for there to be anything but a greater force at work, there's been a sense of dread, and imposing doom as soon as you came on the scene. However it's all mixed up with a sense that I'm going to find out a great deal I want and need to know."
The Hijacker grinned, and as he untied him, said "That explains how you've managed to be the calmest person on board, and yet at the same time been the one passenger in the biggest danger of getting themselves killed before their time." The Hijacker finished untying him, and stepped away. "Up you get then, and please just get off the plane with no incident, I have no wish to see you hurt or killed."
He got up and turned around to face the exit. He stopped dead in his tracks as he thought he saw Claire. He started to tremble before he realised that it was the woman from the tube, that was the double of Claire, and he remembered her voice, and wondered how she could have sounded so like Claire as well. He would have liked to say he was surprised that she was still on the plane, but he knew that he would have only been lying to himself. He quickly glanced to the left, and as expected the mystery woman from that strange white room some five years before was also still on board. Both women were looking at him, and it seemed that, if he wasn't deceiving himself, they both wore concerned expressions.
Then he was walking again following the other passengers off the plane and down the steps on to the tarmac. As he came out of the door the cold hit him. It surprised him at first before he realised that he shouldn't have expected anything else, after all he was in fucking Greenland. It was at times like this that he cursed the strange fact that he had no facial hair to grow since that white room. Without even realising it he found himself on the tarmac and walking across to the terminal building. He looked at the people walking, both those in front and those behind. He noticed that it seemed that all of them wore what if wasn't a worried look, then it was certainly a concerned one. He also noticed that there was no noise, except that of shoes slapping on the tarmac, there was no one talking, and it made for an eerie kind of silence. For once today he resisted the urge to stand out and managed to stop himself from whistling.
The journey across to the terminal didn't seem to take any time at all and he felt himself hit by a blast of warm air as he entered the building. He looked around and was surprised to find that the building was modern, bright and spacious, something he wasn't expecting to find here, and he thought that it looked a far better place to be stuck at than some of the shitholes that he'd had the misfortune to be stuck at over the years.