Two miles west of the White House, the quarter-mile-wide Potomac River drifted lazily past a wooded northern shore. A national park established to preserve the remnants of the historic Chesapeake & Ohio Canal separated the capital city’s elegant and exclusive Georgetown district from the river. Across the expanse of slow- moving water, the modern steel and glass skyscrapers of Rosslyn, Virginia, dominated the southern skyline.
On mild days, the clerks, waitresses, and waiters who worked in Georgetown’s trendy boutiques, antique stores, and restaurants found the canal park and the Potomac waterfront a pleasant place to eat lunch or read a book. But it would be far too cold for that today. Even the light breeze coming off the river intensified the chill. The weak sun was blocked by scattered high-altitude clouds, giving the morning light a grey, thin quality.
Sefer Halovic sat with studied calm in the back seat of their chosen transport for this operation a black Ford Econoline van. All Nizrahim sat next to him, nervously glancing out the side windows from time to time. Nizrahim was a light-skinned Iranian, a small man with long experience in the use of special weapons. Khalil Yassine, their Palestinian driver and scout, was behind the wheel. They were parked facing the exit of the small car lot near the treelined Chesapeake & Ohio Canal. Only the steady rumble of rush-hour traffic heading into downtown Washington along the elevated Whitehurst Freeway broke the early morning stillness.
Yassine had stolen the Econoline in Maryland the night before. Now it bore North Carolina license plates stolen weeks before and held in readiness for just such a use.
All three men were dressed in jeans, running shoes, and dark-colored winter jackets. All wore black gloves. Their outfits were effectively anonymous, devoid of anything distinctive that might draw attention to them now or that potential witnesses might remember later.
Both Halovic and Nizrahim carried 9mm pistols in shoulder holsters under their jackets. Yassine had their heavier small-arms firepower hidden beneath the empty seat beside him an Israeli-made Mini-Uzi with a twenty- round magazine. With luck, Halovic thought grimly, none of their personal weapons would prove necessary. The park had been empty at this time and in similar weather on previous days.
Besides his sidearm, the Bosnian also carried a small walkie-talkie clipped to his belt. It was tuned to National Airport’s Air Traffic Control frequency, but right now it wasn’t producing much beyond static and the occasional squawk. Yassine had a larger tactical radio with better reception up front, and he wore headphones that helped cut out background noise. His radio was tuned to the same frequency.
Halovic laid a hand on the two long green tubes propped up against the seat beside him. He stroked the cold metal appreciatively. These were the real reason they were here.
He shifted slightly and checked his watch. This was ordinarily a busy time for the airport as the early morning flights from all over the country began arriving with planeloads of families bent on touring their nation’s capital, government workers on assignment, and lobbyists determined to shape laws for their clients. The timetable for this mission was fairly precise molded by the minimum intervals between incoming flights and their scheduled arrival times. But Halovic also knew that the vagaries of weather and mechanical malfunction could throw the timetable off.
That was why he’d kept the plan simple.
Yassine looked up sharply, with one hand held to his headphones. He glanced into the back seat. “We have one! He just turned on to final.” The Palestinian quickly craned his head, scanning the area around them again. “All clear!”
Halovic nodded and slid the Econoline’s side door open. He hopped out onto the asphalt and pulled first one and then the other of the shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles off the seat. They weighed more than thirty pounds apiece. Nizrahim scooted out beside him as soon as the way was clear. Each man grabbed a tube and sprinted toward the water’s edge.
Halovic’s walkie-talkie came to life. This time he heard a fragment of the air traffic controller’s conversation through the static. “Roger, Northwest Flight Three-Five-Two. We have you four miles north and west. You’re cleared for Runway One-Eight…”
Barely two minutes out from the airport, the Bosnian realized, mentally calculating the incoming jetliner’s position and likely bearing. He thumbed a safety switch on the missile launcher. It took about five seconds for the nitrogen in a small sphere to cool the missile’s infrared seeker. He was rewarded with a low buzzing growl from the weapon as he ran. The system was ready to fire.
The Bosnian and his Iranian subordinate reached the shore in seconds, only slightly winded by their short dash.
Halovic searched the sky rapidly. Nothing. He turned more to his front and relaxed as he saw the bright red plane there, hanging in the air against the tall skyscrapers of the urban northern Virginia skyline.
Northwest Airlines Flight 352 was a Boeing 757, a twinjet airliner with a crew of nine and more than one hundred passengers aboard. Captain Jim Freeman, the senior pilot, had been in the air almost six hours since starting his day in Denver. His red-eye flight had landed in Minneapolis-St. Paul for a one-hour stop before continuing on to Washington, D.C. So far the weather had been fair and the flying without incident. Now Freeman knew he had only the always difficult landing ahead before calling it quits for the day. He was scheduled to take another flight out to Detroit early the next morning.
National Airport lay on the western side of the Potomac River, just south of the center of the District of Columbia. Because of the many sensitive and historic sites in the capital city, jetliners approaching from the west flew first over the northern Virginia suburbs near Tysons Corner before swinging southeast toward the capital city. Just over the Georgetown Reservoir they always made a sharp turn south to follow the Potomac in a slow, winding approach that taxed any pilot’s skill.
Freeman kept both eyes and all his attention on the job at hand while his copilot, Susan Lewis, ran through the landing checklist. He was a former Navy attack pilot, and right now he missed the heads-up displays and sophisticated electronics of front line military aircraft. Putting the 757 down safely on one of National’s notoriously short runways required a precision juggling act involving altitude, speed, and distance.
Getting something that goes very fast to slow down safely and quickly is a delicate task. While a Boeing 757 cruised at 450 knots, its approach speed was only 130 knots just above stall speed. Any loss of power, any maneuver that slowed the plane too much, would drop it right out of the sky.
Add to this low altitude. Any problem in the air usually means losing altitude, so height gives a pilot time to act. But Freeman’s aircraft, caught in the landing pattern, was only a thousand feet up.
Flight 352 was low and slow.
Along the Potomac Sefer Halovic had spotted the passenger jet when it was almost abreast of him, passing from right to left. Now he raised the SAM launcher to his shoulder and pressed his eye against the sight.
The Boeing 757 leaped into view. The Bosnian knew he had only seconds to fire. The missile had a decent range, but when fired from behind, its effective range dropped because it was chasing the target.
He held the airliner in the center of the crosshairs and heard a buzz from a small speaker in the sight. The buzz became stronger and higher-pitched, verifying that the missile seeker had locked onto the 757’s heat signature.
Halovic fought the urge to pull the trigger instantly. Instead he pressed a switch that “uncaged” the heat seeker. Now the infrared sensor would pivot freely inside the missile’s nose, and he didn’t have to hold the missile precisely on target.
He angled the SAM launcher upward at the nearly forty-five-degree angle needed to make sure the missile cleared the ground after firing. The buzz continued. At last, sure that the seeker still had a solid lock on the airliner, he pulled the trigger.
A dense, choking cloud of grey and white smoke enveloped him, and the echoing roar made by the rocket tearing skyward seemed incredibly loud more appropriate for a battlefield than a peaceful park. Through the clearing smoke, he looked for Nizrahim and saw the Iranian also sighting on the airliner, still as a statue.
Nizrahim’s finger twitched, and he, too, disappeared in a thick acrid cloud. The second SAM streaked aloft a small bright dot at the end of a curving white smoke trail.
Halovic’s own missile was already closing on the lumbering airliner.
NATO designated the shoulder-fired, heat-seeking SAMs they were using as SA-16s. The Russians who had designed the system called it the Igla-1, the Needle.
