"Both hands on the wheel," I told him. "I get the idea."

The pilot's face, normally light brown, was somewhere between red and purple. He looked Filipino, and his accented English was easy to understand.

"Have you called the controllers?" I asked.

"They may shoot us down."

"Tell them you're in control and that you want to land right away. Right away."

"Maybe they won't believe me."

"Let's hope they do. There are at least two in the back. We have to get down before they figure out a way to get in here."

Actually, I was more worried that the hijackers had found a way to get explosives aboard and would set them off.

"Where are we?" I asked.

"Heading for j.a.pan. Over j.a.pan Sea."

"Then alert the j.a.panese and ask where we can set down," I told him. "Get us on the ground right away. Do it, come on."

"They may not let us land."

"They'll let us land. They'll send us to a military airfield."

"Maybe not. Maybe they scramble fighters. Shoot us down. Take no chances."

"Relax. The hard part is over."

All right, so that was a big lie. But do you think telling him what a few ounces of C4 or a similar plastic explosive could do to an airplane at thirty thousand feet would have made him feel any better?

I bent over, undid the copilot's seatbelt, and lifted his lifeless body out of the seat. Then I slipped in behind the yoke, gathering my breath and checking the Sig. The small pistol had held only five bullets and was now empty.

I pulled out my sat phone and dialed Trace, but the call rang through to her voice mail. I picked up the headset and tried to figure out the aircraft's intercom system, which connected to the steward stations in the back. No one answered when I tried buzzing in the back, though it's possible that was because I didn't know what I was doing. I turned to ask the pilot, but he had his head pressed down toward the controls and his hand over his headset. I got up, and went to search the tango for more bullets.

A long, narrow plastic box was taped beneath his shirt, the sort of container cigar smokers like to use to carry a few puros when they're traveling. But this one didn't contain any of Havana's finest. Instead, there was a bomb, complete with timer and enough Semtex to obliterate the c.o.c.kpit.

Not quite what I wanted to find.

I searched his pockets and found some folded papers, but no bullets or other weapons. Sitting back in the copilot's seat, I studied the papers. The pilot glanced over, then took the top sheet. It had settings for the airplane's navigation system. He couldn't tell by looking at the numbers where they would take us, but I had a pretty good idea-the second and third sheets had an aerial view of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Station in j.a.pan.

Located in Niigata Prefecture about two hundred and twenty klicks northwest of Tokyo, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa is the largest nuclear plant in the world and a city unto itself. Even if the crash of an airplane there didn't cause a release of radiation, simply taking the units off line for a few days would cause a major catastrophe for j.a.pan. The seven reactors there represent about thirteen percent of the country's nuclear reactors, which together supply something like a third of the country's electricity on any given day. Best case, suddenly shutting the plant would cause a cascade of blackouts through the country, frying circuits up and down the island. Forget about worst case.

The pilot poked me and pointed frantically at the other headset. I pulled it on in time to hear a hijacker hysterically demanding that we open the c.o.c.kpit door or each pa.s.senger would be killed.

And to show they meant business, here was pa.s.senger one.

There was a m.u.f.fled scream, then a gurgle, then more screams in the background, gasps, and two gunshots.

"Decide!" yelled the hijacker.

The pilot looked at me as if there was actually anything to think about. His hands were shaking violently.

"They want to blow up a nuclear power plant," I told him, showing him the picture. "If we let them in, everyone will die anyway."

As logical as that was, it didn't exactly calm the pilot. He began mumbling to himself.

We'd been gradually descending and were now at about eight thousand feet, where depressurization wasn't as critical a problem. (Not that it was a good thing.) But if the tangos in the cabin had at least one other gun, it was only a matter of time before they tried shooting off the lock to the c.o.c.kpit door. The doors had been designed to take some abuse, and probably-only probably-would withstand a pointblank shot. Put a bomb the size of the one I had in my hand there, though, and it would be a different story.

I took out the sat phone, hoping to get Trace. But great minds think alike-I had just reached my finger for the quick dial when it buzzed.

"d.i.c.k, it's me."

"How many are there?"

"Four that I've seen. I'm in the back, almost at the galley."

"Weapons?"

"Two guns, both pistols. Knife things."

"The one in the c.o.c.kpit had a bomb. It was in a plastic box used for cigars, long and thin. You see anything like that?"

"They have two backpacks. I can't tell what else."

"Where are they?"

"Four went to the front. There may be-"

The phone whistled and then clattered. I only figured out what had happened afterward: someone had been behind her in the galley, saw her talking, and snuck close enough to surprise her and bat her and the phone to the ground.

I pushed the phone closer to my ear. I heard Trace cursing, then yelling at someone.

"Take me, not the boy. Both of you. Come on. Me. Not him. Two," she added, which I a.s.sume was meant to tell me how many were there with her. Trace's voice got a little louder as she moved closer to the tangos, but it wasn't easy to hear.

"Let him go," she said. "You smoke cigars? Let me have one. The cigar case."

After that the phone screeched and went dead, probably smashed by one of the terrorists' heels.

"How long before we land?" I asked the pilot.

"F-f-fifteen."

"I hope you mean minutes, not hours."

The pilot nodded. But the truth was it might just as well have been hours. We were history as soon as they set off the bomb.*

"Can you set the autopilot to keep us over the ocean?" I asked him. "Don't land. Just keep us over the water, in case anything happens."

All I got was a blank look.

"They have another bomb. I'm going to try and get rid of it, but I want to make sure that they don't get the nuke plant if I fail. OK?"

This time I knew he understood me, because his face shaded purple.

"When I yell go, I want you to jerk the airplane around. Twist, turn, whatever you can do. All right? Just go crazy."

"OK," he managed.

I got up. I armed the bomb I'd taken off the cabin hijacker, setting it for thirteen minutes. If I didn't get back before then, we'd all die. But at least the nuclear power plant would remain intact. I slipped the bomb into a pocket behind the copilot's seat, then had a sudden inspiration.

Or a brain fart, depending on your point of view. I grabbed the headset and told the pilot to switch on the intercom so I could be heard throughout the plane.

"Ready?" I asked, cupping my hand over the mike. "When you hear me shout, put the plane into as steep a dive as you can manage."

He nodded.

"Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen," I said in my best airline captain voice. "We've had a little difficulty aboard, a bit of turbulence. But we're going to take care of it-now!"

I undid the lock and pulled the door open. The pilot pushed forward on his controls, jerking the aircraft into a dive on its left wing. It wasn't quite as sharp as I'd hoped, but I wasn't in a position to complain-I was flying fist to face into one of the terrorists.

A hundred different things happened next, all in the s.p.a.ce of ten seconds. The aircraft bucked back and forth sharply, descending, climbing, maybe even moving sideways. I dropped the tango I had hit and grabbed another next to him, getting a handful of knife as well as his wrist. In the meantime, pa.s.sengers jumped from their seats and tackled two of the others. One of the terrorists began firing a gun as he went down. I leapt up, fell as the plane bucked sharply to the left, then grabbed the raghead with the gun. He pushed back from me and fired, once, twice, three times.

He could have fired twenty times for all the good it did him. His weapon was empty. I clocked him with a roundhouse so hard I thought I broke my hand.

In the back, Trace threw a hijacker who'd held a knife at her throat over her shoulder. His blade cut her in the process, ripping a jagged but shallow trench across the side of her neck and up the back of her head. She leapt forward, flying into a second terrorist, the one with the bomb. As they hit the ground, three male pa.s.sengers jumped on top, punching and kicking, and Trace found herself in the middle of a scrum, clawing for the bomb. By the time she grabbed it and got out, both terrorists had been beaten to death.

Shame, that. Dying was too good for the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.

The boy who'd been taken hostage earlier had been cut badly. One of the stewardesses grabbed him, cradling him in her arms and hauling him back to the rear galley, where another crew member pulled down a first-aid kit. Trace, meanwhile, began sprinting up the aisle toward me.

As the plane leveled off, only one hijacker remained on his feet. He had a pistol in his hand, and stood about halfway down the first-cla.s.s cabin, holding everyone else temporarily at bay.

"Give it up," I said.

I doubt he understood English. The other hijackers turned out to be from Indonesia and Thailand, but this one was an Arab, with a sunburned face and grizzly beard.

I'd tucked the pistol I'd taken from the c.o.c.kpit into the back of my belt; it was empty but he didn't know that. I slipped my hand to it, then brought it up with as much dramatic flare as I could muster, holding it up but not pointing it at him.

"Drop your weapon," I said.

There were two pa.s.sengers near him, standing at their seats. One was a middle-aged businessman type with a spare tire so big he looked like he'd wedged himself into the s.p.a.ce. The other, though, looked like a football player. I was hoping that he would clock the b.a.s.t.a.r.d while I had his attention. His eyes darted back and forth in that direction, but he made no move to follow through.

The terrorist reached beneath his shirt, prying away the tape from another bomb.

"Drop the gun," I said.

He started to lower the weapon. My half-second of relief was followed by the realization that he was going to try to set the bomb off by shooting it. I threw myself forward, aiming to hit him-and realizing as I launched that I was too far, too late, and in general seriously f.u.c.ked.

So f.u.c.ked, in fact, that I not only heard the gun go off, but saw the muzzle flash.

How could that be when the barrel of the pistol was maybe six inches from the C4? Stable though it may be, the plastic explosive does not like to be jostled: and getting shot at close range definitely qualifies as jostling.

Simple, dear reader: It wasn't the tango's gun that went off, but the pistol in Trace's hand. She had found the weapon during the scrum in the back, and with her dead-eye aim airmailed our friend to paradise.

Thank G.o.d for that.

"Make sure there's no more bombs," I told Trace. "If any of the terrorists are still alive, we want them. Don't let anybody pound them, as tempting as it may be."

I spun around and sprinted toward the c.o.c.kpit. My soiree had lasted not quite ten minutes. Which meant I had just under five minutes to defuse the bomb I'd set as doomsday insurance.

Plenty of time. Except that the door wouldn't open.

"OK, it's me," I yelled to the pilot. "It's Marcinko. It's over out here. We're OK. We have the plane."

I waited for a few seconds, trying to be patient-it might take the pilot a few seconds to undo his restraint and come and unlock the door.

Ten seconds? Twenty? Thirty?

Definitely not forty, and now it was fifty. And no sign of life from the c.o.c.kpit. The plane just hummed along, heading straight and level toward j.a.pan.

Check that: It nosed down and began twisting, the evasive maneuvers twice as crisp and desperate as the ones when I'd leapt out into the cabin.

Oh, s.h.i.t.

*Technically, it was possible that a bomb that size could have done only "minor" damage to the aircraft, killing a few people but leaving it intact enough to land. Their preparation convinced me they knew the best places to put it, though. I'm not stupid enough to advertise those spots.

13.

There are only two possible responses to realizing that you've been suckered: One, you can stick your tail between your legs and hide under the f.u.c.king bed, whimpering and crying until the world goes away.

Two, you can go after the motherf.u.c.ker with everything you have, even though you realize the odds are against you.

"Get me that surgical tape!" I yelled, starting to pry one of the bombs apart.

I didn't get the nickname "Demo d.i.c.k" by practicing restraint when handling explosives, but I had to fight my instincts now. This was definitely a situation where a little dab will do you.

I taped a small block to the lock and yelled at everyone to run to the back of the plane. I couldn't get the timer to take anything less than a minute. Cursing, I left it and started to retreat-then saw the tape unfurl from one side. The bomb fell in slow motion to the floor.

Mr. Murphy hadn't f.u.c.ked with me in, oh, forty or fifty minutes, and now he couldn't resist stuffing it into my face. I took a half-step forward and then felt myself flying toward the c.o.c.kpit door, the pilot having chosen that precise moment to renew his acrobatics.