CHAPTER 5 – A HOLE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE
Cadaado ‘Airport’, Central Somalia.
02:48 (Somalia Time) / 18:48 (Washington Time)
Saturday, November 2 (Somalia) / Friday, November 1 (Washington)1996 ‘C’
Cockpit of Air Philippines Convair 800
Arriving over Cadaado Airport, Central Somalia
‘’We are supposed to land in that hole? I don’t see any runway lights or even a paved surface.’’ said Elizabeth in a shocked tone of voice as she tried to examine the darkened desert ‘airport’ from her side window. Amin, who was sitting in the jump seat behind the pilot’s seat, actually appeared nearly as surprised as her.
‘’We are over the coordinates for Cadaado Airport, no?’’
‘’Our GPS does say so but that thing down there is no proper airport. I can’t see much with the obscurity, but there is only a half-dozen buildings visible to one side of that dirt strip, none of them big enough to qualify as a true commercial aircraft hangar or airport terminal. Landing at night without any runway lights will be quite risky and we may well end up doing a runway excursion.’’
‘’Well, I was told to bring this plane to Cadaado Airport and that’s where we are going to land, miss. You have shown yourself to be an excellent pilot and I am confident that you will be able to land here.’’
‘’Thanks for the compliment, mister.’’ replied Elizabeth in a sarcastic tone. Earlier on, she and Shirley had quickly whispered to each other while Amin was out of the cockpit and using one of the lavatories in the forward lobby. They had time to hurriedly discuss their situation and form a desperate plan of action. From what Amin had told them earlier about him not having the authority to decide what would happen to them and the passengers once at their destination, Elizabeth and Shirley had concluded that, once landed and with whoever was truly controlling this hijacking operation taking over the Convair 800 from Amin and his men, their chances of survival would then become quite grim and they could well suffer a lot before dying. The two of them had thus decided to do everything to avoid stopping at that final destination and had decided on a risky and desperate plan to escape that trap. While the risks were huge and they would need some luck to succeed, that was still better than let themselves fall in the hands of fanatical religious thugs who probably planned to kill them and the passengers anyway. Giving a silent nod and a wink to Shirley, Elizabeth then started performing a wide turn while losing altitude.
‘’Well, wish me luck, Mister Amin: we will need it. Did your ‘employers’ give you a radio frequency to use once over Cadaado?’’
‘’Uh, no! We were only told to hijack your plane and then fly it to here.’’
Elizabeth shook her head at that: Amin and his men were obviously mere pawns in this game and she wasn’t sure that they would not be simply eliminated once on the ground for being potential witnesses in case they were later arrested. That only convinced Elizabeth that her plan formed with Shirley, while still a desperate one, was still their best option.
Acting as if this was a routine landing at a legitimate, fully equipped airport, Elizabeth completed a full circle in order to line up with the long dirt strip visible through her FLIR HUD{7}. With Shirley reading aloud for her the indications from their radar altimeter and of their rate of descent indicator, Elizabeth slowed down her Convair 800 to its usual landing speed and extended fully their wing flaps, then lowered their landing gear. As she was doing her final approach, she saw new details about the ‘airport’ through her front-view FLIR camera.
‘’Hey, I see another airliner, a Boeing 717. It seemed to have crashed to one side of the runway while trying to land. It is apparently mostly intact but is lying on its belly some hundred feet from the runway. There are also numerous trucks and other vehicles waiting near the largest building of this airfield.’’
Amin, not able to see well forward while sitting in his jump seat, unbuckled his safety belt and stood up in order to look over Elizabeth’s shoulder through her HUD.
‘’You’re right, miss. I didn’t know that another airliner would be involved in this.’’
‘You’re a simple pawn alright!’ thought Elizabeth to herself. As more details around the airfield became visible as they approached one end of the dirt strip, she mentally finalized her plan of action. All those trucks and vehicles parked next to what appeared to be a hangar for small planes had to mean that there were plenty of gunmen present at this airfield, which meant that, if they were allowed to board the Convair 800, then Elizabeth’s chances of escaping this trap would drop to zero. She and Shirley definitely needed to act…soon.
After another minute, their plane overflew the southwestern end of the dirt strip, its wheels down and locked. Elizabeth, carefully calculating her landing distance, finally touched down one kilometer from that end of the runway and settled her Convair 800 down on the ground. She however delayed a bit her next order to Shirley, waiting for the best time and position possible for her plan.
‘’Reverse pitch! Full power!’’
The moment Shirley pushed the engine throttles back to full power after reversing the pitch of their propellers, both Elizabeth and Shirley pressed as hard as they could on their brakes. Amin, still standing between their two seats, was taken by surprise by the brutal deceleration and lost his balance, crashing face first on top of the central command console between the two pilots’ seats. Shirley, who had not donned her seat safety harness, contrary to normal landing rules, reacted at once. Grabbing quickly her small revolver, which she had hidden between her legs, she pressed the muzzle of her snub-nosed .38 Special against the top of Amin’s skull, pointing her weapon at an angle so that the soft lead hollow-point bullet would travel down along Amin’s spine and thus avoid going fully through him and then possibly damage the flight controls. She fired once only, killing instantly the hijacker and then jumping out of her seat, grabbing the Smith & Wesson .45 revolver he had been holding and giving in exchange her revolver to Elizabeth. Both women had killed men on the ground before, during World War 2, when they had to defend their airfield against marauding Japanese soldiers. Now, with their survival and that of their 47 passengers in play, Shirley coldly stepped on Amin’s body and rushed out of the cockpit. As she had expected, the four remaining hijackers on the plane were sitting and strapped for landing in the four folding seats normally reserved for the flight attendants, with two seats on the level of the upper lobby and the two others on the level of the lower lobby, next to the two side airstair doors. The powerful roar of their propellers going in reverse at full power had all but covered the noise of her single shot and, on rushing out of the cockpit and then turning around to face the two hijackers occupying the upper seats, she was able to catch those two men by surprise. Firing twice in quick succession while aiming for their hearts, Shirley was able to kill both men in less than two seconds, then ran down the stairs leading to the lower forward lobby. The two hijackers there were still undoing their seat belts when she appeared in the staircase and opened fire. The hijacker in the left seat, hit in the head, died instantly, while the one in the right seat received two bullets, one in the chest and one in his right shoulder, before collapsing and dropping his pistol.
‘’CORAZON, GRAB A WEAPON, QUICK!’’
The Filipina senior flight attendant reacted at once, allowing Shirley to run back to the cockpit after grabbing a high-capacity 9mm pistol from a dead hijacker.
‘’THEY’RE ALL DEAD, LIBBY! TAKE OFF NOW!’’
Elizabeth, who had pushed Amin’s body off the central console and had partially powered down her engines in order to continue her landing run and get out of rifle range of the assembled vehicles next to the airfield’s hangar, then pushed her three engines back to full power. With the end of the long dirt strip still one kilometer ahead, she was easily able to raise her aircraft off the ground within 700 meters, well before attaining the end of the strip. After sitting back in her seat, Shirley grabbed her intercom microphone and gave an urgent message to her passengers.
‘’TO ALL: STAY IN YOUR SEATS AND KEEP YOUR BELTS ON! ALL FIVE HIJACKERS ARE NOW DEAD BUT WE ARE STILL NOT OUT OF TROUBLE. WE WILL NOW TRY TO REACH A SAFE AIRPORT IN THIS REGION. PLEASE DO NOT COME TO THE COCKPIT! THANK YOU FOR YOUR COMPREHENSION.’’
She then looked at Elizabeth, who was performing a fast climb in order to escape any possible ground fire coming from Cadaado.
‘’You’re still going to try for Djibouti, Libby?’’
‘’Yes!’’ replied Elizabeth, her teeth nearly clenched together with tension. ‘’It will however be a close call at best: we may be running out of fuel just as we are about to land there. You better call Djibouti in advance, so that they are prepared for us.’’
‘’Right!’’ said Shirley, putting down her confiscated pistol before switching her radio to the international distress frequency.
‘’Mayday, mayday, mayday! This is Air Philippines 305. We were hijacked in the Philippines and forced to fly to Cadaado Airfield, in Somalia. However, we have been able to regain control of our plane there and take off from it after killing the five hijackers on board. We are now enroute to Djibouti but may run out of fuel on the way. We request urgent assistance, over.’’
She had to repeat her message a second time before a man speaking with an obvious French accent answered her.
‘’Air Philippines 305, this is Djibouti Control. Are your passengers still aboard, over?’’
‘’Affirmative, Djibouti! The 47 passengers who had to stay aboard after our stop in Kuala Lumpur are still on the plane and safe. However, we are short of fuel and may be empty by the time we reach Djibouti, over.’’
‘’Air Philippines 305, you will have absolute priority for approach and landing once close to us. Take Heading 325 and adopt an altitude of 4,000 meters. Be advised that American fighter jets were already flying over Somalia. We will now have two of them rerouted, so that they could escort you to Djibouti.’’
Both Shirley and Elizabeth felt their hearts jump in their chests on hearing the last sentence.
‘’Thank God for that! Be advised that we saw in Cadaado a Boeing 717 that had crash-landed there and was lying on its belly. However, it appeared to be still mostly intact. We also saw a large number of trucks and vehicles parked next to the main building of the airfield. I thus suspect that there is a large number of gunmen at that location and that they probably are holding the occupants of that Boeing 717, over.’’
‘’Uh, we know about them, Air Philippines 305. For the moment, fly as economically as you can and concentrate on reaching us. Djibouti, out!’’
Shirley couldn’t help exchange a knowing look with Elizabeth.
‘’There is probably something afoot concerning Cadaado, Libby. The fact that American fighter jets were already over Somalia points to a rescue operation underway.’’
‘’I hope so for these poor people from the Alitalia Boeing. God knows what is happening to them right now.’’
03:03 (Somalia Time)
Cadaado Airport, Central Somalia
On the dirt surface of the tarmac at Cadaado Airport, Osman Akmadov could only swear violently in Russian as he saw the Convair 800 fly away into the night. Because of both the surprise and the distance between the plane and the hangar Akmadov stood in front of, his men had been unable to fire at the airliner before it had disappeared into the night sky.
‘’WHAT KIND OF GAME ARE THOSE FUCKING FILIPINO REBELS PLAYING? WE CAN NOW EXPECT THEM TO ALERT THE AMERICANS ABOUT US.’’
Turning around to face the leader of the Somali Islamists who had come to support his operation, he switched to Arabic while pointing an index at him.
‘’Ahmed, that plane is going to attract a lot of trouble on us if we stay here much longer. We have to evacuate the airfield, now.’’
‘’What do we do about the hostages from the Italian airliner?’’
‘’We do as previously planned: execute the male passengers, then drive away with the women and the girls. Some of the local warlords may well be ready to pay good money in order to acquire some infidel sex slaves.’’
The said Ahmed had a mean smile at those words.
‘’I have already a couple of the prettiest ones reserved for myself. One of the airliners may unfortunately have been able to escape us but we still have enough hostages to be able to thoroughly humiliate their governments and send them into a wild goose chase around Somalia. I will go and have the male passengers and pilots segregated and then executed.’’
While still furious about the Air Philippines airliner escaping him, Akmadov concluded that Ahmed had been right: the governments of the 336 people now in his hands would have no choice but to chase around for their citizens, forcing them to clash with the numerous warlords now in control of Somalia and promising a long, bloody and humiliating effort on the parts of those governments. With the United States about to run their presidential election, that could only complicate any effort by the Americans to find and free their 94 citizens who had been aboard the Alitalia flight.
03:04 (Somali Time)
Desert area 800 meters southeast of Cadaado Airport
‘’NEPTUNE, from Seagull: I confirm that the Air Philippines Convair 800 has just taken off without fully stopping at the objective. It is now flying away towards the Northwest, over.’’
‘’Seagull, what is the situation on the ground, over?’’
Lieutenant (Navy) Mike Durban looked again into the eyepiece of the large, powerful low light level night scope mounted on the roof of his Hiller SUPERCAR and observed for a couple of seconds before answering the battle carrier.
‘’NEPTUNE, I see dozens or armed men now running towards the airport’s hangar. I suspect that the hostages are inside it: it is the only building large enough to contain over 300 people, over.’’
‘’Seagull, can you get near enough to allow your snipers to be within effective range, over?’’
‘’We certainly can try, NEPTUNE. In the meantime, I would recommend that the assault force starts its final approach now: the situation could worsen for the hostages in the next few minutes, over.’’
‘’We concur, Seagull. Start your move forward now, out!’’
Satisfied, Durban switched to the radio frequency used by his team.
‘’To all Seagull callsigns: start a covert vehicle approach towards the storage building to the left of the main hangar. We will try to get within rifle range of the enemy force. Move out now!’’
Durban’s driver/pilot then switched on the electric motors integrated inside the four small wheels of their Hiller SUPERCAR, an incredible machine designed as the main assault vehicle for SEAL teams. Being a militarized and highly specialized variant of the civilian Hiller AIRCAR, the SUPERCAR could fly and take off or land at the vertical thanks to its four ducted rotors, powered by a powerful Machen Twin-Merlyn six-cylinder inline diesel rated at 1,300 horsepower. On top of being able to fly, the SUPERCAR could also navigate at the surface of the ocean, thanks to its retractable and inflatable floats, and could also dive under water to a depth of two meters via the use of a telescopic snorkel system. While the vehicle’s cabin then filled with water, the six occupants could breathe air from a large central air tank during their underwater transit. Finally, four small retractable wheels allowed the SUPERCAR to roll on the ground, either connected directly to the engine or on battery power, which allowed for completely silent approach. The Hiller SUPERCAR had been designed a few years ago by General Ingrid Dows while she was a retired officer employed by the Hiller Corporation and the members of the U.S. Navy SEALs had then fallen at once in love with the vehicle.
The three SUPERCARs of Durban’s team, leaving the protection of a low sand dune, started rolling silently towards the isolated storage building, careful not to raise a dust cloud behind them and keeping their speed to a maximum of 40 kilometers-per-hour. If there were still enemy sentries around the hangar, they apparently didn’t detect the three gray-painted vehicles. Still, Durban made his vehicles stop once within a hundred meters from the storage building and gave a short order on the radio.
‘’Walker, Strickland, advance on foot to the storage shed and make sure that there are no hostiles on watch there.’’
Two men from his First Squad then dismounted and ran at a crouch to the building, which was surrounded by a low wall forming a compound on its north side. Some six minutes later, Durban received a radio report from his two men.
‘’Seagull, the building is deserted. It contains drums of aviation fuel and of gasoline. The way is clear, over.’’
‘’Excellent! All vehicles, advance to the storage building and park along its southwest side. All the men except the drivers will then dismount and deploy, facing East.’’
Two more minutes and his vehicles were parked out of sight, while Durban’s men were now crouching behind the low wall of the compound and observing the hangar through their night vision scopes mounted on their rifles and light machine guns. Then, the situation became more complicated, with the platoon chief NCO, Senior Chief Petty Officer Richard Gillespie speaking up.
‘’Lieutenant, I see a file of civilians starting to come out of the hangar. They are escorted out by gunmen. I don’t like the look of it.’’
Pointing his own night scope in that direction, Durban soon clenched his teeth together: the civilian men coming out of the hangar were being marched in single file towards the dirt runway, in the open.
‘’Fuck! I believe that those poor bastards are about to be executed. Snipers, be ready to engage the gunmen escorting them from this position. The rest, follow me at a run towards the hangar.’’
His four snipers, who had long silencers on top of night scopes on their Winchester M1986A3 sniper variants, then concentrated their attention on the 26 gunmen escorting the long file of civilian men, with SCPO Gillespie, also armed with a sniper rifle, left in command of them. Taking the lead and jumping over the low wall, Durban then started running at a crouch towards the hangar, followed by ten SEALs. Thankfully, a couple of trucks parked next to the hangar had just started their engines and the noise they produced was more than enough to cover the little noise the SEALs made while running. While still some fifty meters from the hangar, Durban suddenly saw a file of women and girls also come out, escorted by more gunmen, who directed their captives towards the parked trucks.
‘’Shit! They are about to move out with the female hostages. Second Squad, divert towards the south side of the hangar and do your best to eliminate the gunmen escorting out the women.’’
‘’Second Squad on the way!’’ replied on the radio Petty Officer First Class James Meredith. Now hoping that the marines of 1st Battalion would arrive very soon and stop a possible bloodbath, Durban finally arrived next to the western side of the hangar and crouched, looking left and right and trying to see any entrance door. He had to cautiously look past the corner with the northern side of the building to see one. It was however guarded by a gunman holding an automatic rifle. Taking a quick decision, Durban raised his silencer-equipped rifle and, aiming carefully, fired once. The gunman jerked once, then collapsed on the ground. Durban immediately ran towards that door and waited next to it while his five remaining SEALs following him took positions on either side of the door.
‘’Alright, men, here is what we will do. At my command, we will enter the hangar and then split in two and advance along the walls while eliminating any gunman inside. Be careful with your shooting, though: the place can still be full of hostages. If one gunman tries to use a hostage as a human shield, then don’t let him get away with it and aim for his head. We can’t afford to waste a second or to lose the initiative, as one gunman will still be enough to kill many hostages. Understood?’’
‘’Yes sir!’’ replied in near whispers the Navy SEALs.
‘’Then, go!’’
Opening the door and entering at a crouch, Durban found himself near face to face with a Somali gunman who was about to go out. The man barely had time to open wide eyes and start opening his mouth to shout an alarm before the SEAL officer shot him in the head, killing him instantly. He then shot again, killing a second gunman following a few steps behind the first one. His rifle raised and his eyes scanning quickly the inside of the hangar, Durban saw that a good 150 civilian women and children were sitting and cowering in the middle of the hangar, surrounded at some distance by about twelve gunmen watching them closely. Another group of civilians, all men, were in the process of leaving by the southern main doors of the hangar, escorted by more gunmen. The situation was definitely a difficult one, to say the least. Still, Durban started firing his rifle at the gunmen guarding the women and children, imitated by his men. Totally taken by surprise, the gunmen took a couple of seconds to react, seconds which cost them dearly. Only two of the gunmen guarding the women had time to fire their rifles before crumbling down to the concrete floor like the rest of the guards. That however still left the gunmen escorting out the male hostages. Durban and his men were then forced to take cover behind piles of crates and drums as an intense firefight started between his SEALs and the gunmen. What saved the situation was the intervention of his second squad and that of his snipers, who started engaging the hijackers outside the hangar. Finding themselves under a murderous crossfire, most of the gunmen then turned around and fled in near panic. Those who kept their ground were all shot down in the next few seconds. Unfortunately, one of them decided to take his revenge on the male hostages and started emptying his automatic rifle in their group, shooting at least eight of them before being shot down himself. Swearing to himself, Durban charged down the hangar while shouting in English.
‘’EVERYBODY, STAY DOWN AND DON’T MOVE!’’
Just after he said that, an ear-splitting roar came down from the sky, with 24 PELICAN ‘A’ then landing at the vertical and disgorging hundreds of marines, while the heavy machine guns in the chin turrets of the VTOL assault aircraft started spitting thick streams of .50 caliber tracer bullets at the fleeing gunmen and at the other buildings to the East of the hangar. Every truck or car that then tried to flee was also peppered by the heavy bullets and turned into flaming wrecks. Running to the group of male hostages hit by the gunman’s fire, Durban was able to see that, while three men and a teenage boy were now dead, four other hostages were wounded and screaming in pain.
‘’MEDICS! MEDICS!’’
A half-dozen Navy corpsmen accompanying the marines quickly responded to his screams and started treating the wounded hostages, allowing Durban to go around and check with his SEALs the downed gunmen, some of whom were merely wounded. His experienced eyes then made him stop next to a man who was moaning in pain. The wounded gunman had a pocket radio hooked to his tactical vest and also wore a Soviet paratrooper-style white and blue stripped T-shirt under his tactical vest. That same man, who was apparently semi-conscious and delirious, then spoke weakly a few words…in Russian! Immediately calling one of his SEALs who was a qualified medic, he pointed to him the gunman on the ground.
‘’Cantor, I want this man to be kept alive at all cost: he may be able to provide us some vital information, either voluntarily or involuntarily. Get Higgins to assist you and evacuate him to the NEPTUNE under strong escort as a top priority.’’
‘’I will do my best, sir!’’
04:36 (Somalia Time)
Apron of the Djibouti-Ambouli International Airport
Djibouti, on the southern coast of the Gulf of Aden
Both Elizabeth and Shirley let out big sighs of relief when their Convair 800 stopped rolling after pivoting in position on the parking spot indicated to them by an airport employee using flashlights capped by transparent orange cones. One of their three engines was already coughing from lack of fuel, while all their fuel gauges indicated ‘zero’. Shutting down her engines, Elizabeth then grabbed her intercom microphone and called Corazon Villacruz, who was sitting in one of the flight attendants’ seats on the upper forward lobby.
‘’Corazon, you may now open our left side airstair door: I believe that we have a bunch of French customers who are eager to enter our aircraft.’’
Corazon giggled at her choice of words.
‘’I hope that these customers will be more polite than some of our past customers.’’
‘’With us and our passengers, certainly! With others, maybe not!’’
Going down the stairs to the lower lobby, Corazon stopped for a second to eye the dead bodies of the five hijackers who had taken control of their plane in Sanga-Sanga. Some of the male passengers with past military service had helped her by carrying the bodies of the hijackers and piling them up next to the right side forward door, then covering them with wool blankets. As for the weapons which had belonged to the hijackers, they were now safely stored inside the cockpit. Going to the left side door, Corazon unlocked it and activated its opening mechanism, making the airstair pivot down. The moment that the airstair was fully down, a dozen heavily armed soldiers in camouflage combat uniforms climbed inside, their rifles at the ready. Corazon was able to see at once the miniature French flags on their shoulders but, unfortunately, didn’t know how to speak French. The leader of the soldiers then saved the situation by speaking to her in a heavily accented English after glancing at the covered dead men.
‘’Good morning, miss. Does anybody aboard need medical treatment?’’
‘’No! We are all fine, except of course for those five hijackers. There are two pilots inside the cockpit and 47 passengers in the main cabin. The weapons taken from the hijackers have been stored inside the cockpit.’’
‘’And may I ask who killed those hijackers and how, miss?’’
‘’The copilot, Shirley Slade, did, mister. As for how, she had a small revolver that she hides on her during flights: the situation at some of our stops around the Philippines can get a bit rough at times.’’
‘’I see!’’ said the French soldier, a smile appearing on his face. ‘’Well, my men will take care of getting you rid of those bodies, while I will go visit your two pilots.’’
After giving a few orders to his men, the French leader climbed the stairs to the upper lobby and went to the entrance door of the cockpit, in which stood Elizabeth. The French soldier hesitated a bit at the sight of the multiple rows of military medal ribbons pinned on Elizabeth’s shirt, above her pilot’s wings.
‘’Mon Dieu, miss! You have more medal ribbons pinned on your chest than my colonel does!’’
Elizabeth grinned with pride before replying.
‘’That’s probably because I fought in more wars than your colonel did, Captain.’’
‘’Uh, in what wars did you fight, miss?’’ asked the French Foreign Legion officer, a bit taken aback and surprised at her reply.
‘’World War 2, First Korean War, Indochina Conflict, Palestine Partition Conflict, East Europe War, the China-Taiwan-U.S.A. War and the Second Korean War. I retired for military service in 1976, with the rank of colonel and a total of 294 combat missions flown on bombers. My friend Shirley flew in the same wars as me, but as a fighter pilot. She has a total of 59 registered air victories to her credit.’’
‘’Plus five hijackers, if I can believe your flight attendant.’’
‘’That is correct, Lieutenant. Now, I have 47 passengers who are both tired and quite shaken by our misadventure. Would it be possible to accommodate them in a local hotel, so that they can sleep a bit and recuperate before we can fly back to the Philippines? My crew will also need some serious sleep time: we have been flying straight for well over fourteen hours, with five brief stops enroute.’’
‘’Consider yourselves as guests of France, miss.’’ replied the French officer before giving her a military salute.