The Wolf Read Free Page B

ruin. In the process we would sustain heavy losses—both financial and in blood—but there could be no other way. You don’t talk peace with a guy looking for a fight and you can’t cut a deal unless you trust the hand you’re shaking. I looked at the situation from every possible angle and could figure no other way out. It was a war that needed to be fought. It would be a war foreign to us all: the power of modern organized crime against the Russian mob, the Mexican crews, and every terrorist outfit on the grid.
    I had no way of knowing if it was a war we could win.
    I only knew it was a war we couldn’t lose.
    I needed time to work up a plan.
    I took a leave of absence from running day-to-day operations of the syndicate—the three months I would need to prepare.
    I would have to make the first move, to dictate the course of the action. But before I could even make a move, I got blindsided, hit as hard as I’ve ever been hit in my life.
    That was my mistake.
    I had planned a two-week Paris vacation with my family, kicking it off with a long weekend in New York. My wife and kids were anxious to get going, thrilled I had set aside so much time for us to be together. I’ve never been big on vacations, so when I agreed to one it was greeted with shrieks of happiness.
    I can’t tell you how good those few minutes made me feel.
    I let Lisa handle the details as she had requested. She and our daughters were scheduled to take an early flight out of Los Angeles and get into New York a few hours before me, giving them time to settle in and hit the city for a girls-only afternoon of shopping and more shopping while I put the finishing touches on a Nevada land deal I had been working on for two years. Our son Jack would stay behind and keep me company on the plane. I would even pretend to lose to him at chess while our flight headed east.
    Lisa had talked me out of taking even the most basic safety precautions. Instead, I sent the three of them out there alone, defenseless. I tried to cover it a bit, putting one of the new bodyguards on the flight, sitting him two rows behind my wife. But that was hardly enough.
    Less than one hour into their flight, six men—all armed with Swiss Army knives, one claiming to have an explosive device rigged to his groin—took control of the plane, taking the 187 passengers on board hostage. Among those 187 were two undercover air marshals, one in coach, one in first class, sitting across the aisle from Lisa. Both were armed with semiautomatic weapons. The six terrorists spread themselves out between coach and first, each holding a female passenger as cover. The two marshals waited until they had clear shots and then made their move. But a packed airplane is never a good place for a shootout, regardless of how much training a person received. There’s never enough time or space and simply too much that could go wrong.
    Delta Flight 33, LAX to JFK, was no exception.
    I got my hands on the airline agency’s report of the events as they happened after the marshals announced themselves and pulled their weapons. There was quite a bit of screaming, which grew louder as panic took hold and chaos replaced silent menace. Two of the terrorists managed to get the drop on one of the marshals, slicing a vein in his right arm and taking his weapon. The marshals were brave and tough and fought like wild dogs. The terrorists acted as they had been trained, fearless of death, caring little for the lives of those around them. The end result was as predictable as it was painful: sixteen dead, including the six terrorists and the young bodyguard I had placed on the plane, and eight others seriously wounded. Half the passengers died from gunshot wounds, including a Silicon Valley executive and his teenage son seated in the two seats that had been meant for me and Jack. Three had been strangled. Several others fell to multiple stab wounds. Two on board suffered massive heart attacks.
    Three of the dead belonged to