Terminal 1—Lindbergh
Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport
The pilot’s voice sounded stern as the arriving Washington, D.C., flight taxied to the gate at the Midwest’s busiest airport.
“Two passengers need to disembark because of an emergency,” he announced. “Please remain seated until they have deplaned and the flight attendants inform you that it is safe for you to leave your seats.”
Craning her neck, Ebio Kattan glanced up the jet’s aisle just in time to see Representative Rudy Adeogo and Major Brooke Grant hurrying from the plane. The reporter’s cell phone buzzed. It was her producer at Al Arabic’s Washington bureau.
“General Frank Grant, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has been shot,” he informed her.
“His niece and Representative Adeogo just left the plane!” Kattan replied.
“Get footage of them. Now!”
Unbuckling her seat belt, Kattan darted into the aisle, startling those still seated near her. A flight attendant said, “Please remain seated.” But Kattan ignored her and called to her cameraman. “We've got to go!” He stood, opened the bin above his seat, grabbed his camera, and followed Kattan. Neither bothered to take their carry-on luggage as they hurried down the aisle and literally shoved the flight attendant out of their way.
Kattan ran up the movable ramp into the terminal. But she didn’t see Adeogo or Grant in the terminal. She paid no attention to a sign that welcomed visitors and explained that Terminal 1 was named after Charles Lindbergh, a Minnesota native who was the first American to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic. Passengers walking toward her stepped clear as she and her cameraman hurried toward the main terminal. She still hadn’t spotted Brooke or Adeogo by the time she reached the TSA security exit.
As Kattan had expected, reporters were waiting inside the main terminal for Adeogo to appear. They watched as she and her cameraman descended an escalator into the baggage claim area where Adeogo was supposed to hold a press conference.
“Where’d they go?” Kattan asked when she reached the reporters.
“They’re still on the plane,” one of them answered.
“I was on that plane and watched them get off.”
The journalists swarmed around her.
“Did you interview them?” one asked.
“Did they say anything about General Grant being shot?” demanded another.
“No, they rushed off before I could get to them.”
“Then where are they?” someone asked.
From the confused expression on Kattan’s face, it was obvious she didn’t know.
An airport security guard, followed by a middle-aged official dressed in a business suit, came through an unmarked door.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said in a loud voice, “I’ve been sent to inform you that the congressman and Major Brooke Grant have boarded a private aircraft for a return flight to Washington, D.C. There will be no statement from either of them here this morning.”
“What about the White House task force meeting?” a reporter called out. “Has it been cancelled?”
“You’ll have to talk to someone else about that. All I can tell you is that they are on a private jet heading back to Reagan National.”
The journalists immediately began calling their producers and editors on their cell phones. In the mist of their chatter, a cameraman yelled out: “FOX has something!”
There were no television screens mounted in the baggage area but the cameraman had FOX news streaming live on his cell phone.
A yellow ribbon across the base of the broadcast read: exclusive breaking news.
“Islamic terrorists have killed fourteen Americans in the Washington, D.C., area and critically wounded the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in three separate attacks that appear to have been coordinated acts of terrorism,” the FOX anchor proclaimed.
“An Islamic jihadist known to law enforcement as the Falcon uploaded a statement about the attacks on a website monitored by FOX News moments ago crediting his followers in the United States with carrying out the violence. Those attacks include the murder of eight teenage girls and their instructor at an elite Potomac, Maryland, girl’s school, and four others at a rural Virginia farmhouse. The Falcon also claimed he was responsible for the shooting of Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Frank Grant earlier this morning.”
Images of a police SWAT team armed with assault rifles flashed on the screen. The officers had cordoned off the riding arena at the Madeleine Thackeray School for Girls.
“FOX News has confirmed that two girls have been abducted by terrorists during this morning’s attacks.” After pausing for a second to allow the gravity of his words to settle in, the anchor continued. “The girls have been identified as Cassy Adeogo, the eleven-year-old daughter of Minnesota U.S. Representative Rudy Adeogo, and Jennifer Conner, the fourteen-year-old daughter of a former CIA employee named Gunter Conner who was murdered late last year by Al-Shabaab terrorists. The congressman’s daughter was kidnapped from the girl’s school. Jennifer Conner was abducted from a Virginia farmhouse owned by Major Brooke Grant, the niece of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Frank Grant, who was critically wounded earlier in the day. We expect President Allworth to be making a statement about these horrific murders and the kidnappings within the hour.”
A reporter standing next to Kattan said, “Hey, aren’t you the Al Arabic reporter who was in Somalia with Brooke Grant when our embassy was attacked last year? You broke those stories about her and Gunter Conner. Tell us what you know about the Falcon. Why have terrorists kidnapped Conner’s daughter?”
Another reporter said, “I saw your story—where you were chasing Major Grant and that girl in a parking lot.”
Several reporters shoved microphones at Kattan and began filming her. But the Al Arabic correspondent had no interest in helping her competitors with background information. She spun away from the pack and hurried toward an escalator that would carry her up to the airline ticket counters.
“We’re going back to Washington,” she told her cameraman, who once again fell in behind her. “If necessary on a chartered flight.”
Political consultant Mary Margaret Delaney had been quietly watching the ruckus in the baggage area and she now walked briskly toward the escalator. As it rose, she slipped forward until she was directly behind Kattan’s cameraman.
By the time the trio reached the top step, Delaney was close enough to hear Kattan lecturing her cameraman. “The abduction of those two girls is the breaking story now. We’ve got to get to Adeogo in Washington. No use trying Grant. She’ll never talk to me.”
Delaney turned to her left while Kattan and the cameraman turned to their right in the direction of the ticket counters. Delaney had heard enough. She had come to the airport directly from her breakfast meeting with the OIN’s Omar Nader. She had not come to confront Representative Adeogo nor to blackmail him. The airport was much too public a place for that scene. No, she had come simply because she had wanted to see him face-to-face. She had wanted him to realize that she was dogging him and she had come because she wanted to secretly feel the thrill of knowing that she had finally learned his secret and now had the power to destroy him.
As she watched Kattan walking away from her, Delaney thought, You have no idea that you were only inches away from me and a real exclusive. You are scampering back to Washington, D.C., to chase a story when the documents in my bag contain evidence that could ruin Rudy Adeogo.
Delaney smiled. All in good time, she thought. All in good time.