"Joel Rosenberg - Last Jihad 03 - The Ezekiel Option" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rosenberg Joel C)

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TUESDAY, JULY 29 тАФ 3:16 P.M. тАФ 52 MILES SOUTHEAST OF MANHATTAN


Boris Stuchenko would be dead in less than nineteen minutes.
And he had no idea why.
The fifty-three-year-old self-made billionaire had a long list of enemies; of this he
had no doubt. Business competitors. Political rivals. Mistresses too numerous to count.
But this made no sense. Was it really a hit? Was he really the target? Or was the
president and CEO of LukoilтАФRussia's largest oil companyтАФsimply in the wrong place
at the wrong time for the first time in his life?
Stuchenko gripped the leather armrests. He couldn't see the terrorists. At least one
was behind him, back in business or economy class. But he didn't dare turn and look.
He wasn't even supposed to be on this flight. As the richest man in Russia, he never
flew commercial. His fleet of private jets, including a gleaming new Gulfstream V, was
the envy of the Russian oligarchs.
But over the past eighteen months, he'd become obsessed with buying Aeroflot,
Russia's aging airlineтАФher jets, her routes, her infrastructureтАФand turning the much-
ridiculed "Aero-flop" into a world-class competitor. To seal the deal with the Wall Street
crowd, his strategists were positioning him as a man of the people, willing to fly one of
the most troubled airlines on the planet before turning her into a profit-making
superpower.
Now all that was about to change.
Stuchenko tried to slow his breathing and focus his thoughts. Two hijackers were in
the cockpit. He'd seen them go in. But now the door was shut, and the pilots' screams had
long since been silenced.
Out of the corner of his eye he could see two badly beaten flight attendants, huddled
and shivering on the floor in the forward galley. Their hands and mouths were bound
with duct tape. Their swollen eyes darted from face to face, silently pleading for help
from anyone in the first-class cabin.
No one moved.
They were so young and innocent, the kind of exquisite and courteous Russian
women around which he could have rebuilt this airline. He'd flirted with one for half the
flight. But now Stuchenko refused even to make eye contact. The women had the air of
hunted animals, and he wanted nothing to do with them.
What kind of man was he? He couldn't sit here like a coward.
Stuchenko had served his time in the Red Army. He'd fought in Afghanistan in the
eighties against bin Laden and his demons. He'd been trained in hand-to-hand combat.


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And he'd have the element of surprise. Especially if he could enlist the help of his two top
aides, sitting in the row behind him.
The cockpit wasn't sealed shut. The terrorists had jammed the lock. He'd seen them