The Plane of Destiny

                                                             THE PLANE OF DESTINY

The sleek, green freight plane, wrapped in Arabic writing, tore through the silver Samarkand Mountains.  The sweating, overweight, balding Iranian pilot, whose mouth was eclipsed by a bushy black moustache, loosened his ruby red tie and opened the top button of his blue shirt. He briskly turned on the radio.

Out came an abrupt babble of Persian dialect, giving the news. It was talking about Iran threatening Israel with a secret weapon they were transporting by plane during a peaceful stage in relationships which has caused global protests. This pilot began to sweat more – he was told he was carrying a “secret weapon”.

A few minutes later, whilst glancing down on the mountainous border with Iraq he heard a loud bang on the roof. He turned off the radio and gingerly put the plane on Auto-Pilot. He got up and spoke to a crew member:

“Yes Sharif, could you check out the bang, I think it was situated by the loading point near the fuel tank.”
“Of course, sir”
Merely seconds after the pilot began to pace about the cockpit, there were gunshots. He bolted out of the cockpit and saw Sharif lying on the ground in a pool of blood. Precipitously, a body jumped in front of him and throttled the pilot at the neck. This hijacker then launched him back into the cockpit. As he lay in pain, a magnum revolver was cocked in his face.
“Why, oh why, are you doing this?”
The pilot, Mohammad looked shocked “H-How do you know my name?”
“That is not important at the moment you scumbag fiend, what is it with this Secret weapon?
“You know, I can’t tell anyone!”

The hijacker in a black balaclava with merely eye holes and a long shining trench coat picked him up and launched him (with his large veiny, dark hands) onto the control panel of the circular cockpit. The pilots left eye quivered with the fixed glaze of the pistol on it.
“Tensions have died down with Israel in the past few months; Ahmadinejad even signed a treaty with Prime Minister Netanyahu, do you not remember?
“Listen, I am not the one at the forefront of the decisions, I am merely the transporter!”
“Yes, but you have the opportunity to change that. You are essentially in control of the secret weapon”

The pilot glanced at the hijacker’s stern hand and noticed a peculiar triangular shaped mark on it. This triggered a rush of memories to flow through his brain and reminded him of a shady secret society beneath a suburban mosque of Tehran, several years ago, where robed members would talk about fighting against the Republic: The Persian Resistance Organisation (PRO). It suddenly hit him – the mark was from the PRO. The pilot smiled and remarked gingerly, “Part of the PRO, are we?”
“Yes I got this mark when I was a baby; my future was to be in the resistance. Now, I am in the resistance.”

The pilot was once in the resistance, in the 80s to be precise, and attended several inductions of children into the organisation; this person seemed familiar to him. More and more memories began to rush towards him. “Now land this plane, BACK IN IRAN!! Or I will shoot you and do it myself.” Continued the unknown hijacker. “We don’t want a casualty in this process”
The plane began to wobble and loud bangs from the back of the plane were heard.
“I set a fuse heading for the kerosene tank. You either land this plane or it goes down with a bang. A BIG bang.” The pilot slithered gingerly – and shaking – onto his chair, his back to the control panel. “Listen, I have had experience in the PRO, the other members wouldn’t want this to happen.”
“I don’t care if you used to be in the resistance! Look what you are doing now, in control of a weapon which could kill millions of innocent lives breaking a treaty, for the republic!!
“How do you know it will kill millions, how do you know it will kill anyone?”
“Do you not get the point?? Your Ideology?”
There was a silence. The sweating, exhausted pilot smiled and said, “It is a test”. The hijacker’s hands began to shake. The eyes that appeared from the balaclava arrowed to slats which made it rather obvious he was flummoxed.
“A T-Test? What are you talking about?” The pilot lowered his eyes but continued to smile. “AArgh!”

The hijacker whacked the pilots head with his pistol and smashed the control panel in with a mighty kick, sending a wave of sparks upwards into the air. He locked the door of the cockpit from the outside. He then traipsed to the storage area of the plane. The hijacker looked out of a long narrow window on the aluminium wall and observed parts of the wings falling off and spiralling into the atmosphere.

He shot the lock of the storage door and tore through the second Carbon fibre layer behind it. He then took ten steps back and exploded a C4 package he attached to the thick Silicon dioxide door which sent a shockwave with daggers of carbon outwards towards the hijacker, forcing him to duck.

After the wave, the door collapsed sending a wall of dust to spread. As the dust subsided, the hijacker was able to see this secret weapon Iran had been threatening Israel with. But he didn’t see anything. He yelled and ran around the room searching for anything, picking anything plausible to be a secret weapon, some things the size of a crumb.

He ran into the cockpit and saw the pilot lying on the ground in blood. An identity badge and a note were left on the chair.

Mohammad Jedarh. PRO Pilot.

Your father.  You passed. Welcome to the Persian Resistance.

“Papa!” Cried the hijacker, pulling his balaclava off and hugging his father, seconds before the spiralling plane crashed in a lone forest in West Iraq.