Abe lowered his fat body into the cockpit. He was now dead. It was midday local time. In one hour, 718,556 faithful would be eradicated from the face of the earth, thousands more mutilated, wounded or riddled with shards of holy stone.

Tommy locked the cabin door. All those fucking cranks these days. Abe was glad it was a 747-400, just the two of them, no flight engineer. Nothing he could do.

Outside, the temperature was a silver lake above the tarmac.

It was Dhu Al-Hijjah, holiest of months, and the town was deluged in pilgrims. At least three hundred and fifty of them in the back. They say Muslims may not fight pagans during this month. We’ll see.

The plane moved slowly along the queue, then straightened up. Sometimes we forget the power of an ordinary airplane, 180 tons of metal and 35 tons of barbecue.

Gaining height and velocity. Tommy was in charge. Abe got up and moved back, then shot his buddy from above the left shoulder, obliquely, gently. A small handgun with silencer, no mess. Abe muttered a quick prayer, but he’d already done it before, for hours.

Time to work. He sat down again and plugged a couple of instruments, then set his course: 21° 25′ 24″ N, 39° 49′ 24″ E.

The plane took a nose dive. Abe could hear the screaming in the back. The few passengers who always removed their belts early were thrown forwards, and some of them were hammering desperately at the cabin door. The entire passenger cabin was filled with the knives of hell. Abe’s face was set in a strange, emotionless expression, his eyes focussed on the white mass in front. His hands and fingers played the tune rehearsed for months, not missing a beat.

Out of the blinding desert, roads took shape, buildings leapt out of the blur of distance. Inside his mind, all was quiet, everything had come together. He saw the mosque.

For a few seconds, he saw the immense puddle of grovelling humanity, white-robed hajji looking like maggots writhing on top of each other to get at the doors. One million he’d read somewhere, not including those who couldn’t get in.

In front of him was the target. He couldn’t miss it, fifty feet tall, massive, draped in black and gold, the Kaaba, a cube of granite housing the famous black stone, the Hajar el Aswad. To cynics, a simple rock, to Muslims, one of the holiest relics in the world, fallen to earth before the time of Cain, then white, now black through the sins of mankind.

The next colour, even temporary, would be red.

There are not enough words to describe true terror, real fear. Loved ones are forgotten. Two minutes crushed into a lifetime. Lungs and eyes explode, body chemicals boil, fingernails claw its very flesh.

And then the impact.

What next?

This is the suggested start of the novel. The obvious question is whether he’d actually manage to get through the airspace. Could he? Are there defensive mechanisms already set up? Could he get round them? What sort of computer wizardry could be devised by, say, a nephew/KKK technogeek/WTC widow to make sure he gets through?

Is it credible anyway? What sort of gun (how would he get it onto the plane? Aren’t pilots checked too?) or what sort of bullet would he need to kill, with certainty, without going through the fuselage?

Style: too telegraphic, too slow, too obscure? Is it clear what’s going on?

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