 |
 First UK edition | |
| Author | Craig Thomas |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Techno-thriller novel |
| Publisher | Michael Joseph (UK) & Holt, Rinehart and Winston (USA) |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 261 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| Followed by | Firefox |
Rat Trap is a techno-thriller novel written by Craig Thomas and published in 1976. The plot concerns a hijacking at London's Heathrow International Airport and the complications that occur trying to resolve the situation.
While on approach at London Heathrow Airport, a Boeing 707 begins experiencing engine trouble consistent with an engine fire. After a fraught landing, the plane is hijacked.
The contingency plans for a hijacking are mobilized at the Home Office. Hilary Latymer is the 'Ratcatcher' who will negotiate with the terrorists and attempt to outwit them. During negotiations, the hijackers, led by a man named Packer, demand a prisoner held by the UK, one Shafiq Nasoud. Nasoud is currently being held at HM Prison Dartmoor, charged with attempting to smuggle firearms through Heathrow. It is ordered that Nasoud be brought to London in case it becomes necessary to hand him over to the terrorists. While ferrying him from Devon in a small airplane, the plane experiences engine trouble and crash lands. Nasoud manages to escape his jailers.
Latymer's negotiations with the hijackers do not go well. He surmises from discussion with Packer that Packer is high on heroin. He also deduces from information provided by the American Federal Bureau of Investigation that a female hijacker, Joanne Fender, has a death wish and does not intend for the hijacking to be resolved non-violently. An attempt to take the plane ends in bloodshed.
For most of the evening and night, Nasoud is able to elude a massive manhunt. He kills one British soldier and steals his rifle, and later holds a family hostage. After many close scrapes and several shootouts with the military, who have strict orders to take him alive, Nasoud steals a jeep. He is identified shortly after evading a roadblock, and pursued to a small farm. There, a soldier disables his jeep by shooting the engine block, but he drives into a stone wall and is killed.
With Nasoud dead, Latymer has no options left. On the brink of paying a large bribe to the hijackers, he decides to pass off an imposter as Nasoud, simply to get the hostages released. In the course of the exchange, the imposter is found out, but not before the passengers disembark the plane safely. Gunfire is exchanged between hijackers and police, and meanwhile on the plane, Joanne Fender sets off a bomb, killing Packer and the flight crew, bringing an end to the incident.
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Aircraft hijacking is the unlawful seizure of an aircraft by an individual or a group. Dating from the earliest of hijackings, most cases involve the pilot being forced to fly according to the hijacker's demands. However, in rare cases, the hijackers have flown the aircraft themselves and used them in suicide attacks – most notably in the September 11 attacks – and in several cases, planes have been hijacked by the official pilot or co-pilot; e.g., the Lubitz case.
Operation Entebbe or Operation Thunderbolt was a successful counter-terrorist hostage-rescue mission carried out by commandos of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) at Entebbe Airport in Uganda on 4 July 1976.
The Japanese Red Army was a militant communist organization active from 1971 to 2001. It was designated a terrorist organization by Japan and the United States. The JRA was founded by Fusako Shigenobu and Tsuyoshi Okudaira in February 1971 and was most active in the 1970s and 1980s. After the Lod Airport massacre, it sometimes called itself the Arab-JRA. The group was also known as the Anti-Imperialist International Brigade (AIIB), the Holy War Brigade, and the Anti-War Democratic Front.
Indian Airlines Flight 814, commonly known as IC 814, was an Indian Airlines Airbus A300 en route from Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, Nepal, to Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi, India, on Friday, 24 December 1999, when it was hijacked and flown to several locations before landing in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
EgyptAir Flight 648 was a regularly scheduled international flight between Athens Ellinikon International Airport in Greece and Cairo International Airport in Egypt. On 23 November 1985, a Boeing 737-200 airliner, registered SU-AYH, servicing the flight was hijacked by the terrorist organization Abu Nidal. The subsequent raid on the aircraft by Egyptian troops resulted in dozens of deaths, making the hijacking of Flight 648 one of the deadliest such incidents in history.
Trans World Airlines Flight 847 was a flight from Cairo to San Diego with en route stops in Athens, Rome, Boston, and Los Angeles. On the morning of June 14, 1985, Flight 847 was hijacked shortly after take off from Athens. The hijackers demanded the release of 700 Shia Muslims from Israeli custody and took the plane repeatedly to Beirut and Algiers. Later Western analysis considered them members of the Hezbollah militant group, an allegation Hezbollah rejects.
Unit 777, also known as Task Force 777, is an Egyptian military counter-terrorism and special operations unit. It was created in 1978 by the government of Anwar Sadat in response to concerns of increased terrorist activity following the expulsion of Soviet military advisors from the country by Sadat and his efforts to achieve peace with Israel.
This is a list of aviation-related events from 1976:
This is a list of aviation-related events from 1977, This is the year of the deadliest air disaster in history, the Tenerife airport disaster. Here are the aviation events of 1977:
In September 1970, members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) hijacked four airliners bound for New York City and one for London. Three aircraft were forced to land at Dawson's Field, a remote desert airstrip near Zarqa, Jordan, formerly Royal Air Force Station Zarqa, which then became PFLP's "Revolutionary Airport". By the end of the incident, one hijacker had been killed and one injury reported. This was the second instance of mass aircraft hijacking, after an escape from communist Czechoslovakia in 1950.
In December 1973, a Palestinian terrorist group executed a series of attacks originating at Rome-Fiumicino Airport in Italy which resulted in the deaths of 34 people. The attacks began with an airport-terminal invasion and hostage-taking, followed by the firebombing of a Pan Am aircraft and the hijacking of a Lufthansa flight.
The Delta Force is a 1986 American action film starring Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin as leaders of an elite group of Special Operations Forces personnel based on the real life U.S. Army Delta Force unit. Directed, co-written and co-produced by Menahem Golan, the film features Martin Balsam, Joey Bishop, Robert Vaughn, Steve James, Robert Forster, Shelley Winters, George Kennedy, and an uncredited Liam Neeson in an early role. It is the first installment in The Delta Force film series. Two sequels were produced, entitled Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection and the direct-to-video Delta Force 3: The Killing Game. The Delta Force was "inspired" by the hijacking of TWA Flight 847.
Lufthansa Flight 181 was a Boeing 737-230C jetliner named the Landshut that was hijacked on the afternoon of 13 October 1977 by four members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who called themselves Commando Martyr Halima. The objective of the hijacking was to secure the release of imprisoned Red Army Faction leaders in German prisons. In the early hours of 18 October, just after midnight, the West German counter-terrorism group GSG 9, backed by the Somali Armed Forces, stormed the aircraft in Mogadishu, Somalia, with 86 passengers and four of the total five crew rescued. The rescue operation was codenamed Feuerzauber. The hijacking is considered to be part of the German Autumn.
Sabena Flight 571 was a scheduled passenger flight from Brussels to Lod via Vienna operated by the Belgian national airline, Sabena. On 8 May 1972 a Boeing 707 passenger aircraft operating that service, captained by British pilot Reginald Levy, DFC, was hijacked by four members of the Black September Organization, a Palestinian terrorist group. Following their instructions, Captain Levy landed the plane at Lod Airport. The hijackers demanded that Israel release Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the hostages. The standoff was ended by an Israeli commando raid in which all of the hijackers were killed or captured.
On 19 February 1978, Egyptian special forces raided Larnaca International Airport near Larnaca, Cyprus, in an attempt to intervene in a hijacking. Earlier, two assassins had killed prominent Egyptian newspaper editor Yusuf Sibai and then rounded up as hostages several Arabs who were attending a convention in Nicosia. As Cypriot forces were trying to negotiate with the hostage-takers at the airport, Egyptian troops launched their own assault without authorization from the Cypriots. The unauthorized raid led to the Egyptians and the Cypriots exchanging gunfire, killing or injuring more than 20 of the Egyptian commandos. As a result, Egypt and Cyprus severed political ties for several years after the incident.
Kuwait Airways Flight 422 was a Boeing 747 jumbo jet hijacked en route from Bangkok, Thailand, to Kuwait on 5 April 1988, leading to a hostage crisis that lasted 16 days and encompassed three continents. The hijacking was carried out by several Lebanese guerillas who demanded the release of 17 Shi'ite Muslim prisoners being held by Kuwait for their role in the 1983 Kuwait bombings. During the incident the flight, initially forced to land in Iran, traveled 3,200 mi (5,100 km) from Mashhad in northeastern Iran to Larnaca, Cyprus, and finally to Algiers.
The Achille Lauro hijacking took place on 7 October 1985, when the Italian ocean liner MS Achille Lauro was hijacked by four men representing the Palestine Liberation Front (PLO) off the coast of Egypt, as she was sailing from Alexandria to Ashdod, Israel. A 69-year-old Jewish American man in a wheelchair, Leon Klinghoffer, was murdered by the hijackers and thrown overboard. The hijacking sparked the "Sigonella Crisis".
The hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 615 was an act of Palestinian terrorism that occurred on 29 October 1972 and aimed at the liberation of the three surviving perpetrators of the Munich massacre from a West German prison.
Scandinavian Airlines System Flight 130 was an aircraft hijacking which took place in Sweden and subsequently in Spain on 15 and 16 September 1972. While en route from Torslanda Airport in Gothenburg to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, three armed members of the Croatian National Resistance (CNR) forcefully took control of the McDonnell Douglas DC-9-21 aircraft and redirected it to Bulltofta Airport in Malmö. There was a crew of four and eighty-six passengers on the Scandinavian Airlines System aircraft.