Skyhammer (32 page)

Aviation Command Center

20:24 GMT/15:24 EST

“Any way to gain more time?” the president asked. “I don’t understand why there isn’t a contingency for this sort of situation.”

Otis Searing had expected such a response. The president, like all presidents, did not like making decisions on short notice,
especially one that sanctioned the taking of American lives. Politics. He was probably looking for someone to blame. Otis
Searing, for instance. Still, Searing quickly decided, he was just plain lucky to be finally talking directly to the top dog
instead of some go-between.

“Nothing like this has ever happened before,” Searing told the president now. “Let me describe it this way. If a hostile aircraft
was inbound to Phoenix with the announced intention of attacking the airport, and if we had an interceptor already in firing
position, would you give the order to fire? It’s that simple, sir. Because that’s exactly what we’ve got here.”

“Not exactly,” the president answered. “There are people on board. Innocent civilians.”

And John Sanford, Searing wanted to add. But accusing the president of ulterior motives wouldn’t help matters. Instead he
said, “Yes, but lots more on the ground. Getting Terminal 4 cleared now will take a miracle. And what if he changes his target
again? He’s done that once already. Maybe we can’t save the hundred on board, sir, but we can save hundreds on the ground.
Maybe more than that.”

There was no response from the president. Searing pounded his fist quietly on his knee. He had to use tact, he knew, but at
the same time he had to go straight at the man. “Mr. President,” he said, “as you know, in all these events, every conversation
is being recorded in some fashion. When the record is brought to light, everyone will understand that you did the only thing
you could. But if you wait, if you don’t make a decision in time, the press will have you for lunch.”

The line was still silent. He’d been blunt—too blunt? But what else could he have said, Searing wondered. Should he tell the
president now that this was exactly the reason there was a presidency? That someone had to be there to make a decision when
there wasn’t time to argue about it? But the man wasn’t stupid. That was the problem, actually: The president was too smart.
He saw options where there weren’t any, saw all the ramifications, the effects of any action, rippling out across a sea of
voters. If only he were smart enough to see it didn’t matter. This was a lesser-of-two-evils situation, and doing nothing
was not the lesser. So tell him, Searing thought. But he didn’t have to.

“All right,” the president said suddenly. “You have my authorization.”

“Thank you, sir,” Searing answered, breathing out his relief. He killed the line before any more could be said. In the same
second he opened the line to Albuquerque.

Air Route Traffic Control Center

Albuquerque, New Mexico

20:28 GMT/13:28 MST

Colonel Charbonneau took the call. As he listened to Searing’s brief message, his expression collapsed. He acknowledged, hung
up, and returned to Sector l^’s low-altitude console. With Farraday gone, Lenard Curtis had taken over the station. Charbonneau
leaned over him now, staring for a moment at 555’s blip on the screen.

“Lenard,” He said, placing his hand on the controller’s shoulder. “We’ve just been ordered to move Shadow into firing position.”

Curtis’s shoulder seemed to sag under the colonel’s hand. Charbonneau, knowing they had to remain objective, keep it matter-of-fact,
moved around beside the controller and spread part of an Air Force tactical pilotage chart out on the console table.

“I figure the airplane can glide forty to fifty miles from twenty thousand,” he explained. “The missile should break her up,
though, but still the wreckage might go fifteen or twenty. We’ll call it thirty.”

As Curtis watched intently, Charbonneau used a pair of dividers to plot off thirty miles, working backward from Paradise Valley,
northeast of Scottsdale, Arizona. “That puts us here,” he said. “About sixty-five out of Phoenix.” With a grease pencil he
made a small arc on Curtis’s screen, across the Fossl Two arrival depiction. “Make the call,” he said.

Without a word, Curtis keyed his microphone

Flight Deck

New World 555

20:23 GMT/15:23 EST

The waiting seemed to exhaust him, taking what little energy he had left. He couldn’t think straight aiymore. He wanted water,
but the bottle was empty. His mouth was parched, his throat sore from the cigarettes. Was there any food in Boyd’s kit? Pate
looked at the blanketed body, then gave up the ridiculous idea and stared straight ahead again. Why was he thinking of food?
He would be dying any minute.

He closed his eyes. Tried to let his mind go slack. But it caught again, like a hook, jerking his eyes open. Any second now,
the explosion would ring through the airframe, the yoke go wobbly in his hands. How long would it take the plane to fall?
The ground would rise toward him, slowly at first, then fast. Any moment now. The cloud deck had almost dissipated, and the
sky ahead was like a huge valley ringed by mountains of clouds, so the fighter could see him clearly and would fire a rocket
at point-blank range.

He felt it now, in his hands, arms, chest. Not an ache but a tingling numbness, as if his bones and flesh were hardening.
Was
this
a fear of death, he wondered? No, he’d been scared of dying before. It wasn’t fear, only the damn waiting that made his breathing
labored, his mind tight and slow. Even the anger seemed sluggish now, lying in the pit of his stomach. He could manage only
a sad resentment. He had been stupid, while Farraday had been smart—playing the innocent man, knowing all along they would
shoot him down. Why had he wanted to talk to Farraday? To hear him grovel? It still astonished Pate that he hadn’t guessed
they would put up a fighter. He had trusted in something—some ultimate justice maybe. Not in God to make it come out fair,
but in the story, he realized. There was justice in it. Some kind of justice that wasn’t even a question of right and wrong.
It was a question of balance. Things were out of balance, and only some sacrifice could put it right. Was that insanity? Insanity
was sacrificing for nothing. Insanity was leaving Farraday in charge. So why couldn’t they let him go, use these lives and
his own to good purpose? He had warned them, allowed them to clear the concourse. Wasn’t that enough? If it had been possible,
he would have landed, let the innocent people get off. If it had been possible, but it just wasn’t. He’d always known that
to land the plane was what they wanted. They would never have let him take off again. Now they would never let him land.

Another minute had passed. Pate stared at the clock. Why hadn’t they fired? He willed it. Then his mind escaped him again
and seemed to travel through a focal point—an instant of noise and sight, keen smell, weight and ringing pulse. And then it
expanded, as if trying to remember everything at once, bring all his life down to one clear moment. Or strings of moments—that’s
what they were—but so tangled he couldn’t separate them. Katherine, Westar, Viet Nam. They tangled again, with earlier memories,
repeating endlessly—all of them part of some whole. Until like a miracle, one string came loose. The first day he’d ever seen
Jeeps Henry’s plane—cool, gray, early-summer afternoon, rain falling lightly on the green wheat. A crossroads somewhere up
on the land above Lapwai. He sat in the cab of a pickup truck. The big empty Idaho prairie, the camas, rolling away on all
sides. Wipers steady as a heartbeat, sweeping spots of rain from the windshield. Alone. Nothing at all ahead of him. Only
the blankness of horizon meeting gray sky. A mountain bluebird darting along the fence posts—sharp, flashing, swooping, iridescent
sapphire against the yellow green—darting like an arrow, wings spreading, folding to catch and release the air. Then Jeeps
Henry’s plane, out of nowhere, roaring past, close by, laying down a trail of white, billowing cloud. That’s when it had all
started. The escape from the canyon into the sky.

Shoot, Pate thought. Go ahead. He didn’t care anymore. Wasn’t he already inside Farraday, a poison in his belly, in his bloodstream,
already hurting him by simply being there? Coyote had broken all his flint knives, trying to cut the cords that held Monster’s
heart, but Coyote hadn’t given up. He had leaped onto the heart and torn it lose with the weight of his own body. Now, he,
too, had to leap, Pate thought. It would come down to that one final leap, momentum carrying him forward far enough.

Passenger Cabin

New World 555

20:30 GMT/3:30 MST

Mariella Ponti waited for another passenger on his way back from the lavs, then moved quickly past the last four rows to 28,
where David Crane was waiting tor her. She had done as he’d suggested—asked Emil Pate to explain the problem. She hadn’t understood
the answer, but Crane would, and from the anxious look on his face, she knew he was tired of waiting for her.

Well, she couldn’t help it. Halfway to the back of the plane, at aisle 14, a hand had caught hold of her sleeve, and suddenly
here was this heavy-set, big-eared guy in peach-colored golf pants grinning up at her. “Honey, I’m gonna trouble you for another
of these.” He’d held up a plastic cup half full of melted cubes.

For one thing, she didn’t like being called “Honey.” And for another, couldn’t he see she was in a hurry? But she hadn’t wanted
to attract attention, worry anyone. And Peach Pants wasn’t to blame. He was probably just some Arizona real estate salesman,
a friendly guy, headed home and tanking up in the meantime. Wanting a refill at exactly the wrong moment. She had wished she
could tell him she would be right back, but that wouldn’t do. Where were Christy and Lori? Back in the last row, heads down,
chitchatting, no doubt.

“What do you want in this?” she’d asked, taking the cup, smiling as best she could.

“Well, let me try another one of them—“’ the man had hesitated, trying to remember whatever drink it was. Ponti had caught
sight of Crane again, desperately impatient now.

“Gin and something?” she had guessed, sniffing the plastic cup.

“That’s it.” Peach Pants had beamed. “One of them little bottles of Tanqueray and soda?”

Scarcely ever could a passenger annoy Ponti. Most were generally patient and polite. They knew she wasn’t merely a waitress
but also a cop, who could send them to their seats and save their lives if she had to. Or put them off the plane if necessary.
It was really only the chronic whiners and the bullies and the outright weirdos she wanted to thump on the noggins with a
baseball bat sometimes. The rest, like this guy, were only asking her to do her job; they just seemed to have uncannily bad
timing.

Finally, she managed to slip into aisle seat 28D and lean over the center seat to whisper to David Crane.

“It’s okay,”’ she assured him. “I talked to Emil. I asked about any special landing prep. He said no, not necessary. So, what’s
wrong I asked him. He said there was a problem with the ‘HF transmitter,’ that it could affect the flight controls, but they
thought they had it under control.”

“Wait a minute.” Crane seemed dazed. “What did he call it?”

“An HF transmitter. Here, I wrote it down.” She unfolded a napkin crumpled in her hand.

He shook his head now, as if even more confused.

“What’s the matter?”

“HF transmitters don’t have anything to do with flight controls. It’s a long-range radio. This plane probably doesn’t even
have one.”

“Then what’s going on?” she asked and held her breath.For another few seconds Crane stared at her, but his dazed look had
vanished. He studied her now, as if he were trying to decide something. Ponti felt a chill go up her back. Something was wrong.

“Don’t show any reaction,” Crane whispered, then waited until she nodded. He lowered his voice further. “I think we’ve been
hijacked.”

She heard the rest of it as if from a distance outside herself. A fighter plane was chasing them? Someone must have gotten
into the cockpit. Crane was saying, and was holding both pilots hostage. Procedures tumbled through her head. What to do if
the plane were hijacked—Rule Number One: Maintain professional demeanor.

“How could it be possible?” she whispered. “No one’s gone up there, as far as 1 know.”

“I can’t say how,” Crane whispered back. “But we have to assumed it’s happened. The first officer’s trying to send us a signal.”

Ponti nodded. “Emil sounded real strange. But I thought—”

“Then he’s under duress and that’s another signal. Did he say anything else strange?”

Ponti shook her head. “It’s more the
way
he says things.”

“My bet is there’s only one hijacker. Maybe he’s already killed the captain—injured him anyway. That would explain why you
haven’t heard from him.”

The idea that Boyd had been killed was too shocking. Too impossible. For an instant Ponti thought of her husband, but quickly
she shoved the image out of her mind. What about Emil Pate? Was there a gun to his head right this moment? “What are we going
to do?” she whispered.

“We can’t just sit here.” Calculating. Crane’s eyes darted toward the cabin’s forward bulkhead. He paused “How does that Airfone
thing work?”

“Credit card. We can use mine. I’ll bring it back to you.”

Ponti made her way forward again. This time she would not be waylaid by anyone. It didn’t matter who needed what. Even old
Peach Pants would have to dry out a while longer. She brushed past him and kept going, pulled the Airfone from its bracket
and turned back.

But now a swarm of faces met her; she couldn’t help looking at them. Was it a premonition? All these people suddenly seemed
like friends. Ponti held her lower lip tight to keep it from quivering. In fourteen years she’d lost sense of how good people
were, how different and how interesting. Now each face seemed instantly familiar—that woman in 10A, gazing out the window.
Hadn’t she seen her somewhere before? An old school acquaintance? Maybe it was only because the woman seemed so forlorn that
she wanted to stop and console her. She hurried on, but now she looked down at the older man across the aisle in 13D, head
lolled back asleep, glasses askew, the way her own father slept in his armchair. Did he, too, have children, grown and scattered?
Was he, like Mrs. Howard in 3E, on his way to visit a son who even now waited at Sky Harbor, with grandchildren?