The Last Hostage (23 page)

Rudy let out a ragged breath. "I didn't lie. I wasn't the tipster."

"Bullshit! I've got you dead to rights. I've got evidence that you did make that call. Why the hell would a thirty-year veteran detective have made that up? He'd worked with you before. He knew your voice. You depended on that when you called him, didn't you?"

"I didn't make--"

"CAN IT, BASTARD! You made the friggin' call!"

Rudy was shaking his head energetically, feeling like he was fighting a ghost, dealing with an accusation he had no way of refuting.

What evidence? What on earth did Wolfe think he had? Certainly the detective claimed it was him, but that was old news. Discredited news.

The word of a state police detective who was on the spot, against that of a respected federal prosecutor who had no apparent stake in the case and no apparent motivation to lie. Deciding whom to believe had been a no-brainer for the judge.

Ken Wolfe reached toward the fuel gauges and pushed a button, then made some other adjustments on the front panel.

Rudy looked over at him again. "Suppose your evidence is wrong?

Evidence often appears to confirm one thing, and in fact, the opposite is true. Have you considered that?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"This evidence doesn't lie, unless you were in the habit of making calls to detectives at random every night."

Rudy studied Ken Wolfe's face from the side, his eyes in a squint.

"Wait a minute, you think you have phone records?"

"I don't think I have them, Bostich, I have them. And the originals are safe."

Rudy shook his head. "Captain, phone records can be faked. Where did you get them?"

"None of your damn business."

"Did Detective Roger Matson give you those?" "I said, it's none of your damn business, until your trial for perjury, that is."

Rudy looked forward and began shaking his head, slowly at first, then with energy as he snapped his gaze back to Wolfe.

"Captain, you've been had! What you apparently don't know is that Detective Matson is a bad apple. He has a long history with his department of cowboyish operations, and a long history with area judges for making up so-called evidence to get warrants. You didn't know that, did you?"

"I don't know that now, Bostich. I can't believe a word you say. If you said the sun was up, I wouldn't believe it without an astrophysicist's affidavit."

"Captain, Matson is, in fact, a bad apple. It's all in his record, but I don't happen to carry that record with me."

"Pity. Shut up a second."

Wolfe banked the aircraft to the right and once again rotated a wheel- like thing on the side of the center pedestal as he spoke into the microphone boron attached to his headset.

"Kat? Are you still out there shadowing me?"

Wolfe listened to the response and nodded, his eyes on the horizon.

"Okay. I want to see what you're flying. Now. Pull alongside on my left, one half mile spacing. Then you're going to land first. Understood?"

He nodded again, then turned back to Rudy.

"You have anything more to say?"

Rudy nodded. "Captain, Matson certainly did know me, but you've been so eager to blame me, you never looked into his background.

There are an awful lot of things a federal prosecutor can't tell the general public and the media, things that civilians like yourself can't know. God, I wish you would have come to me first before throwing everything in your life away on this.., this, stupid, pointless reaction."

"I did, bastard. I've been writing letters to you. You never answered.''

Rudy shook his head sadly. "You never asked questions in those letters, Captain. You just made accusations. I wish you'd come in person.

Now... look what you've done."

He gestured toward the front instrument panel while looking at the captain for a response. There was none.

"Look, Ken."

"Don't use nay first name, scumbag."

"Okay, okay, I know you've convinced yourself I'm the bad guy, but you're wrong. Look, I've had to sit on Detective Matson numerous times in the past for getting in the way of federal investigations. He knew me well enough to want to discredit me, and this gave him a perfect opportunity. He was on the spot. Some impossibly unreliable tipster obviously told him who did your.., who killed your daughter, and to get himself off the hook for lying to get a warrant, he invents me as the caller, thinking I'd just say yes. But that would have been a lie! Don't you see, captain? I was under oath. I knew the stakes, but I could not lie about it. The fact was, I did not make that call."

Wolfe had turned his head and was staring at Bostich, eye to eye, in silence.

There was obviously a radio transmission Rudy couldn't hear. The captain looked up and said a few words in pilot jargon into his microphone, then banked the 737 to the left a few degrees as he reduced the power a little more.

Ken Wolfe suddenly looked back at Bostich. "Are you trying to tell me those phone records are fake because I got them from Detective Matson?"

Rudy nodded energetically. "That's exactly what I'm trying to tell you. We've both been set up. I never anticipated he would do this to you, a grieving father. It shows what a scum he is! But that's what he's done. He's used faked records to turn you against me, for what reason I have no idea. Maybe just to hurt you, and he's certainly succeeded."

Wolfe had turned his head forward again, and Rudy watched him with rising hope, knowing the captain couldn't have been aware of what he'd just told him about Matson. Rudy remembered the angry letters from Wolfe, always stopping just short of making actionable threats. He'd pushed them aside as innocuous, hysterical, and not worth his time.

Wolfe was shaking his head slowly, and Rudy felt his heart leap.

Maybe, just maybe, they could end it peacefully in a few minutes at Grand Junction. He would still recommend charges of air piracy, of course. This would be some other federal prosecutor's jurisdiction, but Rudy would be listened to.

Ken Wolfe's expression was changing. As Rudy watched, a sarcastic little smile began playing around the captain's mouth, and Rudy watched it in puzzlement until Wolfe turned to look him in the eye.

"Nice try, Bostich, I'll give you that. As a snake oil salesman, you're good. Too bad for you there's one small detail you didn't know when you concocted that smooth explanation."

Rudy felt his confidence crumbling. "What are you talking about?

I've concocted nothing."

"Detective Matson had nothing whatsoever to do with the phone records I've obtained. He doesn't even know they exist."

Aboard Gulfstream N5LL. 1:58 '.M.

Dane Bailey pulled back the throttles and let the Gulfstream slow as it pulled even with the AirBridge 737 at the same altitude of ten thousand feet. Kat was still on her knees just behind the center console, her left hand holding the back of Dane's chair, keeping her eyes on the Boeing as she pushed the transmit button.

"Okay, Ken, we're out here to your left."

There was a pause. She could see the outline of a head in the pilot's window of the Boeing, but she could make out no details.

"A G-four is hardly a government-issued aircraft," Ken Wolfe replied.

"I never said it was, Ken. We asked a concerned citizen for help, and he's lending us his plane and crew. The whole damn country's worried about you, Ken."

She heard the transmitter click on, and she heard a derisive snort.

"Sure they are, Kat. What they're concerned about are my passengers.

They're concerned the FBI might not be able to get off a clean shot and drop me. The whole damn country doesn't have a clue what this is really all about."

The opening was there and she took it.

"Okay, but we could remedy that, Ken. We could hook you up with a camera crew on the ground and give you all the time you need to tell the country the whole story." She could almost hear the scream of outrage that would come from FBI headquarters if they heard her making such an offer, but it made sense.

"I'll think about it," he said. "Meanwhile, we're ten miles out. You land first."

"Ken, we went through this at Salt Lake with the F-sixteens. What does it matter? We're unarmed, and no threat to you."

"Nevertheless, you land first or I'm not landing. Got it?"

Kat looked up at Dane, who shrugged and nodded, as he radioed the approach controller and began a left turn to prepare for a visual approach.

"Okay, Ken," Kat replied. "You just tell me how you want to handle this on the ground, okay?"

"Remember, Kat. If you've set up any sort of reception committee, you've imperiled everyone. Anyone gets close to this aircraft without my permission, it goes up in smoke."

"Nobody's going to violate your orders, Captain," Kat told him, praying whoever was leading the team below on the ground knew to keep all vehicles strictly behind the airplane once it was on the ground. They had to stay completely out of sight of the cockpit.

Aboard AirBridge Flight 90. 2:08

Ken Wolfe lowered the 737's flaps to the five-degree setting and slowed to 180 knots as he orbited to the west of the airport, watching the Gulfstream land and turn off onto the ramp. When it was down, he positioned the 737 to fly over the airport, along the runway a thousand feet above the surface to look for any sign of a reception committee.

"Grand Junction Tower, AirBridge Ninety. I'm going to make a high- speed pass over the runway. I'll pull up into a downwind for a VFR landing after that."

"Approved as requested, Ninety," the controller shot back, obviously primed to give the hijacker whatever he wanted.

There was no doubt what the FBI's standard procedures would dictate.

Con the hijacker into landing, get the passengers off safely, and somehow immobilize the aircraft without the hijacker thinking the FBI was responsible. In fact, he thought, they would be keeping the airport open just to convince him things were normal.

Somewhere out there in the grass by the runway, Ken thought, there's a sniper waiting to knock out my tires on rollout if someone gives him the signal.

He knew Grand Junction well. AirBridge had been serving it with 737s for the past six months, and Ken had made many a landing in the arid community. The ramp area was sliding past his left shoulder now at more than three miles per minute, the scene appearing non- threatening, except for one small detail which might mean nothing.

Along the flight line, a large hangar stood with the doors partially open. Normally it was either full open or full closed.

He looked again.

There was a haphazardly parked gaggle of aircraft outside the hangar, as if someone had emptied it in a hurry. Normally the ramp in front of the hangar was empty.

Ken pushed the throttles up and began a climb to the south. He was preparing to push the transmit button when another voice came on the frequency.

"Grand Junction Tower, AirBridge Forty-five with you for the visual.''

AirBridge Forty-five? Ken thought. Oh, of course. The noon flight from the Springs. Somehow it seemed strange that the airline's flights would be going on uninterrupted, but if the airport was being kept open to fool him, adding another AirBridge flight was a convincing touch.

The tower's reply came quickly in his headset.

"Roger, AirBridge Forty-five, cleared to land runway eleven, winds, one-seven-zero at one-two knots."

"Roger, cleared to land."

Ken turned west and flew several miles away from the airport before turning back east toward it. He saw the landing lights of the other AirBridge flight--an identical 737--as it approached the north end of the runway, and he watched it touch down, taxi off the runway, and head back up the ramp abeam the open hangar, toward the commercial terminal.

The other 737 was just passing the hangar. Ken tried to visualize what might be waiting inside. If there were police cars and a SWAT team, the commanders would be standing out of sight.

Ken punched the transmit button, altering his voice slightly to sound irritated. The other 737 flight crew would be on ground-control frequency and wouldn't hear him.

"Tower, this is AirBridge Forty-five about ten miles to the north for a visual. We just heard another flight using our call sign down there.

There's only one of us. What the hell's going on?"

Ken turned his aircraft right to a southerly heading to give himself a better view of the suspicious hangar, now four miles distant. He could imagine the exchange of startled looks among anyone waiting down there. If he was right and there was a reception committee hiding in the hangar, there would be a sudden explosion of activity in a few seconds as they convinced themselves that the hijacked aircraft had landed under the guise of a regularly scheduled flight.

"AirBridge Forty-five, we're, ah, confused, sir," the tower controller began. "You say you're still airborne?"

"Roger that, Grand Junction, and we'd like landing clearance," Ken replied.