The Last Hostage (6 page)

She heard the phone being handed over, and a new voice filled the line.

"This is Johnny Beck."

Judy introduced herself. "Mr. Beck, I'm very sorry we left you behind.

Can you tell me how it happened?"

As he talked, Judy began making her trademark doodles on a legal pad, a steady flow of circles and triangles.

Just as suddenly, she stopped.

"Wait a minute. The captain asked you to do what?"

"I was talking to him in the cockpit, and he told me he'd forgotten to pick up his new flight plan, and would I run in and get it for him."

"And that's when you left the plane?"

"Yes, ma'am. But no one in this office knew what he was talking about, and when I headed back outside, the door was closed and the engines were starting."

"Was there someone else in the cockpit, or standing in the doorway, when you were there, Mr. Beck?"

"No. No one was around but the captain and me."

"You're sure?"

"Yes."

"How about on the ramp, say, at the bottom of the stairs?"

"No, ma'am. I was the only one near the aircraft when I got off."

Judy closed her eyes and tried to envision the scene. He had gone inside, made some inquiries, then returned. He had gone inside looking for a flight plan that Ken Wolfe should have known wouldn't be there. Dispatch wouldn't be sending a new flight plan to an aircraft that maintenance had yet to examine.

"How long were you inside, Mr. Beck?"

"Not more than three minutes, four tops. Ma'am, Nancy... my wife... is on the airplane. She's pregnant and probably worried silly about me, since I didn't come back aboard." His voice broke slightly, the stress and worry clearly audible. "Where are they now? Are you sure they're okay?"

Judy calculated the time it would take for the ground crew to move the stairs and the flight attendant to close the door, let alone the time it would take to start the engines. Three minutes would barely be enough.

"Mr. Beck, are you sure he had an engine running when you returned?"

"Yes. Yes, absolutely. But where are they now?"

Judy realized she had been only half-listening to his question.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Beck. The aircraft's headed for Phoenix right now, and we'll get this figured out and get you two back together as soon as we can." The lie rolled too easily out of her mouth, she thought, but what should she say? Your lovely wife is a hostage of some unknown maniac who's commandeered one of our jets?

No, a lie would do for now.

Judy thanked him and replaced the receiver with her eyes riveted on the group of senior executives in the corner.

Judy felt a cold buzz erupt somewhere in her body. It spread rapidly outward, making her legs feel weak, and she held the corner of her desk as she sat down. Verne Garcia's words were all too fresh suddenly in her memory: Wolfe looked a bit strange to me, Verne had said. It was like he was somewhere else, you know? He had a kind of distant, disengaged look.

There were two pilots aboard, and the captain had managed to get both of them off the airplane.

Why?

She rubbed her eyes and shook her head slightly to expunge the small wave of apprehension.

FBI Headquarters, Washington, D.C. 11:00 A.M. MDT, 1:00 A.M. EDT.

Agent Clark Roberts took the hijacking alert from the FAA Command Center in Virginia and began carefully following the established procedures, notifying the appropriate superiors and the field office in Denver and the resident agency office in Colorado Springs. He'd already started the search for the FBI's nearest hostage negotiator when another agent leaned in the door.

"We've got a demand from the subject. You on a first name basis with the Attorney General of the United States?"

Roberts frowned and narrowed his eyes. "What?"

"He's demanding a line to the Attorney General, the Stamford D.A., and the head of the Colorado State Patrol, along with a state judge and federal judge." "Who is?"

"The hijacker."

"You kidding?" Clark Roberts watched the other agent shake his head. "You're not kidding! Lord. A demand like that means it's political.''

"Also, he's headed to Salt Lake City. I checked a second ago. We've got an agent there who's trained."

"Good!"

"But... it's a she."

Roberts looked at the other man carefully. "A woman?"

He nodded. "You want to call?"

"When did we train a female negotiator?" Roberts asked.

"We've got several of them, but that's not her primary job, Clark.

However, she has a degree in psychology and she worked as a psychologist for three years before she became an agent at the Bureau. Our esteemed deputy director said to tell you we go with her."

"This lady have a name?"

"Here's her number in Salt Lake. Agent Katherine Bronsky. I already dialed her beeper and gave your number. We're setting up a command post of sorts at the airport, with the help of the airport police, and she needs to be out there yesterday."

"How much experience does Agent Bronsky have?"

The other agent looked at Roberts with a guarded smile and waited a few seconds before answering. "Seems she's in her second year as a basic agent, but they let her take the hostage negotiator school at Quantico earlier than normal about a month ago because of her previous experience."

"Oh, Lord."

"Hey, maybe she'll bring a fresh perspective. And after all, we don't even know if the hijacker is male or female."

"It would be politically incorrect of me to object on the basis that a marginally qualified female has no business dealing with a hijacker of any gender, so I won't."

"Good. I didn't hear you not say that."

Clark Roberts shook his head. "How long before the aircraft can get to Salt Lake?"

"At least a half hour."

"And how long before we're set up there?" Roberts added.

"At least a half hour."

"Did I ever tell you you're a joy to work with?"

"NO."

"Good. Don't hold your damn breath."

Aboard AirBridge Flight 90. 11:05 A.M.

"Folks, this is your captain again. Put down whatever you're reading and look out of either side of the aircraft. You're about to get a spectacular view of the historic buttes which make up Monument Valley. You've seen them in a thousand Western movies, now we're going to see them up close."

Annette looked once more into the frightened eyes of her two co- workers as they stood in the rear galley where she'd briefed them on the hijacking. "I've got to get back up there before he looks through the peephole."

Bev nodded as Kevin pointed to the side of the aircraft. "I don't know what the hell this excursion has to do with anything, but I want to see it."

Annette hurried back up the aisle, almost missing the voice of the young woman in seat 18E.

"Miss, please! Could I talk to you?"

Annette turned, startled to find herself facing the wife of the young pilot who had entered the cockpit back in Durango. She felt her stomach tightening as she wondered again whether he could be the hijacker, and whether she, too, might be involved.

"Yes?"

"I'm Nancy Beck. My husband went up front when the captain asked if anyone wanted to see the cockpit back in Durango. I haven't seen him since then, and I just.., you know, want to make sure he's riding on the jumpseat up there."

Annette forced herself to smile. "That's exactly where he is, Mrs. Beck."

She smiled and sat back, looking relieved. "Thanks a lot."

Annette nodded, hesitated, and shifted her weight as she tried to decide how to phrase the question she'd been turning over in her mind.

"Mrs. Beck, your husband, is he, ah..." "I'm sorry?" she said, leaning toward Annette, looking puzzled. "I'm sorry. I forgot what I was going to ask."

Nancy Beck nodded as Annette turned and moved back to first class and into an empty row of seats to peer out the window. The 737 had been rocking and bucking gently in the turbulence from thermals, rising columns of hot air from the rapidly heating desert below, but she was unprepared to see the landscape shooting by in such a crazy blur.

She moved closer and slid into a window seat, astounded to see how low they were, a cold knot of fear compressing her stomach.

There was a blur to the left, to the front of the aircraft. Annette looked forward, instantly overwhelmed by the great looming presence of the West Mitten as the huge butte rushed past the window less than a thousand feet to the side, its summit towering considerably higher than Flight 90 was flying.

Her hand fluttered involuntarily to her mouth as the aircraft flew by in a partial left bank, bouncing in the pronounced rough air.

Annette jerked her head to the right in time to see the other great butte filling, the windows, seemingly close enough to touch, the texture of the rocks on the near vertical walls visible in great detail and relief, the speed and proximity leaving her little doubt they were about to crash.

She snapped her head back to the left again, spotting the visitor center on the ridge line, mentally bracing for an impact she knew instinctively they couldn't survive. It wasn't an internal scream of fright, merely a split-second acknowledgment that they were about to smash into the terrain at several hundred miles per hour.

Instead, there was a sudden acceleration of the engines and a sharp pull up, and in a split second the rim of the valley flashed beneath them at tree top level.

No impact.

The 737 whistled over a dirt road, then a highway, finally beginning a sharp right climbing turn as the desert floor dropped away.

Suddenly there was intense commotion throughout the cabin, as if everyone had exhaled at the same moment. Annette could see members of the high school band gripping their armrests in confusion, unsure whether to be scared or exhilarated. But the fear-of-flying group was faring poorly, and watching her with wide-eyed intensity-a dozen sets of eyes flaring like a squadron of startled owls, each trying to decide whether the chief flight attendant was amused or terrified, so they could follow suit.

The verbal reactions registered in her mind, but it was the unruly Blenheim in 6C leaning inside the first class curtain whose voice assaulted her the moment she stood up and moved back to the aisle.

"Stewardess, what in the hell is that idiot up there doing?"

She shook her head, her voice still a hostage to shock, the same question echoing in her own mind.

Annette moved toward him, her face ashen, her voice barely a squeak.

"Sir, I'll try to find out what happened. I warned you to stay seated."

The man's eyebrows were fluttering angrily, hiding his obvious fright, but he nodded and sank back in his seat as his hands fumbled with the seatbelt.

Annette could hear a low rumble of conversation from the coach cabin as she turned away and moved quickly forward into the entry way to pick up the interphone handset, her finger jabbing repeatedly at the captain call button, not caring whether she irritated Wolfe or the hijacker.

"Yes?" Ken's voice sounded testy.

"What in heaven's name was that all about? You've scared the hell out of everyone, Ken."

"No choice, Annette. At least I kept us flying. It's too complicated to explain."

"Ken, you've got an airplane full of traumatized people. We couldn't have been five hundred feet off the ground."

"Two hundred, actually."

"Good Lord? She rubbed her temple, her eyes fixated on nothing.

"Annette, he's telling me to go to Salt Lake City now, so it'll calm down."

"I hope so.

Do we know what he wants?"

"World peace, a chicken in every pot, and death to criminals. I don't really know yet."

"You're going to need to talk to the passengers, Ken. You need to level with them."

"Why?"

"Because they're scared to death. I'm scared to death. Not knowing what's going on is worse than hearing that we're hijacked."

"You sure about that? You know the truth, Annette, but did it keep you calm?"

"I'd wager it didn't."

"You've got to tell them something! Make up a story that it's okay to buzz a national monument and play chicken with mountains.

Something. We're getting unanswerable questions back here." "Deal with it, Annette. I can only do what this nan wants." "He's got a gun?"

"Worse than that. He's got a load of plastic explosives in his checked baggage.

He's also got an electronic trigger in his hand called a dead man's switch."

For what seemed like an eternity, she couldn't make her voice work. A gun was bad enough with a single pilot aboard. Explosives too?

"What..."

she swallowed, trying to clear her throat of the boulder-size lump.

"What should I do back here, Ken?" Annette forced herself to breathe.