What Could Go Wrong?

by Willo Davis Roberts

  Mrs. Basker looked distressed. “Oh, my, I’ve tried to tuck it securely under the seat. I wouldn’t want him to get hurt by tripping on it.” She bent over and shoved the bag as far away from the aisle as she could reach.

  Mr. Upton had just come back to his seat when the FASTEN SEAT BELT sign came back on, and a little bell sounded to call attention to it. A moment late the captain spoke over the public address system.

  “Please fasten your seat belts, ladies and gentlemen. I regret to tell you that we must make an unscheduled stop in Portland. There is nothing to be alarmed about, and we will make every effort to see that Flight 211 is resumed as quickly as possible. If you have a problem with connecting flights in San Francisco, please consult the passenger agent as soon as we land. Thank you for your patience.”

  There was a buzz of conversation around us.

  “I thought we didn’t stop anywhere except in San Francisco,” Eddie said, looking up from the chess board.

  “He said an unscheduled stop, stupid,” Charlie said. “I bet I know what it is!”

  Someone behind us raised his voice. “If this means I miss my flight to Dallas, I’m going to be very angry. Stewardess, what does this mean? Why are we landing? I only have fifteen minutes to get to my connecting flight as it is!”

  The stewardess shook her head. “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know any more than you do. Excuse me, I must prepare for landing. I’m sure your questions will be addressed as soon as we’re on the ground.” She moved away, and the buzzing voices continued around us.

  “Engine trouble? Do you think it could be engine trouble?”

  “Aunt Sophie will have kittens if our plane is late. She’ll think something dreadful has happened to us.”

  “Planes are late all the time. We were late taking off from Seattle, remember?”

  “If we get a tail wind, maybe we can make up the lost time. Don’t worry about it, Gladys. We’ll handle it when we get there.”

  Charlie’s eyes were shining. “I’ll bet I know,” he whispered.

  “What?” I asked automatically. I didn’t see how Charlie could know if the flight attendants didn’t know.

  It was as if Charlie read my mind. “They wouldn’t tell us, because they don’t want to panic the passengers.”

  Eddie’s eyes were huge. “What? What is it, Charlie?”

  “I’ll bet,” Charlie said, keeping his voice low so it wouldn’t carry beyond the three of us, “that terrorists have planted a bomb aboard!”

  Chapter Five

  For a minute I thought Eddie was going to choke.

  “Are we being hijacked?”

  “Of course not,” I said quickly. “Hijackers would be waving guns around, demanding to be taken to Cuba or somewhere like that.” But my heart was beginning to pound.

  “A bomb threat,” Charlie repeated. “I’ll bet you anything.”

  “Maybe someone’s up there, in First Class,” Eddie said, gesturing toward the forward compartment. “With a gun.”

  I leaned out into the aisle to see. “I don’t think so. Two of the stewardesses are standing in the galley or the buffet, or whatever they call it. They’re laughing. They wouldn’t be laughing if we were being hijacked.”

  “Or if there was a bomb on board, either,” Eddie said, looking reproachfully at Charlie.

  Charlie was undaunted by this logic. “They don’t know yet, that’s all. Probably only the crew in the cockpit know. That’s where the radio is. All they’ve told the flight attendants is to buckle themselves in, preparing to land.”

  “Anyway, we’re going to land in Portland,” I observed. We felt the change in the plane as it began a turn, and then quickly began to descend.

  “You’re so full of baloney, Charlie,” Eddie told him, “I never know when to believe you. There’s no way you could know, any more than the stewardesses, what’s happening.”

  Charlie smiled a small, secretive smile. “You wait and see,” he said.

  Around us other passengers were speculating on why we were landing, but none of them seemed to have as much imagination as Charlie. Mostly they were concerned or angry about the possibility of missing connecting flights.

  “If we’re on the ground very long,” I said, “maybe we’d better call Aunt Molly and tell her we’re going to be late.”

  “Sure,” Charlie agreed. “No need to tell her why. It would only upset her.”

  “I just hope my mom doesn’t call her to see if we got in right on time,” I mused, trying to relax. The jet angled down, down, and it made my stomach feel peculiar. “If we get into any kind of trouble, it may be the last trip my folks ever let me take.”

  “What kind of trouble would we be in,” Charlie asked reasonably, “just because our plane made an unscheduled stop? It’s not our fault.”

  “Besides,” Eddie added, “it may just be that a passenger is sick, or there’s an important passenger they want us to pick up in Portland. Something perfectly simple.”

  It was clear that he was less thrilled than Charlie was at the idea that we might be landing because of a bomb scare.

  Charlie shook his head in condescending amusement. “You’re so naive, Eddie. You wait and see. I’ll be right.”

  Eddie shifted his gaze to me and I shrugged. As the jet banked I caught a glimpse of the Columbia River below us as we dropped rapidly into Portland International Airport, and my stomach was tightening up again.

  We landed without a hitch, of course. I felt it when the wheels touched down, but it was smooth and easy. I heard Mrs. Basker exhale in relief and figured she’d been holding her breath, too. She gave me a nervous smile.

  “I suppose one gets used to this, after a while,” she said, almost in apology.

  “Sure,” I agreed. “I wonder, are we supposed to take our stuff with us when we get off? Or will we be getting right back on?”

  “If we’re picking up someone, or letting someone off who’s sick,” Eddie said hopefully, “we shouldn’t have to get off ourselves, should we?”

  Charlie rolled his eyes. “Why won’t you believe me?” he asked.

  Charlie was right about the getting-off part of it. As soon as we’d rolled up to the gate, even before the FASTEN SEAT BELT sign went off, one of the attendants made the announcement.

  “We do not expect to be in Portland for more than a short time, but the captain asks that you take your carry-on baggage with you when you leave the plane. It is suggested that you remain in the boarding area. The passenger agent will keep you informed as to when Flight 211 will resume. We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your patience.”

  “What patience?” Mrs. Hall muttered, but she didn’t sound angry about the delay.

  A few other people did. We unfastened our belts and scrambled around getting our carry-on luggage amid some grumbling. Our exit from the plane was slowed by people asking questions of the flight crew, questions nobody was answering.

  Mr. Upton was just ahead of me. As sour as he’d been when he boarded, I expected him to be pretty grumpy about an unscheduled landing; after all, he’d had to rush and almost missed the flight, so I figured it was important to him to get to San Francisco in a hurry. However, he shuffled along with everyone else, in no particular rush now.

  Mrs. Basker was right behind me. She seemed perfectly cheerful. “I wonder if the delay will mean we won’t get our dinner as scheduled? I called ahead to see if they would be serving a meal, or if I should plan on a substantial lunch before I left, and they said we’d have dinner. If that’s canceled because of whatever this problem is, maybe I’d better try to get a bite while we’re here. I wonder if they can tell us how long it will be?”

  They couldn’t. Everybody was wanting to know the same thing, but the stewardess at the door could only smile and shake her head. She didn’t know yet. And if the captain had informed her of why we’d had to land, she wasn’t sharing the information with the passengers.

  “Getting a snack sounds like a good idea,”
Eddie said, though since it had only taken us about an hour to fly to Portland, his hamburger and chips had barely had time to settle.

  “Yeah,” Charlie agreed. “Let’s find out first if they’ll announce departure from here over the P.A. system. If so, it should be safe to go find a place to eat.”

  We went up the carpeted ramp, being jostled by anxious or disgruntled travelers. Mrs. Basker had somehow gotten ahead of us, and I recognized her voice. “Excuse me, sir, I think you’ve gotten caught on my bag.”

  I glanced up to see her disentangling the straps of her flight bag from Mr. Upton’s hand, which seemed to have snagged on it as they walked side by side up the ramp.

  “Oh, sorry,” he said, letting her pull it free. “It’s so crowded in here, you can’t help walking on each other.”

  I didn’t think it was that crowded. Since Mr. Upton hadn’t been carrying any luggage when he boarded, I didn’t see how he could have confused her bag with one of his own, or how he could have failed to notice when he’d caught on hers, but it was none of my business. At least he wasn’t snarling at her, though he looked annoyed, the way he had when the stewardess had refused to allow him to change seats.

  There was a crowd milling around the passenger agent’s booth, but they did at least tell us that the P.A. announcer would give us enough warning to get back for our flight.

  Portland International was pretty big, too. (Charlie, naturally, had to inform us that San Francisco International was much bigger. I thought it might be nice to travel somewhere Charlie hadn’t already been, so he didn’t know everything ahead of the rest of us.)

  We trotted across garish red-and-blue carpeting in Charlie’s wake. “There’s a Häagen Dazs ice-cream parlor down this way,” he informed us, and I thought maybe it was a good idea, after all, that he knew the way to that. Eddie and I would have been hesitant to get that far away from our plane for fear of getting confused on how to get back fast when our departure was announced.

  There were huge murals on the walls of the city of Portland and of the rocky Oregon coast. We hurried along, bags slapping against us, past a display of a really old-style car that looked brand-new—Charlie said it was built from a kit, so it wasn’t a genuine antique—and other displays of sculptures and a model airplane. Eddie wanted to pause at that last one, but I nudged him.

  “You want time to eat, or not? You can look at that on the way back if there’s time.”

  Reluctantly, he drew himself away. “Yeah. An ice-cream shop, Charlie said. Maybe a banana split would go good.”

  That sounded good to me, too. I dodged around a potted plant—some kind of miniature palm tree—and looked ahead down the wide corridor. “They’ve got signs in Japanese,” I noted. “And banks and clothing stores, even.”

  “Expensive,” Charlie said succinctly. Of course I hadn’t intended to buy anything there; like Eddie, I was only looking.

  We all three had banana splits. They were expensive, too, but huge and delicious. When we finished there still hadn’t been any announcement about Flight 211. On our way back to our loading area, the boys both checked out the model airplane again.

  There was a confectioners’ and we investigated the prices of their chocolates, then decided we’d stick with the candy bars we had. There were candy places in San Francisco, too, and we didn’t want to run out of money before we even got there.

  I saw a bank of telephones and stopped. “I forgot, I was going to call Aunt Molly. Here, Charlie, hold this while I find her number. I hope she’s home. I wouldn’t want her to call Mom when we don’t show up on time, just to see if we left when we were supposed to. Dad would have the F.B.I. on the case in half an hour.”

  I shoved my flight bag at Charlie and dug into my purse for the phone number. I was lucky; Aunt Molly answered on the second ring.

  She sounded startled when she recognized my voice. “You’re not here already, are you, Gracie?”

  “No. We had to land in Portland for some reason, and we’re going to be late getting to San Francisco.”

  “Oh. Engine trouble?”

  “They didn’t tell us. Charlie’s sure terrorists put a bomb on board.”

  Aunt Molly laughed. “Sounds like Charlie, all right. Have they given you any idea how late you’ll get here?”

  “Not so far. And I suppose by the time they do, there won’t be time to call you back.”

  “Well, let’s see. I’m not keen on sitting at the airport for hours waiting, but I don’t want you to have to wait, either. Tell you what. Have you got something to write with? And a piece of paper?”

  “Just a minute.” I found a pencil but no paper except the newspaper Mrs. Basker had handed me. I’d use the edge of that. “Okay. Shoot.”

  “Take down this phone number.” She read it off, and I read it back to her to make sure I had it right. “This is my friend Andrea’s number, and she lives only two miles from the airport. I’ll wait at her apartment, and then it won’t take long when you call for me to get there. Let me know as soon as you get in, before you go to collect your luggage, all right? Then I’ll meet you in the baggage area. I should be there by the time you’ve claimed your suitcases. If you don’t see me, wait by the Avis counter; they have a red sign, so it’s easy to see. You got that?”

  “Got it,” I agreed.

  “Good. I’ll be waiting for your call. See you in a few hours,” Aunt Molly confirmed, and we said good-bye.

  When we got back to the loading area, we recognized a lot of the passengers waiting there. Including one that surprised us quite a bit.

  I grabbed Charlie’s arm. “Hey! Look! It’s the crabby guy in the Hawaiian shirt, from Seattle! He didn’t get on Flight 211, did he?”

  “No way,” Charlie said, swiveling to stare at the man, who hadn’t noticed us. He grinned. “He followed you to get back his newspaper.”

  “How’d he get here the same time we did? Well, no more than half an hour later, anyway.”

  “Who knows? He’s witchy enough he could have come on a broom.”

  “He must have taken a later flight,” Eddie said, more practically.

  “Or he chartered his own plane,” Charlie suggested.

  The man in the Hawaiian shirt seemed to be looking over the crowd from a vantage point on the edge of it. He was chewing gum like crazy. I began to understand why our teachers wouldn’t let us chew it in class; he looked gross.

  “Why would he do that? He could have flown on our plane; there were empty seats, and he was there in plenty of time to get on it,” I objected.

  “He probably had to go to the bathroom at the last minute and didn’t get back fast enough, so he missed the flight.”

  “We got delayed while we waited for that other guy,” Eddie pointed out. “He’d have had to be in the bathroom for a long time.”

  Charlie laughed. “That’s been known to happen. Maybe there was a long waiting line or something. Come on, let’s find seats. It doesn’t look as if we’re leaving soon.”

  The seats close to the departure door were taken, so we settled down in a back row. I was arranging my bag and purse under my seat when I heard the conversation ahead of us, between a couple I remembered had been angry and upset about the delay.

  “How will we know it’s safe to get back on the plane?” the woman was asking.

  “Gladys, they won’t let us on unless it’s safe.”

  “But if they don’t find the bomb, how will we know it isn’t still on there?”

  I sucked in a breath and sat back, forgetting my gear. A bomb?

  “If they don’t find it, it’s because there is no bomb,” the husband replied. “So it will be safe to get on the plane. I promise you.”

  “How can you know that, Howard? Why would anyone tell them there was a bomb aboard if there wasn’t one?”

  “Who knows why kooks do things? They like a good laugh, knowing they scared a whole lot of people, I suppose. The security people are used to things like this, Gladys. Trust them to take c
are of it. They won’t take any chances loading up a plane if there’s any possibility there’s a bomb hidden on it.”

  I looked at Charlie. He was grinning. Eddie’s mouth had sagged open so he looked a bit like Max’s goldfish.

  “I told you,” Charlie said, sounding smug. “A bomb.”

  So Charlie was right again. I sighed.

  Of course it never occurred to any of us that a bomb threat had anything to do with us. Not even to Charlie.

  Chapter Six

  Charlie was right. There was no question about it. We had landed in Portland because of a bomb threat.

  I wondered if it would be in the paper, and imagined what my dad would say. I didn’t see how they could blame this on Charlie, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Dad did.

  Everybody was talking about it. Charlie struck up a conversation with the man beyond him, who seemed to know all about it.

  “Did the passenger agent make an announcement about it?” Charlie wanted to know.

  “No, no. The airlines don’t tell you anything. But we saw the crew going on board to search the plane, and somebody talked to one of them. Seems like there was a phone call—up in Seattle, where the flight originated—said there was a bomb aboard, set to go off over San Francisco. Some of those idiots protesting something by trying to kill off a whole planeload of people! What good’s that going to do their cause, whatever it is?” The man was middle-aged, rather overweight and bald, wearing a rumpled business suit. He sighed. “The crew’s been in there and gone, and they still aren’t letting us get back on. Oh, ho, they’re bringing in reinforcements! See, there’s another crew going on!”

  It didn’t seem to me they’d leave the plane as close as it was to the terminal if they really thought there was a likelihood it would blow up, but of course it wasn’t scheduled to be over San Francisco quite yet, though we’d already been in Portland for over half an hour. We watched the new crew of investigators go aboard; and as soon as they’d disappeared down the carpeted ramp, the buzz of excited conversation started again.