The Last Hostage

by Nance, John J. ;

  “I’ll make sure no one tells the hijacker,” she said.

  Annette turned in confusion and retreated into the forward galley, pulling the curtains behind her, and drew a ragged breath. The plastic bag of cellular phones was still dangling from her right hand and she hadn’t even noticed. She placed it in the corner of the galley, against the right front door, and at the same moment remembered her incomplete phone call to operations. She’d tried to find out whether a passenger had been left in Durango, but had they heard her?

  Probably not, she decided, but even if they had the answer ready, how could she get it?

  The kid from CNN is right, she thought. The FBI needs to know what’s happening.

  Annette looked at the cockpit door and tried to imagine the cellular signal detector going off. What would the hijacker do if he thought someone was communicating with the ground without his permission? Was there somewhere around the airplane she could use the phone without the vibrator activating?

  He’d have Ken call me on the interphone, she decided. He’d yell at me not to try again. That’s all.

  Annette made sure the curtains to the galley were pulled before leaning down and digging out the smallest phone she could find. It was the one Bostich had handed her, and she slipped it in her apron pocket before picking up the bag and moving to the interphone panel.

  Ken answered immediately.

  “I’ve got the phones in a bag here by the door. You want them up front?”

  “I’m going to unlock the door, Annette. Open it just far enough to toss the bag inside, then shut it immediately. Look only at the floor. He says if he sees the whites of your eyes, he’ll shoot. He doesn’t want you identifying him. Understand?”

  “Yes, but Ken, can I come in and talk to you?”

  “No! Do you understand the procedure?”

  She looked back toward the cabin, wondering if anyone was listening to her side of the conversation. The woman in 1C was watching the cockpit door, but Rudy Bostich was out of sight behind the partition dividing first class from the forward entryway. Annette kept her voice as low as she could.

  “I understand the procedure, Ken.”

  Annette picked up the bag of cell phones as the click of the electronic door lock release reached her ears. She moved to the door and put her hand on the handle, which was on the right side, the hinge on the left. She pulled it open less than twelve inches. In her peripheral vision, she was aware of the back of Ken’s head in the captain’s chair as she reached in and quickly dropped the bag on the floor just inside the door, but from her position at the right edge of the doorframe, the copilot’s seat was invisible.

  There was another familiar object visible in the few seconds the door was ajar, and her mind raced to consider the possibilities: The crash axe sat in its storage harness on the left sidewall just inside the door.

  Could I grab the axe before he could stop me? she wondered. But what then?

  Annette closed the door as fast as she could, then moved back to the interphone panel, her knees shaking at the mere thought of attacking someone with an axe.

  She picked up the interphone handset and pressed the button.

  “Okay, Ken. They’re all there.”

  “Thanks, Annette.”

  “Ken?”

  There was no answer.

  “Ken, please answer me.”

  The interphone transmit button finally clicked on.

  “What?”

  “Ken, is he listening?”

  “Yes, but we’re getting close to Salt Lake City. We don’t have much time left. There’s much to prepare for, and even I don’t …” His voice trailed off.

  “Don’t what, Ken? Don’t what?”

  “Never mind. I’m being told to shut up. Go sit down and strap in. It’ll be easier that way.”

  A cold chill began creeping up her back.

  “What will be easier, Ken? What is he planning?”

  There was no response, except for the sound of the interphone button being released in the cockpit.

  Annette sank into the forward jumpseat, a hand over her eyes, the phone clutched tightly to her ear. It’ll be easier that way, he had said.

  The sound of the P.A. clicking on stunned her.

  “This is the captain again. Everyone in this aircraft, flight attendants included, must be seated and belted in immediately. Do not get out of your seats for any reason!”

  Annette jumped to her feet and moved into the forward portion of the first class cabin as she felt the aircraft enter a sudden bank to the right. The eyes of a dozen frightened passengers were on her as she realized they were still banking, still rolling to the right. She caught a glimpse of tree-covered mountainsides thousands of feet below, filling the right-hand side windows of the 737.

  The roll was continuing!

  Annette braced herself with a firm hand on the edge of the overhead compartments. She had planned on walking through the cabin, checking on seatbelts, then briefing Kevin.

  They were still rolling, almost through ninety degrees. She was looking straight down on the trees below.

  Straight down!

  Trees continued to move vertically in the windows on the 737’s right side, from the bottom to the top, as the roll continued. A squadron of sunbeams shot through the left side windows at a wild angle, raking the cabin with as many shafts of moving light as the jet had windows.

  What on earth is he doing?

  She realized they were rolling upside down. Trees and rocks and meadows were moving at a crazy angle out of the top of each window frame, giving way to an upside down view of the horizon as she felt herself getting light on her feet and … floating!

  We’re completely inverted!

  There were brief screams and gasps throughout the cabin as the 737 continued to roll through the inverted position.

  Annette realized she was completely weightless. Blue sky and upside down clouds were visible through the right side windows, and the trees and mountainsides were appearing from the top down through the windows on the left side, all of them still moving as the roll continued.

  She heard the engine power being throttled back, and the sound of an increasing slipstream as the aircraft sped up, its nose pointed slightly down as it continued to roll past 270 degrees, three quarters of the way around.

  And within a few seconds, normal gravity returned and the sky repositioned itself correctly in both sets of windows as the 737 returned to level flight.

  Once again the P.A. clicked on, barely overpowering the deafening sound of cries from the passengers and her own pounding heartbeat. The voice was strained and curt.

  “People, I’m told to tell you that was just a sample of what will happen if anyone disobeys this guy’s orders. Don’t even think of trying to interfere. Stay seated. Stay calm. Stay out of it, or he’ll put us through far worse than what you just experienced.”

  AirBridge Airlines Dispatch Center, Colorado Springs International Airport. 11:40 A.M.

  With the connection to AirBridge 90 broken, Judy Smith replaced the handset and looked around at the faces of the chief pilot, the VP of operations, and the company’s president. The three men had followed her from the conference room when the excited crew scheduler had burst in and summoned her.

  “What, Judy? What?” Steve Coberg asked.

  She shook her head. “I lost the connection. We can replay the tape, but she asked the question ‘Did we leave a passenger behind …’ and then I lost her. I never heard what she was referring to.”

  Judy followed them back into the conference room, aware that a stern-looking man from corporate headquarters she recognized as one of the company’s attorneys pointedly closed the door behind her. She heard the distinct sound of the door lock clicking into place, and she noticed that the curtains between the conference room and the dispatch center had already been drawn. When they were completely isolated, the man moved to the head of the table and introduced himself as the airline’s vice president-law as he loo
ked squarely at the chief pilot.

  “Captain Coberg, is it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  His gaze shifted to Judy, and he spoke her name with a question mark.

  “Yes,” she replied.

  “Okay. What you two were just telling us—these concerns you had about the captain’s reaction to a terrible personal loss—can never leave this room. Any unfounded speculation or observations about the emotional stability of one of our pilots is proprietary information, and in fact, it’s not even information. It’s just dangerous gossip.”

  Judy started to speak, but Steve Coberg cut her off.

  “We have no intention of letting that out of here, Mr. Wallace. But we felt these were observational details that the senior leadership needed to know.”

  The lawyer straightened and snorted, a stormy look on his face.

  “Yeah, we really need to know after the fact that this captain may be a loose cannon in a financially marginal commercial airline operation with a gazillion dollars of liability exposure in a volatile stock market.”

  Coberg glared at Judy, then raised both hands in a gesture of puzzlement. “Well, are you suggesting I shouldn’t have said anything to this group? I mean, these are just background worries, but I don’t want the senior leadership to be, well, blindsided if anything ever came of it.”

  “Did you think he should have been grounded, Captain?” Wallace snapped.

  “Well, no, of course not. If I thought Captain Wolfe wasn’t fit to fly, he would have been grounded.”

  Wallace scowled. “That’s exactly the point, Captain. Officially, this man had no problems whatsoever that would have left you or any other employee of this airline with any doubt about his capabilities, because”—he emphasized the word and drew it out—“because … if you officially had held such doubts, you would have officially removed him from flying.”

  “Sir,” Coberg began, but the lawyer’s hand shot up to stop him.

  “To do any less than ground a legitimately questionable captain would be considered gross negligence, even if his problems ultimately have nothing to do with the way this man handles this hijacking. You operations people need to remember that there’s a country full of rabid plaintiff’s attorneys out there who’ll sue us in a heartbeat on the mere suggestion that a captain wasn’t absolutely perfect. An ink smudge in his log book from thirty years ago may be thrown back in our faces in court. Even God might not know about it, but we’re supposed to, and we can’t go around talking about unfounded concerns because some damn four-striper didn’t smile enough at the cute dispatcher when he picked up his papers this morning.”

  “Mr. Wallace, I take offense at that!” Judy snapped, trying to control the anger that had already been coursing through her mind.

  “What, dear? At being cute? Fact of life. You are.”

  James Ryder, the president of the airline, sat forward slightly and tugged at Jack Wallace’s coat sleeve. “Enough, Jack. This is the damn nineties, and girls are sensitive.”

  “So are women, sir!” Judy replied. “I didn’t think our company endorsed sexual harassment, even by officers.”

  Ryder sighed and raised his hand in apology. “I’m sorry, Ms. Smith. Women, of course. I meant to say women.” He sat back and sighed. “Of course we don’t tolerate sexual harassment here.”

  Jack Wallace shrugged as Judy drummed her fingers on the desk and spoke up.

  “So, Mr. Wallace, you’re saying that whatever information we actually had from observing our crews, we’re not supposed to report it, and therefore—”

  He slammed his fist on the table to cut her off.

  “Dammit, Ms. Smith, there is no information unless you acted on it. You understand? If you knew, any of you,” he pointed his index finger at Judy, moved it to the chief pilot, then back. “If you knew that this captain had real, genuine, nonspeculative, emotional problems that, without question, were materially affecting his ability to fly safely—not just his ability to baby-sit copilot egos—you should have canned him or grounded him instantly. That’s what a court would say. That’s what a jury would say. And that’s what the damned press will go clucking about later on, even if every last person gets off that airplane unscathed. So if you didn’t determine whatever you saw in this captain sufficiently worrisome to cause you to act, you saw nothing, and there was nothing to report. Understand? There are no shades of gray here.”

  “But what if someone asks us officially how he seemed this morning?” Judy asked, fixing the lawyer with a hostile gaze.

  “Such as?”

  “Such as the FAA. Such as the FBI. Such as a court, asking us under oath.”

  Wallace stared back at Judy with equal hostility and disdain before answering. His words were assembled with obvious care.

  “I would never instruct you to lie, Ms. Smith. Remember I said that. But I will always tell you to be absolutely, positively sure that what you say under oath comes from hard facts that you absolutely knew at the time, and not from opinion or casual observations of an AirBridge pilot, or anyone else.”

  Steve Coberg shifted uncomfortably in his chair and spoke up. “But what about written reports from other pilots?”

  Wallace shifted his gaze to Coberg and studied him for a few seconds, then smiled and looked down at the table briefly before snapping his gaze back with enough force to cause the chief pilot to flinch.

  “What reports would those be, Captain?”

  “Well—” Coberg began, but Wallace quickly cut him off.

  “I would be very surprised and distressed if you, or your boss,”—Wallace flicked his eyes momentarily at the vice president of operations, who was cringing—“would permit anything resembling such reports to be in the official files of this airline. I’m sure if I came upstairs this afternoon to look through your file cabinets, I would find no such files in existence. Isn’t that right?”

  Wallace kept his eyes locked on Steve Coberg for several awkward seconds until the pilot swallowed loudly and nodded.

  “Good.” Wallace looked at James Ryder, who nodded his assent. “That closes the subject,” Wallace continued. “We have an aircraft in the control of an unknown hijacker who has obviously overcome by force any reasonable resistance of one of our finest captains. We should be focusing on that reality, and that reality alone.”

  EIGHT

  CNN Headquarters, Atlanta. 11:40 A.M. MDT, 1:40 P.M. EDT.

  The director leaned toward the interphone to speak into the anchor’s ear.

  “We lost Billings. The line just went dead. All we can do is wait for a callback.”

  On the monitors, the director could see the anchor nod as he waited for a commercial break to end.

  “We’ve got a freeze-frame of Chris Billings from the demo tape he left,” the director continued, “and we’ll rerun the audio.”

  A voice from the director’s left caught his attention.

  “That shot’s up on five, Bob. That one okay?”

  The director turned to look at the wall of monitors, studied the face of the young newsman, and flashed a thumbs up.

  “Okay, here we go.”

  In the studio, the anchor looked up and resumed his steady gaze at the live camera.

  “We have an extraordinary breaking news story we began reporting to you less than fifteen minutes ago, involving a hijacked commercial airliner—AirBridge Airlines Flight Ninety—bound from Colorado Springs to Phoenix with a hundred and thirty passengers and crew aboard. Also on board that aircraft is CNN correspondent Chris Billings, who, up until a few minutes ago when the connection was lost, had been able to maintain telephone contact from his seat.”

  The screen dissolved to the still picture of Chris Billings as his voice filled the control room explaining the unplanned stop in Durango, the strange and frightening low pass through Monument Valley, and the sudden announcement that the aircraft had been hijacked.

  “At this moment, Reid, none of us on board this flight really knows what the hijack
er wants, or who he might be. None of us in the coach cabin saw anything unusual before that startling announcement. The captain has told us that the hijacker is holding a gun on him in the cockpit and has placed explosives in the cargo hold. Here’s part of the captain’s announcement a few minutes ago.”

  There was a short pause and the scratching of the telephone handset against the speaker on the portable tape recorder as Billings held them together.

  “… He says that he’ll tell us what he’s demanding a little later, but in the meantime he’s ordering me to fly us to Salt Lake City …”

  Billings’s voice came on the line again.

  “Every few sentences the captain would pause, apparently listening to orders from the hijacker. The most fascinating aspect was when the captain mentioned what he knew so far about the hijacker’s demands.”

  “… certain actions by various governments, including the U.S. government, in trying to right a terrible wrong. He says he knows what he’s doing is a capital crime, but the crime he’s trying to address is far worse. I’ll tell you more when I’m permitted to. In the meantime, stay very calm, and again, do NOT try to be a hero. It could get us all killed.”

  “So, all we really know is that we’re being diverted to Salt Lake City by a hijacker who says he’s trying to right a wrong involving …”

  Billings’s voice ended abruptly as the screen dissolved back to the anchor.

  “And as we said before, we lost contact with correspondent Chris Billings at that point. CNN has also learned that the hijacker is demanding that the Attorney General of the United States and a federal judge be placed on standby to talk to him, apparently when the aircraft reaches Salt Lake City. Additionally, we are told by sources close to the White House that the man most likely to be nominated this week to replace the retiring U.S. Attorney General is on that aircraft. Rudolph Bostich, the U.S. Attorney for Connecticut, was en route to Phoenix, Arizona, for an American Bar Association convention.”

  Salt Lake City International Airport. 11:45 A.M.