Accidental Heroes

by Danielle Steel

  “No one will ever know about this. I promise.” And she meant it. What they were thinking of doing next was in a gray area of the law.

  “I don’t know if he lives in the same place.” She jotted the address down for them on a scrap of paper, with the door and elevator codes, and handed it to her.

  “We’ll check it out,” Lucy said. But the address she’d given them was the same as the one in his personnel file. He hadn’t moved.

  And then Bianca looked at her with genuine concern in her big, dark eyes the color of bittersweet chocolate. It was easy to believe she’d been a model, she still looked like one. Jason had good taste in women, whether he liked them or not, or respected them, which clearly he didn’t. “Has he done something really bad?” she asked, worried about him. She had thought she loved him once, even if only briefly, and he had proven himself unworthy of it.

  “Not that I’m aware of,” Lucy said honestly, not knowing all the details of the case. “We’re trying to protect him too, and keep him from doing something that would hurt people. It sounds like he needs to be saved from himself when his temper gets the best of him.”

  Bianca nodded instant agreement, and felt better about talking to them after what Lucy said. “I hope everything turns out okay.”

  “You helped us a lot,” Lucy said gratefully. “You really made a difference.” It was important for Bianca to know that, and to feel she had done a good thing, not that she had betrayed someone she once cared about. Lucy knew how vital that was in an investigation like this one, and she was mindful of it. “Thank you,” she said again, as the three of them shook hands, and Bianca slipped her surgical cap back on and they walked out of the room together. Paul and Lucy headed toward the exit then, and Bianca back to surgery, as the attendant at the desk stared at them and wondered what had happened. For a minute, she had thought the two Homeland Security agents were going to arrest her if she didn’t get Bianca for them fast enough. But whatever it was, it must have been important.

  Bianca looked thoughtful as she got in the elevator to go back to work. She just hoped that Jason wouldn’t do anything stupid, and that she had helped to stop him. She didn’t think he would do anything really terrible to hurt anyone, she hoped not, but he was dangerous when he got in a rage. It all depended on how angry he got, and how severely he thought he’d gotten screwed over. That was the trouble with Jason. You couldn’t reason with him, and you never knew for sure what he would do. Hopefully nothing.

  When Paul and Lucy got back in the car at the UCSF garage, Lucy pulled the key Bianca had given her out of her pocket and held it up to Paul.

  “Bingo!” he said, grinning at her. “You were brilliant with her, Lucy.” Paul had hardly said a word while they were with Bianca. He knew when to keep quiet, and Lucy appreciated that about him. She had worked with a number of partners who had two left feet and a big mouth, and managed to get both feet into it with regularity. She had hated working with them, but not with Paul. “What do we do now? Go back to the office and call them in New York, or take a quick look in the apartment?”

  They knew he was on a plane, so they didn’t have to worry about his being there. It was one of the few things the New York office had shared with San Francisco, other than the urgency of the matter, which led Paul and Lucy to believe that there was a plane currently in danger because of him. They had figured that much out. They weren’t novices. And they also knew that searching his apartment could really give them a fast leg up. It was illegal to do so without a warrant, except in very unusual circumstances, but it was worth a shot, despite the impropriety of doing it on their own authority. But they could justify it later, if they had to. Homeland Security had full autonomy and were able to use their own discretion, although they were supposed to get their orders from their superiors and a search warrant, but sometimes that wasn’t possible, and a quick decision had to be made. They could have called their office, but decided not to.

  “I vote for the apartment,” Lucy said as Paul smiled at her.

  “I knew you would. Me too. It could save us a lot of time and heartache later.” They were both willing to cross the line to get the job done in this case.

  “Let’s hope he doesn’t have a girlfriend in bed when we get there,” Lucy commented.

  “We can always tie her up and put her in the closet,” Paul suggested.

  She gave him the address off the piece of paper, and it wasn’t far away. He had an apartment in the newly gentrified section South of Market, near the water. The building looked clean and modern when they got there. There was a code for the outer door, which Bianca had given them and they were relieved to find hadn’t changed. And another one for the elevator, which still worked too.

  “Smooth as silk,” Paul commented, as they rode up to the seventh floor.

  “Don’t talk until we see if he had the locks changed.” They had checked the mailboxes and knew he was still living there. If he had moved, they would have lost a major advantage. Bianca had given them the key to a gold mine, if it panned out.

  They got into the apartment easily. He hadn’t double-locked the door. There was no alarm, and there was no one in the apartment. It was a small one-bedroom box, but was probably expensive in that location, and it had a view of the bay, facing east, with the newly rebuilt Bay Bridge just beyond his windows, leading to Oakland and Berkeley and the suburbs in the East Bay. There were dishes in the sink, the bed was unmade, and there were clothes strewn around on the floor, but it looked no worse than any bachelor’s apartment, and wasn’t unusually disorderly. Everything looked normal for a guy living alone with a decent salary and a good job.

  Paul checked the bedroom and bathroom and the closets, while Lucy went straight to the desk. They didn’t want to stay long, in case someone else had a key, even a cleaning person, and showed up. Paul announced from the bedroom that there was no sign of women’s clothing, so he must have thrown Bianca’s away, and had no woman living with him to replace her.

  Lucy looked in all the drawers first, and found nothing special there. There was a stack of books on the floor, which she paid no attention to at first, his computer was locked and they didn’t have the password. It would have been too much to hope for to expect Bianca to give them that too. The key to his apartment was gift enough. And then Lucy sat down at the desk, and dug through some papers to see what was on the surface of the desk. She found an iPad under some magazines, and expected it to be locked too. It wasn’t, and opened easily. She was startled at first by how easy it was, but he hadn’t expected his apartment to be invaded. They had noticed that he lived in barren circumstances. There were no photographs, nothing on the walls, nothing personal, just basic furniture that almost looked like it might have come with the apartment as some kind of furnished rental.

  There was nothing personal on the iPad either, no favorite songs, email, no family photographs or videos. And then she opened a section called “Notes” that looked like some kind of research. He had put it on there under the heading “weapons,” and she started to go through it, and rapidly realized that all the weapons posted on it had one thing in common—none of them had component parts that were metal. All were made of plastic or materials that could not be seen by a metal detector. They were mostly handguns one could assemble oneself, and there were diagrams that showed how to make them. Some were surprisingly efficient-looking, and could be built by 3D printers. Others could be made of household items. He had posted an ad as well of a gun that looked like a ballpoint pen. There were many plastic guns listed, and he had gotten them all from the Internet, along with the instructions of how to build and assemble them. She was stunned as she went through the file.

  “What’d you get?” Paul asked her as he walked by to search the kitchen, and she looked up at him with amazement.

  “Shit, Paul. This is a whole arsenal of plastic guns and weapons you can get past any metal detector
or X-ray machine, like the ones at the airport.” Paul stopped and came to look, and whistled as she scrolled through them to show him. “Jesus, how can they put stuff like this on the net, so any kid can build them, or anyone who wants to take over a plane?” There were dozens of different models.

  Lucy sped quickly to other sections then, and found every article that had been published on the German plane that had been taken down by a suicidal pilot no one had suspected in 2015, in the French Alps, and killed 150 innocent people. And there was another whole section on different forms of suicide, also from the Internet, with the pros and cons listed in each case, as to how effective, complicated, or painful they might be. But the section on plastic guns that could be easily built, with diagrams, told them the story they thought New York was looking for, and the articles about suicide completed it. Then she examined the books she had seen on the floor, and discovered they were all about weaponry and suicide. He had put time and effort into this. Whatever they were afraid he was going to do on a plane was no accident, and had been carefully planned, either for that day or another one. It was clear Jason Andrews had a plan. The big question was whether or not he had one of the homemade, easy-to-assemble plastic guns with him on the aircraft. There was no way to know that, but it was a distinct possibility. He certainly knew how to build them.

  “We’d better get back to the office,” Paul said quickly. Everything they needed, and New York had feared, was on the iPad. They were afraid they could have a rogue pilot on their hands, and there was no question of it now. “Take the iPad with you,” he said to her, and she rolled her eyes at him.

  “Obviously. I wasn’t planning to leave it.”

  “Sorry.” They took a last sweep of the apartment and left immediately, leaving the top lock undone, as it had been when they arrived, pressed the button for the elevator, and were in it a minute later. Paul put a flashing red light on top of the car so they could run red lights on the way back, but he didn’t put the siren on. Lucy called the office as he dodged through traffic.

  “I think we’ve got what you’re looking for,” Lucy told their boss, Alan Wexler, on her cellphone.

  “Do I want to know how you got it?” he asked.

  “Probably not. But it’s an iPad full of information about plastic weaponry you can build yourself and get through any X-ray machine or metal detector. He’s got a ton of stuff on suicide, and all the articles about the German plane that was brought down by the suicidal copilot in the Alps. We’re bringing the iPad with us.”

  “I’ll call New York. Did you get anything from the girlfriend? Does she know anything about a plan?”

  “Ex-girlfriend. She hasn’t heard from him in a year. He has an uncontrollable temper, and is pissed at the airline for keeping him deadlocked as a copilot until he deals with it. She gave us the key to his apartment.”

  “I figured something like that if you’ve got his iPad. At least you didn’t break in.”

  “Walked in through the front door, and out with the iPad,” she said simply.

  “I’ll set up a conference call with New York as soon as you get back. How fast can you get here?”

  “Look out your office window. We just pulled up,” Lucy said, as Paul screeched to a stop and they both jumped out. Lucy had the iPad in her purse, and they went straight to the chief’s office. He stood up when he saw them. She flipped through what was posted and he nodded, as she handed him the iPad.

  Now they had a problem. A big one. As big or bigger than Ben, Dave, and Alan Wexler had feared in their worst-case scenarios. They had a pilot who was angry at the airline, bent on suicide, and probably armed with weapons he had been able to get through the X-ray at JFK. And just in case that wasn’t enough, he might be planning to take the Golden Gate Bridge with him, to make sure he garnered maximum attention.

  Alan Wexler thanked Paul and Lucy for their extraordinary work in record time, and told his assistant to set up the conference call with Homeland Security in New York. One thing was for sure. He knew Ben Waterman wasn’t going to be happy with what they got. Paul and Lucy had done a masterful job.

  Chapter Eight

  After Amanda had gone to her office to cool off following her disagreement with Ben about who their real risk might be, she thought about it for a while and then made a phone call. It was her only hope of getting through to them. She knew that she couldn’t do it alone. She needed backup. The name that came to her readily was Mildred Stern, the psychiatrist they often used in hostage situations, either to help them assess the situation and the risk to the hostages, or to help them communicate better with the hostage takers. She was highly respected in her field, and had written several books about relationships and how they could sometimes be compared to hostage situations. She had a background in criminology like Amanda herself. And she also evaluated and treated Homeland Security officers who had been affected by traumatic situations and were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. She had an office right at the airport in one of the Homeland Security administrative buildings.

  Amanda called her and was lucky to reach her. The eminent psychiatrist said she was between patients. Amanda described the situation to her. She said they were faced with a potentially high-risk situation, and the officer in charge was barking up the wrong tree in his assessment. He was focusing on the copilot, who she was convinced was not a threat, and refusing to correctly assess the pilot, who Amanda felt was a bomb waiting to go off and was capable of bringing the plane down.

  “Sounds like a tough situation,” Mildred said quietly. “I haven’t seen any news bulletins on it, so you’ve kept it quiet so far. What kind of time are we talking about here?”

  “Two hours at most,” Amanda said succinctly, “maybe an hour and a half, worst case an hour, before the plane is due to land. We’re not even sure it’s a real threat, but it could be very real. It sounds like a suicide possibility, and we’ve got three pilots in the cockpit who all qualify. It started with a postcard found by a TSA agent, and nothing may come of it, but we can’t take the chance,” Amanda explained reasonably. What wasn’t reasonable, as far as she was concerned, was Ben Waterman’s assessment of it. And she needed the psychiatrist’s help to change his mind.

  “Landing here?” Mildred asked, as she stood up and grabbed her purse from under her desk. Her office had an institutional-looking desk, two chairs, and a narrow bed a patient could lie down on. There was nothing attractive about it. It was purely functional. But her passion for criminology had led her to give up a lucrative Park Avenue practice twenty years before. She’d been working with SWAT teams ever since. As the daughter of a famous criminal lawyer in Chicago, she had finally found her niche.

  “Landing at SFO,” Amanda answered her. “The flight left here at eight A.M.”

  “Why three pilots?”

  “We have a senior captain flying deadhead on the flight. He had a TIA on the ground two days ago, and they retired him on the spot. He’s flying home in the cockpit. His career is over, and he lost his wife to cancer last year. He’s a suicide risk too. Can you possibly come over and help me get through to the man in charge on this? We’ve got less than two hours to do it, with a hundred and eleven passengers and flight crew on a sold-out flight.”

  “I’ll meet you at your office in five minutes,” she promised, and Amanda smiled, relieved that she had called her. She was sure Mildred could help her turn the tide. Amanda admired Mildred enormously and had read all her books, although she’d never worked with her before. But like Amanda, she was a woman functioning in a man’s world, and she knew how to deal with it. Amanda was still learning the ropes of how to make her male colleagues and superiors respect her, and she knew they didn’t and made fun of her behind her back. She was getting tired of it. She was always pushing the machine of bureaucracy uphill, while they pooh-poohed her theories and ignored her degrees in favor of their instincts and experience, wh
ich she knew were valuable but weren’t everything. And they refused to acknowledge that what she contributed was important too. She assumed it was only because she was female, and they were sexist.

  True to her word, Mildred was in Amanda’s office five minutes later. Amanda introduced herself to the small, thin woman with well-cut white hair, and they walked into Ben’s office together where he was conferring with Phil, the head man on the scene, and Dave from airport security. They looked up, startled to see another woman come in with Amanda. Dave didn’t recognize her, but Phil did immediately. He had worked with her many times. Ben looked shocked to see her. Mildred greeted Ben in a cool, professional manner, and neither she nor Ben acknowledged the fact that she was the psychiatrist he had been seeing ever since the hostage situation had gone sour and he felt responsible for the deaths of sixteen people, which she’d assured him wasn’t true.

  “Hello, Mildred” was all Ben said to her, as she and Amanda pulled up chairs to join the others. Phil looked at her in surprise.

  “What are you doing here?” Phil asked. To his knowledge, no one had called her, and in his opinion she wasn’t needed, at least not yet, but Ben understood immediately and glanced at Amanda with a disgruntled look.

  “Called in the cavalry, did you?” Ben said to Amanda.

  “Yes, I did,” she said in a stubborn tone. “None of you listen to me. I thought you might have more respect for Dr. Stern’s theories than for mine.” She didn’t mean to, but she sounded petulant and immature.

  “I’m sorry you feel that way,” Phil interjected, “but just for the record, you need your superior’s permission to bring in a psychiatrist, even one who works for us. That means Ben or me. Next time, ask before you drag Dr. Stern over here.” He smiled at Mildred, and she smiled back. She knew the drill too, and had assumed Amanda had permission to bring her in. She was not happy with Amanda for putting her in an awkward position. “Mildred and I are old friends and have worked together a lot, but our staff psychiatrists are not to help agents convince other agents of their position, but to try and assess the risk in a situation and how to deal with it, or to deal with hostage takers with the benefit of their knowledge added to our own.”