Accidental Heroes

by Danielle Steel

  “I think you’re all focusing on the wrong person,” Amanda insisted. “I have a master’s in psychology and another one in criminology, and Jason Andrews is not your problem. We’re wasting time on him. He’s a smart, ambitious, talented pilot, with a thirty-five-year career ahead of him. He’s not going to blow that with a suicide mission.”

  “The guy in Germany who killed a hundred and fifty people in the Alps was twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old, and a talented pilot too. There’s no accounting for what drives people over the edge, or what they’ll do. Age has nothing to do with it,” Ben countered.

  “I think Helen Smith is the risk here. No one can come through what she did and stay sane or normal. She saw her husband beheaded on TV,” Amanda said stridently, desperate to convince them and hoping Mildred Stern would help her do it.

  “People do come through it and worse, and do lead sane, normal lives afterward,” Mildred said in a strong voice. “Look at concentration camp survivors and what they lived through. Many of them went on to lead impressively productive lives. I know of Captain Smith’s case and I’ve never heard anything to suggest she was suffering from mental disorders. Has something changed?” Mildred Stern asked everyone in the room, and they shook their heads.

  “It all started with this,” Ben explained to her, pushing the postcard across his desk toward her. “It may mean absolutely nothing, or it could mean a lot. We decided not to take the chance. And total shit luck, we have no air marshal on the flight. We had an equipment failure on an A380, and split the passengers onto two smaller planes. The air marshal who was scheduled is on the other one, so we have no protection in the air for the crew and passengers on this flight. And it’s a crapshoot as to who the problem is, or if we even have one. We’ve been going crazy trying to assess it ourselves.

  “I think Captain Smith is the best thing we’ve got going for us up there if there is a problem, and Phil agrees. She flew fighter planes and she was in the military for twenty years. She can take care of herself and the plane. And we have a copilot who has a disciplinary record a mile long, a terrible attitude, an anger management problem, and is pissed off at the airline because they haven’t promoted him in two years. It’s a fucking wonder they haven’t fired him yet, and he’s probably close to it and knows it, so he’s angry at the world.”

  “Does he have a psychiatric history of suicidality?” Mildred asked him, and Ben shook his head.

  “No, he doesn’t. Neither does Helen Smith. The pilot who just got retired is probably a bigger suicide risk, but if so, I’d like to think he’d do that on his own time, not take a planeload of passengers with him. He’s one of our best pilots, and it’s rotten luck for him that he had a TIA.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” the psychiatrist said sympathetically, and looked at all of them in the room. “To be honest, you’ve got a hell of a problem. It’s damn hard to second-guess people, and problems like this can come out of left field. On the surface, I’m inclined to agree with Ben and Phil: Helen just doesn’t have any of the warning signs of doing something like this, unless there’s something I’m not hearing. But a young hothead like the copilot you describe could do something like it to garner attention and ‘get even,’ without thinking about his own bright future, as Ms. Allbright describes it. And I’m not so sure his future is all that bright. It sounds like he’s been skating on thin ice with the company. And what’s he going to do if he gets fired? That’s it for him. No one is going to hire him if they let him go. And let’s face it, most pilots don’t want to do anything else. It’s their passion, their whole life, and all they know. Getting fired might seem worse than suicide to him.”

  “He hasn’t been fired yet,” Ben corrected her, “but it sounds like he could be headed there.”

  Mildred nodded thoughtfully, and Amanda looked at her with disappointment.

  “You agree with them?” she asked in a small voice.

  “I think I do. The truth is that none of us will know anything for sure until something happens or it doesn’t. The plane may land without a hitch, or you could have a tragedy on your hands. What are you doing about the bridge?” She was used to situations like this and thrived on them, and her suggestions were usually brilliant.

  “We’re closing the Golden Gate in a few minutes,” Ben answered her. “At ten o’clock Pacific time.” As he said it, an assistant walked into Ben’s office and said that Alan Wexler, the San Francisco chief, and two agents were on the line for a conference call with them. Ben put the call on speakerphone immediately, so they could all hear it.

  “We’re all here,” he spoke up clearly. “Did you get anything from the girlfriend? Would she talk to you?”

  “We got everything you need,” Alan Wexler responded in a grim tone. “I’ve got agents Paul Gilmore and Lucy Hobbs with me. They spoke to her and searched his apartment, although that’s off the record.” None of them liked advertising the fact that they took liberties at times. Homeland Security could get away with it, but it wasn’t something they wanted the public to be made aware of unnecessarily, or at all. It was a breach of proper procedure, in an emergency, for a valid cause. Sometimes rules had to be broken to save lives.

  “Hi,” Lucy said by way of greeting, and told them everything Bianca had told her about Jason Andrews, none of which was reassuring, and confirmed their fears about him to a great degree. “We went to his apartment then. She’s the ex-girlfriend and had had no contact with him for a year, so she couldn’t speak to his state of mind now, but she said that the whole time they dated he was angry at the airline for holding him back and not promoting him. He thought they were ruining his career, and he took no responsibility for his part in it and his attitude problems with them. Anyway, she gave us the key to his apartment. We’ve got some interesting info. We’ve got his iPad, and there are pages and pages on it of guns you can build yourself out of plastic materials that won’t show on an X-ray. The diagrams are very detailed, and the weapons look pretty lethal. We found no weapons in the apartment, only the information on the iPad. There’s also a lot of research on suicide methods, and on the German pilot who took the plane down in the Alps. But the plastic weapons were the most disturbing. We’re going to send you everything electronically now, so you can see it yourself.”

  Ben looked around his office at the others in dismay. He had been afraid of something like this. He had a computer screen on one wall, and within seconds, the plastic weapons and diagrams started to appear.

  “Shit,” Phil said and ran a hand over his eyes as Ben stared at one plastic gun after another, until he felt sick looking at them.

  “I think we all agree, Andrews is the threat here,” he said to both the people in his office and those in San Francisco, “and now I think we can assume he’s armed. We’d better give Helen Smith a heads-up.”

  With that, the San Francisco chief said he had to jump off for a minute, and he was back two minutes later. “They just closed the bridge,” he informed them. “Emergency vehicles are lined up, traffic is rerouted, they’re calling it a gas leak, and we’ve got three Coast Guard cutters in the water,” he told them. “We’re ready. All of which won’t do us a damn bit of good if Andrews kills the captain and takes the plane down.”

  Ben wanted to put his head down on his desk and cry. Knowing that Jason Andrews was armed with any one of the plastic guns changed the whole picture. It would be infinitely harder to stop him now and save the plane, especially with no air marshal on board.

  “Do you think the retired captain would be any help?” Alan asked on the phone.

  “I doubt it,” Ben answered. “I’d put my money on Helen, but I’m not sure what she can do with a gun pointed at her.”

  “She’s a tough woman,” Phil said quietly. “I read her personnel file very closely. She’s a black belt in martial arts, and an expert marksman.”

  “Yeah, and she’s got a hou
se full of passengers and a plane to fly.”

  “Where do you want us?” Alan asked them. “At the airport or the bridge?”

  “In the cockpit with a gun to that bastard’s head, and not a plastic one,” Ben said angrily. “I don’t know. Both locations, I guess. Maybe the three of you should be at the bridge. It sounds like that could happen, if he gets control of the plane, but let’s have plenty of men at the airport, in case there’s a problem when they land.” Ben felt helpless sitting at a desk in New York, hearing about it from the distance, and what he wanted to do next was warn Helen Smith that her copilot could be armed. “Keep us informed, will you?” Ben said, as Mildred Stern watched him, and was satisfied that he was doing well. He looked stressed but he was handling the situation to the best of anyone’s abilities. The trouble would come later, if everything went wrong, only a month after the last time.

  Amanda had gotten very quiet. What they had discovered in Jason’s apartment in San Francisco confirmed Ben and Phil’s suspicions. This wasn’t about psychological theories now. It was about weapons, and a man who had been researching methods of suicide and hated the airline he worked for. Even she couldn’t deny it now, and had nothing more to add. The psychiatrist leaned toward her a few minutes later, and spoke in a low voice.

  “None of us can be accurate a hundred percent of the time. We’re bound to be wrong some of the time. We can only work with what we’ve got, and a lot of the time it’s not enough to be absolutely sure, and we have to roll the dice and guess.”

  “It sounds like I guessed wrong on this one,” Amanda said, looking mortified.

  “If that’s true, you’ll be right on the next one,” Mildred encouraged her.

  “They don’t listen to me. They think I’m stupid because I’m a woman.” She had tears in her eyes as she said it.

  “This is a boys’ club,” Mildred Stern said firmly. “If you want to work here, you have to earn it. Going behind their backs is not the way.” It was good advice. As she said it, Ben put through the satcom connection to Helen Smith.

  As she had before, Helen answered in a calm voice, as though she didn’t have a care in the world and was in full control of the situation. Ben wanted that to be true but knew it wasn’t, since they’d been warning her of potential problems for several hours, from terrorists to rogue copilots, with no air marshal on board for support.

  “Ben Waterman here,” he identified himself to her again, although she knew his voice by now, and no one else had reason to call on the satcom for a private conversation with her. “We want to let you know, Captain, that we have reason to believe your copilot’s armed. Possibly with homemade plastic weapons, but they’re just as effective and lethal. He’s done a lot of research on the subject. We know that without a doubt. And on the subject of suicide, and the German pilot over the Alps. We think you’ve got a very serious problem on your hands. His target could be the Golden Gate Bridge. We closed it five minutes ago, and if he brings you down there, we’ve got rescue teams standing by, helicopters, and Coast Guard in the water. We’ve got you covered. Just be careful up there with him, and keep the controls out of his hands if you can.”

  “I’ll see to it, without question, Ben,” she said cryptically with a pleasant lilt to her voice as though he had just given her good news. “Everything is just fine up here. It’s a beautiful day to land at SFO.”

  “I’m sorry we don’t have any armed backup for you up there. I promise it won’t happen again.”

  “Not a problem, Ben. Thanks for letting me know. We’ll try to get everyone down to make their connections. See you next time in New York,” she said confidently. “We’ll be in touch with the tower after this,” she said easily and hung up, as Ben’s heart sank thinking about her, defenseless in the air, with an armed gunman next to her, more than likely.

  “What was that about?” Jason questioned her. “Since when do they call on the satcom all the time?”

  “I think they don’t want to tie up the tower radios with chitchat. They just wanted us to know there may be a delay getting us a gate. They’ve had an overflow of planes at SFO today. We’ll try to protect the passengers’ connections. That’s the best we can do.”

  “That’s all they ever care about,” Jason said angrily. “The fucking passengers. They don’t give a damn about the pilots on this airline. Look what they did to him,” he said, gesturing to Connor, who appeared to be asleep in his seat. “Canned him at a moment’s notice, after a nearly forty-year career, because he had a headache.”

  “He had a TIA,” she said calmly. “That’s a serious thing. He could have another one while he’s flying. I’m sure Captain Gray agrees.”

  Jason didn’t answer her. He just looked straight ahead, while she thought about what Ben had told her. They considered Jason armed and dangerous, and although she hated to admit it, she was almost certain they were right. Nothing on her face betrayed it, and she was ready for whatever happened. She had one hundred and eleven lives to get down safely, and she didn’t intend to lose a single one.

  * * *

  —

  The scene at the Golden Gate Bridge was one of organized pandemonium. There were trucks from the Office of Emergency Services blocking entrance lanes to the bridge. Fire trucks, ambulances, and paramedics were standing at the ready. They had brought a crane in, in case they needed to lift some part of the plane after it crashed, in order to rescue people. There were hundreds of emergency personnel lined up on either side of the bridge, waiting for something to happen. Two helicopters were hovering. The three Coast Guard cutters were stationed in the bay, and someone had thought to call in the Phoenix, the fireboat often used to greet dignitaries and cruise ships, which could shoot water onto the plane if it was on fire when it came down or hit the bridge.

  No one knew the whole story of why they were there. Most of them had been told about a gas leak and potential explosion, but experienced emergency workers knew from the equipment gathered that they were dealing with something much bigger than that, like an air strike of some kind, or a plane crash, or a terrorist threat of major proportions on the bridge. The San Francisco chief of police showed up, and was quietly talking to the director of emergency services.

  “What does this look like to you?” the chief of police asked him.

  “Honestly, it looks like they’re expecting someone or something to take down the bridge. Probably a plane.” It didn’t look like a bomb threat to either of them, unless it was a nuclear missile of some kind.

  “Military?”

  “Maybe. I doubt it. Between us and the Coast Guard, they have us ready for a hundred and fifty survivors. That’s not military. That would be a commercial flight. Maybe they have a hostage situation they’re not talking about, and some fanatic suicide bombers have taken control of a plane. We’ll find out soon enough.”

  It felt like a long wait to all of them, as they tried to figure out what was really happening. No one believed that what they’d been told was the whole story. And twenty minutes after they were in their positions the news trucks started to arrive in droves with cameras and reporters everywhere, asking questions no one knew the answers to. The gas leak story was the one Homeland Security had ordered them to stick with, but the media wasn’t buying it, nor was anyone they spoke to, least of all the rescue workers themselves.

  “This must be the biggest gas leak in history,” one of the reporters said cynically after grilling every fireman and rescue worker he could get to talk to him. Two news helicopters had joined the rescue copters above the bridge, which was eerily empty, free of traffic. It was an odd sight in the bright sunshine, and every time they saw or heard a plane, they looked to the sky, but nothing was happening. The news channels interrupted normal broadcasting to show what was going on. Civilians were being warned to stay away in case the bridge blew up. There were no gawkers on the scene, only professionals, as Ben swit
ched on the TV in his office and they all watched. Mildred Stern had stayed with them.

  “We’re going to look like the biggest idiots in the history of aviation if that flight lands peacefully at SFO,” Ben said as they watched the enormous preparations that had been made in case Jason flew the plane into the bridge.

  “I’d rather look like an idiot than be notifying the victims’ families,” Phil said grimly. It couldn’t be helped. They had to do what they had to do. Watching it reminded Ben of the TSA agent who had found the postcard and been sitting in the reception area for hours in case they needed to talk to her again.

  “Why don’t you bring her in here?” Ben said to Amanda, and she went to get Bernice, who entered the room shyly a minute later, in awe of all of them and what she’d started.

  “Oh, my God,” she said, when she saw all the emergency vehicles on the screen, and heard the announcer describing the dangers of the gas leak that was threatening the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. “There’s a gas leak too?” She looked shocked.

  “That’s for public consumption,” Ben explained to her. “We can’t tell them we may have a rogue pilot in the air who plans to take out the bridge. Besides, we don’t know if it’s true. But we think it might be,” he said to reassure her. She looked frightened by what she was seeing. Denise and Della had been texting her all day: Della to ask what was going on, and Denise calling her irresponsible for starting trouble. Bernice wasn’t thinking about that now. All she could think of were the people on the plane and what would happen to them if it went down. She remembered the disorganized man with the baby, the girls from the chorus in Queens, and the two little children traveling alone whose mother had cried when she left them. Bernice had told her they’d be safe. What if they weren’t? And if they died? She wanted to be wrong now, just as the others did, but it didn’t feel that way, looking at the rescue workers swarming around the bridge, in case the plane crashed into it. It suddenly seemed all too real, and entirely possible, as it did to all of them in the room.