Skyhammer

by Richard Hilton

  It was also because of Katherine that they’d stayed in a hotel beside the river, not in one of the fancy American high-rises north of the town. A small, beautiful hotel of separate casitas in a grove of flowering trees surrounding an open-air restaurant. Parrots squabbled outside their window every morning. Tiny lizards climbed their walls at night as they lay listening to the patter of the rain and talking about their future with all the certainty of two teenage lovers.

  And how he had loved her then, Pate thought. How he had loved that future. Could they have had it? If he hadn’t gone back to work for Farraday? Why had he gone back when everything out of Farraday’s mouth had sounded like a lie, the way he would call them “valued professionals” and describe “fantastic growth.” Pate couldn’t clear his head of Farraday’s sleek, manufactured smile. The blank, killer’s eyes. He’d known it would be a mistake to give in—known it in his gut—the day he’d crossed the windy parking lot, the merger agreement in his fist fluttering like a white flag of surrender. But inside he hadn’t surrendered. So the feeling hadn’t eased; it had only gotten worse until he’d hated himself as much as he hated Farraday. But now he was turning it around.

  Farraday was Monster, Pate thought. Gi’mi’ta. Wearing a human face. But underneath was there only cold greed? No, Farraday could hate. Pate knew this. Could he fear, too? Wear the sweat of fear? That was the problem—the negotiator was sweating, but not Jack Farraday because Jack Farraday didn’t even really know what was going to happen. He didn’t have any idea of how much trouble he was in. But he would find out. “Jack,” he would tell him, “you’ve breathed me in, pardner. I’m inside you now. I’m going to cut out your black, stone heart and kill you.”

  How would it work, though, Pate wondered. If he did say he wanted to talk to Farraday. Could they patch him in from anywhere? No, they would have to get him to a control center somewhere. That would take time, too, but they could do that. Enough time, Pate was sure, that it wouldn’t matter what he told Farraday. He’d be close enough to his destination by then. There wouldn’t be enough time even now if he demanded to talk to Farraday.

  But the demand was what L’Hommedieu wanted. Pate knew he couldn’t forget that. As soon as he demanded anything,L’Hommedieu had leverage. Except this was ridiculous—he could demand anything he wanted because he didn’t really need anything. There were no tradeoffs. It wasn’t a question of whether or not he could work a deal; Farraday wouldn’t give up New World. Farraday might promise to—swear to make whatever concession he wanted—but he would hold out on some technicality, his lawyers would see to it. A loophole, and Farraday was an expert at using loopholes. He probably didn’t even need one. He wouldn’t be expected to hold to any promise he made. But Farraday would make one because he would think he could deal him into landing, and then, once he had him down, that would be the end of it.

  Pate checked his watch. He had kept them waiting for over fifteen minutes now. They might need all the time they could get simply to find Farraday. He dialed the designated frequency and placed his finger on the radio trigger again, imagining the center in Washington—a room full of computers, telephones. He’d seen a picture of it once, during a training session. It was odd now to think of those people as his enemies. He flipped the radio switch.

  “New World Five-fifty-five,” he transmitted.

  A few seconds passed.

  “Mr. Pate?” the negotiator’s voice was expectant. “Are you there?”

  Pate keyed the mike again. “Yeah, I’m here. Where else would I be?”

  More seconds passed.

  “Have you been thinking about talking to Farraday?”

  “I was wondering how he felt about it.” Pate watched the horizon, waiting.

  “He’ll be willing to talk to you,” L’Hommedieu said. “There’s no problem at that end. He’d rather meet you face to face, though. With guarantees on both sides.”

  Pate smiled at the idea. There were no guarantees. “Too bad he isn’t on board,” he transmitted.

  “Does it do any good to tell you,” L’Hommedieu said, “I’ll do whatever I can to see that you get a fair shake?”

  Pate got a cigarette out and lit it. A fair shake? He looked directly at the blanket-covered body in the seat beside him. He hadn’t looked at it in some time. Now small dark spots had appeared, where the blanket touched what was underneath. Pate exhaled smoke and watched it bank off the windscreen and dissipate quickly. The instruments were all reading normal. The fans hummed quietly. Lunch was probably being served back in the cabin. Steak or chicken, Mariella had said. He wasn’t hungry, though. He checked his watch. He couldn’t think of anything to say. But he didn’t need to answer, so he simply waited.

  Finally, the radio crackled. “Okay,” L’Hommedieu said. “Let me ask you about something else, Mr. Pate. What about Katherine Winslow?”

  For the sheerest moment there was a void in Pate’s mind. But then he felt his heart thump hard in his chest. And then he was angry, at L’Hommedieu for setting him up. He reached for the dial, intending to turn to another frequency. But no, he had to answer, and right away or they’d know they’d found a button to push.

  “What about her?” he transmitted, trying to keep his voice steady.

  “She mean anything at all to you?”

  Pate breathed in deep and let it out. They were going to push it. But he’d known that, expected it. He had to keep a grip. Outside, feathery smears of cirrus cloud drifted past, above and to the left.

  Respond, damn it! Pate thought.

  He keyed his mike. “She doesn’t care about me.”

  “You don’t care about her?”

  “No,” he said.

  And then he was sobbing. It happened so fast he opened his mouth and let out a sharp laugh. Then another sob broke from his throat. He couldn’t stop it. He wanted to rip off the headset, hold his head in his hands. L’Hommedieu was saying something to him, the words whining like gnats in his ears, but he didn’t want to listen.

  “Did you hear me, Emil?” L’Hommedieu asked.

  The tears burned in his eyes. He wiped at them, fighting to regain his composure, cursing himself for losing it. Finally he managed to key his mike.

  “Yeah, I heard you, but I gotta do some work now. I’ll call you boys back in ten minutes.”

  He released the switch and rotated the units knob on the VHF selector to a dead frequency again, then sat still, staring out through the windshield at the empty sky. For a moment, he hated L’Hommedieu again. Then he felt an edge of uncertainty nudge into his mind.

  But he drove it away. He made his mind go loose, back to where it had been. Where the calm emptiness of high space surrounded him. The haze seemed luminous now. The shimmering blue of high altitude. He remembered that he had tried to describe it to Katherine once, when they’d first met. It was deeper than robin’s egg, and too luminous, too pure. Too empty. There was so much space out there, he thought. And it was hard to believe, really, that the plane was racing along at over four hundred knots. It seemed he was floating, drifting through the emptiness. Such emptiness, enveloping the earth. It was amazing. And yet the atmosphere was like the skin of an orange, only thinner even than that, the sky no more than a tiny bead of air, holding a grain of sand, an imperceptible flash of time. How could anything in that little spark of time matter?

  Aviation Command Center

  19:01 GMT/14:01 EST

  L’Hommedieu felt as if he had reached a blind corner. He stood at the edge of it, ready to step forward, take the new direction. But what if it was the wrong direction? Pate had clearly lied when he’d said Katherine Winslow meant nothing to him. The tone of Pate’s voice in response to hearing his wife’s name, had convinced L’Hommedieu of that. But what would Pate do the next time he mentioned her? Dial off again? How did his reaction factor in?

  L’Hommedieu removed his glasses. He needed to back up now, he thought, come at the whole thing from some fresh distance. Sighing, he thumbed a fleck of l
int from one lens, something he knew he wasn’t supposed to do; they were plastic lenses, easily scratched. Japanese frames, of some new alloy, supposedly unbreakable, but he doubted it. The temples were far too slender. He was often tempted to bend them, as far as they would go—to prove that they could be snapped.

  Tempted, but so far he had resisted. L’Hommedieu held the frames gingerly with his thumbs and fingertips, spreading the frame outward slightly, feeling the tension in the metal resist his force. Temptation was an interesting concept, he thought. In the moral sense, it meant the doing of something against an established good in order to gain something wanted. It implied a contradiction between right and desire. L’Hommedieu recalled the motto of the sixties, urging everyone to do whatever he or she wanted if it felt good. A dictum that seemed pitifully naive now—but even then it had seemed so, to all but the most naive. Nothing more than an excuse to indulge in the self. To give in to that basic temptation.

  L’Hommedieu put his glasses on again and looked at the clock. He was wasting his time in daydreams. In thirteen more minutes Searing would call up the White House and the Pentagon, and then the Pentagon would call the Tactical Air Command Wing in Phoenix. Then would begin the shift from negotiation to interdiction, the tone of their approach beginning to scale from conciliation toward counterthreat, ultimatum. But he had to concede that interdiction was a likely development, even though it seemed the beginning of defeat to him. If he’d learned one thing in the army it was that military involvement always pointed ultimately toward the use of force, not just the deployment of it. Even the most defensive of such postures still fostered an aggressive mentality, a mentality that counted bodies to determine victory.

  And L’Hommedieu was afraid Otis Searing possessed that mentality, even though he’d never been a soldier. On the other hand, it was Searing’s job to think the way he did.

  L’Hommedieu examined his legal pad, three pages of notes about Pate’s remarks, interspersed with shaded cubes, pyramids, spheres, other doodles—random shapes. He needed to think over the situation, try to sort some hard conclusions out of the gut feelings he’d been relying on so far.

  First there was the problem of Pate’s intention. Was Pate deliberately making it unclear? Or was he truly uncertain in his own mind? L’Hommedieu sensed resolve, a man who was focused. Had he lost his mortal fear? Did he see himself now as an instrument of some purpose higher than himself?

  Then why be ambivalent? What difference could it make? This was one point on which his reasoning failed. He had wanted to believe that Pate’s integrity—his training, his previous service to American values—were fighting whatever torment drove him forward. But how could he know if those forces were strong enough when he didn’t even understand Pate’s true motive, the subconscious one? Maybe Searing was right; they could never accept any guarantee from Pate. He would remain an enigma, probably even to himself, until it was too late.

  L’Hommedieu sat back, telling himself not to give up. A hundred and thirty-two lives were riding on his ability to keep thinking positively. So did his assessment of Pate need rethinking? Rethink it then. Find a clue that would reveal the answer. Or else accept the alternative.

  And maybe it would all come down to Jack Farraday. Or perhaps Katherine Winslow. But Pate had lied not only to save her from anguish but also because he was afraid they might use Katherine Winslow against him. That she might tempt him from his course? Would he even talk to her?

  They would not ask, L’Hommedieu decided. If they could find her and get her out to Albuquerque control in time, they would simply put her on the line and see what happened.

  He got up and stretched the tightness from his back. He needed a break to clear his head. A couple of minutes out of this confining space. First he checked with John Travis to see if any more word had come from New World concerning Farraday. None had. Out in the hallway, L’Hommedieu stood for a moment, and then went down to the office at the west end. The door wasn’t locked. He stepped through and went to the full-height windows. The sky was almost clear, a pale afternoon blue. Across the street the blank, sand-colored side of the Hirshorn Museum rose above the young elms along Independence Avenue. There were a few vendors parked out front on the street, selling hot dogs, popcorn, commemorative tee-shirts. It was an ordinary day. People were coming and going. Just below his eye level, twenty feet to the northeast, at the top of its flagpole, the FAA’s American flag hung limply. A proud symbol of patriotism again—revered rather than reviled as it had been in the sixties.

  Even he had been a little ashamed of his country then, but ashamed, too, that he wasn’t in Viet Nam. He had been in Germany at the end of that decade, where the enemy had seemed less enigmatic. As an intelligence officer he had not spent much time actually listening to the radio transmissions coming from the other side of the border, but he’d heard enough to wonder about the men he was overhearing. Enough to realize they were just men like him, thrust into their roles—tank drivers in training, lost on maneuvers and complaining about the deliberately misleading East German road maps; supply officers trying to order more toilet paper.

  One time, soon after he had arrived, one of his staff members had called him in to listen to a Russian fighter pilot talking about a rocket everyone claimed they had never heard of before—a Yobniy Rakaty. No, it wasn’t in the book. L’Hommedieu had thought they were onto something big. Until the rest of the men in the room burst out laughing at the old joke they pulled on every newcomer. Yobniy was a Russian curse word. The pilot was merely cursing his defective weapon, as any soldier would. No, there wasn’t a lot of difference between men, L’Hommedieu had realized. He was basically like those Russian men.

  Emil Pate was like them, too. Cursing his fate—the bad luck that had brought him into the game and then dealt him losing cards. Except Pate had made himself the dealer. And then refused to play, which was why L’Hommedieu had had to offer to bring in Farraday—to up the stakes, tempt Pate back into the game. And Katherine Winslow might tempt him as well. They were both wagers, thousand-dollar chips, one to play on Pate’s anger and the other to play on his hope. But neither chip was in L’Hommedieu’s possession yet—and might never be, not in time to make a difference.

  He had to know what, if anything, he could do in that event. What he could say. He needed to assess his personal feelings about Pate. Listening to the second conversation had made him realize that he felt more than sorry for Pate. He also felt a measure of sympathy. And respect. What was it the chief pilot had said? That you could trust in the integrity of the man? L’Hommedieu could sense that integrity, and it argued against Otis Searing’s point, that they wouldn’t be able to trust Pate if he said he’d give up, land safely. But L’Hommedieu knew that he believed this partly because he wanted to believe it. Pate had to know that if he gave up he’d never fly again. He’d go to prison. His life would be ruined, not Farraday’s.

  L’Hommedieu looked at his watch, then sat down on the edge of a desk and put his hands in his pockets and stared out at the Hirshorn. It really was a beautiful fall afternoon, the elms in full color. A perfect football afternoon. Days like this were the ones he remembered most from West Point—gray ranks of cadets drilling on the still, green lawn with the rest and brown of forest beyond. The tedium of drilling had hammered discipline into them, and the sense of duty. Did Pate still have that sense, he wondered? He’d been a Marine. Did that mean he’d be intent on completing his mission? What did propel the military mind forward into murderous acts against fellow human beings that were simply anonymous?

  He turned away from the window to see Searing coming down the hall. The principal stepped into the office. His tie had nearly come loose; his sleeves were rolled to the elbows. His dark face seemed even darker. “That sonofabitch Farraday,” he said. “He knows what’s comin’ down. He’s sitting somewhere right now with a lawyer, deciding whether he should stay out of it or not.”

  L’Hommedieu took his hands out of his pockets and put th
em on his knees. The flag outside the window shifted to the other side of the pole, furling into a different form that was at once indistinguishable from the one before.

  “Do we tell Farraday about interdiction?” Searing said. “Might get him thinking in the right direction.”

  L’Hommedieu considered it. What would Farraday do if he knew there was this option? Would he want to prevent such a development? Or would he choose instead to let things run in that direction?

  “Not until we have to,” he answered.

  Searing nodded but did not seem in agreement. He turned his broad back, looked out toward the air and Space Museum a block to the east. “Right now we’ve still got some control. The media hasn’t jumped on it yet. But before damn long—if it hasn’t happened already—word’s going to leak. That’s when the turds start bouncing off the turdhouse roof. We’ll have every agency in every goddamn state he’s even flying close to wantin’ to tell us what to do. That’s when we lose control. No telling how long before some turkey listening in somewhere calls the media. I bet we’re talking minutes, not hours.”

  L’Hommedieu nodded, stood up. He had gone over everything again, but still he had nothing new, no answers to his questions. Except that he knew now that he was still missing something. The key to Pate’s motive. It wasn’t revenge. Not at the heart of it.