Skyhammer

by Richard Hilton

  “Remain standing, gentlemen. This won’t take long.” He seemed determinedly grim as he took a folded paper out of the top drawer of his desk. He glanced at it, then folded it again and began smacking it softly into the palm of his other hand.

  “Your cross-country is canceled,” he announced suddenly, looking at each of them in turn. “You’ve been reassigned—a special mission.” He tossed the folded paper across the desk.

  The two flyers stepped closer. O’Brien unfolded the order and held the teletyped message so that Nesbitt could also read. It was addressed to the commander, 525 FIS. “By order of the President of the United States,” it began. The officers needed only seconds to read the instructions. They exchanged glances with each other, then both looked back at Baxter.

  “I picked you two,” he told them matter-of-factly, “because you’re the best I’ve got. Normally I, or the Executive Officer would fly something like this, but he’s halfway to Bergstrom and I’m nursing this goddamn cold. So it’s fallen to you.”

  Baxter turned away, looked out through the window. Beyond were ramps, airplanes, and runways, then desert and in the far distance, the low, blunted peaks of the White Tank Mountains. “Thank god we’re flying two-seaters,” he said, his voice gone softer. “I can’t imagine a lone man on this mission.” And then he was facing them again, his eyes hard on theirs. “Your aircraft is number six-nineteen,” he said. “It’s being uploaded with two Sidewinders, two Sparrows, and an external tank. You’re to be airborne ASAP. Albuquerque center will provide vectors—strictly UHF communications. You’re to intercept and await further instructions. Any questions?”

  The men glanced at each other again. Then O’Brien quietly said, “No, sir.”

  “A truck is waiting outside the equipment room. Godspeed, gentlemen.”

  “Thank you, sir,” O’Brien answered automatically. The three men snapped off the requisite salutes without another word, O’Brien and Nesbitt about-faced and left the office, walking briskly down the long hall to the personal-equipment room, where the unit’s oxygen masks, helmets and g-suits were stored.

  Albuquerque, New Mexico

  19:07 GMT/12:07 MST

  Katherine Winslow had talked to her father on the telephone that morning. He’d called just after nine her time, as he usually did on Saturdays. As he had for the past three months, he had sent her a check for two hundred dollars and wanted to know if she had gotten it. What he really wanted to know was if she had cashed it.

  This was a ritual. Her father would insist that she use the money, not mess up his monthly accounting by leaving the check pinned under a magnet on the refrigerator door—which was what she had done with the previous checks he had sent.

  Once this issue was out of the way, he would spend a sentence or two telling her about the drought. Her parents had moved back to California when her father retired, to get away from the deadly dry summers of northern Idaho. But now they had been through three straight summers just as dry, and so he always talked rain, the chance of it, anyway.

  Then he would steer the conversation back to her and the girls. She had not realized until just a few years ago how devoted he was to her, how saddened by the events of her life. She and her father had fought often during her high-school years. She had resented the move to Idaho, resented being the principal’s daughter. She knew now that the marriage to her first husband, Donald Weeghas, had been an attempt to get even. Her father had never liked Donald, the Lapwai football team’s star quarterback, a handsome full-blood Nez Perce who’d had aspirations of playing college ball at Idaho State. His wish had evaporated soon after their wedding, and with it his ambition to be anything. She was actually surprised sometimes that they had stayed married long enough to have two children, except that Donald had always been a good soul at bottom, not mean.

  A dangerous one, though, her father had told her the night she came home to say she was marrying him. Dangerous because he didn’t care enough to make anything of himself. He would fail and then try to keep her from succeeding.

  Her father had been right. She’d dropped out of college because of Donald. After the divorce, though, her father had never mentioned his prediction. He had instead taken her and the girls in, then given them the house in Lapwai and helped to pay for the rest of her college education. Perhaps in marrying Emil Pate she had been trying to make up for the grief she had caused both her parents, while at the same time keeping a measure of pride. For her father had not given Emil much credit either, not when Emil had been a student of his, and yet Emil had succeeded—made something of himself. And her father had immediately liked the Emil Pate she had brought home after their wedding. A mature, self-possessed man, kind to her and gentle with the girls.

  There had been something hidden in him, though, which she had sensed from the start—not irresponsibility but rather the opposite. Everything mattered to him. He cared too much. And yet he had always seemed such a genial person. His determination had made him appealing, admirable, but ultimately dangerous, too, because he couldn’t let go, accept defeat—he could only pretend to. And Farraday, the takeover of Westar, the merger, had turned him into a puzzle, silent one minute, raging the next. She hated to think of him like that now, but it was true. She had lost him to the willful stubbornness that had made him leave her. To save her from his ugliness, he had said, but in those first days after he’d gone, she’d felt as though her life had crumbled again. That she’d made another mistake after all. Maybe her father thought so, too. He would stand by her again, though, would keep on sending checks, at least until she got through graduate school. And he would keep on calling so that they could play the little game that allowed her to save face.

  She had spent too long talking to him that morning. It was after eleven before she could leave the house to look for a garden hose at the hardware store. In the backyard of the house she had rented there were two neglected apricot trees, which she wanted to bring back to health if she could, although she knew she would move as soon as possible. The house was underneath the approach to the airport and so was subjected day and night to the downwhine of jetliners coming in for landings, every one reminding her of Emil. The sound of the late-night flights especially made her heart ache with loneliness. But in the meantime the trees needed water, and so she needed a hose.

  After stopping at the hardware store, she drove to the Rio Rico Motel, where she worked as bookkeeper. This morning she would finish a renovation spreadsheet she had promised to have ready Monday morning for the new owner, Stan Fife.

  She parked her station wagon next to the office and got her bundle of laundry out of the back. Stan was letting her use the motel laundry until she could buy her own machines. His pickup was parked at the far end of the complex, and he was standing down in the old swimming pool. He waved to her. She liked Stan Fife, more and more all the time. He was a big, gentle, good-natured man. Smart, too. And no penny-pincher. He had planned more than just a facelift for the Rio Rico. Having been a contractor most of his life, he knew that new plumbing and wiring were as necessary as new stucco. He had hired an architect and requested good quality materials and finishes. Stan also understood what she was going through. He had lost his wife to Leukemia ten years ago.

  It was just after noon when she sat down at the computer and brought up the Lotus 1-2-3 program. But she was thinking that what had happened to Stan was similar to what had happened to Emil. Emil had watched as Farraday, like an insidious disease, destroyed everything he’d worked hard for. But unlike Stan, he had let the evil attack him too. He hadn’t been able to get over the pain and see that life had to go on. The last night she’d seen him, she’d started to tell him about Stan—how Stan had lost everything too, squeezed dry by medical bills, and how he was coming back from it, stronger than ever. But she’d sensed that making the comparison would only reinforce Emil’s misery. And her own.

  She would get over the tragedy that Jack Farraday had wrought. She had made a start toward her own recove
ry and wouldn’t let thoughts of Emil drag her back. She had work to do. She placed her fingertips on the keyboard again. The telephone beside her rang.

  It was Melissa, home from her morning band practice.

  “Mom, there’s a man looking for you.” Her daughter’s voice was pinched with worry.

  “What man?”

  “He just came by here. He’s from the FBI. He said he was trying to call you. I gave him that number. Mom, what’s going on?”

  “Honey, I don’t know,” she said. A dread filled her instantly. It had to be Emil. “We’d better get off the line, in case he’s trying to call here.”

  “Okay,” Melissa said. “But, Mom. Call me, okay? Please, as soon as you find out.”

  “I will, honey. Don’t worry.”

  She put the receiver back on the cradle, thinking that Melissa, too, knew it was Emil. She turned to the window to see if Stan was still out by the empty pool. She could just see the top of his head, and that of the architect’s, above the edge of the coping, down in the deep end. Poor Melissa, she thought. Emil and she had gotten so close.

  Her mind coiled into blankness then, and she stared at the monitor’s screen again, seeing her reflection in in the dark field behind the bright green characters. In the next instant she jumped as the phone rang.

  “Katherine Winslow?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank God. Brad Tolbert, Federal Bureau of Investigation. We’ve been trying to reach you. You art Emil Pate’s wife?”

  “Yes, well—we’re in the process of getting divorced.” She felt a needle of guilt stab through the dread, as if the divorce were a crime.

  “Yes, excuse me. Ms. Winslow, I’m afraid your ex-husband is involved in an aircraft hijacking.”

  Winslow exhaled sharply, relieved. It had to be minor, something Emil could handle. He was on a domestic route, and no one hijacked domestic flights anymore. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Is he all right?”

  The FBI man made a noise, a syllable of some word. “Ms. Winsow, your ex-husband is the hijacker. He’s taken over his own plane.”

  For a moment, she felt like laughing. It was ridiculous. Then the news shoved her hard, like a brutal hand, back into her seat. “That’s impossible,” she whispered.

  “I’m afraid it’s true. And we need you to—”

  “Wait a minute.” It was coming too fast. She leaned forward, pushing the keyboard out of the way. They had to have it all wrong—someone was only making it appear that Emil was involved. Or the whole thing was a hideous joke. “You’re wrong,” she said, angry now. “Who told you this?”

  “My superiors in Washington,” the FBI man answered. “There’s no mistake, Ms. Winslow. We don’t have any time. You must agree to talk to him.”

  A car pulled up sharply outside the office windows, brakes squealing. A white sedan with an emblem on the door. At the same time the man on the phone said, “We’ve got a car on the way over there, and you’re to be taken out to the FAA center. If you will.”

  A man in a brown suit got out of the sedan and came hurrying around to the office door. A moment later he was in the office, his badge out for her to see.

  “Katherine Winslow?”

  Behind him she saw Stan and the architect climbing up now, into the shallow end of the pool. The bright sun glanced off Stan’s graying temples, and off the lenses of his sunglasses. She knew he liked her, was interested in her. He turned away from the other man, laughing at something said. Then he looked toward the FBI car, the office, the window where she was, and before his smile faded into a frown of concern, it seemed to be for her. For the new life she was just beginning. But she knew she couldn’t think that way, not yet.

  “Yes,” she said quietly into the phone. “The car is here. We’re leaving now.”

  THIRTEEN

  Air Route Traffic Control Center

  Albuquerque, New Mexico

  19:33 GMT/12:33 MST

  Like a bad dream, Jim Kelly’s memory of the takeover had gradually dimmed. In the beginning, as had most other Westar people, he’d read every news story, clipped each one that condemned Farraday’s actions, and made photocopies to send to friends. To no avail. His bitterness, frustration, and fear had kept him awake nights, and finally, after Farraday’s ultimatum, to save himself and his marriage, he had simply said to hell with it and quit. Better to leave than keep flying a job he had grown to hate. And he actually liked his new job more than he’d expected. He had recovered his self-esteem.

  But now, after the twenty-minute ride to the Albuquerque center, seated at the situation display console for Sector 71, he could feel himself sinking back into the nightmare. Which was, he realized, exactly what Emil Pate wanted. Pate was acting out every Westar pilot’s fantasy—and there was something in that which Kelly could not condemn.

  And yet this was insane. Pate must have gone over the edge, far beyond the point at which the rest of them had turned back and found some kind of peace. Kelly remembered his own anguish, as sharp and dense as any physical pain. He had been afraid of the limit to which it might take him. He had quit because of that, but Pate had gone back, stuck it out, anything to keep flying, and now he was going to pay for it—pay when it was Jack Farraday who should be punished instead.

  When had he last seen Emil Pate? Kelly had actually flown with him only a few times. Pate had been thoroughly professional, he remembered, but instantly likable. Self-effacing, good natured. jovial in a quiet way—no longer the devil-may-care jet-jock the older Westar pilots had thought him to be. And no crybaby. Just the opposite. Pate had seemed very much the kind of man who could tough it through whatever was thrown at him. A pilot’s pilot, happy simply if he had a plane to fly. Or so it had seemed.

  But the more Kelly thought about him, the more he began to remember Pate as the type of man you could never really know well. Confident to the point of cockiness, not one to mince words—a guy you liked to fly with for those reasons—but a bit strange and distant. Kelly tried to picture Pate and got the image of his sharp eyes, squinted and covert, and his big cheekbones and hair so black it reflected blue in the sun.

  But there was no more time to think about Pate or the old days. He would be on the radio to him in just a few minutes, and Lenard Curtis, the center’s supervisor, needed to check him out on the communications equipment.

  To Kelly’s relief, the gear was basically similar to the headsets commonly used in aircraft. A small speaker on a panel above the console had been activated, and the center’s engineers had hung a telephone handset in front of it so that transmissions could be relayed to Washington. Kelly looked at the clock. They had a few more minutes before 555 was scheduled to be handed off from Kansas City. He picked up the handset and made the connection to Washington. In the next moment L’Hommedieu was on the line.

  “Homm? Kelly. I’m here and pretty well set up. Can you monitor our transmissions?”

  “Affirmative.” L’Hommedieu began immediately to explain what he intended to do. Since he’d be able to hear Pate, Kelly wouldn’t have to relay what Pate said. And L’Hommedieu would be able to speak to Kelly without Pate hearing him. “Here’s the direction I want this to go,” he said. “He’ll know you’re not there by sheer coincidence, but play it that way for a minute. Make a joke of it. Take the edge off first.”

  “I get you,” Kelly said. “Pretend I can’t believe he’s for real.”

  “Right, but don’t carry it too far. He’s very fragile. Don’t tell him he must be crazy. If anything, tell him you know he isn’t. The main thing is sympathy. You’re on his side. Make sure he knows you’d feel the same way if you’d gone back. Tell him you know Jack Farraday cheated him. Make it sound like you hate Farraday as much as he does.”

  “That won’t be difficult.”

  “Jim,” L’Hommedieu said, “here’s the important part. You must get him to see that his taking revenge won’t solve the problem. I’m sure he’ll want you t
o back him up. Do so, to a point. Then draw the line. Don’t condemn him but stop agreeing.

  “Sure,” Kelly said. It scared him, though. “What if he doesn’t care?”

  “We’ve got nothing to lose. But ease into it if you can. Jump too soon, and he might catch on you’ve been coached. And, Jim, one more thing. If Pate has made up his mind on this—if he’s going through with it—and you fail to talk him out of it, I don’t want you thinking you caused the whole thing, understand? And don’t forget, I’ll be right there in your other ear if I think you’re headed onto thin ice.”

  “About one minute,” Curtis said.

  The blip was coming off the edge of the screen.

  “Here he comes now.” Kelly said into the phone as he fit on the headset. For a moment, the responsibility L’Hommedieu had told him wasn’t his settled onto him anyway. What would happen if he failed? Kelly wanted to ask, but it was too late. The blip, thirty nautical miles west of Liberal, Kansas, along with its accompanying data, had begun to flash. Curtis leaned over him.

  “You’re on.”

  Aviation Command Center

  19:39 GMT/14:39 EST

  Brian L’Hommedieu held his breath. It seemed that the sweephand on the clock had become stuck; then it jumped ahead to the next second, and in the same instant he heard Pate make contact:

  “Hello, Albuquerque. New World Five-fifty-five, flight level three-one-zero.”

  Kelly took another breath, then said, “Five-fifty-five, Albuquerque. Radar contact.” He waited a few seconds. “Redman, how the hell you doin’?”

  The sweep hand counted three more seconds.

  “Who is this?” Pate transmitted.

  “It’s Jim Kelly, Emil. Remember me? How’s it doing?”