Skyhammer

by Richard Hilton

  “Thank God!” the controller responded, almost shouting. “We were afraid we were too late. Roger the nose cold, sir. Stand by for further instructions.”

  “Roger. Standing by.” O’Brien confirmed the de-arming of the weapons systems. And then he suddenly felt so giddy he had to make a conscious effort to maintain his position in trail of the airliner. “That was awful close, Albuquerque,” he transmitted. “What happened?”

  “We just got word from D.C. An off-duty flight crew-member on board made contact. He might be able to do something. But we’re not out of the woods yet, Shadow. Stay with him as long as you can.”

  “We’ll be here,” O’Brien responded. He looked at Nesbitt in the mirror. “You okay back there?”

  “Couldn’t be better,” Nesbitt answered. A minute later he said, “I’m sure as hell glad I’m not our replacement—that guy on board 555.”

  Passenger Cabin

  New World 555

  20:36 GMT/13:36 MST

  As David Crane listened to the FBI agent explaining what had happened, he felt as if he were standing somewhere nearby, overhearing a conversation about a terrible crisis that involved someone else. Everything was still too ordinary—the quiet murmur of passengers sitting calmly in the rows of seats ahead of him, the reassuring hiss of the engines on the other side of the fuselage—all of this was too real to be any part of the insane picture Agent L’Hommedicu was painting. But a prickling sensation had crowded against the base of his skull, and now a burst of adrenalin scalded his gut, and waves of nauseating fear staggered him. It was real. Terribly real. He’d seen the shadow of the F-15, and the copilot had lied about the HF transmitter.

  Mariella Ponti, standing in front of him to shield his face from the passengers, saw his terror and mirrored it.

  “What, David? What is it?”

  He shook his head at her, not ready yet to try to relay the news. The agent was still talking, telling him that it was crucial that he remain rational, as calm as possible. And Crane wasn’t to tell any passengers. If one knew, another would find out, and it would spread. Then there would be no hope. Crane understood that, didn’t he?

  “Yes. I understand,” Crane said, though he wasn’t even sure he’d heard it.

  “David, I’m afraid you’re our last and only hope,” the agent was saying. “We’re going to have to count on you.”

  Count on him for what? “I don’t know. I ...”

  “There’s no one else, David!” L’Hommedieu insisted. “And we don’t have time to argue. You don’t have any choice. You must stop him.”

  Crane couldn’t answer. He couldn’t even imagine what might be done. With any attempt to get into the cockpit, the copilot could simply cut the engines, push the nose over. By the time they subdued him it could easily be too late. But what else was there? What else could they do?

  “Listen,” the agent said quietly but with a dose of menace in his voice. “I’m sorry to have to put it all on you, but that’s the way things go sometimes. There isn’t time lo ask, ‘Why me?’ so you’ll just have to accept it. Right now. All right?”

  Crane stared at Mariella Ponti. She’d tucked in her lip, trying to hold back the fear. How old was she? Mid-thirties maybe. She didn’t deserve this. None of them did.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll do my best.”

  “Now listen,” the agent said. “Do you have your cockpit key?”

  He could feel the familiar bulge of keys in his right pants pocket. He knew that the cockpit key, a small brass one, was one of them, but he brought the key ring out anyway and made sure. “Yes. I’ve got one.”

  “Good. Then you can get into the cockpit. Now you’re going to have to surprise him and incapacitate him. Were you in the military?

  “Yes. Air Force.”

  “Any hand-to-hand training?”

  “A little.”

  “David,” the agent said, “you might well have to kill him. You should realize that right now, prepare yourself mentally.”

  The sound of the air rushing by outside seemed louder, yet Crane could hear the complaint of some child a few rows up. He became acutely aware of himself—the rise and fall of his chest, the cool ache in his stomach, the weight of his flesh on his bones, the pressure of his clothes against his skin. And, suddenly, he thought something that had rarely occurred to him in all his years of flying: He was only a few feet from death, and it was as constant a threat as it was certain.

  “David, are you there?”

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  “I think you’ll need one other person to help. Are there any male flight attendants aboard?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think any of the flight attendants could help?”

  Crane stared at Mariella again. Her eyes were intelligent—beautiful really—deep green, like his fiancée’s, and he wanted to hug her suddenly and sob. But that would be panic. He had to be calm.

  “Yes,” he said. There is one.”

  “David,” the agent said. “Again, the fewer who know the better.”

  “I agree.”

  “We’ll need something to incapacitate him. It’s against regs, I know, but flight attendants sometimes carry pocket mace anyway. Check for it. If you can’t find any, use a fire extinguisher. Or both if you can.”

  “Okay,” Crane heard himself say.

  “From there on, it’s pretty simple. You get the door unlocked, throw it open fast, use the mace or (ire retardant, then ... you’ve got to hit him with something hard, maybe the extinguisher canister.”

  “Sir?” Crane was shaking his head. “There isn’t much room in that cockpit. You can’t really take a swing with something.”

  “Good point. If you missed or struck a glancing blow, you could hit something else. Okay, let me think about this one for a minute. Hang on.”

  The radio went dead for what seemed an eternity. Then it crackled again. “David? Are you wearing shoelaces?”

  Crane glanced down at his black, regulation Air Force oxfords. “Yes.”

  “Consider tying the laces together. To make a garrote.”

  “A what?”

  “A garrote. You get it around his neck, cross your hands behind, and pull for all you’re worth. It cuts off the blood to the brain. Very effective. But you’ll have to keep it tight for at least two minutes.”

  Again, Crane couldn’t picture this. It went beyond anything he could even imagine himself doing—tying his laces around another man’s throat ... to kill him? His own throat was suddenly so dry he couldn’t answer.

  “One more thing, David,” the agent said. “We don’t know for sure what kind of weapon the hijacker has. Probably it’s a gun, some small caliber pistol. My guess is, he’ll have it fairly handy but not in hand. He won’t be expecting this. Let’s hope he doesn’t even remember right off where he’s put it. In any case, if he does go for it, try to use your foot to kick it away. The important thing is to be decisive and to feel yourself ready, willing, resolved. You can’t go at this half-assed. It’s all or nothing, do or die. Got that?”

  “You still don’t think I should get help from a male passen-ger?”

  “How could you determine which one would really be a help? We don’t need some gung-ho Rambo screwing this up. Besides, like you said, there’s only room for one more person in the cockpit, and it should be you, someone who knows how to fly the damn plane.” The agent paused.

  “I see what you mean.” Crane tried to swallow but couldn’t.

  “Look, David, there’s no decision. You have to do it. He’s already begun his descent, so you’d better get started. I could give you more advice, but it’s probably best if I don’t. You’ll do better if you figure out the details yourself, okay?”

  No, Crane thought desperately—Don’t put that on me, too. But he heard himself saying “Yes,” thanking the voice on the phone.

  “Talk to you when this is over,” the voice said. “In fact, I want to meet you. Now get to it, and good luck
.”

  Crane handed the phone to Ponti and glanced around the wall of the galley. No one was watching them. “Mariella,” he began, “We’re in worse trouble than you could ever imagine. And we only have a few minutes to save this plane. No one else can find out until it’s all over, so no matter what I tell you, maintain the illusion that everything is normal. Can you do that?”

  Mariella looked at him with fearful concentration, but she nodded emphatically. “Yes,” she said.

  “Smile,” Crane whispered, seeing that a passenger was making his way back to the restrooms.

  As the man passed, Mariella managed a smile; so did Crane.

  “Good. Now, listen carefully. The first officer has hijacked the plane.”

  Mariella’s smile vanished. “Emil? How?”

  “Quiet!” Crane hissed, grabbing hold of her elbow. “Now, listen. He’s killed the captain and he plans to crash the plane.”

  Mariella shook her head in disbelief. “It’s Emil!”

  “That’s his name?”

  Mariella turned away from him, hiding her face.

  “I understand,” he said. “But we don’t have time to be sorry now. You have to do exactly what I tell you.”

  She nodded. “Just give me a minute,” she said. Then all strength went out of her. She would have fainted had Crane not caught hold of her.

  Flight Deck

  New World 555

  Mariella’s call had caught him off guard. Broken his concentration. But now the drone of the cooling fans filled his head once more, and Pate brought his mind back to the focal point again. Only out of sheer habit, he scanned the instruments: 555 was passing twenty thousand. Where was he? He peered through the windscreen. To the south was a blunt brow of cloud, a long gray shroud spread behind it, diffuse at the edges like a frayed blanket. The ground was clearly visible. The silver of a lake flashed at him. Directly ahead the ocher of desert gave way to dull green edge of forest. Off to the north the faint ribbon of 1-40 ran straight west, just beyond it a reddish smear he knew was the Petrified Forest. He checked his watch. More than five minutes had passed since the F-15 had left his field of vision.

  And still they had not fired. And maybe they weren’t going to? Not yet anyway. Why wait, though, he wondered. Because they would wait as long as they possibly could, hoping that he would see the futility of persisting?

  He wouldn’t give up, though—he knew that. He had to be past making that mistake and wouldn’t let the growing weakness in him overpower his will.

  But how long would they wait, he wondered. Until he was in Phoenix airspace? No, they couldn’t do that. The plane would crash into houses, killing more people. On the other hand, they might want to wait until he’d brought the plane to a lower altitude, to spare the long fall.

  Or was his mind only gasping now, running out of any good thoughts? Pate couldn’t tell. Yet there had to be some reason they were waiting. And it had to be that he hoped he would change his mind. In fact, why not wait until the very end, until he was almost down, almost over the airport? They could hope for survivors that way, although the chances were almost nil that anyone would live through the rocket blast and the crash. Still, that had to be their plan, he decided—shoot the plane down over the open land under the final approach, close to emergency vehicles and medical facilities. They would make this fatal mistake. They had to.

  Pate breathed once, deeply, and relaxed his grip on the yoke. Then relaxed into the seat. All he had to do then was make sure he stayed over the metropolitan area until he was close to the approach, then swing around and come at the terminal from the other direction. It would be simple enough. He couldn’t outmaneuver the fighter, but he wouldn’t have to.

  He breathed a second time, as his mind emptied, expanded again. It wasn’t just dehydration that made him tired, he realized. Or the fact that he hadn’t really slept in three days. The sheer effort of maintaining his determination was wearing him out. Exhausting him, in fact, and he felt as if he’d been awake forever. As if he had never in his life truly slept. He would get to soon enough, he thought. Soon enough, all the tight, jagged hatred would be over. Even now, it seemed, all the heat of his rage was suddenly gone. He could remember something Louise Yellow Wolf had once told him. If he only relaxed now, Pate thought, he would be able to hear it.

  With a suddenness that caught him by surprise, his eyelids fell closed again. He tried to open them, but overwhelming relief pressed them down and held them shut, and he quit fighting against it. Didn’t matter, he decided. He could fly the plane blind, listening to the pitch of the slipstream whispering to him. It was a fine, keening voice, too. The voice of high-altitude air, the voice of wind. He didn’t need to see where he was going. Didn’t need to feel anything anymore. Not for a few minutes anyway.

  So he sank into the wind, floated upon it, feeling it caress him, turn him around and around. Like a cold river whirlpool. The pink of his eyelids went blue, then shimmered, deepening into green, luminous and dense, streaked with shafts of burnished bronze, undulating like a translucent curtain. He remembered the dream from his childhood, of the river’s undertow, a dream which had always scared him, but now it was a pleasant memory, of a place where the river turned sharply and narrowed, where the water rushed through and over another drop-off and then sucked under itself. A place, he remembered, where all the people ever drowned by the river were gathered, deep under the surface, white like stripped pine logs in the green darkness, eyes wide open, like fish’s eyes. And the stones on the bottom there were like huge bubbles, tumbling over each other in the current, piling up into a cairn as he reached out to touch them. It was the death place, yes. The Shadow Side. The end of the vision quest. Here in the river’s belly, where there was no terrible distance, no infinite suffering and pain, no uncertainty, hunger or thirst. There was only tranquility, a cold that was warm, a weight that was weightless, a darkness that glittered with voices—fire sparks showering upward into velvety night sky.

  But he knew he couldn’t stay there, not yet. No, as much as he wanted to lie down on the soft green bubbles and sleep and dream, he swam back to the surface, to the whispering hiss of the slipstream. Something was calling down to him. In his grandmother’s voice, telling him he had to finish this first. But it wasn’t his grandmother. Something else was there.Something had crouched behind him. Something yellow-eyed, something with a changing shape.

  “Who am 1?” it asked as Pate woke. “Itsa-ya’ya—is that my name?”

  He was alone, though. There was no one in the cockpit but himself.

  EIGHTEEN

  Shadow

  20:40 GMT/13:40 MST

  The sky was really clearing up now. All the high-level condensation patterns were dissipating. Breaks appeared in 555’s contrails, and off to the left, O’Brien could just make out the small mountain town of Payson, which he knew was about fifty miles northeast of Phoenix. Payson was a good place to relax, he thought. He’d taken his family there a number of times to escape the heat of the valley.

  The F-15 had moved up again on the larger airplane, so he made another correction with the throttles. He felt calm again now. It had been six or seven minutes since he’d been ordered to stand by.

  “Bitts, can you take it for a few minutes?”

  “Sure.” The stick wobbled slightly as Nesbitt took control.

  “I’ve got it.”

  “Roger, you’ve got the jet.”

  Releasing the control stick, O’Brien reached up and loosened the bayonet clip holding his oxygen mask in place. With a paper towel from the thigh pocket of his flight suit he swabbed the perspiration out of it, wondering for the thousandth time how it was they could build machines of such amazing wizardry as the F-15 yet couldn’t figure a way to make oxygen masks more comfortable. It was something he’d been meaning to talk to his neighbor down the street about, an inventor, a Norwegian by the name of Nils, who had over a dozen patents to his credit. Sometimes O’Brien would go down there in the evening to
have a beer while he watched Nils tinker at something. Why the hell would a Norwegian want to come live in the desert? O’Brien shook his head at the question and gazed at the distant, shining surface of Lake Roosevelt, just becoming visible on the hazy horizon. Then he keyed his mike.

  “Hey, Albuquerque, Shadow. How about giving us an update? We’re coming up on Payson right now.”

  “An onboard operation is in progress, Shadow,” Curtis answered. “We’re going to give’em a chance.”

  “Roger. But we’re getting pretty close to Phoenix.”

  “Roger, Shadow. We’re all concerned.”

  Impatiently now, O’Brien watched the jetliner again. Then he had a thought. They wouldn’t have to fire; no matter which way it worked out, no matter whether the man aboard 555 succeeded or failed, they were out of the loop. For a minute O’Brien felt happy. But then abruptly the idea depressed him. If the man aboard 555 failed, if the plane suddenly lurched from its flight path and headed down, they would only be able to watch. Helplessly.

  Passenger Cabin

  New World 555

  20:42 GMT/11:42 MST

  “Are you all right?” Christy Jacobson stood in the aisle outside the galley, shock pinching her face. Mariella Ponti had fallen back against the bulkhead to keep from sinking to the floor. Had she fainted? David Crane was literally holding her up, gripping both her arms tightly just above the elbows.

  “You really look sick.” Christy came forward, put a hand on Ponti’s arm, shot a suspicious glance at David Crane, who had released her now and stepped back, warning Ponti with his eyes.

  “What’s going on here?” Christy glared at Crane, then smiled consolingly at Ponti. And suddenly Ponti’s wits came back to her. Poor Christy, she was completely misreading the situation. She thought she had stumbled onto a lovers’ quarrel. It made Ponti want to laugh. Then hug her, thank her for being so wrong.

  “I’m fine now,” she whispered, stepping out into the aisle with Christy. “Just a little dizziness. Could you just lay low for a few minutes? You and Lori?”