Skyhammer

by Richard Hilton

  “Some day, huh? I expected to be watching football all afternoon.”

  Searing smiled back. “Army-Navy? Bunch of pansies. You didn’t miss anything, let me tell you.”

  “Probably not,” the agent said.

  Then the doors opened onto the lobby.

  They went out onto Seventh Avenue and walked north, past the Air and Space Museum, toward the Mall. It was chilly now, and Searing buttoned up his overcoat, then realized his sinuses were clear. The headcold was leaving him.

  “Amazing,” L’Hommedieu said as they came up to the light at Independence Avenue. “Isn’t it?”

  Searing frowned at him. L’Hommedieu had his hands stuffed into his pockets and his shoulders were hunched against the chill. He was staring across at the looming flank of the Air and Space Museum.

  “What’s amazing?” Searing said.

  L’Hommedieu swiveled on his heels and looked at Searing as if it should be obvious. “Here, we are,” he said. “A thousand miles away from Phoenix.” He shook his head, unable to explain further. Then the light changed and he started out again.

  They hadn’t discussed where they would walk to. But L’Hommedieu seemed to know, so Searing walked after him. They came up to Jefferson. The Washington Monument to the west was dark against the last daylight. Out in the open of the Mall the air seemed colder, and the wind blew more steadily. L’Hommedieu turned and walked east, toward the Capitol dome. And they talked then. About Searing’s kids and about Georgia. About L’Hommedieu’s plans to take his wife back to Europe in the spring. The dome ahead of them was blanched by the pale November sunset. It occurred to Searing that come Monday there’d be something new for congress to talk about.

  When they reached Fourth, they turned once more and headed back. In another few minutes they were passing the Air and Space Museum again, somber in the twilight except for some yellow school buses drawn up in front. L’Hommedieu stopped again and turned. There were happy shouts ringing out behind them, and Searing turned too as dozens of children came running down the steps of the museum.

  TWENTY

  Washington DC

  20:42 EST

  Brian L’Hommedieu had to admit that in the final analysis the system would’ve worked. But only if you accepted the final option as a solution, and he didn’t. They’d been lucky, that was all. Next time there wouldn’t be a David Crane, and the only other statistic in their favor was that Emil Pates were rare. There were others out there, plenty of them treated wrongly, thinking their mistake was to go on hanging at the end of the rope. But most of them would simply hang, hands tied, until they choked on guilt and shame and anger. As Pate had said, the hard part was getting your hands loose. Once you did, it was easy to climb up the rope that was choking you. Too easy, maybe, when madness seemed as logical as sanity. But most people never loosed themselves from all that bound them—the social contracts, the moral contracts, the behavior conditioning that started at birth. Thank God they didn’t—he believed that. Otherwise there would be no civilization. And yet there was something wrong with the whole idea that you had to play by rules when they were bad rules written by men like Jack Farraday. You didn’t have to, but it was insane not to—that’s what you were led to believe.

  He could reason it out that way, but it didn’t relieve the sadness he felt on the ride home. From across the Potomac, as the car veered north onto 66, he could see all the lights of the residential areas, thousands of lights, thousands of people. How many of them had watched the news? A good percentage no doubt. The whole country would be buzzing about it tonight, and the story would be front page tomorrow. The whole story, he hoped. In a few minutes the Nutley exit sign went past the window. Six minutes later he was home.

  Beth had watched the news reports, but they hadn’t given out much. L’Hommedieu got a Watney’s from the fridge and ran hot water over the bottle to warm it a little, then sat at the kitchen table and told her, as well as he could, what had happened. Then he went into the TV room. But the idea of watching the game on tape now didn’t appeal to him. Beth came in, sat on the arm of the chair.

  “Just tell me who won,” he said.

  She looked at him, making sure, then leaned down and kissed his forehead. “Army,” she whispered. “Twenty-one, twenty.”

  “No kidding. You watch it?”

  “Second half.”

  “What—did Navy miss an extra point?”

  “No, they tried for a two-point conversion to win.”

  “How about that?” L’Hommedieu took a sip of ale. “Those Navy bums.”

  He sat quietly for a while, finishing the ale, thinking over the events of the day one more time. Then he remembered the book in his brief case. Maybe there wasn’t much point to looking at it now, he thought, but he was curious, so he got up and went out to the hall and got his briefcase from the front closet where Beth had put it.

  The book was plainly bound in sage-green cloth. The introduction told him these stories had been “handed down orally from generation to generation” since the very beginning of the Nez Perce, the ni mi pu as they called themselves. L’Hommedieu thumbed through the book, from back to front, as was his habit, and saw that much of it was analysis. Then he tried the contents page and found the heading: ‘’Tales about the Origin of Things.” On 27 was a version of the story, “Coyote and Monster.” L’Hommedieu sat down in his easy chair and began to read: “One day Coyote (Itsa-ya’ya) was busy building a fish-ladder so that he could feed his family, when from across the river someone shouted to him, ‘Why are you bothering with that? All the others are gone! Monster has swallowed them!’”

  The story went on in that simple way, telling of how Coyote had allowed himself to be inhaled by Monster, and how he’d used his Mint knives to saw on the cords that held Monster’s heart, breaking the knives, one by one, until Monster’s heart was hanging by a single cord. Then Coyote had leaped onto Monster’s heart and torn it loose, killed him. He’d tricked Monster. Attacked him from within. But there was no motive given, no reason for why Coyote had done this. Perhaps it was simply assumed. L’Hommedieu looked up from the page as the clock in the hall chimed the hour. And he couldn’t help thinking that time was still passing just as quickly as it always had, though now, no matter how hard he tried to believe otherwise, the seconds were not as precious as they’d seemed a few hours before.

  Phoenix, Arizona

  14:46 GMT/7:46 MST

  Four days later

  Jack Farraday drank the last of his milk and set the empty glass carefully down onto the table beside him. He did not feel well this morning. Nothing definite, a little ache in the pit of his stomach. Nothing to worry about. He faced the floor-to-ceiling windows spanning the entire north wall of the executive office suite. Phoenix sprawled over the vast desert, plain and ugly as a Jersey junkyard in the morning light. Farraday knew he would never learn to like it, although he liked this vantage point. Directly ahead, two miles distant, the long, broad runways of Sky Harbor Airport were clearly visible, and even now, as he watched, a jetliner lifted off from Runway 8-Right. It rose up through the vinegar brown haze of car exhaust, climbing steeply, as if lightly loaded—a New World flight, he supposed.

  Scowling, he went back to his desk and sat down. In eleven more minutes the board of directors would gather for an emergency meeting. He had received notice less than twenty hours ago, in a memo from Garrett Rohm, senior member of the board. It hadn’t surprised him. Understandably, the board had been alarmed by Saturday’s events and wanted a briefing. He was only annoyed that he had been forced to prepare his own notes. Walter Frye, the weaseling flack, had walked out on him. And for three days, Phillip Masters had been calling in sick. Boyce was busy with his staff, working out arguments against possible lawsuits from the passengers and from Emil Pate’s heirs. It didn’t matter, though. The Board would only need hand-holding, some calm reassurance.

  After all, what was the big deal? No one had died—no one that mattered, just Pate and that
other pilot. No one had even been seriously injured except John Sanford, whose politics were ridiculous anyway. Adverse publicity? It would blow over soon enough. The public had a short memory. In a week or so, not many would even be able to say which airline had been involved. In a month New World would throw out some cheap fares, and all the bargain hunters would come flocking back. Pate’s threat would amount to nothing in the end. Isolated case. Just another insular event in a violent society. That was how they were spinning it to the media, and so far the media had bought it: This wasn’t a New World problem—it wasn’t even an industry problem; it was a social problem of twenty-first-century America.

  He liked that and wrote it in at the bottom of his notes. Eight minutes to eight. He got up again and went back to the windows. Rush-hour traffic was streaming down the freeway, the sun glancing off a thousand windshields, like flashbulbs winking at him. Swarming confusion. Petty turmoil. Passengers, though. Revenue. The airline business was a river of cash, thanks to them. Cash flow—the bottom line. Money flowing in great surges, so much of it you didn’t have to make a profit, you only had to manage the flow, keep it going, divert enough to make your effort worthwhile.

  The alarm on his desk clock began to beep, so Farraday gathered his notes and slipped on his suit coat. The reception area was empty, the building still quiet. As he stepped into the central corridor, he saw the last of the board members filing into the main conference room at the far end. When he entered, the room went silent. Every member was present, each seated at his place around the long oval table. Its surface was a giant slab of pink travertine, cut from the same block as the surface of his own desk. Farraday remembered now, for some reason, that travertine was a kind of marble, one of the softer forms. Me knew his father would never have liked it. He didn’t like it either and would have it replaced soon with some better stone, maybe granite.

  He greeted them, received their murmured greetings in return. They would not be too friendly today. Not in the beginning anyway. Farraday went quickly to his chair at the far end. Secretaries had prepared the room earlier, leaving cups, saucers, and glasses in front of each seat, a water pitcher and an insulated carafe of coffee for every three places. With a show of impatience, Farraday straightened his notes and poured himself a cup. He had already decided he would push this along, take the offensive immediately.

  First he took a short sip of coffee. Then he gave brief greetings around the room. He spent only a few seconds pretending to read over the text on the top page. Then he started.

  “All right, I’ve been looking forward to this.” He pushed his chair back an inch, eyed them all. “Let me jump right in. Number one: As I see it, we have a tremendous opportunity now to make this man Crane a national hero. Number two: Damage control—the passengers. Item one, no fatalities, no serious injuries except for Sanford. He’s no factor. Did we operate in a safe way? The locked-door policy will come into question. I—”

  “Jack, Jack.” Garrett Rohm was half out of his chair, his mouth in a silly, nervous grin. “Slow down, Jack.” His palms urged it now. “In fact, stop. We didn’t call this to listen you tell us what would happen next. We know what will happen next.” He settled himself again, seemed abruptly tired.

  “What is it, then?” Farraday frowned at him. Rohm had a cartoonish look now. He was a caricature of himself, his florid face gone redder, the furrows in his brow deeper, like ink lines drawn there. Acting the part of an embarrassed man, Farraday thought. Rohm glanced up now, adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses, then found his own fingernail more interesting. He shook his head at it.

  “We’re taking your resignation. I didn’t mean to just come out and say it, but there it is.”

  A sharp pain in Farraday’s stomach made him wince. A hum penetrated his ears, and he shook his head to clear it. Taking his resignation? He couldn’t believe it. On what grounds? He looked at all of them again. None would meet his eyes, all too scared. He knew they wouldn’t follow through. Because this was outrageous, surely Garrett Rohm’s notion. He would clear this up fast, and they’d back down, Rohm too. “You can’t have it,” he said to Rohm. “And I’ll tell you why.”

  But Rohm shook his head. “The Board has come into possession of certain evidence—evidence which makes it impossible for you to continue as chairman—”

  “What evidence!” Farraday shouted, without meaning to.

  Rohm glanced around the room. Heads were rising, turning. Rohm said, “An FAA Inspector is prepared to testify that you effectively wrote off Flight 555. That you saw the destruction of the aircraft as the best option.”

  “That’s a lie.” Farraday willed his face to blankness. He knew instantly whom Rohm meant—the man at the control center, the one who’d mutilated his Benz—an obvious grudge. He’d get even, but plausible denial was the main thing now. For several more seconds he stared placidly at Rohm, then let his eyes travel around the table again. Who wanted to repeat the accusation? No one? His hands released his notes now and opened, palms out—the gesture of a man who had nothing to hide. Obviously he was innocent—since they couldn’t prove a thing.

  But he had to step on this charge before it grew legs. Otherwise, who knew where it would lead? “Okay,” he said, allowing them a forgiving smile. “Give me a day or two to run this down. Who is this guy? Do you even have a name? For all we know, he’s the hijacker’s brother. Give me three days. No leaks. I’ll get Masters in on this. Remember, the important thing right now is to maintain a united front—”

  “It’s on tape,” Rohm said quietly. “The whole thing. The FBI negotiator and the FAA principal are both prepared to corroborate. Jack—” he whispered now—“It’s all over. This isn’t the only thing, just the last straw.” Again Rohm adjusted his glasses, then stared at Farraday. “You’re bad for business,” he said. “You aren’t the image we want.”

  At particular times in Jack Farraday’s life he had sensed a kind of texture to existence—a smoothness overlying a jagged substrata. It might have come from a childhood dream—or more precisely a nightmare—because it always caused him a sharp panic when he thought of it, a fear that one of the jagged points of the substrata would suddenly pierce the smooth surface of his life and impale him. Me had that sense now. That rush of utter panic. He could not make himself look at Rohm anymore. Instead, the meaningless marks on the page in front of him jittered, and the pain in his stomach grew intense.

  Rohm had continued, not really even talking to him now, only telling everyone else about the obvious impossibility of his continuing as chairman. It wasn’t worth listening to. Rohm was playing his part well, though, Farraday thought vaguely—pretending this was such a hard thing for him to do. When he actually enjoyed it so much. That was the thing about Garrett Rohm, about all of them. It was always personal in the end, no matter how much they liked to say it was only business. They would learn. They would lose. The whole thing would fall apart. The pilots would have their way. The other unions, too, and before long they’d be right back where they’d started, treating the employees like something more than a corporate asset.

  The panic had left him. Only the awful pain in his stomach remained. Rohm had stopped talking finally, the color drained from his face. He stared at Farraday now the way a man might look at a bleak, cold day, and Farraday found he could not think of anything more to say.

  He left with the strangest thought. It was just the kind of thought he knew he was capable of. Did others ever think such things? Wish as he did now, to bring down some decisive blow? But what if Emil Pate were up there this very moment, bearing down on the building as he had said he would? And what if he, Jack Farraday were miles away? He wished it: Blow them all to Kingdom Come.

  The girl behind the reception desk smiled sweetly at him as he approached.

  “Good morning, Mr. Farraday.”

  She was pretty, and dumb—as dumb as all the rest.

  “Good evening,” he said, and with a smooth, hard sweep of his arm cleared her desk—the ph
one machine, keyboard, monitor, all of it, the crash ringing through the silent corridors.

  Nez Perce Indian Reservation

  Northern Idaho

  Wednesday, March 17

  It was somewhere above the Big Eddy. Emil had taken her there soon after they were married. They’d driven upriver to Lenore and crossed over and then followed that road up past the town to where it forked. Then they’d taken the upriver road. Katherine Winslow remembered now, too, as she forced the rented car up the steep grade, the tires jouncing over the washboard ruts and loose gravel, that from the high promontory of basalt she was searching for you could see a bend of the river far down below, and beyond it a scattering of houses. The image seemed clear in her mind. She came to the fork and took the right-hand road, past a white farmhouse perched at the edge of the benchland, and then past its weatherbeaten barns.

  Rain had spotted the windshield a few minutes before, but the overcast was breaking up. There was fog in the narrow ravines on the far side of the canyon, rising in ragged sheets behind the dark lines of trees. The road went along the edge of the benchland now, the hillside falling steeply down on the right. She slowed, feeling the tug of the empty space. There were a hundred similar places along the canyon. On these roads, you took your life in your hands, she thought, and then it occurred to her, too, that living in a place like this, where the force of gravity was the constant enemy and the chilly water of the river an emblem of death, you might easily wish that you could fly. There was the urge, even right now within her, to steer the car out, over the edge and soar like a hawk above the steep slope. It made you feel that perhaps you could, if the desire were strong enough.

  But the road wound away now, away from the edge, following the contour of the canyonside, turning sharply when it reached the deepest penetration of the watercut, where the fencelines were overwhelmed by huge tangles of winter-killed blackberry vines and crisp stands of brown teasel. She remembered how impressed Emil had been that she knew their names. But that was something her father had taught his children.