She looked back at him with a snap of her head. “Rusty, if Jon Roth is involved, he won’t call it off. He won’t call the airplane and tell them to run. He’ll let it happen! I know him. I know how he takes hold of an idea and won’t let go. Once he puts an operation in motion, he’s not about to cancel it.”
Rusty was nodding. “I reemphasized the fact that the negative autopsy means less of a chance that the passengers of Flight Sixty-six are infected. He didn’t seem terribly impressed.”
“We’ve got to get to a phone,” she said.
“Absolutely!” Rusty shot back into traffic, headed east, oblivious to a black sedan that took up a trailing position several cars behind.
“How do we do it, Rusty? Can we just call the airplane like you did earlier? Do you still have the numbers?”
“Maybe.”
“Where do we go? We can’t just stand at a phone booth. They could be tailing us right now.”
There were fewer than thirty minutes left. With the Washington Grand Hyatt in view, Rusty swung into the front entrance, parked, and tossed the keys to an attendant as he and Sherry raced through the revolving doors and headed for the elevators.
“We’ll be checking in,” he lied to the doorman.
Rusty and Sherry disappeared into the lobby, oblivious to the two nondescript men who came piling out of a black car that had just parked across the street. The men raced across traffic toward the lobby entrance, their progress tracked quietly by the watchful eyes of the doorman.
Interesting! he thought. Somebody’s got a tail!
Rusty considered using the phone banks near the third-floor meeting rooms, but they were too public.
“Come on. I know an old trick,” Sherry told him. They were alone in the elevator and she punched several of the higher floors in succession, darting out and around the corner on each floor until she found what she wanted.
She rushed back to the open elevator.
“Come on, but hang back and follow my lead!”
Rusty followed her around the corner and watched as she dashed toward a housekeeping cart parked in front of a pair of open doors midway down the hall.
He saw her stop and look into a room on the right, and then one on the left.
Sherry turned and motioned for him to follow, pointing to the one on the left as she poked her head into the room on the right, obviously talking to the housekeeper.
“You’re through with our room, fourteen-forty-three?”
Rusty heard the response from around the corner as he entered 1443.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Thanks!” Sherry said, crossing the hall and pulling the door shut behind her. She turned and latched the door.
There were bags and other personal effects in the room.
“What if they come back?”
“I’ll deal with it when it happens,” she said.
Rusty headed for the phone and called Quantum Airlines in Dallas, asking to speak with the vice president of Operations.
“Your name, please?”
“Dr. Sanders, calling from Langley. I’m with CIA. This is an emergency.”
There was an extended silence before the same voice came back.
“Mr. Sanders, we’ve been warned you would try to make some sort of bogus call. The police are being informed of this attempt. Don’t try to interfere again.”
The line went dead.
Sherry had pressed her ear against his as Rusty made the call, and he’d kept the receiver at an angle so she could hear.
Sherry replaced the call immediately, under an assumed female name.
“We don’t know anybody by that name” was the response. “Who did you say you were with?”
“Federal Aviation Administration. You’ve heard of us, we’re in all the phone books. I’m calling from the Administrator’s office.”
“Very well. We have the number of the Administrator’s office. Give us your four-digit extension and we’ll call you right back in the interests of authentication.”
Sherry hung up on her. “This is hopeless. Jon has blocked us with typical effectiveness. How about the satellite number?”
“I found it!” Rusty told her. He had been rummaging frantically through his shirt pocket. “It’s an old and bad habit, writing on scraps of paper, but sometimes it works.”
He placed the call, using his telephone credit card. After a series of clicks and tones, a recording came on: “We’re sorry, but the vessel or aircraft you have called is not receiving calls at this time. Please try again later.”
With less than thirty minutes left, they were out of options. All official access would certainly have been blocked.
Rusty sat on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands, trying to think. “There is a way, Sherry. There is a way. I just can’t dredge it up!”
She was pacing. “Well, how else can you talk to a seven-forty-seven? Could we reach them by aviation radio?”
Rusty shook his head no.
“Okay,” she said, “all phones are blocked, and we can’t get to the satellite connection they must still have with their Operations people. What other communications would they have on that plane? Radio? Anything? Is there any way we could convince the airline to call the captain and turn him?”
Rusty sighed. “By now Roth has us completely blocked. No one will pay any attention to us unless we’re CIA, and if we identify ourselves as CIA, we then become those renegade impostors they’ve been warned not to listen to. Given time, we could cure it. We don’t have time. They’re flying into a trap, Sherry.”
Rusty stood up, eyes flaring, pounding his fist into his other palm.
“Roth is helping those terrorist bastards assassinate two hundred fifty people. He probably thinks it’s justified! He thinks they’re already dead, and goddammit, I was the one who told him they could die an agonizing death from a viral pathogen that probably isn’t even there!”
“Okay, calm down!” she commanded. “Keep thinking. Is there any way we could reach someone’s cellular aboard?”
Rusty had started to shake his head no. Suddenly he straightened up.
“Iridium!”
“What?”
“Iridium. The new satellite-based cellular system! Suppose someone on board has one? It can receive messages even in passive mode.”
“Great. But who? What’s the number? Will they have it on? Will they answer?”
Rusty shook his head. “I don’t know, but Roth wouldn’t have thought to poison that company against us.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too new.”
Sherry was already reaching for a telephone directory, but Rusty’s hand was up to stop her as he grabbed the receiver.
“That’s okay. I know where their operations center is located.”
“Hurry, Rusty! We’ve got nineteen minutes.”
ABOARD FLIGHT 66
Rachael Sherwood appeared in the cockpit door as soon as James Holland pressed the unlock button.
“Mind if I come in?” Her voice was a soothing and welcome purr.
“Please! It’s lonely up here.”
“Where’s your copilot?” she asked, seating herself on the center jump seat. Holland could see her well-proportioned legs in his peripheral vision, and he could detect a hint of perfume he hadn’t remembered her wearing before. He recognized the scent but couldn’t name it. It reminded him of flowers and beauty and things decidedly female.
“We’ve been sleeping in shifts,” Holland told her. “I sent him back.” Holland turned sideways as far as he could in the seat and smiled at her. “It’s hard to see you when you’re behind me there. Why don’t you take the copilot’s seat?”
She nodded and relocated to the right seat.
“Rachael, how’s the little girl doing down there?”
She sighed. “If we weren’t under the shadow of this … bug, I’d say it was just a typical viral infection all kids get. She probably overdid it and got rundown and chilled. I mean, no one else d
own there is ill, and she wasn’t sitting anywhere near the heart attack victim. But, well, you know.”
Rachael paused and looked out the windscreen.
“But?” Holland prompted.
She looked at him and smiled thinly. “Well, under the circumstances, it looks pretty suspicious.”
“How are you holding up?” he asked.
She smiled broadly at that and looked away again, then returned her eyes to his.
“That’s what I came up here to ask you. I’m fine. Lee’s a tower of strength, just like you, and I’ve been leaning on him.”
James Holland felt a strange twang of something disturbingly close to envy. She had been relying on the ambassador. James Holland wished she could be relying on him.
But she had said “a tower of strength, just like you.” He took comfort in that.
“So, James, how are you doing, really?”
He tried unsuccessfully to chuckle. “That’s like asking, ‘Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?’”
She held his gaze, looking him deeply in the eyes, a disturbing look of intimacy that caused him to turn away suddenly, embarrassed. “I’m doing as well as can be expected, I suppose.”
That’s rather lame, he thought. What’s the matter with me?
She nibbled on her lower lip for a second before responding. “I get the feeling that there’s no one here the commander can really talk to, especially not your copilot. You can’t let anyone see you being human, right?”
He smiled and looked back at her.
“You think I’m secretly coming apart, Rachael?”
She shook her head.
“Certainly not! But you’re not a case-hardened type who chews nails and really doesn’t care about anything except looking macho. I see someone else in that uniform.”
He cocked his head. “Oh?”
She nodded. “Let’s just say I think I do. I’m a pretty good judge of character, James, and a pretty good listener who won’t go for the nearest megaphone when I get back downstairs.”
He laughed at that, a little more easily, she thought.
“Well,” he said, “my ex-wife would tell you I’m not a good talker.”
“Your ex-wife isn’t aboard, though, is she?”
Holland gave her a quizzical look. He felt off-balance all of a sudden.
“No, she’s not,” he said in a measured way.
Rachael swept aside a flurry of cautions that had fluttered through her mind with the mention of his ex-wife. Too many times in the past she had stayed in her shell and played the diplomatic, correct lady who wouldn’t dream of being forward or overly familiar. After all, she hardly knew this man. In fact, she didn’t know him.
But wasn’t that the point?
“Well, James, I am here. And I … care about you. Call it enlightened self-interest.”
Something stirred inside James Holland as well, and as he met her penetrating gaze again, he could see she was serious—and determined. His instincts were trying to raise the shields, protect his inner self, back off before revealing anything personal.
But why? He felt the question ricochet around his mind, and finding no answer worthy of consideration, he smiled at Rachael and relaxed a bit, feeling a kinship he couldn’t remember experiencing before with a beautiful woman. At least, not for a very long time.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“There are no … bombshell doubts to tell you about, Rachael. I mean, I think we’re both worried …”
“Try scared to death,” she said, noticing his large hands and the prominent veins in his forearms.
“Okay, a little of that,” Holland replied. “I just don’t know what to believe, you know? One moment Dallas is assuring me that this is probably a gross overreaction to a not-so-terrible virus, then I’m told that the world’s afraid of us, and then one of my passengers is blown away …” The words were choked off and he looked away, suddenly overwhelmed.
“You did all you could, James. I know the whole story.”
“Do you?” he asked somewhat bitterly. “I could have gone after her, tackled her, something. I mean, good Lord, Rachael, a young mother! They nearly cut her in half!”
“James, if there’s nothing else that demonstrates how ready they were to kill you too, it’s the fact that they shot her. Your own announcement said it all. They were programmed to be mindless about defending their perimeter.”
He shook his head and looked at the center console without speaking.
“We need a strong leader, James. You’d do us no good lying back there on the ramp.”
She’d said “strong” again.
Holland started to smile. Instead, he laughed ruefully. “I’m no damn leader, Rachael. I’m just a pilot who loves to fly. All I’ve ever wanted to do is fly.”
“Was your father a pilot?” she asked.
Rachael could see she’d struck a nerve. He looked shocked, and slowly began shaking his head with a distasteful expression.
“What prompted that question?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Instinct, maybe. Fathers and sons and professions and such.”
“You ever been to Greeley, Colorado?”
“No. Denver, yes. But I have a friend from college who was from Greeley. It’s north of Denver, right?”
“About fifty miles.”
“Did you grow up there?”
He nodded. “In a manner of speaking.”
She brightened, missing the implications. “I understand it’s a small town. Maybe my friend knew your family.”
“I hope not, Rachael,” he said. “I hope not, because the memory couldn’t be a good one. My father was well known in Greeley as a major municipal embarrassment. He was a petty self-promoter who did everything from starting ridiculous businesses to running for public office just to promote himself. I spent my youth trying to disavow any connection.”
“Was his name James too?”
Holland snorted. “Big Jim. That’s what he called himself. Big Jim Holland. The blowhard even ran for public office under that name. That’s why I never let people call me Jim.”
“What did he do for a living?”
“He was the closest thing to a legal con artist, Rachael, you can imagine. He could sell anything. He could sell additional jail time to a convict, refrigerators to Eskimos, brimstone to the damned. Only problem was, he didn’t care whether anything he sold happened to work or be of any value. I spent my youth listening to my mother deflecting angry customers and partners, bill collectors, and tax collectors. My father would buy anything on credit—and he seemed to get endless credit. There are buildings still named for him in Greeley, because the first thing he’d do when he bought or built something was to slap his name on it, usually in stone or concrete. Even when the place was repossessed, they couldn’t erase him.”
“And by contrast you wanted to be anonymous?” she asked.
He snorted and shook his head disgustedly.
“I wanted to be invisible!”
Holland lifted his big right hand, palm up, and hesitated as he searched for the right words. His eyes had drifted to the forward panel. They came back to her now.
“To him I was invisible, unless he needed a little boy to briefly play the role of Big Jim’s son for some promotional purpose. That was the only time I mattered to him.”
“I’m very sorry,” she said.
“I’m not much of a people person. I’m very much a loner. I know it’s a reaction.”
“I’ve watched you with these passengers, James. You’re more of a people person than you think.”
“That’s just the professional James Holland.” He gestured toward the windscreen, his eyes following his gesture. “The real me used to daydream constantly of going back in time to the early eighteen hundreds and being a solitary mountain man. I guess it was the urge to escape the constant public disapproval—the embarrassment of actually being Big Jim’s son. I never wanted a spotlight. I was eve
n one of those captains who’d never make a PA announcement if it wasn’t required.”
The two of them fell silent for a few seconds before Rachael looked back at him and cleared her throat.
“Is your father still living?”
Holland shook his head. “No. He died fifteen years ago. I didn’t even go to the funeral.” He looked over at her again. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I got into all that. It’s water under the bridge.”
She waved it away. “How did you get into flying?”
“Chance, and love at first flight, as I call it.”
He told her of winning a free flight in high school, and how he suddenly couldn’t get enough. He told her of the appointment to the Air Force Academy and how his love of soaring was amply rewarded by a long list of badges and honors. He told her about being number one in pilot training, and of Vietnam and his sixty-three missions in F-4 Phantoms out of Da Nang.
And he told her about Sandra, his ex-wife.
“My fault,” he said, summarizing the divorce. “I really am a solitary type. I don’t communicate well. You’ve heard more about me in the past few minutes than Sandra did in ten years of marriage.”
He turned back to her. “Really, I’m sorry to unload …”
“That’s what I wanted you to do.”
“Well, you were right. You are a good listener, Rachael. You make me feel like we’ve known each other for a long, long time.”
She smiled. “We have. We met at the beginning of this crisis, remember? A lot has happened in a short period of time.”
James nodded, looking deeply in her eyes by obvious invitation. He looked down and noticed she wasn’t wearing a ring.
He cleared his throat, a small but slightly frightening decision made.
“Now, I’d like to ask you something,” he said.
“Okay. What?”
“I’d like to know something about the background of a beautiful and fascinating female passenger I have named Rachael Sherwood.”
TWENTY-TWO
GRAND HYATT, WASHINGTON, D.C.—SATURDAY, DECEMBER 23—5:04 P.M. (2204Z)
Sherry Ellis paced while Rusty Sanders hunched over the telephone, acutely aware of the time.
Sixteen more minutes!
“What’s the holdup?” Sherry asked.
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