Laynie Portland, Retired Spy

by Vikki Kestell

  The screaming made her head hurt.

  She shouted, “Listen up, people!”

  Parents shushed their children, and the cacophony began to die. Passengers, all the way to the rear of the plane, strained to hear her.

  “Here. Use this.” A flight attendant held a cabin microphone toward her. “Press this button to talk.”

  Laynie took the microphone. “Listen up, everyone. It’s over. Five hijackers are down, but the plane is fine . . . I believe. Business class has multiple holes in the cabin ceiling, but the plane’s automatic pressurization system will—should—compensate for the loss of air. Please stay in your seats and remain calm. The captain will apprise you of further instructions when he is ready.”

  “What did she say?” a woman shouted from the rear of the plane. “We’ve still got kids screaming back here and couldn’t hear the announcement!”

  Someone bellowed, “She said everything’s fine! They killed those *blank blank* hijackers!”

  Except Laynie knew in her gut that they hadn’t been “mere” hijackers.

  She handed the mic back to the flight attendant, intending to go forward and check on Tobin—but the male passenger who had handed her the box cutter placed his hand on her arm.

  Laynie’s reaction was automatic. She grabbed his fingers and wrenched them backward, forcing him to his knees in the aisle.

  “Stop! Please!”

  Laynie wiped the haze of confusion from her eyes. Dropped his hand. “Sorry. Little jumpy, I guess.”

  “I get it, I do. No problem. I just wanted to thank you.” He got up and put out his hand. “Thank you . . . thank you for saving us.”

  Others around them chimed in. “Yes! Thank you!”

  Laynie looked down and nodded.

  I’m so tired.

  “Yeah. Okay.” She couldn’t manage more than to turn away, try to put one foot in front of the other, try to move in Tobin’s direction.

  The economy class passengers began clapping—softly, then building as business class joined them, until cheers echoed through the plane. Laynie still just nodded . . . and walked into business class, up the aisle to the forward bulkhead, ignoring every voice that clamored for her attention, unable to respond to them.

  She spotted Tobin standing at the top of the aisle, his left arm hanging limp, blood flowing from his shoulder, down his arm, dripping from his fingertips.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “I think so, but right at this moment? Man, it burns like crazy.”

  Two flight attendants had a first aid kit out and were trying in vain to get Tobin to stop moving long enough to let them staunch the bleeding.

  “Abdul and his buddy?” Laynie asked.

  Tobin jerked his head toward the crew station behind the partition. “Laid them out pretty much where I took them down. Abdul didn’t go peacefully. Managed to get off a shot. Hey, think you could wrangle a couple of passengers to haul the other bodies this way?”

  “Sure. Okay.”

  “Then I need you . . . to go through their pockets. Collect everything. And me . . . I think . . . think I’ma need to sit . . . down.”

  Laynie gestured at the nearest passenger, front row. “Hey, you—yeah, you. Get up, please. The marshal needs to sit before he falls down.” She steered Tobin to the vacated seat. “I’ll deal with the bodies. You—” she indicated the displaced passenger, “move yourself and your stuff to the marshal’s seat over there.”

  She motioned to a flight attendant, “I need somewhere to put these.” She dumped the machine pistol, magazine, and box cutters into a drawer the attendant pointed to and turned her attention to the two bodies.

  “Marta!” Tobin called. “Check their pockets.”

  “I can help you with that,” a steward offered. “Go through their pockets for you, I mean.”

  “Thank you. I’d . . . appreciate it. Keep the stuff from each body separate. I’ll be back shortly.”

  Laynie longed to sit and close her eyes, shut out what had happened, but she couldn’t just yet. While the steward began his grisly work, she trudged back toward economy class.

  The body was still lying crumpled in the aisle, and all eyes in the cabin were fixed on her.

  Time to make another announcement.

  She signaled the attendant, who handed her the microphone. “May I have your attention? Two things. First, Marshal Tobin up in business class needs a doctor. Do we have a doctor on board?”

  A woman raised her hand. “Here. I’m an obstetrician, but I can help.”

  Laynie pointed back to business class. “Thanks. He’s up front. First row.”

  The clamor had picked up again, so she raised her hand for silence. “Marshal Tobin has also directed me to move the bodies to the front of the plane. I need some volunteers—preferably with strong muscles and stronger stomachs.”

  The same two men who had been quick to help her not more than ten minutes ago looked at each other and climbed from their seats.

  “Happy to help, Marshal,” one of them called. The other nodded. A third man joined them.

  Laynie didn’t correct their error. That would come later—hopefully after she had deplaned and disappeared.

  “All right then. Three bodies to move, this one here. That one,” she gestured forward to business class, “and the third through the curtain over there.” She pointed to the other aisle.

  More men joined the initial volunteers. They formed three teams and went about their work in silence.

  A woman seated on the aisle touched Laynie’s arm to get her attention and jerked her hand back just as quickly.

  Guess she saw what I did the last time someone surprised me.

  “Yes?”

  “Marshal, some passengers have been using the Airfones. A lot of them just get a busy signal, but some are getting through, and they are hearing strange reports from the people they talk to. Something about a plane flying into the World Trade Center? Do you know anything about that?”

  Laynie, her expression shuttered, said, “I have no information about that. Perhaps you could ask a flight attendant?”

  “They’re stonewalling us!” someone shouted. “They’ve been huddled together, whispering, and they refuse to answer our questions. The captain must know something—he’s in radio contact with the ground, isn’t he?”

  Laynie found two flight attendants with her eyes. They looked elsewhere, unwilling to meet her gaze. She turned to the attendant who had handed her the microphone. Her head moved infinitesimally side to side.

  Around her, passengers spoke over each other, saying what they’d heard, demanding answers, becoming more agitated, soon to be beyond control.

  “Listen up!” Laynie hollered. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know myself. Now, obviously, something has happened, but I don’t want to hear any more shouting—get me? We all need to be patient and wait until we’re on the ground to find out what’s going on.”

  “No, we don’t. I know what happened.”

  Laynie turned toward an older gentleman where he stood, stooping beneath the low ceiling of the middle section. She knew then that it was hopeless to keep a lid on the news.

  “Care to share?”

  “I talked to my daughter, soon as the shooting stopped. She lives in Midtown Manhattan. I had her on the phone for coupla minutes before we were cut off. She says a plane flew into the North Tower of the Trade Center less than an hour ago. First, everyone thought it was a little commuter plane, but it wasn’t. It was a full-sized passenger jet.”

  He lifted his voice over the rising tide of questions and fear. “My girl was watching the tower burn on TV when I called. The newscasters called it some kind of accident, but while we were talking, a second plane crashed into the other tower. My daughter saw it live, as it happened. Yeah, with two planes flying straight into the towers? That’s no mistake. That’s not an accident. That’s an attack! We’re under attack!”

  Passengers screamed, cried, and shouted out ques
tions.

  “My son works in the subway station under the South Tower. Did everyone get out?”

  “My mom runs a florist shop across the plaza!”

  “My daughter works for Braun and Pfizer, North Tower!”

  Laynie shuddered. She had heard the cries of terror coming from Bryan’s call to a woman named Grace who worked at Braun and Pfizer. In the North Tower.

  All she could think was, We were part of the plan, a second wave of attack. This plane.

  Shaking all over, she handed the mic to the flight attendant, turned her back on the confusion, and walked back into business class.

  Chapter 11

  LAYNIE LEANED AGAINST the door to the cockpit and considered the pile of bodies stacked by the fore bulkhead. She was waiting to view whatever the steward collected from the pockets of the hijackers. As the steward finished with one body, he used a marker to draw a number on its forehead, wrote the same number on the plastic bag where he was putting whatever he pulled from their pockets, as she requested, keeping the evidence separate.

  It wasn’t much, all total. Five passports—two Saudi, one Yemeni, two Syrian—wads of cash, two European driver’s licenses, and a folded piece of paper. The paper came from Abdul’s pocket.

  Laynie waited until the steward and another attendant covered the bodies with blankets, before she checked on Tobin. The doctor had gotten the bleeding under control, but Tobin was trussed up like a Sunday chicken, his pasty-white complexion as appetizing as cold, day-old, cooked pasta.

  He was obviously weak. At least he was lucid. “You did good, Marta.”

  “You, too, Marshal, but I wish they’d get this boat on the ground. You need a doctor.”

  Tobin pointed his chin to the ob-gyn who had patched up his shoulder. She was sitting in a flight attendant’s jump seat, just inside the crew space. Close enough to tend to Tobin if he needed her.

  “I have a doc. She’s a baby doc, so pretty soon we’ll find out if I’m having a boy or a girl.”

  Laynie laughed. The effort wore her out.

  So tired!

  “I’m waiting for that gander of you in your tutu.”

  “In your dreams. What’d you get from the hijackers’ pockets?”

  “Nothing remarkable except for this.” Laynie unfolded the paper. It was a three-panel section clipped from a folding map—what looked to have been one of those colorful, detailed tourist maps of Manhattan Island. Two locations were circled in pencil, the number 1 was written to the side of one circle, the number 2 beside the second. The map’s details were crowded with tourist sites represented by icons or 2D buildings. She held the paper closer and squinted to decipher the icons.

  Mount Sinai Beth Israel Hospital (1)

  Empire State Building (2)

  “Hey, Tobin?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Remember the note I passed you? Take a look at this.”

  Took him a minute to see what she’d seen, to understand what it meant.

  “A hospital! They were going to fly us into a hospital?”

  “A Jewish hospital. Alternate target? Empire State Building, say, if they came in too high and overshot the hospital.”

  “Thank God we stopped them.”

  “Stopped this one.”

  They exchanged looks. He lowered his voice.

  “How many, you think?”

  “Two planes hit the World Trade Center, both towers. Heard something about the Pentagon, too. Could be others. Dunno.”

  “Dear Jesus!”

  Laynie knew Tobin wasn’t swearing. “Yeah, it’s bad, but . . . not as bad as it might have been.”

  “I couldn’t have stopped them without you.”

  “I . . .” She shrugged.

  “Whatever you say, Marta. But I know this—God himself put you on this plane.”

  She tried to smile, but only one side of her mouth worked. Tears, real tears, sprang to her eyes.

  I was supposed to have flown from Paris to New York, but then . . . Oh, Kari! How did your God know to intervene? How did he manage to put me on this plane, on this day?

  Swiping away the moisture before it overcame her, Laynie nodded, gently touched Tobin’s shoulder, and staggered back to her seat. She was in a stupor as she stumbled down the aisle, hardly noticing how people stared. Stared at her and at the blood on her blouse. At the gun she still gripped in her hand.

  They dipped their heads, nodding silent appreciation, some whispering, “Thank you.”

  Laynie saw nothing, heard nothing.

  When she collapsed into her seat, a flight attendant appeared, her cheeks streaked with smears of mascara. “Marshal? Marshal Forestier? We think you need to eat, Marshal. You . . . you’ve been under a lot of stress and haven’t eaten since you first came aboard.”

  Food?

  Laynie blinked back the haze. “That would be nice. Thank you.”

  Another attendant joined the first. “And . . . if you’ll allow me?”

  She pulled Laynie’s tray table down, set a plate of steaming washcloths on it, and started sponging Laynie’s left hand.

  Sponging the blood from her hand.

  Laynie remembered the gun in her other hand and slid the HK between her hip and the seat. She surrendered to the attendant’s ministrations.

  Bryan and Todd watched, waiting for a chance to speak. They restrained themselves until the flight attendant gathered up the soiled cloths. Then Bryan pounced.

  “You know what happened, don’t you? Can you tell us?”

  Laynie blew out a breath. “You couldn’t hear the man in the next cabin? He said he managed to get through to his daughter who lives in Midtown. Two planes hit the Trade Center towers, like fifteen minutes apart. We don’t know much more than that.”

  Todd gaped. “Both towers? But that . . . that can’t be an accident, can it?”

  “No, it can’t.”

  Brian’s eyes widened. “W-what about the people in the towers? I mean, when I called Grace, I could hear people shouting. Screaming. Was anyone hurt? Did they evacuate everyone?”

  “Honestly, Bryan, I have no idea, but I’m pretty sure that’s why we’re parked at ten thousand feet, out to sea and not over land, circling and waiting. Every plane inbound for New York is probably doing the same.”

  She didn’t say what she was thinking. Honestly, Bryan, if a passenger jet crashes into anything, of course people die. Obviously! We just don’t know how many. Yet.

  The flight attendant returned with a sandwich and a hot cup of coffee.

  Laynie drank down the whole cup at one go, scalding her tongue. Nothing had ever tasted so good.

  “Another?”

  “Right away.”

  Laynie picked at the sandwich, then took a tentative bite, in spite of Bryan and Todd ogling her like it was feeding time at the zoo. She reached for the second half of the sandwich and stared at her plate, bewildered. It was bare.

  “You ate it, the whole thing,” Todd assured her, “but I can’t say you chewed.”

  The attendant placed another cup of coffee on her tray. “Let me know if you want something stiffer, ’k? Captain Sheffield says you and Marshal Tobin get anything you want—with his compliments.” She lowered her voice. “He would be out here thanking you personally for saving our plane, but he and the copilot have locked themselves in the cockpit. As a precaution.”

  Laynie imagined ice-cold vodka sliding down her throat, burning into her stomach, melting away the tension in her shoulders and the awful images of three dead men—men she had killed.

  Then her survival instincts kicked in. I’m exhausted. Trashed. Alcohol will knock me out. I can’t let down my guard or do anything to compromise my wits. I have to be ready to run the moment they put wheels on the runway.

  “Just coffee, thanks.”

  THEIR FLIGHT CONTINUED in a holding pattern another few minutes before the captain came over the PA system to break the news Laynie had been expecting. She glanced at her watch. Just past 9:30 a.m.r />
  So much has happened in such a short time . . .

  It felt like hours had passed.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, please give me your undivided attention.”

  The passengers had not heard from Captain Sheffield since prior to the attempted hijacking. At his request, the plane settled into a near-tomblike silence.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I have several important announcements, so please remain quiet as I cover each one.” He spoke slowly, articulating each word. “First, we have received word that at approximately 9:25 a.m. this morning, the FAA, by order of the Department of Transportation, has closed US airspace to all civilian flights until further notice.”

  He paused to let the information sink in before continuing. “What this means is that, until further notice, the US has been designated a no-fly zone for all air traffic except authorized military aircraft. It means that we will not be landing at JFK.”

  Anticipating a tide of reactions from the passengers, the captain raised his voice to compensate.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I must ask you to contain yourself until I have finished. My second announcement is that the Air Traffic Control System Command Center out of Washington Dulles has directed us, this flight, to continue in our present holding pattern—off the Atlantic seaboard of the US—until we can be rerouted to an alternate airport. It should not be a long wait. Since we are an inbound transatlantic flight, we have been placed high on the list to be rerouted. That being said, I want to assure you that, at present, we have sufficient fuel to arrive at our new destination. I repeat, we are not in an emergency fuel situation, and I hope to report our new destination to you soon. I can tell you that we will be landing somewhere in Canada, but that is the extent of my information regarding our destination at this time.”

  Canada! Laynie blew out a sigh of relief. She hoped it would be easier for her to leave unnoticed from a busy Canadian airport such as Toronto or Montreal than from JFK. The unplanned destination would even throw off her pursuers.