The Last Hostage

by Nance, John J. ;

  Ken took a step back and pointed the .44 into the air just over Kat’s head, startling her as he nodded toward the airplane.

  “Okay, Kat, you can join the group.”

  She cocked her head to one side as she tried to interpret his words.

  “You mean, it’s okay to come aboard?”

  Ken shook his head. “No, Agent Bronsky. I mean you’ve just become a hostage.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Aboard AirBridge Flight 90, Telluride Regional Airport, Colorado. 3:30 P.M.

  For several minutes after the captain left the cockpit, Rudy Bostich sat perfectly still, holding the shoulder straps tight and trying to interpret the sounds filtering through the closed cockpit door. After the opening of the forward entry door and hearing muffled voices outside, he finally concluded Wolfe had left the airplane.

  The problem of the electronic trigger seemed simple enough. Provided he could maintain perfect tension on the shoulder harnesses at all times, it didn’t matter where his body might be; the button would remain pressed.

  Slowly, carefully, he held the harnesses in the middle of their length with his left hand while threading the ends around a handle just below the copilot’s window with his right. When he was sure he had the tension right on the makeshift pulley, Rudy unfastened his seatbelt and ducked his head under the straps to get them over his right shoulder, then carefully lifted himself out of the seat and over the center console until he was standing behind the seat.

  Satisfied the straps were still being held tightly enough to keep the trigger depressed, Rudy ran his right hand down the back seat to the inertial reel at the base, gently probing for the trigger device.

  He ran his fingers underneath the unit and around, and leaned over even farther, wholly unprepared to lose his balance.

  Suddenly his feet slipped on the metal floor and in an instant he was falling, his left hand grasping for a better hold on the shoulder straps that were holding the bomb at bay. Gravity was yanking them away, pulling them at last from his fingers.

  Rudy could hear the straps retracting automatically as his mind waited for the impact of the explosion.

  Nothing.

  He had landed on his side. He lay there for a few seconds, afraid to move, probing finally at the back of the seat with his left hand before grasping the top of the copilot’s seat with it and pulling himself up. He looked for the small electronic trigger, around the seat, behind the seat, under the seat, and everywhere else he could think of.

  The conclusion was startling, but inescapable.

  The bastard! It’s not here. It probably never was here.

  Rudy finally pulled himself to his feet and stood, shaken, behind the center console.

  There was a small peephole in the cockpit door and Rudy pressed his eye to it. He could see the daylight streaming into the front entry area from the open door, and he could see the heads of some of the passengers in the distance, but there was no sign of Ken Wolfe or any of the flight attendants inside.

  He leaned forward cautiously over the pilot’s seat to look out the side window to the left. Wolfe was there, standing twenty feet from the door with his back to the airplane, talking to a young woman who was walking toward him. Wolfe’s attention was thoroughly diverted. Maybe, Rudy thought, he could slip out, get to the back doors of the Boeing, and open one of the exits.

  A small, distant twinge of conscience rippled through his mind, a recognition that he’d be leaving a plane full of hostages behind, but he pushed it out of his mind. He refused to believe Wolfe’s words—that blowing up everyone would eventually accomplish his purpose. That was just posturing. The challenge of explaining the abandonment of people who were being held hostage primarily because of him crossed his mind, but he dismissed that as well.

  But, if there were no Rudy Bostich to batter at, there’d be no reason to continue the hijacking, so why would Wolfe hurt anyone?

  That’s a defensible explanation, he concluded. If something happens after I get out of this aircraft, that’s what I’ll tell them.

  Rudy opened the cockpit door and peered around the corner of the forward lavatory to the open entry way. He could see Wolfe outside, his back to the plane.

  Rudy crept past the door in a crouch until he reached the forward portion of first class, then stood and moved to the rear galley as fast as he could walk, ignoring the sea of questioning eyes that followed him down the aisle.

  He reached the rear galley and barged inside, startled at Bev’s instant response.

  “Sir! Why are you out of your—?”

  Annette silenced Bev with a look as she stood. “Rudy, what are you doing back here?”

  He gave her a wild-eyed look as he moved to the right rear door and put his hands on the door-opening lever.

  “What in heaven’s name do you think I’m doing?” He shot back. “I’m going to get the hell out of here and remove his reason for hijacking this airplane.”

  Annette crossed the galley and stood facing him, her right hand on the same handle as his.

  “Didn’t you hear his warnings?”

  Rudy Bostich snorted. “He’s full of warnings, but I’ve been sitting up there watching the criminal bastard for the last hour, and I can tell you he’s not after anyone but me.”

  “He says he has a bomb in the forward compartment.”

  Rudy saw an iron-willed look in her eyes as he remembered the small block of plastic explosive Wolfe had shown him earlier. He licked his lips nervously before replying, his eyes looking away from hers. “I’m sure the bomb is real, but I’m also sure he wouldn’t actually use it.”

  “Did he tell you that? Did he give you some reason to believe he wouldn’t use it?”

  Rudy scowled. “Look, dammit, I’m a good judge of people, and I’m telling you he won’t use it. Trust me.”

  “Why?” Annette asked, searching his face. “Why should I trust you? Why should we trust you? I don’t know who’s right or wrong about what Ken said on the P.A. regarding you and that warrant and everything, but I can’t trust your opinion because it comes from a panicked man who’s trying to save himself.”

  He sneered at her and shook his head. “Yeah, right. Spare me your amateur psychology and move away from this door, unless you want to be an accessory to kidnapping and air piracy.”

  Annette’s grip tightened on the handle as Kevin stood and approached from the side.

  “You’re not going anywhere until it’s safe to do so,” Annette told Bostich. You want to call that being an accessory, go right ahead. I call what you’re doing being a coward.”

  “She’s right,” Kevin added. “Stand away from that door. You’re imperiling all of us.”

  Rudy Bostich snapped his head to the right and snarled at Kevin. “Stay out of this, sonny!”

  Kevin reached out quickly and grabbed the handle—his hand next to Annette’s—as he raised his eyebrows in mock surprise.

  “Sonny?” he repeated in a mocking tone.

  Rudy’s eyes shot back and forth between the two of them for a few seconds before he relaxed his grip and let his arm drop. “Okay, look. He’s outside. What he’s doing I don’t know, but this is the ideal time to—”

  “To what?” Annette asked in amazement. “Just deploy an emergency exit slide and run, with him able to see you? Leaving all of us in here?”

  Rudy shook his head. “I was going to wait until he came back aboard and found me gone.” He explained the ruse with the trigger and the copilot’s seat. “He’ll be frantic to find me, and while he’s racing down the aisle, I can get out.”

  “And go for help, right?”

  He started to nod before realizing Annette meant it derisively.

  “No, not go for help, just remove the reason for the hijacking.”

  Annette stared at him for several very long moments, until Rudy looked away.

  “Let me ask you a question, Rudy,” she said quietly.

  “I’ve had enough questions—” Rudy began, leaning ag
ainst the side of the galley, his eyes on the floor.

  “Nevertheless, answer one more.”

  He looked up. “What?”

  “I heard what the captain said on the P.A. about that warrant. Did you call that detective, and for some reason not want to admit it?”

  Instantly his expression became a sneer. “You gotta be kidding me!” he said as sarcastically as possible. “You, too?”

  “Did you?” she repeated evenly.

  He stood away from the galley wall.

  “Why should I answer such a stupid question? I’m a federal prosecutor, for God’s sake.”

  “Did you?”

  “Of course not, but even if I had, I certainly wouldn’t stand back here and admit it to you.”

  Annette glanced at Kevin, who looked startled, then back at Rudy, who was trying to fathom her reaction and remember exactly what he’d just said.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I think …” Annette said quietly and slowly, her mind racing. “I think you just answered my question.”

  The confusion on his face deepened. “Are you going to help me get out of here, or what?”

  “Sit down, Rudy.”

  “What?”

  “Sit down in the last row back here. You’re stuck with us, and I’m afraid we’re stuck with you.”

  At the same moment outside the forward entrance of the 737, Kat Bronsky was looking at the barrel of a powerful .44 Magnum pointing just over her head as Ken Wolfe’s words echoed in her mind like the vibrations of a struck gong.

  “You’ve just become a hostage,” he’d said.

  She looked him in the eye. “You are joking, right?”

  Ken shook his head side to side slowly. “No, Kat.”

  She raised the palms of her hands. “Ken, what … what good is this going to do? I mean, I’m the negotiator, for crying out loud!”

  “So, we’ll go aboard and you can negotiate. Come on, m’lady. Get up the stairs.”

  “I do not believe this!”

  Ken snorted. “I think I just had the same conversation with the shell-shocked deputy over there. Kat, I’m dead serious.” He inclined the gun barrel toward the top of the stairs and she began climbing in trance-like confusion, wondering how she could explain to Frank what had just happened.

  Oh God! The Bureau will disown me for this! They’ll go crazy! They’ll never take me seriously again!

  Kat stopped halfway up and turned around toward Ken.

  “How can I be your link with the government and help get you what you need if I’m here with you?”

  Ken smiled at her, not unkindly. “Come on, Kat. That was never your mission to begin with and we both know it. Besides, we’ve got phones aboard. Plenty of them. You get Bostich to confess, you can chat with the Pope if you want.”

  “I’m not Catholic,” she replied.

  “Keep moving, Kat,” he said.

  She turned and climbed the last few steps to the entry way and stepped inside, aware that Ken had reached the top step right behind her.

  “Stand in the galley there for a minute, Kat.”

  He turned back to the door and threw a switch. She heard the whine of a motor as the stairs retracted, and the slight bump of cabin pressure as he closed and secured the door. He turned to her then with an index finger up.

  “Stay there. Don’t move.” He opened the cockpit door with his left hand, keeping an eye on Kat, then leaned in for a second, emerging with a strange expression on his face.

  “What’s the matter?” Kat asked.

  “Seems Bostich figured out my little ploy and ran to the back.”

  “What ploy?”

  He looked at her and shook his head. “Never mind. Kat, get up front and strap into the right seat.”

  “The copilot’s seat?”

  He nodded. “Now.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  Ken looked at the ceiling and shook his head before looking back. “We? Kat, let’s get our roles straight here, okay? I’m the hijacker, holding a gun and a bomb and giving you orders. You’re the hostage. Stop sounding like my accomplice.”

  “What, I’m confusing you?” she asked in mock surprise.

  “YES, you’re confusing me! Absolutely you’re confusing me.”

  “Good,” she said, smiling slightly despite her knotted stomach and the appalling picture playing in her mind of the impending reaction at FBI Headquarters when they found out their agent on the scene was a hostage herself.

  Ken shook his head, a rueful expression on his face. “Damn, lady, you are very good at this.”

  She looked up at him with surprise in her mind and an inadvertent look of innocence on her face.

  “I’m just trying to figure out what you want, Ken.”

  He pointed with the gun toward the front. “Cockpit. Copilot’s seat. Now. Go.”

  She hesitated, catching his eyes. “What are you going to do, Ken?”

  “Just get up there.”

  Her hand came up in a stop gesture.

  “Ken, don’t go back there and do anything stupid.”

  A look of disgust crossed his features as he glanced over his shoulder at the cabin, then looked back at her.

  “What, like shoot the only bastard who has the information I need? Hardly. Kat, get up there now!”

  “Or what? Or you’ll gun me down?”

  The sound of the .44 Magnum being cocked shot through her consciousness. The fact that his finger was nowhere near the trigger did not register in Kat’s mind. She heard herself inhale sharply, involuntarily.

  “I’ve got one last chance to get Lumin by cracking Bostich. There will be no second chances for me. Get in the way of that mission, and yes, Kat, I would kill you.”

  “Okay,” she said quietly.

  “Don’t confuse what happened last night with Lumin. Last night there were other options. Today there’s only one.”

  He carefully uncocked the hammer.

  Kat nodded. “I’m moving.”

  She moved into the cockpit and sat awkwardly in the copilot’s seat as she tried to suppress the shaking in her limbs. She could hear Ken somewhere behind her in the entryway. Up to a few seconds ago she’d been confident she could talk him away from the brink. There had been a connection there, however slight, established in spite of his resistance.

  But that confidence had evaporated in the face of the cocked pistol. Now she wasn’t sure. The level of desperation she’d witnessed frightened her, cutting through the procedures and the psychology and the empathy she was beginning to feel.

  Kat’s eyes moved around the interior of the cockpit quickly as she tried to familiarize herself with the various controls.

  Her head was still whirling, and she thought of her handbag, now sitting in the Gulfstream. Her gun was in there. The gun she needed now. So were her FBI credentials, her credit cards, and the one piece of paper she instinctively knew Ken Wolfe must not see: her pilot’s license.

  Communications panel. Where is it?

  She ran her hand along the center console to her left until she located the buttons.

  VHF number one and two, Navigation radios, P.A. button, and interphone. Okay. I need a headset.

  She looked to the right, finding the copilot’s map kit and the cord from the headset jacks on the panel running back to a place on the floor where the copilot’s tiny Telex headset had dropped.

  Kat leaned to her left and looked through the partially opened cockpit door. She could see Ken in the forward part of the cabin pulling a briefcase out of the overhead compartment.

  She picked up the copilot’s headset and put it on as she punched the transmit button on the control yoke.

  “Five-Lima-Lima, can you hear me?”

  “We’re here, Kat,” Jess replied. “What’s your situation?”

  She hesitated for a second, wondering whether to lie about her status as a hostage. Perhaps she could talk her way back out. Yet … they needed to know.

  “I …
I think you’d better call Frank in Salt Lake and let him know what’s happened,” she said in little more than an animated whisper. She let up on the button, waiting for a response.

  “Kat, we saw the gun. Did you go aboard voluntarily?”

  “No,” she replied, “but I’m going to try to defuse this situation. Tell him to inform Headquarters and stand by.”

  A sound to her left caused her to turn around to find Ken Wolfe standing in the doorway, holding a briefcase.

  “You crack Bostich, Kat, and I guarantee you’ll defuse this situation.”

  She searched his eyes, finding no anger there.

  “You did say I could use the phone.”

  He snorted. “That’s the radio, as you obviously know. Stay put.”

  “Ken, where is Bostich?”

  He gestured over his shoulder. “In the back. Cowering in one of the seats.”

  “Shouldn’t I go back and talk to him?”

  Ken ignored the question as he slid into the left seat and worked the levers to slide it forward toward the yoke, adding to her confusion.

  “Ken?”

  He was fastening his seatbelt now, glancing every few seconds out the left window, then down at the fuel gauges.

  “Yeah?” he said at last, his eyes studying the overhead panel.

  “When can I question Bostich?”

  “When we’re airborne,” he said simply.

  Kat felt her heart skip a beat.

  “Ken?”

  His right hand came up in a wait gesture. “Just a minute. I’ve got a few things to do.”

  “Ken, you promised to let the passengers off!”

  He shook his head while flipping through the aircraft’s performance manual. “No I didn’t, Kat. I said I wanted to, but you and your people back in D.C. didn’t keep your end of the bargain. I can’t release the people until Lumin’s in custody.”

  She swiveled halfway around in the copilot’s seat, leaning forward to catch his eye. “Ken, dammit, look at me!”

  He stopped and looked over with a neutral expression. “Yes?”

  “You can’t leave here with all these people aboard. You’ve got to give us something. You’ve got me, you’ve got Bostich, you don’t need them.”