“Well, I did. And I want to help now. Please, Ken, let those people go, and let’s handle this between you and me.”
Ken’s voice returned, neither strident nor anguished.
“The subject’s closed, Mr. North. If you want to help, then yank some strings with the government to get them to comply with my demands. This is my last day as a pilot or an employee of yours. We both know that. I can’t back down until those demands are met.”
“Well,” Bill replied, glancing at Dane and raising an eyebrow. “Why don’t you tell me exactly what those demands are?”
There was no answer.
Bill called twice more, and on the third call Kat’s voice responded, subdued and metered.
“Thanks, Bill, but he says no.”
“He’s really going to try it then?” Bill asked her.
The response was hesitant. “I … don’t know. He wants me to stop talking now.”
“Kat, we don’t have the performance charts over here, but Dane is type-rated in the seven-thirty-seven, and in his opinion, a takeoff attempt would be suicide.”
There was a short click of the transmitter, but no voice.
“We’re here, Kat,” Bill added, “if, you know, there’s anything more we can do.”
Bill North and Dane Bailey sat in silence for nearly a minute, their eyes on the adjacent Boeing, their thoughts on how to prevent Ken Wolfe from attempting a takeoff.
“We could taxi out and block the runway, I suppose,” Bill said.
Dane was shaking his head. “No way. We don’t want to corner a man with a bomb. God knows what else might push him over the edge, but blocking the runway, or shooting out his tires, or anything like that is exactly what would push me over the edge. That’s … intolerable to a pilot.”
Bill North searched Dane’s face carefully. “Why, Dane?”
He snorted softly. “Boss, you’re an aggressive chess player. I’ve watched you. You don’t like to lose. In chess, in business, in anything.”
Bill North smiled in response.
“So how do you feel when someone checkmates you?”
“I’m not following this, Dane.”
“How do you feel in that crystalline moment of shock when you realize you’ve been boxed in, when you recognize that there’s nowhere to move, nowhere to go, no strategy left to employ, nothing left but admission of defeat? Checkmate or stalemate. One second you’re conducting a battle with a myriad of options, the next, because of a strategic or tactical oversight, you’ve lost it all. How does it make you feel?”
Bill North cocked his head. “In a word? Panicked.”
Dane was nodding aggressively. “Exactly. A strong, controlling individual is panicked. ‘This can’t be! I can’t be out of options.’ And when you realize you are, there’s a fatalistic urge to regain control by bailing out of the game, resigning on your own terms.”
“And pilots are controllers.”
“To the depth of our being, Bill. Just like you are in business. If we block Wolfe, we’re stalemating him, and his only option to regain control is to trigger that bomb.”
Bill North sighed. “How about getting to that bomb? Didn’t Kat say it was supposed to be in the forward cargo bin? Couldn’t someone open the bin and get all the bags out?”
Dane was shaking his head. “Not without turning on a master caution light and a light on the overhead panel. He’d see that master caution light in a split second and know what was happening.”
“And you can’t defuse the light from outside?”
“No,” Dane said sadly.
“Then … she’s truly on her own.” He stood. “Let’s get the folks we brought aboard safely escorted into the terminal so we’ve got options if, somehow, he does get that thing off the ground.”
“Bill.”
“Yeah?”
He sighed heavily. “Look, despite everything I just said, the FBI needs to know that stopping him here and taking a chance he’s bluffing about the bomb might be a better bet than letting him attempt a takeoff. That’s got to be their decision, because it’s a real crap shoot.”
“A takeoff is that risky?”
The captain looked up at the owner. “If Wolfe tries to lift off this sixty-nine-hundred-foot runway with this eleven-thousand-foot density altitude at his weight of over a hundred and thirty thousand pounds, we’ll have a fireball off the departure end.”
Bill North shook his head as he gazed at the 737 through the windscreen.
“If he was the only one on board over there, that might be the best solution.”
Dane Bailey turned in his seat with a startled expression, his eyes studying Bill North’s face.
Aboard AirBridge Flight 90, Telluride Regional Airport, Colorado. 4:01 P.M.
“Kat, would you reach over and get that briefcase behind me, please? First, pull your seat back on the rails so you’ll have enough lap space to open it.”
Ken Wolfe motioned to the tiny jumpseat behind his chair. Kat had noticed the case when he’d brought it in, but somehow it had seemed unimportant at the time.
“What’s in there?” she asked.
“That is exactly what I want to know.” Ken looked over at her. “It belongs to Rudy Bostich. His laptop computer should be inside, and we’re going to go on a small fishing expedition.”
“For what, Ken? What would he have on his computer that could help you?”
He balanced the checklist on his lap as he ran through familiar patterns on the various panels with his hand, setting the electrical, hydraulic, air conditioning, and fuel systems for engine start. For a while he didn’t answer, his attention focused on the checklist. He looked over at her then.
“Guys like Bostich are arrogant beyond reason. They always carry too much sensitive information in their personal databases, and very few of them know enough about computers to know that password protection of a file can be easily broken. Bostich probably has names, numbers, references, and God knows what memos in there, and something might just be a smoking gun.”
She retrieved the case and laid it on her lap, aware that he was watching as she snapped open the two clasps. The clasps were gold, the exterior fine hand-tooled leather, the interior rich with the aroma of expensive cowhide.
In the middle, as predicted, was a powerful laptop computer and several manila filing folders.
Kat closed the case again immediately.
“Ken, if I find anything in here that might be evidence to help your case, I’ll contaminate it, because I’m the FBI.”
He paused and glanced over at her. “You’re telling me you need a warrant to search a briefcase?”
“I’m …” she shook her head. “I’m telling you that on the outside chance there’s something here, it would probably be inadmissable in a court because I found it without probable cause and without a search warrant.”
“Okay, what if I ordered you to look?”
She shook her head. “I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know.”
“How about if I pressed the keys while you held it in your lap?”
“Ken, I’m telling you I don’t know the legal ramifications well enough to predict. I just know that the FBI can’t go poking around just anywhere. We’re still governed by laws, and the laws are very strict on what constitutes probable cause.”
“Okay, Kat. Just hold it on your lap for a few minutes while I get the engines started.”
She looked over at the Before Starting Engines Checklist he was using, and reminded herself what he was doing.
“You’re going to start the engines?”
“Yes.”
“And try to take off?”
He nodded without comment.
“Ken, please! Don’t try it! You looked at the performance charts a minute ago. You know it would be suicide, don’t you?”
Ken snapped off a toggle switch and she heard the air conditioning system go silent. He reached up to the forward overhead panel, then, and turned a rotary switch and the sound of the lef
t engine winding up reached her ears.
“Ken, you’re an experienced professional airman. You’re a conservative airline captain. Like North said. Why would you take a wild chance that’s almost certainly doomed to fail?”
“Why didn’t you tell me the vice chairman of my airline was in that plane?”
Kat looked startled. “You didn’t ask. And it was immaterial. I commandeered him.” She watched his hand still holding the start switch. “Ken, are you going to listen?”
There was no response. The first switch automatically clicked off, and he rotated the adjacent one to start the right engine.
With her stomach in a tight knot, Kat watched the second engine wind up to idle power as Ken finished the start procedure, turned the air conditioning back on, and craned his neck to make sure they were clear on the ramp.
The options were limited. She could reach down and cut off the engines, but he could simply start them again. She could try to grab the trigger from his hand, but if she missed, the bomb would kill them all.
But to try a takeoff …
“Ken—” she began again. His right hand came up in a stop gesture.
“Not now. I’ve got to get out to the runway.”
“That’s what I’m trying to talk about,” she said. “You can’t do this.”
“We’ll talk about it at the end of the runway,” he snapped, pushing the power up and using the steering tiller by his left knee to guide the 737 ahead, and then to the left around the parked Gulfstream. He turned left then, and accelerated the Boeing to the east down the long taxiway leading to the end of runway 27 as he reached for the interphone and punched the rear galley call button.
Kat heard Annette answer in her earpiece.
“Where is Bostich, Annette?”
“I put him in the last seat in coach, a window on the left.”
Ken nodded to himself. “Okay, have him stand in the aisle by his seat. I want to see him.”
“Ken, what are we doing?”
“Whatever I need to do to finish this without hurting anyone. Did you make the P.A. about that blowhard in coach?”
“Yes. I thought you heard me.”
“No. But I’m glad you did it. Is he still seated?”
“Yes, Ken. Angry, embarrassed, and frightened beyond belief, but, ah, thank you. That felt very good.”
“Get Bostich on his feet, Annette. Please. So I can see him from the cockpit door.”
“Okay, Ken. Just—”
“What?”
“Ken, I … didn’t know the details about Melinda. I’m so very sorry. I can’t agree with what you’re putting us through, but … but good Lord, what a terrible ordeal.”
“Thanks, Annette.”
There was an awkward hesitation, and Kat could hear the interphone receiver being shifted to another hand. “Okay, Ken. I’ll get him to stand.”
At the end of the taxiway Ken guided the 737 onto the runway surface sideways and braked to a halt, carefully searching the sky to the left before turning the Boeing a hundred and eighty degrees to the right. When he stepped on the brakes, they were facing the taxiway to the north.
He straightened the nose wheel steering and set the parking brakes.
“What are we doing, Ken?”
“I’m protecting my flanks, I’m sure, as we speak, your people are sending in some sort of team to deal with me, now that they’ve lost you. I’ll bet you anything we’ll see a military aircraft pop up in the pattern in a few more minutes, and I do not intend to give them a runway to land on.”
She saw him take a piece of paper out of his pocket, hesitate, then unfold it and read it carefully. She also realized that tears were rolling down his cheeks.
“What is it?”
Ken looked up, his gaze outside, as he held up the slip of paper.
“One … one of the departing passengers …” he closed his eyes and waved it for her to take, unable to finish.
The handwriting was in highly legible cursive:
To the Captain,
You said you’ll be opening the door in a few minutes, so I don’t have much time, but there’s something I need to say to you.
Thank you for letting my family off. My wife and daughter and I have been terrified, as you suspected.
I listened to the story of your daughter’s murder with great sympathy, and with tears in my eyes. We, too, lost a child to crime—a drive-by shooting two years ago, for which no one has been arrested or tried. You and I know a terrible truth most parents don’t: There are two-footed animals out there who prey on children. They’re not really human, and why we protect them with laws meant to protect normal humans I will never understand. What you have done today is very wrong, and very criminal, and while I can’t condone threats to innocent passengers, I pray you succeed in bringing your daughter’s murderer to justice by forcing the truth from whoever holds it hostage. You’ve been a victim and a hostage, too, Captain, but the last hostage is always the truth.
May God be with you.
Kat dabbed at her eyes and refolded the note as she looked back at Ken. “That’s quite a note, Ken.”
He was nodding, his eyes still shut. “He’s right, you know. It justifies nothing, but … at least understanding helps.”
His right hand was resting lightly on the throttles, and Kat reached for it with her left, intertwining her fingers with his, dismissing the flash of caution in her head. She squeezed ever so slightly, expecting him to pull back.
Instead, he squeezed back and looked at their hands.
“Thank you, Kat. I appreciate your being … human.”
She nodded.
“I know you’d have to stop me if you could, arrest me, shoot me, but this …” He raised her hand with his an inch. “This helps to stem the rage.”
He withdrew his hand, then, and took a deep breath.
“Ken?” she said softly.
He nodded, his eyes on the panel. “I know. I know, you don’t want me to risk a takeoff. I fully understand, Kat.” He looked over at her suddenly.
“Look, there’s something you don’t know, something about the performance of this aircraft, my knowledge as a pilot, the whole thing, that you can’t know. As silly as this sounds, the hijacker asking the FBI agent to trust him, please, on this one point, trust me. I wouldn’t risk a takeoff if I had any real doubts I could do it.”
“So … you’re going to try?”
Ken hesitated as he searched her eyes. “Kat, I know they’re not going to sit back there in Washington with their feet on a desk and wait for this to be over. They’re planning to intervene. We both know that. Truth is, the minute anyone shows up here to deal with me—a line of sheriff’s cars, a helicopter, a military aircraft—I’ll have no choice. We’ll have to go.”
TWENTY-THREE
Aboard AirBridge Flight 90, Telluride Regional Airport, Colorado. 4:10 P.M.
Ken Wolfe pressed his face forward toward the windscreen and searched the sky once more before turning to Kat and gesturing over his shoulder.
“I’m going to check on Bostich. I’ve probably left him standing long enough.”
He rolled his seat back as he removed his seatbelt and swung his leg over the pedestal, unlocking and opening the door halfway in one motion. He stood for a few seconds, then returned to the left seat and picked up the P.A.
“Okay, Bostich, you can sit down and strap in again. Folks, we’re going to be sitting out here on the end of the runway for a while. I know I’ve kept you from the restrooms, but now, anyone who needs to, make as fast a run at the nearest restroom as possible. I’m turning off the seatbelt sign, but when I turn it back on, I’ll need you back in your seats immediately, because it will mean we’re about to depart. Rudolph Bostich, you stay in your seat.”
Ken replaced the P.A. microphone and removed Bostich’s powerful laptop computer from the briefcase Kat had been holding. He was in the process of punching the on button as the radio came alive.
“Flight Ninety, t
his is Five-Lima-Lima.”
Kat recognized Dane’s voice. She looked at Ken who nodded approval to answer.
“Go ahead, Dane,” she said.
“Kat, we have an urgent message for Captain Wolfe … from your people in Washington, the FBI. They want the captain to call the number I’m going to give you. Do you have a cell phone aboard?”
Ken was nodding, and she answered yes and wrote the number down.
“Got it Dane. Stand by.”
Ken was fishing for something in his map case, a small black plastic box with wires that he plugged in overhead. He replugged his headset into the box, connected it to a cellular flip-phone, and handed it to her.
“What’s this?” Kat asked, apprehension in her voice.
“Allows us to talk on a cell phone through our headsets and the transmit button on the yoke.”
Ken opened the phone and punched in the number, then sat it on the glareshield as the number began ringing in her earpiece and a voice she didn’t recognize answered from FBI headquarters.
“This is Agent Katherine Bronsky aboard AirBridge Ninety. I … we … had an urgent message to call you.”
There was a pause and several background voices before the man returned. “Ah, Bronsky, we need to talk to Captain Wolfe.”
She shook her head in puzzlement. “Look, I’m the negotiator here, and the captain is listening.”
“Agent Bronsky, you are a hostage, right?”
“That’s right. Her stomach tightened even further, knowing instinctively what was coming.
“Then you’re off the case. Take care of yourself, but pass this line to the captain.”
Kat looked at Ken and raised her eyebrows, fighting down the embarrassment of being summarily dismissed from the loop.
He nodded and punched the transmit button. “This is Wolfe.”
“Captain, would you please stand by to speak with the Acting Attorney General, Martin Springfield?”
“If he’s got something useful to tell me, like you’re complying with my demands.”
“I know he does, Captain. Stand by.”
There were a few clicks on the other end. Ken could envision the sophisticated recording gear hooked up to the line as they opened the line to an office at the Justice Department, where, undoubtedly, a group of people were huddled around Springfield getting ready to prompt him on what to say.
The Last Hostage Page 26
