“American Seventy-five, slow to one forty. You’re overrunning the Eagle flight ahead. United Three Twenty-six, I said maintain one eighty, sir.”
Pilots who flew too fast, or slowed too late, ended up in pilot hell: vectored around for a half hour by unforgiving controllers who would eventually have to squeeze them back into the traffic flow for another try at landing—while the passengers checked their watches and fumed. On the ground, heat undulated in great waves from the blazing-hot metallic skin of the queues of idling Boeing and Airbus products interlaced with smaller regional jets and turboprops to form billion-dollar waiting lines stretching toward the horizon of O’Hare’s real estate.
Jake caught the eye of one of his controllers across the room and rolled his eyes in shared agony. The man smiled and nodded.
The background din of strained pilot voices always grated on Jake’s nerves, especially when aircrews became testy in response to the staccato instructions of his ground controllers, who usually talked about as fast as human speech allowed.
“All right, United Two Thirteen, O’Hare Ground, I SEE you, and I told you to hold your position. Meridian One One Eight, stop it right there, give way to the Eagle ATR Seventy-two on your right. Lufthansa Twelve, speed it up, sir, I need you out of that alley NOW Delta Two Seventeen, are you on the frequency?”
“Ah … Delta Two Seventeen is with you.”
“Roger, Delta, follow the Meridian Triple-Seven on your left. Air France Twelve, change to tower frequency and wait for him to call YOU.”
Diane Jensen, Jake’s favorite controller for mostly sexist reasons, appeared at his side from the break room below, adjusting her headset as she prepared to pick up the rhythm and take over for one of the male controllers. She ruffled her short-cropped, honey blond hair and smiled at him. “And now is the season of their discontent,” she intoned with mock severity.
“Ours, too,” he replied. “Herndon’s slowing the inbounds already,” he said, his eyes on the distant traffic as he invoked the name of the FAA’s Air Traffic Control System Command Center near D.C., “and we’re running out of ramp space.”
“And I’ve got a short-tempered brother in that mess down there trying to get to Dallas. I just dropped him off. You’d think he was preparing for battle.”
“He was,” Jake remarked.
“I suggested Amtrak,” she said, moving forward to plug in next to the man she was preparing to relieve. “But he wouldn’t listen.”
The tie-line from Approach Control was ringing again, and as Jake reached for the receiver, his eyes caught a bright glint of sunlight from a distant car in the clogged traffic outside. He was glad he didn’t have to be down there among all those flaring tempers.
Very glad.
RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Colonel David Byrd picked up the papers he’d spread out on the witness table and shoved them in his briefcase before turning to take the outstretched hand of Julian Best, chief of the Aviation Subcommittee staff.
“Nicely done, Colonel,” Best said, a grin creasing his craggy features.
“Thanks,” David Byrd replied as the insistent chirping of a cell phone began somewhere in the room.
Colonel Byrd tapped the surface of his briefcase. “By the way, Julian, I’m not exaggerating,” he said, a dead-serious expression on his angular face. “While we’ve pretty much solved the terrorist threats, the air rage threat is becoming critical. The summer’s just beginning, and this isn’t FAA posturing.”
Best was smiling. “I know you’re not blowing smoke, Colonel. I know your record. Anyone who commanded a special ops squadron, has a row of ribbons that impressive, and handled the things you’ve handled is too tough to send to Capitol Hill on a B.S. mission.”
The chirp of a cell phone interrupted them and Byrd shrugged as he gestured to the phone.
“Sorry.”
“No problem, Colonel. I’ll be in touch,” Julian said as he turned to go.
Byrd opened the phone and turned toward the nearest wall to concentrate on the call, momentarily puzzled by angry words on the other end.
“This is Lieutenant General Overmeyer, Colonel. What in holy hell do you think you’re doing testifying to Congress without my approval or a Pentagon handler? I just saw your ugly mug on television in uniform! Who gave you authority to go on C-Span in uniform and make policy statements?”
Colonel Byrd pulled up a mental image of General Overmeyer, the Air Force deputy chief of staff, a man known to most of his subordinates as “General Overreactor.” The general was powerful and dangerous to the career of any officer who crossed him. Even a full colonel.
“General,” the colonel began, “you put me directly under the command of the FAA administrator, and I was testifying at her direction.”
“Byrd, you’re not there to be a civilian lapdog to be trotted out at the administrator’s discretion to chase pet issues up a tree anytime it pleases her.”
“General, I take offense at that. I’m hardly a lapdog, I …”
“I want you in my office in thirty minutes, Byrd. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir. If you insist.”
“Apparently I just did. That’s a goddamned order. Oh. In case you’ve forgotten your roots, Colonel, do you need any help finding it? The Pentagon, I mean? It’s a big structure near Reagan National.”
“General, sarcasm isn’t necessary.”
“GET YOUR ASS IN HERE!”
The general hung up, leaving David Byrd off-balance, as he calculated the fastest way across the Potomac.
CHAPTER TWO
CHICAGO O’HARE AIRPORT, ILLINOIS
11:30 A.M. CDT
The windy city awakened to the usual traffic mess of a weekday June morning with temperatures hitting the mid-seventies by eight. By noon, the thermometers were pushing ninety and rising at roughly the same rate as the tempers of many of those converging on O’Hare by bus, van, taxi, and car through the medium of hopelessly jammed freeways.
The airport itself was in a state of meltdown. O’Hare was Overcrowded, overheated, and overused, with no relief in sight from the constant pressure to add more flights and more passengers, and keeping the intricate airport machine balanced, oiled, and running was a daily battle. There was little margin for error, and any outside disruption could cause a cascade of delayed and canceled flights, the effects of which would ripple back through the airline system to create gate holds, delays, and more cancellations across the United States.
And disrupting the Meridian system was precisely what the infuriated flight attendants of Meridian Airlines were determined to do on this hot summer morning.
As passengers alighted at the Meridian check-in area at O’Hare, they were immediately sucked into a tornado of angry flight attendants brandishing picket signs. “We’re not on strike yet!” the signs proclaimed. “But Meridian’s being UNFAIR!” A handful of passengers gave them thumbs up, but most brushed past the pickets, pretending they weren’t there.
Among the melee, hundreds of pounds of bags clunked, plunked, and thudded their way onto the sidewalk as a tide of passengers lined up for the skycaps running curbside check-in. Other passengers struggled through the sweltering heat and crowded confusion of the sidewalk to get to the ticket counters inside, which were grossly undermanned and defined by unending lines. Movable stanchions marshaled the supplicant passengers into a back-and-forth line that provided only the vaguest of promises that one would actually reach an agent before departure time. It was a depressing game understood by most. Agents cost money, and Meridian wanted as few of them as possible.
A Meridian Airlines customer-service agent in a wrinkled blazer and badly stained tie turned from his latest close encounter with a furious customer and checked his watch, disappointed to see it was only fifteen minutes past twelve. He could see a frazzled-looking couple approaching from the right, their eyes locked on his red coat, but he raised his eyes instead to the driveway outside, his
attention snagged by a stretch limo. Who, he wondered, would emerge from the long, black Cadillac? It could be Madonna, who was in town, or some political superstar. But most likely it was just some unknown fool with too much money. In any event, it gave him an excuse to ignore the obviously unhappy couple a few seconds longer.
He hated the customers. He hated Meridian. And he hated his job. More than anything else, he hated the fact that he’d worked for Meridian too long to quit, and had too much invested not to care about being fired—something he and most of the contract employees were threatened with weekly.
The driver of the limo came around and opened the rear door, and the supervisor watched a young Asian couple unfold themselves from the rear seat. The man and woman stood on the curb, trying to come to grips with the confusion.
It’s nobody, the supervisor said to himself. Just a couple of overgrown children with too much money. He turned to other oncoming customers instead.
At the curb, Jason Lao pulled his briefcase from the interior of the ostentatious limo and nodded uncomfortably to the driver. He’d signed the invoice and paid a reasonable tip before getting out, and now all he wanted was distance from the car before someone recognized him.
Linda Lao was several paces ahead. She turned and smiled at him, the warm, sensuous smile that had captivated his heart since their Silicon Valley days. She waited for him to pull the handle up on his bag and catch up.
“Now, babe, wasn’t that better?” she said.
“No. That was mortifying.”
“Jason …”
“I order a town car and they send me a rolling bordello.”
“It was a bit much, I’ll admit, but it was comfy and cool, and you’re filthy rich now, remember? We can afford it!”
A skycap had turned and spotted them as likely candidates as they each pulled their large rolling bags across the inner drive.
“Folks, can I help you?” he asked.
Jason nodded and let him take charge of the bags.
“Where are you going today?” the skycap added.
“London,” Linda said with a toss of her head, not caring who knew how excited she was.
He nodded and began loading the bags on a handcart as Linda took Jason’s arm and guided him through the automatic doors, then spun him around.
“What?”
“Okay, repeat after me, Mr. Chairman. I’m going to enjoy this.”
“What?”
“Come on. Repeat it.”
“That’s silly.”
“Maybe, but say it anyway. I … am … going … to … have … fun!”
“Yeah, okay, I’m gonna have fun.”
She put her hands on his shoulders, mock seriousness painting her features. “You want me?”
“Of course I want you. I always want you.”
“Okay. No smile, no fun, no sex. Got it?”
He sighed and tried to smile. “Okay. I am going to have fun.”
“And you’re going to relax, right?”
“One thing at a time,” Jason replied, smiling a bit at last.
Linda Lao knew she was dealing with a lit fuse whenever Jason had to go to the airport. He was tightly wound, demanding much of himself and others, the engine of success for one of the few surviving dot-com superstar companies. He was successful because he lived and breathed customer service—a term that, in his words, had become an oxymoron in commercial aviation.
Every foray to the airport was an agony for Linda, who hated watching her husband angered and stressed by typically hideous service. Even the snowstorm of postflight complaint letters he usually wrote wasn’t as annoying as just watching the tension eat at him—which was why she had all but begged him to charter a jet for the trip to London.
The reaction had been predictable. Jason was a frugal man from a frugal family who had survived and prospered in Hong Kong by being frugal. A price tag approaching thirty thousand dollars for a chartered jet compared with coach fares under two thousand had horrified him.
“At least get us first class, then,” she’d begged.
“Our employees don’t fly first class, and neither do we,” he’d said. “I have stockholders to think about.”
“But your company isn’t paying for this trip. We are.”
“All the more reason. We’re not so good we can’t fly coach.”
“Jason, honey, coach is all right for domestic flights, but it’s horrible for international!”
The limo was the only exception he’d make, and she knew she’d be hearing about that for the next two weeks: the cost, the embarrassment, the wrong message it sent. It amused her sometimes that he was so careful of finances and of his image as a leader. They had struggled for years in California to make it, and now they had. “But precisely when,” she asked him on a regular basis, “are we planning on spending some of the fortune we’ve earned?”
“Over my dead body will we pay thirty thousand for transportation, and that’s that,” he’d said, and her years as the dutiful child of Chinese parents had kicked in, forcing concession to her husband’s feelings. Coach it was to London.
And now she regretted giving in.
The trip through the conga line of sweating passengers to the indignities of the ticket counter had taken thirty minutes. Characteristically, Jason had brought them to the terminal two hours early, so time wasn’t a problem, but keeping him under control was.
Linda glanced up at the passenger security portals, relaxing somewhat at the sight of the uniformed federal officers now running the process. Jason had been delighted by the change and even cooperative, but the memory of their last foray through the old system some years before still sent shivers down her back.
They’d been headed to Los Angeles when the officious attitude of a snaggle-toothed security guard all but pulled the pin from Jason’s temper.
“There is no rational reason to check my computer beyond what you’ve already done,” Jason had snapped as the man tried to wrest the briefcase from his grasp, and a tug-of-war ensued.
“Sir, take the computer out or you’ll have to leave the secured area.”
Two Chicago cops had immediately turned and approached. The morning had been boring. They were itching to arrest someone, and Jason was emerging as a likely candidate.
“Jason,” Linda whispered in his ear, “this isn’t the place. These people are certified idiots. You can’t reason with them.”
Jason had turned to her, his teeth clenched, his anger almost out of control as she whispered again in his ear. “I want to get to L.A., baby, not bail you out of jail. Don’t say another word. Just nod to the stupid person and show him your computer.”
She’d seen his jaw muscles twitching frantically as he fought to control himself while the security guard fumbled around trying to find a switch to turn on the computer.
“Here!” Jason had said in exasperation, his finger jabbing the on button. “And what the hell is that going to prove? The screen lights up. Big damn deal!”
A large woman had moved in from the other side, her uniform straining against her apparent love of food. She was nodding to the cops, who were getting closer.
“You giving us attitude, mister? We don’t need no attitude. You give us attitude, we’ll get the police here to ’splain it to you. You don’t be cussing at us here.”
Linda had tightened her grip on Jason and dug a fingernail into his wrist to the point of drawing blood, as his temper had reached the boiling point and teetered for a few seconds while the forces arrayed against him waited for the one additional snarl they needed in order to make an arrest.
Linda remembered their disappointment when Jason had suddenly exhaled and replaced his computer in his briefcase, saying no more as he avoided the eyes of the security guards and turned to take Linda’s arm.
“Thanks,” he’d said under his breath.
“Gotta stay cool, babe,” she’d whispered, well aware of the glares of the Chicago cops who had been cheated of their prize. “They
live for guys like you.”
“Which gate?”
Linda looked around, startled. “What?”
Jason was smiling. “Which gate?” he asked again as he pulled the carry-ons off the X-ray belt, snapping Linda back to the present. She realized they were already through the checkpoint, and it was disorienting to see her volatile husband still calm.
“Gate … B-Thirty-three,” she replied, fumbling with the ticket. “Meridian Flight Six. I saw the screen. It’s showing on time.”
They changed course for the adjacent concourse, dodging the obnoxious beeping of a passenger-carrying electric cart rushing by at breakneck speed, driven by an agent wearing a half-maniacal expression.
CHAPTER THREE
THE PENTAGON, WASHINGTON, D.C.
12:58 P.M. EDT
Colonel David Byrd straightened his uniform and entered the outer office of the Air Force deputy chief of staff. A “get-your-ass-over-here” order from Overmeyer was a lower-level emergency than such a summons from the secretary of defense, but it was still chilling. The general had a reputation for getting angry very easily, though he usually got over it just as fast.
“Good morning, Colonel,” a secretary said without a moment’s hesitation. “The general is waiting.” She led the way to a small conference room where Lieutenant General James Overmeyer was sitting on the opposite side of a conference table flanked by two men in business suits. David saluted formally, and the general returned it in a dismissive way before gesturing to his right.
“Colonel Byrd, meet Billy Monson from Defense Intelligence and Ryan Smith from Central Intelligence.
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