Accidental Heroes

by Danielle Steel

  “I’ve got to go with Ben on this,” he told her kindly. He didn’t want to offend her, but after reading the personnel files himself, he thought Ben was right. Helen had been through hell, but was solid as a rock. Connor was an honorable man, and must surely be depressed over losing his career, but not to the point of killing 111 people. If there was a plot, which no one knew for sure, Jason was their man. They all believed it after what they’d read about him.

  The first thing Ben did when he got back to his office was to call Alan Wexler, the head of the San Francisco Homeland Security office, to have him send agents to talk to Jason’s ex-girlfriend in San Francisco. She was a nurse at UCSF Medical Center, and he wanted to know more about Jason’s anger problem, and just how far she thought he would go, if she would talk to them.

  And then he called Helen on the satcom to bring her up to date. “We’re not sure, but we think we have a problem on your flight,” he said cautiously. “We don’t know anything certain at this point, we’re just guessing, based on what we do know and can piece together. But I don’t think the concern is with the passenger list,” he said quietly. “Your Arab couple are fine, by the way. They’re Saudi royals on their way to grad school. I think the problem may be in the cockpit.” There was silence at her end for a long moment as she tried to absorb it and what that meant for her. “Do you understand me, Captain?”

  “I think I do.” She didn’t suspect Connor Gray. Her copilot was a far more likely candidate to cause trouble. And she didn’t argue with Ben about it. She thought he might be right, if there really was a problem.

  “Are you having any issues now?” Ben asked her.

  “We’re fine,” she said and sounded convincing. And it was true. Jason had been quiet for the last hour, and hadn’t spoken to her or Connor. He had been lost in thought, as he sat in his seat with the plane on autopilot, but there was no way to know what he was thinking.

  “We’ll stay in touch with you,” Ben told Helen. “We’re gathering more information now. By the way, we’ve got a parental abduction situation in coach, but that’s under control and it’s not your problem.”

  She laughed ruefully as he said it. “Anything else?” And she had thought it would be an easy flight.

  “We’ll keep you posted,” Ben promised.

  “I’ll look forward to it.” She sounded cool and calm. The fighter pilot in her had taken over, her head clear even under fire in combat.

  “And don’t let him do the landing at SFO,” he warned her.

  “Definitely not,” she said pointedly, and hung up a moment later. She glanced over at Jason after the call ended, and told him that the Arab couple had checked out, were Saudi royals and weren’t a problem. He listened to her and nodded and didn’t say a word, and she went back to watching the blue sky ahead of them. They were three hours out of San Francisco. Halfway through the trip.

  * * *

  —

  As Ben hung up after speaking with Helen, Phil Carson walked into his office with the manifest of the first flight in his hands. The second flight was no longer an issue.

  “I just saw an interesting name on here,” Phil said as he sat down and handed Ben the list, and pointed to a name close to the top. “It rang a bell for me and I looked him up. Thomas Birney, he’s the American rep of the manufacturer of the plane. I read somewhere that he had some corporate issue with the CEO of the company and he was going to quit. He’s ex–U.S. military, and he has top security clearance. Maybe he can help us on the flight.” With no air marshal, they needed all the help they could get. “He’s retired Air Force; if we need someone to check out what’s going on in the cockpit, he could step in and see what’s up. He has a plausible excuse for a courtesy visit to the flight deck. Captain Smith may need a helping hand. See if you can get his email address from the company. They’ve got WiFi on the flight, we could send him an email.” It sounded like a good idea to Ben, and he called the New York company office immediately. He noticed that Amanda had gone back to her office. Bernice was sitting in a chair in the waiting area. And several of the senior agents had walked into Ben’s office after Phil explained the problem to them. They had a possible suicide flight, without absolute certainty about who the suicide pilot might be, and only a hunch to go on. All they knew, whatever the plot, if there was one, was that it had to be foiled. And they had exactly three hours to do it.

  The head of the aircraft manufacturer’s U.S. office in New York took Ben’s call, was extremely cooperative, and gave him Tom Birney’s email address, as soon as he established that Ben worked for Homeland Security, and that there was a security issue that they needed to contact Tom about. They asked if there was anything they could do to help, and Ben said there wasn’t, but they were fully supportive and sympathetic.

  * * *

  —

  As Bernice sat in the hallway, waiting for further news and developments, Della called her and asked what was going on.

  “A lot right now, but maybe nothing. A lot of wild stuff is happening.” And she had started the whole thing with the postcard she’d found, but she didn’t say anything to Della. She called Toby’s school then, and asked them to keep him in day care. She could see that there was no way she’d pick him up on time, because they wanted her to stick around. If it got too late, she’d have to ask her neighbor to pick him up. After she hung up, she sat thinking about everything she’d heard since she’d called airport security. She just hoped that Homeland Security would manage to save the plane and the people on it. She didn’t even want to think about what might have happened if she’d listened to her supervisor and hadn’t called.

  Chapter Six

  Robert Bond had been holding his baby for the past three hours and Scott hadn’t stopped screaming, as though he knew that something was wrong. His father couldn’t explain to him that everything was going to be okay. They were going on a nice trip together. They would stay in San Francisco for a day, and that night they were flying to Japan. Robert just needed time to think, and he wanted to be alone with Scott, without Ellen telling him how many hours he could have the baby for and what time he had to be back with him. It was always less time than he wanted and seemed fair to him. And in their provisional custody agreement, the female judge had agreed with Ellen that the baby was too young to spend the night with his father, and to make sure it stayed that way, Ellen was still nursing him full-time. She had added baby-food fruits and cereal to his diet, but she wanted the baby to be dependent on her. Robert had thought they had been ready for children, but clearly they were not. Everything had changed, and not for the better, the moment Scott arrived and even in the months before.

  He had no ties to Japan, he just wanted to get as far away from her as he could. He was going to bring the baby back eventually, in a month or two, and maybe by then, she’d be more reasonable. He had left her a nice note, explaining everything to her, and how he felt about it. He had been so in love with her before they married and for the first year, but her pregnancy had changed her. She focused only on the baby, and when Scott had been born, it only got worse. Now she was obsessed with their child and no longer cared about him, or even wanted to be married to him. Everything had to be perfect and baby-proof. They lived with monitors and gates, and baby equipment everywhere. It all had to be done the way she wanted it. She refused to go back to work, and they couldn’t even afford to go to a movie. Her parents paid for everything and ran the show.

  Robert had been saving for months, without telling her, and now he was going to Tokyo and Kyoto with his son. He loved everything he’d seen about Japan on the Internet. The people were polite, the country was clean. He was going to rent a room in a mountain town somewhere, after they visited Tokyo, and he was going to discover fatherhood on his own. He was twenty-five years old, and he hadn’t been ready for it, and didn’t want the baby at first, but now he was going to embrace being a parent wholeheartedly. They
had been separated for six months. Ellen said he was irresponsible, and she wanted a divorce. Her parents had invited her to live with them, and she had agreed, which was intolerable for him. His own parents had never approved of her and refused to let him stay with them now. They said he had wanted to be an adult, so he had to be one and figure things out for himself. So he had. He hadn’t hidden what he was doing or where he was going, he just hadn’t told anyone. He had gotten Scott a passport one afternoon when Ellen had to go somewhere and she let Robert take him to the park.

  Since no one would help him, he had taken the baby without Ellen’s permission, letting himself in through the garage. He knew what time she showered after her parents left for work. It had all been easy, until now. All Scott had done since they boarded the flight was scream and pull on his ear.

  Robert was sitting next to a heavyset woman with bleached blond hair, wearing sickeningly sweet perfume. She was the leader of some kind of group of girls who were sitting all around them, and ignoring whatever she said to them. The woman had told him that she thought the baby had an earache, but Robert had no idea how to tell. He had never been with the baby for long on his own till then. He was planning to email Ellen from Japan in a couple of days and tell her they had arrived and the baby was safe. She’d have to live without him until they got back. She couldn’t tell him what to do now, and neither could the court. He had taken matters into his own hands. In his mind, now he was what they all had kept telling him to be, an adult. It all made sense to him.

  On Robert’s other side was a couple who hadn’t stopped arguing since they sat down. They were going to his sister’s wedding in California, which she didn’t want to do. She said his family was always nasty to her, and Robert knew just how she felt. She hated the sister who was getting married, and reminded her husband that he didn’t get along with her either, and couldn’t stand the man she was marrying, who he thought was a crook. So why were they going, and why did they have to stay with his parents, who criticized her the whole time they were there, whenever they went? But he said he didn’t like her parents either, and they treated him like dirt. Her sisters wouldn’t talk to him, her brother was stoned whenever they saw him, and her cousin was a drug dealer and belonged in jail.

  It had gone on endlessly. Robert missed hearing some of it because of the baby’s screaming, which drowned them out, but it was like watching reality TV. On top of it, she said she hated their apartment in Queens, and if he’d get a better job, they could move into a decent apartment and she could get pregnant. She was thirty-six years old, they’d been married for eight years, and her clock was ticking. But he said he wasn’t ready for kids, and he liked the job he had. He just didn’t like her family, any more than she liked his. It sounded like one of those “Can this marriage be saved?” programs. And in Robert’s opinion, it couldn’t. The two flight attendants were talking about them too.

  “Oh, Jesus, have you been listening to the pair arguing?” Bobbie asked Annette. “I think they’re going to kill each other before we land.”

  “Maybe we should make an announcement, asking if there’s a marriage counselor on the plane,” Annette said and rolled her eyes and laughed.

  “They’re a great reason to stay single. She’s been crying for most of the flight, and he sounds like a jerk,” Bobbie agreed with her.

  “I had a relationship like that once. I stuck it out for four years. I have no idea why. I think I was just scared I wouldn’t find anyone else. I felt like I’d gotten out of prison the day he left,” Annette said with a sigh.

  “My parents’ marriage sounded like them,” Bobbie commented. “They got it right the second time, with other people,” she added with a smile.

  “Do you think that baby will ever stop screaming?” Annette said with a look of despair.

  “Yeah, he’ll fall asleep in the last five minutes of the flight. Kids like that give babies a bad name,” Bobbie said, and they both laughed.

  “It’s not the kids, it’s the parents. The dad has no idea what he’s doing with that child. I think it might be sick.”

  “That’s what the woman sitting next to him told him.”

  “Watch out for the little choristers, by the way. They keep stealing our snacks. Don’t you just love working in coach?”

  “Yeah, love it. Not.” There were two of them, and with seventy-two passengers in coach on a fully booked plane, a screaming baby, and fourteen young girls running around loose, it had been a tough flight. Someone had smoked weed in the only toilet that was working, and the flight attendants were convinced it was one or several of the older girls from the chorus, and the chaperone didn’t give a damn. The girls had told them that they were going to San Francisco and Seattle to perform, and then flying back to New York. They were a rowdy group, and the chaperone paid no attention to what they were doing. As far as she was concerned they were safe on the plane and couldn’t go anywhere, so she didn’t have to watch them. She’d had her earphones on for most of the trip and was watching a movie, but at least she couldn’t hear the baby crying, although for those sitting near her, the smell of her perfume was almost worse than the screaming infant.

  Bobbie went up to business class to visit Nancy and Joel again and looked at them with envy. It had been a peaceful trip for them, except for the momentary alert about the Arab couple, which turned out to be a false alarm, and they were both asleep in their seats. He had mellowed out after the first two hours on the flight and watched a movie until he dozed off. And the word that had filtered down was that they were a Saudi prince and princess.

  The report from coach was dizzying, and made the business class flight attendants happy they weren’t in the main cabin. The two flight attendants in first class had reported that Susan Farrow was a dream, and had signed autographs for them. It had warmed them up considerably. And Nancy hadn’t wanted to tell anyone, but finally couldn’t resist and confided to Bobbie that she had just found out that morning before the flight that she was pregnant. She couldn’t keep it to herself a minute longer. She beamed while she said it, and Bobbie congratulated her and hugged her.

  “I’m old enough to have a kid in college,” she said seriously, “but I don’t care. We’ve waited so long for this. I don’t want to do anything to screw it up. I’d probably never get pregnant again. This was a miracle.” They talked about it for a few more minutes and then Bobbie left. Joel came back from delivering a drink to a passenger and started talking about his wedding again. They all had their lives to go home to, and couldn’t wait. They would be landing in two and a half hours.

  * * *

  —

  On the ground, Ben, Phil, Dave, Amanda, and half a dozen Homeland Security agents were actively debating if they should instruct the captain to bring the flight down at another airport before they reached San Francisco. But they didn’t have enough conclusive evidence to go on, just a postcard that might mean nothing and their collective gut. And if they landed early, roughly halfway through the flight, it could cause panic and drama on board, possibly for nothing. Phil’s conclusion, as senior officer, was that they didn’t have anything concrete to justify landing the flight now. If something changed, they would, or could consider it seriously. But for now, they all agreed after half an hour, it was best to let the flight proceed to SFO. They still had time to change their minds. They all felt confident that Helen was competent enough to handle whatever happened in the air, which hopefully would not include a harrowing detour to the Golden Gate Bridge. And if they changed the flight plan now, they were afraid that Jason might try something dangerous or dramatic wherever they were. They had one advantage with the A321: If they did decide to land early, they wouldn’t have to dump fuel, which could have been an additional problem on another plane. The plane they were using could land fully loaded, so full fuel tanks were not an issue. But their decision in any case was to keep the flight on course and in the air.

/>   “Let’s go for it,” Ben said quietly. “We’ll stay with the approved flight plan and land at SFO.” Helen didn’t know that they’d been thinking of changing the final destination, and they didn’t tell her, since their conclusion was to stick with landing the plane at SFO, but it had been a serious debate. Ben and his team had to take it all under serious consideration, and they had no certain knowledge that the flight was in danger, only a postcard and a guess. And admitting to a threat of some kind would attract the attention of the media even before they landed, and could provoke an instant reaction from Jason. It seemed safer to identify and neutralize him, and bring the plane in according to plan.

  * * *

  —

  Catherine James was still wide awake and sending emails, and had been for several hours. She had taken her suit jacket off and rolled up the sleeves of her silk blouse. She was having a town car pick her up at the airport to take her to Palo Alto for her meeting. She desperately wanted the job, and to make a good impression, so she didn’t drink any more wine or champagne after takeoff, although she was still slightly nervous about the flight. But there had been no turbulence. It had been a smooth ride all the way from New York, and they only had two hours left. As much as she hated flying, she knew she could manage that. The man next to her had worked as long as she had, and when she asked him what he did, he said he was an aeronautical engineer, and she looked impressed.

  “The company I work for built this plane,” he said, and smiled at her. She had turned out to be neither drunk nor talkative, so he was friendlier than he had been at the beginning of the flight. He had asked her where she was going, and she said to a meeting in Palo Alto. She said she was hoping to move to California, if things went well. He didn’t tell her that he had quit his job recently and had been interviewing in New York. He had another month to finish out his contract and was staying till the end. As one of the top people in management in the company, he felt he had a responsibility to them, especially when his leaving was reported in The New York Times. They were still trying to convince him to stay, but Tom thought their disagreements had been too severe. He didn’t like the attitude of the CEO. There was a battle of wills between Tom and the head of the New York office, and he felt the CEO hadn’t supported him, so on principle he was leaving. He’d been interviewing with similar firms in the East, but he hadn’t found one he liked as much yet. He had loved working where he was and didn’t want to change, but he felt he couldn’t stay, with a personality clash with his superior. He had one more company in L.A. to meet with in two weeks, and then he planned to make a decision about his future. In his current job, he commuted between their New York office and one in San Francisco.