Accidental Heroes

by Danielle Steel

  It took several minutes before Grant and Barbara Hollander could talk to the young Saudi couple calmly, ask them how they were as well, and thank them for staying with their grandchildren when they left the plane. Nicole and Mark were telling them all about it in vivid terms, and their grandmother couldn’t stop crying as she hugged the couple again and again. Ahmad seemed very paternal as he stood by, looking embarrassed by the emotional scene, and Sadaf cried with them, out of relief for all of them.

  Nicole explained to her grandparents that her new friends were going to school in Berkeley, and had come all the way from a place called Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. The four adults smiled at the exchange as others swirled around them and similar scenes were played out, and uniformed airline staff attempted to help people get oriented and find the people they were looking for, and shepherded others to the buses that were waiting to take them to hotels where rooms had been reserved for them. All possible amenities had been provided for them, including clothes from local stores, provided by the airline until they could get organized on their own. The Hollanders offered to drive Ahmad and Sadaf to wherever they were going, which the young couple shyly declined. They had signed up on the boat for one of the rooms at the Hyatt Union Square.

  “You can stay with us if you like,” Barbara Hollander suggested, and Sadaf insisted that they didn’t want to impose, would be fine at the hotel, and had to sign up for student housing at Berkeley the next day. Grant asked them what they would be studying, and Sadaf said she would be studying art history, and Ahmad was going to business school. Both Hollanders were impressed by how polite and kind they were, and mature for young people their age. After talking for a few more minutes, the Hollanders gave them their phone number, the children hugged Ahmad and Sadaf, and they left for Orinda, where they lived in the East Bay. They wanted Ahmad and Sadaf to come to dinner once they were settled in Berkeley.

  They had said that their daughter and son-in-law were flying out the next day to see the children themselves, and visit in Orinda for a few days. The vacation had gotten off to a terrifying start for Nicole and Mark, but they seemed to have weathered it, and they waved as they left to locate their grandparents’ car in the parking area. Sadaf and Ahmad talked about what nice people they were as they got on the bus with others from the plane to be taken to the hotel.

  * * *

  —

  When Joel came off the Coast Guard ship with Nancy and other members of the crew, he saw Kevin immediately, and made his way through the crowd to him. Kevin flew into his arms, and the two men stood hugging silently. Kevin couldn’t stop crying as he held him.

  “I thought I’d never see you again,” he whispered as Joel smiled through his own tears.

  “You didn’t think I’d miss our wedding, did you?” He introduced Nancy to him then, and said she was their newly appointed matron of honor. Kevin’s parents had come with him and were standing off to the side discreetly, and joined the two men when they saw Nancy.

  “We were afraid we were going to lose you,” Kevin’s mother said to Joel in an emotional voice. Her son looked just like her, and she hugged Joel with deep feeling.

  As Joel walked away with them, he spoke quietly to Kevin. It was nearly eleven o’clock at night by then. They had kept the crew on the Coast Guard boats to feed them and examine them, while airline representatives came on board to talk to them. Homeland Security agents had come out to the boats too to find out what they knew of the final traumatic hour of the flight. They knew little or nothing of what had gone on in the cockpit.

  “I’m going to call my parents tomorrow,” Joel said quietly. “I want to tell them we’re getting married.” He knew they would be shocked and wouldn’t approve, but he felt he owed them that. He could have died that day, and he wanted them to know the truth about his life, even if they didn’t like it. They were his family, and he didn’t want to lie to them. He had made the decision in the life raft waiting to be rescued and vowed to himself to be honest with them, out of respect for Kevin and himself. And if they couldn’t handle it and rejected them, that would be okay too. He didn’t want to be like his brother, living a lie forever in order to be accepted by a community who would have ostracized him if they knew the truth. It seemed like a sad life, and Joel was grateful he had moved to a city where the way he lived was commonplace and he was respected by his peers.

  “See you Friday!” he called out to Nancy as they left. He had told her the wedding was at four P.M. on Friday at city hall in San Francisco, and she had promised to be there.

  She was still waiting for Peter when Joel and Kevin left with Joel’s future in-laws. Peter arrived a few minutes later, still in his pilot’s uniform, fresh from his delayed flight from Miami. He had come by cab straight from the airport. He had gotten the message that she’d been rescued over the radio from air traffic control, and he had left the plane in the command of the copilot for a few minutes so he could go to the restroom and compose himself.

  He held her in his arms and felt her warmth against him as he closed his eyes, grateful that it wasn’t a very different scenario.

  “I’m pregnant,” she whispered to him, as he held her. She wasn’t sure what effect the stress and rigors of the rescue from the sinking plane would have on the pregnancy, but the doctor on the Coast Guard ship had said she was all right. Peter looked at her in amazement. It had been a day of miracles. “We have a lot to talk about,” she said, smiling at him. She looked tired but uninjured in what was left of her uniform and the paper slippers they’d been given on the Coast Guard ship. They walked to one of the shuttles waiting to take them home. They lived in the house they’d bought in the Marina and didn’t have far to go. All she wanted to do was be together, and try to forget everything that had happened that day.

  * * *

  —

  There had been a sad scene being played out near them, as people pretended not to notice. The police had been waiting for Robert Bond when he came off the Coast Guard ship holding Scott. The girls from the chorus said goodbye to him. A chaperone from the San Francisco Girls Chorus was waiting for them and had volunteered to escort them. Monique Lalou had been taken to the hospital by ambulance. One of the mothers was arriving to continue the trip with them, and another member of the San Francisco Chorus had volunteered to help until she got there. The girls were shaken by the experience but excited to go to the hotel. They were going to be staying at the Hilton downtown.

  The police tried to be as discreet as possible, under the circumstances, but it was obvious what was happening. A member of child protective services took the baby from Robert, and explained that Scott would be taken to San Francisco General Hospital that night to be checked out and would remain there until his mother arrived from New York the next day.

  “I think he had a fever on the plane,” Robert said, looking remorseful. He felt guilty now for what he’d done. At the time, it had all made sense to him, but now it no longer did. Nothing about the past year made sense to him, or even the year before when he and Ellen got married, despite everything their parents said, and her parents’ vehement objections that they weren’t ready and that Robert was too immature. And then she’d gotten pregnant and it all got worse. “He may have had an earache too,” he said to the woman who was holding him, and she nodded. She felt sorry for Robert, but the baby seemed happy and didn’t look sick. “He threw up a lot,” he added.

  “Your wife said he was sick when you took him,” she said gently, having read the report. “She said he has the flu.”

  Robert nodded. He hadn’t noticed anything until Scott started crying on the plane, and eventually projectile vomited.

  “He looks fine now, though,” the social worker from CPS said gently.

  He was chortling happily and holding his arms out to his father, but Robert knew the police were standing by, waiting to take him to jail.

  “When do you thin
k I’ll be able to see him again?”

  “I don’t know,” the social worker said honestly. “That will be up to family court in New York. There will be a hearing. Your wife is taking him back to New York tomorrow.”

  “I guess her parents are bringing her.”

  “I don’t know.” She got into a car with the city’s emblem on it then, after strapping Scott into a car seat in the back. Scott still held his arms out to his father, and had cried when the social worker took him away. Robert was waving at him, making funny faces, with tears rolling down his cheeks.

  The police stepped in as soon as the social worker left. They read Robert his rights and arrested him for parental abduction, which was a felony in California, at the family court judge’s discretion, and also a felony in New York.

  “What happens now?” Robert asked nervously, as they walked him to a police car in handcuffs.

  “That’s up to the judge. You’ll be arraigned. Someone can post bail for you. The rest will be decided later in court. Your lawyer can move to transfer the case to New York.” The two policemen tried to go easy on him. They didn’t agree with what he’d done, but he’d already been through a lot that day, and who knew what his wife was like and what he’d been running away from. The older of the two policemen commented on it after they’d dropped him off at the jail.

  “He’s just a kid.” He felt sorry for him. Robert had looked like a deer in headlights when he saw the jail.

  “He’s a year younger than I am.” The younger policeman was less sympathetic. “I’ve been married for four years and I have two kids. And my wife would kill me if I pulled a stunt like that. Imagine if the baby had died during the crash or when the plane went down. He had no business stealing him from his mom.” His older partner thought about it and knew he was right, but he also knew that people grew up at different ages, and some never did.

  “My younger boy could have handled being a dad at twenty. He’s twenty-nine now and he and his wife just had their third kid. My older boy is thirty-four, and he couldn’t manage it today. I wouldn’t leave a hamster with him. He acts like he’s fourteen. He’s completely irresponsible—can’t keep a job or a girlfriend. I’m not sure he’ll ever grow up, or if I’ll live to be old enough to see it. My wife makes excuses for him and gives him money all the time. He gets thrown out of apartments for making noise and smoking weed, and then he moves in with us and drives me crazy. Some people just grow up slower than others. This kid looks like one of those to me. Maybe what happened on the plane will wake him up and teach him that he’s on real time, especially with a kid. Some people never get that. I have friends my age who still don’t,” he said, feeling sorry for Robert, especially with a baby, who would inevitably pay the price for his father’s immaturity.

  “I have friends like that too,” the younger policeman said thoughtfully. “I just don’t feel compassionate toward guys who screw up their kids or put them in dangerous situations.”

  “The boy will love him anyway,” he said, and they both knew it was true. They had picked children up for protective services, or referred them to them, and the kids always seemed to forgive their parents and wanted to go back to them.

  “I hope this teaches him a lesson,” the young father said. And at that exact moment, Scott had just been admitted to SF General, and Robert was crying in his jail cell, wondering if Ellen would ever let him see Scott again. He felt like a total fool and realized now how wrong he had been. Too late.

  By midnight, all evidence of the survivors’ checkpoint on the dock had been cleared away. Those who lived in San Francisco had gone home. The others had gone to hotels, except for one passenger who had insisted on catching a one A.M. plane to attend an important meeting in Seoul. An airline rep had helped him buy clothes and a suitcase at the airport, and they had held the flight for him, given the circumstances and the fact that he had VIP status with the airline.

  The crew had gone home to mull over what had happened, and how they could have handled it differently or more smoothly. They knew they would have counseling available to them if they needed it. Most of them felt they didn’t. Things like that could happen. Planes crashed from mechanical failure and unusual weather conditions, and even terrorists. It was something they had to face every day. And a pilot with his own agenda to turn a flight into a suicide mission, taking innocent people with him, was not unheard of anymore either, and couldn’t be predicted. These were the rigors of the job as much as drunk or nasty passengers, bad crew members to work with, crying children, or unexpected turbulence. It was all part of it. It wasn’t just about serving hot rolls with dinner, or handing out earphones, and they accepted the risks with the benefits when they took it. None of the crew members had complained about what had happened. It had been handled flawlessly by the airline once it happened, and equally so by all the emergency service providers.

  * * *

  —

  Catherine was lying on her bed at the Four Seasons Hotel in Palo Alto, trying to assimilate everything that had happened. She’d had to call the venture capital firm she’d planned to interview with to tell them what had happened and to reschedule the appointment, hopefully for Friday. And she wanted to buy some decent clothes to meet them in. The concierge at her hotel had told her about the Stanford Shopping Center, where she would find everything she needed. And he had extended his sympathy for what she’d been through. The hotel was comping her for the first night of her stay, which she thought was a compassionate gesture, and the airline had offered to pay too. And she would need to replace all her ID and credit cards and get a new cellphone.

  She was surprised to hear Tom’s voice when she answered the phone in her room. They had been on different rescue boats, and she hadn’t seen him since he told her to get out of the plane as fast as she could before it went down, and pushed her toward the first slide in the business cabin.

  “I just called to see how you are. I couldn’t find you on the Coast Guard dock but I got there pretty late,” he said, sounding exhausted. He’d been in a long meeting with Homeland Security about what had transpired in the cockpit. The FAA wanted to see him, and the CEO of his company had called him as well. It had been a busy night for him. And he’d called his son in Chicago to tell him what had happened and that he was okay.

  “I’m all right,” she said, sounding as wiped out as she felt. “The whole thing has had such an unreal quality to it,” she added in a small voice. And it would have seemed even more so if she’d seen Connor Gray dying from gunshot wounds, and Jason Andrews blow his brains out at close range after grappling with Helen for the controls. “Are you okay?” she asked him.

  “Just tired.” He was at the apartment he had in San Francisco, which the company provided him, and had had to fight his way through the press outside his building when he got there. Someone had told them that he’d been in the cockpit before the plane went down, and they wanted the inside scoop from him. He told them that he had no comment, and there would be another press conference the next day, to answer all their questions. The airline had promised there would be one, with members of Homeland Security, and the director of the Office of Emergency Services present, to address all the issues. “I really enjoyed talking to you, Catherine, in spite of the circumstances.”

  “Yeah, me too,” she said, yawning, and he laughed. “I knew something was wrong from the look on your face when you started getting emails.”

  “Homeland Security in New York wanted me to go into the cockpit and suss out what was happening. They told me there was a glitch, and there was no air marshal on the flight. It was brave of you not to start drinking champagne when things started to get dicey.”

  “I didn’t want to be drunk at my meeting,” she said honestly, “otherwise I would have. Although I’m not sure how much good it would have done me up to my ass in water in the life raft.”

  “You can order some now,” he s
uggested.

  “This may come as a shock to you, but I’m not an alcoholic, just a nervous flier.”

  “So you said.” And then he laughed. “When you knocked down those three glasses before the flight, I figured I’d be sitting next to a chatty drunk all the way to California.”

  She laughed at the impression she had given him. “It just puts me to sleep.”

  “I noticed,” he teased her. “But then you were great company for the rest of the flight. And knowing how you feel about flying, you were terrific during the evacuation, and before that.”

  “The crew did a great job. And I’m so glad they found the captain. She’s lucky she didn’t get eaten by a shark, or drown.” The reporter on the news had pointed out that there were sharks in the ocean just outside the bay, and shark attacks occasionally.

  “She did an amazing job keeping control of the plane when the copilot tried to bring it down. She’s a remarkable woman and a hell of a pilot.”

  “That’s too bad about the retired captain,” she said, and they were both quiet for a moment, thinking about him. No one felt sorry for Jason, given what he’d tried to do, and nearly succeeded.

  “The airline is going to have a lot of explaining to do.”

  “Will you be at the press conference tomorrow?” she asked him and suspected he would.

  “Yes, I will. They asked me to be there. As window dressing, I guess.”