John J Nance - The Last Hostage

by The Last Hostage(lit)

  She explained her worries over the young pilot from seat 18D.

  "I saw him go forward to the cockpit back there in Durango," Bos-rich said. "I think I heard him go down the stairs, too, but I'm not certain."

  "If he didn't leave the airplane, Rudy, then he's the hijacker."

  Rudy Bostich was shaking his head. "No. No, I got a good look at him. He's very young, probably late twenties, and I know I've never seen him before. I can't imagine why he'd have a problem with me.

  It's got to be someone else."

  "You have other enemies?"

  He snorted and laughed, then raised his hand in apology. "I'm sorry. That sounded derisive. It's just that my job is putting people on trial and helping to ruin their lives for what we believe they've done.

  There are probably a hundred or so hardened felons out there who would consider it an honor to kill me slowly."

  "Does the name Ken Wolfe ring a bell, Rudy?" Annette had to know if Rudy and Ken had a history.

  He shook his head at first. "Ken Wolfe? No, I can't say it does. Who is he?"

  "Ah, he's our captain, and I just.., wondered if you might know him. That's all."

  Rudy Bostich shook his head in the negative. "Not that I can recall.

  Where's he from?"

  "Colorado, I think."

  "Name's not familiar, Annette."

  She pointed to the cell phone in his hand, as much to change the subject as to make contact. "Could you give it a try, Rudy?"

  He looked at the phone again, as if surprised it was still in his hand.

  "Yeah, ah, how do I get in touch with the FBI, though?"

  She looked over at him, surprised at the question. This was a federal prosecutor.

  "You dial nine-one-one, I suppose, and ask to be transferred."

  He swallowed and nodded slowly, his eyes still on the tiny cellular phone. "Okay. Okay, I'll give it a try."

  Annette shifted forward on the seat.

  "Where're you going?" he asked.

  "To check on the people."

  "But Annette, he said--"

  She cut him off. "Rudy, this is still my cabin, and I'm still responsible for all of you. It's a balance of risks, okay?"

  "But what if he detects the phone and comes charging out of the cockpit?"

  "You hear the cockpit door open, hide the phone. There's no way to know where a signal came from."

  Rudy Bostich nodded and slowly opened the phone's keypad as Annette moved into the aisle, trying to suppress a sudden flash of disappointment at his timidity.

  FBI "Command Post," Salt Lake City International Airport. 11:50 A.M.

  "Agent Bronsky. If youll pick up the phone and punch line 'twenty-five, Approach Control says they'll have the aircraft patched in momentarily."

  Kat flashed a thumbs up to the airport police officer and turned to a technician who had been working to specially equip one of the desk telephones.

  "Ready?"

  He nodded, pulling off a headset. "We're wired. I'll be running a tape as well as piping the line back to Washington as you requested."

  She sat down and adjusted herself in the chair, taking time to breathe deeply before lifting the receiver and punching the appropriate button.

  "Agent Bronsky here."

  "This is Salt Lake Approach. Stand by. We're going to patch you through."

  "Approach, who's doing the talking aboard that aircraft?"

  "Far as we know, one of the pilots. We gave him a heading direct Provo a few minutes ago and the response was completely professional.

  I'm sure we're talking to a pilot. In fact, we're ready for you to give him a call."

  Kat adjusted the handset against her ear. "AirBridge Ninety, how do you read me?"

  There was silence on the line for a few seconds, then the sound of a transmitter being keyed.

  "This is AirBridge Ninety. Who's calling?" The voice was deep and steady.

  "Is this the captain?"

  Another pause.

  "Who's calling? Who are you?"

  "This is Kat Bronsky. I'm an FBI agent, and I'm talking to you through Salt Lake City Approach Control's radios. I'm at Salt Lake International. Now, can I please ask to whom I'm speaking?"

  "This is the captain of Flight Ninety. You understand our situation?''

  "Not well enough, sir. I take it you have an uninvited guest in the cockpit with you who's on channel?"

  "That's correct. We've been squawking seventy-five hundred, and he's fully aware of what that means."

  "And this is Captain Wolfe?"

  Several seconds ticked by as Kat waited for the calculated effect of letting both hijacker and captain know that the FBI had already done their homework on the crew.

  "Yes. Ken Wolfe."

  "And, Captain Wolfe, does the person in the cockpit with you want to tell me his name?"

  "Hold on." Twenty seconds went by before the transmitter was keyed on again. "He says no, he doesn't want to give his name."

  "Okay, Captain. We can work with that. Will he talk to me directly?''

  Another pause, equally as long.

  "He says no. I'm supposed to relay."

  "Understood. Well, the first thing I need in order to help is to have some clear idea of precisely what he wants. We understood your earlier relayed transmission regarding the various officials he might want to talk to, and we're working on that, but I need to know precisely what else he wants so that we can try to meet those requests."

  There was no response for more than thirty seconds.

  "I asked him. He says to tell you he wants love and charity and peace in our time, Agent Bronsky. He wants... murderers executed for their crimes, pedophiles permanently locked away where they can't hurt little girls and boys, lying prosecutors exposed for what they are, and-- what was the last one?"

  The transmitter keyed off, then on again. "Oh yeah. He wants stupid, criminal-loving judges thrown off the bench. All of his demands, he's telling me, are achievable, and I tell you, the safety of every person on this airplane depends on his instructions being followed to the letter. I--what?"

  Kat could hear some mumbling in the background while the captain held down the transmit button.

  Good thinking, captain! she mused. Now maybe I can hear what the hijacker's saying, too.

  The voice was too far in the background to understand, but it was there.

  "Okay, Agent Brasky, was it?"

  "No. Bronsky."

  "Right. Bronsky. He says to tell you he has nothing left to lose, and you can consider him completely desperate. He's armed, and he's got us wired to blow up if he lets go of an electronic trigger he's holding.

  There are explosives in the forward baggage bin. He says to tell you that he'll issue more instructions one by one, and if any one of them is not agreed to immediately, we're.., we're dead."

  Kat nodded. Standard ploy. Hijacker loads on the initial threats of violence to establish his dominance over the situation.

  "Okay, Captain. You can tell him, if he's not listening to my voice, that we will follow each and every instruction to the best of our abilities, and we'll keep you informed on exactly what we're doing. We do not want him to be surprised or concerned. Our policy is to give a hijacker what he wants as long as he shows his good faith by progressive release of the passengers and crew, and as long as no one is harmed. Tell him that whatever he wants, what we want is a quick and safe ending to this with no one, including him, getting hurt. Do you think he understands that?"

  In a moment, Ken answered. "He says yes, but any tricks or attempted tricks will be fatal. If he asks for the Attorney General and you put someone else on the phone pretending to be the Attorney General, he'll trip the switch and we're--I hate this reference but I'm supposed to use it-we're toast."

  "Understood. Reassure him that we will not betray our word, nor any agreements we make. If we say it's a deal, it's a deal, and the full faith and credit of the U.S. government will back it. He's got to agree, however, to
wait and talk if he's got any concerns. No one will be sneaking up on you, but something unforeseen could happen that might frighten him, and we've got to be able to have the chance to explain it rapidly. Will he agree to ask first about anything he doesn't fully understand?"

  "He says yes." "Okay," Kat said. "I know you're on your way here. We'll talk more on the ground, but I would like to understand, as clearly as I can, what, precisely, he wants us to do first?"

  "Give me a phone number. A land line. He wants me to call you from a cell phone."

  Kat looked up at the technician, who scribbled an area code and number on the pad in front of her. Kat read it into the phone.

  "Stand by. I'll call you."

  A long minute and a half crawled by before the appropriate line lit up, and Kat grabbed it.

  "Agent Bronsky here."

  "Okay, Agent Bronsky. Here's the deal. The first instruction is this.

  The FBI must proceed to a trailer park south of Denver and arrest the occupant of a particular trailer."

  Kat scribbled the address as it was read.

  "Okay. But what if we find more than one person there?"

  "Wait a second."

  Kat put her hand over the mouthpiece and turned to the technician.

  "You getting all this?"

  He nodded vigorously as the captain's voice returned.

  "Okay, he says pray you only find one person there. You're looking for a heavyset male. Any other person would probably be a kidnap victim."

  "Okay."

  "And, the suspect must be formally booked into a federal holding facility on federal charges of kidnapping and murder. A federal grand jury will have to be brought together in a matter of an hour or so, and they must hand down a formal indictment. And a full trial must be guaranteed. For anyone aboard this airplane to live through this, each and every step must be accomplished."

  "Does he want to give me the name of the person he wants arrested, Captain?"

  There was another pause of several seconds duration.

  "He says to tell you again that there's only one humanoid organism in that trailer. When you've arrested it, he'll have further explanations and instructions."

  "Can he tell us who this individual kidnapped and murdered?"

  "Negative. Not until the man's arrested."

  Kat looked over at Frank Bothell, who had already picked up the open line to FBI headquarters. He raised and lowered his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders, a signal Kat understood well. Maybe it could be done, maybe it couldn't. Stall in the meantime.

  "Captain, tell him we're starting the process immediately. As soon as you're safely parked down here, we'll talk further. Would you see whether he will permit us to run a private telephone line straight out to your aircraft?"

  'I'll ask him. I'll let you know when we're parked. And Agent Bronsky?"

  "I'm here."

  "Do not, I repeat, do not even think about shooting tires or blocking the airplane or any other direct physical interdiction. He's serious.

  He'll detonate his bomb if you try."

  "I understand. I'll be right here standing by on your air traffic control frequency if you need me. Just let the controller know, or call the same number on your cell phone."

  "Roger," was the only response.

  "Kat?" Frank Bothell's voice reached her from across the small room.

  Kat stood and handed the phone to an airport police officer who had been standing nearby. "Re-establish the line with Salt Lake Approach and stay glued to this, please. Tell the controller to let you know the instant the captain wants to talk to me. Also, keep this other line open in case he calls by cell phone."

  The officer nodded and slid into the same chair Kat had occupied as she moved to Frank's side. "What's up?"

  "I've got the two men in Durango you wanted to talk to on line twenty- three, and Salt Lake Air Route Traffic Control Center just called to let us know that another airliner saw Flight Ninety doing aerobatics on the airway a few minutes before you started talking to him."

  "Aerobatics?"

  "Aerobatics are extreme flight maneuvers like rolls and loops and-"

  "I know the term, Frank. What kind of aerobatics?"

  "Apparently they're flying slow, and they rolled the aircraft," he replied, indicating the maneuver with his hand.

  "So we've got a wild, illegal buzzing of Monument Valley..." Kat began.

  "I'd call it more of a surface level fly-through. He was down between those giant buttes."

  "Okay, and now he's rolling the aircraft. Does that suggest to you what it suggests to me?"

  Frank nodded tentatively. "You're the psychologist, Kat. I'm just a federal cop. The roll sounds like a fight in the cockpit. I don't know what to make of the Monument Valley thing." Frank studied her eyes.

  "But... you're discerning something else."

  She nodded. "It's not a fight. It may be something far more dangerous.

  He could be demonstrating a feeling of liberation which would be inconsistent with his demands so far, or he could be trying to scare everyone aboard. I'm only sure of one thing, Frank. We've got to get that airplane on the ground and keep it nailed there. Whatever's going on, the flying is dangerously unpredictable. They get in the air again, we could lose them."

  "Meaning?"

  "The hijacker says he's a desperate man and he's demonstrated a type of physical control over the plane that tells me he isn't afraid of the technology. It also tells me he isn't necessarily afraid of dying, and if he's suicidal, he could take them all down in the blink of an eye."

  "A purposeful crash, you mean?"

  "Frank, from ten thousand feet above the ground, a seven-thirty-seven pushed over to the near-vertical can impact the ground in less than fifteen seconds, and the captain might not be able to prevent it."

  "Wonderful. What do you suggest?"

  "A heartfelt prayer that he's really going to land."

  Kat picked up the telephone handset and punched the button for Durango.

  Aboard AirBridge Flight 90. 11 :50 A.M.

  As Annette sat down again, a heavily perspiring Rudy Bostich slammed the tiny flip-phone back together with obvious irritation and sat looking stunned.

  "Can't get through?" Annette asked him from the adjacent seat. Bostich slowly shook his head no.

  "It'll probably improve in a few minutes," Annette added. %

  coming up to the Wasatch Mountains right now. As soon as we reach the other side, you should be able to reach a cellular antenna."

  Rudy Bostich was staring at the cockpit door, his eyes wide.

  "Rudy?"

  There was no response.

  "Rudy, is... is there anything you're not telling me here?"

  He turned toward her suddenly, his face frozen in a panicked expression.

  "Annette, you said the captain's name is Ken Wolfe, right?"

  She nodded cautiously. "Yes."

  "And you said he was from Colorado?"

  Annette studied his eyes. There was panic there, and another chill began to make its way down her spine. "I think he lives in Colorado, Rudy. I don't know anything about his background."

  "Could he... could he be from Connecticut?"

  "Rudy, why are you asking?"

  "Does he... did he... have a daughter? Has he ever talked about losing a daughter?"

  "Losing? You mean to illness?"

  "Whatever."

  "Mr. Bostich, you're obviously really worried about something }

  What is it? Please tell me."

  Bostich was gripping the arms of the first class seat hard enough to whiten his knuckles, his gaze forward.

  "Look," Annette began, "I don't know him well enough to know whether he's ever been married. I've heard rumors that he had a terrible family tragedy somewhere, and I recall his saying something once about hating to miss autumn on the East Coast, but I don't kno,a sure."