Skyhammer

by Richard Hilton

  “That leaves a half hour,” L’Hommedieu said. “Let’s give it that long.”

  “Why? Why wait if we’re going to do it anyway?”

  L’Hommedieu had turned away, as if he thought the matter settled, but now he looked up again, studied Searing for a moment, then shrugged. “Because as soon as the President and his staff know how serious this is, we start to lose some of that control you’re worried about. Especially when they find out Sanford’s on the plane. If we give the President that piece of information this early, he might latch onto it and simply cut us out of the whole decision-making process and then waffle around until it is too late.”

  Searing also hated the idea of involving politicians, stretching the chain of command. “But listen,” he tried, “the President knows a hijack’s in progress. By now the White House Situation Room’s briefed him that the hijacker’s one of the pilots, right? So now we tell him the subject’s intractable. We tell him we need the approval now, as a contingency, ahead of the time we might have to use it.”

  “And what about Sanford?” L’Hommedieu said. “You want to be the one to tell the President afterward that you simply forgot Sanford was aboard?”

  Searing let his breath out. It was a good point, one he couldn’t argue.

  L’Hommedieu turned back to his notes. “We keep the lid on a little longer. Let’s see if we can get a demand out of Pate. We get that, we’ve got something to hang our hopes on. And I’m betting Pate goes for the cheese.”

  “But Pate’s trained as part of the response team,” Searing insisted, though he felt defeated now. “He knows what you’re trying to do.”

  “However—” L’Hommedieu smiled at him this time. “We are departing from Strategy. Farraday is the object of Pate’s aggression. Pate knows we wouldn’t want to allow him direct contact. Yet we’ve offered Farraday to him. This is something he hadn’t considered. He’ll be suspicious, yes, but also confused, and intrigued by the idea. And finally he’ll give in to it. He’ll think, Why not? What have I got to lose? And maybe, just maybe if we can actually get Farraday on the line, Pate will clean out his pipes, vent the pent-up rage. And then ...” L’Hommedieu paused, was about to speak again, when Penny Lofton swiveled her chair around.

  “I’ve got Pate’s chief pilot. Line two. Charles Overstreet.”

  L’Hommedieu put his hand on Searing’s forearm. “Let’s give Pate another twenty minutes, okay?”

  Searing agreed, but he didn’t like it. He yanked station 7’s handset from its cradle, thinking something still didn’t seem right. “Let’s see what Overstreet can tell us,” he said.

  They had already decided that Searing would begin the interview so that L’Hommedieu could be available in the event Pate called back. L’Hommedieu would listen in on the other phone, take notes. Searing liked this arrangement. It was better that the chief pilot did not know the FBI was involved, at least not immediately. If necessary, though, if Overstreet were evasive, L’Hommedieu would jump in and change the complexion of the call from interview to interrogation.

  Overstreet seemed friendly at first, but wary. No, he said, he’d not been told the reason for Searing’s call. Then he corrected himself. “Not specifically. An emergency was all I was told,” he said.

  Unlikely, Searing thought. He checked L’Hommedieu’s reaction—which indicated he thought the same—then said, “We’re needing a little information on one of your pilots. “Emil Pate. Know him?”

  After a moment, Overstreet said, “Yes. What’s happened to him?”

  “I can’t say at this time, Mr. Overstreet.” Searing made sure L’Hommedieu agreed with that. “But we’re wondering what you can tell us about him.”

  “Let me get his file.” Overstreet said. There was a sharp click as the phone was placed down on a hard surface. A few seconds later, Searing heard a file drawer slide shut with a bang.

  L’Hommedieu covered his mouthpiece. “Get him right to the psychological profile,” he said. “His own opinion.”

  Then Overstreet was back on. “Well,” he said, “There’s nothing unusual in Pate’s record. Except for outstanding performances on all his checkrides.”

  “Actually, we’re more interested in his state of mind,” Searing said. “Some sort of psychological profile.”

  “Ah,” Overstreet said. “You have to understand, we’ve got over six hundred pilots at this base. I remember Pate, but I can’t be expected to keep a close watch on all of them, you understand. It’s not really my job, Mr. Searing.”

  L’Hommedieu was shaking his head. Overstreet was smokescreening.

  “Didn’t you have to counsel him a couple of months ago?”

  “A couple of months ago?” Overstreet cleared his throat. “Yeah, here it is. No big deal, as I recall. I mean he was a striker who came back to work for us. He was carrying that seniority-integration grudge. You know, being bumped back to the right-hand seat. But he seemed stable to me. Very stable.”

  “Sounds like you remember him pretty well,” Searing said.

  “No, it’s not that,” Overstreet answered too quickly. Now he waited too long to continue.” I just mean I would remember him if he hadn’t seemed normal. If you see what I mean.”

  L’Hommedieu covered his mouthpiece again. “I’m going to jump in.”

  “Would you hold a moment, Mr. Overstreet?” Searing covered his mouthpiece. L’Hommedieu was right. The guy needed an arm twist. “You want me to tell him who you are?”

  L’Hommedieu shook his head. “I’ll do it.”

  The agent introduced himself, speaking quickly in a flat, voice that carried a trace of threat. “I’m a special agent with the FBI, Mr. Overstreet. And I can tell from your equivocation that Emil Pate does stand out in your memory. So, please, start telling us what you really know about the man. Right now.”

  Searing heard Overstreet exhale, then silence. “Okay,” he said quietly. “But what’s Pate done? I think I have a right to know that.”

  “Understandable request,” L’Hommedieu answered. “However, we can’t tell you at this time. You’ll just have to accept that. Now tell me, please, what’s your personal opinion of Emil Pate? In a nutshell.”

  “In a nutshell?” For a dozen seconds Overstreet was silent. Then he said, “Well, he’s a tough one to get a handle on.”

  I’ve seen his employment record,” L’Hommedieu said. “He doesn’t fit the typical commercial pilot profile.”

  “No,” Overstreet agreed, “he’s not college educated for one thing. But what I mean is, he’s his own man. Though he cares what people think of him, in my opinion anyway. Or at least he cares what his own clique thinks.”

  “Many friends? Or do most pilots dislike him?”

  “No, I wouldn’t say that. You don’t dislike him. He’s not mean. Actually, I think he was very popular—at Westar. I’m sure he’s still close to a number of those pilots. There used to be a pack of them at Westar, a dozen maybe. A bunch of ex—Viet Nam fliers. Called the ‘Wild Bunch’.”

  “Why were they called that?” L’Hommedieu asked. “Were they reckless?”

  “No,” Overstreet said. “Not in the cockpit, no. They’re all excellent pilots, those I know of—some of them are with us now, I think. But on the ground—again this is hearsay— apparently they’d use their layovers ‘to maximum benefit’ as we’d say.”

  “Meaning?”

  Overstreet cleared his throat again. “Chase women. Get rowdy.”

  “I thought Pate was married.”

  “I’m talking about ten years ago,” Overstreet said. “Make that fifteen. Before regulation. Right after Viet Nam. Most of those guys were fighter pilots. Fairly big egos. See, that’s their whole problem—but I suppose one needs a healthy ego to command a jetliner, too.”

  “And Pate was a captain at Westar,” L’Hommedieu said, “but now he’s a copilot again, and so he’s more than a little upset about the seniority integration.”

  “Yeah,” Overstreet said firmly. �
�I think you could say that.”

  “Incensed?”

  “That’d be a good word to use, yes. Okay, to be honest, he unloaded on me, right here in the office. But it wasn’t just rage. The guy was ashamed of himself for losing it. That’s why I thought it had gotten out of his system, that all he needed was to blow off steam. Apparently that’s not—”

  “Why do you think he in particular was so mad? Were you having as much trouble with the other Westar pilots who stayed?”

  “No,” Overstreet said firmly. “No, most of them understand the situation, I think. Some have grudges. You have to expect that. But Pate sort of wears his uniform all the time. If you read his file, you know what I mean. Big ego. Mr. Pilot all the way.”

  L’Hommedieu nodded. “He identified strongly with the role of captain?”

  “I’d say completely. You have to understand how much authority the captain has—New World captains anyway.”

  “So Pate felt a loss of status.”

  “Bingo,” Overstreet said.

  “Did you work for Westar?”

  “Me?” Overstreet sounded surprised. He was quiet for a minute, then said, “Eight years.”

  “Did you cross the line during or after the strike?”

  “Wait a minute,” Overstreet said. “Are you suggesting something?”

  L’Hommedieu made a note his pad. “Mr. Overstreet, just one more question. This isn’t an accusation, and what you say is confidential as of the moment I say so. Okay? So what I want to know is, why—if Pate flew into a violent rage—why didn’t you take him off the flight roster?”

  Again Overstreet was quiet. Then he said, “Okay, I want to know what’s going on. What’s Pate done?”

  “I’m asking the questions,” L’Hommedieu answered. “Your failing to answer them truthfully could be obstruction of justice. Why did you leave him on the roster?”

  “I thought he was fit.” Overstreet’s voice had a whine to it now. “I asked if his feelings would affect his judgment in the cockpit, his professionalism, and he said that wasn’t even an issue. Look, sir, I’ll say this. I don’t get along with those guys that well, because I didn’t wait to go back, but I didn’t think Pate was a problem. Whatever else, he’s not some head case. He blows up once. Like I said, I thought he’d gotten it out.”

  “So—at the time—you firmly believed,” L’Hommedieu said, spacing the words out now, “that Pate, no matter what he was going through, would not deliberately jeopardize a flight—another crew member, or the passengers—not if he were in a rational state of mind?”

  “That’s what I believed,” Overstreet said. “I still do, sir. If you knew him, I think you’d say the same.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Overstreet. You’ve been very helpful. Could you come up with the names of some of those other Westar pilots who came back after the strike? The ones Pate knows well?”

  “I could,” Overstreet said, calm again, but sounding abused. “But I expect finding any of them might be difficult on short notice. None of them would have enough seniority yet to be on a permanent line. We’d have to go through the schedules. Conceivably every one of them could be in the air right now.”

  “I see.” L’Hommedieu tapped his pen on his pad for a moment. “Try anyway,” he said. If you find one, give him this number and have him call immediately. And stay at your number for another hour or so if you will.”

  “Whatever you say,” Overstreet answered.

  As soon as L’Hommedieu hung up, he began making notes. Searing watched him, wondering what exactly he had learned. “What do you think now? That Pate’s no head case?”

  L’Hommedieu stopped writing and rubbed the back of his neck, then pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “It’s an interesting profile. Stone-cold professional on the one hand. Highly trained ex-Marine, career pilot. Man with an ingrained purpose, which is to do his job right, bring the plane down safely, keep crew and passengers from harm—wouldn’t you say? Should be a man who’d find it very difficult to do what he’s doing.”

  Searing nodded. It sounded like a good assessment, as far as it went. But what about the other side of Pate? “And on the other hand?” he asked.

  L’Hommedieu sipped his coffee now, made a wry face at it. “This whole sense maybe that the world has turned on him, cast him out. If he feels that way, then we’re all somewhat guilty in his mind. Guilty of negligence, of allowing injustice to happen. That could be his rationale for killing a hundred and thirty people.” L’Hommedieu picked up Pate’s file, studied the photo again. “But there’s something else, too. I wish I knew more about him. I want to talk to him again. I want to listen to the tapes, go over what he just said. I want to find out what really makes him tick, where his weak points are. I’d especially like to talk to his wife.”

  Searing folded his arms and sat back. Of course that would be to their benefit. So would a six-month study of Pate. But they only had a couple of hours. Now the nagging fear that they were forgetting something important returned. But what was bothering him? L’Hommedieu’s advice was good, wasn’t it? Wait a little before letting the President in on it. They did have some time. And Searing also had to admit that L’Hommedieu had handled the chief pilot well, gotten out of him what they wanted. So for the time being he would have to give L’Hommedieu the benefit of any doubt.

  “Okay, we’ll give it twenty more minutes,” he said, getting out of his chair. “But I say we scramble a plane then, regardless of any progress.”

  L’Hommedieu was writing again and did not even nod. Feeling frustrated, Searing went back to station 1, got a fresh tissue and blew his nose. At least his head seemed slightly less congested now. For a moment he thought of the end of the day—that no matter what happened, he’d go home, get in bed and nurse his cold. In Operations Bob Stouffer glanced up at him and smiled, shaking his head. Searing sipped his coffee, but it was cold. He sat down and looked at the clock. They had two hours. It wasn’t much, not the way things were going. They needed to find the ex-wife. He opened the line to the FBI. And then, hearing the click of the connection being made, he thought about the other side of the matter, the best-case scenario, wherein they got Pate’s wife to talk to him, got Farraday on the line, even got a best friend to an ARINC hookup somewhere. And got Pate to change his mind. What if all that happened, he wondered. And what if Pate agreed to land the plane?

  “Pat McDonald,” a voice said in his ear.

  McDonald, L’Hommedieu’s assistant at the Washington Bureau office, reported that the Bureau office in Albuquerque had been calling Katherine Winslow’s number constantly and getting no answer. So they had sent an agent to the address. He hadn’t reported in yet. Searing hung up the phone again and started to punch in the number for New World headquarters. But he stopped, remembering the last question he’d asked himself. What if Pate agreed to land the plane?

  He got up and went back to the chair beside L’Hommedieu. The agent was still writing. He looked up in a moment.

  “What guarantees do we have?” Searing said. “If Pate agrees to land the plane. How do we know he’ll follow through?”

  For a moment L’Hommedieu didn’t understand. Then he saw what Searing was driving at. “It’s a good question,” he conceded. “How would we know what he intends until he does it?”

  “I’m not even so sure that’s what scares me most.” Searing kept his eyes steadily on L’Hommedieu now. “Suppose he does mean it when he says it? At the last second he could still snap. Takes only one little bad thought—a ‘Why not’? Isn’t that how suicides happen?”

  “Conjecture,” L’Hommedieu said.

  “You get my point, though.”

  “Yes. What if Pate is suicidal and what if his suicidal intent reasserts itself? No, there isn’t any way we can know what he’ll do because he may not even know. That might be the final chance we take. But I don’t think he’s suicidal.”

  “You’re saying we have to take the final chance?”

  Again
L’Hommedieu needed a moment to get his point. Then he rewound the tape again and pressed the play button. “Listen to this,” he said.

  In a moment Pate was speaking again, saying, “Only those on the inside, the ones swallowed up in it, know. But if I do this, everyone will know Farraday’s a slimeball, a monster.”

  L’Hommedieu stopped the tape and looked at Searing. “He didn’t say ‘when.’ He said ‘if.’ Twice he says it. Unconscious slip? I think so, which signifies at least some doubt in his mind. And therefore hope. Hope for some other way out, and because of that hope I think once he thinks about it, he’ll want to talk to Farraday. And when he calls back, I’m going to hit him with something else. We’ll see if his wife still means anything to him.”

  The “if” seemed a small point to Searing, slip of the tongue or not. And he wanted to say so, but he didn’t. L’Hommedieu was the psychologist, the one to decide the significance of whatever the subject told them, however he told them. “Okay,” he said. “Ten more minutes. You’d better hope Pate’s been thinking it over.”

  ELEVEN

  Flight Deck

  New World 555

  18:58 GMT/13:58 EST

  The sun had kept pace. The high-altitude haze ahead was deepening. He was over Kansas still, but in the distance lay the Oklahoma panhandle and then New Mexico. And Albuquerque. It would glide beneath him, five miles under his feet, teeming with people he knew, the stores he had shopped in with Melissa and Carrie, and Katherine. The restaurants, the river park, the old town. Katherine’s favorite restaurant there. Their old neighborhood. The little church where he and Katherine had gotten married, neither of them wanting anything special.

  Pate remembered now, too, how they had gone down to Puerto Vallarta on their honeymoon. In the off season—October when the air was like a hot, damp blanket and rain came every evening. They hadn’t cared, though, trudging up the cobble streets, walking the beaches. Dark as he was, he had been mistaken for a native more than once, the locals simply rattling off Spanish at him until they’d realized from his confused smile, the way Katherine laughed, that he didn’t understand a word of it. They had taken a tour boat to Yelapa, down the coast, to where the Indian boys all had big ugly iguanas draped over their shoulders—pets, which for a dollar they would let you hold to have your picture taken. But Katherine had wanted a picture of the boy holding his beast, and all the boys had thought that marvelous. Pate had thought it marvelous too—that Kate had this knack for doing the unexpected.