Skyhammer

by Richard Hilton

  “We’d better get back in,” Searing said.

  Wichita Mid-Continent Airport

  Wichita, Kansas

  19:01 GMT/13:01 CST

  The day was typical of west-central Kansas in November, bright and cold, with the usual stiff northerly wind gusting across the nearly vacant tarmac at Wichita’s Mid-Continent Airport, and adding a mean bite to the air. The ramp had been bladed, but the remnants of the previous day’s snowstorm lingered in the shade of the terminal and adjacent buildings.

  Behind the counter at Bridge Aviation, a fixed-base operation catering to business jets, Darryl Dobbins glanced up as a weather report began churning out of the teletype. Nothing the weather might have to offer could be very interesting to Dobbins. After twenty-eight years in aviation, the last six running the counter for Bridge, he’d just about seen it all, heard it all.

  He turned back to the Sports Afield spread open on his desk. He was reading an article on smallmouth bass fishing in Canada, and thinking about his next vacation. He glanced up again and saw the two pilots of the Hawker-Sidley corporate jet that had landed a little while ago—aircraft Two Nine Whiskey—hurrying across the apron outside, their polypropylene ski jackets zipped up tight over their uniform shirts. A moment later they burst through the front door, stomping snow from their feet. Dobbins concentrated on the magazine again, hoping they wouldn’t need him for anything.

  One of them went directly into the lounge area and dropped a coin in the coffee machine. But the other came over to the desk.

  “Some weather you got here.”

  Dobbins nodded without looking up. “November in Wichita.”

  “So—you heard anything about that New World flight?”

  Dobbins did look up now, and adjusted his glasses. The pilot was excited, he could tell. “Son, I got no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.

  The pilot leaned over the counter. “You haven’t heard anything? Nothing about a copilot taking over a plane and threatening to crash it with everyone aboard?”

  “What?” Dobbins pushed up his glasses again. “Where’d you hear that?”

  “On the radio. We were tracking about forty miles behind him when he called up K.C. Said the captain was incapacitated and he was in command. We didn’t believe it either. But that’s what we heard. I figured it’d be on the news by now.”

  “I ain’t been listening to the TV” Dobbins rose from his chair and moved over to the counter. “Which airline you say it was?”

  “New World, Five-fifty-five.”

  The Hawker captain, coffee in hand, approached the desk now.

  “Is this for real?” Dobbins asked him.

  “Far as we know.” The older man nodded. “The guy’s headed for Phoenix. Out to get Jack Farraday—that’s what he said. We were on the same frequency but then they switched him off to a discrete.”

  “Well, holy cow,” Dobbins said, staring at the captain and then his copilot. “Let’s see what’s on the tube.”

  He lifted the counter access and led the way over to the TV in the lounge. It was on but there was no sound. Dobbins turned up the volume. Then he flipped through the channels,slowly, but there were only pre-game shows and Kung Fu movies. “Damn it,” he said, “I been trying to get them to put in cable so we could get CNN.”

  The three men stood watching the screen for another minute. Then Dobbins turned back toward the counter.

  “Tell you what,” he said over his shoulder. “I’ve got a nephew in the newsroom at Channel Seven. I’ll give him a jingle.”

  It took less than five minutes for the news from Darryl Dobbins’s nephew to reach the top of his station’s affiliate network. Within another twenty minutes, VHF aviation-band scanners were being trained on the sky along 555’s route, as well as toward the antennas of air route traffic control centers near all large cities. Switchboards at FAA Headquarters, the FBI, and New World Airlines began to light up with calls.

  Flight Deck

  New World 555

  19:01 GMT/14:01 EST

  Pate finished another cigarette. The ashtray was overflowing now. He took another sip from his water bottle and then leaned to his right to look down through the side window. The land below was the color of rawhide, webbed by the darker threads of water courses. He would cross into New Mexico soon and be truly in the West again. He’d fly over Albuquerque in about twenty minutes, and he knew that if he searched he would probably even be able to pick out the subdivision where he and Katherine had started the house they had dreamed about and never gotten a chance to live in. Would he be able to pick out the neighborhood where Katherine and the girls were living now? Probably not. Shouldn’t even try, he decided. It would only make him think about her, which he shouldn’t let himself do. Better to believe that he hadn’t ever met Katherine. Had never looked up and seen her standing on the other side of the open grave at Louise Yellow Wolf’s funeral.

  The day did seem too long ago. Like something he’d only heard of or imagined. Except that he remembered the August heat burning through the thin shade of the sycamores, the pale hills in the distance. The white cabbage butterflies dancing frantically through the patches of sun beyond the shade of the cemetery. The silence, the buzzing of insects. The two Indian boys sitting on the old Ford tractor, away from the crowd, waiting to fill in the grave. And Katherine in her gray suit, blonde hair tied up. The daughter of the high school’s principal, all grown up. He hadn’t been back to Lapwai in ten years, wouldn’t have gone back for any other reason but the funeral.

  He and Katherine had shaken hands. “Would you like some coffee?” she had asked. Pate had been thinking of scotch, but he followed her back to her house. Her parents’ old house, where she was living after her divorce. They sat at the table in the yellow-walled kitchen, and she told him about her marriage, the end of it, about her two daughters. Smiling at her hands, at him, shyly but knowingly. And then he had told her all about his life. And she had said to him, “You sound like everything’s all your fault.”

  It was exactly how he had felt. That all the years between his leaving Lapwai and his return were a mistake he had perpetrated. Years of living like there was no tomorrow, living just like his old man. He had known only girls he’d had nothing to say to—nothing of consequence—and all they had ever talked about was what they’d done on their last layover or something they’d bought. He had committed a cheap life, he felt, chasing anything in a skirt, counting coup in the cockpit afterward. And he had told Katherine all of this, that day of the funeral. He had poured out his story like a confession. And what had she said? That maybe it was a good day to start over—looking at him with those calm green eyes of hers, knowing him for what he was but also for what he could be. He had gone back to Denver, back to Westar for two weeks before he’d realized he couldn’t do it without her.

  But she would be a lot better off without him, Pate thought now. He had messed up her life enough. It was a good day for her to start over. Would she forgive him, though? He couldn’t help but wonder that now. As much as she might try, could she?

  Without warning his mind betrayed him, showing him a passenger cabin, an audience of faces, the view of them he’d seen so many times. Though after a thousand times, you didn’t see them anymore—they weren’t people, only a photograph you’d seen too many times, only more freight, filling the “tube.” And once you were in the cockpit, you forgot about them altogether; the cockpit became the “magic box,” a head without body or wings, flying by itself. After ten thousand times, you found it easy to feel alone.

  Except he saw them clearly, in the brief instant before he shut the image out—rows of individual faces, and Mariella’s cheerful smile, dissolving in a sheet of flame. Could Katherine forgive that?

  Didn’t matter. Didn’t matter! he thought furiously now. Not if she hated him for the rest of her life. Better in fact if she did. And he would not care about her any more either. The negotiator had actually done him a favor, asking about her. The last of
his need for her had been squeezed out, and now he’d be okay. They couldn’t use her to get to him. He wouldn’t think about her at all. He’d think about Jack Farraday. He’d get him on the line and let him talk—keep him talking, keep them all guessing until it was too late.

  Pate shifted in his seat and shook his head to clear it. He checked the instruments. Yes, he’d screwed up, he knew it. If they hadn’t been looking for Katherine before, they would be now. And they’d get her to talk to him if they could. But he wouldn’t talk to her. He’d twist the dial again. He wouldn’t talk to L’Hommedieu anymore either. He would only talk to Farraday. He would lay it all on Jack Farraday, the one who deserved the blame.

  It was 14:04 now. The headwind was slowing him down. Almost two hours remained. Plenty for him, not enough for them. Enough time for the newshounds to get on the scent? Somebody somewhere had heard his first contact. More than one flight would’ve been on the same channel. They’d be scanning the airways by now, picking up his signal.

  He dialed frequency 113.8 into his number-two VOR receiver, then 250 degrees into the course window of the horizontal situation indicator. The deviation needle centered up nicely. He reselected VOR/LOC on the autopilot control panel so that the autopilot would track the course, applying wind- drift correction. The DME readout indicated fifty-six nautical miles to the Wichita VOR. He flipped the transfer switch on his VHF control head back to Kansas City’s frequency and listened until he heard a TWA jet check in, followed by the controller’s acknowledgment. Then he keyed his microphone.

  “Kansas City, New World Five-fifty-five,” he transmitted.

  Aviation Command Center

  19:12 GMT/14:12 EST

  Searing swiveled his chair around, his face grim. Something had changed for the worse.

  “What is it?” L’Hommedieu asked. He had just returned from the men’s room.

  “Slusser just called. He got a message from Pate.”

  L’Hommedieu felt his heart sink. “He won’t talk to Farra-day?”

  “No. He wants to talk to Farraday.” Searing scowled, studying L’Hommedieu carefully. “But he says he won’t talk to you no more.”

  L’Hommedieu sat down. It was not this news that startled him so much as his own failure to foresee such a possibility. Such a simple move. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it, and he swore at himself under his breath.

  “In fact,” Searing said, a trace of sarcasm creeping into his accent this time, “Pate says he won’t be talking to no one again till he flies into the Albuquerque control sector.”

  “Did Slusser give you his exact words?”

  “Said, ‘tell L’Hommedieu I don’t need to talk to him anymore and that I’m taking him up on Farraday.’”

  “That’s it?”

  Searing nodded, folded his arms.

  L’Hommedieu shook his head slowly, pounded his fist softly against the table, trying to think. “Well it complicates things.”

  “Whistle Dixie for me,” Searing said. He unfolded his arms, slapped his knees and got up. “I’m making that call to the Pentagon. And the White House. It’s time.” He stood looking down at L’Hommedieu, waiting to be challenged. But L’Hommedieu only shook his head again. He had no argument to make. It had been a mistake to alienate Pate. A gamble that hadn’t paid off, had instead cost him.

  “Then I’m calling New World again,” Searing said. “Kick some butt. Tell them their boss is our last hope.” He pulled a tissue and blew his nose, then picked up the phone.

  L’Hommedieu leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Now how was he supposed to do his job? It was tough enough when you were face to face with the subject, tougher over the phone. Now he’d have to work through a middle man, someone he didn’t even know. Listening in but unable to respond.

  Although this might work to his advantage, he realized. It reminded him of something a Navy friend had once told him. A veteran of the nuclear submarine service, who had mentioned the fact that they never used their active sonar while they were on patrol. All that sophisticated detection gear and yet they disconnected it as soon as they were at sea. “Why?” L’Hommedieu had asked, dumbfounded. “Imagine you’re in this big, pitch-dark room,” his friend had said. “Like a high school gymnasium—you and this other guy. And you each have a shotgun and a flashlight. And you’re trying to shoot him, and he’s trying to shoot you. Would you turn on your flashlight to try to find him?”

  It would be like that with Pate. So long as L’Hommedieu didn’t turn on his light—didn’t break in and try to talk to Pate—Pate wouldn’t know he was listening in, advising whomever Pate would talk to. They could work on Pate passively, flashlight off, through Farraday, and through Katherine Winslow. And maybe a friend or fellow pilot? There might still be time to find an old Westar man, one in Albuquerque, where Searing had said many still lived.

  And suddenly L’Hommedieu knew who. Again, he was amazed he hadn’t realized sooner. Did he still have the business card, though? His wallet was a pack rat’s nest of paper scraps, old receipts, cards—but then he found it, a white one with the Federal Aviation Agency logo embossed on it, and underneath that the name of his old West Point platoon leader, James Edwin Kelly, Flight Examiner. He and Kelly hadn’t kept up a close friendship over the years—Christmas greetings were exchanged—but at least they had kept track of each other. He knew that after graduation Jim Kelly had finagled his way into the Air Force, and then into pilot training. And after the Air Force he’d gone to work for a commercial carrier, and if L’Hommedieu’s memory served him correctly, the airline Kelly had flown with—and resigned from to take the FAA job—was Westar.

  He turned the card over. Kelly’s home phone number was penciled in, along with his address. Yes, he’d stayed in Albuquerque. And with any luck he’d be home today, L’Hommedieu thought. Kelly wouldn’t miss the Army-Navy game if he could help it.

  L’Hommedieu pushed his chair down to John Travis and showed him the card. “Call Albuquerque FBI and get a car out to this address.”

  He propelled himself back to his own station and picked up the phone. They would find Kelly. Their luck was going to change now. They would also locate Katherine Winslow. All the pieces would start falling into place, Jack Farraday, as well. They would fit together somehow, and bring Emil Pate to his senses. L’Hommedieu didn’t know how, but he knew it had to happen. There was no other way.

  TWELVE

  Corrales, New Mexico

  19:11 GMT/12:11 MST

  For the last three years, James Kelly had bet on Army. Two years ago he had wagered a new pair of basketball shoes against his son Josh’s garage cleanup. Last year he had bet three lawnmowings against repainting the backyard fence. Since he’d lost the bet last year, this year’s bet was the same. This year, however, unlike the last two, Kelly also had points.Six, in fact, and he considered himself very clever to have negotiated them. With an Irishman’s talent for feigning doubt, he had spent most of the morning bemoaning Army’s weak offensive line and reminding Josh that the Vegas bookies had Navy favored by thirteen and a half points.

  Unfortunately, six was beginning to look like not enough. Navy had scored two touchdowns, to Army’s single field goal. Army had the ball, but on second down had just blown another pass play. With halftime only a minute away, Josh was already beginning to gloat.

  Kelly rarely missed the annual Army-Navy showdown. In fact, he hadn’t missed a game in ten years, not since his final months in the Air Force, and that time he’d been somewhere over the mid-Atlantic, on his way to the Azores in a C-130 transport. This year he’d just gotten home from two weeks in Phoenix, administering oral exams and type-rating check-rides to new Boeing 737 captains with New World and Southwest airlines. This Saturday was the first in three he’d had off, and he felt more than a little deserving of this chance to kick back and relax. He also felt he deserved better than a shameful defeat at the hands of Navy and losing the bet to his son for the second year in a row.

/>   “Don’t throw it,” he muttered. “Give it to Yates.”

  Maybe that wasn’t such good advice, though. Yates, Army’s star tailback, had suffered a miserable half so far.

  The huddle broke now. Kelly hunched forward in his recliner and clenched his fists. After an interminable snap count, the quarterback wheeled away from the line, holding the ball out to the fullback. But the hand-off was a fake.—he was back-pedaling, now, looking down field.

  “Throw it!” Kelly pleaded. “Throw the bastard!”

  “Sack! Sack!” Josh screamed, jumping up from the carpet.

  The Navy rush was almost upon the Army quarterback. Kelly half rose out of his chair, a bellow of frustration caught in his throat. He heard the telephone ringing. Then the quarterback took a step forward and avoided the rush. For another split second he waited. Then he sent the ball sailing in a high, long arc, up against the blur of the crowd, and then it came down and there was the receiver, running full out, a step ahead of the defensive back—leaning now, flying forward, leaving his feet as the ball came down into his outstretched hands. He pulled it to his chest and hit the ground, skidding, but holding on, in-bounds ... at the two-yard line.

  Kelly leaped, punching the air with his fist. “Yeah!” He shouted. “Yeah, yeah, yeah!”

  “Crap!” Josh muttered.

  The phone rang again. Kelly sat down. The next play was absolutely crucial. He had to concentrate now.

  But his wife Jackie was in the doorway, holding the phone receiver out toward him. She looked worried. “It’s Brian L’Hommedieu.”

  For a moment Kelly stared at her. He couldn’t remember the last time he had talked to his old classmate.

  “He said it’s urgent,” Jackie went on. “More important than the game.”

  Kelly knew that wasn’t possible, but it had to be something serious for Brian L’Hommedieu to call any time, let alone now. He bounded to his feet, and took the receiver.

  “Brian!” he boomed into it. “Long time, buddy. Was that pass beautiful or what? Those Navy—”