Skyhammer

by Richard Hilton

  A minute later, however, Farraday said, “The problem is getting the bastard down, I suppose. What should I say to him first, Edgar?”

  “Avoid any pleas for compassion. For the record we’ll want to establish his motive quickly.” Boyce nodded toward the file. “Remember, it doesn’t matter what’s in the record—we can always block submittal in court—anything we don’t want. What matters is that we get evidence we can use. Soget right to the bargain. Offer to do what he wants first. He’ll probably want you to spell it out.”

  “But what if he vents first? What he wants is a piece of me, right?”

  “A piece of you, yes.” Boyce glanced at Frye. “Figuratively speaking, of course. So you’ll have to apologize, offer to restore benefits, salaries, seniority. You’ll probably have to promise to quit New World as well. All of that, and then, because he’s got an ego to salve, you’ll have to make personal restitution. That’s what you’ll call it. Ask him how much personal restitution he wants for his family.”

  “What do you think, Walter?” Farraday slapped the file on Frye’s knee again.

  Frye could not look at him. He had been listening to Boyce but now the words flurried in his mind. “Yes,” he heard himself say. “He’s probably got an ego—”

  “So I lay mine on the table for him, that it? Let him chop it off?” When Frye didn’t answer, Farraday said, “Basically, if I’m to get him to land, I’ll need to lie right down on the runway for him, right?”

  Was he supposed to agree? Yes, Frye wanted to—anything to get Farraday’s eyes off him. But his mouth wouldn’t open.

  “I think you should be as conciliatory as possible,” Boyce said now, to Frye’s relief. “The best thing you could do is play the role of repentant. Be sorry. Say you wished you and he could sit down and work this out together. Show him you’re not what he thinks. Tell him you’ve made some bad decisions and want to set things right again. Don’t play it at all the way you played it this morning. Praise him for bringing you to your senses. All of that will sound very good in the press.”

  “Even though it’s all a load of crap,” Farraday said, but he was nodding. Then he said quietly, “You’re not giving us your two cents, Walter. I didn’t hire you to sit there like an idiot. Are you still behind the curve on this?”

  He was more than behind the curve. He wasn’t even on the curve, Frye realized. He wanted no part of it. But what was he supposed to do? Ask them to let him out right then and there? He truly felt kidnaped, as if he were riding along on a bank robbery. And they were going to put a gun in his hand and make him shoot someone. No, it was worse than that. It had nothing to do with this Emil Pate or whatever motive he had or how justified it was. They were talking about the whole situation in terms of aftermath. Damage control. What to say in order to sound good to the public, not to Pate. And maybe worst of all was the fact that they were building one colossal lie, a terrible irony.

  “It’s just too bad,” Frye offered. “I mean that this Pate isn’t simply doing it for money. That would—” He stopped. He hadn’t meant to speak his mind. In the corner of his eye, he saw Farraday staring at him again. With effort he turned his head to meet the gaze, and was astonished to find that Farraday was grinning.

  “You want to know my regret, Walter?” Farraday’s eyes traveled down past Frye’s throat and then back up to his eyes. Here it comes, Frye thought. Farraday would tell him he was a weakling, a big mistake. And suddenly he hoped that Farraday would. It would save him the trouble of confessing as much. But instead Farraday said, “My only regret is that it’s happening to us. If it was happening to any other airline, we’d have a field day.” His smile widened at Frye’s dismay. “How about the homosexual angle?” he asked. “Two faggot pilots getting off in the cockpit?” He made a noise, a snickering laugh through his nose. “A lover’s spat gone bad? We’d drive the competition right into the ground.”

  “Very funny, Jack,” Boyce said. “That was very good.”

  “How about you, Walter?” Farraday said. “You like that one?”

  In fact, Frye was horrified. But he nodded. Then, in the long minutes that followed, as he stared down at his hands clasped between his knees, he wondered what he would do. He had given up a lot to be there in that back of that limo. But he would not be able to work with Jack Farraday. He could hardly bear sitting next to him. Thank God they were finally pulling off the freeway, driving up to the low, white Albuquerque control center.

  As the car pulled up, a man came rushing through the front doors of the building. Boyce and Farraday got out on either side of him, and Walter Frye, numb now, slid toward Boyce’s door to get out.

  “Walter?”

  Farraday was leaning back into the car. Frye tried to answer, but his mouth had gone as dry as sand.

  “I want you to stay in the car with Bobby,” Farraday said, nodding toward the bodyguard in the driver’s seat. “Watch a football game. We’ll handle this.”

  Even though Frye knew what this meant, that he was not trusted, it seemed like a wish come true. In utter relief, he watched Farraday and Boyce go up the front walk and into the center. Then he settled back and closed his eyes. He would wait. But not because he was afraid of Jack Farraday anymore, or trying to please him. No, he’d wait because he’d be damned if he’d pay cab fare back into town.

  Bobby had gotten out of the front seat and gotten in beside him. He turned on the TV. The sound of cheering filled the car.

  Flight Deck

  New World 555

  20:04 GMT/15:04 EST

  Pate had decided the sky was beautiful. Like the blue of a clear lake high above the timberline. It had the depth of water, the shades layered, the layers bleeding into each other. What was it that made the sky blue? Ice particles, high up in the ionosphere? The light struck the ice and the ice refracted the part of the spectrum that was blue so that it was many shades, blending into blue. There wasn’t really any such thing as pure blue. Or maybe there was, but it was a shade so discrete, so rare, you probably had to rise to the very edge of the atmosphere to see it.

  The clouds were broken into pieces now, floating over their shadows on the surface of the denser air beneath them, like islands, whole subcontinents on a transparent sea, a geology of clouds—rumpled mountains, deep canyons, escarpments, valleys, translucent coastal plains. A faint haze shimmered above the clouds, like an aura. As high as he was, there was more space above. Interminable s pace. Pate stared at the yoke, listened to the whine of the slipstream—felt himself, his body, the dense confusion of his mind, and the earth spinning fast beneath the plane. You never were more conscious of time, he thought, than when you were moving fast over the earth.

  But flying high above the earth—where you floated, hardly seeming to move—that wasn’t real flying, he thought now. Real flying happened close to the ground where speed registered—skimming over the land, rising up suddenly and feeling the bond of gravity bend and stretch, the land tilting suddenly, seesawing, the horizon soaring as you fell, then falling again as you soared. That’s what he had lived for, the same thing Jeeps Henry had lived for.

  He could take the plane down right now, he thought. Get this done with. Just roll it over and head straight for the ground. But not into it. Skim the ground. And soar up again? Why was he thinking this? Was he afraid to die after all? No, it wasn’t that. He was only afraid of something else. A whisper of doubt had entered his mind. Abruptly he felt it. For the first time since he’d come to the decision to die, he’d realized he might actually be insane, hanging onto his pride as if it were a lifeline, terrified that he’d fall into the bottomless abyss if he let go, when in fact his pride was an anchor, dragging him down. Was Katherine right that he’d gotten it backwards?

  He looked around the cockpit, then at the still form of the dead man. He was trapped there now, inside the small, fragile shell. The uncertainty was too much like the old pain—the desperation brought sweat to his face and palms. But what if she was right?

&
nbsp; Pate waited another minute. Then he turned the radio dial back to the assigned frequency. They could reach him when they wanted to now. He would call them when he hit the next sector. Maybe there was some other way out of this. Maybe it would depend on Jack Farraday.

  Passenger Cabin

  New World 555

  20:06 GMT/15:06 EST

  Mariella Ponti picked up the handset on the first-class bulkhead and pushed the cockpit call button. As she waited for an answer, her gaze moved from one passenger to another. Senator Sanford and his aide were dozing. The two business men and Mrs. Howard were reading.

  “Engine room,” Pate responded.

  The voice startled her. She barely recognized it.

  “Emil?”

  “Yeah. What?”

  The chill in his voice made her shiver. She turned away from the passengers. “It’s Mariella. You guys all right up there?”

  “Fine.”

  “I thought you might want some coffee or something.”

  There was no answer.

  “Emil?”

  “Let me check.”

  She waited a few seconds.

  “No thanks.” He sounded a little better this time, less abrupt.

  “How about some water? Or something else to drink?”

  “Nope. We’re doing okay.”

  “You sure? No trouble?”

  “Thanks but no thanks. We’re fine.” There was only irritation in his voice now. But something was not right, and Ponti felt a sting of alarm.

  “Okay.” She started to hang up but then, on a whim, asked, “How about if I come up for a few minutes? Everybody’s dozing back here and I’m a little bored.”

  There was a longer pause this time. Then Emil came on. “Well, to tell you the truth, we’ve got a little problem up here. Nothing serious, but it could be if we don’t fix it. So it’d be better if you didn’t come up right now.”

  “I understand,” Ponti said, but the alarm nagged more insistently. “If you guys need anything just call, okay?” She released the handset’s key and replaced it in its receptacle. Sanford’s aide was sleeping with his mouth open. Mrs. Howard glanced up at her suddenly. Concern wrinkled the old woman’s brow, and Ponti realized that she herself must be frowning too. She smiled at the woman, who smiled back and returned to her magazine.

  Ponti stopped for a moment at the curtain separating the cabins; then she slid the curtain open slightly and stepped through, closing it behind her. She made her way along the coach aisle. Most of the passengers were either napping or reading. Some of the youngsters were gazing out the windows; others had collapsed against their parents, sleeping.

  She was looking for David Crane. He was not in the seat he’d started out in—maybe he’s in the lav, she thought. No, there he was, on the aircraft’s right side, the side with three seats abreast. He’d found the only open row to stretch out and snooze in.

  She moved quickly back and sat down beside him in the aisle seat. A couple with a young child was in the row in front of them, an elderly man and his wife in the row behind. The child was sleeping. His mother was reading, the father resting with his seat reclined, eyes closed. Was it safe to talk, she wondered?

  She nudged Crane. “Mr. Crane,” she whispered.

  “You can call me David,” he said, smiling, his eyes still closed.

  She scooted closer. “I need to talk to you about something.” She looked about furtively. “Can you meet me by the rear galley?”

  Crane’s eyes popped open now. “Sure.”

  When he got there, Ponti pulled him into the space between the galley and the lavatories. The other two attendants were taking breaks. Nobody was in the aisle.

  “Listen,” she said. “There’s something strange going on in the cockpit.”

  “What do you mean, strange?” Crane asked.

  Quickly, Ponti described her attempts to take drinks to the cockpit, adding that neither pilot had used the lav, that they’d refused meals. And the captain hadn’t made any PA announcements about the route and points of interest. He hadn’t been on the intercom since the required climb-out announcement. The copilot had given all the PA’s and had answered the interphone every time. And he wouldn’t let her in the cockpit. “He said they were having a little problem, nothing serious, but they’d just as soon I didn’t come in.”

  “Maybe the captain’s sick,” Crane offered.

  “I thought about that, too,” Ponti said. “But you’d think they’d want some water, aspirin, something in that case. Besides, why wouldn’t they tell me?”

  “Do you know the first officer?”

  “Sort of. We were at Westar together. He’s a good guy, I think.” She shook her head. “But he seemed a little strange this morning.”

  “Look.” Crane lowered his voice. “Just ask him pointblank what’s wrong. Tell him you’re concerned and want to know if you should prepare the cabin for an abnormal landing, that sort of thing. He’ll probably tell you what’s up.”

  Ponti nodded. It was good advice. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll try that.” Noting his look of concern, she added, “I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.”

  Air Route Traffic Control Center

  Albuquerque, New Mexico

  20:05 GMT/13:05 MST

  At Sector 19’s low-altitude console, Shane Hartwell felt his pulse quicken as he watched Shadow’s radar blip track northeastward across his screen. One of a handful of former Air Force controllers assigned to the center, Hartwell had been delighted when Lenard Curtis, the center’s supervisor, had picked him to direct the intercept. A year of handling the routine movements of airliners over the southwestern desert had begun to grate on him, and he often missed the action and camaraderie of military operations.

  He studied the fighter’s data block now. Not since his Air Force days had he seen a four-figure groundspeed readout.At the moment, Shadow’s was reading 1,112 nautical miles—around 1,275 statute miles per hour. The blip was moving so fast it jumped nearly a quarter-inch on his screen between scans.

  Hartwell was so engrossed that Len Curtis startled him when he leaned over the console.

  “We just got word Jack Farraday’s on his way to the center,” the supervisor said quietly. “Have Shadow turn off his transponder. They’d rather not have Farraday know about this.”

  Hartwell nodded and issued the instruction. In a moment Shadow’s data block disappeared. Only a faint dim smudge, an unenhanced “skin paint” of the fighter continued to track across the screen. To an untrained eye it would be virtually invisible. Farraday probably wouldn’t even notice it.

  FIFTEEN

  Shadow

  20:08 GMT/13:06 MST

  Shadow was level at 24,000 feet, her speed steady at 1.75 Mach. Captain O’Brien rechecked the transponder in standby, and his radar on maximum-range scan. He glanced at the head-up display, directly ahead of him in his line of vision through the windscreen. Besides displaying primary flight information, the HUD’s green-glowing graphics and symbols would allow him to operate the fighter’s weapons systems without taking his eyes off the real target. When the time came, everything he needed to fire the aircraft’s gun or its missiles would be projected onto the glass. The fire control system’s computer would even tell him when to shoot.

  If the time came. O’Brien glanced at a rearview mirror mounted on his canopy bow. Nesbitt’s image, face hidden behind his dark visor, simply nodded. They were hot-miked, could talk without pushing buttons, but there wasn’t anything to say. Not yet.

  During the Gulf War, before the actual fighting had started, O’Brien had written letters home to a good friend, an old college buddy, telling him about the boredom. His friend had written back asking him to describe Dhahran, the town where the squadron had bivouacked. Such a strange request, O’Brien had thought, before he decided the friend was just trying to distract him. That was the thing about the time you spent before going to battle, he thought now. You didn’t want to contemplate your mission too much
. He glanced over the canopy rail, at the broken pattern of gray-green pine forest and pale ochre, high desert far below. Fragments of cloud, about a thousand feet down, were casting patches of shade over the land. Ahead the fragments were bunching up, merging.

  “I may have the target, Stick,” Nesbitt said quietly. Just coming on the screen.”

  O’Brien glanced down, saw the tiny square target depiction at the top of the rectangular screen, just left of center. As he watched it, a small bar projected from the bottom of the symbol; Nesbitt had slewed the radar, locked onto the target. Automatically, the screen began displaying the target’s history: heading, altitude and true airspeed.

  “Looks like him,” O’Brien said, noting the altitude steady at 31,000, the speed at 426. “We should have a visual any minute.” He glanced up at the HUD. The glowing green target box had appeared on its face, and now O’Brien peered intently through it at the sky beyond. With the air over the desert as dry as it was this time of year, the target would not leave much of a contrail, if any. O’Brien figured they might not acquire it visually until they’d closed to within ten or fifteen miles. So he was surprised when, within a minute or two, a tiny dark speck appeared in the sky beyond the rectangle.

  “I have him, Bitts. Eleven forty-five, couple of fingers up.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Nesbitt said, after a few seconds.

  The speck grew rapidly, developing detail. Within another minute a short contrail, maybe a quarter mile long, was visible. O’Brien brought the throttles back and keyed his microphone.

  “Albuquerque, Shadow has a tally-ho on the target.”

  “Roger, Shadow,” the controller answered. “The subject is in the plane’s right seat. Suggest you maintain your present track until you’ve passed him and then approach from behind and below. Your present altitude should preclude a contrail.”