Brian nosed the car into his marked parking space adjacent to the office building’s main door.
“Why don’t you run in, and I’ll stay out here,” Elizabeth said.
Elizabeth locked the doors before reclining the seat and adjusting her head against the door post. It would feel good to catch a few minutes’ sleep.
Marvin Grade saw the double speed bumps too late to avoid being propelled into the ceiling of his car as he rolled into the Pan Am Operations parking lot. He braked to a halt on the other side of the bumps and took inventory of his frazzled nerves. Then, he headed for the parking spaces in front of the main building adjacent to the hangar, as he had been instructed, and quietly selected a space to the left of an expensive-looking BMW.
Grade checked his watch. He had ten minutes.
I’ll get out of the car in five minutes and walk in exactly on schedule, he decided.
He felt a chill shudder through him, and reached over to turn up the heater, leaving the engine idling as he watched the time and waited for the appropriate moment.
Elizabeth had slipped almost instantly into a deep sleep. But now the dream she was in was being rattled by the sound of a loud car with a bad muffler. Slowly she swam back to the surface of consciousness. Without moving her head, she noticed the driver next to her, and the odd fact that in the dark—in an almost empty parking lot—he would choose a spot right next to Brian’s car.
The engine was running. Why?
A creepy feeling began to grip her. She found herself taking mental inventory of possible defenses.
She glanced at the glass door that was the entrance to the building. She could see partway down the hall in the direction Brian had gone. There was no one in sight. She wondered if he’d locked the door behind him.
He’s just sitting there! The way the man sat hunched over the wheel and staring straight ahead was unnerving. That and the fact that the engine was still running.
She caught a glimmer of light reflecting from the building door and slowly moved her head to see what had caused it. A dark car was entering the far side of the lot, triggering feelings of relief that she wasn’t all alone. But the car stopped just inside the gate and sat there with the engine running. In the dim glow of the few overhead lights in the parking lot, she could see the car’s exhaust fumes curling up into the night. She watched with increasing apprehension as the driver killed his headlights.
That’s weird. Why did he stop there?
Elizabeth forced herself to calm down. She was locked in, and Brian would be back in a minute. Besides, she told herself, the sort of people they’d been fighting wouldn’t be driving a beater like the car to her left.
Her mind ran through a summary of the malicious attacks on Pan Am: the airborne sabotage, the computer problems, the financial troubles … and the presence of someone in Eric’s apartment just before she’d arrived!
A small voice began to whisper urgently in her mind: Get out! Now! Get out of here!
That made no sense, but she found herself leaning over the driver’s seat and searching for the trunk release. She opened the gas tank and the hood before she found the right one, the satisfying thunk confirming that the trunk lid had opened. In one swift motion she opened her door and closed it behind her as she swept to the trunk and grabbed her briefcase—the instinctive need to protect the papers and the computer inside as great as the need to protect herself. She slammed the lid closed then, noticing that the car in the distance hadn’t moved—and neither had the driver next to her.
Elizabeth moved toward the door that had swallowed Brian, feeling time dilate. Panic clawed at her stomach as she reached for the door handle.
It wouldn’t open!
There was a sound from behind her now, the sound of a gearshift being moved. She began pushing at the door, harder and harder, until her hand hurt. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the shadowy figure behind the wheel look at his watch, and then glance in her direction.
She rattled the door as hard as she could, finally pushing against it with her shoulders.
The sound of a car door being opened reached her like a thunderclap. The man was getting out!
This is stupid! Calm down! Logic sought to regain control of the wild emotions propelling her—but logic was no match for panic.
“Damn!” she said out loud, giving the door a mighty shove.
It wouldn’t budge.
Panicked, Elizabeth began alternately pushing and pulling on the door, nearly falling backward when it flew open in her hands.
She rushed inside then, closing the door behind her and turning the lock as she saw the man in the old car begin to turn his body to get out of the driver’s seat. She headed down the hallway as fast as she could without running, her heart pounding, half expecting to hear the sound of smashing glass behind her.
She found Brian closing a file cabinet in his office. He looked up, startled at her wide-eyed appearance.
“Elizabeth? You okay?”
As she opened her mouth to reply, the soul-jarring impact of a massive explosion shuddered through the office complex, accompanied by the sounds of breaking glass and crashing metal.
“What the hell was that?” Brian’s voice was loud and panicked, his eyes—like hers—huge with adrenaline and shock.
They reentered the hall together, tentatively, and began moving carefully toward the front of the building.
The glass door had been shattered and thrown inward, completely off its frame, as had an adjacent window. Glass and flying metal had wrecked the outer reception area. They had to step gingerly over various unidentified debris as they walked through the opening where the door had been and out onto the parking lot.
Wreckage was everywhere. The shadowy form of the flaming hulk of a car lay on its side some fifty feet to Brian’s left. He recognized it as the remains of his BMW.
Where the Chevrolet had been sitting, there was only the twisted skeleton of a car, its interior on fire. People were beginning to converge from various directions. Elizabeth recognized at least one guard in the group. In the distance, she thought she saw the occupant of the dark-colored car get out and run toward the scene as well. She and Brian began circling the wreckage warily, her mind numb as Brian’s amazed voice rang in her ears.
“My God, Elizabeth, there was a bomb in my car!”
She realized she was shaking her head. His BMW was shattered, but the basic structure was still intact. The old car, however, had been literally blown apart.
“No. It was the car next to us. He came in … sat there … was running his engine.”
“There was someone in it?”
She nodded as her mind filled in the implications. There was no one—no body—visible in what was left of the old beater. That meant that …
Elizabeth looked down, confirming the grisly fact that more than metal debris was strewn at their feet. She backed up slowly, checking every footfall, as other would-be rescuers converged on the scene, realizing as they drew close that the remains of at least one person had been scattered in small bits.
Brian’s arms suddenly enfolded Elizabeth, and he swung her around to face him. He was ashen. Even in the soft sodium-vapor light of the parking lot, he looked as if he’d seen a ghost.
“I … what made you … I mean, thank God you came in!”
“He scared me,” she said simply, knowing there had been more to it. Her voice sounded small and distant. “It was creepy.”
Brian hugged her, aware that she was dazed, and kept her face in the direction of the building as his eyes surveyed what was left of his car.
He could make out the remains of the steering wheel of the BMW. In the light of the flames, he could see clearly the twisted framework of the passenger seat Elizabeth had occupied.
It had been shredded instantly.
“Dear God, I guess I was wrong,” he said quietly, stroking her hair and holding her tight. “They are homicidal.”
24
Monday Mornin
g, March 20
Seattle
The mood in Pan Am’s corporate headquarters was dark and angry. Elizabeth’s attitude matched. They were under attack, and the weekend had been a joyless search for answers as she and Brian had huddled at her mother’s house in Bellingham, the seriousness of the situation suppressing even Kelly’s ebullient personality. There was, Elizabeth had explained to her daughter, a very real possibility that Pan Am could fail if much more happened.
“Leaving you both unemployed,” Kelly had observed quietly.
No one yet knew precisely why the car had exploded in the Operations parking lot at Seatac. But the campaign against Pan Am seemed to have taken a very personal turn—something Elizabeth had never expected.
She wasn’t sure who the target had been, but the car bomb had been an epiphany—the straw that broke the back of her fears—and her attitude had steadily evolved through the weekend from shock to pure anger.
By Sunday afternoon, Pan Am’s frantic Executive Committee had called a Monday-morning board meeting to deal with the burgeoning public-relations crisis Jennings had unleashed. Over the weekend, the articles and television reports about Pan Am’s accusations against the big three had ballooned into a major story. The mood of the board was vindictive, the possibility of firing Chad Jennings being openly discussed.
Thanks to Jennings, the airline industry was in an uproar of collective indignation, all aimed at Pan Am. The big three carriers had each returned fire with a fusillade of bitter denials and furious denunciations, all laced with counter-threats of legal actions for defamation. Jennings had been snarled at personally by all three chairmen, and lawyers on all sides were reportedly drawing up lawsuits—while the media continued to press Jennings for evidence he didn’t have.
The board ordered Jennings to apologize or be fired. At first he refused, but just as quickly relented, retreating to his office to call the media for yet another round. Grumbling and furious, the outside directors milled toward the door, an embarrassed and angry Joseph Taylor among them. Elizabeth was heading quietly for the same door when Taylor snagged the sleeve of her dress.
“That was good work, getting the loan from London. I’ll be frank with you. I didn’t think you could do it.”
She smiled at him. “I’ll be frank with you, Joe. With the constant harassment and interference I was getting, I wasn’t sure I could, either. But I’ve found some new allies for us.”
“Oh? Who?”
She shook her head. “I don’t trust even this room to be free of bugs. Let me keep that to myself for a while.” She watched his bulging eyes, wondering if he was going to take offense, but a smile spread across his face and he chuckled out loud.
“Always been my method to hire good people and get the hell out of the way, so you tell me only when you think I oughta know.”
“Thanks.”
“Just keep on plugging. I have faith in you.” He patted her arm with an overly solicitous grin and turned away, leaving Elizabeth in no doubt that he would jettison her the instant she seemed no longer useful.
The board meeting had been over less than ten minutes when Brian phoned from Operations with the news that the Seattle police and the FBI had discovered the identity of the man killed in their parking lot.
“Marvin Grade is the name. Get this. He was a former mechanic for the old Pan Am. Personnel says he applied to us for a job during the start-up a year ago, but wasn’t hired.”
Elizabeth sat back in her desk chair and cocked her head.
“So this was just a … he was just holding a grudge?” she asked. The possibility seemed crazy. After all, other than the obvious mess, what would be the point of committing suicide in the parking lot of a company he didn’t work for? Elizabeth hadn’t expected that possibility. She and Brian had both assumed the bombing was related to all their other troubles.
“Who knows? They’re thinking suicide, but the police are searching his house in Maple Valley right now.”
Over the years in New York, Elizabeth had lost two co-workers to suicide. In the case of one, there had been months of warnings that everyone—including Elizabeth—had ignored. In the other, a quiet middle-level account manager she had just upbraided for a small mistake had apologized and then retired to his office to retrieve a special tool he’d lifted from building maintenance months before. Without leaving a note, the man had quietly opened a window and stepped out to oblivion. His gruesome death and his grieving family had left Elizabeth profoundly shaken and racked with unfocused feelings of guilt.
She closed her eyes and tried to shrug away the memory.
“Brian, a suicide like that seems … pointless.”
They had tried out theories most of Saturday night in front of the fireplace in Bellingham, Elizabeth trying to recapture a vague memory—a nagging feeling that there was something she had seen or heard or felt just before the explosion that might be material.
But the memory—if there was one—wouldn’t come.
“You reminded them about the black car?” she asked at last.
“Yes.”
“Was it the FBI?”
“Nope. The FBI says they weren’t aware of this poor fellow. And they don’t believe the black car you saw was connected, either. You said you saw the driver run toward us after the explosion?”
“I thought so, yes.”
“They say that shows that whoever was in the black car wasn’t involved. So it was probably a spectacular suicide—or an accident.”
“What do you mean, an accident?” she asked.
“Remember our alternate possibility? The guy brings a bomb into our complex planning to install it in an airplane, but it blows up prematurely and kills him.”
“Which would make him the saboteur,” she said softly.
“Could be. It makes sense. A former mechanic who probably knew the 767 and 747. Whoever’s been fooling with our aircraft has done a pretty amateurish job in some respects, but he also knew our planes and how to get to them.”
Elizabeth heard Brian sigh on the other end before he continued. “Anyway, we might know something after they search his house. I’ll call you as soon as I hear anything.”
Elizabeth hung up the receiver at the same moment she noticed an ashen-faced Fred Kinnen in the doorway, holding some papers. She motioned him to the chair across the desk. Kinnen closed the door before sitting down.
“Fred? You look like you’re in shock.”
He glanced nervously at the papers in his hand, then looked up at his boss before speaking.
“I am,” he said, sliding the two-page fax across the desk to her. “I think we’re screwed.”
She recognized the letterhead. It belonged to the lead bank of the consortium that provided Pan Am’s revolving credit line.
She read the terse paragraph over twice in disbelief.
You are hereby notified that in accordance with Section Five, Page 42, Paragraph 13, subparagraph (a.) and (b.), the Lenders do hereby declare that they have, for good cause, lost confidence in the credit worthiness of the Debtor, and in accordance with Section Seven, Page 53, Paragraph 8, do hereby declare the entire balance of the loan proceeds advanced under this agreement to be due and payable in accordance with the schedule set forth thereby.
Elizabeth looked up at Kinnen with an equally shell-shocked expression. “Did you look up that … that section?”
He nodded. “We’ve got seven days to repay one hundred forty million dollars, and half of the remaining balance at thirty days and sixty days respectively from the date of this notice. Otherwise they formally declare us in default.”
“My God!”
“I know,” he said.
“They”—she placed the fax on her desk and gestured at it as if someone’s pet rattlesnake had been dumped on her blotter—“can do this?”
Kinnen shrugged.
“Why are they doing this, Fred? What do they mean, ‘lost confidence’?”
She saw his eyes fall to the papers on h
er desk and realized there was something else he was holding back.
“Fred? Fred? What do you know about this?” Her words came through clenched teeth, her voice shaking with anger. “What happened?”
His head bobbed up and down once, then again several times, and his eyes finally rose to meet hers as he took a ragged breath.
“Jennings happened. After you called from London, or wherever you were. Just after the board appointed Jennings acting president, the chairman took him aside. I couldn’t overhear all of the conversation, but a few minutes later Jennings told me that Taylor said he had no confidence you could get the money in time. Joe Taylor directed him to try to get the eighty-five million through other channels, including local—or so he claimed.”
“Local? You mean, Seafirst Bank, U.S. Bank, that sort of local?”
“Yes.”
“That’s idiotic!”
Kinnen nodded. “I tried to explain that. I tried to tell him he’d be touching a lit cigarette to the tail of a tiger if he approached them without the proper buildup, but he set up an appointment and raced right over.”
Elizabeth sat back, thoroughly stunned. “And, of course, the first thing they did with our financial reports was call up and ask questions of our current debt holders, tipping them off that we were desperate, and giving them all the excuse they needed to trigger this provision.”
“Yes.”
She looked down at the desk and drummed her fingers for a second, formulating a battle plan.
“First, go get the general counsel—what’s his name?”
“Jack Rawly.”
“Right. Ask him to come in here immediately. Then locate Joe Taylor. Don’t tell him anything yet, just don’t let him leave town.”
“How about Mr. Jennings?”
“We’ll deal with him later.”
By noon, Elizabeth had cleared the small crowd of officers and co-workers from her office, closed the door, and relayed the depressing news to Brian. She was probably violating officer confidentiality, but it didn’t seem to matter anymore. Brian was the only one she could really trust.
Phoenix Rising Page 28
