Never Again

by Harvey A. Schwartz

  Shapiro only half-listened to her as the reality of what was about to happen surfaced.

  I won’t need that information, he thought. One-way trip.

  He noticed the quizzical look on the woman’s face. She’d turned to walk to the towplane, then stopped and suddenly walked back to face Shapiro.

  “Almost forgot,” she said. “Gotta check yer license?” She held her hand out.

  Shapiro reached into his back pocket for his wallet and extracted his dog-eared pilot’s license. The woman examined it closely, as if it were a winning lottery card.

  “Shapira. That’s a Jew name, ain’t it?” she asked, sounding more curious than anything else.

  “Yes, I am Jewish. Why?”

  “No reason. FBI been talking to some of the Jew power pilots, that’s all. Just wonderin’?” She paused as if trying to remember something, then swung her head to look at Shapiro. “Ready to go?”

  She walked across the grass to the towplane, started its engine and waited for it to warm up.

  After glancing at the towplane to make sure the pilot was still there, Shapiro lifted the canopy over the glider’s cockpit and leaned into the rear seat. He removed the Chemical Bank of New York credit card from his wallet and swiped it through the card reader on top of the bomb.

  LED lights lit on the keypad. Shapiro carefully, as carefully as he’d counted threads on the safety pin, pushed keys. 0-9-1-1. The numbers appeared on a small screen.

  The keypad beeped.

  Hebrew letters glowed on the small screen. SET DELAY, they said, Debra had told him.

  Shapiro looked at Goldhersh. This time, the man was praying out loud. “Sh’ma Yisrael Adonai Elohaynu Adonai Echad.”

  Shapiro pushed the 0 key.

  The device beeped.

  He looked at the red plastic cover, hinged at one end. Five Hebrew letters were on top of the cover. Reuben had told him they spelled the word for ACTIVATE. He left the cover down.

  The towplane taxied to a position a hundred feet in front of Shapiro’s aircraft. Shapiro climbed into the glider’s front seat. Goldhersh stood over him.

  The two men did not speak. Shapiro slowly buckled his safety straps, snapping each end into the circular metal buckle that lay on his chest, pulling them tight. He reached forward between his legs and found the end of the aerobatic strap, pulled it up over his crotch and snapped it into the buckle.

  Goldhersh reached into the rear seat, doing something Shapiro couldn’t see.

  A long rope was attached to the back of the towplane, above the rear wheel. The pilot got out of the plane, walked to the far end of the rope and dragged it to the front of Shapiro’s plane.

  The cockpit canopy was still open.

  “Five-thousand feet, right?” the woman said to Shapiro. His heart stopped as he saw her eyes glance toward the rear cockpit and hesitate. Her eyes widened. She stared at Shapiro for a moment, debating what to say. “Ya might want to strap that down so it don’t come loose,” she said. “Want to do a release test first?”

  “Yes, yes.” Shapiro could barely speak. He waited for the woman to bend down to attach the end of the towrope to the release hook at the front of the glider before he turned his head to glance at the back seat.

  A jacket, Goldhersh’s large jacket, covered the bomb.

  They went through the routine release test. She pulled the rope. He pulled the release knob on his panel. The rope released from the glider’s nose. When they finished, the woman reattached the rope, gave it a tug, then walked to the towplane and climbed in. Shapiro shoved first his right foot down, then his left foot, wiggling the plane’s rudder from side to side, indicating to the pilot that he was ready.

  The towplane’s engine roared. The two aircraft rolled down the grass airstrip. After thirty seconds, Shapiro pulled back on the stick and felt his glider rise into the air. He maintained his altitude of five feet above the grass until he saw the towplane lift, then he followed directly behind it, banking his wings as the towplane banked its wings.

  He heard his takeoff mantra as if somebody else in the cockpit were speaking. Stick forward, land straight ahead, stick forward, land straight ahead.

  The towplane leveled off as Shapiro’s altimeter crossed five thousand feet. His left hand reached for the yellow release knob on the center of the panel, then stopped. His hand hovered over the knob. The towplane continued flying straight and level, buzzing onward.

  Two inches separated his left hand from the release knob. He looked at the hand, then at the towplane, continuing to fly past the release point, still straight and level.

  Shapiro was shocked to hear a voice over the VHF cockpit radio.

  “Everything okay back there, Mr. Shapira?”

  Without a word, Shapiro grasped the yellow knob and pulled it. Then pulled it again, just in case it hadn’t released the first time. That was procedure.

  The glider banked to the right, the towplane to the left.

  Shapiro pushed a small button on the GPS chart plotter on the instrument panel, a button marked Follow Route.

  He’d input his course before leaving Portland—a course that took him from Central Maryland sixty-five miles to Washington, directly over the White House.

  Tammy was agitated the entire flight back to the airstrip.

  “Somethin’off about that guy with him. He looked like a Jew, too. Why go to five thousand feet for a ridge ride?” she said aloud. She dialed her cell as soon as she landed. “Hello, FAA, this here’s Tammy Beaujot at the Mid-Maryland Soaring Society, over in Gathistown? No, jerkball, that’s Bu Jot, like it’s spelled, not Bu Joe, like that fancy wine.”

  Enough of trying to get these idiots to pronounce her name the way her daddy taught her to say it. She wouldn’t give her name.

  The woman was in telephone hell for twenty minutes, handed off from one bureaucrat to the next at the FAA regional office in Baltimore.

  Five more minutes of listening to instrumental music.

  Finally an intelligent-sounding voice, a woman, came on the phone. “Regional security, Rivkin here.”

  “Look, Rivkin here, I run the glider operation? At Mid-Maryland Soaring? At Gathistown? Maryland, ’bout sixty miles west’a DC, you know?”

  “How can I help you, Mizz . . . sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Ya didn’t catch it cause I didn’t toss it. Look, ma name don’t matter none. I gotta tell ya ’bout somethin’fishy what just happened.”

  “I need your name to complete my report, ma’am. It’s regulations.”

  “Well, I don’t wanna give ya ma name. It ain’t none’a yer bizness. Do ya wanna hear what I gotta say or not?”

  “I can’t take a report without a name. I’m sorry, I must insist on a name. That’s regulation, ma’am.”

  CLICK.

  CHAPTER 69

  Air parted around Shapiro’s sailplane as easily as water around a fish, causing almost no sound. The Maryland countryside flowed beneath the thin white wings, curved gently upward at their tips from supporting the weight of the aircraft. Sunlight shining through the clear canopy warmed Shapiro’s chest.

  He glanced at the GPS, displaying a map of the area between his position and downtown Washington. Digital readouts flanked the map. Distance to Waypoint 59.4 miles. Altitude 4,890 feet.

  He glanced at the variometer, the sensitive rate-of-climb indicator that showed whether the glider was rising or falling. The horizontal needle was barely below level. The aircraft sank as slowly as a feather fluttering in the breeze.

  Shapiro planned his flight with the glider pilot motto in mind: Get High and Stay High. At 4,000 feet he’d look for lift to boost him back to 5,000 feet, or higher. Until he sank to 4,000 feet, he’d fly straight toward his destination—the White House.

  The whistle of air flowing smoothly around the plane removed him from a suicide mission and returned him to his personal place of comfort, calming Shapiro almost to the point of dozing. His head dropped to his chest, then jerked u
pward with a start.

  Stop that, he scolded. Stay sharp, for God’s sake.

  He looked at the instruments. Distance: 55.2 miles. Altitude: 4,755 feet.

  Shapiro looked over the sailplane’s nose, struggling to see the nation’s capital through the haze hovering on the horizon. He could only make out farmland, crossed by roads, highways and scattered buildings, fading into the distance.

  Soon enough, he thought. He flew onward in silence, senses heightened.

  Instrument panel. Distance: 41.8 miles. Altitude: 4,022 feet.

  Time to take the elevator up a few floors, he thought, looking around. A mile or so off to the right he spotted a shopping mall, a central building covered by a black, tarred roof surrounded by acres of paved parking area, partially filled with cars. Just downwind from the mall but a mile and a half above it, Shapiro saw wisps of white cloud in the sky. He smiled.

  The morning sun shone on the asphalt, the cars and the tarred roof, heating them, creating bubbles of warm, moist air that rose through the cooler air from the surrounding fields. Glider pilots searched for these columns of lift and attempted to center in them, flying in tight circles with wingtips pointed almost straight down, circling within the rising air like hawks.

  Strong lift, such as that generated by the shopping mall, could raise a lightweight sailplane faster than an elevator in a skyscraper.

  Shapiro banked his plane to the right, then flew directly over the shopping mall. He felt the airplane bounce, the indicator of entering lift. Suddenly the right wing rose, as if a giant were crouched outside the plane lifting the wingtip with both hands. Instinctively, Shapiro threw the control stick to the right, lowering the right wing, moving his feet in and out to control the rudder, maintaining a smooth circling turn.

  The familiar feeling of locking his glider into the center of a column of rising air swept over him. This was the seat-of-the-pants flying he loved so much. He felt pressure against his bottom as the plane was lifted into the sky, the rate-of-climb indicator pegged in the upward position.

  After a few minutes of spiraling flight, Shapiro looked up through the canopy, straight above the aircraft, and saw the bottom of the forming cloud less than a hundred feet above him. He leveled the plane’s wings and flew out of the column of lift.

  Glancing at the GPS and instrument panel, Shapiro grinned to see that he’d ridden the lift to 6,755 feet. He checked his heading and turned the plane’s nose slightly to the left. Back on course. Distance: 47.8 miles.

  That’s all the height I need to get there, he thought, calculating the plane’s rate-of-sink against the distance to go. I can fly straight there and arrive with half a mile of altitude. Piece of cake.

  That realization, that all he had to do now was fly straight and level, focused his thoughts on his destination and his conversation with Goldhersh on the drive from Maryland.

  He thinks I’ll back out, Shapiro thought. It’s not too late to do that. I could land just about anywhere. He looked at the ground below, studded with farms. What appeared to be a school, with athletic fields beside it, was ahead to his left. I could land there. On the football field. Sideslip in. Point a wingtip down the field. Drop like a stone. Piece of cake.

  He flew on, straight, level, on course.

  Distance: 28.9 miles. Altitude: 4,948 feet. There it is.

  He saw highways ringing the city and clusters of buildings within the ring, the Potomac River on one side. A cloud of haze rested a thousand feet above the city. He was still too far to make out individual buildings.

  An image struck him. The Flying Tzadik. That’s who I am, a Jew on a mission. A righteous mission. A tzadik. A righteous man.

  A tzadik, he’d learned, was not a perfect man but rather one who wrestled with the effort to do what was right even when faced with the temptation and opportunity to do wrong. It became his goal throughout adult life.

  The still, small voice that lurked in his mind in all but occasional silence whispered to him. He listened closely, his mind wandering from his flying.

  Righteous, or self-righteous, the voice hissed. Are you righteous or self-righteous?

  He cupped a mental hand to his inner ear, straining to make out what the voice was saying.

  Heroic or ego-driven, the voice said. Who are you to think you can change the world? Shapiro’s eyes spotted another farm field below the glider. I could put it down there, he thought. Easy. Piece-of-cake landing.

  No! The camps. That man, Quaid, putting American Jews in goddamn concentration camps. All those people who cheered at the march. In camps.

  The image of the young Israeli woman, strapped to the wooden board by duct tape, red rubber hose jammed into her nose, writhing against her bonds, came to mind. How many others are they doing that to? I can stop that from happening.

  Without conscious thought, as the glider flew over the farm field, Shapiro felt the stick jerk to the right as the sailplane circled the field.

  “No,” he said, softly, no audience except himself to hear. He leveled the wings, checked the course heading and flew on. Straight and level.

  Distance: 19.2 miles. Altitude: 4,135 feet.

  Less than twenty miles. He calculated quickly—about twelve minutes.

  He felt a cold sweat on his forehead. He twisted his head to glance back at the bomb. It looked larger than before. That was impossible, he knew, but it seemed to him the machine was aware it was about to be called to life.

  He looked forward toward the horizon and felt the same thrill at seeing Washington that he had on every visit since his eighth-grade field trip. His eyes sought out the monuments. He could see the grassy mall with the Capitol dome at one end, flanked by buildings on either side. And that—that must be the White House.

  His breath sucked in when he saw the stub of the Washington Monument. They removed the pieces pretty quickly, he thought.

  He looked at the GPS.

  Ten minutes to destination.

  The skies over Washington crackled with electronic beams from dozens of radars. When one of these signals encountered a metallic object, it bounced back, like a wave striking the side of a swimming pool, reflecting an echo that was picked up by the receiving antenna. These invisible electronic signals created an impenetrable defensive wall mightier than any surrounding a medieval castle.

  Jet fighters at nearby Bolling Air Force Base stood on constant alert, armed with missiles and cannon. Armed with orders to turn away errant pilots, orders to shoot down any plane that failed to instantly obey.

  However, just as the air parted smoothly around the glider, the electronic waves from the search radars passed through the plastic skin of the sailplane as easily as light penetrates window glass. Shapiro entered the capital city’s airspace undetected.

  He could see the White House straight ahead, off in the distance. At just more than 3,000 feet altitude, he was well above the highest buildings, but close enough to the ground to begin to attract attention.

  A few people pointed at the strange aircraft, its long thin wings distinguishing it from any other type of airplane except, oddly enough, from Cold War U-2 spy planes, which had been nothing more than jet-powered sailplanes. The silent flight of the glider allowed it to slip over most people unnoticed, however.

  Calm enveloped Ben—the calm he felt as he rose from the attorney’s table in court to give his closing argument to a jury. Too late for doubts in the righteousness of his client’s cause by then. It was all a matter of winning.

  Or losing.

  This time, though, doubts persisted. Has there ever been a bomb-throwing tzadik? he wondered.

  He could make out individual cars, people below him. They have less than ten minutes to live, he thought. I’m going to kill a lot of children.

  Like Adam.

  Adam. Tears filled his eyes. He wiped them abruptly. Not now. Focus. He turned his head to glance again at the bomb. He’d yanked Goldhersh’s jacket off the device. The cold, shiny cylinder was bathed in sunlight coming thro
ugh the canopy, illuminating the cover over the final button. The red plastic pulsed in the sunlight.

  A panicked thought. I haven’t made sure I can reach the button.

  Ben twisted his body and strained behind him in the narrow cockpit. His right hand stopped six inches from the red cover. He slapped his left hand to the round buckle on his chest holding the ends of the safety straps and gave it a savage twist, freeing the straps.

  His right hand rested on the red cover. He lifted it slowly.

  Strange, he thought. The button is red, too.

  He carefully lowered the cover over the button and twisted back into his seat, then reattached all the safety straps. He could no more fly an airplane with his straps unbuckled than he could drive a car without a seat belt. That was not procedure.

  Another thought came. I should have worn a yellow star.

  He pictured Lawrence Quaid, a brush of a Hitler mustache under his nose. I’m going to kill today’s Hitler. Stop today’s Holocaust.

  That picture was replaced by a memory of Catherine Quaid pinning a yellow Star of David to her blouse. He smiled as he recalled telling her about the king of Denmark.

  She is a tzadik, he thought. She knew right from wrong. She did right, rather than wrong. There’s a person who took a personal risk for a cause in which she believed. She’s probably in the White House now.

  Am I a tzadik if I kill a tzadik?

  He looked at the ground. This low, the plane’s speed was exhilarating. He liked flying low and fast. Nobody is looking up at me, he thought. They don’t know I’m here. Nobody knows what I’m carrying. The Angel of Death is passing over their houses and they don’t know it.

  The Angel of Death. Like in Egypt. At Passover.

  Can the Angel of Death be a tzadik?

  The Angel of Death freed the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt. That was the Passover story. That rabbi, at the march, had said that God sent the Angel of Death to slay the enemies of Israel. The Angel of Death, or God himself, was the world’s greatest terrorist, the rabbi said.

  Is that what I am, the world’s greatest terrorist?