Skyhammer (13 page)

So he would need to find other weaknesses. The subject’s history would be of utmost importance. The only problem with researching
his history was, again, time.

The light had caught them at Independence Avenue, across the street from the FAA and its twin, the Department of Transportation,
on the other side of Seventh.

“I’m gonna take you down into the parking garage,” the driver said over his shoulder.”That way you can go right up the elevators.”

L’Hommedieu nodded. That would save a minute or two. And every minute would count. Although he had to assume they would get
the subject to land. As for the next step—getting him to lower his demands—they’d have more time, which was good since it
would involve a combination of ego massaging and bashing. And if the subject wasn’t too looped out he’d begin to reason with
them. That was the key to getting the demands lowered—getting the subject to see that his reasoning was invalid. Once you
got that far, the hijacker would begin to lose resolve. That’s when you could start making your own demand, over and over
until it became what he wanted too. By then, too, you’d usually found some other weaknesses that could be emphasized to wear
him down. It was all a little like pouring drinks into a poker-game adversary while quietly stacking the deck. You bluffed,
you cajoled, you let him win enough to keep him at the table, until finally he realized he couldn’t win, that he didn’t even
want to win anymore; all he wanted was to finish the game.

Could he handle it? L’Hommedieu thought so. He was good at negotiating. He knew the strategy inside out. But suddenly he realized
something else he hadn’t thought of: He was facing one very serious handicap. Because the the hijacker was a pilot, his training
would have included elements of the established strategy, the very tactics they would try to use against him. Was the hijacker
fully aware of this advantage? Was it likely he’d planned the hijacking carefully? Had he developed a strategy of his own
to counteract what he knew they’d try to use on him?

L’Hommedieu had no time to think about it now. The driver had made a sharp right and headed down the long ramp that led under
the building. Now the guard at the entrance to the garage was asking for his ID. L’Hommedieu dug out the card and handed it
through the window, then took it back a moment later when the guard had finished with it. The driver drove down the first
row of spaces to the end and stopped. He was out in the next second and opening the back door before L’Hommedieu could.

“Don’t forget your lunch,” he told Hommedieu.

There was still half a sandwich, a kosher dill, and a baggie of potato chips lying on the seat. L’Hommedieu stuffed them back
into the paper sack before getting out of the car. He thanked the driver and then hurried through the metal door and down
the short hall to the elevator at the other end. What floor was the Aviation Command Center on? The eleventh, he remembered,
around the corner from the administrator’s office. He waited for the doors to open, wondering what his opening line to the
hijacker would be. That would depend on what kind of profile he could build from whatever data was supplied. He’d have to
be quick without being haphazard, if that was possible. But judging people quickly was his strongest suit. All the course
work he’d done for his master’s did not count as much as his ability to quickly sense personality. And mood. And what was
truth and what was a lie. If anything, the formal training worked against him, cautioning against stereotyping and leaping
to conclusions, when leaping ahead and stereotyping was what you had to do. And, too, his formal training had constantly preached
the need for objectivity when subjectivity was what it really came down to. Subjectivity gave you empathy, and empathy put
you in the hijacker’s shoes.

The elevator doors slid open. L’Hommedieu got on and turned to face the doors as they closed again. It was his wild card,
he thought, but he needed data, background, because there was no standard profile this time. He wondered how much they’d be
able to dig up. Would there be anyone to help him get inside the guy’s head? A wife? Parents? Brothers or sisters? Fellow
pilots? And had they made contact with Jack Farraday yet?

The elevator doors opened on the eleventh floor. L’Hommedieu stepped out and walked quickly down the hallway, around the corner,
the second corner.

And then he was lost. What was the room number? L’Hommedieu came to a stop. He tried to think of it. But his mind was still
working on the hijacking, and suddenly his heart turned over at a different thought: Searing had said the hijacker was the
copilot. If so, what had happened to the rest of the flight crew?

Flight Deck

New World Flight 555

18:15 GMT/13:5 EST

Briefly, Emil Pate studied the flight plan again. It would take him north of St. Louis, just south of Kansas City. He’d cross
the corner of Kansas, passing a little north of Coffeyville, then make a slight course correction and slice across the Oklahoma
panhandle, clip the corner of Texas. Then he’d cross into New Mexico, flying directly over Albuquerque, and then go on in
on the FOSSL 2 standard arrival to Sky Harbor. He checked his panel clock. Nineteen minutes had passed. They would need time,
though, he knew, to get the response team into the center. Especially since it was the weekend.

He lit another cigarette and told himself to be patient. He had two hours, and when they did contact him the negotiator would
want to talk to him plenty. But he was ready for that. He knew just about how it would play out. They would get his file from
New World and comb through it for anything they could use. What would they find? His service record, his history at Westar.
They’d make something out of that—what, he didn’t know. Except he knew there was nothing in the file to make them think he
was crazy. All it would tell them was that he’d been stable, reliable, disciplined—that there was no insane reason for him
to be doing this, only one good reason.

He blew smoke at the cloud-spattered horizon beyond the windshield. He glanced at Boyd’s Garfield doll. Then, holding onto
his calm, as if gripping a safety line, he studied the shape in the seat beside him, the places where the spread knees pushed
against the blanket, the round profile of the head. The captain of 555 was dead all right. Pure and simple. Pate shook his
head—a needle of sharp regret worked its way in. But he wouldn’t let regret weaken him. He thought instead about his decision
to keep Boyd a secret for the time being. It would give them more to guess about, more blanks they couldn’t quickly fill in
and build strategies from. The same was true for Sanford. They’d find out soon enough the senator was aboard, but he wouldn’t
mention him. Make them guess he didn’t know and then use it if he had to, when it would mean something.

A chime sounded. The blue cabin-call light on the overhead panel flashed. Pate got the intercom handset from the rear of the
center pedestal. “Engine room,” he answered, doing his best to sound normal.

“Hi, Emil. Mariella. You guys ready for lunch? We got—you guessed it—steak or chicken.”

He hadn’t forgotten Mariella Ponti either. Only tried to, because he regretted more than he cared to admit, how bad he felt
that she was aboard. It wouldn’t make what he had to do any easier. He hadn’t imagined that anyone he knew would end up on
the same flight.

He had anticipated her question, however. “Let me check with the captain,” he told her. He released the microphone key on
the set and waited, tapping off eight seconds on his knee. Then he keyed the mike again.

“Hey, Mariella. Tell you what. We’ll pass on lunch. Gotta hold out for that burrito, remember? Why don’t you guys split’em
up?”

“Well, okay,” Mariella said hesitantly. “How about some drinks?”

“No thanks, sweetheart. We’re okay.”

She’d wonder about that, he knew. They were at 31,000 feet, the cabin pressured to about seven, the humidity near zero. She’d
be offering liquids again before long because she was trained to, and he’d have to put her off again. He knew Mariella well
enough to know she wouldn’t simply get tiffed and leave him alone. But that didn’t matter either. The cockpit door was locked;
she couldn’t get in without permission.

He got another pack of cigarettes from his flight bag and settled back and scanned the instruments. Then, abruptly, he unbuckled
his lapbelt, leaned across the body of Boyd, yanked Garfield from the windshield and tossed him to the back of the cockpit.
The damn thing had been staring at him long enough. The silence was driving him nuts too. There was no chatter at all on the
radio. They’d obviously changed him to a discrete frequency. So why hadn’t they been talking to him? A half hour was plenty
of time. Maybe they were letting him hang—maybe that was part of their plan, let him sweat a little, make him wonder what
was going on.

He wouldn’t sweat it, though, Pate told himself. He slid his seat back, reclined the back cushion, and brought his right foot
up onto the footrest. Fourteen thousand feet below, the stratus undercast was starting to break up, and he could see most
of central Missouri, the long, narrow fingers of the Lake of the Ozarks flashing sunlight at him.

Truth was, they had to be in a panic, he thought. Had to be running around frantically, rounding up the response team, gathering
all they could on him, waiting until they had their game plan straight before they put it in motion. They’d try to find Katherine,
of course. Maybe try to get her on the radio. He wouldn’t talk to her, though. He knew better. Trying to explain to her why
this had to happen would be too difficult, too painful. Besides, she knew what it was about. They’d only be putting her on
to try to get him to realize the hurt he was causing her. Another way to crack him. Better to pretend he didn’t love anyone.
Better to believe it.

He made another routine scan of the engine and flight instruments. Ship 109 was still operating flawlessly, her two engines
churning steadily away, the autopilot tracking perfectly along Jet Route 19, applying a good ten degrees right-drift correction
to counter the powerful west-northwesterly jet stream.

Aviation Command Center

FAA Headquarters

18:20 GMT/13:20 EST

“It’s an MD-80” Otis Searing said. “That means no third pilot, just the captain and first officer. And we don’t know yet what’s
happened to the captain. I’d say it’s real possible the hijacker’s killed him.”

L’Hommedieu had found the ACC a minute earlier and entered the same way the others had, through Operations. He had asked about
the flight crew as soon as he saw Searing. Now he listened, sitting at station 8 on the horseshoe, making notes while Searing
briefed him. The news about the captain damped his excitement. If the hijacker were already a murderer, talking him down would
be more difficult.

When he had finished the briefing, Searing introduced him to Peggy Lofton and John Travis. Both of them were busy on telephones
and could only nod. They were hemmed in on either side by TV monitors and other electronic gear, and L’Hommedieu was suddenly
aware of the disarray everywhere. There were enough extra chairs in the room to seat a dozen more.

“Remodeling.” Searing explained. He stood beside him, surveying the room grimly, his thick arms folded. He was a very dark
black man, L’Hommedieu thought. His round black forehead glistened. The room did seem too warm now. He eyed L’Hommedieu again.
“When do you want to make contact?”

“Not until I know more about him. I assume we’re faxing in his files?”

The supervisor nodded. “We’ve got some time yet. But not much.”

“Where is he now?”

“Maybe a hundred miles east of K.C.”

“And still on course?”

“Yeah. And we’ve got one piece of good luck. The jetstream’s pretty far south this time of year. He’ll be flying right into
the teeth of it most of the route—it’ll slow him up by a hundred knots or more. Should buy us an extra twenty minutes, give
or take.”

“We can use it,” L’Hommedieu said.

Searing gave him another grim stare. “Time is talk, right?”

L’Hommedieu nodded, looking around the room again, at the FAA and DOT emblems displayed on the far wall, at the windows through
to Operations, a duty officer sitting at a desk against the far wall. The room seemed too small, too confining. “Who else
knows about this? Other than your team?”

Searing shrugged. “I’ve activated the net. That adds some folks. Transportation Secretary, a senior captain at New World and
whoever he talks to. Farraday, when they get him. The White House Situation Room, the Pentagon. They’re all patched in, all
on mute right now. They only know that we’ve got a domestic hijack. I figured we’d keep the lid on as much as we can until
we get some top dogs on the line. Couldn’t reach the administrator. Out of town for the weekend. But the assistant administrator’s
on his way in.” Searing paused, leaned an inch toward L’Hommedieu, his head tipping forward slightly. “Personally, I think
too many oars in the water won’t get the ship nowhere. So I’d just as soon keep the politicians out as long as possible anyway.”

L’Hommedieu agreed. He’d lived in Washington long enough to know what Searing meant. “What about Farraday? You don’t know
if he’s been reached yet?”

“No.” Searing scowled. “They only said he’d be notified. I left the order for him to call ASAP.”

“Let’s not worry about him too much yet. How about the rest of the crew? The passengers? You think they know?”

“No way to tell, not for sure, but the best guess is not—except for the captain if he’s still alive.” Searing saw that L’Hommedieu
was wanting an explanation. “It’s an FAA requirement to keep the cockpit door locked during all portions of a flight. On top
of that, some airlines don’t allow flight attendants on the flight deck without flight crew permission. That might be the
case at New World. Whichever, you can bet he’s figured a way to keep the cabin crew out of the loop.”