Skyhammer (19 page)

“I thought he was fit.” Overstreet’s voice had a whine to it now. “I asked if his feelings would affect his judgment in the
cockpit, his professionalism, and he said that wasn’t even an issue. Look, sir, I’ll say this. I don’t get along with those
guys that well, because I didn’t wait to go back, but I didn’t think Pate was a problem. Whatever else, he’s not some head
case. He blows up once. Like I said, I thought he’d gotten it out.”

“So—at the time—you firmly believed,” L’Hommedieu said, spacing the words out now, “that Pate, no matter what he was going
through, would not deliberately jeopardize a flight—another crew member, or the passengers—not if he were in a rational state
of mind?”

“That’s what I believed,” Overstreet said. “I still do, sir. If you knew him, I think you’d say the same.”

“Thank you, Mr. Overstreet. You’ve been very helpful. Could you come up with the names of some of those other Westar pilots
who came back after the strike? The ones Pate knows well?”

“I could,” Overstreet said, calm again, but sounding abused. “But I expect finding any of them might be difficult on short
notice. None of them would have enough seniority yet to be on a permanent line. We’d have to go through the schedules. Conceivably
every one of them could be in the air right now.”

“I see.” L’Hommedieu tapped his pen on his pad for a moment. “Try anyway,” he said. If you find one, give him this number
and have him call immediately. And stay at your number for another hour or so if you will.”

“Whatever you say,” Overstreet answered.

As soon as L’Hommedieu hung up, he began making notes. Searing watched him, wondering what exactly he had learned. “What do
you think now? That Pate’s no head case?”

L’Hommedieu stopped writing and rubbed the back of his neck, then pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “It’s an interesting
profile. Stone-cold professional on the one hand. Highly trained ex-Marine, career pilot. Man with an ingrained purpose, which
is to do his job right, bring the plane down safely, keep crew and passengers from harm—wouldn’t you say? Should be a man
who’d find it very difficult to do what he’s doing.”

Searing nodded. It sounded like a good assessment, as far as it went. But what about the other side of Pate? “And on the other
hand?” he asked.

L’Hommedieu sipped his coffee now, made a wry face at it. “This whole sense maybe that the world has turned on him, cast him
out. If he feels that way, then we’re all somewhat guilty in his mind. Guilty of negligence, of allowing injustice to happen.
That could be his rationale for killing a hundred and thirty people.” L’Hommedieu picked up Pate’s file, studied the photo
again. “But there’s something else, too. I wish I knew more about him. I want to talk to him again. I want to listen to the
tapes, go over what he just said. I want to find out what really makes him tick, where his weak points are. I’d especially
like to talk to his wife.”

Searing folded his arms and sat back. Of course that would be to their benefit. So would a six-month study of Pate. But they
only had a couple of hours. Now the nagging fear that they were forgetting something important returned. But what was bothering
him? L’Hommedieu’s advice was good, wasn’t it? Wait a little before letting the President in on it. They did have some time.
And Searing also had to admit that L’Hommedieu had handled the chief pilot well, gotten out of him what they wanted. So for
the time being he would have to give L’Hommedieu the benefit of any doubt.

“Okay, we’ll give it twenty more minutes,” he said, getting out of his chair. “But I say we scramble a plane then, regardless
of any progress.”

L’Hommedieu was writing again and did not even nod. Feeling frustrated, Searing went back to station 1, got a fresh tissue
and blew his nose. At least his head seemed slightly less congested now. For a moment he thought of the end of the day—that
no matter what happened, he’d go home, get in bed and nurse his cold. In Operations Bob Stouffer glanced up at him and smiled,
shaking his head. Searing sipped his coffee, but it was cold. He sat down and looked at the clock. They had two hours. It
wasn’t much, not the way things were going. They needed to find the ex-wife. He opened the line to the FBI. And then, hearing
the click of the connection being made, he thought about the other side of the matter, the best-case scenario, wherein they
got Pate’s wife to talk to him, got Farraday on the line, even got a best friend to an ARINC hookup somewhere. And got Pate
to change his mind. What if all that happened, he wondered. And what if Pate
agreed
to land the plane?

“Pat McDonald,” a voice said in his ear.

McDonald, L’Hommedieu’s assistant at the Washington Bureau office, reported that the Bureau office in Albuquerque had been
calling Katherine Winslow’s number constantly and getting no answer. So they had sent an agent to the address. He hadn’t reported
in yet. Searing hung up the phone again and started to punch in the number for New World headquarters. But he stopped, remembering
the last question he’d asked himself.
What if Pate agreed to land the plane?

He got up and went back to the chair beside L’Hommedieu. The agent was still writing. He looked up in a moment.

“What guarantees do we have?” Searing said. “If Pate agrees to land the plane. How do we know he’ll follow through?”

For a moment L’Hommedieu didn’t understand. Then he saw what Searing was driving at. “It’s a good question,” he conceded.
“How would we know what he intends until he does it?”

“I’m not even so sure that’s what scares me most.” Searing kept his eyes steadily on L’Hommedieu now. “Suppose he does mean
it when he says it? At the last second he could still snap. Takes only one little bad thought—a ‘Why not’? Isn’t that how
suicides happen?”

“Conjecture,” L’Hommedieu said.

“You get my point, though.”

“Yes. What if Pate is suicidal and what if his suicidal intent reasserts itself? No, there isn’t any way we can know what
he’ll do because he may not even know. That might be the final chance we take. But I don’t think he’s suicidal.”

“You’re saying we have to take the final chance?”

Again L’Hommedieu needed a moment to get his point. Then he rewound the tape again and pressed the play button. “Listen to
this,” he said.

In a moment Pate was speaking again, saying, “Only those on the inside, the ones swallowed up in it,
know
. But if I do this, everyone will know Farraday’s a slimeball, a monster.”

L’Hommedieu stopped the tape and looked at Searing. “He didn’t say ‘when.’ He said ‘if.’ Twice he says it. Unconscious slip?
I think so, which signifies at least some doubt in his mind. And therefore hope. Hope for some other way out, and because
of that hope I think once he thinks about it, he’ll want to talk to Farraday. And when he calls back, I’m going to hit him
with something else. We’ll see if his wife still means anything to him.”

The “if” seemed a small point to Searing, slip of the tongue or not. And he wanted to say so, but he didn’t. L’Hommedieu was
the psychologist, the one to decide the significance of whatever the subject told them, however he told them. “Okay,” he said.
“Ten more minutes. You’d better hope Pate’s been thinking it over.”

Flight Deck

New World 555

18:58 GMT/13:58 EST

The sun had kept pace. The high-altitude haze ahead was deepening. He was over Kansas still, but in the distance lay the Oklahoma
panhandle and then New Mexico. And Albuquerque. It would glide beneath him, five miles under his feet, teeming with people
he knew, the stores he had shopped in with Melissa and Carrie, and Katherine. The restaurants, the river park, the old town.
Katherine’s favorite restaurant there. Their old neighborhood. The little church where he and Katherine had gotten married,
neither of them wanting anything special.

Pate remembered now, too, how they had gone down to Puerto Vallarta on their honeymoon. In the off season—October when the
air was like a hot, damp blanket and rain came every evening. They hadn’t cared, though, trudging up the cobble streets, walking
the beaches. Dark as he was, he had been mistaken for a native more than once, the locals simply rattling off Spanish at him
until they’d realized from his confused smile, the way Katherine laughed, that he didn’t understand a word of it. They had
taken a tour boat to Yelapa, down the coast, to where the Indian boys all had big ugly iguanas draped over their shoulders—pets,
which for a dollar they would let you hold to have your picture taken. But Katherine had wanted a picture of the boy holding
his beast, and all the boys had thought that marvelous. Pate had thought it marvelous too—that Kate had this knack for doing
the unexpected.

It was also because of Katherine that they’d stayed in a hotel beside the river, not in one of the fancy American high-rises
north of the town. A small, beautiful hotel of separate
casitas
in a grove of flowering trees surrounding an open-air restaurant. Parrots squabbled outside their window every morning. Tiny
lizards climbed their walls at night as they lay listening to the patter of the rain and talking about their future with all
the certainty of two teenage lovers.

And how he had loved her then, Pate thought. How he had loved that future. Could they have had it? If he hadn’t gone back
to work for Farraday? Why
had
he gone back when everything out of Farraday’s mouth had sounded like a lie, the way he would call them “valued professionals”
and describe “fantastic growth.” Pate couldn’t clear his head of Farraday’s sleek, manufactured smile. The blank, killer’s
eyes. He’d known it would be a mistake to give in—known it in his gut—the day he’d crossed the windy parking lot, the merger
agreement in his fist fluttering like a white flag of surrender. But inside he hadn’t surrendered. So the feeling hadn’t eased;
it had only gotten worse until he’d hated himself as much as he hated Farraday. But now he was turning it around.

Farraday was Monster, Pate thought.
Gi’mi’ta
. Wearing a human face. But underneath was there only cold greed? No, Farraday could hate. Pate knew this. Could he fear,
too? Wear the sweat of fear? That was the problem—the negotiator was sweating, but not Jack Farraday because Jack Farraday
didn’t even really know what was going to happen. He didn’t have any idea of how much trouble he was in. But he would find
out. “Jack,” he would tell him, “you’ve breathed me in, pardner. I’m inside you now. I’m going to cut out your black, stone
heart and kill you.”

How would it work, though, Pate wondered. If he did say he wanted to talk to Farraday. Could they patch him in from anywhere?
No, they would have to get him to a control center somewhere. That would take time, too, but they could do that. Enough time,
Pate was sure, that it wouldn’t matter what he told Farraday. He’d be close enough to his destination by then. There wouldn’t
be enough time even now if he demanded to talk to Farraday.

But the demand was what L’Hommedieu wanted. Pate knew he couldn’t forget that. As soon as he demanded anything,L’Hommedieu
had leverage. Except this was ridiculous—he could demand anything he wanted because he didn’t really need anything. There
were no tradeoffs. It wasn’t a question of whether or not he could work a deal; Farraday wouldn’t give up New World. Farraday
might promise to—swear to make whatever concession he wanted—but he would hold out on some technicality, his lawyers would
see to it. A loophole, and Farraday was an expert at using loopholes. He probably didn’t even need one. He wouldn’t be expected
to hold to any promise he made. But Farraday would make one because he would think he could deal him into landing, and then,
once he had him down, that would be the end of it.

Pate checked his watch. He had kept them waiting for over fifteen minutes now. They might need all the time they could get
simply to find Farraday. He dialed the designated frequency and placed his finger on the radio trigger again, imagining the
center in Washington—a room full of computers, telephones. He’d seen a picture of it once, during a training session. It was
odd now to think of those people as his enemies. He flipped the radio switch.

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

A few seconds passed.

“Mr. Pate?” the negotiator’s voice was expectant. “Are you there?”

Pate keyed the mike again. “Yeah, I’m here. Where else would I be?”

More seconds passed.

“Have you been thinking about talking to Farraday?”

“I was wondering how he felt about it.” Pate watched the horizon, waiting.

“He’ll be willing to talk to you,” L’Hommedieu said. “There’s no problem at that end. He’d rather meet you face to face, though.
With guarantees on both sides.”

Pate smiled at the idea. There were no guarantees. “Too bad he isn’t on board,” he transmitted.

“Does it do any good to tell you,” L’Hommedieu said, “I’ll do whatever I can to see that you get a fair shake?”

Pate got a cigarette out and lit it. A fair shake? He looked directly at the blanket-covered body in the seat beside him.
He hadn’t looked at it in some time. Now small dark spots had appeared, where the blanket touched what was underneath. Pate
exhaled smoke and watched it bank off the windscreen and dissipate quickly. The instruments were all reading normal. The fans
hummed quietly. Lunch was probably being served back in the cabin. Steak or chicken, Mariella had said. He wasn’t hungry,
though. He checked his watch. He couldn’t think of anything to say. But he didn’t need to answer, so he simply waited.

Finally, the radio crackled. “Okay,” L’Hommedieu said. “Let me ask you about something else, Mr. Pate. What about Katherine
Winslow?”

For the sheerest moment there was a void in Pate’s mind. But then he felt his heart thump hard in his chest. And then he was
angry, at L’Hommedieu for setting him up. He reached for the dial, intending to turn to another frequency. But no, he had
to answer, and right away or they’d know they’d found a button to push.