Skyhammer (22 page)

Kelly rarely missed the annual Army-Navy showdown. In fact, he hadn’t missed a game in ten years, not since his final months
in the Air Force, and that time he’d been somewhere over the mid-Atlantic, on his way to the Azores in a C-130 transport.
This year he’d just gotten home from two weeks in Phoenix, administering oral exams and type-rating check-rides to new Boeing
737 captains with New World and Southwest airlines. This Saturday was the first in three he’d had off, and he felt more than
a little deserving of this chance to kick back and relax. He also felt he deserved better than a shameful defeat at the hands
of Navy and losing the bet to his son for the second year in a row.

“Don’t throw it,” he muttered. “Give it to Yates.”

Maybe that wasn’t such good advice, though. Yates, Army’s star tailback, had suffered a miserable half so far.

The huddle broke now. Kelly hunched forward in his recliner and clenched his fists. After an interminable snap count, the
quarterback wheeled away from the line, holding the ball out to the fullback. But the hand-off was a fake.—he was back-pedaling,
now, looking down field.

“Throw it!” Kelly pleaded. “Throw the bastard!”

“Sack! Sack!” Josh screamed, jumping up from the carpet.

The Navy rush was almost upon the Army quarterback. Kelly half rose out of his chair, a bellow of frustration caught in his
throat. He heard the telephone ringing. Then the quarterback took a step forward and avoided the rush. For another split second
he waited. Then he sent the ball sailing in a high, long arc, up against the blur of the crowd, and then it came down and
there was the receiver, running full out, a step ahead of the defensive back—leaning now, flying forward, leaving his feet
as the ball came down into his outstretched hands. He pulled it to his chest and hit the ground, skidding, but holding on,
in-bounds ... at the two-yard line.

Kelly leaped, punching the air with his fist. “Yeah!” He shouted. “Yeah, yeah,
yeah
!”

“Crap!” Josh muttered.

The phone rang again. Kelly sat down. The next play was absolutely crucial. He had to concentrate now.

But his wife Jackie was in the doorway, holding the phone receiver out toward him. She looked worried. “It’s Brian L’Hommedieu.”

For a moment Kelly stared at her. He couldn’t remember the last time he had talked to his old classmate.

“He said it’s urgent,” Jackie went on. “More important than the game.”

Kelly knew that wasn’t possible, but it had to be something serious for Brian L’Hommedieu to call any time, let alone now.
He bounded to his feet, and took the receiver.

“Brian!” he boomed into it. “Long time, buddy. Was that pass beautiful or what? Those Navy—”

“Damn it, don’t tell me!” L’Hommedieu interrupted. “Sorry, I’m not watching it, Jim. We—”

“You’re not watching it?” Kelly’s jaw dropped. “Horam, they’re just about to—”

“I’ve got Elizabeth taping it for me!” L’Hommedieu lowered his voice. “Listen, Jim, we’ve got a hijacking in progress, that’s
why I called. I need to know if you can help me.”

“Hijacking?” Kelly set his beer down on the pass-through and turned away from the TV. What did a hijacking have to do with
him?

“It was Westar you were with, right?”

“Six years, not counting the goddamn furloughs. Someone’s hijacked a Westar flight?”

“Did you know a pilot named Emil Pate?”

“Redman Pate? Hell yes, I knew him. Everybody knew Emil Pate. Is he the pilot?”

“He’s an Indian then?”

“Part. Half, I think. Everyone called him Redman.”

“How well did you know him?”

“Pretty well. Flew with him a few times. Good stick. The best. What is it, Homm? Is Pate the pilot?”

“Yes,” L’Hommedieu said. “And the hijacker.”

As L’Hommedieu went on quickly, explaining the situation, Kelly stared at the TV again, too stunned to follow the next play.
He saw that the Army players were dancing, hugging each other. Josh had rolled over onto his back and covered his eyes with
both hands. Something had happened.

“Why?” he blurted suddenly. “Why’s he doing this? Is he crazy?”

“In a way,” Brian L’Hommedieu said. “He has a very clear motive, though. He wants to get even with Jack Farraday.”

At the name, Kelly felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck. He hated Jack Farraday. “No shit,” he said softly.

“No shit.” L’Hommedieu answered. “I’ve got a hunch a sympathetic voice—someone he knows is on his side—might help talk him
out of it. Would you be willing to talk to him? There’s no one else, Jim. No one we can find in time. He’ll be crossing into
Albuquerque center airspace in about twenty minutes.”

Yes, Army had scored, Kelly realized. Now they were just three points down. The second half would be the real battle. And
a close finish, and he would probably win the bet. He’d hate to miss that. But abruptly he didn’t care. L’Hommedieu was talking
again, telling him there were a hundred and thirty-two people on the plane. Twenty-eight of them children. Kelly stared at
his son, sprawled on the carpet, thin arms still thrown over his face. Then he turned away from the screen again. “It’ll take
me twenty or thirty minutes to get out to the center.”

“We’ve already sent a car for you,” L’Hommedieu answered. “I figured you’d say yes. Call me when you get there. By then I’ll
know how you should approach him.”

Kelly put on his shoes and a clean shirt and waited, watching Navy move the ball down the field, wondering just what he would
say to Emil Pate. That Pate was a hero maybe. A hero for doing what they all wanted to do—get Jack Farraday. But he would
tell him he was as wrong as Farraday, too, if he was willing to kill innocent people.

Navy couldn’t get close enough for a field goal. The halftime show started. Just as the FBI car arrived, the broadcast was
interrupted by a special news bulletin reporting the hijacking of a New World Airlines flight en route to Phoenix, Arizona.

Aviation Command Center

19:17 GMT/14:17 EST

Otis Searing replaced his handset and eased his chair back from station 1. He felt the pall of helplessness and frustration
lifting. It had taken ten minutes of haggling, first with the duty officer at the White House Situation Room, then with some
colonel at the Pentagon, an aide to General Klinesmith, the commander of NMCC, and finally with Klinesmith himself. Then the
president had talked with General Klinesmith and then with the Situation Room duty officer, who had then picked up the line
to Searing again ...

But now it was at least partly accomplished. The chase plane would be launched, within a half hour, if all went well.

The only problem was that only an intercept had been authorized. The president had decided that he did not want to make a
final decision “hastily,” the duty officer had told Searing. It went without saying that the president’s caution had become
acute the moment he’d learned John Sanford was a passenger on the flight.

Searing stood now and went into Operations to refill his cup. Then he returned to his station and sat down to study the U.S.
map on the wall beyond the horseshoe. L’Hommedieu had finished talking to his old school mate in Albuquerque and had left
for the head again. Searing sipped his coffee and then, with his eye, drew an imaginary circle around the area east of Phoenix.
They would need to calculate a point on the eastern edge of the circle, a point beyond which 555 could not be allowed to fly.
They would need to know what centers of population would be threatened, what lay within the cone of land over which the debris
from the plane would scatter—but the “debris,” Searing thought suddenly, would be more than shredded metal and plastic, it
would be human beings. Fifty-seven women, forty-four men. Twenty-eight children. Children like his own. And none of them had
a clue to their fate. It made his blood boil again, to think that Farraday wasn’t yet involved.

Impulsively, he snatched up his handset and opened the line to New World’s Flight Ops VP, Mark Rydell. To his dismay and abrupt
rage, the line had been put on hold. Searing swore, disconnected the line and immediately dialed it in again. It connected.
He dabbed at his nose with a tissue. A moment later the same woman he’d first talked to answered, her voice placidly beginning
to recite the same litany of introduction he’d already heard.

“This is Searing again,” he interrupted. “What happened to Rydell? I told him to stand by.”

The woman seemed slightly offended. “He’s just stepped out, sir.”

“But he made contact with Mr. Farraday?”

“Yes, Mr. Farraday should be returning your call at any moment.”

“Better yet,” Searing answered, “you give me the number where he is and I’ll call him.”

The woman stammered, and then put him on hold before he could object. Searing swore again and moved his hand to redial. But
he changed his mind. Reporters were no doubt trying to get through. He’d been lucky to reconnect once. Give it a few minutes,
he told himself, and got out of his chair and sat on the edge of the desk with the phone to his ear. He loosened his tie.
Then he stood and glared through the windows at the surveillance monitors above the duty officer’s desk. He swore quietly
to himself this time. As if in response, one of the surveillance monitors blinked, showing a new view of some hallway. The
phone clicked in his ear.

“I haven’t been authorized to give you that number,” the woman said. “But Mr. Farraday is calling you right now, Mr. Searing.”

“Right,” Searing said. “And the check is in the mail. You get word to him—no more stonewalling, and this line stays open,
understand? You don’t put me on hold, I put you on hold. And tell Rydell to nail his butt to a chair. Failure to comply will
result in his arrest. And yours.”

He punched his hold button before she could answer and sat down on the edge of the desk again, shaking his head at the sheer
incompetence. It was all too clear that things had gotten wretchedly lax. Communication chains were not being maintained.
New World’s personnel hadn’t been properly trained. He dabbed at his nose and considered for a moment the report he would
have to write when this was over. L’Hommedieu stepped back into the room. When Searing told him what had just happened, without
a word, as if some new thought had occurred to him, the agent sat down at station 8 to make a note.

A minute later Bob Stouffer stuck his head through the door to Operations. “It’s on the news,” he said.

They stood at the doorway as the bulletin played. The New World logo filled the screen behind the newscaster. “From unconfirmed
sources,” the woman was saying, “we’ve learned that the hijacker is one of the crewmembers. His demands are as yet unknown
...”

“They’ll be banging on the door downstairs any minute,” Searing said. “Whatever you do, don’t leave any phone line closed.”

At that moment Lofton called to him from the command center. “Line three: It’s Jack Farraday.”

Relief pushing aside his anger, Searing went back to his station and snatched up the handset again and connected it.

“Searing, ACC.”

There was a moment of silence. Then a voice said, “This is John Farraday.”

It was a hard, flat voice. Cold. A northern, city voice, the kind Searing instinctively recoiled from. He glanced at L’Hommedieu,
nodded at him to pick up the line.

“Where are you, Mr. Farraday?” he asked.

Again there was no immediate response. Then Farraday said, “Is this conversation being recorded?”

“Monitored, not recorded. Not at this end. Where are you?”

“And exactly who am I speaking to?”

“Otis Searing. Supervisor, NAMFAC Control, acting principal, Aviation Command Center. I’ll ask again: Where are you calling
from, sir?”

Once more it was several seconds before Farraday said, “I’m calling from the Hilton Hotel in Albuquerque.”

“That’s the best news I’ve heard all day,” Searing answered. “We need you to get out to the Albuquerque control center as
fast as you can. I suppose you know what this is all about, sir?”

“Yes, I’m aware of the facts, Mr. Searing,” Farraday said. “I would like to know what steps you’ve taken so far, and why I
need to be directly involved.”

Searing had already gone over in his mind what he’d say to Farraday, and how he’d say it.

“Mr. Farraday, the hijacker has demanded to speak with you, and we believe it’s a good idea.”

There was a long, muffled silence this time. Farraday had covered the phone to talk to someone else. Then he was back on.
“I don’t think that would be wise,” he said.

“I’m afraid it’s not really up for discussion,” Searing answered. “It’s a directive. At this point we have no other demand
from the subject, and he won’t talk to anyone else. If you don’t talk to him, Mr. Farraday, he’ll just take the plane on down
to Phoenix and do exactly what he says he’s going to do. You know what his threat is, don’t you?”

“My information,” Farraday said, “is that he’s not made the threat definite and that there’s a very good chance this is simply
an extortion to get money.”

L’Hommedieu covered his handset. “Where did he get that information?”

Searing shook his head. To Farraday he said, “We don’t think the chance is very good at all that the subject is bluffing.
You know his stated motive?”

“He may be disgruntled,” Farraday responded, “but we don’t hire unstable pilots. We believe his real motive is money. He wants—”

“He’s seeking vengeance on you,” Searing interrupted, his temper rising.

“As I said,” Farraday went on calmly, “his ulterior motive isn’t my concern. We don’t negotiate with cold-blooded terrorists.”

Searing fought to control his temper now. “Mr. Farraday, this isn’t an ulterior motive we’re talking about. It’s not cold-blooded
either, not even close. This guy hates your guts and wants to get even, pure and simple.”

“I’m fully aware of the magnitude of the
supposed
threat, Mr. Searing,” Farraday said, a harder edge to his voice now. “My point is that a response from me might actually
encourage him.”