Skyhammer (28 page)

“Fine.”

“I thought you might want some coffee or something.”

There was no answer.

“Emil?”

“Let me check.”

She waited a few seconds.

“No thanks.” He sounded a little better this time, less abrupt.

“How about some water? Or something else to drink?”

“Nope. We’re doing okay.”

“You sure? No trouble?”

“Thanks but no thanks. We’re fine.” There was only irritation in his voice now. But something was not right, and Ponti felt
a sting of alarm.

“Okay.” She started to hang up but then, on a whim, asked, “How about if I come up for a few minutes? Everybody’s dozing back
here and I’m a little bored.”

There was a longer pause this time. Then Emil came on. “Well, to tell you the truth, we’ve got a little problem up here. Nothing
serious, but it could be if we don’t fix it. So it’d be better if you didn’t come up right now.”

“I understand,” Ponti said, but the alarm nagged more insistently. “If you guys need anything just call, okay?” She released
the handset’s key and replaced it in its receptacle. Sanford’s aide was sleeping with his mouth open. Mrs. Howard glanced
up at her suddenly. Concern wrinkled the old woman’s brow, and Ponti realized that she herself must be frowning too. She smiled
at the woman, who smiled back and returned to her magazine.

Ponti stopped for a moment at the curtain separating the cabins; then she slid the curtain open slightly and stepped through,
closing it behind her. She made her way along the coach aisle. Most of the passengers were either napping or reading. Some
of the youngsters were gazing out the windows; others had collapsed against their parents, sleeping.

She was looking for David Crane. He was not in the seat he’d started out in—maybe he’s in the lav, she thought. No, there
he was, on the aircraft’s right side, the side with three seats abreast. He’d found the only open row to stretch out and snooze
in.

She moved quickly back and sat down beside him in the aisle seat. A couple with a young child was in the row in front of them,
an elderly man and his wife in the row behind. The child was sleeping. His mother was reading, the father resting with his
seat reclined, eyes closed. Was it safe to talk, she wondered?

She nudged Crane. “Mr. Crane,” she whispered.

“You can call me David,” he said, smiling, his eyes still closed.

She scooted closer. “I need to talk to you about something.” She looked about furtively. “Can you meet me by the rear galley?”

Crane’s eyes popped open now. “Sure.”

When he got there, Ponti pulled him into the space between the galley and the lavatories. The other two attendants were taking
breaks. Nobody was in the aisle.

“Listen,” she said. “There’s something strange going on in the cockpit.”

“What do you mean, strange?” Crane asked.

Quickly, Ponti described her attempts to take drinks to the cockpit, adding that neither pilot had used the lav, that they’d
refused meals. And the captain hadn’t made any PA announcements about the route and points of interest. He hadn’t been on
the intercom since the required climb-out announcement. The copilot had given all the PA’s and had answered the interphone
every time. And he wouldn’t let her in the cockpit. “He said they were having a little problem, nothing serious, but they’d
just as soon I didn’t come in.”

“Maybe the captain’s sick,” Crane offered.

“I thought about that, too,” Ponti said. “But you’d think they’d want some water, aspirin, something in that case. Besides,
why wouldn’t they tell me?”

“Do you know the first officer?”

“Sort of. We were at Westar together. He’s a good guy, I think.” She shook her head. “But he seemed a little strange this
morning.”

“Look.” Crane lowered his voice. “Just ask him pointblank what’s wrong. Tell him you’re concerned and want to know if you
should prepare the cabin for an abnormal landing, that sort of thing. He’ll probably tell you what’s up.”

Ponti nodded. It was good advice. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll try that.” Noting his look of concern, she added, “I’m sure it’s
nothing to worry about.”

Air Route Traffic Control Center

Albuquerque, New Mexico

20:05 GMT/13:05 MST

At Sector 19’s low-altitude console, Shane Hartwell felt his pulse quicken as he watched Shadow’s radar blip track northeastward
across his screen. One of a handful of former Air Force controllers assigned to the center, Hartwell had been delighted when
Lenard Curtis, the center’s supervisor, had picked him to direct the intercept. A year of handling the routine movements of
airliners over the southwestern desert had begun to grate on him, and he often missed the action and camaraderie of military
operations.

He studied the fighter’s data block now. Not since his Air Force days had he seen a four-figure groundspeed readout.At the
moment, Shadow’s was reading 1,112 nautical miles—around 1,275 statute miles per hour. The blip was moving so fast it jumped
nearly a quarter-inch on his screen between scans.

Hartwell was so engrossed that Len Curtis startled him when he leaned over the console.

“We just got word Jack Farraday’s on his way to the center,” the supervisor said quietly. “Have Shadow turn off his transponder.
They’d rather not have Farraday know about this.”

Hartwell nodded and issued the instruction. In a moment Shadow’s data block disappeared. Only a faint dim smudge, an unenhanced
“skin paint” of the fighter continued to track across the screen. To an untrained eye it would be virtually invisible. Farraday
probably wouldn’t even notice it.

Shadow

20:08 GMT/13:06 MST

Shadow was level at 24,000 feet, her speed steady at 1.75 Mach. Captain O’Brien rechecked the transponder in standby, and
his radar on maximum-range scan. He glanced at the head-up display, directly ahead of him in his line of vision through the
windscreen. Besides displaying primary flight information, the HUD’s green-glowing graphics and symbols would allow him to
operate the fighter’s weapons systems without taking his eyes off the real target. When the time came, everything he needed
to fire the aircraft’s gun or its missiles would be projected onto the glass. The fire control system’s computer would even
tell him when to shoot.

If the time came. O’Brien glanced at a rearview mirror mounted on his canopy bow. Nesbitt’s image, face hidden behind his
dark visor, simply nodded. They were hot-miked, could talk without pushing buttons, but there wasn’t anything to say. Not
yet.

During the Gulf War, before the actual fighting had started, O’Brien had written letters home to a good friend, an old college
buddy, telling him about the boredom. His friend had written back asking him to describe Dhahran, the town where the squadron
had bivouacked. Such a strange request, O’Brien had thought, before he decided the friend was just trying to distract him.
That was the thing about the time you spent before going to battle, he thought now. You didn’t want to contemplate your mission
too much. He glanced over the canopy rail, at the broken pattern of gray-green pine forest and pale ochre, high desert far
below. Fragments of cloud, about a thousand feet down, were casting patches of shade over the land. Ahead the fragments were
bunching up, merging.

“I may have the target, Stick,” Nesbitt said quietly. Just coming on the screen.”

O’Brien glanced down, saw the tiny square target depiction at the top of the rectangular screen, just left of center. As he
watched it, a small bar projected from the bottom of the symbol; Nesbitt had slewed the radar, locked onto the target. Automatically,
the screen began displaying the target’s history: heading, altitude and true airspeed.

“Looks like him,” O’Brien said, noting the altitude steady at 31,000, the speed at 426. “We should have a visual any minute.”
He glanced up at the HUD. The glowing green target box had appeared on its face, and now O’Brien peered intently through it
at the sky beyond. With the air over the desert as dry as it was this time of year, the target would not leave much of a contrail,
if any. O’Brien figured they might not acquire it visually until they’d closed to within ten or fifteen miles. So he was surprised
when, within a minute or two, a tiny dark speck appeared in the sky beyond the rectangle.

“I have him, Bitts. Eleven forty-five, couple of fingers up.”

“Yeah, me too,” Nesbitt said, after a few seconds.

The speck grew rapidly, developing detail. Within another minute a short contrail, maybe a quarter mile long, was visible.
O’Brien brought the throttles back and keyed his microphone.

“Albuquerque, Shadow has a tally-ho on the target.”

“Roger, Shadow,” the controller answered. “The subject is in the plane’s right seat. Suggest you maintain your present track
until you’ve passed him and then approach from behind and below. Your present altitude should preclude a contrail.”

The F-15’s high bubble canopy actually allowed the man in the rear seat to see behind the aircraft, and now in his mirror
O’Brien saw Nesbitt’s helmet turning one way, then the other. “No contrail,” the RIO confirmed.

Good, O’Brien thought. The fighter’s dull, blue-gray skin would be virtually invisible against the terrain below. Without
a contrail, the hijacker would never spot them.

They were coming abeam the MD-80 now. O’Brien could clearly make out the airliner’s gleaming blue and white fuselage, the
swept wings, the engine pods on the tail.

“Say his Mach, Center.”

“Can’t be sure, Shadow. My readout is strictly ground speed. He’s filed at seven-six.”

O’Brien checked his own speed, decreasing now through Mach 1.0. They were still closing easily on the he target. He adjusted
the throttles to hold .95 and then, keeping his eye on the other airplane, rolled into a thirty-degree left bank. The radius
of his turn would be six to seven miles; he could play out the last half of the turn to align their track with the airliner’s.
And it worked perfectly. A minute later Shadow rolled out on 555’s tail.

“On altitude,” Nesbitt said.

They were still too fast, though, by ninety knots according to the HUD. O’Brien brought the throttles back further, the airframe
rumbling as the big engines decelerated. The MD-80’s contrail streamed above them now, while the airliner itself, dead ahead
and maybe a hundred feet higher, seemed like a toy suspended in the blue field. This was more like a formation rejoin than
an intercept, and O’Brien had flown hundreds of those in the course of his training. It would be a cakewalk, he thought. Except
that his knees were shaking again, and his heart beating fast.

“Overtake thirty knots,” Nesbitt said.

Mach was still decreasing. “Rodge,” O’Brien answered. He cracked the speed brakes, then retracted them. It slowed the plane
to a manageable overtake. “Albuquerque,” he transmitted, “Shadow is joining with the target. I’m moving in for a closer look.”

The controller acknowledged. “Be advised, we don’t know the passengers’ reaction should they see you. Recommend you stay below
and behind.”

“No problem,” O’Brien radioed. He could bring Shadow right up under the airliner’s tail if he wanted. The pod-mounted engines
would block him from view. O’Brien nudged the throttles ahead slightly, and the other plane began to grow larger again. Within
two minutes it seemed to fill the sky above them, so close O’Brien could see the oil streaks under the engines, the plaques
marking the exit under the tail. He could actually make out the warning message inside each red rectangle. Tapping the throttles
back, he stabilized their position scarcely a dozen feet below the larger craft.

“Something, isn’t it?” Nesbitt said.

“Yeah,” O’Brien answered. It was something all right. Only the big jet’s twin contrails streaming from a few feet aft its
engines showed how fast both planes were traveling. Otherwise, the MD-80 seemed pinned above them in the blue space, like
some giant placid creature, harmless, and oblivious to the killing machine that lay just beneath it.

O’Brien called the center again, his voice quiet. “Center, there’s no damage to the aircraft. I’m going to drop back a thousand
feet and remain in trail.”

“Roger that,” the controller answered. “Keep an eye on him.”

As Shadow drifted back, O’Brien realized he had gone rigid. He relaxed now, checked Nesbitt in the mirror. “You believe this?”
he said.

Nesbitt’s helmet wagged back and forth slowly. “No, way, Stick. No way.”

Air Route Traffic Control Center

Albuquerque, New Mexico

20:08 GMT/13:08 MST

After the bright sun outside, the windowless control room seemed dark and confined. Jack Farraday felt as if he had gone underground,
or perhaps even entered some kind of science fiction submarine—the rows of big, black radar-depiction screens glowing with
myriad sparks of green, like deep-sea portholes, or so he imagined. Even the illuminated faces of the controllers who sat
in front of the screens wore the calm concentration of men trapped under a great subtle pressure. At least that was how it
seemed, and he knew he would be glad to get out of there.

“You’ll be able to see okay in a few minutes,” the man who had led them in said as he showed them to a station close to the
door and pulled another chair over for Boyce. There were two rows of stations separated by a central aisle. At the far end
of the room was a desk, and a number of men—pale shirts in the darkness—were gathered there. Two of the pale shirts came down
the aisle in a hurry now. The first introduced himself as the center’s supervisor, Lenard Curtis, and the other was Alex Cook,
one of the controllers. They were clones, both pudgy and bespectacled. Farraday shook their hands quickly and sat down.

The radar screen in front of him was as big as a serving platter, black, and seemingly empty save for the narrow green line
that traced an irregular shape within its circumference. A small hexagon of green near the center was labeled “ABQ.” Otherwise,
there was only one more, smaller mark, a green diagonal dash, near the right-hand edge of the screen, and beside it a block
of tiny letters and numerals.