Skyhammer (15 page)

“Everybody ready?” he asked.

Travis and Lofton nodded.

“What’s the passenger breakdown?” he asked Lofton.

She looked at her notes. “One hundred thirty-four passengers and crew. Three flight attendants. One hundred and one adults.
Fifty-seven women, forty-four men. Three medicals.” Lofton looked up at L’Hommedieu. “Twenty-eight children.”

Flight Deck

New World 555

18:37 GMT/13:37 EST

The last of the stratus had dissipated, and visibility was excellent. Six miles below, the Kansas City metropolitan area drifted
under the plane. Pate could see the gently looping, opaque ribbon of the Missouri River, trace it northward, past the mouth
of the Kaw. From his early days at Westar, flying routes into Great Plains cities, he knew the river’s course. It was the
path Lewis and Clark had followed. White men discovering Indian country. The river marked the western edge of Missouri, then
drew the line between Iowa and Nebraska. Then it split South Dakota, sliced off the western third of North Dakota, found Montana,
crossed it, and finally broke apart at the very edge of Idaho.

In those breaks southwest of Bozeman, he thought now, the water was still clean—snowmelt from the peaks of the Bitteroots.
And on the other slope of the divide, the Idaho side, the same kind of water would flow down the Lochsa into the Salmon, and
then into the Clearwater, and on its way to the Snake it would flow past Lapwai, out of the heavy timber and down between
the steep canyon walls, bare on the southern exposures except in the draws where syringa and birch and wild blackberry grew
in dense tangles. At daybreak, there would be steam on the surface of the river and great blue herons standing motionless
along the shallows, invisible until they moved. The river would smell of soaked wood. The sun would peer suddenly over the
rim of the canyon and strike the beads of water spilling down the underside of a fishing line, and they would shimmer like
pearls. Later with the sun full up, the long shadows gone and the air turning hot, the water would seem like liquid ice, sliding
between the banks of fire-bright willows, beneath the dun-colored canyon walls, the cloud-traced blue of the sky.

Pate smiled. He and Jeeps Henry had sometimes taken Jeeps’s boat all the way up to Orofino and put in there. Below Orofino,
the canyon bottom was like a long staircase, the river flowing over it, shallow and then deep, the current fast then slow.
Floating the river was like flying. In the fast current the bottom shot by, a yard under the bottom of the boat, a blur of
rocks. And then would come the next drop-off and suddenly there was only a dense green, the current slowing to an almost imperceptible
pace. Staring down into his own shadow, Pate would see nothing—nothing but green—until finally, deep down, ghostly shapes
would begin to glide under him, more and more, until he could make out the bottom again, boulders still fifteen feet down
but rising as the current picked up and the river approached the next shallows, the next drop-off.

Turbulence buffeted the plane. Pate opened his eyes, startled for a moment, before he remembered where he was. Six miles up
in a jetliner, a thousand miles from the Clearwater River. Now in the distance the horizon was sheathed in high thin smears
of haze. He scanned the instruments, then took off his sunglasses and massaged his eyes and then his forehead, reminding himself
that he had to quit thinking of the past. Only the present mattered.

Below were the fields of eastern Kansas—the land cut up into postage stamps of gray and brown. He listened to the airplane,
the relentless, monotonous cacophony of cockpit noise: the instrument cooling fans, the air blowing through the ducts, the
hiss of the wind against the windshield. A wave of fatigue passed over him. Dehydration didn’t help. He needed to keep sipping
water.

But as he reached for the water bottle, the radio suddenly coughed static. Then the Kansas City controller’s voice came on
loud and clear.

“New World Five-fifty-five. This is Kansas City.”

The response had taken over thirty minutes, but he had expected that, knowing they needed time to assemble the team on a Saturday.
He gripped the hand mike but waited, running his mind once more over what he knew would happen. The sequence of steps called
the established strategy. One man would talk to him, an expert negotiator. The first objective would be getting him to land
the plane. The negotiator would steer everything toward that, playing mind games, trying to work him into some deal, like
a cowhand working cattle into a chute. But there was no deal, nothing they could offer him. That was his first advantage.
The more they tried, the more time he would get to make his point clear. And he could cut to an unknown frequency and leave
them whenever he wanted to. That was his second advantage.

He keyed the hand mike. “Yeah, K.C. Go ahead.”

“New World Five-fifty-five,” the calm voice of the controller responded, “Request you maintain flight-planned route and present
flight level. And contact Wichita ARINC, frequency One-three one point three.”

Pate acknowledged. ARINC would give the Washington control center a direct link to him. He dialed the frequency in and flipped
the control head switch. Then he put on his headset and adjusted its boom microphone. Now when he wanted to speak he only
had to depress the trigger switch on the control yoke.

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

A few seconds passed. Then came the reply: “New World Five-fifty-five, this is Wichita. Please stand by for a phone patch.”

It would take a few seconds. Pate waited. Would they have talked to Charlie Overstreet, his chief pilot in Cleveland? He remembered
his last meeting with Overstreet, not a good one. And what about Katherine? It would take them a while to find her. Too much
time, probably. The important thing now was to play it like he’d planned—stay calm, collected. No ranting. Show them he was
completely rational. There was no hurry. He’d let them work on him a little.

“New World Five-fifty-five, how do you read?” It was a man’s voice—a little nervous maybe. The transmission was blurred by
just a trace of static.

“Five-fifty-five has you five-by,” Pate transmitted back.

“Roger, Five-fifty-five. Emil ... Pate, is it?”

“That’s me, pardner.”

“I’m Agent Brian L’Hommedieu,” the man said. “Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

This was part of the strategy, exchanging names to create rapport. Pate was tempted to tell the agent he knew that, but no,
he would go along with it. “Luh-hawm-adoo? That’s a hell of a handle, pardner.”

“Emil Pate’s not exactly common,” the agent answered.

A bad response, Pate thought. Why start with antagonism? To make him wonder exactly that, probably. He glanced at the altitude
indicator, then for a moment stared at the ground-proximity WARNING sign directly in front of him, before he scanned the rest
of the flight instruments. Then he keyed his mike.

“So then, Mr. Luh-hammadoo,” he said, “We can forget the established strategy, can’t we?”

Aviation Command Center

18:39 GMT/13:39 EST

Brian L’Hommedieu had drawn a parallelogram on his notepad, one side of a three-dimensional cube. Now he drew diagonal lines
from corner to corner and then began to fill the quadrants in with more lines. He knew that he had to answer Emil Pate without
delay, but he hadn’t been ready for the tone of Pate’s voice. Men who hijacked airplanes were always wrought up, their vocal
cords tight as guitar strings, but Pate’s voice sounded more like a bass fiddle. It was not the voice of a desperate man.
Where was the venom, the frenzied anger, the frustration that had to be bubbling just beneath that surface tone? And where
was the hint of fear? No, there was no trace of it. Not yet. Perhaps he had not yet realized that his death was imminent?
Or did this indicate he was not really planning that—was in fact bluffing?

L’Hommedieu finished filling in the parallelogram. He’d have to cut through that surface, he decided. Get to the stuff beneath
it. Then maybe he’d know for certain.

But how? By talking about mortality? That would call the bluff, and it was too soon for it. Following the strategy—to the
letter anyway—wouldn’t get him very far, either. Pate was right about that. On the other hand, following it anyway, filling
in some of the routine blanks, would make it seem that he had no other plan and maybe put the subject off his guard a little.
L’Hommedieu keyed the phone.

“Mr. Pate, since you’ve given us no covert signals, we’re assuming you mean what you say, that you are in fact the initiator
of this action. I would assume you know the policies for handling such action, and the penalties. I also want to make sure
you understand public perception of such actions. Sympathies will be with the passengers—”

L’Hommedieu was interrupted by a high-pitched squeal coming through the phone. He yanked the earpiece away from his ear.

“He’s keying his mike at the same time,” Searing explained. “Stepping on you. Intended to get your attention, probably.”

If so, it had worked. L’Hommedieu put the phone carefully to his ear again. “Mr. Pate? Do you have something to say?”

“Yeah,” came the response. “Don’t talk about the passengers.”

“Okay,” L’Hommedieu said, making note of it on his pad.

“But let us know one thing if you will. Do they know what’s happening?”

There was a long pause. Then Pate said, “No, and subject closed.”

“All right,” L’Hommedieu said, “but I hope you understand what I meant—that you will only infuriate the public, which is counter
to your objective.”

“I don’t think so,” Pate responded. “Isn’t that
exactly
what I want? All the flack I can stir up? Sooner or later it’ll hit Jack Farraday.”

“He’ll be one of the victims,” L’Hommedieu answered quickly.

Pate was quiet again for ten seconds before he said, “What do
you
know about Farraday?”

And this time his voice had carried a nuance of anger. L’Hommedieu was momentarily gratified. But now he would have to be
careful.” I know what he’s done to you,” he answered.

“You don’t know,” Pate said. “Only those on the inside, the ones swallowed up in it,
know
. I can’t make anyone know how that feels. But if I do this, everyone will know Farraday’s a slimeball, a monster. And when
the press starts digging through the mess at New World Airlines, Jack Farraday’ll be done for. The New World board will stick
his head on a stake and hand it over. They won’t have any choice. The public’ll be screaming for it. You read me on this,
Mr. L’Hommedieu?”

“Won’t they see, though, that Farraday offered you a deal?

Doesn’t that suggest he’s trying to be fair?”

“Christ!” Pate shouted, knocking the phone away from L’Hommedieu’s ear again. “He only did that to use us—make you, the union,
everyone think he was fair—can’t you see that?”

Searing was shaking his head. “The man’s loony-tunes,” he said.

L’Hommedieu nodded, but he wasn’t so sure. Not that it mattered now. He had brought out Pate’s anger and he had to defuse
it. For the time being anyway. He needed to introduce some angle Pate hadn’t thought of and would have to chew on. But what?
Pate had already chewed on the matter, for months probably. L’Hommedieu glanced at his notes— “Threat real? Captain dead?
Weapon?”

“Mr. Pate,” he said, “This is somewhat off the subject, but airport security will want to know how you got a weapon aboard.
Could you at least tell us that, since it no longer matters to you?”

Pate was quiet for a half a minute. Then he said, “You want to know if the captain’s really dead and how. So I’ll tell you
straight out, pardner. He is. Because there wasn’t any alternative.

“Was he a scab?” L’Hommedieu asked.

“Affirmative,” Pate answered tersely. “But I didn’t do it for that. I did it because this ain’t no hostage situation. Not
if I’m taking this thing to Phoenix to drive it into the ground.”

L’Hommedieu wrote IF on his pad. Why was Pate so evasive about his threat? To throw them off? Or was it unintentional? Was
the captain dead or not? This was a crucial point, he realized.

“Is it necessary to follow through on the threat?” he asked quickly. “Couldn’t you just be bluffing it?”

“Pardner,” Pate said. “I spent the last three days asking myself the same question. And what I decided is simple. There’s
no purchase in bluffing on this. None at all. I’m fording a rising river, that’s what I think.”

Now L’Hommedieu didn’t believe him, though. And he had an idea suddenly, a theory, which he hoped was right. “You know what
I think?” he said. “Off the record, just between you and me? I think your story is a lot better if you live to tell it. I
think you know that, too, but you’ve got to make this threat seem real, don’t you? Then you land the plane and you’re some
kind of hero. No harm, no foul, as they say. No one gets hurt, statement made.” L’Hommedieu paused, got no response. “That’s
what I think you’re up to,” he added.

“Think what you want,” Pate answered. “Makes no difference to me.”

“But how about just between us, you let me know what you’re really up to. We keep it a secret. Isn’t that a lot safer?”

“If that’s what you want to do, you go ahead with it,” Pate said. “Sounds good to me.”

And so they were back to square one, L’Hommedieu thought. “Was it an accident?” he tried. “Did you not actually mean to kill
the Captain? Emil, maybe it wasn’t premeditated. Or is it a blank in your memory? Think about this before you answer, Emil.”

He hoped there’d be a long pause, but there wasn’t.

“I might be insane,” Pate answered, “but I won’t plead it. You just don’t get it, do you? I climb out of this plane and say
I went crazy and that’s all anyone would hear.”

“Then you do plan to tell your own story.” L’Hommedieu felt triumphant. He’d finally caught him in a contradiction.

But Pate made a sound like a laugh. “We’ve been trying to tell the story for a year now—about the house that Jack built. How
he’s treated us like dogs, dragged us by the leash because he figures we’re too professional to whine. But good men have killed
themselves already, L’Hommedieu—just couldn’t take it no more. I almost shot myself. I sat there with the gun in my hand,
and that’s when I figured it out. Amazing when you get to where you can’t stand yourself anymore. When you get that low—”