Skyhammer (36 page)

The plane pitched up again. Then it pushed over and pitched to the left. The passengers were screaming. The negative gravity
lifted Crane off the floor, but miraculously he came down on his feet. When he regained his balance he could see that they’d
passed east of the mountain. But they were no longer aimed at Sky Harbor. Ahead of them lay the Arizona State University campus,
and, directly ahead, between two gigantic outcrops of rust-colored rock, he saw Sun Devil Stadium, resplendent in the maroon
and gold of seventy thousand fans.

Crane couldn’t be sure of his aim. He didn’t even know if the gun would fire. But he couldn’t wait any longer. There was no
time left. So he pointed the weapon as best he could and pulled the trigger.

Shadow

When 555 had first pitched up violently, O’Brien was taken by surprise. Now he worked to follow the airliner as it alternately
banked left and right, pulled up and pushed over. Curtis’s voice crackled in his ear.

“Shadow, Albuquerque. What’s going on? We show increase in airspeed!”

“All hell’s busted loose!” O’Brien shouted back. “There was a major pitch-up and now someone’s throwing the thing all over
the sky!” To keep up with 555’s latest maneuver, he’d had to push his stick forward hard, lifting himself and Nesbitt violently
against their shoulder harnesses. “Center,” he transmitted breathlessly, “he’s turned away from the airport. He’s headed more
to the south.”

New World 555

The first shot had shattered an engine r.p.m. gauge, just to the left of Pate’s elbow. Without thinking he’d pulled the aircraft
up sharply again. He’d held the climb a moment too long, however. His assailant fired again, and this time the shot tore into
his left shoulder, the .22 Hollowpoint bursting like white-hot fire and spraying a cloud of reddish-pink mist against the
instruments in front of him. He recoiled, groaning at the pain, shocked by what had happened. Then a blinding rage filled
him. This was why they hadn’t shot him down, and he had failed to foresee it. How incredibly stupid he was! Through his teeth,
Fate groaned. He would
not
let his own weakness win. He was too close now. But where was the goddamn airport? He pushed the nose over again, crying
out as the negative gravity pulled up on his arm.

The airport was not there. His heading had wandered; he was too far east. In front of him instead were two huge, rust-colored
hills, jutting up out of the fiat valley . .. And between the hills—he knew it as soon as he saw it—was the Arizona State
football stadium, the near rim of it opening to show a confusion of color. He stared, seized by panic. But just as suddenly
the panic released him. It was Saturday, he realized. There was a football game in progress... thousands of spectators who
didn’t even know what was approaching in the sky to the north ... thousands who didn’t care that he was about to die for them,
who wouldn’t even fight back and kill the thing that was consuming them.

Instantly, the rage rolled over him again. Darkness fell, shutting out all thoughts but one: He had to finish this. Make his
final leap. Climb up and do it. He rammed the throttles forward to their stops and pulled back hard on the yoke. The airliner’s
nose came up sharply, the g-force pushing him down into his seat, tearing at his wounded arm. He clenched his teeth against
the pain. He only needed a few more seconds.

The man behind him would be regaining his balance, though, aiming the pistol. Pate pushed the control column forward again,
as hard as he could. The negative gravity nearly floated him out of his seat, but he hooked his feet under the rudder pedals
and held on. His left arm swung up, and the pain made him shout. But now he hauled back on the column, brought the nose up
sharply once more, into a twenty-degree climb this time. He pulled back harder, until there was nothing but sky in the windshield.
The airspeed was decreasing through 280 knots, but he was nearly back to ten thousand feet. He rotated the yoke full left,
all the way to its stop. The airliner responded, rolling in the same direction. He could hear the passengers in the cabin
scream in unison as they experienced the sensation of riding in an aircraft being rolled completely and violently over onto
its back.

Albuquerque Center

“He’s climbing again,” O’Brien radioed. “Something’s going on. I’m going up with him.”

The center was silent now. Everyone there was holding his breath, staring at the two glowing blips on the screen. The radio
speaker emitted another crackle as Shadow transmitted again.

“What’s he doing now? Jesus Christ!”

“What?” Curtis shouted into his mike.

“Center, he’s—rolling it! He’s got it completely inverted!”

“Shadow! Shadow!” Curtis broke in.

“It looks like ... Oh, Christ! He’s aiming for the stadium!”

“What stadium?”

“ASU, man!” O’Brien’s voice had risen an octave. “Oh, Christ, he’s going down, Center. He’s crashing it.”

“Goddamn it!” Curtis shouted, and a collective groan went up from the rest of the men grouped around him.

New World 555

Now Pate looked “up” and found the horizon, which split the windscreen. He had guessed close enough; the stadium was dead
ahead. He only had to adjust the aircraft’s trajectory by pulling the nose down a fraction. He aimed for just beyond the center
of the field, then used his right hand to quickly lift his left up to grip the yoke. The pain in his arm was excruciating
now, the bone—the whole shoulder socket—obviously smashed. With his right hand he groped in the pedestal area, just behind
the throttle quadrant, feeling for the ship’s fuel switches. He needed to concentrate on his target now, could not look down.
He could see the field plainly, the white stripes. The bowl of the stadium was a mosaic of colors. Now there were flashes
at the far end of the field—had to be sunlight glancing off the instruments of the marching band, massing behind the end zone
for halftime. He would fly right into the band. The plane would explode, engulf the whole stadium in a fireball ...

Out of sheer habit. Pate scanned the instruments one more time. Triple Nickel was still flying perfectly. It had done all
he’d asked of it—taken the stress, gotten him there. For the briefest moment he wanted to yell, shout in triumph.

But the air had gone from his chest. The will. How could he destroy the plane when it had come through for him so faithfully?
Astonished at this thought, he stared at the stadium again, and this time he saw the people, thousands of them, as a strange
moment of blankness seemed to suspend him, like a mote of dust. He couldn’t give in—the mission had to be completed.

But the thought seemed like tissue paper, and even now it flew from his mind. He was killing himself, he realized, and killing
others who weren’t to blame, not saving anybody. He knew this. He’d always known it. With sudden intensity a recollection
of his entire life surged over him, and the darkness squeezing his mind drew back like a blanket thrown off. He heard the
air moaning against the windscreen. The yoke pushed back against his hand, urging him to pull up, and the cockpit seemed suddenly
glowing with brilliant, sharp light. There was still time. Already he had smoothed the aircraft’s flight path. Positive gravity
pulled him down into his seat. He knew the man behind him would be able to aim the pistol again, but the man wouldn’t have
to shoot. No, Pate thought, he wouldn’t have to.

It was his last thought. After it came only a soundless thunderclap of white, dense nothing.

Flight Deck

New World 555

20:51 GMT/13:51 MST

In the instant he pulled the trigger, Crane saw fragments of skull and tissue fleck the windscreen. The. bullet had struck
its mark. Flinging the pistol aside, he lunged into the cockpit. Pate’s hands were still on the yoke. He ripped them away
and seized it. Old skills, honed in his thousand hours in T-38 cockpits, had to come into play now. It was just another airplane,
he told himself, staring wide-eyed at the huge football stadium that seemed to hang above the plane, growing larger with alarming
speed.

High speed dive recovery, Crane. Come on,
execute
!

The procedure came back to him.

Step one: Throttles idle and unload.
He slammed the power levers back to idle, simultaneously releasing all the back pressure, relieving the aerodynamic forces—the
lift and its attendant drag—from the airframe.

The stadium nearly filled the windscreen now. Crane could see banners, the band, the teams on the field.

Step two: Roll to the nearest horizon.
The airplane was not perfectly inverted; its wings were at a slight angle to the horizon. He applied full right yoke to roll
the ship back upright in the “shorter” direction. The plane responded with what seemed incredible sluggishness, but it did
respond, and finally, with the wings dead level, the plane upright again. Crane stopped the roll. The stadium had swung around
now, but it still blossomed across the windscreen, opening like some gigantic apparatus about to swallow him. And now the
ground proximity warning system began screaming at him—“Whoop, whoop. .. Pull up!... Whoop, whoop.. .Terrain!”

Step three: Break the descent
. Crane hauled back on the control column. Straining against the g-force, he held on, pulling the big jet out of its dive
just as the upper tiers of the stadium passed under the nose—so close he could see the people falling away in waves on either
side. Now the far end of the stadium passed beneath the rim of the windshield, a huge Scoreboard Hashing to one side, then
an expanse of parking lot, then a swimming pool, a vast rectangle of turquoise water. The plane was skimming above rooftops,streets,
parking lots, no more than a couple hundred feet beneath the floor of the cockpit. He’d done it.

Still the ground prox system brayed at him. The altitude was decaying, he realized, the airspeed less than two hundred, close
to a stall. They could easily mush right into the ground.

Keep flying
, he told himself.
Get the power up. Keep the nose up
. He pushed the throttles forward and eased back on the column. He found the trim switch on the yoke and thumbed it until
the MD-80 was maintaining a shallow climb with no back pressure. Finally the raucous aural warnings ceased. Carefully, Crane
adjusted the power to stabilize the airspeed at 250 knots and the rate of climb at 500 feet per minute.

His legs were aching. All this time he had been hunched over in the narrow space between the two pilot seats, half his upper
body pressed down across the dead body of Pate. Crane sagged now, onto his knees as tears of relief streamed down his face.
The cabin behind him seemed eerily silent. They must be all screamed out, he thought.

“Mariella?” He couldn’t leave the controls. “You okay?”

There was no answer. Then he heard someone behind him and snatched a look back.

Mariella had leaned into the cockpit doorway, dazed. Then, her eyes darting from the dead captain to Pate, she whispered,
“Oh, my God!”

Crane turned back to the controls. “We’ve got to clear one of these seats. See if you can get someone to help.”

He looked back at her again. For another moment she stared at him. Then, blinking, she recovered.

“Are you all right, David? Are we okay now?”

“I’m okay. And yes, we’re okay. We’ll make it just fine now.”

“I’d better check the cabin then. And get some help.”

“Bring a blanket, too,” Crane told her.

Alone again, Crane couldn’t prevent himself from glancing sideways into the face of the man he’d killed. Pate’s left temple
was shattered, and gore had oozed down into his left eye socket—scalloping there under the eye—and on down, around the corner
of his mouth and then down his neck and into the collar of what had once been a clean, white uniform shirt. The wound itself
was a gaping hole, bits of pink skull still held to it by strands of skin and hair. Crane was horror-struck, but he could
not look away. The wound was some kind of terrible make-believe, not real. He hadn’t just killed this man. With his free hand,
he reached up and gingerly touched the dark hair. Then, as if what he’d done could be repaired, he touched the wound itself,
the red-matted hair at the very edge of it, the torn scalp. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Air Route Traffic Control Center

Albuquerque, New Mexico

20:53 GMT/13:53 MST

O’Brien had been shouting exuberantly, telling Center of the recovery. Now Kelly and Curtis and the rest watched the radar
screen as 555’s coded symbol, followed closely by Shadow’s, crossed the approach course for Sky Harbor’s Runway 26 left and
then continued southward, its altitude digits slowly increasing.

“She’s under control,” O’Brien reported again. “Repeat, Albuquerque. They made it.”

“Roger, Shadow,” Curtis acknowledged.

In the Center, a cheer broke out.

Curtis switched to his other line. “Control, Albuquerque. Did you guys get all that?”

“Yeah,” Searing answered. “We got it. The plane’s okay. But who’s flying it?”

Curtis shook his head. “We don’t know. I’ll tell Shadow to pull up alongside for a look-see.”

He glanced up at Kelly. Kelly shook his head. He didn’t know if Emil Pate would have gone that far only to give up.

“It’s over, anyway,” Curtis said. Then his eyes shifted. Someone had just entered the room, and Kelly turned and saw the figure,
standing just inside the doorway. Farraday gazed back at him squarely. Kelly got up and crossed the room. Now Farraday was
smiling, gloating. Yes, Kelly thought, his hide had been saved as well. Suddenly he wanted more than anything to swing his
fist into Farraday’s face.

“You goddamn bastard,” he said quietly, his voice cracking, his eyes going blurry. “Emil Pate was ten times the man you are.”

Then he had to turn away and go quickly through the door, down the hall and out, into the warm, bright, early afternoon sunshine.
It was a beautiful day. Kelly wiped his eyes with the back of his forearm and remembered how, back when they’d both worked
for Westar, nothing could get to Redman Pate. What had happened to him? Nothing that couldn’t have happened to anyone?