Blue Skies

  “Hello?”

  “Oh, I’m so glad I caught you. I just got pegged for a flight. The pilot is a no-show. He’s one of the most responsible we have, so he might still turn up. But—”

  “Nick,” Carlisle interrupted. “Turn around.”

  She made a one-eighty and found herself face-to-face with him. “What are you doing here?” she asked into the phone.

  He smiled and lowered his phone to his side, which made her realize what she’d done. “I’m picking up Ethel,” he said. “So, you’re going out now?”

  “Yeah, but the good news is, I’ll be back at about three tomorrow and I’m on the ground for turkey. I couldn’t have planned it better than that. But like I said, he might still make it. You’ll keep an eye on the kids—all three of them?”

  “Four. There’s Ethel. And Buck called earlier. Said he’d come up this afternoon if he could escape Phoenix.”

  “Aw. I don’t mean to stick you with—”

  He put up a hand. “I have a lot to do for tomorrow. I’m going to serve a light dinner tonight and ban everyone from the kitchen. This suits me fine.” He cocked his head to listen to an announcement. “That’s her flight. You fly safely and we’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Tell the kids I’ll call later from Chicago.”

  She then spoke to the gate agent, who, though bristly, was fine when handled with extra consideration for the pressure she was under. Nikki told her to give them an additional ten minutes before beginning boarding, and then hurried down the jetway to the plane.

  She was already in the cockpit in her street clothes when Sam finished his walk-around and joined her there. “I must be living right,” he said upon seeing her in the left seat.

  “You wouldn’t have any idea what happened to Jeff, would you? He’s a no-show for this flight.”

  “I can’t believe that.” He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and clicked off some numbers, but all he got was voice mail.

  “He might be racing toward us as we speak,” Nikki said.

  “I don’t wish him any bad luck, but if he doesn’t make this flight, that would suit me fine.”

  “Just so long as you don’t get any ideas,” she warned.

  “Nick, so far my ideas are all I’ve had to keep me warm at night,” he said. But he got into his seat like a good boy and they began running the checklist.

  From that point it was business as usual. The senior flight attendant came up and introduced herself as Karen; Nikki asked Sam to do a crew briefing so she could catch up. The uniform and overnight bag arrived and she made a quick change as the passengers began boarding. The plane filled up with people, the bags were loaded, the fueling was complete.

  “Well,” she said, “it looks like Jeff missed Flight 909, Sam.”

  “God bless him,” Sam said.

  Carlisle had collected Ethel from her Northwest flight out of Minneapolis and was escorting her toward the baggage area when he heard someone shout, “Stop!” Instinctively, he stopped. Holding Ethel’s arm, he pulled her to the side of the concourse, which was swollen with wall-to-wall people.

  There were further shouts, a few surprised screams, and then Carlisle saw a young Hispanic man in black pants and white shirt fly through the crowd at a dead run. His head was down, but he had a panicked look on his face as he shoved people of every age out of his path. Carlisle gasped as he watched an old woman who walked with a cane tumble to the floor. There, in the man’s right hand, flush against his thigh, was a very large black gun.

  Since there were no alarms sounding, Carlisle assumed the man had run full speed through the exit side of the security station. As long as he kept going, running inside the crush of people who couldn’t see him coming from behind, he had a path to the gates.

  “Dear God,” Carlisle breathed.

  Close on his tail was a man in airport security livery, but he was unarmed. Behind him came the National Guard, brutally serious-looking young men with very scary M-16s, but as Carlisle knew, there would be no shooting by them; the concourse was absolutely packed.

  Just as Carlisle thought this, the man darted into the New Century gate, shoved the gate agent out of his way and ran down the jetway. The jetway that led to Nikki’s plane.

  Now there were screams in earnest from people on the concourse who had seen the gun. A Metro police officer was speaking into his radio as he ran behind the helpless soldiers who trailed the security guard. Immediately, over the airport intercom, Carlisle heard, “Jack Woodson, Jack D. Woodson.”

  He looked down the concourse. Airline employees sprang into action at the code word for a security breach. They secured the doors to jetways, while at the other end, crew members were closing and securing aircraft doors and pulling jetways back from the planes. Gate agents were moving people out of the gates, directing them down the concourse.

  Running against the flow were more Metro police officers, while in the background that tireless mantra kept repeating, Jack Woodson, Jack D. Woodson…Jack Woodson, Jack D. Woodson.

  The passengers were boarded and the pilots were ready to push as soon as the Ops agent brought the final weight-and-balance paperwork to the cockpit. Karen stuck her head in. “Captain and Captain,” she said, smiling. “A miracle has occurred—there are enough meals on board and you will actually be fed.”

  “Are we full?” Sam asked.

  “An ass in every seat and a face in every window. Like you had to ask.”

  “Do we have a final head count?”

  “Any second now, along with a weight and balance, and then we push. Darn close to on time. Have a nice flight,” she added, ducking back out.

  Brenda was in the forward galley to finish counting her stock. Stephanie and Georgia were in the aft galley, so Karen went to the door, waiting to see if there were any nonrevving crew members or jump-seaters coming on at the last minute. Failing that, she would secure the door.

  She smiled when the young man came sprinting down the jetway, happy to see an airline employee hurrying when they were in danger of running late. He must be an airline employee in that white shirt and dark pants, though he had no logo on his shirt. Before she could ponder this, he stuck the muzzle of a very large gun into her waist.

  “Close and secure the door,” he said, though not unpleasantly.

  “Wha—”

  “I said, close and secure the door,” he ground out nervously.

  Karen had a lot of flying experience, having been furloughed from two other airlines before being hired by NCA, and she had been flying at the time of the 9/11 attacks. She did not want to let him on the airplane. “Okay, look, let’s just back out of here and—”

  He jabbed her harder. “I want you to close and secure the door.” Sweat beaded his forehead and upper lip.

  She stood in that little area between first class and coach, her toes right at the edge of the doorway, with bulkheads on either side of her. No one but Karen knew this was happening. She didn’t want him to take her airplane and she was willing to make a huge sacrifice to avoid that. The problem was, would her sacrifice prevent others?

  “No, I can’t,” she said, and began to walk toward him, pushing him backward. “You have to leave the jetway.”

  He lifted the point of the weapon out of her belly and whacked her across the face, knocking her off her feet and to the floor of the jetway. Then he walked right on the airplane and headed down the first-class aisle toward the cockpit.

  Karen struggled to her feet, holding the side of her head. She leaned against the jetway wall and heard only the normal rustling of a plane filled with passengers. Then there was the click of the cockpit door closing after the gunman, and someone in first class cried, “Gun. He had a gun!”

  It began slowly. A woman in first class got out of her seat and fled the plane, padding down the jetway. Her husband followed right behind. In seconds, all the passengers in first class were rapidly but quietly deplaning while the passengers in coach looked on in confusion. And then the
y began to follow, having no earthly idea why.

  Karen pushed her way back into the plane. She struggled to get to the far side, opposite the door. From there, her cheek smarting painfully, she jumped up and down, waving her arms over the heads of fleeing passengers, trying to get the attention of Stephanie and Georgia. Way at the back of the plane she saw the two startled faces of her sister flight attendants, and with hand gestures signaled a gun and pointed to the cockpit.

  As one hundred and fifty people fled off the plane, not sure why, Stephanie and Georgia looked at Karen in confusion.

  “Gun,” Georgia said. “She’s saying there’s a gun.”

  Immediately she headed for the tail door to blow the slide. “Wait!” Stephanie said. “Check the ramp!”

  They both looked outside and what they saw scared them to death. About six men, dressed entirely in black and wearing helmets, trained lethal-looking guns on the airplane. They stared at one another. “Are they the good guys or the bad guys?” Stephanie asked.

  “Okay,” Georgia said decisively. “Blow the slide, disable the airplane so it can’t take off, but evacuate out the jetway in case they’re bad guys.”

  Stephanie threw open the door and the rubber slide began to inflate—galoob, galoob, galoob—flipping open in huge arcs. Like a tidal wave with a mind of its own, the coach passengers turned and headed out the back and down the slide. At the bottom, two of the armed men moved to the end of the slide and began helping people off, pointing out the evacuation route.

  Georgia looked at Stephanie and crossed herself. And then began herding people down the slide.

  Nikki and Sam had heard someone enter and close the door. Because the cockpit door was to remain open until they had taxied out to the runway for takeoff, the unusual sound caused them to turn. That was the first indication either of them had that the plane was being hijacked.

  He stood a couple of feet behind them. Although he raised the gun threateningly, he didn’t point it at them. “I have to go to Ohio,” he said. “Right now.”

  Stunned, neither of them spoke. They were installed in cockpit seats, which were not simple to get in and out of. Facing forward as they were, there was simply no way to defend themselves against a man with a gun. One funny move from either of them and he could shoot them so quickly, they’d never know it happened.

  “Oregon! I have to go to Oregon!” he gritted out, agitated and sweating. His teeth began to chatter and he looked as though he might cry.

  “Sure thing,” Nikki said slowly, soothingly. “I’m your captain, this is your copilot, and we’re going to take you.”

  “Right now,” he said more evenly.

  “Right now,” she said.

  He was not a terrorist. He didn’t even know where he wanted to go. She flipped a couple of switches with her left hand and slid her right hand down to the console to press the open mike button. “There are just a couple of things to do before starting the engines. Can you, um, sit on that chair? Just pull it down from the side of the wall and have a seat.”

  “Are you taking me?”

  “Absolutely,” she said. She glanced over at Sam and saw that his eyes were locked on the young man and he seemed frozen—not with fear, but rather anger. Small wonder, after what he’d been through in the tragic loss of his wife. She hoped he wasn’t in shock. “I’m Captain Burgess. This is Captain Landon, flying as my copilot today. And what is your name?”

  He bit his lip and again appeared as though he might cry. He glanced left, right, then back at Nikki. “Michael. My name is Michael. Michael, Michael, Michael, Michael.”

  “Go ahead and pull that jump seat down and get comfortable, Michael.”

  She turned back to the front and fiddled meaninglessly with switches and dials, as though getting ready to start the plane. Sam also shifted around in his seat, staring out the front of the plane, his hands on his lap, clenching and unclenching his fists. Nikki had an insane and hysterical thought—Michael, Michael, Bo-bichael, banana-fanna-fo-fichael…She compressed the mike button again. “And do you have friends or family in Oregon?”

  “I have to go,” he said.

  “Certainly,” she said calmly. Even she was impressed by how calm she was. She had heard the cockpit voice recordings of pilots on their way to auguring in: Tell Mary Lou and little Jack I love them very much…. We’re going down…. Her dirty little secret was that if it ever got that bad, that close, she’d just yell, Holy shit! Waaaaaahhh! And she’d yell it like a girl.

  But with a gun behind her and Sam unreadable beside her, would she cave in to fear? Not unless she were suicidal.

  Outside the plane, on the ground, in the terminal windows and on the roof, black-clad men began appearing, pointing guns at the plane.

  “Get them away! Get them away!” Michael yelled, standing up again. There were metal runners on the floor for sliding the cockpit seats back and forth and she didn’t want him to trip and accidentally discharge the gun. Whenever he got excited, he waved that gun around and did not appear to be too graceful on his feet.

  “Take it easy, Michael,” she said. “I’ll tell them to go away. I’m going to call Dispatch on my cell phone and tell the dispatcher to get rid of them. Okay?” She reached into her brain bag beside her cockpit seat and pulled out the cell. She clicked off a few numbers. “Yeah, Dave. Captain Burgess here, Flight 909 to Oregon. The men in black are making our passenger upset. Ask them to leave, please? Thank you.” She put the phone down on the console and left it on, hoping they could hear her in Dispatch.

  She looked over her shoulder at Michael and gave him a smile. She called up the kind of smile she had used for April when she didn’t make cheerleading, for Jared when his soccer team lost in the finals, a really good mother-smile. But she knew that he was unstable, very likely psychotic, and any moment might be their last for no reason at all. “There,” she said. “Better?”

  He just looked around nervously, chewing his lip, now and then letting out a whimper.

  Sam was still staring straight ahead, the muscles in his cheeks pulsing, his eyes mere slits. What must this be like for him? He must be sitting there wondering if it had been anything like this for his wife. She found herself sending him a mental message. Hang on, Sam, just hang on.

  Joe Riordan was called immediately. At four-thirty the afternoon before Thanksgiving, the corporate offices were beginning to thin out. He called Bob Riddle’s office and was immediately transferred to voice mail, so he slammed down the phone and stormed out of his office. He pitched his car keys to Jewel. “Bring the car up to the door. I’ll be out in a second.”

  She caught the keys and grabbed her purse. This was a command she’d never been given before, and she wasn’t going to be asking questions.

  Joe was on the other side of the building in no time. He passed Dixie’s desk on his way to Riddle’s office. “We have a gunman on 909. Jewel’s got the car in front.” And he kept going.

  Dixie could tell by his panicked stride that he wasn’t going to wait for her to think about this. She grabbed her purse, her blazer, her ID badge and fled. It was probably the first time she didn’t bother to freshen her lips or wash out her cup.

  Crue was just returning to her desk from the ladies’ room when Joe came bearing down on her. “Where’s Riddle? He at the airport?”

  “No, he’s…ah…”

  “He still in town? On his cell?”

  “He said something about meeting some of the pilots and then…”

  She looked at her watch. He had told her he was going to meet some of his boys for a drink, and then he was going to try to get a hop to Phoenix for the holiday. She was to call him one more time today from the office at exactly four-thirty, and then she could go on home. Her instructions were the same as many times before. She should call from the phone at her desk, he would recognize the number as his own office, and he would take it from there. She was to hang up, but many times she had covertly listened to his scam.

  Joe Riordan pi
cked up the receiver from the phone on Crue’s desk. “Punch him up for me?”

  The large console and keypad faced her. She popped off the seven numbers rapidly. There on her desk, looking back up at her, was her résumé—she was planning to leave it with Shanna in HR before going home. She had already applied for the position of crew scheduler and this would complete her application.

  Joe’s attention was on his call; he could barely make out Riddle’s voice above the bar noise and ching-ching-ching of slot or poker machines. “Riddle,” Bob answered. Before Joe could even say hello, Riddle was nearly shouting, “What? She did what? She can’t make decisions about pilot pay! Jesus Christ, she’s just trying to create some political coup because she thinks I’m already on my way out of town for the holiday, but I’ll fix her little wagon. I’ll see Riordan on Thanksgiving Day if I have to, because we’re not going to screw our pilots out of their rightful—”

  “Riddle!” Joe shouted, cutting him off. “Get back to your office ASAP! And don’t leave until you see me, no matter how late it is!” He slammed the phone onto its base. “We have a hijacking,” he told Crue. And with that he left the building.

  By five o’clock, Nikki was exhausted, but Michael wasn’t. He was clearly in some manic state. She had told Michael about a dozen times that they’d be under way as soon as they could get some clearance, but he was growing impatient. Sam, on the other hand, had needed some time to get his head together and come out of shock, but he was back. Cool and in the moment.

  “Growing up, I had a dog, a cat and a duck,” Sam said. “What about you, Michael? You have pets?”

  Nikki shot him a confused look, but he just winked at her.

  “Two dogs,” Michael said. “Bowser and Glory. They’re dead.”