Dan’s hand was flailing the air near the flight attendant’s shoulder. He connected at last, turning her around to face him.
“Look in this wallet. Find my ID card and pilot’s license.”
“What?” she asked.
“Just do it! Did you hear about the crash of the Meridian seven-forty-seven yesterday in Vietnam that killed over two hundred people?”
“Yes,” she replied, as she tentatively flipped through the plastic sleeves and stopped at his airline ID.
“Okay, sister. I was the copilot. We were shot down, and I’ve been blinded. The woman you’re questioning here plucked us out of a jungle in the middle of a hail of bullets. She is precisely who she says she is, and if you don’t help, we’re dead.”
The woman looked hard at the Meridian ID, and flipped to his FAA pilot’s license before closing the wallet and handing it back.
“Stand back,” she said, and turned toward the door to wrestle it closed, waving the wide-eyed gate agent back. “Pull the jetway and stand by. You didn’t see any of this, okay?”
The agent nodded.
As soon as the door was closed, the flight attendant motioned toward the front. “Let’s go. The captain needs to hear all this.”
With Dallas and Dan following, Kat and the flight attendant entered the large DC-10 cockpit, where Kat repeated the explanation. The captain sat with his right arm partially over the back of his seat, listening and looking hard at the group that had invaded his airplane, saying nothing as the nervous flight attendant added that she had seen the blinded copilot’s ID and license as well.
Kat felt her apprehension rising as the captain waved the flight attendant away and sat motionless for a few seconds, leaving an uncomfortable silence unbroken by the copilot or the flight engineer. Finally, the captain held out his hand.
“I don’t need an ID, Agent Bronsky. I’m proud to have you aboard. You bet I’ll help.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
“I know what you did to end the AirBridge hijacking last year, and how humanely you treated that poor captain.” He looked at the flight attendant. “Judy? Get them all into first class if we’ve got it, take good care of them, and give Agent Bronsky anything she needs. She’s a fellow pilot, too. Commercial and instrument rating, if I recall correctly, am I right?”
“That’s right,” Kat said. “Thank you, Captain…”
“Holt. Bob Holt,” he said.
“Captain Holt, when we get to Seattle, I’ll arrange payment of the fares.”
“Tell you what, Agent Bronsky,” the captain said. “After we get up to cruise, have Judy bring you back up here and let me ask you a whole bunch of things, okay?”
“You got it.”
Kat started to turn toward the door, but a sudden, chilling connection finally snapped together in her mind. She sat down hard on the jump seat behind the captain with her index finger in the air. Meridian 5 had been attacked by the weapon they had found aboard the Global Express, and now the weapon and the Global Express were airborne in the vicinity of Honolulu, from which they were preparing to depart. What if they’ve discovered where I am… where Robert is? I can’t let them fly into the path of another attack, unaware!
“Ah, Captain Holt,” she said, taking a breath and shaking her head, “there’s one more thing I’d better explain to you in detail right now, because by stepping aboard, I may have just placed you fellows at risk.”
CHAPTER 33
A young couple in a holiday mood moved toward a public telephone along the concourse, laughing and talking. The man reached for the receiver, but another arm was already in front of him, reaching for the same instrument. The young man kept one arm around his girlfriend and adopted a reproving glance at the interloper, who in turn fixed the pair with a cold, reptilian stare, his demeanor a whirlwind of fury and challenge.
The young man backed up immediately, pulling his girlfriend with him and raising his free hand. “Oops! Sorry about that.” The adjacent phone booth was empty, but the couple ignored it and quickly headed down the concourse.
The man who’d identified himself as Agent Hawkins yanked the receiver to his ear and punched in a series of numbers. He was perspiring from the marathon search among the various departure gates, and trying to figure out where his charges had gone. The possibilities expanded with each passing second as flight after flight pushed back. The six had vanished without a trace, and the heavy-handed use of the FBI badge had netted him nothing but hostility from the various gate agents.
“Yes?” The voice on the other end was slow and deliberate and in control, quite the opposite from the way he felt.
“This is Taylor, in Honolulu.”
“You’re certainly not going to tell me you’ve lost them, are you?”
“Unfortunately, that’s exactly what I have to report. I’m sorry—”
“You certainly are,” the voice interjected, the slightest hint of anger tingeing the otherwise rock-steady control. “Schoen screwed up, and now you.”
“Sir, look. We did get back the jet, the item in the box, and one of our pilots.”
“Wonderful,” was the sarcastic response. “But the jet can’t run to the wrong people with information that can ruin this entire enterprise, now can it?”
“No, Sir. We did the best we could. They went out a window.”
“We’re almost out of time before the next phase commences, Taylor, and I’ve got too many of you in the field running around on unplanned cleanup missions. Schoen’s the only one left from the Hong Kong debacle, and he’s on the way back. And now this.” There was a long sigh. “Do you believe them to be still in Honolulu?”
“No. We think they slipped on an outbound flight somehow. I’ll have it figured out in a half hour. They’re headed to Los Angeles, Denver, or Seattle.”
“When you’re sure, coordinate the intercept with San Francisco directly, since you have descriptions and names. Provided you follow through in the next half hour, they have time to get in position anywhere in the West. Tell them to expect the FBI to be there in force wherever they land. Those six will have to be taken cleanly before the feds get a chance to get close. And Taylor, my orders are simple: Take those six to the nearest warehouse, shoot them, make absolutely certain they’re dead, secure MacCabe’s computer and destroy it, then ditch the bodies where they won’t be found. Ever. As soon as that’s done, I want everyone to reassemble here.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Kat left the cockpit and gently closed the door behind her, feeling profound relief that they’d reached altitude safely. If there’s a medal for commercial airmen who go above and beyond the call of duty to help the FBI, these guys qualify, she thought.
Captain Holt had listened carefully to her worries that the crash of Meridian 5 could have been the result of an attack against the eyesight of the pilots, and the fear that the same group could come after his aircraft. At the flight engineer’s suggestion, they used maps and pillows and a blanket to block the windscreen on the copilot’s side.
“That,” the captain told her, “leaves at least one of us fully functional. I don’t care what they use, unless they blow up the cockpit, they can’t hurt an eyeball they can’t see.”
“Maybe,” Kat suggested, “that’s the best way to protect all airliners against a Meridian-type disaster.”
“If,” Captain Holt told her, “it’s some kind of anti-eyeball device, and if every flight crew blocks their cockpit windows as soon as they’re airborne, then yes, it will work. But how about takeoff and landing? How about the situation where there’s a hillside or a building nearby that someone could use as a platform to fire that thing you described? As commercial pilots, we’re still going to be vulnerable on every flight, because ultimately, we’ve got to see outside.”