He glanced at the variometer, the sensitive rate-of-climb indicator that showed whether the glider was rising or falling. The horizontal needle was barely below level. The aircraft sank as slowly as a feather fluttering in the breeze.
Shapiro planned his flight with the glider pilot motto in mind: Get High and Stay High. At 4,000 feet he’d look for lift to boost him back to 5,000 feet, or higher. Until he sank to 4,000 feet, he’d fly straight toward his destination—the White House.
The whistle of air flowing smoothly around the plane removed him from a suicide mission and returned him to his personal place of comfort, calming Shapiro almost to the point of dozing. His head dropped to his chest, then jerked upward with a start.
Stop that, he scolded. Stay sharp, for God’s sake.
He looked at the instruments. Distance: 55.2 miles. Altitude: 4,755 feet.
Shapiro looked over the sailplane’s nose, struggling to see the nation’s capital through the haze hovering on the horizon. He could only make out farmland, crossed by roads, highways and scattered buildings, fading into the distance.
Soon enough, he thought. He flew onward in silence, senses heightened.
Instrument panel. Distance: 41.8 miles. Altitude: 4,022 feet.
Time to take the elevator up a few floors, he thought, looking around. A mile or so off to the right he spotted a shopping mall, a central building covered by a black, tarred roof surrounded by acres of paved parking area, partially filled with cars. Just downwind from the mall but a mile and a half above it, Shapiro saw wisps of white cloud in the sky. He smiled.
The morning sun shone on the asphalt, the cars and the tarred roof, heating them, creating bubbles of warm, moist air that rose through the cooler air from the surrounding fields. Glider pilots searched for these columns of lift and attempted to center in them, flying in tight circles with wingtips pointed almost straight down, circling within the rising air like hawks.
Strong lift, such as that generated by the shopping mall, could raise a lightweight sailplane faster than an elevator in a skyscraper.
Shapiro banked his plane to the right, then flew directly over the shopping mall. He felt the airplane bounce, the indicator of entering lift. Suddenly the right wing rose, as if a giant were crouched outside the plane lifting the wingtip with both hands. Instinctively, Shapiro threw the control stick to the right, lowering the right wing, moving his feet in and out to control the rudder, maintaining a smooth circling turn.
The familiar feeling of locking his glider into the center of a column of rising air swept over him. This was the seat-of-the-pants flying he loved so much. He felt pressure against his bottom as the plane was lifted into the sky, the rate-of-climb indicator pegged in the upward position.
After a few minutes of spiraling flight, Shapiro looked up through the canopy, straight above the aircraft, and saw the bottom of the forming cloud less than a hundred feet above him. He leveled the plane’s wings and flew out of the column of lift.
Glancing at the GPS and instrument panel, Shapiro grinned to see that he’d ridden the lift to 6,755 feet. He checked his heading and turned the plane’s nose slightly to the left. Back on course. Distance: 47.8 miles.
That’s all the height I need to get there, he thought, calculating the plane’s rate-of-sink against the distance to go. I can fly straight there and arrive with half a mile of altitude. Piece of cake.
That realization, that all he had to do now was fly straight and level, focused his thoughts on his destination and his conversation with Goldhersh on the drive from Maryland.
He thinks I’ll back out, Shapiro thought. It’s not too late to do that. I could land just about anywhere. He looked at the ground below, studded with farms. What appeared to be a school, with athletic fields beside it, was ahead to his left. I could land there. On the football field. Sideslip in. Point a wingtip down the field. Drop like a stone. Piece of cake.
He flew on, straight, level, on course.
Distance: 28.9 miles. Altitude: 4,948 feet. There it is.
He saw highways ringing the city and clusters of buildings within the ring, the Potomac River on one side. A cloud of haze rested a thousand feet above the city. He was still too far to make out individual buildings.
An image struck him. The Flying Tzadik. That’s who I am, a Jew on a mission. A righteous mission. A tzadik. A righteous man.
A tzadik, he’d learned, was not a perfect man but rather one who wrestled with the effort to do what was right even when faced with the temptation and opportunity to do wrong. It became his goal throughout adult life.
The still, small voice that lurked in his mind in all but occasional silence whispered to him. He listened closely, his mind wandering from his flying.
Righteous, or self-righteous, the voice hissed. Are you righteous or self-righteous?
He cupped a mental hand to his inner ear, straining to make out what the voice was saying.
Heroic or ego-driven, the voice said. Who are you to think you can change the world? Shapiro’s eyes spotted another farm field below the glider. I could put it down there, he thought. Easy. Piece-of-cake landing.
No! The camps. That man, Quaid, putting American Jews in goddamn concentration camps. All those people who cheered at the march. In camps.
The image of the young Israeli woman, strapped to the wooden board by duct tape, red rubber hose jammed into her nose, writhing against her bonds, came to mind. How many others are they doing that to? I can stop that from happening.
Without conscious thought, as the glider flew over the farm field, Shapiro felt the stick jerk to the right as the sailplane circled the field.
“No,” he said, softly, no audience except himself to hear. He leveled the wings, checked the course heading and flew on. Straight and level.
Distance: 19.2 miles. Altitude: 4,135 feet.
Less than twenty miles. He calculated quickly—about twelve minutes.
He felt a cold sweat on his forehead. He twisted his head to glance back at the bomb. It looked larger than before. That was impossible, he knew, but it seemed to him the machine was aware it was about to be called to life.
He looked forward toward the horizon and felt the same thrill at seeing Washington that he had on every visit since his eighth-grade field trip. His eyes sought out the monuments. He could see the grassy mall with the Capitol dome at one end, flanked by buildings on either side. And that—that must be the White House.
His breath sucked in when he saw the stub of the Washington Monument. They removed the pieces pretty quickly, he thought.
He looked at the GPS.
Ten minutes to destination.
The skies over Washington crackled with electronic beams from dozens of radars. When one of these signals encountered a metallic object, it bounced back, like a wave striking the side of a swimming pool, reflecting an echo that was picked up by the receiving antenna. These invisible electronic signals created an impenetrable defensive wall mightier than any surrounding a medieval castle.
Jet fighters at nearby Bolling Air Force Base stood on constant alert, armed with missiles and cannon. Armed with orders to turn away errant pilots, orders to shoot down any plane that failed to instantly obey.