Storm nodded, parting the curtains on his way into the middle cabin, then proceeded into business class. He kept walking by passengers who appeared both stunned and submissive. The sound of human suffering grew louder with every forward step: moans, wails, groans. As he approached the front of the plane, his ears were joined by his nose in telling him that something was very wrong. He smelled gunpowder. And blood.
It was when he entered first class that he understood why. Storm had seen war zones in his life, and this qualified as one. There was blood splattered against the ceiling, the bulkhead, the seats, the floor. There were at least seven dead passengers, all missing parts of their heads. Several more were lying in the aisle, wounded badly. Flight attendants were hunched over them, attending to their wounds.
A dark-skinned man in pilot’s clothes was on the floor, leaning against the door to the cockpit. His close-cropped salt-and-pepper head was caked with blood. He was holding a gauze pad to the right side of his head. His name badge identified him as “Capt. Montgomery.”
Storm approached, identified himself, crouched next to the pilot, and asked what had happened.
“It started right after takeoff,” he said. “TSA notified flight control that we had a stowaway in the wheel well.”
“Yeah, that was me. Sorry about that.”
“Well, I still had to follow the flight plan for a while. You can’t just pull a U-turn in the busiest airspace in America, you know? So flight control was coming up with a new route. They were going to have me stay low and then make an emergency landing in Philly. In the meantime, they were going to have two F-18s escort me in as a precaution. But it’s not like I had squawked a seventy-five hundred or anything.”
“A seventy-five hundred?”
“Sorry, that’s the hijack code. You squawk a seventy-five hundred on the transponder and the air force knows to send in the cavalry. These were just supposed to be escorts, but not long after they showed up was when I heard the gunshot. My first officer was looking at me like What the… when one of the flight attendants called me on the intercom. She told me that some guy with an eye patch had blown one of the passenger’s heads off with a gun that was made of wood of all things. He had told the flight attendant that he was going to shoot one person every thirty seconds unless I opened the door to the cockpit. Regulations say I can’t open that door under any circumstances, but goddamn… Every thirty seconds I heard another gunshot and I… I just couldn’t…”
The man stopped, needing to compose himself. Storm glanced out the window and saw the blinking lights of an F-18 not far off the 747’s wing. Volkov hijacked the plane because he thought he had been caught, never realizing it was actually Storm’s actions that had sent the fighter jets flying.
This was not an irony that Storm enjoyed.
Montgomery had regained enough poise to continue: “So we opened the door. He pistol-whipped me and told me to get out of the seat. He told Roger to get out of the seat” — Storm assumed “Roger” was the first officer — “but Roger wouldn’t budge. He said something like, ‘Who’s going to fly the plane?’ And the guy just said ‘Me’ and then he shot him…. He shot him….”
Montgomery needed another moment. Storm stood and looked around for Whitely Cracker. He was three rows back in first class, huddled under a vomit-stained blanket, not looking at anyone or anything.
Storm crouched back down.
“I’m armed,” Storm said quietly. “If we can get that cabin door back open, I can end this.”
“Great. I’ve got a code that’ll open the door.”
With great effort, Montgomery stood, turning toward a narrow keypad next to the door.
“You ready?” he asked.
Storm pulled out Dirty Harry. The pilot punched some numbers.
“Okay, here goes,” Montgomery said as he hit the pound sign. Then he frowned. Nothing was happening. He typed the code in again. Still nothing. A red light was illuminated.
“Damn it,” Montgomery said.
“What?”
“He found the button that allows the pilot to deny access from the inside. We can’t get in.”
Montgomery had slumped back down. He was checking his blood-soaked gauze pad. His eyes appeared even more sunken than they had been minutes before. He was the picture of defeat.
Derrick Storm knew he could not allow himself to be beaten.
“There has to be some way,” Storm said.
“Maybe before 9/11, but not now. Those things are like bank safes.”
“Trust me when I say bank safes can be cracked,” Storm said. “What kind of lock is it?”
“It’s electromagnetic. You’re talking about something like twelve hundred pounds of holding force. Not even a moose like you could break that.”
“I don’t need to break it. Electromagnetic locks require a power supply. I disrupt the power supply, I disrupt the lock.”
“You don’t think the airlines thought of that?” the pilot said. “There’s redundancy upon redundancy in these planes. In addition to the main power supply, there’s a battery backup that lasts twelve hours. The battery is in a steel case, imbedded in the door. You’ll never get to it.”
Storm stared at the door for a long moment, as if he had Superman’s heat ray vision. Alas, he did not.
But he suddenly realized he had something that would work just as well.
He looked down at his left wrist. The phrase “Variable Frequency Dial Allows Multi-Channel Communication!” was flashing in his head.
“What frequency is the lock set at?” Storm asked.
“What…? I have no idea.”
“No problem. Do the flight attendants have a small tool kit? I’m also going to need a piece of electronics with a nine-volt battery and someone’s laptop. Ask around among the passengers.”
Montgomery summoned two of the flight attendants, who soon produced the items Storm requested.
He took one last look at the SuperSpy EspioTalk Wristwatch Communicator. “Sorry, Ling. Gotta do it,” he said, then pried off the facing.
Inside, he found a circuit board that was, in its basic premise, like the Westing house in his father’s garage. It was just a lot smaller. He went to work. Changing the toy into a device that would send out an electromagnetic pulse at the proper frequency was just a matter of pirating parts from the laptop, combining them with the transmitter from the wristwatch, and powering it with the nine-volt battery.
It just took time, which, Storm was soon to learn, they were running out of even more quickly than he thought. The problem was no longer leaving U.S. airspace. It was staying in it that could kill them.
“I don’t mean to rush you,” Captain Montgomery said. “But how’s it coming?”
“Just a little longer. Why?”
“Because an old airline pilot like me has an altimeter built into his head. Mine is telling me we’re at about eight thousand feet. And I don’t think those F-18s just off our wings are going to be very patient. They’ll get orders to shoot us down if we get much lower than five thousand feet. One of them just did a head butt.”
“A head butt?” Storm asked as he screwed a wire into place.
“It’s a maneuver they attempt with a nonresponsive aircraft. They soar vertically upward to within a couple hundred feet of your nose, trying to get you to point it back up.”
“I’m almost done,” Storm said. “While I’m finishing, I need a favor.”
“Anything.”
“Get these passengers out of first class,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen when I get that door open. The fewer people to get hit by any stray bullets, the better.”
“You got it,” Montgomery said, rising to his feet. The man was clearly energized by having a sense of purpose. So Storm added one more thing:
“Oh, and Captain? Don’t go far. I’m going to need someone to land this plane after we take back control of it.”
“I like your style, Storm,” he said.