Falling, p.12
Falling, page 12
“How do you two know each other?” Carrie asked Sam.
The tone of her voice was too familiar and Bill was suddenly wildly uncomfortable with not knowing what had happened when he’d lost contact with them. He felt a whole new level of alpha male protection, one rooted in envy and possession. It was animal, not rational, but it snapped Bill back into focus.
He watched Carrie and Scott glance up at something out in front of them before dropping their gazes a few moments later.
“Bendo is my brother,” Sam said. “Well, good as.” Pointing at the camera, he said something in a language neither Carrie nor Bill understood. Ben laughed in response and replied in the same foreign tongue. The warmth of their reunion felt unfair, like ticker tape falling on the losing team.
“Well, Ben is my brother too,” Bill said, his voice shaking. He stared at the wings on the first officer’s shirt before pointing back at the cockpit door. “They boarded this plane in good faith. They put their lives in our hands. Our duty is to respect that responsibility.”
Sam began to talk but Ben stopped him with his hand.
“Why?” Bill continued, his voice rising. “Why not just shoot me and crash the plane? If that’s what you wanted, you didn’t have to involve my family.”
“This isn’t what we wanted,” Ben said.
“Then what do you want?” Bill pleaded. “I don’t understand what you want. I don’t understand why you’re doing this.”
Ben looked out the window in front of him, considering the question, the hand holding the gun drooping slightly.
“Where we come from, our people have a saying. ‘No friend but the mountains.’ It means our fate is one of betrayal and abandonment. That we only have each other. No one else cares. We can only count on ourselves.”
Ben looked to Sam, his eyes misting above a forlorn smile.
“We tried not to believe that,” the first officer continued. “We wanted so badly to believe it could be different, it would be different. We bought into hope. Into the American Dream. Freedom, hope, belonging—that’s all we wanted. For ourselves and for our families. And tell me—why is that wrong? To want that kind of life? Why shouldn’t our lives have that kind of dignity? Why don’t we deserve it? We played by your rules, we did what you wanted, we were everything you asked us to be. And you betrayed us! You ask me how I could betray this profession—well, how could you betray millions of people who only want a decent life of their own?”
Bill tried to think of a good response, but came up empty. He didn’t really grasp what Ben was talking about. Finally he said, “What does any of that have to do with my family or the passengers on this plane?”
Ben spread his arms wide and laughed.
“Keep going. Keep reacting exactly as we knew you would. Because that’s exactly it! That’s exactly why we’re doing this! You people never think it has something to do with you. All around the world, shit happens. And you just carry on. Because it doesn’t have to do with you. You never get involved unless you’re forced to. So?” He motioned around the cockpit. “Here we are. You’re finally being forced to face the truth.”
“What truth?”
“The truth that people are only as good as the world lets them be. You’re not inherently good and I’m not inherently bad. We’re just working through the cards life dealt us. So putting you in this position, dealing you these cards—what does a good guy do now? It’s not about the crash, Bill. It’s about the choice. It’s about good people seeing they’re no different from bad people.” He looked from Bill to Carrie. “You’ve just always had the luxury of choosing to be good.”
Bill’s face flushed. He didn’t fully understand what Ben was talking about, but he recognized the anguish he saw burning in his copilot’s eyes. It was the same hot rage that coursed through Bill’s body every time he looked at his helpless, captive family.
“But what about people who have no choice?” Bill said. “The passengers on this plane, the people in Washington, DC. How do their innocent deaths prove your point?”
“What about the innocent deaths of my people?” Ben spat back. “Why are their lives of less worth, why are their deaths less tragic? No one cares when they die horrible deaths. It’s time your people shared the same meaningless ending. I want America to mourn in the way we’ve had to mourn for our whole lives.”
“An eye for an eye isn’t justice,” said Bill.
“Neither is inaction. Nothing will change if nothing changes.”
“But nothing will change if you do this either. America won’t bow to a vigilante terrorist.”
“We never wanted you to bow! We just wanted to be seen!”
Ben panted in the silence that followed his outburst, the gun trembling in his hand. Bill faced forward in his chair. Ben turned his head away to look out the window. Sad attempts at a physical de-escalation in the cramped space.
Bill dropped his hands to his side, defeated. He didn’t know what to do. Everything felt hopeless. He stared at his family, mentally removing them from this madness, trying to remember how simple their lives seemed as recently as last night.
Bill had grilled hamburgers. They had eaten with the TV on, volume low, watching the game. Scott spilled his milk at one point. Elise had cried and so Carrie ate her sweet potato fries standing up, bouncing her until she stopped. Bill remembered thinking he needed to take out the trash when he threw the milk-soaked paper towels in the bin. He had forgotten to do that before he left this morning.
A distant noise was beeping in his earpiece. Bill barely noticed it, lost in the blissful memory of normalcy. But the faint, irregular sounds eventually pulled Bill away from his reverie. All at once something clicked in his mind as he strained to listen, trying not to breathe.
But now there was only silence. His mind was playing tricks on him.
He looked over to Ben, who showed no sign of having heard anything unusual. If there were any sounds, they would come through the backup frequency, which was only audible in Bill’s earpiece. Ben was in his own world anyway. He was inspecting the gun, his thumb running over the handle.
Suddenly, there it was. Bill’s eyes widened. There was a noise.
It wasn’t his imagination. Someone had heard him and they were talking back.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“ALL SET?” JO SAID.
Big Daddy tossed an almost-empty bag of cheap plastic Coastal Airways headphones on the forward galley countertop with a thwack.
“All set,” he said.
“Every passenger?”
“Every single one.”
“And you had them all turn on their TVs? And turn to the news?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Did it go okay? Were they receptive?”
Daddy stared at her, deadpan.
Reaching the galley, Kellie passed between them, tossing her nearly empty bag on top of his.
“Okay, these people do not like us,” she said, her eyes wide. “Holy shit are they angry.”
Daddy nodded in agreement. “He needs to finish whatever it is that he’s doing—now—because we need to give these people some information.”
The flight attendants looked across the galley to Rick Ryan, who continued to swipe and tap on his phone.
Jo said, “As soon as he’s finished—and thank you, Mr. Ryan, for assisting—we’ll go. In the meantime, let’s talk specials.” She handed Daddy the manifest and Kellie looked over his shoulder. “Miraculously, we don’t have too many. Two infants and one wheelchair. Thank god no unaccompanied minors. You do have a language in eighteen delta, though. Last name Gonzales, so I’m assuming Spanish? Do either of you speak Spanish?”
Kellie shook her head.
“Un poquito,” Daddy said, poring over the list. “That’ll be a fun briefing.”
“Kellie, while Daddy’s doing his briefs, break down your galley. We need it final-descent secure, now. There won’t be time later.”
She nodded.
“Gimme just a minute,” Rick Ryan said. “I’m almost done.”
The crew waited. They each had a thousand things to do to get the passengers ready for whatever was coming, but they couldn’t do any of it yet. Hurry up and wait. Even in a crisis, the unofficial motto of aviation held true.
“Do you remember,” Daddy broke the silence, “way back in the day, what they taught us to do if the plane was hijacked?”
Jo smiled. The memory seemed quaint. “Talk to them. Appeal to their emotions. Level with them. Give them what they want. Basically? Do whatever you gotta do to get the plane down safe.”
Back then, the tactic was to gain the hijackers’ empathy, so the company had instructed the flight attendants to keep pictures of their children or family on them at all times. Jo had the boys’ baby pictures tucked in with her badge and she remembered Big Daddy kept a picture of his cat. He’d told her his plan was to distract the terrorists with his pussy.
“Then 9/11 happened,” Daddy said, his voice trailing off. “And everything changed.” He leaned back against Jo’s jump seat. The cockpit was right there and he ran the backs of his fingers up the door. “We used to have something to work with, you know? The bad guys made sense, the world made sense. There were motives and demands. But now…” He shook his head.
“Cool, cool, cool,” Rick Ryan said, ending the moment. “It’s done. I’d say wait a couple minutes, then you’re on.”
Jo took out her phone and opened the message thread with her nephew.
* * *
Theo’s pocket vibrated and he strained against the seat belt to fish out his phone. Opening the message, he felt his brow furrow.
“What?” Liu asked.
“She says: ‘Watch the news.’ ”
Liu pulled up CNB’s website on her tablet. Waiting for it to load, she leaned over the partition. “How far out are we?”
“Approximately six minutes, ma’am,” the driver replied.
A sea of red covered the device. “What the…” Liu muttered to herself.
The network was in full breaking-news mode, massive fonts and capital letters demanding the world’s attention. The news anchor’s eyes darted up and down from his notes to the camera, the pace of what was occurring too fast for a teleprompter. Liu turned up the volume.
“…information is coming in as we speak. So far, all we know for sure is that some form of hijacking or terrorist incident is currently unfolding on board a midair Coastal Airways flight from Los Angeles to New York. Celebrity personality Rick Ryan is one of the passengers on board, and he has alerted the media to some sort of upcoming announcement. We are standing by, waiting for that…”
A box graphic of a tweet appeared on-screen:
@RickRyanyaboi
FLIGHT 416 HAS BEEN HIJACKED.
LIVE VIDEO FROM CREW COMING. PRAY FOR US!!!
Tagged to all the major news networks, the FBI, Homeland Security—even the White House—the tweet had already been shared twelve thousand times in less than three minutes.
“…the plane is an Airbus A320, which can carry up to one hundred and fifty passengers, plus a crew component of three flight att—”
The news anchor pressed his earpiece.
“Okay, I’m being told we have live streaming video from the plane. Let’s watch.”
The studio disappeared, replaced by a stuttering feed from the interior of a plane. The screen was filled with the face of a middle-aged woman in a flight attendant’s uniform.
Theo almost gasped. Aunt Jo.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, her voice choppy as the video buffered. “By now you’re aware that we have a situation on our hands.”
Liu looked up at Theo with complete sincerity.
“Is your aunt fucking insane?”
* * *
Jo stared into the little camera on the back of Kellie’s phone. The young flight attendant stood across from her, focusing intensely on the screen, occasionally raising or lowering the device to keep Jo centered in the frame.
“I know the whole world is watching right now, but they’re not who I’m speaking to,” Jo said into the camera. “I’m talking to you—the passengers of Flight four-one-six. I know you’re confused and angry. I would be too if I were you. But from where I stand, things looks a little different. Ladies and gentlemen, you need to know what’s going on. You deserve to know what the crew knows.”
The engines hummed. It was the only noise in the cabin. Every passenger on board wore either their own headphones, or the airline’s complimentary pair passed out by the flight attendants. They all watched the news intently.
“I’m not gonna sugarcoat this,” Jo continued. “Our captain’s family has been kidnapped. His wife, their ten-year-old son, and ten-month-old daughter are being held hostage on the ground back in LA as we speak. The individual who took them has said he will kill them—unless the captain crashes the plane.”
A woman in first class gasped loud enough to startle Kellie. Daddy stood with his arms crossed against his chest, watching the passengers, taking the cabin’s pulse as Jo spoke. He was to monitor for any signs of an accomplice among them; anyone becoming fidgety or looking around suspiciously. Glancing at Jo, he gave her an encouraging nod.
“Now I’ve flown with Captain Hoffman coming up on twenty years,” Jo continued. “I know that man. I know that man. There is not a chance, not a single possibility, that he would crash this plane. None. And that’s all I’m going to say about that because there is nothing else to say.
“But before I go on, I wanna talk to you,” Jo snarled, eyes narrowing, weight shifting. “You, you sick son of a bitch, wherever you are. You think you’ll get away with this? You have no idea the forces that hunt you right now. They will find you, I guarantee you that. And I promise you something else too.”
She adjusted her scarf.
“That family you’ve got? They will live. And this plane? Is not going to crash.”
Kellie stood a little straighter. Daddy clenched his jaw, widening his stance.
“So let’s talk about those masks now. Why did we drop them? So that we can protect ourselves. Yes, ladies and gentlemen. This maniac has involved us in his sick plan as well.”
Jo could feel her heart rate spiking the way it does in the moment before a confession. When you’re scared and want to run or back down, but know you can’t.
“Before we land, he’s going to make the captain release a gas into the cabin from the cockpit. What is the gas? Well, we don’t know. But we’re going to assume it’s pretty bad, and we’re going to plan on it being pretty bad.
“Look,” she continued. “Whatever it is, we sure as hell don’t want to breathe it. That’s what the masks are for. The flight attendants will brief you and prepare you for what’s going to happen. But here is what you need to know most of all, what you must remember from this very moment up until those wheels touch down in New York.”
She stepped forward.
“We are going to get through this. We will work together. We will protect each other. And together—as passengers and flight attendants and pilots of this flight—we will show this monster that we cannot be bullied, blackmailed, or taken down.”
Jo paused. She had no idea where any of those words had come from. She had set an intention, opened her mouth, and the words simply flowed out. Her mind raced. What had she missed? She wasn’t even sure what she just said.
“When I was a little girl, Daddy used to say to me: ‘Sit deep and put your spurs on, girl.’ Ladies and gentlemen, we have one choice. That choice is to trust and to be united. It’s an honor to be here with you, and a privilege to serve you. Sit deep and put your spurs on—here we go.”
Kellie pressed the red button. With a soft ping, the video stopped recording.
* * *
Theo watched Liu lay the tablet in her lap. Outside the van’s window, the scenery passed by in a blur.
“Dehumanize the bad guy,” she said. “Paint the captain as victim and hero. Unite the mob against a common enemy, which distracts them from their potential demise. Rally their warrior spirit into action.” Liu turned to Theo. “This urge you have to disregard authority and piss on protocol? It’s a family trait?”
Theo inhaled through an upsurge of pride that made his cheeks tingle.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, unable to hide a small smile.
“She didn’t— Wait, did she talk about DC?”
“No, ma’am,” another agent said.
Liu shook her head.
Aunt Jo was a thousand miles away and she was able to get under Liu’s skin too. Theo loved it.
“Ma’am? We’re here,” the driver said, pulling into a run-down strip mall. Vacant storefronts with faded outlines of former signage filled the plaza. Small planters with overgrown grass and dry trees dotted the parking lot. A maroon sedan with two flat tires and a windshield thick with dust sat abandoned.
The only other sign of life was at the far end of the lot. Under a burned-out streetlight, shrouded in darkness, a large silver SUV straddled two spots, conspicuous in its newness. In the shortness of a late-fall day, nighttime had already fallen—but the car’s sunshield was up, blocking a view of the inside from Alpha unit’s vantage.
“Park behind that,” Liu said, and motioned toward a planter with a sizable tree.
The vehicle slowed to a stop, rocking back as it set in park.
“All right, you sicko,” Liu said. “Let’s try this again.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CARRIE WATCHED A BEAD OF sweat slide down Sam’s cheek. It clung to the bottom of his chin before dropping onto his sleeve, leaving a dark circle on the gray CalCom uniform.
It was hot in the cramped quarters. Carrie’s T-shirt clung to her where Elise pressed against her. Scott’s hair stuck to his forehead with a sheen of moisture.
Sam set the phone down and started to work at the button on his sleeve. Holding the detonator made the simple task awkward and Carrie could feel his frustration rising with the heat as his fingers slipped around the small plastic button without success.
