Hard Fall (49 page)

Twelve seconds, his watch pleaded.

“Flight control's got that one …” a woman shouted out.

“There's a bomb on board! Patch through to them!” Daggett yelled at the top of his lungs, thinking in terms of police radios, sprinting toward her. He hadn't known exactly what he would do once he reached here, but at the time it had seemed his only chance of getting through to them, the only possibility of communicating, was from this tower. What had Meecham said? A three-way switch, each phase of which had to be working in order for the detonator to blow. Daggett could stop the timer only by closing one of the earlier gates. Think! Think! Not enough time for the plane to level out. “Tell them to decompress the cabin! Decompress the cabin, right now!”

Seven seconds.

How could they remain so calm, these people? In a voice that might have been mistaken for a priest's, the young woman called out in a southern drawl, “Mayday, Alpha-one-five-niner, this is National ground control on an emergency intercept. Explosives on board. Please decompress aircraft immediately. Repeat, blow air packs immediately. Mayday. Mayday.”

“Five seconds!” Daggett screamed.

The room had gone as silent as a library, Daggett's breathing and the hum of electronic gear and cooling fans the only sounds. The woman said calmly into her headset microphone, “Emergency intercept, Alpha-one-five-niner … confirm loss of cabin pressure. Confirm loss of cabin pressure” She placed a hand firmly to her earset. “Alpha-one-five-niner …”

Daggett, watching the seconds expire on his watch said, “Now!” his eyes then straining out the window to see an aircraft that was too far away to be seen.

“Confirm please, Alpha-one-five-niner. Confirm please …” Her hand still on the earphone. Every head in the room was turned. It seemed every breath was held. She looked to Daggett and nodded without a hint of expression. “That's affirmative,” she said to him. “We've got callback.”

It was as if he were a beach ball that had been overfilled with air to the point of bursting. His tremendous sigh of relief washed away the anxiety with a huge expulsion of air that was soon echoed by everyone in the seats around him. “Tell them to level out—they've got to get out of the climb—and get them back here as fast as possible.”

She went about the communication in that same flat-toned, monosyllabic southern drawl. Daggett turned around. Henderson's face had gone ash white.

“We found the other detonator,” Daggett said.

Henderson nodded. “I kinda guessed that.”

They met on that same beach on the Maryland shore where he had first spoken to her. It was early October, and the autumn winds had whipped the green sea into whitecaps, winds that warned of a storm from the south, and caused Lynn Greene to raise her collar in defense. She was scheduled to leave the following day, returning to Los Angeles, and this had seemed an appropriate place to both of them.

As they walked, arm in arm, working the very edge of the water, their shoe prints were occasionally swallowed and erased from the sand. Sandpipers, like the Secret Service, hurried ahead of them, staying just beyond reach. There was some freighter traffic in the big shipping lanes far out to sea, and Daggett couldn't help but wonder where each ship was headed and what adventures lay in store. There had been a time in his life when he had wanted to be a sea captain. There had been times in his life when he had wanted to be many different things, but he was what he was; and this was what he had come to tell her.

“Is it okay to say that I don't like it, but I understand?” she asked him.

“It ain't over till it's over,” he said.

“Then this will never be over,” she replied. “Will it?”

“No, I don't think so.”

“We should have made love that night. I've been kicking myself over that.”

“I think we did. I've never loved you as much. I know that. We gained new ground that night. You listened. It's a marvelous gift to be able to listen. Something I'm working on.”

“I
do
love you, you know.”

“Yes, I think I do know.”

She broke loose from him and chased the birds, and when she returned to stuff her arm into his, she had glassy eyes, and he wondered if it was the wind. “It gets so damned complicated.”

“It does.”

“But it seems so simple.”

“It is: I have to see this through to the end. It may come tomorrow, it may come in a year's time. It may be that she and I find a way through together, and I owe that to her to try. If it was you …”

“I know. I would want the same thing. You're right. I know you're right, but it hurts.”

“Yes, it does.”

She stopped him. There they were, standing in the exact spot he had been standing when she had so boldly challenged him to come inside.

She withdrew her hand from the pocket of her coat slowly, cautiously, until she had his attention. She spun her hand over, opened up her fingers, and there lay a key. “Just once,” she said, looking over at the cabin.

They made a mound of warmth on the bed out of all the blankets, their coats, and two large bath towels she found in the closet. They ended up tangled in the darkness of that cocoon, magically entwined in a perfume of their excitement, hearts pounding through their skin, fingers clenched into a single fist. The explosion of their contained love, was, as Daggett put it, “Something only an explosives expert could understand.” But she encouraged further investigation on his part, and so, in the language of their professions, they teased each other until her suggestion of “only once” was long past, and the orange autumnal sun lit the sky a shocking pink.

They were silent on their walk back to the car, although she giggled several times and followed this by squeezing his arm tightly. She finally said, “I suppose that may have to hold us a lifetime.”

“It had better,” he answered her. “I'm not sure I could live through that again.”

Six weeks later, Anthony Kort sat waiting in a chair at Dulles International Airport. Across from him sat Monique Cheysson. His hands, like hers, were handcuffed; a chain linked his wrists to his shackled ankles. It was first time he had seen her since that day at the airport. She looked worse for wear. They had had separate hearings. He had been told by a guard that she had been caught several days after the bombing, while trying to board a train bound for New York. He had no way of knowing if this was accurate.

His attorney had won him the right to wear civilian clothes instead of the humiliating orange jumpsuit that the federal prosecutor had requested. Monique was dressed in a blue denim dress. He'd seen enough of orange jumpsuits for a long, long time.

The extradition was to Germany, where he was to stand trial for the downing of 1023. His attorney believed that this had come about from a failure by the prosecutor to build a “winnable” case that might get Kort the death penalty. The Feds very badly wanted the death penalty. Now their hopes hung on Germany.

He was surrounded by FBI protection. He recognized one of them, a guy named Levin, who had acted as an assistant to Daggett through many of the interrogations. Today, Levin seemed to be running the show without Daggett. He appreciated the irony of FBI protection.

The reason for all the concern was that Michael Sharpe had escaped prison. A total of four members of
Der Grund
had been freed in a daring helicopter raid on a prison, leaving the European press to speculate that Sharpe and his organization were exceptionally well funded and well connected. There were rumors of a secret “Green Fund” operating out of the Swiss banks, and a cartel of former industrialists who had “gone green.” Only two weeks before the break,
60 Minutes
had run a segment on Sharpe's recruiting of criminals and his “crusade of terror.” Now his well-organized escape led the press to speculate that Sharpe knew the identity of some or all of the industrialists funding the organization and its operations, and that it had been these people who had freed him.

Recent headlines had focused on Kort, and hopes had been raised that his trial in Germany might bring out some of the missing facts, might widen the already growing international investigation. America loved a good headline.

This was why he wasn't surprised when, looking out at the plane being readied, he recognized the face of one of the food service personnel. His whole body twitched when he saw that face—it was one of Michael's henchmen. Michael had no intention of Kort telling them anything, that much was obvious. He looked over at Monique and he smiled thinly. She stared back at him without expression. He hoped they would sit them next to each other on the flight. He wanted to die alongside of her. With all he had been through, nothing should have surprised him. And yet sight of this man did.

“You all right?” one of his guards asked him.

Kort smiled widely. It had been months since he had felt such a thrill. “Couldn't be better,” he said.

Daggett sat nervously in the hospital waiting room.

Right about now, Kort's plane would be taking off.

He had his priorities set. He had told Pullman a flat no. Levin was handling this for him.

Just beyond a series of sealed doors, doctors were conducting the first exploratory surgery since Duncan had felt warmth in both his feet only ten days before. X rays confirmed that something—perhaps the fall from the bookshelf, two months earlier—had radically moved his third vertebra, and though the resulting progress could not be medically explained, there was a desire on the part of specialists to wire that vertebra in place before it slipped back again. If things looked okay in there, they would be doing that just about now.

She came down the hall toward him, and he stood to greet her. First they kissed, and then they hugged tightly. She had brought them Chinese take-out and she claimed she had not rigged the cookies, although he recognized the print of her typewriter and he doubted there ever had been a fortune that read
Your son will play baseball with you within the year
. It brought tears to his eyes and caused him to spill his coffee, which brought a moment of panic, but both were quickly mopped up.

His pager sounded at his belt. Daggett reached for it. But then he caught himself. Rather than read it, he switched it off and ignored it. Today was not a day for pagers, he reminded himself. That had been the whole point of telling Pullman no. He had not known such happiness in ages. He looked back upon the past few months, the past few years, and thought: I wouldn't do it any other way, even if given the chance. Where previously he had lived under the cloud of despair, now he felt the warm rays of hope. All was not perfect—it was not a perfect world—but given time …

Cameron Daggett, Chief of Police, Sun Valley, Idaho

Seattle: Dr. Christian Harris, Psychiatrist; Dr. Donald Reay, King County Medical Examiner, the Seattle Police Department; John E. Hope, Simulator Projects/Training, Boeing Commercial Airplane Group; Jerry Femling, Senior Manager, Security, The Boeing Company

Los Angeles: Detective Dennis Payne, Robbery/Homicide, Los Angeles Police Department; various anonymous members of the LAPD substation, Los Angeles International Airport

Washington, D.C.: David Dodge Thompson, National Gallery. FBI: (Washington Metropolitan Field Office) Thomas E. Duhadway, Special Agent in Charge; James E. Mull; (Hoover Building) Stephen D. Gladis; David W. Wade, Chief Telecommunications Services; J. Christopher Ronay, Chief Explosives Unit; I. Ray McElhaney, Jr.; Robert B. Davenport; Dr. Rose Anne Fedorko; and to the many other Special Agents who could not be named....

Thanks also to: Richard and Lynette Hart; Ollie Cossman; Louisa Jane Modisette; Jacques Bailhe; Franklin Heller; Ian Cumming; Darwin Ridd and Leucadia Film; Bruce Kaufman; Carolyn Johansen.

Office Management: Mary Peterson

Manuscript Preparation: Colleen Daly, Maida Spaulding

Special Thanks: Al Zuckerman, Writer's House; the Warden and Fellows of Wadham College, Oxford, England; the Fulbright Commission

NOTE:
A glossary of acronyms can be found on the final page.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual incidents, or persons living or dead is unintended and purely coincidental.

Some facts in this story (both in locale and of a technical nature) have been deliberately changed or altered for reasons of storytelling, or at the request of law enforcement or specific individuals who aided me in my research. Certain secrets remain intact, which is better for everyone. To the warm and generous people of Seattle, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., my advance apologies for any mistakes that could have been avoided.