Skyhammer (10 page)

Slusser rolled his chair up to the adjacent station, plugged in the headset, and fitted it on. The station was normally reserved
for the low-altitude portion of the sector, but, due to the weather, it was devoid of traffic this morning, and its frequency
would be more discrete. Using the trac ball mounted on the desktop beneath the monitor, he positioned the console’s cursor
on 555’s blip. Then he typed a sequence into the computer. In a moment, a series of numbers blinked into view on the screen,
adjacent to 555’s basic data display. Two hundred and three minutes to destination, the computer estimated. Three hours and
twenty-three minutes.

“Okay,” Nordstrom said, “he’s on twenty-one twenty-five.”

Slusser keyed his mike. “New World Five-five-five, Kansas City. How do you read?”

The response was immediate. “Triple Nickel’s got you five-by, K.C.”

No code word in that. Straight pilot-ese. The voice was almost a baritone, had a little bit of some accent, but Slusser couldn’t
tell what. Sounded strangely relaxed now, though. Drugged? No, he didn’t think so—nothing more than a mild tranquilizer maybe.

“Five-five-five, this is Jim Slusser again,” he transmitted. “Could you give me your name again?”

Slusser’s earphones crackled. “Emil ... Pate. You need that spelled?” He spelled it without waiting for Slusser to answer.

Slusser had already pulled a pen and notepad from his shirt pocket. He flopped the pad open on the console’s narrow desk and
jotted down the name. Still no code words.

“Could you tell me some more about what’s going on here, Mr. Pate? You’re saying you’re a scheduled crewmember on this flight?”

“That’s affirmative. And there’s no one up here with a gun to my head, K.C. I’m on my own, so why don’t you just go ahead
and call Washington like you’re supposed to.”

Slusser ran his finger along the crease of his double chin, wondering how he’d report it. On his pad he wrote “weapon,” underlining
it. “I need to follow through on some items, Mr. Pate,” he transmitted. “As I understand it, sir, you said the captain’s no
longer in command. Is that correct?”

“Correct.”

“Where is the captain, sir?”

Slusser waited, his pen poised above the pad. He glanced at Nordstrom. He was trying to concentrate on his own screen while
also doing his best to listen in. Their eyes met briefly.

“That’s not important,” came the response. “Same for all the other crap you’re supposed to find out. So let’s get on with
this, pardner. Get Washington on the line.”

Slusser nodded, made a question mark on the pad beside “weapon.”

“Stand by, Mr. Pate,” he transmitted. Then he leaned back in the chair. He had to think. This man was either exactly who he
claimed to be or else someone doing a damn good job posing as the first officer. Although in the end it didn’t matter a whole
lot which of them he was. Either way, they were dealing with someone who knew the situation and the FAA procedures as well
as they did. A pilot, or a former pilot, then. One who’d gone over the edge, clearly. But not so far over the edge he had
no reasons for what he wanted to do. And, therefore, he could be
reasoned
with. And there was time, if he truly meant to go on to Phoenix. Slusser knew he should try to establish motive, regardless
of the hijacker’s impatience. He ran his finger into the crease again, then keyed his mike.

“Mr. Pate Jim Slusser again. Let me just review this one more time. As we understand it, you plan to take the aircraft on
to Phoenix? And then you intend to crash it, is that correct, sir?”

“I’ve told you,” Pate answered. “Get Washington on the line.”

Slusser breathed in and let it out. “Okay, sir. Roger. But I’ve got my job to do. Could you just give me some idea of why
you’re doing this?”

For several seconds there was no response. Then Slusser’s headset hissed. “I can tell you why in two words,” Pate said. “Jack
Farraday.”

Slusser had been ready to write it down, but the pen hovered. He had an impulse to ask for an explanation even though Emil
Pate knew he didn’t need it. Anyone in the business could understand the motive. Jack Farraday had hurt a lot of people, hurt
them badly. Slusser sighed as a sense of inevitability pushed aside his amazement. Somehow it was no surprise someone was
finally taking revenge. It was time to call Washington.

He keyed his mike. “Okay, Mr. Pate. I’m calling D.C. Please stand by this frequency.”

He waited a second for a response. When none came he slipped the headset off and rolled the chair back and stood up. “Bill,”
he told Nordstrom, “I’m pulling the handle on this one. Take over here and stick with this guy into the next sectors. Follow
him from station to station. Try to keep him on the low-sector frequencies. Let’s hope not too many other flights overheard
any of this before we switched him.”

At his desk Slusser picked up the phone and punched a button that opened the hotline direct to the Federal Aviation Agency
headquarters in Washington, D.C.

National Aerospace Management Facility (NAMFAC)

Control Room

Federal Aviation Agency Headquarters

Washington, D.C.

17:29 GMT/12:29 EST

For a mid-November Saturday, NAMFAC was busier than usual. All morning the northeast section had caused headaches. Two storm
systems had rubbed shoulders over Quebec and shoved a rapid cold front down along the seaboard. Some of the section’s airports
had reported microbursts and driving sleet; others complained of heavy fog. Delays had started with the red-eyes into Boston.
Those had backed up the early flights coming into La Guardia and Kennedy from all the major hubs to the south and west.

Fortunately, the storm system had begun to clear out as rapidly as it had developed, and the section’s controllers had managed
the overloads. But now the moderate storm brewing in the Ohio Valley was about to go big time. Already it was stalling traffic
to Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

Otis Searing, the traffic management supervisor for the day, scanned the depictions on the twenty-inch monitors, and then
picked up the printouts. He sat against the edge of the U-shaped command desk and leaned to pluck another Kleenex from the
box he’d brought from home. Head colds had never bothered him, not until he’d moved north from Georgia. But since then he
seemed to get at least one doozy every fall and then another in the early spring. This one had been with him almost a week
and he was tired of it, tired of the Washington chill. He missed the hot, sultry Georgia air—even though he thought he never
would. That, the food, and, as always, the companionship of his own people. Although Searing had lived for twelve years in
the north, he still considered himself a southern black. Only his accent, his health, and maybe his world view had changed;
inside was the Augusta hometown boy—the son of a Camp Lejeune drill sergeant. Whenever he went home he felt like a fish tossed
back into its own pond again. He reverted instantly to the soft Georgian drawl of his kinfolk and complained about the north,
and thought about retirement.

But the truth was, Searing loved his job. And he was proud of the fact he was the first African-American to have become one
of the six supervisors sharing the responsibility of running the NAMFAC control room—“Flow Control” as those who worked there
called it. Flow Control was the brain of the whole FAA system. Flow Control kept the entire nation’s air traffic moving smoothly.
It was the spout end of a big funnel of channeled information—a funnel called the Enhanced Traffic Management System. Raw
data flowed in from twenty air route traffic control centers, or ARTCC’s to be refined and collated by the Department of Transportation’s
analysis center in Cambridge. The information was then relayed electronically to the control room, on the sixth floor of the
FAA’s big white-marble complex on Independence Avenue. Kitty-corner from the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum. In the two
decades since deregulation the system had come a long way. Now, instead of canned databases and hypothetical scenarios, NAM-FAC’s
powerful new computers analyzed live flight data and up-to-the-minute weather information. At a keystroke, any one of a number
of displays could be made available to the controllers—from a depiction of virtually every aircraft in the sky over the U.S.
to an analysis of a single target in the traffic pattern at a specific airport. Although the facility could now be managed
by just a dozen controllers, it was easily three times more efficient.

And these days they needed all the efficiency they could get. The job wasn’t getting any easier, Searing thought as he crossed
to the center of the control room to recheck the depictions on Pittsburgh and Philly.

This was the part of the job he enjoyed, though, watching the traffic symbols proliferate and converge, studying the patterns
that developed. To manage a score of aircraft simultaneously converging on a single point was essentially like running a football
through tacklers. In both cases, you had to see patterns developing, know when to make the right move, and where to make it.
Searing had played tailback for Georgia Tech in ’66 and ’67. He liked it when the situation got tense, which was why his teammates
had called him O.T.—for overtime—during his playing days at Tech. Now his staffers used the nickname when a situation became
critical.

Searing made his decision: They’d delay flights to both airports. He got another tissue, then crossed to the northeast section.

“Double whammy,” he said to one of the controllers. “Another hour on both.”

Blowing his nose again, he watched the controller enter the coded sequence that would instruct all controllers nationwide
to delay departure for up to one hour of all flights destined for the two cities. That would take care of it, Searing concluded.
The day was settling down to something more or less routine.

He was almost sorry it was. Now he would have to get to the side of the job he did not like—the paperwork. He’d been warned:
You work for the government, you push paper, and the higher you climbed, the more of it there was. A new mountain was piling
up consisting of progress report memos, evaluation updates, preliminary specifications, addenda, revision supplements, and
requests for more information. It was all part of the agency’s push to develop the next-generation traffic management system
by the year 2000. Searing was swamped. It wasn’t just any Saturday either. Clemson was playing Georgia Tech; they’d be kicking
off in less than an hour. All morning he had been concocting a scheme to smuggle a small TV from the trunk of his car into
the coffee room. The trick was to do it without anyone finding out he was the culprit. He was just beginning to think that
he’d have to let someone in on the plan—someone he could entrust with the dirty work, someone other than his assistant Ron
Quarry, who’d never learned to appreciate the importance of football—when Quarry called to him from the command desk.

“It’s Kansas City on the hotline, O.T.”

The facility’s overhead lighting, although not as dim as that in ARTCC centers, was rheostatted down to provide better resolution
on the monitors. Searing could see the red light on his hotline glowing brightly. He stepped back to the center U and leaned
across his station to pick up the handset.

“This is Otis Searing.”

“Jim Slusser, Mr. Searing. K.C. supervisor.” The voice on the other end contained a clear note of urgency. “I’m afraid we’ve
got a situation out here. A hijacking, technically.”

About to pluck another tissue from the box. Searing stopped dead. Nobody had informed him of any training session scheduled
for today. “This ain’t no drill, is it?”

“No, it’s real,” the man answered. “The first officer contacted us and said ...”

“Hold up.” Searing released the key on the handset. Real or not, major or minor incident, there was a set procedure to be
followed. “It’s a hijack,” he told Quarry quietly. “Real one. Get the checklists and put this on the speaker. I’m comin’ round.”

Searing’s adrenalin began to pump. Until recently FAA Security had handled hijackings, but government cost-cutting had finally
caught up with the agency, and more than a year ago procedures had changed. A new directive called for the Flow Control supervisor
to run the command center during such emergencies. Searing had been through a half dozen training sessions. There hadn’t been
a bona fide domestic hijacking in years, only threats, a few hoaxes. The center still scheduled exercises, but they hadn’t
actually conducted one in months.

Searing slid into his chair and took a pen from his shirt pocket. In a holder atop the counter between their desks, Quarry
had found a pad of hijacking checklists. He peeled one off for himself and handed the pad to Searing. By then Searing had
engaged the speaker and opened the telenet, which provided hotlines to all of the regional centers. It would also let him
connect one center to another, or connect approach and departure controllers to the DC center. He could also monitor communications
between any aircraft and center.

“You all ready?” Searing said.

Quarry nodded. He had pulled his chair over. Searing removed the handset from its cradle on the side of the module and keyed
its transmitter.

“All right, sir. Go ahead now.”

Jim Slusser spoke rapidly, his voice accompanied by short bursts of soft static. “It’s a New World flight, Five-five-five.
About forty-five minutes out of Cleveland, en route to Phoenix.” He paused a moment, then continued. “The situation is rather
... unique, I’d say, sir. The hijacker appears to be one of the pilots.”

Searing and Quarry had been busy filling in blanks on their checklists. Now they stopped and looked at each other. Searing
found the transmitter key.

“Give me that again. One of the pilots?”

“That’s affirmative, sir. The first officer, apparently. He claims the captain’s incapacitated, and he’s taken control.”

“Hold up now. He
said
he was hijacking it?”