Fly Paper

11

Like all airport restaurants, this one was lousy. The $2 hamburger was cold, the potato chips stale, the Coke flat and mostly ice. Jon looked out the window. The sky was overcast. Right in front of him, some men in coveralls were stuffing the belly of a 727 with luggage; behind them stretched an endless concrete sea of runway, planes taxiing around as if wandering aimlessly. It was a gray day. Jon’s was a gray mood.

The Detroit airport was a cold, monolithic assemblage that didn’t exactly cheer Jon up, its overall design a vaguely modernistic absence of personality, heavy on dreary, neutral-color stone, and its infinite intersecting halls converging on a toweringly high-ceilinged lobby in what might have been intended as a tribute to confusion. The only thing he liked about the place was that, compared to Chicago’s O’Hare, there were fewer people and, consequently, not as much frantic rushing around. But the less hectic pace didn’t do Jon any good, really; it only gave him time to reflect on things that were better left alone. It gave him time for a gray mood.

And he was tired. He’d been up all night practically, watching movies — not on the tube, but in a ballroom at the hotel, with hundreds of other voluntary insomniacs. The showing of old films (“from eight till dawn”) was a traditional part of a comic book convention, and when he got back to the hotel after the Comfort bloodbath, he figured he might as well enjoy himself, he wouldn’t be getting much sleep that night, anyway. Not after what happened.

He’d made a point of not sitting with anyone he knew and, despite the common interests he shared with those around him, avoided conversation, and struck up no new acquaintances among his fellow fans. His hope was that he’d lose himself in the flickering fantasy up on the screen, and so he sat watching, all but numb, leaning back in the uncomfortable steel folding chair and letting the Marx Brothers and Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon and any number of monster movies roll over him in a celluloid tide. Jon and the rest of the crowd followed the films through most of the night; the feature set for a 4:30 A.M. screening was worth staying for: the original 1933 King Kong, and Jon thought to himself, This is where I came in.

After that, the crowd had thinned, even the diehards throwing in the towel in the face of an especially dreadful Japanese monster epic, and Jon finally headed up to the room, where he grabbed a couple hours of restless sleep.

Only now was the shock beginning to subside.

Only now was he able to begin exploring the significance of what had happened last night. Last night, afterwards, he had tried to squeeze what had happened out of his mind, filling his head instead with the harmless, distracting images of old movies. Now, the next morning, Saturday, he sat by the window at the airport, watching the ground crew scurry around a Boeing 727, sipping his flat Coke and replaying the events of the night before on the movie screen of his mind. Jon remembered waking up after being struck by Billy Comfort with a pole of some kind, and remembered looking up at Billy and realizing that the pole was the handle of a pitchfork, a pitchfork Billy was a second away from jamming into Jon. He knew he should roll out of the way, but Billy’s foot was pressed down on his chest, holding him there, firm, for the pitchfork’s downstroke...

And then a shot, and another, and Jon had seen two thin streams of blood squirt from Billy’s chest, and Billy was knocked off his feet, allowing Jon to roll clear, which he did, the pitchfork sinking into the earth next to him. For a moment, both Jon and the pitchfork trembled. Meanwhile, Billy had flopped on his back and died.

Jon got to his knees, turned, and saw Nolan. They looked at each other, a look that had a lot in it.

Then Jon saw Sam Comfort, whom Nolan had evidently knocked down but not out, rearing his head above the high weeds that had hidden him from Jon’s vision, and Sam Comfort had a great big goddamn gun in his arms, a shotgun, and was lifting its twin barrels to fire them into Nolan, and Jon yelled, “Nolan! The old man!”

And instinctively Jon clawed for the .38, yanked the gun from its holster, and wrapped both hands around the stock and aimed and squeezed the trigger. Just as Nolan taught him.

The shot was an explosion that tore the night open.

And Sam Comfort.

Old Sam caught it in the chest, high in the chest, about where one of the bullets had struck his son, and fell over on his back, much as his son had.

Jon got to his feet, but didn’t go over to where Sam was. Nolan was already leaning down to examine the man.

Jon said, “Is he?...”

“Not yet,” Nolan said.

“What should we do?”

“We should get the hell out of here.”

“And... leave him... to bleed to death?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus, Nolan.”

“Listen, what is it you think we’re doing here? Playing tag-you’re-fucking-It? We’ve robbed these people, Jon, and killed them. Now what do you think we should do?”

“Get the hell out of here,” Jon said.

So now, having spent a shocked, pretty much sleepless night, Jon tried to begin facing up to the fact that he’d — damn it! — that he’d killed a man. Every time he admitted that to himself, every time the phrase killed a man ran through his mind, his stomach began to quiver, like that pitchfork in the ground.

Sure, the prospect had always been there, ever since he first teamed up with Nolan, on that bank job. And yes, there’d been blood before; people around them had died, violently — his uncle Planner for one. Bloody brush fires like that could spring up around a man like Nolan at just about any time. But reacting to such brush fires was one thing, and starting them something else again. Nolan had introduced Jon to a world of potential violence, but together they, had never initiated violence. Never before, anyway. This time — pitchfork or no pitchfork, shotgun or no shotgun — this time, Jon and Nolan had invaded someone else’s home territory, had initiated violence, and people had died. This they had known, these thoughts Jon and Nolan had shared in that look they exchanged after Billy’s death; a loss of innocence for Jon, for their relationship, that they could recognize even through the smoke and nylon masks.

That the Comforts were perhaps bad people, evil people, was weak justification at best, rationalization of the most half-assed sort, and made Jon wonder just how he and Nolan were any different from Sam and Billy Comfort.

It all came down to this: Jon had killed a man.

And it made him sick to think it.

“Sorry I took so long,” Nolan said, sitting down across from Jon at the window table. He took a bite of his sandwich, a hamburger identical to Jon’s. “Damn thing’s cold. Was I gone that long?”

“It was cold when they brought it.”

“Goddamn airports. I told you we should’ve just grabbed a hot dog at one of those stand-up lunch counters.”

“I hate those things, Nolan. Standing at those lousy little tables, getting your elbow in somebody’s relish...”

“Yeah, but the food’s hot, isn’t it? And not so goddamn expensive.”

Jon had to smile at Nolan’s consistently penny-pinching attitude. Here they’d picked up, what? Over $200,000 from the Comforts’ strongbox last night, and the man is worried about nickels and dimes. Jon could figure why Nolan had taken so long in the can, too: he’d waited till the non-pay toilet was vacant.

Nolan noticed Jon’s smile, weak as it was, and said, “You feeling better, kid?”

“I’m feeling all right.”

They really hadn’t talked about it yet, but it was there.

“You can’t let this get you down.”

“Nolan, I’m all right. Really.”

“I believe you.”

They were silent for a while, each nibbling at his cold, lousy hamburger as if it were a penance.

Jon glanced around to make sure a waitress wasn’t handy to overhear, then said, “Are you sure the money’s going to be okay?”

“Sure.”

“What about the...” Jon gestured, meaning the two guns, which along with the money were in one of Nolan’s suitcases.

“Don’t worry,” Nolan said. “The baggage goes through unopened, I told you.”

“Don’t they have an X-ray thing they can run the baggage through?”

“That’s just for carry-on luggage. Shut up. Eat.”

Neither one of them finished their hamburgers. Nolan left no tip. When Nolan wasn’t looking, Jon left fifty cents. After all, the waitress wasn’t necessarily to blame for the hamburgers being cold.

Fifteen minutes later, boarding passes in hand, they were standing in line while a pair of female security guards, armed, took all carry-on luggage, right down to the ladies’ hand bags, and passed it through the massive X-ray scanner. Ahead of them in line a few paces was a college-age kid with curly brown hair, similar to Jon’s, wearing jeans and a green corduroy shirt tucked in over a premature paunch, carrying a Radio Shack sack.

“Hey, Nolan,” Jon whispered.

“What.”

“That kid up there.”

The kid was presently handing the Radio Shack sack to the security guards and being checked through with no trouble.

“What about him?”

“Isn’t that a wig he’s wearing? Take a look. That isn’t his hair, is it?”

“Maybe not,” Nolan admitted. “So what?”

“Well, it just seems strange to me, a young guy like that, wearing a wig.”

Nolan shrugged.

So Jon shrugged it off, too; maybe the kid was prematurely bald or something. Like the paunch. Weird, though — young guy with no fat on him elsewhere, no hint of a double-chin, and here he has a gut on him.

Jon stepped up and smiled at the two security guards, both of whom were pretty and blonde, and allowed his brown briefcase to be slid into the X-ray. Then he and Nolan stepped through the doorlike framework that was the metal detector. On the other side Jon picked up his briefcase of comics, wondering offhand if X-rays had a negative effect on pulp paper.

They climbed the covered umbilical ramp to the plane, boarded, and were met by the flight attendant Nolan had met at the hotel. She was a knockout brunette who, for some reason, looked vaguely familiar to Jon. She gave him a brief, similar where-have-I-seen-you-before look, and then she and Nolan traded longer looks of a different sort, Nolan saying, “Morning, Hazel.”

“Good morning, Mr. Ryan,” she said, and she and Nolan made eyes for a second. It was damn near embarrassing.

They passed through the forward, first-class compartment and past the central galley, where the fourth and final flight attendant (a dishwater blonde not quite as attractive as the others) was already fussing with filling plastic cups with ice. They continued on into the tourist cabin, where they took the very last seats in the rear of the plane, near the tail. Only a few people were on board as yet, but Jon and Nolan had been toward the front of the metal-detector line, and the plane was going to be close to capacity.

Jon was having problems with the briefcase: it was so jammed full of comics and stuff, he hadn’t been able to get it shut again, since the security guard checked it. He was struggling with it in his seat, and it got away from him and flopped out into the aisle, in the path of another passenger.

It was the kid in the wig, still lugging his Radio Shack sack.

The contents of Jon’s case were scattered in the aisle, and Jon and the guy in the wig bent over and began picking the books up.

“I’ve got some of these,” the guy said, holding up a Buck Rogers Big Little Book. He had a soft voice, or at least was speaking in a soft voice. He seemed almost shy.

“Really? You a collector, too?”

“No. I read them as a kid.”

“You don’t look that old.”

“They were my older brother’s.”

“Oh. Well, thanks for the help.”

“Hope I didn’t damage them or anything.”

“Never mind. My stupid fault.”

The guy in the wig smiled a little — a very little — and went on toward the rest rooms in back of Jon and Nolan’s seat. He stepped inside the first one.

“Must be nervous,” Jon said. “Plane isn’t even off the ground and he’s going to the can already.”

Nolan hadn’t been paying much attention. “Maybe it’s his first flight,” he said.

12

Nolan looked out the double-paned window as the Detroit airport flowed by, the plane beginning to make its move down the taxiway. Above him, the little air vent was blowing its stale, recycled air down into his face and, as he looked up to turn it away from him, he noticed the FASTEN SEATBELTS and NO SMOKING signs flash on in red letters, and he buckled up. About that time, Hazel’s voice came over the tinny intercom and reminded anyone who hadn’t yet complied with those two requests that now was the time.

He didn’t really like planes that much, didn’t care for flying. He didn’t feel in control on a plane and preferred traveling by car, where he himself could be behind the wheel. Years ago, he had traveled by train fairly often, but train service in this country had gone to hell, and buses were a pain in the ass and slower than walking. So he was adjusting, finally, to the jet age, despite his firm belief that if God had wanted men to fly, he’d have given them parachutes.

They had the three-abreast seat to themselves, though the unused third was presently being taken up by the briefcase of comic book crap that Jon had lugged aboard. Right now, the cabin pressure was making its abrupt increase, and Jon was making faces, swallowing as he popped his ears. Nolan did the same, with less facial contortion.

Hazel’s voice came on the intercom again, while two of the other flight attendants stood, one at the front of the tourist compartment and the other halfway down the aisle, going through the oxygen-mask-and-emergency-exit ballet to the accompaniment of Hazel’s narration. When that was over, one of the flight attendants came walking down, checking to see if all smokes were out and seat belts fastened, and when she came to Jon and Nolan, she asked Jon to please put his briefcase under the seat in front of him. Jon explained that it wouldn’t fit under there, and she took it away from him, paying no heed to his protests, and put it in a closet compartment opposite the rest rooms that were right behind them.

For a while, Jon sat there, looking like a kid whose favorite toy got taken away. Then he said, “Nolan.”

“What.”

“Get a load of that.”

The kid who’d collided with Jon’s briefcase of comic books a few minutes before, the same kid Jon had noticed was wearing a wig, had come out of the john from behind them and was now heading back up the aisle.

“Get a load of what, Jon?”

“That kid in the green shirt.”

“What about him?”

“That isn’t his stomach.”

“What?”

“He’s got something under his shirt.”

“No kidding.”

“No, really, Nolan, something bugs me about that guy. Why’s he playing dress-up? Wearing that wig. Carrying something under his shirt.”

“Maybe it’s old comic books.”

“You can laugh if you want to, but that’s a weird kid, take it from me... and don’t say ‘takes one to know one.’”

“Would I say that?”

“You’d think it.”

“You got me there.”

The plane had stopped now, having reached the end of the taxiway, and out the window Nolan watched a DC-8 land, bouncing twice on its motionless tires, making blue smoke as rubber met concrete, and then settling down. The soft throb of the 727 jets began to build as the plane started to move, picking up speed fast, shoving Nolan and Jon back in their seats. The nose of the plane lifted, and they headed for the gray sky, Detroit slipping away rapidly under them.

The seat belt and no-smoking sign soon winked off, and Nolan loosened his seat belt but left it buckled. The captain’s voice came out of the intercom and went into the standard flying-at-assigned-altitude-and-estimated-time-of-arrival spiel. According to the captain, the overcast day would be turning into rain here and there up ahead, but he anticipated smooth flying nevertheless. Sure.

On the whole Nolan was pleased with the way things had worked out at the Comforts. Maybe pleased wasn’t the word — more like satisfied. The take had been over two hundred thousand (he hadn’t counted it, except for a fast shuffle through the strongbox of cash), and they’d got out with their asses intact, in spite of the foul-up. What more could he ask?

It was, of course, unfortunate that Jon had had to shoot a man; but something like that was bound to happen sooner or later, and the kid had been exposed to the rough side of the business before, so it wasn’t like he’d been a complete virgin. Last night, what had happened had left Jon silent and shocked, but today he was as talkative as ever, and seemed only slightly depressed. And sleepy. Nolan would bet his share of the take that the kid hadn’t slept more than a couple hours, at most.

If he had his way, it wouldn’t have happened. He’d sure as shit tried to plan around any overt violence. But what the hell, you can’t shelter a kid forever; if you do, he’s going to suffocate. He figured Jon would get over it. There’d be a scar, but Jon would get over it.

Yes, the kid would have a rocky conscience for a while, Nolan knew, but that was the way it should be. It wasn’t healthy to feel good about killing a man, even a man the likes of Sam Comfort. When killing gets easy, a man is less than human, in Nolan’s opinion, and a man who likes killing isn’t a man at all. Besides, it’s bad for business. Society and its law-enforcement agencies take a much dimmer view of killers than they do of thieves, possibly because most of society fits into that latter category, to one degree or another.

Anyway, it was over and done, and they were sitting pretty: pretty rich, and pretty lucky to be alive, and pretty sure nothing could fuck up at this late date. Nolan did feel a little bad about holding onto the two guns. Normally, he’d have got rid of them immediately, since they’d been fired on a job — especially when they’d been fired and killed somebody on a job — which these guns had. And he would get rid of them when he got back, after he had seen to it Jon and the two hundred thousand were returned safely to that antique shop in Iowa City. He would’ve asked Bernie for a fresh gun when he returned the Ford early that morning, but Bernie wasn’t there yet, so he’d decided to risk holding onto the .38s for a short while. But it was not good policy to do so, and it grated on him even now, thinking of those two guns down in the suitcase in the hold, nestled next to all that cash. Even Jon, over their mid-morning brunch (two bucks for a goddamn stinking cold hamburger!) had expressed concern about the guns, which had pleased him because it showed that Jon was getting more perceptive about things that counted, and irritated him because the kid had spotted a flaw in Nolan’s supposed perfection.

Hazel was coming down the aisle, looking very nice in the tailored flight attendant outfit, with its soft, light colors. She stood beside their seat, leaned down, and asked, “Can I get you gentlemen something to drink?”

“I thought you were working first class,” Nolan said.

“I was, but since you were riding tourist, I traded off with one of the other girls.”

“Can you do that?”

“If you’re senior flight attendant, you can.”

“Oh, you got rank, huh?”

“It’s called age. But it was kind of silly for me to do.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, this junket’s such a short hop, I’m not going to have much of a chance to do anything besides serve a few drinks and pick up the empty cups.”

“Yeah, but anything, just so you can be close to me, right?”

Hazel said to Jon, “I see why you need all three seats. One for you, one for him, and one for his ego.”

Jon said, “He’s just talking big so nobody notices he’s airsick. If he had his way, we’d be traveling by covered wagon.”

Hazel laughed, and Nolan did too, a little. Nolan ordered a Scotch and Jon a Coke, and let Hazel go.

“She’s a nice lady,” Jon said.

“Yeah. She lives in Chicago. One of those high-rises on the lake. Has lots of days off, she says. Maybe I’ll be able to get in and see her now and then.”

“Chicago isn’t much of a drive from the Tropical, is it?”

“An hour, if the traffic is bad. Only, I hope I won’t be at the Tropical much longer.”

“With half of last night’s take in your sock, you shouldn’t have to be.”

Nolan nodded, then said, “Say, kid.”

“What?”

“I, uh, never really, you know, thanked you for last night.”

“Thanked me?”

“Yes, goddammit. You did save my fucking ass, you know.”

“Well, you saved mine. So what?”

“Yeah. So what.”

They both sat back and tried to look gruff. Nolan was better at it than Jon.

“Hey, Nolan.”

“What”

“That kid. The one with the wig.”

“I don’t want to hear about it.”

“He’s headed up toward the front going up through the first-class compartment.”

Nolan had no comment.

“I don’t know, Nolan, something weird about him, I tell you. Something’s going on with that kid.”

“Aw, shut up. Go to sleep for half an hour, or go get one of your funny-books and read it or something.”

They sat in silence. Five minutes went by, and then the dull little bell sounded that signaled the intercom coming on.

The captain again.

“We’ll be having a little change in course this morning, ladies and gentlemen. We’ll be rerouting our plane directly to the Quad City Airport at Moline. Those of you who were headed there anyway shouldn’t mind this little detour as much as the others.”

The captain’s lame attempt at humor had the reverse of its intended effect: it was easy to see past his superficially light, joking tone and tell something was wrong, very wrong, and the murmur of passenger concern swept through the plane like a flash flood.

He continued, “Now, I don’t want anyone to panic. Everything is in control.” The captain hesitated. “But I feel you should be aware that we have a man with a bomb aboard... and he’s just chartered himself a plane.”

13

Like all flight attendants, Hazel knew she might one day be involved in a skyjacking, but she wasn’t overwhelmed with fear by the prospect. At one time she would have been: at one time she’d been deathly afraid of flying itself.

Fifteen years ago, when she’d first applied for a job with the airlines, she’d requested ground duty. Then, when she got into the program, she’d begun a gradual change of mind, even after that grueling week of intensive training under emergency conditions, in which she’d had to overcome some of her fears, anyway, just to live through the damn thing. The advantages a flight attendant had over girls on the ground were many, with fewer hours of work for the same amount of pay perhaps the biggest lure of all, and oh, those gorgeous travel possibilities! Factors like that had whittled away at her flying fears, and the statistics had helped, too. Knowing that a plane was safer than a car, for instance, if for no other reason than that the man behind the controls was a professional, not a sloppy amateur like most motorists. That if an engine went out, there were three more to take its place. That practically every little town in the world had some sort of air strip, so a landing spot was always close at hand.

Of course, there were accidents, and air accidents have few — if any — survivors. A flight attendant friend of hers (not a close friend, but more than an acquaintance) had been on a plane that was struck by lightning and went crashing to the ground, providing a fiery death for the friend and fifty-some other people aboard. Don’t think Hazel didn’t have a sleepless night or two over that.

But every profession had its risks, and for a woman, being a flight attendant was pleasant, even glamorous, no matter what Women’s Lib had to say about it. In fact, liberation of the sexes had only gone to show what a good job the flight attendant had: males had begun clamoring for the jobs, and many a tired businessman had recently had the disappointment of looking forward to a bouncy blonde stewardess and getting instead a brawny blonde steward.

Skyjacking was one risk, however, Hazel hadn’t had to consider fifteen years ago; during the first years of her career the term hadn’t even been coined. The hijacking of a commercial airliner was so infrequent that the industry, from board of directors down to flight attendants, thought of it as some bizarre, freak occurrence, an incomprehensible and frightening crime, but certainly no large-scale threat to air travel itself. The 1968 rash of hijackings — twenty-one in all — changed that attitude quickly enough, and skyjacking became a major worry in the minds of all airlines personnel. Hazel included.

She’d seen the public’s reaction turn from amusement and titillation to terror and rage. Early on, the skyjackings (usually to Cuba) seemed a free vacation of sorts; even Time magazine urged skyjacked passengers to “enjoy the experience,” and “make the most of your side trip by doing a little shopping,” telling them of the “magnificent” Cuban beach, and noting that “the food is excellent, too.” Was it any wonder she’d overheard a passenger wistfully wishing for a skyjacking experience to brighten the boredom of a business trip? She’d winced as one federal aviation official had gone so far as to announce that skyjacking “sure takes the blahs out of air travel.”

And then violence had changed the amusement to terror: a pilot shot in the stomach by a skyjacker angry because the ransom money delivered to him was short of what he’d asked; a black militant beating crew members about the head with a revolver, threatening passengers with similar abuse; a prisoner being transported by plane finding a discarded razor in the john and, holding that razor to a flight attendant’s throat, demanding his own Cuban “side trip”; and, of course, the chaotic violence of the Arab-Israeli airline war, the world witnessing the destruction of a $23 million aircraft, a Pan Am 747 melted to junk by exploding dynamite charges.

With a feeling of disappointment verging on despair, Hazel and other flight attendants had watched as the FAA tried desperately to find means of fighting skyjacking, most of those means proving ineffective at best, ludicrous at worst. A bulletproof shield protecting the pilot was one FAA official’s suggestion, as well as barring the cockpit door. Just how this would dissuade a skyjacker, who’d have plenty of unprotected hostages aboard to choose from, was not explained, unless Hazel and her sisters were to wear bulletproof bras and issue bulletproof shields to each passenger. The FAA then distributed to ticket-sales personnel a “psychological profile” of the “typical” skyjacker, but skyjackers seemed able to get past ticket counters without hassle despite the “profile,” which was general to the point of silliness, anyway, the most solid “fact” being that “the average skyjacker is a man between sixteen and thirty-five years of age.” The FAA’s next move was to create a system of armed guards for planes, in response to a request heard repeatedly from the public, and the Sky Marshal Program was the result. This particular concept terrified Hazel from the start: the idea of a shoot-out at 30,000 feet was enough to terrify anybody. The “unwritten directive” of the sky marshal was well-known among flight attendants: “If a skyjacker uses a flight attendant as a hostage, shoot the flight attendant to reach the skyjacker.” Swell. In actual practice, however, the sky marshals were little threat to either skyjackers or flight attendants. Typical of their ineffectiveness was the successful skyjacking of a jumbo jet to Cuba, though three sky marshals were present on the plane, as well as an FBI agent. The Sky Marshal Program was discontinued some time ago, but the recent rash of skyjackings by Cuban refugees and other social outcasts had prompted the FAA to reinstate it. This Hazel saw as more of a gesture than an anti-skyjack measure.

The only way to effectively deal with a skyjacker was to stop him before he got on a plane. She remembered when the first real step was taken: the search of carry-on luggage before passengers boarded the plane. Suddenly guns and knives were commonly found dumped in waste cans in airport johns. Then metal detectors came into use, and X-ray of carry-on luggage, and skyjacking again became an exception, not a rule. Still, skyjackings had been pulled off by men using “guns” that turned out to be plastic ball-point pens and combs; one skyjacker proclaimed himself a human bomb, while his “explosives” turned out to be rolls of candy mints stripped to his body. The most hair-raising of the boomerang effects caused by the use of metal detectors was the switch skyjackers had made to nonmetallic devices such as homemade bombs. Hazel shuddered at the thought of that. Though neither situation exactly appealed to her, she would much prefer facing a man with a gun than a man with some unstable, patchwork homemade explosive device.

And now she was doing just that.

A young man of perhaps twenty years of age was aboard with what appeared to be a pocket calculator in his hand — claiming he was prepared to blow up the plane if his demands were not met.

JoAnne, the youngest of the other three attendants on board, had come to Hazel with a look of stark panic in her eyes. Hazel was in the galley section, which was between the first-class and tourist cabins, getting drinks ready. JoAnne said, “He says he wants to talk to the head stewardess. That’s you, Hazel.”

“Who says what?”

“A kid. He says he’s got a bomb. He wants to talk to you.”

“All right. Now, JoAnne. Listen to me. Keep your head on. Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“Where is he? Up forward?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Are you all right, JoAnne?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. You stay right here. Don’t say a word to anybody. I see him up there. Green corduroy shirt and jeans? With a beer belly?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then. You stay here. You might finish getting these drinks ready for me.”

“Yes.”

He was just a boy, really. A kid. With damn freckles, yet. He was wearing mirror-type sunglasses, which she didn’t believe he’d been wearing when he came aboard, and he was wearing a wig. Why hadn’t she noticed that wig before? Damn.

“Are you the head stewardess?”

“I’m the senior flight attendant, yes.”

“Hazel?” he said, reading her name off the badge on her breast pocket. “Your name is Hazel?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Hazel, I have just now pressed some buttons that have armed a bomb that is on this plane, in my suitcase in the cargo hold of the plane. If my fingers touch this—” he indicated the black plastic calculator— “just so, the bomb will explode and all of us won’t be here anymore.”

“Do you want to see the captain?”

“Yes. You tell him to come out here.”

She entered the cockpit the greenish glow of the instrument panel brighter than the overcast sky out the forward windows.

Captain McIntire, a handsome gray-templed man in his early forties, a married man with two kids, and a confirmed letch who’d tried a hundred times to get in Hazel’s pants (unsuccessfully), turned in the left-hand seat and grinned wolfishly, saying, “How’s tricks, Hazel?”

Beside him, the copilot, Willis, suppressed a groan. He was a thin guy with a pockmarked complexion and short brown hair, in his late thirties. He hated McIntire, and it showed sometimes. Behind McIntire was the navigator, Reed, a balding, fleshy, middle-aged man with no discernible personality, as far as Hazel knew — an invisible man as gray as that sky out there.

Hazel did not play it cute. No, Captain, tricks are not good, she thought, and said, “We have a skyjacker aboard. He’s just outside the cockpit here.”

The three men traded expressions of disgust that masked fear.

McIntire cleared his throat, but his first words came out a squeak, anyway. “Send him in, damn it.”

“He wants you to come see him.”

Reed said, “Whoever heard of hijacking a plane out of Detroit?”

Willis said, “We did. Now.”

The captain turned over the controls to his co-pilot and rose from his seat. He wasn’t grinning anymore.

Hazel stood next to the captain while the boy told him about the bomb. He spoke in a voice that was soft and seemingly calm but had a faint tremor in it. Then he made his demands. He said, “Two hundred thousand dollars in cash. This is how I want it: ten thousand twenty-dollar bills. Radio ahead and have the cash delivered to the Quad City Airport at Mo-line. We will, naturally, fly directly to the Quad City Airport. Then we’ll fly somewhere else.”

The captain stood there for a moment, waiting.

Then the boy said, “That’s all I want. Go back and fly your plane. Tell your passengers the situation.”

Which the captain did.

The skyjacker asked Hazel, “I believe you’re working in the tourist-class section, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am.”

“My seat is in tourist. I’ll walk back with you.”

So now she was serving drinks, the skyjacker sitting among the chattering, fidgeting passengers like just another victim, giving no indication to anyone he was the villain of the piece.

But when she served Nolan his Scotch, he said, whispering, “It’s the kid in the wig, isn’t it?”

Surprised, Hazel nodded.

“What’s the airline’s policy in a skyjacking?”

“Do what the man says, what else?”

“How does the kid claim he’ll detonate his bomb?”

“He’s got a pocket calculator wired to do it, he says.”

Nolan thought a moment, then said, “I think he’s bluffing. I don’t think he has any bomb on board.”

“We have to assume otherwise,” Hazel said.

“You do,” Nolan said. “But I don’t.”

And a chill ran up her spine. For a moment, for reasons she didn’t wholly understand, she was afraid of her last-afternoon-and-night’s bed partner. For a moment this man calling himself Nolan — though he was flying under the name Ryan, for “business purposes,” he’d told her last night — frightened her far worse than the young skyjacker sitting a few feet away.

14

By the time the plane landed at the Quad City Airport, most of the passengers were smashed. Common practice during a skyjacking was for flight attendants to serve free drinks to anyone who wanted one, and that included just about everybody on board; the exceptions were sitting in front of Jon and Nolan: a trio of nuns, who looked like they could use a good, stiff drink, at that.

The booze had had its intended calming effect on the passengers, creating an atmosphere not nearly as tense as it might have been. Other factors had also helped lessen the tension, the main one being that the skyjacker had remained anonymous to his fellow travelers, and had not gone about waving a gun and shouting obscenities and generally reminding everybody they were sitting on a flying powder keg. Of course, the tension was there, underneath it all, and if the atmosphere was strangely like a party, it was a less than jolly affair — a going-away party, perhaps, or a bankrupt company’s last Christmas fling.

Even Jon had fallen prey to the free-flowing liquor; he wasn’t much for hard booze, but the role of skyjacking victim was upsetting enough to his nerves for him to gladly switch from Coke to Bourbon and Coke and its soothing, analgesic powers. Jon had downed only two of them so far, but he was feeling the glow. He and Nolan hadn’t spoken much since the news of the plane’s enforced change of destination, and now he glanced at Nolan and regarded his older friend’s expressionless, tightjawed demeanor. He figured Nolan’s stern countenance meant one of the following: either Nolan was pissed off, or was putting together a scheme of some sort, or both.

Anyway, Jon thought, something was wrong. Nolan hadn’t had anything to drink since that first Scotch, which he’d barely finished. That wasn’t like Nolan, turning down free drinks. Turning down free anything.

For some reason, Nolan was taking this skyjack thing very, very hard, and it puzzled Jon.

“Hey,” Jon said, whispering. “This’ll work out all right. What’s the harm? I mean, it got us home quicker, didn’t it?”

Nolan said nothing.

“I agree with you,” Jon continued, “about the kid in the wig. I don’t think he put a bomb on board, either. Or anyway, if he did, I don’t think he’s the type to set it off.”

Nolan was shaking his head now. He looked disappointed.

“Nolan, what’s wrong?”

They were speaking low anyway, because of the holy trio in the seat ahead, but now they lowered their voices to less than whispers, reading each other’s lips, really, a communication just this side of telepathy.

“Don’t you get it?” Nolan said. “Don’t you see it yet?”

“Get what? See what?”

“We’re screwed.”

“Huh?”

“Your pal in the wig, Jon. He’s screwed us. Shoved it in and broke it off.”

“What d’you mean? How are we worse off than anybody else on the plane?”

Nolan took Jon’s almost-empty glass of Bourbon and Coke away from him, set it on the floor, said, “You better stick to straight Coke in the future, kid. You aren’t thinking too clear.”

“I don’t...”

“Okay, Jon. We’re on a skyjacked plane. Now, what’s the best we can hope for? What’s the best thing that can happen in this particular situation?”

“Well, I suppose the best thing that could happen would be for somebody to take that supposedly rewired calculator away from the skyjacker. That would put the plane back in the hands of the good guys, right?”

“Okay. Then what.”

“Everybody rides off into the sunset, I guess. Except for the skyjacker. He goes straight to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred thousand dollars. Right?”

“Half right. The skyjacker isn’t the only one who goes straight to jail and doesn’t collect two hundred thousand dollars.”

“What?” The clouds began to lift inside Jon’s head. “Oh. Oh Jesus.”

“Yeah. Oh Jesus. Even if they could grab this guy before he’s done any damage, the ‘good guys,’ as you call them, would still have to assume there’s a bomb on the plane. Which means the bomb squad’ll be called in and...”

“They’ll fluoroscope all the luggage. Shit. Oh shit. And all our money? All our beautiful money?...”

“We’ll just have to forget it. Best we can hope for is to leave the airport fast as possible, before people start asking embarrassing questions. Hope to Christ they don’t trace the luggage to us. My phony name’ll lead them nowhere, that’s one good thing. You’re using your right name, but your luggage has nothing suspicious in it. I just hope nobody remembers we were traveling together. I hope Hazel’ll cover for us — a little, anyway. I hope a hell of a lot of things, frankly.”

“Jesus, Nolan. We can’t just let all that money go...”

“We have to. I been trying to figure a way to save it, but I can’t find one. That money isn’t the only thing in that damn suitcase, don’t forget.”

“I haven’t forgotten, Nolan. I wish I could, but I haven’t.”

The guns, Jon thought, the goddamn guns.

The two .38s they’d used at the Comforts’. The two .38s they’d used to kill the Comforts. Bad enough to have to try and explain two hundred grand in cash, but two hundred grand in cash and two revolvers, both of which might be traceable to a multiple killing and robbery...

Jon didn’t want to think about it.

“And,” Nolan was saying, “that’s what happens in the best of all possible worlds. The other possibilities are even more depressing. Such as, maybe there is a bomb on board, and the skyjacker gets rattled, and we all get blown to hell, in which case we won’t sweat the money. Or, the guy lets some of us off the plane and keeps some hostages, and then gets rattled, and our money gets blown up. Or the goddamn skyjacking is a success, and the guy gets away, and the bomb squad moves in to work on the plane and... well, it goes on like that. No matter how you figure it, Jon...”

“We’re screwed.”

Hazel was coming down the aisle. She stopped beside them and said, “Now that we’ve landed, he’s having me ask among the passengers for volunteers to be hostages. He’s going to keep ten people on the plane and let the rest go.”

“Then what?” Nolan said.

“He says he’ll let the hostages go when the ransom’s delivered. When we take off again, just the pilot and copilot and navigator and yours truly’ll be aboard. And the skyjacker, of course.”

“Has he made any more demands?”

“He wants two parachutes.”

“Why two?” Jon asked.

Nolan grinned. “Because he’s smart. He learned that trick from the best skyjacker of ’em all, of D. B. Cooper. Asking for more than one insures him that the chutes won’t be sabotaged.”

“Why?” Hazel wanted to know.

“Because with two parachutes, he might make somebody else jump along with him.”

Hazel still didn’t understand. “Certainly not the pilot or copilot or navigator,” she said.

Nolan nodded. “Certainly not.”

Hazel swallowed. “Let’s hope the powers that be don’t consider us flight attendants expendable.”

“Any other demands?”

“Just that we aren’t to reveal his identity to the other passengers. As you said, he’s smart. He figures the fewer people that get a good, long look at him, the better. This way, he’ll just blend into the crowd.”

Jon said, “I don’t know, he looks pretty obvious to me, with the wig and sunglasses and everything.”

“Not really,” Nolan said. “Most of the passengers on this plane are businessmen. They just figure him for some hippie kid or something; a fairly likely suspect, maybe, but not much more so than anybody else.”

“D. B. Cooper,” Hazel said, “was dressed like a businessman. Suit and tie, topcoat oxfords. Like most of the people around you.”

Nolan asked, “Has he told you where you’ll be flying yet?”

“No. Mexico, though, don’t you suppose? Parachute out into some flat area, where somebody’ll be waiting to pick him up?”

“Maybe.”

“I’m supposed to be asking for volunteers right now. But I’m not asking you. I don’t want you. Understand? We’ll have plenty of volunteer hostages, and I don’t want you two to be part of them. Especially you, Nolan or Ryan or whoever you are. I get the feeling you’re the hero type, and I don’t want you grandstand-playing me into getting blown to pieces.”

“I’m telling you, Hazel,” Nolan said, “that kid doesn’t have any damn bomb on board. Take it from me, I’m a judge of character if there ever was one. That kid just doesn’t have the balls for it.”

They’d been keeping their voices down anyway, but she leaned over and whispered, so as not to take any chance of ruffling the feathers of the nearby nuns, and said, “It doesn’t take balls to blow up a plane, dummy. Just a little dynamite.” And she headed back up the aisle, skirt flashing over those fine, long legs of hers.

“So what are we going to do, Nolan?”

“I’m glad Hazel gave us an out. A hostage is one thing we don’t want to be. We can’t afford to stay. Or you can’t, anyway. Now, soon as you get off this plane, you get your ass back to Iowa City, got me?”

“You got an idea, Nolan?”

“I might have.”

“What is it?”

“You just let me do the thinking, and do as I say.”

“Yeah, I know, I know, mine is not to reason why. You’re the mastermind and I’m the flunky.”

“Think of yourself as second in command, if it softens the blow.”

Thirty seconds later, the captain’s voice came over the intercom: He instructed all the passengers, except those who had volunteered to stay on board, to come forward and disembark. Everyone but the hostages began to rise from their seats, the businessmen straightening their ties, grabbing their briefcases; women fussing with their hair, tidying themselves in preparation for the photographers who’d be waiting out there; even the three nuns were smoothing out their habits. Everyone but the hostages, and the skyjacker of course, began to move forward.

Except Nolan.

Who slipped into the nearest of the two johns around the corner from their seat and, giving Jon a look that said, “Keep quiet and do as I told you,” sealed himself inside the cubicle.

And now Jon stood alone, at the rear of the aisle, everyone else trailing on up toward the front, excluding the handful staying behind; Jon began up the aisle, hesitantly, wondering what the hell to do.

He could almost identify with the skyjacker; they were about the same age, after all, and had both got in over their heads in daring, potentially violent endeavors in pursuit of riches. And Nolan stowing away like this meant one thing to Jon: the skyjacker was in for it. Nolan was going to do God-knows-what to that poor kid, and Jon didn’t know who to be more worried for, Nolan or that dumb-ass skyjacker.

And then a realization hit Jon, a short, hard jab that almost knocked him down: Nolan was wrong!

Nolan’s assumption that the skyjacker had not planted a bomb on the plane was clearly false. Otherwise, why would the skyjacker take the trouble to let the bulk of the passengers disembark here at the Quad Cities? The kid evidently had a conscience of sorts, and didn’t want to blow any more people to smithereens than he absolutely had to! The stupid fucking hypocrite.

Jon didn’t know what to do. Should he warn Nolan? Go back and tell him, explain the logic of it, pull him out of that damn can and fuck the money, just get the hell out of here? What good was Nolan going to do jumping the kid, anyway? Nolan! he screamed in his brain. There is a bomb on this goddamn plane!

But it was too late to go back. He was passing beside the seat where the young skyjacker was sitting calmly, just another brave volunteer hostage, as far as anyone could tell. A sudden rush of indignation ran through Jon. He wanted to grab that little shit by the shoulders and shake him till his wig fell off. What kind of fucking monster could do a thing like this? Didn’t the bastard have any respect for human life at all? How could the son of a bitch coldly plant a bomb on a plane and treat life and death like some casual goddamn thing?

Jon glared at the skyjacker as he passed him, but in the reflecting mirror-sunglasses, he saw only himself.

15

He looked out at the airport. It was a modest affair, two creamy-brown brick buildings joining a central tower, some hangars off to the side. You could set this airport down in the lobby at O’Hare and no one would notice. Its relative smallness was one reason he’d picked it. He’d chosen Detroit as takeoff point and the Quad Cities as ransom drop, partially because neither airport had been involved in a skyjacking before; the Quad City Airport was especially poorly equipped for such a contingency. He realized the money would probably have to be flown in from Chicago, but that was just a twenty-minute flight, and since he’d had the pilot call the demand ahead, the money could almost beat them there. Here at the Quad Cities, a skyjacking would be more than the local enforcement agencies could handle, and the people flown in on the spur of the moment from Chicago would be disoriented and, in teaming with local people, disorganized; by the time anyone was at all prepared to deal with him, he would be gone. But had he chosen O’Hare, for example, he’d have had to face a damn anti-skyjack task force.

He was more than aware of the harsh fate dealt out to others who’d engaged in this particular crime: there were so many instances of FBI snipers dropping skyjackers, he couldn’t keep them all straight in his mind, though one recent episode was vividly clear to him: a skyjacker had been cut in half, literally, by the close-range blast of an FBI agent’s shotgun. Consideration of such facts had led him to the choice of a relatively “small-town” airport, but even then, he knew that overconfidence was insanity. For that reason, he had sent the stewardess out to pick up the money. He was not about to stick his head outside the plane and get it blown off his shoulders by an FBI marksman.

He watched as the attractive brunette flight attendant walked out on the runway, per his instructions (the transfer of money was to be made in full sight of the plane, in broad daylight), while a heavyset, sour-faced probable FBI man in a brown suit, carrying an attaché case and two parachutes, walked out from the airport complex and met her. He handed her the case of money so reluctantly, you’d have thought it was his, then gave her the chutes and headed back. She returned to the plane. No apparent attempt at trickery.

He smiled, sat back in the seat.

The flight attendant, Hazel, brought him the attaché case.

“Sit across the aisle,” he told her, “and open the case.”

“You want me to open it?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, but it might be sabotaged. I might snap it open and release a gas or something. I have to be careful, you can understand that”

“Of course,” she said.

She sat across from him, opened the case.

There was no gas, no explosion.

There was, however, a lot of money. Rows and rows, stacks and stacks, of green packets, packets of cash still in their Chicago bank wrappers.

“Shall I count it?” she said.

“Please. There should be ten thousand twenty-dollar bills.”

It took a while.

“All there,” she said.

“Thank you. Close the case, please.”

She did, and handed it to him. He laid it on the seat beside him, next to the tape recorder.

She looked at him strangely. She was a very pretty woman; striking eyes, the color of her name. She looked something like Carol, as a matter of fact, only brunette instead of blonde. She said, in a surprisingly kind voice, “What’s a nice kid like you doing in a situation like this?”

When he’d researched other skyjackings, he’d found that his goal was different from most. Funny, too, because his would seem the most likely goal. But it wasn’t. Many skyjackers did it for glory; he wanted none of that. True, the adventure of it had been appealing to him, but the publicity meant nothing. He had no desire to become a folk hero, à la Rafael Minichiello or D. B. Cooper; and he certainly didn’t want to see his name in the papers! Some skyjacked out of death wish, suicidal tendency; if he had any of that, he didn’t know it. Much skyjacking was political protest and/or the seeking of political asylum, the skyjackings to Cuba being the most obvious example of that. But there was no political motivation to his skyjacking, although a disillusionment with the American Dream had had something to do with his transition from straight, conservative citizen to air pirate. But who was not a pirate, after all, when the Establishment reeked corruption, from the White House on down? And he’d seen how the great capitalist system worked, hadn’t he? The protestant work ethic he’d obeyed so religiously, only to be swindled and squeezed and screwed out of his savings and his youth and his ideals by those good capitalists at Dream-Land Realtors. Still, he was no protester; he cared nothing for politics. His was an admittedly selfish goal he shared with few skyjackers; D. B. Cooper and a handful of others, that was all.

So, when the stewardess asked him for his reason, he was almost anxious to clarify himself.

“I need the money,” he said.

And she smiled — couldn’t help herself — and nodded, almost sympathetically. “I know what you mean,” she said.

He wanted to tell her that he didn’t want to hurt her, but he knew it would sound silly, hypocritical to the point of absurdity. But he really didn’t. And he didn’t want to hurt himself, either, but if they forced him to, he knew he’d have to consign this plane and the pretty stewardess and himself and all his hopes and dreams to a fiery hell. The only consolation was, it would be over in an instant. Like turning off a TV. Press the button, and boom. No pain.

He told her, Hazel, to let the hostages off the plane, and she made the announcement over the intercom, as the hostages were scattered all about the plane, having remained in their own seats, at his request. He’d felt it best not to let them huddle together, as people in such situations often do; that type of thing could lead to an uprising or some other sort of half-assed heroism, which he could do without.

He was glad to see the hostages go. Relieved. He’d felt the same earlier, when he watched the other passengers leave. It was as if a great weight on him was gradually being lessened. Now, with just the crew and the single stewardess left aboard, he felt almost at ease. The pilot, copilot, and navigator — and the stewardess, too, for that matter, much as he liked her — were the equivalent of military personnel who had taken on a risk-prone job and were prepared, to some degree, anyway, to die in the line of duty. His conscience was taxed far less by their presence than by that of the passengers. Having the passengers around him had proved much more disturbing than he’d expected. The possibility of pressing some buttons on that specially wired calculator and destroying the plane and people on it had been just that: a possibility, a hopefully unlikely eventuality that Those-in-Authority might force him to, if they were foolish. The responsibility would not be his. But once on the plane, with faces all around him, lives all around him, his emotionless, laboratory theorizing blew up in his face like a misjudged experiment; his rationalizations strained at the seams, as the faceless ciphers of his game plan turned out to be flesh-and-blood human beings, people, not pawns. And this hand had trembled around the plastic case of the calculator.

Now, though, the passengers were gone, the last remainder of them trickling out at the stewardess’ guidance, and the hand around the calculator no longer trembled — even if its palm Was a trifle sweaty.

With the hostages safely off the plane, the stewardess came to him for further instructions. He told her to inform the captain to take off immediately.

And they did. The stewardess remained in the cockpit, and he strapped himself into his seat while the plane taxied down the runway and lifted its nose in the air. Once the plane had leveled out again, he unbuckled and, taking along only the calculator, left his seat and went forward and knocked on the cockpit door.

The stewardess answered, and he told her to tell the captain to come out and talk to him.

He didn’t want to go in there, in the cockpit. He didn’t want to be contained in that small area with those three probably very capable men. And he wanted to show them, the captain especially, that he, the skyjacker, was in command now; when he told the captain to come, the captain damn well better come.

The captain came.

And said, “What’s our destination?”

“I think we’ll be going to Mexico,” he said.

“We’ll need fuel for that.”

“I know. You can refuel at St. Louis.”

The captain nodded.

“I would like all of you,” he said, and he nodded toward the stewardess, “to remain in the cockpit throughout the rest of the flight. Understood?”

They indicated they understood.

“Captain, I want you to fly this plane at low altitude and low speed, from here on out.”

“How low?”

“Five thousand to six thousand feet, speed one hundred and twenty-five nauts. Fly a straight course to St. Louis. I know the terrain. I’ll know where we are. No stunt flying, please.”

“You intend to jump?” the captain asked. “I thought you said Mexico...”

“Maybe. That’s my concern. I think you can understand that it’s to my benefit to keep you, as well as the people you’ll be in constant contact with on the radio, in doubt as to exactly what my intentions are. By the way, you’ll notice very soon that the rear ramp exit is down. I’ll be lowering that ramp as soon as you return to the cockpit.”

The captain got a knowing look in his eye; what he knew was this: the ramp was ideal for use by a parachutist. Only 727s and DC-9s had such ramps.

“Do not assume, captain, that I’m going to jump immediately. Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. But I am aware that a warning light on your panel lights up when the ramp is lowered, so I am lowering the ramp now, so that you will not be able to pinpoint when or if I’ve jumped. If I haven’t knocked on the door by the time we approach St. Louis, you’ll know I’m gone.”

“Which airport in St. Louis?”

“It doesn’t matter. The FBI will be at whatever place I pick. Tell you what. Feel free to select the one you like best. You’re the captain, after all.”

The captain’s eyes tightened, while the stewardess seemed almost to enjoy the put-down, and when the captain returned to the cockpit, she remained in the doorway to say something to the skyjacker. What she said was, “It’s a little late to be saying this, but try not to do anything you’ll regret.”

He smiled. “It is a little late for that.”

“Well. Enjoy your money, anyway.”

“Thank you. I’ll do my best.”

She disappeared into the cockpit.

He went back to his seat and waited while the pilot brought the plane to a lower altitude; then he walked to the rear of the plane to let down the ramp. Seats the flight attendants used during takeoff were folded against the door, and above that was the handle, which he pushed all the way to the left, pulling the door in; just outside the door, on the left, was the stair release control, a little box with a lever in it, which he pushed outward. The ramp lowered. There was an immediate suction effect, which he’d anticipated, and he braced himself accordingly. The wind noise and jet roar were deafening, but there was no pressurization problem at this altitude. Ears aching, face whipped by gusting air flow, he smiled out at the ramp, the little mini-flight of stairs that would allow him to jump from the plane with ease.

He went back to his seat, where the attaché case of cash waited. He took off the wig, the sunglasses. He stripped off the green corduroy shirt; beneath it he wore a thin black cotton pullover, long-sleeved, and the single emergency chute, strapped to his stomach. He wasn’t about to use the two chutes he’d asked for. He knew they would be bugged; they would be hastily but well armed with homing devices that could lead the FBI and everybody right to him. He would wait a while, and, one at a time, throw those chutes out, to send the posse on a wild goose chase or two.

He settled back in the seat and, breathing easily for the first time in hours, began to relax. The project was going well. Flawlessly. Admittedly, it had been harder to execute than to plan — well, not harder, really, but more taxing emotionally. It was one thing to coolly plot, to engage in deliberated planning, to rehearse his lines in his head, and quite another thing to carry out all of that in a plane filled not with Xs on a diagram, but human beings.

And that was the element he couldn’t plan for, the human element, and it had worried him, both at home and on the plane. Blueprints were fine for building houses; diagrams were great for putting together electrical systems. But human beings weren’t as dependable as diodes, and he realized something could go haywire, despite his thorough engineering; he knew some human could throw a wrench in the works.

In fact, he had thought he’d spotted someone who might be just the person who would throw that wrench. Sitting next to that kid, that curly-haired guy with the Big Little Books and comics, was a rock-faced man with dark hair and mustache and narrow eyes that had an almost Oriental cast to them; he’d felt those eyes on him, boring into him, and had noticed the stewardess, Hazel, talking to the guy more than was perhaps natural. He’d almost decided the guy was a FBI man or sky marshal or something, but to his relief the guy hadn’t stayed around as a hostage, which would have been a good indication that he was a law enforcement agent of some kind who’d happened to be on the flight. He hadn’t banked on having someone like that aboard, and was glad to find his suspicions were groundless.

Some time passed, and he went back to the noisy aperture and tossed out the first of the parachutes.

He went back to his seat, the calculator still in hand but not so firmly now, and he sat and watched the land go by. He’d told the pilot to fly a straight course, not wanting to be overly specific about precisely what course he wanted (since that would alert everyone that he indeed did intend to jump soon) but knowing that if the pilot wasn’t pulling something, Highway 67 should be in constant sight. It was. It was important for Highway 67 to be within reasonable walking distance when he jumped, in order for Carol to pick him up as planned. He checked his watch; time was working out okay. All was running smooth, then.

A few minutes passed, and he went back to the ramp and threw out the second parachute.

He sat down again, looked out the doubled-paned window. Missouri was rolling by. Some of it was hilly, but most was relatively flat farmland, which was what he was after. Soon he should spot the landmark he was looking for and make his jump. He prepared himself, checked out the chute; got the C. B. out of the Radio Shack sack, which had been under the seat in front of him; he set it on his lap, atop the attaché case. He still had the calculator in hand, and hadn’t decided whether to take it along or not; probably wasn’t wise to leave anything behind he didn’t have to, but maybe there was some freak chance of the thing detonating the bomb on the plane, with the impact of his fall.

He watched out the window, the familiar landscape gliding by. And then he saw the landmark — and red barn whose slanting roof bore white letters advertising MIRACLE CAVERNS — and he got up. He clipped the C.B. onto his belt, tucked the attaché case under his arm.

Now was the time.

He walked down the aisle, toward the ramp at the rear of the plane; the opening beckoned him, a gateway to freedom, to a new start for Carol and him. And as he walked by the rest rooms, a hand reached out and clamped onto him by the wrist, shook the calculator from his hand. Then a fist crashed into his jaw, damn near breaking it, knocking him back on his butt.

His mind reeled: someone sneaked on the plane at Moline, he thought, damned FBI sneaked someone aboard!

Then he looked up and saw who it was.

That hard-faced S. O. B. with the mustache.

Who was now on the floor, in the aisle, scrambling after the calculator, which had flipped between some seats. The guy had a look of pain on that scowling face of his, from the mingled wind-noise and jet-screech coming from the open ramp door, a harsh, grating sound that was working on the guy’s eardrums.

The skyjacker was used to the sound, as the ramp door had been open some time now; but the guy with the mustache had been hidden away in the rest room, apparently, where the sound had been muffled. Which meant the guy was somewhat incapacitated, but the skyjacker was still hesitant about retaliation: the guy was big, and looked mean as hell, and was probably armed.

He knew he was close enough to that door to make a successful jump, no problem; he had the money. Why not go for it?

But the guy with the mustache had seen him, sans wig, sans sunglasses, sans any disguise; and would be able to report exactly where he’d jumped. Which meant one thing: the skyjacker would be caught.

He’d never considered the possibility of capture, really; he’d always thought it was either/or, heaven or hell — a bundle of money and make a new life, or no life at all. Now, with capture, he’d have prison to face; life imprisonment, perhaps, and the same for Carol...

In the three seconds it had taken the skyjacker to make these realizations, the guy with the mustache had retrieved the calculator from between the seats, though he was still on his hands and knees. He looked up with an expression of annoyance; he was a mean-looking S. O. B., all right, like an Indian with a grudge.

The skyjacker swung his attaché case and caught the guy on the chin, throwing him back, on his back, apparently unconscious. The skyjacker went to retrieve the calculator from the man’s hand — best not leave that behind...

But the guy reached out a big hand and grabbed him by the ankle, and yanked, and he fell on his ass in the aisle, hard, and the attaché case of money went skittering out of his hands, landing a few feet away from the open ramp door. With that suction effect, the case would get pulled outside in a second if he didn’t reach it first, and on his hands and knees he crawled after it, like a grossly oversize infant. He got his hands on the case, the suction of the open door tugging at the skin on his face, the wind slapping him, and he felt something come down hard on his back.

A foot.

And then the guy said something; he had to yell, scream it really, to get his voice above the jet roar and wind. He said, “If I let you up, will you behave?”

Now it was the skyjacker’s turn to yell. “Yes!”

“I shouldn’t,” the guy said, still screaming, “I should kick your goddamn ass out of this plane.”

But the pressure subsided; the foot went away.

He got to his feet and looked at the guy. He had expected the guy to be fuming, but he still seemed more annoyed than enraged. And another surprise: he had no gun, at least not in sight.

And that gave the skyjacker a burst of courage.

He knew he was close enough to that door to make a successful jump, no problem. He had the attaché case in his hands. Why turn the money over to this guy when there wasn’t even a gun pointed at him? Why give up now, after working so hard and coming so close?

He lurched forward, shoved a hand into the guy’s chest, pushing into him, knocking him off balance.

But it wasn’t enough.

The guy with the mustache lashed out with a fist as big as a softball, and the skyjacker tumbled back, head spinning, knocking against the edge of the open ramp door; then the suction got hold of him and he was gone, unconscious or damn near but somehow instinctively clutching the attaché case to him, falling down those steps into the gray sky.