“Are you trying to trick me?”
“No, sir!”
Of course he was. Peter leaned wearily toward the co-pilot. “If you continue in this vein, I’ll amputate your thumbs and big toes so that you’ll reel through the rest of your life like a drunken orangutan.” “I would never try to trick you, sir,” said the co-pilot, meaning it. “But there’s also a way through the aircraft’s radio to make a phone call, isn’t there?” “Yes, sir. I would just call UNICOM and ask for a land line. That’s a civilian service. They do it all the time and they have no monitoring policy.” “Good. Do that. Get on the telephone and get me the New York Times.” “I’ll call 411, sir,” he said as he got on the radio. Within several minutes, Peter had called the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post and the Wail Street Journal. Depending on the newspaper, he was either hung up on, met with scornful laughter or, at best, treated with polite curiosity. That is, until the Post pulled his name up on their computer and noted that he had been dead for two months. Then on the last call, there was a series of mysterious cracks and sizzles on the line and he hung up. “Somebody was just listening in. Did you tip them off?” “No, sir, I swear to God.”
He waited for something to happen, some bolt from the sky or a voice to come over the radio, but nothing came. After a while he calmed down and let Beatrice bring the promised coffee. Jittery as he was, he took another one himself. Oddly enough, the second cup seemed to steady him, and he resumed gazing out the window, like a tourist on his first flight to the Caribbean. At Cape Hatteras the coast changed direction, receding southwest. The Learjet struck out over open water, flying a little lower than a commercial jet. The view was much more striking than anything he ever experienced before. Enjoy it while you can, he thought-you may soon be leaving this great blue planet. His scientist’s eye noted the subtle differences in the ocean’s surface as they passed the edge of the Continental Shelf, saw the waters turn deeper blue and the bottom fall away to the abyss. They were passing over the Blake and Bahama Ridges, great undersea mountain ranges he knew were as high as the Rockies. It was pleasant to know such things, he reflected. Not all his learning had been in the service of destruction. Now he could see all the way across Florida into the Gulf of Mexico and, ahead, the islands of the Bahamas stretching out like the first pearls of some great necklace extending all the way to the end of the Caribbean itself. They were almost home.
Then he looked out the side window and nearly jumped out of his seat. He was staring at another human being. It was a pilot, no doubt scrambled from Homestead Air Force Base outside Miami, in a heavily armed F-15C Eagle fighter. The airplane couldn’t have been more than fifty feet away; Peter could see the pilot’s helmet with a jagged streak of lightning across it. In fact, he could almost read the name on his G-suit. The fighter itself bristled with rockets and guns. A flat Midwestern voice boomed over the radio. “Hello Learjet niner-four-eight-three-eight, do you read me?” Peter turned and put the knife to Anspaugh’s ribs. “Don’t make me do it.”
“What should I do, sir?”
“Ignore him,” said Peter.
Suddenly Anspaugh lost all his previous shyness. “Ignore an F-15? Sir, that’s the same as saying you’re a marauding aircraft. You know what he’s got on that thing? Twenty-millimeter Vulcan cannons, probably four AIM-7 Sparrows, four more Sidewinders. He can take us out in the blink of an eye.” “Can you outrun him?” said Peter, hoping the women were missing what he was seeing and wondering if Henderson had regained consciousness. “Outrun him? We make 540 knots tops-he does Mach 2.5 plus! He could knock us down just with his sonic boom!” “Then tell him who you are,” Peter ordered, “and say that every-thing’s all right.” Anspaugh gaped at him, convinced now that the man was insane. The radio voice crackled on again. “Lear niner-foureight-three-eight, please respond or be considered hostile.” The fighter was drifting closer, the pilot literally peering in their window. Peter waved. “Say hello,” he said through his teeth to Anspaugh. Anspaugh keyed the mike. “Learjet niner-four-eight-three-eight.” “Niner-four-eight-three-eight, say your destination.” “Destination Roosevelt Roads Naval Air Station, Vieques Island.” “Do you have a Dr. Peter Jance aboard?”
Anspaugh looked at Peter for help. “No,” Peter told him. “That is negative,” said Anspaugh.
There was some static while the pilot gave them another once-over. “Who is the gentleman sitting to your right in the cockpit?” Peter felt the sweat beading on his upper lip and hoped it didn’t read across forty feet of troposphere. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Beatrice moving up from the cabin, curious to see what was going on. He waved her back, keeping his hands low “Say I’m Colonel Oscar Henderson,” Peter said. “That would be Colonel Oscar Anderson,” said the terrified copilot. “Henderson,” said Peter.
“Henderson,” said Anspaugh.
More static. “I am being asked to speak directly to Colonel Henderson. Could you give him the mike, please?” The co-pilot looked at Peter, who breathed deeply and took the mike. “What the hell’s the meaning of this?” he demanded in the best Henderson growl he could summon. “You are dangerously close, cowboy! You want to cause a midair? Who’s your commanding officer?” “I am Colonel Howard Price, United States Air Force, and the commanding officer of this wing,” said the voice from the fighter. “These men are under my command.” What men? Peter thought. He leaned closer to Anspaugh’s window and looked up. His heart missed a beat. There were three more fighters flying in echelon above them. “Colonel Henderson, I have been instructed to request your mission code. Could you give that to me, please?” Mission code? Oh Jesus, thought Peter.
“We are Operation Fountain Society,” he bluffed. Static. Then: “And your mission code?”
Now Peter’s face was drenched with sweat. “It’s in my briefcase. I don’t have it with me here.” “I formally request you retrieve that from your briefcase, sir. I need to confirm the code.” His fear was so intense he could barely move without jerking like a marionette. He had once been invited to witness strafing practice on Vieques and he knew what these aircraft and their guns could do. Targets didn’t just get shot full of holes, they flew apart into redhot shrapnel and were unrecognizable afterward. “Stand by,” Peter said. He turned and looked helplessly at his wife. “What are you going to do?” she asked.
“He doesn’t know shit what to do,” an all-too-familiar voice boomed from the cabin. Christ, thought Peter.
It was Henderson, awake and laughing at them. Peter rose from his seat and started back. “It’s basic fail-safe procedure,” Henderson snarled. “You don’t have the code, you’re Swiss cheese.” Peter grabbed him by the lapels. “Then you’re going to give it to me.” “No, I’m not, and you know why?”
“Why?”
“Because you tie a lousy knot,” said Henderson matter-of-factly, lunging up, wrists bleeding and chafed, hands free. He threw Peter against the bulkhead with such brute force he was knocked senseless. Behind him, Elizabeth fumbled for the Beretta. “Put that down before you hurt yourself,” Henderson sneered, kicking backward without looking, catching Peter in the groin even as he tried to struggle up. Elizabeth fired.
She missed Henderson, but the window next to him cracked vertically and a jagged hole in its center emitted a horrendous screech of wind and decompression. Beatrice and Elizabeth clutched their ears as the atmospheric pressure plunged, shooting subzero air through the cabin at tremendous velocity Distracted by the agonizing sound, Elizabeth swung around, too late, as Henderson, bulling forward, twisted the pistol from her hand and knocked her sprawling. He wheeled, intending to level it at Peter, but the tilt of the plane, now climbing at a fearful angle, spilled Peter against the seats and sent Henderson reeling back against the shattered window. There he stuck, with a look of horror on his face. In the next instant his abdomen caved in, the window turned red and blew out altogether. Henderson’s body was sucked into it with monstrous force. His spine snapped loudly, the body folded double, jamming into the aperture even as his viscera ballooned into his trousers outside the windows. His eyes glistened a moment, then eerily withdrew into his skull. He was slowly imploding, but his body, for the time being at least, had effectively sealed the gap. “Take us down or we’ll blow!” screamed Peter at the co-pilot. He wheeled on Beatrice and Elizabeth. “Strap in!” The stall-warning horn blared as he clawed his way toward Anspaugh, who was struggling to level the plane while the radio crackled, the voice on the other end demanding to know what was going on. Peter flung himself back into his seat. A loud crunch echoed from the cabin. “He’s not going to stay in that window much longer!” Elizabeth yelled. “Then hang on!” Peter shouted, as Anspaugh shoved the stick forward in a dive. “Niner-four-eight-three-eight, respond, respond!” Peter swore and grabbed the mike. “Mayday, Mayday!” he called. “We are experiencing explosive decompression and are diving to lower altitude. Please advise as to nearest base. This is not an evasive action-repeat-this is not an evasive action!” The wind howled past the canopy, screaming through the cabin as the altimeter spun down like a mad, backward clock. Peter could see the fighters diving with them, flaps down. They leveled off at three thousand feet. Moments later, the remains of what had once been Oscar Henderson shook loose from the Learjet’s window and fell like a spinning husk toward the sea below. Then the radio crackled again. “Niner-four-eight-three-eight?” Peter’s hands shook convulsively as he picked up the mike. “Ninerfour-eight-three-eight.” “Confirm that was a fatality.”