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  “Yeah? Mine, too—but dogs don’t live as long as people. What kind?”

  And for about ten minutes the men bonded over childhood pets. Apparently this young man had had a pretty decent childhood, a mom, dad, brothers, sisters, and now he was clearly suffering from some mental illness that held him as much a victim as Nikki and Sam. Nikki found herself hoping no one would hurt him—but then she’d think about April and Jared and begin praying that this kid wouldn’t kill her.

  Her nerves were taut. She began to tremble slightly.

  “What’s taking them so long?” Michael asked.

  “They might be waiting for a new flight plan,” Sam suggested. “Captain Burgess, can you radio ATC and ask them if you need to file a new flight plan?”

  “You bet,” she said. “This is NCA 909, do you need a new flight plan from us?”

  “What’s your destination, 909?”

  “Oregon.”

  “Affirmative, we’ll need a new flight plan and we have current weather for you.”

  “Michael,” Sam said. “The captain usually files the flight plan. It should only take her about ten minutes. Okay?”

  “But what if she doesn’t come back?”

  “Why wouldn’t she come back? She said she’d take you to Oregon.”

  “Ohio!” he yelled.

  “Okay, good thing you corrected her now, before she filed the wrong flight plan. Captain? Hurry up on that, will you? I’m getting stiff waiting.”

  Good old Sam. He was one hundred percent. And how could he manage? When she thought of April and Jared, she imagined his dilemma—two daughters who had already lost a parent to a horrible aircraft disaster. “I’ll hurry. Ten minutes. Fifteen tops.”

  “I don’t know if I should let you—”

  “Don’t worry about it, Michael. You don’t really need two pilots to fly the plane. It’s just a safety precaution.”

  She moved very cautiously out of her seat and past the young man. It was a terrible moment, leaving Sam alone with him, but she had the sense that if this went well, it could lead to the end of this miserable ordeal. She glanced at her watch—it had been almost an hour and a half.

  She opened the cockpit door and stepped through, completely unprepared for what would happen next. The second she was clear of the door, she was taken down by two SWAT officers who had no idea who was exiting the cockpit. They flattened her to the floor of the plane between the flight attendant jump seats and the first-class galley. Her breath was knocked out of her with a whoosh, but lest she make any noise that might alert the gunman, a hand covered her mouth.

  Quickly and quietly she was lifted to her feet and hustled off the aircraft between the two officers. She had a chance to glance at the interior of the plane, now empty of passengers, and saw that SWAT members were scattered throughout, rifles trained on the closed cockpit door.

  Once she was down the jetway and in the deserted gate area, she viewed her plane from the windows—it was a surreal vision. Her beautiful NCA 757 was surrounded by armed SWAT officers. It was a sight she hoped to never see again in her life.

  When she got to Dispatch, she was hushed with a finger. Her cell phone remained open on the console of the cockpit and the dispatchers had somehow amplified the conversation. Sam and Michael were now talking about Sunday School teachers they’d had as children.

  Nikki was led to the break room in the Flight Control area by a SWAT commander. “We’ve got to get Sam out of there right away,” she said.

  “Do you think he’s in imminent danger?”

  “I think Michael is a couple of fries short of a Happy Meal. I’d hate to see him hurt—but I’d hate to see Sam hurt even more.”

  “We got it. We need your uniform.”

  A woman stepped into the break room. She was wearing jeans, a T-shirt and a bullet-proof vest. She shook a short wig in her hand, then pulled it over her blond hair. Soft reddish gold curls framed her face.

  “Wow,” Nikki said. “Amazing.”

  “Close enough, anyway. Let us change, Charlie,” she said to the guy. She was already unzipping her jeans. “Then Captain Burgess can call her family.”

  Nikki was quickly left alone with the female officer, who kindly handed her a clean police sweatsuit. “The condition of this uniform is…” Nikki began.

  “Don’t worry about it,” the officer said.

  “Damp. Really damp.”

  “I bet it was a little scary out there.”

  “Yes and no. I’d call him unpredictable and off his bean, but certainly not malicious or vindictive.”

  “That’s good to know. I heard you talking him down. You did a great job.”

  “If you scare him, he might shoot you. Or Sam.”

  “I’m not going to scare him. I’m going to go into the cockpit,” she said, buttoning Nikki’s shirt. “And I’m going to disarm him quickly. And I’m going to have tons of help backing me up.” She fanned the shirt a little, grinned and said, “This isn’t too bad, Captain. You’re my hero.”

  Nikki handed over the pants. “Get my copilot out of there before I have a heart attack.”

  “Michael has been identified as a young man with mental problems who is currently off his meds. His father is waiting with the police. We’re looking to get everyone out without injury.”

  The woman pulled the pants on, then the boots, and adjusted the gun she wore around her ankle. Once she’d shrugged into the jacket and put the hat on her head, she squeezed Nikki’s upper arm firmly. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

  “Hey. I don’t even know your name.”

  “My name’s April Carberreri.”

  “April,” she replied. “My daughter is April.”

  Officer Carberreri grinned. “No kidding? Cool.”

  “Yeah,” Nikki said weakly. The officer took off at a sprint. “And for the first time in my life I am relieved that April wouldn’t be caught dead in anything as ghastly as a uniform.”

  The hijacking lasted only another fifteen minutes, but the national news managed to milk it for days. Officer Carberreri knocked on the cockpit door, coughed a couple of times, then said with an altered voice, “Got that flight plan filed, Sam.” It was Sam who opened the door for her, which made life easy. She shoved him behind it, entered with her head down and slammed Michael’s hand with the gun sharply to the right, banging it against the wall. The gun fell to the floor, and with a very slight struggle, Michael was taken into custody.

  The man in custody was removed from the plane by way of the air stairs. More than one reporter with a telescopic lens managed to get a shot of a man in SWAT gear on one side of the cuffed suspect, a woman in a pilot’s uniform on the other side, a couple of SWAT guys behind him, and sailing past them in a sweatsuit was Captain Nikki Burgess, who jumped into the arms of the copilot.

  So much for discretion.

  Nineteen

  After almost two hours of nerves stretched tighter than drums, the attempted hijacking of a New Century 757 was over. Aside from the flight attendants and ramp personnel who were on the scene when it all happened, Joe Riordan was the only airline employee allowed to stay while the police debriefed the crews. There would be more debriefings with the FAA and NTSB later, but the interviews immediately following the incident were very important. So there were Jewel and Dixie, sitting at the airport waiting, almost limp with the exhaustion of wondering what was going to happen.

  Slowly, passengers began to return to the ticket counters and concourse. Even though the threat had been isolated and was not conspiracy or terror related, the presence of police and National Guard seemed to be greatly increased.

  “I could give you a lift to the office and come back for Joe,” Jewel offered.

  “Or I could buy you a drink if the bar isn’t too crowded, and we could watch this whole clambake on CNN,” Dixie suggested.

  “Perfect!” Jewel said. “I need a drink!”

  “Now, there’s a first,” Dixie said.

  “What do y
ou mean by that?” Jewel asked as they walked toward the nearest bar.

  “You’re a little…Well, if you don’t mind me saying so, you might be a little on the rigid, perfectionist side. It’d do my heart good to get you just a bit sloppy.”

  “Ah, payback for putting Shanna in your car?” Jewel asked with a smile.

  “Putting her in my car doesn’t need no payin’ back, Jewel, darlin’. But what she did in there is gonna take you some big-time payin’ back.”

  Jewel laughed, and it almost shook Dixie out of her snakeskin pumps. “Well, where you been hiding that, girl?” Dixie demanded.

  She let it go again. And her eyes sparkled wickedly, as if she’d been dying to laugh real hard for a long time now.

  “Let’s get some liquor in you,” Dixie said. “I think you’re coming unhinged on me.”

  They passed two overcrowded bars and kept walking down to the far end of the airport, where several nonscheduled carriers made a couple of flights a day. There was a sports bar, and though hardly vacant on this of all nights, at least the two women could find a booth from which they could see the TV.

  Jewel, throwing caution to the wind, ordered a dirty martini. Dixie followed with a Crown Royal on the rocks. They toasted the crew of 909, clinked glasses and watched the denouement of the hijacking about three times in a row. By the time they’d seen Nikki run into Sam’s arms three times and their drinks were more than half gone, they were starting to feel pretty good.

  “I’ve always taken a shine to you, Jewel,” Dixie said.

  “Bull. You hated me, admit it.”

  “I never did. I hated Shanna, but I now only feel very sorry for her. Looking at her was like looking in an old mirror. But you? I always liked your style. The way you never let anyone know if you’re really sleeping with the boss.”

  Jewel let that wild laugh go again and Dixie started to think maybe it had been a good thing that she’d kept it under wraps this long. But she still didn’t tell.

  “What makes you think it’s sex?” Jewel asked, lifting one eyebrow. “Maybe he’s hooked on me because I’m the smartest woman who’s ever run his office. And when he’s away, his company.”

  “I wouldn’t doubt that,” Dixie admitted.

  “Tell me about that one,” Jewel said, pointing to the television screen as Nikki, for about the fifth time, ran into the arms of her first officer while her look-alike dragged away the cuffed perpetrator.

  “Nikki? Or the guy?”

  “Are they an item?” Jewel asked, plucking her olive out of the glass.

  “They couldn’t be,” Dixie said. “She’d have told me.”

  “That boss of yours, she’s a curiosity.” Jewel bit on the little plastic sword that had speared her olive. “When she first stumbled into Joe’s office, she was a little on the dowdy side. Not that I pay attention to things like that.”

  “’Course not,” Dixie mocked.

  “But look at her now,” she said, stabbing the air toward the TV with the sword. “She’s turned into a fine-looking woman, hasn’t she? It does make you wonder if love did that to her.”

  “You think?” Dixie asked.

  Jewel thought a moment. “No. More likely success. Power and success.”

  “You would know, oh, my queen.”

  “They do look good together, though.”

  “But I bet it was just the tension of the situation. Because they were in danger together, I reckon. Or else—”

  Dixie stopped talking a second. She heard a man’s voice, speaking softly, quietly. She tilted her head to listen and put a finger to her lips, warning Jewel to be quiet. But in the bar, with all the noise, they weren’t likely to be heard.

  She recognized the voice but couldn’t remember where she’d heard it.

  “I was working undercover on another case when the shit hit the fan,” the man said.

  “Really?” answered a fascinated woman’s voice.

  “That’s right. So I was already on the job, ya might say, and was just outside the cockpit door there, when the SWAT boys came in. After that, it was pretty much routine, if you know what I mean.”

  Dixie got up on her knees, turned around and looked over the top of the booth to the one behind her. He was sitting there, cozily, with his arm around a young woman and a drink in his hand. “You!” she said. The man promptly spilled his drink down his shirt. “Rocky!”

  It took him a moment to focus, and he might never have placed her, his attempts and conquests so many, but he knew he was busted. He nearly dumped the young lady on the floor in his effort to scramble out of the booth and make his getaway.

  “Hey!” the woman shouted, stumbling into the lap of a patron at a table across from the booth.

  Once Rocky, if that was his real name, cleared the door of the bar, he broke into a dead run. He didn’t get very far, however, because running through an airport immediately following a hijacking attempt wasn’t the most intelligent move.

  Dixie just turned around in her seat and began to laugh.

  “Who was that?” Jewel asked.

  “Just another of our local aviation nutballs.”

  Joe Riordan told Nikki and Sam that he wanted them both seen by a counselor before coming back to work, and they readily agreed. Then he got the dispatcher to find a jump seat for Sam to Colorado Springs so he could see his daughters. “Make it a priority,” Joe said. “If you can’t find him a jump seat, find him a full-fare seat and charge it to me. If you can’t get one of those, I’ll rent a plane to take him there.”

  It wasn’t hard to find him transportation, once airline personnel knew who the passenger was. During crises like this, all airlines were a part of one family, a family that took very good care of one another. The first airline called said they’d put him in first class and get him home even if they had to bump a passenger.

  Nikki walked with Sam from Dispatch to the upstairs concourse, but no farther. She was too recognizable from the news and the Metro sweatsuit she still wore. They stood just inside the door at Gate 1, as alone as they were about to get.

  “I’m sorry about what this does to your holiday dinner,” he said.

  “The least of my worries. I hope everything is all right with your girls.” Then she swallowed and said, “With you.”

  “I have no idea what to expect when I get there, Nick. It’s one of those things we might never get past. I mean, they saw their mother die about a thousand times….”

  “I know. I can’t imagine…”

  “I might need more than a few days.”

  “Take as much time as you need. Doesn’t matter. Even if it takes years, your job and seniority number are protected here.”

  “I’ll be in touch, then,” he said. He gave her a brief hug and walked away.

  She watched him go. It had taken a lot to bring him back to the flying life, and he might just have encountered the one thing that could take him out of it. She knew in her heart she might never see him again. The business had become insane, and she wasn’t sure if Sam hadn’t just had all he could take.

  A hand rested on her shoulder and she turned to see that Joe had come up behind her. “I didn’t know about him until tonight,” Joe said.

  “I didn’t know when I hired him. He didn’t keep it a secret, though. He thought everyone knew. I mean, he’d been on the news, he and his daughters, along with hundreds of other family members of 9/11 victims.”

  “I listened to the two of you with that guy. You did a good job, Nick. Both of you did. I couldn’t have done that…and I’m fearless.”

  She laughed.

  “Tell me something. Did you think maybe he’d kill you? Did you think you might die?”

  “It crossed my mind a couple of times. But it wouldn’t have been because he was filled with hate, like terrorists. It would have been because…It would have been because he was totally helpless. I almost feel sorry for him.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Almost,” she repeated.

 
“What if you had to fly again, right now. Could you do it?”

  She rolled her eyes at him.

  “Seriously,” he pushed.

  “Come on.”

  “Like I’m kidding? I don’t think I want to go for an airplane ride right now.”

  “Look, I started flying when I was eleven. I went on a cross-country flight with Buck when I was fourteen. I raced the Stearman when I was seventeen and I almost won. I fly. I might fly a desk sometimes in my job, but in my life I fly. No matter how tough the bastards make it for us, I fly. I love to fly.”

  Hands in his pockets, he rocked back on his heels, grinning. “Boy, did I know what I was doing when I hired you. Hah! Listen, you interested in the VP job?”

  “You have a VP already.”

  “I heard he was looking around.”

  “Yeah, I heard that, too. But he’s still with us.”

  “I know. I told him to sit in his office and wait for me till I get back over there, no matter how late I am.” He pulled out his cell phone. “I wonder where Jewel went. She brought me over here in my car.” He pecked off some numbers and spoke into the phone. “Where are you? Oh, yeah? Sit tight…I could use one, too.”

  Then he turned to Nikki. “Jewel and Dixie are having a drink at the sports bar down toward the north end. Want to join us?”

  “No, I have to get home. My kids sounded fine on the phone, but I know they must be waiting to see me, hear the whole story.”

  “Okay,” he said. He grabbed her in a quick clutch. Grateful. He was probably grateful his plane wasn’t shot up, but she knew he was also grateful she was all right. That everyone involved was all right. “I’m going to have a drink and take Jewel out for a big, fat steak. And I’m going to bed early and, by God, sleep in tomorrow.”

  “You going to the office first?”

  “Hell, no. Why would I do that?”

  “Tell Riddle the coast is clear and he can go home?”

  “Hell, no. Why would I do that?”

  It was almost nine o’clock by the time Nikki drove up to her house, and it was lit up like a carnival. When she walked in the door she was greeted by yapping and barking and shrieks from the kids. “You’ve been on the news all night!” they yelled.