Skyhammer Page 6

  “One-forty-six point five,” he read aloud. He thumbed through a packet of flip-cards, thinking that it all was completely second nature to him, every step. He located the page for 147,000 pounds, and set the packet next to the weight card. They were 2,500 pounds below maximum allowable takeoff weight. Both be and Boyd adjusted the pointers on their airspeed indicators. Then they finished the before-takeoff checklist.

  Now they were number two for the runway. Pate stared at the heat waves boiling from the engines of the jet parked ahead of them. He had never really noticed before how furiously the heat attacked the cold air. He looked to his right, out his side window. An American 757, its bare metal gleaming in the gray light, was about to touch down. A current of envy worked through him. American had somehow kept clear of Farraday and all the trouble he’d caused. Sheer luck, he supposed. The toss of the dice. He thought again about Senator Sanford and Mariella Ponti, and how luck of the draw played a part in everything.

  “You want the first leg?” Boyd asked.

  With a faint puff of blue smoke from its tires, the 757 touched down. Pate watched it decelerate. He’d always wanted to fly a 757. Westar had never owned one, though, and, thanks to Farraday, New World couldn’t afford to upgrade its fleet. “No. You go ahead and take it,” he said to Boyd. “I’ve got the radios.”

  Boyd made a quick, canned briefing covering procedures in case of an engine failure or other major problem. A minute later the tower cleared the aircraft ahead of them for takeoff. Boyd released the brakes and brought the nose around, and they moved into the number one position. He set the parking brake, and they sat in silence, waiting again. Now the plane ahead of them was at the far end of the runway, leaving the ground and climbing up into the gray sky, sooty trails of exhaust in its wake. The runway seemed barren, vast. A hundred feet in front of them on the pale concrete were the black skid marks of tenthousand touchdowns. Pate suddenly wished he’d called Katherine. Then he drove his mind away from that thought, focused it again on the narrow, blank runway, stretching out, as pale as a piece of the sky.

  The tower controller’s voice crackled in his earphone. “New World Five-fifty-five, wind zero four zero at twelve knots. Cleared for takeoff.”

  Pate acknowledged. He checked his watch; 11:42 Eastern, 16:42 Greenwich Mean Time. Boyd released the brakes and advanced the throttles and steered the airplane around onto the runway centerline.

  “Landing lights,” Pate said.

  “On.”

  “Checklist complete.”

  Boyd advanced the throttles further, to vertical. Pate checked the N1 tachometers; they stabilized at near 60 per cent.

  “Power stable.”

  Boyd engaged automatic throttles, and the levers motored forward. Pate followed them up with his hand.

  “Takeoff thrust set.”

  With a gentle jolt, Flight 555 began accelerating down the runway, the nosegear humping over the expansion joints in the concrete, the airframe shaking with each impact. Pate scanned the engine instruments and the airspeed. All was normal.

  “Vee one, rotate,” he called as the needle passed 146 knots.

  Boyd eased his control column aft, bringing the nose up steadily, and at 152 knots ship 109 broke from the ground. Abruptly the thumping and shaking ceased, and they soared up into the cold, fluid light.

  “Positive rate. Gear up.” Boyd emphasized the call with a palm-up motion of his hand.

  Pate leaned forward and threw the gear lever up. The “clunk” of hydraulic actuators sounded through the cockpit, and, momentarily, the noise of the nosewheels spinning down against their snubbers thrummed the floor beneath them.

  Pate eased back in his seat and through his side window watched the white landscape fall away. Off to his right, the flat, gray expanse of Lake Erie grew huge. It seemed they were caught in a liquid seam, between the land and the surface of the seam—the overcast—as if they were a fish climbing through water, and for a long moment he pictured the river of his childhood, the Clearwater, flowing through its steep canyon.

  Then he turned from the window. They were passing a thousand feet now. Boyd eased the nose down and began accelerating. “Flaps up, climb power,” he called.

  Pate repositioned the flap lever and selected climb power. The autothrottles eased back slightly. In seconds they reached the overcast and the world outside went white as they were enveloped in the stratus.

  Most pilots continued to fly by hand, at least to 18,000 feet or so, but now Boyd switched the autopilot on.

  A minute later Cleveland tower handed them off to the departure controller. Pate acknowledged, and dialed in the new frequency. Departure cleared them up to flight level 230 and assigned them a vector toward Indianapolis, 240 miles to the southwest.

  Two minutes later they passed ten thousand feet. There was only a trace of turbulence in the stratus now, only an occasional jiggle. Boyd reached up and sounded the dual chime in the cabin twice, clearing the flight attendants to initiate their service.

  At eighteen thousand feet, they reset their altimeters, and Boyd switched the landing lights off. At twenty thousand feet they were handed off again, to the Indianapolis Air Route Traffic Control Center.

  “Good morning, New World Five-fifty-five,” the Center’s controller responded when Pate checked in. “Climb and maintain flight level three one zero; fly heading two five five; direct Indianapolis when able.”

  At flight level 230, 23,000 feet above mean sea-level, they began to see patches of blue sky. A few seconds later the MD-80 was zipping in and out of the stratus’s ragged tops. And then suddenly they broke out into clear air, the undercast falling away beneath them and brilliant sunlight flooding the cockpit. Boyd switched off the engine anti-ice. He pulled a pair of sunglasses from his shirt pocket, put them on, and slid his seat back on its rails. As Pate watched him, at the periphery of his vision, Boyd removed the telephone handset from its receptacle at the rear of the pedestal, and brought it to his ear. It was all mechanical for him, Pate realized. The job meant only the uniform, the girls, the envy of other men. Not the flying. Flying, for Boyd, was just the tedious price he had to pay for the prestige.

  Boyd made the company-required announcement to the passengers, advising them of route of flight, time enroute, and the weather in Phoenix. He flipped off the seat belt sign, making sure to request that belts be used when passengers were in their seats. Then he told them he’d keep them advised of points of interest along their route, adding that the undercast of clouds was forecast to break up around Kansas City.

  “So sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight,” he concluded.“And thanks again for choosing New World Airlines.”

  He returned the handset to its receptacle and resumed monitoring the flight’s progress. He looked Pate’s way once, as if he wanted to get Pate’s attention, but Pate kept his eyes on the panel, watching the blinking LED’s.

  Soon now, Pate thought. His palms were sweating. The hiss of the air rushing over the windshield seemed to penetrate his head. He opened his jaw to pop his eardrums. They were passing 27,000 feet, climbing at less than 800 feet a minute, the engines straining in the thin, cold air.

  At 30,900 feet the flight mode annunciators switched, indicating altitude capture, and the autopilot began reducing pitch, lowering the nose almost imperceptibly, initiating level-off to 31,000. When the altitude had stabilized, the annunciators again flashed, changing to Mach cruise, and the autothrottles began working to establish the speed Boyd had commanded—Mach.78. Even though 555 was cleaving the air at over 460 knots, a ferocious headwind was reducing their rate over the ground, nearly six miles below, to about 360.

  A minute later, the cabin call chimed. Boyd pulled the handset back up to his ear.

  “Cockpit.”

  “Hey, Kevin. Mariella. You ready for a refill?”

  “Yeah, sure. Sounds good.”

  Boyd had to reach back and rotate the lock on the cockpit door. With a little difficulty, Mariella pulled it open from
the other side, then leaned in and passed a fresh cup to Boyd.

  “Emil? You still okay?”

  “Fine,” Pate said, willing her to leave.

  She closed the door. Thankful—suddenly and acutely sorry for her, though—Pate turned and made sure it was locked again. Then he faced forward. He checked his watch. It was time. His heart thumped once heavily. He glanced at Boyd, at the smug set of his mouth, his young, nearly seamless face. Still a kid. It was not good that he had to do this, Pate thought. But it was necessary. He had considered all other ways.

  Boyd sipped his coffee and set the cup down on the panel beside his left armrest. “Sounds like a beautiful day in Phoenix. Too bad we can’t stay there.”

  Pate couldn’t reply. He ran his palms along his thighs, wiping the sweat from them. Then he reached down to his flight kit in the well under his side window and flipped open the leather pocket cover. He sat erect again, then let his head swivel slowly as if he were making a routine scan of the horizon. He pretended to detect something, off to the left of the aircraft’s nose.

  “Traffic, eleven o’clock, on the horizon,” he said.

  Boyd directed his attention to the area, leaning forward a little and searching intently. “I don’t see anything,” he said irritably, still looking.

  Pate by then had reached down into the pocket of his kit.

  “I’ve lost him too. No problem. He was no factor.”

  Boyd turned and scanned the instrument panel. There came a moment of doubt, a tremor that passed through Pate’s mind, as his hand closed, his finger found its place. He could not do this after all, he realized. Not in this way.

  But Boyd’s head turned, and now he could see what Pate had taken from his kit. Behind the amber lenses of his sunglasses, his eyes frowned, then widened in disbelief. In another second he would react. Then it would be too late.

  Boyd reached out, tried to grab hold of the barrel of the gun. But the silenced.22 in Pate’s hand snapped softly, a sound barely audible above the normal cockpit noise. The ejected shell casing tinkled off the instrument panel. “Oh!” Boyd said sharply, his hand flying to his chest, where a sudden stain was already spreading on the white uniform shirt. “God damn it!” he said, staring at Pate in angry astonishment. Then he collapsed forward, trying to shield himself, shouting, “Son ofabitch!”

  For a moment, Pate stared at him. But with the shock came only clarity of purpose. He fired a second time, into a point just under Boyd’s arm, hoping the bullet would hit the heart. He didn’t want Boyd to suffer. But Boyd flinched and groaned sharply, and then his right arm lashed out. He wasn’t going to die so easily. Pate grabbed his hand at the wrist, pulled Boyd toward him and leaned in. He pressed the barrel of the pistol into Boyd’s left breast pocket and fired once more. Boyd shuddered, his head snapping back against the seat. Pink foam spilled out of his mouth. Then he slumped, his hands moving feebly, as if trying to find something. Pate recoiled away, horrified again, then lunged forward and slapped the hands from the control yoke, the radio handset. They dropped, useless. Boyd’s head fell onto his chest.

  Pate’s mouth had clamped tight. The air was shooting in and out through his nose. He let go his breath in a sharp cough and fell back against the outer wall of the cockpit.

  Boyd didn’t move. Pate watched him, waiting to see his chest rise, take another breath. A terrible gout of dread hit him. Was Boyd actually dead? Had he done this? He felt his heart hammering in his chest and temples, the sweat pouring down the insides of his arms. The gun dropped into his lap. His hands shook uncontrollably as he tore into his kit and found the carton of cigarettes. He ripped the cardboard open. He could hardly get a pack open and light the cigarette.

  But it was over. Right or wrong, it was done. Keeping his eyes closed, he put his head back and took another deep drag on the cigarette. He had no choice now, except to follow through.

  FIVE

  Flight Deck

  New World Flight 555

  17:17 GMT/12:17 EST

  A month ago he had seen Katherine. He’d been living in Cleveland three weeks by then, thinking still that his life would—like a film run backward—somehow fall together again. Thinking it, but knowing differently. He’d spent nights sitting in darkness, treating his pain with silence, booze, and cigarettes, knowing they weren’t cures for the way he was feeling.

  Katherine had called him. They had to settle things, she said. Pate could still remember the flatness of her voice. That strength of hers working her through the pain that was eating him up. He’d flown into Albuquerque the next afternoon, arriving at sundown. She had rented a house on the west side, a shabby box, located ironically, almost directly under the approach to the airport.

  His stepdaughters met him at the door, Carrie leaping to hug him, Melissa cautious, not knowing if it was okay to show she was glad to see him. When he hugged her, though, she whispered in his ear, “I still love you.” Melissa had always been his best pal. He’d taught her fly fishing. They’d spent whole days together up along the trout streams east of Albuquerque.

  He and Katherine did not even touch. They said next to nothing while they sat in the front room and the girls told him of all the things they’d been doing. But later, when they were alone in the kitchen, she told him she’d found a job.

  “Keeping books, helping manage a motel.” She stood at the sink, her back to him.

  “I’m glad,” Pate said. He felt washed by sadness, though, realizing that she was back where she’d been after her first marriage had failed. He saw her reflection in the dark window above the sink, saw that she was crying, trying hard to hold it in. And then he knew she was thinking the same thing he was thinking: It was over, finished.

  He slept on the sofa, too broke to get a motel room. The next morning, he did not even try to feel different about the whole rotten deal. He simply left without looking back, feeling completely emptied of all desire to do anything more than get out of her life before he screwed it up anymore.

  Even that wasn’t the end of everything. You never stopped hoping, Pate thought now. Not until it was too late.

  The cockpit cooling fans hummed softly. The air passing over the windscreen hissed like a gas flame. He could hear the engines, too, whispering a higher moan. With his eyes closed he was disconnected, floating through space, the whine of the slipstream as steady as the wind coming down off the Camas Prairie. He thought of the loose, crazy freedom of that time, when he was 16 when he’d learned to fly. A man named Jeeps Henry had taught him. A cropduster, a rough-edged old flyer from Texas who’d jockeyed fighter jets in Korea. One day Pate had watched him dusting, and the next day asked him for a job.

  After two months of cleaning tanks and sprayer heads, he’d gotten Jeeps to take him up in his restored Stearman biplane. Such a long time ago, but Pate could still remember the day clearly: The stuttering roar of the motor, the propwash beating back over his face. The wheels bouncing through the chuck-holes, and then suddenly the ground falling away, the shadow of the plane shrinking, crashing into the trees, the sky going big as they climbed out of the Clearwater Canyon. Jeeps had tried to scare him, rolling the plane over and looping it and bringing it down low again, skimming the unripened wheat. Then soaring up again, like a diver off a diving board, the green-gold fields receding, until the motor had reached the limit of its strength and the plane was suspended there for an instant, before it slipped backwards and fell off to one side, nosing straight for the ground.

  It didn’t scare him. He soloed two months later, and earned his commercial license within the year. Two years after that the Marines took him.

  But Jeeps Henry was long dead now. Pate had quit missing him years ago, didn’t want to think about him. Or any of it. All of those early days seemed like someone else’s. And he’d finally gotten nowhere, ended up with nothing.

  He tried to let himself sink into the nothingness, take shelter in it. He didn’t have to think at all for a while.

  But into his mind came a
shadow, watching him. and at first he did not know what it was. Then it was Boyd, falling forward, and then backward, groaning while he grinned at Pate, and Pate’s heart raced again.

  My God, he thought, how was it possible he had done it?

  With a start, he opened his eyes. A half-inch of ash fell from the end of his burned-down cigarette.

  The smell of raw meat was in the air. The smell of blood. Holding his breath, turning, Pate looked at the dead man in the seat beside him. Sunlight was pouring through the cockpit’s left side window onto Boyd’s shirt. The shoulders of the shirt were still white, but the front and even the sleeves were the color of wet liver, the burgundy of blood congealing. It had soaked into Boyd’s seat, even dripped down onto the floor of the cockpit.

  Boyd’s head had fallen toward him. Pate stared at the face, stricken again with the odd, shuddering hope that Boyd was only pretending. But the bright sunlight was slicing between the half-open lids of the left eye, showing the vacant, dead blue of the iris.

  Three days ago he’d felt like killing Boyd. In the pawnshop on Lorain Avenue where he’d bought the silencer for his pistol, he had conceived his plan as if it would be some sort of repair job—this first, then that, step one, step two—simple, necessary. He had let a furious need for revenge make him think it necessary. But now it seemed crazy, like plunging off a cliff to take a shortcut.

  Except that was exactly why he had done it. Because memories were like lifelines his mind would toss down to him. He would think of Katherine and Melissa and Carrie, of Jeeps and Deke, of better times, because he wouldn’t be able to keep himself from reaching out, taking hold, changing his mind ... but none of it would make any difference now because he had already fallen too far. Now, if he thought of Mariella Ponti, or John Sanford, or all the rest of the passengers—if he forgot for a moment that they would be casualties of war ...