What to do?
And then Hank made the decision for her.
He turned and said, ‘You know we’re dead, don’t you?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘Christ, yes,’ he said. ‘We both know this fucking aircraft. You can’t get to those air-conditioning packs, you can’t unplug ’em, you can’t block ’em. If there’s anthrax down there, the only solution is to give those guys flanking us the shoot-down orders.’
‘Hank, we should just give them the time to—’
‘Fuck that. We need to act before they realize that a shoot-down is the only solution. Put on your oxygen mask.’
Helen put on her mask and switched on her microphone, and there was a click-click sound as Hank disconnected the aircraft’s autopilot and associated autothrottles.
Hank turned to her and said, ‘We’re going to get this piece of shit on the deck now!’
His right hand pulled the throttles to idle and extended the aircraft’s speed brakes. As Hank pushed the control yoke forward and lowered the nose, the aircraft’s rate of descent quickly increased.
Over the cockpit’s speaker, Helen heard the voice of one of their escorts: ‘Ah, AirBox Ten, this is Sword One, level off and halt your descent, please.’
Hank keyed the microphone. ‘Houston Center, AirBox Ten, we’re an emergency aircraft and we are now descending for immediate landing at Keesler Air Force Base.’
Helen felt herself being pressed back in the seat as the jet quickly descended. Declaring an in-flight emergency meant that for most intents and purposes Hank was the closest thing to an air god. He and she and this aircraft now had priority for everything, including an immediate clearance to land at any airfield in the vicinity. Hank could pretty much do anything he wanted to get the aircraft on the ground, and it was a hell of a gamble, because once they had landed there would be some serious hell to pay, from the FAA to the military to the General himself.
But they would be on the ground. That was what counted. Yeah, most times it would work.
But this wasn’t most times.
An urgent voice in the earphones: AirBox 10, AirBox 10, this is Sword One, Sword One, immediately resume your previous altitude. Immediately. Please acknowledge.’
Hank said nothing. The ground was approaching. Helen swallowed.
‘Hank?’
Not a word.
The earphones. ‘AirBox 10, AirBox 10, acknowledge. This is Sword One.’
‘Hank…’
‘Fuck them all…’ he said.
Suddenly bright lights flared in front of them…flanking them, reaching out ahead of them.
Tracer fire, from the F-15s’ cannon.
‘AirBox 10, this is Sword One. You will level off immediately. You will climb back to altitude. You will continue to hold.’
‘Or what!’ Hank shouted.
‘Sir, we are authorized to engage. Don’t force us to shoot you down!’
‘Fuck you! You don’t have the balls to shoot down a civilian aircraft! Go ahead, Air Force!’
Helen watched in horror as the altimeter unwound as the jet descended. Twelve thousand feet and lowering…She thought of the anthrax in the belly of her jet. She thought of her husband Tony, her two kids, thought about the Air Force pilots back there, knowing what they had to do… knowing that after 9/11 so many of the rules had been rewritten or tossed out.
‘Hank, pull up! C’mon, they’re going to shoot us down!’
Hank yelled back. ‘Shut up! They don’t have the balls. They’re not gonna do it!’
‘How do you know that? Hank! Pull up.’
‘Shut up!’
Ten thousand feet.
‘AirBox 10, Sword One. Your last warning. We are weapons hot, repeat, we are weapons hot.’
Eight thousand.
What to do, what to do — a fight in the cockpit? Helen remembered that Egypt Air flight years back, when the copilot flew the jet right into the ocean, even with the pilot struggling with him and the controls… Hank was taller than her, stronger, and thirty pounds heavier… it wouldn’t work.
Seven thousand.
‘AirBox 10! Last warning!’
Six thousand feet.
‘AirBox 10!’
Five thousand, five hundred.
Helen rotated in her seat, reached up back against her seat restraints…reached out, fingertips barely touching, Hank busy with flying…
There. Grabbed it.
‘Sweet Jesus, forgive me,’ she breathed. Then she bashed in the back of Hank’s head with the emergency crash ax.
And bashed him again.
And again.
She dropped the ax, grabbed the controls so she was now in command of the aircraft, started pulling back on the control yoke and adding power.
Helen keyed the microphone switch, saying, breathing heavily, ‘This is AirBox 10… AirBox 10… we’re climbing… we’re climbing back to altitude…’
There seemed to be relief in the F-15 pilot’s voice. ‘Roger, AirBox 10. Good job. We’ll get through this together. This is Sword One.’
She looked over, at the slumped figure of Hank, at the blood on his shirt, blood on the panel, blood on the windscreen.
‘Sword One — to hell with you. I’ve just killed my pilot — and you’re going to land and be alive today… which is more than I can be sure of for myself.’
Sword One didn’t answer.
Monty looked at the flushed face of Victor, at the other faces of Brian and the General and Randy, the machinist. He said, ‘General, what will those pilots do when they get low on fuel?’
Bocks said, ‘What do you think they’ll do? What any one of us would do in the same spot. They’re going to try to land. They’re going to try to dodge their fighter escorts, fruitless as that’ll be.’
Land… of course they’ll try to land, Monty thought. What else would they do?
Land.
At an airbase.
Lots of airbases he’d been at over the years, busy ones like Offut and Eglin and Wright-Patterson. And, of course, lots of empty and quiet ones like—
Shit.
Empty ones.
Lots of empty ones.
‘Doc!’
‘Yes, Monty?’
‘The anthrax — how long does it stay in the atmosphere?’
‘A few hours — maybe four or five.’
‘And where does it go after that?’
Victor said, ‘Then it comes to rest on the ground.’
‘Still dangerous on the ground?’
‘Sure,’ the doctor said. ‘But in the air is where it’s most dangerous. When it’s on the ground you can protect yourself through normal decontamination efforts.’
‘How far can the anthrax spores travel when it’s airborne?’
‘All depends on the wind. Several miles…less, if there’s no breeze.’
Monty felt a little flicker of excitement kindle inside him. Maybe. Just fucking maybe.
‘C’mon,’ he said. ‘We’re going for a quick walk.’
He stood up and opened the conference-room door, stepped outside to the Operations Center. There was a low roar made up of phones ringing, people talking, keyboards being tapped, men and women, delivering and picking up messages as they moved back and forth. Monty gestured to the large display screen, depicting North America and parts of the Caribbean. Up on the screen, the triangular icons marking the orbiting AirBox flights were highlighted.
‘Look, I see at least two AirBox flights out in northern Texas. Am I right.’
The General said, ‘Yeah, you’re right. So what?’
‘General, the so-what is where those two aircraft can go. They fly an hour west, they can hit a base I’ve trained at when I was detached to Air Force Special Ops. Tyler, used to be an Army Air Corps base back in the 1940s. Nothing there now except tumbleweed, coyotes, and a runway.’