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With the DC-10 we had a lot more leeway. If it came to it, we could take the cockpit crew and simply follow instructions from Air Traffic Control, since that's what was going to cause this crash.

The thinning was going well. We still had two hours to fly, and we'd taken forty or fifty out of the 747. The plane had departed with almost every seat full. One would think people would begin to notice empty seats, but the fact is it takes them a long time to realize what's happening. Part of that is because we pick the candidates for thinning very carefully. We would not take a child without its mother, for instance. Mommy would come looking. But taking a mother and her crying infant is perfect. The other passengers may notice on some level that the crying has stopped, but they never try to find out why. That's the sort of good fortune you just don't question.

In the same way, we were alert for people most dissatisfied with the sardine-can seating arrangements, such as anybody sitting next to a tall person, or three unrelated men sitting in a row, especially if they were trying to work. If that middle fellow got up to get a drink or visit the rest room he was unlikely to come back. I'd never heard anybody complain about that, either.

But the biggest thing we had working in our favor was the unimaginable nature of what we were doing. I'd see someone looking troubled, walking the aisles. Maybe he'd noticed all the seats were filled when we took off, and now there were all these gaps. What gives? But logic is on our side. The guy knows nobody has stepped outside for a smoke. Thus, logic proves everyone is still aboard; ergo, they must be in some other part of the plane. Nobody ever gets farther than that, not even if we take half the passengers.

I concluded things were going smoothly and decided to take a look at the other plane, the DC-10. So the next time the Gate appeared I ... stepped through into the future, changed into a United uniform while Operations shifted its focus to the other plane, and ... stepped onto United Flight 35.

Another advantage to jumbo jets: nobody notices a new flight attendant.

Since the hazard was less on this flight, the team was being even more aggressive. They were summoning passengers to the rear o f the plane on one pretext or another, never to return I surveyed the situation with approval, and signalled to Ralph Boston. He followed me into the galley.

"How's it going?" I asked him.

"Easy. We plan to start the final operation in another couple minutes."

"What's the local time?"

"There's twenty minutes left."

That can be disconcerting. When I'd left the 747 it still had three hours to o, which meant it was somewhere over the midwest. This pane was already in California, two and a half hours later. It's enough to give you a headache.

But why not work it that way? Why, for instance, should the people uptime wait twenty-

four hours while I watch the Carson show in a New York motel room? They had not, of course. As soon as the Gate vanished in my motel room Operations had reset it for the lavatory of the 747 the next day. What had happened, from Lawrence's viewpoint, is that I'd stepped through, Sondergard had come out, the Gate had flickered, and out came the first flight attendant I pushed into the lavatory the next day.

It takes some getting used to.

"Something wrong?" Ralph asked. I glanced at him. Ralph was not impersonating a male flight attendant this trip. His skinsuit made him a perfect copy of a very black, very female person whose name he probably did not even know. Ralph is small, and has been with my teams a long time. Over a year.

"No. We might as well get going. Should I stay here, or Bo back to the other plane?"

"Lilly's alone in first-class. You could help her out up there."

So I did. Technically, of course, I'm in command, but Ralph was the DC- 10 leader, and Cristabel was in charge on the 747. On a snatch like this one I find it best to let my team leaders lead.

The first-class operation went smoothly. We used the standard "coffee-tea-or-milk" gambit, relying on our speed and their inertia. I leaned over the first two seats on the left, smiling big.

"Are you enjoying your flight?"

Pop, pop. Two squeezes on the trigger, close to the head and out of sight of the rest of the goats.

Next row.

"Hi, folks. I'm Louise. Fly me."

Pop, pop.

We were close to the rear of the cabin before anybody tumbled to anything. Finally, a few people were standing up and looking at us curiously. I glanced at Lilly, she nodded, and we plugged the rest of them rapid-fire. All of the first-class cabin was now peacefully asleep, which meant none of them could help us pull sleepers through the Gate. It's completely unfair, but there's no solution for it. Another benefit of your first-class ticket, air travelers!

We hurried back to tourist, which is always a bigger problem. They hadn't started putting people to bed yet. Ralph was still working the thinning con, and as I watched, he leaned over a man in an aisle seat and asked if the man would please come with her (him) for a moment.

The guy stood up and Ralph's back exploded. Something hit me hard in the right shoulder. I spun around on my heel, starting into a crouch.

I noticed a fine film of red on my hands and arms.

I thought: hijacker, the guy's a hijacker.

And: But why did he wait so long? And: Hijackers were rare in the 1980s.

And: Was that a bullet that hit my shoulder? Is Ralph dead? And: The goddam motherfucker is a hijacker!

It seemed I had all the time in the world.

What actually happened was the bullet hit my shoulder and I turned with it and brought my left arm up and thumbed the selector switch to OBLITERATE

and crouched as I came around and took careful aim and blew him apart.

His upper torso and head lifted away from the rest of his body. It leaped into the air and landed six rows back, in the aisle. His left arm landed in somebody's lap, and his right, still holding his gun, just dropped. His legs and groin fell over backwards.

Okay. I could have stunned him.

Better for him that I didn't. If I'd taken him through the Gate with me alive, I'd have fried his balls for breakfast.

There's little point in describing the pandemonium that followed. I'd have a hard time doing it, even if it was worth describing; I was sitting in the aisle during most of it, looking at blood.

The crew had to stun just about everybody. The only bright spot was the number we'd managed to shuffle through during the thinning phase. The rest would have to go through on our backs.

When Lilly finally knelt beside me she thought I was hurt more than I actually was. She acted as if I might break if she touched me.

"Most of this is Ralph's blood," I told her, hoping it was so. "I guess it's a good thing I stopped the bullet. It could have punctured the fuselage."

"That's one way of looking at it, I guess. We had to take the cockpit crew, Louise. They heard the ruckus."

"That's okay. We're still in business. Let's get them through."

I started to get up. On the count of three: one, and a two, and ...

Not that time.

"We can't move them yet," Lilly said. l didn't care for the alarmed expression on her face when I had tried to rise. Well, I'd show her. "We're stacking them by the lavatory," she went on. "But the Gate is with the 747 right now."

"Where's Ralph?"

"Dead."

"Don't leave him here. Take him back with us."

"Of course. I'd have to anyway; he's mostly prosthetics."

I managed to get to my feet and that felt a little better. This didn't have to be a disaster, I kept telling myself. One dead, one wounded; we were still all right. But I was beginning to appreciate the drawbacks in snatching two planes at once. I like to have the Gate there, ready to use, all during the operation.