The bullets blasted into the food cart which had become his cover, and Blaine fired a volley back high. From this angle he didn’t want to risk hitting a passenger instead of Bote.
The terrorist was still firing in a wide arc, when McCracken rose and pumped off four rounds in his general direction, his bullets digging chasms into the thick aircraft walls. Bote kept firing the machine gun behind him as he disappeared around the corner.
Another detonator, Blaine realized with a clap of fear in his stomach, he’s going for another detonator!
McCracken vaulted over the food tray and tucked into a roll to the chorus of people still screaming. He was back on his feet almost immediately, rushing down the aisle toward the galley where Bote had taken cover. A hail of machine-gun fire forced him into a dive as he neared it. The dive carried him to the front of the galley, where Bote was grasping for something in a black bag. His free hand came around with the machine gun.
Blaine fired first.
His initial shot tore into the terrorist’s chest, pitching him backward. The next two bored into his head, obliterating it in explosions of blood and bone. Bote slipped to the floor with the black detonator gripped in his hand.
Blaine was still lying prone on the floor amid the continued screams of the passengers, when a pair of the 767’s doors shattered outward and a troop of French security police tumbled in, nearly falling over themselves.
“Smoking or nonsmoking?” he asked them, rising carefully with arms in the air.
“You’re finished this time. You know that, McCracken?” Daniels shot out accusingly in the backseat of the Peugeot heading back to the American Embassy.
“No, Tommy my boy. Why don’t you tell me about it?”
Daniels shook his head. “You’re a walking embarrassment, McCracken. I thought I’d heard it all with that Parliament Square incident five years ago, but today beats everything. Now you run a rogue operation on foreign soil. Do you have any idea what that means?”
“Not off the top of my head.”
Daniels’s driver made a hard right.
“Well, you just might lose the top of your head, McCracken. This is a diplomatic disaster. Washington will have to hold your head up on a stake just to get the French to talk civil to us again.” Daniels’s stare grew incredulous. “None of this really matters to you, does it?”
“What matters to me is that none of the passengers died.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what is?”
Daniels’s emergency phone rang and he grabbed it from its rest on the back of the seat before him.
“Daniels.” A pause. His eyes found Blaine. “Yes, I’ve got him with me now … What? That wasn’t the original plan. I’m more than capable of—” Another pause. Daniels’s face reddened. His teeth ground together. “Yes, sir, I understand … Yes, sir, immediately.” He replaced the receiver and looked back at McCracken. “I’ve been ordered to send you back to Washington. Pronto. Looks like the President wants to fry your ass personally.”
“I’ll make sure he saves some grease for you, Tommy my boy. There’s plenty to go around.”
Chapter 3
First thing Tuesday morning Sandy Lister walked down a third floor corridor in the network’s New York headquarters and popped her head into the fourth doorway down.
“You ready?” she asked her assistant.
T.J. Brown nodded nervously. “The research is all finished, if that’s what you mean. But am I ready for a meeting with Shay? No way, boss.”
“Good,” said Lister. “You’ll do just fine.”
And seconds later she was hustling T.J. toward the elevator that would take them up to the fifteenth floor and the office of Stephen Shay, executive producer of the newsmagazine Overview.
Sandy had been through scenes like the one coming dozens of times before, but this one had her more nervous than usual. It was a story she really wanted, one that hadn’t come through network channels and was arguably somewhat out of her league. The network had hired her away from her previous position as anchor of a rival’s morning news program to become one of five reporters on a new television magazine slotted to compete with the flagging 60 Minutes. Overview would be more people-oriented and promised to deal with issues crucial to the American public as determined by up-to-the-minute polling. It would be fresher, more spontaneous than its counterparts. Or at least that was what the network had told Sandy and the public. Thus far four episodes had aired with another two in the can and the results had been something neither fresher nor more spontaneous than any other television newsmagazine.
The ratings, though, were at least as good as expected, especially during Sandy’s segments, mostly because the lighter, profile segments she hosted were more to the public’s liking than hard news. When you came right down to it, who wanted to hear about chemical waste anyway? Plenty of viewers had enough troubles paying the bills to make sure their toilets kept flushing, never mind worrying about someone else’s unsanitary landfill.
The fact that she wasn’t a hard journalist didn’t bother Sandy and probably never would. She took pride in her interviewing technique, glad not to be likened to the coarse, falsely intimate style of Barbara Walters or the puffy, prepackaged smiles of the Entertainment Tonight staff. On those occasions where research was required, she headed the process every step of the way, refusing to just step before the camera on call and read what someone else had written. Nor would she permit redubbing of her questions and shamelessly superficial reaction shots. The result was a far more spontaneous, unaltered interview and this as much as anything accounted for the fact that Sandy’s popularity rating was the highest of any woman in broadcasting.
Accordingly, Sandy felt a growing confidence in herself. She had no desire to expand her reach into hard journalism per se, but felt ready to take a more active role in story selection and follow-through.
Starting today.
Her contract in these areas was vague. Her meeting with Stephen Shay this morning would not be. She knew what she wanted and, more, how to present it in terms he would understand. She would ask for the one specific story she wanted most. From there everything would take care of itself.
She was aware of T.J. Brown hovering close behind her as they stepped into Shay’s private office together. Sandy nodded at the secretary, who smiled and picked up the phone immediately.
“Sandy’s here, Mr. Shay.” Then, looking at Sandy, “You can go right in.”
T.J. seemed frozen in his tracks.
“Piece of cake,” Sandy whispered. “Just picture him naked.”
“Huh?”
“I had a public speaking teacher once who said to avoid nervousness when giving an important speech, just picture your audience naked.”
That made T.J. smile as they moved toward the inner office door. “Shay naked? I’ll give it a try.”
T.J. had graduated from the Columbia School of Journalism three years before, fourth in his class and just as black as when he went in. Broadcast spots for minorities were still limited, so T.J. wallowed around for a while with newspapers and radio stations before applying for a research assistant’s position at the then infantile Overview. The five anchors had screened the over four hundred applicants personally and Sandy Lister had come away especially impressed with T.J. He was actually overqualified for the job, but nonetheless seemed eager to be considered. Hiring him became Sandy’s first completed business with her new network, a decision she had not regretted for one moment, even when T.J. urged her to go harder on her subjects and dangled plenty of research to help her do so.