Authors: Steven Gould
He said, "Fuck you."
"Get treatment."
He was silent for a moment. "Why are you running from these government men? Don't you have any respect for your country?"
I almost hung up then, angry. Then I took a deep breath and said, "I have more respect for the Bill of Rights than they do. I have more respect for the Constitution. I'm no threat to them, but they don't believe that. They probably
can't
believe that."
There was the squeal of a tire from the parking lot—nothing extreme. It was more like the sound of someone turning into a tight parking place just a little too fast, but I knew better.
"Get treatment, Dad. Before you die. Before you fuck up anybody else's life."
I dropped the phone to hang on its cord, then walked over to the hall leading to the rest rooms and stood just inside, in the slight shadow.
They hit both doors at once, four men, each carrying something that looked like a short-barreled rifle with a huge bore.
Christ! What the hell is that?
I swear there was something just visible, sticking out of the gun barrel, that gleamed in the station's fluorescent lighting. One of the men saw me then and jerked the gun to his shoulder.
I jumped.
I phoned Dr. Perston-Smythe from a phone booth on the street. I'd yet to explore much of Washington but I stayed away from the Mall. I didn't want them watching the Air and Space Museum before I had a chance to see it.
He answered his own phone and I wondered if he had an agent sitting in his office, one of those short-barreled rifles in his hand, or one of the dart guns they'd shot me with the first time, at Dad's place.
"What on earth are those nasty-looking rifles they're carrying around?"
He drew in breath sharply. "What do you want, Mr. Rice?"
"I want to be left alone. I'm not harming anyone, much less 'national security,' and you guys are going way overboard."
There was a click and someone else's voice came on the line. "Mr. Rice, please don't hang up. This is Brian Cox."
"Surely you aren't spending all your time in Dr. Perston-Smythe's office?"
"Well, no. We arranged to switch the call to me in the event you called. Dr. Perston-Smythe is no longer on the line."
"What do you want?"
"We want your services."
"No."
"All right, we want to know how you do it."
"No."
"You're already working for us. That was quite a job you did in Algiers and Larnaca. Especially Larnaca."
I felt my nose wrinkle. "Hardly. I didn't go after them for you."
He laughed quietly and I swiveled my head around, watching the streets. I wondered if he was trying to distract me deliberately, to let them sneak up. I wanted desperately to ask him if there were other teleports that they knew of, but I was sure he was capable of lying to me about that, to lure me in. I didn't want to hand him that obsession, that tool.
"Well, even if it was revenge for your mother, it works for us. We could give you Matar, you know."
Bastards.
"In return for what?"
"Ah. A favor here and there. Nothing arduous, nothing unpleasant even. Certainly nothing worse than Larnaca."
I shouldn't have, but I told him, "He blew himself up. All I did was collect the pieces. Everyone on that flight would have died if I didn't."
"Oh." His voice was utterly neutral. I don't know if he believed me or not. "How can you be sure? For all you know he might have given himself up in the next five minutes. Are you sure you didn't endanger the passengers more? He might never have pushed the button if you hadn't interfered."
He was only verbalizing what I'd been saying to myself all week long.
A car was easing up the street, four men inside. Others walked the sidewalks. They were wearing long coats, the fronts open; each had one hand clamped against his side, holding something beneath the coat. They stopped fifty yards away in plain sight.
"I see your men, Cox."
"Well, they'll stay away while we talk."
"Why'd you bother? Do you think they can catch me? What is that nasty gun they're carrying around."
"Tranquilizer."
I thought he was lying. The bore was too big. "And if I'm allergic to the drug? I jump off someplace and die. You get zip."
"You should work with us. We protect the country. Is that a bad thing?"
"I'm going to puke."
"Do you want Matar?"
"I'll get him myself."
"We'll get you eventually, unless you want to stay in hiding forever."
"Aren't you afraid you'll drive me to work for the other side?
Perestroika
and all, I'm seeing less and less difference. They, at least, seem to be getting rid of their secret police. We still have you. Leave me alone."
"What about your father?"
"Do what you want to him," I said. "He deserves it."
I dropped the phone and jumped.
I spent eight hours in the air flying from DFW Airport to Honolulu. Japanese Red Army terrorists seized and held three hundred tourists outside of security at the Honolulu airport. By the time my plane arrived, it was all over.
An assault by a Pearl Harbor Navy Seal unit supported by Army Special Forces from Schofield Barracks freed most of the hostages. Casualties were "light," two tourists, one Navy Seal, and six of seven terrorists.
Honolulu was beautiful, the water incredibly blue, the mountains emerald green, but I left after acquiring a jump site, deeply depressed. One of the dead was a woman, Mom's age.
"You can't be everywhere."
I sat on a sheepskin rug, pushing sticks into the wood stove. I felt cold. Every since cleaning up the hijacker's body from the cold, dark water of the pit, I'd been unable to get warm. Even in balmy Hawaii the sweat on my skin was cold.
Millie sat beside me, her robe opened on bare skin, comfortable. I was still clothed, my coat draped across my shoulders.
"I know." I hugged my knees. The heat from the stove was almost painful on my skin, but it didn't touch my bones.
She wanted me to see a therapist, another painful echo of Mom. I didn't want to.
She shifted on the rug, leaning against me, laying her head on my shoulder. I turned my head and kissed her forehead. She spoke.
"You think that if you get Matar, you'll be done. That it will somehow make things right. I think you're wrong."
I shook my head, leaned closer to the fire.
She went on. "I think you'll find that it doesn't help at all. And I'm afraid you'll get killed finding this out. You can jump away from guns, knives, bombs, but until you can jump away from yourself, you won't get away from the pain. Not unless you face it and deal with it."
"Deal with it? How?"
"You should see a therapist."
"Not again!"
"A therapist isn't going to kill you... not like a hijacker. Why is it easier to get men to go to war than to see a counselor?"
"Should I just let things happen? Should I let them kill innocent people?"
She looked at the fire for a moment, then said, "There was an interview with a Palestinian on CNN today. He wanted to know why this mysterious antiterrorist didn't rescue Palestinian children from Israeli bullets."
"I can't be everywhere." I winced at what I'd said.
She smiled. "So where do you draw the line? You knew that the situation in Honolulu had nothing to do with Shiite extremists before you left. You knew Matar wouldn't be there."
We were back where we started. "Can I just stand by? When I could do something?"
"Go to work for a fire department. You could rescue more people with less danger. I'm afraid you'll end up like the NSA if you go this route. The more you associate with terrorists, the more terrorist your behavior."
I pulled away from her. "Have I really started acting that way?"
She shook her head and pulled me back. "I'm sorry. It's my fear. Perhaps if I constantly remind you of it, it won't happen."
I slumped into her arms, curling in on myself, my head on her shoulder. "I hope so."
Athens, start of so many hijackings, was the site of the next one. An Olympia Airlines DC-10 took off for Madrid and, ten minutes later, requested an emergency landing due to depressurization. At the same time they switched their flight transponder to 7500, the international sign for hijacking.
The plane had been back on the ground for two hours when I learned this from Manhattan Media Services.
Units of the Greek Army were in place, surrounding the plane, when I arrived in the terminal. I went looking for the press, first, because I figured they would know something about the number of hijackers, their arms, and the demands.
The Reuters reporter from Algiers was there. His eyes got very large when he saw me and he stepped back from his front-row position and cut me out from the group of newsmen.
"You're the one," he said in an excited whisper. "I thought it was you from the film." He kept looking around, anxious to scoop the others.
"What are you talking about?" I wondered if this was a disaster or if I could use it.
"Don't go away. Let me interview you!"
"Relax. You attract all of your colleagues and I'll leave."
He took a deep breath, lowered his shoulders. "I knew it!" he whispered. "Why don't we go someplace quiet?"
"Aren't you forgetting something?" I said, nodding my head at the terminal window. The plane was at the end of the runway, about half a mile away.
He licked his lips. "After?"
"Depends. What's happening with the hijacking? What can you tell me?"
"So, if I tell you what I know—"
"I can ask
them,"
I said, pointing at the rest of the press with my thumb.
"Okay. Okay, take my card." He handed me a white card with the Reuters masthead, his name, Jean-Paul Corseau, and a phone, fax, and telex number. "There's three of them. They have pistols. There was a plainclothes guard who wounded one of them, but the other two killed him. In the fight, a bullet went through a window in first class. They'd only reached eight thousand feet, so it wasn't too bad, but the pilot insisted on landing. They're demanding a new plane. They wouldn't let the pilot unblock the runway, either, so they're having to route traffic to the other runways."
"Any other demands? What nationality?"
"Nothing yet. They're ETA, Basque separatists. Most of the passengers are Spanish."
"Basques?
Since when did Basques start hijacking? I thought they went in for bombings?"
He shrugged.
"Anything else? How badly wounded is the third hijacker?"
"We don't know."
"Okay, thanks. If it works out, I'll give you something after." I looked around. Nobody seemed to be watching us. "What's that over there?" I asked, pointing back at the press.
Corseau turned his head and I jumped.
One of them stood in the doorway, looking out, wearing a long leather coat and holding a pistol in his hands. The rear door was shut and all the window shades. One of them also stood in the cockpit, just visible. He was using the radio. That left one more, the wounded man.
On a DC-10 the front door is behind the first-class section, with a partition forward that's cut by the two aisles leading forward and back. A walk-through galley leads across the plane to the second aisle. I jumped to the middle of the galley, shielded from the front by the partition and the back by the galley.
I couldn't see anyone watching the man in the door, whose back was to me, but it was possible. I decided to risk it and jumped behind him, one hand around his waist, the other covering his mouth. I jumped him to the pit and dropped him, then jumped back to the galley. I listened. Nobody seemed to have noticed. I used the dentist's mirror to look forward.
A man in a rumpled suit leaned against the front bulkhead, a strange pistol in his right hand pointed in the general direction of the seated passengers. Blood soaked the left side of his jacket, low down, and he held that arm pressed tightly against it. His face was covered in sweat and he looked very pale. From where he stood, he could see down the aisle by the doorway.
At his feet I saw the head and arm of a still body, hand outstretched, fingers pointed up, half open, almost imploring.
I moved back to the other aisle and used the mirror to examine the cockpit door.
The door to the cockpit was open and I could see the last terrorist standing there, a radio headset on his head. He stood at the edge of the door, waving his gun to emphasize what he was saying.
From my angle the only crew I could see was the pilot, sitting still, head straight forward. He had a bald spot.
I took the steel rod out of my bag. I didn't see how I could jump the terrorist on the radio away, without the other one seeing me. I lifted the rod above my head and jumped.
I appeared at the cockpit door and the rod cracked into the back of the terrorist's head. I had the vague impression that he pitched forward, but I was twisting immediately, to bring the rod down on the wounded terrorist's gun hand. I heard bone crack and cringed.
The gun fell forward and the passenger in the front seat scooped it up. The terrorist slumped to the floor suddenly, cradling his wrist
and
his side. There was blood on the wall behind him.
I looked into the cockpit. The engineer and copilot pinned the unconscious terrorist to them while the pilot pried the gun from his fingers. He looked back at the door, fear and determination on his face.
"Don't shoot," I said, smiling. "I'm on your side." I backed up and walked down the aisle, past the galley, into coach. I heard the pilot scramble out of his seat and follow. Everything seemed all right. The flight attendants were standing at the very back of the plane.
"Where's the third one?" he asked.
"Oh. I, uh, put him on hold. I'll be back with him in a second."
I jumped away, to the cliff high above the pit.
The man in the long leather coat was on the island, shivering. He'd managed to hold on to his pistol and he was standing, arms crossed, hunched forward. Water dripped from the leather coat. He kept looking from side to side.