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THE CABIN SPEAKERS crackled to life, and the pilot came on the PA.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Sheffield speaking. We are presently just south of Nova Scotia on our descent to JFK. However, I have just received word that flight control has placed us in a holding pattern off the Atlantic seaboard, meaning we will be a little late to our gate. I apologize for any inconvenience. I know they are working hard to get us on the ground, so we appreciate your patience.”
A flight attendant at the front of the plane took over. “In preparation for landing, the captain has asked that all passengers return to their assigned seats and remain seated. Please fasten your seatbelts and raise your seatbacks and tray tables to their full, upright, and locked positions.”
Laynie peered down the right aisle. Instead of complying with the captain’s orders, Abdul and his companion stood up and moved up the aisle toward the forward bulkhead.
Laynie ducked her head toward the left aisle—Tobin was missing from his seat.
He’s waiting for them behind the partition, with his Glock .40 and his Beretta 9mm.
Time for me to act, she told herself. I have to trust that Tobin can get his job done, just as he’s trusting me to do the same.
She left her seat and, with a quick stride, crossed the right aisle. She crouched down behind the honeymooners, against the lavatory wall, with the HK in her right hand, nail file in her other, her left arm cocked and ready to swing—and waited for the hijackers to act.
Several things occurred simultaneously.
A flight attendant near the cockpit screamed.
Tobin shouted, “US Marshal! Stop where you are!”
Two shots boomed forward of business class. Chaos and screaming erupted from the passengers. Another shot, higher pitched. And a man pushed through the curtain separating economy class from business class.
Laynie, crouching in wait, her back against the lavatory wall, rose partway. She swung her left arm back—then forward, jamming the nail file into the man’s inner thigh. Before a scream could leave his mouth, she pushed up from her partial crouch and, using the strength of her legs to propel her left hand upward, forced the terrorist’s gun hand high into the air.
The weapon discharged—a machine pistol on full auto—spraying rounds into the cabin ceiling.
Laynie’s training kicked in. Her vision tunneled. Narrowed. Fixed on her sole objective. Stop the terrorists. Kill them.
She confronted her opponent face to face, her gun up, counting on his forward momentum to bring his belly into direct contact with the barrel of her HK. She fired twice. As he started to slump, Laynie body-slammed him to keep him erect and used his bulk to shield herself while she sought her next target.
The second attacker stood in the aisle on the other side of the curtain. He was facing the economy class passengers, trusting that his compatriot had his back. As soon as he realized something had gone awry, he whirled around, tearing the curtain from its hooks.
Stop the terrorists. Kill them.
Laynie aimed straight down the aisle—hoping no one stood in the aisle behind him. She fired twice. The terrorist jerked, the impact stumbling him backward. Two men in economy class jumped from their seats to wrest something from his hand and push him to the floor.
Laynie scanned the cabin. She had a third armed terrorist to take out. She dropped the hijacker’s body she’d used as a shield, pivoted back to business class, and leaped from the aisle’s alcove, gun extended, ready to fire again.
Her third target had pushed into business class from the other economy class aisle. When he spotted her across the cabin, he charged. Laynie stood her ground. She fired and kept firing, hitting her target three times, missing once. Her gun locked open. Out. As the man lurched sideways, slumping onto the hospitality station, Laynie dropped her empty mag, slapped in the spare, and chambered another round.
She did not have to use it. Her target slid to the floor, leaving a trail of blood across the hospitality station’s countertop. His weapon—a box cutter—fell beside him.
A box cutter?
She swiveled, both hands on the gun, arms and gun extended, scanning for further threat.
“Clear! Three down! Tobin?”
His voice bellowed back to her. “Clear! Two down.”
All Laynie could do was blink as she processed what had happened in bare seconds. She checked the pulse of her last target, sprawled in front of the aft hospitality station.
Nothing.
She collected the box cutter and pocketed it.
Still ready and wary, she retraced her steps to check her first target. She glanced past the torn curtain into economy class before turning her attention to the fallen hijacker.
He was still lying in the aisle where Laynie had dropped him. Just behind the honeymooners.
The honeymooners.
The young bride clung to her husband, sobbing. He stared into space.
“You all right?” Laynie asked him.
He nodded, an automatic response, unblinking, staring without sight. In shock.
Laynie bent over the hijacker’s body. He, too, was dead, his weapon beside him. Laynie looked at the ceiling of the business class cabin. It was peppered with pencil-thin holes that hissed and whistled as rivulets of air exited the cabin.
She pulled the gun from the hijacker’s dead hands. She had initially believed the weapon to be an Israeli Uzi but, after turning it over in her hands, recognized it as a Croatian AG Strojnica ERO, a knockoff of an Israeli Uzi.
How in the world did he smuggle this thing on board?
She looked closer. It was the man who’d been wearing a walking cast. Not any longer. Bits of plaster clung to his shortened pant leg.
Clever. He had pieces of the disassembled gun hidden within the plaster cast. They must have precut the cast so all they had to do was pull it off.
She checked the Strojnica’s settings. Full auto.
She ejected the machine pistol’s magazine. Empty.
When Laynie had shoved the hijacker’s arm into the air, he had emptied all thirty-two 9mm rounds into the cabin’s ceiling. Thirty-two rounds that could have, instead, shredded the lives of the newlyweds and others in business class, that could have blown out windows, with catastrophic results—but no. Every round had gone into the ceiling where thirty-two fine streams of air escaped the cabin.
Above the high-pitched hiss of air, Laynie heard her sister’s voice in her head.
“Be safe, little sister. I’ve only just found you.”
Laynie cringed. My answer was stiff. Snide, even. “I’ll do my best.”
She bit her lip. But when I caught sight of Marshal Tobin eyeing me, I did call on God . . . in a hopeless sort of way.
“Herre Gud, hjälp mig!” Oh, dear God, help me!
Would God answer such a panicked, frantic cry? An insincere cry of desperation?
“If you need him, the Lord will hear you call on him, Laynie.”
“Too many things went right when they could have gone so very, very wrong,” Laynie whispered. “I guess I can’t disagree with you this time, Kari.”
Sparing the peppered ceiling a last look, she cleared the Strojnica’s chamber and slung its strap over her shoulder, letting the gun ride down her back. Then she kicked aside the torn curtain and entered the economy class cabin to assess the second hijacker she’d shot. He, too, was dead. The two men who had rushed to subdue him stood over his body in the aisle. One of them had the hijacker’s weapon—another box cutter.
He held it awkwardly toward Laynie. “You’d better take this.”
The fog of battle was lifting, and Laynie’s hearing began sending signals to her brain that she had blocked out. She realized that throughout the plane, passengers were weeping and moaning, kids crying and wailing.
The screaming made her head hurt.
She shouted, “Listen up, people!”
Parents shushed their children, and the cacophony began to die. Passengers, all the way to the rear of the plane, strained to hear her.
“Here. Use this.” A flight attendant held a cabin microphone toward her. “Press this button to talk.”
Laynie took the microphone. “Listen up, everyone. It’s over. Five hijackers are down, but the plane is fine . . . I believe. Business class has multiple holes in the cabin ceiling, but the plane’s automatic pressurization system will—should—compensate for the loss of air. Please stay in your seats and remain calm. The captain will apprise you of further instructions when he is ready.”
“What did she say?” a woman shouted from the rear of the plane. “We’ve still got kids screaming back here and couldn’t hear the announcement!”
Someone bellowed, “She said everything’s fine! They killed those *blank blank* hijackers!”
Except Laynie knew in her gut that they hadn’t been “mere” hijackers.
She handed the mic back to the flight attendant, intending to go forward and check on Tobin—but the male passenger who had handed her the box cutter placed his hand on her arm.
Laynie’s reaction was automatic. She grabbed his fingers and wrenched them backward, forcing him to his knees in the aisle.
“Stop! Please!”
Laynie wiped the haze of confusion from her eyes. Dropped his hand. “Sorry. Little jumpy, I guess.”
“I get it, I do. No problem. I just wanted to thank you.” He got up and put out his hand. “Thank you . . . thank you for saving us.”
Others around them chimed in. “Yes! Thank you!”
Laynie looked down and nodded.
I’m so tired.
“Yeah. Okay.” She couldn’t manage more than to turn away, try to put one foot in front of the other, try to move in Tobin’s direction.
The economy class passengers began clapping—softly, then building as business class joined them, until cheers echoed through the plane. Laynie still just nodded . . . and walked into business class, up the aisle to the forward bulkhead, ignoring every voice that clamored for her attention, unable to respond to them.
She spotted Tobin standing at the top of the aisle, his left arm hanging limp, blood flowing from his shoulder, down his arm, dripping from his fingertips.
“You okay?” she asked.
“I think so, but right at this moment? Man, it burns like crazy.”
Two flight attendants had a first aid kit out and were trying in vain to get Tobin to stop moving long enough to let them staunch the bleeding.
“Abdul and his buddy?” Laynie asked.
Tobin jerked his head toward the crew station behind the partition. “Laid them out pretty much where I took them down. Abdul didn’t go peacefully. Managed to get off a shot. Hey, think you could wrangle a couple of passengers to haul the other bodies this way?”
“Sure. Okay.”
“Then I need you . . . to go through their pockets. Collect everything. And me . . . I think . . . think I’ma need to sit . . . down.”
Laynie gestured at the nearest passenger, front row. “Hey, you—yeah, you. Get up, please. The marshal needs to sit before he falls down.” She steered Tobin to the vacated seat. “I’ll deal with the bodies. You—” she indicated the displaced passenger, “move yourself and your stuff to the marshal’s seat over there.”
She motioned to a flight attendant, “I need somewhere to put these.” She dumped the machine pistol, magazine, and box cutters into a drawer the attendant pointed to and turned her attention to the two bodies.
“Marta!” Tobin called. “Check their pockets.”
“I can help you with that,” a steward offered. “Go through their pockets for you, I mean.”
“Thank you. I’d . . . appreciate it. Keep the stuff from each body separate. I’ll be back shortly.”
Laynie longed to sit and close her eyes, shut out what had happened, but she couldn’t just yet. While the steward began his grisly work, she trudged back toward economy class.
The body was still lying crumpled in the aisle, and all eyes in the cabin were fixed on her.
Time to make another announcement.
She signaled the attendant, who handed her the microphone. “May I have your attention? Two things. First, Marshal Tobin up in business class needs a doctor. Do we have a doctor on board?”
A woman raised her hand. “Here. I’m an obstetrician, but I can help.”
Laynie pointed back to business class. “Thanks. He’s up front. First row.”
The clamor had picked up again, so she raised her hand for silence. “Marshal Tobin has also directed me to move the bodies to the front of the plane. I need some volunteers—preferably with strong muscles and stronger stomachs.”
The same two men who had been quick to help her not more than ten minutes ago looked at each other and climbed from their seats.
“Happy to help, Marshal,” one of them called. The other nodded. A third man joined them.
Laynie didn’t correct their error. That would come later—hopefully after she had deplaned and disappeared.
“All right then. Three bodies to move, this one here. That one,” she gestured forward to business class, “and the third through the curtain over there.” She pointed to the other aisle.
More men joined the initial volunteers. They formed three teams and went about their work in silence.
A woman seated on the aisle touched Laynie’s arm to get her attention and jerked her hand back just as quickly.
Guess she saw what I did the last time someone surprised me.
“Yes?”
“Marshal, some passengers have been using the Airfones. A lot of them just get a busy signal, but some are getting through, and they are hearing strange reports from the people they talk to. Something about a plane flying into the World Trade Center? Do you know anything about that?”
Laynie, her expression shuttered, said, “I have no information about that. Perhaps you could ask a flight attendant?”
“They’re stonewalling us!” someone shouted. “They’ve been huddled together, whispering, and they refuse to answer our questions. The captain must know something—he’s in radio contact with the ground, isn’t he?”
Laynie found two flight attendants with her eyes. They looked elsewhere, unwilling to meet her gaze. She turned to the attendant who had handed her the microphone. Her head moved infinitesimally side to side.
Around her, passengers spoke over each other, saying what they’d heard, demanding answers, becoming more agitated, soon to be beyond control.
“Listen up!” Laynie hollered. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know myself. Now, obviously, something has happened, but I don’t want to hear any more shouting—get me? We all need to be patient and wait until we’re on the ground to find out what’s going on.”
“No, we don’t. I know what happened.”
Laynie turned toward an older gentleman where he stood, stooping beneath the low ceiling of the middle section. She knew then that it was hopeless to keep a lid on the news.
“Care to share?”
“I talked to my daughter, soon as the shooting stopped. She lives in Midtown Manhattan. I had her on the phone for coupla minutes before we were cut off. She says a plane flew into the North Tower of the Trade Center less than an hour ago. First, everyone thought it was a little commuter plane, but it wasn’t. It was a full-sized passenger jet.”
He lifted his voice over the rising tide of questions and fear. “My girl was watching the tower burn on TV when I called. The newscasters called it some kind of accident, but while we were talking, a second plane crashed into the other tower. My daughter saw it live, as it happened. Yeah, with two planes flying straight into the towers? That’s no mistake. That’s not an accident. That’s an attack! We’re under attack!”
Passengers screamed, cried, and shouted out questions.
“My son works in the subway station under the South Tower. Did everyone get out?”
“My mom runs a florist shop across the plaza!”
“My daughter works for Braun and Pfizer, North Tower!”
Laynie shuddered. She had heard the cries of terror coming from Bryan’s call to a woman named Grace who worked at Braun and Pfizer. In the North Tower.
All she could think was, We were part of the plan, a second wave of attack. This plane.
Shaking all over, she handed the mic to the flight attendant, turned her back on the confusion, and walked back into business class.
