Four Past Midnight

CHAPTER 2

Darkness and Mountains. The Treasure Trove.

Crew-Neck's Nose. The Sound of No Dogs Barking.

Panic Is Not Allowed. A Change of Destination.

1

Brian had asked the older man in the red shirt to look after Dinah, but as soon as Dinah heard the woman from the starboard side - the one with the pretty young voice - she imprinted on her with scary intensity, crowding next to her and reaching with a timid sort of determination for her hand. After the years spent with Miss Lee, Dinah knew a teacher's voice when she heard one. The dark-haired woman took her hand willingly enough.

'Did you say your name was Dinah, honey?'

'Yes,' Dinah said. 'I'm blind, but after my operation in Boston, I'll be able to see again. Probably be able to see. The doctors say there's a seventy per cent chance I'll get some vision, and a forty per cent chance I'll get all of it. What's your name?'

'Laurel Stevenson,' the dark-haired woman said. Her eyes were still conning the main cabin, and her face seemed unable to break out of its initial expression: dazed disbelief.

'Laurel, that's a flower, isn't it?' Dinah asked. She spoke with feverish vivacity.

'Uh-huh,' Laurel said.

'Pardon me,' the man with the horn-rimmed glasses and the British accent said. 'I'm going forward to join our friend.'

'I'll come along,' the older man in the red shirt said.

'I want to know what's going on here!' the man in the crew-neck jersey exclaimed abruptly. His face was dead pale except for two spots of color, as bright as rouge, on his cheeks. 'I want to know what's going on right now.'

'Nor am I a bit surprised,' the Brit said, and then began walking forward. The man in the red shirt trailed after him. The teenaged girl with the dopey look drifted along behind them for awhile and then stopped at the partition between the main cabin and the business section, as if unsure of where she was.

The elderly gent in the fraying sport-coat went to a portside window, leaned over, and peered out.

'What do you see?' Laurel Stevenson asked.

'Darkness and mountains,' the man in the sport-coat said.

'The Rockies?' Albert asked.

The man in the frayed sport-coat nodded. 'I believe so, young man.'

Albert decided to go forward himself. He was seventeen, fiercely bright, and this evening's Bonus Mystery Question had also occurred to him: who was flying the plane?

Then he decided it didn't matter ... at least for the moment. They were moving smoothly along, so presumably someone was, and even if someone turned out to be something - the autopilot, in other words - there wasn't a thing he could do about it. As Albert Kaussner he was a talented violinist - not quite a prodigy - on his way to study at The Berklee College of Music. As Ace Kaussner he was (in his dreams, at least) the fastest Hebrew west of the Mississippi, a bounty hunter who took it easy on Saturdays, was careful to keep his shoes off the bed, and always kept one eye out for the main chance and the other for a good kosher cafe somewhere along the dusty trail. Ace was, he supposed, his way of sheltering himself from loving parents who hadn't allowed him to play Little League baseball because he might damage his talented hands and who had believed, in their hearts, that every sniffle signalled the onset of pneumonia. He was a gunslinging violinist - an interesting combination - but he didn't know a thing about flying planes. And the little girl had said something which had simultaneously intrigued him and curdled his blood. I felt his hair! she had said. Someone cut off his HAIR!

He broke away from Dinah and Laurel (the man in the ratty sport-coat had moved to the starboard side of the plane to look out one of those windows, and the man in the crew-necked jersey was going forward to join the others, his eyes narrowed pugnaciously) and began to retrace Dinah's progress up the portside aisle.

Someone cut off his HAIR! she had said, and not too many rows down, Albert saw what she had been talking about.

2

'I am praying, sir,' the Brit said, 'that the pilot's cap I noticed in one of the first-class seats belongs to you.'

Brian was standing in front of the locked door, head down, thinking furiously. When the Brit spoke up behind him, he jerked in surprise and whirled on his heels.

'Didn't mean to Put Your wind up,' the Brit said mildly. 'I'm Nick Hopewell.' He stuck out his hand.

Brian shook it. As he did so, performing his half of the ancient ritual, it occurred to him that this must be a dream. The scary flight from Tokyo and finding out that Anne was dead had brought it on.

Part of his mind knew this was not so, just as part of his mind had known the little girl's scream had had nothing to do with the deserted first-class section, but he seized on this idea just as he had seized on that one. It helped, so why not? Everything else was nuts - so nutty that even attempting to think about it made his mind feel sick and feverish. Besides, there was really no time to think, simply no time, and he found that this was also something of relief.

'Brian Engle,' he said. 'I'm pleased to meet you, although the circumstances are -' He, shrugged helplessly. What were the circumstances, exactly? He could not think of an adjective which would adequately describe them.

'Bit bizarre, aren't they?' Hopewell agreed. 'Best not to think of them right now, I suppose. Does the crew answer?'

'No,' Brian said, and abruptly struck his fist against the door in frustration.

'Easy, easy,' Hopewell soothed.-' Tell me about the cap, Mr Engle. You have no idea what satisfaction and relief it would give me to address you as Captain Engle.'

Brian grinned in spite of himself. 'I am Captain Engle,' he said, 'but under the circumstances, I guess you can call me Brian.'

Nick Hopewell seized Brian's left hand and kissed it heartily. 'I believe I'll call you Savior instead,' he said. 'Do you mind awfully?'

Brian threw his head back and began to laugh. Nick joined him. They were standing there in front of the locked door in the nearly empty plane, laughing wildly, when the man in the red shirt and the man in the crew-necked jersey arrived, looking at them as if they had both gone crazy.

3

Albert Kaussner held the hair in his right hand for several moments, looking at it thoughtfully. It was black and glossy in the overhead lights, a right proper pelt, and he wasn't at all surprised it had scared the hell out of the little girl. It would have scared Albert, too, if he hadn't been able to see it.

He tossed the wig back into the seat, glanced at the purse lying in the next seat, then looked more closely at what was lying next to the purse. It was a plain gold wedding ring. He picked it up, examined it, then put it back where it had been. He began walking slowly toward the back of the airplane. In less than a minute, Albert was so struck with wonder that he had forgotten all about who was flying the plane, or how the hell they were going to get down from here if it was the automatic pilot.

Flight 29's passengers were gone, but they had left a fabulous - and sometimes perplexing - treasure trove behind. Albert found jewelry on almost every seat: wedding rings, mostly, but there were also diamonds, emeralds, and rubies. There were earrings, most of them five-and-dime stuff but some which looked pretty expensive to Albert's eye. His mom had a few good pieces, and some of this stuff made her best jewelry look like rummage-sale buys. There were studs, necklaces, cufflinks, ID bracelets. And watches, watches, watches. From Timex to Rolex, there seemed to be at least two hundred of them, lying on seats, lying on the floor between seats, lying in the aisles. They twinkled in the lights.

There were at least sixty pairs of spectacles. Wire-rimmed, horn-rimmed., gold-rimmed. There were prim glasses, punky glasses, and glasses with rhinestones set in the bows. There were Ray-Bans, Polaroids, and Foster Grants.

There were belt buckles and service pins and piles of pocket-change. No bills, but easily four hundred dollars in quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies. There were wallets - not as many wallets as purses, but still a good dozen of them, from fine leather to plastic. There were pocket knives. There were at least a dozen hand-held calculators.

And odder things as well. He picked up a flesh-colored plastic cylinder and examined it for almost thirty seconds before deciding it really was a dildo and putting it down again in a hurry. There was a small gold spoon on a fine gold chain. There were bright speckles of metal here and there on the seats and on the floor, mostly silver but some gold. He picked up a couple of these to verify the judgment of his own wondering mind: some were dental caps, but most were fillings from human teeth. And, in one of the back rows, he picked up two tiny steel rods. He looked at these for several moments before realizing they were surgical pins, and that they belonged not on the floor of a nearly deserted airliner but in some passenger's knee or shoulder.

He discovered one more passenger, a young bearded man who was sprawled over two seats in the very last row, snoring loudly and smelling like a brewery.

Two seats away, he found a gadget that looked like a pacemaker implant.

Albert stood at the rear of the plane and looked forward along the large, empty tube of the fuselage.

'What in the fuck is going on here?' he asked in a soft, trembling voice.

4

'I demand to know just what is going on here!' the man in the crew-neck jersey said in a loud voice. He strode into the service area at the head of first class like a corporate raider mounting a hostile takeover.

'Currently? We're just about to break the lock on this door,' Nick Hopewell said, fixing Crew-Neck with a bright gaze. 'The flight crew appears to have abdicated along with everyone else, but we're in luck, just the same. My new acquaintance here is a pilot who just happened to be deadheading, and -'

'Someone around here is a deadhead, all right,' Crew-Neck said, 'and I intend to find out who, believe me.' He pushed past Nick without a glance and stuck his face into Brian's, as aggressive as a ballplayer disputing an umpire's call. 'Do you work for American Pride, friend?'

'Yes,' Brian said, 'but why don't we put that off for now, sir? It's important that -'

'I'll tell you what's important!' Crew-Neck shouted. A fine mist of spit settled on Brian's cheeks and he had to sit on a sudden and amazingly strong impulse to clamp his hands around this twerp's neck and see how far he could twist his head before something inside cracked. 'I've got a meeting at the Prudential Center with representatives of Bankers International at nine o'clock this morning! Promptly at nine o'clock! I booked a seat on this conveyance in good faith, and I have no intention of being late for my appointment! I want to know three things: who authorized an unscheduled stop for this airliner while I was asleep, where that stop was made, and why it was done!'

'Have you ever watched Star Trek?' Nick Hopewell asked suddenly.

Crew-Neck's face, suffused with angry blood, swung around. His expression said that he believed the Englishman was clearly mad. 'What in the hell are you talking about?'

'Marvellous American program,' Nick said. 'Science fiction. Exploring strange new worlds, like the one which apparently exists inside your head. And if you don't shut your gob at once, you bloody idiot, I'll be happy to demonstrate Mr Spock's famous Vulcan sleeper-hold for you.'

'You can't talk to me like that!' Crew-Neck snarled. 'Do you know who I am?'

'Of course,' Nick said. 'You're a bloody-minded little bugger who has mistaken his airline boarding pass for credentials proclaiming him to be the Grand High Poobah of Creation. You're also badly frightened. No harm in that, but you are in the way.'

Crew-Neck's face was now so clogged with blood that Brian began to be afraid his entire head would explode. He had once seen a movie where that happened. He did not want to see it in real life. 'You can't talk to me like that! You're not even an American citizen!'

Nick Hopewell moved so fast that Brian barely saw what was happening. At one moment the man in the crew-neck jersey was yelling into Nick's face while Nick stood at ease beside Brian, his hands on the hips of his pressed jeans. A moment later, Crew-Neck's nose was caught firmly between the first and second fingers of Nick's right hand.

Crew-Neck tried to pull away. Nick's fingers tightened ... and then his hand turned slightly, in the gesture of a man tightening a screw or winding an alarm clock. Crew-Neck bellowed.

'I can break it,' Nick said softly. 'Easiest thing in the world, believe me.'

Crew-Neck tried to jerk backward. His hands beat ineffectually at Nick's arm. Nick twisted again and Crew-Neck bellowed again.

'I don't think you heard me. I can break it. Do you understand? Signify if you have understanding.'

He twisted Crew-Neck's nose a third time.

Crew-Neck did not just bellow this time; he screamed.

'Oh, wow,' the stoned-looking girl said from behind them. 'A nose-hold.'

'I don't have time to discuss your business appointments,' Nick said softly to Crew-Neck. 'Nor do I have time to deal with hysteria masquerading as aggression. We have a nasty, perplexing situation here. You, sir, are clearly not part of the solution, and I have no intention whatever of allowing you to become part of the problem. Therefore, I am going to send you back into the main cabin. This gentleman in the red shirt -'

'Don Gaffney,' the gentleman in the red shirt said. He looked as vastly surprised as Brian felt.

'Thank you,' Nick said. He still held Crew-Neck's nose in that amazing clamp, and Brian could now see a thread of blood lining one of the man's pinched nostrils.

Nick pulled him closer and spoke in a warm, confidential voice.

'Mr Gaffney here will be your escort. Once you arrive in the main cabin, my buggardly friend, you will take a seat with your safety belt fixed firmly around your middle. Later, when the captain here has assured himself we are not going to fly into a mountain, a building, or another plane, we may be able to discuss our current situation at greater length. For the present, however, your input is not necessary. Do you understand all these things I have told you?'

Crew-Neck uttered a pained, outraged bellow.

'If you understand. please favor me with a thumbs-up.'

Crew-Neck raised one thumb. The nail, Brian saw, was neatly manicured.

'Fine,' Nick said. 'One more thing. When I let go of your nose, you may feel vengeful. To feel that way is fine. To give vent to the feeling would be a terrible mistake. I want you to remember that what I have done to your nose I can just as easily do to your testicles. In fact, I can wind them up so far that when I let go of them, you may actually fly about the cabin like a child's airplane. I expect you to leave with Mr -'

He looked questioningly at the man in the red shirt.

'Gaffney,' the man in the red shirt repeated.

'Gaffney, right. Sorry. I expect you to leave with Mr Gaffney. You will not remonstrate. You will not indulge in rebuttal. In fact, if you say so much as a single word. you will find yourself investigating hitherto unexplored realms of pain. Give me a thumbs-up if you understand this.'

Crew-Neck waved his thumb so enthusiastically that for a moment he looked like a hitchhiker with diarrhea.

'Right, then!' Nick said, and let go of Crew-Neck's nose.

Crew-Neck stepped back, staring at Nick Hopewell with angry, perplexed eyes - he looked like a cat which had just been doused with a bucket of cold water. By itself, anger would have left Brian unmoved. It was the perplexity that made him feel a little sorry for Crew-Neck. He felt mightily perplexed himself.

Crew-Neck raised a hand to his nose, verifying that it was still there. A narrow ribbon of blood, no wider than the pull-strip on a pack of cigarettes, ran from each nostril. The tips of his fingers came away bloody, and he looked at them unbelievingly. He opened his mouth.

'I wouldn't, mister,' Don Gaffney said. 'Guy means it. You better come along with me.'

He took Crew-Neck's arm. For a moment Crew-Neck resisted Gaffney's gentle tug. He opened his mouth again.

'Bad idea,' the girl who looked stoned told him.

Crew-Neck closed his mouth and allowed Gaffney to lead him back toward the rear of first class. He looked over his shoulder once, his eyes wide and stunned, and then dabbed his fingers under his nose again.

Nick, meanwhile, had lost all interest in the man. He was peering out one of the windows. 'We appear to be over the Rockies,' he said, 'and we seem to be at a safe enough altitude.'

Brian looked out himself for a moment. It was the Rockies, all right, and near the center of the range, by the look. He put their altitude at about 35,000 feet. Just about what Melanie Trevor had told him. So they were fine ... at least, so far.

'Come on,' he said. 'Help me break down this door.'

Nick joined him in front of the door. 'Shall I captain this part of the operation, Brian? I have some experience.'

'Be my guest.' Brian found himself wondering exactly how Nick Hopewell had come by his experience in twisting noses and breaking down doors. He had an idea it was probably a long story.

'It would be helpful to know how strong the lock is,' Nick said. 'If we hit it too hard, we're apt to go catapulting straight into the cockpit. I wouldn't want to run into something that won't bear running into.'

'I don't know,' Brian said truthfully. 'I don't think it's tremendously strong, though.'

'All right,' Nick said. 'Turn and face me - your right shoulder pointing at the door, my left.'

Brian did.

'I'll count off. We're going to shoulder it together on three. Dip your legs as we go in; we're more apt to pop the lock if we hit the door lower down.

'Don't hit it as hard as you can. About half. If that isn't enough, we can always go again. Got it?'

'I've got it.'

The girl, who looked a little more awake and with it now, said: 'I don't suppose they leave a key under the doormat or anything, huh?'

Nick looked at her, startled, then back at Brian. 'Do they by any chance leave a key someplace?'

Brian shook his head. 'I'm afraid not. It's an anti-terrorist precaution.'

'Of course,' Nick said. 'Of course it is.' He glanced at the girl and winked. 'But that's using your head, just the same.'

The girl smiled at him uncertainly.

Nick turned back to Brian. 'Ready, then?'

'Ready.'

'Right, then. One ... two ... three!'

They drove forward into the door, dipping down in perfect synchronicity just before they hit it, and the door popped open with absurd ease. There was a small lip - too short by at least three inches to be considered a step between the service area and the cockpit. Brian struck this with the edge of his shoe and would have fallen sideways into the cockpit if Nick hadn't grabbed him by the shoulder. The man was as quick as a cat.

'Right, then,' he said, more to himself than to Brian. 'Let's just see what we're dealing with here, shall we?'

5

The cockpit was empty. Looking into it made Brian's arms and neck prickle with gooseflesh. It was all well and good to know that a 767 could fly thousands of miles on autopilot, using information which had been programmed into its inertial navigation system - God knew he had flown enough miles that way himself - but it was another to see two empty seats. That was what chilled him. He had never seen an empty in-flight cockpit during his entire career.

He was seeing one now. The pilot's controls moved by themselves, making the infinitesimal corrections necessary to keep the plane on its plotted course to Boston. The board was green. The two small wings on the plane's attitude indicator were steady above the artificial horizon. Beyond the two small, slantedforward windows, a billion stars twinkled in an early-morning sky.

'Oh. wow,' the teenaged girl said softly.

'Coo-eee,' Nick said at the same moment. 'Look there, matey.'

Nick was pointing at a half-empty cup of coffee on the service console beside the left arm of the pilot's seat. Next to the coffee was a Danish pastry with two bites gone. This brought Brian's dream back in a rush, and he shivered violently.

'It happened fast, whatever it was,' Brian said. 'And look there. And there.'

He pointed first to the seat of the pilot's chair and then to the floor by the co-pilot's scat. Two wristwatches glimmered in the lights of the controls, one a pressure-proof Rolex, the other a digital Pulsar.

'If you want watches, you can take your pick,' a voice said from behind them. 'There's tons of them back there.' Brian looked over his shoulder and saw Albert Kaussner, looking neat and very young in his small black skull-cap and his Hard Rock Cafe tee-shirt. Standing beside him was the elderly gent in the fraying sport-coat.

'Are there indeed?' Nick asked. For the first time he seemed to have lost his self-possession.

'Watches, jewelry, and glasses,' Albert said. 'Also purses. But the weirdest thing is ... there's stuff I'm pretty sure came from inside people. Things like surgical pins and pacemakers.'

Nick looked at Brian Engle. The Englishman had paled noticeably. 'I had been going on roughly the same assumption as our rude and loquacious friend,' he said. 'That the plane set down someplace, for some reason, while I was asleep. That most of the passengers - and the crew - were somehow offloaded.'

'I would have woken the minute descent started,' Brian said. 'It's habit.' He found he could not take his eyes off the empty seats, the half-drunk cup of coffee, the half-eaten Danish.

'Ordinarily, I'd say the same,' Nick agreed, 'so I decided my drink had been doped.'

I don't know what this guy does for a living, Brian thought, but he sure doesn't sell used cars.

'No one doped my drink,' Brian said, 'because I didn't have one.'

'Neither did I,' Albert said.

'In any case, there couldn't have been a landing and take-off while we were sleeping,' Brian told them. 'You can fly a plane on autopilot, and the Concorde can land on autopilot, but you need a human being to take one up.'

'We didn't land, then,' Nick said.

'Nope.'

'So where did they go, Brian?'

'I don't know,' Brian said. He moved to the pilot's chair and sat down.

6

Flight 29 was flying at 36,000 feet, just as Melanie Trevor had told him, on heading 090. An hour or two from now that would change as the plane doglegged further north. Brian took the navigator's chart book, looked at the airspeed indicator, and made a series of rapid calculations. Then he put on the headset.

'Denver Center, this is American Pride Flight 29, over?'

He flicked the toggle ... and heard nothing. Nothing at all. No static; no chatter; no ground control, no other planes. He checked the transponder setting: 7700, just as it should be. Then he flicked the toggle back to transmit again. 'Denver Center, come in please, this is American Pride Flight 29, repeat, American Pride Heavy, and I have a problem, Denver, I have a problem.'

Flicked back the toggle to receive. Listened.

Then Brian did something which made Albert 'Ace' Kaussner's heart begin to bump faster with fear: he hit the control panel just below the radio equipment with the heel of his hand. The Boeing 767 was a high-tech, state-of-the-art passenger plane. One did not try to make the equipment on such a plane operate in such a fashion. What the pilot had just done was what you did when the old Philco radio you bought for a buck at the Kiwanis Auction wouldn't play after you got it home.

Brian tried Denver Center again. And got no response. No response at all.

7

To this moment, Brian had been dazed and terribly perplexed. Now he began to feel frightened - really frightened - as well. Up until now there had been no time to be scared. He wished that were still so ... but it wasn't. He flicked the radio to the emergency band and tried again. There was no response. This was the equivalent of dialing 911 in Manhattan and getting a recording which said everyone had left for the weekend. When you called for help on the emergency band, you always got a prompt response.

Until now, at least, Brian thought.

He switched to UNICOM, where private pilots obtained landing advisories at small airports. No response. He listened ... and heard nothing at all. Which just couldn't be. Private pilots chattered like grackles on a telephone line. The gal in the Piper wanted to know the weather. The guy in the Cessna would just flop back dead in his seat if he couldn't get someone to call his wife and tell her he was bringing home three extra for dinner. The guys in the Lear wanted the girl on the desk at the Arvada Airport to tell their charter passengers that they were going to be fifteen minutes late and to hold their water, they would still make the baseball game in Chicago on time.

But none of that was there. All the grackles had flown, it seemed, and the telephone lines were bare.

He flicked back to the FAA emergency band. 'Denver, come in! Come in right now! This is AP Flight 29, you answer me, goddammit!'

Nick touched his shoulder. 'Easy, mate.'

'The dog won't bark!' Brian said frantically. 'That's impossible, but that's what's happening! Christ, what did they do, have a fucking nuclear war?'

'Easy,' Nick repeated. 'Steady down, Brian, and tell me what you mean, the dog won't bark.'

'I mean Denver Control!' Brian said. 'That dog! I mean FAA Emergency! That dog! UNICOM, that dog, too! I've never -'

He flicked another switch. 'Here,' he said, 'this is the medium shortwave band. They should be jumping all over each other like frogs on a hot sidewalk, but I can't pick up jack shit.'

He flicked another switch, then looked up at Nick and Albert Kaussner, who had crowded in close. 'There's no VOR beacon out of Denver,' he said.

'Meaning?'

'Meaning I have no radio, I have no Denver navigation beacon, and my board says everything is just peachy keen. Which is crap. Got to be.'

A terrible idea began to surface in his mind, coming up like a bloated corpse rising to the top of a river.

'Hey, kid - look out the window. Left side of the plane. Tell me what you see.'

Albert Kaussner looked out. He looked out for a long time. 'Nothing,' he said. 'Nothing at all. Just the last of the Rockies and the beginning of the plains.'

'No lights?'

'No.'

Brian got up on legs which felt weak and watery. He stood looking down for a long time.

At last Nick Hopewell said quietly, 'Denver's gone, isn't it?'

Brian knew from the navigator's charts and his on-board navigational equipment that they should now be flying less than fifty miles south of Denver ... but below them he saw only the dark, featureless landscape that marked the beginning of the Great Plains.

'Yes,' he said. 'Denver's gone.'

8

There was a moment of utter silence in the cockpit, and then Nick Hopewell turned to the peanut gallery, currently consisting of Albert, the man in the ratty sport-coat, and the young girl. Nick clapped his hands together briskly, like a kindergarten teacher. He sounded like one, too, when he spoke. 'All right, people! Back to your seats. I think we need a little quiet here.'

'We are being quiet,' the girl objected, and reasonably enough.

'I believe that what the gentleman actually means isn't quiet but a little privacy,' the man in the ratty sportcoat said. He spoke in cultured tones. but his soft, worried eyes were fixed on Brian.

'That's exactly what I mean,' Nick agreed. 'Please?'

'Is he going to be all right?' the man in the ratty sport-coat asked in a low voice. 'He looks rather upset.'

Nick answered in the same confidential tone. 'Yes,' he said. 'He'll be fine. I'll see to it.'

'Come on, children,' the man in the ratty sport-coat said. He put one arm around the girl's shoulders, the other around Albert's. 'Let's go back and sit down. Our pilot has work to do.'

They need not have lowered their voices even temporarily as far as Brian Engle was concerned. He might have been a fish feeding in a stream while a small flock of birds passes overhead. The sound may reach the fish, but he certainly attaches no significance to it. Brian was busy working his way through the radio bands and switching from one navigational touchpoint to another. It was useless. No Denver; no Colorado Springs; no Omaha. All gone.

He could feel sweat trickling down his cheeks like tears, could feel his shirt sticking to his back.

I must smell like a pig, he thought, or a

Then inspiration struck. He switched to the military-aircraft band, although regulations expressly forbade his doing so. The Strategic Air Command practically owned Omaha. They would not be off the air. They might tell him to get the fuck off their frequency, would probably threaten to report him to the FAA, but Brian would accept all this cheerfully. Perhaps he would be the first to tell them that the city of Denver had apparently gone on vacation.

'Air Force Control, Air Force Control, this is American Pride Flight 29 and we have a problem here, a big problem here, do you read me? Over.'

No dog barked there, either.

That was when Brian felt something - something like a bolt - starting to give way deep inside his mind. That was when he felt his entire structure of organized thought begin to slide slowly toward some dark abyss.

9

Nick Hopewell clamped a hand on him then, high up on his shoulder, near the neck. Brian jumped in his seat and almost cried out aloud. He turned his head and found Nick's face less than three inches from his own.

Now he'll grab my nose and start to twist it, Brian thought.

Nick did not grab his nose. He spoke with quiet intensity, his eyes fixed unflinchingly on Brian's. 'I see a look in your eyes, my friend ... but I didn't need to see your eyes to know it was there. I can hear it in your voice and see it in the way you're sitting in your seat. Now listen to me, and listen well: panic is not allowed.'

Brian stared at him, frozen by that blue gaze.

'Do you understand me?'

He spoke with great effort. 'They don't let guys do what I do for a living if they panic, Nick.'

'I know that,' Nick said, 'but this is a unique situation. You need to remember, however, that there are a dozen or more people on this plane, and your job is the same as it ever was: to bring them down in one piece.'

'You don't need to tell me what my job is!' Brian snapped.

'I'm afraid I did,' Nick said, 'but you're looking a hundred per cent better now, I'm relieved to say.'

Brian was doing more than looking better; he was starting to feel better again. Nick had stuck a pin into the most sensitive place - his sense of responsibility. Just where he meant to stick me, he thought.

'What do you do for a living, Nick?' he asked a trifle shakily.

Nick threw back his head and laughed. 'Junior attache, British embassy, old man.'

'My aunt's hat.'

Nick shrugged. 'Well ... that's what it says on my papers, and I reckon that's good enough. If they said anything else, I suppose it would be Her Majesty's Mechanic. I fix things that need fixing. Right now that means you.'

'Thank you,' Brian said touchily, 'but I'm fixed.'

'All right, then - what do you mean to do? Can you navigate without those ground-beam thingies? Can you avoid other planes?'

'I can navigate just fine with on-board equipment,' Brian said. 'As for other planes -' He pointed at the radar screen. 'This bastard says there aren't any other planes.'

'Could be there are, though,' Nick said softly. 'Could be that radio and radar conditions are snafued, at least for the time being. You mentioned nuclear war, Brian. I think if there had been a nuclear exchange, we'd know. But that doesn't mean there hasn't been some sort of accident. Are you familiar with the phenomenon called the electromagnetic pulse?'

Brian thought briefly of Melanie Trevor. Oh, and we've had reports of the aurora borealis over the Mojave Desert. You might want to stay awake for that.

Could that be it? Some freakish weather phenomenon?

He supposed it was just possible. But, if so, how come he heard no static on the radio? How come there was no wave interference across the radar screen? Why just this dead blankness? And he didn't think the aurora borealis had been responsible for the disappearance of a hundred and fifty to two hundred passengers.

'Well?' Nick asked.

'You're some mechanic, Nick,' Brian said at last, 'but I don't think it's EMP. All on-board equipment - including the directional gear - seems to be working just fine.' He pointed to the digital compass readout. 'If we'd experienced an electromagnetic pulse, that baby would be all over the place. But it's holding dead steady.'

'So. Do you intend to continue on to Boston?'

Do you intend ... ?

And with that, the last of Brian's panic drained away. That's right, he thought. I'm the captain of this ship now . . . and in the end, that's all it comes down to. You should have reminded me of that in the first place, my friend, and saved us both a lot of trouble.

'Logan at dawn, with no idea what's going on in the country below us, or the rest of the world? No way.'

'Then what is our destination? Or do you need time to consider that matter?'

Brian didn't. And now the other things he needed to do began to click into place.

'I know,' he said. 'And I think it's time to talk to the passengers. The few that are left, anyway.'

He picked up the microphone, and that was when the bald man who had been sleeping in the business section poked his head into the cockpit. 'Would one of you gentlemen be so kind as to tell me what's happened to all the service personnel on this craft?' he asked querulously. 'I've had a very nice nap ... but now I'd like my dinner.'

10

Dinah Bellman felt much better. It was good to have other people around her, to feel their comforting presence. She was sitting in a small group with Albert Kaussner, Laurel Stevenson, and the man in the ratty sport-coat, who had introduced himself as Robert Jenkins. He was, he said, the author of more than forty mystery novels, and had been on his way to Boston to address a convention of mystery fans.

'Now,' he said, 'I find myself involved in a mystery a good deal more extravagant than any I would ever have dared to write.'

These four were sitting in the center section, near the head of the main cabin. The man in the crew-neck jersey sat in the starboard aisle, several rows down, holding a handkerchief to his nose (which had actually stopped bleeding several minutes ago) and fuming in solitary splendor. Don Gaffney sat nearby, keeping an uneasy watch on him. Gaffney had only spoken once, to ask Crew-Neck what his name was. Crew-Neck had not replied. He simply fixed Gaffney with a gaze of baleful intensity over the crumpled bouquet of his handkerchief.

Gaffney had not asked again.

'Does anyone have the slightest idea of what's going on here?' Laurel almost pleaded. 'I'm supposed to be starting my first real vacation in ten years tomorrow, and now this happens.'

Albert happened to be looking directly at Miss Stevenson as she spoke. As she dropped the line about this being her first real vacation in ten years, he saw her eyes suddenly shift to the right and blink rapidly three or four times, as if a particle of dust had landed in one of them. An idea so strong it was a certainty rose in his mind: the lady was lying. For some reason, the lady was lying. He looked at her more closely and saw nothing really remarkable - a woman with a species of fading prettiness, a woman falling rapidly out of her twenties and toward middle age (and to Albert, thirty was definitely where middle age began), a woman who would soon become colorless and invisible. But she had color now; her cheeks flamed with it. He didn't know what the lie meant, but he could see that it had momentarily refreshed her prettiness and made her nearly beautiful.

There's a lady who should lie more often, Albert thought. Then, before he or anyone else could reply to her, Brian's voice came from the overhead speakers.

'Ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain.'

'Captain my ass,' Crew-Neck snarled.

'Shut up!' Gaffney exclaimed from across the aisle.

Crew-Neck looked at him, startled, and subsided.

'As you undoubtedly know, we have an extremely odd situation on our hands here,' Brian continued. 'You don't need me to explain it; you only have to look around yourselves to understand.'

'I don't understand anything,' Albert muttered.

'I know a few other things, as well. They won't exactly make your day, I'm afraid, but since we're in this together, I want to be as frank as I possibly can. I have no cockpit-to-ground communication. And about five minutes ago we should have been able to see the lights of Denver clearly from the airplane. We couldn't. The only conclusion I'm willing to draw right now is that somebody down there forgot to pay the electricity bill. And until we know a little more, I think that's the only conclusion any of us should draw.' He paused. Laurel was holding Dinah's hand. Albert produced a low, awed whistle. Robert Jenkins, the mystery writer, was staring dreamily into space with his hands resting on his thighs.

'All of that is the bad news,' Brian went on. 'The good news is this: the plane is undamaged, we have plenty of fuel, and I'm qualified to fly this make and model. Also to land it. I think we'll all agree that landing safely is our first priority. There isn't a thing we can do until we accomplish that, and I want you to rest assured that it will be done.

'The last thing I want to pass on to you is that our destination will now be Bangor, Maine.'

Crew-Neck sat up with a jerk. 'Whaaat?' he bellowed.

'Our in-flight navigation equipment is in five-by-five working order, but I can't say the same for the navigational beams - VOR - which we also use. Under these circumstances, I have elected not to enter Logan airspace. I haven't been able to raise anyone, in air or on ground, by radio. The aircraft's radio equipment appears to be working, but I don't feel I can depend on appearances in the current circumstances. Bangor International Airport has the following advantages: the short approach is over land rather than water; air traffic at our ETA, about 8:30 A.M., will be much lighter - assuming there's any at all; and BIA, which used to be Dow Air Force Base, has the longest commercial runway on the East Coast of the United States. Our British and French friends land the Concorde there when they can't get into New York.'

Crew-Neck bawled: 'I have an important business meeting at the Pru this morning at nine o'clock AND I FORBID YOU TO FLY INTO SOME DIPSHIT MAINE AIRPORT!'

Dinah jumped and then cringed away from the sound of Crew-Neck's voice, pressing her cheek against the side of Laurel Stevenson's breast. She was not crying - not yet, anyway - but Laurel felt her chest begin to hitch.

'DO YOU HEAR ME?' Crew-Neck was bellowing. 'I AM DUE IN BOSTON TO DISCUSS AN UNUSUALLY LARGE BOND TRANSACTION, AND I HAVE EVERY INTENTION OF ARRIVING AT THAT MEETING ON TIME!' He unlatched his seatbelt and began to stand up. His cheeks were red, his brow waxy white. There was a blank look in his eyes which Laurel found extremely frightening. 'Do You UNDERSTA -'

'Please,' Laurel said. 'Please, mister, you're scaring the little girl.'

Crew-Neck turned his head and that unsettling blank gaze fell on her. Laurel could have waited. 'SCARING THE LITTLE GIRL? WE'RE DIVERTING TO SOME TINPOT, CHICKEN-SHIT AIRPORT IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, AND ALL YOU'VE GOT TO WORRY ABOUT IS -'

'Sit down and shut up or I'll pop you one,' Gaffney said, standing up. He had at least twenty years on CrewNeck, but he was heavier and much broader through the chest. He had rolled the sleeves of his red flannel shirt to the elbows, and when he clenched his hands into fists, the muscles in his forearms bunched. He looked like a lumberjack just starting to soften into retirement.

Crew-Neck's upper lip pulled back from his teeth. This doglike grimace scared Laurel, because she didn't believe the man in the crew-neck jersey knew he was making a face. She was the first of them to wonder if this man might not be crazy.

'I don't think you could do it alone, pops,' he said.

'He won't have to.' It was the bald man from the business section. 'I'll take a swing at you myself, if you don't shut up.'

Albert Kaussner mustered all his courage and said, 'So will I, you putz.'

Saying it was a great relief. He felt like one of the guys at the Alamo, stepping over the line Colonel Travis had drawn in the dirt.

Crew-Neck looked around. His lip rose and fell again in that queer, doglike snarl. 'I see. I see. You're all against me. Fine.' He sat down and stared at them truculently. 'But if you knew anything about the market in South American bonds -' He didn't finish. There was a cocktail napkin sitting on the arm of the seat next to him. He picked it up, looked at it, and began to pluck at it.

'Doesn't have to be this way,' Gaffney said. 'I wasn't born a hardass, mister, and I ain't one by inclination, either.' He was trying to sound pleasant, Laurel thought, but wariness showed through, perhaps anger as well. 'You ought to just relax and take it easy. Look on the bright side! The airline'll probably refund your full ticket price on this trip.'

Crew-Neck cut his eyes briefly in Don Gaffney's direction, then looked back at the cocktail napkin. He quit plucking it and began to tear it into long strips.

'Anyone here know how to run that little oven in the galley?' Baldy asked, as if nothing had happened. 'I want my dinner.'

No one answered.

'I didn't think so,' the bald man said sadly. 'This is the era of specialization. A shameful time to be alive.' With this philosophical pronouncement, Baldy retreated once more to business class.

Laurel looked down and saw that, below the rims of the dark glasses with their jaunty red plastic frames, Dinah Bellman's cheeks were wet with tears. Laurel forgot some of her own fear and perplexity, at least temporarily, and hugged the little girl. 'Don't cry, honey - that man was just upset. He's better now.'

If you call sitting there and looking hypnotized while you tear a paper napkin into teeny shreds better, she thought.

'I'm scared,' Dinah whispered. 'We all look like monsters to that man.'

'No, I don't think so,' Laurel said, surprised and a little taken aback. 'Why would you think a thing like that?'

'I don't know,' Dinah said. She liked this woman - had liked her from the instant she heard her voice - but she had no intention of telling Laurel that for just a moment she had seen them all, herself included, looking back at the man with the loud voice. She had been inside the man with the loud voice - his name was Mr Tooms or Mr Tunney or something like that - and to him they looked like a bunch of evil, selfish trolls.

If she told Miss Lee something like that, Miss Lee would think she was crazy. Why would this woman, whom Dinah had just met, think any different?

So Dinah said nothing.

Laurel kissed the girl's cheek. The skin was hot beneath her lips. 'Don't be scared, honey. We're going along just as smooth as can be - can't you feel it? -and in just a few hours we'll be safe on the ground again.'

'That's good. I want my Aunt Vicky, though. Where is she, do you think?'

'I don't know, hon,' Laurel said. 'I wish I did.'

Dinah thought again of the faces the yelling man saw: evil faces, cruel faces. She thought of her own face as he perceived it, a piggish baby face with the eyes hidden behind huge black lenses. Her courage broke then, and she began to weep in hoarse racking sobs that hurt Laurel's heart. She held the girl, because it was the only thing she could think of to do, and soon she was crying herself. They cried together for nearly five minutes, and then Dinah began to calm again. Laurel looked over at the slim young boy, whose name was either Albert or Alvin, she could not remember which, and saw that his eyes were also wet. He caught her looking and glanced hastily down at his hands.

Dinah fetched one final gasping sob and then just lay with her head pillowed against Laurel's breast. 'I guess crying won't help, huh?'

'No, I guess not,' Laurel agreed. 'Why don't you try going to sleep, Dinah?'

Dinah sighed - a watery, unhappy sound. 'I don't think I can. I was asleep.'

Tell me about it, Laurel thought. And Flight 29 continued east at 36,000 feet, flying at over five hundred miles an hour above the dark midsection of America.