Chapter 6

Helen removed the magazine from her gun and wrapped her jacket around the Beretta. “You guys stand back,” she told Katherine. “I’m going to break the window.”

Helen waited until Katherine and David were out the way and inspected the glass. She would make a noise, she knew, but this was their best chance for escape. There’d be no going out the front door for them tonight—not if they hoped to survive until morning.

She focused, then swung the bundle. The window shattered. She threw the jacket again and again, closing her eyes against the flying shards. She wondered if she was cut but didn’t take time to examine herself. Instead, she loaded the gun at once, then tried to remove some of the jagged edges of windowpane that clung to the frame.

She listened for footsteps. Nothing yet. The skyjackers had probably been so overly confident in their own abilities, and so dismissive of what the women could accomplish, that they hadn’t connected the crashing of the glass with anything their captives might have done. Men were often like that, Helen reasoned.

She urgently waved Katherine and David toward her, picked David up at once and lowered him carefully through the window. She prayed that he wouldn’t be cut. She looked out at him and put a finger over her mouth to warn him to be quiet. But David usually was quiet. That was a concern that Eric had about him. One out of many.

Then Katherine picked her way through the window, grabbed onto the frame as stepped out and swallowed a cry of pain. Damn, she was sliced. Still, she was out!

But their luck couldn’t hold, could it? Things never worked that well. As Helen began to step cautiously through the window, she sensed something behind her in the room and turned. The man who had forced them into the car was behind her, a look of such astonishment on his face that it almost made her laugh. She pointed the gun at him, but the guy was stupid. Why did men always think that a woman wouldn’t, couldn’t, shoot?

He pulled his own gun from his pocket and as he did, Helen squeezed off a shot. She had been a sharpshooter, a competitive sharpshooter, from the time she was a teenager, and the passing years hadn’t worsened her abilities. In fact, she was a savvier shot than ever, had a better understanding of what she was up against in terms of weapon kick, wind or lack of it, and so on.

She didn’t want to kill the man, or she would have—although Eric had told her many times not to fool around in such a situation, but to go for the heart or dead between the eyes. Instead, she shot her opponent’s shooting arm just exactly at the elbow, shattering it. He’d never be grateful to her for doing so, but he owed her a debt. The man dropped the gun and howled like a banshee, the pain was so great, which didn’t matter in terms of noise, since her gun had let off an explosion so loud that even those deadheads in the other room couldn’t ignore it.

Absurdly perhaps, Helen stepped back into the room and knelt beside her kidnapper, her gun at his head. She reached into his pocket and came up with a fistful of the cash he had stolen from the women. She heard the others scurrying toward the room and stood, then fled backward toward the window, gun at the ready.

The one who had driven the car appeared first, but he just stared at her, ducking behind the door frame. He didn’t have a weapon or didn’t have it out. She positioned her leg into the window frame and lowered herself to the ground. Katherine grabbed for her and tried to help her out, but by the time Helen was through, she knew she had been cut in more than one place.

Katherine picked up David and ran toward the front of the house. It wouldn’t have been Helen’s choice of directions, but she followed, stumbling backward, holding her gun out so she could shoot whoever came chasing them. In fact, shots rang out toward her, and she could see two of the men leaning out the window.

That was good though, because once the women and David were around the house, it would take the men at least a few seconds to hurry toward the entry and outside. But where was the smooth one, the bandolero who threw innocent men from their own airplanes to a certain demise? He was the one most likely to arrive at the entrance first At the front of the house, Helen steered Katherine toward the car they had been abducted in, so they could use it as cover from any shooting that would occur. “Wait,” Helen said, suddenly. “I can hotwire the car in twenty seconds.” She had always been losing her car keys when she was stationed at Pope and one of the mechanics there had showed her how to start a car without the benefit of keys. She’d never thought that she would use it to steal a car, however. But then, this car was probably already stolen.

As she got the engine going, those revolutionaries who were still on their feet burst out of the house. Helen shoved David into the front seat and Katherine hopped in. “Keep low,” Helen ordered them, then jumped in herself, her head ducked down against the shots being fired. “Where the hell are the neighbors during all this?” she muttered. “Where are the cops?” Maybe the shooting was the usual in this neighborhood for a Saturday night.

Helen fumbled with the wires, popped out of the car momentarily to fire two warning shots toward the bad guys to hold them back, then started the car at the same second she pulled the car door closed after herself. She screeched the car down the road, heading for she knew not what—but when in doubt, a gas station.

They had escaped their captors, who couldn’t even chase after the women, since the helpless females now had the car. Extremely neat! She slowed the vehicle to a normal pace and turned toward Katherine. “That went rather well, I think,” she said, pleased with herself.

“You’re bleeding all over the place,” answered Katherine without much warmth. “And so am I.”

“Yes, but the car isn’t ours, so we don’t have to worry about messing up the upholstery,” Helen put in defensively. She was entirely elated that they were all still alive and in relatively good shape. Their credit cards were gone though, so they couldn’t pick up Eric’s car this evening, after all. She understood that things never went exactly as planned.

Since she didn’t know where they were or where they were going, she drove on. Finally, she passed a sign announcing the presence of a hospital and decided to pull in. She didn’t care about herself; she was certain she was fine, but she wanted to be sure that Katherine got sewed up, or had a tetanus shot or whatever. Katherine concurred that they were about due for some serious medical attention.

As they got out of the car, Helen realized she was covered with blood. She had sliced herself royally in several places. Funny, she hadn’t felt it much. She must have been running on adrenaline. The evening reminded her of some times she had had in the old days.

On Sunday, Helen stayed in bed until after ten, then got up and messed around the apartment, eating days’ old leftovers from the refrigerator. She swallowed pain killers to dull the agony of her wounds plus the twenty-four stitches she had received, then called to check on Katherine and on David. Katherine had gotten off relatively lightly in the medical department and had even peddled dutifully for a few minutes that morning on her exercise bicycle. And David was acting as if nothing much had happened the day before, although he wondered if they could go out for hot dogs again.

On Monday, Helen flew down to Washington. Having left the plane at La Guardia Saturday night, she went through multiple gyrations to retrace her steps to Queens and spent more than an hour going over the aircraft inch by inch to make sure it hadn’t been sabotaged. Eric, she knew, would have slept in the plane over the entire weekend to make sure no harm was done—despite multiple wounds and a lack of ventilation on the airship. He was a perfectionist, a hero; she, however, couldn’t maintain that much of an edge.

A different mechanic had cheerfully checked out the perfectly unsullied workings of the jet, and Helen had departed the airfield with only a modicum of anxiety. The only problem with her landing at National, as it turned out, was the density of Monday morning air traffic, but she well knew that the slick, sick handsome Latino stranger whom she had met on Saturday night would not rest content until Helen was out of the way.

The fact that the skyjacker hadn’t tampered with her aircraft on Sunday, she attributed to two possible causes: His connections weren’t solid enough at La Guardia to admit him onto the field, or he and his associates had spent the intervening hours scrambling to move out of their base in Queens. Probably the use of the house had been temporary anyway. If Helen had been able to go back on Sunday with the cops, they would undoubtedly have found a very ordinary family living there.

But she hadn’t been able to return, although she had spent quite some time before flying out Monday morning driving the streets near to the hospital where they had been sewn up, hoping to find where Katherine, David, and she had been held that weekend. She wasn’t familiar enough with the neighborhood to locate the house, however, and so many of the streets looked exactly alike. Yes, she was driving the car she had stolen from the bad guys. She’d park it outside the gate at La Guardia and let it, too, get towed away.

In fact, she hadn’t wanted to bring the cops into it. She had some very good reasons. Nor had she wanted to alert the ATF. She would let them know, when she felt the time was ripe, but yesterday hadn’t been the day. Today wasn’t, either.

When Helen showed up at Viscotti’s office at eleven in the morning—as she had promised him she would do—she was in a surprisingly good mood, all considered. “Well?” he wanted to know. “How’s the investigation going?”

“Step outside with me and I’ll tell you,” she promised. You really never knew when an office was bugged. You really never did know—she wasn’t just saying that.

Viscotti seemed annoyed at having to indulge Helen’s petty paranoid fantasies, but he did get up from his desk and walk into the corridor with her. She led him down the hall a way. It was an astonishingly simple business to set up a camera the size of a matchbox facing the door to an office in order to record the organization’s comings and goings. So much could be told from who came and who went.

Yes, it would be no surprise to anyone spying that Helen was visiting the office of her employer; so what if she were recorded, someone like Viscotti would say. But she might be taped telling all to him, and even without sound, a lip reader would be able to pick up every word. Extreme? Ordinary everyday goings on in post high-tech America, truth to tell. She knew. Information security was one of her bags.

Helen gave Viscotti an edited synopsis of what she had been up to. She told him about her talk with the ATF agent and she revealed that she had received a threatening phone call from a man claiming to be the skyjacker. She didn’t bother to go into the story of her abduction in Queens or her rather wily escape. She was afraid that Viscotti might try to be too protective of her and fire her from the case.

“I can’t believe it,” said Viscotti. He sounded as if he really didn’t believe her.

“Then call your friend at the ATF. It’s John Garcia who told you to call Eric, right?”

“I told you his name,” insisted Viscotti. Helen made a face denying the validity of that assertion. “I will call him then,” he promised.

“I’m working hard. I’m making progress.”

“I hope you’re not flying around too much, costing us a lot in fuel and airport fees,” Viscotti fussed.

“Don’t be petty, Henry. This is a real-life investigation. It’ll cost you. If the association can’t afford to protect its members, then drop it. I’ll bill you for my work to date and send a report.” She took the keys to the CitationJet out of her purse.

“Never mind,” said Viscotti, pushing away Helen’s hand. “I want you to go ahead, but I want you to file another report as soon as possible. I need to know exactly what is going on, and it had better all be legal. I don’t want anything to happen that could put us in an unfortunate light in the media.”

“By the time this is over, we’ll all be heroes. You’ll look like a saint. And I’m working on this in conjunction with the FAA, as well as the ATF. Nothing to be alarmed about. I will send you a first bill with that report, if it’s convenient.”

Viscotti nodded a reluctant acknowledgment and Helen smiled. She waved over her shoulder as she made her way toward the elevator. She didn’t look back.

This time she knew how to find her way to Dennis Malloy’s office. A visit is better than a phone call, she always thought, especially if you wanted to enlist someone to do something for you.

Malloy appeared a little wary when he came out to the waiting room to greet her, but he ushered her in to his cubicle without any delay.

“It isn’t drugs, Dennis, it’s guns,” she told him triumphantly. “They’re gunrunners to the various revolutionary factions in the Latin countries, and the ATF is watching them. An ATF special agent told me so. I think the ATF doesn’t want to stop these hijackings because they have their own agenda, or they would have approached the FAA earlier for a cooperative effort. The ATF is a rogue agency, Dennis, that’s what I think.” She realized suddenly that she had read an article in Grenade to that effect, and that’s why she thought so. She wondered momentarily if she ought to allow a magazine like Grenade to mold her political opinions.

For a second time today, one of her listeners had trouble accepting information she dared to share. “You’re sure an ATF agent told you the hijackers are gunrunners,” he asked dubiously.

“And why wouldn’t they be, Dennis? Did you think the culprits are a band of nuns intending to transport medical supplies to the Central African Republic?” She shook her head at him. “You spend too much time in your office, Dennis Malloy. All this recirculated air isn’t good for your brain cells. You’re got to get out into the field. And I’m the person who can take you there. It’s time for a little spin down to Roanoke, Virginia. We can interview the Roanoke Regional administrator, Cary Greenwild. Because even though we know what the skyjackers are—and ATF may even know who they are—we still need to find out how they did it. A new FAA regulation may be in the offing here, once we uncover what security failure led to such a terrible end.”

“Going down to Roanoke Regional won’t help,” he objected. “The hijacking was probably from Connecticut.”

“Then we can fly into Tweed-New Haven, too. Although I’ve already spoken to them at the airport.”

“I really can’t manage it today,” Malloy insisted. “I’m incredibly busy.”

Helen made a face of intense disappointment. “Just to Virginia then,” she pleaded.

Malloy turned red and looked unhappy. He dropped his eyes and mouthed something at her that she couldn’t quite catch.

“What?” she said. “I didn’t hear that.”

He whispered in a slightly loader tone and she leaned toward him to pick up the sounds. She heard the words, then tried to interpret them. He had said, she believed, “I don’t like to fly.” But had she heard him correctly? What did he mean? He was an inspector with the Federal Aviation Administration. He couldn’t work for the FAA and not fly around the country.

She looked at Malloy, puzzled. Maybe he thought she was inviting him to pilot the plane or something. Maybe everyone else in the FAA was an experienced pilot and he was merely a novice. Nah! He was scared of getting in an airplane, that was the actual meaning of his words.

“It’s a perfect day for flying,” she assured him, trying not to be overheard by the inhabitants of the nearby cubicles. “Not much wind, so no bumps. I’m a great pilot, too. I flew with the Air Force for 10 years. I even flew C-5s for a while—the big transport birds. But what I’m flying today is a brand-new jet with all the avionics you need to get from here to China—including a global positioning system. It’s totally awesome.” She smiled at him encouragingly, but his face had set in an expression that announced he wasn’t risking his life in any damn heavier-than-air machine.

“Walk me out then,” she suggested.

She had him accompany her in the elevator to the first floor and out onto the street where she planned to catch a cab. “Flying in a plane is as safe as the ride we just took in the elevator,” she told him sadly. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a late lunch in Roanoke and be back in Washington in time for the evening rush hour? I’ll teach you to fly, if you like. You wouldn’t have to be afraid if you knew you yourself were in control. I’m a certified flight instructor.” Damn, she wanted to show up at Cary Greenwild’s door with the FAA in tow. She didn’t like that guy’s snotty attitude.

“Just to think about it makes me feel sick,” confessed Malloy with equal sincerity.

“But don’t you have to fly for your work?” she asked.

“Not if I’m cagey. When I first started the job fifteen years ago, I flew, but later I became afraid of flying. I still flew sometimes then. After a while, I stopped flying, but no one noticed.” He looked her in the eye. “You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?”

She smiled. “No, but I’ll use the information to blackmail you—so keep feeding me all the clues you come up with.” She was kidding, of course she was…She swatted Malloy on the arm and put her hand out to catch a taxi.

She flew up to Tweed-New Haven and caught another cab to the offices of Majore Chemical, the firm that had employed Lyle Adams. Helen’s timing was bad, they told her. Adams’ boss was out of town, although the public relations woman, Sandy Kovaks, would be able to see her now.

The two women shook hands and Helen gave her a by-now-memorized, introductory spiel, as she pulled out her private investigator’s license. Corporate PR people could be as slick as banana peels and twice as oily, Helen knew, so her approach was circumspect.

“What do you make here at Majore?” she inquired.

“Designer chemicals for very specific industrial uses. You have a need, maybe for a non-toxic substance to replace something you’ve been using for years that is somewhat hazardous, and we’ll find, or design, a substitute. Or if your company has a new process, an unusual one that requires a chemical agent to interact with other substances in a certain way, we’ll help you find a chemical that will serve as the essential link for you. We have the software, we have the database, we have the chemists and industrial engineers. We will also manufacture a chemical for you in bulk or in small amounts, depending on your need.”

“Wow,” said Helen. “It’s amazing what goes on nowadays.

“Yes, it is.”

“Lyle Adams was one of the chemists?”

“Yes, he was. His death was a very sad loss for us all. This is a small company—like a family, really. He’ll be very much missed.”

Helen mused. “What work was he doing that required him to fly down to Roanoke?”

“I don’t know what he was working on exactly. His general area was aerospace. He put together composites, plastic composites, I imagine. Those are compounds that comprise new materials such as the ones used in Detroit or, in this case, in advanced aircraft.”

“Who was the client?”

Kovaks looked uncomfortable. “I couldn’t say.”

“You don’t know, or you can’t say?”

“I’m not sure.” Kovaks seemed embarrassed. “I liked Lyle. He was a gentleman.”

“May I use a phone?” Helen asked. All right, she had inadvertently left her cell at home. But an idea percolated inside of her. The least Majore could do was pay a dollar or two for her phone call.

Kovaks gave Helen a private office in which to use the telephone. Bad security, Helen thought, glancing around the room as she dialed. They had letterhead stationary in here that she could steal in order to pass herself off as a Majore employee. She could turn on the computer system, too, and try to hack her way at least into the usual occupant’s files, even if the workstation wasn’t hooked into a main database. What else? She could plant a bug while she was at it—or an explosive device with a timer, although that was going a bit far.

Her party picked up. “Dennis, it’s Helen,” she hissed. “Come here, Watson, I need you. We must meet in Roanoke. I think this thing is bigger than either of us had imagined.”

“I told you what I’m not doing, and I meant it,” said Dennis Malloy.

“I didn’t say you had to fly,” Helen protested. “Do you have a car? Drive here in the morning. What time can you get here?” Distracted, she tapped the mouse sitting in front of the computer terminal. The screensaver graphic disappeared, and a directory of files showed itself to her.

“It’s a four- or five-hour drive.” Malloy was outraged.

“That’s why people go places on airplanes,” she reminded him. “Listen, Lyle Adams wasn’t just a chemist. He was working on composites for advanced aircraft. Majore is a defense contractor. This opens up a whole new can of worms. What was Adams working on when he was killed? Were the rest of the skyjackings only a cover to do Adams in? I see so many possibilities here, Dennis, it’s incredible. You’re an investigator, right? Come on, help me, let’s get cracking. If you leave the house by seven, you can surely pick me up at Roanoke Regional by noon.” She selected a file and clicked the mouse. Text appeared on the screen, and she leaned over to read it. The text appeared to be gibberish. No, these were chemical formulas or something like that.

“Do I really have to? That’s ten hours of driving for me in one day.”

“You really have to, Dennis,” she asserted. “The trip will be good for you. A change of pace is always stimulating and rejuvenating. I’ll see you there at noon. Thanks. You’re the greatest.” She hung up before he could think of any other objections.

She scrolled down the page. More of the same. She made the pages go by in rapid succession until she came to the end. She scrolled back a little way. This part was more readable. The last page or so was a memo appended to the scientific mess. She read it rapidly. The note was to senior vice president Robert Avilla at Beaumont Aircraft in Salem, Virginia, projecting dates for Alpha tests and then Beta tests of the product. She stared at the screen in utter amazement. The report, the memo, whatever it was, had been signed by Lyle Adams, with space enough left for Adams’ signature, once the piece was printed out.

The dead man was speaking to her, Helen thought. Adams had given her significant information. He had given her a sign that she was to continue!