Chapter 16

She couldn’t dig Dennis out of the wall. And furthermore, he wasn’t in the best of moods. He kept snarling at her in low tones as she tried to break his chains and he tried to eat his meal of “scraps.”

“Run out and get help,” he instructed her. “The ATF or even the local police.”

“I’ll try later,” she said. “An alarm system is installed on the doors. I’ll have to see if I can disarm it. Run get help! You make it sound so easy. I’m doing my best.”

“I can’t believe all the terrible things that have happened to me since I got involved with you.”

Helen stopped hacking away at the bolt in the concrete that held the chain. “You’re still in one piece so far,” she responded defensively. So far!

She climbed back up the basement stairs. She’d scout around and see how she might approach that “running for help” Dennis was promoting so avidly.

She pushed on the door. But the door was stuck. She couldn’t remember closing it when she had come down before. She tried turning the knob and shoving against it with her full weight. The door didn’t budge. She descended the flight of stairs once again.

“He’s locked us in,” she told Dennis.

He spooned the last of the casserole into his mouth. “That was good,” he commented. “Did Avilla make it himself?”

“He’s locked us in,” she repeated.

Dennis sighed. “I suppose you’re going to want to share my slender accommodations. One narrow cot, a light blanket, one public toilet, and now I have company.”

She sat beside him on the cot. “I’ll bet you’re glad I’m here. I’ll bet you’re as glad to see me as you could possibly be.”

“Your presence beats the nobility of suffering in silence,” he agreed. He allowed himself one small, woebegone smile.

She awoke and looked at her watch. The time was five-thirty. The one light that they had to see by shone down on them, into their eyes, both an advantage and a disadvantage. Nice to have light, but hard to sleep with it on like that. She lay still, listening to the sounds of the house. Had she heard something to awaken her? Was Avilla up yet? If they were going to hijack a Points West plane today, they had better get cracking.

And there the noise was, a sound at the door. Helen gently shook Dennis from a fretful sleep on the narrow cot. He began to groan as he came to, and she put a hand over his mouth. If she were quick about it, maybe she could run up the stairs and drop Avilla when he come in.

The door creaked wide open before she could jump off the cot. “Rise and shine, boys and girls. It’s showtime.” The voice was not Avilla’s and the footsteps that descended weren’t his, either. Helen found herself staring up at Ernesto Peno. She shivered in the morning cold.

Ernesto was so like his uncle, she thought. Not only in looks, but in the way he presented his evil deeds, as if such vileness was merely a form of entertainment. The two were cut from the same bolt of cloth. Or what Avilla had was contagious. Peno, his nephew, had caught an equally extreme case of it.

Helen sprang from the cot and Dennis sat up in place, looking wary. Avilla had arrived, too, and descended the stairs to join the others. “I like to bring old friends together,” he commented, stepping toward them. “Isn’t this nice? Helen will come with me this morning and we’ll leave Dennis with Ernest, who will keep him company.”

“No,” Helen disagreed sharply. “No way am I leaving Dennis behind. Shoot us both now, if you like, and do the flying on this job yourself, but I’m not going anywhere without my friend.”

Avilla and Peno conversed in Spanish for a while. Apparently, they were not making little witticisms at this point. “All right,” acceded Avilla, at last. “Dennis may go on this outing.” He took a key from his pocket and unlocked the steel cuff on Dennis’s wrist. Released from the restraint, Dennis began to rub his chaffed skin gently. He stretched both arms up into the air. Obviously, he would prefer to go home and do his yoga right now, skipping the scheduled morning skyjacking.

“You need a shave, dear boy,” Avilla told Dennis. “And frankly, a shower. I suppose I can give you a shirt and pair of pants to wear as well.” Helen felt absurdly relieved by this turn of events. Showers and shaves seemed oh so civilized. Yet she knew very well that the unsavory duo intended to kill the two investigators later anyway. Any idea that Helen and Dennis would be released after the skyjacking, with thanks for a job well done, was a dream.

Richmond was a stone’s throw away from Roanoke by CitationJet. Helen debated inserting a request into her routine patter with the air traffic controller at Richmond, asking him to have the police standing by when she landed. The problem was that the plan offered not even the slenderest hope for Dennis and her. Even if she was allowed to utter the words, Avilla would shove the two captives out the exit at once, for a long, lonely freefall, and would proceed on to Mexico to add another Cessna jet to his nephew’s collection.

Instead, Helen reasoned, they might have a slight chance for an escape after they arrived in Richmond, or at some moment before they boarded the Points West jet. Peno and Avilla couldn’t expect to go through the checkpoint holding onto their guns. In fact, as she tried to figure out how they were going to achieve this entire feat of derring-do, her sense of reality began to flounder. Hijacking a commercial airliner nowadays couldn’t be done any way discreetly enough to work.

Of course, international skyjackings occurred, but they were almost never successful. As for skyjackings in the U.S., none were even attempted anymore. Except recently, she reminded herself. She knew of seven, not commercial, but all successful. All committed by the companion sitting in the cockpit beside her watching her every move—Robert Avilla. Even with the air-cooling system on, Helen began to sweat.

They disembarked the CitationJet. Avilla was the one to turn and give the plane a backward glance. “What a shame to leave her here,” he said wistfully. “I’d like to try to fly her back to Roanoke, but I suppose that’s too big a risk to take.”

Too big a risk! Just what kind of a risk did he think he was taking now? And where was she supposed to be when all of this was over? Was he confessing that she wouldn’t be able to simply pick up her jet and go on home? As if she didn’t know that was his intention from the very beginning.

Was she scared? Yes, but she also had an indefatigable sense of optimism. Avilla was bad; she was good. She’d therefore be able to punch the guy out. That foundation worked real well for Batman, among others. And, in truth, the approach worked for her darling fiancé, too. He was good, wasn’t he?

They paused outside the hangers that lined the rear of the runway. Avilla and Peno had a short talk in Spanish. Peno nodded, as if agreeing with his uncle’s conclusions or accepting his instruction.

Avilla turned to Helen and Dennis. “This is where we part,” he said. “You were both wonderful houseguests. So quiet. So well-behaved. Although no one folded the blanket and I had to put the dishes in the dishwasher myself.” He smiled, amused by his own sick idiocy, then turned and walked off toward the terminal building.

Helen was stunned. What was next? She peeked at Dennis. He seemed rather surprised as well. Wasn’t Avilla supposed to guide them through their skyjacker routine?

“Don’t try anything this time,” Peno told them. “My hand is on my gun and the gun is pointed right at a vital organ. We’re walking around to that gate.” He pointed. “Walk at a normal pace. We don’t want to have any problems, do we?”

Helen was more mystified than before. What sort of a hijacking was this? The event didn’t seem scripted according to the usual scenario. They reached the gate. Beyond where they stood, on the field, some of the larger birds hung out, looking big and clunky on the ground, longing for their element, the endless sky. No Points West jets, she noted, although she saw a couple of 727s.

Peno conversed in Spanish with the security officer at the gate. They were in cahoots, Helen realized grimly. She looked for identification on the guard’s uniform. He was from a national guard agency, a contract officer hired by the airport. Why pay more than a few bucks an hour?

Peno gave the man an envelope. How much? Helen wondered. How much were the lives of the passengers and crew worth? How much was the value of a multimillion-dollar piece of equipment to the guard who had sold them all out to a madman?

The security officer let them onto the field and Peno shoved the gun into Helen’s spine, directing her toward one of the 727s. A set of stairs stood against the open door of the plane. That meant at least one other payoff, insuring that the plane would be open and waiting for them. The two prisoners and their captor boarded. Peno looked satisfied but glanced behind him cautiously as they entered the cabin.

He shepherded them toward the back. “Too bad we are three. The lavatory is going to be bit of a crowd scene.” For a moment, Helen thought that Peno was kidding, but he was deadly serious. They were going to share the narrow toilet space until the time came to emerge from hiding with a gun and uncivil intentions.

She looked at her watch as Peno shoved Dennis and her into the tiny lavatory. Seven-forty-nine in the morning. She hoped this was an early flight out.

But the legend on the side of the airplane has been that of MountainAir. Joan flew for Points West. Therefore, Avilla had been lying again when he had told her she was going to finish the flight for Joan. (And what about a co-pilot? Without Avilla, they didn’t have one.) Still, the pilot must be a woman. Or was that correct, either? Maybe picking Helen as a pilot was simply a convenience to the father and son—both to help them steal the airplane and so that they could do away with Helen, finally, as they had tried to do several times before.

Had she thought father and son? What kind of a slip was that?

They certainly were like father and son, though, whether the actual relationship was true or not. In fact, if it was true, she didn’t want to hear about it. That would be the final bizarre twist making an already too, too nasty tale completely stomach wrenching. A picture of a weary, middle-aged, bloated Maria Sedone came unbidden into Helen’s mind.

All this had been going through her head as she stood with her face practically pressed into Sedone’s son’s chest. Peno was Sedone’s son, that was the only aspect of his parentage she could currently identify. She took Dennis’s hand in hers, squeezed it and held it for a minute or two, then let it drop away. She was damned uncomfortable in here. Chemical smells poured from the toilet, choking her, and the air was as hot as if a roaring fire had been set in the midst of them. But the heat was being generated by the three people stuck in there—without relief from any sort of ventilation.

This juxtaposition of bodies seemed to last and last, as if time had stopped forevermore. Helen looked at her watch, stood sweating and beginning to itch for millennia, then looked again. The minutes ticked by with an agonizing slowness. “Let’s open the door a little,” she whispered to Peno. He looked down at her and smiled as if he could drink her blood. She was sorry she had asked.

The plane began to roll. Dennis seemed alarmed, as if something untoward was happening, but the ground crew was simply towing the plane toward the terminal gate. They would hook up the covered entranceway and the passengers would board. The tow continued longer than Helen expected, so she presumed the gate was some way from where they had been parked.

Then she felt the jet began to move forward under its own power, as if traveling down the runway, gathering speed for take-off. Yes, this was definitely take-off, guys. The crew had neglected to stop for the passengers. What was a passenger jet doing flying without its complement of paying guests? Helen had never heard of anything like this, but a lot of her puzzlement as to how the skyjacking could work cleared up rather quickly with a single ‘ah ha’ experience. Shit! They had planned this well and might easily get away with it, the bastards. Damn, she had to stop them. These people were regular sky Nazis. Helen clenched her fist. She hated bad people; she really did.

Now Peno eased open the door and ushered Dennis and Helen out of the lavatory, indicating that they should take two of the empty seats toward the back of the plane while he stepped ahead, down the aisle. Dennis looked distinctly unhappy, Helen noticed. He was trying his deep breathing. She reached out and held his hand again. “We’re on God’s string,” she whispered. This time she didn’t release the grip and he squeezed back hard, conveying to her that he was terrified.

Peno didn’t pay the slightest attention to them at this point. He was arranging things in his pocket and was moving forward. This was a good time to jump him, Helen thought. Peno was stronger than Avilla, younger, but she had taken him once. So no reason she couldn’t do so again.

As if aware of what she was thinking, Peno turned and pulled the gun from his pocket. He saluted her, tapping the weapon mockingly against his forehead. He had her Beretta, the bastard! Avilla had given it to him. The gun slipped back into his pocket as he moved forward and something else came out. She thought maybe it was a hypodermic needle.

Helen felt entirely frustrated sitting here powerless while the flyers in the cabin were about to be jumped by a lunatic. Had Peno’s uncle given him step-by-step instructions in how to hijack a jet plane? How to render the pilot—and co-pilot—helpless? How to throw them out at 20,000 feet? How to force Helen to fly them—where? Where was she supposed to land the 727? Certainly not on that Mexican runway against the side of the mountain, a length of landing space barely sufficient for her own corporate-style jet. Then where?

Wherever the other jets were that Avilla had hijacked, probably. Wherever that was.

She thought of screaming to alert the crew in the cockpit, but what good would that do? Get them shot, probably, by inciting them to fight. Get a few holes in the plane and depressurize the cabin. Which was okay, since the person flying the plane had an oxygen mask hanging right behind her. The others might require some oxygen, too, but that they be thinking clearly wasn’t so essential as that the pilot be tracking.

It was too late to do anything now, anyway. And she trusted to the fact that the autopsies of the other pilots had shown they were still alive when they had been tossed out of the plane. Unless Peno’s style of skyjacking differed from Avilla’s, he wasn’t going to kill the flyers right at this minute.

Dennis was breathing slowly, deeply, to calm himself. Helen noticed that she was holding her own breath. She got out of her seat and walked forward. She simply couldn’t help herself. She had to know what was going on.

She stopped at the cockpit door and looked in. Shocked, she let out that breath she had been holding. The pilot was Joan. Both she and the co-pilot were slumped over and Peno put the plane on autopilot.

“There you are,” he said, as if he had expected her to come along soon. “You can help me with her, first. It wouldn’t do to have two Joan Waxman’s aboard. You don’t want to share your identity with her, do you?” He smiled and began hauling the unconscious woman out of her seat. “Grab her legs.”

Helen took hold of Joan’s legs and helped Peno carry her out, into the body of the plane. She tried remembering to breathe—not as deeply as Dennis was doing, but deeply enough to fuel the required activity and to allow her mind to work.

They brought Joan over to the exit in first class and set her down in the aisle. Helen tried to avoid looking at her.

“Help me open the door,” requested Peno. “How nice to have help. All the other times I had to do all the work by myself.”

“I thought your uncle was the skyjacker.” Helen’s voice cracked with dryness and nerves.

Peno laughed. “Don’t be silly. I did it all. Help me unclasp this.” They worked at the door lock. Something caught her attention and Helen looked up, toward the rear of the plane. Dennis was inching forward, toward them. She frowned deeply, hoping he would take it as a warning. He wouldn’t like it up here very much once the door was open.

The door moved apart from the frame. A powerful wind swept through the cabin. They were a little higher than for the usual paratrooper dive. “You’re a pilot then,” she shouted at Peno above the noise of the wind.

He nodded in acknowledgement. So, he wasn’t licensed with the FAA—they didn’t have a special skyjacker’s license—but he knew how to fly anyway, well enough to take seven planes into that little mountain runway and presumably out again for use somewhere deeper in Latin America.

“A skyjacking was reported while you were in Mexico,” she protested.

He nodded again. “My uncle’s little witticism,” he yelled toward her still somewhat-unhearing ear. “He’s a flyer, too, you know.”

Peno indicated to Helen that she should help him pick up Joan so that they could fling her out the open door. Helen beckoned to him. She had something to tell him, to whisper into his ear.

He shook his head no. He wasn’t an absolute fool, after all. He didn’t trust her. Helen glanced toward the rear of the plane again. Dennis was still making his way slowly toward them, clinging to the aisle seats as he passed, breathing deeply and keeping his head down so he wouldn’t see out the windows.

Peno turned his head to look, too, which was enough of a diversion for Helen to reach over and thump her open palm against the center of his chest. That gentle but focused blow threw Peno off balance and gave her the time to move in closer to him. A stiff wind tried to keep her from him, but she pushed against it with determination.

He reached into his pocket for the gun, but he was still off center and moving slowly. Helen grounded herself, but by the time she was ready for her second blow, Peno had the Beretta in hand. This was, as Peno had called it, showtime. If she hesitated now, they all were dead. Instead of the strike to the chest she had wanted to deliver, she used a blocking move to knock against his arm, sending the gun flying into the aisle near Dennis, who reached for it.

Peno headed in the direction of the weapon, but Helen stepped in front of him. She knew that the only strategy that would work for her here was to keep him off center. He was too strong and mean for her to fight directly. She evaluated where his weight was and pushed on the less stable side to throw him off. She moved him back toward the door where he stumbled against his victim, Joan.

This was Helen’s opportunity, even though the risk was that he would recover, grab her, and push her over the threshold herself. She stepped forward, dangerously close to him and to the endless reaches of boundless sky. Her open hand snaked out and struck him again on the chest, but with a more forceful punch, calculated, she hoped, to use his own weight and energy to topple him into nothingness.

Peno staggered, tried to save himself, reached out for her to try to pull her with him. His hand brushed against her sweatshirt as she stepped back quickly into the interior of the plane.

As Helen had intended, but much to her surprise, Peno was unable to catch himself. He dropped out the open door.