Falling by T.J. Newman
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“ALL SET?” JO SAID.
Big Daddy tossed an almost-empty bag of cheap plastic Coastal Airways headphones on the forward galley countertop with a thwack.
“All set,” he said.
“Every passenger?”
“Every single one.”
“And you had them all turn on their TVs? And turn to the news?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Did it go okay? Were they receptive?”
Daddy stared at her, deadpan.
Reaching the galley, Kellie passed between them, tossing her nearly empty bag on top of his.
“Okay, these people do not like us,” she said, her eyes wide. “Holy shit are they angry.”
Daddy nodded in agreement. “He needs to finish whatever it is that he’s doing—now—because we need to give these people some information.”
The flight attendants looked across the galley to Rick Ryan, who continued to swipe and tap on his phone.
Jo said, “As soon as he’s finished—and thank you, Mr. Ryan, for assisting—we’ll go. In the meantime, let’s talk specials.” She handed Daddy the manifest and Kellie looked over his shoulder. “Miraculously, we don’t have too many. Two infants and one wheelchair. Thank god no unaccompanied minors. You do have a language in eighteen delta, though. Last name Gonzales, so I’m assuming Spanish? Do either of you speak Spanish?”
Kellie shook her head.
“Un poquito,”Daddy said, poring over the list. “That’ll be a fun briefing.”
“Kellie, while Daddy’s doing his briefs, break down your galley. We need it final-descent secure, now. There won’t be time later.”
She nodded.
“Gimme just a minute,” Rick Ryan said. “I’m almost done.”
The crew waited. They each had a thousand things to do to get the passengers ready for whatever was coming, but they couldn’t do any of it yet. Hurry up and wait. Even in a crisis, the unofficial motto of aviation held true.
“Do you remember,” Daddy broke the silence, “way back in the day, what they taught us to do if the plane was hijacked?”
Jo smiled. The memory seemed quaint. “Talk to them. Appeal to their emotions. Level with them. Give them what they want. Basically? Do whatever you gotta do to get the plane down safe.”
Back then, the tactic was to gain the hijackers’ empathy, so the company had instructed the flight attendants to keep pictures of their children or family on them at all times. Jo had the boys’ baby pictures tucked in with her badge and she remembered Big Daddy kept a picture of his cat. He’d told her his plan was to distract the terrorists with his pussy.
“Then 9/11 happened,” Daddy said, his voice trailing off. “And everything changed.” He leaned back against Jo’s jump seat. The cockpit was right there and he ran the backs of his fingers up the door. “We used to have something to work with, you know? The bad guys made sense, the world made sense. There were motives and demands. But now…” He shook his head.
“Cool, cool, cool,” Rick Ryan said, ending the moment. “It’s done. I’d say wait a couple minutes, then you’re on.”
Jo took out her phone and opened the message thread with her nephew.
Theo’s pocket vibrated and he strained against the seat belt to fish out his phone. Opening the message, he felt his brow furrow.
“What?” Liu asked.
“She says: ‘Watch the news.’ ”
Liu pulled up CNB’s website on her tablet. Waiting for it to load, she leaned over the partition. “How far out are we?”
“Approximately six minutes, ma’am,” the driver replied.
A sea of red covered the device. “What the…” Liu muttered to herself.
The network was in full breaking-news mode, massive fonts and capital letters demanding the world’s attention. The news anchor’s eyes darted up and down from his notes to the camera, the pace of what was occurring too fast for a teleprompter. Liu turned up the volume.
“…information is coming in as we speak. So far, all we know for sure is that some form of hijacking or terrorist incident is currently unfolding on board a midair Coastal Airways flight from Los Angeles to New York. Celebrity personality Rick Ryan is one of the passengers on board, and he has alerted the media to some sort of upcoming announcement. We are standing by, waiting for that…”
A box graphic of a tweet appeared on-screen:
@RickRyanyaboi
FLIGHT 416 HAS BEEN HIJACKED.
LIVE VIDEO FROM CREW COMING. PRAY FOR US!!!
Tagged to all the major news networks, the FBI, Homeland Security—even the White House—the tweet had already been shared twelve thousand times in less than three minutes.
“…the plane is an Airbus A320, which can carry up to one hundred and fifty passengers, plus a crew component of three flight att—”
The news anchor pressed his earpiece.
“Okay, I’m being told we have live streaming video from the plane. Let’s watch.”
The studio disappeared, replaced by a stuttering feed from the interior of a plane. The screen was filled with the face of a middle-aged woman in a flight attendant’s uniform.
Theo almost gasped. Aunt Jo.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, her voice choppy as the video buffered. “By now you’re aware that we have a situation on our hands.”
Liu looked up at Theo with complete sincerity.
“Is your aunt fucking insane?”
Jo stared into the little camera on the back of Kellie’s phone. The young flight attendant stood across from her, focusing intensely on the screen, occasionally raising or lowering the device to keep Jo centered in the frame.
“I know the whole world is watching right now, but they’re not who I’m speaking to,” Jo said into the camera. “I’m talking to you—the passengers of Flight four-one-six. I know you’re confused and angry. I would be too if I were you. But from where I stand, things looks a little different. Ladies and gentlemen, you need to know what’s going on. You deserve to know what the crew knows.”
The engines hummed. It was the only noise in the cabin. Every passenger on board wore either their own headphones, or the airline’s complimentary pair passed out by the flight attendants. They all watched the news intently.
“I’m not gonna sugarcoat this,” Jo continued. “Our captain’s family has been kidnapped. His wife, their ten-year-old son, and ten-month-old daughter are being held hostage on the ground back in LA as we speak. The individual who took them has said he will kill them—unless the captain crashes the plane.”
A woman in first class gasped loud enough to startle Kellie. Daddy stood with his arms crossed against his chest, watching the passengers, taking the cabin’s pulse as Jo spoke. He was to monitor for any signs of an accomplice among them; anyone becoming fidgety or looking around suspiciously. Glancing at Jo, he gave her an encouraging nod.
“Now I’ve flown with Captain Hoffman coming up on twenty years,” Jo continued. “I know that man. I know that man. There is not a chance, not a single possibility, that he would crash this plane. None. And that’s all I’m going to say about that because there is nothing else to say.
“But before I go on, I wanna talk to you,” Jo snarled, eyes narrowing, weight shifting. “You, you sick son of a bitch, wherever you are. You think you’ll get away with this? You have no idea the forces that hunt you right now. They will find you, I guarantee you that. And I promise you something else too.”
She adjusted her scarf.
“That family you’ve got? They will live. And this plane? Is not going to crash.”
Kellie stood a little straighter. Daddy clenched his jaw, widening his stance.
“So let’s talk about those masks now. Why did we drop them? So that we can protect ourselves. Yes, ladies and gentlemen. This maniac has involved us in his sick plan as well.”
Jo could feel her heart rate spiking the way it does in the moment before a confession. When you’re scared and want to run or back down, but know you can’t.
“Before we land, he’s going to make the captain release a gas into the cabin from the cockpit. What is the gas? Well, we don’t know. But we’re going to assume it’s pretty bad, and we’re going to plan on it being pretty bad.
“Look,” she continued. “Whatever it is, we sure as hell don’t want to breathe it. That’s what the masks are for. The flight attendants will brief you and prepare you for what’s going to happen. But here is what you need to know most of all, what you must remember from this very moment up until those wheels touch down in New York.”
She stepped forward.
“We are going to get through this. We will work together. We will protect each other. And together—as passengers and flight attendants and pilots of this flight—we will show this monster that we cannot be bullied, blackmailed, or taken down.”
Jo paused. She had no idea where any of those words had come from. She had set an intention, opened her mouth, and the words simply flowed out. Her mind raced. What had she missed? She wasn’t even sure what she just said.
“When I was a little girl, Daddy used to say to me: ‘Sit deep and put your spurs on, girl.’ Ladies and gentlemen, we have one choice. That choice is to trust and to be united. It’s an honor to be here with you, and a privilege to serve you. Sit deep and put your spurs on—here we go.”
Kellie pressed the red button. With a soft ping, the video stopped recording.
Theo watched Liu lay the tablet in her lap. Outside the van’s window, the scenery passed by in a blur.
“Dehumanize the bad guy,” she said. “Paint the captain as victim and hero. Unite the mob against a common enemy, which distracts them from their potential demise. Rally their warrior spirit into action.” Liu turned to Theo. “This urge you have to disregard authority and piss on protocol? It’s a family trait?”
Theo inhaled through an upsurge of pride that made his cheeks tingle.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, unable to hide a small smile.
“She didn’t— Wait, did she talk about DC?”
“No, ma’am,” another agent said.
Liu shook her head.
Aunt Jo was a thousand miles away and she was able to get under Liu’s skin too. Theo loved it.
“Ma’am? We’re here,” the driver said, pulling into a run-down strip mall. Vacant storefronts with faded outlines of former signage filled the plaza. Small planters with overgrown grass and dry trees dotted the parking lot. A maroon sedan with two flat tires and a windshield thick with dust sat abandoned.
The only other sign of life was at the far end of the lot. Under a burned-out streetlight, shrouded in darkness, a large silver SUV straddled two spots, conspicuous in its newness. In the shortness of a late-fall day, nighttime had already fallen—but the car’s sunshield was up, blocking a view of the inside from Alpha unit’s vantage.
“Park behind that,” Liu said, and motioned toward a planter with a sizable tree.
The vehicle slowed to a stop, rocking back as it set in park.
“All right, you sicko,” Liu said. “Let’s try this again.”