The story starts on the day after 9/11 -- here are the first 2 chapters of THE FIFTH PLANE:
Chapter 1 Ten A.M., September Twelfth “Danny Boy—“ The bird colonel — his nametag read “Logan” — was all smiles as he sat down across from Daniel Clooney, holding out a dripping can of A&W Root Beer. The world jostled, and Daniel shook his head. How anyone could drink anything on a bouncing helicopter, much less keep it down, was a mystery he didn’t want to solve. The nation was at war, yet here he was, trapped in a flying coffin with a numbskull in a uniform who wanted to be everyone’s best buddy. In about an hour, if the twirlybird held together, Daniel would meet America’s biggest hero since Audi Murphy, assuming the lucky schmuck was still alive. A sick thought, but if his injuries didn’t get him, Osama’s suicide troops probably would, no matter how much protection the FBI provided. The colonel sat back and yelled to be audible over the noise. “How does it feel to know that you are riding on practically the only goddam piece of machinery in the sky over the whole continent?” “What about the F-16s flying patrol all over the country?” Daniel replied. A jolt slammed his teeth together. Orders or no orders, on the trip back from Ohio, he would rent a car. “They’re patrolling from every airbase that has them, I thought.” “They don’t count.” Again the wide grin. Daniel’s father had always warned him about military big shots who came on too friendly. He had also warned him never to climb into a helicopter. “What the hell sort of job did you say you have?” Smilin’ Jack continued, taking the root beer in huge gulps. “Gotta be a big deal to let us fly on a day like this.” “Liaison Office. It’s new. We coordinate FBI, CIA, and Justice. You know, cut down on duplication of effort, keep communication channels clear.” “Duplication of effort? In government?” Logan guffawed. Daniel laughed politely, but Logan persisted, leaning forward, filling the narrow, steel-lined space between seats. Why couldn’t the military make a comfortable vehicle? “So how’d you get such a plum slot? Were you a spook?” Daniel shook his head. “FBI. The CIA didn’t want me.” “No shit?” A sip of root beer. “Wasn’t your dad military intelligence?” Another jolt, this one from the inside. Daniel’s body tensed. There was more to Smilin’ Jack than met the eye. His dad’s profession was something Daniel never divulged. “How do you know that?” A shrug. “They gave me a folder when we made out the flight plan. There’s a folder on everyone, as I’m sure your poppa told you.” The bird took a swooping dip, and so did Daniel’s stomach. Logan yelled toward the cockpit opening. “Keep it level, McGee.” The reply, unintelligible, made the colonel laugh. Logan checked his watch. “About forty more minutes.” He smirked at the way Daniel’s fingertips were dug into his knees. “So why are we taking you to see the hero? Can’t be security. Jesus, I heard there’s almost a division guarding the hospital.” “Well, there you are.” Deep breath. “Every other service branch and agency has a contingent out there, at the hospital or combing the crash site in Pennsylvania. Guess my boss didn’t want our department to be left out.” A knowing nod. “One of those deals, eh?” A final gulp of root beer, and the can crinkled in the wiry hands that already displayed a few age spots. Logan sat back again, looking almost comfortable on the hard metal. “Only problem with that story is the timing. Things are too hot to send you to make an appearance — for appearance’s sake. Nice try, but your daddy should have taught you to lie better.” Daniel didn’t bristle, though he wanted to kick himself for not seeing it earlier. The colonel had the atmosphere, the carriage, the doe eyes that shifted methodically. So much like his father, it hurt. Only his father never smiled this much. “So there’s something going on behind the scenes.” Logan looked skyward, like a crossword puzzler trying to discover a word. Daniel turned his own gaze toward the rear of the spacious Huey. The only other passenger was one guy in battle dress, dutifully holding his M-16 across his lap on the back bench. Logan kept drilling the well, though he couldn’t know it was dry. “I mean, this guy — this nobody — what’s his name?” “Frank Whitlock.” “—Yeah. He’s coming back from a sales convention, probably on his second beer, suddenly the plane’s hijacked, then one of the passengers calls on his cell, finds out they’re all about to be toast — then this insurance-salesman-nobody gathers some bozos in the back of the plane, organizes them, they march forward, can’t get in the fucking cockpit door, and somehow our boy, who has never had a day of karate in his life, kicks the goddam thing down, and they kill the bastards with wine bottles and — what was it about their necks? They broke some of the terrorists’ necks?” “My information comes from CNN, just like yours,” Daniel said, pulling rank for good measure. Logan’s grimace was so pained that Daniel took pity, and threw him a bone. “Only thing I heard different was that Whitlock was organizing the ‘resistance’ before they started getting the warning phone calls.” Logan’s eyes flashed at this tidbit of new info, and Daniel kicked himself. “Well, there you are. The old fart was in on the caper.” Daniel shifted to look out of the window, but the jostling view only riled his stomach further. “Come on, Clooney. It adds up. This old guy never flew a plane in his life, according to the records. But records can be doctored. Christ, the bad guys put the damned thing into a power dive, and Hero Whitlock pulled it out. Brought the nose up without stalling, less than a thousand feet off the deck, then lands it. He lands it.” Again, the insipid smile. “So where does that put Liaison Officer Daniel Clooney? You heading up there to arrest America’s hero? Or give him a Black Ops medal?” He read. With his eyes and likely thirty or forty years of training for every nuance of body language, the old colonel was riveted on any response Daniel might telegraph. Too bad he didn’t realize there were none to give. “You’ve got a great imagination, Colonel. It’s a great scenario, and I’ll bet the talk shows are onto it by this weekend.” He risked another look outside. “I’m afraid my assignment isn’t so sexy. Like I told you, my boss just wants us to have a presence. The Liaison office is an experiment. The lawmakers started howling for the CIA and FBI to come together an hour after the last tower fell yesterday. My boss is Gerald Sullivan, a career man, and he figures he’s finally in the right place at the right time.” “Sullivan? And you’re Clooney?” Logan guffawed, a little too loudly. “Well, maybe I’m wrong. They can’t give real secrets to two Irishmen.” His eyelids closed, leaving only slits. “But as one analyst to another, something about America’s hero smells to high heaven, and I think you know what it is.” Daniel managed his own smile. “Ever think that Whitlock might just be an average American who was able to pull off something remarkable? Not everything has to be some sort of conspiracy. All the hero’s told anyone is that he had a premonition about the hijacking. You’ve been in this game a long time. Maybe even you can admit that miracles do happen.” “Perhaps.” A slow nod. Then that awful, all-encompassing grin again. “But I doubt your daddy ever told you that.” Chapter 2 Night Horror “You’re going to die today.” “You’re going to die today.” The whispers were repeated, as if to make sure that Frank Whitlock understood. Voices had always come to him in dreams, but these were not the usual, sometimes inane predictions. These threats had come out of, been part of the darkness every night since September eleventh. Someone was trying to tell him something. Something he missed on the day it happened. The death whispers always said “today.” So far, there had always been a tomorrow, thank God. Was he finally lapsing into some form of schizophrenia, fulfilling Mr. Campbell’s prediction uttered way back in high school English? Mental illness or latent genius, it didn’t much matter. The terrorists wanted him, and they would get him. He could see that in the eyes of his protectors, though they were, to a person, professional and cheerful. He could also feel it waiting for him, somewhere out there. Almost touch it. His death would not be pretty. Frank lay sweating in the wayward sheets, trying to urge feeling back into his legs. “You are going to die today.” The whisper echoed each time he closed his eyes. And now his blood circulation was returning, climbing at turtle-speed up his hips, pricking his fingers alive, and climbing the length of his arms, inch-by-inch, blood invading cells like tiny floodwaters, thawing flesh so strangely frozen. Waking up paralyzed in the middle of the night had been part of his life since childhood, but that did not stop him from wondering if this was how death would feel when it did come. “It’s only three.”Jill climbed over her pillow and loomed above him. “Are you all right?” “Yeah. Go back to sleep.” A whiff of her cherry shampoo. He could flex his fingers now. “Did I scream?” “No.” She re-arranged the covers, tucking them in gingerly, to avoid the healing wound on his right side. “Were you dreaming about the plane?” “No. I don’t dream about that.” “I still know when you’ve had a nightmare.” She yawned. “Sorry, I have to go in early. If you really need to talk, I’ll stay up.” “No. Go back to sleep. I’m OK.” Night horrors were one thing, but the night sweats were a new addition. Shock to the body, the doctors in the hospital said. Getting stabbed by razors a half-dozen times did things like that to your system. Tiny, unquenched infections, or maybe random echoes through the nervous system that would only last a few weeks. If only the whispered threats would fade with them. He could try to simply drift back to sleep – God knows he needed the rest – but Sam would never forgive him. So he took deep breaths as silently as he could, and tried to remember the dream. That was their code – when he woke frozen, he had received a message from Sam. After a long time listening to the pings of the wind chimes on the back patio and the chimes of Grandma Landwerlin’s clock in the hall, wisps of a scene began to return to the inside of his eyelids – pinpoint flashes of light, and smells pressed in from all sides. An odor of death — was he back in the plane? My God, no. “You’re going to die today.” Now the dream washed over him with full force: He saw an airplane, but not the big Boeing jet. He was a little boy again, flying gliders with Sam out on the football field. In the cold, impenetrable Texas wind – this was before they moved to California – the tiny balsa-wood crafts kept crashing straight down into the hard brown grass. Only occasionally could they catch a level wind draft, and then the wooden toys became magic, pitching up and down as they traversed the whole field, finally clacking to rest on the bleachers. “Look at this,” Sam called, and here was where things started to warp. Frank felt himself tense up, but he followed him to the end zone. “Those ants — look at those ants.” Sam yelled and pointed. A mountainous ant bed towered in one corner of the football field, an exaggerated kind of habitat constructed by fire ants. Ridiculous, Frank wanted to say. There were no fire ants back home when he was young. He followed his brother’s finger, and felt his own jaw drop. The crawling insects were not ants, but tiny human beings, clad in ancient garb, fighting a great battle with all the fervor of crazed bugs. They carried guns, and maces, and swords in their minute, muscular fists. He might have been watching a well-executed cartoon, but this scene was three-dimensional and awful. Tiny pools of bright red blood were forming all up and down the pitted dirt. Incredibly, one group of the little fighting figures wore red, and the other, black. Like ants. Frank stood, mesmerized. He felt like a god, easily able to stop the fighting if he wished. He had only to pick up any of the tiny creatures and crush them in his fingers. What did it mean? “No, idiot,” Sam said, waving his arms, pointing past the warring bug-humans. “See? One-one-five-eight-seven. There — in the grass.” “What?” Frank feared that pulling his gaze away would break the spell. Not only could he see everything the little people did, like looking down from a blimp, but their very feelings rose on the air in grunts and wails. Each warrior faction was fanatical, wronged, vengeful. “The numbers — the numbers,” Sam insisted. There, across the end zone in white marking chalk, someone had written the digits: 1-1-5-8-7 — asif that were the name of some strange home team. “See?” Sam got right up in his face, excited. “Remember them.” He repeated slowly, “One-one-five-eight-seven.” “Why?” It was stupid even to ask. His big brother died when Frank was thirteen, but still came to his dreams, to show him things. Marvelous things, often horrifying, always urgent. But he never answered why. At that instant, one of the tiny wooden gliders flew into view, circled the numbers for one, two, three turns, then sailed upward on the wind, and stalled. Frank had had only a couple of flying lessons when the company bought a private jet, and knew what a stall was. On September eleventh, he had used that knowledge to barely keep the jumbo jet out of one. The balsa craft slammed down onto the hard ground, hitting the chalk “5,” raising a miniature cloud of white dust. In the dream, Frank picked up the craft and straightened its wings. There on the side, letters had been scrawled in ballpoint, obviously Sam’s handwriting, “k…,l,m,” and some childish scribbles that looked like little birds and clouds. “You ruined it,” Frank said. “Is it the alphabet? We agreed not to write on the planes. You’re supposed to use the stick-on decals.” But Sam was running away, down the field, into the cold wind that had suddenly increased in fierceness. The sign that the dream was about to end. The sky grew dark, and in his last glimpse, the tiny people on the big ant bed had ceased to move, their weapons hanging limply by their sides or at their feet. The miniatures slept and groveled in eerie sitting positions, and their feelings could just be made out — pleading whispers, perhaps prayers that seemed to also ask why. Frank could hear their unspoken fears: These people knew that this was just a lull in their wretched little war, and that when they awoke, they were all going to die. Frank’s eyes came open, and his stomach churned. It was always good to see Sam, even though he was trapped in that slippery, scary world of dreams. Each time Frank tried to talk to him, man-to-man, he scurried away. He never did get to ask him, are you OK? That question had real meaning now, since he might well be joining Sam in the near future. Maybe his body was even getting ready for the end. The real world had been a blur since that fateful day — the roller coaster fight on the plane, the horror of the screams, the wrenching landing, the blood and the press, and the woozy hospital visit by the President of the United States. He fought it, but for a few moments, the big fear reached out of the darkness: Was he still on the plane, bleeding, dying? Were these three tumultuous weeks since the eleventh only the tortured dreams of a dead man, like that farmer on Owl Creek Bridge in the Civil War? To hell with the accolades and bouquets and never-ending replays on television. Had he lost Jill? He listened. Her breathing was regular, now. Soft. He slipped his feet out of the covers, and into his house shoes. Wrapping his robe around him, he went into the den and switched on the small reading light. The police guards would notice, so he had to work fast. In the phone book, he found the number he wanted, punched through the maze of audible choices, and finally heard the voice — too perky for this time of night — of a human being.
“Yes.” Frank was careful to whisper. “I just wanted to know if KLM Airlines has a flight one-one-five-eight-seven? Yes, I’ll hold.”