Unaccompanied Minor (19 page)

“I’m gonna start countin’ now,” Ramona sing-songed. “One… two… three… four… five… six… seven… eight… nine… ten… eleven… Okay, hey, how ’bout I let Flo have a chance to beg for her life? C’mon on over here, Flo. Here, tell April how Jack’s got a gun to your head. Go on, tell her.”

I heard Flo’s raspy cough, then she said, “Yep, kid. There’s a gun to my head,
again
.” I began to turn in circles, looking for something, anything, I could think of to use to help gain control of the situation.

“Tell her he’s got the barrel cocked,” Ramona urged.

“Yep, he’s got the barrel cocked.”

“Now beg for your life, Flo. C’mon, do it.”

Malcolm and I stood frozen in fear and dread. Flo coughed once more, then her voice—her dear, cigarette-shredded voice—came through strong and clear. “April, just remember Mac season two, episode five, and whatever you do,
don’t come up here! Don’t you dare come—
”

BANG!
The sound of the gunshot was so loud through the speaker that I grabbed my head as though I’d been shot myself. “
No!
” I screamed. “
Flo, no! Flo!
”

The speaker was silent but for the cries of the nearby passengers. Then I heard—and I swear I felt it, too—the small thud of Flo’s body as it crumpled to the galley floor above my head. I crumpled to the floor myself, too stunned to even cry. Someone was crying, though, softly. I turned to see both Malcolm and Officer Ned weeping into the palms of their hands.

After the screams of the passengers died down, the aircraft fell eerily quiet, and not only did Ramona and the fake drunk stop making demands, but I didn’t hear any hijackers trying to bust their way through the hatch to force their way down. They must have thought they were able to regroup and plan their next move. They must have thought we didn’t have anywhere to go.

And normally, they would have been right.

I felt Malcolm’s hand on my shoulder. “What did she mean by ‘Mac, season two, episode….”

“Episode five,” I said softly.

“What was that about?”

I didn’t answer him. I wiped away the wetness on my cheeks (I must have cried after all) and forced myself to address the task at hand. “Does your cell phone work up here?” I asked Malcolm.

“No, believe me, I tried,” he said, doing his best to stiffen his upper lip.

Many people think cell phone use isn’t possible from an aircraft at cruising altitude. They’re only half right. Some work, most don’t. It’s just a matter of seeing which ones do. I remembered the imposter Brighton McPherson’s phone, which thankfully Officer Ned had tucked back into the pocket of Beefheart’s vest. I grabbed it, dialed 911 and got an operator somewhere in Arkansas.

“I’m on WorldAir flight 1021 and we’re being hijacked!” I screamed into the phone.

“What’s your name?” the operator asked me.

“April Mae Manning.”

“What’s the address of the emergency?”

“I just told you. I’m on an aircraft! We’re being hijacked! They’ve killed three people!”

“I can’t dispatch the police unless you give me an address,” she said curtly. I hung up.

Next I dialed the WorldAir reservation desk, only to be sent to some computer-automated echo chamber. “Representative!” I yelled into the phone. “Representative!… Representa…
dang it
!” I hung up. “Malcolm, who should I call?”

“Who knows phone numbers? I just click a name on the contact list.”

Then Officer Ned—thank God he wasn’t dead—reached up and weakly motioned for me to give him the phone. I handed it to him.

“I swear to God, you kids, you don’t know any phone numbers?” He winced as he punched in a number. The painkillers were starting to work, I could tell.

“Who are you calling?” I asked.

“The Georgia Bureau of Investigation,” he said. Someone must have answered, because he raised his finger to silence me. “Representative!” he croaked into the phone. “Representative!… Representa…
oh, forget it
!” He hung up, handed the phone back to me, and rested his head back onto the bundle of blankets I’d made him for a pillow.

No time to be frustrated. I dialed 800-444-4444, the number of the old MCI telecommunications technical support line. It was a number so simple it defied forgetfulness. An automated operator answered with, “Welcome to MCI. Our system indicates you are calling from 404-828-8805. If this is the number you are calling about, press one.” I hung up.

“Malcolm, write this down: 4-0-4-8-2-8-8-8-0-5,” I directed, “it’s the number for this phone.” Then I dashed over to the pile of useful items collected from the crew bags, grabbed the curling iron and banged it against the counter until the half that was the metal tube broke off. I yanked the heating coil out of it and popped the plastic cap off the top, which left me with a hollow metal tube. Then I opened the packet of spaghetti and inserted a handful of the dry pasta sticks into the tube.

“Can you hand me that P02 bottle, Malcolm?”

“What is a P02 bottle?”

“Sorry, it’s the oxygen bottle in the bracket to the left of the jumpseat, the one with the rubber yellow mask.”

He handed it to me. I tore the rubber mask from the plastic tubing, then inserted the open end of the tubing into one end of the metal pipe filled with spaghetti. I sealed the connection with the masking tape.

“What is that?” Malcolm asked.

“It’s a makeshift lance,” I said.

“Are you serious? Like the kind bank robbers use to bust open safes?” Of course Malcolm knew what a thermic lance was. “Is it gonna work?”

“I hope so. I learned about it on
Gizmodo.com
. ‘Seven Deadly Weapons You Should Never Ever Make Out of Harmless Household Items.’ My grandfather and I did this once, but this is my first time trying it with an authentic pressurized oxygen tank,” I said. “The dry spaghetti is supposed to serve as a decent facsimile for conductive aluminum rods.”

“
So
awesome.”

The walls on an aircraft that separate its compartments are made of material that, though strong, is also as thin and lightweight as possible. It’s the perfect material to be strong enough to hold aloft untold tons of cargo, resist impact from blunt blows, and hold up during catastrophic weather conditions. It is
not
ideal to withstand a blowtorch—or, in this case, a thermic lance, which can kind of be described as a blowtorch, but with laser-like precision.

Malcolm gingerly picked up the bag containing the now-dormant explosive device and placed it on the crew stowage shelf, securing it behind the rubber netting. He and I both donned sunglasses we’d collected from the crew bags, and I put on a pair of oven mitts from a drawer next to the reach-in freezer. Then I carried my contraption as far forward in the galley as I could, aimed it at the wall separating us from the cargo bay, pulled Flo’s cigarette lighter from my pocket, and held it at the tip of the improvised lance.

“Ready?” asked Malcolm.

“Ready.”

“Ready for what?” Officer Ned wailed weakly. “What are you kids doing? Put that thing—”

Malcolm cranked the handle on the tank, which caused the pure oxygen to be released into the metal tube. I waited a few seconds to be sure the oxygen had saturated the interior of the metal tube. Then I flicked Flo’s lighter to life and touched the flame to the tip of the lance.

“Wow!” Malcolm exclaimed. Even Officer Ned looked a little impressed. The improvised thermic lance beamed like a bionic light saber. I touched the beam to the forward wall and began to burn a circle to open a hole big enough for every one of us to fit through, including Officer Ned. “Malcolm, can you please put the rest of the useful items in my backpack and carry it over here?”

I would have thought there’d have been more sparks, but there weren’t, perhaps because the metal material I was torching through wasn’t completely solid, but had a corrugated center. There was smoke, though, which set off the alarm positioned over the sink. The beeping could hardly be heard over the sound of the engines, but I told Malcolm to silence it anyway. When the tank ran out of oxygen, I’d finished burning about four-fifths of the circle, creating a large C-shaped cut in the wall. Malcolm turned the crank of the oxygen tank to the off position, and motioned me aside. Then he kicked the center of the C until it bent outward, perching suspended on its remaining hinge like the lid of a can of spinach in the old
Popeye
cartoons.

We stood peering through the opening. It revealed a metal catwalk bordered by cargo areas on each side. At the head of the catwalk was a metal shelving grid that housed a collection of blinking electrical boxes, circuits, and panels.

“What is that?” Malcolm asked.

“That,” I said, “is the aircraft avionics area.”

The word “avionics” is a contraction of the phrase “aircraft electronics,” and represents the area of an aircraft that houses the important circuits that manage the aircraft communication system, navigation system, anti-collision system, and multiple other systems. Normally you can find the avionics panel in the cockpit of the aircraft, but with giant, sophisticated jets like the L-1011, the avionics are too large to fit into the cockpit, so they are located in a section of the cargo bay directly below the cockpit. If needed, an L-1011 pilot can access the avionics through a hatch in the floor without having to open the cockpit door.

Malcolm and I walked to the end of the catwalk and studied the cluster of panels closely. I was trying to match it to the memories of the times I helped my airplane-engineer grandfather study for his annual recurrent training. I found the breaker I was looking for and pulled it out.

“What did you just do?” asked Officer Ned, who had emerged directly behind me. He was still missing one boot and hunched over with his arm around the Malcolm’s shoulders, who was doing his best to help support him. Beefheart was sitting on his haunches obediently at their feet, his tail stub wagging.

“I think I just dropped all the oxygen masks in the passenger cabins,” I said. Above us we could hear a wave of muffled hollering coming from the passengers. So I knew I’d done something.

“What do you mean you
think you dropped the oxygen masks
?” Officer Ned asked.

“Well, I’ll know in a second,” I said. “If the plane is on autopilot like I suspect, this will make the computer think there’s a decompression occurring.”

“What does that accomplish?”

Just then we felt the plane begin a sharp dive. The panic of the passengers above us reached a new decibel, then quickly dimmed to an eerie silence. Malcolm and Officer Ned braced themselves against one of the cargo shelves.

“What’s happening?” Officer Ned asked, panicked himself.

“When a decompression occurs on an aircraft, the vessel must immediately dive to an altitude below fourteen thousand feet,” Malcolm informed him, “which is an altitude that has oxygen dense enough for us to breathe without the need for compressed air.”

“Quick, Malcolm, come with me. Officer Ned, you stay here with Beefheart, please.” The plane suddenly leveled out, but I knew we only had a few minutes until the autopilot corrected itself and began to climb again.

The PA system crackled to life with Ramona’s voice. “Listen, passengers, you better stay seated with your—” she began, but then I reached back and yanked two more breakers from the avionics board. Sparks leapt from the panel.

“What was that?” Malcolm asked as he followed me back into the galley.

“I just blew the plane’s PA and interphone system,” I said.

“You pulled
two
breakers just now.”

“Yeah, I also shorted out all cockpit communication.”

“Wow.” Malcolm whistled under his breath.

We crawled back through the opening to the lower galley. I yanked the meal cart containing the body of the imposter Brighton McPherson out of the stowage sleeve (“It’s all in the leverage”) and rolled it near the small access door in the fuselage that the catering crew uses at the gate when they board supplies. The plane had just dipped below fourteen thousand feet; the cabin pressure automatically adjusted accordingly, I surmised, so this door should open.

The imposter’s body was positioned in the meal cart so that when you opened the front flap all you saw was his back, where a tattoo of three tiny black birds trailed from the base of his neck into his collar. I uncapped the Sharpie marker and, across the back of his white regulation work shirt, I wrote, “WorldAir flight 1021. We are being hijacked. Please don’t shoot us down! Call 404-828-8805.” Then I opened the exterior door.

The rush of air was deafening, but since we were at an altitude of sustainable density, not much got sucked through the opening except some loose debris and a crew bag or two. Once opened, the door raised itself on tracks and stayed flush with the curve of the ceiling. Malcolm and I each held a handgrip on either side of the door frame with one hand, then reached back with the other to grasp the pull bar of the meal cart to draw it forward. I hadn’t meant to discard the cart along with the body, but once the momentum got started it was hard not to. The cart and body both tumbled out of the aircraft and separated in midair. The imposter Brighton McPherson somersaulted in one direction, while the cart went in the other.