Falling(26)

“Motherfucker,” Liu said. “We gotta stop him.”

Ordering Charlie unit to hold their position, she turned to face the Alpha team. Theo realized every agent except him was in full tactical gear, the words FBI SWAT written in bright yellow across their backs.

“Rousseau,” Liu said.

“Ma’am?”

“Out of your gear, now. You’re intercepting.”

Agent Rousseau blinked at the director. Removing his gear would take minutes. He frantically began to strip his protective suit, checking the politician’s progress. The man had already knocked on the next-door neighbor’s door and no one was answering. Bending, he slid a flyer into the mail slot.

“We have to stop him,” Theo said, pressing his hands against the glass. “He can’t go up there, it’s way too dangerous.”

“I’ve got five agents already inside the inner perimeter. We have no idea what we’re dealing with. And you want to blow our cover?” Liu said. “Rousseau! Let’s go!”

Theo watched the agent wrestle with straps and ties. There was no way he would make it in time. Not a chance. Theo looked around the van, at the agents who were idly observing their colleague taking off his gear. Theo couldn’t believe it. The politician would be ringing the Hoffmans’ doorbell before Rousseau was halfway done and none of the agents seemed to get that.

Either they didn’t get it—or their order to sit and wait blinded them to the urgency.

Theo looked down at his own gear, his one bulletproof vest.

Ripping the Velcro, he slid out of it, discarding it on the seat as he jumped out of the car. Liu pounded against the glass with a string of muffled expletives, but Theo ignored her, sprinting toward the Hoffmans’ house.





CHAPTER NINE


JO STUCK THE END OF the mrt into the tiny hole and jabbed upward. The ceiling panel flopped down on a hinge and four oxygen masks tumbled out with a perverse jack-in-the-box-like swing.

“Why is this necessary again?” a woman on the aisle asked the flight attendant. The man next to her at the window didn’t hide his skepticism, arms crossed, his ginger ale and chip bag now empty.

“Honey, I don’t make the rules. I just follow them,” Jo said. “A sensor up front told the pilots that the system that drops the masks automatically may not be working. When that happens, FAA protocol requires…”

Jo had started at the first row of first class, Daddy at the over-wing, Kellie in row eighteen. Row by row they went, informing the passengers of the regulation, dropping the masks, fielding any questions, and then quickly getting out so they could repeat the process with the next row back.

Stay calm, stay confident, Jo told them just before they started. The crew would set the tone. If this wasn’t a big deal to them, it wasn’t a big deal at all. They weren’t manipulating the passengers per se, they were artfully managing a perception that was in the plane’s best interest.

As a career flight attendant and mother of two, Jo knew there wasn’t much difference between the roles.

Get the masks out. That was step one—the most important step. Get the masks out and available so the passengers could protect themselves when the time came.

Step two: manage the inevitable confusion and resistance.

Step three: deal with whatever “backup plan” might pop up after steps one and two.

Step four: fight and survive the actual attack.

Step five: evacuate the plane upon landing at JFK.

The crew decided to focus on step one, which, in light of everything else, felt manageable.

Dangling yellow masks began to fill the plane as the three flight attendants made steady progress. When she finished with a row, Jo would do a quick visual sweep of the cabin before moving on to the next. She didn’t know what she was looking for; it wasn’t like someone in a ski mask was going to hop out and tell her to put her hands up. Still, she assumed something would seem off. But nothing did. She already felt hunted and the false sense of normalcy made the tension worse.

Every row jumped as the compartment popped open even though they knew to expect it. The passengers thanked Jo after the masks dropped as though she had just set their warm chicken entrees in front of them. They were confused and nervous, understandably.

But ultimately, they complied.

Jo had assumed it would go like that. After all, a flight is just a random sample of the general population, a classic bell curve. A few assholes and a few exemplars, but primarily, a whole bunch of sheep.

Jo would often sit on her jump seat during takeoff and assess the group assembled for that particular flight. She would consider who would be an ABP—Able Bodied Person—willing to assist in an emergency. She would find her hot spots, those passengers already showing a proclivity for noncompliance. But she would also wander to the realm of questions like, Okay, if something were to happen, who’s gonna be the comic relief? Who’s gonna be the drama queen? Who’s the rebel? Who’s the hero? Who’s the coward?

“I knew it,” Jo said to herself, watching a woman storm up the aisle. Her husband stayed behind holding a squirming baby.

“I have a child,” the woman said to Jo in a way that was somehow an accusation.

Jo glanced over the woman’s shoulder. “And he’s adorable. Congratulations.”

“This is not funny,” the woman hissed. “The kind of emotional trauma my baby is being put through with these, these—things—everywhere”—she gestured at the masks—“will scar him for life.”