The hijacker spun just in time to see Mayor Fellinger’s second bodyguard, who had been handcuffed and locked in one of the upper-deck lavatories, barreling down on top of him. With his wrists secured behind him, the best weapon the guard had was his massive square shoulders. Tucking his chin in to the left, he led with his right shoulder and rammed it into the hijacker. As he did, the cold steel of the man’s blade sliced deep into the guard’s stomach and flayed him open to the sternum.
Meg, whose breath had just barely returned, knew this was her only chance. While the hijacker struggled to get out from underneath the dying weight of the bodyguard, she frantically looked around again for some sort of a weapon. There was nothing. The only thing she had were her bare hands. Primal instinct took over. Her long nailed fingers immediately curled into talons and she leapt for the hijacker. Just as she was about to close in on his throat, the butt of his pistol, protruding from his jumpsuit, caught her eye.
The hijacker must have sensed what Meg had seen because he stopped trying to get out from under the dead bodyguard long enough to grab her wrist as she lunged for the gun. She managed to slip the man’s grasp and grabbed his gun. She pointed it at him and felt her hand tighten around the weapon’s grip. She found herself shaking with rage and fought to get control of herself. Though she tried to ease up on the trigger, her finger tightened upon it still further. There was a loud burst of fire followed immediately by another.
It amazed her that a silenced pistol would make so much noise. Just downstairs, when the hijacker had shot Bernard Walsh, the weapon had made nothing more than the sound of two muffled spits. It was then that Meg realized her pistol hadn’t even so much as twitched and that the shots she heard hadn’t come from the weapon she was holding.
Meg spun just in time to see two hijackers who had mounted the stairs to the upper-deck lounge quickly closing the gap with her. She hit the deck and, remembering what she had been taught by her father, aimed and fired at each man. She watched as they fell to the floor and came to a sliding stop only feet away.
Meg knew that she needed to make sure that they were not just playing dead. As she rose to her feet and was about to make her way over to the fallen hijackers, she felt a searing pain across her ankle. Looking down, she saw her would-be rapist was still alive and moved back before he could swing at her again with his deadly blade.
The man had almost freed himself from beneath the enormous bodyguard. He was going to kill her. She was certain of it. Without a moment’s hesitation, she raised the pistol and shot him in the head. As he slumped back to the floor, the blade tumbled from his hand.
Meg examined the wound on her on ankle. The cut was bad, but could have been much worse. She needed to stem the flow of blood, and though she was loath to do it, she reached for the hijacker’s ski mask and used his knife to rip part of it into a makeshift bandage, which she tied tightly around her ankle. She knew there was no time to rest. She could hear the dead hijackers’ radios crackling with calls in what she assumed was Arabic, probably instructing the men to report on the cause of the gunshots. Though the weapon Meg carried was silenced, the weapons carried by the men shooting at her were not.
She stole a glance behind where she had been standing and saw that the hijackers’ shots had not been as wildly placed as she had thought. They had blown out two of the windows on the left-hand side of the aircraft, and from what Meg could see, the remaining shots had just narrowly missed hitting her. Maybe Judy was somehow watching out for her, after all, or maybe, just maybe, her father really had taught her “everything” he knew about shooting.
“We’re not done yet,” Meg said half to herself as the smell of gunpowder hung in the quiet air of the upper deck. She knew that the decisions she made in the next seconds would undoubtedly mean the difference between life and death not only for her, but for the entire crew and passengers as well.
Carefully, Meg removed two Italian-made, nine-millimeter Beretta model 12S submachine guns from the dead hijackers.
She slung both over her shoulder and, with the silenced pistol carefully gripped in both hands, crept toward the stairwell. Before she could get there, another hijacker emerged from it halfway up. Meg crouched in the ready position, and when he made it to the top of the stairs, she hit him with two shots to the chest. Despite the adrenaline, or maybe because of it, she was dead-on accurate.
As the hijacker fell to the floor, he came dangerously close to sliding backward and falling down the stairs. Meg ran to him and caught him by his collar just in time. The last thing she wanted to do was tip off his friends that she was coming, and bringing hell with her.
Slinging the third hijacker’s weapon over her shoulder, she now felt as if she weighed a thousand pounds. Stepping around the dead man’s body, she slowly made her way down the stairs. Meg swept her pistol from side to side, just as she had been taught, alert for any movement. It’s only a matter of time, she told herself. Be ready.
By the time she hit the bottom step, Meg knew what her next move would be. Both Mayor Fellinger and United CEO Bob Lawrence were ex-military. If anyone could make a difference here, it was them. Based on the men she had killed upstairs and what she had observed during the hijacking, Meg figured there were at least two hijackers left in business class and two more in first.
With her pistol at the ready, she swung out from the stairway into the aisle on the port side of the aircraft. No more than five feet away was one of the hijackers guarding the business-class passengers. He saw Meg and was quick in raising his weapon, but not quick enough. Meg hit the man with a shot in the throat, and he fell in a heap on top of the body of Bernard Walsh. In a flash, a nearby passenger, whom Meg recognized as Dan LeHay from United’s ad agency, stripped the newly departed hijacker of his weapon. Meg instructed him to proceed parallel with her up the opposite aisle toward first class. She told him not to shoot unless absolutely necessary. If there was any shooting to be done, she wanted to do it with the silenced pistol.
Another passenger quickly offered his services, and Meg instructed him to watch their backs as she unslung one of the submachine guns and handed it to him. There was no way for her to know how many hijackers were in the rear of the plane.
Meg and Dan Lehay made their way toward the front of the plane. From across the forward business-class cabin, the remaining hijacker guarding the business class passengers saw Dan coming and raised his weapon. Before Meg could take a shot, three sharply dressed passengers in blue blazers with University of Southern California and American flag lapel pins took advantage of the distraction and leapt from their seats. As quietly as they could, the USC men beat the crap out of the hijacker.
Meg quickly moved into the center aisle and called Dan Lehay over to her. “From what I can guess, there’s no more than two of them guarding first class. We need to get up there and arm the mayor and Bob Lawrence. If you can distract them, I think I can take both of them out.”
“Are you that good a shot?” he asked.
“For all of our sakes, I’d better be.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“First, we’re going to pass your weapon up to those guys in the blue blazers. I’m sure one of them will be able to handle it. You’ll then walk up your aisle to first class and walk directly in. Hopefully that will confuse the hijackers and that’s when I’ll do my thing.”
“That’s it?” asked Lehay.
“That’s it. But don’t just stand there. Act lost or sick or something. Do whatever you can to help confuse them. When I start firing, get down on the ground.”