Final Approach by John J. Nance Page B

sharply. With a major story breaking in Kansas City, all she needed was another time-wasting phone call.
    â€œDid anyone on that airplane from Washington, Flight 255, get out alive?”
    â€œWe don’t have that information yet, sir. Who is this?”
    â€œDon’t matter. Listen carefully: this crash wasn’t no accident.”
    She froze for a second, wondering if this was a prank. “What do you mean by that? What do you know?”
    â€œThe whole story. I heard them plotting it. D’you know that Congressman Larry Wilkins was on that airplane?”
    The reporter hadn’t known that. Wilkins had been in office less than a year and was already widely disliked on Capitol Hill. He was a determined right-wing extremist with a scary agenda trying to masquerade as a responsible Republican, but it was standard knowledge he had grown up with a white supremacist philosophy. He had built a small empire of car dealerships while being groomed for politics by a shadowy collection of powerful, wealthy Southerners based in New Orleans—a group with ties to elements as diverse as the Ku Klux Klan and Lyndon La-Rouche’s rabid crowd. But somehow, for some strange combination of reasons she couldn’t fathom, Wilkins had scrubbed his public image well enough to win election from one of the Louisiana districts.
    â€œHe was on 255? From Washington? How do you know?”
    â€œI just do. And he’s dead, isn’t he?”
    She hesitated. The word from Kansas City was that no ambulances had made Code 3, lights-and-siren runs from the wreckage of 255. That seemed to indicate that no one got out, but it was too early to confirm. That was not reliable information.
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œYeah, he’s dead. The airplane was brought down. I can’t tell you exactly what it was they monkeyed with in Washington, but I can tell you it weren’t no accident.”
    â€œWho is this?”
    â€œForget it, little girl, I told you it don’t matter who this is. Just remember what I told you.” The line was dead in an instant, but it took her nearly a minute to replace the handset, carefully and slowly, as if it were a snake. Her editor was 20 feet away, framed by the plate-glass window at the Cable News Network facilities in Atlanta, which occupied several floors of a spectacular glass-and-steel office-hotel complex known originally as the Omni. Their newsroom overlooked the enclosed courtyard, contained within a soaring atrium.
    The reporter made her decision, walking briskly to her editor, who listened intently before picking up a phone to consult with his boss at home, all three of them trying to decide whether to sit on the call, report it to the authorities, or report it to the world.
    â€œHow could it be sabotage? One landing airplane hit another one on the ground!”
    â€œI don’t know. All I know is what he said … that it wasn’t an accident … something about monkeying with the airplane in D.C.”
    â€œWas Wilkins really on board?” The editor swung around, addressing a young man several desks away. “Jerry? Call Wilkins’s AA in Washington at home. You have the number?” The man nodded, already digging for the name of the congressman’s administrative assistant—AA in political shorthand.
    The editor turned back to his reporter, three more staffers now gathered around them. “Even if he was on the airplane … even if he’s dead … unless somebody can tell us this is an unnatural crash, I don’t see how we can use it.”
    Through the din of background noise in the newsroom a young woman hurried toward the editor’s desk holding a freshly ripped page of Associated Press wire copy, her approach unnoticed until she placed it in his hands.
    â€œThanks.” He looked at the copy and whistled softly. “Oh boy! Either our mystery man’s been active, or something else is going on.