Jeffery Deaver - The Coffin Dancer

“Roger. Descend and maintain ten. Vectors, two seven right. Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo. ”

Percey refused to look down. Somewhere below and ahead of them was the grave of her husband and his aircraft. She didn’t know if he’d been cleared to land on O’Hare’s runway 27 right, but it was likely that he had, and if so, ATC would’ve vectored Ed through exactly the same airspace she was now sailing through.

Maybe he’d started to call her right about here…

No! Don’t think about it, she ordered herself. Fly the aircraft.

In a low, calm voice she said, “Brad, this will be a visual approach to runway twenty-seven right. Monitor the approach and call all assigned altitudes. When we turn on final, please monitor airspeed, altitude, and rate of descent. Warn me of a sink rate greater than one thousand fpm. Go-around will be at ninety-two percent.”

“Roger.”

“Flaps ten degrees.”

“Flaps, ten, ten, green.”

The radio crackled, “Lear Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo , turn left heading two four zero, descend, and maintain four thousand.”

“Five Foxtrot Bravo , out of ten for four. Heading two four zero.”

She eased back on the throttle and the plane settled slightly, the grinding sound of the engines diminished, and she could hear the woosh of the air like a whisper of wind over bedsheets beside an open window at night.

Percey yelled back to Bell, “You’re about to have your first landing in a Lear. Let’s see if I can set her down without rippling your coffee.”

“In one piece’s all I’m asking for,” Bell said and cinched his seat belt tight as a bungee cord harness.

“Nothing, Rhyme.”

The criminalist closed his eyes in disgust. “I don’t believe it. I just don’t believe it.”

“He’s gone. He was there, they’re pretty sure. But the mikes didn’t pick up a sound.”

Rhyme glanced up at the big mirror he’d ordered Thom to prop up across the room. They’d been waiting for the explosive rounds to crash into it. Central Park was peppered with Haumann’s and Dellray’s tactical officers, just waiting for a gunshot.

“Where’s Jodie?” Rhyme asked.

Dellray snickered. “Hiding in the alley. Saw some car go by and spooked.”

“What car?” Rhyme asked.

The agent laughed. “If it was the Dancer, then he turned hisself into four fat Puerto Rican girls. Little shit said he won’t come out till somebody shuts off the streetlight in front of your building.”

“Leave him. He’ll come back when he gets cold.”

“Or to get his money,” Sachs reminded.

Rhyme scowled. He was bitterly disappointed that this trick too hadn’t worked.

Was it his failing? Or was there some uncanny instinct that the Dancer had? A sixth sense? The idea was repugnant to Lincoln Rhyme, the scientist, but he couldn’t discount it completely. After all, even the NYPD used psychics from time to time.

Sachs started toward the window.

“No,” Rhyme said to her. “We still don’t know for certain he’s gone.” Sellitto stood away from the glass as he drew the drapes shut.

Oddly, it was scarier not knowing exactly where the Dancer was than thinking he was pointing a large rifle through a window twenty feet away.

It was then that Cooper’s phone rang. He took the call.

“Lincoln, it’s the Bureau’s bomb people. They’ve checked the Explosives Reference Collection. They say they’ve got a possible match on those bits of latex.”

“What do they say?”

Cooper listened to the agent for a moment.

“No leads on the specific type of rubber, but they say it’s not inconsistent with a material used in altimeter detonators. There’s a latex balloon filled with air. It expands when the plane goes up because of the low pressure at higher altitudes, and at a certain height the balloon presses into a switch on the side of the bomb wall. Contact’s completed. The bomb goes off.”

“But this bomb was detonated by a timer.”

“They’re just telling me about the latex.”

Rhyme looked at the plastic bags containing components of the bomb. His eyes fell to the timer, and he thought: Why’s it in such perfect shape?

Because it had been mounted behind the overhanging lip of steel.

But the Dancer could have mounted it anywhere, pressed it into the plastic explosive itself, which would have reduced it to microscopic pieces. Leaving the timer intact had seemed careless at first. But now he wondered.

“Tell him that the plane exploded as it was descending ,” Sachs said.

Cooper relayed the comment, then listened. The tech reported, “He says it could just be a point-of-construction variation. As the plane climbs, the expanding balloon trips a switch that arms the bomb; when the plane descends the balloon shrinks and closes the circuit. That detonates it.”

Rhyme whispered, “The timer’s a fake! He mounted it behind the piece of metal so it wouldn’t be destroyed. So we’d think it was a time bomb, not an altitude bomb. How high was Carney’s plane when it exploded?”

Sellitto raced through the report. “It was just descending through five thousand feet.”

“So it armed when they climbed through five thousand outside of Mamaroneck and detonated when he went below it near Chicago,” Rhyme said.

“Why on descent?” the detective asked.

“So the plane would be farther away?” Sachs suggested.

“Right,” Rhyme said. “It’d give the Dancer a better chance to get away from the airport before it blew.”

“But,” Cooper asked, “why go to all the trouble to fool us into thinking it was one kind of bomb and not another?”

Rhyme saw that Sachs figured it out just as fast as he did. “Oh, no!” she cried.

Sellitto still didn’t get it. “What?”

“Because,” she said, “the bomb squad was looking for a time bomb when they searched Percey’s plane tonight. Listening for the timer.”

“Which means,” Rhyme spat out, “Percey and Bell ’ve got an altitude bomb on board too.”

“Sink rate twelve hundred feet per minute,” Brad sang out.

Percey gentled the yoke of the Lear back slightly, slowing the descent. They passed through fifty-five hundred feet.

Then she heard it.

A strange chirping sound. She’d never heard any sound like it, not in a Lear 35A. It sounded like a warning buzzer of some kind, but distant. Percey scanned the panels but could see no red lights. It chirped again.

“Five three hundred feet,” Brad called. “What’s that noise?”

It stopped abruptly.

Percey shrugged.

An instant later, she heard a voice shouting beside her, “Pull up! Go higher! Now!”

Roland Bell’s hot breath was on her cheek. He was beside her, in a crouch, brandishing his cell phone.

“What?”

“There’s a bomb on! Altitude bomb. It goes off when we hit five thousand feet.”

“But we’re above -”

“I know! Pull up! Up!”

Percey shouted, “Set power, ninety-eight percent. Call out altitude.”

Without a second’s hesitation, Brad shoved the throttles forward. Percey pulled the Lear into a ten-degree rotation. Bell stumbled backward and landed with a crash on the floor.

Brad said, “Five thousand two, five one five… five two, five thousand three, five four… five eight. Six thousand feet.”

Percey Clay had never declared an emergency in all her years flying. Once, she’d declared a “pan-pan” – indicating an urgency situation – when an unfortunate flock of pelicans decided to commit suicide in her number two engine and clog up her pitot tube to boot. But now, for the first time in her career, she said, “May-day, may-day, Lear Six Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo. ”