“Count me in too,” she said, and they both headed for the assistant producer who supposedly had the list, as she commented on it. “I don't believe that. They don't board planes if there are bomb threats on them.”

“Maybe they do, and we just don't know it,” Greg muttered.

They got the list of names to call, and two hours later, they sat on opposite sides of Maddy's desk, staring at each other in disbelief. The story was consistent with everyone they talked to. There had been a warning, but not a specific one. The FAA had been told that an outbound flight out of Kennedy was going to have a bomb on it sometime in the next three days. That was all they were told, and all they knew, and an executive decision had been made at the highest level to tighten security but not to stop their outbound flights unless they found evidence of a bomb or had further information. But there had been no further warning.

“That's pretty vague,” Maddy admitted in their defense. “Maybe they just thought it was an idle threat.” But they had also suspected that the threat emanated from one of two terrorist groups, both of which had committed similar atrocities before, so they had reason to believe it.

“There's more to this than meets the eye,” Greg said suspiciously, “I smell a rat somewhere. Who the hell can we call for a source deeper inside the FAA?” They had exhausted all their resources, and as they sat thinking about it, Maddy had an idea, and got up from her chair with a look of purpose.

“What've you got?”

“Maybe nothing. I'll be back in five minutes.” She didn't say anything to Greg, but she went upstairs in the private elevator to see her husband. He had been at the White House the night before, and with a threat of that magnitude, he might have heard something, and she wanted to ask him.

He was in a meeting when she got there, and she asked his secretary to go in and ask him if he'd come out for a minute, it was important. He followed her out of the conference room with a worried look a minute later.

“Are you okay?”

“I'm fine. I'm working on the plane that went down. We got a tip that there was a warning about the bomb in a general way, but the flight went out anyway. They all did. I guess no one knew which flight the bomb might be on.” She explained to him quickly, but he didn't seem too upset or particularly startled.

“It happens that way sometimes, Mad. There's not a hell of a lot anyone could have done. The warning sounds pretty vague, and could have been unfounded.”

“We can tell the truth about it now, at least if there's a story here. Did you hear anything last night?” She was looking at him intently. Something in his eyes told her it was not an unfamiliar story to him.

“Not really,” he said vaguely.

“That's not a real answer, Jack, this is important. If they were warned, they should have stopped the flights. Who made the decision?”

“I'm not telling you I know anything about it. But if they were warned, in a general way, what do you think they could have done? Stop all outbound flights out of Kennedy for three days? Christ, they might as well have shut down all U.S. aviation. They couldn't do that.”

“How did you know it was all ‘outbound’ flights, and that the threat covered a three-day span? You knew, didn't you?” And then she suddenly wondered if that was why he had been called to the White House on such short notice, to advise them of what to say to the American public, if anything, or maybe even what to do, or not do about it. And how to cover their asses if a plane did go down at some point. But even if the decision hadn't been his, which it couldn't have been, he might well have been an important voice in the ultimate decision about whether or not to warn the public.

“Maddy, you can't shut down all outbound flights out of Kennedy for three days. Do you know what that means? At that rate, you'd have to shut down all incoming too, in case the blast hit them. This country would have gone haywire, and our economy with it.”

“I don't believe this,” she said, suddenly in a white fury. “You and God knows who else decided to just go ahead with business as usual and not warn anyone, because our economy would be affected? And you'd disrupt flight schedules? Tell me this didn't happen the way I think it did. Tell me four hundred and twelve people didn't die to spare our aviation industry a disruption. Is that what you're telling me? It was a business decision? Who the hell decided that one?”

“Our President, you fool. What do you think? That I make decisions like that? It was a major issue, but the threat just wasn't specific enough. They couldn't do a goddamn thing about it, except check every plane with a fine-tooth comb before it went out. And if you quote me, Mad, I'll fucking kill you.”

“I don't give a damn what you do. This is about people and lives and babies and children, and innocent people who got on an airplane with a bomb on it because no one had the balls to shut down Kennedy for three days. But goddammit, Jack, they should have!”

“You don't know what you're talking about. You don't shut down a major international airport for three days for a bomb threat, not and stay in business.”

“They shut it down for snow, for chrissake, and the economy stays afloat. Why not for a bomb threat?”

“Because they'd have looked like fools and everyone would have panicked.”

“Oh, okay, I guess four hundred lives is a small price to pay in order to avoid a panic. My God, I can't believe what I'm hearing. I can't believe you knew and you didn't do a fucking thing about it.”

“What did you expect me to do? Go to JFK and hand out leaflets?”

“No, you asshole, you own the network. You could have blown the whistle on this, anonymously if you wanted to, and forced them to shut down the airport.”

“And the door to the White House would have been slammed in my face forever. You think they wouldn't have known who leaked something like that? Don't be ridiculous, and don't,” he said, grabbing her arm and yanking her hard with it, “ever call me an asshole. I knew what I was doing.”

“You and the boys you were playing with last night killed four hundred and twelve people at noon today,” she almost spat the words at him and her voice was shaking. She couldn't believe he had been a party to it. “Why don't you just buy a gun, and start shooting people? It's cleaner, and a lot more honest. Do you know what this means? It means that business is more important than people. It means that every time some woman gets on an airplane with her kids, she doesn't know if someone has been warned that there's a bomb on it, but for the sake of big business, she and her kids are a walking sacrifice, because no one thinks they're important enough to warrant a ‘disruption.’”

“They're not, in the larger scale of things. You're naive. You don't understand. Sometimes people have to be sacrificed for larger interests.” She felt as though she was going to throw up as she listened. “And I'll tell you something, if you breathe a word of this, I will personally drag you back to Knoxville and leave you on Bobby Joe's doorstep. If you say a goddamn word, you're going to have to answer to the President of the United States and I hope they throw your ass in jail for treason. This was a security issue, and it was handled by people who knew what they were doing and have the highest possible clearance. This is not some little whining, psychotic housewife we're talking about, or some fat slobbering Senator. If you open up this can of worms, you're going to have the President on your neck, and the FBI, and the FAA, and every major agency in this country, and I'm going to watch you go down in flames with it. You are not touching this one. You don't know a goddamn thing about it, and they'll turn on you so fast, and bury you in about five minutes. You'll never win this one.”

She knew there was some truth to what he said, everyone would lie about it, and it would be the biggest cover-up since Watergate, and more than likely the public would never believe her. She was one small voice in a sea of much bigger ones who would not only out-shout her, they would see to it that she was discredited forever. They might even kill her. The thought of it was frightening, but the thought of letting the public down and not telling them the truth made her feel like a traitor. They had a right to know that the people on Flight 263 had been sacrificed to economic concerns. And to the people who had made that decision, they meant nothing. “Did you hear what I just said to you?” Jack asked her with a terrifying look in his eyes. He was beginning to scare her. He would be the first one to take her down, before even the others could, if she jeopardized his network.

“I heard you,” she said numbly. “And I hate you for it.”

“I don't give a damn what you think or feel about this. I only care about what you do, and it goddamn better be the right thing this time, or you're finished. With me, and the network. Is that clear, Mad?” She looked at him for a long moment and then turned on her heel and walked swiftly down the stairs, back to her own floor. She didn't even wait for the elevator, and when she got back to her office, she was pale and shaking.

“What happened? Did he know anything?” Greg asked. He had figured out instantly where she'd gone, and he'd never seen her look the way she did when she returned to her office. She was deathly pale and she looked sick, but for a moment she said nothing.

“No, he didn't” was all she said, and she took three aspirin with half a cup of coffee. And not surprisingly, ten minutes later the head producer came in and looked sternly at both of them before issuing a warning.

“I have to clear your copy before you go on the air tonight, both of you. Anything that deviates from what's approved, we cut you off and go to commercial. You got that?”

“Got it,” Greg said quietly, and he knew where it came from, just as Maddy did. Greg didn't know what had been said upstairs, but he knew it couldn't have been pretty. Just looking at Maddy s face told its own story. He waited until the producer left and then looked across at Maddy, his eyes full of questions. “I take it he knew,” Greg said softly. “You don't have to tell me if you don't want to.” She looked long and hard at Greg and nodded.

“I can't prove that. And we can't say it. Everyone involved will deny it.”

“I think we better not touch this one, Mad. This is one very large hot potato. Too big for us, I think. If they knew, you can be damn sure, everyone involved covered their asses. This one had to be run by the big boys.” It impressed him to realize that Jack Hunter was now considered one of them. He had heard for a while that Jack had become the Presidents spin doctor. He was obviously playing in the big leagues.

“He said he'd kick me off the show if I touch it.” She looked less impressed than Greg had thought she'd be as she said it. “I don't care about that, I hate lying to the public.”

“Sometimes we have to,” Greg said carefully, “even though I don't like it either. But the big guys would hang us out to dry on this one.”

“Jack said I'll wind up in jail, or something pleasant like that.”

“Isn't he getting a little cranky?” Greg said with a wry smile, and Maddy laughed in spite of herself, and then remembered the way he had grabbed her arm and shaken her. She had never seen him as enraged, or as frightened. But this was a big one.

They wrote their copy for the show that afternoon, and it was checked carefully by the producer. And half an hour later, it was returned to them with further edits. The piece on the air disaster was about as bland as it could be, and the powers that be upstairs wanted them to rely mostly on video footage to convey the story.

“Be careful, Mad,” Greg whispered to her, as they sat at their desks in the studio, waiting to go on the air, after the countdown had started. And she only nodded. He knew what a crusader she was, and what a purist. It would have been just like her to take a kamikaze dive into the danger zone, by exposing the truth after all, but this time he was pretty sure she wouldn't do it.

She read off the piece about the crash of Flight 263, and her voice nearly broke once. She sounded somber and respectful as she spoke of the people on board, and the number of children. And the footage they showed underlined the tragedy even further. They had just shown the last shots, of some video footage someone on Long Island happened to get of the explosion, and Maddy was about to close when Greg saw her fold her hands on the desk, and look away from the TelePrompTer, and all he could feel as he watched her was terror. He mouthed the words “Maddy, don't …” because he could see on the monitor he was off camera, but she didn't see him. She was looking straight into the camera she was facing, right into the faces and hearts and homes of the American public.