“The plane was full of babies. Thirty-six of them,” she said. “But there wasn’t a single adult aboard.”
Chip laughed, a bitter sound in the sudden silence.
“What—babies were flying the plane? You expect me to believe that? ‘Goo-goo, gaa-gaa, air traffic control, this is baby plane one, over,’” he mocked. “It sounds like something out of a diaper commercial.”
Angela fixed him with a steely look.
“The FBI’s theory was that there had been a pilot, a co-pilot, a whole flight crew, but they escaped somehow. Even though there were security cameras at the gate, and none of them showed anyone leaving the plane before I stepped on.”
“So maybe there was a secret door somewhere, out of the camera’s view,” Jonah said. “Or maybe it was an experimental high-tech plane that worked on autopilot.” He was still looking for realistic explanations. But if “experimental high-tech…autopilot” was the best he could do, he was really getting desperate.
“ You think the pilot and flight crew just vanished into thin air,” Katherine said, her voice ringing with confidence.
“Possibly,” Angela said. “Or…”
She stopped. That one word hung in midair, tantalizingly.
“Or?” Jonah prompted.
Angela shook her head.
“I’ll work up to that one,” she said dryly. “Chip will just start laughing at me again.”
“I’m sorry,” Chip said, though he didn’t really sound like he meant it. “You’re making this all Twilight Zoneish, but it just seems like—well, what Mr. Reardon told Jonah and Katherine sounds about right. There was some sort of baby-smuggling ring, and they were forced to land—maybe the police were shooting them down; maybe they just ran out of gas or oil or whatever planes use. But anyhow, the people ran away and left the babies behind, because they didn’t want to get caught. So, really, as long as the FBI or INS or whoever looked at the plane, if they looked at, I don’t know, the instruction book in the cockpit, to see what language it was written in—then there should have been lots of clues about where we came from. And surely they have all that in their records and—”
“You forgot what I said,” Angela said in a steely voice. “The plane disappeared.”
“Maybe it didn’t disappear exactly,” Chip said. “Maybe they just towed it away and you thought—er…”
His voice trailed off because both Angela and Katherine were glaring at him, full force.
“I told you you wouldn’t believe me,” Angela said, and she sounded so sad that Jonah felt guilty on Chip’s behalf. Jonah wasn’t sure what to make of Angela’s story either, but he wasn’t going to tell her that.
“Shall I continue?” Angela asked.
Meekly, all three kids nodded.
“Before I knew what was going on, there were FBI agents there and police and airport officials and airlines officials and all sorts of other officials I couldn’t even identify,” Angela said. “They were treating the whole airplane like a crime scene. A mystery to solve. But, you know, there were all those babies, and when one started crying, they all started crying. And you could just tell, it was driving those official types crazy. So they organized this baby brigade, and we had all these people carrying the babies off the plane—we were supposed to pay close attention to which seat each baby had come from, in case that was important. We didn’t have carriers or strollers or anything like that, so we just closed off the entire gate area and lined the babies up on the floor. We were just lucky none of them was old enough to be crawling yet….”
Jonah had been to the airport a couple of times: once when he was in third grade, and his Cub Scout troop had taken a field trip to learn about planes, and once when his family had gone to Disney World, and Dad hadn’t wanted to drive. Jonah could just imagine the chaos of thirty-six babies being taken off a plane at once. But surely it would have been chaos—surely lots of people would have seen.
Angela was still talking.
“The moment we had all the babies off the plane—and all the agents and officials and airline personnel were off the plane too, because they were trying to get the babies sorted out—at that moment, I looked back. And I could see the plane, just like normal, just like I could see the carpet under my feet or the rubber lining around the door or my hand in front of my own face. It was there! And then it was gone, there was nothing there except air, and I could see straight out to the runway lights and the satellite dishes and the highway….”
Even now, thirteen years later, Angela’s voice was full of wonderment. It was like she was still amazed, still stunned.
“And, once again, you were the only one to see this?” Chip asked, making no effort to keep the skepticism out of his voice.
Angela turned her head sharply.
“No,” she said. “Monique saw the plane disappear—Monique Waters, my boss. But later, when Monique saw how things were going, she denied it all. She was the one who filled out the disability papers, saying I was delusional and prone to hallucinations and unfit to work at Sky Trails.”
“How do you know she saw it disappear?” Chip asked.
“Because she screamed out, ‘Holy crap! Where’d that plane go?’” Angela said, grinning slightly.
Jonah was trying to absorb this. He sort of wanted to believe Angela—he was sure that she believed what she was telling them. But it was too incredible.
“What about the other people?” Katherine began. “Didn’t any of them—?”
“It was dark out,” Angela said. “We were all carrying babies—you try to take care of thirty-six infants and still manage to think clearly! I think some of the other people might have seen the plane vanish, but then this one guy, James Reardon—”
“The one we talked to,” Katherine interrupted.