I joined Mendez in the lead cruiser, thinking ahead as we sped across the tarmac. Mendez contacted the control tower. Barked into his radio, “Shut down this runway. Forthwith.”

I was anxious, but more than that, I was exhilarated to be leading this command. And I was anticipating bringing Garza down. I wanted him so badly it hurt just to think about it.

Striplights blazed on the airfield, and a United jumbo jet roared overhead, its impossible weight lifting into the wind-whipped gloaming.

I peered up at the grounded American 777, then watched as the rolling staircase was locked to the side of the aircraft.

Patrol-car doors opened and closed all around the plane.

Cloaked in twilight, we trotted toward the aircraft.

My adrenaline flowed as Mendez, Jacobi, and a sharp team of young cops followed me up the stairs, the soles of our shoes ringing on metal as we climbed skyward.

I tapped on the aft door with my gun butt, and it slid open.

I signaled to the flight attendant to be quiet and to step aside. We entered the first-class cabin from the rear.

I saw the back of Dennis Garza’s head right away. He was in the third row, right side, aisle seat, an ugly red gash blazing through his hair.

A redheaded woman sat beside him at the window.

Maureen O’Mara.

And I saw a problem. A big one.

Two hundred pounds of beverage cart filled the aisle from one side to the other. That cart and two flight attendants stood between us and Garza.

Garza heard us approach, turned his head, and squinted at me.

“You,” he said.

O’Mara patted his hand, said, “Be cool, Dennis. Everything’s okay.”

“Dennis Garza. Maureen O’Mara,” I called out. “I have warrants to take you both into custody as material witnesses.”

“Like hell,” Garza shouted. He fumbled in his jacket pocket. Then he rose out of his seat, stepped into the aisle.

O’Mara yelled out, “Dennis. No!”

Moving with the sudden-strike swiftness of a snake, Garza grabbed the flight attendant closest to him, wrapping her streaked hair around his hand, pulling her head back hard so that it was only inches from his face.

I saw something glint in his hand. It was a syringe!

He had his thumb on the plunger, the needle already piercing the taut skin of the flight attendant’s neck.

The young woman screamed, the sound of her terror filling the cabin, reverberating off the walls.

“I want safe passage out of here. Or I’ll shoot her full of insulin. She’ll be dead before she hits the floor,” Garza threatened.

Garza’s once handsome face was almost unrecognizable. His features were bruised and twisted, his lips curled back, pupils huge, eyes darting.

He looked every bit the maniac I believed him to be.

“It’s up to you,” he said. “I don’t care if she lives or dies.”