There was something off about this guy—a new hire who had come to them from UPS, supposedly. Sure, the Part 91 operations got less priority handling than the air carrier guys, but this was an easy gig with great pay and great hours. What was there to complain about? For Nate, this gig was just another chapter in a dream come true. He’d been working himself up the grinding ladder of commercial aviation—a grind for those without a military pedigree, at least—and now had an interview coming up in a couple of weeks with Delta. Slower just meant more pilot-in-command hours as far as he was concerned.

This guy, First Officer Smith or whatever, didn’t seem to have the love of flying that all the other pilots at TransAmerica shared. Nate started to worry that meant he had a sketchy past that had kept him out of commercial cockpits, or maybe a less than honorable military discharge. He thought of those terrorists twenty years ago, and of Smith’s filing their flight plan through the most overtrafficked corridor in the northeast, instead of around DC to the west.

He’d been eight years old when the planes crashed into the towers and the Pentagon. Was his copilot a zealot? A terrorist? A true believer with a score to settle?

He shook off the thoughts.

Don’t be paranoid. This dude’s an American.

Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong with Smith.

“Never know when the next terrorist zealots will pop up, Nate,” his dad, a retired postal worker, had said. “They’ll probably walk and talk and look like us next time.”

A chill chased down his spine, and he wondered how quickly he could get the Glock 43 out from beside his seat and whether he could point it at Smith and fire if the situation required. That thought made him suddenly claustrophobic, and despite being in the driver’s seat doing what he loved, he was overcome by the compulsion to get on the ground and out of this plane.

“Hey, approach, any chance direct Harrisburg from here?” he said, calling ATC.

“Negative, seven-seven-Lima. Continue on victor one-five-seven. I might be able to get you direct a few miles north of Patuxent River. In the meantime, descend and maintain one-four thousand.”

“Seven-seven-Lima—say again—fourteen thousand feet?” Nate said, then released the push to talk and glanced at Smith, wondering why he wasn’t at least working the radios. The guy hadn’t even asked to fly the leg, something every right seater asked as they tried to build their own hours toward the next job.