The bomb was in a small bag—a woman's bag judging by the soft, flimsy things you'd never find in a man's—and I didn't know it was a bomb right away. I thought it was just a clock, one of those small, quiet alarms. I was going to pass it by and go on, but what held me was that something was taped to it. By the feel, I knew it must be electrician's tape. Interested and curious, I explored the clock more closely, found two wires. One went to a battery and the other to hard round cylinders taped together. The hairs stood up at the base of my neck when I suddenly realized what it was.
The clock's balance wheel was rocking merrily. Quickly I went up past the train of gears to the alarm wheel. If this was anything like my own alarm clock, this one had something like ten minutes to go.
It was forty minutes to Burbank and Lockheed Air Terminal.
My mind was churning when I turned from the window to look around at the unconcerned passengers, the woman at my side asleep again. I thought: Which one of these.... No, none of them would know it was there. I glanced out the window again; clouds were still in the way. We'd be leaving the valley for the mountain range north of Los Angeles soon, if we hadn't left it already. No place to land the plane there.
But of course that had been the plan!
My heart was beating in jackhammer rhythm; my mouth was dry and my mind was numb. Tell somebody about the bomb before it's too late! No, they'd think I put it there. Besides, what good would it do? There would be panic and they'd never get the plane down in time—if they believed me.
"Sir." My head jerked around. The stewardess stood in the aisle, smiling, extending a tray to me, a brown plastic tray bearing a small paper cup of tomato juice, a cup of coffee, a cellophane-wrapped doughnut, paper spoon, sugar and dehydrated cream envelopes, and a napkin.