They were both in the office by eight o'clock, and she and Greg sat down and did some work together on a special he was working on about American dancers. She had promised to help him with it, and she was still in his office at noon, when they both became aware of a lot of scurrying and running around in the hallway.

“Now what?” Greg asked as he looked up, wondering what had happened.

“Shit. Maybe things are heating up in Iraq. Jack was with the President last night. They must be cooking up something.” They both walked into the hallway to see what people were saying. Maddy was first to collar one of the associate producers. “Anything major?”

“A flight to Paris just blew to smithereens twenty minutes out of Kennedy. They claim you could hear the explosion all over Long Island. No survivors.” It was the abbreviated version of what had happened, but as Greg and Maddy checked the news desk, they learned what little more there was. No one had claimed responsibility for the explosion, but Maddy was sure there was more to the story, even if they did not yet know the details.

“We got an anonymous call from someone who sounds like they knew what they were talking about,” the producer said to them. “They say the airline knew before they boarded the flight that there had been a threat. They might even have known as early as noon yesterday and they didn't stop it.” Greg and Maddy looked at each other. That was insane. No one could have let something like that happen. It was a U.S. owned airline.

“Who's your source?” Greg asked with a frown.

“We don't know. But they knew their stuff. They gave us a lot of fairly traceable details. All we know is that the FAA got some kind of warning yesterday and it sounds like they didn't do anything about it.”

“Who's tracking that for you?” Greg asked with interest.

“You are, if you want to. Someone's got a list of people to call. The caller gave us some pretty specific names and directions.” Greg raised an eyebrow as he looked at Maddy.

“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.”