Without Honor

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Flight 451 left Miami International Airport at two-fifty in the afternoon. On time. It was Tuesday, October 13. The weather was warm, in the high eighties, under clear blue skies with a gentle wind from the southeast. Signs were posted here and there throughout the busy airport warning that it was a federal offense even to joke about air disasters or hijackings. But it had been months since any incident had happened anywhere in the world, and even longer for Miami, so there was only a simple, relaxed watchfulness among the security people.

By three the DC-10 had climbed out over the Florida peninsula, the sun glinting on its silvery tail and wings, the cocktail cart beginning to move up the long aisle.

There were only ten persons in first class, among them two Mexican government employees returning from vacation; a professor of languages from the University of Mexico who had come to Miami to attend a conference on ancient cultures; three businessmen from AT&T (one of them of Mexican descent) on their way to talk some sense into the Mexican minister of communications about joint funding of a new satellite that would improve telephone service between the two countries; and two American couples on their way to Mexico City on assignment with the U.S. Agency for International Development, which had gotten a new start six months earlier.

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