I leaned over my own seat, pressed the recline button, and drove seat 14A backward to its absolute mechanical limit—a full seven-inch tilt that dropped the heavy plastic shell directly into the lap of seat 15A.
Then I reached beneath the frame. With two sharp, surgical twists of my hemostat, I jammed the hardened titanium jaws directly into the hydraulic recline piston’s pressure valve, crimping the copper bypass line and locking the mechanism permanently into the fully reclined position!
No human hand could push that seat upright again without an industrial cutting torch.
Next, I picked up the blue vellum chancery brief from the floor.
I smoothed the parchment out across Melissa Vance’s lowered plastic tray table, anchoring it directly in front of her seat with a single piece of sterile medical adhesive tape from my pocket.
And on the top margin of the seventy-billion-dollar indictment, written in bold, indelible black surgical skin marker, I penned three words:
