The Storm

  The man grabbed the curtain, yanked it aside but didn’t step in.

  Kurt had the knife out ready to strike, but the guy was looking back down the aisle of the plane, shouting some joke to his comrade and laughing at his own words even as he spoke.

  Finally he turned and stepped in. Kurt grabbed him, wrapped a hand around his face, clamping it over his mouth, as he drove the knife into his back just below the nape of his neck.

  With the spinal column severed, the man went limp. Kurt held him up and turned him, keeping his mouth covered until he sensed no breath coming forth. Gently, he sat the man down on the toilet seat and stared into his eyes. The light was gone from them.

  He pulled the knife out. No reaction.

  Kurt hated killing, but there was no grounds for mercy here. Only one side would get off the plane alive: either Jinn’s men or he and Leilani.

  Recognizing the thug as the one who’d driven the truck that dragged him and Joe across the desert, Kurt felt a little less remorse. The next stage in the plan was more complicated. To begin with, blood was everywhere. Kurt used the man’s head covering to staunch the flow and eased him back against the bulkhead, wedging him into the space.

  He gauged the man as roughly similar to him in size and shape, and they wore similar uniforms, but there was one glaring difference: the thug had thin black hair, Kurt’s hair was thick and steel gray.

  With few other options, Kurt chose to wet his hair down and press it flat to his head. It was dark and cold and tremendously noisy in the plane. And who would suspect trouble at thirty thousand feet anyway?

  He figured the other guy had seen his friend walk to the head. He would have to look really closely not to see his friend coming back a few minutes later.

  Kurt pulled the curtain and prepared to play his gambit. Just in case, he held the knife concealed in his hand.

  He stepped out of the lavatory and marched confidently back toward Leilani and the remaining guard. It was easier than he thought. The hold was filled with equipment. At least two of the rigid inflatable boats he’d seen and, more ominously, racks of what looked like handheld ground-to-air missiles.

  But the clutter left only a small space for the passengers. Leilani and the guard were sitting across from each other in foldout seats that attached to the aircraft’s walls.

  The most cursory of glances was all the guard gave him. He then leaned his head back against the headrest on the side of the plane and shut his eyes.

  Even Leilani had her eyes closed.

  After all, it was the middle of the night, and even with the pressurization of the cargo hold the air was still thin and dry, most likely set to an altitude nine thousand feet or so. That kind of air had a way of making people drowsy even if it was all but impossible to really sleep in such conditions.

  Kurt sat down a foot from the guard, right across from Leilani. He switched from the knife to the gun once again and stretched his foot out to tap her.

  She opened her eyes and saw him with a finger to his lips.

  The one thing Kurt had remembered Kimo saying about his sister was that she worked with deaf kids. Kurt knew American sign language. Or at least he once did.

  With great effort he signed I … am … a … friend, hoping he hadn’t misspelled the last word and told her he was a fiend.

  She seemed puzzled but her eyes were hopeful. On the chance he’d messed up the whole sentence, he signed something she would have to understand: N … U … M … A …

  Her eyes grew wide and he held a finger to his lips again.

  He nodded toward the guard, pulled the pistol from his pocket and cocked it. The man’s eyes opened at the sound.

  “Don’t move,” Kurt said.

  He held the pistol with his right hand and grabbed the man’s own pistol. The guy didn’t flinch.

  Kurt pointed toward the back of the plane. When the guard looked that way, Kurt whammed him on the side of the head with the pistol. The guard dropped like a sack of flour, but he didn’t go out. A second blow did the trick.

  By the time he woke up, he was bound and gagged and tied to the floorboards of one of the boats near the tail end of the aircraft.

  As Kurt finished tying him down, Leilani spoke. “Who are you?” she asked.

  Kurt smiled. “Can’t tell you how glad I am that you don’t know.”

  Of course she had no idea what he was talking about, but Kurt was making a mental note that from now on he’d be suspicious of anyone who knew who he was before he’d introduced himself.

  “My name’s Kurt Austin,” he said. “I knew your brother. I’m with NUMA. We’ve been trying to figure out what happened to him.”

  “Did you find him?”

  Kurt shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  She gulped back a wave of emotion and took a slow, deep breath. “I didn’t think anyone would,” she said quietly. “I could almost feel that he was gone.”

  “But the search led us to Jinn and by accident to you,” he said.

  She glanced nervously toward the cockpit door.

  “Don’t worry,” Kurt said, “they’re not likely to come back here anytime soon. And if they did, all they’d see is you and one of your guards.”

  She seemed to accept that.

  “When did these guys grab you?” he asked.

  “In Malé. As soon as I checked into the hotel,” she said.

  It seemed as if a tremor of fear swept over her as she thought back to the incident, but she stiffened. “I kicked one of them in the teeth,” she said proudly. “The guy will be eating soup for weeks. But the others threw me down.”

  She was feisty, but far different from the way Zarrina had portrayed her. She was less worldly, more like a twenty-five-year-old should be. Kurt wished he’d seen her before.

  “I woke up in the desert,” she added. “I couldn’t escape. I don’t even know where I was. They interrogated me and got everything—passwords, phone numbers, bank accounts. They took my passport and driver’s license.”

  All of which explained how the impostor knew so much and why the American Embassy confirmed for NUMA that Leilani Tanner was in Malé.

  “You don’t have to feel bad about that,” he said. “You’re not some hardened operative who would be expected to resist interrogation. Besides, you must have done something right, you’re still alive.”

  She looked ill. “I think that Jinn looks at me like some type of horse to break,” she said. “He’s always touching me, telling me how I’ll enjoy being with him.”

  “He’s never going to find out how wrong he is,” Kurt said. “I’m getting you out of here.”

  “Off the plane?”

  “Not exactly,” he said, then switched subjects. “Any idea where we’re going?”

  “I figured you might know that better than me,” she said. “I’m a prisoner, remember?”

  “And I’m a stowaway. We make a fine pair.”

  Kurt moved to one of the tiny circular windows in the side of the plane. It was still dark outside, but as he looked down below he could see a smooth gray surface with a slight shimmer.

  “We’re out over water,” he said. “The moon’s come up.”

  He glanced toward his wrist to check his watch. Never again would he trade his watch in as collateral. A kidney maybe, the deed to his boathouse perhaps, but not his watch. At least not without grabbing another one along the way.

  “You don’t happen to have the time do you?”

  She shook her head.

  He and Joe had made their way to the staging area around eight p.m. As near as he could tell, loading the trucks and then the aircraft had taken a total of three hours. The plane had sat on the ground for another couple of hours after that, which put takeoff sometime around one a.m.

  He went to the starboard window to see if he could see anything out that side. The view was the same: nothing but water.

  It was slightly possible that they were over the Mediterranean, a couple of hours?
?? flying time would have crossed Saudi Arabia, but with everything else that had been going on Kurt guessed they were headed south, out over the Indian Ocean, with a cargo of microbots in the tanks beneath his feet. Two and a half hours from Yemen in a jet aircraft would put them all but smack-dab in the middle of it.

  He wondered where they were headed. He wondered if Jinn had a secret base hidden on a deserted island somewhere. Staring out the window again, he strained to see forward as far as he could but saw only more waves.

  Leilani watched him go back and forth. “What do we do next?” she asked. “Look for parachutes? I heard them talking about some.”

  Kurt had already spotted the chutes she was referring to. “They’re not for people,” he said. “They’re attached to the boats so they can fly low and dump them out the back without having to land. They call it LAPES, Low Altitude Parachute Extraction System.”

  She looked confused.

  “You ever see a drag race?”

  She nodded.

  He pointed toward the two nylon packs that sat beside each ribbed boat. “They’re drogue chutes,” he said. “They pop out the back like the ones that slow down drag racers or the space shuttle after it lands. Not exactly made for jumping.”

  “Okay,” she said. “You got any other plans?”

  He smiled. “You sound just like someone else I know. A good friend of mine, actually.”

  “Is he on the plane?” she asked hopefully.

  “No,” Kurt said. “He’s probably sitting in the first-class lounge at Doha by now. Looking over the menu from Citronelle and getting hungrier by the minute.”

  She tilted her head like a child or cocker spaniel might. “It could be me,” she said. “But you don’t make a lot of sense.”

  “I’ll be more clear,” he promised. “We’re not jumping out of this plane, we’re taking it over. We’re going to force our way into the cockpit, order the pilots to fly us somewhere safe and make a dinner reservation under the name Zavala at a place called Citronelle as soon as we touch down.”

  “Can you fly it?”

  “Not really.”

  “So we make them fly it,” she said, smiling, “like we’re the hijackers.”

  “Exactly.”

  She looked toward the front of the plane. “I didn’t see any kind of armored door,” she said. “Just a ladder. Breaking in should be easy.”

  “The trouble comes on the other side,” Kurt said. “We’re at high altitude. The plane is pressurized, and that cockpit’s draped in acres of glass. A struggle and an errant shot through one of the panes and we end up with rapid decompression.”

  “Which is?”

  “A controlled outward explosion,” Kurt said. “Basically, a giant sucking sound that ends with us flying out through the shattered window and free-falling toward the ocean for approximately ten minutes. Which will seem rather pleasant when compared to the sudden stop at the bottom.”

  “Don’t want to do that,” she said.

  “Neither do I,” he replied. “If we’re going to take over the plane without a struggle, we need to upgrade our weapon status.”

  With Leilani trailing him, he walked toward the cargo pallets, hoping to find something more lethal.

  As he dug into the first pallet, the high-pitched whine of the engines slowed and dropped an octave or two. The odd, slightly weightless feeling of an aircraft nosing over from cruise to descent came next. It was far more pronounced than on your average airliner.

  “We’re descending,” Leilani said.

  “Must be getting close,” Kurt said. “We’d better hurry.”

  CHAPTER 34

  THE FLOATING ISLAND OF AQUA-TERRA WAS UNDER NEW management. As Zarrina gave orders on the bridge, even Otero and Matson were feeling the heat.

  Many decks below, Paul Trout walked the confines of Marchetti’s five-star brig, taking inventory of the surroundings. It came with floor-to-ceiling windows, soft recessed lighting and comfortable pillow-top mattresses. It even had a massage chair and a juice dispenser.

  “A juice dispenser,” Paul said incredulously.

  “Good idea,” Marchetti said, calling to him from the massage chair. “I’ll take a guava-pineapple while you’re up.”

  Paul looked over at their host. He was arching his back like a cat rubbing on the furniture as the chair’s shiatsu tumblers moved up and down his spine.

  “Oh, that feels good,” he mumbled. “Yeah, right there.”

  On the one hand, it struck Paul as the height of absurdity; on the other hand, he couldn’t wait for Marchetti to get done so he could have a turn. Fighting the fire had knotted up his back something fierce.

  He poured three cups of the guava-pineapple mixture and brought them back to the other side of the room. He placed them down between Marchetti, who was still making strange sounds of pleasure, and Gamay, who was scowling like an assistant principal ready to put everyone in detention.

  Paul offered her one of the cups. She shook her head in disgust.

  “When you two are done enjoying your spa day, maybe we could try and figure out a way to escape?”

  “I tried the windows,” Paul said.

  “Oh, you’ll never get through those,” Marchetti promised. “They’re designed to withstand a Force 10 gale.”

  “What about doors?”

  “Key-coded from the outside,” he said, shifting his position in the chair. “No way to access the control box from in here. If you notice, we don’t even have a handle.”

  “I noticed,” Gamay said.

  Marchetti pushed back into the seat a little farther, and the tumblers began to vibrate, shaking him and giving his voice a strange staccato sound like someone pounding on his own chest as he spoke. “I … think … we … should … just … sit … tight …” he said. “Conserve … our … energy …”

  Paul saw the fires of fury rise up in Gamay’s eyes. He got out of the way quickly as she lunged toward Marchetti and his chair. She grabbed the plug and yanked it out of the wall. The massage ended abruptly.

  Marchetti looked stunned. Paul guessed his own session was now on permanent hold.

  “You’d better get serious,” she growled. “These people aren’t playing a game. That wench Zarrina killed one of your crewmen, and who knows how many others in her time. And if we don’t get ourselves out of here, they’re going to kill us before this is over.”

  Marchetti looked to Paul for help, got none and turned back to Gamay.

  “Sorry,” he said finally. “Denial is my favorite coping mechanism. When you have a billion dollars, problems have a way of disappearing if you ignore them long enough.”

  “This one isn’t going away,” Gamay said.

  Marchetti nodded.

  “Do you have any security protocols?” Paul asked. “Any emergency codes or scheduled check-ins that will cause you to be missed?”

  Marchetti scratched his head. “Not really,” he said, sounding as if he hated to disappoint them. “Being too accessible kind of messes up the whole reclusive billionaire persona I’ve been trying to cultivate.”

  “How do you run your companies?” Paul asked.

  “They kind of run themselves.”

  “What if you need to give an order?” Gamay said. “What if one of them has to make a big purchase or close a deal or a merger that only you can sign off on?”

  “I’d have Matson do it.”

  That was a problem.

  “So,” Paul said, summing things up, “as long as Matson keeps communicating with the outside world, no one will ever know you’re missing.”

  Marchetti nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

  Gamay looked as glum as Paul felt. “At least until they come up with a nice story about your disappearance during some expedition or other stunt.”

  “Yes,” Marchetti said. “I’m starting to realize there are drawbacks to being a recluse.”

  “All kinds,” Gamay insisted. “There were rumors that Howard Hughes died years before his of
ficial date of death. Probably false, but the thing is he became so isolated no one knew for sure. You’re in the same boat. And if you call it an island, I’ll slap you.”

  “Boat,” he agreed. “And assuming we survive, I promise to be far more public from here on out.”

  That’s great, Paul thought, but it wasn’t going to help them now. “What do you think they’ve done with the rest of the crew?”

  “A couple of them seemed to be on Zarrina’s side,” Gamay said.

  “The others are probably locked up like we are,” Marchetti added. “There are five cells down here.”

  “Keeping us spread out,” Paul said, “prevents us from plotting against them.”

  “What about your people?” Marchetti asked. “The ones back in Washington. You’re expected to report and check in. Surely you’ll be missed.”

  Paul exchanged a knowing glance with his wife, after years together their minds melding in some way. “Not quickly enough.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Paul explained. “We send them data every twenty-four hours. But it won’t be too hard for Zarrina and Otero to fake it. She knows what we’ve been sending and what we’re after. I imagine it’ll be quite some time before anyone becomes suspicious.”

  “Maybe Dirk will call us,” Gamay said hopefully. “They can’t fake a video linkup.”

  “No,” Paul said. “But they can threaten all kinds of dire consequences should we try to broadcast the truth. Which we shall of course attempt to do regardless of their threats.”

  Gamay looked at him. “How do we tell Dirk, or anyone else who calls in, that we’re in trouble without our captors knowing about it?”

  “We’re hostages,” Paul said. “Dirk has been in this situation a few times. Maybe we slip in the name of one of those places or one of the thugs who held him. That ought to get his wheels turning.”

  “That’s brilliant, Mr. Trout,” Marchetti said. “A secret code.”

  “The Lady Flamborough,” Gamay said.