The Ghost Pattern

…11

The passengers had remained relatively calm until the Boeing started its descent. That’s when they started panicking. They were sobbing, crying, holding one another’s hands tightly, asking questions, all in a quagmire of sounds, erratic movements, and emotions out of control. Some were strangely paralyzed, unable to move or make a sound.

Adeline locked eyes with Lila and mouthed to her, “Talk to them.”

Lila was already strapped in her jump seat, but she reached out to the PA microphone and managed to articulate an announcement that was supposed to bring a little more calm to the 423 passengers on flight XA233.

“Ladies and gentlemen, to avoid the bad weather the captain has decided to land the aircraft, for your safety. This is a small airport, so please assume brace positions. Please place your feet and knees closely together, with your feet flat on the floor. Bend forward as far as possible, touching the seat in front of you if you can reach it. Keep your hands above your head, one over the other. Bring your elbows close to your body. Remove your high-heel shoes and any eyewear. The runway will be short, and the captain will be braking hard once he touches down. Please remain calm. Universal Air is committed to your safety and to take you to your final destination as soon as possible. Thank you.”

Adeline nodded a silent thank you, and Lila smiled weakly for a second. The passengers fell eerily quiet, most likely paralyzed with fear. A woman a few rows back was praying, prayer beads in her hands and eyes tightly shut. Someone’s voice was heard coming from the back cabin, “I’m gonna sue you assholes! If I live through this, I’m taking you to the cleaners!”

Adeline gestured Lila to come sit next to her, in the empty first-class seat. Lila hesitated; that wasn’t permitted by regulations. Then again, nothing happening on that flight was permitted by regulations, so she unbuckled fast, ran for the seat next to Adeline, and buckled up just when the jet started its final descent.

The aircraft dropped altitude abruptly, then finally touched down on a bumpy, decrepit concrete runway, almost too narrow for its wheels to fit. The Boeing’s brakes hit so hard they made a screaming noise, exacerbated by passengers screaming and wailing, covered by the roar of all four engines in full reverse thrust. The huge jet shook hard as it rode over the potholes and cracks in the concrete surface, making the passengers bounce around in their seats as if they were broken puppets.

The jet finally came to a screeching stop, through some miracle remaining intact after the rough landing. The passengers lifted their heads slowly, as if finding it hard to believe they survived, and started looking out the windows.

The plane started a very slow taxi on a narrow extension of the runway, its massive wing wheels rolling on the grassy grounds on the sides of the strip. After what seemed to take forever, the jet entered a decrepit hangar buried in the side of a hill. It was dark, poorly lit by some improvised projectors and whatever light made it through the doors. It was lined with rusted metallic panes that had originally been painted army green, now stained and falling apart.

Then someone’s yell froze the passengers’ blood in their veins. “Oh, my God, they’ve got guns!”

Lila grabbed Adeline’s hand and both of them looked out the window.

“Oh, God…” Adeline whispered, “where are we? Do you know?”

“We must be in Russia somewhere, there’s nothing else here other than Russia and Japan, and this doesn’t look anything like Japan,” Lila answered, shuddering.

First Officer Klapov exited the cockpit and unlocked the cabin door. Through the open door and through the starboard windows, the passengers watched in terror how armed men pushed mobile stairs toward the jet’s door.

A woman shrieked and said, pointing at Captain Gibson’s body, now visible through the open cockpit door, “Look, he’s dead!”

Then all hell broke loose.

Armed men climbed onboard the aircraft and took positions inside the cabins. Two remained by the cockpit, two more made their way toward the back of the plane, shoving hard anyone who stood in their path.

They looked military, but their uniforms were in bad shape and mismatched, as if they had put on whatever pieces of leftover uniforms they could find. Most of them were heavily tattooed and looked like ex-cons, escaped after many years of doing hard time. They were dirty, most of them unshaved, and, on whatever pieces of their bodies could be seen, covered in scars. They looked more like a hard-core paramilitary gang than a military unit.

Within seconds, the entire cabin commotion fell to a deafening silence, sprinkled here and there with muffled whimpers and quiet sobs.

One of the armed men picked up the PA microphone and spoke in heavily accented, rough English.

“Welcome to Russia,” he said, smiling wickedly and exposing two rows of dirty, decaying teeth. “This is how it will work. I say, you do. If you do what I say, you live. If not,” he added, shrugging his shoulders with indifference, “you die.”

Passengers and flight attendants watched what was happening with eyes wide open in terror, speechless.

“Now we get off the plane,” the man continued. “Move!”

The two men in the back of the cabin started pushing the reluctant passengers out of their seats. A man tried to grab his briefcase and was punched hard. The blow brought him to his knees in the aisle between the seats.

“No time for bag, leave it!” the man with the gun ordered. Then he prodded the kneeled passenger with the barrel of his gun, forcing him to get up and walk toward the exit.

One of the armed men at the front of the jet started his way toward the back, but stopped halfway, and started pushing and shoving passengers, forcing them to disembark. Scared and helpless, passengers clung to their seats, afraid to leave the relative safety of the aircraft and brace the terrifying unknown that awaited them at the aircraft door.

Lila and Adeline still held hands tightly, holding on to each other. Still holding hands, they were pushed out of the plane, and down the stairs, where more men with guns barked orders and pushed everyone toward the hangar door. Outside the hangar, several Army trucks stood by.

One of the Russians held a clipboard in his hand, and directed disembarking passengers toward the trucks.

Lila and Adeline waited in line behind passengers who had disembarked before them. The man with the clipboard asked everyone their name, then flipped though the papers attached to his clipboard, then pointed at one truck or another. He was sorting them, executing some form of triage. They had the flight manifest.

“Theo Adenauer,” the next passenger in line identified himself in a discernible German accent.

“Dr. Adenauer, yes?” the Russian asked.

“Yes,” the German confirmed, slightly surprised.

The Russian pointed him to the nearest truck, parked right next to the hangar door. The German complied.

The next few passengers were pointed toward other trucks, which were filling fast. Used to counting passengers, Lila fell into her work habit and determined that a truck could take roughly fifty passengers. They were the types of trucks most commonly seen in World War II for supply transport, a cargo hold was covered with a soft top made of military drab fabric on a wire frame. Fifty people would fit in there, standing room only, packed closely together like sardines. Even so, the Russians needed nine or ten trucks to haul all of them out of there.

“Alastair Faulkner,” said a proud man with a British accent.

“Dr. Faulkner?” the Russian confirmed.

“Yes,” the man replied, raising his eyebrows.

The Russian showed him the truck parked closest to the hangar door.

“Did you notice that?” Lila whispered, wondering what the hell that was all about.

“Uh-huh,” Adeline whispered back, “they’re sorting passengers; they’re putting all the doctors in that one truck.” She squeezed Lila’s hand.

An Asian family was next in line, a man carrying his toddler and holding on to the hand of his wife.

“Wu Shen Teng, Lin Teng, and Yun Tsai Teng,” the man said quietly, not daring to look the Russian in the eye.

“Dr. Teng from Taiwan?” the Russian asked, after flipping through his papers.

“Y — yes,” the man replied.

“You, go there,” the Russian said, pointing at the nearest truck. “The woman and child will go there,” he added, pointing at one of the other trucks.

“No,” Dr. Teng said, “I’m going with them, they are my family.”

The Russian remained quiet as he handed his clipboard to another man, then took his Kalashnikov off his shoulder. Lightning fast, he hit the Taiwanese man in the groin with the weapon’s butt stock. Dr. Teng, still holding his daughter, shrieked and fell to the ground, managing to turn and land on his side, his daughter on top of him, unharmed. His wife cried and grabbed the baby, then kneeled next to her husband, saying something fast in Chinese in a pleading tone of voice.

“You, go to that truck, they go in the other one,” the Russian repeated. “OK?”

Another Russian grabbed Mrs. Teng and her baby and pushed them toward a truck, while Dr. Teng managed to stand up and walk on his own, bent forward, crouched in pain.

The next few passengers boarded their trucks in silence, and none of them was selected for the closest truck.

Lila and Adeline were next.

“Lila Wallace,” she said, anticipating she’d be sent to the trucks to their right.

“You go there,” the Russian said after checking his papers, pointing at the doctors’ truck. “Someone needs to feed them and wipe their asses, and it will not be me.”

Adeline was sent to the other trucks, with the rest of the passengers. They parted ways reluctantly, with a final hand squeeze and quiet, whispered words of encouragement.

Then an American accent was heard, coming from a middle-aged woman who held her head up high. “Jane Crawford.”

Same routine… the Russian checked his papers and confirmed. “Dr. Crawford?”

“Yes,” she answered. “Yes, I know, that truck,” she said. “But tell me, please, what’s the deal with the separate trucks? Where are you taking us?”

“To the lab, where you have work to do,” the Russian replied.

“And them?” Dr. Crawford asked, pointing at the rest of the trucks.

“Them? They are your lab rats. We will cage and feed them until you are ready to run your tests.”