The Storm

CHAPTER 33

KURT AUSTIN WAS TRAPPED IN THE LAVATORY. HE’D SNUCK aboard the plane with the most equipment and the fewest of Jinn’s men milling around and had hidden himself in the small facility near the front of the cargo compartment. After drinking a dozen cupped handfuls of water from the small faucet, he’d stepped up on the toilet so no one could see his feet.

With the curtain drawn, he waited and listened. Crates and big stacks of equipment were loaded aboard and lashed down. He heard swearing as something heavy was dropped and then the voices of the pilots as they climbed up a small ladder and entered the flight deck.

Eventually he’d heard the sound of harsher voices ordering someone around. In response, a woman’s voice said in American English; “Okay, okay. Stop pushing me.”

Kurt felt certain it was the woman from the hall, who he believed to be Kimo’s sister. At least he’d chosen the right plane.

A few minutes later the aircraft had sprung to life. With Kurt holding on and trying desperately not to slip from his perch, the Russian transport/flying boat taxied onto the runway, ran its engines up to full power and accelerated down the surprisingly rough lake bed. The takeoff seemed to last forever, and Kurt was glad when the plane finally clawed its way into the air.

Based on the slow pace of the climb and the length of the roll out, they had to be fully loaded and heavy with fuel. That meant a long journey.

In a way, that played into his hands. Sooner or later someone would have to go to the bathroom. If it was Leilani, he would get a chance to talk with her. If it was one of the pilots, he would stick the pistol in the man’s face and take over the plane. If it was one of Leilani’s guards, it would be the last thing the man ever did.

As it turned out, one of Jinn’s guards was the first to feel the call.

Two hours into the flight, Kurt heard the man’s boots clunking toward him from the rear of the aircraft. He put the pistol away, pulled out the knife and pressed himself as far to the side as possible in the closet-sized space.

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.”