The Survivor

Chapter 31

“Sir, you’ll have to calm down.”

Nate leaned over the check-in counter. “I told you-”

“You want us to stop a flight? Because you don’t like one of the passengers? Whose last name you can’t even produce?”

“No, that’s not why.” He glanced through the giant windows. The plane, now taxiing to the end of the runway. “My wife and daughter’s lives are at risk-”

“We’ve already left a message for them at the arrival gate. If they are uncomfortable in any way in the air, they can report it to the flight attendants. We have a very competent crew aboard, and-”

The rest of the agent’s response was drowned out by American Flight 4 roaring into takeoff. Nate backpedaled from the counter despondently and watched the 767 mount the mockingly clear blue sky. Onlookers returned to their newspapers and laptops as the plane shrank to a speck.

Again he called Janie’s cell phone and then Cielle’s, but both were of course still turned off for the flight. Arguing with himself, he vacillated between fleeing and staying, rising and sitting at intervals, a liturgy of panic.

What if Yuri killed them en route? Or right upon landing? Nate couldn’t let his wife and daughter spend a five-and-a-half-hour flight unaware that their prospective killer was sitting right behind them. But what the hell could he do?

Flight 4 was now a memory lost to the cumulus clouds heaped at the horizon. Gone. Thin air and all. His lungs felt incapable of drawing a full breath, and for once he knew that the ALS was not to blame. What would Shevchenko have planned for Janie and Cielle when they set down in New York?

He turned from the window, nearly banging into a man standing behind him, facing away. As he started to apologize, the figure made a stiff, horror-movie pivot.

Charles.

He opened his mouth and puffed out a ghostly sheet of smoke from his charred insides. As it rose, he grinned, impressed with himself. “Know who my favorite officer always was?”

As usual, oblivious to the context.

Nate was almost too infuriated to reply. “Right now I don’t give a shit who your favorite officer was.”

“Lieutenant Spick-’n’-Span. ’Member him?”

Nate glowered at his dead friend, barely resisting the urge to inflict more bodily damage.

“One time we were rolling out for recon, and I stopped by his office to grab coordinates,” Charles continued. “He was gone, but he’d left a note nailed to his door, said, ‘In the absence of orders, figure out what those orders would be and execute aggressively.’” He took a step to the window, his fingers leaving red-wine streaks on the pane. “Funny motherfucker, LT was.”

Nate followed Charles’s gaze to the sky into which the plane had vanished, the vapor trail already starting to dissipate. Charles’s ill-timed story bounced around in his head, two words sticking: Execute aggressively. That sounded about right.

He turned and walked briskly away from the gate, passing a continuous loop of storefronts-newsstand, Starbucks, McDonald’s. Just before the escalator to baggage claim, he spotted what he was searching for-a white courtesy phone. Snatching it up and turning his face to the wall, he waited for the operator. When the pleasant voice came on, he said, “I’m calling about American Airlines Flight Four. There’s a bomb on board, planted by the Ukrainian man in the tenth row. If you don’t turn the plane around, it’ll detonate.”

He set down the receiver and, keeping his face lowered, strode the six steps to the escalator. As he descended, he dialed Janie on his cell phone, waiting for voice mail. “Janie, listen to me. I know you can’t turn your phone on till you’re taxiing in, but Yuri’s on your flight, in the row behind you. Don’t look back. Don’t be obvious. But watch yourself. Delete this message now. There’ll be security all over when you land. Get yourself and Cielle to them, and I’ll figure something out by then. Okay. I-”

The question of how to sign off caught him by surprise. He was still searching for words when the escalator sank into the floor and he stepped out into the chaos of the baggage-claim area.

At once the phone was snatched from his grasp, an arm slid around his waist, and a point dug into the side of his lower back, pressing so hard it seemed his skin would pop at any quick move.

He grunted and jerked away, making out only the bill of a baseball cap just behind his shoulder. The arm tightened across his waist so that he and the small man moved as a piece, their bodies in lockstep. Twisting, he craned for a look beneath the cap.

Misha’s boyish face peered up, dense bangs shoved down nearly to his eyes. “Keep walking or I will push the screwdriver straight through your kidney.”

The pressure intensified, sending flames across the band of Nate’s lower back and down the back of his thigh. “Okay,” he grunted. “Okay. Where are we going?”

“To Pavlo.”

“How do I know he won’t just kill me?”

“Because you’re still breathing.”

They hadn’t stopped moving, a brisk pace across the floor. People clustered all around, and yet no one paid them any mind. The automatic doors rolled open, the dry midday heat enveloping them. As they stepped to the curb, a white van pulled up, the side door rolling back with a screech. Valerik waited on a bench seat, gun resting flat against his thigh, the sleek stub of his ponytail so solid it looked carved from wood. The point of the screwdriver prodded Nate up and in, and a moment later Misha hopped up front with Dima.

Valerik pressed the barrel of the pistol to the top of Nate’s knee, and they coasted out into the flow of traffic, Dima returning the traffic cop’s polite nod as they passed.