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DIADEMA PRESS
First published in the USA
in 2013 by Diadema Press LLC
www.diademapress.com
Copyright © A. M. D. Hays 2013
This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ISBN 978-0-9854182-0-5
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed upon the subsequent purchaser.
Jacket design by theBookDesigners
Jacket photographs
Digital Numbers: © Shutterstock Copyright: Smit
Gunman: © Shutterstock Copyright: hurricane
FOR M
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Epilogue
Chapter 1
Two minutes before the hijackers struck, Dee Lockwood was filching a bottle of Dom Pérignon from the drinks cart. The flight attendant was busy tending to the prickly old general seated two rows back and Dee, ever the opportunist, topped off her champagne glass and stuffed the bottle down in the seat pocket at her knees.
Her colleague Ed, sprawled in the luxurious single seat across the aisle of the little Gulfstream 650 jet’s tubular cabin, chortled a little too loudly, nerd that he was. “You’re such a delinquent!”
Dee wiggled her nails at him without looking up from her laptop screen. “It’s the least they can do. I’m giving them my whole weekend, for nothing.”
The two of them were being flown in a private business jet, along with six other passengers, to attend a weekend conference at a remote military base in the Sonoran Desert. They were joining an elite group of security specialists to discuss new cryptographic criteria for an unspecified National Security Agency project. So far, Dee had refused to sign anything but the basic waivers, so she had no reason to expect a penny for her weekend’s labor.
The general’s demanding baritone boomed behind her. He wanted his Rob Roy with a twist of lime, not lemon. “Do I have to explain the difference?” he growled impatiently.
“You’d be crazy to pass up this contract,” Ed advised her, leaning across the aisle and murmuring over the muted hum of the jet’s twin Rolls Royce turbines. He twitched his eyes toward the rear of the plane, vainly attempting subtlety. His rubbery, expressive face often reminded Dee of the bygone comedian Stan Laurel. “This is pure government gravy,” he said. “I’ll bet Congress doesn’t have a clue how much money this operation sucks up.”
She suspected he was right. The two military men behind them carried a look of sinister confidence suggesting black ops, deep funding and connections in high places. They were a curious pair, the general and his mountainous aide. Both wore Special Forces berets in a strange shade of dark red Dee had never seen before: nearly black, reminiscent of dried blood. The general looked like a grizzled old wrestler gone to fat and the red hue of his stubbly jowls suggested a testy temperament, and perhaps a mean one. He also had the unmistakable air of a man used to getting his way. And his aide, with small, sharp eyes and no neck, looked committed to seeing that he got it. Dee didn’t doubt the general could write checks that would clear, but she needed to hear a little more about the proposed project to satisfy her scruples. Classified government projects were not all alike—not by a long shot.
She stretched with feline grace and Ed watched her, as well he might. The afternoon sunlight spilling in through the round porthole beside her highlighted her slender-waisted houndstooth ensemble. The warm light set off the sea blue of her eyes and matching silk scarf to striking effect and glinted on her auburn hair.
The dapper fellow seated in front of her poked his head up and gave her a charming smile. He spoke in an English accent: “I gather you are now the person to see about another splash of that marvelous French bubbly?” His hand snaked around the seat and presented an empty champagne glass.
Dee had noticed him as she and Ed were boarding. He had a pleasant face, with strong bones and dark, gentle eyes. And he wore an expensive suit in a London cut. She was inclined to avoid him—experience had left her ill-disposed toward gorgeous men.
She gave him a civil smile and poured him a drink. “I didn’t know the NSA invited our allies to their little get-togethers,” she said.
“I’m more of a gate-crasher, really. It was the minister’s idea, not mine, I quite assure you. My name is John.”
“Dee.”
“A pleasure.” He gave a discreet little toasting movement with his glass, said, “Cheers,” and withdrew. She tucked the bottle back into the seat pouch.
She turned to Ed and tapped the screen of her laptop. “This application gizmo of yours is pretty time-consuming to set up. Are you sure it’s worth all this trouble?”
“Give it some time,” he replied, giving her a salesman’s smile full of hopeful confidence.
Dee’s screen contained a small digital version of herself: a simple computer animation in a style reminiscent of Japanese children’s cartoons. The software was also tracking her eye movements through the camera above her laptop screen. When her attention turned back in its direction, the little character spoke to her through the Bluetooth insert in her left ear.
“What can I help you with?” the cartoon asked in a squeaky-cute parody of her own voice. The little figure grinned obsequiously and blinked its immense eyes at her, and its batting eyelashes made little twinkly sounds. It gestured expansively at a command menu on the screen.
“Is there some way I can change the icon?” Dee asked. “It looks like a character in a children’s game, and why is it dancing around like that?”
“It will change as it adapts to you,” Ed replied. “That’s the whole idea. You’ll be amazed how useful it is, once it adjusts to your style.”
“All right, I know you folks put a lot into this.” She selected VOICE RECOGNITION from the menu. The cartoon figure smiled and asked her to repeat aloud a long and boring page of text. Dee groaned, turned her computer off, and tucked it away in her bag.
In the aisle behind them, the flight attendant raised her voice.
“That bin is not for storage, sir! Kindly take your seat.”
Glancing back down the aisle she saw a wiry, nervous-looking man in a blue windbreaker opening the last overhead bin on the port side of the airplane. He was one of the group of three men in the last two rows, none of whom she recognized from previous government projects.
The standing man unclipped the skinny red fire extinguisher stowed in the bin, and pulled it down in a fast sweeping motion. The attendant gasped with surprise.
Then the other two men in the back of the plane leapt up from their seats, as if choreographed. One of them was a short, broad-shouldered man with a dark five-o’clock shadow. He reached over the back of the general’s seat and whipped a cord around the old man’s neck from behind. The general was about to take a sip of his drink when the garrote bit into his hand. The fresh Rob Roy and its twist of lime zest smashed against the ornamental brass siding below the window, and he winced as blood trickled down his fingers.
In the same moment, the little man in the windbreaker swung the fire extinguisher across the aisle, hitting the general’s bodyguard in the head with a sickening metallic clunk. The big man slumped bonelessly against the seat in front of him, one burly arm flopping out into the aisle.
The third hijacker, a tall, grim man with a blond crew cut, shouldered past his comrades and slipped around the drink cart. Without a word, he grabbed the stunned flight attendant by the lapels of her uniform. With a single deft jerk, he spun her around, catching her neck in the crook of his elbow.
As the events unfolded before her eyes Dee sat paralyzed with shock and an overwhelming sense that it couldn’t be real. She could hear Ed beside her, making strange, excited hooting noises as if he were trying to yell something but couldn’t enunciate a complete word.
The action in the back of the plane continued in eerie silence, with only a few quiet choking noises coming from the general and the flight attendant.
The wiry little man tossed the fire extinguisher onto a seat behind him and leaned over the general. He began patting the old man down with nervous, birdlike movements. The general’s face was purple under his gray stubble, but his free hand came up instinctively as if to choke the man. Th
The nervous little hijacker yelled “Ha!” Dee’s shock was now tinged with fear as he produced a small semiautomatic pistol from inside the general’s jacket. It was no bigger than Dee’s hand, nickel steel with a black, stippled grip.
“Hey . . . hey . . .” Ed gasped—the closest he had come yet to articulating actual words.
It’s like a nightmare, Dee thought as she recalled stories in which jets suddenly depressurized due to a puncture in the fuselage—passengers sucked out of the cabin, to die in the freezing oxygen-deprived atmosphere as they tumble back to earth. Closing her eyes, she tried to concentrate on her breathing and think clearly.
Then, turning her head slowly around, she scanned the entire cabin with a careful eye, looking for anything to improve the situation. There seemed to be nothing she could do except sit and watch.
The wiry hijacker patted down the inert body of the general’s man, but the big soldier was unarmed. It seemed the hijacker already had the only gun on the plane.
Meanwhile, the tall blond man marched the flight attendant up the aisle. He moved with slow deliberation, observing every detail of the plane and its passengers as he passed. His ice-blue eyes were as watchful and free of emotion as a cat’s. The flight attendant walked on tiptoes, back arched, neck immobilized in the crook of his arm. The small man with the gun trotted after them, reminding Dee of a jumpy little dog.
The blond hijacker flung the flight attendant into one of the two front seats. Dee could hear her sobbing and gasping for breath. The man swept his eyes over the passengers one more time while the little one with the gun kept glancing at the side of his face, evidently awaiting instructions.
“Cover them,” the tall one said. He turned toward the cockpit door, not deigning to look at his accomplice.
Dee squinted. Is that a Slavic accent?
The little gunman planted himself at the front of the aisle, staring at the passengers with wide, unblinking eyes.
Behind him, the blond man took some small objects from his pocket. Leaning a little way into the aisle, she watched as he unwrapped what appeared to be a stick of chewing gum and kneaded it between his fingers, then jammed the sticky mass into the keyhole of the cockpit lock. Then he pulled the insides out of a cigarette lighter. It had apparently concealed a tiny device, which the hijacker now stuck into the little gray blob on the cockpit lock. She heard a beep, and the man stepped away from the door and covered his ears.
Nothing happened for a few seconds and she and Ed looked at each other. Then a loud bang, like a rifle shot, made them both jump in fright. Dee’s heart pounded so hard in her chest that she felt light-headed. Leaning back in her seat she looked over at Ed—his face was pale.
The cockpit door swung open, dangling to one side on a broken hinge, and the blond guy plunged through the smoke and into the cockpit.
A moment later, the plane lurched hard and began to dive.
Dee would have a hard time remembering the next thirty seconds. The jet plummeted nose-first toward the desert, its turbines whining hysterically in a soprano shriek of whirring steel. She heard screaming and realized that her own panicked cry was mixed with those of the other terrified passengers. Glasses and luggage slid toward the front of the plane, smashing into the bulkhead.
After what felt like an eternity, the wings finally seemed to catch the air again, and the jet pulled out of the dive and back onto a level flight path. She could not breathe or convince her hands to release their white-knuckled grip on the armrests. For several seconds, her mind was strangely empty, as if she were about to pass out. Then, tentatively, she thought: I’m alive. . . . I’m going to live.
She looked across the aisle to Ed who was unleashing a colorful verbal tirade—it seemed that he was making up for being speechless a few moments earlier.
The wiry guy in the windbreaker had fallen to the floor, and now he scrambled to his feet. His face was a greenish gray, and he looked ill. He pointed the gun at Ed, who promptly fell silent. Then, stumbling to the cockpit door, he leaned inside, waving the gun.
“Come on, come on—git movink!” he said
The jet’s flight officers emerged from the smoky cockpit with their hands in front of them, their faces pallid. The pilot’s right hand covered his eye and he grimaced in pain, and the copilot was bleeding from his forehead. The gunman gestured impatiently for them to sit in the two remaining empty seats at the front of the cabin, and they obeyed.
Still trying to settle her stomach and nerves after the violent plunge, Dee struggled to clear her head and calculate how far the small jet could fly. They probably weren’t fueled for much more than the original flight plan, which must have been six or eight hundred miles. But it was enough to reach northern Mexico. If these men had a landing strip waiting for them with plenty of fuel on hand, they could fly anywhere on the planet.
Ed was looking at her, goggle-eyed. “Who are these guys?” he stammered.
“Shuddup!” the little man yelled. “No talk, nobody.” His gun hand made little twitching movements that weren’t at all reassuring.
He moved down the aisle, grumbling to himself and waving the gun at each passenger. Once he was past her seat, Dee stole a glance back down the aisle and saw the same tableau as before. The thick-shouldered hijacker still had the general pinned to the back of his seat with a loop around his neck, and the big aide lay unconscious, or maybe dead, sprawled halfway into the aisle.
The gunman jerked a look over his shoulder, and Dee ducked back into her seat. A few moments later, he was standing beside her. She was startled to see the bright red fire extinguisher in one hand, the pistol in the other. Without the slightest warning, he slammed the fire extinguisher against the back of Ed’s head.
Ed didn’t even groan as he fell forward in his seat. Dee’s hand flew up to her mouth to stifle a cry escaping her lips, and she fought back the nausea rising in her stomach as the horror sank in.
The little gunman gave Dee a menacing leer, then leaned over Ed’s limp body and appeared to be searching through his possessions. Surely, he doesn’t think Ed is carrying a gun. Looking around the plane in terror, she could see only the faces of the three people behind her. It was then she noticed the bodyguard opening his eyes slightly.
The big soldier had recovered consciousness and was silently watching the proceedings, his bloody head still hanging upside down near the floor. He looked ready to make a move.
She panned her eyes over to the gunman. With the tall hijacker busy flying the plane, the gun in the little man’s hand was the only thing keeping the hijackers in control. He was still bent over Ed’s seat, his back to her, digging through Ed’s belongings and muttering to himself.
Seizing the opportunity, Dee pulled the champagne bottle out of the seat pocket in front of her, and, rising to her feet, drew the bottle overhead in a quick, graceful arc, then brought the thick bottom edge down hard on the back of the gunman’s head. It exploded into green shards and a sparkling shower of vintage champagne.
Dee didn’t want to see what happened next if she could help it, so she sank back down into her seat, curled up in a fetal position, and tried to disappear. As she was doing so, the seat in front of her lurched powerfully.
Peeking around the seat she saw John, the Englishman, dash up the aisle and dive through the cockpit door. A separate commotion was going on behind her. She closed her eyes.
From the cockpit came a single loud grunt and the plane wobbled violently on its flight path. Dee grabbed the armrests again in a panic. A moment later the unconscious body of the tall blond hijacker flew out through the broken door to land, shoulder first, in the aisle.
The plane steadied and returned to smooth flight even before the two pilots could scramble over the inert body of the hijacker to reclaim their positions in the cockpit. Dee sat up and looked behind her. The general’s bodyguard was holding the dazed black-haired hijacker on the floor while the old man pummeled him with his bony fists. The real struggle seemed to be over back there, and the action had shifted into a recreational phase.
