by Lisa Harris
He looked behind him. From the look on their passengers’ faces, they felt the same.
Paul Riley’s face had paled, and a panic settled in his eyes as he gripped the armrests. “I need off this plane.”
Barrick leaned forward. “He’s panicking. You need to do something.”
“It will settle down soon. We’ll all be fine.” Jonas tried to sound calm.
Riley tugged on his shackles. “I need to get off this plane.”
Jonas caught Madison’s gaze. He had no idea whether this was a stunt or real panic but getting off wasn’t exactly an option.
Barrick’s voice rose a notch. “He’s having a panic attack.”
Madison leaned over her armrest. “Take a deep breath and try and calm down. The pilot’s working to get us out of the storm. It’s just some turbulence.”
Riley looked unconvinced. “I’m going to throw up.”
“Take a deep breath,” Madison said. “We’re going to be fine.”
“You don’t know that. If we crash—”
“It’s just bad weather,” Jonas said. “The pilots are used to navigating around storms like this—”
“But that isn’t always enough.” Barrick linked his fingers together. “Japan Airlines Flight 123 in 1985—520 dead. Turkish Airlines Flight 981—346 people dead. In 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Vanished over the ocean with 239 people on board, and more recently—”
“Barrick, be quiet. You’re not helping.” Jonas got up and crouched down next to Riley. “I want you to listen to me. Thousands of planes take off every day and land successfully at their destination. We’re going to get there safely.”
Never mind that the upcoming trial would probably leave both of them in prison for life.
Riley shook his head. “You don’t know that. Small planes are even more dangerous than commercial air—”
“Flying is the safest form of transportation there is. You’ll be fine.”
Riley sucked in a breath of air and nodded, but he still didn’t look convinced.
The plane dropped again. Jonas grabbed on to the seat back next to him as the pilot came over the speaker once more, asking them to take their seats. Jonas fought to push down the panic bubbling inside him as he stumbled back up the aisle, quickly sliding into his seat.
The pilot’s voice crackled again on the intercom. “Please prepare for a crash landing.”
A crash landing? Surely the pilot wasn’t serious. They were in the middle of nowhere with two prisoners. The plane took a nosedive, confirming the fact that this was no joke. One of the men behind them let out a long groan. Jonas grabbed Madison’s hand, then closed his eyes and braced for impact.
Four
Madison drew in a deep breath and immediately felt a stab of pain shoot through her rib cage. She opened her eyes and forced herself to not panic. An eerie stillness surrounded her. It was quiet. Too quiet. There was no sound of an engine running. No voices. Just the smell of something burning and the quiet groans of the metal aircraft.
Sunlight streamed in from behind her as she tried to focus on the situation. She unbuckled her seat belt, then slowly stood up, needing to figure out what had happened. Where they were. And why it was so quiet. She pressed her hand against the back of the chair to steady herself, pressing her lips together at the pain. She held up her arm. Nothing seemed to be broken, though her wrist looked slightly swollen. She pulled up the bottom edge of her shirt and found a bruise forming.
But she didn’t have time to worry about it right now. Seconds seemed to drag by. There were six people on this plane and nothing but silence. She couldn’t be the only one who had survived the crash.
Metal creaked beneath her as she turned around and discovered the source of the light. The aircraft had been snapped in half and the back section—where the prisoners had been—was gone. But that wasn’t the most disturbing part. The front—where she stood—wasn’t on the ground.
She tried to not panic as she struggled to put together the scenario in her mind. They’d crash-landed in a forest. And the plane—at least half of it—was hovering somewhere above the ground. One false move . . .
She shoved aside the thought and moved slowly to the other side of the aisle where Jonas sat motionless. “Jonas. Jonas, are you okay?”
He answered with a moan. “I think so. How long was I out?”
Jonas’s voice flooded her with a sense of relief. “Not long, I don’t think.” She fought to clear her mind. They needed to make a plan to get out of here. Needed to see if the pilots and prisoners were injured. Needed to get off this airplane before it took another dive and ended up on the ground this time. And they were also going to have to get help.
Madison checked her pockets to find her phone, but it wasn’t there. She searched the area around her seat, then felt her heart sink when she caught sight of it. She unwedged her broken phone from beneath a piece of twisted metal. The screen was shattered and blank.
Great. “What about the pilots?” Jonas asked, pulling her back to the crisis at hand.
“I don’t know. I have to go check on them, but we’re lodged in a tree. Do you know where your phone is? Mine’s crushed.”
“I’m not sure where it is, but we’ve got to get out of here ASAP. We’re still responsible for those prisoners.”
“True, but the tail of the plane is on the ground. It was snapped in half.”
Jonas sucked in a breath. “We’re lucky to be alive.”
She nodded. “I’ll check on the pilots if you check on the prisoners.”
“Madison . . .”
She turned around. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. I can’t move. My leg is pinned beneath the seat in front of me somehow.”
“Don’t panic. We’ll get you out.”
“And if this airplane decides to quit defying gravity first?”
She took careful steps but managed to maneuver herself until she stood right beside him. She studied the seat. The chair in front of him had twisted on impact. She moved in front of it and pulled as hard as she could, but it didn’t budge.
A tree limb snapped somewhere beneath them, and the plane shifted. Her stomach lurched.
“How high up are we?” he asked, straining to look out the window from his seat.
“I’m guessing about twenty to thirty feet off the ground.”
“And I’m stuck beneath a strip of metal.”
“That about sums it up. It shifts slightly when I push on it, but then I can feel the plane shift as well. Let me check on the pilots. If they’re alive, they’ll be able to help.”
“Careful. Any movement is going to mess with the integrity of the plane. If the weight shifts, and the plane falls . . .”
He didn’t have to finish his sentence, though at the moment, the plane dislodging from its current location was only one in a long list of problems they were facing. She took another step. The plane creaked beneath her but didn’t move.
“Be careful.”
“I will.”
Another step toward the front of the plane gave her a better view out the window where she could see the broken-off section below them. Her stomach turned again.
“Riley’s still in his seat, but considering the angle of his neck and the fact he isn’t moving, he might be dead.”
“And Barrick?”
She felt a shiver slide down her spine as she shifted her gaze to where Barrick had been sitting. “The way the back of the plane fell, I can’t see his seat.”
She couldn’t panic. Not yet. He was shackled and couldn’t have gone far. More than likely, he’d been thrown from his seat and was dead like Riley. She moved cautiously to another one of the windows and searched the ground for signs of him as far as she could see through the dense forest. But there was no sign of the man.
“I can’t see any footprints from this angle,” she said, turning back to Jonas. “But I can’t be sure.”
“We’re going to have a serious problem if
Barrick managed to vanish. This guy is desperate—and smart. We both read his file. He used a toothbrush to make a shiv and killed a fellow inmate, and that was after he murdered two people.”
She nodded. “So worst-case scenario he’s alive and escaped, but even if that’s true, he couldn’t have gone far. More than likely he’s injured, and on top of that, he’s shackled.”
She slowly approached the cockpit, worried about what she was about to find. If the pilots were alive, or at least conscious, she should have heard them.
The cockpit door had buckled in the crash, but it was surprisingly easy to open. Blood covered the front of the pilot. A tree branch had shattered the window and impaled his copilot. Nausea bubbled in her gut, reaching up into her throat. She checked the pulse of each man but there was nothing. Just lifeless faces staring back at her. A satellite phone lay on the floor between them, the screen crushed.
She fumbled for the radio and pressed the button. “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. This is JPATS prisoner transport flight 342 en route from Seattle to Denver. Can anyone hear me?”
She counted to ten, waiting for a reply. Nothing.
“Repeating, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, this is flight 342 en route from Seattle to Denver with United States Marshals. We have just crashed. Location unknown. This is a prisoner transport plane. Pilots are both dead and possibly one prisoner has escaped. Need assistance.”
The radio buzzed, then went silent.
“Jonas,” she called out to her partner. Her heart was beating frantically. “I can’t get through on the radio.”
“Try again.”
Panic threatened to engulf her. She was used to high-stress situations. Ones that put her life at risk on a daily basis. In an early-morning raid, there was never any way to know what was going to be on the other side. Whether they’d be met with live rounds of fire or a submissive suspect. This was no different. She just needed to stay focused and remember her training.
“Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.” She repeated the information, praying that someone would hear her. There had to be someone out there listening. Or maybe someone had seen the plane go down? Except she had no idea where they were. It was possible that no one had seen the crash.
“They’re dead, aren’t they?”
She stepped back into the cabin, nodding. There was no time to feel sorry for herself. “Communications are out. There’s no way to send a message.”
“I found my phone,” Jonas said. “There’s no signal, but there should be an emergency beacon on the plane.”
He was right. The airplanes sent messages during the flight including latitude, longitude, altitude, and airspeed. The authorities would track them here and send someone to rescue them.
“They’ll track us using breadcrumb data,” Jonas said. “On top of that, sensors will automatically transmit a distress signal when the crash is registered.”
“But we can’t stay here. If Barrick managed to escape, we have to go after him.” She stared at the seat that had him trapped. “But first we’ve got to get you out of here.”
“Are you injured?” Jonas asked.
She brushed off his concern. “Just a few bruises. I’ll be fine.”
She stood in front of him again, trying to determine exactly what had happened. The bar from the seat in front of him had jammed across his leg, pinning him down. She tried pulling on it from in front of the seat but couldn’t get enough leverage to move it. She tried slowly from another angle. The plane shifted beneath her, dropping several feet before stopping again.
Her shoulder slammed into the side of the plane, knocking the wind out of her.
“Madison?”
Stillness surrounded them. Her fingers gripped the seat in front of her. Seconds passed. The plane creaked beneath her. She realized she was holding her breath, waiting for the plane to fall again.
He reached out and put his hand over hers. “Are you okay?”
“No. We need to get out of here. Another drop like that could kill us.”
Their options were limited, but what was she supposed to do? She couldn’t get him loose without moving the seat, and that meant the risk of the plane falling again.
“We need something to pry this seat forward,” she said, turning carefully to see if anything in the cabin looked useful. She came up short.
“You could to go to the cockpit again and see if there’s a crash ax.”
“It’s too unstable.”
“We don’t have a choice. We need some kind of leverage to move this seat off of me.” He gave her a weak smile. “Go on.”
She turned back around, careful not to move too quickly. A minute later, she’d found it and returned to the cabin.
“Where do you think we are?” she asked as she jammed the ax into a spot where she could get the leverage she needed to free him.
“I’m thinking we have to be over Idaho.”
She secured the ax’s position and used her forearm to wipe sweat from her brow. “Okay, so what do you know about this part of the country?”
“It’s full of national parks and is one of the least densely populated states. The landscape is rugged—well, you can see that for yourself.”
A shiver slid through her. “Which means we could be hours or days from human contact.”
“Unless we happened to land somewhere right outside a town. There’s still a chance someone saw the crash.”
She pulled on the ax with all her strength, careful not to strain her wrist or make any sudden movements that might further dislodge the plane.
The seat groaned under the pressure.
“Gently,” Jonas cautioned.
“I’m doing my best.”
“You’re doing great. Just another half an inch or so, and I think I can get out.”
A few seconds later he was free.
“Is your leg injured?” she asked.
He pulled up his pant leg in order to see. “It looks as if I’m going to have quite a bruise, and the skin is scraped up pretty badly, but nothing feels broken.”
“Good.” She grabbed her backpack, then handed him his. “I think the only safe way out—if you can call it safe—is through the cockpit.”
Their weight any farther toward the back of the plane would be too dangerous, causing the metal death trap they were in to shift and drop.
“For now, all that matters is that we locate our second prisoner.”
They moved slowly, one at a time, out of the shattered cockpit window, careful to avoid the shards of glass covering the confined space. She tried not to make any sudden movements while Jonas took her hand to help her out. Outside the plane, she made her way toward the trunk of a tree, thankful for the thick branches that had kept them up so far. From the treetops, though, all she could see was the surrounding thick forest. Which meant the likelihood of running into a hiker seemed slim.
A couple minutes later, they’d both managed to climb down the branches and make it onto the ground.
She brushed off her pants, then grabbed her backpack and headed toward the downed section of the plane, careful to avoid walking directly beneath the craft they just escaped. Riley still lay motionless in his seat, but Barrick . . .
“Jonas.” She spun around to face him. “Barrick’s gone.”
Five
Jonas stared at Barrick’s empty seat. Their worst-case scenario—one they tried to avoid at all costs—had just become a reality. He studied the darkening clouds connected to the storm they’d just passed through. Not only did they have no idea where they were, but the storm churned above them, and as soon as the sun set, the temperatures were going to drop significantly.
At the moment, bad weather felt like the least of their worries. There was a dangerous man out there, and if he found them first, Jonas had no doubt he’d kill again.
“Riley’s definitely dead,” Madison said, walking back toward Jonas. “Looks as if he has a broken neck.”
“He probably died upon impact.”
But he knew
what she was thinking. Paul Riley was no longer a risk and no longer a part of the equation. The Marshals Service typically only transported prisoners on the smaller planes when they were thought to be especially dangerous. Like Damon Barrick. And they had no idea where he was.
Jonas studied the tail section of the plane. The impact had twisted the metal, splitting the plane in two. But it was where Barrick had been sitting that captured his attention. Not only had the man managed to survive the crash, he’d escaped.
“He clearly managed to get out of his seat belt,” he said, “but there’s blood on the seat, so we know he was injured.”
“But not badly,” Madison said. “There’s not enough blood.”
Madison rested her hands on her hips and stared out through the surrounding forest. “In our favor is the fact that he’s still shackled and wearing orange. That will slow him down and make it harder to vanish.”
But they also knew enough about the man to know he was resourceful.
Madison crouched down and studied the soft dirt next to the tailpiece. “This has to be him. Fresh footprints. He took off this way”—she pointed toward the woods—“and should be pretty easy to follow. He can’t be more than a few minutes ahead of us.”
“And he’s going to be moving slowly,” Jonas said. “But there’s also a good chance he’s looking to ambush us. He could have taken something from the plane, but he’s going to want our guns and supplies, because he knows we’re coming after him.”
“I think we should also leave a trail of our own.” She pulled a bandana from her pack and started ripping it into strips. “That way if help makes it here, it will be easier for them to follow us. Especially if we end up getting lost.”
He frowned, but knew it was a possibility. He stared out at the densely wooded area as they walked, leaving the plane and three dead bodies behind. An icy shiver slid through him. It was a miracle they were alive.
“How’s your leg?” she asked.
“Manageable.”
They paused their hike for a moment while she dug some pain medicine out of her backpack and handed it to him. “This should help.”