B007JBKHYW EBOK

by April Campbell Jones

  Then I was swept off my feet again, this time into the bulkhead. “What the hell—“

  Mitzi was suddenly tugging at my pant leg. “Ed! We’re taking off!”

  “No!”

  “The plane is rolling! Forget the ceiling latch and get this compartment door back open! Quick!”

  I felt a numb chill head to feet. “I won’t leave Clancy with that maniac!”

  “You have to! Open this compartment before we leave the ground!”

  “They’ll kill her!”

  “They kill us when we reach Baghdad!”

  “I won’t leave her!”

  “Ed, you’re not going to be any good to her dead! Get us out of here! We can take a separate flight when we’ve had time to devise a new plan!”

  “This is the plan!”

  I gasped at a painful bite at my left ankle, then Mitzi was dragging me to the floor of the compartment. I sprawled on my knees, dropped the flashlight and recovered it. The beam fell across the poodle’s blazing eyes.

  “Open it, Ed! Now! Or the next bite is for real!”

  I hesitated, saw those red eyes burn brighter, and threw the beam at the compartment door.

  I ran the cone of light quickly over it, back and forth, up and down the nearly invisible seams.

  “Shit!”

  “What the matter?”

  “There is no inside latch!”

  Then I gasped as the backward pull of inertia sent me spilling on my ass.

  I tried to push up, felt the elevator-drag increase precipitously in my shoulders, my stomach. Heard Mitzi whine, nails scratching for purchase against the tilting floor.

  We were airborne…

  TWENTY-THREE

  For the first half hour or so we said nothing to each other.

  I guess we were both pretty numb.

  Also, I figured Mitzi was pretty disgusted with me by that point from the way she sulked in the opposite end of the compartment and hung her head in the flashlight glow.

  “You want to get that damn flashlight out of my eyes, please?”

  “Sorry, it’s kind of scary sitting in pitch blackness.”

  “You’ll have all the light you need when we land in Baghdad and they open the hatch to slit our throats.”

  “I’m really sorry, Mitz. About the way things turned out.”

  She said nothing.

  “I guess you’re going to hate me all the way across the ocean, huh?”

  She said nothing.

  Another ten minutes passed then: “What time is it?”

  I flicked on the flashlight. “Almost nine o’clock. Central Time.”

  I dared to shine the light on the poodle. She had her head up now, pressed against the side of the compartment.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Listening. Nobody’s moving around up there. No talking either.”

  “It’s full daylight out now. They must all be asleep.”

  Mitzi lifted her head and gazed at the obstinate ceiling latch a moment. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever flown a plane before?”

  I sort of tossed it off. “Actually…”

  She jerked toward me. “Actually what?”

  “A friend of mine in college, his dad had a little Cessna.”

  “And--?”

  “My friend—Chris Hastings—flew us up to Canada a few times in his old man’s plane on fishing trips. He let me take the wheel a few times.”

  “How many times?”

  “I don’t know. A few.”

  “Did you ever land the plane?”

  “No.”

  “But you watched your friend land the plane.”

  “Mitzi. I cannot land a DC-9.”

  “They’re all the same in principal. Besides, if we can figure the radio out, the airport will guide us in. A plane like this probably lands itself anyway.”

  “Too bad neither of us speaks Iraqi.”

  “We’re not going to Iraq. We’re going back to O’Hara Field.”

  I stared at her. “After we overtake the pilot and crew.”

  “Right.”

  “And figure out how to turn this black albatross around.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And get that stupid damn ceiling hatch open.”

  She was sniffing the air again.

  “Pick me up, Eddie.”

  “Why?”

  “Lift me up to the latch handle. Use your mouth for the flashlight.”

  “Mitzi—“

  She sighed. “You’re right. Let’s just sit here and do nothing, Ed! Maybe they’ll let us watch them rape and murder Clancy!”

  I lifted the poodle in my arms, twisted my neck around and tried to level the beam at the latch. “I can’t turn my head that far…”

  “Never mind. I can see it. Bring me a little closer so I can get my teeth around it. Good. Now. Can you brace your legs against something?”

  I threw the beam at the compartment floor; there was nothing. “Yes.”

  “Okay. Get ready. And don’t drop me…”

  I felt the muscles along her back and shoulders tense as she got the latch between her teeth and began to pull. She was even stronger than I’d thought. I lost my balance and we thumped to the floor.

  We sat silently for a moment. “Well, if they are awake,” I whispered, “they surely heard that racket.”

  “We’ll know in a second,” Mitzi said.

  No movement above, nobody came to the hatch.

  I shone the light on the dog, gasped. “Jesus, your muzzle’s all bloody!”

  “It’s nothing. Lift me again.”

  “What’s the point?”

  “The point is, the latch moved!”

  I picked her up quickly.

  “Try not to fall over this time.”

  “You’re heavy!”

  “Ready?”

  “Okay.”

  “Here we go. One…two…three!”

  * * *

  We stood in aisle in the center of the aircraft and looked up and down, forward and aft, quickly.

  The rows of seat on both sides of the fuselage were empty. All the windows were shuttered. The plane was semi-dark.

  I dropped the cargo hatch back in place softly. “Maybe they’re all in the pilot’s cabin?”

  “Why? The cockpit would be too cramped for more than three people. They might be aft, lounging about on Hef’s old circular bed, watching TV.”

  “You think?”

  “Not really, but they have to be somewhere. First thing we have to do is get these window shades up again, let in a much light as possible. You take the port side. That’s the left.”

  “I know what the port side is!” I looked around me a moment. “Strange…”

  “What?”

  “The airplane looks smaller on the inside than the outside…”

  Mitzi jumped up on the nearest row of seats. “That’s really interesting, Eddie, you wanna start un-shuttering the windows, please?”

  It took us over fifteen minutes to get all the windows up between the pilot’s door and the back cabin, but it was glorious to have the plane filled with light, see all that electric blue sky out there riding a bubbly sea of fat clouds.

  The next thing we did was open all the overhead bins.

  They were empty.

  I stood there expressionless. “I don’t get it. No people, no luggage. Where are they?”

  Mitzi hopped off the last seat and signaled me with her head. “Let’s check the rear compartment. The toilet and the shower.”

  “They can’t all be peeing and bathing at the same time!”

  “Check them anyway.”

  We checked.

  I cannot describe how cool it was to be standing there in Hugh Hefner’s old bedroom-in-the-sky, the elliptical bed, surrounded by 1970’s era stereo and TV equipment, right out of a scrapbook. My jaw was unhinged. “That crazy fucking caliph restored it to exactly Hefner’s specifications!”

  “That crazy fucking caliph thin
ks he is Hefner. Ed?”

  “Yeah?”

  “There’s nobody back here. That means you must have been right. For some reason everyone’s crammed in the cockpit.”

  “You look doubtful.”

  “Doesn’t make sense. They can’t shutter the plane’s front windshield, how would the pilot see? Yet, even if the pilot’s not one of them, the rest are all vampires, so how are they surviving direct sunlight?”

  I thought about it. “I haven’t the least damn idea.”

  Mitzi turned toward the front of the craft again. “C’mon. And silently! No communicating except with your mind!”

  I nodded and we started forward again back up the aisle. “There’s a door on the pilot’s cabin. What if it’s locked?”

  “I don’t know, we knock?”

  “Funny.”

  We passed between the rows. “Good weather, fortunately,” I noted through slanting shafts of sunlight from the right-hand windows.

  “Fortunately for you, Sport.”

  “I can’t possibly fly the airplane, Mitzi.”

  “Yes you can.”

  “No, I can’t!”

  “Yes you can.”

  We came to the pilot’s cabin, faced the closed door.

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  I nodded. “Nine-eleven. But that plane went down. Those people were heroes.”

  “So are you, Eddie, you just haven’t learned to think like one yet.”

  “If that’s supposed to induce confidence—“

  “Be quiet for a second.”

  Mitzi crept forward silently like a cat, tilted her head a moment, obviously listening. Then leaned into the door and pressed on ear against it.

  She shook her head. “No one’s in there.”

  I started. “Say what?”

  “Check for yourself, there’s no lock.”

  I put two fingers in the convex door handled and pulled right. The door slid open.

  We were greeted by more light, more blue sky, lumpy fields of clouds all the way to the horizon. The cockpit was empty.

  “This is nuts…” I whispered, as if inside a cathedral.

  Mitzi nodded, staring in at the softly glowing instrument panel, the back of the pilot’s chair. “Nuts is the word for it.”

  I still couldn’t accept it.

  I pushed into the cockpit and looked around, already knowing I’d find no one. It was eerie.

  “Who the hell’s flying this plane?”

  “The autopilot, clearly.”

  I slapped my hand hard on the back of the pilot’s chair. “They ditched! The sons of bitches parachuted out! Somewhere over the north woods, probably between Chicago and—“

  “And where, Eddie?” Mitzi hopped up on the pilot’s seat, sniffed the lighted panel. “You’re not making sense.”

  “I’m not making sense!”

  “What time is it?”

  I sighed, trembling all over now; Clancy…taken from me yet again. “Just after nine in the morning.”

  “Then we’d be somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. They didn’t ditch.”

  “Then where the hell are they? What have they done with Clancy?”

  Mitzi had her front paws up on the instrument panel, nosing at a double-folded length of paper. “What’s this?”

  I bent over the seat, unfolded it. “Looks like a map. And maybe flight schedule…”

  “In Arabic, of course.”

  I bent closer. “Not all of it. The map shows the location of Chicago, Illinois…then a curving red ink line somebody drew on through the North Atlantic past Iceland, between Norway and the United Kingdom…then Germany, the Ukraine, finally through Turkey and into Iraq. Well, that’s comforting, at least we know we’re on the right plane.”

  “Anything about flight time?”

  I ran my finger over the flight plan. “Six thousand, four hundred and thirty-one miles—from Chicago to Bagdad. Huh. Less than I’d have thought.”

  I could see the wheels turning in the poodle’s head. “That’s about…thirteen hours, give or take. Let’s see…ten thousand kilometers…and the Iraqis are about eight hours ahead of us. That explains the departure time and their ETA. They leave at dusk, arrive just before dawn. Maybe.”

  “What do you mean, ‘maybe’?”

  “Hold that map over here.”

  I spread it across the panel before her.

  “I don’t have any idea how much fuel one of these things carries. The first points of touchdown not surrounded by ocean are Greenland and Iceland, both unlikely fueling stations, I’d think. That would make the next possibility…either Norway or England.”

  I tossed my hands up impatiently. “What the hell difference does it make? They’re not on this plane!”

  Mitzi turned to look up at me soberly. “The difference it makes is this—at nine o’clock central time that puts us about a quarter of the way to Bagdad. But already past the tip of Greenland. What if Greenland or Iceland is the first mandatory fuel stop? That would mean the plane’s already past the point of no return.”

  She pushed the paper aside suddenly and began sniffing across the control panel.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “The fuel gauge.”

  I joined her, scanning the rows of dials and levers. “Is this it?”

  She turned her head. “Do you spell ‘fuel’ ‘a-l-t-i-m-i-t-e-r’?”

  “Okay, okay!”

  “Actually, it’s a good thing you found that. See that red needle? If it starts climbing past that mark or below it, it means the INS isn’t working and—“

  “INS?”

  “Inertial navigation system—automatic pilot--and we’d either climb or dive. We’re fine.”

  “For now.”

  “For now. We’ll have to reset the INS when we turn around. The button should be somewhere there on the yoke.”

  “Mitzi, I cannot turn this plane ar—“

  “Here’s the fuel gauge…”

  “Where?”

  I pushed past her, located the gauge, felt my heart drop. “Damn! It’s over half empty! We are past the point of no return!”

  “Take it easy. Not necessarily. There’ll be an emergency tank somewhere—give us another hour or so—and maybe even a secondary tank to switch to. The trick is finding the button or lever. In any case, the sooner we start heading back to the mainland, the better.”

  “I’m not a pilot!”

  “It’s easy. Pull back on the yoke, the plane goes up--push forward, the plane di—“

  “Don’t say that word!”

  “What’s this…?”

  I looked over at her. She was sniffing a square plastic cap on the panel—some kind of lock-down cover it looked like—under which was a bright red button.

  “Ed…”

  “Right here.”

  “Do not lift this plastic guard cap.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “Do not push the red button under it.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  But my curiosity got the best of me. And I opened my big mouth. “Why.”

  “Because I think…just a guess, mind you…but I think the red button releases the ES.”

  “Swell. What’s an ES?”

  She looked at me soberly. “Ejection seat.”

  “What!”

  “I think.”

  “Which seat?”

  Mitzi looked back at the red button. “Not sure about that yet…”

  “For chrissake, the guy has an ejection seat in his aircraft—I am under no circumstances flying this fucking plane!”

  “Never mind that now. See that panel there?”

  “Where? This?”

  “That’s the radio panel. It’s probably still set for O’Hara Field. Turn that dial…”

  I turned the dial. Static.

  “I was afraid of that. Must be storm clouds there below us.”

  “Great!”

  “Never mind, O’Hara may be too far off
now anyway. We’ll try for an east coast runway. Turn the green dial three clicks.”

  “Why?

  “That’s the emergency frequency.”

  “How come you’re so smart?”

  “Alicia owned a private plane, remember? Piloted it herself?”

  “And she let you come along?”

  “Turn the dial, Ed.”

  I turned it.

  Nothing.

  “Press that button.”

  I pressed it.

  “Now give them our flight number and position.”

  “Our what?”

  She pawed the folded paper toward me. “Read.”

  I gripped the paper with sticky fingers, fumbled through the farce. “Uh…this is private jet Four-zero-six…uh…on one-twenty-three point two. Does anybody read me?”

  Nobody did.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  A few minutes later, Mitzi found the secondary fuel tank button and hit it.

  The gauge needle floated happily into the green FULL zone.

  “Good. That should get us to the United Kingdom with a good safety margin. If we can pick up Heathrow’s frequency they can assign us a flight path and guide us in.”

  “Then we don’t have to turn around?”

  “It would be quicker to land in England. Once we’re locked into their computers they’ll take us down, the plane should virtually land itself.”

  I slumped against the bulkhead. “Thank God.”

  Mitzi didn’t look happy. “There’s a third option, of course…”

  I stiffened. “Which is?”

  “Take the plane out of autopilot, get below these clouds, and use the extra fuel to circle and look for the passengers…”

  “You just said they didn’t ditch!”

  Mitzi gave me a patient look. “They’re not on the plane, Ed. Maybe…maybe Mansur hired someone—a weather ship or something—to pick them up at some strategic point. Maybe he’s afraid of missiles from Turkey or Iran or something…opted to come ashore in Iraq by water.”

  I looked at the map. “He’d still have to get past Spain and Algeria to do that. And the flight schedule indicates straight-through from O’Hara Field to Baghdad International. Besides, I can’t imagine him let his precious bunny jet just crash into the sea.”

  Mitzi sighed and hopped off the pilot’s chair. “Neither can I, frankly.” She trotted back into the main cabin. “So you tell me where the passengers and Clancy are.”