by Jackson Ford
I look down, eyeing the plane below me. I’ll have to be careful – it’s directly below the roof hatch, but parked at a slight diagonal. I’ll hit the body slightly off-centre.
Ten feet. Five.
Here we go.
Touchdown.
My Jordans barely make a sound as they kiss the body of the plane, leaning into it, cat-walking my way up onto the body. I glance at the entrance, but nobody’s looking. So far, so good.
The cockpit escape hatch is less than twenty feet away. I unclip quickly, just like Paul and I practiced, and flash him a thumbs-up before starting my walk over. I stay low, quiet, placing my feet carefully.
“Teagan,” Paul whispers in my ear. “Be damn careful.”
The hatch is only meant to open from the inside, and when it does, there are reels that pop out, so the pilot and co-pilot can descend from the plane without breaking their legs. I reach out with my PK, focusing, wrapping it around the hatch…
I move the internal mechanism and slide it upwards, holding the reels in place. Smooth and easy – the hatch pops in under two seconds. I don’t waste time, lowering my legs inside, and dropping into the cockpit.
Action-hero ninja landings are crazy tough to pull off in real life. But if I do say so myself, I give it a pretty good go. I only wobble a little bit on the landing, coming down into a crouch, arms up, just behind the pilot seats. Above me, my PK seals the hatch.
“I’m in.”
THIRTEEN
Teagan
OK, private jets are awesome.
This plane is bigger than my apartment. And it’s way more comfortable: buttery leather seats, muted silver accents, tables that I’m pretty sure are real wood. Also a full bar, with some seriously good whiskey stacked behind it.
Forget being a chef. Hell, forget being a government agent. I should try find work as a German tech billionaire.
The soft carpet muffles my footsteps as I pad towards what looks like the bedroom door, fine-grained wood with a steel handle. It’s locked, of course, but I’m through in seconds, my PK making short work of the mechanism.
The first thing I notice is the contraption hanging from the bedroom ceiling. When I realise what it is, I whistle, long and low.
“What is it? Over,” Paul says.
“Dude has a sex swing bolted to the ceiling. Like a bondage sex swing. On his plane.”
“Focus, Teagan,” Paul says. “Now. Over.”
Sex swing aside, the bedroom is rad, with a huge double bed and an enormous flatscreen TV. There’s an oversized window on the other side of the room, letting Schmidt look out at the clouds from his pillow. An en-suite bathroom to my left, the door ajar, reveals an expanse of smooth white tile. The motherfucker has an actual shower in there.
He hasn’t gone to any trouble to hide the safe – why would he? It’s on the lower half of a bedside cabinet, secured with a hefty biometric lock.
Come to think of it, I’m not sure I want to see what’s actually in there, now that I know what Herr Schmidt gets up to on transatlantic flights.
I feel at the lock with my PK, driving my mind into the mechanism. It’s a little bit more complicated than ones I’ve seen in the past. I have to focus, teasing out the right pieces to manipulate. It would be a lot easier just to rip out the entire door, but I believe the idea is to not alert Mister Germany that someone was all up in his shit.
I can feel the solution on the tip of my mind when Paul comes on the comms. “Hold. We have an unidentified vehicle on scene. Over.”
“I see it,” Annie mutters. I have to restrain the urge to reply, Of course you do, you’re right there.
“Do I need to do anything now?” Africa says.
“No.” Paul pauses. “Hold position.”
A moment later, he sucks in a breath. “It’s Schmidt. Schmidt is here.”
“What the fuck do you mean, Schmidt is here?” I hiss.
“It’s him all right,” Annie murmurs. “I can see him getting out.”
“Reggie?” Paul sounds frantic. He must have forgotten he was still on the group channel. There’s a buzz of static, Paul adjusting something, and then Reggie’s voice in my ear.
“That’s impossible,” she says. “I’ve been monitoring the hotel, he’s still…”
There’s a second of silence. Then she sucks in a horrified breath. “Oh, shit. Paul, I got it wrong. He left the hotel. He’s there. He’s with you.”
“He didn’t make the sale?” I say. “Is anybody with him?”
“I don’t know. Working on it!”
Paul doesn’t hesitate. “Team: abort. Abort mission.”
“What—?” I scramble to my feet. “No!”
“Annie – keep them distracted, just a little longer. Teagan, I want you back up on top of the jet for extraction. And Africa, keep the engine running.”
“But I haven’t got the goods yet!” I hiss.
“Doesn’t matter. We—”
“It’s just him,” Annie says quietly. “I don’t see a buyer.”
“Annie,” I say. “Keep them distracted. I need, like, two more minutes.” Reggie has gone completely silent as if she doesn’t want to make anything worse.
“Teagan,” Paul says. “The jet isn’t rented. Schmidt owns it. He’ll send the pilot back on board and deal with TSA himself.”
“Oh. Fuck.”
“Exactly. You need to exit, qu—oh goddammit.”
“What now?”
“The pilot’s coming back now. Repeat, pilot inbound. They’ll be onboard in the next twenty seconds.”
I close my eyes for a second, then rocket out of Schmidt’s love den, cursing. If I can get to the cockpit quickly, I can be out the top of the plane before they know I was there. Except… shit, it’s not going to be enough. There’s no way I can get up, out, and then lock everything down before the pilot comes into the cockpit.
Not like I have a choice. As my feet hit the plush carpet of the main cabin, there’s a squeal of tyres from outside the plane, closely followed by Paul saying, “Africa, what in the hell are you doing?”
“It’s OK.” Africa sounds more excited than I’ve ever heard him. “I will keep them busy.”
There’s the sound of a door opening over the comms, and then Africa’s voice again – not just in my ears, but echoing across the tarmac. “Hey! You! Mister Germany! You bloody toubab!”
“Uh, Paul?” I say, hovering, frozen. “What exactly is happening out there?”
He ignores me. “Africa, stand down.”
“No worries,” he says, speaking quickly and quietly. “I give Teggan time.” Then another roar: “Ya, you! I’m talking to you. This is the Homeland Security, I will put you in Guantanamo Bay!”
I have to bite down on a laugh. The thought of Africa striding across the tarmac, a seven-foot-tall behemoth in a Gestapo outfit and mirror shades, looming over the little German tech bro and his entourage, is hysterical. Also useful, because it’ll buy me the time I need. I risk a peek out the plane’s open door; the pilots have stopped on the tarmac, staring at the huge, gesticulating monster in their midst.
Africa, you hero. I will never get mad at him again, not ever.
I turn towards the cockpit… and stop.
The list is here. I’m sure of it. It’s in the safe, right behind me. What if, instead of getting the hell out, I stayed on board? What if I used the time Africa bought me?
Hide. Wait. When the coast is clear, open the safe, grab the goods, get the hell out. Come back a legend.
I don’t bother with closets, or the en-suite bathroom. The first thing Schmidt is likely to do is hang up his jacket, then take a piss. Besides, I pride myself on thinking laterally in these situations. I throw out my PK, tendrils of mental energy running along the floor and walls.
Africa and Annie are still tag-teaming everyone on the tarmac. “Teagan, where are you?” Paul says. “I’m ready to pull you back up. Over.”
“OK, don’t get mad…”
“Wha
t do you mean, don’t get mad?”
“I’ve got an idea.”
“Get out of there now. That’s an order.”
It’ll take me a little time to crack the safe, but if I can find a hiding place, I can do it mid-flight, while Schmidt and his goons are drinking schnapps in the main cabin. I could risk opening the safe up now… but I’d still have to get out, and I might not be able to do it without running into someone nasty. “Sorry, Paul,” I murmur. “We’re doing this.”
“Teagan!”
There. Three panels in the floor, on the other side of the bed, covered with thick carpet. The carpet is glued down, but it’s synthetic fibre. I have it up in about five seconds, rolled like a yoga mat, exposing the panels beneath. I pop one, revealing a crawlspace thick with wires and electronics. It will be a hell of a tight fit, but there’s just enough room for me to climb inside. In my earpiece, Africa is still yelling incomprehensible nonsense at Schmidt, and it sounds as if Annie is trying to calm him down. Paul is going fucking nuts. I’m pretty sure he’s about to have a heart attack.
Tight fit. That’s like describing Antarctica as a tiny bit chilly. I have to curl into a ball, knees jammed under my chin, and even then I’m not sure I’m going to be able to put everything back where I found it. At least I don’t have to use my hands. I push the panel down on top of me, grunting as it squashes me even further into the space, locking me in darkness. Dust tickles my nose as I roll the carpet back over the panel. It probably doesn’t look nearly as good as it did before, but I doubt Schmidt will notice.
A few seconds later, someone – the pilots and crew, I assume – board the plane.
Thumping footsteps, in the room above me. I stay still as I can, hardly daring to breathe. There are voices, but I can’t make out the words.
A sneeze tries to worm its way into my nostrils. I don’t let it, using this trick I know where you squash your tongue against the roof of your mouth. Not going out like that. No way. Not with a fucking sneeze.
Africa and Annie stall for as long as they can – demanding passports, visas, background checks. But eventually, Annie comes over the line. “I had to clear him. He was about to send someone to get a supervisor. Teagan, where are you?”
“Kind of a funny story,” I mutter.
“She OK?” Africa sounds out of breath. “Teggan?”
“They’ve cleared the plane for taxi,” Reggie says quietly. There’s a lot of static on the comms now.
Around me, the plane’s engines and internal systems begin to kick in, vibrations rattling through my tiny hidey-hole. There’s a jolt, and I bang my head against a strut. I have to bite my lip to stop myself from swearing very loudly. It’s only been a couple of minutes, but my muscles are already aching, throbbing with pain that doesn’t go away no matter how much I shift my weight.
The rumbling gets louder as the plane starts to move, taxiing out of the hangar. A sudden, horrible thought occurs: they insulate the cabin, but they do nothing about the rest of the plane. What if I have to hide out here for the whole flight? I may badly want to complete this mission, but I’ve got absolutely no desire to freeze to death while doing it.
More footsteps, the voices moving away. I take a deep breath, and send my PK out as far as I can. This time, I’m not trying to move anything.
You can’t live with my ability without figuring out some very useful tricks, and one of those is what I like to think of as echolocation. It has nothing to do with sound, of course. When I move an object, I can sense how it fits into the world: size, velocity, position in space. What that means is that when I focus, I can build up a picture of the world around me, even with my eyes closed.
This doesn’t work with people, who are organic and complicated and annoying. But human beings tend to carry lots of inanimate objects around with them. Phones. Keys. Watches. Jewellery. Pacemakers. Artificial hips. Butt plugs. It’s very easy to build up a fine-grained picture of the world, just by tracking the things people have on them.
I concentrate, trying to pick up as much information as I can. There are two people in the cockpit – or, if I’m being accurate, a couple of smartphones, two upright pens in shirt pockets, and what feels like a very expensive Rolex. Four in the main cabin, their positions flagged by a bunch of other watches and metal wallets and stud earrings. And guns. At least two guns. There’s nobody in the bedroom above me.
The engines ratchet up to a roar, the vibrations rattling my crawlspace as the plane thunders down the runway. Shit. Oh well: I’ve always wanted to see New York. Apparently they have great pizza. Paul and Annie are speaking in my ear, but I can’t hear them over the noise of the engines.
A takeoff means everybody in the plane will be in their seats in the main cabin, at least for a few minutes. That gives me a window of opportunity. I send out another burst of PK, ensuring there are no keys or coins making their way towards the bedroom, then peel back the carpet and crack the hatch.
Uncoiling myself, rolling out onto the floor of the bedroom, is better than anything the people who land up in Herr Schmidt’s sex swing have ever experienced. I have to resist the urge to purr like a cat. The ache in my muscles goes from horrible-owey-yikes pain to oh-my-God-don’t-you-dare-stop pain.
My good mood lasts precisely three seconds. Because when I’m done with the safe, I’ll have to go back into the floor. Not only will I have to be there for hours and hours, but I also have to do it while the passengers are sipping vodka tonics and eating cocktail olives. And then probably getting freaky in the bondage swing, right where I can hear them.
It’s a good thing I’m flat on my back, because right then, the plane takes off, the floor tilting underneath me. Slowly, I get to my feet.
“Paul? Annie? Come in?”
Nothing. Just a slight hiss of static. A little knot of worry forms in between my shoulder blades.
I shake it off, going back to work on the safe lock. I drop to my knees in front of it, mind half on the objects and the rest of the cabin. Still no movement. Good. I zero in on the lock components, isolating them with my PK, working out which parts do what. A few moments later, the sequence clicks together in my head, and the lock pops. Bam. In.
The safe is full of paperwork. Stacks of it: bearer bonds and contracts and notebooks. My heart sinks. It’s going to take me too long to hunt through this mess. Should I just take it all? What if he opens the safe during the flight? Then again, he might do that anyway, even if I just take the list. What will happen if he finds it missing? Will he turn and head back to LA? Book it for Germany? Much as I want to see Europe, I’m not sure I can take a full night beneath Schmidt’s floorboards…
I haven’t thought this through. There are too many elements, too many things to juggle. I have to stop, take a breath, actually figure out how to—
A soft footstep. Behind me. I whirl, and Jonas Schmidt is standing in the doorway.
He looks younger in person, in his early thirties, with a mop of floppy blond hair over a smooth-cheeked face. His eyes, a piercing blue, are wide with surprise. He wears a tight, white V-neck T-shirt over cream linen pants, and he’s taken off his shoes.
I stare back him, blinking in shock. It’s impossible for him to be here. I might have been concentrating on the safe, but I kept some of my PK focused on the main cabin, and none of the pens and coins and watches had—
But Schmidt isn’t wearing a watch. There’s nothing in his pockets: not a phone, not a wallet, not even a zipper on his pants. If he had them earlier, he’s put them aside somewhere. He wears no jewellery. Doesn’t even have any fillings. His clothes are lightweight linen and cotton. There is absolutely nothing on him that my PK could latch onto.
Teagan, you fucking idiot.
I give him a wide smile. “Um. Hi. So you’ve been selected for a random security screening…”
“Mikhail,” he shouts. “Gerhard. Komm schnell!”
FOURTEEN
Amber
Amber doesn’t dare ask Matthew to put on his
seatbelt. Not when he’s this quiet. He stares out the window of the pickup, hands folded in his lap, still as a statue. Inside the car, there’s no sound but the hum of the engine, the rumble of the road. When she’d put on the radio, he’d snapped at her to turn it off.
His silence isn’t the sullen, irritated type that he gets when he’s hungry, or needs the bathroom. It’s a calm silence. Focused. His face is a total blank. Amber knows this silence well. It’s what happens before he hurts someone.
No. He’s just tired, that’s all. We were up late last night, and we spent a long time at the museum so…
It’s taken them over two hours to get out of Los Angeles. The 2 was jammed with traffic, and multiple detours have added to the journey. Now, they’re deep in what’s supposed to be the Angeles National Forest, north of the city. Amber doesn’t know why they call it a forest; the few trees she does see are scraggly things, widely spaced and burnt-brown.
Her son had still been talking with Mia, the museum volunteer, when Amber had returned with his Mountain Dew. The young woman had grown more and more amazed at his questions, and after a while, Matthew had a crowd gathered around him, volunteers and scientific staff both, enthusiastically talking about fault lines and aftershocks and tectonic activity.
Amber had tried to follow along. She knew she should be paying attention, trying to pick up clues to what her son was planning. But the conversation went down rabbit holes, twisting and turning, playing with concepts she couldn’t even begin to fathom. The longer she’d stayed there, trying to listen, the more confused she’d become. And what was she going to do? Drag her son away? He’d just punish her later.
One of the staff – an older man with a ring of white hair below a shiny, bald scalp – had taken her aside, handed her his card. “We can’t employ children – obviously,” he’d said, grinning. “But when he gets old enough, we’d love to have him intern here, even if it’s only on the weekends. You’ve raised one hell of a good kid. And of course, you’re both welcome back any time.”