by M C Rowley
Jairo moved to Luciana quickly, took her gun, and began strapping her down on one of the beds, leaving it turned over.
I came to his side.
“Where now?”
Avoiding my gaze, he said, “Now we go find Mr. Reynolds. Now we finish this.”
Chapter Thirty Two
In the cockpit, I found Jean settling into one of the pilot seats, checking controls, and strapping in.
“You can really fly this thing?”
Jean ignored my question but puffed out a short, sharp scoff as she eyed the dials and needles and levers.
“You need help?”
“Yes,” she said. “Sit down. One of the engines has a problem. Not sure how far we can get.”
I realized I had been avoiding actually looking out of the cockpit window until now. I felt terrified. I had never loved flying, but it had never stopped me getting on a plane. I just didn’t like the takeoff or the landing very much. I had once been in an old Russian Fokker over a desert in North Africa and a sandstorm had hit. We’d bounced a hundred meters at a time until we finally touched down. That had been scary. That had been frightening.
But at least there had been pilots.
This was a whole different level of shit-your-pants scary, and my infantile way of dealing with the pounding pulse in my neck had been to pretend the situation wasn’t true and avoid looking out the window.
But now I couldn’t avoid it.
What met my eyes was actually a thing of beauty.
Black clouds filled the bottom half of the three panes of the windshield, but the top half was awash with stars, sparkling down upon one plume of white cloud far in the distance. Thick gold tendrils of light marked the separation point between the clouds and what was essentially space.
“Pretty calming, right?”
Jean was looking at me taking it in. “Glad it relaxed you there. Now help me.”
“Right,” I said. “Sorry.”
“Take this.”
Jean handed me a helmet with built-in headphones and I slipped it on, only remembering then that only a few minutes ago my son had ripped their original owner away and thrown him to a 10,000-feet death drop.
The helmet was still a little warm.
I shuddered and put the thought to the back of my mind.
“First,” said Jean’s voice, now coming through the headphones, “we need to get low and kill the radar.”
“But don’t we need that?”
“No,” said Jean. “We need to be anonymous, at least for a while. There are two radars. The primary and the transponder. We switch off the transponder and air traffic control don’t know if we’re a kidnapped military plane on the run or a giant bird. That’s how the hijackers did it on 9/11. Switched off the transponders and bingo.”
“We’ll get shot down.”
“There’s a chance,” said Jean. “And that’s why we fly low. I’ll take us down to five thousand feet while we’re in Mexico. But as soon as we’re fifty nautical miles from the U.S. border, I’m going to treetop level.”
“Jesus,” I said.
“We’re going to need night-vision goggles too. Can you go back there and see if you can find some?”
I nodded. “On it.”
Jean seemed to be getting the feel for the controls now and I felt the plane starting to descend. I looked back at the windshield and the glorious scene I’d first seen was sinking into black as we re-entered the clouds.
I made my way back into the main hold. Jairo was sitting with his back to the wall, eyes on Luciana, who was on her side, still strapped to the bed.
Jairo looked at me as I came in.
“What?”
“Jean’s got it under control,” I said. “Needs some night-vision goggles. Seen any?”
Jairo shrugged.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll look.”
I went through the gear that was hanging on the bare metal walls, but had no luck. I spotted three solider backpacks and went through them, but found nothing. I was about to give up when I noticed the seats on the side of the hold had closed compartments. I opened the first and then the second. In the third, I found what I was looking for. A large black pair of goggles that had shiny scarab-beetle-green glass fitted in each scope and a sturdy rubber strap to hold them on your head.
I gathered them up and took them back to Jean. As I made my way back to the cockpit, the plane was leveling out. I guessed we’d reached five thousand feet.
“How are these?”
Jean grabbed them and checked them out.
“Good job,” she said. I felt a little rush of pride for having done something useful.
“Now we can kill the lights.”
I took my seat again and watched as Jean went through the switches. Outside, the lights that had been shining from the undercarriage disappeared. I peered right out of the window and saw the wing lights extinguish too. All that remained was the burning ball of fire where one of the propellers should have been.
“You’re right about the engine,” I said. “It looks bad.”
“It is bad,” said Jean. “Might stop us from landing, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
I took a good lungful of air and breathed deeply, trying to hold my shit together.
“This is about as invisible as you can make a Hercules,” said Jean, looking a little pleased with herself. “Stay alert,” she added. “We’re about two hours from the border. Once we cross, assuming we make it without being shot down, there’s just the little question of crash-landing and making a getaway with a Mexican cartel leader and a domestic terrorist’s assistant.”
“Reynolds is a terrorist?”
“He’ll be categorized as such now. No doubt about it. Not every day your bad guy starts a civil war right next to the motherland.”
“Jean,” I said. “You’re CIA, right?”
She didn’t respond at first but then slowly, perhaps evaluating our situation and the shit I’d already seen, she began to nod.
“And your mission is Jairo? Or Reynolds? Or both?”
“That’s enough, Dyce. We might make it out of this and I don’t want to have to exterminate you.”
She smiled, but I winced. She was likely being serious.
“This mission is a solo one. I’ve got no contact with my bosses. And if something happens to me or your son, we’re on our own. We’re deniable. We’re not protected.”
“So we’re criminals in the CIA’s eyes too?”
“That’s right.”
I leaned back. For the next hour or so, I let Jean concentrate on the job.
After an hour and a half, Jean’s voice boomed into my brain: “It’s almost time.” I sprang from the copilot’s chair, blood pumping.
“Relax, Dyce, take it easy.”
I gathered myself and settled my gaze on the window. And saw treetops.
“What the hell?”
“Flying low now. We’re hitting a nautical mile every seven seconds. And I calculate we’re about ten minutes from the U.S. border.”
I sat back down.
“Home sweet home,” said Jean.
Her eyes were focused in front of her. Her jaw was clenched, and her gaze unwavering.
“Look, we have to talk about the plan.”
“I’m listening,” I said. But that was a half-truth, because a considerable portion of my attention was on the dark black trees outside. We were practically pruning them at one nautical mile every seven seconds.
Jean said, “The crash landing is the riskiest part. If air traffic control picks us up on radar and calls it in, they’ll scramble jets. And this is Texas, so they aren’t too far away.”
“Okay,” I said.
“So we’re going to land pretty damn sharpish after we cross that invisible line of the border. It’ll be desert, but in reach of a place to run. And that’ll be what we do. Reynolds will have people everywhere. Cops. His own men perhaps.”
“Got it.”
“Dyce,” she said, turning away from the view in front for a short few seconds. “If you fall, we will leave you behind. You get that?”
I nodded. Because what else could I have done in response to that? Come over all British and said thanks and sorry for everything (then complained about it afterwards)?
Jean spared me the need to come up with a reply as she returned to her landing.
I started gritting my teeth.
Chapter Thirty Three
Not too far away, Mr. Reynolds’ private line began ringing. He used different ones for different individuals.
He picked up the phone and said, “Yes.”
But no one said anything back. Instead, he heard noise, a lot of noise.
“Yes?”
Nothing.
About to hang up, he realized Luciana was trying to send him a message. Something had gone wrong on the plane. He listened harder.
Screams was what he heard. Fading screams. Some kind of altercation, but not a fight. Then he heard the voice of Scott Dyce shouting at someone to stop.
Jairo Morales.
Reynolds understood what was happening. Luciana had failed.
He moved quickly to his laptop and opened the tracking page for Luciana’s GPS and in seconds he had them. Then he calculated distances and time.
The landing location would likely be close to where they had planned. And they wouldn’t make it far past the border.
Simple to calculate.
He listened to the conversations on the phone, making out the gist of them, and hung up.
He’d heard enough.
Reynolds dialed another number and waited for the rings and then the voice of his fighting dog.
X03.
He spoke to Reynolds in that brutal poor-Mexican Spanish he detested so strongly.
“¿Cuando pues?”
When then?
The man they called X03 sounded agitated and stressed. Mr. Reynolds hated his stupid codenames, monikers to make him feel important. Reynolds always made a point of using his given name.
“Horacio,” said Mr. Reynolds through the distortion box. “It’s time.”
“As planned?”
“Yes,” continued Mr. Reynolds. “But you need to sort some business out first.”
There was silence on the line. But Reynolds heard the cartel leader’s breathing.
“The plane is on its way to the States as we speak. A military carrier.”
“One of the ones from the jungle? The C-130s?”
“That’s right.”
“To the States?”
“Yes,” said Reynolds. “It’s heading for the border in Texas, close to El Paso. Jairo Morales is aboard.”
“As planned then,” said X03.
“Indeed. If they don’t die in the crash, we need to exterminate the remaining passengers and capture Morales. If we don’t, our whole mission here is over. And you’ll go back to Mexico and fight it out with the rest.”
“Hell no,” he said.
The right answer.
“When then?”
“You need to head to El Paso now, Horacio.”
Silence on the line again. The criminal knew he had no choice. Mr. Reynolds and the Founders controlled Código X’s funding, and X03’s freedom to roam the United States. The gangster was hog-tied. But Reynolds let him think he had the leverage to take his time in answering.
“Alright then. I’ll send some men.”
“No,” said Reynolds. “It has to be you.”
And he hung up.
But sending X03 would not be enough. Simply, Reynolds did not trust him enough.
He checked the GPS tracker on the computer again. It was moving straight, on course for the U.S. border and Texas.
Reynolds needed that plane to land.
Chapter Thirty Four
Everything was pitch black except for the dials in front of us, glowing and dominating our field of vision, blinding me to whatever lay outside. I was secretly happy for not having to watch our crash landing. We were flying at just around fifty feet, Jean said. And that scared the crap out of me.
“Brace,” said Jean. “We’re coming down.”
I leaned back and closed my eyes, teeth grinding themselves to nothing. My lower lip was quivering and I realized I was mumbling to myself, not words or sentences, just humming in a frantic, trance-like way.
“Thirty feet,” said Jean. “And there goes the border. We’re over.”
The noise of the plane’s pressure, whooshing down and then up again against the ground—so close now— drowned out the engine. That classic sound that caused the fear in non-flyers, the drone and groan of air rushing by at speed.
The sound right before the crash.
But a new sound came. A pop. Some kind of shot perhaps; I couldn’t tell. My eyes flew open and I looked at Jean, who was panicked.
“Damn, damn, damn,” she said. “They’re scrambling.”
“What?”
“They got us,” she said.
“The Americans? Can’t you tell them it’s you?”
I realized how desperate I sounded and how stupid the idea was as soon as it left my mouth.
“I told you,” shouted Jean, pulling the center stick back and flipping our nose toward the sky again, “we’re deniable here. They’ll shoot us down if I don’t turn the radio on and answer them in the next two minutes.”
“Two minutes?”
The plane was now at a completely different angle, forty-five degrees, pointing at space. The sound of the engines replaced the rush of air once more and we screamed upward.
“That’s right,” she said. “Two minutes is standard.”
I didn’t waste my breath asking what the plan was now. I had already guessed it.
“Get back there and find the chutes,” said Jean. “I’ll come back as soon as I get us high enough.”
I swore under my breath, not believing this had gotten worse, and got up, holding the back of the chair. My path lay down a treacherous slope. I had to jump a part, landing at the side of the cockpit door. I lifted the metal divider and peered into the hold, all askew.
“Leveling out,” shouted Jean from behind me, and the floor started to return to normal. Once it was at a good angle, I steadied myself and looked over to Jairo and Luciana.
She was unconscious and blood trickled from beneath her. Jairo was sitting strapped in next to her, holding her body upright, his face a miserable grimace, eyes black.
“What have you done?”
He looked at me. “She isn’t dead.”
Then Jean’s voice shouted at us again. “Get ready! Door’s opening now.”
And true to her promise, the gaping mouth at the rear of the plane parted and I could just make out the night sky once more as wind howled into the hold.
“We need the parachutes!”
Jairo stared back at me and pointed. I looked behind me and saw two green rucksacks strapped to the hold wall.
“Two?”
Jairo got up, leaving Luciana to slump into her own lap. Blood was coming from one of her fingers, or rather from where one of her digits should have been. Her nose was also red.
It was too noisy to start asking Jairo questions. It was hardly the time.
He, meanwhile, had freed the chutes as Jean stepped into the hold with us. She glanced at Luciana and sneered, then walked to Jairo, grabbed one of the packs, and walked to me.
Shouting so I could hear her, she said, “You with me. Jairo’ll take her.”
Then she pulled me to her torso. I was just under a foot taller than Jean but I was undoubtedly the one who felt more uncomfortable. She tied me to her like I was fishing bait on a hook. No emotion. No fear.
“Let me do the work,” she said.
I just nodded and we walked, the four of us, to the open door. The wind whipped inside and filled my ears with noise. The arteries closest to my skin pulsed violently. I was helpless, of course—which helped, in a strange way.
<
br /> Jairo held Luciana like an infant child.
Jean looked at him and nodded hard, then raised one digit, then flicked a second, then a third.
And we jumped.
The pull of Jean’s weight distracted me from the initial shock of entering a free fall in complete darkness. I saw the black shadow of the plane pass by my line of sight quickly at one point, but other than that, I had my eyes scrunched up tight. The wind rushed and hissed around my face as my head was plunged into the top of Jean’s head.
Out of nowhere a force came from above and pulled us upward. Jean had opened the chute. I had expected a longer fall. Everything slowed down. The wind changed to a hum. Everywhere at once, but exterior. I tuned in to my heartbeat once more and tried to hold my head up.
I thought I could make out the shapes of mountains in the distance. I looked vertically, but the plane had gone. Jean’s arms were moving, and I understood in that moment she was steering us. I kept still and waited for impact.
It took ages. We floated like that, with humming around us, until the horizon I was looking at disappeared. Everything seemed to spin around us, like we were static and the wind spiraling around us.
Then Jean’s voice came from behind me. “Hold tight.”
I folded my legs and braced and we hit the ground—hard.
Jean rolled over me as the ground spun over my head and the noise died completely.
My ankle hurt a bit, but it wasn’t serious. I could move it.
I rolled to my side and closed my eyes.
The ground that beneath me was crumbling. Sand.
Jean disconnected from me so fast the sand hit my face. She had disentangled herself from the jellyfish-like lines and canopy before I could even get to my feet.
Her figure brushed past me and she ran.
I rolled and got up, breathed, and looked across the plain. The sun was cracking through the black night, a thin strip of orange and purple framed by black.
And I ran too. I ran as hard as I could.
But I was stopped.
The ground hit me back like when I’d landed, my ass back on the dirt, me facing upward. I hadn’t disconnected the chute.