Cost of Life

by Joshua Corin

  “There’s nothing we can do,” he said. “Not right now.”

  He then went on to explain, as calmly as he could, the madness that had transpired over the past eight hours. He was tempted to skirt the darker details, but she deserved to hear it all, she whom he had vowed to love and protect until death do them part. At first she interrupted him, asked him lots of desperate questions, but then the interruptions and questions dwindled in number until, by the end, she was a silent listener.

  Larry ended as he began, with the words, “I’m so sorry.”

  Now it was her turn to hold him close and tight and caress him into calmness. And she had almost succeeded when one of the flight attendants near the front of the cabin suddenly stepped into the aisle. The attendant had made it a good three paces before Edil ratcheted his submachine gun.

  Bislan—who was prodding a very uncooperative Drake Coxcomb with questions for the camera such as “How much do you think bravery is worth in actual US dollars?”—apologized to him and joined Lucy Snow in the aisle. He turned the camera on her. “Is there a problem?”

  “Well, you tell me, because according to my watch, you’ve got twenty-nine minutes left in your little game here. Now, I don’t know what you’ve got planned for the after-party, but I seem to recall Captain Walder warning you that this plane might not be fit to fly.” By now, Lucy was staring directly into the camera. “So unless your after-party involves us stalling out at ten thousand feet and then crashing into the ocean, how about you let us do our job and check to make sure we’re still aerodynamic?”

  All eyes were on her.

  “Captain Walder…” said Bislan.

  And all eyes shifted to Larry. He slowly stood up.

  “Captain Walder, how many people will you need to examine the exterior of the plane?”

  “As many as I can get,” Larry replied. “If there’s damage, I’ll need folks who know what they’re doing to help me repair it. Plus, if there are any engineers aboard, we sure could use your help too.”

  Over in Seat 18A, Frank Brown slunk down. Could he have been of assistance? Possibly. He was a very smart man. But he didn’t speak up.

  Nobody spoke up.

  Bislan waved toward the front of the plane. “Take your flight crew and do what you need to do. But do it quickly. As soon as we release the five lucky passengers and cull the five unlucky ones, I expect to be ready to take off. That gives you twenty-seven minutes, Captain.”

  Larry kissed his wife good-bye—and only minutes after she had woken up!—and promised her that he would be back soon. He kissed his son too and then joined Lucy near the front of the cabin, all the while wondering what really had prompted her outburst. It wasn’t as if they could try to escape. There had to be at least one guard outside, and bullets traveled much faster than any of their legs could ever hope to take them.

  The rest of flight crew—Francisco, Addison, Deja, and Maryann—silently queued down the aisle behind Larry and Lucy. Bislan sputtered a few foreign phrases to Edil, who accompanied them into the business-class cabin and down the ladder to the dirt floor of the barn. There they met up with Shimsh, who had a sad look about him, as if taking down two Delta Force operators was tugging at his soul.

  “So here’s what I’m thinking,” said Lucy.

  They gathered around her while their minders, meanwhile, maintained a safe distance—for now. Around them, the airplane’s turbines provided a loud white noise.

  “First of all, Captain,” Lucy said, “I just wanted to thank you. The only reason we’re still alive is because you took a stand for us.”

  Larry shrugged. He didn’t know what to say. To receive accolades? After everything he had put them through today? After Reese’s murder? He wanted to shrink away, but even if he did, his absence would probably cause even more problems.

  “But now that we’re out here, what are we supposed to do?” asked Addison. “I mean, no offense, but I wouldn’t know what to look for.”

  Francisco wiped a hand across his sullen brow. This was a man once full of cheer. No longer. Now his gaze was downcast and his gait hesitant, as if any step might reveal a land mine. “Let’s just do our best,” he said, with all the enthusiasm of an undertaker.

  “Or we can sabotage them,” said Lucy.

  Sabotage them?

  Yes. Of course.

  Larry lit up, excited. Among them, they might not know how to repair a broken engine, but they sure could figure out how to break a good engine. But how to do that without getting caught?

  Edil cleared his throat. Congregating and chatting was not what the six of them were brought out here to do. They spread out and pretended to examine the various exterior sections of the airplane—or at least the parts they could examine from the ground.

  Now what?

  Francisco and Addison looked to Lucy. She was the instigator. Instigate.

  So she did:

  “HEY, UGLY!” she shouted.

  Neither Edil nor Shimsh batted an eye.

  “Well, that solves one problem,” she said. “I don’t think they understand English. We’re free to talk.”

  “Unless they’re pretending not to understand English!” Addison sang out to the terrorists.

  But again, neither Edil nor Shimsh reacted.

  Francisco, who was ostensibly checking for something underneath the fuselage, then said, “The soldiers are probably still outside. We could try to let them in.”

  “Thanks,” replied Deja, “but I’d rather not get shot.”

  “Me neither,” added Maryann.

  Larry peered into the grooves of a wheel. “So we create a distraction first. Then one of us unbars the door.”

  “What kind of distraction?”

  Good question. Larry looked around.

  “And who’s going to volunteer to walk to the door, because, no offense,” said Addison, “but it’s not going to be me.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Lucy, without a hint of trepidation in her voice. “You all better come up with one hell of a distraction, though. And soon. According to my watch, we’ve got about fifteen minutes.”

  Two minutes later, Larry came up with a hell of a distraction.

  He took off his dark-blue jacket and, when Edil and Shimsh weren’t looking, three-pointed it into the nearest engine turbine. Instantly its dull hum growled into leonine roar.

  Edil and Shimsh both approached, barrels-first, furious.

  “Oops,” said Larry. He held up his hands in mock apology. Edil responded by snarling every snatch of profanity he knew at the pitiful man. Above them, the turbine ground Larry’s uniform coat into tatters, spitting pieces into the air, which floated down like blue snowflakes.

  All the while, Lucy, unseen, scampered toward the rear barn doors. She kept her center of gravity low. She imagined she was a cat. A really pissed-off cat. She was fleet-footed and stealthy and the other flight attendants did their best not to watch her.

  But Murray Bannerman watched her. So did half a dozen others seated port-side including Leticia Morgan from one row behind him. They watched with hope. They watched with fear.

  Lucy reached the doors.

  Murray Bannerman let out a breath he didn’t even know he’d been holding. Leticia Morgan genuflected.

  And several yards away, Murad, curious about their curiosity, was tempted to peer through one of the windows and see for himself. Had he been more decisive, he might have seen Lucy wrap her fingers around the wooden bar that latched the doors shut. Her plan was going to work. The turbines’ racket was providing plenty of sonic cover and both Chechen gunmen were too distracted by Larry to—

  BAM!

  The wooden bar fell to the ground—and then Lucy fell to her knees beside the bar.

  BAM! BAM!

  No! Neither Edil nor Shimsh had moved! Where was the gunfire coming from?

  BAM!

  Lucy limply crashed forward. Her body managed to push open the barn doors just enough for her head to poke out into the sunligh
t. Falling, falling, horizontal.

  Murray Bannerman wept for the first time in sixteen years.

  Leticia Morgan shut her eyes and murmured a prayer of mourning.

  From out of the Airbus’s main doorway leaned Bislan. His pistol still had its aim on Lucy—but his gaze matched Larry’s.

  “For future reference, Captain,” he said, “strange and sudden noises just make curious people want to come out and see what’s going on.”

  Shimsh wandered toward Lucy’s corpse to retrieve it and pull shut the slightly ajar barn doors.

  Francisco was weeping. Deja and Maryann held each other. Addison was too shocked to react.

  Shimsh bent down beside Lucy, slipped his hands underneath her armpits, lifted her up an inch off the ground, and then froze.

  Then he returned Lucy’s body to the ground.

  Then he raised his hands in surrender.

  “Shimsh!” cried Bislan for his countryman.

  But the man never stood a chance, not against six well-armed and well-pissed Delta Force operators.

  Chapter 46

  Six minutes earlier, Hellhound-1 had received a coded audio message confirming his fearful prediction. The terrorists had been able to anticipate Delta’s Force’s under-earth infiltration because they had tapped into the live video feed from a series of KH-13 orbital satellites. How the Chechens had accomplished this feat was not Hellhound-1’s problem. What was his problem—and the problem his commanding officer was undoubtedly wrestling with back at Fort Bragg—was how to outwit the all-seeing opponent. The lives of almost two hundred civilians depended on this solution, and in fifteen minutes, if the terrorists stuck to their insidious proposition, five of those civilians would be executed.

  But then the barn doors opened.

  Hellhound-3 had been the one to first spot this most unusual development and at first he didn’t believe his eyes, but then Hellhound-4 too noticed the twin doors yawning outward. It didn’t take long for the news to pass among them, and it didn’t take long for Hellhound-1 to gesture his men into action.

  They heard the gunshots from within.

  They continued to advance.

  And in the heartbeat before her death, Lucy saw them and she knew she had succeeded. She fell facedown, flat, lifeless.

  The commandos continued to advance. They made no sound.

  They were fifteen feet away when they spotted Shimsh.

  Ten feet away when he spotted them.

  He froze, then raised his hands in surrender. But in a hostage rescue operation, Delta Force never took prisoners. The six Hellhounds painted him with their scopes and then punctured him with their bullets.

  When he fell, he fell faceup.

  The six soldiers advanced in a wedge formation. Larry and the remaining flight attendants hit the dirt. Moments later, Edil hit the dirt too, thanks to an octet of fire-hot bullets placed in and around his heart. Bislan had retreated from view, but no matter—Delta Force could climb a ten-foot ladder.

  While Hellhound-2 and Hellhound-3 completed a quick sweep of the barn, which included making sure the hostiles they’d engaged were dead, Hellhound-1 checked on the civilians. “Is anyone hurt? No? Good. Stay put. This will all be over soon.”

  The remaining three men were at the bottom of the ladder, ready to ascend, when a terrified passenger suddenly appeared at the top, blocking the entryway. They could see the barrel of the gun pressed to her temple.

  “Please!” she pleaded to the hidden gunman. “Please!”

  The three soldiers hesitated. They didn’t yet have a clear shot and couldn’t proceed until they did lest they risk injury or worse to the passenger—but, then again, this entryway was not the only access point into the airplane. Already Hellhound-2 and Hellhound-3 were working on a way to gain egress into the port-side service door located at the rear of the aircraft.

  Meanwhile, the hidden gunman, Bislan, began to speak:

  “Doesn’t all of this violence make you sad? It saddens me. If you believe in heaven, as I do, then the good men you just murdered are now in Paradise, but that will be cold comfort to their families. Who will be the ones to tell them the bad news? Will it be you, you cowboys? No. Those responsible for causing misery rarely take responsibility for the misery they cause.”

  Hellhound-2 and Hellhound-3 grabbed several apple boxes they found stacked against one side of the barn and proceeded to stack them beside the port-side service door. Hellhound-2 climbed the stack and reached for the latch to open the door. In moments, they would be in.

  “Be careful, cowboys,” said Bislan. “Don’t you think that, in the event of an emergency, we may have rigged all possible entrances and exits with explosives?”

  Hellhound-2 paused mid-unlatching and looked to Hellhound-1 for instructions.

  Hellhound-1 held up a hand: Wait.

  Bislan prattled on:

  “You see, the difference between yourselves and us is that we’ve had a long, long time to prepare. You won’t surprise us and you won’t win, but relax. In a few minutes, five passengers will be released into your custody and, in a few minutes, five passengers will be released from this mortal plane, and then you will allow us to take off and proceed to our final destination, whereupon, if you comply, we will alter our original plan and release most of the remaining passengers into the wild for you to pick them up. Gentlemen, that is your best-case scenario. If I were you, I would choose to accept it, and you can indicate such by exiting my barn and shutting its doors. We are on a tight schedule, so I will give you sixty seconds to comply. Please note that failure to comply will result in, well, bad things.”

  Hellhound-1 scowled, deep in thought, and then he side-whispered to the flight crew, “Do any of you recall seeing any kinds of explosives on board?”

  “You think he’s bluffing?” exclaimed Addison. “Are you serious?”

  “I need to make an informed decision here. Now, do any of you recall seeing any kinds of explosives on board? You’ve been trained to know what to look for. Please.”

  “Forty-five seconds, gentlemen…”

  Larry couldn’t recall the terrorists affixing anything to any of the doors—but he’d spent a good deal of this ordeal on the flight deck. The others appeared similarly uncertain—not to mention the fact that Lucy’s death was still addling their nerves.

  “Thirty seconds…”

  In the end, they could neither confirm nor deny whether this was a bluff. They shook their heads like dejected children. They quietly apologized.

  “It’s OK,” Hellhound-1 told them. “We’ll find another way.” Then he called out: “All hands, back to one! Double-time!”

  The operators hurried out of the barn. They carried the bodies of their two fallen brothers and the brave flight attendant with them.

  And then the doors shut.

  Larry’s heart twisted and gasped.

  Bislan poked his head out from the doorway. Apparently the passenger had been allowed to return to her seat. “Captain Walder, am I correct in assuming that this plane is still flyable?”

  “It should be,” replied Larry quietly.

  He honestly didn’t know. He honestly didn’t give a damn.

  “Then what are you all waiting for? Don’t be antisocial. Back inside!”

  The five remaining members of Flight 816’s flight crew offered one final look around the carnage in the barn, at the blood pool left by poor, brave Lucy, and then they boarded the ladder, one by one.

  Inside, the passengers were quiet, but this was no longer the silence of cowed prisoners. This was the scorn-eyed silence of children seething at an unfair world—seething, and ready to fight back.

  Bislan waited until they had all returned to their seats before he let out his pent-up tension in a long, volcanic sigh. While he had been mostly sure the Americans would buy his fib about the explosives—statistically speaking, the risk of challenging his veracity carried with it too much of a cost—he hadn’t been absolutely sure, and those sixty seconds
of insecurity may have been the tensest of this entire day.

  But now back to the show.

  He picked up the video camera from the seat—1B—where he’d set it down and strolled back into the main cabin.

  He had time for one more interview. Had he spoken yet with the three children in Row 29? No, he had not. He came upon them with a smile and a clean camera lens.

  “Hi there,” he said. “And what’s your names?”

  The two boys on either side of the big-boned teenager replied in chipper, nasal unison: “I’m Kip!” and “I’m Kenneth!” Their older brother, Davey, had such a look of wet hate in his eyes…

  “And is this your big brother?”

  Kip chuckled. “He said ‘big.’ ”

  Kenneth chuckled. “Davey’s not big. He’s huge!”

  “I see.” Bislan clenched his teeth. “Boys, do you know what the word worthless means?”

  “Well, duh. We’re not stupid,” said Kip.

  “Can I hold your gun?” asked Kenneth.

  “You cannot. Now if I were to guess, you’ve been tormenting your brother here for a long time. Do you mind if I ask why?”

  Kip replied, “Because it’s fun.”

  Kenneth nodded in agreement.

  “I have a brother too. When we were growing up, we were very close. It took me a long time to realize that not all families were as lucky as ours. Davey, how much money do you have in your wallet?”

  Davey squirmed under the spotlight. Bislan waited. Davey finally acquiesced and took out his wallet—a chunk of leather bloated with Magic: The Gathering cards—and counted his cash. “Fourteen dollars.”

  “Fourteen dollars. If you give me ten, I’ll take your little brothers outside and shoot them each in the back of the head. I’d honestly do it for free, but I’m a capitalist and I believe in symbols. Ten dollars. Or five dollars if you want me to put an end to only one of them. That might work to your advantage even more. What do you say?”

  Davey didn’t answer immediately. Oh no. He waited the whole half-second flutter of a hypothetical hummingbird’s heartbeat before responding: “Go. To. Hell.”