“Up there,” yells Luxton, pointing toward the plane, his voice clear because the wind’s gone quiet. The dust rustles as it settles, the brown gray screen dropping so she feels the heat of the sun on her face, eyes adjusting to clarity.
In the far distance are covered watchtowers. Vehicles begin to move. People emerge from shelter.
Near the plane, the engine of a fuel tanker starts up. The pilot gets up inside the cockpit, turns his back, and disappears from sight into the main cabin.
John Polinski bends, head hanging, his breath catching, resting hands on his knees. Kat sees how sick her father is.
Soon, as work begins again to get the plane refueled and off the ground, the three of them will become conspicuous. Two guards will be discovered, one dead, the other tied up.
The door shifts, then opens.
Luxton and Kat don’t speak, but she knows what she should do, and Luxton is agreeing.
It has to be her, because she’s a woman, and that’s how things work.
A hose from the fuel tanker is being clipped under the wings. The cargo hatch comes down, and the cabin rear door opens—a head peering out to check that the weather’s gone. Luxton kneels by her father, checking his pulse.
Kat runs up the steps as if she owns the aircraft. Two cleaners are in the cabin, vacuum cleaners humming down the aisle. She inhales the fresh smell of a place protected from the dust storm.
The pilot’s leaning against the bathroom door, a cup in his hand, about to take a sip. He’s average height, with gym-workout shoulders, a slight belly, strong hands, his mouth too wide for his face to make him good-looking, and there’s no smile to be seen. He looks up at Kat and keeps his expression cool and demeaning.
“You the guy who flew us in?” says Kat.
His eyes shift from her face to the dust-smeared RingSet logo on her jumpsuit and back to her face again. He nods.
“What happens when the plane bumps into that shit we just had out there?” says Kat, jerking back her thumb toward door, turning her head enough to see through the curtain a small group of prisoners still in their seats, not yet having disembarked.
“We don’t fly,” he says.
“Where you from?” says Kat, taking a step to get right inside the cabin. He puts the cup on a ledge and checks a stain on his sleeve.
“Grew up on a farm in Kansas. Now I fly between dust storms.”
Kat laughs, maybe longer than she should. “That’s funny,” she says. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Happens a lot in these parts, ’specially in the summer. Messes up the schedules.”
“What about the plane? It got dust all up its ass.”
The pilot grins at that. “Plane’s pretty good.” He affectionately pats the wall. “Flight plan’s gone to hell. Waiting to get another slot.”
“Doesn’t seem there’s a lot of traffic around to slot into.”
He points upward. “Up there’re the main routes from Asia to Europe.”
Kat lets it rest there, just for a beat.
“I know we can’t know who each other are, but suppose I call you John and you call me Jane?”
He shrugs, eyes roll a bit. “You can call me Dane. Denmark. That’s where my grandparents came from. Everyone called me that as a kid. So where do you come from, Jane?”
“Lancaster, Ohio,” says Kat.
The radio crackles from inside the cockpit. Dane checks his watch. “Excuse me. Only be a few seconds, but that could be our slot.” He turns quickly as if he’s afraid Kat might leave.
Kat motions for Luxton, at the top of the steps, to wait another moment.
The wing vibrates as fuel’s pumped into it. Jeeps cross the camp, impossible to tell where they’re heading. The cleaners work on the cabin. Another peek through the curtain: Two guards have come into the back and begun escorting the rest of the prisoners off. They don’t act as if they know one of their workmates has been killed.
She looks back to the cockpit, sees Dane, headphones on, speaking into a mouthpiece and punching buttons. The prisoners and guards have left the main cabin. Kat signals Luxton, and he brings her dad in, pain in his face, but also wonderment. She points, and they disappear through the curtain.
Kat knocks on the open door. Dane beckons her in. He taps the arm of the copilot’s seat.
“Roger,” he says into the radio, flipping up a switch and another two on the ceiling. “Got it,” he tells Kat enthusiastically. “One aircraft’s coming in to land now. After that, if they can fuel us up in time, we’ve got a slot.”
“How long’ll that take?” says Kat.
“High pressure pumps, dual nozzle. Not long.” His eyes are on a map screen now. He wants to be with her but not look at her. “I could ask what you’re doing here,” he says, “but I guess that could get us both fired.”
“That’s for sure,” says Kat. “I’m getting a couple of sick folks onto the plane. I may not look it, but I’m a nurse.” Her hand’s across, touching his arm.
“A place like this, it’s nice to talk to someone from back home.”
She smiles. “You still got that farm?” she says softly.
“Hardly,” he says. Calculations of weights and distances have superimposed themselves over the map. His eyes are on the numbers. “I lost it to the banks the year before I was due to take it over from my folks. It broke their hearts. I joined the air force, learned to fly, and ended up here, somehow. The job pays twice any major airline’s rates. And we’re told it’s for the good and security of the nation. I hope to make enough to buy back the farm before my folks pass away.”
He flits his eyes up to Kat. “So, there. You got my life wrapped up with a bow. You got one, too?”
“Good childhood,” says Kat. “Like you. My dad died, and I went off the rails. You know, wrong side of the street kind of stuff. Guess a daughter loves her dad more than she thinks. Got myself together, trained as a nurse, then paramedic, and—hey—like you said, here I am, protecting my country.”
She gazes through the windshield, watching the prisoners walking in a line, eight or nine of them, way across to the corner of the camp, their razor-clear shadows going with them. It’s not just her dad, she thinks. She’s got to get them all freed. Not this time, perhaps. But she’ll have to come back.
She’s paused enough for Dane to notice. The prisoners make an image that two decent people talking together should not mention. Dane’s about to speak, but checks himself, and Kat says, “You got a wife, kids, or are you like me?”
“There she is,” he says. The other plane kicks up dust on landing, slows quickly, and turns toward a set of steps on the runway.
“Had a wife,” he says. “But I guess I’m attracted to women who don’t much like a man when he’s down. And you?”
“Not much good with men, up or down. I’m working with a guy right now who I wouldn’t mind settling down with, but I don’t think I’ve even registered with him, and you know . . .” The beginning of a lump in her throat makes Kat trail off. A figure steps in front of the plane and gives Dane a thumbs-up sign.
“That’s our all-clear.” He turns in his seat. “Where the hell’s . . . Yeah, right, the name’s classified, but I need my copilot.”
Outside, the camp looks busy after the storm, and somewhere in that fenced-off wasteland, a copilot’s being called, and someone’s got to be finding a body.
She takes out the Beretta, rests it in her lap. He sees it when he looks up again from his instruments.
His face drops, begins a fast movement, but stops as Kat jacks a round into the chamber.
SIXTY-TWO
Friday, 7:59 a.m., BST/2:59 p.m., Voz Island
You won’t survive,” he says calmly, as if announcing light turbulence, but his smile fades, and his eyes sharpen into the hard glint of a man angry at being conned. He has a hand on each knee and is sitting bolt upright.
“I killed a man to get here,” says Kat. “I’ll kill one to leave.”
; “It’s not about killing.” Dane tilts his head to look out the side window. The storm has gone, and a breeze puckers the light surface of dust on the steppe like wind rippling water. Yellow outlines created by the afternoon sun make the landscape look less harsh.
“You fly us out,” says Kat, “you’ll get enough money to buy back your farm. And like you said, that’s what it’s all about.”
“RingSet’s not a company worth dying for, but I will not be responsible for the deaths of innocents,” says Dane.
“You already are,” Kat says.
He shrugs. “Kill me if you want, but I’m gonna clear the plane.”
His gaze is aimed straight at Kat, way past caring about any feelings, including his own. “Okay, folks,” he announces. “Everybody off, please, while we carry out an internal check of the aircraft.” He clicks on a new monitor. It has multiple screens showing various camera angles of the interior main cabin.
John Polinski has a window seat in first class, his head lolling, his eyes half closed. Luxton examines his wounds and applies dressings from a first aid kit. The prisoners are all off, but the cabin staff and cleaners are still at the back. They obediently begin leaving through the jet’s back door.
Kat’s about to tell Dane to begin takeoff without the copilot, when a voice crackles through Dane’s headset.
His face hardens. “That’s the tower,” he says. “They’re onto you.”
Kat slides down into the jump seat behind Dane, both hands holding the Beretta aimed at the back of his head.
She breathes in deeply, keeps her voice steady. “Then get us airborne.” The surface of the runway looks distorted, melting in the heat and shimmering. In a plume of dust, two vehicles with yellow flashing lights come toward them from the direction of the control tower.
Dane takes off the headset, immerses himself in being a pilot. “Starting one,” he says to himself, as the engine whines. “Starting two.”
Luxton heaves the front cabin door closed, pulls the lever to lock it, and heads back to do the rear door.
“Fuel engine flow, okay. Gas exhaust pressure, okay.” Dane’s fingers play the overhead panel like a keyboard. The vehicles split up, one heading toward the end of the runway almost a mile ahead, one closer to the rear of the aircraft.
“Rear door’s still open,” says Dane, pointing up to a beeping red light.
“Go,” says Kat, her voice pitched with urgency. “Take off with the goddamn door open.”
“We can’t pressurize.”
“But we can fly. So fly.”
Dane moves the thrust levers, making the empty plane vibrate. He shifts the rudder, and the aircraft turns toward the sun, yellow and swollen on the horizon. A third jeep veers, skids on the loose surface, and accelerates toward the end of the tarmac to cut off the aircraft’s takeoff.
Sweat rivulets run down Kat’s face. Dane looks flatly ahead, stops the turn, and gives the engines more power.
“Release brakes,” he whispers. “A2 plus ten.”
Kat catches a sudden movement in one of the monitors. The fuselage trembles, making the image shake, and Kat can’t work out what’s happening.
The aircraft’s gaining speed. Sixty knots . . . 72 knots . . . 81 knots . . .
Dust hits the side windshield like a wall of rain. Blurs of rusting vehicles and low-rise buildings rush past. The land surface swirls into a cloud, and the jeeps become invisible. The runway, miragelike, changes from deep black, to yellow, to silver gray. The sky is storm-washed blue.
Then she catches something in the monitor. Another person moving toward Luxton.
Something familiar.
Luxton’s arm is wrapped around the massive handle of the rear door that is half closed, shaking into a blur as the plane gathers speed.
He doesn’t seem to have noticed the other person 20 feet away from him, who’s drawing a gun. Through a twist of the hand on the weapon, the indistinguishable movement of body weight, then finally, when he turns, the now visible mustache, Kat sees that the man about to kill Mike Luxton is Simon Tappler.
No wonder they intercepted her at the house! No wonder Yulya found her at the concert hall! He would have known everything she was doing.
Tappler fires as the plane bucks. The shot misses. He steadies himself, hand on the back of a seat. Even so close, the plane’s instability makes Luxton a difficult target.
Dane jerks his head up at the monitor. Kat’s weapon stays steady on him.
Tappler fires again. Misses. The plane yaws, throwing him back against the open door. Air slipstreams suck out a pillow and a blanket.
“If I take off, he dies,” Dane shouts over the noise of takeoff. “If I abort, you die.”
A bird flashes in front of the nose. One twenty knots . . . 125 . . . 129 knots . . .
“We commit in twenty seconds,” says Dane.
“Take off,” says Kat.
Tappler grabs the back of a closer seat. In the monitor, he seems only inches from Luxton. He fires again, and this time Luxton lashes out and kicks the weapon from Tappler’s hand. Another kick hits his face.
“Keep going,” says Kat. She grips the butt of the Beretta, eyes darting between the monitor and the jolting of the nose on the runway.
“There,” mutters Dane.
Just beyond the heat shimmer, two jeeps block the runway, one facing the aircraft, one backed up the other way. The sun flickers off the rearview mirror, showing a heavy machine gun mounted on the back.
“Committed,” says Dane, pulling back the levers sharply, giving the engines extra thrust, and making the nose soar skyward. The plane shakes at the sharp angle of climb, wings straining to hold it against the extra pull of gravity.
Tracer bullets, curving beneath them, light up a path through floating dust.
Tappler scrambles to his feet. Luxton is buffeted against the door, being sucked away.
The aircraft dips sharply. Kat’s sweat has gone cold and dry on her skin. The wings tip, and the ground rushes toward them. The whole fuselage tilts as Dane goes into a tight, low turn to avoid the tracers.
Tappler grabs Luxton’s legs and pushes them outside the plane. Either Luxton will lose the strength of his arm, or the legs will be crushed by the vise of the door. The door shakes, sliding up and back, threatening to either slam shut or tear off.
“Keep us airborne,” Kat shouts to Dane. She heads to the back of the plane. A lurch flings her against a seat. A line of tracer bullets arc above the wingtip. Beyond that she sees mountains capped with snow.
She keeps moving back.
The slipstream drags Luxton farther out of the aircraft. The door bumps wildly on its hinges. With his bare hands, Tappler is prying Luxton’s grip from the hinge.
If Kat fires, she has an equal chance of hitting either. If the door isn’t closed within seconds, they won’t be going anywhere.
Tappler glances indifferently, as if he’s been expecting her and doesn’t care. She runs at him.
With each step she judges when she can do it—how close she is—how he will react.
His concentration becomes divided between Luxton and Kat. He shifts his body weight.
Too late.
Kat fires, first at the torso, then at the upper leg. That’s when he crumbles and when she’s onto him. Luxton, with arms trained for the trapeze, heaves himself inside, and in a single, elegant movement, swings around and bats Tappler out through the door.
Tappler plunges through a flaming trail of tracer rounds that drop out of range short of the fuselage.
With Kat anchoring him, Luxton pulls the door closed and locks it. The plane falls into an empty quiet, climbing more gently, calmly moving to safety across the infinity of the Kazakh steppe.
SIXTY-THREE
Friday, 10:03 a.m., BST
The sun’s glare catches her on the side of the face. A white blue sky stretches endlessly ahead, colors merging to the white yellow of the desert on the slight curve of the earth, and not a cloud anywhere.
>
Dane glances back at her. “That’s the Caspian below us,” he says. “The good news is that the flight plan was already filed, and it takes us back to Byford. The other good news is that no one is chasing us. Air traffic control is talking to us like nothing’s happened.”
“Meaning RingSet’s told no one outside the Voz Island camp?” says Luxton.
“I’m only talking about air traffic control,” says Dane. “But they’ve got us where they want us, either way. If we land at Byford, we’re dead. If we go anywhere else, you get taken in for hijacking. They don’t need to chase us.”
“Where does that leave you?” says Kat.
Dane’s long face changes in the sunlight, looking healthy, with a stubble that accentuates lines and a severity in the eyes. “The bank that took my farm is owned by ACR, and RingSet’s an ACR subsidiary. Not much worse can happen to a man than having his whole life stolen from him.”
“I saw worse, lots worse, in that concentration camp back at Voz,” says Kat.
Dane looks away.
“You with us, then?”
“You made me a promise to buy back my farm. Sometimes life gets that simple. You don’t want to keep your promise, then I’ll decide my interests when the time comes.” He flips a switch above his head and lowers his eyes to a display on the panel. “And I guess that’ll be in about . . . five hours and ten minutes, when we reach British airspace.”
Luxton walks up to the cockpit door. They talk softly in the doorway, their eyes on Dane. Kat trusts Dane, but she’s not risking it. Either she or Luxton will be in the cockpit all the time.
“How is he?” she says.
“As good as can be expected.” She glances down at Luxton’s hand, which he’s wrapped with a cloth, but is bleeding badly.
“Watch Dane,” she says. Kat finds the first aid kit, comes back, and fixes Luxton’s injury with antiseptic cream and a bandage.
When she’s done, Luxton touches her elbow. “I didn’t have time to say this before,” he says, “but thanks.”
“You, too,” she says, waits a second, then asks, “Tappler?”
Luxton shakes his head, says nothing.
The History Book Page 26