Tantalizing him, Dr. Martinez opened her mouth to speak. Then she stopped herself and remained silent.
“Damn,” he whispered, mostly to himself.
“I assure you,” she said coldly, “I will be the only one allowed to go near it and touch it. Am I clear? We can’t risk the recovery going wrong again and people getting hurt.”
“Why is that?”
Again, she did not answer. She was hiding something. What? What are you hiding? He watched her for clues, but discovered nothing. She put her glasses back on and picked up her book.
Whatever, he finally thought as he made a fist and bumped it against his thigh. He’d had plenty of clients that wanted to keep things secret. He always made them pay for that privilege, just as he had now. Four million bought a lot of privacy. He was also certain that he’d find out soon enough what was going on. She couldn’t hide it forever. And, thanks to Gauge, they had enough armaments to start a war if they wished to do so.
Instead of continuing his current line of questioning, he pivoted back to his original question. “Why us? There are scores of other private security teams out there who could have been hired to get you to Russia and back.”
She lowered her glasses and looked him straight in the eyes. “Because I once knew your wife.”
Ah. Everything began to click into place. He remembered her now from the book cover dust jacket on his wife’s nightstand. There was an implied connection between these artifacts and primitive man at some level. It had been his wife’s field of study. Dr. Martinez was apparently a professional colleague of Sharon’s. But what was the ultimate connection between the two?
He slapped his hands against his thighs and stood. If Morgan got the Wi-Fi signal back up, he intended to do a little internet research on Dr. Martinez. Morgan had said earlier that she’d assembled a background report on her, but he still wanted to do a little research of his own. Maybe I can find some nice nude selfies if I search hard enough.
~14~
MAYDAY!
Sometimes I can be a damned fool. Thankfully, Cutter also knew that God was well known for watching out for fools and small children. He had always figured he was more of the former and less of the latter, despite the fact that others often debated the point vigorously.
Right now, though, in all seriousness, he hoped that God had his back because if He didn’t, Cutter and everyone else on board the plane were screwed.
It had started when they’d altered their route to skirt the final sliver of EU airspace just past Sweden. While they had taken on a splash of extra fuel in Atlanta just before scooting out of there in a hurry, their not-so-well-calculated flight plan that had called for an addition refueling stop in London before continuing into Russia had failed. Apparently, the US justice system really wanted him and his crew—the bastards. While Morgan had planned for reserves, just in case, those reserves hadn’t quite been enough and were now completely depleted, which had caused the engines to quit.
At least all the annoying whining noises were gone.
Looking over at the co-pilot, Cutter asked, “Did you get confirmation we can land? It might also be good to check in with them and make sure they are not planning to shoot at us during our approach.”
The co-pilot turned a lighter shade of pale.
Cutter tried to hold the wheel in a loose grip but with just enough firmness that he remained in full control of the aircraft. Coming over the mountains and descending below twenty-thousand feet had kicked up a great amount of turbulence and was causing everything to feel like a bad rollercoaster ride, doubly so, given that the aircraft was nothing more than a glider now—and a very poor one at that.
Keeping the G4 on the verge of a stall and making tradeoffs for distance was one of the most challenging ways possible to fly such a heavy jet. And, as much as he hated to admit it to himself, he was still gripping the controls just a little too tightly. Loosen up there, partner. He rolled his shoulders and glanced at the co-pilot. The guy said something over the radio in Russian then nodded to Cutter, who asked back, “Did you express to them the seriousness of our situation?”
The co-pilot, wide-eyed, nodded back.
Cutter had tried to contact the control tower in English, which was supposed to be recognized worldwide by all country’s control towers, but this particular one apparently wanted to be different, or their grasp of the English language was about as good as his grasp of Russian, which consisted of maybe one or two words.
“Here we go,” he said, rolling his shoulders again before withdrawing the plane’s flaps a notch.
Ahead, he could see nothing other than a thick gray mass of clouds. Below the windscreen, lights were blinking incessantly on the instrument panel, and the artificial horizon indicator showed that their flight path was level. Good. But he could also tell that they were making an overly steep descent. Not so good.
Since the G4 did not make even a second-rate glider, added to the fact that it was also stuffed full with a heavy load of armaments in the cargo hold, it flew much like a pig with stubby little wings. But, fortunately, there was one small bit of additional good news—this wasn’t the first time he’d made a landing on instruments alone, though he would have preferred to have had the engines running, and to have been able to actually see the ground. Probably better I can’t.
Readjusting his sweat-slicked grip on the controls, he whispered to himself softly, “A nod for a wise man, and a rod for a fool,” which seemed a far more appropriate thing for God to be doing than simply protecting fools. Stupid should hurt. But in this case, he could sure use that nod.
He turned to check on his passengers. Morgan was glancing at him nervously from her seat. She’d closed her laptop and stowed it away beneath her feet, but her hands kept fidgeting as if she still wanted to keep typing.
She mouthed, “We going to make it, right?”
“Of course,” he mouthed back and punctuated it with a smirk.
Gauge was fully awake and staring out the window beside him. Even though he was feigning calm, Cutter could tell that the man was a little scared. Gauge was not the type would want to die in a fiery plane crash. He was more the type who would want to be taken out in a hail of gunfire while riding on the back of a shark and firing a bazooka.
Behind him, Dr. Martinez sat quietly, staring forward. Cutter had probed her a little further over her relationship with his deceased wife, but she had given up no additional details that connected all the various dots. Morgan hadn’t been able to add much either, but at least he knew a smidgen more about those artifacts, at least enough to know not to touch one. Still, there was something important Dr. Martinez was holding back from him, and that bothered him to no end, but not quite as much as figuring out how in the hell he was going to land the aircraft.
With a sudden jolt, it felt like the bottom had dropped out from under him and he was falling. He went weightless for a brief second and rose from the seat. Then he smashed down hard in his seat and was rocked sideways as the entire aircraft shuddered and banked hard to the left. He jammed his foot into a corner and corrected right and was buffeted again by another patch of turbulence, then was thrown forward and hit the control yoke, causing the air in his lungs to rush out all at once.
Unexpectedly, the plane smoothed and leveled out all on its own, but still continued to buck in smaller and smaller staccato waves as it settled.
Gasping, Cutter took a few quick breaths and refocused on what the hell he was doing. Alarms in the cockpit were going off incessantly as even more buttons started flashing in a dizzying, chaotic display, like some madman’s dream. He quickly refastened his harness and cinched it tight. He realized he’d been far too casual about everything. It was time to get serious.
“I’m trained to fly,” Cutter said through the headset to the co-pilot as he took control again, “but I’m not certified for this particular model. Is there a procedure for all this?”
“Hold steady on oh-nine-four,” came the co-pilot’s shak
y voice.
Cutter did as instructed, but without any power coming from the engines, he was having a difficult time keeping the plane on any kind of straight course. The co-pilot ran his hands over a series of switches too quickly for Cutter to see clearly in his peripheral vision, but the alarms began to shut off one by one.
Then the STALL WARNING light started blinking.
Cutter cleared his throat. “Is this thing even capable of a zero power landing?”
And the co-pilot didn’t even shrug or say another word. He seemed to be reviewing his life and all the choices he had made in it.
Another alarm started.
HYDRAULIC FAILURE.
The co-pilot came out of his trance long enough to silence the alarm, then he spoke over the radio in a frantic, high-pitched voice.
“Mayday, Mayday. Golf-Sierra seven-seven-four-four. Request immediate clearance for landing. Both engines out. Hydraulics failing. Mayday, Mayday. Please respond.”
He’s gone on autopilot. Cutter lightened his grip on the controls again and waited for a response on the radio call.
None came.
The co-pilot repeated his plea, this time in Russian.
~15~
HARD LANDING
Ahead was a mush of gray, and Cutter was flying blindly into it without instructions from the tower, and without anything other than the seat of his pants for guidance—in a plane he would be lucky to land even in the best of circumstances on a cloudless day.
He worked his grip on the wheel, wondering what in the hell he was going to do.
Not a damn clue.
But then the clouds parted, and the sun appeared, bright and bold and yellow in the haze of day. His first instinct was to shield his eyes from the sudden change in relative brightness. Instead, he squinted and continued to hold his death grip on the hard plastic wheel, fighting against the glare while trying to keep the plane level and biting enough air to avoid a stall.
Ahead, the single strip of gray concrete that was the Vuktyl airfield loomed large. Behind it was what appeared to be a small community of homes scattered among the random assortment of green treetops. Behind them was a murky river, tinged red.
“Altitude?” he asked into the mike he was practically chewing on, not wanting to spare a moment to look down and check the display himself.
“Three-zero-one-fiver,” the co-pilot said. “Runway is zero-three-fiver-zero. Wind oh-seven-oh, ten knots.”
“How about that?” Cutter said, slightly surprised.
“What?” the co-pilot asked, then, “Repeat?”
“Never mind,” Cutter breathed back into the static.
He reached for the landing gear control to begin deployment then clicked the flaps an additional notch to account for the increased drag. With both engines out, electrical power was scarce, but to his almost overwhelming joy, he felt the wheels deploying, so he pushed forward ever so slightly on the control yoke to compensate a wee bit more.
Gentle.
Having the wheels down though wasn’t enough to give him any kind of confidence that the landing would go well overall, but it was enough to provide a tiny flicker of hope. Landing with the gear up was never a good option. No matter what, the approach was going to be steep, and during the last leg of the descent, everything would happen very quickly. He’d only get single, solitary shot at it.
Make it count.
He drew a deep breath and said into the mike, “It’s just like shooting womp rats in my T-16 back home.”
Glancing over, he spared a moment to check in with the co-pilot. The guy didn’t seem to get it, which was just too bad.
Some people—
Cutter rocked the plane back and forth, bleeding off more altitude. They’d been cleared by the tower, and the runway had been swept clean of planes and vehicles. The landing strip was almost five-thousand feet of reinforced concrete when even ten-thousand feet might not be enough.
“Here goes nothing,” he said, hoping God was planning to spare the rod today.
As the G4 neared the ground, the buffeting of the airframe increased to a violent, head-rattling shake. This time, Cutter was firmly strapped to his seat and as sober as he’d been in well over a year.
“One thousand feet altitude,” the co-pilot said.
“Five hundred.”
“Four.”
Math told Cutter that he had just fifty feet left to go, given that the runway was at three-hundred and fifty feet above sea level. As they got closer, the concrete strip seemed to flatten and stretch out to the horizon, but that was only an optical illusion. The town and residences quickly vanished below the treetops and the blackened, tar-filled cracks in the runway all seemed to blur together as they streaked past.
Twenty feet.
He pulled back on the yoke, flaring the nose of the plane, feeling the near-to-ground effect giving the G4’s wings a needed final boost of lift.
Ten feet.
Leveling.
Flaring.
With barely a squawk from the rubber tires, the plane touched down, and those cracks in the runway shuddered the airframe and shook him hard in his seat.
Uh, oh.
With a terrible sinking feeling, he realized he had used up too much runway on approach and had landed halfway down it. From the corner of his eye, he spotted the airport buildings to his right whooshing past, as well as the single taxiway that shot past. He was going hard on the brakes and deceleration kept him punched up against his restraints, but he was also struggling to keep everything going in a straight line over the bumps and cracks in the rough concrete. The plane began to shimmy violently and veer to the right no matter how much control he exerted in the opposite direction.
Closer.
Stop, please…
With a sudden jolt, the plane shot off the last of the runway. The landing gear bit into the dirt and grass and pointed them on a new heading—directly toward a cluster of short green trees in the near distance.
The plane started to rotate further and skid sideways, bucking wildly. Cutter bit down hard and forced himself to relax his grip again on the steering yoke. There was nothing he could do other than hang on for dear life, hope for the best, and ride it out until it stopped. Still, he tried what he could, instinctively turning the useless wheel in the opposite direction of the skid as if he were driving a car on ice.
Come on—
And with a sudden, bone-jarring jolt, the plane came to a halt, flipped up, lingered there for a brief moment, and then reversed course and came crashing down, finally settling with an almost perceivable sigh of relief.
For a very quick dozen heartbeats, there was almost complete and utter silence. The only sound was that of fatigued metal reaching a new equilibrium. Cutter blinked twice and shook his head. He licked his dry lips and worked his jaw.
The co-pilot next to him was alternating between beaming wide smiles and mouthing, “Wow.”
Glancing at the man, Cutter said, “So that’s how you do it.”
The smile vanished from the man’s face, replaced by a look of abject fear, as if he’d suddenly realized the obvious—that Cutter truly hadn’t known a damned thing about dead-sticking a G4, which was the gods’ honest truth.
Cutter unbuckled himself and worked a kink out of his neck as he stood. When he went rearward to check on the others, he found Morgan already cleaning up all manner of things that had shaken loose or had come spilling out of cabinets and had been bouncing about the interior.
Gauge was still in his seat, nodding and grinning in his own way, which always made it seem as if he were laughing at some cosmic joke only he was privy to.
Outside, the sun was getting ready to set, and new flashes of light visible inside the plane started coming from behind them. Cutter glanced out the window and spotted a single emergency vehicle speeding toward the G4.
He could hardly keep from smiling as he slapped a hand on one of the seat backs and began making his way to the forward exit, where he twisted the
control handle to manually lower the door and stairway ramp.
“Company’s coming,” he said as he deplaned and stretched his arms wide and shook the numbness out of his rubbery legs.
~16~
COLONEL SUVOROV
Taking long strides in a way that blended well with a forceful, military-like clockwork precision, a man wearing a dark-colored beret cocked to one side and dressed all in black and white camouflaged fatigues marched toward Cutter and the smoking plane with purpose. Two additional men accompanied the guy, taking care to remain to either side so that if the guy were to reach out an arm, neither of his two followers would be struck by it.
Cutter remained firmly in place by the jet’s small stairway, scratching his chin, figuring he had about another day’s worth of beard growth in the past hour. Or, maybe it had just gone a bit gray.
“Jackson Cutter?” the man in the beret said in acceptable English as he closed the distance. He had a touch of an accent but sounded as though he’d trained hard to eliminate it.
Cutter remained silent and let the man continue his approach. He’d found that it was often better to wait for others to speak first. It was a power thing, and he sort of got off on that, especially now. He was already about as high on adrenaline and joy juice as he had ever been sucking on a bottle.
When the guy was exactly two feet in front of him, the man came to an almost orchestrated halt, as did his men. The two behind the man in the beret thrust out their chests and locked their hands behind their backs and raised their chins. The lead guy in the beret was tall enough that Cutter had to look up a little to stare into the man’s smoke-gray eyes. The guy was clean-shaven and well-tanned and had a jawline that made him look as if he’d often used his teeth to break rocks into gravel, but his belly betrayed him as someone who also enjoyed a good meal or two, or three.
Zombie Team Alpha Page 7