The Hydra Protocol

by David Wellington

  Looking straight ahead he saw her tail assembly instantly. The helicopter pilot had moved up behind Nadia so close he felt like he could almost reach out and touch the plane. Neither aircraft seemed to be moving—it was like they were both hanging motionless in the sky, separated by just a short gap of air, while the world moved beneath them.

  Chapel had a sudden idea. It was crazy, of course. No, more than that. It was stupid. But maybe it was better than just sitting in the helicopter and waiting for Kalin to open fire.

  IN TRANSIT: JULY 28, 12:03

  The copilot shouted something back at Kalin, and the torturer nodded. “We have enough fuel for another twenty minutes of flight. After that we must set down at Irkutsk,” he told Chapel. “To be safe I will give her another fifteen minutes before I open fire. Though I think we both know already that she will not set down or speak to us. She must think I do not have the will to kill her.”

  “I guess she doesn’t know you that well,” Chapel said.

  It was now or never, then.

  “Kalin,” he said, “does this helicopter have any rappelling equipment on board? Even just a hoist I can hang a line from so I could hot rope?”

  Kalin almost smiled. “Nothing of the sort.”

  Damn. That would make things a lot harder. Still . . .

  “Tell me you are not thinking—” Kalin began.

  “If I can get on her plane, if I can get inside, I can talk to her. I can talk her down, I’m sure of it,” Chapel said, even though he wasn’t sure of anything. Expressing his doubts wouldn’t help him make his case. “Look, if we could just get above her, get as close as possible, I could jump over.”

  “Utter folly,” Kalin said. “You would fall.”

  “Maybe,” Chapel admitted.

  “You will fall and die for nothing.”

  “Or maybe I stop her from launching.”

  “Moving closer to her aircraft might be seen as an aggressive move,” Kalin pointed out. His smile was getting wider by the second. Apparently Chapel’s idea amused him. “She might launch if we approached like that.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s a risk I’m going to have to take. Not to mention the risk of jumping out of this helicopter. I don’t suppose you have any parachutes?”

  Kalin laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. “Oh, Kapitan, you are not just a fool, you’re a maniac as well. I admit I am impressed that you refuse to give up, even now.”

  Too dumb to just give up. Maybe they would write that on Chapel’s tombstone. After he fell a couple of hundred feet into all those pine trees down there.

  “It’s a chance. It’s worth doing. It—”

  Kalin raised a hand for peace. “I will allow you to try,” he said. Of course, that had been the real obstacle all along. Chapel was more or less Kalin’s prisoner, and he couldn’t take any action now without Kalin’s say-so. Chapel was a little surprised Kalin had agreed to his plan. “I will allow it because it would amuse me to see you die. Either falling through the air, or on board the plane when I shoot it down.”

  Chapel glanced around at the soldiers in the cabin—but of course, none of them spoke English. “Just get me as close as you can,” he said.

  Kalin gave the pilot an order. He had to confirm it—the pilot didn’t refuse, but clearly he thought the idea was insane. But eventually the helicopter started moving closer to the plane and lifted above it. Chapel watched the plane get bigger. When he’d come up with this idea, the plane had looked motionless in the sky, as if it were just hanging there. As they drew near, however, he saw it was moving quite a bit, side to side, up and down. It didn’t matter how good a pilot Nadia might be, currents in the air would keep the plane from holding to a smooth course.

  He tried not to look at the ground, at the endless expanse of trees. That wasn’t where he was headed, he told himself. Looking forward, he could see the blue stretch of Lake Baikal, and then the plane came close enough it blocked out the view.

  He studied the top of the plane as they approached. The wings were mounted high up on the fuselage, above the cabin, which gave him a good, broad surface to land on, but they were also made of metal smoothed down to reduce wind resistance. There was a radio antenna he might grab onto, though he wasn’t sure it would hold his weight. He was just going to have to get lucky.

  The helicopter pilot brought them closer, and closer still, until they were right on top of the plane, maybe ten feet above it. Chapel could have just stepped out of the side hatch and fallen onto Nadia’s wings. If he slipped, though, it wasn’t like he would get a second chance. “Closer,” he called out. “As close as you can get!”

  The helicopter sank a few feet in the air.

  Kalin leaned out the side hatch to look down with Chapel. It occurred to Chapel that he could just grab the torturer and toss him out in that moment. But doing that, as satisfying as it might be, wouldn’t help him convince Nadia not to launch.

  “Twelve minutes, Kapitan,” Kalin said. “Best to go now, and not hesitate.”

  IN TRANSIT: JULY 28, 12:06

  The wind that buffeted Chapel was cold enough to freeze the water in his eyes, if he didn’t keep blinking. He would have to jump forward, ahead of the plane, or the wind would tear him off into empty space.

  He went through all the motions in his head, all the different ways this could go wrong and how to avoid them. There was a lot he couldn’t account for, though, plenty of variables he couldn’t know in advance.

  He braced his legs against the fuselage of the helicopter. Took a deep breath. Released his grip and—

  Jumped.

  The free fall seemed to last far too long, time stretching out as adrenaline flooded his veins, every neuron in his brain firing at once with one single message: what the hell did you just do? He hung there in the air with his legs and arm outstretched and the wing surface of the plane came looming toward him, a white cross like the X that marked the spot where he was going to die, the spot where he pushed his luck just a little too hard—

  And then he hit, much harder than he’d thought he would, his whole body slamming against the top of the plane, his chin striking a rivet in the white metal that made him feel like he’d loosened his teeth. The hands-free unit in his ear popped loose and disappeared behind him, torn away by the wind. All the breath exploded out of him in a single burst, and spots swam before his eyes.

  And then, over the whirr of the plane’s propeller and the rhythmic thumping of the helicopter’s rotor he heard a horrible, soul-crushing sound, a squeaking, squealing noise of rubber being dragged across metal.

  His feet were sliding across the wing top, the soles of his shoes trying desperately to grip as the wind tried to push them off.

  Chapel shot his hand out, trying to grab for the radio antenna.

  It was too far away. He couldn’t reach.

  Desperately he tried to extend his fingers, to get even the slightest grip on the thing, but even as he strained and pushed he was sliding backward, his belt buckle grinding against the wing. He was going to slip off, he was going to fall—

  Forgetting about the radio antenna, he looked desperately around him for anything else he could grab. One of his feet slipped over the back of the wing and there was nothing there—he brought his knee up, tried to get his shoe back on the wing, tried to push himself forward but only managed to speed up his slide, and then both his legs were hanging off the back of the wing. He splayed his fingers out, tried to hold on to the wing with just friction, knowing it was a losing battle, knowing—

  He swiveled himself around, trying to get more of his body up onto the wing, and his hand went underneath, under the back of the wing surface. And touched something—yes, there! On either side of the plane a diagonal strut stuck up at an angle to support the weight of the wings, a thick bar of steel exactly the right diameter to be used as a handhold. He could just brush it with his fingertips, but if he shoved himself backward a little more, gave up a little more of his hold on the wing . . . yes! He g
rabbed it solidly in his hand, just as his body started to slip over the edge, faster and faster. If he fell from the wing, he knew his own momentum would tear him from the strut, so he rolled off carefully, getting his legs down, swinging them toward the plane. He couldn’t see the landing gear but he kicked around until he got one foot on the wheel and pushed himself against the side of the plane.

  His hand couldn’t hold on to the strut for much longer. It was holding up almost all of his weight—his foot on the landing wheel couldn’t get a stable hold. He brought his other foot up and wrapped his leg around the strut. That would hold a lot better than his hand. It gave him a chance to breathe, a chance to think of what to do next.

  Looking around, he found the hatch on the side of the plane that would let him inside. It looked like it was miles away, but maybe, if he really extended his arm he could just reach it . . .

  His fingertips brushed the latch, and the hatch popped open, torn backward by the wind. It bounced back and forth on its hinges, threatening to slam closed again. He was going to have to jump for the hatch, and there was nothing beneath him this time, nothing to catch him if he fell.

  He knew there was no other option. He pushed himself off the strut, launching himself toward the hatch just as it flapped open again. His hand shot out and found something to grab onto and he pulled himself inside the plane, just as the hatch flapped shut and latched itself behind him.

  He lay on the carpeted floor of the plane, in the leg well between two rows of seats, and just focused on breathing. It was quiet and warm there, so quiet and warm after the freezing sky of Siberia. He would just give himself a second, just rest for half a second before—

  “Jim?” Nadia asked.

  IN TRANSIT: JULY 28, 12:08

  Chapel scrambled up onto his feet. He lifted his hand to show it was empty, then took a step forward between the two rows of seats.

  Up ahead of him, Nadia sat strapped into the pilot’s seat, looking at him over her shoulder. One of her hands was on the steering yoke. The other held her phone.

  “Please,” he said. “Don’t do anything rash. I just came to talk.”

  “You jumped out of a helicopter and onto my plane to talk? Jim, that was . . . that was insane.”

  “That’s my job. Doing stupid things for America.”

  She gave him a smile. It wasn’t a match for the warm, excited smiles she used to give him, back when . . . before she . . .

  He fought down his anger, his need for revenge. There were bigger things at stake here than getting back at her. “Nadia, you’ve really painted yourself into a corner here. The Russians are going to shoot you down in about ten minutes if you don’t start talking to them. You have to give them something.”

  “Do I?” she asked. She glanced back through the windscreen. “They seem to be backing off. I thought for a moment they intended to ram this plane.”

  “They’re holding back right now. But they don’t need to ram you. They’ve got a machine gun that can cut the wings off this thing.”

  She sighed. “Come forward. I can’t talk to you over my shoulder like this and fly at the same time.”

  He made his way to the front of the plane and sat down next to her. There was no copilot’s position, no controls in front of him. He wouldn’t be able to fight her over who got to fly. Not that he even knew how, though he supposed Angel could talk him through it . . . damn. He’d lost his hands-free unit when he jumped. He could still call Angel on the phone in his pocket, but for all practical purposes he was on his own.

  “Just—just put down the phone, for now,” he told her. “Please? I know what you can do with that thing.”

  “If I put down the phone, you’ll have no reason not to kill me.”

  “The thought had occurred to me,” he said, before he could stop himself. “But I won’t. I plan on living through this. If I tried something, you would lose control of the plane, and then we’d both die.”

  “Perhaps you think it would be worth it, after everything I did.”

  He closed his eyes and rubbed his face with his hand. Then he looked over at her and met her eyes. And realized he had no idea what to say next.

  She kept the phone in her hand.

  “Anyway,” he said, “I’ve seen you fight. You could probably take me.”

  That made her smile again. There was a little more light in her smile this time. “Count on it.” But still she didn’t put down the phone.

  “Okay,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm. He had to think of this like a hostage negotiation—with three hundred and fifty million people, the population of America, as the hostages. “All right. You don’t want to put down the phone. So tell me what you do want. Tell me where we go from here.”

  “You know what I want.” She glanced through the windscreen at the helicopter, which was keeping station just clear of her wing tip. “It looks like I’m not going to get it.”

  “So what’s your plan?” he asked.

  “My plan?”

  “You have one, don’t you?” he said, as gently as he could.

  “Oh, certainly.” She laughed. “I did. But as usual, you came along and made it impossible.”

  “I—what? As far as I can tell I’ve just been along for the ride this whole time. I was there to help you make things this desperate.”

  “Come now,” she said. “I won’t believe that. You knew right away when you met me—you knew I was up to something. That’s why you spied on me, isn’t it? That’s why you kept looking for the gaps in my story. It’s why you seduced me.”

  “I didn’t—wait, what?” Chapel asked, blinking rapidly. “I did what?”

  IN TRANSIT: JULY 28, 12:12

  “I didn’t seduce you—you seduced me,” Chapel said, very slowly, as if he was working out a complicated math problem. “You led me on, you used the fact that Julia had just dumped me—you knew I was weak, vulnerable—”

  “You knew I was attracted to you,” she said, “and you played hard to get, driving me crazy.”

  “You made the first move!”

  “Only after you made me want you. And what about in the desert, in the tent, when you woke me to kiss me, then turned away?” She shook her head. “You were trying to weaken my resolve, and it worked.”

  “It . . . did?”

  She looked over at him. “I would have told you everything. I would have brought you in on my scheme, even if it meant wrecking everything the marshal and I had worked to attain. Back in Aralsk-30, just before the soldiers arrived—I was going to tell you about Siberian independence, and stealing the launch codes. I was going to give you a chance to join me—or stop me.”

  Chapel’s eyes went wide.

  “I thought,” she said, and clearly it took some effort to dredge up the words, “that I could go it alone. When I left Marshal Bulgachenko for the last time, when I went rogue, I thought I could live the rest of my life without any human comfort or warmth. It wasn’t going to be very long, was it? But I had no idea what people need when they must face up to their own mortality. The loneliness was incredible. It was like winter had come and I knew the sun would never rise again. And then you came along. Jim, we were never going to be happy marrieds. We were never going to have children or a nice little house with a lawn you would mow every weekend. I knew that. But the thought of just having someone there, someone to stand beside me, someone to be with me at the very end . . . I suppose it is easiest just to say that I did not want to die alone.”

  Chapel forced himself to blink his eyes. It made him realize he’d been staring at her, unable to believe what he heard.

  “When you called me, when you told me America wished to help me,” she said, softly, “I knew it was a ruse.” She shook her head. “It was just so good to hear your voice.”

  “Seriously?” he asked.

  “When I thought you were dead . . . it was almost too much to bear.”

  Chapel couldn’t believe it. Her feelings for him had been real? He’d been runn
ing on rage for so long, convinced she had seduced him to keep him in line, to keep him moving in the direction she wanted to go. But this changed everything—

  He shook his head.

  She had still betrayed him. Lied to him. Used him to forward her political cause. That hadn’t changed.

  “No. No. You lied to me from the start,” he said. “You used me.”

  “I know you hate me, Jim. I understand why.”

  “Because you used me and my country to steal a weapon of mass destruction?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I won’t deny it. I will say I did it for the best of reasons. To free my people from Moscow.”

  “Through an act of terror,” he insisted.

  “After all we’ve been through, you can’t even call me a freedom fighter?”

  “That’s just semantics. What you did was wrong, Nadia. You put my entire country in jeopardy. And if you launch those missiles, the United States will be forced to retaliate—it’s just the way things are. You’ll destroy Russia as well. Some of our missiles are aimed at Siberia, you know.”

  “It’s that clear, is it? There is no moral quandary in your mind. I’m one of the bad guys.”

  “As long as you’re holding that phone, yes,” he said.

  She turned to face him. Looked deeply into his eyes. What would she find there? He didn’t even know himself, anymore. Despite what he’d said, this situation was anything but clear. Would she find hatred still burning in him, or something else? Maybe just a wish that things could have been different?

  She pursed her lips and looked back through the windscreen. Lake Baikal filled most of the view, now, as big as a sea, an ocean. Mongolia lay just a few dozen miles from its southern shore.

  “I wanted to see this,” she said. “This lake—it’s the heart of Siberia. It is the deepest lake in the world, did you know that?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Perhaps the oldest lake, as well. We—the Sibiryak—we sing folk songs about the ‘glorious Baikal sea.’ We tell the story of a fugitive from the gulags who rowed across Baikal in a lard barrel, to return to his family.”