“But by leaking the information to me . . .” she said, still a very smart woman despite the disease that was ravaging her brain. “My career has already come to an end.” She looked at him. “Order me not to tell.”
“I order you not to tell.”
“Phooey to you. I’m not going to let those people die.” She picked up the phone. “Who do I call with this?”
“Yeah,” Des said. “That’s where we’ve got a little problem. Landlines are down and my cell phone’s been dead since last night. Short of hitching a ride to the airport and flagging down Max—”
“What are we waiting for?” No-nonsense to the bitter end, Helga grabbed her purse and her notepad and headed for the door.
Sam Starrett clicked once into his headset microphone as he gave the hand signal—ready.
The SEALs on surveillance would be watching him and they’d report to Lieutenant Paoletti in the negotiators’room that Starrett and Karmody were in place and ready to go.
He thought about Alyssa up on the roof, lying there in the hot sun.
He thought about Alyssa in his bed.
In his life.
WildCard was looking at him oddly and Sam realized he was grinning like a stupid-ass fool.
Wouldn’t that be just his luck? To be too distracted to do his job, and get his ass killed.
God, don’t take me now, he prayed. Don’t pull some ironic shit here and have me die today.
And then he helped God out a little by refreshing his grip on his weapon and focusing on the job ahead, waiting for the other members of his team to signal that they were ready, too.
“We need to get to the airport immediately.”
Teri turned to see Helga Shuler and her assistant hurrying toward her.
“Can you take us?” Mrs. Shuler asked.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” she said. “Not without proper authorization. I’d need to receive orders to—”
“Do you have a radio?” Mrs. Shuler asked. “Can you get in touch with either . . .” She looked down at a pad of paper she was carrying.
“Lieutenant Paoletti or Max Bhagat,” her assistant supplied the names.
“Is there a problem?” Teri asked. “Is this some kind of an emergency?”
“There’s a bomb on the hijacked plane,” Mrs. Shuler said with a grim certainty. “There’s a sixth terrorist on board—a woman. Once the SEALs take the plane, she’s going to set the thing to blow. Everyone on board will die.”
Teri stared for two or three seconds. Then she leapt for the radio.
Her vision was blurred.
Both of her eyes were swollen, one of them nearly all the way shut.
Her lip was split, her entire mouth cut and bleeding from her own teeth.
Her wrist was broken and each breath she took—both in and out—made her sides burn with pain.
She was bleeding. Her head, her nose, between her legs.
She lay there, beaten and naked from the waist down, her shirt torn, her shorts gone. Her uninjured hand covered what little she could manage to cover, and her knees were pressed tightly together—as if that would keep the next one from pushing her legs apart and pushing himself inside of her.
She’d known what was coming when Bob told Al to hurt her. She’d expected it, braced herself for it. Planned to endure it.
As long as she could keep breathing, as long as she was still alive, she was winning.
And finally it was over. Al had spit in her face and climbed off of her and she knew that she’d won.
Except she hadn’t.
Because Bob had dropped his pants. And it wasn’t over. And it was worse, far worse because he’d made her believe that he was her friend.
There was blood on the walls. Sprayed in a pattern. Someone—the pilot, she thought—had tried to stop them from hurting her and had died for his efforts. They’d shot him—the pilot—and he’d lain there beside her, half of his head blown away, for countless long minutes until they’d dragged him away.
She didn’t want to look at that pattern of blood anymore, and she closed her eyes as she listened to Max’s soothing voice over the radio, as she breathed and tried to convince herself that breathing still meant that she’d won.
“Helga Shuler is standing right in front of me,” the pretty young helicopter pilot said into the radio, obviously working hard to sound rational and calm. “She has information that it’s imperative Max Bhagat and Lieutenant Paoletti receive ASAP. Over.”
The transmission wasn’t very good, and Helga couldn’t hear what the person on the other end of the radio had to say, but whatever it was, it didn’t make the pilot very happy.
“No, sir, I will not keep this channel clear. I’m not going anywhere until I connect with Max Bhagat or Lieutenant Paoletti. I repeat, it is imperative I speak with either of them or with Lieutenant Jacquette or with Senior Chief Wolchonok or with Lieutenant Starrett, or God! Let me speak with Petty Officer Jenkins! I’m not picky here! Over!”
Des touched the girl’s arm. “We can be at the airport in three minutes if you fly us.”
She looked from Des to Helga, and Helga could see that her career was flashing in front of her eyes. But still, she nodded. “Get in.”
Alyssa lay on the roof, watching her target, listening to Max Bhagat.
He was talking about money. An offer, he said, from an outside source. They were willing to pay twenty-five thousand dollars, U.S., he said, for each passenger who walked safely off the plane.
Yeah, he’d caught their attention with that one.
She wasn’t listening so much to the words anymore as to the tone of his voice. The rise and fall of the phrases. Every so often he’d say over or come back, and there’d be a pause.
And then he just paused, without an over, and she knew before she heard the word, that it was coming now.
Jefferson shifted slightly, too, as in tune with it as she was.
Tom Paoletti’s voice. “Go, go, go!”
She squeezed the trigger.
Go, go, go!
The door opened and Starrett turned his head away as the flash bang exploded.
And then he was inside, facing a tango, weapon in hands, in his kill zone.
He fired.
She heard a crack, heard what sounded like a single loud explosion from the cabin, then Max, shouting, his voice distorting over the radio speakers. “Gina, stay down!”
She opened her eyes to see that she’d been sprayed with blood.
Al, who’d been in the co-pilot’s seat, was sitting there still, but he wasn’t going to hurt her anymore.
Bob had been pushed back and down, against the door, his eyes sightlessly open, a neat hole in the middle of his handsome forehead.
“If you can hear me, please God, I hope you can hear me,” Max was shouting over the sounds of gunfire and screaming from the cabin, “stay down, Gina! Stay down!”
She crawled to the microphone dangling down near the floor and keyed the thumb switch.
“Max,” she said through her broken lips, “can you bring me some pants?”
Teri connected with Lieutenant Paoletti as the airport came into view.
Helga was in the co-pilot’s seat, radio headset on and ready, and as soon as she heard Paoletti’s name, she began to speak. Clearly. Concisely. In her gentle Danish accent. Reading from her notebook.
“This is Helga Shuler. I have sources with Israeli intelligence who have informed me that there is a sixth terrorist on board the hijacked plane. A woman rigged with a suicide bomb. You must abort, repeat abort. Over.”
“It’s too late to abort,” Paoletti said, and Teri’s heart clenched. “Please stand by with your information, over.”
Too late. They were too late. Stan was already on that plane, and her world was about to end.
She could see the hijacked aircraft out on the runway, see the snipers and other personnel on the terminal roof.
Teri headed for the runway.
Stan went in fast, Muld
oon to his left.
He both heard and saw Muldoon fire, neatly taking out one of the terrorists.
The noise was intense, both in the aircraft’s cabin and over his radio headset.
Five tangos had been eliminated within seconds of the flash bangs.
He could hear Sam Starrett’s voice shouting for the passengers to stay down, to stay in their seats, nobody move fast, nobody move.
Stan was still in adrenaline mode, his senses relaying information to his brain at warp speed. He caught sight of movement from the corner of his eye, and he turned.
And the world went into slow-mo.
A woman.
Standing up.
Right near the bulkhead, mere feet from where he and Muldoon had come in.
Muldoon’s back was to her.
Light glinted on metal.
A handgun—she was pulling it free from her coat.
She was wearing a fucking overcoat while everyone else was stripped down to their T-shirts.
Stan pulled up his weapon.
And saw that—Jesus!—she had a baby in her arms.
He could fire and stop her cold, but not without hitting the baby.
He hesitated, and his hesitation—just those few brief seconds—cost him dearly.
He was dead.
Her handgun was out and up and there was nothing to do but step in the way to prevent her from hitting Muldoon.
He saw her fire, and realized. It was a doll she was holding. He was going to die for a fucking plastic doll. And as she moved, he saw beneath her overcoat that she was rigged to blow, wired with some kind of bomb, loaded down with C-4.
And he pulled his own gun higher even as he felt the impact of her bullet and he fired back a double burst. Head shots. Praying there wasn’t some kind of automatic trigger that would take them all instantly to hell.
The woman went down and Stan grabbed her.
Teri landed the helo next to the plane.
“Are you nuts?” Des shouted. “This thing’s going to blow!”
“Then you better run away,” she told him.
Helga was on the radio, reading aloud her information about the bomb, broadcasting to the SEALs.
To Stan, who was somewhere on that plane with a bomb that could go off any second.
She switched her radio to the channel Paoletti had said the SEALs were using.
Starrett couldn’t fucking believe his ears.
“The bomb has a fail-safe,” a woman with an accent not entirely unlike the famous Dr. Ruth’s was saying over his headset, after Lieutenant Paoletti had dropped the less than welcome news that there was a bomb on board.
“There is a sensor designed to read the pulse of the woman who has the bomb,” Dr. Ruth said. “After thirty seconds without reading that pulse, it will go into a three-minute countdown, repeat, three-minute countdown.”
“Have we located this woman?” Starrett shouted. God was doing it. He was pulling an ironic on him. Sam never should have agreed to have dinner with Alyssa Locke.
But then, over his headset, he heard the most beautiful words spoken by one of the most beautiful voices in the entire beautiful world.
It was the senior chief, the team’s miracle man. “I’ve got the bomb.”
Alyssa Locke stood on the roof of Terminal A, her heart in her throat.
Someone—it looked like Muldoon—had triggered the emergency slide on their side of the plane.
“The woman is dead.” Senior Chief Wolchonok’s voice was only one of many coming through her headset, but it was the only one she was paying attention to. “I’m exiting with her out of the port side of the aircraft.”
“Let’s get these people off the plane! Starboard side!” That was Sam’s voice now, his lazy drawl transformed, his voice rapid-fire and nearly accent-free. “Move!”
Three men had come out of the terminal and were running toward the runway. Tom Paoletti, Jazz Jacquette, and Alyssa’s boss, Max Bhagat.
Jules Cassidy was down there, too, in a truck, no doubt waiting to give Bhagat a ride to the plane and win brownie points for being there and ready. He pulled alongside of them with a screech of brakes and they all jumped aboard. He zoomed out onto the runway.
Toward the plane and the bomb.
Alyssa looked at Jefferson.
Who nodded. They headed down the stairs and toward the plane as fast as they could run.
“Get Mrs. Shuler out of the helo,” Teri shouted at Des. “Move back, move away.”
He didn’t need to be told twice. He nearly picked the woman up and hustled her off, hurrying in the direction of the terminal.
She could see Stan then. Coming down the slide. Carrying a body.
He was covered in blood—not his, please God.
But he staggered as he reached the ground, staggered again when he shouldn’t have staggered, and she knew.
“Stan’s been hit,” she reported. “I need the hospital corpsman—Jay Lopez!—on the port side of the plane now! Stan, how bad is it?”
“Teri? Shit, you’re not supposed to be here.”
“Glad to see you, too, babe. Muldoon, get your butt down that slide and help the senior chief. He’s wounded! And someone get me the new coordinates for the U.S.S. Hale. Now!”
Stan was already dead. He’d known that the moment he’d stepped in front of that gun.
Except he was still moving. Still walking.
It was the adrenaline that kept him going.
He didn’t have much of a plan other than getting the bomb off the plane until he saw that helo sitting there on the runway like a gift from God.
Three minutes wasn’t a lot of time, but if he could get the bomb and himself onto that helo, he could pilot that thing far enough from the plane and terminal to keep anyone else from getting hurt.
And then it was more than the adrenaline that kept him going. It was the adrenaline and his knowing that he could fix this. It would be his last fix, but it would be a good one.
But then he’d heard Teri’s voice, and he knew. She was on board that helo and getting her off wasn’t going to be easy. She wasn’t going to leave him, and because of that, she was going to die, too.
“Teri, get the hell out of here. I can fly that thing.”
“Yeah, you can do a lot, hot stuff,” her voice came back, “but I’m the one who wears the wings in this relationship. Lopez, where the hell are you? We’re counting down and I’m in the air the second Stan is aboard.”
Muldoon was beside him, then, helping him carry the body. “Senior, you’re wounded.”
“Get back!” The timer was running. Two minutes and fifteen seconds and everyone near this thing was dead.
But Muldoon didn’t back off. He took most of the woman’s weight from Stan and helped him move faster.
And then Tom Paoletti and Jazz Jacquette were there, too. And Lopez. And then Stan wasn’t carrying anyone anymore. He was being carried.
Onto the helo.
They were in the air, then, and he was shouting. This wasn’t part of his plan. Teri wasn’t supposed to be there. Or Muldoon. Or Jacquette. Or Lopez, who was starting an IV on him right there, tearing open his shirt.
“Lieutenant Howe, can you fly this thing a little faster?” That was Jazz Jacquette’s sub-bass voice. He was good, but there was no way he was going to defuse a bomb like that one in under three minutes.
“Believe me, sir, I’m doing the best I can. Stan, you still with me?”
“Teri,” he said. The adrenaline was wearing off and his whole world was pain. Pain and a bomb that was going to blow in a matter of seconds. “Gotta ditch the bomb! Don’t want you to die, too—”
“No one’s going to die. Lieutenant Jacquette is watching the timer. What’s the countdown, sir?”
Jacquette: “Can you get me over the open ocean in fifteen seconds?”
“You bet.” Teri. “I’ll be flying nice and low. Let me know the minute the bomb hits the water. I’ll take us up and out of here. Stan, no one�
��s going to die, do you hear me? No one. We get rid of the bomb and our next stop is the hospital on board the U.S.S. Hale.”
“Teri,” Stan said, having trouble breathing, afraid she was wrong.
“Bombs away,” she said. “Any time now!”
“It’s in the water,” Jacquette shouted. “Go!”
Gina lay on the floor of the cockpit, aware of the door being forced open.
Someone came in. Someone in uniform who took one look at her and began shouting for the lieutenant, shouting for medical assistance.
And then another man came in. He was wearing a white button-down shirt and a tie, and he had a blanket that he used to cover her.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, “that we didn’t get here sooner,” and it was so strange to hear that voice, Max’s voice, coming out of a real mouth, in a real face.
It was a good face. Blurry, but good. What she could see was older than she’d pictured, with deep lines of fatigue around his eyes.
He had tears in his eyes, and she knew that seeing her like that, broken and bleeding, hurt him badly.
“At least you got here,” she said. “I’m pleased to finally meet you, Max.”
He laughed at that, but then started to cry. As she watched, he composed himself, wiping his eyes and even managing to give her a smile. “I’m going to get you off the plane now.”
He was ready to pick her up in his arms, but she didn’t want him to remember her that way forever. First impressions were important, after all, and she was already at a serious disadvantage.
And dammit, she wanted to see something besides pity in his eyes.
“No,” she told him. “I want to walk.” And as she said it, she realized it was true. She did. She wanted to walk off that plane. “Will you help me walk out of here?”
“Yeah.” He nodded and helped her to her feet, the muscle jumping in his jaw as his repositioning the blanket around her forced him to get another glimpse of her battered body.
He stood on the side of her unbroken wrist, slipping her arm over his shoulders, his arm around her waist, supporting her.
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