Lethal Cure

by S A Gardner

  Jake stood, the bigger copilot covering him fully, his gun to the man’s head, his balance somehow unaffected by our downward plunge.

  “Will you shoot me and risk more damage here?” Jake said, addressing Damian, almost conversationally. “Or risk this fellow dying and reduce your chances of handling the plane to nil, not to mention all those who’ll wind up dead if we crash? Let’s call it stalemate for now, finish this another day.”

  Damian charged. I clung to him, for balance, for sanity.

  Jake made sick sense, as usual. This was another form of brutal triage. The man behind the impending disaster was low priority compared to the disaster itself. No use wanting to rip his jugular out with my teeth.

  I yelled over the chaos. “Let him go, Damian. Where would he go anyway?”

  Jake? Ha. That had to be delirium talking. Jake would go anywhere, do anything he pleased.

  Damian slammed against the door with another brutal pitch as Jake staggered past him with the copilot. The same pitch threw me over the dead pilot. I struggled to knock him from his seat. Stepping over him, I took his place, stared at the blasted controls. Flying all sorts of planes had been part of my training. Troubleshooting was, too. But not after a controls shooting. I tried every single one. Nothing.

  I yelled, “Damian!”

  “In a sec.”

  I swung around. Oh, no. Damian couldn’t resist. Wasting unaffordable time on his vendetta. And getting the copilot shot while at it.

  But he had Jake now, disarmed. Then I heard it. Even over the cacophony. Agony. Bones snapping. I staggered after him in time to see he’d broken Jake’s arm in multiple places. The same arm he’d broken in Russia. Then his fist smashed into Jake’s face. Jake went down like a sack of wet cement.

  “Now will you come?” I yelled again.

  Damian threw me his rifle and Jake’s gun, dragged the shot copilot to his feet and threw him back in his chair, kneeled on the floor between us, said something in Spanish. In answer the man’s whimpers rose. Damian smacked him on the head, barked again.

  “How bad is his injury?” I yelled.

  Damian ran a series of checks of the controls and shouted, “He won’t die now.”

  Nothing more to say. The plane wasn’t responding to any control inputs. This meant total loss of both the plane’s hydraulic systems, which operated flight controls, brakes, landing gear and other key systems. As a final backup, the Il–76 had manual controls, which worked control of rudders, flaps and other control surfaces with mechanical cables and links. We turned to these. They were much stiffer, less responsive. Seemed damaged, too.

  The copilot gasped something. Damian translated. “He says we must fix a few circuits. He’ll guide us through it.”

  “You do it. I’ll try to fix him.” I escaped his glare. “Have to, even if we don’t need him, or anything else ever again.”

  I examined the man as he struggled to give directions to Damian. One bullet. Just right of his vertebral column, exiting his chest between the fifth and sixth ribs.

  In minutes I had a chest tube installed, draining the accumulating blood, and fluid replacement making up the blood volume deficit. He wouldn’t die. This way at least. It seemed we wouldn’t, either. Not from a crash.

  Damian had leveled the plane!

  “Calista, take the controls. I have to organize emergency landing with the authorities.” He barked at the copilot, who fell over himself vacating his seat for him.

  I took the controls as Damian poured a stream of Russian over the radio, every tremor I’d held in check blurring the world out of focus once more. Was nothing not painful? Even relief?

  “Son of a bitch!”

  What now?

  “Jake slithered out.” Damian hauled the copilot up, rammed him back into his seat.

  I grabbed at him. “Damian. Jake’s more dangerous than you can imagine. Don’t take any chances with him. Finish him quickly.”

  He squeezed my hand, critical emotions crowding his face, squeezing my heart. Then he ran out—leaving incoming transmissions bombarding me.

  I struggled to make it out. To fathom directions, orders. Screamed for them to go slower, to repeat.

  In the end I shouted, “Speak English. The man who speaks fluent Russian isn’t here.”

  Yeah, both men who did just stepped out. To battle to the death.

  Then I felt it. A blast of horror, my life’s worst. His distress. Damian. Then I heard his call. Was it in my head?

  It boomed, expanding my skull, cracking it. “Calista.”

  With the copilot at the controls, I burst out of the cockpit, found Jake struggling into a parachute and Damian on the floor.

  Both men reached their hands out to me. This image would burn on my retinas throughout this life and beyond.

  I crashed beside Damian. What had Jake done to him? I hadn’t heard another shot, he didn’t have another gun.

  What did he do?

  Damian hands grabbed mine. “Came through the door—stabbed me in the leg—must be one of your poisons—feels like—like…”

  I snatched my hands away, scrambled on my knees, scouring the floor for a spent dart, a syringe, fount–found…

  Cyanide.

  No time, not one second to waste—my bag—the antidote kit. I spilled back into the cockpit…and the bag was gone!

  I ran out, and Jake—Jake had it!

  I charged him, roaring, took him down, slammed with him to the floor. I left him a grunting-in-pain mass, ran back to Damian, barely conscious now. My cyanide injections were overkills. Didn’t know if even the antidote would work.

  Oh God, oh God, please, please…

  I fumbled for the antidote, both sodium nitrite and sodium thiosulfate. Had to give him one after the other, IV. Nitrite first, then thiosulfate, larger, 50 cc’s, longer to inject and—

  Gunshots ripped through my charred awareness. Coming from the cockpit. Jake, finishing the job.

  “Go…” Damian’s faint plea, like an ax grinding my vitals. “Not potential victims now—sure ones—all my mistake…”

  He was right. Millions would die now. And I didn’t care. Only him…

  Don’t be stupid. Let Jake sabotage the not-quite-fixed controls and you all die, Damian included.

  “It’s cyanide,” I choked, thrust the ampoules and syringes in his hand. “Inject…”

  He echoed my gasps. “I know—go!”

  I went. Out of my mind. After Jake.

  Of everything he’d done, I’d get him for this the most. For forcing this choice on me.

  In the cockpit, I found him slumped, parachute to the sidewall, broken arm held at an awkward angle, the gun in his left hand completing his vandalism. My fury, before my kick, knocked the gun down. Then I grabbed his broken arm and twisted.

  He roared, convulsed over me. His eyes, as clear and endearing as the first time I’d looked into them, beseeched me.

  “Don’t, Cali,” he rasped. “Come with me. Do you think I would have left you to die? The parachute will carry both of us.”

  I punched his broken nose. He fought me now, then made a grab for the gun. The plane, in league with him, pitched at just the right angle, making him reach it, throwing me off.

  He half straightened, gun in hand. Moment of truth.

  He’d be a fool if he didn’t shoot me now.

  Jake was no fool.

  He fired. One of the cockpit windows shattered.

  Had all this heaving made him miss?

  Or was he forcing me to give up trying to salvage the plane, panic and join him?

  I had no time to figure out which. He turned away and staggered out, leaving me another impossible choice. Watch him run over Damian and jump out to freedom? Or try to fly the plane and save millions?

  Not so impossible. I no longer saw the big picture. He’d boiled me down to basics.

  That crazy bastard had to go!

  I ran out as the rear door opened. No depressurizing now we’d descended so far
.

  “Jake!” At my shout, he turned at the edge. “I loved my Jake. He died eight years ago. I never got to say goodbye. I say it to him now. And to you, I say good riddance.”

  Disappointment flooded his eyes as we both raised our hands with our weapons, mine a shard of glass, a memento of his latest scene of destruction. Yeah, him and me both.

  I hurled the glass. It lodged in his neck. Only then did he fire, the shot going wide. I rolled on the floor, then sprang up as he stumbled backward. I secured a hold at the door’s edge, snatched the gun out of his hand as he fell out of the plane.

  I watched blood spurting in undulating ropes from his neck in the downward draft.

  Shoot him! Between the eyes this time!

  God help me, I couldn’t. Couldn’t kill him again. He might have spared me, earlier….

  His final look of love mutilated me, and I saw no more, tears blinding me, gut-heaves disemboweling me.

  Somehow I managed not to plummet after him, closed the door, lurched back to Damian, found the empty ampoules but not the syringes— God please—was he…?

  A sudden plunge launched me up into the air, weightless, hurled me to the floor. Voices bombarded me, cacophonous, sanity consuming.

  Too late for Damian anyway if he hasn’t managed to inject the antidote. Get up, get the controls. Try. Do it!

  Oh, Damian—sorry, so sorry…

  I was back at the plane controls. Didn’t remember making the trip—didn’t feel, couldn’t—too much. Not equipped to process all this. Dissociating, dissipating… Damian, Jake—millions…

  Metallic screeching impinged on shut down senses, brought back with it the roaring din, the crushing wind. The radio!

  Couldn’t make anything of the garbled voices, English now, orders, explanations, directions, still alien, faraway, surreal.

  Guess something inside me was on auto, receiving, processing, enough to make the coordinates, approach the landing strip. Couldn’t work the brakes, couldn’t get the wheels down. Land was a zooming up violent end, terror beyond registering.

  Crash-land on the tanks and it’ll still rupture them and disperse the agent.

  No idea whose voice, whose thoughts these were. They made sense to whatever remained sentient, functioning inside me.

  I forced the flying behemoth on its axis a couple of dozen feet from the ground. The wing scraped against the tarmac, then plowed into it, snapped, sheared, the noise screeching like a million shrieking demons.

  And then the crash.

  A judgment day boom and brunt, razing from the outside in, disconnecting cells, imposing new levels of helplessness, of insignificance. So permeating it invaded unconsciousness, maybe even death…?

  Didn’t mind, as long as the plane didn’t explode.

  Wake me up only if Damian does.

  Thirty-Nine

  Hands, voices, pain, burning stench, pain, nausea, oppression, dread—and did I mention pain?

  But not exactly pain. Pain was defined by the very property of being localized. This was all-receptors, all-together-now misery. I no longer had skin, but a red-hot map of lacerations, no nervous system, but an exposed wires network, no organs, but a squelchy-mass mess.

  All proved one thing. I was alive. Death couldn’t feel so corporeal, could it? Or so noisy. Or so annoying!

  It was annoyance that got to me. “Hey—quit poking me!”

  My eyes opened, squinted at faces, recognized the universal manner that said medics.

  We were in the open air. So I made it? This was really happening? And if this was real, and that was the plane on its back like a gutted bird in the distance, then we’d crash-landed, hadn’t gone kablooey and—

  Damian! The agent tanks!

  I jackknifed up and a thousand hammers struck inside me. My caregivers tried to keep me down. I slapped hands right and left. Found one hand to do it with. The other was in a splint and sling.

  “Let me up. Anyone speaks English here?” My Russian seemed to be another casualty of the accident.

  A woman patted me on the back. “I’m Dr. Natalya Voloskaya. You must have a concussion or worse. You’ve been out for two hours.”

  Just two hours? After all that? And in just two hours the crash site had became almost a town, filled with every emergency and state personnel Russia had to offer?

  I croaked, “I’m fine.”

  The blonde shook her head, adamant. “You’re not. You had a dislocated shoulder, which we reduced, you’ve broken your right wrist and five ribs on the same side. You probably have lung contusion. You’re only feeling good because of the morphine.”

  This was good? Sure it was. I could move, talk without keeling over, without howling. I was fine. I was alive when I shouldn’t be.

  “You’ve done a great job putting me back together,” I wheezed. “I need to know about the man on board. And the plane’s damage.”

  “Which man? There were two dead men….” I saw her face distort, the world with it. Damian, no—no… Wait—not Damian, the pilots. The woman was going on. “And there was a man with multiple injuries, who seemed to have been poisoned.”

  Was?

  “He said he injected himself with an antidote.”

  Said? As in conscious? Talking? Alive?

  “He spoke in Russian, too. He’s being treated but is stable.” I sagged. She tutted. “It’s why I left him and came to you.”

  I shot up again, pain unfelt. Damian. Alive!

  I was up and stumbling.

  The woman ran after me, answering my questions still, bless her. “The plane’s top came off like a sardine can, one wing broken, the rest is intact.”

  Thank God! But that didn’t mean much. Couldn’t let the agent fall into the Russian government’s hands. Into anybody’s hands. Only one set of hands I trusted not to abuse it.

  I saw parts of Damian among the wall of people. Parts that moved.

  Good enough. Deal with the catastrophe in the making now.

  I turned to the woman. My age, taller, strong chords of kinship striking between us. I took her by the shoulder. “I had a bag. I need it.”

  “They emptied the plane, put all they found there.” We passed the dead pilots on the way to where she’d pointed. Jake’s last victims. “The distress call said hijackers commandeered your cargo plane, intending to crash it into a government installation, that you overpowered them but not before they damaged the controls. Is this what happened?”

  Damian. Always ready with convincing stories.

  I nodded, limped through the heaped articles with my newfound protectress warding off security personnel. My bag. Found it.

  In five minutes I’d contacted Sir Ashton, told him the gist of what happened. And to do whatever it took to get us the hell out of here with the plane, before someone unleashed Armageddon.

  And what do you know! His “extraction” team was already on the way. Good to know the good guys had their intel sources on the alert at all times, too. Just hoped he had an abyss deep enough to bury the agent in, until we produced its counteraction, or deleted it from time’s records.

  It took five hours for his Antonov to reach Vladikavkaz’s airport, land and load the damaged Il–76. Five hours when constant interrogations and treatments kept me from Damian. Nothing would have if I hadn’t seen him sitting under his own power.

  Then we were on board Sir Ashton’s private jet, with full medical facilities on board. They transferred Damian first. I entered the jet upright, my first demand for everyone to just disappear. Had to have time alone with him. Now.

  I approached his stretcher. He kept his good eye closed. The other was shut involuntary. Another pretense, huh? Nope. No more. Buck stops here.

  “You know, Damian, I’m up to here with Jake almost killing you, and then me killing Jake.”

  He still didn’t open his eye. Couldn’t look me in mine, huh? “It’s safe to say that particular scenario isn’t playing ever again.” His voice darkened, softened, the very sound of anguish
and regret—and love. “How are you?”

  Asking for a toll report? From our vicious scene, when he’d battered me inside and out? From having to kill Jake—again? From the ordeals of the past ten days? Or those still waiting for me into the no-end-in-sight future?

  Go for the obvious.

  I tapped my finger over his eyebrow. That got that eye open. “Dislocated shoulder, broken wrist—goodbye to surgery and vigilantism for the duration—and ribs five through nine. Oh, and three thousand five hundred cuts, bruises and lacerations. You?”

  His eye swept my nightmarish-looking self, a world of ouch filling it. He still took my cue. “Compound fracture femur, torn latissimus dorsi, a few hundred stitches, a few liters of blood spilled, concussion, post-cyanide toxicity funk, the rest pulped, thanks.” A beat. “Alive, and too damn well. Calista…”

  I went down on my knees beside him, careful not to bend even a few degrees. Morphine was starting to ebb. “Sit up.”

  He obeyed, hesitation impeding him, blasting off him in breakers. My left hand captured his head, dipping in exquisite contact. I completed it, gently pressing the lips he’d bruised into his, mingling blood and hurt and yearning, life flowing again with every restless shift, tongue exploring his injuries, soothing the tattered flesh, swallowing my reiterated name and the “perdóneme” seeking forgiveness.

  Then he took the kiss over, taking it from pain to passion. Uh-uh. Didn’t think so.

  I broke the kiss, rose in slow motion, headed for the seat opposite his stretcher. “That was to thank you for surviving.”

  His surge of animation drained. He still moved his cast, hopped up on one foot, dropped beside me.

  Too long later, he murmured, “You don’t sound too glad I did.”

  “I’m delirious. In every sense of the word.”

  His short laugh was bleakness made audible. “Another way of telling me you’d certainly want to live if I died now?”

  “You think I’d resort to sarcasm, instead of telling you straight you’re relegated to the category of ‘good riddance?’”

  His laugh this time was even bleaker. “Wouldn’t blame you. I’m not worth it.”