The trail branched out to the right and Emma took it. It had the advantage of running along the side of the mountain instead of uphill. To her relief, Carrow picked up the pace again once he was no longer climbing. They burst out onto a road.
“Where are we?” Emma asked him. He put his hands on his thighs and bent over, breathing heavily. He pointed down the slope.
“That goes to the airport.”
“Then let’s go,” she said.
The downhill run was easier. Emma’s eyes continued to burn but her throat hadn’t closed yet and she thought perhaps she’d caught a break. Carrow ripped off the poncho and Emma got a look at his face. There was no mistaking the determination there. Ten minutes later they were nearing the intersection and the Acute Care Center as a car pulled out in front of them. Emma’s throat went dry with fear and she scrambled in her pocket for her gun.
The car window lowered and she saw that Oz was driving.
“Get in.”
Carrow and Emma tumbled into the car, with her in front and him in back. Oz hit the gas.
“Thank you from the bottom of my heart,” Carrow said. “I didn’t know how I was going to run down that hill.”
“Did Sumner leave?” Emma asked. Oz shook his head.
“We saw the fire and heard the shooting. It was all I could do to get Sumner to stay put in the airplane. I had driven up to the Blue Heron to look for you and all I found was Ms. Johnson, asleep. I put her in the car and drove her to the airport. Then I told him I would drive up this second road and look for you both while he warmed up the jet. It should be ready when we get there.”
“The Rex?” Carrow said.
“Yes.”
He turned a corner and the airport came into view. The Rex’s lights were on and Emma could see that the ladder was down.
“Head straight for it,” she said. “There are several very pissed-off arms dealers gunning for us. We need to get out of here, fast.”
Oz drove to the airport and directly onto the tarmac. When they got out, Emma ran with him and Carrow to the plane. She hurried up the stairs and Carrow showed them how to secure the door.
“All aboard?” Sumner yelled through the open cockpit door. Emma made her way up to him, holding onto seat backs and the wall because the plane was turning to get into position to take off.
“Get us the hell off this island,” she said.
Sumner swung the plane around and started taxiing down the runway, gaining speed. Emma lowered herself into the copilot’s seat and watched. From the right, halfway up the hill, she saw a car spin to a stop and the door open. The thin man stepped out. He reached into the passenger seat. The Rex moved past and Emma couldn’t see anymore.
“Trouble to your right,” she said. “The Russian just pulled up. He was reaching into the back and I’ll bet he’s getting an RPG.”
“Ten seconds more and we’re airborne,” Sumner said. The rain pummeled the plane harder as they increased their speed and Emma snapped into a belt and clutched the armrests. They lifted off and she heard sporadic clapping from the cabin followed by an explosion. The jet shivered. A warning alarm went on and the dashboard lit up in red.
“We’ve been hit with something,” Sumner said as he kept climbing.
“Can we fly?”
“Yes, but we’re leaking fuel. Get Stromeyer on the phone. I’m going to have to land soon.”
Chapter 54
Banner and Stromeyer sat around a speaker-phone on a conference call with Susan Plower.
“We need to have them land somewhere,” Stromeyer said.
“They’re arriving from a quarantine zone. No one wants them, I’m afraid,” Plower said. “Can they make it to Guantanamo?”
“Not enough fuel,” Banner said.
“Listen, Encephalitis Lethargica is quite dangerous. It’s a sleeping sickness that causes catatonia, mutism, psychotic events, sleep, and death. There’s no cure and no way to tell who will survive and who will die. You can understand why I’m getting no takers for them.”
“Yes, I do understand,” Stromeyer said. “But we have to do something.”
“You aren’t exactly making this easy on me. How the hell am I going to sell that to anyone?”
“But the good news is that we don’t know how it’s spread. Perhaps it’s not easily contracted from one human to the next.”
“That’s not what happened in 1915. The CDC is telling me that over five million died.”
“But that strain hasn’t been seen since. Or, at least only extremely rarely. It’s entirely possible that this version isn’t as deadly,” Stromeyer said.
“Or maybe not. I’ve already called the British Virgin Islands and the Bahamas. No one wants to expose their populations to this scourge and I don’t blame them. Can they attempt a water landing?”
“I don’t think so,” Banner said. “The seas are rough as a result of the tropical storm. It’s likely they’ll die if they do.”
“What about returning to Terra Cay?”
“There’s an entire team of angry arms dealers just waiting to kill them. That’s likely suicide.”
“I’ll work on it. How long do they have before they run out of fuel?”
“Half an hour,” Banner said.
“Why didn’t Carrow fill the damn thing up?”
“They did, it was hit by a grenade and it’s leaking.”
“I’m on it. Let me make some calls.” Plower hung up.
Carrow sat behind Emma and Sumner in a jump seat in the cockpit.
“What’s the plan?” he said.
“We need to land,” Sumner replied. “The nearest airports are denying us access.”
“Can’t we just land anyway? What are they going to do if we ignore them?”
“Blow us out of the sky before we do,” Sumner said.
“I’m an English citizen. Half these islands are territories of the British Crown. Hell, the Queen is a neighbor on the island. They’d better not blow me out of the sky.” Carrow sounded outraged.
“They can and they will,” Sumner said. “We need an airstrip that can handle a jet and a friendly nation.”
“Does the phone work?”
Emma nodded. “It does.”
“Then let me call my friend.”
“Who?” Emma asked. Carrow named an actor known the world over.
“He owns an island and he’s got a landing strip.”
“He owns the entire island?” Sumner said.
“Yes. He owns the entire island.”
Emma handed him the phone. “Get the coordinates.”
Carrow dialed the phone and after a terse conversation said, “hold on,” and quoted the coordinates. “He says he doesn’t know how long the airstrip is, but he can land his jet. It’s a bit smaller than this one, but it may work.”
“Is anyone on the island? If so, tell them to stay far away from us and the plane,” Emma said.
“He’s at his LA house with his family. There’s only a skeleton staff there at the moment and they live off island, so he thinks we’re alone. I told him about the quarantine and he’s asking that we stay with the jet after we land.”
“Ask him if he thinks the runway lights are on,” Sumner said.
The plane gave a lurch as a gust of wind hit it. Emma’s stomach lurched as well. Carrow braced himself against the back of Sumner’s seat as he carried on his telephone conversation. He leaned toward Sumner.
“There should be directional lights on at the runway, but he’s been having a bit of trouble with the utilities and he said there’s no guarantee they’re working in the midst of the storm. Will we make it there and can you land it?”
“We’ll make it and I can land anything,” Sumner said. “But first get the creature off the controls.”
“No creature,” Emma said.
Sumner glanced at her. “Right.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Carrow asked.
“He was drugged with Scopolamine. He’s hav
ing hallucinations.”
“Please tell me you can see the controls.” Carrow’s voice was strained.
“I can,” Sumner said. He kept his eyes on the instrument panel and Emma watched as the plane began to descend. In the distance she saw a row of flickering lights. Sumner adjusted the jet and pointed straight at them.
“Everyone strap in. We’ll land in three minutes,” Sumner said. The warning alarm on the panel switched to a louder, more strident pitch. The noise set Emma on edge.
“Is that a new problem?” she asked.
“No, it’s the same problem. The fuel is just about finished.”
Emma watched the runway lights grow clearer. The wind still lashed at them and the plane bumped with the gusts, but Sumner kept it on the line of trajectory and the ground grew closer. Emma held her breath as they prepared to touch down. They lowered onto the runway with only a small bump and the plane slid along the tarmac and ground to a halt at the end. It was a near perfect landing. Glare from a nearby spotlight bounced off the windshield. Sumner killed the engines and the annoying alarm fell quiet.
No one spoke. Rain poured off the windshield, sheeting downward. Emma slumped in her seat with a sigh of relief.
“You are one hell of a pilot,” Carrow said. “And I need a drink.”
Emma sat in the sunny kitchen in a small house located on the island. It remained devoid of people with the exception of Sumner, Stromeyer, and Banner. The last two had arrived after a decent interval, when it became apparent that none of the remaining group on the airplane had contracted the disease. After much negotiation on the part of Susan Plower, Marwell, Johnson, and Kemmer had been collected and transported days earlier to the Bahamas, where they were kept in the same cordon sanitaire with Randiger. Out of the forty cases on the island, twenty-five people died, including Martin from Rex Rain.
“How’s Latisha doing?” Emma asked.
“Well. The doctor says he expects to discharge her shortly,” Stromeyer said.
“And the arms dealers?”
“Two contracted the disease and died. Shanaropov and a Mexican survived. The Russian took off on his yacht and is at large. Plower has put resources behind a manhunt. We’ll see what comes of it. She’s also arranged for the Mexican to be transferred to Guantanamo.”
“Bad for the Mexican,” Emma said.
“But nothing more than he deserves,” Banner said. “We recovered the bullets and the gun. None of it worked very well, but even if one had been smuggled through a metal detector and used to hit a target it could have been a disaster.”
“What about the encephalitis? Is the island still quarantined?”
Stromeyer shook her head. “It will be lifted shortly, since no new cases have appeared. It has disappeared once again, as quickly as it did before.”
“Still no cure?” Banner said.
“Still no cure and no answers, I’m afraid,” Stromeyer replied.
“So science can’t explain everything yet. The world retains its mystery,” Emma said.
She sipped her coffee and eyed Sumner. He was his usual taciturn self, but she thought that his hallucinations had tapered off. He caught her staring at him, held her gaze and smiled.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank my agent, Barbara Poelle, and her husband, Travis, for the title suggestions, my publisher, Liate Stehlik, editor Lyssa Keusch for her editorial input and another great cover, the graphic artists and cover specialists who put it all together, and Shawn Nicholls for his online assistance. Thanks to everyone at HarperCollins for their support year round, and my publicists, Danielle Bartlett, Pamela Spengler-Jaffee, and Dana Kaye, who keep my schedule straight when I can’t.
Thanks again to Darwyn Jones, who read the manuscript in a weekend despite the fact that he was swamped with his own work.
Thank you to the readers. Your encouragement is greatly appreciated.
And, of course, to my family.
About the Author
JAMIE FREVELETTI is a runner and a former trial lawyer. The author of the international bestsellers The Ninth Day, Running Dark, and Running from the Devil, she lives with her family in Chicago, Illinois.
www.jamiefreveletti.com
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Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DEAD ASLEEP. Copyright © 2012 by Jamie Freveletti. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition NOVEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780062198013
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062025197
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