Broken Trust

by Jill Williamson

  “Go signal Lukas to bring the plane back,” I told Nick. I handed my gun to Drew, who checked the safety and threaded the strap over his head and one shoulder so the rifle lay against his back. He did all this while keeping the handgun trained on the baddies.

  “I’m going to walk out onto the deck,” I said. “You guys follow me out. Everyone else stays here. Drew, keep an eye on things.”

  “I got this,” Drew said.

  “No deal.” Tebow shook his head. “Muren and gun boy come out where I can see them. I’m not going to let them free everyone so they can come running to help. The hostages stay in here. Gun boy and Muren walk down to the dock with us.”

  Well, he called that one. But they didn’t know the girls were waiting outside.

  I tried to look ticked off, like they’d foiled our big plan, then I reluctantly nodded to Drew and Nick, and walked out, ignoring the protests from Mr. S and Kerri. I stopped on the deck, where Tebow quickly appeared beside me and lifted his gun against my chest while Blondie tied my hands behind my back. I flexed my wrists as much as I dared, hoping it might give me some wiggle room.

  “Walk down to the dock,” Tebow said, prodding me in the arm with his Glock.

  I took the stairs one at a time. I imagined that the girls were freeing the hostages this very minute and that Special Forces was almost here. Out on the lake, Lukas had somehow attached the rowboat to the Tebow’s plane and was towing it back to shore the hard way. I didn’t see where Gabe had hidden himself.

  I reached the ground and took my time on the path, then walked slowly down the dock. I reached the end before Lukas did. Tebow stepped back, gun still trained on me. “I need to search him. Take the gun.”

  Figs. Blondie set his computer on the dock, then took the gun from Tebow, who patted me down. He felt the matches in my sleeve, but couldn’t get to them with my hands tied. So he cut my wrists free and ordered me to start shedding layers. I went one layer at a time, as slowly as I could move, hoping my rescuers would show. My heart sank as I stripped off the matches and the ivory pocket knife. When I made it down to my compression shirt he let me stop, then tied my hands again. I shivered and twitched as mosquitoes buzzed around me, eager for a feast.

  Tebow picked up the ivory knife that was still stuck to my T-shirt. “I’ll take that back,” he said as he pocketed the knife.

  “Would have been disappointed if they hadn’t tried something,” Blondie said.

  Tebow continued his search from my waist down. He tossed out my collection of socks, found Grace’s knife hooked to my shin and set about ripping off duct tape. I caught movement up by the lodge. Kimbal and Mr. S at the top of the stairs.

  “Kick off those shoes.”

  “Huh?”

  “Take them off,” Tebow said. “Hurry up.”

  I made a very pathetic attempt to comply. “It’s hard with my hands tied.”

  “Just do it.”

  Where was Special Forces? We were running out of time here.

  I had just removed my second shoe when Blondie fired the gun in the air. Nick and Drew both dropped into a squat, but Blondie wasn’t looking at them. The girls and the grown-ups had been spotted. The girls and Kerri stood in a huddle on the deck just outside the entrance to the lodge, praying by the look of them. Dusty and Bill were halfway down the stairs. Mr. S and Kimbal had made it to the start of the dock. Both had their hands raised, palms forward. Neither were armed.

  When the recoil faded, Blondie yelled. “Stay right there. You too, Liam!”

  Who was Liam?

  Tebow tucked Grace’s knife into his back pocket and narrowed his eyes at me. In a sudden movement that made me flinch, he reached for me and ripped off my cross necklace.

  A few gasps from the group up at the lodge. I drifted out of my head a little, knowing I was in trouble but not wanting to panic.

  Lukas took that moment to arrive, and as usual, the guy was two steps ahead.

  Tebow abandoned me and climbed into the flying boat. He futzed around in the cockpit, cursed a blue streak, then almost broke the door climbing back out. Three fierce steps and he’d ripped the Glock away from Blondie and pointed it in Lukas’s face.

  “What did you do to my plane?” he screamed, his face and neck flushed red.

  The confused expression on Lukas’s face could have won him an Oscar. He pointed to the middle of the lake and spoke with a thick Spanish accent. “I just row it out there and back, señor. Is that bad for planes?”

  “The instrument panel is all—I don’t have time for this!” Tebow slammed his gun against Lukas’s head, knocking him off the dock and into the water.

  People went crazy. The girls screamed. Kimbal yelled. Mr. S ran down the dock. And Gabe dove in the water after Lukas.

  Tebow trained his gun on Mr. S. “Stay right there.” When Mr. S kept coming, he shot. His bullet took a wedge of wood out of the deck.

  Mr. S stopped.

  Movement in the water behind me drew my attention. El McWilly bobbed up from under the dock, reached up to my foot, lifted my pantleg, and tucked a thin, black rock into my sock. Before I could do or say anything, he sank beneath the water again. Gone.

  What the…?

  I looked around. Tebow still had his gun trained on Mr. S. Gabe had Lukas’s head above water. He was awake, and a trail of watery blood ran down his cheek like he’d just picked off a leech. Nick and Drew were on their feet again.

  No one had noticed El McWilly. And, while I could be mistaken, I was 99.999 percent certain that the kid had given me a flintknapped rock.

  I wanted to kiss the little flintknapper.

  The satphone rang then. I held my breath, hoping nothing had happened to Faith.

  Blondie answered, “Yes?” He turned on the dock, peering past me and squinting. Then he grinned a grin of victory and my heart sank. “We’ll be waiting.” He ended the call. “Canton has an alternative ride for us.”

  Something electrical started to hum. I looked around, trying to spot it. The screeching whir of an airplane starting up made it easier to zero in. It was coming from the airplane hangar where they kept the Twin Otter.

  Mother pus bucket. We forgot about the Otter!

  It rolled down the ramps and sloshed into the water. I could see Alcan’s bearded face in the cockpit. He steered the plane toward us.

  “Don’t do this!” Kimbal yelled. “I will see you live to regret it.”

  “Your threats mean nothing to me, Liam. It’s clear to everyone that you don’t know what loyalty is.”

  I did not miss Blondie calling my uncle, Liam, as if they were old pals.

  Who the figs was Liam? Some undercover code name?

  The seaplane coasted up to the west end of the T. Blondie picked up his laptop, then ran down and grabbed the line to secure the plane. “Come on!” he yelled.

  Tebow prodded me down to the end of the dock. The back passenger door opened. Alcan, the traitor, poked his head out and grinned, then went back to the cockpit. Through the open door I could see a couple of the wolf dogs walking around in the cabin. I ran through some last-minute worst-case-scenario escape plans. I could jump into the water, but with my hands tied, I might drown. Once I was inside the plane, I could open the roll door and jump out that way. Again, though, I’d be over water, and I’d have no time to use El McWilly’s rock on my bindings while I was floundering in the lake.

  Tebow stopped me where Blondie stood before the plane, but instead of telling me to get in, Blondie said, “Knock him out.”

  “I’m out of darts.”

  “Use your fist,” Blondie said. “I don’t want any trouble on the flight.”

  Whoa. I inched back a step, and the heel of my right sock snagged on the wooden dock. I didn’t want anyone punching me, not that I believed he could actually knock me out. “It’s not that easy to knock someone out,” I said.

  “Don’t they teach you anything useful in your spy club?” Tebow asked. “When you hit someone so hard their brain bounc
es off the skull, it triggers a blackout. Like this.” He drew back, snapped his fist into my temple, and that’s all I remember.

  REPORT NUMBER: 26

  REPORT TITLE: I Go For a Plane Ride and Decide to Get Off Early

  SUBMITTED BY: Agent-in-Training Spencer Garmond

  LOCATION: Mission League training compound, Bear Paw Lake Lodge, Alaska, USA

  DATE AND TIME: Sunday, August 5, late afternoon

  I woke up cold with a throbbing headache. I was lying on the aluminum floor of the Twin Otter, hands still bound, feet bound now too. The plane was in flight. Blood had rushed to my head, which was facing the tail end of the plane. This told me we’d taken off recently and had yet to reach our cruising altitude. The engine wailed. That, combined with all the loose seatbelts rattling against the bulkheads, didn’t help my pulsing head.

  I was lying lengthwise between the benches. I glanced past my feet to the cockpit. I could see the elbows of two guys sitting in the bucket seats there. A quick glance the other way confirmed that the rest of the plane was empty. Someone wasn’t here. Alcan? Tebow? What had happened there? And where had the dogs gone?

  My gaze settled on the parachutes beyond the black cargo net in the tail. Then I looked to the roll door. That was my exit.

  No way. I’d never parachuted before. Didn’t know how.

  But I kind of did. I’d taken the class with everyone else. And Bill had said the chutes were all packed and ready for emergencies.

  This was an emergency.

  But going with them might not be so bad. Maybe I’d finally find out what they wanted from me.

  But I knew that already. They thought I could tell them the identity of the Profile Match. But I couldn’t. What would happen if they thought I was lying? I recalled Tebow’s knock-out punch… Anya’s knife last summer in Okinawa.

  Yeah, I’d take my chances with the parachute.

  It took some effort, but I reached down and pulled out the flintknapped rock El McWilly had stuffed in my sock. I pulled my feet up behind me and sawed at the ankle ropes, wishing I was more flexible. The last time I’d had to cut my own binds, I’d had a razor blade, but the rock knife turned out to be sharper than it looked and was a lot easier to hold than a razor blade. I got my feet apart pretty quickly, then moved on to my wrists. This took a different method of sawing. I had to squeeze the rock between my fingers and the heel of my hand and move it up and down slowly. I almost dropped it once, but caught it between my wrists.

  When I was free, I tucked the rock back into my sock so I could return it to El McWilly to frame or bronze or put in a museum. I watched the cockpit for a moment, wondering if one of those guys might look back and see me. How should I do this? Inchworm? Crawl? Get up and walk?

  I went with a cross between inchworm and crawl. It took a while to reach the net that blocked off the cargo area.

  I rose up into a squat. There wasn’t much headroom back here, so I crouched there a minute, again watching the men in the cockpit. I couldn’t believe I’d gotten this far without one of them looking back at me. What a couple of morons.

  The net that separated the cockpit from the cargo area was attached at all four corners with belay clips. I unhooked one of the bottom ones and slipped underneath. The parachutes lined the walls. The altimeters strapped to each drew my gaze, needles quivering in tandem around 6000 feet. That wasn’t very high. Which parachute should I choose? They all looked the same. I grabbed one, checked that it had the three pulls, and unhooked the altimeter. I strapped it to my wrist, remembering what we’d done at the class in Lake Elsinore, then I pulled on the chute like a backpack and clipped the front. Cinched it.

  “Hey!”

  I’d been spotted. Tebow had taken off his headset and was trying to turn in his seat. Blondie glanced back as well. So apparently Alcan had missed his flight out of the compound. Wondered what they’d done with the guy. And his dogs.

  I got busy, hooked the leg straps, and put on a helmet and goggles.

  Tebow kneed Blondie in the ear as he scrambled between the bucket seats. The plane lurched to the side. I lost my balance and fell against the wall, knocking down another parachute. It wouldn’t take Tebow long to reach me. I slipped out past the cargo net and grabbed the bottom of the roll door, pulled it up, standing as I did. The door moved roughly along the curved roof. Wind blasted inside the cabin along with the roar of the engine. My vision blurred and, half-dazed, I tripped toward the open door. I would have fallen out of the plane had Tebow not caught hold of me.

  “You stupid kid!” He shoved me behind him, and I fell against the curved wall opposite the roll door. He pulled the door closed, so I kicked his calves as hard as I could, knocking him off his feet. He fell toward me, and I rolled out of the way just before he hit the floor. I scrambled toward the door, pushed it up a couple feet with both hands. I needed to stand to get it any higher, so I reached up for the grab bar and had just got my fingers around it when Tebow clutched my left pantleg. I kicked his hand with my right foot. He let go of my leg and stood, which gave me the time I needed to get both hands on the grab bar. I pulled up and side-kicked him in the chest. He flew back against the cabin wall.

  I pulled up the door another few inches. Tebow was already coming back for me, so I made my move, hoping nothing had happened to my pack in the tussle, trying not to think the worst.

  I winced and slipped out the gap at the bottom of the roll door. I heard Tebow yell a nasty word just as the wind ripped me away.

  Then I yelled some nasty words of my own.

  ****

  I used to think skydiving would be like riding a roller coaster. It wasn’t. Adrenaline charged through me. Wind rushed in my ears like I’d stuck my head out the window of a fast-moving car. Blue everywhere. Some white fluffy clouds. I didn’t feel weightless. It was more like a powerful wind was pushing me back up from the ground. Yet there she was, spread out like Google Earth, coming slowly closer.

  Suddenly reminders from the skydiving lesson came back to me.

  Don’t close your eyes.

  Don’t hold your breath.

  Relax.

  Open up your body so you don’t go too fast.

  The view, the sound, the colors, the sensations, the reality—the entire experience—was so consuming, my body and mind were not communicating well, like I’d rebooted my brain, and it was still loading up. It finally occurred to me to check my altimeter. It was at 5000 feet. Good thing I’d remembered to look. I could pull at any time.

  But I didn’t.

  I waited until 4000, enjoying the ride.

  When the time came, I thought back to the class and moved my right hand to the plastic handle of the ripcord. I put my left hand behind my head, though I couldn’t remember why that was important. Then I tugged the handle.

  There was a brief delay, a loud popping noise, a hard yank on the harness that seemed to pull me up, and it was suddenly very quiet.

  One, two, three. I looked up at my parachute, relieved to see it was open and seemed to be functioning properly. It was yellowish orange, bright from the sun beyond, and seamed in wedges that reminded me of a grapefruit.

  I pulled both brake toggles and felt my descent slow.

  “Thank you, God in heaven!” I yelled, then laughed like a maniac.

  Now I could relax for ten seconds or so.

  I looked past my white socks and my eyes focused on all the patches of green colors below. I tugged on the right handle and arced clockwise. Tugged on the left arced the other way. Passed through a cloud.

  More maniacal laugher.

  When the altimeter read 2000, I started looking for a place to land. I probably should have been doing this already. It all looked green to me. I didn’t see an open area anywhere. Nothing but trees. I suddenly imagined myself hanging in a tree, dying of thirst, or falling into river rapids and drowning, all tangled in my chute. Another of the instructor’s warnings came back to me.

  A parachute is only as safe as the pers
on operating it.

  Gee, thanks. A lot of good that warning did me now.

  I wasn’t supposed to go below the thousand foot mark without making a firm decision about where I was going to land. The only problem was, I didn’t see any good places to land.

  The closer I got, I spotted some patches of open swamp. I figured swamp would be better than trees or rivers and steered myself toward one.

  I was supposed to land into the wind, but I couldn’t remember how to turn myself and I couldn’t tell which way the wind might be. The ground was coming fast, though. My sole plan at this point was to not die.

  I was supposed to flare at thirty feet, but it was hard to judge what thirty feet was when I was looking at my stockinged feet with the ground approaching fast.

  I pulled on both toggles to slow myself down. I pulled them a couple times more, and when I was some twenty feet from the ground, I yanked down, slow and hard. I had both hands all the way to my waist. I held them there, waiting for impact. I was coming in at an angle, but the wind was in my face, so that was good. I’d somehow managed to land into the wind.

  I recalled something about extending one’s feet for the landing. I panicked then, worried I’d mess up my knee. The ground approached. Coming fast. My feet hit the water. Dragged through it. Toes dug into muck. I stumbled, kicking up water and Lilly pads, going faster than I wanted to. When my parachute hit the water behind me, it hung like a thousand pounds off my shoulders, jerking me back. I fell onto my rear, sitting up in cold water that reached my chest. Nuts. I pulled on the straps and pedaled my legs until my feet sank into the muck.

  I stood and fumbled with the parachute straps, grinning despite my wet landing. I was alive. I had parachuted out of a plane by myself with barely any training.

  I was giddy.

  And so relieved.

  I kind of wanted to do it again.

  I waded through the swamp until I found dry land, then wandered through the woods, trying to stick to mossy patches in an effort to go easy on my feet. I steered myself toward any patch of sunlight, looking for both warmth and a place that was open enough that I could spread out my chute and wait to be found. I slapped a hundred mosquitoes away, but the two hundred I missed feasted like hobbits.