Emma grabbed the filet and shoved it in her mouth, ripping off a section with her teeth. It tasted like heaven. She couldn’t chew it fast enough. She swallowed a large portion whole and ripped at the filet again. She chewed twice before raising her eyes.
She glanced at a nearby corpse. It was a woman. Her eyes gazed at Emma in an unblinking stare. Emma stopped chewing and felt her stomach start to rebel. She closed her eyes and took slow, deep breaths. Keeping the food down was imperative. After her stomach settled, she opened her eyes and looked at the dead woman.
“I’m so sorry.” Emma whispered the words.
An overwhelming sadness settled over her. She got up, still clutching the food plate, and stumbled away from the body and the woman’s lifeless eyes. She sank down near her pack and finished the filet, all the while doing her best to keep her gaze off the destruction all around her.
When she was finished she made her way back to the cart and fished through the plates. Out of fifty or sixty packets, she found ten still intact. She grabbed them and carried them to her backpack.
She sat at the end of the runway and stacked the few precious food plates next to her pack along with a small parcel of airline napkins. She’d brought the pack, a compass, compact tent, bedroll, and a portable Coleman stove. Only the pack went with her as a carry-on. The other items she had checked into cargo.
She assessed the backpack’s contents. It contained a paperback book, her passport, wallet, a reflective sheet that collected heat, a pillow that could be blown up to act as a neck rest on the long flight, her telephone, notepad with attached pen, and tester tubes of the new Engine Red lipstick that she’d created for a cosmetic customer’s elite makeup line. Their development was shrouded in secrecy. She tossed the book, the pillow, and stared at the lipstick testers. There were two. Their cases were different, but the color was the same. She shoved them into a side pocket with the useless cell phone.
She continued rooting through the discarded remnants of the passengers’ things. She found a traveler’s first-aid kit, several airline bottles of scotch, and one small bottle of wine. She also found a beautiful silver lighter with the initials AEG engraved on the side.
She reached the area where Wary Man had hidden his luggage and the briefcase. A brass bag tag on the luggage held a business card that read Cameron Sumner, Southern Hemisphere Drug Defense Agency and listed an address in Key West, Florida.
Emma sat back on her heels. So Wary Man has a name and a job fighting drugs, she thought. She opened the suitcase. It contained nothing of interest. Just all the normal items packed by any business traveler.
She turned her attention to the metal briefcase. The words UNITED STATES ARMY were stenciled on the top in black script. Emma pried it open. It contained two handguns and some spare ammunition. She nearly wept when she saw them, partly from joy and partly because she didn’t know how to fire them.
Emma’s bags weren’t among the looted luggage that lay all around. She didn’t care much about the clothes she’d brought, what she really wanted was the bag that held all her hiking material and the separate duffel that contained her compass and the special hiking tent. The compass was crucial to her survival. Without it she could wander in circles until the food ran out or the guerrillas captured her.
The tent was far less important. Designed to be worn on a hiker’s back, it weighed only four pounds but opened to accommodate two people. The manufacturer claimed that it was rugged enough for an expedition to Everest. When collapsed, it didn’t look like much, and she hoped the guerrillas hadn’t recognized it for what it was.
Half an hour later she found the duffel. It was ripped in half, and empty. Emma rifled through it before tossing it down. She searched in a circular pattern but didn’t find any pieces. Her precious compass was gone. She tried to ignore the sudden rush of panic that accompanied this realization.
“Get a grip, Emma. It’s not like it was food or anything.” She spoke out loud. Her voice sounded strained, but surprisingly normal. Just hearing herself helped. It confirmed that she was alive, and not a wraith wandering among the dead.
She found her luggage twenty-five yards into the trees, blackened, but otherwise in perfect condition.
“Louis Vuitton, god of luggage design,” Emma said. “Why the hell didn’t I put the compass in here?” She started laughing like a hyena. She sank to her knees. The laughter morphed into tears and then panic.
Emma forced herself to take deep breaths to halt the riot of emotion that overwhelmed her. She dragged herself upright, took an extra pair of socks from her luggage, and halfheartedly resumed her search. She found the tent under a heap of discarded clothing. The black outer nylon carry bag had melted at the corners, but the tent itself was undamaged. Her joy at finding it far outstripped its value to her, she knew, but she felt as though fate had thrown her a bone. She attached the tent to the flat side of the backpack. It acted as a frame, and made the load a bit more bearable. She finished rummaging through the luggage but found nothing useful.
She went back to her pack and filled it with the food and alcohol. She shoved one pistol into the pack and put the other on top. She took out the notepad, dated the first sheet, and hesitated. While Emma itched to leave the airstrip, she knew she should stay with the wreckage. The authorities would search for the plane first. Staying near it would give her the best chance for rescue. Her only other options would be to run down the dirt road Smoking Man used, or follow the passengers into the forest. Emma wanted to avoid Smoking Man and his soldiers at any cost, and the guerrillas holding the passengers were no less frightening.
She wrote, I’m still alive. The guerrillas took passengers into the jungle. About seventy. Cameron Sumner is one of them. The others I don’t know by name. I will stay near this crash site unless forced to leave.
She signed the note, ripped it out of the pad, and placed it in her bags on top of the clothes. She stashed Sumner’s luggage under a palm and shoved her own next to it.
The sky clouded over and an afternoon rainstorm began. Emma moved into the tree line. She sat with her back against a tree and watched the fat raindrops hit the dirt, making little puffs of smoke with each hit. The airplane sides sizzled. The charred bodies simply smoked.
Emma sank into a torpor. She watched the rain pummel the earth in a hypnotic trance. She gazed at nothing, letting her mind wander. Once she was in the trees, the air felt thick with humidity and smelled like warm earth and green leaves. After the stench on the runway, Emma thought it was one of the sweetest smells she could imagine. She didn’t want to go back near the jet’s wreckage. She shrugged off her pack and lay down, using it as a pillow.
8
BANNER’S MEETING ENTERED ITS FIFTH HOUR. MIGUEL AND THE members of the military were gone, and Whitter was slumped in his chair and had untied his tie completely. On the wall a flat-screen television, set to CNN and muted, flashed a map of Colombia and some photos of people that Banner assumed were Colombian. It was the tenth time they’d seen the stock footage.
Dispatching Miguel solved the immediate problem of search and rescue, and the meeting turned to intelligence gathering. The remaining attendees aired the information they knew about the flight, and now it was Stromeyer’s turn.
“I’ve analyzed the data from the manifest. There are two or three interesting characters among the passengers.” Stromeyer handed around a copy of the plane’s manifest. Four names were highlighted.
“First. Manuel Cordova Sanchez is listed as the copilot. He is a Colombian-trained pilot, his license is up-to-date, and his credentials more than adequate.”
“So what’s the problem?” Banner said.
“He is not, and never has been, an employee of British Airlines. He boarded the plane in Miami, using false identification and claiming that the real copilot was ill. He was ill all right. The police found him in his hotel room, dead.”
“So he gets into the cockpit, threatens the pilot, and flies the plane into the mountains.”
Stromeyer nodded. “That’s the current theory.”
“Wouldn’t the pilot resist? He’s got a whole plane to assist him,” Whitter said.
Stromeyer shrugged. “Depends on what was used to threaten him. He’s in charge of the plane, and perhaps he felt that the passengers stood a better chance to live if he didn’t resist.”
“Isn’t there some action he could take?” Whitter said.
“Yes, but nothing that would help if the hijacker has already made it to the cockpit. One protocol suggests he put on his mask and send the plane into a deep dive, which causes rapid depressurization and renders the passengers and any hijackers in the main cabin unconscious. But the copilot has his own mask and could use it to stay alert. Honestly, if there are any survivors, then whatever the pilot did was correct.”
Whitter sighed. “I see what you mean.”
“And the others?” Banner pointed to another highlighted name. “What about these two, Carlos and Consuelo Rivera?”
“Let’s talk about them last. The next, very interesting, name is Cameron Sumner.”
“Why does that ring a bell?” Banner said.
Stromeyer nodded. “I’d heard it before, too. He’s a licensed jet pilot. He flew private jets—Gulfstreams, Lears, like that—for various corporations located in Florida. One of the corporations paid for him to train in bodyguard techniques and weapons with us at Darkview.”
“Do you have a picture of him?” Banner said.
Stromeyer slid a passport photo at Banner.
Sumner’s face was only vaguely familiar. “Did we send him to Iraq?”
Stromeyer shook her head. “No. His Darkview evaluation sheet says that he was focused, intelligent, extremely proficient in firearms, and damn near unflappable. We made an offer to him, but he chose to continue flying for the suits. That is, until last year. Last year he became a trainer and monitor at the Southern Hemisphere Drug Defense Agency. He was stationed in Key West, where he oversaw training of personnel for the Air Tunnel Denial program.”
“The what?”
“The Air Tunnel Denial program, or ATD. It’s a joint program administered by the United States and Colombia designed to identify and intercept drug running aircraft that enter into U.S. or Colombian airspace.”
Banner stared at Stromeyer. “Are you telling me that the United States has an entire program set up to review suspicious aircraft entering Colombian airspace, and they are still unable to locate a commercial airliner downed in Colombia?”
Stromeyer shrugged. “It’s not as crazy as it sounds. The ATD program is administered from various air bases in both the United States and Colombia, and concentrates its attention on smaller aircraft that fly at low levels. Its mission is to identify the suspicious plane, establish visual and radio contact with it, and order it to land if it appears to be a drug transport. The planes used for drug transport are small private planes that can land in the remote areas using short runways. There was no reason for ATD personnel to be suspicious of a large commercial jet.”
Whitter groaned. “Reason won’t come into it. The press will eat us alive for funding a program that is supposed to spot suspicious aircraft activity and yet doesn’t even notice a huge jet lumbering off its course.”
Much as he hated to, Banner agreed with Whitter. The mistakes were piling up in this disaster.
The gentleman from the Department of Transportation spoke up. He looked to Banner like either an accountant or an engineer. He wrote on a pad lined with tiny grids that he’d brought himself, and he carried a sheaf of papers with him.
“Mr. Whitter, I think you need to be prepared for the eventuality that we may never find this jet. Especially since it landed in a mountainous region with significant jungle coverage. In the last ten years in the United States alone, fifty-three plane crashes have never been recovered.”
“In what type of terrain?” Banner said.
The man shrugged. “All types. One involved a Learjet that crashed only a few miles from a regional airport. Hundreds of searchers on foot and multiple helicopters were deployed for three weeks. That plane, all eight tons of it, has never been found.”
“Where did it crash? Alaska?” Whitter said.
“New Hampshire.”
“You have a missing plane in New Hampshire?” Whitter’s voice registered shock.
The DOT official looked pained. “We do. Of course some UFO enthusiasts have added it to their roster of unexplained events. But their claims are grounded in ignorance. They don’t know, or don’t believe, the statistics.”
Banner rubbed his forehead, where a headache began forming.
Stromeyer reached below the table into a briefcase and pulled out a small tin. She slid it across the desk to Banner while she turned to Whitter.
“Mr. Whitter, wait until you hear the rest of my report. The ATD program isn’t the only one the press is going to excoriate us for,” she said.
The tin contained aspirin. Banner opened it and chugged two down.
Whitter held his hand up to stop Stromeyer. “Great, Ms. Stromeyer—”
Both Banner and Stromeyer interrupted him. “Major Stromeyer,” they said in unison.
Whitter took a breath. “Major Stromeyer, let’s talk about the other problem areas last. Right now, tell me why was this guy flying to Bogotá?”
“He was scheduled to give a quarterly report to Colombian authorities about the Air Tunnel Denial program. What’s interesting is that he requested and received clearance for two pistols to be transported in the cargo hold.”
“Did he now?” Banner said. He circled Sumner’s name over and over again.
“That does seem like an odd request,” Whitter said. “Why would he need guns for a speech about monitoring radar? Do you think he was involved with the hijacking?”
Stromeyer shook her head. “Doubtful, but the request is odd and we can’t overlook the possibility.”
“What about these other two?” Whitter pointed at the manifest list.
“Ah, yes, the Riveras. Both Colombian nationals flying home after a two-week stay in Miami. The Colombian government reports that Carlos used to be a midlevel operative in the terrorist Colombian National Self-Defense paramilitary group, or the CSD, before he was captured by the Colombian army. Now that the CSD has agreed to peace talks, he is one of the first of the former terrorists to claim benefits under the funds set aside by the U.S. and Colombia to aid in repatriating former CSD. Problem is, he was seen outside the real copilot’s door the morning before the flight. He appears to have aided the terrorists by killing the real copilot. So the first beneficiary of our new program to end terrorism ends up using the funds we paid him to expand it.”
“Shit,” Whitter said. He pointed to the tin still on the desk. “Is that aspirin?”
“Be my guest,” Stromeyer said. She slid the tin toward Whitter.
9
THREE HOURS AFTER LEAVING THE AIRSTRIP, RODRIGO AND THE passengers detonated their first land mine. The lead passenger never knew what hit him. One moment he had stopped to hack at the foliage, and the next he blew up, his body thrown several feet into the air with the blast. Shrapnel hit the two passengers next to him, cutting their faces.
The passengers screamed and charged backward. The panicked people ran right into the guerrillas, pushing them aside in the chaos. They poured back down the path like rats fleeing a fire.
Alvarado heard Luis roar from the middle of the pack. “Stop, you stupid fools!” He shot his machine gun into the air.
The people kept running. Several other guerrillas followed Luis’s lead and peppered the sky with bullets in an attempt to slow the stampede. Alvarado used his gun as a club and clubbed the people who pushed past him. Alvarado saw Luis, now standing in the middle of the path, hammering the trees with shot. Low-lying branches cracked and tree branches and bits of bark and leaves flew onto the people, frightening them even more.
Luis roared threats. “Stop running or the next round will kil
l you all!”
The passengers kept moving. They clawed at one another, each trying to get ahead of his neighbor. They flowed off the path and into the tree line.
“Stop moving! Stay on the path! The mines are laid in patterns. You keep running and you will hit another!” Alvarado screamed.
Tall Man yanked one of the passengers back onto the path just as another plunged off it and triggered a second land mine. The resulting explosion blew off the passenger’s arm from the elbow down.
The passengers froze. A woman sank to her knees and put her hands over her eyes.
Luis stormed up to the injured man, who lay groaning in the leaves next to the path. Luis shot him in the head.
The shot echoed through the mountains. The people left remained still. Only the sound of Luis’s heavy breathing, and a woman gasping, could be heard. Everyone else stood like statues, unmoving.
Rodrigo marched over to the gasping woman. About sixty, with graying hair, she sat on the path, her body heaving in its attempt to get air.
Luis yelled at her. “What is wrong with you?”
The woman spoke between gasps. “Heart condition. I lost my medication in the crash. I need a hospital. I can’t continue.” Luis pointed his gun at her. She sat up as straight as she could and looked him in the eye.
“May God have mercy on your soul,” she said. She pulled a rosary out of her pocket. She clutched it in her hand while she stared Rodrigo down. He looked at the cross, then at her.
“If you can’t continue, you stay here.” Rodrigo turned to the passengers. “Now get back in line. All of you!” The passengers formed back into a line along the path, stepping carefully. All evidence of the last minute’s panic was gone. They huddled next to one another as if afraid to move.
“You.” Luis pointed to a male passenger. “My English is not so good. You understand Spanish?”
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