Onboard this cargo plane, there would be no cabin pressure with heat or cooling to keep me cozy. And there would be no restroom to speak of. But the prospect of flying the strictly functional skies didn’t dissuade me in the slightest.
“I’ll need a sleeping bag,” I said. “A backpack with a few supplies would be good. And a vehicle once I touch down.”
“These things,” Niilo answered, “much like everything, can be arranged.”
Chapter 22
Before dawn, I was up and at ’em.
Enid arrived, wearing her customary ripped jeans with a flowing black cotton blouse this time, and instead of red, purple winged eyeliner that matched her purple ballet flats. Without fanfare, she sashayed into my guest room carrying a rolled sleeping bag and the backpack I’d requested. When she upended the bag on the bed, a ball cap, bottled water, granola bars, hand wipes, gloves, a small tool kit, and a fat white envelope bounced onto the pale mauve comforter.
“Everything you need for your flight,” she declared.
“Even this?”
I picked up the envelope, found it stuffed with twenty-dollar bills.
Enid said, “You’ll need a little pocket money. Besides, Niilo wants you to know you’ll be well paid for your work. Or maybe Vivian Sternwood will.”
Enid winked.
I frowned.
Niilo needed to quit throwing money around. It didn’t impress me. But Enid had been right when she’d suggested I’d need pocket money. The FBI surely had an alert on my credit card accounts. They must’ve even frozen my checking and savings accounts altogether.
And sadly, in this world, a body couldn’t get very far without walking-around money.
“When you’re ready,” Enid said, glancing at her ever-present smartphone, “I’ll escort you to the car.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
I crammed a change of clothes and the green handbag carrying its contraband key alongside the other goodies in the backpack, lashed the bedroll to it, and slung the thing over my shoulder. The backpack wasn’t bulky and it fit snugly against the black, belted jacket I’d appropriated from the closet. Teamed with the dark-wash blue jeans, long-sleeved white T, and my own boots, I’d be able to go just about anywhere once I reached the DC area and not draw the attention my torn tan trousers and rumpled blazer would’ve earned.
“You’ve got law enforcement watching the gate,” I told her. “They’ll stop us moments after we leave the campus.”
Enid laughed as if I were a child who’d said the cutest thing.
“Oh, you thought I meant automobile. Believe me, Jamie, this isn’t going to be an issue.”
We left the Koti, took the elevator to the building’s first floor, and exited under an indigo sky.
Along the way, I saw neither hide nor hair of my host.
“Will Niilo be at the airfield?”
“No.”
Enid piled into one of Stellar Unlimited’s golf carts, touched her ID card to the reader built in the dash.
I clambered into the seat beside her.
She said, “Niilo doesn’t like leave-taking. But don’t worry. I know you’ll see him again soon.”
And with no more explanation than that, Enid stomped on the accelerator.
Stellar Unlimited’s glass-tiled structures whizzed by as we sped across the compound. Lights blazed in several of them, suggesting that the labs and offices were occupied despite the early hour. Niilo’s employees, it seemed, worked through the night like the shoemaker’s elves.
When we came upon a short, sleek structure built into one of the hillsides, Enid swerved into its portico. I couldn’t see through the façade’s blackened glass. And no sign outside designated what took place within.
“Your ID wouldn’t have opened this door.” Enid grinned.
She led the way to a pair of sliding panels tucked under the portico’s overhang. They didn’t part until she zipped her card through a specialized reader and punched in a complicated eight-digit sequence—but her credentials only gave us entrance to some kind of antechamber. Once the doors closed behind us, Enid ran through the protocol all over again to get us into the building proper.
This second set of sliding doors allowed us into nothing more than an expansive lobby. Except this lobby offered no elevators, no directory, and none of the trimmings other lobbies often had, like ficus trees or a bubbling water feature. It didn’t have a security guard or even an information desk—but in the dead center of the space ran an escalator, descending through the cream-tiled floor.
“After you,” Enid said.
I hopped onto the moving stairway, rode the conveyance down, down, down. As we traveled, Enid didn’t have eyes for anything but her cellphone. I, on the other hand, couldn’t stop marveling at my surroundings. Strips of white LED lights flicked on to illuminate dressed walls cut from bedrock. Sedimentary sandstone, shale, and more displayed beautiful striations—and the delicate fossils of thousands of sea creatures.
Still the escalator carried us deeper below ground. Four minutes later, the machine deposited us on some kind of subway platform. And smack dab in front of us, on tracks laid lower yet, a single-car bullet train vibrated alongside the platform’s painted yellow line.
Enid seized me in another cinnamon-scented hug. “Jamie, I’m going to miss you. It’s been real, you know?”
“Um, yes. I know.”
“Can I get you anything else before you go?”
“I’m good,” I told her. “Unless, of course, you’ve got a spare phone in your hip pocket.”
“Golly! I almost forgot!”
Enid did reach into her hip pocket then. She produced an oversized cellphone—seemingly identical to hers—built by a manufacturer I didn’t recognize. She thrust the device into my hands.
She said, “A mistake like that is how a First Assistant becomes nobody’s assistant.”
“Well, your secret’s safe with me.”
“Aw, that’s sweet of you. I ported your cell number, by the way. Anyone who dials your digits can reach you on this phone.”
“How did you know my cell—”
Niilo’s words came rushing back to me.
To know is the root of real power.
“Never mind.” I slipped the phone into one of my jacket’s many pockets. “Thanks, Enid.”
“Oh, Niilo had it built in our communications lab. Niilo thinks of everything.”
I couldn’t deny that.
“Just remember,” Enid added, “when you turn the phone on, and it connects with a cellular tower, the authorities will be able to locate you through triangulation.”
“I won’t forget.”
“Good, good.”
And with one more farewell, I left Enid behind to step onto Niilo Järvinen’s own personal bullet train. The doors of the car whispered shut behind me. I snagged a spot on a contoured fiberglass seat, propped my backpack between me and the window that looked out on more bedrock.
Generally speaking, the car was a dead ringer for those on Amtrak’s Acela line, LA’s Metro Rail, or even the United Kingdom’s BritRail. Only the seat cushions, patterned with a happy print of four-pointed stars, were the giveaway that this sweet setup belonged to a single individual. Well, that and the fact that I was its one and only passenger.
An electronic pulse warned me that that train was about to take off. And take off it did. With an acceleration rate that would’ve made drag race drivers salivate, Niilo’s private line barreled beneath the California hills and surfaced in the desert, graced by the rays of the rising sun.
In no time, sandy valleys gave way to plains. Niilo’s launch facility appeared on the horizon. The train slowed noticeably, dipped down underground, and slid to a halt, probably beneath the long bunker-like building I’d sighted from the air.
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I disembarked when the car’s doors opened.
And found myself on an empty platform much like the one I’d left behind.
“You the cargo?”
I turned to look and spied the intricate framework of a heavy-duty freight elevator at the end of the walkway. A lean man stood at the controls. With his tanned cheeks and cheerful crow’s-feet bracketing his eyes, he was no stranger to the elements. He’d tucked his thumbs in the slash pockets of his scuffed brown-leather jacket. The style of those jackets hadn’t changed a whole lot over the decades. As a general’s daughter, I recognized it. Originally meant to protect high flyers from the bitter cold of the upper atmosphere, fashion houses had reproduced them and called them bomber jackets. But this jacket—and the man who wore it—were the real deal.
“You’re the loadmaster,” I called in return and hiked my backpack a little higher as I set out to meet him.
“Call me Stephen,” he said, swinging the freight elevator’s gate wide so I could step into it with him. “Let me guess. You don’t have a name.”
“I do,” I told him. “But you might be better off not knowing what it is.”
Stephen’s weathered face split into a wide grin. The patch Velcroed to the shoulder of his coat bore Stellar Unlimited’s four-pointed star. But with his easy self-assurance and Wally Cleaver haircut, he had to be former US Air Force—and as such, there couldn’t be anyone better to fly with through the skies.
When we got outside and Stephen had pointed me into the passenger seat of a rough-and-ready Land Rover, he said, “You ever fly cargo before?”
“Nope.”
“It gets cold up there. And bumpy. We’re not like commercial airlines, either. We’re fast, but maybe not as fast as you’d want us to be.”
But the flight would have to be what it would be, since I didn’t have any other way to get back to Virginia. I didn’t say this, though, and Stephen said little else as we trundled past the tall scaffolds of Stellar Unlimited’s launch sites, the massive hangar, and out across the tarmac that reached into more desert.
Despite the early hour, heat devils danced across the asphalt. Shimmering at their heart was a smoky streak that had to be the aircraft. And even at a distance, it was enormous.
We sped closer. I could make out the plane’s sleek body, its unbelievable wingspan, and the great, gold four-pointed star sparkling on its tail. All in all, the thing was a monster—and the smudges around it, I realized, were front-loaders shuttling cargo into its hull.
The specks past that were people.
“Is that…Is that a Lockheed Starlifter?”
Stephen slipped me a sideways glance. “Sure is. Now, how does a lady like you know a thing like that?”
I didn’t reply. Because, thanks to my father’s previous occupation as a two-star general, I knew that the C-141, nicknamed the Starlifter, had been the military’s heavy hardware for nearly forty years. For many of those years, as an army brat, I’d seen these planes and their related models—the C-141B and C-141C—touch-and-go, and land and load, on army posts and when we visited air force installations alike.
The original Starlifter had begun its career keeping our soldiers supplied while they risked their necks in Vietnam. The last of them had been honorably retired after bringing relief to the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Now this particular plane had been given a second chance at life, shuttling cargo for a Finnish billionaire.
Amazing.
Stephen raced up to the hulk, just as a massive cargo door at its rear clanged shut. The plane dwarfed the fleet of forklifts gathered in its shadow. And made miniatures of the three men poring over a clipboard at its side.
Stephen and I climbed out of the Rover to join them. He introduced me to the others. We shook hands all around. None of them said as much, but they each had the look of air force veterans, one and all. And I was glad for that.
Not that my attitude made any difference to the pilot.
He was a mature man with enough silver in his hair to give my father a run for his money. When his copilot and navigator moved off to begin their final preflight checks, he said, “With all due respect, ma’am, flying cargo isn’t a cakewalk. It’s not too late for you to catch a flight at LAX.”
Of course, catching a flight at the Los Angeles International Airport would mean the authorities would likely catch me.
But this guy didn’t know that.
“If you’d rather not have me onboard,” I began, “I understand—”
The pilot, however, waved away my concern and offered me a kindly smile. “If cargo’s good enough for you and Niilo, it’s good enough for me.”
“It’s more than good enough,” I assured him.
He nodded curtly, spoke to Stephen. “Ready for wheels up?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then get Miss Cargo here into position. Have a good flight, ma’am. We’ll you see at Beldine Field.”
Chapter 23
Stephen accompanied me as I climbed up the sloping ramp and into the belly of the beast.
The interior of the Starlifter was cavernous and cold. And nearly every square foot of it was crowded with cargo. Wooden packing crates the size of Subarus and stenciled with strings of numbers had been strapped to rings in the metal floor.
Olive-green impact cases probably held sensitive instruments, but they could’ve carried refrigerators they were so large. These had been winched to the floor as well. Pallets, piled high with cardboard boxes, were shrink-wrapped tight and tied down. Last but not least, four specialized go-carts with six wheels apiece sporting off-road tread—and that looked like they could deliver the kids to school on Mars—had been driven to the front of the craft. Each tire had been immobilized with webbing, nylon restraints, and chain.
“Niilo manufactures most of this equipment here,” Stephen informed me. “He imports the rest of it. And we fly it wherever it needs to go, whether that’s his axillary lab outside DC or Cape Canaveral—you name it. We don’t get many passengers, though.”
I could see that. Originally, such planes had been outfitted to carry equipment, but also a small complement of troops, a medical team, and more human beings if the need arose. That need had often defined its mission in recent years. Planes like this one regularly ferried the injured from the Middle East to military hospitals in Germany. On this particular Starlifter, all that remained of that past were two aluminum-and-canvas jump seats, however.
“We fly with a skeleton crew,” Stephen explained. “Still, sorry to say there’s no room for you in the cockpit—even if federal regulations would allow it.”
“That’s all right. I don’t want to tangle with the feds.”
“Good on ya. Here, stow your gear. Strap into the seat like this.”
With buckles and belts, Stephen demonstrated.
“When we reach altitude, you can move if you want to, even stretch out on the floor. Don’t go far. Avoid the cargo. We can’t warn you about turbulence.”
“Got it,” I replied.
“Check your watch. I’ll leave the lights on for you, and in about eight hours, when you see ’em toggle on and off, that’s my signal to strap in again.”
I nodded.
Stephen left.
He sealed me into the arching steel tube. Its eerie artificial light made monoliths out of the packing crates. With a searing whine, the turbines along the plane’s wings revved. I couldn’t see them, closed-in as I was in the cargo bay, but I could sure feel them, and all their power, rumbling through me. More than that, I could sure as hell hear them.
When the engines reached a fever pitch, the Starlifter lurched forward. The plane slogged down the runway in an attempt to defy gravity. And then it did. For one beautiful, buoyant moment, I was weightless. We were airborne.
My ears popped with pressure again and
again. The knot in my stomach eased. So did the one in my neck.
I hadn’t realized I’d felt so tense.
As the temperature dropped, I released the restraints that held me in place. Grabbing my backpack, I staked out a spot on the steel floor, leery of the sway and pitch of the crates and the rock-and-roll of the carts as they shifted within their restraints. Sure, they were technically secure. But even forged chain could fail. And I didn’t want to be in the way if it did.
I wiggled into my sleeping bag for warmth. Enid or Niilo, one or the other, had selected a good one. Its high-tech fabric was thin and light, but that belied its insulating ability.
It would do the trick.
I snuggled down, planned my next move. For a long while, I was convinced white noise and rumbling were the only sounds I’d ever hear for the rest of my life. But then warmth and weariness overcame them and got the better of me, and I fell asleep.
I woke to find the plane banking hard to the right. This was a telltale sign that the pilot was indeed an air force veteran, trained to avoid antiaircraft fire. And that I needed to hightail it to my jump seat.
The landing rattled every bone in my body. And when the plane’s doors cranked open, Stephen’s was the first face I saw. Weathered worry lines formed a dent between his eyes.
“Hey, Cargo. How’d you make out?”
After enduring the roar of the plane’s engines, he could’ve been shouting for all I knew.
Maybe I was shouting, too.
“Stellar Unlimited’s the only way to fly,” I told him, though I was happy I wouldn’t have to do it again anytime soon.
“Glad to hear you say that.”
I slung my pack on my back and we walked down the ramp together.
Here in Virginia, at Beldine Field, not far from Dulles International Airport and the myriad of aeronautical and light industrial complexes that had sprung up in this neck of the woods, the spring sun had already begun to set on the western horizon. Pole lights lined up along the edge of a warehouse combated the oncoming darkness. In their shine, a bevy of men driving heavy equipment rushed to unload the rest of the cargo.
The Kill Chain Page 14