Ancestor (33 page)

She stopped. So did they. The snow swirled around them. She looked each of them in the eye. Her friends. Her family. “Do you guys trust me?”

All three nodded.

“Then do the inspection, and don’t ask any more questions.” She turned and walked toward the hangar. Her friends followed. The less the boys knew, the less chance of someone slipping up, tipping their hand to Magnus. If he had killed Jian, he wouldn’t think twice about whacking the C-5 crew.

They entered the plane, leaving the growing wind to howl outside. Once inside, Sara stopped to give everyone instructions.

“Miller, Cappy, do a status check on the flight harnesses for each cow.”

The Twins exchanged a glance.

“Just in case, right?” Miller said.

“Yeah,” Cappy said. “In case we had to
hypothetically
fly in bad weather?”

Sara nodded. The Twins nodded back, then quickly and quietly went about their duties. Sara walked down the aisle between the cows, Alonzo at her side.

“Know what?” he said. “I have this crazy urge to do the preflight checklist.”

“I’d start in the lab,” Sara said. “You know, make sure all the equipment is locked down. Just in case.”

“Just in case, right. Because far be it from me to tell you that storm coming in is going to be a high-toned son of a bitch.”

“No way we’d fly out in that,” Sara said. “But after the storm passes … anyway, doesn’t hurt to be prepared.”

“Say no more,
mon capitaine.”
Alonzo walked to Tim’s lab area and got started.

Sara moved through the barn toward the fore ladder, walking past the cows, suddenly very annoyed with the ever-present smell of cattle and the stink of cow shit. Alonzo was right. That storm
was
a high-toned son of a bitch, and by the time they prepped the C-5 for flight it would be right on top of them. They couldn’t safely bust out until tomorrow, when the weather broke. That gave her one night to talk Colding into leaving.

She climbed the front ladder, reached the top and walked into the cockpit—

—to find Magnus Paglione sitting in the comm chair. He smiled at her. The cockpit lights played off his freshly shaved head. Sara’s heart beat double time. Adrenaline shivered through her body.

“Sara, are you okay? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

“You scared the piss out of me, Mister Paglione. What the hell are you doing in here?”

Magnus shrugged. “Just checking out the plane, making sure everything was in good shape. You don’t mind if your boss checks up on you, do you, Sara?”

She forced a smile. “Of course not.”

“Is it still getting nasty outside?”

Sara felt sweat trickling down her armpits. Maybe he’d decided she
knew too much. Maybe he was here to kill her, too. “Yes sir, still nasty. Wind is already picking up. That storm will be on top of us real fast.”

“I’ll bet it would be difficult to fly this big bird in weather like that.”

Sara nodded, perhaps a little too enthusiastically, grateful to have an actual subject to discuss. “Oh
hell
yes. Taking the C-5 up now would be downright stupid.”

“But you could do it,” Magnus said. He stood up and walked closer, breaking the three-foot cushion. The killer stared down at her. This close to him, all alone, she felt like a child, home from school after another disciplinary incident, waiting for her father to make her go fetch the belt.

No, not a child … she felt like an insect.

Magnus reached up slowly and brushed a flake of snow off her shoulder. “I bet a hotshot like you
could
fly this beast into that storm.”

Her voice came out small and thin. “I … yeah … we could do it. You know, in an emergency, I suppose.”

Magnus smiled. “Well, consider this an emergency. Danté has intel that Colonel Fischer could be here as early as tomorrow morning. You’re bugging out tonight.”

Sara stared up at him, fear vanishing in the face of swelling anger. “You can’t be serious, Magnus. I wasn’t yanking your chain about that storm.”

“I’m serious, too,” Magnus said. He leaned down. Sara couldn’t help but flinch a little as his scarred face, with its odd violet eyes, stopped only inches from hers. She smelled Yukon Jack on his breath.

“I want you flying off this island by twenty-thirty hours,” he said. “Not a second later, you got that?”

His voice was no longer the smooth, calm monotone she’d heard all this time. Now it crackled with authority, a voice that had undoubtedly ordered men to attack, to shoot, to kill.

“Yes sir.” The words came out of her mouth of their own volition.

Magnus stepped back, then nodded once with the flair of a Prussian officer snapping his boot heels together. He slipped past her and out of the cockpit.

Sara shivered. Maybe the storm wouldn’t be as bad as she thought. And even if it were, it had to be better than being stuck here with Magnus Paglione.

“YOU TWO FUCKTARDS must be on crack to send us up in this weather.”

Sara. Such a way with words. And yet Colding did, indeed, feel like a Grade-A Fucktard, because sending her up in said weather was the only way he could think of to get her to safety. Like that made any sense—get her to safety by putting her in severe danger.

Magnus drove Clayton’s Bv206. Colding sat in the passenger seat, Sara in the back. That’s how bad and how fast the storm had hit—they needed the Nuge to drive down the half-mile road from the mansion to the hangar. Colding had seen many winter storms, but never one from the vantage point of an island in the middle of Lake Superior. Wind seemed to shake the very ground, the clenched fist of a roaring elemental god. The snow didn’t fall, really—it permeated. Thick sheets blew in all directions, including up. And this was just the front end of a killing blizzard that had already cut visibility to a mere twenty yards.

Sara leaned forward over the front bench seat. “Let me make this clear. See this snow blowing fuckall over the place? In the air force we’d ground all flights.”

“You’re not in the air force,” Magnus said. “I got your point the third
and
fourth times you said it. The tenth is just overkill.” Magnus wore a big black parka, the hood pulled so far forward it hid his face. Colding couldn’t help but think he looked like a modernized version of the Grim Reaper—Death drives a Bv206.

Hazy lights grew visible as the Hummer crept forward. Visibility was so bad they were fifty yards away before Colding could make out the monstrous plane’s tail, and even then the front of the plane remained hidden by the storm. In the whipping haze, the black plane’s dimensions looked even larger, almost otherworldly.

Magnus stopped the Bv206 a few yards from the C-5. The wind’s demonic shriek even drowned out the idling jet engines. Colding, Magnus
and Sara hurried out and scrambled up the rear ramp, fighting the wind all the way.

Most of the plexiglass stalls held an
extremely
pregnant cow, each suspended in a flight harness, hooves dangling just a half inch off the ground. IV tubes ran into each of their necks. The animals seemed surprisingly calm. Their vacant expressions showed no awareness of the danger around them, of the gale-force winds that would soon shake the plane like a martini mixer.

Sara pulled back her parka hood. Short blond hair stuck up in all directions, much like it did after several hours of lovemaking. “We have to wait.” She looked at them both, but Colding knew the words were meant for him. She was begging him to back her play. “I’m telling you it’s
insane
to fly out in weather like this. We could lose the whole project, not to mention the collective asses of me and my crew.”

Why didn’t she get it? This was her shot to get off the island, away from Magnus. “Fischer could be on the way,” Colding said. “We have to get you out of here now.”

“Come
on
, guys,” Sara said. “It’s not like anyone is going to land here in this weather. Just wait for the main part of the storm to blow over. We’ll fly out while it’s shit weather, but still doable.”

“I’m
done
with this,” Magnus said, his voice suddenly so loud even the docile cows turned to look. “You fly out of here right now.”

Colding mentally begged her to stop complaining, to just play ball.

“I refuse,” Sara said. “Flights are my call, we’re waiting. I just don’t like it.”

“Shut
up,”
Colding snapped. “Nobody said you had to fucking
like it
. Just do your goddamn job and fly the plane!”

She stared at him, her eyes showing more than a bit of betrayal. Colding instantly hated himself, but he had to get her off the island before her complaints made Magnus change his mind.

Magnus smiled, looking from Sara, to Colding, back to Sara again. “And remember, princess—total radio silence. If Fischer is out there, we can’t tip our hand. No radio until you’re thirty miles out from Manitoba, got it?”

Sara nodded.

“Good,” Magnus said. “You’re flying southwest to get out of the storm as quickly as possible. From there you’ll circle around the storm, then northeast to avoid the radar at Thunder Bay International. After that you’ll head for the home office. Jian, Gunther, Colding, Andy and I are staying here for now. Colding, let’s go.”

Sara looked uncomfortable at the mention of Jian’s name, but she said nothing.

Colding followed Magnus out of the cage and down the ramp. Sara’s safety, and the safety of the others, now rested squarely on her piloting skills.

A BRUTAL DOWNDRAFT swatted the half-million-pound C-5 Galaxy, dropping the plane a rattling two hundred feet in the blink of an eye. Sara wondered—for the seventh time in the last fifteen minutes, by her count—if this was it. She pulled back on the yoke, fighting the hurricane-class winds. The gust abated as suddenly as it appeared, and she dragged the C-5 back to five thousand feet.

Alonzo looked white as a sheet, an impressive barometer of his nervous state considering his dark complexion. His head moved with sharp, birdlike movements as his eyes flitted from instrument to instrument.

“This is nuts,” he said. “We’ve got to put her down.”

“Where exactly would you like to do that? We’re over the middle of Lake Superior.”

A crosswind slapped the C-5, shaking it, rattling metal hard enough to make Sara’s teeth clack. She’d flown in some bad shit before, but nothing like this. “We’re here, ’Zo, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Now quit whining and help me get through this.”

If she could take a step back in time, maybe she’d have pulled her Beretta and taken her chances in a shoot-out rather than flying into this storm. Was Peej’s note for real? Was Jian actually dead, or was that just a trick to motivate her to fly out in this ridiculous weather? Was he just using her again?

No. Couldn’t be. He wanted to get her and the boys away from Magnus. Peej had no choice—Magnus had already killed Jian, which meant everyone else’s life wasn’t worth a plugged nickel. If this was her one chance to get off the island, to get her crew to safety, she had to take it.

The plane lurched right, yanking her body against her seat restraints. Even though the cows were another deck down, she heard them mooing, braying. The sound carried tangible terror. She shared the sentiment, wondering at the power of a storm that could knock the C-5 around with such ease.

Alonzo snapped a peek at the instrument panel, then looked at her, his
eyes wide. “That last gust was sixty-two knots.” Sweat drenched his face, but he kept his hands firmly on the yoke.

“Just be cool, ’Zo. Nothing to it.”

She focused on the instruments. She didn’t bother looking out the window; there was nothing to see but snow and ice.

THE C-5 FELL again, but only slightly this time. Compared with the roller-coaster ride of the past thirty minutes, the drop was barely noticeable.

“Wind down to forty knots,” Alonzo said. He looked better, relieved. They were now on the blizzard’s edge, still in significant danger, but it was nothing the C-5 couldn’t handle.

“Cue the Barry Manilow,” Sara said, “’cause it looks like we made it. I’d better see how the civvies handled that mess. Keep on this heading for another five minutes to get us some distance from the storm, then circle around it. See, ’Zo? I told you there was nothing to it.”

He smiled sheepishly. “Right, boss, nothing to it as long as you don’t mind wet-vaccing the poo streaks off my seat.”

She grabbed the handset to the in-plane intercom. “Deck two, deck two; everything okay back there?”

Rhumkorrf’s voice came back. “Are we quite finished with that tumultuous experience? I wouldn’t exactly call that the friendly skies.”

“You holding up okay, Doc?”

“I’m fine. I’m afraid I had some difficulty in retaining my preflight meal. I assume I am now free to mop about the cabin?”

Sara laughed. “Sure, Doc. Get yourself cleaned up. Don’t worry about it—I almost blew chunks myself. How’s Tim?”

“One of the cows fell out of the harness during flight. Tim is working on her.”