Crashers (41 page)

And she followed Isaiah.

 

“This is the part where we go through our preflight mantra,” Isaiah said, tightening his shoulder straps. “But since none of that stuff will make any sense to you, we'll just skip right along to the next thing: getting airborne.”

“Isaiah.” Kiki reached over and touched his forearm. “We're doing the right thing.”

Isaiah said, “Famous last words,” and kicked over engine number one.

 

Turning the Vermeer around involved crossing the median. If they got stuck in the mud, their harebrained stunt would be over before it began. But they didn't get stuck.

The giant jetliner turned slowly, creaking onto the empty southbound lanes of Interstate 5. The road ahead was still empty of moving vehicles. People who'd pulled off to the side sat in their cars, eyes glued to the spectacle they'd be telling their grandchildren about in decades to come.

Lining up on the fast lane, the Vermeer's wings hung over the shoulder of the road to the left and over one of the northbound lanes to the right. Isaiah goosed the engines and began rolling back down the highway.

The plane picked up speed, spraying a V of rainwater in front of it, two horizontal tornadoes of swirling water forming behind it. Isaiah's hands nudged the throttle controls forward, nodding to himself as if he'd done this a thousand times on a thousand different highways.

“Looking good,” Kiki shouted over the roar. She wasn't fooling either of them. She had no idea how it was looking. Isaiah appreciated the cheerleading nonetheless.

Of course,
he reminded himself,
she doesn't know about the overpass lurking in the gloom ahead.

Walter Mulroney was at the wheel of one of the Sentras as Peter Kim pored over a badly folded map, trying to find his way through a labyrinth of twisting rural roads that connected downtown Valence to Salem without getting on the clogged I-5. The men careened around a muddy corner and Peter said, “Left here. Left! Your other left!”

Walter cranked it to the left. Visibility was pretty bad, and it took him a moment to realize that they were crossing an overpass above the highway. “There are straight-shot farm roads on the west side of I-Five,” Peter explained. “We should be able to get even with those idiots, then hike to the highway on foot. Then, we'll just talk them out of this stu—”

Walter stomped on the brakes. The Sentra skidded, the nose coming around. They stopped, halfway across the overpass, facing the wrong way.

“What the hell?” Peter spat. He knew Walter didn't approve of obscenities, but he didn't much care. “Are you out—”

The shriek of the Vermeer's four massive engines battered the car like a physical force. The wide-body rose from the south, blotting out the clouds, hurling its shadow across the raised roadway and the Sentra, blocking the rain, if only for a second.

Walter leaned forward, mouth open, eyes staring up at the retracting landing gear. He could see wear patterns on the treads of the great tires.

Peter stared up, too. The sliding, floating mass of metal over his head reminded him of a scene from
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
.

The Vermeer passed on by.

Its thrust tube of rainwater hit the Sentra a second later, rocking the car, maxing out its shock absorbers, lifting both right-side wheels off the road for just a second.

Then the jet was gone, the wake vortex dissipating into the clouds. The Sentra quaked back down onto its shock absorbers.

Walter and Peter sat there for a while. Finally, they looked at each other.

Walter Mulroney's voice cracked. “Fuck! Me!”

THE SUN WAS BRUTAL. Even Daria's Middle Eastern complexion and upbringing couldn't alter that fact. At least, by being cuffed to the clothes pole, her shadow had cooled it enough so that she could lean back against it without blistering.

Every breath was a fine agony. Her tongue played along the teeth on her left side, found a cracked tooth.

Sweat discolored the ground beneath her. Pretty soon, she'd stop sweating. That's when heatstroke would set in.

Grunting with pain, she curled her legs up against her butt. She twisted, reaching for her boot. The razor blade was still there. Big deal. If there was an old spy trick for defeating a regulation pair of FBI-issue handcuffs with a double-sided razor, they hadn't taught it in the Mossad. It didn't even make a decent weapon—being sharp on both sides, she'd be as likely to slice open her own hand as any attacker.

Her mouth was dry and she tasted dust on her teeth. Between each labored breath, her thoughts fell morbidly on her case agent, Ray Calabrese. She'd failed him, and she knew with icy certainty that failing Ray meant dooming some airliner.

As the thought fermented in her head, the sound of another jet fought through the fog of fury and recrimination. She glanced up, squinting. A
twin-engine aircraft cleft the cloudless sky. Two more old vapor trails were visible.

Daria didn't know any of the details, but she suddenly realized the strategic value of this festering excuse for a motel. It sat beneath a bustling air corridor leading to the airports of Southern California.

The swap-out sliced through silver-gray clouds, soaring into the bright blue sky of southern Oregon. It was going on 5
P.M.

Isaiah Grey relaxed his grip a little. When he looked over, Kiki winked at him.

He reached for the intraship PA system. “You boys can get up now. This bus is so light, it'll only take us about two hours to reach L.A.”

He clicked off the system and leaned back. “So. You and Tommy, huh?”

Kiki's face burned a bright pink. “Isaiah!”

“Oh, please.” He rolled his eyes. “This morning was the first time that man has smiled since he hit Oregon. Go get him. I'll hail regional air traffic, declare an NTSB emergency and let them know why we're in the air. Honestly? I think we're the only craft flying today. Should have the sky to ourselves until we clear this weather.”

Dennis could barely feel the thrum of the engines of the luxurious Gulf-stream. He'd been in Cadillacs that had bumpier rides. He leaned back, admired the burnished wood paneling of the fuselage, the big-screen TV with satellite feed, the well-kept furniture, the full bar. This, he thought, was the life. Soon, it would be his life.

The pilot's voice drifted over the PA. “Sir? We're about an hour out of LAX. Is there anything we can do for you?”

“Yes. Divert to Victorville Airport.”

He listened to the hiss of the PA system. “Ah, we can do that. It's not much of an airfield. Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Dennis said, and snuggled deeper into the fantastically comfortable seat.

David Singh swiveled in his seat. “Can I have the PA, then?”

Behind him, Teddy McCoy pulled on his Mickey Mouse ears and flicked the appropriate toggles, activated the PA system, then nodded to David.

The captain adjusted the microphone attached to his headset. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. The good news is, we're facing less head wind that I'd anticipated. We should be reaching Los Angeles in a little under two hours.”

 

The Sinn Fein members exchanged looks. The Ulster Unionists exchanged looks. They sat on the upper deck of the double-decker jet—actually higher than the flight deck, which was located forward and directly between the upper and lower seating areas. The delegates occupied seats in the first ten rows of the jet, and, if it had been configured differently, this definitely would have been first class.

As it was, the A380 had been configured to make the most money possible for the first five years of its life. That is: it was all economy seating throughout the vast fuselage.

In this configuration, the jet carried 838 passengers. They, plus the 9 crew members, accounted for a staggering 847 souls.

Almost six times the number of people who'd been on board Cascade-Air Flight 818.

It hurt like hell doing it, but Daria edged herself around the pole. She was no longer facing the sun. At least she didn't have to squint, and the sunburn would cover her arms and legs and midriff evenly.
It's important to keep up appearances,
she told herself. She tried to approximate a smile, which just opened her split lip again.

“Lovely day, isn't it.”

Keith O'Shea, the dark-haired Irishman, had sauntered up behind her. Daria bent forward, covered her mouth with one arm stretched around the pole, and coughed dryly into her fist.

O'Shea circled in front of her and lowered himself to his haunches,
close enough that their knees touched. He wore a wifebeater and a red bandanna around his neck. A Glock model 27 was stuffed in his belt. He held a bottle of water and a long military knife with a serrated six-inch blade and a handle made of black polymer.

He grinned at her, a handsome rake of a man who knew, in his heart, that every woman desired him.

“Drink?”

Daria stared up at him, breathing shallow.

“No?” He took a long gulp. “He shouldn't've trusted you. O'Meara, that is. He was always a wanker.”

Daria said, “Think so?” but her voice was husky and as dry as gunpowder, the words slurred as if her tongue had swollen to match her parched, cracked lips. Her hair hung lank in front of her eyes and she stared at him through the straight, black locks.

“Johnser, too,” O'Shea said. He reached over and ran the tip of his knife along the muscles of her calf. The tip left a soft red trail as it passed.

Daria stared at him through her hair. O'Shea smiled languidly and shifted his weight, one hand down on the ground, shoulder softly touching Daria's shoulder. The knifepoint drew along her exposed thigh. He sipped more water.

“Why here?” she asked, the words more or less intelligible.

He shrugged. “We've a friend who can drop an airliner in our laps. The only reason we're here is, sometimes people walk away from plane crashes, don't they. Our job's to make sure no one walks away from this one.”

And this far out into the Mojave Desert, Daria knew, they could swoop in and take care of any survivors long before rescue crews could arrive.

“There are . . . Catholics . . . aboard?” It was difficult to understand her, her words were so slurred.

O'Shea winked at her. “Ye need to speak up, lass. Catholics? Oh, aye. There're IRA butchers on board, to be sure, but we could kill those fuckers at will, and twice on Sunday. No, we're aimed at the Protestant delegates.”

Daria looked confused.

“Jay-sus, girl. Killing a Catholic is something any of us could do—did do—by the time we were seventeen. But these fucking delegates? They're talking about giving the land to the pope. They're pissing away Ireland, a bit at a time. When we crash this jet and kill the Catholics, we'll show
them the respect any soldier shows his enemy. It'll be a military death, dignified-like. But the Protestants? They're bugs. I'm hoping they survive the crash. I'm hoping to kneecap them and watch the desert take 'em.”

He'd enjoy it, too,
she thought.

“Plus, fucking the Good Friday Accord on American soil, destroying an airplane, it'll be 9/11 all over again. Remember how badly the Yanks screwed Iraq? We'll finally be rid of their meddling.”

He took a hit of the water, his Adam's apple bobbing. Wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “Look, lass. This is crap, this. Chaining you up like a dog, in this sun. O'Meara has no idea how to treat a lady. That's always been his problem.”

Daria dredged up enough saliva to say, “Oh?”

O'Shea winked at her. His hand rose and the knife danced along his knuckles, flipped easily end over end and returning to his palm, like some sort of conjurer's trick. He handled it like a virtuoso, studying her eyes for fear.

“We need to know who you are and who you work for. Where your mates are. What they're planning. All of that. But we'll get fuck-all doing it O'Meara's way. It's ham-handed.”

Daria raised the outer curves of her eyebrows in question.

The knife flashed and the shirt button between her breasts spiraled away, landing in a puff of dust. Only the knot of her shirttails held the cloth together under her breasts.

“My way's better,” O'Shea whispered. The knifepoint glided along the inner curve of her breast.

Daria let her torso edge forward, leaned into the knife. “Give us a kiss,” she slurred.

O'Shea didn't know if it was heatstroke or a trick, or if she got off on it. But he was no fool. He reached around, tested the cuffs on her wrists. They were secure.

The knife danced easily over his knuckles again. He slammed it into the ground, half the blade disappearing into the dirt. He leaned in, grabbed the back of her head, and kissed her. It was a hungry kiss, openmouthed. He felt her tongue, dry as sandpaper, slip past his lips.

Daria took the deepest breath she could and exhaled for all she was worth, as if giving O'Shea CPR. Her rib made a creaking noise and spots danced before her eyes.

She had no spit to give, but when she'd coughed into her fist, she'd slid the two-edged razor onto the dry surface of her tongue. When she blew
into his mouth, it shot off her tongue and lodged itself in the soft tissue at the back of Keith O'Shea's throat.

O'Shea's eyes flared open and he pulled back. He had absolutely no idea what was happening. It felt like a live electrical wire had touched the back of his skull. He tried to say something but the act of moving his tongue filled his mouth with hot, sticky blood.

His hands rose to his throat. He gagged, the gag reflex increasing the pain in his head a hundredfold. He leaned forward, blood drooling from between his lips. He tried to close his mouth and felt like his tongue was caught on fire. The water bottle fell to the ground, water gurgling onto the hardpan.