Girl on a Plane (3 page)

Oh God. Marni.

A woman behind me starts to sob.

The little boy leans very slowly toward me and says quietly, “Where did the captain say we're going?”

I keep my eyes on the gun. “Jordan,” I whisper. “He said Jordan. You all right?”

He nods but moves his arm close to mine. It's trembling.

“What's your name?” I say, staring ahead.

“Tim.”

“I'm Anna. Don't worry. I'm sure this will all be over soon.” I feel the boy on the other side tense.

Huge sweat rings bloom under the hijacker's arms. His black hair lies slicked down over his forehead.

Suddenly his bulging eyes stare directly at me. I go hot, cold, concentrate on the cream chair back that's in front of me. There's a stain there shaped like a boot.

“Who
is
that man?” Tim asks. “What does he want?”

I wait till the hijacker looks the other way, then lean forward and duck below the seat so that he can't see my head. “He's a Palestinian, Tim,” I whisper. “They were chucked off their land in a war, and I think they're trying to get it back. They're taking us to an airstrip in the desert.” And I remember my friend Samir taking me into his dad's study a few days ago to show me pictures of where he used to live in Palestine, in a white house surrounded by olive groves.

“I have a friend,” I whisper, “who used to live in Palestine.”

The little boy looks at me. “Is your friend a hijacker too?”

“No,” I say. “Not all Palestinians are hijackers. His family fled during the war with Israel when he was younger. Luckily, his dad got a job in Bahrain.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. This is Captain Gregory again. Thank you for remaining calm. I've been asked by the two hijackers to tell you that there's another member of the PFLP sitting in the aisle seat in row twenty, holding a black briefcase full of explosives.”

I hear gasps. People look around, trying to spot the hijacker. A bolt of panic shoots through me. I feel cold, sick.

Tim touches my arm. “Why has he got explosives? Is he going to blow us up?”

Coils of fear squirm in my gut. I try to keep my voice steady. “He'd be blowing himself up too, then. So I expect it's just a threat to make us do as they say.”

I can't do this. I can't. Please, let me put my head down on my table. Let me close my eyes. Let me go to sleep.

“Are you scared?” Tim asks, with the ghost of a breath.

“Yes,” I say. “I am, a bit.”

“Me too.” He stares ahead. He's very good at being quiet. Must be practice. Boarding school after lights-out.

“We'll be all right,” I say. I turn a little and look at him, attempt a smile.

I try not to look at the jittery hijacker again. Instead I stare through the gap in the seats in front of me. It's only a few inches wide, but I can see the armrests, each with a metal flip-top ashtray cut into it, all the way to the bulkhead at the front. The arms resting on them are all still.

I glance quickly at the boy on my other side. He's sitting stiffly with his head back, his eyes closed. An Arab man sitting across the aisle with his wife and child twists around a little in his seat, looking down the aisle for the man with the explosives, I suspect. But then he glances up at Sweaty and thinks better of it.

“Ladies and gentlemen.”
It's the captain again.
“If we are to stay safe, we must remain calm, keep quiet, and do exactly what the hijackers say—​or, they say, they will detonate the bomb. Now, in a minute the hijackers will come through the cabin. They want you to hand in your passports, open at your picture for them to check. After they've been stamped with the Revolutionary Airstrip stamp, they say they will be returned to you. Please cooperate with them, and please remain quiet and calm. I'll speak to you all again soon.”

A giant of a man suddenly pushes through the curtain with a machine gun slung over one shoulder. His broad face, framed with thick, curly hair and a dark beard, is tense. Businesslike, he begins collecting passports from the passengers at the front, piling them up in his huge hands. He looks strangely detached, as if he's just going through the motions.

As he begins to make his way down the cabin, we all scrabble around, looking for our passports, and it feels good to be doing something. I drag my shoulder bag from where it lies slumped at my feet. The older boy is already turning his passport over and over in his hands. He puts it down on his lap, picks it up again, opens it at the photo. I read his name.

“David,” I say.

“Yes.” He turns and looks through me, his voice miles away.

“I'm Anna,” I say quietly. “He's Tim.” Tim raises his hand in a half wave.

David looks at us as if perplexed, then looks back down at his passport.

“Have you found yours?” I ask Tim. He nods. “And Fred's?”

He looks up at me, his eyes bright. “
He
hasn't got one, silly!”

Suddenly the hijacker's machine gun clunks against David's seat. He's wearing a bullet belt. I've never seen one so close-up. The bullets look polished,
contained.
And sharp, and puncturing. I see shards of twisted metal in bloody flesh, in shattered bones.

The giant hijacker stops to tidy his pile of passports. I'm shocked by his immaculately clean hands, his square fingernails, the dark wrist hair curling around his metal watch strap. His jeans and white T-shirt look so ordinary. Washed and ironed. He's made of flesh and blood. And yet he might kill us.

He takes David's passport, looks straight at me, smiles grimly, and holds out a huge hand. As I give him my passport, my fingers brush his, and I pull back, electrified.

He takes Tim's and moves on down through the cabin.

“Did you see?” Tim whispers. “His head nearly touched the ceiling.”

“Yes,” I say. “One's a giant, and the other one is seriously sweaty.”

“Charming pair,” David mutters.

We fall silent as the sweaty one brushes past to go to the back of the plane. When it's clear again, I ask David if he can see the man with the bomb.

“It's row twenty,” I say. “About ten back.”

David twists around and looks down the aisle. “There's just a foot sticking out. A black lace-up.” He turns to me. “He's probably wearing a suit.”

“The boss, you think?”

He shrugs. The Giant and Sweaty walk back up into first class, loaded with passports.

“Weird,” David says. “Everyone was talking about hijackings, but I never thought it would happen to me. Stupid, really.”

“I know,” I say. “People were teasing me about it too, but I didn't think it could actually happen. Why do you think they want our passports?”

“To find out who we all are, where we come from, I suppose. They're probably looking for Israelis.”

“Why?” Tim asks.

David leans forward. “The PFLP hijacked four planes on Sunday, all heading for America. Two of them have been taken to a place in the Jordanian desert. Another one, a Pan Am flight, got blown up in Cairo after everyone had gotten off.”

“And the fourth?” I ask.

“That was an Israeli plane, El Al. The two hijackers on that one were overcome by the crew. The plane made an emergency landing at Heathrow. One hijacker was killed; the other's in prison in London. But that's the plane the PFLP really wanted, the one from Israel.”

“Why?” Tim asks again.

“It was the Israelis, they say, who drove them off their land.”

As our plane hums on and on toward Beirut, David takes a battered James Bond paperback from the webbed seat pocket in front of him. Tim follows suit, pulling a Paddington Bear story from his satchel. I look at them in disbelief. How can they think of reading with all this going on? But they do.

In the end, and reluctantly, I take
Wuthering Heights
from my bag. It's a required text, and I should have read it and taken notes over the holidays. But, of course, I was too busy having a good time. That was then.

I try hard to concentrate, but my eyes keep glazing over. I'm reading the same line again and again. So instead I listen to the throb of the plane, to David turning a page, to the man talking quietly to the woman behind me. She's stopped sobbing now and only occasionally gives a great, juddering sigh.

The hijackers have allowed the crew to get up. They've tied back the blue curtain between us and first class, so now I can see a few of the passengers in the left aisle seats there. They're being tended to by the chief steward. He's handing a whiskey to a large bald man smoking a cigar. The girl behind him has red-blond hair and a cropped top and is frantically filing her nails with an emery board. I stare at the two red and white Exit signs on either side of the curtains.
Exit.
What a strange word. And where precisely can we exit
to?
There
is
no exit now. Not
that
kind.

I might die up here, walled in between rows and rows of seats.

The thought makes me feel sick and panicky again, so I push it away and watch the man and woman directly in front of me turning to whisper to each other. I can see the color of her eyes (blue) and the black hairs in his nostrils. If I put out my hand, I could touch her cheekbone.

I'm feeling restless and claustrophobic. The chair fabric is hot and prickly under my bare legs, and my arms are cramped in to my body. David's taking up most of the space on our armrest, and Tim's resting Fred's tin on the other one. I long to stretch out. If I did, one arm would touch the window and the other, the far edge of David's seat. Instead I reach up toward the low ceiling as if to change the nozzle on the air-conditioner cone. My fingertips only just graze the light button. Next I push my legs out and swing them up under the seat in front of me. I can feel the soft life jacket. It's crazy, but knowing it's there makes me feel a little better.

Tim shifts the tin onto his lap, so I rest my arm on the armrest and fiddle with the built-in ashtray, opening and shutting the lid. There's a pile of old, gray ash in there. The smell of it wafts up. David stops reading, holds his book between his knees, marking his place with a finger, and frowns at me. I stop playing with the ashtray. He goes back to his book. I notice that the woman in front of me has her hair fixed back with bobby pins; they remind me of Marni.

Does Marni know? What will she say when she does?

Marni, I'm being hijacked.
The words rush around my head. Unleashed. Impossible to absorb.
You said it hardly ever happened. But it has. Don't let the boys fly tomorrow, Marni. Stay there. All of you. Don't fly.
The woman behind me lets out one of her shuddering sighs.
Will I ever see you again, Marni? If I die, will it hurt?

Fear prickles my skin. Tears rise. A sob grips me.

“I HAVE TO GO!” a man shouts from behind me. “I MUST GO!” he bellows. “I HAVE TO USE THE TOILET! I MUST BE ALLOWED TO USE . . .”

“SIT IN YOUR SEAT!” Sweaty's voice, high and shrill, rises over his. The three of us turn around to watch, half kneeling on our seats. Sweaty charges toward the middle-aged man standing in the aisle and pushes him roughly down in his seat. The man stands back up, his face red and flustered, his gray hair tousled. There's a scuffle. The woman behind me covers her face. The man with the bomb briefcase lifts it to his chest, hugs it as if it's precious. The Giant strides down the aisle toward Sweaty. Both hijackers train their guns on the standing man.

I shrink down, can't watch, shut my eyes, wait for the shots.

The cabin will depressurize. We'll all be sucked out.

My hands clutch the seat.
FOR GOD'S SAKE, SIT DOWN,
I scream inside. The fear in my chest, tightening like a vise, takes my breath away.

The plane hangs in space.

There's a flurry of air as Rosemary, the stewardess, walks down the aisle with her hands up. “Let me help,” she says. “Please, let me help.” Her voice is clear and reasonable and calm. “The passengers will need to go to the toilets.” She keeps talking. “What about letting them go one by one? I'll go with them. It's not a trick, I promise. I'll make sure nothing happens.”

I climb back up again to peer over the back of my seat. Tim and David are half standing. The hijackers' guns point at Rosemary now.

“Wait here!” the Giant says, squeezing past her. He strides back to the man with the bomb briefcase and talks quietly in Arabic with him. Rosemary persuades the passenger to sit down.

The Giant marches back down the aisle. “One only,” he says to Rosemary, holding up a finger. “With you. Only one at a time.”

“Thank you.” She reaches out to the seated man. “Come this way.” He stands, and she follows him down the aisle to the toilets at the back.

The man with the briefcase places it down by his feet.

I sit back down.

David looks at me, his face ashen. “We're trapped inside a huge metal bomb.”

“What if someone else does something really stupid?” I say.

“Well, that'll be it,” David says. “He'll blow us up. Christ.” He looks away. “This is shit.”

I can't speak. My tray clatters down. I put my elbows on it and rest my head in my hands.
I'm going to die here, surrounded by strangers. Disappear. Become nothing.

The hard lump of fear in my chest flickers and glows . . . blazes. Tears sting my eyes.
Endless nothing . . .

Stop. STOP IT. Breathe. Just breathe. Say something calm.

Calm.

I'm Anna. I'm going to be all right.

I'm going to be all right. Breathe. Quietly.

Quietly . . . I was born fifteen years ago . . .

And I hear her voice. Marni, speaking the words that used to hypnotize me to sleep when I was little: “It's two a.m. . . . on a freezing February morning. We're in the car, Dad and I, on the way to the hospital. But you're in such a hurry . . .” Her voice smiles. “And then there you are—​in the car . . . eyes wide open, looking up at me, listening. All ready . . . all ready for life.”