But Hershel was too polite.
“I have to go,” he told Annebet. “It was a pleasure meeting you.”
And so it started.
It wasn’t more than a few days later that Annebet and Marte came by Poppi’s store on the pretense of looking for Helga, but really so that Annebet could see Hershel again.
Helga’s parents had seen the way Hershel looked at her, the way she smiled at him, and that night at home, all hell had broken loose.
Helga had sat on the stairs and listened.
“She’s after your money!”
“How could you say that?” Hershel’s voice was thick with disbelief, with indignation. Hershel, who never raised his voice to anyone, was as close to getting loud as Helga had ever heard him. “Money is the last thing she cares about. If anything, she’s a communist, all right? She’s becoming a doctor so she can set up a free children’s clinic. She’s as beautiful inside as she is out!”
“Don’t fight,” Helga whispered, closing her eyes, wishing Marte were there beside her. “Please don’t fight.”
“Who’s fighting?”
“Poppi and Hershel,” she said. “Make them stop.”
“Okay, how’s this—it’s 2001. Their fight’s been over for years. Come on, Helga. Look at where you are, who you’re with.”
An airplane. She was on an airplane and Des was sitting beside her. Her heart pounded and her mouth was dry. She had no clue why she was here or where she was going. She wouldn’t let herself panic. Instead she reached for her purse.
“We’re getting ready to land,” Des told her. “I should fill you in on some additional details that came in while you were resting.”
Details. Merde, she needed far more than details.
“Can you get me something to drink?” she asked. “Please? Some tea?”
He looked at her. Then pulled himself to his feet. “With lemon?”
“Perfect.” She smiled, and then, finally, thank God, he was gone.
Helga dug into her purse and found her memo pad. She flipped it open.
“Hijacked plane in Kazabek, Kazbekistani terrorists, Americans on board,” she read, “including Senator Crawford’s daughter Karen, age twenty-four. Demanding release of two prisoners, one in Israel, one in America. U.S. Navy SEAL Team Sixteen, Senior Chief Stanley Wolchonok is Marte Gunvald’s son!”
Okay. Okay. Breathe.
She remembered. It made sense again, and she could even recall getting onto the plane. But, dear God, what was going to happen when she couldn’t remember? When she looked at her list and read her own handwriting, yet couldn’t recall putting her pen to the page?
Desmond came back down the aisle, carrying a hot cup with a cover. She flipped her memo pad closed and forced a smile as he handed the cup to her.
“Thank you—aren’t you nice.” She took a sip as he sat down and laughed. “Oh, that’s odd. I was expecting coffee and it’s tea. You know how strange that can be. . . .”
Des looked at her. “You asked for tea.”
She had? “Sorry, I was . . . groggy.” And focusing so much on trying to remember what she was here for, on getting a look at her memo pad . . .
He cleared his throat. “Okay. You ready for details?”
“I am.”
“The SEALs landed in Kazbekistan about five hours ago. They’ve already constructed a wooden mock-up of a 747 at a former military airfield just south of Kazabek, and they’ve begun using it to practice boarding the hijacked aircraft.
“The man in charge of the takedown is Lieutenant junior grade Roger Starrett. Your guy, Senior Chief Stan Wolchonok, will be working closely with him. One Lieutenant junior grade Casper Jacquette, the executive officer—XO—of the SEAL team, is in charge of surveillance, and he’s already got a rotation of men surrounding the hijacked plane, looking in the windows, trying to get a sense of the situation inside.
“Lieutenant Tom Paoletti is the team’s CO, and he’s the man in charge of the entire operation. He’s the one who’ll say go when it’s time to kick down the doors.
“FBI negotiator Max Bhagat will handle all communications with the terrorists—he’s in place, but they’ve been silent aside from their initial demands. We’ve both worked with Bhagat before. Many times.”
“Yes, of course,” Helga told Des. “I know Max quite well.”
He looked at her, but she couldn’t read the expression in his eyes. “Last but not least, there are believed to be only five terrorists on board, all heavily armed.”
Helga nodded.
“Starrett, Jacquette, Paoletti, and Bhagat,” Des repeated. He lowered his voice, leaned closer. “You might want to write those names down in your little pad so you’ll know who they are the next time you come up blank.”
Helga didn’t know what to say.
Des reached over and took her memo pad. He opened it to a blank page, looking at her the whole time.
He took a pen from his inside jacket pocket and, finally looking away from her, started to write.
When he was done, he recapped his pen, put it back into his pocket. He stood up, handed her the memo pad, and walked to another seat at the front of the plane.
Still shocked, Helga looked at her pad. He’d listed the names, titles, and positions of the men about whom he’d just briefed her. And underneath he’d written in his clear block printing, “I know your secret.”
“Who is Karen Crawford?”
Gina held tightly to Casey as two of the gunmen moved to the back of the plane, both shouting in heavily accented English, “Who is Karen Crawford?”
It was terrifyingly bizarre, like the answer to some twisted round of Jeopardy! with machine-gun toting contestants.
The blond stewardess dared to intercede. “Americans,” she called out. “They are looking for an American woman named Karen Crawford.”
Not too surprisingly, no one stood up.
“Please,” the stewardess said. “Miss Karen Crawford!”
Oh, yeah, like if she were Karen Crawford, she’d step forward right about now. No, thank you very much.
One of the gunmen waited. He was about Gina’s age, with long, dark hair pulled back into a tight ponytail and a face that could have made him a fortune had he joined a boy band instead of choosing a career in international terrorism. He looked at them—in particular at the obviously American group of students sitting around her.
The sound of crying played like an annoying soundtrack to the fear. There were babies on the plane. They’d no doubt picked up on the tension and were inconsolable.
As was Casey.
Gina’s own eyes were dry, but inside she was quaking and ready to be sick. She couldn’t remember ever being this frightened of anything. Silence of the Lambs had scared the crap out of her, but it wasn’t anything like this.
This was real.
Those guns held real bullets. This wasn’t some makebelieve game, some movie where the director could call out “cut” and they’d all go home after the day was done.
Slight pressure from one finger and a sweep of one arm, and they would all be dead or dying.
Gina had never given it much thought before, but right now she knew. She didn’t want to die.
And for the first time since she was eleven, she wanted her mother.
The other terrorist on the Find Karen Crawford Team paced, a dangerous panther of a man. Smaller than the Backstreet Boy, the expression on his face was even more frightening than those enormous guns.
He was angry and getting angrier by the minute. He spoke in a language that wasn’t English, and Backstreet translated.
“We know United States Senator Crawford’s daughter Karen is on this plane.” Backstreet’s English was very good, his smooth voice a gentle, soothing baritone, as pretty as his face. “We realize she most likely travels under a different name, so checking passports is a waste of our time. We can do this nicely. Or not.”
Nicely. This was nicely? With guns and threats and fear souring all of their mouths?
Why couldn’t the university jazz band have decided to tour Ohio?
Backstreet waited, watching them, but still no one moved.
Except for the snarly pantherman, who turned and brought the butt of his gun smashing down on trombonist Ray Hernandez’s head.
Oh, God!
Ray slumped in his seat as Casey cried even harder.
“Oh, my God,” she sobbed. “Is he dead?”
“I don’t know.” Gina’s voice shook. Okay, now it was time to step forward. Other people were getting hurt. Come on, Karen—
Gina’s world tilted.
Karen.
Was it possible . . . ? Could it be . . . ?
Gina reached for the piece of paper with her luggage tags, the one upon which the perfect-nosed girl in the airport had scribbled her sister’s name and phone number in Vienna. Karen. That girl’s name was Karen and her sister was Emily Something. . . .
Gina unfolded the paper.
Emily Crawford.
Dear, sweet baby Jesus. Karen Crawford couldn’t step forward. Her boarding pass had been stolen and she wasn’t on this flight.
Alyssa Locke was in Kazbekistan.
She was here—right here—at this run-down military airstrip south of Kazabek, where they’d just spent the past few hours constructing a wooden mock-up of the hijacked plane.
Sam Starrett concentrated on breathing, on keeping the air going into and out of his lungs, on keeping his heart pumping blood through his body.
Having the SEAL lieutenant in charge of the planned takedown of the hijacked plane faint would not be cool. Especially not in front of the parade of dignitaries who’d come to check them out.
And especially not in front of Alyssa Locke.
She was actually here. This wasn’t a dream.
She had all her clothes on. A dark pantsuit with a blouse that buttoned right up to her chin. Dark sunglasses that covered her eyes.
God, he wanted to see her eyes.
He could hear Lieutenant Paoletti making introductions, Nils beside him—called in because of his ability to speak the language—repeating the lieutenant’s words in the local dialect for a swarm of K-stani officials.
As Sam shook hands, he tried to bring himself back, to pay attention. All the major players had gathered, and it would be useful to remember their names.
He met Israeli envoy Helga Shuler and her assistant, Desmond Nyland, an older black man who was a former operator. Had to be. He was probably in his fifties, but he still moved as if he’d spent years in Special Forces.
Senator Andrew Crawford, whose daughter was on that flight, was also there, his million dollar campaign smile nowhere in sight, poor bastard.
FBI negotiator Max Bhagat had his usual cool on, but Sam knew Bhagat was as impatient as he was to get these introductions over with and get back to work. Alyssa and what’s his name—her funky little fruitcake of a partner—were with Bhagat, no doubt to sit on the sidelines and watch the man work.
Good. Lock Alyssa in the negotiators’room that was being set up twenty miles away, over at the Kazabek airport, within visual range of the hijacked 747. If Sam was lucky, he wouldn’t have to see her again for the rest of this op.
But then it was Alyssa’s turn to be introduced. She took off her sunglasses as she shook hands with Mrs. Shuler, with Lieutenant Paoletti, and . . .
Sam took her hand. He had to. There was no way he could avoid it.
“Ma’am,” he said, looking into her eyes for the first time in five months, three weeks and three very long days.
Her fingers were cool, fingers she’d once wrapped around his—
She jerked her hand free, as if she could read his mind.
“. . . from the FBI. They’ll be observing Lieutenant Starrett’s preparations for the takedown of the hijacked plane,” Tom Paoletti was saying as Sam briefly shook her partner’s hand. Jules Cassidy. That was the little fruit’s name.
And then Paoletti’s words sunk in. Observing. Takedown. No. No.
But yes. Shit, yes. Alyssa Locke was here to watch him.
She wouldn’t look at him. She was purposely looking over at the mock-up of the plane, out to where the senior chief and the other men assigned to his squad for this op were walking through their relatively simple insertion plan.
She was going to be watching as his team popped the doors as quietly as possible. They would enter with a bang and a flash of light, with detailed information from the surveillance team as to the five tangos’exact locations inside the plane. Once inside, they’d make head shots and take out the terrorists. Swift and deadly.
After they got the doors open, the entire operation would take a matter of seconds and run like a well-oiled clock.
But the reason it would run so smoothly was because Starrett and his men would practice. They would run the drill over and over and over, for as many days as the negotiators could give them, until they could do it in their sleep.