Flint put up his hands. “That’s not the way we do business.”
“I’m the client,” she retorted. “If you want to get paid, you won’t make an issue of it.” She waved her hand at the plane. “There’s clearly room.”
“Vanessa,” he said and then adopted a more deferential tone. “Mrs. Parker, I’m not thrilled about the idea because it’s dangerous. We’re flying into Somali airspace without a flight plan. There are bad guys down there: militias, warlords, Islamists, you name it. Some of them have anti-aircraft guns. You never know what might happen.”
Vanessa gave him an unyielding look. “I have no doubt that Mr. Steyn will keep us safe.” When he hesitated, she spoke from the heart. “Look, Tony, I understand your reservations. But if I were a sailor, I’d be on the boat, too. I know you’re going to get proof of life before you make the drop. I want to see them with my own eyes. I don’t want to be sitting in a hotel room waiting for a call.”
At last, Flint shrugged. “Are you coming, too?” he asked Mary.
The FBI agent shook her head. “This is as far as I go.”
Flint angled his head toward the steps. “All right then. Climb aboard.”
“Thank you,” Vanessa said softly.
Mary wrapped her in an embrace. “I’ll see you when you get back. Just think, this will all be over in a few hours.”
Vanessa nodded and walked to the plane.
After a short taxi, they took off into the cloudless blue sky, climbing quickly to 12,000 feet. Vanessa sat in one of the executive seats in the front of the cabin, looking out the window at the vast Kenyan plain and charting the progress of the flight on a monitor beside her. Flint sat a few seats back, punching buttons on the guidance system controller—a laptop with a joystick. He hadn’t spoken to her since they left the hangar, but she was too nervous to care. She hated small planes more than anything. In some dark recess of her mind, she was convinced they were going to fall out of the sky.
They flew east toward the Somali border, staying in Kenyan airspace until they left the coast and made a wide northern turn over the ocean. As the minutes passed, Vanessa’s thoughts drifted backward in time, like a film reel in reverse. She saw Daniel as he was on the day the
Renaissance
sailed out of Annapolis, heard him whisper in her ear that they would be back soon. So many people had come to see them off—friends, colleagues, journalists, extended family from the Parker clan. As the cameras clicked away, Quentin had cast off the bow line, and Daniel had maneuvered the sailboat into the channel. He had turned then and caught her eye, waving farewell. Guilt had besieged her as she walked away from the pier, guilt for the love and solidarity she didn’t feel. She had blamed Daniel for it, as she always did. But, in truth, his sins were a kind of consolation, a permission slip to ignore the obvious—that the unraveling of their marriage was her fault as well as his.
She saw it so clearly now, the broken road they had walked, the way their priorities had diverged, like islands drifting apart, until their only commerce was business, the shared responsibility of raising Quentin and managing their assets and deciding where to go on vacation. Their love had gone stale before it grew cold. They had lost the friendship that had joined them in the beginning. The rest had been inevitable—the mercenary Daniel had become, working for the praise of his father because Vanessa had ceased to care; the emotional shell she had developed to protect the privacy of her pain and avert the embarrassment of appearing needy; their infrequent trips to bed and the mechanistic quality of their sex; the affair she was certain he had with that paralegal at his firm; and the emotional bond she had developed with Chad Forrester—how humiliating it was to think about now!—when he offered her sympathy during the uncertainty of Quentin’s adolescence.
So much water had passed under the bridge since she had last thought of Daniel with affection that she had almost forgotten what it felt like—what
together
felt like. But suddenly she wanted it again. She wanted to believe that he was with her, that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, that he saw her as beautiful and graceful and worthy of love. She knew there was no way to undo the damage of the past, no way to recover what they had lost. But there was a way to begin again. If he was ready, as he said he was, then so was she. She was tired of being alone.
“Twenty minutes,” she heard Steyn call from the cockpit.
At once the plane slowed and began its descent. She looked out at the ocean and marveled at its immensity. It was a world unto itself. If she had been more courageous, she would have joined them in the Seychelles or Bali or New Zealand, as Daniel had proposed in his letters. She would have taken a day trip with them, perhaps even sailed a leg of the journey. But there was always tomorrow. They could sail to the Caribbean or Bermuda. It would require all of her fortitude, but she was willing to go along, if only Daniel would give her the chance.
She saw ships far below, half a dozen of them, their bow waves like arrows in the sapphire sea. The plane descended through a layer of gauzy clouds and continued down, down, down until she could see the ocean swells like ripples on a lake.
“Five minutes,” Steyn announced, waving his hand to get their attention. “I see the warships. They’re spread out—a couple of miles apart. Looks like they have birds in the air.”
Vanessa scoured the ocean but didn’t see anything. She glanced at Flint and saw the sat phone in his hand. “I’m ready to make the call,” he said. “Any special requests?”
She smiled at his sarcasm. “Actually, yes.”
“Why am I not surprised? You want to talk to them,” he guessed.
She felt a dam break in her heart. “I want them to see me, too.”
Flint shrugged and punched in the number, putting the phone to his ear. “Ibrahim,” he began, as casually as if he were ordering a pizza. “We have the package. But we need a visual of the hostages before we send it down. Bring them into the cockpit. I’ll call back.”
Vanessa caught sight of the aircraft carrier miles away. It was extraordinary, really—the assets the Navy had deployed to save her husband and son. She felt gratitude well up in her. Despite her frustrations with the government, she knew the men on the Navy ships cared about what happened to Daniel and Quentin. If they didn’t, they would never have come.
“There’s the sailboat,” Steyn said, banking the plane to give them a better view. “I’m going to bring her down to two hundred feet for the pass.”
Suddenly, Vanessa saw it, too, a speck of white beside the gray bulk of another warship.
That must be the Gettysburg
, she thought.
Paul Derrick is on that ship.
The plane descended again until the water looked close enough to touch. She took binoculars from Flint and trained them on the sailboat, her heart pounding in her chest. She saw the mast and the boom and the lettering on the transom and a small boat lashed to the beam.
Where are they?
she thought.
Why aren’t they in the cockpit?
At once, the weather hatch moved, and a dark-skinned man in red T-shirt emerged from the companionway, carrying a gun. He looked into the sky and motioned toward the hatch.
“It’s Quentin!” she exclaimed when he appeared. She couldn’t believe how shaggy his hair was. He’d never grown it long a day in his life. He was taller than she remembered, and more muscular. For the first time, he looked more man than boy.
“There’s Daniel!” she cried when he, too, stepped into the cockpit and put his arm around his son. They waved at the plane, ignoring the pirate beside them.
I’m here!
she wanted to shout.
I love you!
She heard Flint place another call and saw the pirate take a phone from his pocket. “Ibrahim,” Flint said, “I have a visual. Give the phone to the Captain. I have someone who wants to talk to him.”
Vanessa brought her emotions under control and took the phone from Flint. When she heard her husband’s voice, she spoke his name with all the feeling in her heart. “Daniel.”
“Vanessa?” he said in disbelief.
“I can see you,” she replied, as the plane began to bank again.
“My God. How did you—?” She heard his voice trail off and saw him turn to Quentin. “It’s your mother,” he said with undisguised wonder.
“Daniel,” she said, getting his attention again. “I’m sorry I never came to visit. I should have, long ago. I have so many regrets.”
She heard him breathing. “Me, too. More than I can say.”
She forged ahead. “I want to come sailing the next time you go offshore. We could take the
Relativity
to St. Thomas. Quentin could bring Ariadne.”
“That’s a great idea,” he said, his voice cracking with feeling. “Let’s talk about it later. Quentin’s right here. He wants to say hello.”
“Mom?” Quentin said when Daniel gave him the phone. “What are you doing here?”
“I had to come. I couldn’t leave it to strangers.”
Quentin laughed gently. “That’s cool. We’ve missed you.”
Vanessa began to cry. She couldn’t help it. Her greatest fear—one that had stalked her like a malevolent spirit for so many years—was that she had failed her son, that his childhood travails were her fault because she hadn’t stayed home with him, because she had been irritable when he was harder to parent than his peers, because she hadn’t known how to connect with him as a teenager except through her music. To see him now so grown up, so poised in the face of danger, and to hear his affirmation meant more to her than anything in life.
She placed her hand against the window. “Can you see me? I’m waving.”
She saw him squint, then nod. “Yeah, I see you.”
“I see her, too,” she heard Daniel say in the background.
“I love you, Quentin,” she said softly. “I’m proud of you.”
“I love you, too, Mom. See you soon.”
Ibrahim took the phone back and sent Daniel and Quentin below. “Mrs. Parker,” he said, staring up at the plane as it circled overhead, “as you can see, we have done nothing to harm them. Deliver what you promised, and I will do the same.”
“The package is on its way,” she confirmed.
“Excellent,” the pirate replied and hung up.
Flint took back the phone as the plane banked and began to climb. “It’s going to be loud when I open the door. Buckle your seatbelt and stay put until the package is away and the door is closed.”
“Two minutes to the drop point,” Steyn called out.
“Roger that,” Flint said. He turned the handle on the cargo door, then took hold of it and pulled until the seal broke and the door came off in a whoosh of noise. Warm air rushed into the cabin and sent napkins in the galley swirling. He set the door aside and moved behind the package. “Ready on your mark!” he shouted over the howling wind.
“One minute!” Steyn yelled back.
Vanessa gripped her armrests and looked out the window at the sea. They were high enough now that she could make out the coastline of Somalia painted bronze by the sun. The proximity of land accentuated the gravity of the moment. Without warning, her skin began to tingle and her heart started to race. She slowed her breathing and focused all her energy on resisting the pressure inside of her.
“Thirty seconds!” Steyn yelled. “Fifteen! . . . Ten! . . . Five!” Then: “Go! Go! Go!”
In one motion, Flint shoved the package out of the hatch and secured the door again, bringing a sudden end to the vortex of sound. He returned to his seat and picked up the controller, typing something on the keyboard. “Camera is operational,” he called out. “Signal strength is excellent.”
Vanessa had two thoughts at once:
I don’t want to watch.
And:
I can’t bear not to watch.
She slipped down the aisle until she stood behind him. She stared at the display in confusion. The video feed was an incomprehensible blur. Then, at once, the camera stabilized, swinging like a pendulum, until it came to rest. She saw the sun and the ocean shimmering beneath it.
“Parachute is away,” Flint called out, working the joystick. “I have steerage. Full power on the fans. Video is clear and steady. We’re on the glide path.”
Vanessa saw a cluster of numbers at the bottom of the screen—altitude, ground speed, rate of descent, and wind velocity. The package was at 1,100 feet and falling steadily. Flint zoomed in with the camera until the
Renaissance
came into view, bobbing on the mirror-like water. She felt a knot in her stomach. It seemed like an impossible target.
“Not much wind today,” he said. “It must be hot as Hades down there.”
She watched, mesmerized, as he guided the package toward the sailboat. She saw Ibrahim in the cockpit with two more Somalis. The resolution improved until she could make out their faces. She stared at the altimeter as it dropped below two hundred feet, then one hundred, then fifty. The pirates reached out their arms and Flint began to count down.
“Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one.”
At once the image distorted. Vanessa saw a flash of red—Ibrahim’s shirt—then the camera juddered and the image clarified again. She recognized the base of the helm.
“Bingo!” Flint exclaimed. “Package delivered.”