Chase Baker and the God Boy: (A Chase Baker Thriller Series Book No. 3) (8 page)

The pilot produces an identical
knife from an ankle sheath, brings it to Anjali’s throat. Maybe it’s the
sharpness of the blade pressed up against the soft skin that wakes her. But her
eyes suddenly open.

“You bastard!” she screams, bringing
her right knee up swift and hard, nailing the pilot in the sweet spot. Not even
his evil eyes can protect him from a swift kick to the balls.

He shrieks, pulls the knife away.

Beatrice comes after me with her
own knife, but I shift myself forward at the last possible moment. She lands in
the seat on her face and chest. Grabbing hold of her arm, I pull it behind her
back, bending it in a way God did not intend. The knife drops from her hand,
falls onto the seat. I pick it up, jump across the aisle, and bury the blade into
the pilot’s ribcage.

He drops on the spot.

“Chase!” Anjali shrieks.

Turning, I spot a pistol barrel
staring me down. My own pistol poised in the hand of Beatrice, our not-so-friendly,
bright-eyed flight attendant.

“Duck!”

The shot singes my hair as it blows
out the window next to Anjali’s seat. The abrupt change in air pressure sends
the pilotless plane into a nose dive. It also begins to pull us, along with the
pilot’s body, towards the gaping hole, as if an angry God himself has gripped
us in a pair of invisible hands.

“Hang on,” I shout while feeling
for Anjali’s seatbelt, buckling it around her waist, pulling the strap as tight
as it will go without cutting into her stomach.

She fires again, but she’s out of
balance and another hole appears above the busted out porthole. At first the
hole is small. About the size of my fist. But the force of the escaping air is
shredding the plastic and metal fuselage. That’s when the dead pilot’s body
lifts off the seat, his head and shoulder pressed into an ever-widening hole
that is joining with the shot-out window to form one big, man-sized opening.
For a brief second, I consider grabbing hold of his legs. But he’s already
dead. A second later, the pilot is sucked out of the hole and making his way
back down to Earth the hard way.

But now, it’s my turn to get sucked
out of the opening.

My legs lift up off the floor. I’m
being yanked out of the plane right behind the dead pilot. Not exactly the way
I pictured my inevitable demise, preferring instead to drift off to sleep in my
ripe old age and never wake up.

Beatrice fires again and another hole
appears beside the big one. I’m holding on to the metal frame beneath Anjali’s
seat, double-fisted. The plane screams as it speeds towards the earth like a
missile. Peering over my left shoulder, I see the flight attendant floating
towards the opening. She, too, is being sucked out. My pistol still gripped in
her hand, her face painted with panic, she tosses the automatic out the hole while
attempting to grab ahold of something. Anything.

…Christ, there goes my gun…

“Please…help…me!” she screams. But
her words are barely audible with air rushing in and the plane in rapid decent.

She begins to claw at the seats
while her entire body lifts up, the powerful vacuum-like suction pulling her
head-first out the opening. Glancing over my shoulder through the breach in the
fuselage, I watch her limbs waving and kicking spastically as she enters into a
three-mile drop without a chute.

…Don’t let the door slap you in
the ass on the way out…

Looking up, I see the look of
desperation on Anjali’s face.

“Don’t worry. I’ll get us out of
this.”

But unless she can read lips, she
has no clue what I’m saying.

Choices: I can either continue to
hold onto the seat and ride this bird to the ground in which case we’ll be
vaporized by the crash, or, I can make my way to the pilot’s cabin, hand-over-fist,
and attempt to level her out at an altitude and speed that will cut down on the
exterior air pressure.

Easy peasy, right?

Problem is, I’m not a pilot. But I
have to at least try.

Pulling myself into the aisle, I
grab onto my seat. That’s when something catches my eye. The rear lavatory
door. It’s blown open. Stuffed inside the cramped compartment, seated on the
toilet, are two people—both of them duct-taped together.

It’s the rightful pilot of this
aircraft and his flight attendant. Chase Baker the charmed.

A wave of warm optimism fills my veins. I can only hope the pilot
is still alive. And if he is alive, I hope he’s conscious enough to pull us out
of this dive. Quickly, I make my way the ten or so feet to the lavatory,
crawling on my stomach for the entire distance. For some reason, if I crawl,
the suction is not so bad. When I look up, I can see the pilot’s eyes are wide
open. So are the flight attendant’s. Also, their whites aren’t glowing or
burning red or turning anything other than their natural, God-given color. More
good news. Raising myself up, I pull the tape off his mouth.

“You the real pilot?”

“Cut me loose,” he shouts while alarms
blare from inside the cockpit. “Do it now. We’re dropping three thousand feet
per minute. Three minutes before this thing careens into the Arabian Sea.”

Reaching into my jacket, I find my
Swiss Army knife, flip open the big blade. Pressing the business end of the
blade on the tape that binds his wrists together, I cut. While he pulls his
hands apart, I reach down and cut the ankles. Without issuing a single word,
the pilot drops down to all fours, begins speed crabbing his way to the
cockpit.

Meanwhile, I pull away the tape
that gags the flight attendant and free both her wrists and ankles.

“Thank you,” she says, mouthing the
words.

I take her by the hand, pull her
along with me to one of the free seats. She slips into it, securing herself
with the belt.

“Buckle in,” she insists.

“I’m going to keep the pilot
company,” I insist, crawling my way to the cockpit, stealing a quick glance at Anjali
along the way. She’s shivering in the cold. Still, she issues me a forced smile,
but I know she’s not happy. “Now’s a good time to pray,” I yell to her, but she
can’t hear me over the blast of air pouring in through the opening.

Once I reach the cockpit, I slip
myself into the co-pilot’s chair. By the look of the altimeter, we’ve got about
ten thousand feet left to work with.

“Strap yourself in,” says the
pilot. “Things could get a bit shaky.”

I do it. “Shaky’s fine by me. So
long as we live to feel it.”

He pulls back on the yoke. The
plane bucks and bounces, the engines scream in protest. The G’s we’re pulling
are so intense, my stomach feels like it’s about to spill out of my feet. But
after a few seconds, the plane levels out then slowly starts taking on altitude.

“With that hole in the fuselage,
the pressurization is shot,” the pilot says. “We’ll fly her up to twenty thousand
for the duration.”

“You mean you’re going to take us
to Nepal as planned.” A question.

“Those are my orders. We’re alive.
The plane flies, and the bad guys are gone.”

I reach out with my right hand.
“Chase Baker. Damn glad to know you.”

He grips the hand tightly, gives it
a shake, releases it.

“I’m not entirely sure what you’re
after, Mr. Baker. But it must be important to attract that kind of trash onto
this plane.”

“You mind my asking who they were?”

“Radicals,” he says. “Hindi terrorists.
Thuggees. Vermin who have promised their souls to Satan and who distort the
evil half of Kali for their own selfish purposes. Warped people who do not want
you to succeed in your mission.”

I’m reminded of what Anjali
revealed about Kashmiri and his dream of an evil Utopia utilizing Dr. Singh’s
six-armed kid. Surely the bad guys would be opposed to our mission to stop
them. But, what’s really upsetting is that they already know about the mission.

“Please don’t take this the wrong
way, Captain…”

“Mumbai. Like the city.”

“Captain Mumbai. Why’d they let you
live?”

“Same reason you wanted me to live.
To land this plane. That terrorist was capable of taking off. But landing was a
different story entirely.”

“Guess they felt the same way about
the flight attendant.”

“They would have kidnaped her in
the end had they succeeded, sold her into slavery. She would bring a nice price
on the terrorist black market.”

“Nice bunch of people operating in
the name of Kali these days,” I say, my tone full of acid.

“You don’t know the half of it,” he
responds. Then, “Two hours more until we reach Kathmandu. Go on back and try to
get some rest. The hole is no longer a danger now that the pressure has been
equalized, but it’s cold. The attendant will hand you a blanket.”

“If you don’t mind, I’ll stay right
here and enjoy the view.”

He laughs.

“Please do, Mr. Baker,” he says.
“By all means, sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight.”

We ride in an open-topped Jeep from the small airport into the
heart of Kathmandu. The city is as hot as it is congested and smog-filled. The
narrow streets can barely accommodate the mix of old and young, dark, leather-skinned
natives dressed in bright saris and robes. Cars made in China spit black
exhaust while drivers pound the horn and curse to their Hindu, Muslim, and/or
Christian Gods for the crowds to move out of their way or else be run down. On
both sides of the street, ancient Hindu temples are filled with worshippers
while small fires burn in clay bowls and monkeys use the tall minaret style
architecture as if they were trees in the forest.

The temples are surrounded by three
and four-story ancient wood buildings that look as if you can blow them down
with the gentlest of exhales. Besides natives, the streets and sidewalks provide
access to all varieties of animals—including cows—who seem to enjoy the right
of way. We pass by a team of young adventurers carrying ropes and climbing
boots strung around their shoulders. They wait impatiently for their number to
come up in the Everest climbing lottery. That is, if their number comes up at
all. Just a couple of months ago a team of Sherpas were killed in an avalanche
that also took the lives of the Italian climbers who employed them. Since then,
the Sherpas have been on strike, leaving the climbers frustrated with not much
else to do but roam the ancient streets.

But, at least Kathmandu is known as
much for its monkey-filled temples as it is its bars. One glance upwards and
you can’t help but notice the revelers who lean out the windows of the many drinking
establishments, Nepal Ice Beer bottles in hand. With marijuana and hash being
as free here as the wind, this is a place where hippies traveled to en masse in
the 1960s for spiritual enlightenment and a good buzz. Many of them OD’d, but
many survived, thrived, and never bothered to go back home.

The Jeep finally makes it to the
gates of the Kathmandu Guest House, the oldest and most famous of the Kathmandu
inns. Or so the old driver informs us.

“This is where George Harrison, the
Beatle, stayed,” he proudly states while retrieving Anjali’s bags and my
shoulder bag. “Here, he wrote many, many songs.”

Inside the lobby of a nineteenth-century
wood and stone structure that looks like it was lifted from an old English
garden and resettled here, we are handed the keys to two rooms, both of which
adjoin.

At the top of the stairs, we open
the door to my room and step inside. That’s when we see that an interior door
separates my room from Anjali’s. She shoots me a smile and a wink over her
shoulder like I had planned it this way all along.

“Hey, you’re the one who made the
reservations,” I say. “So, don’t blame me.”

“I’m going to freshen up,” she
says. “I’ll assume this door will be locked.”

As she exits the room, I reach over
to the inside door, unlock it.