Cost of Life (12 page)

When his phone rang, Larry was smoothing his wife Marie's blond bangs off her clammy forehead. Her eyelids fluttered. As responses went, that would have to suffice. When Larry had held his son Sean's head to his chest and kissed him on the scalp, the boy hadn't even so much as twitched. Only a thready pulse—bum…bum…bum—on the side of the neck indicated Sean was still alive.

All of the passengers had watched the captain storm from the flight deck and down the aisle to embrace his loved ones. This solved several mysteries. They now knew who the unconscious woman and boy in the exit rows were. They now knew why their pilot had—possibly—collaborated with the hijackers in getting them here. As to the purpose of the large-shouldered caretakers who had wheeled the somnolent pair aboard, that mystery had already been solved. They were the threshold guardians, blocking off any hope of escape through the exit row doors.

They also were Marie and Sean's caretakers, and right now Larry needed answers about his wife and son's care. The rational part of his brain doubted these men even spoke English, but the rational part of his brain was very much not calling the shots at the moment.

“What did you give them? Huh? Are they going to be OK? What poison did you inject into my child?”

The caretaker beside Marie, whose name was Zakayev, muttered back in thick accent, “Telephone.”

Telephone? What kind of nonsensical fucked-up response was that? Telephone?

Zakayev bent down with one of his loping arms and picked up off the floor Larry's phone, which had fallen out of his pocket. He handed the device to him and said, once again, “Telephone.”

Larry stared at it like it was an artifact from another dimension. On a whim, he turned it on, and was prepared to return it to his pant pocket when it sang out its generic ringtone.

Blocked number.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Captain Walder. This is Special-Agent-in-Charge Jim Christie with the FBI. We need to talk.”

The FBI. Oh God. Larry's brain exploded with a million thoughts and shut down his ability to speak.

“Captain Walder, let me start by telling you that we are doing everything in our power to rescue everyone on board as quickly and safely as possible. Now, many passengers have reported that there has been incidence of gunfire. Can you confirm this and has anyone on board the plane been injured?”

“I…my copilot…Reese Rankin…he was…trying to do the right thing and they just shot him in the face.”

“Who? Who shot him? We have some camera phone pictures but we don't know any of the hijackers' names yet.”

Larry shook his head. “They're not American. I don't know what else to tell you. They've…they've got tattoos on their necks…like a supermarket barcode. The one who shot Reese is the leader, I think. He's older. One of his hands…his left hand…it's deformed or something. I tried to stop them, but…they took my wife…and son…they…”

“Are they all right? Are they alive?”

“Yes…”

“That's good. When the police conducted a sweep of your home, they found some blood. It's good to hear they're alive.”

“They're drugged…they drugged them…” At that moment, Larry matched gazes with Zakayev—but if the oaf understood what he was saying—if the oaf even cared—he sure didn't show it.

“Captain Walder…Larry…can I call you Larry? You can call me Jim.”

The armed men at either end of the cabin didn't appear the least bit fazed by all the chatting and texting in which everyone else seemed engaged.

“Larry, this is all very helpful. Before we continue, though, I'm going to give you my number so you can call me back at any time. Are you ready?” He then proceeded to give his phone number and, for good measure, he repeated it. “All right. Now, Larry, I have a very unusual request to make and I need you to be on board with this.”

Did he have a choice? Had he ever?

“Where is the leader now, Larry?”

“The flight deck.”

“And where are you?”

“As far away from him as possible. I'm with my wife and kid. We're in the main cabin.”

“You mentioned that they were drugged. Do they have someone looking after them if you leave for a few minutes?”

“And go where?” Larry looked around. “There aren't many options here, Jim.”

“I need you to go back to the flight deck.”

Larry's blood chilled subzero. “Why?”

“I'll be candid. We need to establish a bridge of communication with them and then we need to use that bridge to acquire vital intelligence on the situation. Only then will we be able to act in a way that allows for the best possible outcome.”

“In other words, you want to know what their demands are.”

“There are a lot of variables. But I promise you, Larry, he's expecting this phone call. Do you have any idea how many people on that plane have dialed nine-one-one just in the time we've been talking?”

“But why? I mean, why are they allowing us to do this? People are taking pictures of the hijackers with their phones and it's not like they're wearing masks. This is all very strange. And then there's Marie and Sean…I swear to you, I didn't have a choice…I did what I did because of them and if it meant making sure they were safe, I'd do it again…”

“I know, Larry. No one is accusing you of anything. And as for your other questions, the sooner we get those answers, the sooner we'll be able to put our rescue operations in play, but the only person who can give us those answers is in the flight deck and the only person who can get him speaking to us right now is you.”

The curtain separating the main cabin from business class wasn't drawn. Larry had an unobstructed view of the flight deck. The door was ajar.

The carpet by the door remained smeared with Reese's blood.

“There's another reason you're the one I called, Larry. Like it or not, for all these people on board this plane, you are their captain.”

Yes. Larry shut his eyes. The bruise on his forehead spat daggers into his skull. If only he could curl up with Marie and with Sean and go to sleep. Such a simple request, Lord. Surely within Your abilities to grant. Please.

He opened his eyes. The cabin blurred into focus. Larry kissed Marie on the tip of her nose and strode toward the front of the plane. He passed quilts of faces, corduroy brows and button eyes and mouths that were not mouths but moth-eaten holes. He squared his shoulders and straightened his uniform.

One of the passengers, an older woman, snagged him by the wrist.

“Captain, what's going on?” she pleaded.

Larry sighed, shook his head, and continued on toward the front. Bearded Edil held up a hand to stop Larry's approach. Bespectacled Murad watched wary-eyed from the cabin's aft.

“I need to see the man in charge,” Larry said.

“You need sit down,” Edil answered.

Well, at least he spoke a little English. That would make Larry's next bit easier. He held up his phone and said:

“It's for him.”

Edil frowned and then leaned back and exchanged words with his two friends in business class, Alvi and Ansor. Alvi was sliding a thick lithium-ion battery into the butt of a digital camcorder while Ansor was preoccupied with some activity on his laptop. Both of them engaged Edil in what appeared to be, from body language alone, the shrugs and smirks of humorous banter. What they said, though, seemed to do the trick, and Edil relaxed his aggressive stance and was about to wave Larry onward to the flight deck when, with the flinging of a paperback novel at Murad, retired police officer Drake Coxcomb initiated his insurrection.

Drake couldn't believe his luck. The captain and his phone were actually blocking the bearded terrorist's line of sight. Could there possibly have been a better opportunity? Drake glanced at the Llewelyns, his comrades-in-arms.

He saw the excitement in their faces.

Good.

Borrowing the chunky Stephen King novel his wife, Rhonda, had purchased at the airport bookstore and envisioning himself as one of the mighty discus throwers he and Rhonda had witnessed live during the '96 Atlanta Olympics, Drake catapulted the paperback toward Murad.

The paperback flapped fifteen feet through the air. It struck Murad square in the face, breaking both the bridge of his nose and the bridge of his glasses. One half of his glasses slid to the carpet. The other remained stubbornly fixed in place. By the time Murad was touching a finger to the blood draining down his nostrils, the father-and-son team of Archie and Mickey Llewelyn were out of their seats and barreling down the aisle toward him like a pair of unchained bulls.

Archie had never before been in a fight—unless one counted the knock-down-drag-out verbal beatings he and his late wife had often traded over the dinner table. And what effect did this have on their son? When he was a child, Mickey had tried to stop them and then fled the room in tears. By his ninth birthday, the tears stopped. By his tenth birthday, he was able to stay at the table through the duration of the row. By his twelfth birthday, he was supplying color commentary. He could be quite creative.

What wonderful words then must have been tickling his tongue as he beheld his father lower into a running crouch and tackle that terrorist son of a bitch into the beverage cart. Aluminum cans rained down on the two scufflers. Murad struggled for his Heckler & Koch submachine gun but by now Archie's son had joined the fray and had snatched the weapon into his own hands.

Mickey had never held a gun before.

Meanwhile, Drake climbed on top of his seat and, careful not to hit the ceiling, shouted in his most authoritative voice: “Let's
do
this, people! Let's take them down!” Not quite the St. Crispin's Day Speech, but enough to motivate the gaggle of the sorority girls to climb over the seats like lionesses and pounce on the two brutes in the exit rows. They used their smartphones and their in-flight magazines as bludgeons.

Lucy Snow took command of the insurgency at the front of the cabin, rallying the business-class passengers against Emil. The bearded thug shoved Larry out of the way and readied his H&K for Lucy and her crew's frontal assault.

“Stop!” he bellowed. “Sit!”

They stopped.

But they did not sit.

Back at the tail, Archie was delivering his right fist knuckles-first against Murad's already-broken nose. The small bones crackled with each blow. Somewhere on the carpet, one of Murad's lenses shattered. Murad retaliated by clobbering Archie in the eye with a can of Coke. It wasn't enough force to push Archie away, but it was enough to cause the Aussie engineer to wince and buy Murad a few precious seconds of respite with which to cough up some of the blood that was draining down his throat and spit it into his opponent's eyes.

That was when Mickey stepped forward with the gun. His intention was to close the distance between himself and his target. His intention was to intimidate his target into a cowering ball of quivering terror.

He had the best intentions.

However.

Years at The Oprichnina had bestowed upon Murad a close, personal relationship with his primal self, and his primal self only understood survival. His primal self wasn't about to show weakness. His fingers blindly felt the carpet for one of the many shards his eyeglass lens had shattered into, located a nice sharp chunk, and then without hesitation drove the wedge of thick glass into Mickey's right anterior talofibular ligament, splitting the fibrous tissue connecting the front of the ankle to the front of the foot.

Mickey cried out and fell to his knees.

Murad snatched the gun, toggled the firing mode to single-shot, and pulled the trigger twice.

One of the 9mm bullets passed through Mickey's left lung, pierced the plastic door of an overhead bin, and planted itself inside a passenger's suitcase.

The other 9mm bullet stayed put in the lung.

Screams burst like thunderclouds throughout the cabin, though even at their loudest they couldn't match the earsplitting rapport of the H&K MP5. The screams and the gunfire interrupted any progress the coeds had achieved in their pile-on beatings of the exit row thugs, Zakayev and Zurebny, who used the momentary distraction to their advantage. They twisted their assailants' fingers out of joint and snapped their forearms as if they were dried spaghetti. Now they didn't have to shove the young women away; with broken fingers and arms, the young women were recoiling on their own. Drake moved to help them, and Zakayev stepped into the aisle to block him. His meaty palms were each the size of Drake's face. The college girls had given him a pair of black eyes, but they just made him appear even more menacing.

Then came a third gunshot from the tail of the plane. Drake whipped his head around and watched Archie, soaked to the stomach with his own blood, lie down on the carpet beside his gasping son. Drake moved to help them and Zakayev wrapped a hand around the ex-cop's left biceps.

“No,” said the Chechen.

Drake wavered. He knew there wasn't much he could have done for the men, but they didn't have to die alone. Then he caught the gaze of his wife, a woman who could summarize whole novels with a glance, a woman he had known for forty-six years, who had spent many of those years wondering if that day would be the day his death on the job turned her into a widow—no, Drake couldn't do that to his Rhonda.

He took his seat.

By now so had Lucy and her crew.

Old Erskine Faulks whimpered. He was not the only one. But at last some semblance of decorum had returned to Flight 816. Murad resumed his post by the rear lavatory, as if the dying Aussies weren't lying at his feet, their breathing ribbons of wet air the only sounds to be heard in this long, hot room of people.

That is, until Bislan emerged from the flight deck, picked up the front speaker, and announced in his crisp accent:

“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Please sit back and relax while I go over our itinerary for the rest of the day.”