Flight 12 to Rome: A Nick Bracco Novella (2 page)

“So you haven’t come across any threatening leers yet?”

“Oh, I’ve gotten some leers, but I don’t think it was from terrorists. I think it was from people trying to sleep. It is a red-eye you know.”

“So you couldn’t spot one person on this flight who looked suspicious to you?”

Jess tilted her head to the side. “There is one guy who gives me the creeps. The bald guy sitting in 54G. He keeps flirting with his eyes.”

“That never happened to you before?”

“Not like this.”

“You haven’t been looking hard enough.”

Jess ripped a sheet of paper from her notebook and slapped it onto Nick’s tray table. She pointed to the seat numbers and notes she’d left beside them. “In 5C is a business man from Oregon who’s wearing a suit and sneakers, so he’s for real. Exactly what a businessman from Oregon would wear. The teenager in 21D has brain damage so don’t get alarmed at his behavior.” She stopped. “We are eliminating women, correct?”

Nick shrugged. “Probably.”

“Okay, well, really there’s only ten or fifteen candidates who could fit the profile.”

“Tell you what. I’ll check on your bald-headed monster, and you continue the interview process.”

“Great,” Jess said with a bleak expression, then left with her notepad. Nick followed her out of the row and walked down the aisle, moving left to the other side of the three-seat section where another aisle separated that section from the two double-seat section. Nick found seat 54G. Fortunately, the bald guy was sitting up against the window and the seat next to him was empty.

Nick sat beside the man and said, “How are you?”

The guy looked at Nick like he’d just asked for his wallet.

“What the fuck do you want?”

“I want to show you something,” Nick said, discreetly pulling out his credentials. He held them up for a moment, then quickly returned them to his pocket. “FBI,” he said quietly.

This normally was enough to register a certain amount of concern on a citizen’s face, but not here. Not with this stoic figure of rock sneering back at Nick. He held a short tumbler full of ice and a lime that Nick guessed was a gin and tonic.

The guy swirled the drink and took a sip. “I bet that impresses all the women.”

“Only the innocent ones.”

“Hmm,” the guys said, downing the remainder of his drink and staring out the window at the darkness.

“So what’s in Rome?” Nick said casually.

“The Sistine Chapel. Saint Peter’s Square. The Coliseum.” He looked over Nick’s head and waved his empty glass as if flagging down a waitress at Hooters. “Miss,” he said.

No one heard him, or they ignored him on purpose.

“Are you always like this?” Nick asked.

Finally the guy gave Nick his attention. He twisted to face Nick and removed a badge from the inside of his coat pocket. Nick recognized it immediately as a Federal Air Marshal badge.

“Are we gonna measure dicks now?”

Nick shook his head. “Why are you acting like this? All you had to do was tell me who you were.”

The guy sucked back the last few drips of his drink, then lowered the tumbler to his lap. “I don’t usually identify myself unless needed. It’s not professional.”

Nick frowned. “Is it professional to drink on the job?”

“Do me a favor,” the guy said. “Get me fired.”

Nick didn’t have time to waste on a disgruntled employee. He got up and said, “Nice chatting with you.”

He made his way toward the front of the plane, turbulence causing him to grab seats as he maneuvered down the aisle. He stopped at Kyle Church’s row. He was sitting a few rows behind Nick’s seat and had a woman sitting next to him.

Nick offered a disingenuous smile and said, “How are you, Kyle?”

Kyle Church looked troubled and preoccupied, but the woman seemed extremely agitated by his presence. Nick pointed to his assigned seat and looked at the woman. “Would you mind exchanging places while I chat with my old colleague?”

The woman had an athletic build with short black hair and a slightly crooked nose which looked more appropriate on a boxer. She glared at Kyle as if tacitly admonishing him before she slowly got up from her seat.

Nick slid into her spot and said, “What are you doing, Kyle?”

The guy ran a hand through his thick head of hair. “I had it, Nick.”

“Had what?”

“The device. I had it.”

Nick’s blood pressure spiked. “What do you mean
had
? How did you find it?”

“Never mind how,” Kyle said. “The fact is it was stolen from me and I believe the thief is on board the plane.”

“How?”

“It’s irrelevant,” Kyle said, getting frustrated. “We need to find it before we get to Rome.”

Nick gave him a suspicious look, and Kyle immediately interpreted the expression.

Kyle looked down at his hands. “You’re wrong, Nick.”

Nick remained still, wondering just what scheme Kyle was running this time.

“I accepted the bribe because I knew Bradford was dirty and I wanted to prove it.”

“You have any evidence?”

Kyle clasped his hands together, then placed them against his chin. “I had the recorder running on my cell phone but—”

“The button malfunctioned or stopped recording when it rubbed against your keys. Yeah, I was at the trial.”

Kyle looked toward the window. “This device is extremely dangerous.”

“It also comes with a reward.”

“It’s not the money.”

“You’re not with the Bureau anymore, Kyle, so how do you even know about the device?”

Kyle bit his lower lip, then said, “There are people who know about Kristin’s murder. They know who did it.”

Nick understood. Kyle’s girlfriend was killed when her car exploded when she started it one morning. Kyle was there to see it happen. There was always speculation that Kyle had double-crossed the wrong people and he was being punished for his behavior.

“Kyle,” Nick said, “you’re in way over your head here. Why don’t you tell me what you know and I’ll try to help.”

Kyle stared into space, his eyes not fixing on anything. “I was followed to the airport. They knew I had the device and they weren’t going to let me make it.”

“Who?”

“Clanton.”

“Brian Clanton?”

Kyle nodded.

“Brian Clanton, the assistant CIA director?”

Kyle continued to nod.

Nick almost laughed out loud. “Kyle, do you know how preposterous that sounds?”

Kyle looked at Nick. “Really? Did you happen to tell anyone at Langley you were going to be on this flight?”

Nick said nothing.

“I didn’t think so. Apparently there’s a little trust issue, isn’t there?”

Nick said nothing.

“Oh, I know . . . you had to compartmentalize the intelligence so you kept it in house. Right? Except you have a team of Interpol agents waiting for you in Rome. So you trust an international agency with multinational branches over the CIA?”

Nick wasn’t about to go into the rift between departments, but Kyle hit the target with extreme accuracy. “Okay, so Clanton is chasing you, trying to take the device and keep it safe from a rogue agent.”

“Sure, that makes sense, except for one thing. Clanton is the ringleader of the operation. I can prove it. I’ve got photos, recordings, secured emails. It’s all on a flashdrive in a safe deposit box. There is no malfunctioning button this time. I can give you everything.”

The look in Kyle’s eyes prevented Nick from dismissing the notion. There was something so lucid, so clearly sober about his demeanor, Nick almost believed him.

“Okay,” Nick said. “What does the device look like?”

“It’s inside a small canister posing as an inhaler. Like one of the inhalers for asthma patients.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Who’s this woman you’re with?”

Kyle instinctively looked at the seats in front of them where she was sitting. “I don’t know. She calls herself Lisa, but I doubt that’s her name. She claimed to work with Kristin at the Embassy, but I know she’s lying.”

“So what does she want?”

“The device.”

“And whose side do you think she’s on?”

“No idea. I just know she rescued me from Clanton, but I doubt she’s with the government.”

“Jeesh, Kyle, what have you been doing?”

“A lot,” he said sheepishly. “An awful lot.”

“Tell you what,” Nick said. “We get to Rome, I’ll have my partner check into this right away. You give him the data and we’ll check it all out. But you’ll be detained until we have the device. Okay?”

“Sure,” Kyle said, “but I doubt this plane is going to Italy.”

Nick squinted. “What do you mean?”

Kyle showed Nick his phone. On the display was the face of a compass. “We’ve been heading due south for the past fifteen minutes. And unless they moved Rome to the Bahamas, we won’t be landing in Italy anytime soon.”

Nick returned to his seat with more questions than answers. He placed his phone on the tray table with the compass showing them heading south. Nick was going to give the pilot a few more minutes to reroute, before he acted. A temporary flight path could be changed due to weather ahead, so he wasn’t going to jump the gun.

Jess returned to her seat next to him and began scribbling more notes.

“Anything?” Nick asked.

Jess shook her head, then pulled out her cell phone and tapped her screen a couple of times. “What about you?” she said, staring at her phone. “You put a little scare into my stalker?”

“Your stalker is an air marshal.”

Jess looked over at him. “You’re kidding.”

“I wish I were.”

Jess tapped her screen again, then glanced over at Nick’s phone. “Are you getting a signal?”

Nick picked up his cell. “Sure, but mine’s a satellite.”

The interior of the plane was dark now with most of the passengers in a reclined position attempting to sleep.

A female flight attendant pulled a cart up next to their row and looked at Nick. In a quiet voice she said, “Something to drink, sir?”

“Diet Coke, please.”

“And you, ma’am?”

“I’m okay,” Jess said, then added, “is there a problem with the WiFi on board?”

“Yes,” the woman said with rehearsed pleasantry. “The WiFi isn’t functioning. Sorry, I know it’s an inconvenience.”

The plane jostled, yet the attendant adroitly avoided spilling anything as she reached over and handed Nick his drink. “If there’s anything else you need, please let me know.”

Nick couldn’t help but stare at his phone, praying for the damn compass to move away from the giant “S” on his screen.

“You waiting for a call?” Jess said.

“No,” he said, taking a sip of his drink, then added, “I’m just solving a mystery.”

“What mystery?”

“Nothing.”

“Nick, not everything is on the record.”

He had to grin at that one. “I realize I opened up to you earlier, but I am an FBI agent you know.”

They hit turbulence and Nick felt the plane come out from under him. He clutched the armrests as the fuselage bobbled in the sky.

“Bobably jus urbance,” Jess said.

Nick looked at her. “What?”

“Bopity moor uterlent,” she slurred. Her face seemed to slant to the right, melting like a Salvador Dali painting.

Nick was too slow to realize what had happened. He glanced at his drink, then at the flight attendant peeking at him through the corner of her eye. He jammed a finger down his throat desperately trying to purge the drug from his stomach, but again he was too late. His finger felt fat and gooey, and he couldn’t find his esophagus. The motion of the plane made him tired now and he could tell consciousness was leaving. The last thing he remembered was the flight attendant jabbing a syringe into Jess’s neck and watching her head drop onto the tray table with a thud.

* * *

Even before he opened his eyes, Nick felt as if he were speeding down a rollercoaster. Every little jiggle the plane made caused his stomach to roll up and down. His hands were clammy and his eyelids were resisting his commands. He was slumped down like a drunk and hadn’t the power to sit up.

When he finally managed to open his eyes, there was a woman sitting next to him, pointing a gun. His gun. It was the athletic woman who boarded with Kyle Church. Her crooked nose seemed even more severe close up.

“Welcome back,” the woman said quietly.

They were in the last row on the right side of the plane. In the middle three seats sat Jess and Kyle Church with their heads back, snoring.

Nick forced himself to sit up, rubbing his neck from the uncomfortable position he’d slept in.

“How much they paying you?” Nick asked, while cracking his neck from side to side.

“Five million each.”

“So, what’s that, thirty million dollars for a doomsday device?”

There was a tone of sarcasm in her voice that seemed to belong there. “You’re very funny, Agent Bracco. You trying to figure out a number? Let’s just say there are more of us than you. A lot more.”

Nick blinked dry eyes. “So five million dollars to destroy the planet. Nice.”

“Don’t patronize me. You think you know all the answers, but you don’t. You only know a small portion of the equation.”

“Enlighten me.”

“Well,” she shrugged one shoulder, “the country who owns the device can defend itself properly from any enemy.”

“Yeah? What if the enemy are your own citizens? Then what?”

That stopped her. She had to go off script and it seemed to annoy her. “It makes no difference who the enemy is. Maybe this will prevent the United States from getting involved in everyone else’s business.”

“You have experience with foreign policy?”