Stop, he ordered himself. He’d been staring at the scotch. Thinking. Trying to figure out how to kill three other assassins onboard the trans-Pacific bound 747 now making for the west coast of the United States. And then the Pacific beyond.

  It’s hard. But it’s not impossible, he thought and got up to go the lavatory at the back of the plane, intent on finding out exactly where the gorilla was sitting.

  Except he isn’t.

  He’s not sitting in the back of the cabin at all. He’s missing.

  So, it’s going to be difficult, Frank thinks grimly and locks the bathroom door behind him.

  It takes two minutes to get the forty-five assembled from the various compartments sewn into his expensive Italian suit and loafers. The silencer goes on last. But not yet. So he shoves the gun down his pants and puts the fat cylinder in his jacket pocket. When he gets back to his seat, he sees that the Eurasian girl has made her way to first class. She sits across the aisle from Ravenhill, leaning over to chat animatedly with him. Long caramel legs without shoes gently shift with each joke the old man trots out, along with billboard-sized helpings of his ego.

  And after five minutes, Frank hasn’t seen Jordana or the other stewardess.

  Things are going from difficult to dangerous.

  After dangerous... comes fatal.

  “Don’t think about her,” he mutters, pushing away thoughts of Marie. He’s up and moving toward the galley as though to get a fresh drink. When he arrives, neither stewardess, nor Jordana, is there.

  And the elevator that leads to the lower galley is down-shaft in the belly of the flying giant.

  Frank is just reaching into his jacket pocket for the silencer as he readies to pull out the forty-five, when he hears Ravenhill’s nasally laugh and delicate footsteps approaching the galley along the aisle from first. The Eurasian girl gives a deep throaty giggle that ends in a wicked high soprano whoop, they turn the corner, and she’s as surprised to see Frank as Frank should be to see her.

  It’s clear Ravenhill has no idea what’s going on here. He only thinks he’s about to get ridiculously lucky at altitude.

  A moment later, Frank hears the galley elevator lock into place and the door swings open.

  He turns and gets the butt of a gun right in the forehead.

  Lights out.

  ***

  “I thought he said we’d be using this stuff in Cambodia... to support the guerillas.” It’s Ravenhill and his normally nasal, hiccupping, self-assured academic’s voice is whining like some spoiled child. He’s afraid too. Frank can hear the fear. Loud and clear.

  “Well we’ve decided to test it here. Now. Over the U.S.” Her tone, the come-hither plaything-of-your-dreams sex-kitten fantasy Eurasian girl is gone. This is all headmistress who wears the pants, and carries the guns.

  That much is clear.

  “Get it through your head... this is happening now, you little worm! And if you want to get off this plane before it slams into that rock, then work with us. I need the arming codes and the mixture ratios for both tanks.”

  “But the plane...” whines Ravenhill. “If it explodes, it’ll destroy the contaminant. I’m almost sure of it.”

  “Our data says otherwise,” lectures the Eurasian schoolmarm. “So we’re doing this. Codes... now!”

  Frank’s feet and wrists are bound. He opens one eye and sees Jordana on the floor next to him. She’s bleeding and he knows in a heart that has just stopped... he knows she’s dead. Except why would her feet and wrists also be bound like his? Then he sees the barest rise in her chest.

  His first thought is gratefulness. His second is that he’s going to kill the hell out of these people once he gets free.

  “Manually set 001001000 on the digital switches,” begins Ravenhill reluctantly. He’s giving them codes to whatever bomb it is they want to set off. In a 747. Cruising over the top of the United States.

  They’d used the word “contaminant.”

  Frank’s third thought is that he’s in a lot of trouble.

  When he opens his eyes, he sees the Eurasian standing over the little tweed-suited academic who’s on his knees and sweating even though it’s freezing cold down here in the belly of the giant aircraft. The other stewardess has Frank’s gun and she looks mean. The kind of mean that gets a thrill out of hurting other people.

  And, wonders Frank distantly, where’s the gorilla?

  Now Ravenhill is babbling about pressure ratios and mixtures.

  “You realize the genetic agent and the defoliant are going to destroy that valley.”

  “That’s what we were hoping for. We’re of the opinion that would be a “best case scenario” for us, Poindexter. A win, if you will,” says the Eurasian smugly.

  “It’s aahhh... a watershed!” His voice is incredulous. “You’ll destroy glacier ice and California’s whole aquifer will be poisoned. Within five years, the entire west coast will be a desert wasteland. A dustbowl. I thought you guys were with the CIA.”

  Frank watches as the Eurasian Headmistress nods at Mean Stewardess.

  Quick as a snake, she stands back and points the pistol at Ravenhill’s head.

  “N-...”

  And then his brains are all over the lower galley wall.

  “Well, you thought wrong,” she sneers. Then laughs. “Forgot the silencer.”

  The Headmistress shakes her head and goes to the back of the galley, toward the rear of the airplane.

  “Any minute now!”

  And as if on cue, there’s a loud metallic clanging. As though someone has begun to demolish a steel girder. Five minutes of this, and the rear wall comes apart at the seams as the hulk that is the gorilla tears his way into the galley.

  “Did you get in the cargo compartment?” asks Eurasian Headmistress.

  Through eyes half shut, Frank sees Gorilla nod. Slowly.

  “Good, now you two go clear the upper lounge and take control of the aircraft. I’ll go back into the hold, find the cargo, and arm the canisters. Climb to forty-five thousand and set the autopilot and glideslope for our target. I’ll get our chutes laid out and we’ll open the cargo bay. After that, it’s a long fall to all that money that’s waiting for us. Go!”

  Frank hears the elevator activate on a low whiny hum. Then watches the Headmistress climb through the tear in the galley wall.

  For a moment they’re alone.

  No one had asked what they’re going to do with the stewardess and the guy they clocked. The two people tied up on the deck of the lower galley in the plane they’re about to crash.

  I guess they know exactly what they’re going to do with us, thinks Frank. And it probably isn’t pretty.

  He struggles at the bindings, but they’re done by a pro. They feel impossible to break. Frank has to fight off the hopelessness that wants to surround him.

  So he continues to struggle.

  “Frank,” whispers Jordana.

  “Yes,” he grunts as he tries to snap the ropes which only tighten.

  “I need you to break my hand.”

  Frank puts everything into one last heave. Break, dammit, he screams at the bindings inside his head.

  “Save it, Frank,” she says softly. “I need you to do this.”

  “No!” grunts Frank.

  “You’ve got to.” Her voice sounds weak. As though she’s in pain. And fading.

  “Are you okay?”

  “She stabbed me. I’m putting pressure on the wound with my arm and elbow. I think the bleeding has stopped.” But they both know what she really means. She hopes the bleeding has stopped. That’s what she really means.

  Again, Frank silently promises to murder these people in whole new ways.

  “Break my hand and I can slip the knot, Frank.”

  He struggles again and knows there’s no arguing. She’s right. There’s no way to stop them unless one of them can get out of these bindings. And then defuse a bomb of some sort. Before this jet slams into the ground.

  They said a rock, Frank reminds himself. A rock in California. They’re going to slam the plane into a big rock. He didn’t know California well enough to know which rock they were talking about.

  He turns over on his side, knowing if the Headmistress suddenly walks back in, she’ll know something’s up. Then she’ll kill them both.

  And they’ll never see...

  Stop that. Right now.

  He takes his wife’s hand in his.

  “I’m so sorry, honey,” he whispers. He’s on the verge of tears. Hot angry frustrated tears. He’s shaking with rage and he feels suddenly helpless as he takes her long slender hand and feels that it’s slick with blood.

  Her blood.

  Then he crushes it.

  Because... Marie.

  I’m happy, Daddy.

  Because they have to make it back to her. They have to.

  He feels Jordana go tense. Hears her stop breathing as she tries to resist the pain. Hears her holding her breath as she fights the nausea he knows she’s going through. Knows she’s fighting the blackout that’s threatening to take her. Because if she blacks out now, they’re dead.

  A moment later she’s breathing. Crying softly. Whimpering. But breathing.

  “I’m so sorry, baby,” Frank is whispering over and over as softly as he can.

  He hears her murmur. “It’s okay. Everything for our little darling, right? It’s okay, my love.” She is softly sobbing because of the pain.

  And Frank is convinced they’re not going to make it. That this is all too tragic. That death has made its appointment with them.

  That it’s coming for them.

  Jordana is wriggling. Wriggling through the ropes.

  “What the...” it’s the Headmistress, and her voice is pure righteous indignation.

  How dare they try to save themselves from her!

  Frank rolls on his back, sees the Eurasian Headmistress climbing through the rent metal gap in the galley that leads into the dark belly of the aircraft and whatever bomb waits back there... then he rolls straight at her.

  She’s moving fast to avoid him but Frank hears a leg snap as he rolls into her shin, forcing the leg in a direction it does not want to go.

  She’s down on top of him, all long hair and teeth and claws, swearing and scratching. Even through the blinding pain he has caused her, she’s trying to claw his eyes out as she screams at him. Trying to kill him. In a moment she will.

  Before that can happen, Jordana starts to strangle her even though her hand is broken and she’s screaming in pain, and when she finishes the Headmistress off, sightless eyes bulge in shocked disbelief at what has just happened.

  A few minutes later, they’re unbound and as Frank stands, feeling blood rush to his hands and feet, he sees the dried blood along Jordana’s blue coat. They both stare at it.

  “Don’t touch it. It’s stopped for now. We don’t want to open the wound,” she says in her husky Italian-accented English.

  She smiles at him, seeing the worry on his face. Languidly, seductively, through the pain she winces at, she murmurs, “Don’t be so pessimistic, my love.”

  They take the elevator to the upper galley.

  In the galley, a drunken Asian businessman is prowling through the trays looking for scotch and muttering to himself in Japanese. Jordana ignores him and leads Frank into first class. A few of the well-to-do are reading magazines. Some are passed out. Frank looks out a window and feels the airplane begin to climb. He reaches for his gun and finds it’s not there. Of course it wouldn’t be. They’ve taken it.

  He pulls out his pen and uncaps it, revealing the nib injector filled with deadly neurotoxin. He grasps it in his hand like a fighting knife and they climb the tiny spiral staircase that leads to the upper deck.

  Frank peers from carpet-level at the floor of the upper deck. He sees Mean Stewardess dragging one of the pilots feet first out the cabin door. She doesn’t look like she’s having any trouble and her back is toward him.

  Now or never, thinks Frank, and rushes her.

  She hears him and turns but it’s too late, he has the one shot poison cartridge against her neck and she knows if she moves, she’s dead.

  “Drop it,” he whispers, meaning the compact silenced gun she’s carrying in one hand. A Walther PPK.

  Through the open cockpit door, he can see one of the pilots slumped over against the window, blood and brains washing the high altitude view. It’s the co-pilot.

  Sitting in the pilot’s seat, barely, the big gorilla is pulling back on the flight yoke while flipping a series of switches with practiced effortlessness. As though he knows exactly what he’s doing.

  Frank feels Mean Stewardess smile.

  Because she’s a psychopath, he thinks. And he’s right. But that’s not the only reason she’s smiling.

  The compact gun with the silencer spits, and a moment later the air inside the cabin is turning into a hurricane as everything rushes toward the smashed rectangular window with the rounded edges she’s just shot out.

  He hears her distantly laughing above the tornado as Frank’s pen is snatched from his hands before he can apply enough pressure to shoot her full of neurotoxin. Enough to kill an elephant. Unpleasantly.

  Frank is pulled toward the widening gap in the cracking window. He sees that just beyond the shattering plastic is a forty-five thousand foot fall out onto the great prairie far below. Mean Stewardess flees toward the aft section of the upper cabin, struggling desperately against the sudden hurricane.

  A moment later, the pressure equalizes and everything is dull white noise and chaos falling back into place. The aircraft tremors as wind rushes past Frank and out into the yawning blue chasm of high altitude. Bells and alarms are screeching in the cockpit and people below are screaming.

  The aircraft is beginning a steep climb as it heels over to the right.

  Frank falls back against the far wall as he watches Jordana plant one of her hairpins right in Mean Stewardess’ eye. The woman shrieks and pushes Jordana back down the stairs in front of her, following her down, screaming in agony, promising murder.

  The Gorilla climbs out from behind the controls and pushes his way from the cockpit as though it has just given birth to him and the horrible nightmare that he is.

  Frank feels the aircraft climbing and turning. He knows if this continues, it will roll over on its back. And then...

  The Gorilla stops to sock Frank in the stomach.

  The wind goes straight out of Frank as the guy buries a fist the size of a ham in his gut.

  And there isn’t much wind because oxygen at this altitude is precious.

  Frank isn’t thinking he has to stop this guy for any other reason than that if this guy gets past him, he’ll meet Jordana next, find her on his way to get a parachute from the cargo bay.

  And Frank can’t let that happen. Can’t let him find Jordana next.

  So it’s “Every Day” for Frank because it can’t be the last day for the one he loves.

  It’s ‘Nam in his heart and mind. The trenches that night after the mags went dry and VC were still coming through the wire, in the wire, all around them. After his knife stuck in some guy from the other side of the world and wouldn’t come out of the crying man’s ribcage.

  Red. Murder. Every day.

  All elbows and fists and knees and even Frank’s head, because what does he have to lose if Marie loses her Mama? He’s smashing everything he’s got into this behemoth to stop him. If just so Jordana can hold Marie by the seashore. Even if he’s not part of that picture in his mind.

  And...

  “I’m happy, Daddy.”

  The man’s bones are like the oak beams of a house. But Frank smashes into them with elbows and forearms. The man’s belly is like a cast iron stove, but Frank hurls his knee into it, grunting and promising murder. The man’s brow is like the prow of some ancient Viking ship... but Frank smashes his head into it and hears some horrible deep crack. And hopes it’s not his own.

  The giant goes down, hard, clutching his broken nose and smashed forehead.

  Without thinking, Frank gives a little hop and lands knee first on the man’s exposed throat.

  That breaks. Easily.

  The plane is almost on its side.

  He can’t find Jordana. In the next moment, the plane will be upside down at full-throttle. His wife will just have to be okay for a few minutes more.

  He hopes. Hopes desperately in that way where you’re praying and asking for one thing with all you’ve got left to promise. Offer. Give. Beg.

  He crawls into the cockpit and pulls himself into the pilot’s seat. Outside the wide windshield, the world is not as it should be. The far horizon is almost vertical and the sky takes up only half of it.

  Frank grabs the yoke and coaxes the airborne giant back toward the left. Slowly, he thinks, and hears the plane groan mortally while he does.

  Incomprehensible bells shriek for attention. He can dimly hear some small far-away voice over the headphones that lie on the instrument clusters near the engine throttles.

  And looking at the throttles and the seemingly impossible amount of gauges and switches it takes to fly this thing, Frank knows they are dead for sure. If not now, in the next few minutes.

  Frank is gasping for air.

  The tinny voice keeps buzzing and buzzing in the headphones.

  The massive 747 wallows back to level and the engine noise increases. As though the giant turbines are spooling up into some all new urgent doomsday hum. He glances at the throttle. All eight are set full forward. Max Power.

  The gorilla was trying to kill us all, Frank thinks, and grabs for the headphones.

  “Pan Am 408, this is SFO. We have you not at your assigned altitude. Please advise,” asks an urgent voice.

  Frank scans the instrument panels for a mic. He finds it near his knee, grabs and keys it.

  “We’re in trouble up here. Both pilots are dead.”

  There’s a long pause. Frank can hear his breath wheezing. Even though there is a waterfall of adrenaline coursing through his system, he feels himself fading.

  Needing oxygen.

  Nothing over the radio.

  He grabs an oxygen mask that has fallen behind the headrest. He can feel cold air flooding out from the mouthpiece on his fingers as he tries to get it over his head. He lets go of the controls completely, and it feels as though the plane will just suddenly nosedive into the ground far below as he dons the mask.

 

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