Hell, he’d rather be dead than spend the rest of his life in a Belarusian prison anyway. For now, boarding the plane at least briefly prolonged his life expectancy, so in the interests of survival, he went with that. Plus Aleksa was already onboard, and he didn’t want to abandon her. After dragging her into this, he thought she should at least not have to die alone.
Resignedly, Avery staggered up the steep incline of the ramp and into the cargo bay. The cavernous space was sufficiently large to accommodate as many as four army tanks or something as big as a Mi-24 gunship. All gray and white, with halogen lights shining brightly overhead, the cargo bay had a sterile, clinical look. A hooked crane hung from a rail system that ran the length of the ceiling, and the air felt cold and metallic.
Aleksa sat on the floor, her back against the fuselage’s aluminum skin. Getting his first close look at her, he saw that she suffered a bruised eye, plus the scrape on her forehead where she’d hit the street, but she was able to keep her head up and otherwise didn’t look like she’d been hurt too badly.
Avery stumbled over to her. He squeezed his abs and legs tight, to keep the strain off his damaged ribs, while he carefully lowered his weight to the floor next to her. His head dropped forward, and he shut his eyes, ready to pass out again. He heard voices speaking Russian in the background and the steady whine of turboprop engines, sounding distant and muffled. He thought he heard Aleksa say something, but lifting his head and responding required energy he no longer possessed.
He felt so tired. Within seconds, he already felt himself drifting away. He needed just a few minutes to shut down and re-charge, get his head together.
But Aleksa wasn’t going to give him the opportunity. She prodded him with her shoulder and said, “Look.”
Avery painfully opened his eye.
Directly across from them, five steel, heavy-duty cylindrical containers, light blue in color, lay stacked on their sides, each row becoming smaller from the base up, creating a pyramid. There were two such pyramids. Each container was about five feet long, with maybe a two foot diameter, with the end caps bolted on. Chains and cargo netting stretched taught secured them in place to prevent them from rolling. Avery couldn’t make out the black Belarusian labels and Cyrillic writing on the end-caps, but the international radioactive materials trefoil symbol was immediately recognizable.
“It’s not safe to be this near,” Aleksa said.
The Russians didn’t seem concerned about exposure. Avery thought the cylinders would be sufficiently insulated to contain the radiation. Inside each container would be another container in which the HEU pellets were kept, with o-rings on the end creating a tight seal. Inside, a layer of fiberboard and plywood separated the two containers. But it didn’t matter. They weren’t going to live long enough to have to worry about the effects of radiation poisoning.
Ruslan Kheda and two more mafiya men boarded the aircraft. Kheda gave some orders to them, pointing toward Avery and Aleksa. Then he hit a button on the control module, raising the ramp and locking it in place. The trio walked across the cargo bay and through the open hatchway into the passenger compartment in the forward fuselage behind the cockpit.
Before the hatchway slammed shut, sealing Avery and Aleksa inside the cargo hold, Avery caught a glimpse of another Russian already in the crew compartment. He figured there were at least seven onboard, including the pilots. They were all big guys, too, and he figured everyone was armed.
After several minutes, the massive engines and propellers picked up, and the aircraft kicked into motion. Slowly and smoothly, the pilot taxied the Antonov onto the runway. Once the pilot put the throttle into full power and the Antonov picked up speed, accelerating down the long stretch of runway, the deafening roar blotted out all other sound in the cargo hold, blasting Avery’s and Aleksa’s ears. Contrary to what Hollywood depicted, it was near impossible to hold a conversation in a transport’s cargo hold.
Bombarded by the unending thunder barrage of the engines, Aleksa winced, and Avery, with the trauma his head had already sustained, found the volume especially distressing. He wanted to tear his ears off. But that was the point. Being held in the cargo hold was meant to further wear them down and disorientate them. Plus, here, Ruslan Kheda didn’t have to worry about making a mess.
The cargo bay’s floor abruptly and steeply angled upward as the Antonov’s four turboprop engines lifted the jet off the ground and carried it on a steep ascent into the sky. Aleksa fell over against Avery, her hair in his face and her shoulder digging into his ribs. He winced, and she gave him an apologetic look, which he shrugged off.
The plane reached altitude and leveled out. At thirty-plus thousand feet, the temperature dropped rapidly in the cargo hold. Aleksa kept close against Avery. Her warmth and presence gave him comfort.
Unable to converse verbally, she looked up at him, as if expecting him to have a solution or some way out of here. He returned her gaze through his one good eye, but he had nothing with which to reassure her, and he saw the resignation in her eyes.
It was contrary to the Ranger mentality and training ingrained into his psyche, but Avery thought himself defeated, at least physically. Only the unyielding scream of the engines kept him awake. He expected Kheda’s crew to return any minute to finish the job and knew he should be looking around to find for some way to even the odds, but he couldn’t bring his mind up to the task.
But Aleksa was on the same page. She slipped her cuffed hands up from under her legs. The chain between the cuffs was very short, to create a narrow gap and prevent someone from doing just that, but she possessed the flexibility and determination to force her hands beneath her feet and get them in front of her.
She stood up and searched up and down the length of the cargo bay. But there was nothing around, not even tools, which could be used as weapons or to break free of the handcuffs. The Russians had done a thorough job of clearing the cargo hold of any loose items in preparation of converting the compartment into a suitable prison.
Abandoning the search, she finally sat back down near Avery.
His head leaned against the fuselage, with his eyes closed. He was breathing, and she checked his pulse and heartbeat. Both were steady. She stayed near close to him, watched over him as he slept.
Close to three hours later, the hatchway in the bulkhead separating the forward passenger compartment from the cargo hold opened. Aleksa didn’t hear anything, but when she turned her head and suddenly saw Ruslan Kheda, with a Russian right behind him, she jumped, panicked.
The Russian closed the hatch, sealing them in with the prisoners.
Aleksa’s pulse quickened. She felt like a mouse cornered by a snake and never took her eyes off the approaching men, even as she reached over with both hands and began shoving Avery. When he didn’t move, she put more force into it and screamed his name.
With Kheda and the Russian only ten feet away, Avery finally stirred and opened his eye. It took him several seconds to orientate himself and recall where he was. But the instant he glanced up at Kheda’s scowling, hate-filled face, everything came back to him, and Aleksa felt him tense upright defensively beside her.
The floor declined several degrees as the Antonov decreased altitude and leveled out after a couple minutes.