Marina had learned to fly aerobatics, and preferred that kind of thrill to any roller coaster Cedar Point might ever conceive. She was fully aware, having experienced it herself, that motion sickness was common among aerobatic pilots in training. In fact, it was so common and fairly expected that when Air Force pilots trained, they were not allowed to clean up if they vomited. Nor were they relieved of duty.
Those who continued flying despite being ill were lauded and kept on, but those who were not able to continue were not.
Marina herself had flown enough aerobatics that she was immune to the motion sickness problem, and found that as long as she flew a few hours regularly, she kept that immunity up.
She was counting on George and Bran — and, unfortunately, MacNeil — to be on the other end of the spectrum, and hoped neither of the kidnappers would have had the fortitude to make it through the Air Force training.
If Marina felt any regret for putting MacNeil through the same, she didn’t dwell on it. If it didn’t kill him, it’d make him stronger. Besides, it would give her a good sense of just what he was made of.
She banked the plane to the left, and then to the right, in quick succession, ignoring George’s frantic demands to know what was wrong. Instead, she kept her face tight and her eyes focused outside the windshield as if she was just as terrified as he was. That in itself was a battle, to keep the exhilaration from showing in her face.
After leveling the plane for about three minutes, during which time she responded to George with a clenched-jaw, “Be quiet! I’m just trying to keep us in the air!” she slipped the plane into one of the aerobatic routines she’d learned.
It was fifteen minutes of loops, banks, and steep turns, and it was certain to turn the stomachs inside out of every man on the plane.
She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from grinning in delight when George finally succumbed, bending forward to rest his head against the other yoke. That was the worst thing to do, but she wasn’t about to share that little tidbit with him.
Marina settled for bumping the plane up and down as if it were going over the moguls in the snow below so she could take a good look at the man sitting next to her. Yes, the gun butt was sticking up between George’s bottom and the seat, forgotten.
A quick look toward the back told Marina that MacNeil wasn’t doing much better than George; and she couldn’t see Bran. But she managed to catch MacNeil’s attention again and gave a quick nod. He coughed, but she wasn’t sure if that was his signal or a precursor to him retching all over the floor.
But someone puked as she turned back quickly. A quick glance told her it was Bran. And that pushed the beleaguered George over the edge.
Marina did another loop for good measure, then made her next move. With a measured shift, she twisted the yoke to the right, and as George flew up off his seat in the same direction, she snagged the gun from under his rear and dropped it on the left side of her chair in one motion as smooth as the plane’s loop.
“Marina.” She heard a choked voice from behind. Gabe. She righted the plane and cast a quick look back. He caught her eyes, then, holding his hand over his mouth, he flipped open his seatbelt and lurched across the small cabin toward Bran.
She couldn’t see what happened next, but Marina assumed Gabe was relieving Bran of his weapon, so she kept the plane steady for a moment so as not to jar him out of his calculated move.
When she glanced back around, she saw Gabe back in his seat, fumbling with his seatbelt with one hand, clutching the gun in the other, and retching over the side of the armrest.
The plane was going to be hell to clean up.
Once the plane was flying level for more than five minutes, Gabe recovered from his bout of motion sickness. Now that he and Marina had the weapons, it was short work for him to take control of George and Bran, who hadn’t realized they’d lost their guns along with their dinner until it was too late.
Marina kept the plane straight and level as easily as if they were out for a Sunday jaunt while training one of the guns on George. She appeared to have gotten over her reluctance to hold a weapon at this juncture. When she turned toward the back as if to see what he was doing, Gabe assumed she’d put the plane on auto-pilot.
Still a bit weak queasy, he assisted Bran in moving the handcuffs from his pocket to his wrists. Bran barely resisted; he was covered with vomit and his face was speckled with tiny red dots from the force of his puking. Gabe was thankful for the fact that he hadn’t had anything to eat since that long-ago piece of pizza in the hotel room, and had therefore been content with little more than dry heaves.
After Bran was cuffed with his wrists behind the seat so there would be no unexpected distractions, Gabe made his way to George and half-dragged, half-pulled him from the front seat to a back seat and cuffed him in a similar manner.
“Sorry guys. We’re not going to be as accommodating as you were for us.”
Once he was sure they were immobilized, Gabe dropped into the seat next to Marina, taking care not to step in George’s vomit.
“That was some fucking ride.”
“I’m sorry.” She didn’t sound the least bit remorseful. In fact, she dashed him a cocky grin, which made her exotic features all the more attractive.
He couldn’t decide whether to be pissed off and tear a chunk out of that shapely ass, or kiss the hell out of her for her quick — and creative — thinking. Annoyance won out, for it was obvious she had loved every minute of the discomfort she’d inflicted on them. Including him. “Couldn’t you have faked something else?” he asked. “Like low fuel?”
“Then I would have had to land, and we might not have been able to disarm them. I thought it would be better to disable them first.”
Couldn’t fault that logic. “Speaking of landing ….”
“I’m going to try and contact a nearby airport and see if we can land there. We can get something to eat and clean up and maybe rest.”
“I’ll let Bergstrom know where we are so we can get these guys into custody.”
“Yes. But I want to get some info from them if we can, because I think we ought to finish the flight and go to wherever they were taking us. It’s the only way to find out what’s going on.”
“What about your career?” Admittedly, he had to work to keep the sarcasm from his voice. Hard.
26
Victor Alexander never expected that he would step foot in the world of the Skaladeskas again.
But Roman had called him home. Insisted that he rejoin the family. The ideal time was at hand, he’d said. The ideal time.
An event that Victor had not expected to occur during his lifetime.
And since he’d arrived, he’d been treated like an honored prisoner. Not a guest. Not the welcomed prodigal son of the Bible’s New Testament. But as a hostage. A prisoner of sorts.
Yet, his conscience told him, deep in the recesses of his mind, do you deserve anything different? If his father knew the truth, he’d as likely order him banished into the wilds of the rough mountains to meet his fate at the paws of the wolves and mountain lions, or have him executed.
It was only by Roman’s grace that Victor remained alive. Roman had had use for him over the years; the decades. But Victor greatly feared that his summons home portended the end of his usefulness. The thought nauseated him.
It had been the method of his travel that gave the first indication that all was not as simple as it appeared; when he was ushered from what had been a neutral meeting place into a waiting car.