“It’s not her plane,” Blake said with desperation in his voice. “This one has no markings. All Universal Air flights have the XA logo on their tails.”
She looked at the tail, rising eight stories high in the air, and wondered why she’d missed that. She wanted it to be the XA233 so badly, that she didn’t see the evidence in front of her.
She stared intently at the disappointingly white tail, scrutinizing it inch by inch, looking for some detail, some hint. Then she grabbed her LED flashlight and scanned the white tail again, squinting.
“Wait a second… there!” she exclaimed, pointing the flashlight at a certain spot on the plane’s tail. “Blake, what do you see?”
Sam and Lou lit their flashlights and pointed them at the same area.
“See?” Alex said. “They peeled off the logo and markings, but there’s a trace left, where the paint was dulled by the adhesive material of the logo. The curvy X? You see?”
Blake nodded, unable to speak for a few seconds, choked, while tears pooled in his eyes.
“I knew it,” he whispered. “I know she’s alive!”
Alex grinned widely and side-hugged him, not taking her eyes from the markings on the plane’s white tail. They were right; they had a chance.
“Now let’s find her,” she said, walking briskly toward the aircraft door, still fitted with mobile stairs. Let’s see what we can find inside, maybe there’s something we can use.
“Right,” Lou said, and joined her.
As she walked past the huge landing gear, she looked up, intrigued to see it up close. She’d never been so close to a commercial airliner before. She slowed her pace a little, observing the double sets of wheels, the shock absorbers, the gear mechanism. Deep inside the gear compartment, a red glint caught the corner of her eye as she turned to leave.
She froze. Feeling her blood instantly turn to ice, she looked up, searching for the source of the elusive red glint, the eerily familiar flicker. Then she found it. A timer, counting down, with only nine seconds left to go.
“Oh, shit,” she said, then screamed from the bottom of her lungs, “run! Run!”
She ran as fast as she could, her tactical vest and all her gear rattling on her and slowing her down. Everyone ran without looking back, following her lead. They exited the hangar running, but she didn’t stop there. She continued toward the forest line, running as fast as she could.
The sound of the explosion reached them first, and then, within milliseconds, the shockwave hit them hard, smashing them to the ground and covering them with smoldering debris.
…48
Ivan hated to be the one who had to wake Myatlev up in the morning. Eternally hung over, sullen, and grumpy as can be, Myatlev was not easy to deal with in the early hours of the day. Entering his bedroom usually turned Ivan’s stomach. He clenched his teeth and winced just thinking about it. The stink of metabolized alcohol and sweat, combined with stale cigar smoke and, sometimes, just to make it worse, the smell of bodily fluids exchanged freely during his boss’s sexual encounters, made it almost unbreathable, even for the hardcore ex-Spetsnaz that he was.
Regardless, he had no choice but to wake him, and with bad news on top of it. Ivan stopped in front of Myatlev’s bedroom door, rapping his fingers against it and waiting no more than two seconds before entering.
There he was, butt-naked, lying flat on his back, his morning wood still impressive for his age and state of physical decay, his snores roaring louder than a tank engine climbing a steep hill. At the far end of the bed, a young girl, not much older than sixteen, crouched shivering. Wrapped tightly in sweaty sheets and trying to take as little space as possible, she stared at him with big, round, pleading eyes.
Ivan waved the girl away, and she was quick to disappear, grabbing her things on her way out. Then, taking a deep breath, he approached Myatlev and cleared his throat to wake him up. Nothing. No throat clearing was going to cover that snoring. He touched Myatlev’s shoulder, and said, speaking louder and louder with each word.
“Boss? Boss? Good morning. Boss?”
Myatlev finally opened his eyes, groaned, and licked his dry lips.
“What the fuck is it?”
Ivan handed him a glass of sparkling water and a couple of rehydrating pills, to help with his obvious hangover.
“We blew up the plane, as you said,” Ivan replied, unperturbed. “We recorded the explosion via satellite.”
“Good.”
“But there’s a problem,” Ivan continued. “You’ll have to see.”
He pulled open the laptop he had brought along, and pulled the recorded satellite view of the hangar. The recording started a few minutes before the explosion, showing four people approaching the hangar, taking out the two sentries, commando-style, then sneaking inside the hangar, only to come out of there running for their lives just seconds before everything blew up in a huge blaze of fire.
“What the fuck?” Myatlev said, suddenly awake. “Who are they?”
“Unknown,” Ivan replied. “But my man is still in the area. He’ll find out.”
…49
Alex landed hard face down, the shock knocking the air out of her lungs. All the hardware she carried in her vest pockets crushed her flesh when she’d smashed into the ground. She breathed shallow, feeling a sharp pain at the left of her sternum with each breath, but managed to put her hands on top of her head, trying to protect herself from the flying, smoldering debris. She looked to her left and saw Sam squinting and cussing under his breath. She couldn’t make out what he was saying; the sound of the explosion still rang in her ears. It didn’t matter though. It mattered he was still alive.
To her right, Lou and Blake were starting to move tentatively, as to figure out if there was anything broken. Good, we’re four for four, excellent score, she thought, trying to encourage herself to get up.
The falling debris let up, only smaller pieces of lighter materials, ash, and embers still coming down on them. She stood slowly, checking every limb carefully, mindful of all aches and pains, ruling them out one by one as non-critical. A cut on her forehead dripped blood in her right eye, and she wiped it off with the back of her hand. It wasn’t deep; she was OK. She turned toward Blake, who also stood, a little dazed, but in one piece. Sam got back on his feet with a little more difficulty, continuing to mutter oaths at every step, pallor appearing on his stained face. He wiped his shaved head with his sleeve, and walked a little crooked, dragging his left leg.
“What happened?” Alex asked.
“Nothing,” he replied, barely audible over the persistent ringing in her ears. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry. Let’s take care of that,” he said, pulling out his first-aid kit and extracting a butterfly bandage. “There,” he said, applying it gently to her forehead.
“I lost the spare ammo,” Lou said bitterly. “It’s gone. It was near the hangar door.”
“It’s all right,” Alex said. “We’re all carrying spare clips, we should be OK.” She turned toward Blake, who continued to look dazed, standing, yet appearing as if he was about to collapse. “Blake, you OK?”
“We got nothing,” he replied, sounding sad and defeated. “We have no proof, nothing. It’s all gone.”