It didn’t move.
Either it was stiff through newness, or it was locked. He bet on the former, twisting it harder, and the hatch popped open. He hurled himself through the narrow gap, landing with a thump as the undercarriage clanked into position behind him. The gap between the leg and the ceiling of the wheel well was barely three inches.
The light level dropped sharply as the outer doors slammed, the engine noise falling to a dull roar. Chase took in his surroundings. He was inside a crawl space, less than four feet high and lit by small but intense LED clusters. More cables lined the walls, leading towards the center of the aircraft.
He closed the hatch and followed them, hunting for a way into the holds.
Nina heard someone banging at the door. She moved more quickly down the hold.
What was in the containers, she had no idea-only that none of them were connected to the plane’s hull. Holding the securing straps to keep upright as the A380 rose steeply into the sky, she headed for the back of the aircraft.
The banging on the door intensified. She didn’t have much time, and there were two more decks still to search…
Chase opened another hatch, emerging from the crawl space to find himself in the forward lower hold. The A380’s bottom deck was split in two by the undercarriage, and he’d chosen to head forward rather than aft with the thought that he might be able to reach the cockpit and threaten the pilots.
If the virus was in the aft hold, he was screwed…
The hold was full, no way for him to squeeze around the aluminum containers and barely a foot of clearance between them and the ceiling. He climbed onto the nearest one and crawled forward on his belly as fast as he could.
Kari squeezed through the door. She ducked beneath the strap tied to the handle, then surveyed the hold, catching a glimpse of movement at the far end.
She wiped blood off her bottom lip, staring at the crimson stain on her skin for a moment. “Oh Nina, I wish you hadn’t done that…”
Then she raised a gun and set off after her.
There was a door at the front of the hold. Chase opened it, finding a cargo lift just large enough to fit a catering cart, and next to it a ladder leading upwards.
He ascended the ladder. It emerged in a utility room, a cramped space lined with lockers. He glanced at the labels on them-emergency equipment of various kinds-then took out his Wildey and opened the door a crack to peer out.
Nobody was in sight. He was near the front of the plane. The room seemed to be some kind of crew area, a row of seats against the back wall next to an open door through which he could see the main hold. Another door led forward.
That had to be the cockpit.
Chase stepped out of the utility room, the Wildey at the ready. To his left was a flight of stairs leading up to the top deck; he looked up it, but no one was there.
What should he do? He needed to find Nina. But Frost said the virus would be released when the plane reached its cruising altitude, and with the A380 still in a steep climb, that wouldn’t take long.
Chase made his decision.
He marched to the cockpit door and flung it open. The copilot glanced around, obviously expecting to see one of the other crew members-then barked a warning in Norwegian to the pilot.
The pilot twisted in his seat, grabbing for something.
Chase saw the gun, and reacted exactly as training and experience had taught him. In the confines of the cockpit, the Wildey sounded like a cannon. The bullet blasted a hole right through the back of the pilot’s seat and the man himself to embed itself in one of the monitor screens. Blood splattered over the instruments.
The pilot slumped forward, dead, his hand dropping from the control stick. The plane rolled sharply to one side, throwing Chase against the cockpit wall. He regained his balance, looking up. Instead of trying to keep control, the copilot had gone for a gun of his own-
The Wildey boomed again.
The two security men heading down the main hold to cut Nina off heard the first shot-and the A380’s lurch instantly confirmed that something was seriously wrong. By the time the noise of the second shot reached them, they were already running back towards the cockpit.
Nina shrieked as she was pitched against one of the containers. She grabbed a strap for support and pulled herself back up.
She was certain she’d heard a gunshot just before the plane banked.
A very distinctive gunshot.
“Eddie…” she whispered, barely daring to believe the possibility. Had he somehow managed to get on board?
The plane shook again.
If he was aboard, then he was causing as much trouble as ever…
Chase struggled to squeeze between the seats of the two dead men. The A380’s ultramodern systems had replaced the traditional heavy yoke of an airliner with a small joystick. Which was less physical for the pilot-but also harder for Chase to reach. “What the hell did you have to do that for, you stupid twat?” he growled rhetorically at the pilot.
He managed to grab the stick and nudged it to one side. To his enormous relief, the plane’s tilt began to level out.
Then it struck him-he had no clue what to do next. He’d jumped out of plenty of planes, but he didn’t know how to fly any kind of plane, much less a five-hundred-ton behemoth.
“Shit!” He looked desperately at the control panels. The only thing he could identify at a glance was the artificial horizon, which showed the plane still in a climb, and banking more steeply than he liked.
Where the hell was the autopilot?
There! “Autopilot Engage,” near the top of the control panel. He jabbed at the prominent switch, tentatively releasing the control stick. A synthetic female voice announced that the autopilot was active, the plane smoothly bringing itself to a level attitude. He searched for the altimeter. The A380 was at just over twelve thousand feet, well short of cruising height.
He hoped that whatever system was being used to release the virus wasn’t activated by a timer.
Kari pulled herself upright as the A380 leveled out. The two booming shots from the direction of the cockpit suggested that both pilots were dead-and that Chase was responsible.
Chase! How the hell had he gotten aboard?
Not that it mattered. He was here, and he posed a threat.
More so than Nina? She weighed the dangers. The virus canisters were inside a container at the very rear of the middle deck, plumbed into pipes that would disperse the deadly solution into the jetstream from the A380’s tail. If Nina could get the container open, she might be able to interfere with the release mechanism.
But she had to find the container first, and then break into it.
Chase, on the other hand, was in the cockpit. He was the greater danger.
With one last look after the retreating Nina, Kari turned back.
Nina reached the rear of the upper hold. None of the containers showed any signs of being connected to the plane’s exterior.
Which meant the virus was on one of the other decks.
She feared she would have to return to the front of the hold and somehow make it past her pursuers, but then spotted a hatch in the rear bulkhead. It opened into a small compartment. She poked her head into the low-ceilinged space. It was an access area, with what looked like large fuseboxes connected to fat skeins of wires on the walls.
And another hatch set into the floor.
She clambered into the cabin and turned the catches on the hatch, pulling it open. Below she saw another metal container, in front of it a pallet onto which was strapped a large, sleek blue-and-silver motorbike. She recognized it as Kari’s, the racing bike she was so proud of.