'But what if he—' Ben started to say, but the bodyguard interrupted him.
'Trust me,' he said. 'I'm trained for this.' He smiled at both of them. 'You OK?'
Ben and Angelo nodded. 'Aren't you going to let everyone else know?' Ben asked.
The bodyguard shook his head. 'Too risky,' he said.
'What do you mean? Why?'
The man glanced down the aisle. 'We don't know for sure that the guy in the cockpit's the only one. It would be unusual for a hijacker to act alone.'
'You mean—' Ben and Angelo looked at each other.
'You mean, someone in the cabin could be working with them?'
The bodyguard shrugged. 'It's possible. There's even a chance one of the cabin crew is involved. We need to be careful, guys. Very careful. Don't trust anyone, not unless they prove themselves to be trustworthy. OK?'
'OK,' Ben and Angelo said in unison.
The bodyguard nodded, then stood up and walked the few rows up towards the front.
'You think he's up to it?' Ben asked Angelo in a low whisper, keeping his voice quiet so that nobody else would hear them talking.
Angelo nodded seriously. 'Brad used to be in Delta Force. He doesn't talk about it much, but from what I can tell he's been all over the world with them. Antiterrorism mostly.' He looked a bit rueful. 'I always thought that looking after spoiled rich kids like me was a bit of a come-down for him. Guess I was wrong. Still, if anyone can sort this situation out, I think it is him.' He smiled nervously. 'I asked him once how many men he had killed.'
'What did he say?'
'He said, "How do you know they were all men?" I think he was joking, though.'
Ben found it hard to laugh. His mouth had gone dry, he realized, and his body felt weak. He was cold, but he was still sweating. Ben Tracey knew what fear felt like, and he was feeling it now. Brad might be highly trained, but his plan didn't sound that great to him. Not that Ben could think of anything better. They just had to hope that the bodyguard's special forces training hadn't deserted him.
Ben craned his neck to look over the seat in front. At the front of the aisle he could see Brad preparing himself. All around the plane the buzz of panicked voices was rising again. He could hear people trying to make calls on their mobile phones, but there was no signal this high up and they were left shouting pointlessly into their handsets. Ben didn't get the sense that any of them were paying much attention to Brad.
All that was about to change though.
When the bodyguard hurled his heavy shoulder against the door, it made a dull thud but didn't seem to make much difference to the entrance. A few people around him fell quiet. Brad stepped back and then made another run. By the time he hit the door for a second time, everyone in the plane seemed to know what he was doing.
'What's going on?' one man at the back shouted. 'Don't be an idiot!'
But Brad ignored him. He stepped back again, set his shoulders and then started running towards the door for a third time.
And it was only then that the plane nosedived yet again…
In the cockpit, the first bump on the door had made the hijacker jump.
The man spun round. His eyes were narrow and his fist gripped the gun firmly.
There was a pause, and then a second bump. The door shook slightly, but it held fast. He eyed the locking mechanism — a big red handle at the twelve o'clock position with an arrow pointing downwards. To open the door, all he needed to do was pull it down.
He checked the gun. It was loaded and ready. He would have to be fast. Fast and accurate. When he let go of the controls, the plane would dive. But that would be OK, just as long as he was expecting it. He took a deep breath and let go of the controls. Immediately the plane tilted downwards and he had to hurl himself towards the door. With one hand he held the gun out straight; with the other he brought down the locking handle and pulled the door open.
The hijacker only had a split second to take everything in. Barely a metre away from him there was a large, thick-set man, and he was coming towards him at some speed.
Their eyes locked. The hijacker aimed the gun straight at his head.
He fired.
The force of the bullet knocked the man backwards.
There was no way the hijacker's target would have survived the headshot, but the man fired once more for good measure. This time the bullet hit the bodyguard in the chest.
The hijacker slammed the door shut and forced the locking lever up again. Sweat was trickling down the side of his face now, but he remained calm as he carefully edged himself towards his seat again, grabbed the controls and steadied the plane.
Three people dead. But that didn't matter. It was only a matter of time before it happened to all of them.
Chapter Four
It sounded like everyone started screaming at the same time. The plane had nosedived and it was that which was scaring everyone, rather than the silent bullets. As he gripped fearfully onto his seat, Ben wondered how many people had even noticed that the bodyguard had been shot.
One person had, though. Angelo.
'Brad!' The Italian boy's yell filled Ben's ears. As the plane suddenly pulled out of its dive and started rising again, Angelo rushed into the aisle and up to the body lying on the floor. Ben followed immediately.
'Stay away, you two!' one of the cabin crew shouted, but he was quickly rebuked by Angelo.
'Stai zitto!' the Italian said between gritted teeth. 'Shut up! Brad was here because of me, all right?' But when he came up close to the corpse, Ben noticed that his friend took a step back.
The bodyguard was a mess. His face was bloodied and unrecognizable, and half of his head had been shot away. It was a gruesome sight.
As he stared at the bodyguard's corpse, the noise of frightened people all around him seemed to disappear into nothing. Ben had seen enough dead bodies in his time, but it wasn't something he'd got used to. The sight of Brad, dead and cold, sent a shiver down his spine and made him feel sick.
It was only the sound of the intercom crackling into life again that snapped him out of it. Everyone else in the cabin fell silent too as the hijacker's voice filled the air.
'Ladies and gentlemen.' His foreign voice sounded almost polite. 'I advise you all to take your seats and remain calm.'
Ben felt as if everyone in the cabin was holding their breath. All he could hear was the sound of the plane's engines.
'If anybody else tries to do anything foolish,' the hijacker continued, 'they can expect to die, like the man I have just shot.'
There were some shocked whispers from the back of the plane — clearly not everybody had been aware that Brad had been shot.
'It seems fair to me,' the hijacker continued, 'that you understand what is going to happen to you before it happens. And why.'
A pause. A deathly silence.
'I come from a small island many thousands of miles from here. I do not believe any of you will have heard of it. You are all too caught up in the importance of your own affairs to worry about people like us. Not long ago, men from the West invaded our island. They were not an army, and no doubt news of the invasion did not reach your ears; but to my people their arrival was a terrible event. They raped our land in their search for oil; and because of their greed, our children have started to die.'
The hijacker's voice was flat and emotionless now. Ben thought he could sense a tone of determination. In the cabin, the silence had turned into a hum of curious voices. There was still an atmosphere of thick fear, but the hijacker had certainly got their attention. Ben turned to Angelo. His Italian friend's face was expressionless as he continued to listen to the words coming over the intercom.