‘If it gets dangerous or in any way doesn’t feel one hundred per cent funky-dory we’re out of there.’
Judd nods. ‘One hundred percent funky-dory or we’re gone.’
Corey works the controls, points the Loach towards the Galaxy. ‘Okay, what’s the plan?’
‘The dog.’
‘That’s a terrible plan.’
‘No, no, your dog.’ Judd points at the desert far below.
Corey follows Judd’s finger. In the distance Spike gallops after the Loach, barking all the way. ‘Sorry, mate, you can’t come along on this one.’
There’s a definite tinge of sadness in his voice.
45
Rhonda flexes her arm. She ignores the deep pain in her wrist because the plastic tie is now very loose. Within the suit’s sleeve she pulls on her wrist. It slips under the tie. Hallelujah! Her arm is free.
She draws it down the sleeve and prepares to execute the most difficult part of the plan. She needs to get her arm out of the sleeve and position it in front of her chest so she can unzip the front of the flight suit. There’s only one way she can do it.
Straighten, tense, roll. Hold her arm straight, tense it and roll it clockwise while pushing down at the shoulder. There will be a snap, her shoulder will pop out of its socket and there will be great pain. Purple pain, Judd called it. She had spent years making sure it didn’t happen accidentally but now must do it on purpose.
She takes a breath, reminds herself that the pain will be worth it, that in a moment she’ll be out of this chair and the Frenchman will be out like a light. She doesn’t want to kill him, in spite of everything he’s done. No, she wants to knock him unconscious so she can watch him fry in court.
Before any of that can happen she must distract him. If she can get him talking he won’t hear what she’s doing behind him. It’s a great theory, just as long as he doesn’t turn and look at her as he speaks. She’ll just have to hope he doesn’t because she doesn’t have another option.
‘There’s something I don’t understand. If you’re all professional mercenaries and you really were involved in 9/11, why go to the trouble of stealing a shuttle and doing whatever you plan to do to punish the government? Don’t you do this kind of stuff all the time? Why take it so personally?’
The Frenchman turns, fastens his eyes on hers. ‘Because my pregnant wife was in the North Tower.’
Corey looks at Judd. ‘That’s your plan?’
‘That’s my plan.’
‘Well, it’s just awful.’
‘No, no, it’ll work.’
‘Not even accidentally. Mate, really, you’re havin’ a lend of yourself.’
‘I don’t know what that means.’
‘It means you’re fooling yourself and then you’ll die, is what it means.’
Judd ignores him, searches the floor of the Loach. Corey shakes his head in frustration, scans the horizon and picks up the Galaxy in the distance. It is slow and they are catching it. Carrying the shuttle and using only three engines is clearly a big handicap. If the Yank is right about that then maybe he’s right about this half-baked plan too.
‘Yes.’ Judd holds up two hooks Corey uses to move hay bales. They’re rusty but solid, each about 12 centimetres long. He can comfortably hold one in each hand.
‘Okay, let’s say we do catch it, are you even sure she’s on board?’
‘Tango in Berlin said she was.’
‘There’s a reliable source.’
‘If there’s any chance she is I have to try. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t.’
Corey can’t argue with that. He’d told Judd that he didn’t want to be ‘caged’ but in truth the women he dated thought he was crazy as soon as he spoke to the dog. So from painful personal experience the Australian knows how hard it is to find ‘the one’ and won’t stand in the way of Judd being reunited with the woman he loves. ‘Okay.’
‘Thank you.’ Judd unlocks the lever on the winch and pulls out the blue Dynamica rope, roughly measures it as he goes, gets it all out so he can see the end tied around the axle. He tugs on it, makes sure it’s secure. ‘Okay, we got a bit over thirty metres.’ He looks at Corey. ‘You ready?’
‘Not at all, but let’s do it anyway.’
The Frenchman studies Rhonda. ‘That’s why I’m doing this. Operatives within the US government were responsible for 9/11 and therefore responsible for the death of my wife, who was five months pregnant.’
Rhonda hears the pain in his voice, wants to say: ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ She doesn’t. This guy executed one of her crew in cold blood and plans to deploy a dirty bomb. She won’t let herself feel sorry for him. ‘If you faked the Shanksville crash site why didn’t you warn your wife about the Twin Towers?’
‘We didn’t know about it, or the Pentagon, until after it happened.’
‘So what happens now?’
‘We proceed on our current course. Once we are in range I will release Atlantis from the Galaxy and we will crash into the designated target.’
We.
Something cold and awful turns over in Rhonda’s stomach. She’s not sure what’s worse, that her shuttle will be used as a weapon of mass destruction or that she’ll be aboard. ‘What do you need me for?’
‘You will be my conduit.’
‘I still don’t know what that means.’
‘You will soon enough.’
She takes a breath, frustrated. ‘At least tell me what the target is.’
‘A house. In McLean, Virginia. Edgar’s house, to be precise.’
‘Who the hell is Edgar?’
‘It’s a nickname, after the puppeteer and ventriloquist Edgar Bergen. He had a show on American television many years ago.’
‘So who is it?’
‘The man who once controlled your government. A man who now spends his time surrounded by secret service agents tending the rose bushes in his garden, in McLean, Virginia.’
‘I don’t know who you’re talking about —’
‘He’s the man who conceived, funded and managed 9/11. Your last vice-president.’
46
Atlantis is close. Judd balances on the Loach’s left skid, one hand clasped to its front strut, the other to the doorframe, a hook held in each. Shirt pasted flat against his chest, he bows his head against the blast of freezing air.
He turns and nods at Corey in the Loach’s cockpit. The little yellow chopper dips towards the expanse of white thermal tiles on the top of the shuttle’s fuselage.
Ten. Six. One metre away. The twin viewports in the roof of Atlantis’s flight deck are right in front of Judd. He leans to look inside, can’t see anything through the reflection off the glass. He shifts position to get a better angle, tries again.
Rhonda. She sits in the second row of the flight deck. Alive. The relief is overwhelming. Judd wants her to look up, to see him, to know he’s there. She doesn’t. There’s no way she can hear the chopper so there’s no reason to look up.
He nods at Corey, who gives him a thumbs up and moves the Loach lower. The skids kiss Atlantis’s soft thermal-tile skin and Judd swings the left hook down.
It slams into a tile, slices down until nothing but its shank protrudes. He pulls on it. It seems to be wedged in tight. ‘Seems’ will have to do. The moment of truth has arrived. He has no reservations. Seeing Rhonda has only strengthened his resolve.
Judd lets go of the doorframe and drives the second hook deep into the shuttle’s thermal-tile skin, a foot to the right of the first. He pulls on it. It’s tight. He grips both hooks as hard as he can then rolls onto the shuttle’s fuselage.