Six Passengers, Five Parachutes

by Ian Bull

  Tina lays down her cards. “Gin.”

  “That’s your third game. You have a strategy; I like that.” Boss Man winks.

  The flirting bugs me, so I join them at their table. “I looked at Hachiro Kobayashi’s work,” I interject. “Japanese game shows are the best. They raise humiliation to an art form.”

  “What was your favorite game that he did?” Boss Man asks.

  “Cannibal Island, without a doubt.”

  “What’s Cannibal Island?” Tina asks.

  “It’s a brilliant concept. Twelve contestants arrive on a remote island and form two teams. When a team loses a challenge, one player from that team is hauled away screaming, to be killed and butchered. It’s a sham, but the other players don’t know that. The producers then present the dead player’s flesh as food the players must eat, but it’s actually ostrich meat.”

  “Did they really eat it?” Tina asks. She seems shocked, which is a first for her.

  “People refused at first, until they realized if they didn’t eat enough to stay strong for the challenges, they might lose and be butchered as well. People went insane. It was great.”

  “The line that separates civilization from chaos is very thin. I like that we’re exploring that in our show, too,” Boss Man says, swiveling in his chair.

  We nod, all happy to agree.

  A redheaded stewardess appears. She’s one of the three women from the yacht, I realize, just in a different uniform. I guess they follow him wherever he goes.

  “Sir, we land in twenty minutes,” she says and slides a paper in front of him. “They’re stocking the yacht at the Skypier, and this is Mr. Kwong’s list of provisions, if you have any last-minute requests.”

  “I’ll Skype him. We need more than this.” Boss Man pushes away from the table and they disappear behind a veneer door.

  Tina pulls on the ends of her curly hair. That’s her tell that she’s nervous. She glances around, searching for hidden cameras, then leans close. “Last night, he said he was ready to ‘erase heads.’ What does that mean?”

  “That he’ll have someone killed,” I say.

  “Is he serious, or is he just trying to scare us?”

  “He erased one head already.”

  “Who?” She leans forward, tugging her hair even harder now.

  “An Army guy-turned-photographer named Steven Quintana.”

  “The one in the news? Who dated Julia what’s-her-name?”

  “He was snooping around. Probably wanted to be as famous as his ex-girlfriend.”

  “Is she involved?” Tina asks.

  “She seems clueless, but Boss Man has people monitoring her. She can’t fart in her Malibu beach house without him hearing about it. We’re safe.”

  Tina blinks like she’s got dust in her eyes. She looks out the window. The lights of Hong Kong and Kowloon appear below, like two immense pulsing electronic bacteria glowing in the dark ocean.

  “When did it happen?” Tina asks, looking back at me.

  “While we were in Honduras.”

  “You should have told me.” Her eyes are moist, but her jaw is hard.

  “After all the work we did, would it have made a difference?”

  Tina’s legs tremble as her hands grip the armrests. “We can never fuck up,” she whispers.

  The landing gear locks into place as the glowing microchip of Chep Lak Kok airport rises to meet us. The jet lands with a tiny bounce, and we coast past the main terminal and stop at a small hangar—the Business Aviation Center. The redhead lowers the staircase and an Asian man with slick hair and a blue suit darts up the stairs. Boss Man appears with just one carryon bag.

  “Welcome to Hong Kong, sir,” the young man says.

  “Hello, Kwong,” Boss Man says as he darts past him down the jet stairs and we follow.

  The business center has its own customs desk, where a smiling female official stamps our passports. We roll into a waiting Town Car that drives us along the edge of Chep Lak Kok until we reach a private pier where a yacht is docked. It appears to be the Clairvoyance, right down to the incandescent blue trim lights, but with a different name: Second Sight. The names must refer to Boss Man’s ability to know everything before it happens.

  “It’s a duplicate, right down to the silverware. It’s one of four I have around the world,” says Boss Man, as if anticipating my question. “I’m always home, no matter where I go.”

  The captain and the pilot, in white shirts with blue epaulets, stand on the back deck and salute as Boss Man boards, with Tina and me, Kwong, and the three female stewards right behind. The women disappear into the depths of the ship, while we go up one floor to the main deck. It really is an exact duplicate, down to the velvet recliner where I sat Thursday night while the doctor sewed my arm up.

  “I’d offer you a drink, but you two are working,” Boss Man says as the yacht rolls to life and we pull away from the dock.

  Lacking sea legs, I plop in the velvet chair. My forearm throbs. I need something, a shot of whisky or a snort of cocaine—or both. I sneak my pill container out of my pocket and take a Valium and a Ritalin instead. They’ll keep me calm and awake.

  “Robert, meet Hachiro Kobayashi,” Boss Man says as a Japanese man walks in. He sports spiked punk hair and wears black jeans, and a Ramones shirt under a leather jacket.

  “Thank you for having me,” Hachiro says. He bows, then sits next to me.

  “I’m thrilled you’re here,” I say, trying my best to sound thrilled.

  Tina sits on the opposite white couch, while Boss Man paces on the plush white carpet.

  “How long?” Boss Man asks Kwong, who stands by the glass doors to the upper back deck.

  “An hour. We’ll cruise below Lantau Island and approach Stanley Prison from the South.”

  “Just enough time,” Boss Man says, then faces Hachiro and me. “Gentlemen, our game must be better. I don’t want five parachutes, with food, water, and money stuck in overhead bins. I want exploding smoke canisters and hidden weapons. Unexpected surprises.”

  “Snakes on plane,” Hachiro says.

  “Yes! But more,” Boss Man says, pointing at him. “Maybe rip out all the seats and leave six, facing each other. Create obstacles and barriers. Or tie the contestants together so when they’re released from their seats, they’re still bound to one another. But you two are the experts. Your job is to take my ideas and top them. This is a fight to the death on a pilotless plane that will crash into the ocean. It’s a wild concept that deserves a wild set.”

  “Yes, sir,” we say in unison.

  We can’t design and build something that brilliant in a week, yet somehow we must. The boss always wants the impossible. Common sense doesn’t matter. Our job is to make the impossible happen, and then that becomes the new normal.

  Out the porthole window, a giant, serene Buddha floats in black space, lit up like a Christmas bulb. We must be passing Lantau Island, which has a massive Buddha on its peak. I need some of that Zen right now. A week ago, Tina and I were sweating in a filthy Honduran prison, not knowing if we had a show. Now, the show is a flying missile that I must steer just right or we’ll smash into something and die.

  “Robert? Can you go over the calendar?” Boss Man asks. He caught me losing focus again. “Make your requests now, everyone, because you won’t get another chance.”

  I swivel my chair to see both Hachiro and Tina. “Six Passengers, Five Parachutes debuts in a week, next Saturday morning,” I say, and let that impossible number sink in. They blink and swallow before I continue. “Once back in the US, Tina and I will open an office in Tucson, Arizona. I hired a production management team that’s on hold, along with a camera and audio rigging crew, and an engineer to prep the microwave transmitter for the plane.”

  “I’ll join you in Tucson with my design team,” Hachiro says. “Three Japanese-Americans.”

  “I’ll need their names for our background check,” Tina adds.

  I nod and keep going.
“Ryan Airfield is a general aviation airfield just west of Tucson. We purchased a DC-9 in Texas, and our pilot will fly it to Ryan on Wednesday. The base operator will lease us the Northwest runway to prep our jet. We’ll also have privacy there. Our cover story is that we’re rigging the plane to do vegetation mapping of the High Sonoran Desert as a joint study between the University of Arizona and the Instituto Tecnolgico de Sonora. We will rig the transmitter and a few cameras and run a test flight on Thursday.”

  The blonde and the brunette, now dressed in their ship uniforms, appear at the door carrying trays of sandwiches and water. My arm throbs with pain, and I’m losing focus again. I need both pills to kick in. Boss Man puts his hand up to interrupt me, which is fine by me.

  “That test flight is crucial. I’ll be in the studio in La Paz, ready to pick up the microwave transmissions across 500 miles of empty desert. It must work Thursday if the game is Saturday.”

  The blonde and the brunette finish laying out the food and drinks on the smooth teak dining table. They move in slow motion, as quiet as a silent movie, their perfect asses filling out the fabric darts in the rear of their uniforms. I’m losing focus again. When’s the Ritalin going to hit?

  Boss Man snaps his fingers at me. “Robert! What happens after Tucson?”

  “Flight plans have been filed with American and Mexican customs and the FAA. On Friday morning, the DC-9 will take off from the Ryan Airfield, cross the border, and fly to Nogales to get our entry stamped, and then fly another fifty miles south and land on a desert airstrip just below Cananae, a mining town in the Sonoran Desert. Our rigging and production crews will cross the border by car at Naco, Arizona, drive south one hour, and meet the plane on that airstrip. Two mobile offices will be there, dressed with maps and botany books to match our cover story. For the next twenty-four hours, we prep the plane for the actual game.”

  “Sorry to interrupt, I apologize,” Hachiro says, bowing his head slightly. “We will also need to add a third mobile office for my production designers, with work tables. We’ll be making props and building a set inside that plane. I will also need to buy weapons to hide on the plane. Knives, clubs, smoke bombs, maybe Tasers…with your approval, of course.”

  “Of course,” I say, while calculating the cost of an extra trailer, plus weapons that must be hidden or shipped in from Hermosillo. That’s another 10K and a million phone calls.

  “You can do it, Robert.” Boss Man waves his hand at me like I’m a child. “Hurry up and move on to game day.”

  I stare at the ceiling so no one sees my skin redden. The head executive often humiliates the number two in command, just so everyone knows who’s the boss. Gil Krauss did it to me at Velodrome. It always makes me jittery. Or maybe that’s the Ritalin finally working.

  “Our prisoners arrive by private jet starting at seven a.m. Saturday morning,” I say. “A jet lands, a prisoner is escorted off in shackles and onto the waiting DC-9. Then the next one lands. The last contestant will be on the ground by ten minutes before showtime.”

  Boss Man stops. “Hachiro, that means your game prep ends at seven a.m. sharp. Got it?”

  “Hai, Bosu,” Hachiro says, nodding.

  Both pills now work in tandem as a calm focus takes over my brain. I feel good now. “It’s eight a.m. and showtime. The broadcast begins with an amazing open. As each prisoner boards the DC-9 in shackles, we show him in tight heroic close-up and superimpose his nation’s flag behind him as the guards lock him into his seat. Cameras inside catch each fighter’s eyes as they size each other up.”

  Boss Man waves to interrupt again, then points at Tina. “Are you in charge of creating the graphics package?”

  “I am, under Robert’s supervision,” Tina says, sitting up. She glances at me.

  “From the moment the first prisoner boards to the moment the game begins, my bookmakers will be taking bets and updating the odds, which must run onscreen,” Boss Man says.

  “Like a Bloomberg ticker tape, or Off Track Betting,” Tina says.

  “Exactly!” Boss Man says, pointing at her like she just discovered E = mc2. “Who makes the first kill, first off the plane, who stays on the plane the longest, who dies on the plane, and overall winner. The graphics must look great, be easy to read, and easy to update in the studio.”

  “I understand,” Tina says, but Boss Man keeps going.

  “When the broadcast begins, it’ll be eleven a.m. in Rio, two p.m. in London, four p.m. in Cairo, five p.m. in Moscow, ten p.m. in Beijing, and eleven p.m. in Tokyo. We’re timing this to grab big weekend bettors, and we must deliver a great show and a fun, easy gambling experience.”

  “They’ll be ready, I promise,” she says, and then glances at me with wide eyes.

  I continue, “We will rig a microwave transmitter to the tower at the landing strip in Cananae to transmit signals from the handheld ground cameras. That’s for the start of the show, while the DC-9 is still on the runway and the prisoners are getting locked into their seats. Then, as the plane takes off, the studio in La Paz will switch over and grab the signals coming from the onboard microwave transmitter, which will be shooting out images from the twenty CCTV security cameras mounted in domes inside the plane—”

  Boss Man can’t help but interrupt again. “In La Paz, my studio crew will add graphics, music, and commentary, just like Monday Night Football. Then shoot it out over a secure fiber optic cable to our select pay-per-view audience. Robert?”

  I struggle to find my rhythm. “The plane takes off and reaches a cruising altitude of 5,000 feet. The pilot will put the plane on autopilot, seal the cockpit, and bail out. It will be 8:15 a.m., seventy-five minutes since the first prisoner landed. Wagering stops….”

  I pause and lock eyes with each of them, one by one, including the Boss Man. I raise my chin as I raise my voice, ready to bring my two-year dream home.

  “…and the seatbelts unlock and our game begins. For the next forty-five minutes, we will broadcast the most brutal, lethal, and entertaining fight show in TV history, until the plane crashes into the ocean at precisely nine a.m. The entire broadcast will be exactly two hours. Winning bets will be wired into accounts by nine-thirty, and the FTP site will be disabled by ten.

  “The studio crew in La Paz will board boats and disappear into the Sea of Cortez. The mobile homes will disappear as the crew crosses back into the United States. Everything in both the real and digital worlds will be scrubbed clean. We leave no trace.”

  “And we will have a quarter-billion in profit,” Boss Man says with a huge sigh. He stares out the window at the passing black water. Colored lights flash by, and the scent of jasmine flowers mixed with saltwater and diesel fuel waft inside. We must be getting close to land.

  Kwong touches his earbud. “We’ll be at Stanley Prison in five minutes, sir.”

  Boss Man points at us. “Eat. You’ll be working over twelve hours without a break.”

  Hachiro, Tina, and I dart over to the table. I wolf down two ham and cheese sandwiches. The ship lurches and I get a strong whiff of diesel and almost vomit, but I get a sip of water into me just in time. I can work eighteen hours straight on the craziest reality show, so bring it on.

  The bright, tall buildings on the southern tip of Hong Kong Island appear. A low cement building pulses with orange lights right on the edge of the island—notorious Stanley Prison. I just want to get there. It seems like a safer place to be right now.

  “Have you determined the order in which the prisoners will board the plane?” Hachiro asks. “It could increase the drama and tension, along with the betting.”

  “Brilliant question,” Boss Man says. “Robert? Do you have an answer for it?”

  It is a brilliant question, one I wished I’d thought of first, which makes me hate Hachiro.

  “Omidi the Arab and Asenov the Bulgarian will board first and second, Muslim versus Christian,” I say. Then the Brazilian Lucas Souza, Andre Uwase from Africa, Rico Perez from Honduras, and finally our Asian fig
hter.”

  Boss Man swags his finger at me. “No Andre, remember? What about your American?”

  I knew I made a mistake the moment Andre’s name came out of my mouth. Andre’s name has been rolling off my tongue for months now, and having to cast an American instead of Andre happened yesterday. Still, it was Boss Man’s one note, which makes it a bad brain fart.

  “I’ll answer for him,” Boss Man says to Hachiro, “The American will board second to last, then the Asian. That’s the best for betting.”

  “Yes sir,” Hachiro and I both say.

  “And I want the contestants to see all the roll-ins as they board, so they can size each other up. Pump up their fury. Plus, video of them getting buckled in from the ground cameras.”

  “We can hang a monitor over their seats,” Hachiro says.

  “We’re bringing the edit system. We can rig it so it receives from the camera and transmits to the monitor on the plane,” I say.

  “And make sure your American’s roll-in is ugly and incendiary. We want angry contestants and angry bettors,” he says, then points at me.

  How will I find an American willing to die on TV in a week? While producing the show?

  We follow Boss Man onto the deck. We are in calm water and close enough to shore to see streetlamps and the headlights of moving cars. This side of Hong Kong Island is less urban, with small beach towns on sheltered coves. The ship pulls up to a small cement dock with a wooden sign—the St. Stephan’s Beach Club, a swanky hangout for the rich, just four hundred yards from Hong Kong’s most brutal prison. The ship’s crew tosses ropes to Chinese guards in black uniforms waiting on the pier.

  The three female stewards appear. I know they have names, but they’ve never offered them. The blonde hands Tina her casting binder; the brunette hands me a plastic case with the D5 camera and a leather satchel with $150,000 for the warden. The redhead hands Hachiro a cooler with food and drinks for the next sixteen hours.

  The yacht captain lowers the gangplank as the shore whistle sounds. I feel like a WWII paratrooper about to jump over France. Boss Man puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes, either to comfort me or warn me, or both.