Passenger 19

by Ward Larsen

  Then another whispered command from Passenger 19. “Get rid of your passport and any other ID!” A hesitation. “Do it, for God’s sake!”

  He visualized both girls retrieving their passports discreetly and slipping them into the seatback pockets. Exactly where he’d found them.

  “Whatever you do,” Kristin implores, “give them my name. Tell them you are Kristin Marie Stewart from Raleigh, North Carolina. That’s what we both say and nothing else! Do you understand?”

  Next he heard a new male voice that was stunningly familiar. The words came in English, rumbling as if churned from a rock crusher. The same voice that had asked him what he was doing under a wing. Black boots with a crescent-shaped scar. “Out of my way! Anyone who moves will be shot!” Then closer to the microphone. “Hands on your heads, everyone!”

  A last desperate whisper from Kristin Stewart, “Say nothing else, Jen! Nothing! It’s your only chance!”

  “Quiet!” the male voice ordered. His next words blasted full volume from the iPod’s tiny speaker. “Kristin Stewart! Which of you is Kristin Stewart?”

  There was no audible response, and the question was shouted again. Then Davis heard a sound that caused him to nearly crush the iPod in his hand—the sound of skin slapping skin, followed by the yelp of a young girl. He didn’t know which, but it hardly mattered. Shuffling and grunting was followed by more commands in Spanish. Finally, he heard Jen’s voice one last time. Her tone was matter of fact and cool. She could have been signing off from their daily dorm-room chat.

  “Help us, Dad, we’re—”

  The last word cut off abruptly.

  For three more minutes Davis sat still as the pictureless video ran, capturing the occasional distant shout, but little else. There were no muted conversations among the nearby passengers, which Davis took as evidence that at least one assailant had remained in the cabin to stand guard. The recording ended abruptly. He looked at the time bar and saw six minutes and ten seconds. That was when the iPod had given in. Davis didn’t know why. Perhaps the battery had gotten low, or someone had nudged the off button.

  He looked closely at the device to make sure there was nothing else. He saw no other videos or pictures. Further invading Jen’s privacy, he checked her contacts, notepad, and calendar. Nothing held promise. He sat motionless on the edge of the bed, like a statue of carved marble. Jen had been pulled off the aircraft that night, abducted after an unscheduled landing by men who had come for Kristin Stewart. Lawless men who’d shot a Secret Service agent in cold blood. Here Davis paused. Had an unarmed Mulligan resisted? Had he tried to put up a fight against insurmountable force? No, he decided. There had been no sounds of a scuffle, no shouted warnings from Mulligan to Kristin. The bandits had burst aboard and shot him straight out. Shot him because they knew who he was, where he was sitting, and why he was there.

  Davis imagined the rest. Two college girls getting pushed and shoved, possibly beaten. An image of pure conjecture, to be sure, and one that made him simmer with rage. As distressing as the recording was, however, it also came as a gift. He now knew with certainty that Jen had survived the crash. He knew she and Kristin Stewart were likely still alive. Somewhere.

  All he had to do was find them.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Through the course of that night a reenergized Davis played back the recording fourteen times. In each run-through he registered fresh nuances, and he paused regularly to take notes. The only way to keep his emotions in check, he knew, was to be absolutely methodical.

  On the second playback he isolated the sound of Flight 223’s entry door being opened—the same door he and Delacorte had discussed earlier, and that was now missing—evidenced by the sudden introduction of white noise from the aircraft’s auxiliary power unit, the small tail-mounted engine that provided power and conditioned air on the ground. He logged three male voices, including the distinctive gravel-edged baritone. Most of the words were in subdued Spanish, which Davis took for conversation between the assailants. It crossed his mind that one voice could also be that of Captain Reyna. With enough time, and in a proper lab, he could have the APU noise acoustically filtered out, the Spanish translated, and the voices analyzed. But those luxuries he didn’t have. Jen needed him now.

  On the tenth playback Davis drew a paper-and-pencil diagram of the airplane, sketching from memory where each passenger had been sitting. He traced the path the invaders must have taken: entry at the forward door, down the aisle, and ending at the back of the jet where the girls sat. He stopped and started the recording repeatedly, trying to place sounds one by one, and slotting each new fragment into his existing bank of knowledge. He listened closely to Jen’s words. “They said the copilot is sick—maybe that’s why we landed here.”

  The copilot had not been taken ill, that much Davis knew, allowing that a bullet to the brain is not a common malady. All the same, Jen’s comment meant an announcement had been made to justify what was happening. Most likely it came from Reyna, although it could have been relayed through the flight attendant. Either way, the intent was evident—the captain wanted to keep everyone calm during their unscheduled landing, compliant until his supporting cast of armed associates took control. Calm and unknowing was always the best mindset for prisoners, which was what the passengers of Flight 223 had become.

  Davis wondered if anyone besides the two girls had been taken off the jet, even temporarily. He heard nothing on the recording to support the idea, and the fact that they were the only passengers not found in the wreckage cemented things. Minute by minute, his theory coalesced and gained definition: Flight 223 had diverted to a remote airfield, guided by a captain who was conspiring with individuals on the ground. The copilot had been executed, likely by his skipper during the first flight behind the protection of a hardened door. After landing, the two young girls were taken away. It also explained the unidentified body in the cockpit, a man who hadn’t boarded in Bogotá, but who had materialized in the aftermath of the crash. He’d been installed as a surrogate for Reyna, a faceless crash-test corpse whose fingerprints had recently been inserted into the captain’s files. It all made sense to a point.

  But there the fall of dominos was interrupted.

  Where had they landed? When the aircraft took off a second time, how were the passengers kept in check? And the most important questions of all: where had Jen and Kristin Stewart been taken, and why?

  Davis could think of only one credible answer. Kristin Stewart had been the victim of a kidnapping, an elaborate scheme that was planned from the outset to sacrifice over twenty innocent lives. He knew kidnapping and extortion were rampant in this part of the world. Even so, in terms of scale and intricacy, this plot was in a league of its own, which meant the payday would have to be extraordinary. Was Kristin Stewart the daughter of a billionaire? Possibly, but the fact that she warranted Secret Service protection seemed doubly ominous.

  Davis was consumed by a sudden sense of dread. Kristin Stewart had been clever. Realizing she and Jen were similar in appearance, she’d made a great call. “Tell them you are Kristin Marie Stewart from Raleigh, North Carolina. That’s what we both say and nothing else!” In the confusion of the moment, the ruse had worked. The thugs, unsure how to solve that puzzle, had simply hauled both girls away. Kristin’s quick thinking had saved Jen’s life. But why had she done it? Any young girl would have been frightened, but it seemed a curious reaction to get Jen involved. With the level of planning Davis was seeing, the kidnappers were not unsophisticated—within hours, if not minutes, they would discover which girl was the real Kristin Stewart. So why had she drawn Jen into it? He could think of no logical explanation.

  Davis rubbed his face in his hands and closed his eyes, trying to reboot his cluttered head. The reprieve was brief. There was no time for speculation or dwelling on shadowed motives. Now was the time for facts. The time to take Colombia, turn it upside down, and shake vigorously until his daughter fell out.

  He set aside the iPod a
nd began poring over his notes and diagrams. He kept working as the clock clawed into the lee of the night. Davis slept a fitful two hours. At the first glimmer of sunrise, he ignored the shower and his shaving gear, and struck out for El Centro at nearer a jog than a walk. He ignored the restaurant, and didn’t even consider stopping for coffee. No boost was necessary.

  He walked quickly because he was hopeful. He was hopeful because there was no other way. Amid all the uncertainty and angst, however, Davis allowed himself a trace of pride. The instigators of this conspiracy had hijacked an aircraft, not by the crude means Colonel Marquez had envisioned, but in a far more intricate scheme. He saw enough technical competence to divert an airliner, alter records, and arrange the disabling of black boxes. Yet whoever these geniuses were, in one moment at least, they had been outsmarted by a beautiful nineteen-year-old girl. Jen had sensed trouble, and after the unscheduled landing at a remote strip, she’d fashioned her very own voice recorder in the cabin of the aircraft. How brilliant was that?

  As he walked down the dusty sidewalk in a waking quarter of Bogotá, Davis was buoyed by what his daughter had done. He only hoped she was maintaining that cool in whatever trials she still faced.

  You did good, baby. Just hang on.

  * * *

  She bent over the putrid pot and vomited for the third time. When her stomach stopped heaving, she rocked back on her knees and expelled a rattling breath. Jen Davis had never felt so miserable in her life.

  Dim light blushed at the gap beneath the door, introducing a new morning. She looked around the room and decided nothing had changed during the night. This had become her mental diversion, stamping every detail of her surroundings into memory. Four walls and one door under a warped ceiling. The mattress and the awful bucket, a stained brown blanket. A blanket, for Christ’s sake, on the middle of the equator.

  It was not the semester abroad she and her advisor had envisioned, that of guiding a tiny farming village through a soil improvement project. With reaching optimism, Jen made a silent pledge to enroll in creative writing next spring semester. She imagined a humorous essay in which she would contrast the conditions of her captivity to the dorms of Duke University. Last winter she’d been assigned to live in one of the school’s oldest buildings, a famously dilapidated tenement known for its lack of heat, and one that was rumored to have been featured on the original 1924 recruitment brochure. The first two paragraphs of that essay were already composed word for word in her head, a feat she had never before attempted.

  She had to do something to keep her sanity.

  She’d slept poorly, even worse than the previous night. Jen was sure she had a fever—she was shivering and her clothes were moist with sweat. In the beginning she’d thought her ills sourced from the terror, but yesterday she began vomiting and suffering diarrhea, suggesting that a proper malady had visited to amplify her degradation and misery. She’d not left this room since arriving Saturday night with a canvas bag tied over her head, and she knew nothing of where she was or where Kristin Stewart had been taken.

  More than once Jen had summed up the evidence from that night. The aircraft’s sudden descent followed by a rough landing. The captain telling everyone to remain in their seats. At that point, perhaps with a suspicion inherited from her father, she’d hit the record button on her iPod. Seconds afterward, three armed men rushed aboard and, in the most terrible moment of the entire affair, shot the man sitting next to her. Fear and confusion reigned among the passengers. Then came the strangest part of all, the girl from the University of Virginia imploring her to assume her identity. Kristin, too, was shaken by the killing—Jen had seen it in her wide eyes and tortured expression. She’d recovered quickly, though, and when she became adamant about Jen taking her name, it seemed as if Kristin knew what she was doing. So Jen had followed her lead.

  Had it been a mistake?

  The rest was a blur. The two of them were bundled off the airplane, hoods put over their heads before they were shoved in a vehicle. The drive to wherever she was now had taken no more than fifteen minutes. At that point she and Kristin were separated, and Jen had been here behind a solidly bolted door ever since.

  She avoided thinking of it as a jail cell, although that was effectively what it was. The lone window had been plastered over, and a feeble light bulb drooped from a wire five feet over her head, powered intermittently by a generator she could hear in the distance. The walls looked solid and impenetrable, and were painted an off shade of brown. Insects ran riot, and there was an ill odor about the place, not improved by the open bucket she was forced to use.

  A bleak routine had been established by her captors. Each morning a man wearing fatigues and a black ski mask brought a tray of food—stale bread, thin soup, and a water bottle. An hour later he came for the tray and brought a replacement bucket—never clean, only empty. Then the same drill later in the day, right before sunset. Jen had tried to engage the man in conversation, politely at first, but more insistent with each passing day. She never got a word in return. Yesterday she’d stood up when he arrived, and he immediately pulled a truncheon from his belt and brandished it threateningly. Jen sat back down.

  And there, in a nutshell, was her existence. She supposed Kristin had ended up in a similar room. But what was the point of it all? She wondered. Was this a kidnapping? Had Kristin gotten into trouble? Jen was not ignorant. She knew Colombia was notorious for its drug cartels. Could this abduction have something to do with narcotics? And where would she be now if she’d not taken her seatmate’s peculiar advice, if she’d remained on board the airplane with the other passengers? Kristin seemed like a decent girl, intelligent and outgoing. All the same, there had to be more to her story.

  In a small victory, Jen realized that her nascent college education was already coming in handy. Last semester she’d taken freshman psychology, and the lecturer happened to be an authority on the behavior of hostages and detainees. For an entire day the professor had led an open discussion on the subject, bits of which now clung in her mind like leaves to a gutter. She knew that captives held for interrogation, those with assumed intelligence value, were often subject to harsh conditions. They were systematically stripped naked, made hot or cold, and deprived of food and water. Any indicator of day or night was typically removed, and loud music, white noise, and bright lights were used to deprive the subject of sleep. Jen had endured none of these irritants, and she could easily differentiate day and night by referencing the gap beneath the door. Or could she? Might that be a manipulation designed to throw her off?

  She sighed, not wishing to succumb to paranoia. What did these people want? If they asked, should she admit to not being Kristin Stewart?

  Jen began to circle the room, turning the ten-by-ten square into her private exercise yard. On the third lap she heard voices outside. This was a first, aside from a few murmurings before and after her meals were delivered.

  The door lock rattled and a man came in. He was medium height with thick black hair, a wispy beard and mustache. A twenty-something Che Guevara. The door closed behind him. She heard the bolt engage.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Jen was relieved to finally see another person. Less so when she imagined why he might be here.

  “Good morning, Jennifer.”

  “My name isn’t Jen—”

  “Please, please,” said the man, waving his hand as if shooing away one of the room’s tenant flies. “We have known since you arrived who you are. However, it does cause me to wonder—why did you claim to be Miss Stewart?”

  Having anticipated this question for days, Jen gave the only answer she’d come up with that would not implicate Kristin. “I don’t know.”

  The man looked at her with marked disappointment.

  Jen countered with outrage. “Why the hell are you holding me prisoner?”

  “Strong language is unattractive in young girls. Didn’t your father teach you that?”

  Che, or whoever he was, spoke with a ligh
t accent. Jen took him for a Colombian who’d spent considerable time in an English-speaking country. He seemed educated and chose his words with precision. “Is Kristin all right?” she asked, battling yet another wave of nausea.

  “Miss Stewart is fine. You, on the other hand, appear to be suffering.” He nearly said something more, but hesitated.

  “What?”

  He cocked his head to one side, as if making a decision. “I suppose it won’t hurt to say it. As uncomfortable as your circumstances are, you’re far better off than those who remained on the airplane.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Soon after you and Kristin were removed, the airplane took off again. That second journey ended tragically.”

  “Tragically? You mean … it crashed?”

  “Yes. So you see how fortunate you are.”

  Her nausea redoubled, and Jen crawled to the bucket just in time. She coughed up bile and the meager contents of her stomach. When the waves passed she kneeled upright, and with spittle on her chin she looked him in the eye, trying to show strength. Jen opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off.

  “No—I am not here to answer your questions, Jennifer. I am here to ask one. Very soon I will send a message, one that could lead to your freedom.”

  Jen felt suddenly dizzy, but tried to maintain focus. She wanted desperately to understand what was happening.

  “What I need from you is a small bit of information, something that is known only to you and your father. It will serve to prove—”

  “Prove that you’re holding me hostage?”

  Che grinned a disconcerting grin. “You’re a smart girl. That is good for both of us. We must convince your father that you are here and safe.”

  Jen shut her eyes and tried to think. Part of her wanted to push back, to deny anything this man asked for. Had the airplane really crashed? Or was he only trying to manipulate her? If it was true—God, what her father must be going through. Then she extended that thought. Air crashes were his specialty. If the jet had gone down, would he find a way to get involved? Could he be in Colombia searching for her at this moment?