Zone

by Jack Lance

  After Aaron had left for the flight deck, Sharlene wished she had some downtime. She hated confrontations with Aaron, on any level. But personal time was impossible in the confines of an airline galley. Jessica Orrigo and Rosette Fiske had joined Gloria and Ray in the galley and the four of them were engaged in a lively conversation.

  ‘I’m going to make another round,’ Sharlene said to them. ‘Stretch my legs a little.’

  She walked away, seeking privacy. She wanted to empty her mind, to think of nothing. She headed toward the tail section of the plane, turned the corner in front of the aft toilets and the crew bunk, and started another round of walking on the opposite side of the plane.

  One of the passengers raised his hand.

  ‘Miss?’

  The man, a Latino, emanated a pungent odor of sweat. His neighbor by the window seemed bothered by something, probably the stench. She was a sprightly young girl with short blonde hair, who was leaning her head against the bulkhead. The girl was either pretending to be asleep or trying to go to sleep, but Sharlene could tell by her dour facial expression that she was wide awake.

  ‘Could you get me another Scotch, please?’ the man asked politely.

  Although her father’s alcoholism had instilled in her a hatred for hard liquor, she only refused such requests from passengers who were well on their way to becoming blotto. This man might have a problem with body odor, but he was far from being drunk.

  ‘Of course,’ she promised. ‘I’ll be right back.’

  She returned to the main galley. To her surprise, she found no one there. She wondered where Rosette, Gloria, Jessica, and Ray had gone.

  Not that it mattered.

  Sharlene squatted down, selected a mini-bottle of Johnnie Walker and placed it on the countertop, next to a plastic cup and a small tray.

  Behind her, the galley curtain swished open.

  ‘Where have you been?’ she asked, without looking up to see who was there.

  She assumed her co-workers had followed her example and taken a stroll through the aircraft. Apparently she had been so lost in thought that she hadn’t spotted them inside the cabin. That was not unusual, however. A 747 was a much bigger airplane than most people thought.

  A hand caressed her back. So, it was not her co-workers after all.

  She stayed in the same position, still not looking up but enjoying the attention. ‘What did Jim say?’

  He didn’t answer. She couldn’t blame him. She had just snapped at him outside the crew’s bunk. She had let herself go, and now she felt remorseful.

  ‘Look, Aaron, I didn’t mean what I said. I …’

  She hung her head, considering what to say to bridge the gap. ‘I don’t know why I yelled at you. It was my fault, not yours.’ She ran her tongue over her lower lip. ‘After we land in Sydney, we’ll talk about it. All right? I’ll explain.’

  Just when she had given up on love, she had finally found a man she could trust. She must now give him her trust in return. She knew their relationship could not keep going on the way it was, stuck in neutral. She had to listen to her heart and move it forward.

  Even if he can’t handle it and it ends with him breaking it off, at least we will have been honest with each other. At least I will know I have been honest with him.

  Aaron still had said nothing. But his hand kept caressing her back.

  Sharlene closed her eyes and remembered the last time she had seen the sun, on Venice Beach. No one there but the two of them, just like now. The roaring surf and the shade of the overhanging rock, a secluded area just big enough for them to crawl into and cuddle. She had wanted time to stand still that afternoon, but the minutes had ticked by much too quickly.

  Aaron drew closer as his hands moved around her, cupping her breasts and gently stroking them. She sighed with pleasure when he tweaked her nipples.

  ‘Stop it, Aaron!’ she whispered, despite the ripples of pleasure coursing through her. ‘Someone might come in!’

  In reply, he pinched her hard.

  ‘Stop that!’ she said more forcefully.

  What has gotten into him? she wondered. He shouldn’t be doing this. How embarrassing would it be for someone to walk in and catch the purser feeling up a stewardess! But Aaron still did not release her. He kept squeezing her breasts and massaging her nipples until they grew hard despite herself. Then she heard a dull thud close by.

  Sharlene opened her eyes. In front of her, on the floor, was the small bottle of Scotch whisky, the one she had put on the countertop for the man with the foul body odor. How did that happen? she wondered. She couldn’t have knocked it over, and they hadn’t experienced any turbulence.

  Suddenly she felt a severe chill, as if she had stepped into a frigid storage locker. She looked back over her shoulder.

  There was no one behind her.

  She stared at nothing, shivering and rubbing her arms.

  Then the galley’s curtain was swished aside.

  Gloria and Jessica were back.

  Jessica frowned. ‘Is everything all right, Sharlene?’

  ‘I …’ Sharlene looked away and picked up the whisky bottle. ‘I dropped this.’

  ‘Are you really OK?’ Jessica persisted. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  Sharlene’s hands were shaking so badly she was having trouble holding on to the little whisky bottle.

  I have to get out of here. Now!

  She clenched the little bottle between both hands, left the tray on the counter, and stormed out of the galley.

  It was only when she handed the whisky to the Latino that she noticed she had forgotten the cup. Fortunately he had another one jammed into the seat pocket in front of him.

  ‘Here you go,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  Sharlene walked off and then stopped beside an exit, facing the door. Had she been at home now, she would have crawled into bed with a pillow over her head. But there was nowhere to be alone in this plane.

  Until what had just happened in the galley, she would have believed that her anxieties had returned, and that was all. She had had that nightmare, and then the feeling she was being pursued. Illusions. They were all just illusions.

  But if those were just illusions, what the hell had this been? She could still feel the warmth of the hands on her breasts.

  As she struggled to compose herself, another bizarre event happened. A woman somewhere behind her started yelling in a loud voice. She was an enormous lady who came waddling down the aisle toward Sharlene, calling out to someone named Jerrod.

  Emilio gratefully accepted the bottle of Scotch. He adjusted his headphones, poured a measure of the golden liquid into his cup, and turned his attention back to the movie.

  Phil Clark was hiding behind an old barrel on the porch outside the saloon. Gun in hand, John Wayne, alias sheriff Jeff Eastman, was crouching behind the doorframe of a building on the other side of the street. The two men were separated by a few yards of sand and dust. Tumbleweeds rolled past, propelled by a hot desert breeze.

  The camera zoomed in on Eastman’s pinched eyes set beneath the brim of his grayish white hat. He was chewing on something that could have been a piece of gum. Next in view came a close-up of Clark’s grim unshaven face. With his black hat and the long dark coat he was wearing, he cast a menacing glare as he squatted behind the barrel, a shotgun resting on his knee.

  ‘Come on out and I’ll spare this town!’ Clark shouted at Eastman. ‘My men are on their way. There’s nowhere for you to run.’

  The camera zoomed in on Eastman again. He didn’t answer, but you could see his mind working. The outlaw was right. He was trapped.

  Another close-up of Clark, whose face filled the screen. His beady, heavy-lidded eyes fearsome beneath the black hat. He grinned mockingly.

  ‘What are you doing this for, Jeffery?’ he shouted out to the lawman. ‘Don’t you see what’s going on here? Cabrera is pulling a fast one on you. He st
ole from the boss. Hand him over to us!’

  Emilio’s eyes went wide. He reached up and pressed the headphones down more firmly over his ears.

  ‘I’m telling you, the gringo is a thief!’ Clark rasped. ‘We want him, Jeffery. This time he won’t escape. Hand him over!’

  Emilio pulled off his headphones and, with trembling fingers, started pushing the touch screen at random. Phil Clark’s face remained on the screen a moment longer, and then Emilio’s finger hit the off button. The screen went black.

  Emilio sat there wide-eyed.

  Then he heard a commotion and looked up. Ahead, down near the lavatories, something was going on. Something bad.

  SEVENTEEN

  Occupied

  It was 4:10. Although Sabrina Labaton had not exchanged a word with Evelyn in twenty minutes, she kept rewinding Cassie’s story in her mind. At the moment, Evelyn was holding Cassie’s hand. Both mother and daughter appeared lost in thought. In the main cabin all was quiet. Only the flight attendants were moving about.

  Sabrina decided to stretch her legs. She got up and started ambling through the aisle. Her thoughts returned to her mother, Patricia Labaton, who had been confined to an institution for years. Sabrina’s sister Susan had accepted the fact that their mother would never be able to leave the institution. But Sabrina could not accept that dire fate. It was, in part, why she had majored in psychology.

  On a hot summer day that was otherwise quite ordinary, Patricia Labaton was struck by a car while crossing the street. She had recovered physically from the accident, but not emotionally. Her mind remained permanently damaged, according to her primary physician. Since then, she had heard voices inside her head. The voices made her do things that heretofore were totally out of character. What was strange, though, was that in earlier years, long before the accident, their mother sometimes talked about things she had no way of knowing. If Sabrina lost something, her mother often told her where to find it. And she always seemed to know when Sabrina would call her. Patricia had also predicted that Susan would move to Australia long before Susan had even considered the notion.

  Sabrina had discussed all this with her mother’s doctor, who in a derisive tone had summarily dismissed it as irrelevant. But when Sabrina had decided to read up on alternative psychological disciplines, a new world had opened up to her. She was reminded of this after what Evelyn had told her.

  Sabrina glanced around furtively, as if fearful that other people could sense her musings about her mother. Her eyes locked with those of a balding man in his forties who was studying her intently. Was he entertaining sexual fantasies about her? She detested men like that. Then she saw, across from her in the opposite aisle, a heavy-set woman shuffling past. Sabrina had noticed her before. The obese woman was glancing around, clearly agitated.

  ‘Jerrod! Jerrod!’ she started shouting in a voice so loud she immediately got everyone’s attention.

  When the blonde flight attendant walked toward the woman, she started gesturing wildly. A glint of a distant memory dawned in Sabrina’s mind. At first she failed to understand its meaning. Then it blossomed into full sunlight.

  She set off to talk to the big woman. The closest path across to the other aisle was straight through the main galley, which is where she went. As she approached the woman, she was already joined by two more flight attendants.

  ‘Yes, I’m serious!’ the portly woman bellowed to the blonde stewardess. ‘Of course I’m serious! What do you think, that I’m an idiot? He’s been gone for half an hour, for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘Is Jerrod … the skinny man?’ Sabrina blurted out.

  The woman swiveled toward her. ‘Yes, he is. Where is he? Do you know?’

  ‘He went to the bathroom, I think.’

  As the woman stared at her, Sabrina thought back. She had noticed a skinny man hurry past her in the direction of the bathrooms. Everything about him bespoke an urgent need to urinate. That was when she had noticed the fat lady for the first time.

  And it was also when Cassie had started making strange noises as she leaned across the armrest of her seat and stared at the man’s back. Afterward the girl with the ponytail had been curiously downcast. Without Cassie, Sabrina would not have noticed Jerrod. She was not in the habit of keeping track of complete strangers on a plane, especially those on the way to the lavatory. Sabrina couldn’t recall seeing the skinny man emerge from the toilet stall. But why would she recall such a thing?

  Except, for a reason she could not explain, it seemed evident that Jerrod had not returned to his seat.

  ‘Which one?’ his wife thundered.

  ‘What?’ Sabrina replied. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’

  ‘Which stall!’

  ‘Um …’

  Sabrina thought hard. ‘One of these two, I think.’

  She pointed toward the toilet stalls, feeling uncomfortable being the center of attention for this large, demanding woman and three flight attendants. Everywhere she looked, passengers were craning their necks to get a better view.

  On the stall to the left, the green indicator beneath the door handle read UNOCCUPIED. For a reason Sabrina did not understand, the fat lady yanked the door open. Did she think her husband was hiding in there?

  Then the woman started pounding on the other door, which displayed a red OCCUPIED indicator under the door handle. ‘Jerrod!’ she yelled shamelessly, making no effort to control her voice. ‘Jerrod! It’s me! Phyllis! Open up!’

  Sabrina was tempted to tell the woman she was behaving like a mad heifer, but she restrained herself.

  No answer was heard from inside the occupied stall.

  Phyllis threw another perplexed glance, first at Sabrina and then at the blonde flight attendant, who had said nothing since Sabrina came on the scene. She just stood there, watching. Before one of the other two flight attendants could interfere, the woman pounded the toilet door again. ‘Jerrod! Are you in there? Say something!’

  Nothing but silence greeted her entreaties.

  Phyllis’s eyes bore through the blonde flight attendant. ‘Open it!’ she demanded in the tone of an incensed drill sergeant. But the blonde stewardess did not salute or snap to attention. Nor did her two colleagues. They deferred to the blonde, who apparently had seniority.

  ‘Open it!’ Phyllis screamed.

  Sabrina opened her mouth as if to say something, but whatever it was she swallowed her words.

  Cassie had drawn her attention.

  The girl had risen from her seat. The flight attendants followed Sabrina’s gaze and saw Cassie as well. She stood in the aisle; her face was twisted into a grimace and her fists were clenched. For a fleeting moment she reminded Sabrina of her tomcat Toby, the pet her father had given her when she was a little girl. Toby had been a kindly animal, except when she took him to the vet. There he would hiss menacingly, arch his back and extend his claws, and there was no placating him.

  Evelyn stood up, too. She was trying to coax Cassie back into her seat.

  ‘Open it!’ Phyllis bellowed yet again, drawing herself up to her full imposing height. With every eye in the cabin hard upon her, Sabrina looked back at the toilet door with its clear red shield that read: OCCUPIED. Was the skinny man in there?

  If so, what had happened to him?

  EIGHTEEN

  Jody

  ‘OK, Aaron,’ Jim said. ‘As crazy as it sounds, here’s what’s going on, or not.’

  The pilot then told Aaron Drake what those in the cockpit were struggling to understand. He said that when the turbulence hit, some ninety minutes earlier, they had lost radio contact as well as their navigation systems. Jim tried to sound calm and professional, as if these were routine challenges for a seasoned pilot. He blamed the lack of radio traffic on bad frequencies, and the malfunctioning navigation on defects in the flight-management systems.

  ‘We’re on top of it,’ he said, ‘but I assume that’s why the flight map in MEG has stopped working. Don’t worry. The engines are fine an
d we’ll land somewhere. The transponder is active, so I’m sure it’ll be picked up by a ground station any moment now. After that, we’ll see what happens.’

  Aaron nodded. ‘OK. We’ll tell the passengers we’re experiencing a slight malfunction and are working to restore it.’

  ‘You do that,’ Jim said. ‘There’s no cause for alarm.’ Not yet at least, he thought to himself.

  After the purser left the cockpit, Jim heaved a sigh. He believed he had given Aaron the right amount of information. Aaron could brief the cabin crew members, to set them at ease, and they in turn would calm those passengers who suspected that something might be amiss. At 4:17, Greg sent out another flurry of messages on all radio frequencies. None of them proved fruitful.

  ‘Let’s assume for a moment,’ Jim conjectured, ‘that we’re unable to get our radio back. In that case we will be intercepted by Australian fighter planes as soon as we enter their airspace. We’ll have to use hand signals to get them to help us land.’

  ‘But what if we don’t encounter any F16s?’ Greg said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Exactly what I just said,’ Greg insisted.

  ‘Jesus, Greg,’ Ben countered. ‘Australia is a big country, we can’t miss it. Of course they’ll intercept us. Do you think their air force is asleep down there? If we intrude on their airspace without proper identification, they’re going to send up fighters. You can bet your life on it.’

  Ben Wright was one of the most pragmatic people Jim knew. And that was a good thing. In the next few hours he would need a clear head in the cockpit.

  Jim could only imagine what was going through Greg’s mind. Was it possible that his copilot had been wondering the same thing he was? That maybe Flight 582 was about to turn into some kind of Bermuda Triangle mystery?