by Mg Gardiner
Reavy had gotten into the crane. She’d dropped the blade and severed the right wing. She was chopping the plane into sections.
Why? Cutting off any more safe exits?
The plane creaked, suddenly unbalanced. Sarah felt close to hyperventilating. Outside a whipping sound filled the air. The blade hit the roof of the jet, directly in front of the wings. It sliced through and rammed all the way through the floor. Jesus. Dust filled the interior. A moment later, the cables tightened and the blade rose, disappearing skyward through the rip.
Dimly, muffled by the sound of the crane’s engine, Fell shouted something to Reavy. It sounded like, “Again.”
Please. Sarah saw Grissom emerge from a crouch and climb past newly created piles of twisted metal and clamber toward her. Fell was at an empty window, waving at Reavy, directing her where to aim the guillotine.
Sarah paused one second longer, to make sure Grissom saw her. It’s okay, she told herself, trying to maintain her nerve. Just lure him and Fell to the back of the jet. Keep them on this side of the chopping block.
Because Zoe was with Danisha on the other side. And with every fall of the blade, it became nearer to impossible for Grissom or Fell to get to them.
He caught her eye just as the blade dropped again. With a hellacious shriek it slammed through the roof behind him, slicing it and rocking the plane like a toy. A toy in a magnitude 8 earthquake. The roof was torn from wing to wing, and the floor of the plane was shattered all the way across the cabin.
For a short second, the tear in the floor looked like a moat, impenetrable, a safety barrier. Then the plane groaned, a twanging moan of metallic pain. The slice in the roof began to gape, an inch at a time. The plane was being torn in half.
And if it was, the cockpit door wouldn’t protect Zoe. The cockpit was three stories above the ground. If the plane toppled, it would be akin to dropping a house thirty feet to the dirt with her little girl inside.
Danisha was going to have to get out.
And Sarah had to keep Grissom and Fell from going after them. She turned and clattered through the mess toward the back of the plane.
Ordinarily, 747s didn’t have access below the main deck. But this jet, half-disassembled, had a hole in the floor, with a rickety ladder descending. Beneath it was a dusty splay of sunlight. Somewhere a door was open or missing—a cargo door, something. There was a way out.
She became aware that Grissom had stopped shooting at her. Maybe he figured Zoe wouldn’t come out of a hiding place unless Sarah called her. Good. Let him think so. Except that probably meant he had plenty of rounds in his gun.
She clambered past toppled dinner carts and open cabinet doors through the aft galley. Outside the windows, the guillotine blade swung past and edged upward, rising again on its cables.
One more slice and the plane would disintegrate. She wedged herself into the hole and set her feet on the ladder. Glanced back. Grissom and Fell were coming, scuttling like gargoyles through the wrecked guts of the jet. Behind them, near the front of the plane, she glimpsed the staircase.
A little hand held onto the railing, coming down. So did a woman’s hand, raggedly, leaving a streak of blood.
They had one way out: the emergency exit over the remaining wing.
Look away. Don’t let Grissom know something’s caught your attention. She turned her head. She heard the crane outside, its engine revving.
Hurry, Danisha. They had to pass near the point where the blade had been falling. They needed to get out before it dropped again.
She waited for it. Grissom and Fell loomed nearer. She held poised on the ladder, nerves writhing, and waited for the blade to drop.
From outside came two booming gunshots.
The crane’s engine revved wildly. The blade didn’t fall. Sarah looked outside. In the cab of the crane, Reavy had been flung back against a window. She’d been shot. And was deathly still.
Lawless pulled himself into the cab and shoved her from the seat. He leaned over the controls.
The cab of the crane swung around. He swayed and put a hand on the seat to steady himself.
In the cabin of the 747, Grissom let out a long animal moan. He was staring at Reavy.
The moan turned to a scream. “Fucker.” He put a hand on his head. “Reavy.” With his revolver he pointed at Fell. “Kill him. Gut him, Fell.”
Then, at the bottom of the stairs, Danisha stumbled and crashed to her knees. Grissom turned at the sound. He forgot Reavy, and Lawless, and saw his prize. He saw Zoe holding tight to Danisha’s bloodied hand.
Danisha struggled, trying to get her feet under her. Grissom headed toward them. They were almost two hundred feet away, past buckled flooring and collapsed ceiling panels and tangles of wiring and ripped-up seats. But he was intent. He raised his handgun and clambered after them as if forging against thigh-high water in a riptide.
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Grissom forded through junk toward the gap in the floor of the jet. At the bottom of the staircase, Zoe pulled on Danisha’s hand. Danisha slumped, collapsed. Zoe was trying to get her up, but Danisha wasn’t moving.
Sarah plowed after Grissom. He might not be able to jump across the ragged hole in the floor of the plane and reach them, but if he got close enough he could shoot them both.
The airframe groaned again and the rip in the roof gaped wider. The floor gained a slight but noticeable tilt. Sarah fought her way uphill. She didn’t see Fell. Her nerves whined. Maybe Fell had gone after Lawless. Maybe not.
She heard Zoe. “Danisha, come on.”
Her chest cramped. It looked like Danisha was unconscious. Zoe was tugging on her arm.
Sarah shouted, “Zoe, run. Run away.”
Her child looked up at her. Her face was pale and her expression perplexed. It seemed to say, How can I leave Danisha here?
“Go,” Sarah yelled. “I’ll get Danisha. Go to the front of the plane. Hurry.”
Silently, Zoe turned and ran.
Grissom climbed on all fours over wrecked rows of seats. Sarah passed the galley. Cabinet doors hung open. She foraged. In an unemptied trash container she found a Perrier bottle. She slammed it against the counter and shattered the end off.
Ahead of her Grissom reached a half-wrecked lavatory. The door hung by one hinge. He jammed his gun in the front of his waistband, ripped the door free, and carried it with him toward the tear in the floor.
Zoe disappeared near the front of the jet, little legs flashing. Grissom hoisted the lavatory door and tossed it across the gap in the floor as a bridge.
Sarah ran up the aisle, raised the broken bottle, and lunged at him. With both hands she jammed the bottle down into his shoulder.
He yelled and buckled and they went down together onto a floor covered in dust and metal filings and tufts of insulation. Grissom hit facefirst. She raised the bottle again and slammed it down onto his right wrist. She put all her weight behind it and twisted and ground the glass into his arm. He screamed and clenched and tried to throw her off.
She brought the bottle up again and swung it at his bloodied face. She slashed and he flinched and she grazed his cheek. She swung again and he brought up his left hand. She twisted the bottle and felt it dig into his palm.
The pain took him then, channeled into rage. He flung her off and turned on her. His hands were a wreck, torn useless. But he swung at her as though flailing with dead meat and knocked the bottle from her hand. Then he turned back to his makeshift bridge.
She got to her knees. “Lawless,” she yelled.
Above her the jagged rip in the roof slowly yawned wider. Sunlight flooded through. In the sky above hung the blade of the guillotine, swaying on its cables. The engine of the crane continued rumbling.
“Lawless. Help.”
Grissom staggered against a bulkhead and aimed dazedly for the bridge. She clawed to her feet and dived at him.
Got him around the legs and brought him down in a heap.
Grissom was two hundred pounds of den
se muscle, damaged but still powerful. He cocked an elbow, his face gleaming with fury, and clocked her in the temple.
The view erupted like sparklers and a loud hum filled her head. Her hands went numb. Hold onto him, a voice seemed to say.
“Hold onto him,” the voice repeated. It was Danisha.
She clung to his legs. He kicked, but she wedged a hand under his belt. He couldn’t shake her. He couldn’t move his fingers enough to grip the gun.
But he could beat her to death with his bare knuckles. It was only a matter of time.
“Hold him, Sarah.” Danisha struggled to her knees. She had her SIG, but in her left hand, and couldn’t get to her feet to get a shot.
Through the gash in the roof, the sun caught the blade of the guillotine. It hung directly above her and Grissom, swinging, almost eagerly.
Sarah tried to breathe. Watched it sway. She felt Grissom’s bulk and strength gather itself beneath her. Grunting, he pulled himself toward the bridge by his elbows and free leg.
The dust and noise seemed to clear. She heard only her own voice, the words carrying through the desert air.
“Lawless— Drop the blade.”
Danisha gasped.
“Lawless, do it!” Sarah screamed.
Grissom grasped what was about to happen. He redoubled his efforts to crawl free and cross the bridge. He squirmed and kicked and elbowed her again. She felt herself slipping.
“Lawless. Now. Drop the blade.”
Grissom fought and groaned and began to pull her with him up the tilting floor onto the bridge. He was getting away. She wasn’t going to be able to stop him.
With a thump, somebody landed on him. A wiry body, clawing into his hair with her hands, biting him in the back of the neck. It was Fell.
Too shocked to complain, Sarah held her bare grip on him. One last time, she cried, “Lawless— Do it.”
Before the words left her mouth the cables twanged and there was a rush of air overhead. An image of Zoe filled her mind. Of laughter, a gap-toothed smile, small warm arms wrapped around her neck.
The blade of the guillotine, two tons of dull steel, fell through the rip in the roof and passed in front of her eyes with an apocalyptic noise.
70
The dust and debris billowed in a yellow cloud, choking everything, everything but the sight of the blade buried in the floor in front of her, everything but the sound of the fuselage giving way, groaning and shrieking. With a final rip, the airframe tore in half.
Tail heavy, the back of the plane dropped and the section where Sarah was clinging tilted up.
She was too shocked at being alive to feel frightened, until she and Fell and all the debris and what remained of Grissom slid loudly toward the aft of the jet in a jumbled slow-motion catastrophe.
She shouted, alarmed. Her hand was still wedged under Grissom’s belt. She pulled it free, tumbled past the galley, and plowed to a stop against a wrecked bunch of seats. Stunned, she held still, as though moving would set the plane thrashing again. Fell was five feet away, battered, covered in dust and blood. Grissom’s feet protruded from under a collapsed pile of overhead bins. Fell stared, as if she wanted to kill him again.
Sarah tried to stand. Her legs wobbled. She seemed like nothing but one giant tremor.
Fell pulled herself painfully to her feet. She swayed. Then she hawked and spit at Grissom’s feet.
“Shattering Angel,” she said hoarsely. “Got his due. Thought he was God.” She grimaced in pain. “Hubris.”
“I’ve heard of that,” Sarah said, chest heaving.
Fell slumped against the wall of the plane. “Keep that in mind.” She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. It came away bloody. “That was for Nolan. So you get a pass.”
Fell looked toward the cockpit and pushed away from the wall. A locket swung from the chain on her neck. It had opened. Inside was a faded photo of a small child.
“Your son?” Sarah said.
Fell touched it. “My boy. Creek,” she said. “I don’t want Zoe for myself. I need my boy.”
Sarah raised the revolver she had pulled from Grissom’s belt. She aimed it at Fell.
“Live to fight another day,” she said.
For a moment Fell glared at Sarah with her strange mismatched eyes. She seemed to think about it. Then, turning, she stumbled down the aisle toward the tail of the plane. She slipped through a break in the airframe and disappeared.
Hacking, Sarah lowered the gun. After a second she broke open the cylinder. As she’d feared, the gun was empty.
Being a cast-iron liar had its advantages.
She climbed to her feet, eyes gritty, muscles shuddering. The jet creaked and settled. The phone was ringing. She grabbed it from the floor and made her way through the break near the tail of the jet, into a day so full of white sand and sunlight that she nearly vomited. The phone continued to ring.
The nose section of the 747 had tipped forward into the sand, like a bird that had done a facefirst landing, and keeled on its side. She staggered to it and climbed on all fours up the hot metal of the fuselage to the open forward door.
“Zoe,” she called.
She hoisted herself through the door, dropped onto a bulkhead, and crouched, looking around. The light followed her, strange beams broken by the long line of windows overhead.
“Zoe.”
A rustling sound came from behind the first row of seats, tipped vertical, right at the nose. “Mommy.”
Zoe unbuckled her seat belt and crawled out onto the wall of the plane that lay against the ground.
Sarah jumped off the bulkhead, braced herself, and took her girl in her arms.
“I gotcha, kiddo. I gotcha.”
“I got you too,” Zoe said.
Sarah held Zoe tight.
“I buckled up,” Zoe said. “Like you always tell me.”
She should have been too shattered to walk, but with Zoe on her hip Sarah seemed to have all the strength in the world. She held her close, breathing the scent of her hair, warmed by her lithe, smooth arms around her shoulders.
She found Danisha a minute later. She was slumped against the wall of the jet near the stairs, half-conscious and weak with pain, applying pressure to a bloody wound in her shoulder.
“Bastard got me. Wasn’t quick enough,” she said.
Sarah set Zoe down and crouched at her side. She set a hand against Danisha’s cheek.
“Thank …” She couldn’t get the words out. “Dani, thank …”
Danisha put a finger to Sarah’s lips. “You’re welcome. Now stop being all syrupy and get me to a goddamn hospital.”
A minute later Sarah boosted Zoe through the door and climbed out after her. In the distance she heard helicopters and the faint wail of a police siren.
Overhead, the crane loomed, its cables loose, dripping down into the body of the 747, where the guillotine blade was embedded. The crane’s engine was silent.
Then she saw Lawless, sprawled in the sand beside it. A chalky pool of blood spread from beneath his back.
She skidded up next to him on her knees. “Michael.”
His hand moved. He breathed, jaggedly.
She touched him with care, her hands shaking. “What …”
“Reavy. She … it’s not bad.”
He was a terrible liar. “Hang on.”
“Zoe?” he said.
“Safe. I’ve got her. We’re okay.”
The helicopters drew nearer, rotors beating the air. She stood and waved her arms overhead.
A medevac helicopter that had landed just outside the fence loaded Lawless and spooled up its engines to take him to the trauma center. Sarah stood poised outside the door as the life flight crew hung an IV and locked the gurney in place. They scrambled around, professional and calm, but their care was edged with alarm.
In the boneyard, the crime scene was being secured. In an ambulance nearby, paramedics were attending to Danisha. Zoe sat on the back bumper, drinking from a water bottl
e.
Lawless managed to turn his head toward her. “You,” he said.
“Hold on. You’re in good hands,” she said.
“You—Sarah, I wish …”
She swallowed. “I’m okay, Lawless. We’re okay. We’re good.” Her eyes were swimming. “You did good.”
The flight crew urged her back.
Lawless raised his head. “Reavy. Had …” He touched his shirt pocket, tapped it. “Angel.”
“What?” She tried to get closer. “Angel’s wing?”
“Searched her.” He tried to hold her gaze. “Key is—she had …” He grit his teeth. “Blew … it …”
“Blew it? What? You didn’t blow anything.”
“No. Angel …” Pain took him and his head fell back.
“Lawless? I don’t understand.”
The crew shut the door. She ducked away from the spinning rotors and downwash as the helicopter lifted off. It rose, the nose tilted down, and it swooped away, leaving quiet in its wake.
Standing on the other side of the landing zone was Special Agent Curtis Harker.
He looked wrung out, but his eyes were as keen as ever. Squaring her shoulders, she walked toward him.
“It’s over,” she said.
He squinted at the landscape. His gaze settled on Lawless’s black car, and Nolan’s body lying beside it. Though his suit was neat, his tie smooth, it seemed to Sarah that he was being picked at by invisible crows.
“There were three of them. Where’s the third?” he said.
“She took off while the plane was falling apart. If you haven’t found her, she’s long gone.”
“She’ll come after you,” he said. “They all will.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“That sounds either brave or fatalistic. What does it mean?”
“It means I’ll take my chances with the Worthe clan,” she said. “But I’m done running. And you’re done chasing me. You’re done putting out bulletins calling me a child thief. You’re done using my daughter as bait.”
