Expect the Sunrise

by Susan May Warren

  She’d encountered a few of these types over the summer. She smiled. “We’ll run outta gas before then, land in the ocean. Sharks will have us for dinner.”

  “Then maybe I’ll need it.” He grinned at her.

  “Listen.” Andee lowered her voice. “I know you’re kidding, but we had an attack on our pipeline a few months back, and they’re just a little gun-shy around here, if you’ll pardon the pun. Surrender the gun or there’s no ride.”

  His smile dimmed, and he handed her the weapon, climbing aboard the plane without another word.

  Ishbane had only a small carry-on—a backpack on wheels—besides his briefcase. He handed Andee the carry-on and climbed in behind Flint.

  Uh-oh. She recognized a man with a slipping grip on his control of aerophobia when she saw it. And flying over the Brooks Range translated to turbulence—lots of it.

  Phillips tried to load his army duffel and balked when Andee reached for it. “It’s too heavy, ma’am.”

  Ma’am? But his courtesy made her smile. “Sorry, Mr. Phillips. Rules say I have to load the bags.”

  He shook his head as he handed it to her.

  Yes, it seemed painfully heavy.

  McRae approached her last, scrutinizing her as if gauging her ability to fly the plane. He handed her his bag with a dubious look. She half expected him to ask if she was serving cocktails in first class and when the pilot would arrive.

  After McRae boarded, Andee secured the passenger door, then crawled out from under the plane. The wind had picked up, and she smelled rain. Or maybe snow. Behind her, she heard a Piper Cub firing up. It would be first in line for takeoff. If she didn’t move quickly, she’d be grounded.

  Andee jogged around to her cockpit door, giving one last visual check before climbing inside. She adjusted her radio headset and began her pre-engine start checklist.

  Preflight—complete.

  Passenger briefing. Andee keyed her mike and explained the seat and belt adjustments and emergency-exit procedures and asked them to remain silent during radio calls.

  Briefing—complete.

  Fuel selector—on.

  Avionic and electrical switches—off.

  Brakes test—Andee held the brakes.

  This would be her last commercial flight of the season.

  Besides her emergency gear and the extras she’d packed for her passengers in her own gear, she’d added a fresh supply of amoxicillin—just in case Gerard got injured or an infection— as well as a couple new best sellers, some canned meat in the event Gerard’s bear supply dwindled, and a laptop computer, with the errant hope that her father might want to figure out how to enter the twenty-first century and send her an e-mail. Last time she was in Disaster she’d discovered a satellite hookup at the township hall. If Gerard had the desire, he could take his laptop to town and keep in touch with his only daughter.

  She hoped she wasn’t courting heartache.

  Brakes—check.

  Circuit breakers—check.

  “Okay, folks, we’ll be in the air in a few minutes.” Andee turned the master switch on, pushed the mixture to rich, and primed the engine. Checking to see that the prop area was clear, she cracked the throttle and hit the starter.

  The Cessna spit, then popped to life, its prop whirring and cutting out cabin chatter.

  Making sure the magnetos were on, she pulled the throttle back to 1,000 rpm and checked the oil pressure. How she loved the sound of a well-tuned engine.

  Something hit her shoulder. She jerked and turned. Phillips was leaning forward, his mouth moving. She moved her headset off her ear.

  “—someone out there waving at you.”

  Andee looked out the window toward the terminal. A smile gathered on her face, and for the first time in three months she felt the cloud of loneliness lift. Sarah Nation, her best friend, stood on the tarmac in a black parka, waving wildly.

  Andee cut the engine and unbuckled her belt. “Hang on, everybody. I’ll be right back.” She nearly leaped out the door, raced around the plane, and flew into Sarah’s embrace. “What are you doing here?”

  “Happy birthday!” Sarah grinned, her blue eyes lighting up. She’d shoved her blonde hair into a stocking cap, and Andee noticed fatigue around her eyes.

  “Are you kidding? You came all the way from New York for my birthday?” But Andee couldn’t hide her elation.

  “Your last e-mail sounded a bit blue.” Sarah shrugged, but Andee saw the faintest edging of worry. “Besides, I haven’t been to Disaster since we were in college. How’s your dad?”

  “Stubborn and as friendly as a badger. Are you sure you want to trek all the way up there? It’s liable to be a cold flight.” Andee eyed the sky. “And the ceiling is dropping so we need to leave ASAP, and you look beat.”

  “I’ll sleep on the flight. Is there a movie?” Sarah had always been one to seek out her friends. Only four months ago she’d helped their search-and-rescue cohort Dani search the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northern Minnesota for a lost teenager.

  “I can’t think of a better place to spend your birthday than in Disaster,” Sarah said, turning toward the plane.

  Andee caught up to her, thankful that her friend never left room for doubt about her loyalties. “Gerard will be thrilled to see you,” Andee said. “Want to ride copilot?”

  “He still makes you call him by his first name?” Sarah handed Andee her bag. Andee stowed it in the belly pod as Sarah slung her backpack over her shoulder.

  “I don’t get it. Like he doesn’t want anyone to know I’m his daughter or something. My mother was the same way. A free spirit, hoping to change the world. I’ll never understand what they saw in each other.”

  “True love conquers all,” Sarah said before climbing into the copilot seat.

  Andee grinned. No, true love had never been their problem. She had been their problem.

  How fun was it to be her?

  Andee went through the engine check again and restarted the plane. She finished her takeoff checklist, then radioed the tower and asked permission to take off.

  Andee prayed for safety as she studied the darkening ceiling, hoping this trip would be the best one of the season.

  Sometimes Stirling McRae couldn’t believe the stupidity of his own decisions. Like after vowing never to set foot in a plane three months ago, here he sat, wedged into a flying tin can manned by a wisp of a woman who looked like she should be serving meals rather than pushing a Cessna up to four thousand feet.

  Or maybe his stupidity began the moment he saw Ari Al-Hasid and lit out after him like a fox on a rabbit, without a thought to the future. The terrorist had blasted a hole through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System and another through his brother’s gut. Mac could still see Brody’s blood etched into the pores of his hands.

  What was worse, however, was that Mac’s impulsiveness had blown three years of surveillance, careful scrutiny, and an FBI master plan. They still hadn’t discovered the whos and wheres of Al-Hasid’s terrorist cell, despite three months of interrogation. To add to the horror, the FBI’s only other lead— a former drug-running-murderer-turned-mercenary-terrorist named Constantine Rubinov—had vanished, and not even a 24/7 eye on his family connections in Valdez had uncovered him. At best, the cell knew they were under surveillance. At worst, Mac’s knee-jerk reaction had accelerated their agenda. He wouldn’t be so lucky that they’d simply pack up and leave town.

  No, Al-Hasid’s cohorts were still out there. Plotting. Waiting.

  Mac closed his eyes slightly, bracing himself as the Cessna hurtled over the runway and slipped gracefully into the air. He never did like flying, even when he did it in an agency-procured plane. It wasn’t just being crammed in with six strangers; it was the fact that he had no control, and that made him jumpy. One wrong move by the pilot and they’d crash into the jagged line of mountains in the far-off horizon.

  And said pilot didn’t exactly inspire confidence. He’d bit back a remark about his bag being lar
ger than she was, but the truth lingered. He’d met his share of pilots, and the majority were levelheaded, commonsense, salt-of-the-earth types who knew how to tie down their airplanes in the middle of an ice field, make camp in fifty-below weather, and take down a bear with one shot.

  How could this petite woman keep herself alive, let alone her passengers, if they crashed? Emma? He thought pilots were supposed to have names like Lucky Joe or One-Eared Butch. Not . . . Emma. He barely stopped himself from unbuckling his seat belt and diving from the plane as they began to taxi.

  If he had his druthers, he’d be in the copilot’s seat. Just in case they went into a steep dive and he needed to resurrect his flight training.

  Mac massaged his temples. There he went again, conjuring up worst-case scenarios. “You should write conspiracy theories on the Web the way you see diabolical plots in every situation.” His boss’s voice rang in his ears. Tanner Buchanan had followed that statement with the suggestion that Mac would be better off taking a vacation from his theories—somewhere very, very remote—and while he was there take a long, hard look at his future. And if he wanted the same one he’d had three months ago before Brody’s death.

  Mac wasn’t sure what his answer might be.

  Perhaps Buchanan had a point. Mac had lived this job so long he was starting to lose it . . . maybe. For example, take the man sitting next to him—Phillips, Emma had called him. He looked like Sly Stallone with a smile. Yet all Mac saw in his clenched hands and the bulge in the upper right-hand side of his jacket was Rambo hiding a weapon, ready to hijack the plane.

  When Mac looked at the smoker in a leather coat behind him, he saw a decoy, someone who had a bomb in the briefcase he held on his lap.

  What a dunderhead Mac had turned into. He even saw terrorism in the eyes of the dark-haired woman heading home to her children. What was that she held on her lap in the camera-shaped bag? Certainly not a . . . camera?

  Clearly, he needed time off to clear his head.

  After Mac had returned from Brody’s funeral, his thoughts of Hasid had tangled with his personal need for revenge. He’d called the hangar and found out the pilot’s name, the one who’d flown over as his brother died in his arms. How Mac longed to go toe-to-toe with Andy MacLeod, grab the man by the shirt, and ask, “Why did you let my brother die?”

  An answer. That’s all he wanted. Just an answer. And the opportunity to tell MacLeod all he’d cost the McRae family.

  But three months of grief had worn Mac out, and his da’s most recent telephone call—the one tempting him with family and a place to heal—had pushed Mac into buying a ticket north to Deadhorse, the tundra town south of Prudhoe Bay. There he could enjoy some of his mother’s home-cooked haggis and oat bread, hold his sisters’ babies, and captain one of his brother-in-laws’ fishing boats while he figured out what to do about his future.

  Maybe he’d also finally be able to shake free of the scenarios that had plagued his sleep and knotted his brain for nearly the last three years. Scenarios that included Hasid’s cell or other terrorists sneaking into Alaska and destroying America’s homeland source of oil, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. The destruction of the pipeline would cause America to seek new alliances with Arab nations and Russia and even tuck tail in its relationships with dictator governments that supported terror, like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. The cost of the war on terror would skyrocket and bring the troops home in defeat. Villages like the one he’d grown up in would have to return to dog-sledding to receive supplies. If they received them at all.

  Keeping the pipeline safe meant keeping the American way of life and soldiers safe. Families fed.

  Yet he had to concede that maybe his bureau chief was right. Security in America had tightened since 9/11, especially around the pipeline. Hadn’t they caught two attempts just the past year?

  He should be focusing on the word caught and not attempts.

  Paranoia only sharpened his regret when he had returned from burying his little brother in the family plot. And it fortified his inclinations to resign from the bureau. Perhaps it was time to exorcise this . . . patriotism—or whatever drove him—from his system.

  The plane’s engine droned in his ears, a hum that pushed into his brain, turning it numb. Below, he saw the pipeline, a metal snake winding through the lush forest. Fifty feet to the west of the pipeline, the gravel Dalton Highway furrowed the forest north, some four hundred plus miles. To the west, through the cockpit window, he saw the jagged spires of the Brooks Range, a gateway to the Arctic looming closer. Hovering like smoke, wispy gray clouds bulging with rain shrouded the peaks to the north. Taiga swathed the valleys, a boggy, half-frozen carpet that never fully thawed.

  “We’re climbing to four thousand feet,” came the voice over the loudspeaker. “I want to get over these clouds, so we’ll have to go through them. It might get a little bumpy, so prepare for turbulence.”

  Mac held on to his seat, wishing he’d driven his half-ton Chevy. Still, air travel, even in a small plane, made better sense than driving in the iffy weather of northern Alaska in late September without a town for two hundred miles.

  He cut his gaze to the pilot. Dressed in a leather jacket, jeans, a scarf, and gloves, she wore her curly dark hair behind her ears. He’d been taken for a moment by her dark eyes. Emma. Interesting. Scottish vernacular for “lady.” He’d heard his father use the name occasionally when referring to his mother. “Aye, she’s a real Emma, that one.” He smiled as his father’s brogue laced through his mind. Although Mac considered himself an American first, having become a citizen when he was in his teens, his father made sure Mac knew and appreciated his heritage.

  Emma seemed confident enough. He noticed she hadn’t had a problem telling Ishbane to not smoke during the trip or lifting the bags into the belly pod. She probably had to be in shape to run flights all summer long, loading and unloading cargo. But she seemed so small, even breakable. Maybe it was the way she had hugged her friend. Mac had watched out the round Plexiglas window, and as they embraced, he’d felt a pain so intense slice through him that he had to clench his jaw. He even pushed against his chest as if to massage it away.

  He’d had a friendship like that with Brody. And his death left a hole inside that still took Mac’s breath away sometimes.

  “You need to come home, Stirling. Get a wife, start a family.” Brody had sat by the fire, his legs crossed at the ankles, drinking Cragganmore.

  Mac looked out the window, remembering his answer. “I don’t have time for a wife. A woman would have to crash-land at my feet to get my attention.”

  Brody had stared into his glass, swirling the liquid, his voice dropping. “Maybe you just haven’t found one worth paying attention to yet.”

  “No,” Mac had wanted to say. “I’ve seen the destruction of too many marriages, the debris from trying to balance a family with a dangerous and demanding career.” Besides, he just wasn’t the roses, birthday-remembering, poetry-quoting, romance-hero type that a woman dreamed about.

  Sleet pelleted the wings, and a flash of lightning crackled through the sky. Mac grabbed his armrest as the plane jittered in the air.

  “Turbulence?” Ishbane snapped from behind him. “This is turbulence?”

  Mac hadn’t liked the skinny man from the start, and now his tone only made Mac bristle. Like they needed reminders? Mac watched the pilot. Her posture betrayed no emotion as she held the plane’s yoke.

  Mac had flown using his instruments only a few times, but here in Alaska, approaching the Brooks Range, it couldn’t be more dangerous to fly in zero visibility. More than that, he saw a film starting to form on the wings.

  Ice.

  Turn around. The feeling clutched his gut as the plane’s engine began to labor. The high-pitched whine sounded like a scream.

  Next to Mac, Phillips closed his eyes.

  The plane jerked and dropped altitude. Mac’s stomach hit his ribs, and he sucked a breath.

  The woman behind him screame
d.

  Emma didn’t flinch, just levered the plane into a steeper climb.

  Mac gripped his armrests, eyes on the wings. Climb. Climb. If they could get above the clouds, find the sunshine and better weather . . .

  The plane slowed, time turning to syrup as Mac watched the ice layer the wings. Then through the whine of the engine Mac heard it. The sound that cut through his soul and stole his breath.

  Stall warning.

  The plane stopped climbing, and for a white-hot second of silence, simply gave up life as Mac and everyone else in the cabin sucked in a horrified gasp.

  And then they were falling.

  Chapter 2

  THE SUNLIGHT FOUND Gerard MacLeod’s neck, heating the layers of flannel and wool as he loaded his arms full of the last of his firewood and turned toward the cabin. The smell of autumn hung in the air—pine and dying deciduous leaves, the breath of winter just above the darkening clouds to the south. He stood for a moment, reading the sky. Days like today that hinted at trouble despite the seeming calm made him anxious when he knew that Andee was up there.

  Please let me have taught her well. He let the thought calm him. Of course Andee would be fine. She had turned out to be a better pilot than he—he should have expected that since she’d lived most of her life with her overachieving mother. Mary MacLeod knew how to instill determination into her daughter, and he’d done his part by making Andee face those moments of crisis and helping her breathe through them to think clearly.

  At least he hoped that’s what he’d given her. Something to temper the legacy of abandonment in Andee’s mind. He could still see lingering fragments of hurt in her eyes, especially during this time of the year when her upcoming departure to her mother’s in Iowa loomed like a death sentence over them, turning his past decisions into blinding moments of pain, reminding him anew of all he’d sacrificed.

  Then again it had only been in the last few years that he’d let himself feel anything. After Andee and her mother had left, he’d made himself go numb. It seemed like the only way to get through each day.