An airport truck rolled along a hundred yards in front of her, a mobile passenger stairway mounted on its chassis. She sped to it, and after overtaking it, cut it off, forcing it to a stop. In a fluid motion, she reached around and unzipped the backpack, whipping out the P90 and pointing it at the driver.
“Out. Now. Don’t make me shoot you,” she yelled in French.
The open-mouthed driver raised his hands and quickly complied. She jumped behind the wheel, jammed the shifter into gear and floored it. The heavy vehicle lurched forward with a roar as the bewildered maintenance worker stood with his hands still raised above his head, trying to make sense of what had just taken place.
~ ~ ~
The pilot smiled as the tower gave him clearance to taxi. With a curt glance at the instruments, he reached forward, toggled the transmit button and confirmed. They were number one for takeoff and would be airborne in minutes.
Grigenko sat in the oversized reclining chair nearest the cockpit, his legs up on the footrest, a glass of vodka in his hand. Oleg peered through the window, absently watching the terminal. The pilot’s voice came over the speakers.
“We are cleared for takeoff, sir. Please fasten your seatbelt. We will be in the air shortly.”
A map popped up on the large flat screen TV on the forward bulkhead, a red line charting their planned flight path to the United States.
Grigenko felt for the remote control in his seat arm and switched it to television, thumbing through the channels until he found live news coverage of the fire in the Monaco marina. His beloved Petrushka was ablaze and looked like it would be a total loss. The newscaster’s excited voice recited statistics on the yacht’s cost and then launched into a measured description of the reclusive Russian oligarch who owned it.
“So, the insurance company is going to be pissed, nyet?” Grigenko said with a harsh laugh, then took another swallow of vodka. Oleg smiled in obligatory amusement.
Grigenko glanced out the window, movement having caught his eye. Just a maintenance vehicle.
“Once we’re in the air, I’m going to get some sleep. It’s been a long day,” he said, stretching his arms overhead with a yawn. He pushed a button on the seat, and the windows went opaque, blocking out the glare from the runway spotlights.
The pilot inched the controls forward, increasing power to the engines as the Gulfstream started its takeoff run. It began crawling forward and then quickly accelerated, pushing him back in his seat.
The copilot saw the truck heading at them just before the pilot did.
“What the hell does he think he’s doing? Go, get out of here, idiot. We’re taking off,” the pilot said, waving with his hand at the window, talking to himself. “Do you see this fool? Must be dru–”
The truck swerved and veered toward the jet. The co-pilot screamed as the vehicle’s stairway clipped the right wing, tearing the tip off and jolting the plane. The pilot cut power and struggled to manage their trajectory, but the jet was going too fast, having hit the truck while moving at almost a hundred miles per hour. Fluid streaked from the damaged wing, a part of which dragged on the tarmac, sparks flying in a long bright trail as he fought to control the skid. A fragment of wreckage bounced off the runway and then hit the left rear engine, smoke belching from it as the metal chewed through the turbine blades. A warning lamp illuminated on the instrument panel, and the engine died. As the plane slowed, flames began to ignite the liquid pouring from the wing and fuselage.
~ ~ ~
“What the hell–” Grigenko screamed in the cabin as the plane veered out of control. His drink flew from his hand and the glass crashed against the burled walnut interior.
The jet careened sideways with a sickening yaw, then tilted as if in slow motion before slamming back onto its wheels, the deceleration straining the restraining belt that held him in place.
The din of the alarms screeching was the only sound in the cabin for a few moments after they stopped. The pilot burst from the cockpit, his expression panicked.
“What happened?” Grigenko demanded as the pilot pulled on the emergency lever to open the door and lower the fuselage stairs.
“A truck hit us. We have to get clear of the plane. We’ve got a full load of fuel, the hydraulic fluid is on fire, and one of the engines is damaged. We need to move, now,” he warned as the door swung open.
Grigenko looked at Oleg.
“Get your weapon out. Do you have another gun?” he barked.
Oleg nodded, pulled a small pistol from an ankle holster, and handed it to his boss.
“Go.”
Oleg stood and moved to the door, Grigenko behind him. The pilot and co-pilot descended the stairs and, after one look at the damage, took off at a full run, trying to put as much distance between them and the jet as possible before it blew.
The bodyguard stepped out of the fuselage, pistol at the ready, and was halfway down the stairs when a red dot appeared on his forehead. He hesitated, seeming to sense danger, and then the top of his skull disintegrated.
Jet stood on the tarmac a hundred and forty yards in front of the plane, feet apart in a classic military stance, the P90 pointed at the Gulfstream, the red emergency light of the truck illuminating her with an eerie, oscillating glow.
Grigenko stepped out of the plane and took in his fallen bodyguard, and then squinted to get a look at his attacker. His eyes widened in disbelief when he saw Jet in the middle of the runway, the headlights of the truck behind her framing her silhouette in harsh white light.
She waited as he pushed Oleg’s corpse down the stairs and leapt over it onto the ground. The Russian swore as he raised his gun and squeezed off two shots. At that distance, he didn’t have a chance of hitting her. They both knew it.
Flames licked at the jet engine and engulfed the damaged wing. It would be just a matter of seconds until the fuel blew.
She sighted and squeezed the trigger of the P90 again. Grigenko’s shinbone shattered. He continued to fire at her as he collapsed onto the runway, but the bullets went wide, missing Jet and ricocheting harmlessly away from her.
He caught himself as he fell forward, the skin tearing off his hand as he stopped the momentum, and then he struggled back up onto one knee, peering down the barrel of the pistol in an effort to improve his aim.
“You bitch. I’ll ki–” he screamed, and then a blinding flare of orange shattered the night as the Gulfstream detonated in a massive fireball.
Jet spun away and sprinted for the truck as flames rolled toward her, but the force of the blast knocked her off her feet. She rolled under the vehicle as the wave of molten fuel roared past her, holding her breath so it wouldn’t scorch her lungs. Her damp hair crackled as she clenched her eyes shut, and then the explosion faded, and the searing heat diminished.
Rubbing soot from her face, she crawled out from under the vehicle and surveyed the blazing wreckage, pieces of the Gulfstream scattered well clear of the fuselage, the jet now mostly unrecognizable. Grigenko’s charred remains sizzled on the runway, an oily, unrecognizable smudge with bones wedged haphazardly amidst the smoldering chunks.
A droplet of moisture rolled down her cheek, cutting a trail through the grime as she watched the inferno. She took a last look at where the Russian had met his end, and then she turned and walked back to the truck, the dim skirl of fire trucks and emergency vehicles sounding from where they were pulling onto the far end of the field.
Epilogue
Two toddlers, little boys, chortled with glee as they chased each other around the seats in the passenger departure area of Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris. One of the tots clenched a blue plastic airplane in his hand and was tormenting his sibling by making vroom vroom sounds and holding it over his head, just out of reach of his smaller brother.
The harried mother looked up from her magazine and rolled her eyes, then called for them to come back to where she was sitting, their carry-on bags gathered around her seat like circled wagons. The boys cheerfully ignored h
er, and she exhaled a noisy sigh of frustration before catching sight of her husband, who was returning from the bathroom.
“Steve, could you please control the boys? They’re making me crazy,” she said in a loud, whiny voice, simmering annoyance just under the surface as she emphasized the last word.
Steve moved to the older of the pair and grabbed his shoulders, then brought him close and said something in his ear. The little boy nodded and gave him the toy, and Steve wandered back to his wife, the children trailing him. The smaller one swatted the older one in the back of the head, triggering an inevitable response – a half-hearted kick, and then the two were scuffling on the floor, their screams drawing ugly looks from the assembled travelers. Steve looked defeated and helpless, and the mother slapped down her magazine and marched over to the boys, dragging them apart and holding them, separated, as she read them the riot act.
A woman with fashionably cut dyed black hair watched the episode unfold from the coffee stand across the waiting area with a barely concealed smile.
The overhead speakers clicked on, and a distorted female voice announced the commencement of boarding for flight 41 bound for Chicago, initially in French and then in mangled English. First class was invited to board at its leisure, and in a moment, passengers traveling with small children.
Jet shouldered her large purse, drained the last dregs of her coffee and tossed the cup into the trash before approaching the podium, a small suitcase rolling behind her.
“Yes, may I help you?” the attendant asked in heavily accented English.
“I’m checking in for my flight. It’s two hours late, so I was wondering if you could confirm that I can still make my connection in Chicago?” she replied in French.
The woman took her ticket and tapped in a long string of numbers, backspacing to correct entries made in error as her fingers flew over the keys. She eventually pressed enter, and her brow furrowed as she concentrated on the results.
“Mmm. Yes. Well, it will be close, but you should still be able to make it. Do you have any checked bags?”
“No, just my carry-on.”
“Then I would say no problem. Assuming customs isn’t too bad, you should make the connection to Omaha with half an hour to spare.”
“Thanks.”
Jet made her way to the jetway and submitted to the last-minute security baggage check, then moved down the ramp and into the plane. The stewardess greeted her as she boarded and looked at her boarding pass, then pointed to the left.
“First class is right up there. 2A. Window.”
She slid her bag into the overhead compartment and fell gratefully into the oversized seat, relieved to be leaving France. She had ducked into the casino the following day and claimed her winnings and nobody had batted an eye – as if a young woman walking out of the building with nearly three hundred thousand dollars was an everyday occurrence. The management had even offered a security guard to see her to her bank, which she had politely declined.
The newspapers had been filled with accounts of the shootout on the boat and the ensuing fire, and the tragic explosion in Nice that had claimed the life of one of Russia’s most enigmatic oligarchs, but aside from jumbled and contradictory accounts from some airport personnel, nobody had linked her to the incidents. After laying low for forty-eight hours and dying her hair, she had booked safe passage to the United States with no complications.
The sound of other passengers loading onto the plane reassured her that this was really happening, and that within a few more minutes, she would be winging her way to her daughter – a daughter she’d never met; part of herself stripped away, stolen, punishment for a crime she hadn’t even known she had committed. The surrealism of it all still had her in a daze, and occasionally the force of the unfolding events of the last week would intrude with the impact of blunt-force trauma.
David’s betrayal still devastated her in a profound way, even while at the same time she understood his reasoning – that no matter how careful she tried to be there was no way to completely escape her past, and that meant there was always a chance that an enemy would surface when least expected – as the Russian had with her. And she recognized that she had told him time and time again that she would be the worst mom in the world, given her background.
But.
Even though she appreciated the logic, and also knew that his personality had demanded control over every aspect of whatever he touched…she couldn’t help but feel that a part of her had died when he had confessed, just as a part of her had died when he had.
The contradictions were enormous. She wasn’t sure she would ever be able to make sense of them.
And the thought of David, of their last few days together, when a new future seemed possible and theirs to grab, crushed her in a way nothing had ever before.
How could you both love someone and hate them, simultaneously?
Sometimes things didn’t make sense. Life was messy that way. You mushed on, nursing wounds and displaying your scars, some with pride, some with remorse. The only thing she knew for sure was that in the end, nobody got out of it alive.
A canned warning came over the speakers advising her to pay attention to the screen, and then cheerful, smiling flight attendants warned of steps she’d need to take if they crashed into the ocean at six hundred miles per hour. She adjusted her seat back and turned her head, staring out through the window at a world she didn’t understand, that she didn’t belong to.
The heavy plane rolled to the edge of the runway while the flight crew completed its last-minute preparations and strapped themselves in, and then the pilot’s confident voice announced that they were ready for takeoff. After a few seconds, the jet surged forward and gathered momentum, and then the miracle of physics took over, and the mammoth jet’s wheels left the ground as it rose into the warm spring sky.
<<<<>>>>
In JET II – Betrayal, Jet must battle insurmountable odds to protect those she loves in a deadly race that stretches from the heartland of Nebraska to the corridors of power in Washington, D.C., from the lurid streets of Bangkok to the deadly jungles of Laos and Myanmar.
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JET II – Betrayal excerpt
Chapter 1
Gordon nudged his sleeping companion. “Doug. Wake up.”
Doug’s chin was drooping onto his stained military green T-shirt, sweat-soaked in the muggy night heat.
Gordon elbowed him again.
Doug shuddered, raised his head, and cracked open a bleary eye.
“What?”
“Shhh. Keep it down,” Gordon hissed. “We don’t want to alert the guards.”
He shifted his camouflage-clad legs in the mud and rotting vegetation then glanced at his partner’s calf, where a filthy bandage was wrapped around a festering bullet wound, the pants cut off at the knee. The rusty stain of dried blood on the dressing was alive with ants exploring the once-white gauze.
Doug was pale, his body battling infection and fever. It hadn’t helped that neither of them had been fed for two days, or that they only got water every four hours. The jungle in the southern hills of Myanmar was brutal at the best of times – if their captors didn’t kill them, nature soon would.
“I got my hands almost free,” Gordon whispered. “Slide over here so I can work on yours.”
Both men were tied to a stake hammered into the ground at the edge of a clearing, their wrists bound behind them with rope. A crude-yet-effective form of imprisonment – and it wasn’t as if there were a lot of places to go. The Golden Triangle was a lawless area that ran from Myanmar to Vietnam, encompassing a swatch of Laos and northern Thailand. Other than occasional villages, where the natives lived in abject poverty, it was mostly jungle and opium poppy fields.
“How?” Doug slurred, too loud for Gordon’s liking.
“Shut up. Just move a little. And stay quiet.”
Dou
g complied, inching his body to where Gordon could reach his wrists.
The night was dark but a sliver of moon shining through the trees overhead provided enough light to reveal Doug’s haggard features. Glancing to the right, Gordon could make out the main encampment’s tents in the clearing and a few rough-hewn shacks near the tree line, close to one of the countless streams in the hills of the Shan state that bordered Laos and Thailand.
Gordon sawed at the rope with a sharp shard of bamboo he’d broken from the base of the stake. His hands were bleeding from where the jagged edge had sliced the skin, but he didn’t care. If they didn’t escape, they would die. It was that simple.
He guessed that it was around one in the morning. The sun had set at least five hours ago, although his sense of time had become warped, he knew, from the dehydration, hunger and exposure. They’d been left out through the inevitable periodic downpours, the mountain air drying the moisture from their skin over time, bringing with it the mosquitoes that swarmed around them. He’d been bitten so often that every area of exposed skin was swollen and red, as was Doug’s.
He didn’t even want to think about the mosquito-borne diseases that were endemic to the area. Dengue fever, malaria, yellow fever, chikungunya…and there was typhoid, hepatitis, the plague, hemorrhagic fever and a host of other delights that could be had from drinking the water or coming into contact with the jungle denizens.
The least of their problems right now.
Gordon strained to hear anything from the camp. All was quiet, but he knew that could be illusory because, day and night, random patrols of two or three men moved soundlessly into the jungle from the shelters, assault rifles slung over their shoulders. These were Shan – area tribesmen who knew the region like their own back yard – hired guns, paid to live like fugitives and act as security for the man who was a kind of God to them.
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