The Ninth Day

by Jamie Freveletti

  “Here’s the third hail.”

  Emma sat back down and grasped the armrests, gripping them tightly. Vanderlock listened to the transmission.

  “We’re coming up on a farmhouse, so I think you’d better shoot at your own risk, guy. Is it really worth killing people just to stop some weed from entering the country?” Vanderlock sounded determined and cool. Emma heard bits of noise coming from Vanderlock’s headset in response, but she couldn’t make out the words. “I know that runway. I’m going to fly right over it in minutes. I am not landing.”

  Emma strained to see in front of them. Sure enough, a long passage, banded on each side with stalks of corn, appeared carved into the field. The ATD plane pulled even closer.

  Vanderlock flipped a switch. “Now I got some other guy hailing me.” He listened some more. “You again? I told you, I’m not landing! Why did we have to switch frequencies to have the exact same conversation? And you should know that I have a passenger named Emma Caldridge. You shoot me, you kill her, too.” Vanderlock listened some more. “What about her?” he said. More noise flowed from the headset in response. Vanderlock turned to her, and waved at a headset placed in front of the copilot position. “This guy claims to know you. Put that headset on.” He barked a laugh. “Oh yeah, this guy definitely knows you. Repeat that so she can hear it,” he said into the microphone.

  Emma felt hope rise in her. “Is it Banner?” She clapped the earpieces on in time to hear Sumner say:

  “Tell Caldridge I’m going to strangle her when I get my hands on her.”

  Chapter 32

  Emma watched the plane shoot straight upward. Vanderlock, though, was cruising even lower. Her headset was silent. Sumner had switched off.

  “He’s taking off,” Vanderlock said. “He told me to land and leave it there. Said it will take the ATD a few hours to get to the location. The implication being that I have time to get away. Do I trust him?”

  Emma nodded. “He means what he says.”

  “Then we’re landing.”

  Vanderlock slowed the plane and touched it down on the runway. They careened ahead, still way too fast. Screeching wheels and creaking plane parts echoed in the cabin. They reached the end of the runway and continued a bit, knocking through some cornstalks before coming to rest. Vanderlock switched off the engines.

  Emma was breathing fast, as if she’d been running a marathon rather than sitting in a chair. Vanderlock fiddled with switches and turned knobs. When he was finished, he reached back toward the cooler. He picked up a brick with his bare hands and tossed it into the hold.

  “I told you not to touch it!” Emma said. Vanderlock waved her off.

  “Bricks broke open. We’re breathing it, so it’s done.”

  He was right. The shipment bricks had all shifted, and the ones closest to Emma and Vanderlock broke open and leaves covered the bottom of the jet around their seats. Vanderlock brushed some off the top of the cooler before opening it and removing the whiskey bottle. He uncapped it, took a swig, and handed it to her. She grabbed it without hesitation and swallowed a mouthful. It burned and she coughed once. She handed it back.

  “Wanna tell me about flyboy?” Vanderlock said.

  Emma shook her head. “I don’t, actually.”

  Vanderlock raised an eyebrow. “He sure was more than willing to kill me until he learned about you.” Emma got up and swayed a bit as the blood moved very slowly to her head.

  “Let’s get out of this plane. We can talk about it in the fresh air.”

  They opened the door and Emma stepped down onto the field. The air smelled of newly mown grass and heat and dust, but the good kind, like the type that kicks up in the summertime. Vanderlock tossed a small duffel onto the ground and stepped down himself, with the toolbox containing the guns in one hand and the whiskey bottle in the other. He looked around.

  “This is a La Valle runway. I’m surprised your flyboy knew about it.”

  “His name is Sumner.”

  Vanderlock gave her a considering look. “The one you went to save in Somalia.”

  Vanderlock pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He put one to his lips and lit it with a blue stick lighter. “I’ve been thinking about why he shifted frequencies. I’ll bet he didn’t want his ATD buddies to hear him ask about you. He had us in his sights but didn’t fire and then took off. You think he’ll lie? Give the ATD wrong coordinates? Buy us some more time?”

  Emma thought about Sumner. She’d depended on him to have her back in other dangerous situations, but in all she’d been on the right side of things. She didn’t know if his support would continue if she fell on the wrong side of the law, and right now he must be wondering why she was acting as she was. Just the thought of Sumner losing confidence in her upset her.

  “I don’t think he’ll go so far as to lie about the coordinates.”

  “Can you convince him to leave us alone?”

  “Not forever. Eventually he’s going to demand some answers.”

  Emma checked out the area. There was a small, prefabricated aluminum shed nestled in a corner of the tarmac, amidst some trees. She headed in that direction. The last thing she wanted was to talk, or even think, about Sumner. That he was angry at her was to be expected, but she was bitterly disappointed that he had switched off the channel before she could ask him for help. She swung open the shed doors to find a jumble of airplane parts, old gasoline containers, and several cans of spray paint in various colors, some marked with the word “Neon” and with colors that matched the markings on the makeshift runway. She picked up one with red splattered on its side. She heard rather than saw Vanderlock step in behind her.

  “We’re going to have to leave the airplane here. Your flyboy”—Emma shot him an angry look and Vanderlock put up a hand—“I mean Sumner made it clear he’s coming back here. Even if I could fuel up and get airborne, it would be a waste of time. He’d just track me again and start shooting. I’m going to hustle up a vehicle and come back for you.”

  “We need to lock up the plane. No one should touch the shipment.”

  Vanderlock shrugged. “Sure, but La Valle’s men keep an eye on the runway. They’ll see the plane and want to offload the cargo. How much of the shipment did they load?” Emma shook the paint can. It still contained quite a bit of liquid.

  “That was one portion. There’s more in two other vehicles, and I assume another shipment right behind that one.”

  “Maybe they’ll let this sit, then. Long as they have more. I’ll lock it down when I get back.”

  Emma nodded. Vanderlock disappeared into the cornfield and she headed over to his plane. She walked up the stairs, leaned to the airplane’s side, and began to work.

  Thirty minutes later she was done. Lucky for her there was no real breeze and she wasn’t covered in paint. She reversed down the stairs and headed back to the shed. She tossed the can into a nearby bucket. The sound of a car bumping along the dirt road connected to the tarmac grew louder. A black Dodge Caliber lurched onto the runway, circled to the side of the airplane, and stopped. Vanderlock got out, slamming the door behind him.

  “We should hustle. La Valle’s guy saw us landing and had the sense to turn on the police band. They’re forming up and headed this way. If we move. . . .” Vanderlock flicked a look at the plane and his mouth dropped open. Emma waited while he took in her handiwork.

  She’d spray painted a large red skull and crossbones onto the side of the jet. Portions of the bones and skull dripped red paint, giving the effect that the image was bleeding down the white aircraft shell. It looked ominous and deadly and was just the effect that she desired.

  “You tagged my plane,” Vanderlock said.

  Emma headed to the car. “The last thing I need is a bunch of police officers piling into that cabin. Once they inhale they’ll be infected. Maybe that will keep them out.”

  Vanderlock stayed put, still staring at the plane in apparent shock. “What were you thinking?”

  Emma spun arou
nd and walked up to him. She tugged on his sleeve. “I was thinking about saving a few lives. Now let’s go. If we don’t get out of here soon, the police will come and lock us both up. By the time I explain everything to them we’ll all be dead. We really need to get to a lab now that we’re infected.” Vanderlock tore his eyes from his beloved plane long enough to fix her with an incredulous stare.

  “I’ve been around you for less than two hours and you’ve managed to nearly get me blown out of the sky, infect me with a deadly disease, and vandalize my plane.”

  Emma had never seen Vanderlock rattled, but messing with his plane seemed to have done that to him. She wanted to feel some sympathy, but after watching the Black Eagles stagger out of the house with blood everywhere she knew that no one should get into that plane while the shipment contaminated the air inside. She needed to solve the shipment’s puzzle, and fast.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “We’re free, don’t you get it? La Valle’s men aren’t here, and you and I can take off.”

  Vanderlock shivered. “Okay, right. Where’s a lab? Because on top of all of this, I’m not dying in nine days, I can tell you that.” He sounded massively pissed, and Emma couldn’t blame him. “In fact,” Vanderlock stopped at the driver’s door, “if we’re free, why don’t we go to the nearest hospital? Let the professionals figure this thing out. When they do, you give the information to La Valle and I’ll let him use my plane to finish the delivery. We all walk away in one piece.”

  “I’m all for it. Let’s go.”

  Emma climbed into the passenger seat. Vanderlock settled behind the wheel, and he started the car. He shifted into first and hit the gas. The car’s wheels spun on the dirt, kicking up bits of earth before gaining traction. Vanderlock hurtled down the road, taking a good bit of his anger out behind the wheel. He’d lowered all the windows and Emma put her head back on the headrest, closed her eyes, and let the fresh air blow over her. Vanderlock turned on the radio.

  They were the featured news.

  Vanderlock groaned as he listened.

  Emma stared at the radio in dismay as she was described as “armed and dangerous.” Oz was called an accomplice, and Mono a “drug cartel’s henchman with a long criminal record both in Mexico and the U.S.” The radio announcer knew to add that she was suspected of having flown in a private plane that had entered the country illegally, and that the appropriate authorities were scrambling to intercept.

  “You entered illegally?” she said to Vanderlock.

  Vanderlock gave her a sour look. “How else would I enter?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, register a flight plan like every other pilot?” Emma let him hear the sarcasm in her voice.

  “And what would I have put for the purpose of the flight? Drug running? I was bringing in a shipment under radar.”

  “Well clearly not under enough, since they know about you.”

  Vanderlock shot her a glare. “Your buddy Sumner must have told the entire world by now. What did you do to piss him off? You spray paint on his plane, too?”

  “Since he works for ATD, it’s his job to arrest drug dealers, which apparently now includes me. He must not be thrilled that I’m breaking into labs, shooting at security guards, and flying a load of marijuana cross-country.”

  Vanderlock turned onto another road, but this one was paved in asphalt. “You think he would have fired on us?”

  Emma nodded. “Definitely. He’s done it before. He’s no one to mess with. I only wish he’d stayed on the frequency long enough to allow me to explain myself.”

  Vanderlock blew a line of smoke out the window. “We need to get to a road where we can hustle. I only have a general idea of where we are, but I’m pretty sure this will get us to an interstate.”

  Emma liked that idea. “The sooner the better. Where are we?”

  “Middle of Oklahoma, headed east.” Farmhouses and barns dotted fields, but the road remained empty of other vehicles. “Tell me straight up. You think a hospital in a small town is equipped to figure out what’s going on?”

  Emma pondered that question. “Let’s put it this way, I think they’ll be pretty efficient in telling us what it isn’t. Figuring out what it is will be the challenge, and for that we may need a large teaching hospital with a research facility attached.”

  “And time,” Vanderlock said.

  “And time,” Emma agreed. “My fear is that they’ll spend a great deal of it doing routine tests to rule things out, and all the while we’ll be covered in sores and our hands curling into claws.”

  “Claws? Jesus. Forget that. We’re breaking in. I’m putting my money on you.”

  Emma shook her head. “No. This is way above my pay grade. What we need is an infectious disease specialist. First thing we do is find a telephone. I want to call Banner, enlist his help. Warn him about the shipment.”

  Vanderlock shook his head. “Don’t do it. He can’t help you, he doesn’t have any jurisdiction over this, and there’s a warrant out for your arrest. Assuming he can grease some wheels, you’re still looking at hours lost in a holding pen waiting for your fingers to fall off.”

  Emma felt a flash of irritation. Vanderlock’s take on Banner always angered her. “He could cut the time spent unraveling this thing in half—” Emma stopped talking as the thought that had been floating in her head, unmoored, suddenly came to the fore. She gasped.

  Vanderlock picked up on her sudden stillness. “What? You’re as pale as a ghost. What?”

  “My God, Vanderlock, did you just say my fingers would fall off?”

  “Well you said they’d be claws, I just pictured them brittle and bony. I’m sorry, I didn’t intend to freak you out, but . . .”

  “We need a lab right now,” Emma said.

  Vanderlock nodded. “That’s what I say. Grab that piece of paper the cartel loser gave me. It’s in the duffel.”

  Emma leaned into the backseat and searched around in the bag. She pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. She sat back to read it.

  “This one.” She showed Vanderlock the third lab on the list. “Is it close?”

  Vanderlock scanned the paper. “Six hours by car. The second one is better. That’s only two hours.”

  “No, that one won’t have the equipment I need. That location is primarily a corporate headquarters, not a lab.”

  Vanderlock shrugged. “Okay, then we’ll go to the other one. But first we’d better lose this car.”

  “We do that, then how will we get there? This car’s great, why would we change?”

  “It’s owned by one of La Valle’s guys. He has a tracking device on it. He’ll find us in a heartbeat, and when he does we’ll be back delivering a shipment.”

  “Fine. Anything to avoid La Valle. What about renting a car? The authorities didn’t mention your name. Perhaps they don’t know who you are.”

  Vanderlock shook his head. “I wouldn’t count on it. The ATD guys have been monitoring me since South America. They have to have my information by now.”

  “Then what’s the plan? Because I can run there, but I’m pretty sure you can’t.”

  Vanderlock took another drag off the cigarette. “Quit bragging. I’ll have you know that I ran cross-country as a teenager.”

  “In between cigarettes?”

  Vanderlock chuckled. “And drinks, and messing with the girls, and . . .”

  Emma waved a hand in the air. “Can we stay on the subject here? How are we going to get another car?”

  Vanderlock leaned close to her. “We’re going to steal one.”

  Chapter 33

  Banner sat in his hotel room fielding phone calls and working the computer. His crew located in the Caribbean was in the middle of an expanding mission, and things were not going as smoothly as he would have liked. A knock on the door was a welcome interruption. He opened it to find Sumner standing before him.

  “Did you get your pilot?” Banner asked.

  Sumner stepped past him into the room, a grim expression on h
is face. “No. He flew low and I wasn’t willing to kill a bunch of farmers just to bring him down. I pulled up.”

  Banner did his best to hide his surprise. He knew that Sumner was not so foolish as to put others at risk just to succeed at a capture, but he’d never known the man to simply pull up and give up. Especially not when he had the pilot in his sights.

  “You didn’t have enough gas to keep with him?” Sumner popped a coffee pod under the single shot maker and pressed the start button.

  “I had enough fuel,” he said. He kept his eyes on the cup as it filled.

  The other pilot outmaneuvered him, Banner thought. It was the only explanation for Sumner’s unsuccessful flight and return empty-handed. Sumner’s cell phone rang and he answered it, never taking his eyes from the coffee.

  “Yes?” He propped the phone between his ear and his shoulder while he opened a container of cream and dumped it in the coffee. He paused in the preparation as he listened to the speaker. “I heard you. For now, no one enters that plane. Communicate that to whatever local police may be on the scene. We’re on the way.” He hung up and turned to Banner. “They found the plane in a field on a runway La Valle uses. I’m going to head over there. I think you should join me,” Sumner said.

  “Sorry, but I can’t. I need to finish up with the Caribbean crew and then head back to D.C. I’m no longer any use to Caldridge. With a warrant out for her arrest and every level of law enforcement agency in three states looking for her, I lack any jurisdiction to help her.”

  “Wasn’t she out there to begin with under a contract from the Department of Defense?”

  Banner nodded. “Even so, I think I lost control once she crisscrossed the border between the States and Mexico. And I really lost control when she started a crime spree. The best I can do is be prepared to assist her once they pick her up. I’ll arrange for Ralston, Darkview’s lawyer, to be on hand. We’ll post bail and then find out what’s going on.” Banner started collecting his clothes and tossing them into the luggage that he’d opened on the bed.