Over the Edge

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “She came to me for help with a serious problem,” he told the lieutenant. “I’m not going to go into details—it’s something you definitely don’t want to know about. But it would do her good to get out of Dodge for a few weeks.”

  “She came to you?” Tom asked. “Why would she do that?”

  “Let’s talk figuratively,” Stan said. “Say one of the female officers was being sexually harassed by, oh, say, a lieutenant commander. And say I saw this asshole grabbing this female officer’s ass—and say she knew I saw. And say I followed her out to where he’d cornered her in the parking lot and—”

  “Damn.” Tom sighed and rubbed his forehead. “There are proper channels for this kind of thing.”

  “Yes, sir, there are. But that doesn’t apply in this particular unique situation.”

  Tom applied pressure to his eyes. Stan was definitely giving the man a headache.

  Another sigh and Tom looked up at him. “You know, I could order you to tell me who this lieutenant commander is.”

  “Aye, sir,” Stan agreed. “You could. But I know you’ll trust that I have my good reasons when I ask you not to do that. Besides, we were talking figuratively, remember?”

  Tom gazed at him for many long seconds. But then he laughed. “You know what’s going to happen, don’t you? You’re going to marry Teri Howe before Kelly marries me.”

  Stan laughed, too. That was just plain silly. “Right.”

  “Yeah,” Tom said. “It’s going to be just like it was with Johnny Nilsson. I turn around, and wham, the kid’s married. How did that happen? I’ve been engaged for forever, I’m dying to marry this fabulous woman I absolutely adore, only I can’t seem to get it done. I swear to God, if you come back from the Azores and tell me you want to get married, I’ll—”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Stan insisted.

  “Throw you a party,” Tom finished with a tired smile.

  “Muldoon,” Stan said. “I’m going to set her up with Mike Muldoon. Not that you heard that from me.”

  He’d thought of it right away, when Teri Howe was lamenting the fact that she couldn’t get a date. Who would be more perfect for her than Muldoon—the Troubleshooters’own personal version of Dudley Do-Right? Honest, sincere, squeaky clean, and disgustingly handsome. Stan had no trouble imagining the two of them together.

  Tom looked at him. More X-ray vision. “Okay. You better get moving if you’re going to do that paperwork. And somebody better tell Howe to get her gear together.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Stan put the papers on the CO’s desk. “She’s all ready to go, and I have the paperwork right here.”

  “Of course you do.” Tom smiled and signed.

  Four

  They were being hijacked.

  The news came from the white-faced stewardesses who moved through the cabin, telling people in a variety of languages to remain seated and to please stay quiet and calm. There was a gunman in with the pilot, demanding they land the plane in Kazbekistan.

  Gina held Casey’s hand, glad to have something to do, someone to talk to, to soothe, to keep from going ballistic. It was keeping her from going ballistic herself.

  “Stay calm,” Dick McGann, the university band director, told the American students, although he looked as if his head were going to explode. “Stay quiet, stay in your seats.”

  Gee, thanks for the news flash, Dick. As if they hadn’t heard the stewardess.

  Casey was crying, but at least she was doing it silently now as the plane began its descent.

  “We’ll land in Kazabek,” Gina told her friend, “and that’ll be that. This guy probably just wants a ride home. He’ll get off the plane and—”

  “You really think so?” Casey’s eyes were hopeful.

  Gina was praying it was so. She didn’t want to think about what might really be happening here. She’d taken a world cultures course last semester that had dealt primarily with the concept of terrorism.

  She’d done a term paper on the psychological makeup of people who would willingly pick up a gun and take a roomful—or a planeful—of people hostage.

  In order to do that, you had to be ready to be a martyr for your cause. To die.

  And to kill.

  Please, God, don’t let the gunman start shooting and make the plane go down and . . .

  They landed. The wheels touched down with a lurch and a jerk, and thank God at least falling out of the sky was no longer an option.

  Somehow she managed to smile at Casey. “Yeah,” she said. “Any minute now, he’s going to get off the plane. I’m almost sure of it.”

  One of the big ironies of this situation was that Gina had used Kazbekistan when arguing the merits of this trip with her father. “It’s not like we’re going to Kazbekistan,” she’d said.

  Um, Dad? Change of plans . . .

  And, crap, if they were delayed too long here in Kazabek, she wouldn’t be able to call the Perfect Nose’s sister at the Hotel Ratskywatsky or whatever was written on that piece of paper in her pocket.

  “Think positively,” she told Casey, told herself. “This is going to be over really soon.”

  The plane stopped rolling right there, on the middle of the runway, some distance from the terminal—if you could call the rundown Quonset hut and two-story concrete block structure a terminal. Come to think of it, this entire airport was barely an airport. It was a concrete strip in the middle of a field on the edge of marshlands, near the sea.

  Two of the stewardesses moved purposefully at the front of the plane, the third moving back through the aisle to speak to the passengers.

  “Please stay in your seats,” she informed them. “The gunman has ordered us to open the door.”

  “See? So he can get off the plane,” Gina whispered to Casey.

  She could see out the window, see an awkward-looking cart with a disembarking ladder attached zooming across the concrete toward them. She could see it lurch to a stop. She could see . . .

  Oh, God. Oh, tremendously powerful God . . .

  “Don’t do it!” Gina shouted over the hush. “Don’t open the—”

  The door opened.

  And four camouflage-clad men carrying machine guns boarded.

  Oh, God!

  The chaos and noise was immediate, although most of it came from the intruders. They spoke loudly, in a language Gina didn’t understand, but their meaning was clear. Close the doors.

  The stewardesses didn’t move quickly enough, and one of the men hit one of them—hard—in the back with the butt of his weapon.

  A man in first class stood up as if to stop them and got savagely smashed in the head for his trouble. He went down, bleeding, and around Gina, everyone burst into tears.

  She held on to Casey, who was sobbing uncontrollably. Dear God. Dear God . . .

  Two rows up, she could see Trent, where he was sitting with Jack Lewis and Miles Foley.

  He wasn’t bored anymore.

  Helga Shuler was losing it.

  It. Her marbles. Her mind.

  It was probably early stages Alzheimer’s and it had caught Des completely by surprise. The worst of it was, he had no idea how long it had been going on.

  The woman was a list maker. As long as he’d known her, she’d worked off of an entire legal pad of lists. Things that had to get done immediately. Things to do later. Things to start thinking about doing.

  She made lists reminding her of the names of the people she was working with on various projects, lists of their spouses and children and birthdays. Lists of facts, lists of dates, lists of important information.

  He simply hadn’t known that that important information had probably included what year it was and what city she was working and living in and the fact that her husband, Avi, had died ten years ago.

  He wondered if his name was on her current list. “Desmond Nyland, personal assistant since 1986. His wife, Rachel—my former close friend—deceased two years. Adopted daughter, Sara, in first year at Harva
rd.”

  For years Helga Rosen Shuler had traveled all over the world as an envoy—a representative of Israel. She was sharply intelligent, marvelously eloquent, elegantly dignified, and warmly caring—one class act all the way. She was also a Holocaust survivor, a Danish Jew who never let an opportunity slide to remind the world of that fact.

  She’d just turned sixty-eight. That was hardly old at all. She was still energetic, vibrant.

  Maybe it wasn’t Alzheimer’s—her forgetting Rachel had been gone these past two years, her talking aloud to her Poppi and Marte and whatnot. Maybe she was simply overtired, overworked.

  And maybe the man in the moon was coming over for dinner tonight.

  So okay. He’d keep an eye on her for a while.

  But if it happened again, Des was going to have to tell her that if she didn’t resign voluntarily, he would need to inform both her bosses and his that she was no longer fit to do her job.

  And wouldn’t that be fun?

  He knocked on the door to her office.

  “Come in.”

  Helga was sitting behind her desk, looking up at him expectantly, with her usual friendly smile lighting her still pretty face as he came inside.

  Des looked into her eyes. Did she even know who he was? He closed the door behind him, hating the fact that he would wonder that now, every time he saw her. “I found Marte Gunvald.”

  “Oh, my God, Des, you did? That quickly?”

  Thank God. She knew who he was. “Luck played into it. And the news isn’t all that good.”

  She was ready for it, already at peace with the idea. “She’s dead.”

  He nodded. “Since 1980. Cancer.” He handed her the file and sat down across from her desk, watching as she scanned it.

  “So young,” she murmured. “Her son was only what . . . ? Eighteen, poor thing, at the time. Stanley. Marte had a son named Stanley. It says he’s from Chicago. Did she live in Chicago, too? Were there any other children?”

  “I’ll have more info for you in a few hours,” Des told her. “Like I said, it was luck the information in this file was available. And I’m afraid your good luck is very bad luck for one hundred and twenty people on World Airlines flight 232 out of Athens. The reason this info came up so quickly is that two hours ago, terrorists hijacked that flight, forcing it to land in Kazbekistan. They’re demanding the freedom of two prisoners—one in an American jail, and one in an Israeli jail—both charged with terrorism.”

  Des leaned forward to tap the file. “Marte’s son—Senior Chief Stanley Wolchonok—is one of a team of U.S. Navy SEALs being called in to deal with the terrorist situation. He doesn’t even know it yet. His CO probably just got the order himself.”

  And yet she and Des knew. There were questions in Helga’s eyes, questions she knew better than to put into words. Questions he couldn’t answer about his connection to Mossad, Israel’s intelligence organization, questions about Mossad itself.

  Instead she asked, “Who’s going?”

  Israel didn’t negotiate. The terrorists could kill all of the people on that plane, one by one, and Israel still wouldn’t let that prisoner go free.

  But they would play the game. They’d send a representative to Kazbekistan to help buy the Americans the time they needed to get their team of SEALs in place and take down the plane.

  Des shook his head. “Helga, believe me, you don’t want to go to Kazbekistan.” The godforsaken country was nicknamed the Pit. It was listed as the number-one nastiest place on the planet in the newly revised edition of The World’s Most Dangerous Places.

  “Yes, I do. Someone has to go, and I want it to be me.” She had on her envoy face, used her envoy voice. “Do whatever you have to do to get me there.”

  Something big was up.

  First Jazz Jacquette got a phone call.

  Big and black, SEAL Team Sixteen’s executive officer’s default expression wasn’t quite as dark a glower as Senior Chief Wolchonok’s. His was more an expression of intensity, of ultimate concentration.

  A taciturn, somewhat aloof man, Jazz seemed as if he were always on the verge of figuring out the cure for cancer or developing a theory that would enable him to defy gravity.

  Teri had been a little nervous as she boarded the transport plane, when she’d found out that Jazz, not Tom Paoletti, was in command of this training op that she’d been sent along to participate in. But then she’d seen the senior chief. He’d met her gaze, sent her both a smile and a nod, and she’d relaxed.

  Stan was here. She was safe.

  It was a strange feeling—this sense of safety—and she refused to overanalyze it, to accidentally exorcise it by giving it too much thought.

  As she watched, Jazz, still on the phone, called Stan over. He said something to Stan, and whatever he said, it made Stan instantly more alert.

  Which was saying something. Stan Wolchonok usually stood like a fighter—on the balls of his feet and ready for anything. But as Teri watched, he went to DEFCON 1, to launch mode. There was really no other way to describe it.

  He and Jazz had a conversation, with Jazz still holding the phone to his ear. And then, when Jazz gave his full attention back to the phone, Stan turned.

  And looked at her. It was a little shocking, all that energy aimed directly at her.

  Oh, fuck.

  She usually wasn’t very good at reading lips, but Stan’s exclamation was impossible to miss.

  But then he turned away and began talking to Sam Starrett, who had joined him and Jazz. Starrett, normally the king of laid-back cool, was all sharp movements and terse business, too.

  “What’s going on?”

  Teri wasn’t the only one who’d noticed something big was afoot. Ensign Mike Muldoon was sitting behind her and he leaned forward, concern in his eyes.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  PO2 Mark Jenkins came down the aisle toward them. “A plane with Americans on board’s been hijacked,” he told them. “We’re being rerouted to Kazbekistan.”

  Teri looked back at Stan, who was deep in conversation with both Starrett and Jazz. This mission had gone from make-believe to real life in the blink of an eye.

  They were going to Kazbekistan—where U.S. Navy helo pilots were ordered to wear their flack jackets if they so much as set one foot outside of their garrison hotel.

  Oh, fuck was putting it mildly.

  FBI counterterrorist team agent Alyssa Locke came out of the elevator and into the lobby of her apartment building as Jules’s car pulled up out front.

  She ran out to meet him, opening the door to put her carry-on luggage into the backseat.

  “Go,” she said as she climbed into the front, and he pulled away from the curb before she even shut the door.

  The flight to Kazbekistan was leaving in forty-five minutes. No way was it going to be delayed because of them.

  Despite the fact that the call had come in less than an hour ago, despite the fact that Jules had been out of the office at the time, and despite the fact that they’d both been running nonstop ever since, they were not going to be late.

  “I can’t believe this,” Jules said, driving fast, with both hands on the wheel. “Can you believe this?”

  “No,” Alyssa said.

  FBI negotiator Max Bhagat had asked for both of them by name, requesting that they join a small group of FBI agents accompanying him to Kazbekistan to observe the negotiation and the actual takedown of the hijacked World Airlines flight.

  Requesting. Sure. Bhagat’s requests packed more power than a four-star’s orders.

  “Do you think he asked for us because he wants to sleep with you? And if so, are you going to do him?” Jules glanced at her, mischief lighting his eyes and too-pretty face, laughing at the dark look she shot him. “Aw, come on, I’d do him to boost your career. Of course, he is extremely hot.”

  “Please don’t tell him that when we see him.” Alyssa laughed at the thought of Jules Cassidy going up to the extremely straight Max Bh
agat and . . . “He’s so obviously not—” She stopped herself. Because not all gay men were as blatantly out as her partner. And there was a certain tidiness to Bhagat. A well-manicured polish to his dark good looks. She looked at Jules. “I know it’s none of my business, but . . . is he?”

  “A member of the Barbra Streisand Fan Club?” Jules asked. “Definitely not. Limited eye contact last time we met. But a boy can dream, can’t he?” He fluttered his eyelashes at her.

  “Dream away,” Alyssa told him. “After we get on the plane, okay?”

  “ETA—airport—thirteen minutes,” Jules told her.

  “Good.”

  His voice turned serious. “Why do you think we’ve been asked to observe?”

  Alyssa shook her head. She didn’t know. “I hope it’s because Bhagat’s recognized that we’re good at what we do.”

  Jules nodded. “That would be nice. But . . . what do you know about this situation?”

  “Just what I told you on the phone.”

  World Airlines Flight 232 had taken off from Athens shortly before 8:00 a.m., local time. An hour into the trip an unidentified gunman had entered the cockpit, ordered the pilot to take him to Kazbekistan, ordered him to land at the airport in Kazabek, where four additional unidentified gunmen had entered the plane. At which time they’d sealed the plane, started making demands, and identified themselves.

  “Five terrorists, claiming to be from a K-stani group called something that translates roughly to the People’s Party, are aboard a 747 with one hundred twenty passengers,” Alyssa summed it up, “an as yet unknown percentage of which are American citizens. They’re demanding the release of two prisoners who are awaiting trial, charged with terrorism—one being held in a U.S. federal prison, the other in a prison in Israel.”

  “Osman Razeen,” Jules said.

  She looked at him. “What?”

  “The terrorist being held in the U.S. is Osman Razeen,” Jules said.

  Razeen was a GIK terrorist leader that Jules and Alyssa had helped apprehend less than six months ago.