Jet

by Russell Blake

  ~ ~ ~

  Jet felt herself being dragged away from David, then a powerful hand yanked the zipper on the front of her jumpsuit down with violent force. Vaslav strained at her clothes, his breath catching in his throat when he saw the bronze of her nakedness under the leather. He pulled her arms out of the sleeves and then began stripping the pant legs off, tearing the outfit down to expose her.

  He stood, fumbling with his belt, and then dropped his trousers as he looked to the railing, where smoke was pouring from the deck below. He would have to rappel down using one of the cables from the helicopter deck once he was done with her. There was no way to make it down the stairs now.

  And no way for anyone to get up.

  David gurgled helplessly beside them, unable to help her, his life ebbing from him even as the nightmare he was witnessing grew worse with each passing second.

  Vaslav knelt between Jet’s legs, and then his hands flew to his throat. Blood sprayed from a gash running from below his left ear to his esophagus. He tried to staunch the stream with shaking hands, and then his eyes rolled into his head, and he slumped onto the deck next to her, twitching as life departed him in a rusty puddle. Jet pulled herself to a sitting position, the plastic card from the casino still clenched in her right hand. She’d retrieved it from her jumpsuit’s only pocket, the stiff edge as effective as a razor in her skilled hands. She wiped the blood from it using Vaslav’s hair and then pulled her jumpsuit back up, zipping the front before moving to where David was laboring to breathe.

  “David…” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. He was dying. The chest wound was bubbling pink froth from his lung. She gazed at the ashen skin of his face and knew.

  “I…I’m sorry, Maya.” His voice was barely a whisper.

  “Shhh. No need to be sorry about anything, David.”

  He grabbed at her arm, his grip weak, trembling.

  “I need to tell you something.”

  “I love you, David.”

  He shook his head.

  “I’m so, so sorry. I love you too… I didn’t mean to ruin your life…”

  “You didn’t ruin anything. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  He coughed, blood trickling from his lips and oozing down his chin.

  “Listen. I want you to know…I’m sorry about the baby. Our baby.”

  She recoiled, shock written across her face.

  “How did you know–”

  “There’s no time. I…I found out. That’s the…important thing.”

  “Oh, David. She…I lost her. She died while I was giving birth…” The tears fell from her face, collecting in a small pool, mingling with the dark stain spreading on his chest.

  “No.”

  “Yes, David. I…I’m sorry.”

  He shook his head and increased his grip, surprising her.

  “No. She…didn’t die.”

  The words slammed into her. She looked around wildly, her expression uncomprehending.

  “How do you…what do you mean, she didn’t die? I saw her. I buried her. Hannah.”

  He shook her arm with his remaining strength, forcing her eyes back to his.

  “She’s alive. I’m…sorry. I had to…protect…her. It wasn’t…safe.”

  “You…how…”

  “I…found out, and…I had the doctor…switch Hannah for…a newborn that died the day before. The underage mother…was going…to put it up for adoption…”

  Another racking cough finished with a grimace. He didn’t have much time.

  “I wanted to tell…to tell you a hundred times…since you came back. But I…I couldn’t. I was afraid…I was afraid I’d…lose you again…and it still wasn’t safe…Grigenko…”

  Her expression froze.

  “You stole my baby…? You let me live for two years believing she was dead?” The dawning horror in her eyes was worse than anything she could have said, any condemnation or expression of hate.

  “I had to. You’d…never be safe, no matter…no matter…what you believed. You can’t outrun your past. And…she’s my daughter, too. I did…what was best. For her. Not for you…or for me. For her, to keep…her…safe,” he said, his voice trailing off at the end. His eyes began fluttering.

  She was losing him.

  “No. No, you can’t die. Where is she? What did you do with my baby?” she screamed, grabbing his wetsuit and shaking him. His head lolled, and then he croaked at her.

  “What? What did you say? David. Don’t die. Where is she?”

  With the last of his life, his lips quivered, trying to shape a word. She leaned close to him, putting her ear beside his mouth.

  “Where, David? Where?”

  His breath wheezed and gurgled. He drew one final lungful of air and clamped his eyes shut from the effort of staying alive, trying to make amends for having done the unforgivable.

  “Ohhh…mah…haaah…”

  The last of the breath departed him as a groan, and then he shuddered and lay still, his eyes, having opened on the last syllable, stared lifelessly at the ceiling above him.

  “No. No no no no no. Damn you, David. Damn you…”

  She pounded on his chest with her fists, over and over again, drumming home each exclamation, then fell against him, sobbing, anguish shuddering through her body, a combination of love and hate battling for dominance.

  Flames licked at the rear of the command deck and the enclosed area filled with black smoke, the fire now raging out of control below. Fire engines screeched to a halt on the wharf, and she vaguely heard screams in French as the firemen directed their hoses at the ship.

  She looked up at the smoke. Her daughter was alive. David’s final gift had been to give her back her life. But in doing so, condemning his memory to eternal damnation.

  Jet reached over and closed his eyelids, then rose and staggered to the bridge. A radio crackled near the throttles, and she heard Grigenko’s distinctive voice.

  “Change of plans. Tell the jet to file a flight plan for Omaha, in the United States. I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Have the pilots ready to depart when I arrive. And get our man in the United States to send someone to this Nebraska place to meet me when I get there. Do you understand?”

  Omaha?

  But how?

  How had Grigenko learned that her daughter was there?

  Jet looked around, eyes stinging from the haze, and saw a glow from the com room. She moved to the door and peered in. A laptop computer screen flickered in the dark, running on its battery. She approached it and saw cables going from the hard disk to a much larger box. A decryption engine.

  Moving closer, she peered at the screen and saw lines of code. She scrolled down and read, taking in the data. It had to be David’s laptop, stolen from his apartment. The data on it had been instrumental in Grigenko finding her.

  But apparently David also kept other information on it.

  Like his plans to kidnap Hannah.

  The floor began to collapse and flames shot through a rent twenty feet away. She committed the name and address on the screen to memory, then ran to where David’s FN P90 lay on the floor near where he’d fallen. She scooped it up, moved to David and freed his backpack, pausing to slide the weapon inside before pulling the straps over her shoulders.

  A sharp crack sounded from the deck as more of it collapsed – she wheeled around and darted to the bridge. The side door was wedged shut, and she pried at it with both hands, forcing it open with a creak. She stepped out and looked over the rail, then without hesitation threw herself headlong into the night air, her body describing an arc as she narrowly cleared the structure below and sliced into the water, her entry hardly causing a splash.