Darkness

by Karen Robards

  “If we don’t go now, we won’t get another chance. As soon as the sleet stops, this yard is going to be crawling with gunmen. And in the meantime, all it’s going to take is for one of those dogs to have to take a leak and in the process pick up our scent, and we’re done.”

  Their faces were inches apart as they leaned closer to make themselves heard. Their eyes met and held. Gina realized that this was it, the fork in the road, the moment of choice. All she had to do was say, you know, I think I’ll give this a miss. He wouldn’t leave without her, she knew.

  Wordlessly she got up on the balls of her feet, then took off at a sprint across the icy open field toward the hangar. She stayed low, her back bent against the lashings of sleet, her boots slamming through the layer of ice that covered the stabilizing snow. The pounding of her pulse in her ears was louder even than the drumming of the sleet hitting the hangar’s corrugated metal roof.

  Bursting through the open garage-style door into the shadowy darkness beyond, Gina processed the instant absence of pelting sleet with a rush of gratitude. Then she looked at the small plane with its large single propeller in front of her and felt her stomach sink straight to her toes. The thing was yellow and white, about the size of a mosquito, and looked like it was held together with duct tape.

  She had zero confidence that it could make it into the sky, much less carry them across an ocean.

  Cal was right behind her. His eyes touched on her, seemed to register that she was in one piece, moved around the interior of the hangar as though checking for any potential threat—it was empty—and fastened on the plane.

  “Come on.” He headed toward it.

  No. No, no, no. Every instinct she possessed screamed in protest. Gina followed him anyway. The ice that had accumulated on his clothing fell off in thin sheets as he did a quick walk around the plane, checking it out. She supposed that ice was sliding off her in a similar fashion as well. She was too agitated to look.

  Hoping for a locked door was hoping for too much, Gina knew even before Cal pulled the door open. The plane’s dark interior yawned before her, as terrifying as anything she’d ever seen: the mouth of the beast.

  She thought, I can’t do this.

  “Put your foot there and climb in.” He patted a wing strut even as he turned to look at her. She didn’t know what he saw in her face, but she knew that her heart had pushed way beyond pounding to go into panicked palpitations.

  “Hey.” He turned to her, cupping her face in his hands. Her cheeks were frozen. His gloves felt frozen. Neither was as cold as the blood pumping through her veins. “You trust me, remember?”

  “Oh, God.” She gripped his wrists, nodded jerkily.

  He kissed her, a quick brush of his lips against hers. His lips were cold—and firm and possessive. It was a measure of her terror that she didn’t even respond.

  “I’ve got you. I’ve got this,” he said as his hands dropped away from her face and he patted the strut again. The look he gave her was compelling. “Gina. Climb in.”

  Mute with fear, she looked from his face to the big gloved hand resting on the fragile-looking strut to the darkness waiting for her beyond the open door.

  Then she steeled herself and climbed in.

  The interior smelled old and musty. The narrow cylinder was cramped enough that she had to bend her head as she made her way toward the nose. If there had once been passenger seats, they’d been removed in favor of making cargo space: only the pilot and copilot seats remained. There were dog crates and other items in the back: it seemed pretty certain that the tracking dogs and their handlers had arrived on this plane. She didn’t really look at anything else, because she didn’t care.

  She was too busy keeping it together, keeping a lid on the panic that washed over her in waves. It was bad. Her nerves felt as if they were jumping beneath her skin, her stomach had turned inside out, and her chest was so tight that it required effort to breathe.

  Cal was behind her. She concentrated on him and tried not to think about the fact that she was inside a plane. That she would soon be flying in said plane.

  The cockpit was so small that she had no other option but to sit down in the copilot’s seat to make room for Cal to enter. Memories crowded into her mind. She forced them back, mentally slamming the door in their face. Instead of looking at the windshield curving so close in front of her, she pulled off her gloves, pushed back her hood, and looked at Cal. He had the rifles under his arm and was carrying the flashlight, she saw as he tucked the rifles away on the floor behind the pilot’s seat. He switched the flashlight on, shielding the beam with his fingers as he played it over the instrument panel: old wood, a dozen or more round, glass-fronted dials, twin yokes. Her gaze steadfastly followed the light’s path.

  “Don’t you need a key?” she asked faintly as the light zeroed in on the ignition.

  “No. Hold this steady for me, would you?” He passed her the flashlight.

  She took it, restricted the beam with her fingers so that it focused only on the ignition, and refused to let her hands shake. Instead she watched Cal work. He’d stripped off his gloves and his long fingers moved dexterously, despite how cold she knew they had to be, as he inserted what looked like a straightened paper clip into the ignition, following it with the blade of his knife.

  “You know how to hot-wire a plane?” she asked.

  He was manipulating the blade and the wire simultaneously. “A basic skill learned in Air Commando 101.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Sometimes stealing a plane is the best way to move across hostile territory anonymously. They can’t track you if they don’t know it’s you.”

  Without warning the engine roared to life.

  The sound was so unexpected that Gina jumped. The flashlight wavered, but Cal didn’t need its light anymore: he’d already withdrawn his improvised tools from the ignition.

  “Won’t they hear?” she asked in alarm as he took the flashlight from her and switched it off before folding himself into the pilot’s seat. He had, she saw, pushed back his own hood and pulled off his cap. His black hair was ruffled. His hard, handsome face was taut with concentration as he checked the dials. Her seat vibrated with the force of the engine’s gyrations. Beyond the windshield, she tried not to see the propeller coming to life, rotating with increasing speed until it was no more than a blur.

  Clenching her teeth against the emotional meltdown she could feel hovering, she focused on remaining very, very calm.

  “They might. I’m hoping that it’s noisy enough out there to block the sound.” He frowned, tapped on a dial with a forefinger, then glanced at her before reaching past her to undo the latch on the small, triangular window beside her. “Get the gun out.”

  His businesslike tone was calming. So was having something physical to do. She looked a question at him as she complied. “Why?”

  “I’m going to be busy flying this thing. If we run into trouble, you may have to provide cover fire.”

  Fear twisted around Gina’s heart.

  “If they start shooting at us, you mean.” Her voice sounded hollow. Big surprise, she felt hollow. Like there was a huge empty space where her stomach used to be. But at least she wasn’t quite so worried about being rendered catatonic by memories. A jolt of stark terror, she discovered, was a potent antidote to losing it.

  “I’m hoping they won’t. I’m hoping we can just roll on out of here and sail off into the sky.” Reaching across her, he grabbed her seat belt and fastened it for her. Then he kissed the corner of her mouth. Firm, cool lips, the scratch of beard. “You’re doing great. We’re going to get out of here in one piece, I promise.”

  He pulled on his own seat belt.

  Goose bumps prickled over her skin. She swallowed in an effort to combat her suddenly dry mouth. Her heart thumped like it was going to beat its way out of her chest. Her mind screamed, No! even as she braced herself.

  He reached for the throttle, eased it back, and they were moving
, taxiing through the open doorway out into the relentless sleet. It beat a staccato tattoo on the plane’s metal skin, rattled down on the windshield. As they picked up speed, the interior of the plane vibrated forebodingly. One hand clenched into a fist, the other tight around the gun, Gina sat rigid in her seat, her gaze focused straight ahead.

  “Shit.” Cal was fighting the yoke and working the throttle at the same time. The plane fishtailed down the runway, its tires clearly unable to find a purchase on the ice. But what had prompted his exclamation wasn’t anything to do with the plane: it was the men spilling from the buildings, charging toward the runway, opening fire.

  A series of bullets smacked into the fuselage, the sounds as sharp as slaps.

  “Gina.” Cal looked her way, and she knew what she had to do. Shaking off the near paralysis that had been holding her in thrall, she girded her loins, shoved the little window open, stuck the pistol’s barrel out a few inches, and fired back at the closest of the dark shapes darting toward them through the sleet. Whether she hit anybody, she had no idea. She was suddenly as icy cold inside as the wind rushing in through the window. More bullets smacked the fuselage as the plane picked up speed, slip-sliding toward the end of the runway like a drunken speed skater.

  Her worst fear—oh, God, she couldn’t even stand to entertain the thought—was that a bullet would find the gas tank and the plane would—

  Do. Not. Go. There.

  Out of the corner of her eye Gina saw something moving, something big, looked at it fully, and realized with a spurt of mortal fear that the tractor was lumbering toward the runway at full tilt.

  “Gina. You don’t have enough bullets. Shoot one of the fuel tanks. Did you hear me? Shoot one of the tanks.” Cal was yelling at her, had apparently been yelling at her all along. Between the roar of the wind and the roaring in her ears she hadn’t heard a word, until this fresh burst of horror had juiced her with adrenaline and cleared her head.

  She instantly saw what Cal meant: the men were bunching in front of the fuel tanks, using them for cover, firing at the plane from there, and the tractor was just about to barrel past the white metal capsules on its way to blocking the runway.

  The fuel tanks were only a few yards beyond the end of the runway. The plane was racing toward them, too.

  “Shoot the tanks,” Cal bellowed.

  Sick with dread, screwing up every last bit of courage she possessed, praying that she was not making a fatal mistake, she put her faith in God and Cal and snapped off some bullets at the damned tanks.

  They exploded in a tremendous fireball, sending the tractor flipping end over end and bodies flying and a wall of flames shooting a hundred feet into the air.

  The plane achieved liftoff and soared over the blaze with what, to Gina, felt like inches to spare.

  The smell of fire was strong, freezing Gina in place. Sparks peppered the sky, glowing red like a million burning eyes. They flew through them as all around, everywhere, the sleet and the clouds and the sky turned a shimmering orange. The concussion from the explosion hit with jarring force, shoving the tail up and the nose down. The plane hurtled toward the ground, tipping left, threatening to roll as it plummeted toward what, below them, looked like an ocean of fire.

  Fear grabbed Gina by the throat, strangling all utterance. Dropping the gun, she clutched the edges of her seat with both hands and hung on. Her heart pounded and her stomach dropped with the plane. Too terrified to close her eyes or even pray, she stared wide-eyed through the windshield and waited to crash and die.

  The plane steadied. The wings evened out. A moment later they were bumping up through the sleet into the clouds, and the only orange she could see was a slight reflection on the shiny surfaces in front of her. Then the clouds swallowed them up, and the fire was left behind.

  “You okay?” Cal reached past her to close the small triangular window that, until that moment, she hadn’t realized was still open. The freezing cold, the rushing roar, immediately lessened.

  “Yes.” It was all she could do to reply. She felt limp, wrung out, exhausted from acute terror. Her chest still felt like it was caught in a vice.

  “You did fantastic back there.”

  “Thanks.” She was still having trouble talking. The plane rattled and bumped as it barreled through the clouds, and as she faced the fact that there were hours of this yet to go, her insides twisted with fright.

  “The worst is over. I’m going to get you home safe.” Cal’s voice was soothing. Gina managed to turn her head enough to look at him. He did not look frightened, or even worried. He looked like he had when she’d jumped off the mountain with him: coolly competent, a man in his element.

  Gina’s death grip on her seat lessened. She even managed a deep breath. This was not a man who overestimated his abilities or underestimated the risks. This was a man who had proved to her that he could do exactly what he said he’d do.

  “I know,” she said.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Some five hours later, Cal set the Beaver down on the northwest runway at Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks, Alaska. The sixty-three-thousand-acre home of the 354th Fighter Wing would not have been his first choice of refuges, but the mission was too urgent and the margin for error was too small to let any type of personal consideration weigh with him. The flight had been a little rough, as he’d had to stay low to avoid detection by radar and thus evade any pursuit that the opposing side might have been able to launch. The end had gotten slightly hairy as fuel, even with the extra juice from the auxiliary tanks, had run critically low. It had been full dark by the time the bright lights of the base had appeared on the horizon. He’d been operating under visual flight rules since taking off from Attu, and since the instruments were a little wonky he’d had to basically guess how much farther they had to go. Without a word to Gina—he didn’t want to alarm her—he’d been nursing the fuel to make it last, and the sight of the base, which was basically a small, self-contained city, was a considerable relief. Grim triumph was his strongest emotion as the Beaver rolled in past the control tower and on down the runway: they’d made it.

  As he had expected, as soon as the plane taxied to a stop it was surrounded by a full contingent of MP vehicles; being in a civilian aircraft of unverified provenance, he would necessarily have been accorded a look-see. What he had not expected, at least not so soon, was the large black limousine.

  He was tired. He was hungry. He was worried about the woman beside him, who’d gotten paler and quieter as she’d white-knuckled it through the buffeting they’d received five thousand feet above the waves. But one look at the limousine and he could already feel his hackles beginning to rise.

  “We rate a limo? And a police escort? Or are we about to be arrested?” Gina was looking out at the surrounding cars with surprise. She’d shed her snow gear during the ride and was sitting there beside him looking stressed but beautiful in her snug red thermal shirt and tight jeans, her hair finger-combed and confined in a loose braid that hung over one shoulder. Faint blue shadows beneath her eyes gave them a slightly bruised look that did something to his gut. He wanted to wrap her up in his arms and sweep her off somewhere to rest and recuperate. But he couldn’t: not right now.

  Cal sighed. Having unfastened his seat belt, he reached over and unfastened hers.

  Then he got up, leaned over, and kissed her.

  She kissed him back, her lips softly clinging, her mouth hot and sweet and luscious. He felt himself getting hard in response, recognized that now was not the time, and pulled back.

  Those big blue eyes of hers were almost his undoing. If it hadn’t been for his certain knowledge of who was waiting for him in that limousine, he would have taken his time and kissed her breathless. As it was, he dropped one more quick, hard kiss on her lips and lifted his head.

  Her slim, cool hand was still lingering on his cheek when he looked back out at the tarmac and saw that the rear door of the limo was being held open by an airman at full attenti
on. The combination of the cars’ headlights and the runway lighting meant that the tarmac was as bright as a football stadium on a Friday night in October.

  Straightening as best he could given the low ceiling, Cal said, “I realize it’s probably a little early in this relationship for us to start meeting the parents, but brace yourself: you’re about to meet my father.”

  Gina’s face tipped up toward him. “What?”

  Cal nodded toward the tall, silver-haired man who was just stretching to his full height as he got out of the limo.

  Gina looked. Then she looked back at Cal.

  “But—that’s a general.”

  Cal nodded. “Yep.”

  Grabbing her hand, he snagged both their coats and headed out of the cockpit. “Let’s go.”

  “Your father’s a general,” she said from behind him. Her fingers were wrapped around his. He tightened his hold on them.

  “Yes, he is.”

  “I thought you said your father was a retired Air Force officer.”

  “He is an Air Force officer, and he is retired. He’s here at Eielson acting as a consultant to the 354th Fighter Wing.” Having reached the door by that time, Cal opened it and jumped down. Then he reached up to lift Gina down. As he set her on her feet she was looking at him wide-eyed, but she didn’t say anything, probably because she was as aware as he was of their audience. He helped her on with her coat, shrugged into his, and was just turning around to head to the limo and get the confrontation over with when a deep, gravelly, and way too familiar voice spoke in an abrupt tone behind him.

  “I got a message saying you were landing here.”

  That message had no doubt come via the control tower, when Cal had had to identify himself before being given permission to land. Well, his plan had been to get in contact as soon as he was on the ground anyway. Suspicious as he was of Whitman’s, and possibly the CIA’s, involvement in what had gone down, he’d made the decision not to head for the small private airfield where he was supposed to return with Rudy for a rendezvous with Whitman, but to come to Eielson instead. The flash drive in his belt, and the information he possessed, were vital to national security. At this point, there were two institutions the integrity of which he felt he could trust absolutely, and that were also equipped to deal swiftly and effectively with whatever was on that flash drive: the Air Force, and his father.