“You can have his,” said Weiss immediately. And nodded at Phillips.
Phillips’s face twisted in rage. “You sonofabitch!”
Boone went quiet. I stared at him in horror. Of course he’ll do it. He’s going to jail if he stays on the plane.
“I’ll pay you,” said Weiss. “A hundred thousand dollars to put the gun down right now and come with us.” He had the easy tone of a man who’s used to buying his way out of things. When Boone hesitated, he pressed. “You’re on the wrong side! You’re one of us, not one of them!”
I saw Boone’s stern expression weaken. His eyes flicked to the window and the mountains outside.
And then his eyes went to me, just for an instant. And he looked back to Weiss and leveled the gun with new ferocity. “I’m not one of you,” he growled.
I saw Weiss falter. And then he smirked. I turned and followed his gaze just too late.
Hennessey brought the wrench down on the back of Boone’s head and he staggered forward, conscious but dazed. Hennessey grabbed the gun from his hand and went to stand beside Weiss, both of them pointing their guns at Boone and me. We froze.
“Easy,” Hennessey told Weiss. “Let me handle this.”
“Fuck that,” said Weiss. “They’ve made us late. We’re going to miss our jump point.” And he leveled the gun and fired.
The whole cabin echoed with the explosion. My eyes screwed shut and every muscle in my body went rigid as I waited for the pain to hit.
But nothing happened. My eyes opened. Had he shot Boone first and I was next? But Boone was standing there blinking in shock, just as I was. Had Weiss missed?
Then I felt the world tilt and slide. For a second, I thought I had been hit, maybe in the head, and this was the start of death. Then I staggered into Boone, his warm body huge against mine, and I realized the world really was tilting. The plane was gradually twisting over on its side.
My head snapped around to the front of the plane and I saw the pilot, slumped forward in his seat, and the blood on the windshield. Weiss hadn’t missed at all.
Weiss and the marshals were now backing towards the door, their guns trained on us. And suddenly I understood.
They’d never intended to just jump out and let us continue to Fairbanks and raise the alarm. The plan was to crash the plane...with Boone and me on board.
6
Kate
My heart started to slam in my chest. The floor was tilted over at almost forty-five degrees, now: we had to cling on to the seat backs to stay upright.
“Go finish up in the cockpit,” Weiss told Phillips. “Hurry!”
Phillips got to his feet, shaking his head in anger. “You were going to give him my chute? Leave me here to die?!”
“Things change,” Weiss told him. “Get over it.”
Phillips scowled, grabbed the tool bag from Hennessey and ran off to the front of the plane. There was the sound of banging and then he returned carrying a metal box.
“Toss it,” Weiss told him. Phillips slid open the door and outside air rushed into the cabin. We were low enough that there was enough air to breathe but it was so cold it felt like my lungs were freezing and the roar of the wind was deafening. Phillips hurled the box out and I followed its sickening curve down until it was just a speck.
Oh God. This is really happening. They were going to leave us there, the pilotless plane would plunge into the rocks and we’d be killed. I glanced at Boone. Why didn’t he take the deal?
Weiss and the two marshals checked their parachutes a final time. I tried to think of something, anything, we could do. But the only way out of this had passed hours ago, when I’d forced my way onto the plane. I caught Hennessey’s eye for a second before he looked away guiltily. He might be working for Weiss but he seemed a lot more reluctant than Phillips. No wonder he’d tried to stop me getting on board. He knew I was signing my own death warrant.
A noise started, a rising wail that I’d only heard in movies, the sound of a plane picking up speed as it dives. By now, the windows on one side of the plane were almost completely filled with ground and the other with sky. The plane was almost standing on its wing and it was losing altitude fast. “We’ve got to go,” said Weiss. “Right now.” And he took a deep breath...and jumped.
I watched in disbelief as he fell away from the plane. Seconds later, his parachute bloomed into a huge white canopy. Hennessey was next. He hesitated at the door and gave me a troubled look over his shoulder. “Sorry,” he muttered.
For a second, anger flared inside me, pushing back my fear. Was that supposed to make it better? To ease his conscience? He’d still taken Weiss’s money. “Go to hell,” I said bitterly.
His eyes narrowed...and he jumped. A second later, I saw his chute open. The wail was rising in pitch and volume, a banshee’s howl that made it difficult to think. The plane was still tipping, rolling onto its back as it descended.
Only Phillips was left, now. He backed towards the door, his gun still pointed at us. “You should have taken that bastard’s deal,” he told Boone grimly.
I heard Boone draw in a shuddering breath, as if he was trying to control his anger. One big, warm hand settled on my shoulder and squeezed it gently.
And then Phillips jumped and three parachutes were floating down towards the ground.
And we were in a plane with no pilot. Going down.
7
Kate
For a few seconds, I just stood there, clinging onto the seat backs, staring at the slowly descending parachutes. Already, they were thousands of feet below us. And below them—
I made a mistake and looked down.
I hate heights. When we have meetings up on the top floor of the FBI building in New York and everyone else is admiring the view, I stare fixedly at my notes. I don’t especially like flying but, when you’re up and the cabin crew are pushing reheated food at you, you can almost convince yourself that the sky outside the window isn’t real.
As I stared out of the open door, reality came back sickeningly fast. We were thousands of feet up...with no way to get down. I staggered back on legs numb with fear.
And then the plane’s roll sped up. I grabbed for a seat back and missed, falling backwards, then tumbling as the plane rolled fully onto its back. I screamed and landed hard on the ceiling that had now become the floor. The plane began to angle down and I rolled….
Right towards the open door.
I tried to grab hold of something but this was the ceiling: there were no seats to cling to, just smooth white plastic. The rectangle of blue and white came closer and closer, opening up to swallow me. Oh Jesus God no please no! The wind enveloped me, sucking at my clothes and I screamed so hard my throat hurt—
A big, warm hand grabbed my wrist. I looked up to see Boone stretched full-length along the aisle. He was all that was holding me inside the plane. I looked down and immediately wanted to throw up. One leg was actually outside, hanging out into thin air.
Boone hauled me towards him as if I weighed nothing, just a smooth, effortless lift. I managed to get to my knees and together we crawled towards the cockpit. Both of us had had the same idea: our only hope now was to pull the plane out of the dive. It was tilting further and further down each second. By the time we reached the cockpit, we were slithering down an almost vertical slope.
The pilot was still in his seat, slumped over the controls. Boone hauled him out and took his place and I climbed into the co-pilot’s seat. We were angled so steeply down, I had to brace myself against the instrument panel or I would have wound up falling right through the windshield.
Ahead of us, the ground filled our view. I couldn’t see sky anywhere. Oh Jesus.
“Please tell me you were in the Air Force,” I croaked. “Please say you know how to fly.”
But he was looking at the controls with the same incomprehension I was. I could feel the panic taking over. We are both going to die.
And it crossed my mind again: why didn’t he take the de
al? I hadn’t had a choice, but he had.
The ground was close enough now that I could see individual trees. I looked in desperation at what was in front of me. A thing like a steering wheel. A lot of dials, one of them spinning madly. More switches and knobs than I could count.
I gripped the wheel the way the pilot had. It turned under my hands but that was no good. We needed to go up.
I had a vague memory of people pulling back on the wheel in movies. Did it move that way, too? I pulled and nothing happened. But then...wait, it was moving. It was sliding towards me, millimeter by millimeter. I’d expected it to be like a car, where you’re just guiding it, but this needed strength. It felt like I was hauling a truck full of rocks up a slope. I grunted, giving it everything I had.
Then, suddenly, it got easier. Next to me, Boone had grabbed his wheel and was hauling it back towards him. The view through the windshield started to change. We were pulling out of it.
But not fast enough. As the horizon came into view and we leveled out, the ground started to rise, too. We were heading up the side of a mountain, and it was steeper than we could climb.
“Buckle in!” said Boone, letting go of the wheel and grabbing his own seatbelt.
I grabbed for my own belt, fumbling with the buckle. A forest rushed up to meet us.
And then everything went black.
8
Boone
Water. That was the first thing I was aware of. Water was running down my face.
Except it wasn’t running down, towards my neck, like it should. It was running from the back of my neck along my cheeks, winding its way through my stubble, collecting on my lips and nose and then dripping from there.
I opened my eyes and saw branches. It took me a few seconds to figure it out.
The plane had come to rest nose down in some trees and I was maybe thirty feet above the forest floor, facing straight down. Only my seatbelt was keeping me in my seat.
I could hear heavy rain. That explained the water. But how was it hitting me in the back of the neck?
I twisted around. Oh.
There was nothing but sky above me. The back of the plane wasn’t there. The cockpit had snapped off in the crash just a few feet behind my seat. Beneath us, the remains of snapped-off trees, some viciously sharp, stood up like stakes. We’d have to be careful climbing down.
I looked across at Kate. Just like me, her seatbelt was the only thing keeping her from falling out of her seat and down into the trees below. She was slumped forward in her seat, unconscious. But she was breathing.
I released a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. It caught me by surprise: it had been years since I’d worried about another person. She looked so small, hanging there, so fragile….
“Kate?” I said gently.
She stirred slightly. Groaned in pain, which made my chest close up tight in a way I couldn’t explain. There was something about her, beyond her looks. She might be small but on the plane she’d thrown herself headlong into the fight, all because she didn’t want to see those bastards get away. She wanted justice. Childish, sure. But it reminded me of when I used to believe in things, too.
“Kate?” I said, a little louder.
She started to properly awaken, her arms and legs flailing weakly as she tried to figure out her surroundings. And as her weight shifted, suddenly the whole cockpit fell.
For a few sickening seconds, we were in freefall, accompanied by the rustle of leaves and the creak of branches giving way beneath us. Then there was the crash of shattering glass, a violent jolt and we stopped. I looked down….
What had stopped us was one of the snapped-off trees. The metal at the edge of the windshield was caught precariously on the trunk. But one of its branches—
My stomach twisted.
One of its branches, its end a jagged, splintered spike, had crashed straight through the windshield and was three feet from Kate’s chest. If we moved again, it would go right through her.
9
Kate
I opened my eyes and stared at the branch and its knife-like tip. The vibrations from the fall were still dying away, the branch swaying like a cobra about to strike. Oh Jesus. A cold sweat broke out across my back.
“Don’t move,” intoned Boone. “Do not...move.”
I sat there frozen, taking long, shuddering breaths, until everything came to a complete stop again. Then I carefully looked around and took it all in: Boone, strapped in next to me, the missing fuselage behind us, the ground far below.
I swallowed and closed my eyes. I really don’t like heights.
“You hurt?” asked Boone. There was still that hesitation before he spoke, as if he was having to dig the words from way down deep, but it was reducing a little each time.
“I don’t think so,” I said weakly. I slowly opened my eyes and tried not to look at the ground. But that left me looking at the broken-off branch, primed to stab straight through my heart.
“Okay,” said Boone slowly. “This is what we’re going to do. You’re going to take off your seatbelt—”
“I’ll fall!” I tried to keep the panic out of my voice but failed.
“No you won’t.” His voice was like iron. “Because I’m going to reach over and grab you. As you slide out of your seat, I’ll pull you over to me.”
“Grab me first!” My voice was going high and tight with fear.
“I can’t.” I could hear the frustration in his voice, the anger at not being able to help me. “I’m going to have to lunge across to reach you. When I move, we’ll likely fall again. We have to do it at the same time.”
Oh God. I looked across at him. Those blue eyes were like the sky reflected in a glacier, ice as hard as rock. Determined to save me.
I looked down at the branch. If he moved too slow. If he mis-timed it. If I slipped out of his grip—
“Kate?”
I glanced his way again, my heart thumping in my chest.
“I will catch you,” he said.
And something in his voice made me believe him.
I reached down and felt for the buckle of my seat belt. Hooked my fingers under the release.
“We’ll do it on three,” said Boone. He sucked in a deep breath and extended an arm, ready to lunge. “One.”
I deliberately didn’t look at the branch. I looked at his arm, his tanned wrist twice as thick as my own.
“Two.”
Every muscle in my body tensed.
“Three!”
I hooked my seatbelt open and fell.
Boone lunged towards me, arm extended.
The whole cockpit shifted again and plunged down, the branch spearing up towards me—
Boone’s hand closed on my wrist and I was wrenched sideways in mid-air. The branch whipped past me, close enough to touch—
The cockpit came to a stop as the branch buried itself in my seat back, right where I’d been sitting. I swung, dangling from Boone’s outstretched hand. He was panting. I was panting.
“Got y—” he started.
I screamed as his seat belt gave way and we both plunged. And instant later, we stopped again. I looked up. He had me by one hand. With the other, he was clinging onto the arm of his seat. I could see the muscles standing out hard on his back from the effort but he wasn’t letting go. “Got you,” he said again, breathlessly. And this time, there were no more surprises. I hung there weakly, face upturned to the heavens, and just let the rain soak me as my heart slowed to something approaching normal.
It took a full twenty minutes to climb down the tree to the ground. That may not sound like much, but when you’re clinging to the rough bark of a tree trunk, high above the ground, twenty minutes is a lifetime. When my feet finally touched the dirt, I wanted to lean down and kiss it.
Boone had taken a moment to dig around under the pilot’s seat and had found a box of flares. He’d also twisted off a jagged shard of metal he said he could use to make a knife. Both of us were soaked to the skin and
, now that we were safe, the cold was really starting to set in. It must have been around noon and it was spring, but it was ferociously cold.
“We need to find shelter,” muttered Boone. Even he was hugging himself, his jacket and plaid shirt plastered to his chest.
But I hardly heard him. Something in the trees had caught my eye. I stumbled forward. The trees grew too far apart to provide much cover from the rain and it coursed down my face, making it difficult to see. My shoes squelched, they had so much water in, and I’d started to shake. But I kept putting one foot in front of the other, my eyes fixed on what was before me. I was willing it to change.
Our plane had crashed near the edge of the forest. I slowed to a stop as I passed the final few trees and the view opened up in front of me.
I was on the edge of a mountain. Below me, rocky cliffs which fell hundreds of feet, then a thick carpet of forest. Far off in the distance, I could see a river. More mountains. And absolutely nothing else. Just wilderness, as far as the eye could see.
I was in the absolute middle of nowhere.
The rain ran down through my soaking hair, running in little waterfalls down my face and off my chin, each drop chilling me a little more. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to remember the route map I’d glimpsed in the airport. We’d been roughly midway between Nome and Fairbanks when we crashed. That area of the map was just a big, blank space. No towns. No anything. I’d lost my purse in the crash but it didn’t matter: I knew there’d be no cell signal way out here.
I felt the panic start to rise inside me and took a long, shuddering breath. Oh Jesus. What are we going to do?! We had no food. We had no water. We were probably hundreds of miles from the nearest person.
A voice behind me said, “Kate?”
Alaska Wild Page 4
