Seconds to Midnight

by Philip Donlay

  “We’re back here,” Marta replied.

  “It’s perfect. You two walk into the hospital, find Tomasz, and I’ll hover nearby to back you up.” Trevor got out of the helicopter. “Let’s go iron out the details, but I’m thinking a quick in and out. Where better to fly a bright yellow helicopter than to a hospital?”

  “Before we get too far into this plan, what happens if it doesn’t work?” Lauren said. “What if we leave the hospital with nothing? We need to discuss our next step.”

  “We fly to Prague and keep digging,” Marta said.

  “That could work.” Trevor began to scan the exterior of the helicopter. “Though investigating a case that Interpol is no doubt actively pursuing could be risky, especially if they’re also looking for Lauren.”

  “You being on a watch list is a concern,” Marta said to Lauren, “but for now, let’s go and get some water started for tea.”

  “I’ll be in shortly,” Trevor called as he hoisted himself back into the cockpit.

  “I was wondering . . . earlier when I was on the phone,” Marta whispered to Lauren. “I couldn’t help but notice you and Trevor talking. What does he think about the mission? Does he have another plan in mind?”

  “No,” Lauren said. “When Trevor and I were talking, for the most part we were talking about you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  DONOVAN FLOATED ABOVE the ghostlike Boeing. The 737 looked intact, but completely out of its element. It was resting on the sharply sloped lake bottom, about eighteen degrees nose up. Playing the beam of his dive light around the nose gear, he found that the tires had settled down into the sandy bottom. The light illuminated the windshield and reflected back into his eyes. He needed to adjust his angle to see inside the flight deck.

  A flash illuminated next to him. Donovan turned to find Jesse taking photographs. After he shot several, he motioned for Donovan to descend with him. Except for the rhythmic hiss of the regulator, and an occasional sharp report from the shifting ice, there was no other sound.

  Together, they swam down the side of the plane until they reached the point where the right wing joined the fuselage. As they’d planned, Donovan wouldn’t go below fifty feet, so he stopped and hovered on the wing, next to the open emergency exit. First he trained the beam of his flashlight onto his depth gauge, steady at forty feet. He then moved the beam into the interior of the jet. Jesse, however, continued down to the tail to find the actual registration number on the side of the plane.

  Donovan’s flashlight illuminated sofa cushions and other floating debris trapped against the ceiling. He could see that the beige carpet was littered with glass.

  Rising bubbles alerted Donovan to Jesse’s ascent, and moments later, Jesse was kneeling on the wing next to him. With his flashlight, Jesse surveyed the interior, then stowed his light and began to shed his air tank. With the regulator in his mouth, Jesse pushed his tank through the narrow emergency exit ahead of him and swam into the interior.

  Donovan did the same, swinging the tank up and over his head, careful not to clip the valve or the regulator on the edge of the opening. With his tank secure in his arms, Donovan kicked through the opening into the 737. With the airplane on a slope, Jesse took the deeper tail section, and Donovan slid his tank back into place and slowly worked his way toward the cockpit. As the reality of being inside the wrecked plane began to sink in, Donovan found that his breathing rate had increased. The bubbles from his regulator floated to the ceiling, flattened out, and worked their way forward, rising with the angle of the jet.

  Kicking gently, Donovan pushed cushions aside and scanned back and forth below him in an effort to spot anything out of the ordinary. The lush interior was a blend of leather-covered chairs and sofas, mixed with polished wooden tables and credenzas. Numerous personal flat-screen televisions were mounted seat-side, all standard fare for a private Boeing 737. The cup holders, seat belts, and overhead air vents appeared to be gold plated. As Donovan inched his way forward, he spotted a sturdy leather briefcase sitting on the floor between two seats. This was the first clue as to who may have been on board. He swam down, grabbed the handles, and lifted. It was much heavier than he’d expected. He swung it up onto a table and with his heavy gloves, he fumbled at the latches until they snapped open and he could lift the lid. Normally he’d try to bring up the entire case unopened, but he wasn’t an archaeologist on this trip, he was looking for answers. On top were soaked papers in file folders, the notations written in what Donovan recognized as the Cyrillic alphabet. He pushed the files into his mesh dive bag, and then discovered several canvas bags were under the folders, nestled in the bottom of the case. He removed the knife from his ankle sheath and slit the material of each bag. He watched in dismay as gold coins spilled out of the openings. All three bags contained investment-grade coins, a mixture of South African Krugerrands, Turkish Republic gold coins, American Eagles, as well as gold coins from Canada and Australia.

  Donovan left the case open and pushed on toward the cockpit. The sweeping beam of his flashlight revealed fire-damaged carpet, sidewalls, and charred furniture. As he swam forward, he spotted two bodies floating near the ceiling. He drew closer and discovered the first corpse, a male, had burns on the hands, legs, and arms. His face seemed undamaged, except for a bullet hole in the forehead. The dead man had thinning blond hair and blue eyes. Donovan patted down the dead man’s clothes, feeling for a wallet.

  He found an object in an inside jacket pocket, but his thick dive gloves made it impossible to grasp anything. He finally ripped the entire pocket apart, and a phone, not a wallet, sank to the floor. Donovan maneuvered it into the bag and continued to the next corpse. The man was in his thirties, bald, and also had burned hands and a bullet wound, this time behind his left ear. After a quick pat-down, nothing registered, and Donovan continued toward the front of the plane. The passageway narrowed and he came to a lavatory, the lock indicating it was unoccupied. The galley was next, where he found aluminum tins on the floor, as well as plates, some broken some intact, and scattered utensils. Shattered glass covered the floor. He swam to a door that he assumed led to the crew’s rest area and managed to negotiate the latch with his gloves. When he opened the door, he found two empty bunks. He closed the door and continued toward the cockpit door where he found the next body. This one was an older woman, maybe late fifties, thin, with wrinkles, jewelry, and very long fingernails. She, too, had been shot in the head. Donovan floated her away from the door and pushed into the cockpit.

  Light filtered down through the ice above and illuminated the cockpit. The captain sat in the left seat, still strapped in, and wearing his oxygen mask. The first officer was out of his seat, floating freely. Donovan estimated he was probably mid-thirties with curly brown hair and a mustache. He’d been shot in the chest. Another look at the captain told Donovan he’d been shot from behind.

  Donovan backed out of the cockpit into the entry space and pulled himself to the base of the main entry door. Using his sturdy dive knife, he pried up the heavy bar that was attached to the emergency slide and freed it from the floor. He swung the locking mechanism of the main door and pushed against the solid frame until it swung open. When he spotted Jesse swimming toward him through the cabin, he pointed to the briefcase on the table.

  Jesse stopped and photographed the coins, collected an assortment, and dropped them in his own bag. As Donovan hovered near the main door, Jesse took pictures of each corpse in the cabin, moving to different angles to get pictures of faces as well as the burns. Donovan moved aside to allow Jesse to continue to document the scene, both in the cabin and the cockpit. Once he was finished, Jesse checked his watch and motioned to Donovan that they needed to start up.

  Donovan and Jesse moved through the main cabin door, then connected their mesh bags together. Once both were attached to a bright orange lift bag, Jesse squeezed off several bursts of oxygen from his spare regulator, which quickly filled the lift bag and it climbed toward the surface. Togethe
r they modulated their personal flotation devices to slowly ascend toward the surface. Jesse stopped them at ten feet for a cautionary decompression stop, to purge their blood of any nitrogen bubbles.

  Waiting seemed like an eternity until Jesse signaled Donovan he could continue to the surface. In that time, he started to feel the effects of the cold in his hands and feet. When he started kicking for the top, he could also feel the stiffness in his knees and hips. When he broke the surface of the water, he squinted against the sunlight to see Rick perched on the edge of the opening. Donovan spit out the regulator and immediately felt the stab of the brutally cold air torture his lungs. As fast as he could, he separated himself from the tank, which Rick lifted up onto the ice. Then he handed up his weight belt, the mesh container, and deflated lift bag. With Rick pulling, Donovan kicked hard to get out of the water. As he sat on the edge of the ice, Rick unstrapped his flippers, then pulled him to his feet.

  “Your snowmobile suit is inside the tent; the small gas furnace has been working hard,” Rick said. “It’s nearly forty degrees inside. Or as I call it, Paradise.”

  Donovan hobbled to the shelter, stopping just outside for Rick to pull off his gloves. Then in one quick motion, Rick unzipped the dry suit and helped peel it off Donovan’s body. Once free, Donovan stepped into the enclosure and closed his eyes as he soaked up the warmer air. He toweled off and then put on his snowmobile suit, dried his face and hair, and slid on his wool head protection, boots, and gloves. He stood near the stove for one more moment and began to think he might survive.

  “Are you okay in there?” Jesse yelled from outside.

  “I’m fine,” Donovan said as he left the warmth of the enclosure and hurried to the hole in the ice.

  “How was it?” Jesse asked as he treaded water. “You did great. How do you feel? Did you stay warm?”

  “I’m good. I felt fine.”

  Jesse shrugged off his tank. “Cool, how about a hand getting me up and out of the water?”

  Donovan and Rick pulled Jesse up and out of the frigid water and repeated the same process Donovan had just gone through. When Jesse slipped into the tent, Donovan noticed how low the sun had sunk in the west. They would need to leave soon. He went straight to the mesh bags they’d floated up from the plane. The contents had already frozen into a clump of ice, and Donovan knelt and dipped it into the lake water to momentarily thaw it out. He clenched his teeth against the cold, removed his glove, and fished out a waterlogged passport. Inside was a photograph of Sofya, who now had a last name—Baronovsky. She’d just had her twenty-sixth birthday. Donovan risked trying to turn to one of the sodden pages to see where Sofya had traveled, but couldn’t; ice was already freezing the paper together, and he was forced to stop.

  “That feels better.” Jesse stepped from the tent dressed as he was before, in his heavy snowsuit, hat, and gloves. “That was incredible. I’ve never dived on what amounts to a crime scene. I can’t show you any of the pictures until we get back and the equipment warms up, but this 737 has a VR registration. VR-CSB, to be exact, and in the back of the plane were bags of gold coins, as well as several cases filled with automatic weapons, AK-47s I think, and boxes of ammunition.”

  “Cayman Islands,” Rick said. “VR-C registered planes are a familiar tax and identity dodge. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were a trail of fake names and shell companies attached to this plane.”

  “From what I saw, the people on board were doing business in Russian,” Donovan said. “We need to get back to the cabin, stow all of this, and make sure the charter pilots don’t find out what we’re doing. It’s going to be difficult to get any of the papers or electronics dried out. Depending on what the other team found, I say we come back in the morning and make another dive.”

  “I agree,” Jesse said as he began to carefully fold the dry suits for transport. “I didn’t have a chance to open all of the closets and storage areas. I mean, this is still nothing but a mystery.”

  “What else did you find?” Rick asked Jesse.

  “It wasn’t pretty, but there was a woman and man near the aft stateroom,” Jesse said. “It looked like the man had been shot twice, once in the stomach and again in the throat. He also had a deep cut on his forearm. The woman looked to be in her mid-thirties. She was shot as well. I’m no forensic expert, but I watch enough television to know that burns around the hole in her blouse meant she was probably shot at point-blank range.”

  “So, the total body count is two women and three men, plus the two pilots,” Donovan said. “Everyone I saw had a gunshot wound, plus two of the men had serious burns.”

  “What in the hell,” Rick said. “Sofya didn’t have a mark on her when we rescued her.”

  “Maybe she’s the one who inflicted the damage?” Jesse said.

  “Or,” Donovan said solemnly, “they hadn’t gotten to her yet. You didn’t by chance see a gun, did you?”

  “I didn’t, but to be honest, I wasn’t really looking.”

  Donovan tried to connect the chain of events that still made no sense. “It could have been thrown around as the plane sank. We’ll look for it tomorrow.”

  It took them another half hour to pack the sled and begin their journey back to the cabin. The trip went faster, as they could retrace their own distinct tracks in the snow. Rick navigated the snowmobile back through the frozen river with more speed than before. When they burst out of the narrow confines onto the first lake, Donovan spotted the Twin Otter in the distance, parked near the cabin. A solitary column of smoke rose from the chimney and mixed with the tops of the trees. It looked as if the airplane had just arrived and they were still unloading.

  Rick slowed as they neared the camp and guided the snowmobile as close to the cabin as he could. As he shut it down, Montero stepped from the cabin as did Michael, and walked toward them.

  Donovan pulled off his helmet. “Any luck?”

  “No,” Montero said. “You?”

  “Some, but I’d like to spend the night and go back down in the morning.”

  “We need to get back out there tomorrow, as well, and cover more ground,” Michael said as they headed toward the snowmobile to help Jesse and Rick unload the gear.

  Montero signaled Donovan to join her, and together they moved off the main pathway where they could talk in private.

  “You first,” Montero said. “Did you make it inside the plane?”

  “It was a mess. We found seven bodies. The two pilots had clearly been shot shortly after they landed. There were three other men and two women; they’d all been shot as well. Some of them were burned. We also discovered a great number of gold coins, and Jesse found crates of assault rifles, complete with ammunition. It looked to me like someone was running. We salvaged some laptops, a number of documents, and a phone or two. Everything I saw was written in Russian. Once everything dries, perhaps we can translate them?”

  “Were you able to find out where the jet is registered?” Montero asked.

  “Cayman Islands.”

  “That figures. Nothing about this case has been easy.”

  “What is it you wanted to talk to me about?”

  “It’s Sofya,” Montero said. “She’s becoming more unstable. I was with her as we were out there searching, and the longer we walked, the harder she began to cry. She spoke aloud, became unfocused, disoriented, as if reliving past events.”

  “We’re at ground zero of a plane crash that probably initiated her PTSD and associated amnesia. Isn’t her starting to remember a good thing?”

  “I don’t know.” Montero shoved her gloved hands into the pockets of her parka. “With the traumatized women I’ve worked with before, we had a fair idea from social workers, family members, or police reports to understand what was buried. The doctors could eventually coax it out into the light with the appropriate safety nets in place. With Sofya, we have no idea. Imagine having amnesia, and then without warning, horrible realities came flooding back all at once.”

  “We f
ound her passport. It’s Russian. Sofya Yvette Baronovsky. She’s twenty-six years old.”

  “That’s interesting,” Montero said. “I wonder if it’s really her name.”

  “I don’t know, but after what you’ve said, let’s keep that information to ourselves for now. Do you think Sofya can make it through one more day?”

  “I think so, but what if she went with you to the airplane? From the surface of the ice, she wouldn’t be able to see the 737. It might be easier than the anxiety of searching for an unknown object. Besides, I think Michael and I can cover more ground if it’s just the two of us.”

  “She can go with me.” Donovan was about to turn away when he caught a glimmer of motion to the east and stopped. The first twilight dance of the Aurora Borealis was making its appearance. The shimmering colors of green and pink danced upward, seeming to leap from the tops of the snow-covered trees and pulse straight up into the purple sky, where the energy would fade and then it all began again. Donovan felt as if he were standing on another planet, and for a moment, it was as if he were a million miles away from everything he knew. In that instant, he felt a sting of regret about the argument with William, and he missed his wife and daughter almost more than he could endure.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  MARTA STOPPED, SPOKE to the woman seated behind the information desk, and was directed to an elevator bank. Lauren, in turn, her hair in a ponytail, wearing a scarf and reading glasses low on her nose, walked past the information desk like she knew exactly where she was headed.

  They ignored each other as Marta pushed the button that would take them to the third floor.

  “He’s in room 347,” Marta said once they were alone in the elevator.

  When the doors opened, they each headed in a different direction. Lauren knew from studying the hospital layout that each floor was a rectangle, so if she kept walking, she’d eventually rendezvous with Marta at Tomasz’s room. As Lauren came around the last corner, she spotted a wooden chair about halfway down the hallway. A check of the room numbers confirmed that this was Tomasz’s room.