by Matthew Rief
“I’m not smuggling anything,” the man gasped.
“Then why are you here?”
Novikov winced. “My job was to just be here. To distract. That’s all.” He eyed Jason. “Looks like it worked.”
“Where are they? I know you know, and I’ll kill you right now if—”
“Keflavik Airport.”
“Flights are still grounded.”
He looked at Jason, his face red from the searing pain. “Not all flights.”
Jason froze at that, then he remembered Scott’s earlier mention about the UNSC leaving Iceland on their private jet that afternoon.
“The UN plane?”
Novikov uttered nothing, but his eyes said it all.
Jason gritted his teeth and muscled the man even higher on the wall. “Who’s—”
Loud voices and heavy footsteps thundering up the stairs interrupted him. He needed to get out of there quickly. Without a word, he dragged Novikov across the room to a window. Releasing control of the smuggler, Jason kicked the man through the glass, shattering the window as Novikov flailed out onto the deck and rolled on the carpet of glass. He was still alive but wailing from the cuts across his bare body.
Grabbing the railing, Jason flung himself over the edge and dropped to the first floor. Hearing a loud commotion overhead, he withdrew and raised his pistol, then raced through the living room of the villa. Once out the front door, he bolted down a sidewalk leading to the main building and reception area of the resort. He stood out like a sore thumb as he sprinted through the lobby, rushing past a few rich, well-dressed guests.
He reached the valet station just as a black Aston Martin parked and a man in an Italian suit climbed out with a petite blonde woman in a red dress. The man tossed the keys to the valet attendant, but Jason swooped in for the interception.
“Just going to borrow it,” Jason said, darting around the hood and heading for the open driver’s door.
The man tried to stop him, but before he could reach Jason, the American was already plopped down and throwing the luxury speed demon into gear. He mashed the gas pedal, the force throwing his body back against the seat as the 400-horsepower, eight-cylinder engine rocketed the vehicle away from the resort’s entrance in a cloud of tire smoke.
TWENTY-ONE
Scott and Alejandra huddled over the laptop, adjusting the drone’s camera to keep an eye on Jason and direct the operative secretly into the villa. As Jason approached his destination, Charlotte entered the living room with a cellphone pressed to her ear. Wrapping up the call, she filled her mug with coffee and downed two gulps of the much-needed caffeine.
“Any luck?” Scott said, keeping his eyes locked onto the laptop.
Charlotte rubbed the back of her neck. “The more calls I make, the more uneasy I get.”
After discovering as much as she could regarding the history of the mysterious virus, Charlotte kept herself busy doing everything she could to help the team. With a long list of contacts all over the world, and with Scott providing support, she swiftly investigated North Korea’s biological weapons program, with special emphasis on General Kang Ryong-Jin. She’d already spoken to two sources in the fifteen minutes since hearing from Murph, and her conclusion was solidified: General Kang was the last man in the world anyone wanted to get ahold of a deadly virus.
“That bad?” Alejandra said.
Charlotte sighed. “They test their weapons on their own citizens . . . on massive scales. We’re talking tens of thousands of people. Imagine what they’ll do to their enemies.”
As Scott informed Jason of a guard patrolling the left side of the unit, Charlotte gazed out through the room’s main window, when something caught her attention in the distance. She leaned forward, squinting toward the coast. “I thought all flights were supposed to be grounded.”
“They are,” Scott replied, staring intently at the drone’s camera feed.
He and Alejandra watched intently as Jason appeared from the water, grabbed hold of his victim, then forced the guard down into the lagoon.
“Nice takedown,” Scott said quietly.
“Then why is there a plane taxiing onto the runway?”
Scott tore his focus away from the laptop and eyed Charlotte skeptically. “What did you say?”
Charlotte pointed out the window toward Reykjavík Airport. “There’s a plane heading out onto the runway.”
Scott and Alejandra jumped from the couch, and Charlotte grabbed a pair of binoculars and zoomed in on the tarmac. “Holy crap, Scott.” She lowered the binos. “It’s a cargo plane. Just like the one Murph said some of the terrorists used to sneak into the country.”
Scott whipped out his phone and motioned for the door. “We need to move. Now!”
Jason’s voice blared through the radio, asking if they were still there. Scott rushed to the radio on the table and explained to Jason that they were heading to the airport to check on a lead but that he should continue with the mission. Dropping the radio into his pocket, Scott bolted for the door with Alejandra. Charlotte rushed to join them, but Scott held up a hand.
“Stay here and keep an eye on the drone feed. Novikov might bring in backup.”
Before Charlotte could protest, Scott and Alejandra were already out the door. On the elevator ride down, Scott placed a call to the Icelandic president’s direct line. When the politician said all flights were still to remain grounded and that he had no idea about a cargo plane taking off, Scott called ATCs at the Reykjavík Control Center.
The two were soon climbing into a blacked-out BMW in the underground parking garage.
Scott put his phone on speaker and clipped it to a dashboard stand. “Hold on,” he said, firing up the engine and flooring it out of the garage and into the city streets.
While he waited to be connected, Alejandra called Murph. “Do you have the flight plan for that cargo plane you mentioned?” she said.
“Like I said, it—”
“Did it go anywhere after landing in Keflavik?”
Alejandra waited, hearing a series of rapid keyboard clicks on the other end. Scott stomped the gas, screeching through a red light and blurring through downtown.
“Yes,” Murph said. “Looks like it flew across the country to the airport in Hornafjörður to drop off supplies, then cut back to be loaded up at the airport near downtown Reykjavík.”
She ended the call, then turned to Scott. “It’s the same cargo plane that General Bioterrorist and members of his posse arrived on.”
Scott clenched his jaw, eased off the gas, and drifted around a sharp turn, then booked it along the eastern edge of the airport. Before reaching the side entrance onto the grounds, he got ahold of the airport’s security team, and they informed him that the plane was attempting an unauthorized takeoff and that they had orders from the president to keep it on the ground.
“We have squad cars closing in on the jet,” the officer stated.
Turning into the airport’s auxiliary parking lot, Scott gassed it through a security checkpoint, plowing through a gate and roaring past rows of parked cars and onto the edge of the tarmac. By the time they had a good view of the airstrips, the Boeing 767 was already nearing the runway.
Police cruisers and airport security vehicles flanked the aircraft, lights flashing and sirens blaring. Ahead of the plane, a row of cruisers blocked off the route to the runway.
Scott hit the gas, spitting up smoke as he accelerated past a line of private planes and helicopters to join in the pursuit. He and Alejandra watched as the aircraft closed within a hundred yards of the blockade then cut sharply into as rapid of a turn that the plane could manage, the right tires touching the edge of the grass.
“What are they doing?” Alejandra said.
Suddenly, the plane’s turbines picked up, and the aircraft completed its turn and roared toward the landing section
of the runway. The police cruisers didn’t have time to move, and the right wing of the aircraft smashed into the side of one of the vehicles, crunching it like a soda can and flipping it out of its hulking way. On a line with the stretch of pavement in front of it, the cargo plane’s engines roared even louder, and the craft swiftly picked up speed.
“We can’t let it get in the air,” Scott barked into his phone, communicating with the local law enforcement.
Having bypassed most of the officers, the plane had a near clear shot for takeoff, but two of the cruisers remained on it—one just off its right wing, and the other off the tail. Scott thundered toward them, driving perpendicular to the plane’s soon-to-be position, then cut across onto the runway beside the plane.
The jet was rapidly approaching the craft’s takeoff velocity of seventy miles per hour. Having exhausted all other methods, and with no other choice, Scott told Alejandra to take the wheel, and he withdrew his pistol. “We’re gonna need to take out the tires.”
With Alejandra keeping them straight, he rolled down the driver’s window and took aim. The plane was seconds away from rising off the tarmac when he pulled the trigger in rapid succession. The first 9mm round hit home, exploding one of the tires in the left main gear.
Two more shots finished off another, and the craft lurched, the landing gear striking the pavement and briefly shooting up sparks before being stripped clear from the fuselage. Scott let off the gas, and Alejandra swerved to the left as the nose of the plane smashed against the runway and the craft jostled uncontrollably. Unable to get out of the way in time, the left wing pitched violently and clipped the side of their BMW, crunching the panel and throwing them into a spin. They held on as the vehicle screeched off the runway and into a field, spitting up dirt and grass before coming to a shaky stop.
Catching their breath, they watched through a cracked windshield as the plane continued forward, scraping against the pavement and teetering uncontrollably left and right. Jerking left, the wing bashed into the ground, causing the craft to spin before reaching the end of the tarmac. Its momentum still intact, the plane skidded roughly into the grass and plowed through a chain-link fence before crashing into a ditch.
Followed closely by Alejandra, Scott shoved open his door, jumped out, and took off for the wreck. Before he took two steps, the damaged cargo plane blew up from the inside, the resounding boom shaking the air. Flames burst forth, engulfing the aircraft and sending debris flying in all directions.
TWENTY-TWO
The built-in GPS estimated a nineteen-minute travel time to Keflavik International. Winding to the main road, then cutting north to the coast, Jason put the iconic British sports car to the test, roaring up over a hundred miles per hour and weaving around sporadic cars as he cut through the light afternoon fog.
Making quick work up and down through the barren landscape, he reached the coast and turned sharply west onto Route 41. From there, it was a straight shot to the airport, and Jason managed to reach it in half the predicted time.
On the drive over, he’d gotten ahold of Scott via the radio. Their leader informed him that he and the others were all at the downtown airport in Reykjavík and had taken down the cargo plane attempting to take off.
“Looks like we have it, kid,” Scott said. “The plane blew up after it crashed. Whoever was pulling the strings of their operation must be trying to cover their tracks.”
Jason hastily explained what happened back at the lagoon and what Novikov had said about their enemies planning to get the samples out of Iceland.
“The UN plane?” Scott said. “Seems like a terrible plan to me. That thing’s got pretty tight security.”
The more Jason thought about it, the more it made sense. The plane utilized by the group assigned to fly in and deal with the situation would be the place least expected to harbor the insurgents.
But how would they get aboard the aircraft with the samples without being spotted?
It was a big question, and one that would be difficult to answer if Novikov had been telling the truth.
“Could all be a wild goose chase,” Jason said, flooring it toward the entrance to the private terminal. “Novikov might be messing with me, but I need to check it out. Is there any way you could contact the ATCs and get it grounded?”
“It’s supposed to take off in five minutes,” Scott said. “I’ll try, but I doubt I can stop it at this point. I have some sway, but not that much. Not here. And not with the UN.”
Jason ended the call. Part of him thought it crazy to try anything. Novikov couldn’t be trusted. But there was something in the man’s voice that had convinced Jason of the truth. And then there was the text that had popped up on the smuggler’s phone when Jason entered the master bedroom.
Plan is a go. T-minus twenty minutes.
And everything with the cargo plane downtown seemed so . . . convenient. Far too easy.
Jason knew he’d likely run into a dead end, but he didn’t care. He’d rather cover all his bases and be wrong than play it safe and miss a moment of opportunity.
He flew into the private lot and screeched to a halt at the guard shack. Flashing his terminal pass to the officers, the men cleared the way, and he drove toward the row of hangars. Their team’s jet was parked in the middle of the three, and as he cruised up toward the buildings, he spotted a white CRJ-200 out front. Black SUVs were parked in a line beside it, along with a baggage handler vehicle.
As Jason drove closer, he focused under the cockpit window where a blue logo depicted a pair of olive branches cradling a map of the world, along with “UN” in big bold letters at the tail.
Jason drummed his fingers on the wheel, trying to figure out what card to play next. He was a covert operative. He had no official jurisdiction, no documented provable authority anywhere. He couldn’t just waltz his way onto the private UN jet.
The plane’s engines were already firing as he approached the SUVs, and the baggage handlers were loading the last of the luggage from the backs of the vehicles. Parking beside the SUVs, he got an idea just before stepping out of the idling sports car. He popped the trunk with his fingers crossed and then smiled as he laid eyes on two expensive-looking roller bags. Pulling them out, he wheeled them toward the door into the cargo hold.
Surprised that no one was stopping him, but chalking it up to the fancy car and bags, he reached the side of the plane. A security guard was moving in his direction, so he climbed up into the hold for cover, then crawled behind a stack of luggage, preparing for what he assumed was an inevitable confrontation.
Less than a minute later, the two bag handlers finished up, then unlatched and shut the door, locking it into place. The moment the door slammed home, the lights dimmed in the cargo hold, shrouding Jason in near utter darkness.
TWENTY-THREE
Fire trucks and police cruisers rushed to the scene, sirens howling and personnel springing into action. Firefighters doused the fiery wreck with streams of water, doing their best to control the blaze. Wreckage lay scattered all over the tarmac and grass. Much of the fuselage was completely destroyed, including the cockpit.
Scott stood with his arms crossed, staring intently at the destroyed cargo plane. Even from two hundred yards off, he could feel the heat radiating from the burning fuel. Black smoke billowed from the wreck, tainting the afternoon sky as the inky haze was carried off with the coastal wind.
“I’m no explosives expert,” Alejandra said as she stood beside him, “but that first blast sure didn’t look accidental.”
Scott nodded, narrowing his gaze. He’d gotten a good look at the explosion while hustling toward the downed aircraft. Though the blast wave had knocked him back immediately after detonation, there seemed to be a primary explosion that detonated the fuel tanks.
“You’re right,” Scott said. “This was no accident.”
The aircraft had been moving upwards of sev
enty miles per hour, but it didn’t strike anything hard enough to combust. Modern liners like the Boeing 767 were equipped with an array of advanced interlocks and automatic safety features to ensure that fuel tanks didn’t ignite. The only way for the tanks to go up in flames was in the event of a powerful, catastrophic collision. Otherwise, the flammable liquid was unlikely to ignite.
Scott’s radio crackled to life, Jason’s voice coming through. He informed Scott that he was heading for Keflavik Airport, then briefly explained what happened at the villa and the tip that Novikov had supplied. Scott told him what happened and that he believed the cargo plane had been destroyed intentionally.
Despite their apparent success in preventing the samples from being smuggled out of the country, Scott called the Icelandic president again to request that the UN jet remain grounded for the time being, but he wasn’t able to get through. He then tried members of the UNSC but received no answers there, either. After checking his watch, he realized no one was picking up because it was time for the jet’s scheduled takeoff.
In a last-ditch effort, Scott called the air traffic control tower at Keflavik and explained the situation.
“We’ve already received the order to ground the jet, sir,” the man said.
“Copy that. Make sure it stays on the tarmac until it can be thoroughly searched. I’m on my way.”
Scott motioned to Alejandra, and they turned toward the beat-up BMW. The group’s leader was confident they’d already succeeded, but he’d learned over the years to pay attention to his operatives’ hunches.
If Jason thinks there could be something to Novikov’s tip, then it’s worth investigating.
“The jet’s already airborne,” the ATC said, his voice blaring through the speaker and freezing Scott in his tracks. “She took off less than a minute ago. We tried to stop it, but the pilot switched off his comms.”
