by Amy Faye
Stay seated. No smoking. Once the light turns off, you can get out of your seat for a while. But it was just a jump from Damascus to Tehran. You could barely read a short novel in the time it took to take the trip. Most people could probably hold it.
There was a little bit of muttering in first class, and a bit more muttering from coach. Blake turned and looked. The American kept herself planted in a jump seat and watched down the aisle. She saw him, but she didn’t make any response. There were no curtains between first class and coach. Packed three-to-a-side, there were more people to mutter. Then the other attendants went and sat down themselves.
There was no alcohol to speak of, and he wasn’t hungry. He was tired, but not tired enough to sleep. Just tired enough to be on-edge and irritable.
The plane jumped and jerked into the air, and then before he knew it they’d leveled out and they were barely two and a half hours out of Tehran already. The seatbelt signs went off. In front of him, a woman rose, her head covered in a lilac purple hijab that he had to admit looked good against her dark tanned skin. But he had the respect not to think about it any more than that.
All in all, it was a perfectly normal flight. Which was what made it so strange when he heard a sound that he was absolutely attuned to. A noise that couldn’t have been misinterpreted. The distinctive bloated bark of a 45-caliber pistol.
A woman screamed. Blake turned in his seat. A young man looked like he was ready to kill every passenger on the plane. There was a good chance that he was. He shouted a prayer, grabbed the blonde, and started forward.
Blake sucked in a breath and eased the seatbelt latch open. It came apart easily and mostly silent. Nothing else on the plane was silent. Everyone shouted all at once, and most of them crowded away from the center.
Blake kept fussing with the control. The guy was young, and he looked like he spent some time in the gym. As he came forward, through first class, Blake looked up at him. He looked down. The guy looked angry. But he didn’t look absolutely confident. He didn’t look like he had done a whole lot of this kind of thing before. And if Blake guessed right, he wasn’t likely to do much of it again.
He started in Arabic. Maybe he knew English, maybe he didn’t. But he started with Arabic. “You want to die?”
Blake did his best to sound afraid. “I don’t understand!”
The blonde looked at him curiously. She’d heard him speaking before. He was fluent in Arabic, of course. But that didn’t mean he was going to let some kid intimidate him free of charge.
“You want to die,” the kid repeated again. The gun barrel was still warm when it jammed into Blake’s head.
Then Blake moved. It was subtle and slow at first, and then fast and hard. By the time there was something to see, it was too late to stop. The gun twisted in the boy’s hands, wrenched on his fingers until Blake felt them about to pop. Then he yanked the gun loose, hard, before the kid could try to fire it again. It fell to the floor, and the kid started reaching.
Blake kicked hard into his nose. The kid stumbled back, blood streaming through fingers that tried to hold the broken cartilage together. Blake grabbed his arm, twisted, and broke it at the shoulder in one easy motion. Like taking a lid off a jar.
He looked up at blondie. “Go get some handcuffs or something. They’ve probably got something in the cockpit.”
“Is… are we okay?”
“Go on. Ask for handcuffs. They’ll probably have them.”
She left. A minute later, she came back with a zip-tie. It wasn’t a kindness, but then, the kid had been trying to hijack an airplane. If kindness wasn’t on the menu, then Blake wasn’t going to feel that bad for him. He tightened the zip-tie until it cinched and then strapped the guy into his seat.
“That should keep him busy a minute.”
Blake reached down and plucked the pistol from the floor. He released the magazine and cleared the breach before handing the magazine, bullet, and empty pistol to the stewardess.
“I told you, you have any trouble…”
“What do I do with these?”
“You’re the expert,” Blake answered coolly.
“And then what?”
“You look nervous. After that, you relax. If you need any help with that, I’ve got a great system.”
Three
There was no way that nobody had any idea what was going on. Lara told herself over and over again. It was a mistake. She could get fired for this. Hell, she would get fired for it. If not arrested, which was far, far more likely.
Then the savior’s lips tasted her throat again, and the shock of pleasure that ran up her spine reminded her of the reason that she was doing this at all. If any of the other people on the flight could, they’d be doing it, too. Watching someone get shot, and then having the whole thing stopped by some stranger, was about as exciting an event as anyone could experience.
She just wanted to come down from it easy. In the best way possible. And he promised her that experience. One that she’d more or less denied herself ever since Greg had suggested it. He hadn’t done much to earn it, and everything since then had suggested that turning him down was the right choice.
This was a little bit of an exception, though. More than that. A lot of an exception. She took a deep breath and held it as he started to work on the buttons of her shirt.
The scarf tucked into the lapels of her blouse came free. He pulled it down and off. The movement was rough and more than a little bit violent. And somehow, it was delicious and freeing. What she wanted, without ever realizing how much she’d wanted it.
His lips kissed down, following the skin revealed by the unbuttoned blouse, inch by inch. His lips drew a line down her sternum, through the valley between her breasts. He kept going, though, even in the cramped space provided by the bathroom. It was small enough that two people could barely stand, and he was not a small man. Somehow he crammed his shoulders between the sink and the door and kept kissing until he was finally blocked by the waistline of her skirt.
Her mystery savior stood up. He towered over her, and now that she was stripped half-bare, she felt even more vulnerable. Even smaller. He hooked a finger under the cup of her bra and pushed up.
She wanted to say something. To make some kind of excuse for her less than stellar breasts. They were too small. A man like this, he probably could lay super-models if he wanted to. But then, someone would hear. And even though they had to know what was going on, there was a difference between letting someone reach their own conclusions, and letting everyone listen to your casual, no-names fuck with a stranger.
Then again, he had a name for her. Lara. It said it right on her nametag. If only passengers wore them.
If he was bothered by her cup size, though, he didn’t show it. He dipped his head and pulled a nipple into his mouth. The feeling was immense. Lara had always had sensitive nipples. Apparently, the threat of nearly dying only amplified that feeling. It was only in the back of her mind that she felt his fingers fitting into the waistband of her skirt, working the clasp and then the zipper. The skirt fit tight around her hips, but with the zipper undone it slipped easily down her body, where it pooled on the floor around her ankles.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he growled. His voice was low and soft, quiet enough that she hoped nobody would be able to hear. She sucked in a breath. No, she wasn’t, she thought. But she didn’t argue. She didn’t have the presence of mind to argue even if she wanted to.
His fingers found the waistband of her panties next. He pulled them away from her and his hand slipped inside. His fingers were thick and powerful, but the skin was smooth. A contradiction, in some senses. He looked like the kind of man whose fingers ought to be rough and calloused.
Those soft fingers worked their way through her pubic hair—hair she would have shaved, if she’d expected anything like this, but the truth was that she hadn’t. Then he found the peak of her womanhood, and probed it gently with the tip of a finger. Tested it. And she found that she
wanted him to keep testing. Keep searching. Because if this was what it started off as, then she wasn’t sure where it was going to end up except that it was precisely what she’d been missing out on.
He didn’t stop. His hands kept creeping lower, deeper, until he managed to find her wet, waiting entrance, and he eased one of those thick fingers inside. Lara gasped. Something about the need to be quiet built the whole thing up inside her. The knowledge that there was someone right there only a few feet away, in every direction.
His finger pushed into her deeper. Deeper still. Until it felt like it was all the way inside, filling her up entirely. If this was what a finger was like, what was his cock going to feel like?
He pulled back a little, then pushed in again. His movements were slow and measured. Never fast, never anything but smooth and easy. And yet, Lara could feel an orgasm already starting to build up to a head. He pulled her other nipple into his mouth. This time he didn’t satisfy himself with a soft kiss and a circle of his tongue. His teeth bit in, hard enough to hurt. Hard enough to feel impossibly, wonderfully pleasant, too.
Lara let out a gasp and bit her thumb. It made it easier to stop herself letting out a noise as she felt herself tighten around his finger. As she rode out the waves of an orgasm his finger inside her curled and bent and pressed, still pumping in and out. Searching for the spot inside her that would drive her even more wild. And then he found it.
The orgasm deepened, her pussy squeezing down even harder. Like she was trying to squeeze the life out of the man between her thighs through his fingers. When he withdrew his hand from her panties, it was like losing a friend.
“Turn around,” he whispered into her ear. She did, without really thinking about it. She knew what was coming, but she was in a daze. She didn’t think about the consequences, not any more. She stuck her fist into her mouth to keep quiet, and when he lined himself up with her entrance and then pushed inside, she stifled a moan as best she could.
If she’d felt full before, then she didn’t have words for what she was feeling now. Impossibly stuffed. Her body felt so wild that it was all she could do to keep her voice down. His hips moved forward to meet hers. It started slow. All the way in, and then he’d move back out, agonizingly slowly.
Every movement, her body tried to stop. She wanted him to stop, too, sort of. Part of her wanted to think this all over. Wanted to get control of herself. Wanted to do a whole bunch of math on whether or not this was the worst fucking idea she’d ever had.
The other parts of her, though, were more than happy to oblige. And as much as she knew it was wrong, she wanted it bad enough that she wasn’t about to question herself. Not really.
Eventually, he started to move faster. The parts of her that wanted him to stop realized that they’d made a terrible mistake. They’d have missed out. He moved hard and fast, enough that Lara worried about the noise she was sure it would make. By some miracle he managed to avoid the telltale sign of flesh slapping on flesh, his cock grinding into her with every thrust, hard and fast and so delicious.
Lara’s teeth hurt as they dug into her hands. Holding back the sound made the feelings bounce around her body like pinballs, nowhere to be let out so instead the pleasure just built up until she couldn’t control herself.
He moved faster still. Any worries about noise seemed to be out of his head. Lara knew that they’d all left hers a long time ago. All that was left was his body and hers, and the fact that they were locked into a space much, much too small for what they were doing. But she didn’t care any more, as long as she got to keep feeling this.
Her body tensed again, squeezing around his shaft. Her savior’s manhood pushed all the way into her, down to the base, and then she felt him shudder behind her, twitching inside her, and she felt the warmth of his cum spreading through her body.
As she started to come down, her mind finally starting to catch back up with her body and realizing that she’d just made perhaps the biggest possible mistake of her career, Lara sat down. She reached for her skirt. Well, she thought sourly. At least I didn’t die today. And I guess overall, I’ve got to count that as a win.
Four
Blake’s mind was on Lara. She was an attractive young woman. He’d seen plenty of women who were worth taking notice of. But she’d been surprisingly cool under pressure, and of course, the ‘snack’ afterward was more than just any fond memory.
Even though he’d seen plenty of women in his time, and even spent a little time with some of them, in the near-twenty years since he joined the army, none had stuck in his craw like she was doing right now. Maybe he was getting old after all. Maybe it was the right thing that he wasn’t in the field. After all, if he couldn’t focus at home, what were the chances that he could focus out in the field?
Then again, maybe it was the environment that had made him soft. He forced himself to focus on the matter at hand and looked again at the screen. A video chat with Ray. They’d gotten hell for it, but it was so much easier to use video than to use any other combination. And there were a few secure services now, even if they were mostly used to broadcast all kinds of illegal garbage.
“Come on, Ray, what have you got for me?”
Ray looked up from his notes like he was surprised to hear Blake’s voice. Somewhere, several thousand miles away, it was the middle of the night and someone had to figure out what on earth had just happened.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “We’ve got a name. Hisham Hussain. He’s got ties to local rebel groups. He’s nobody, sir.”
“Nobody?”
“Nobody worth mentioning.”
“Okay, so what was nobody doing on an IranAir flight to Tehran? And precisely how did he get a 1911 onboard?”
A few seconds later the audio made its way across the line, and the video feed from Ray’s end made it back. His lips spread into a wide, flat line.
“We’re still working to figure that out, sir.”
“Alright, then. What have you got for me? A motive?”
“No clear motive, sir.”
No clear motive. Those were Blakes favorite words. Because they meant that he and his people had messed up so royally that they might as well just quit their day jobs.
“None at all?”
“Well, sir, I don’t want to jump to conclusions.”
“Oh, feel free, Major. Go right ahead. Jump to conclusions.”
“Well, his group doesn’t have anything against Iran. Doesn’t even seem to have anything against the Syrian government. Their whole thing is opposition to ‘Zionist occupying forces.’”
Blake had a good idea of what that meant, in the most practical sense of the words. “Meaning us?”
“Meaning us, and people like us, sir.”
“So you’re suggesting he was there for me?”
“I don’t know if he knew who you were, sir. But there’s reason to believe that he was downing the plane to take you out, sir.”
“And no other ideas?”
“Nothing concrete at this time.”
Blake let out a long, low breath. “Good work, Major. If anything changes, don’t hesitate to call. Day or night.”
“Yes, sir.”
The commander saluted. There was something awful about the whole thing. It stunk to high heaven. Questions abound. But in spite of how harshly he’d reacted, there was no reason to blame anyone. Twelve hours was too fast to get a complete story.
They weren’t living in a world where they could take their time getting intel though. They needed to be out in front of attacks like the one that he’d very narrowly foiled. If it wasn’t nobody that had tried to hijack that plane, then there was a good chance that Blake would have been a dead man. It was sheer dumb luck.
Sheer dumb luck wasn’t good enough. He picked up the phone sitting on his desk and pulled it into his shoulder. A moment later, a woman’s voice answered.
“Something wrong?”
“Mom?”
“Blake?”
“Is
Dad there? I need a favor.”
She hesitated a moment. Blake figured she was grabbing a pen. His favors never ended up being can you go pick up the kids from soccer practice. Not the least because he hadn’t been blessed with any children.
“Okay, go.”
“I need Dad to find me a plane. Something with minimum 2,000 miles range on a full tank of fuel. Other than that, comfortable flying for two or three.”
“An airplane, Blake? You can’t be serious.”
“Don’t ask, okay? Just something. Will you ask him or not?”
“I can see what your father can do, but…”
“Have him call me tonight. It’s not an emergency, yet.”
“Is everything okay?”
Blake took a breath in. “I’m fine. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“You know, I just worry about you.”
“I’ll come by for dinner, then. I can talk to Dad.”
“I’ll pass the message along when he gets home.”
“You’re a saint. I love you.”
“Love you too, hon.” Blake set the phone down in the cradle and closed his eyes. There were a thousand questions that he didn’t want to answer. It was an unspoken sort of rule. If there’s danger, don’t talk about it with three people in your life: Your kid, your wife, or your mother.
No wife, and no kids. Which meant that Blake had to be extra careful not mentioning the specifics of his job. Then again, with his primary job taking him as far as three cities over, she didn’t usually have much to worry about.
Now he’d asked his father to ask around about a luxury jet-liner. Which was to say that he’d announced in big letters that he suddenly didn’t trust commercial flights, or that he’d suddenly changed his opinions about spending tons of money on something he didn’t need.
Either one was something worth investigating. But he wasn’t going to talk about it with her. It was just bad business.
