by Ken Douglas
Scorpion
Ken Douglas
Ken Douglas
Scorpion
Chapter One
The plane jerked with the thundering sound of the explosion, cutting off all talk in the cabin. Broxton grabbed his seatbelt and cinched it tighter. Cold chills laced along his spine. A stewardess going by with a drink tray stumbled. He lashed out with his left arm, circling her waist, and pulled her toward him, spilling the tray from her hand, showering nearby passengers with Coca Cola and orange juice.
“ Hey,” she said, resisting and pushing against him, but he was stronger. “No,” she said, as he pulled her down into his lap.
“ Bomb,” he whispered into her ear. Her body sagged as he wrestled her into the empty window seat next to him. She grabbed behind herself with both hands, searching for and finding the seatbelt. She buckled up and Broxton saw the color fade from her face. She grabbed onto the armrests, her skin pale as the sky on the other side of the window, her lower lip quivering, her eyes wide.
“ Oh, lord,” she said, as oxygen masks dropped down from above each passenger, orange, with clear plastic tubes, bouncing and jiggling, like hula dancers on parade. They were flying at thirty-five thousand feet and losing pressure. Broxton reached up, grabbed the mask and slipped it over his head. The stewardess next to him did the same, her hands shaking.
“ You okay?” he asked, voice muffled by the mask.
“ Yeah,” she nodded, but he didn’t believe her. She sucked her lower lip between her teeth and clamped down on it to stop the quivering, her auburn hair, long and perfect only an instant ago, now seemed wild and untamed, her flared nostrils accented the freckles around her nose. She had a fawn-like quality that startled him. He forced himself away from the terror in her eyes and looked over her shoulder, out the window. The mammoth wing shuddered and he was afraid the powerful engines were going to break away, but the shaking stopped as the wing tipped earthward, seeming to drag the rest of the plane with it.
“ My God!” he said as the plane shuddered again, a great spasm running through it, like a death rattle, as the 747 lurched earthward, seeming to pick up speed. The clouds below were moving in a circular direction, but the pilot straightened the descent, added power and pulled back on the yoke. For a few seconds they were in a steep climbing turn. Broxton felt the G force as the plane fought the pilot. He was sucked into his seat, jaws, arms, hands, even fingers weighed down. He dropped his head, forced his mouth open, fought an urge to scream and grabbed oxygen into his lungs.
Then the plane lost the will to climb and started downward again.
He reached into his pocket, feeling for the engagement ring. He slipped the tip of his index finger through it, satisfied that it was still there. He prayed the pilot would bring them in safely. He twirled the ring around his fingertip. Dani, he thought, and he felt the familiar ache in his heart. He should have married her all those years ago.
The plane shimmied to the left, pulling him out of his reverie as the descent steepened. He was afraid it was too much for the plane. He looked out the window, half expecting the wings to rip away, turning the plane into an aluminum tube, spiraling and spinning toward the ocean below. Then the nose eased up, the pilot had slowed the rate of decent, but the sinking feeling in his stomach told him that they were still going down.
The stewardess gripped his hand, nails digging into his palm. He turned to look at her and she relaxed her grip for a second. He couldn’t see her mouth through the mask, but he could tell by the crinkles around her eyes that she was attempting to smile. He forced himself to smile back and he gave her hand a gentle squeeze. He noticed the bruise under her right eye. She’d tried to cover it with makeup. He wondered how she’d hurt herself.
A baby cried, the pressure loss playing havoc on its eardrums. He squeezed his nose, held his mouth shut, and tried to breathe out, equalizing the pressure in his own head. He saw the stewardess imitating him, felt her sigh as the pressure equalized.
A woman’s scream shrilled up from deep in second class and it gave him the excuse he needed to turn away from her. He looked around first class. The orange oxygen masks hid the lower half of the faces, but they couldn’t hide the furrowed brows, eyes clenched shut against reality, or the stiff hands gripping armrests. Many were holding their breath. But there was no panic. There was no point.
He felt the pressure on his hand lessen, then increase. He turned back to look at the stewardess, caught in her Christmas green eyes, and he tried to imagine what he looked like to her.
Did his eyes show the freezing spark that was running up and down his spine? Did they betray the electric tingling at the back of his neck? The tight heat in the pit of his stomach? Did she know he felt like voiding himself at both ends? Could she feel the invisible claws raking over his skin?
The plane jerked and the luggage locker overhead popped open. He ducked as a briefcase fell out, bouncing off his shoulder, sending a stab of pain through his arm. He saw her wince, as if she felt it too. The briefcase hit the floor and sprang open. Papers, a cellular phone, a pocket calculator and a Barbie doll rolled out. The traveling executive had a little girl.
The doll rolled against his foot. He bent over and picked it up. Wherever this Barbie was, it was always summer. Her hair was always blond, always long, her eyes always blue and she always had on that pert summer dress. Barbie never worried. Barbie never had clammy skin, and Barbie never died.
He inhaled the oxygen, closed his eyes and wrapped his fist around the doll, tiny breasts digging into the palm of his left hand as the stewardess’ nails dug into his right. He squeezed harder.
“ Hurts,” she whispered.
“ Sorry,” he said and he relaxed the pressure on both her hand and his eyelids. The interior of the plane slid back into focus. They were still going down, but the angle of descent had eased even more. He began to hope as he slipped the Barbie doll into the magazine pouch on the seatback in front of him.
There. She was safe and warm and away from harm.
He leaned his head back against the seat and rolled it slightly to take in the passenger across the isle. She was old, with rouged cheeks and blue rinsed hair, sitting next to a man who looked like he’d been her husband for several generations. Like himself and the stewardess, they were holding hands. She was looking into the man’s eyes. The man took off his mask and mouthed the words, “I love you,” and Broxton felt the stewardess squeeze his hand. She’d seen it, too.
The plane leveled off after what seemed like a forever down slide on the world’s longest roller coaster.
“ Ladies and gentlemen,” the captain’s voice boomed over the plane’s speaker system, “I don’t know what the problem was, but we have it under control. We’ve had some sort of malfunction in the rear of the plane that caused us to lose cabin pressure, but we have the aircraft under control.”
He was repeating himself. He didn’t know what he was talking about. He was lying.
The stewardess squeezed his hand again and he turned toward her. She slipped her mask off and the hairs on the back of his hands started to tingle when she smiled. Full lips, no lipstick, she didn’t need it, perfect teeth. She was gently biting down on her tongue, as if she wanted to say something and was holding back.
“ What?” He pulled his own mask off. He inhaled and smelled a whiff of her perfume mingled with her fear. It assaulted him like a patch of wildflowers on a windy summer day.
“ You didn’t check on them?” the stewardess said.
Broxton smiled. “You’re very observant.”
“ I’m married to a cop, it goes with the territory. You’ve been watching them. Sneaking peaks whenever you think you can get away with it. You’re not very good. If they were criminals they’d be on to you.” She had a sligh
t Mexican accent that didn’t go with her pale skin and green eyes.
“ I’m supposed to see that nothing happens to them.” He turned and looked over his shoulder at the last two seats in the center of the first class section.
The prime minister’s face was ashen, and he was gripping his seat with an intense fervor. His gray skin and gray hair gave off a death-like pallor, only the beads of sweat dripping from his hair line and the weak rising and falling of his chest told Broxton that there was any life there.
By contrast, the attorney general, in the seat next to him, was taking long, slow breaths, sucking the life-giving oxygen deep into his lungs and exhaling in an almost leisurely fashion. He’s accepted his fate, Broxton thought, he knows it’s out of his hands. He’ll take whatever is dealt. He won’t show fear. He’s a strong man. The prime minister is not.
“ He’s a good man,” the stewardess said. “Tough too. You’d never know he’d had open heart surgery last year.”
“ I didn’t know that.” Broxton took another look at the prime minister’s face. He was grimacing, but it could be pain, not fear. Maybe he’d been too quick to judge.
“ Looks like he might be in some pain,” Broxton said.
“ I wouldn’t be surprised,” she said.
“ The attorney general looks pretty calm, though.”
“ He was an athlete. World famous.”
“ I’ve never heard of him.”
“ Actually neither had I, but the two Trini flight attendants are both gaga over him. He was a cricket player.”
“ That explains it. It’s a sport I don’t keep up on.”
“ They say he’s a real ladies man, Trinidad’s most eligible bachelor.”
“ He looks the part,” Broxton said, noticing the dark man’s expensive suit and salon haircut.
“ Are you some kind of bodyguard?” she asked. He turned back toward her and again she was looking deep into his eyes.
“ Kind of. I’m supposed to keep Prime Minister Ramsingh alive, only he’s not supposed to know it.”
“ I don’t understand,” she said. Her nostrils flared, just a little, and the wrinkles around her eyes scrunched together. Little crow’s feet. He guessed her to be in her mid-thirties, about his age.
“ Someone wants him dead. Attorney General Chandee doesn’t take the threat seriously. My boss does.” He couldn’t believe it. He was telling her about the job. That was forbidden, but he didn’t care. They were talking to take their minds off the horrible reality around them. They were whispering.
“ Who do you work for?”
“ The United States Government.”
“ Oh,” she said.
He turned to look over his shoulder again.
A well built man pushed through the curtain from second class. The sun shining in through the windows on the left side of the aircraft reflected off something shiny in the man’s hand. A knife?
Broxton flicked open the seatbelt and charged down the aisle. The man was leaning over the prime minister. Broxton pulled him off and slammed him across the laps of two priests sitting in the seats opposite. The man had a shocked look on his face. Broxton raised his hand to strike, then he saw the chrome flask in the man’s hand.
“ Sorry,” Broxton said, “I thought it was a knife.” He held his hand out to help the man up. The grip was strong and firm and a smile glinted out from his pale blue eyes, but it vanished quickly, turning to a cold stare. Not a man to take lightly.
“ Brandy,” the prime minister said. His mask was off and in his hand. “If I have to take the heart medication I like to enjoy it going down.” Broxton noticed the liver spots on the prime minister’s hands.
“ Bill Broxton,” he introduced himself. “Again, I’m awful sorry about the mistake. For some stupid reason I thought I saw a knife. I feel like an idiot.”
“ Kevin Underfield,” the man said. “I work for Minister Chandee.” Broxton had to think for a second, then he remembered that in Trinidad the cabinet members were also elected members of parliament.
Broxton turned back toward the prime minister, who continued talking as if nothing had happened. “I used to drink more than my share, enjoyed it. I liked the way it made me feel and usually I could handle it, but from time to time I’d make an ass out of myself. That was before I came into politics, but the press never lets one forget his indiscretions, so now the only time alcohol touches my lips is when I have to take the damn medicine. They still write about my drinking, but now it’s a plus because it’s the old Ramsingh they’re writing about and everybody knows it except them.”
“ So you turned your drinking and past indiscretions into an asset. It can’t be easy to live with.”
“ So you see the two-edged sword.”
“ I see it,” Broxton said. “As long as you don’t drink you can shrug off the past and any man that writes about it unwittingly reminds his readers how you overcame your problem to become prime minister, but if you ever get tanked up again it’ll all blow up in your face.”
“ Yes, they would see me as nothing more than a common drunk.”
“ A hard way to go,” Broxton said. Ramsingh looked up at him through gray eyes that danced around his smile. The man radiated honesty and Broxton couldn’t help liking him.
“ Are you a cop of some kind?” Underfield asked. He had a British accent and that puzzled Broxton.
“ DEA.”
“ I thought we made it clear to your government that we understand the threat and don’t desire any of your help.” The attorney general’s voice was muffled by the oxygen mask. Broxton was finding it hard to breathe, but not impossible.
“ I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Broxton said. “I thought the man had a knife. I recognized the Prime Minister of Trinidad. I made a mistake. I said I was sorry.”
“ If you’re not here to watch over the prime minister, why are you on this flight?” Chandee pointed an accusing finger at Broxton.
“ I’m going to Trinidad to get married,” Broxton said, adding, “if she’ll have me.”
“ And the lucky woman is?” Now Chandee had his mask off, too. He pulled his finger back and laced his hands in his lap. He was addressing Broxton as if he was on the witness stand, but it didn’t matter, Broxton had an answer for him.
“ Dani Street,” he said.
Chandee’s snarl shifted into a smirk that turned Broxton angry. He wanted to slap it off his face, but he held himself in check.
“ The ambassador’s daughter?” the prime minister said. “Maybe we’ve been too quick to judge Mr. Broxton, George. I’ve told you before, you have to watch that.” The prime minister looked at Chandee like a benevolent parent does a wayward child, and the man visibly withered under his stare. His fingers stiffened in his lap as he turned away from his boss and toward Broxton, offering him a thin- lipped smile.
“ I think I’ll just go back to my seat,” Broxton said.
“ That would be best,” Chandee said, his face tight.
“ The ambassador’s daughter?” Underfield said, almost laughing.
Broxton nodded, then the plane hit a patch of turbulence and he stumbled, but caught himself, gripping the back of the prime minister’s seat. Several of the passengers gasped, but nobody screamed. Most of them kept their masks on.
He looked at Chandee, met his eyes, smiled and said, “You know, George, you really should watch that temper. One of these days it’s going to land you in deep shit and the prime minister won’t be around to help you out.”
“ There’s always me,” Underfield said, his gaze turning to knife blades.
“ Right,” Broxton said. And he turned away and started back toward his seat.
“ I work for the attorney general, you know.”
“ You said that,” Broxton said, without turning around. And he quickly forgot about Underfield when he eyed a little girl sitting next to her father. Her hand was clasped tightly in his and her lips were moving. She’s praying, he thought.
He smiled at her and she smiled back, lighting up her freckles. Then she gave him a thumbs up sign. He stuck out his right thumb and flashed it back.
He returned to his seat, thinking about the Barbie doll. He took it out of the magazine pouch and fluffed the doll’s hair with a finger. Then he straightened her dress. He felt the stewardess’ eyes on him. He didn’t even know her name.
“ Yours?” he said, smiling at the girl. She nodded and he handed it back to her. He was rewarded with a smile back. Would the girl’s mother be waiting for her husband and daughter at the airport? Would the airline tell waiting friends and relatives about the trouble on board or would they just say the plane was delayed? Would they make it to Port of Spain at all?
“ It’ll be okay,” the stewardess said, as if reading his mind.
“ I know,” Broxton said, but he didn’t know.
“ I’m Maria,” she said.
“ Bill,” he said, “but most people call me Broxton.”
“ You made an enemy back there,” she said.
“ Sometimes I have a big mouth, like today. My job is supposed to be kind of secret and not one day into it and I’ve not only told you, but I’ve managed to get in an argument with the attorney general.”
“ It looks like Mr. Ramsingh’s being well taken care of.”
“ You mean the muscle man?”
“ He looks like he can handle himself.”
“ He does at that,” Broxton laughed, “and I guess I’ve upset him a little, too.”
“ It would seem so,” she laughed, and he swore her eyes were sparkling.
“ Ladies and Gentlemen,” it was the captain’s voice over the speakers again, “we’re flying at eight thousand feet and although it’s possible to breathe without your oxygen masks I would recommend you keep them on. Our speed is two hundred and fifty miles an hour, less than half of our normal cruising speed, and I’m afraid that will put us forty-five minutes behind schedule for our landing in Port of Spain. So our new ETA is 2:45, If you haven’t already reset your watches, now would be a good time to do it.”
