The Brad West Files

by Fritz Galt

  The jet continued to streak downward at a sharp angle, nose pointed straight toward the waves. Brad rubbed his eyes and reached across the aisle to tap Jade on the shoulder.

  “What is it?” she asked, groggy.

  “Do you think something’s wrong?” He pointed out the window. “May’s in the cockpit and we seem to be losing altitude fast.”

  She rubbed her face and glanced around the cabin. Her trained eyes locked on the cockpit door. “We’re going to crash. Who’s flying this aircraft?”

  By that point the steward, Earl and Dr. Yu were also awakened from a deep slumber.

  The steward staggered toward the cockpit and tried to open the door. “It’s locked.” He peer into the peephole, but shook his head. “The lens is pointed outward. I can’t see in.”

  “Is it a titanium door?” Jade asked.

  The steward shrugged. “I doubt it.”

  Brad stumbled down the sharply inclined aisle and pushed past the steward. “May?” He tried to keep the alarm from his voice.

  There was no response that he could hear.

  He knocked on the door. “May!”

  Again no response.

  He looked at the others. “I saw her get up and walk into the cockpit. I thought she was sleepwalking.”

  “Oh no!” Yu shot out, as if finally clearing the cobwebs out of his brain. “Liang had me plant a thought in her head. She’s still following the instructions.”

  Brad approached him. “What were the instructions?”

  Jade wasn’t about to wait to hear. “Out of my way.” She stepped back and took a flying leap at the cockpit door. It swung inward on its hinges.

  A struggle over the controls ensued. Through the cockpit window, Brad saw a dark shoreline. They were coming in for a crash landing, or worse. The pilot lay unconscious on the deck.

  “May, what are you doing?” Brad shouted. He could see houses glowing in the moonlight. “Wake up! You’re crashing the plane.”

  But May’s determination seemed more than Jade could handle, and she was able to prevent Jade from reaching the controls. The plane continued on autopilot on a collision course with the residential neighborhood.

  May might not appreciate this, but Brad had to manhandle her. It was the only way that Jade could take control.

  Unfortunately there was no way to fit into the cramped cockpit. The two girls were stumbling over the limp body as it was.

  “Get the pilot out of there,” he ordered the steward.

  The airman complied by hooking his hands under the captain’s armpits and pulling him out of the cockpit.

  Earl set to work trying to revive the man.

  An automated voice in the cockpit began repeating, “Climb! Climb!”

  The plane seemed to be headed for one building in particular. It was a single-story structure topped by several satellite dishes and surrounded by a parking lot and lawn. Why was she aiming for that? If she was programmed to inflict maximum damage, why not take out a five-star hotel?

  May fought like a tiger. She clawed at Jade and forced her back into the cabin.

  There was no way for Brad to enter the congested flight deck. He looked around for help. The steward and Earl were rising to their feet, unable to revive the captain. Jade had been forced back out of the cockpit.

  Yu sat bent over with his eyes closed, seemingly unaware of their impending doom. But the reverse must be true. The old man had to get through to his daughter and stop her suicide mission. Could he make contact in time?

  Brad couldn’t afford to wait for the answer to that question. Ears popping, he called to the others. “We’ll have to charge the cockpit.”

  They nodded in agreement. Massive, brute force was their only weapon. Since May was Brad’s girlfriend, he felt it his duty to lead the charge. “Get behind me and keep pushing forward. Don’t stop for anything. Run up my back if you have to. Jade, you get to the controls as soon as I knock May out of the way.”

  All nodded and Brad waited for the men to line up behind him. Earl set his hands on Brad’s hips. Moments later the group began to thrust him forward. He set his feet in motion and aimed for the cockpit.

  But May had already whirled away from the cabin and taken the pilot’s seat. Before her, the landscape began falling away. The nose of the aircraft was rising! The force behind Brad lost its momentum as the cabin changed pitch from downward to a sharp incline. Soon they were trying to climb upward into the cockpit.

  The others were dragging him back. “Let me go!”

  May must have disengaged the autopilot and was pulling back on the column. Stars appeared in the cockpit window. Was she changing the pitch of the jet in order to avoid a crash or to stop his headlong assault on the cockpit?

  The group tumbled backward and landed against the lavatory door in a pile of arms and legs.

  Jade tried to climb over them to get to the cockpit, but was stopped by an outstretched arm. Yu leaned into the aisle and tried to convince her not to interfere with his daughter. He must have gotten a telepathic message through to her.

  For her part, May was working frantically over the controls. She may have incapacitated the men, but created new dangers in the process. The twin engines were powerful, and there was no danger of a stall. But Brad got the impression that despite the fact that they were no longer nose-diving into oblivion, May had overcompensated at the controls.

  Then May’s actions became all too clear. She pushed forward on the column and turned the jet’s nose in a sweeping motion back to level. Brad felt gravity cutting off beneath him. His legs felt light. His hair began to float upward. The jet’s movement pulled him off his feet as if by an invisible hand.

  The others began floating toward the ceiling along with him. Plastered against the top of the cabin, Brad looked down at Yu, who remained buckled in his seat. The old man was fighting for control of his thoughts. Beads of perspiration stood out on his bald forehead.

  May had more than regained control of the aircraft. She had turned the cabin into a weightless environment, nullifying any attempts by the passengers to interfere with her nefarious duty. She had dropped the nose and increased thrust at the same time. The shoreline loomed large in the cockpit window.

  Brad reversed his orientation and tried to crawl on hands and knees across the ceiling toward the flight deck. But Jade and the unconscious pilot floated in his way.

  “We’ve got to stop May,” he cried. “We’re going to crash!”

  But Jade resisted. “This is standard aviation practice.”

  Brad hesitated. “For what?” He clawed at the luggage compartments for a handhold in case they suddenly changed orientation and smashed to the floor. Beyond Jade, he could see May’s view out the cockpit window. He could make out more details. They were heading straight through a cluster of palm trees, both jet engines screaming at full power.

  Why had Jade stopped him? Now they were going to crash with even greater force. He squeezed his eyes shut. He couldn’t believe this. May, a terrorist?

  Then with shifting gravity, he felt released from his levitation. He twisted midair and fell straight toward the floor. He landed hard on his hands and knees. His limbs crumpled beneath him. Then Earl landed on top.

  “Ugh.” The air rushed out of Brad’s lungs. “Thanks, pal.”

  With increased airspeed, the jet’s control surfaces became more effective, and Brad could feel every tremor in May’s arms pulling the nose upward out of the dive.

  “I thought she wanted to kill us,” came Earl’s nasal whine.

  “What? Are you complaining?” Brad wheezed. “Actually, I have no idea what she has in mind.” He craned his neck to see what would happen next.

  Buckled into the pilot’s seat, May was fighting the controls, elbows out, hair tossed wildly to one side. What sounded like a war cry ripped from her throat.

  Trees flashed by the cockpit window. The roar of the engines reverberated off the ground. Below him, Brad heard the fuselage scrape the tops o
f trees. Glass broke in the cockpit.

  Blood streamed from cuts in May’s arms. Nevertheless, she eased back on the column and pulled the jet away from objects on the ground. Their wings barely cleared poles and wires and finally lifted the terrified passengers toward safety high in the clear, black sky.

  “Um, it’s okay now,” Brad announced. “The captain has turned off the seatbelt sign. Feel free to flail about the cabin.” He grabbed for an armrest, hauled himself into a seat, and fastened the buckle low and tight across his lap. His heart pounded against the back of his seat. His clothes dripped with sweat.

  Others crawled into nearby seats and rubbed their sore limbs.

  Jade trudged forward into the cockpit, brushed glass off of May’s shoulders and hair, then wiped the copilot’s seat off and eased into it. “Mayday, mayday,” she called into the radio over the howl of the wind. “This is a U.S. Government flight requesting emergency landing at a military base in Honolulu. What is the nearest airfield?”

  “This is Wheeler Air Force Base,” crackled a voice over the radio. “We have your position.”

  Brad watched Jade’s fingers gently take over the controls. She patted May on the shoulder, and May climbed out of the pilot’s seat.

  She staggered back into the cabin. There, she faced a stony wall of silence. She looked about for an empty seat, but Brad reached out and pulled her toward him.

  She slumped into his lap, curled up like a kitten, and began to weep. He held her cold body close, more tightly than any seatbelt could. He felt her weight shift as they banked slightly and changed course for the airfield.

  “Everything is okay now,” he whispered into her ear. “It’s all over. We’re going to make it. You’re fine.”

  But was that the case? What more instructions had Yu planted in her brain? He turned to the old man across the aisle.

  “What was that building we almost hit?”

  Yu leaned back. “That was supposed to be the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center at Ewa Beach, Honolulu.”

  Tsunami? As in tidal waves? He closed his eyes. Why hit a tsunami warning center? He turned to Yu. “Are there any more instructions that you might care to share with us?”

  Chapter 41

  A medic attended to May’s cuts, then a military bus took the exhausted Brad and crew to a hotel. There they checked into a junior suite and dumped their meager belongings on the floor.

  Brad leaned over the balcony railing. Even from the eleventh floor, his view of the ocean was blocked by a wall of hotels that vied for a view of Waikiki Beach. If he stretched his neck far enough, he could watch for a tidal wave that might swamp the city.

  Back inside, Earl was campaigning for room service.

  Maybe there was something on television. The morning’s local news program was airing a live report from Ewa Beach. A camera truck had pulled up to the Pacific Tsunami Early Warning Headquarters, and a camera panned over a lawn that was littered with toppled trees and smashed communications equipment.

  “It appears that the PTWC site at Ewa Beach has been put out of commission,” the correspondent said. “Although seismometers are located all over the Pacific Basin and water floatation buoys are set up across vast areas of the Pacific, this site collects all that data, analyses it and sends out warnings to a predefined list of contacts in affected countries. It appears that these capabilities have been compromised by an unidentified pilot flying recklessly low early this morning.”

  Brad turned to Dr. Yu, who was sitting in a wicker chair, his eyelids half shut. “So why was May programmed to take out the tsunami center?”

  The reply came slowly. “Because Liang wants a giant tidal wave to flood the Pacific Rim.”

  “Both China and America?”

  Yu nodded.

  Earl cursed, shot to his feet, and began to hobble back and forth across the room.

  May took a seat on the edge of the bed. Her eyes were wide and she held a bandaged hand over her mouth. She had crippled the center and prevented it from collecting data, analyzing it, and disseminating warnings to coastal areas.

  Brad sat down beside her ostensibly to comfort her, but also to steady his wobbly knees. “He wants to kill thousands of people.”

  Earl came to a halt before the scientist. “You’ve got to call off the tsunami.”

  “I can’t. I contacted a kachina spirit and no longer have the totem.”

  “Then there must be some other spirit you can conjure up,” Earl said.

  Brad agreed. “Here in Hawaii, there must be plenty of spirits. Let’s get us the Big Kahuna.”

  They all looked at him as if he had lost his mind.

  He explained. “The only thing we can do now is to rustle up a Hawaiian god and have the two slug it out in spirit land.”

  “There’s no such place as spirit land,” the old man said. He pointed to his forehead. “They must resolve their differences in someone’s mind.”

  “Okay.” Brad sucked in his breath. “Any volunteers?”

  “Wait,” Earl said. “This is getting totally weird. You actually expect two spirits to take control of someone’s brain and duke it out in there? That could permanently scramble the brains. Speaking of which, how about room service?”

  “Any volunteers?” Brad repeated. “All it takes is a little drugs.”

  “No drugs,” the scientist said. “We’ll do this my way. The natural way.”

  “Okay, scratch the drugs.” Brad looked around for someone to sacrifice their sanity in order to save the world. He eyed Earl, not the bravest man on earth. Then there was Jade, suddenly interested in checking out the BlackBerry that the old guy had retrieved for her. She was too sensible to put her mind at risk. His eyes fell on May. She had gone through a big enough ordeal already.

  That left him. He was the best choice for the final showdown over the tsunami. He already had one spirit in his mind, so he was receptive. How much harm could a second one do?

  The room was so silent that the ticking of Earl’s watch became unnerving.

  Earl stomped his cast on the floor. “Will someone please volunteer? This thing could roll into town any second now.”

  “Okay,” Brad said, and stood up. “I’ll—”

  “Wait!” May said. “I know the person to use.”

  Brad whirled around. “Who?”

  “Liang.”

  That sounded reasonable, and would serve him right.

  “Yeah,” Earl said. “I wouldn’t mind if Liang tore every hair out of his head. He could bash his brains in for all I care.”

  Yu was shaking his head. “No. We’re not talking about mind control here. This is more a matter of praying to the spirits to save us. I need a temple.”

  Brad summoned up his limited knowledge of Honolulu. “There’s a Chinatown here.”

  “Then we must go to their Matsu temple,” May declared.

  “Agreed,” Earl said. “To the Matsu temple. I’ll drive.”

  Brad looked around. “Did I say there is a Matsu temple here?”

  “Nonsense,” May said. “This is by the sea. And in every Chinese town by the sea there is a Matsu temple.”

  The old man was waving a hand over his head. “I didn’t say I needed a Chinese temple.”

  They all turned to him. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a tattered business card. “Someone call Dr. Yapo. He will help us reach the Hawaiian gods.”

  Brad noticed an awkward silence in the room. They all felt rebuked. They were mere amateurs running around like a Chinese fire drill when all they needed was the old man for wisdom and answers.

  But who was Dr. Yapo?

  He crossed to Yu and took the card. It bore the name Dr. Mamadou Yapo. “Is this guy Hawaiian?”

  The scientist shook his head. “Nigerian.”

  “Ah. That fits.”

  “Just call him,” Earl said. His eyes shifted down to his wristwatch.

  Brad pulled out his cell phone, punched in the number on the business card, and wai
ted for the ring tone on the other end. Eventually, a groggy voice answered, “Aloha.”

  He cleared his throat. “Is this Dr. Yapo?”

  “It is.”

  That was a relief. “I’m calling on behalf of Dr. Yu Zhaoguo. He is here in Honolulu and has an urgent question for you.”

  He handed the phone over to Yu, who took it and launched into a discussion that sounded more New Age than scientific. It included concepts about lower self and higher self and hunas and aka cords.

  When he was finished, he handed the phone back to Brad. “We have to fly to another island. Kauai.”

  May approached her father and laid an arm around his shoulders. “Why there?”

  “Dr. Yapo will meet us at the Princeville Hotel next to the exact spot where Pele formed the Hawaiian Islands. It is a good place to summon the gods.”

  Brad’s imagination took him to a far-off island where women danced in hula skirts and tribal leaders offered incantations over luaus. “Let’s all go.”

  The old man shook his head. “No, my son. You must remain here and find Liang.”

  “What’s more important?” Brad said. “Stopping the tsunami or stopping Liang?”

  “They are one and the same,” Yu said with a smile.

  “Huh?”

  “I had to speak to the Pueblo water god when I was in Colorado. And the only way to reach a spirit is through another person. So I chose Liang.”

  “You mean that the water god is in Liang’s mind?”

  The old man nodded.

  “And where will you put the Hawaiian god?” Brad asked. “It has to be someone with enough fortitude and mental stamina to undergo a battle.”

  Everybody was looking at him. Really looking at him.

  “Wait a second. I thought the two spirits could fight it out in a single mind.” He backed away from the grinning faces. “And one is already in Liang’s.”

  Even Yu was looking expectantly at him. “You will have to defeat the water god in the physical realm. Only then can your spirit receive the vital force to defeat the water god in the higher realm.”

  Brad thumbed his chest. “You mean you want me to take Liang on mano a mano?”