Page 53 of Red Boar's Baby

There was movement up front, and Jim, the pasty-looking copilot, came back along the aisle, holding onto the backs of the seats. Once again Diana was struck by the vague wrongness. He just didn’t move like someone who was easy in the air.

“Something wrong back here, folks?”

“Yeah,” Diana said. “We’re going the wrong way.”

Jim grinned. “No worries, we’re just detouring around some rough weather. It might put us a few minutes behind, but to worry about.”

“What rough weather?” Diana asked warily.

“Oh, just a few thunderheads. Nothing major, but there’s no reason to get tossed around.”

It was plausible. Too plausible. She couldn’t disprove it. The sky seemed clear at the moment, but spring weather was volatile, and things could show up on radar that weren’t visible to the eye.

“Well, just be careful with those sudden changes,” she said, smiling. “Too much positive pitch can have us slamming straight down into the ground in no time.”

“No worries, nothing like that is going to happen. We’re fine.”

As Jim made his laborious way back to the cockpit, Costa leaned in. “What’s wrong?”

She hadn’t realized anything showed on her face. “Is it that obvious?”

“Probably not to them,” Costa said calmly. “So tell me.”

Diana flicked a glance after Jim. He was leaning over to speak to Farley in the cockpit. “I was right. He’s not a pilot.”

“How do you know?”

“He doesn’t even know the terminology. Positive pitch means we’d be going up, not down; he should have corrected me.”

“Right. I’m checking in.” Costa took out his phone. Then he hit some buttons and frowned at the screen.

“What’s wrong?”

“No signal. That isn’t right. Up here we ought to be getting a signal from any cell tower in the area. Even the emergency call option isn’t working. Check yours.”

Diana pulled out her phone and frowned at it. “No signal on mine either.”

“We’re being jammed.”

Alarm tingled along Diana’s nerves. “That would affect the airplane’s instruments as well.”

“I wasn’t sure about that, but I figured.”

She glanced towards the cockpit. The collapsible door—more for privacy than defense in a machine this small—had been drawn halfway across, but what she could see of the activity in the cockpit simply looked normal: the pilot and copilot in their seat, headsets on and heads bent slightly towards each other.

“They don’t look alarmed,” she said.

“No, they don’t, do they?” Costa unbuckled his seatbelt, but didn’t immediately move.

Diana swallowed. “What do you think is happening? Is there something, some broadcast or other signal, affecting aviation in this area?”

And maybe the pilots as well, she thought in an instant of wild panic. What if some signal was doing something to their brains? What if it did something toherbrain?

“I would guess it’s affecting this plane only, and the reason why they’re not alarmed is because they’re doing it,” Costa said. His voice was level, calm, and controlled, and under its influence Diana’s panic collapsed like a pricked balloon. She was still scared, but he was right: there wasn’t some psychic wavelength or mind-control ray affecting them. It was a perfectly normal, run of the mill ... kidnapping?

“Are we being kidnapped?” she asked quietly.

“I would guess either that, or they’ve decided to conveniently lose a couple of pesky federal agents.”

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