Page 68 of Air Force One
“He—what?”
At that moment, he released the brakes and the plane jerked forward. She waited through the long takeoff roll, but the climb out was smooth. Wobbly, but smooth.
“Well, I hope that’s the worst of it.”
Holly’s smile said quite the opposite. “How much do you know about parachutes?”
“All I know is that people use them to avoid plummeting out of the sky.”
“Precisely.” Holly’s smile grew bigger.
65
They were up at their planned altitude by the time Holly came up to the cockpit. Mike had chased the sunset aloft. Exactly as planned, the sky was still golden, but the direct sunlight had fallen below the horizon, the worst possible time for seeing if anyone was watching the icy mountain peaks and the plane climbing into them.
Holly tapped his ear to remind him to put in the encrypted radio earbuds. He slid them in and she pulled a fleece headband down over them, then a thick woolen hat. Before he’d taken the seat, he’d changed out of the captain’s clothes and layered up with the gear they’d brought.
“Test one, two, three. You’re the best lover this woman ever had.” Holly whispered into his ear.
He clicked the mike switch already taped to his wrist. “Right back at you, Hol.” He’d needed every second, and about three additional weeks, to figure out how to do what they needed to make this plane go. But after hauling him out of the pilot’s seat earlier before she’d turned and grabbed him in the galley… Then he’d taken her up against the forward bulkhead. And the things she’d done to him in one of those fancy leather passenger chairs…
Well, he’d regret the time if he ended up killing them for lack of study, but that was the only part he’d regret.
“We all set?”
She stuck a thumbs-up out in front of him. “You?”
He doubted it but didn’t say so.
“Say when.”
Mike nodded, watching the course plot and autopilot carefully. When the timing matched the plan Max had laid out on the top of The Bunker’s bar, he began the countdown.
“Five.”
“Four.” Oh God, had he ever done anything so stupid?
“Three. Holly, are you positive?”
“Say two, Mike.”
He said, “One.”
Holly hadn’t been merely giving him a thumbs-up. She pressed her thumb down on the small trigger he hadn’t noticed clenched in her hand.
The plane gave a god-awful thump.
The Number One engine, mounted on the plane’s left side just ahead of the tail, didn’t give any alarms. It didn’t give any readings either.
Holly had just blown the engine off the tail.
Also, if she’d done it right—and if there was one thing Holly knew, it was explosives—the flight data and cockpit voice recorders had ceased to exist in any meaningful sense of the word in that same instant. No data from this flight would remain, including the odd directions he’d given the autopilot, though it still had more work to do before it too died.
He transmitted a Mayday call, Holly had rehearsed him on the tone and accent until he could say it properly in his sleep. What he hadn’t expected was Inessa to come rushing forward. She grabbed the microphone from his hands halfway through the call.
Then she screamed into it in Russian.
“This is Inessa Turgeneva. Someone has blown up my airplane. You must come save me. Now! Hurry! Hurry! Oh my God, we’re going to crash and die, don’t let me die! I don’t want to?—”
