“I’ll bet it would be difficult to fly this big bird in weather like that.”
Sara nodded, perhaps a little too enthusiastically, grateful to have an actual subject to discuss. “Oh hell yes. Taking the C-5 up now would be downright stupid.”
“But you could do it,” Magnus said. He stood up and walked closer, breaking the three-foot cushion. The killer stared down at her. This close to him, all alone, she felt like a child, home from school after another disciplinary incident, waiting for her father to make her go fetch the belt.
No, not a child… she felt like an insect.
Magnus reached up slowly and brushed a flake of snow off her shoulder. “I bet a hotshot like you could fly this beast into that storm.”
Her voice came out small and thin. “I… yeah… we could do it. You know, in an emergency, I suppose.”
Magnus smiled. “Well, consider this an emergency. Danté has intel that Colonel Fischer could be here as early as tomorrow morning. You’re bugging out tonight.”
Sara stared up at him, fear vanishing in the face of swelling anger. “You can’t be serious, Magnus. I wasn’t yanking your chain about that storm.”
“I’m serious, too,” Magnus said. He leaned down. Sara couldn’t help but flinch a little as his scarred face, with its odd violet eyes, stopped only inches from hers. She smelled Yukon Jack on his breath.
“I want you flying off this island by twenty-thirty hours,” he said. “Not a second later, you got that?”
His voice was no longer the smooth, calm monotone she’d heard all this time. Now it crackled with authority, a voice that had undoubtedly ordered men to attack, to shoot, to kill.
“Yes sir.” The words came out of her mouth of their own volition.
Magnus stepped back, then nodded once with the flair of a Prussian officer snapping his boot heels together. He slipped past her and out of the cockpit.
Sara shivered. Maybe the storm wouldn’t be as bad as she thought. And even if it were, it had to be better than being stuck here with Magnus Paglione.
BOOK FOUR
Flight of the C-5
NOVEMBER 30: 7:34 P.M.
“YOU TWO FUCKTARDS must be on crack to send us up in this weather.”
Sara. Such a way with words. And yet Colding did, indeed, feel like a Grade-A Fucktard, because sending her up in said weather was the only way he could think of to get her to safety. Like that made any sense—get her to safety by putting her in severe danger.
Magnus drove Clayton’s Bv206. Colding sat in the passenger seat, Sara in the back. That’s how bad and how fast the storm had hit—they needed the Nuge to drive down the half-mile road from the mansion to the hangar. Colding had seen many winter storms, but never one from the vantage point of an island in the middle of Lake Superior. Wind seemed to shake the very ground, the clenched fist of a roaring elemental god. The snow didn’t fall, really—it permeated. Thick sheets blew in all directions, including up. And this was just the front end of a killing blizzard that had already cut visibility to a mere twenty yards.
Sara leaned forward over the front bench seat. “Let me make this clear. See this snow blowing fuckall over the place? In the air force we’d ground all flights.”
“You’re not in the air force,” Magnus said. “I got your point the third and fourth times you said it. The tenth is just overkill.” Magnus wore a big black parka, the hood pulled so far forward it hid his face. Colding couldn’t help but think he looked like a modernized version of the Grim Reaper—Death drives a Bv206.
Hazy lights grew visible as the Hummer crept forward. Visibility was so bad they were fifty yards away before Colding could make out the monstrous plane’s tail, and even then the front of the plane remained hidden by the storm. In the whipping haze, the black plane’s dimensions looked even larger, almost otherworldly.
Magnus stopped the Bv206 a few yards from the C-5. The wind’s demonic shriek even drowned out the idling jet engines. Colding, Magnus and Sara hurried out and scrambled up the rear ramp, fighting the wind all the way.
Most of the plexiglass stalls held an extremely pregnant cow, each suspended in a flight harness, hooves dangling just a half inch off the ground. IV tubes ran into each of their necks. The animals seemed surprisingly calm. Their vacant expressions showed no awareness of the danger around them, of the gale-force winds that would soon shake the plane like a martini mixer.
Sara pulled back her parka hood. Short blond hair stuck up in all directions, much like it did after several hours of lovemaking. “We have to wait.” She looked at them both, but Colding knew the words were meant for him. She was begging him to back her play. “I’m telling you it’s insane to fly out in weather like this. We could lose the whole project, not to mention the collective asses of me and my crew.”
Why didn’t she get it? This was her shot to get off the island, away from Magnus. “Fischer could be on the way,” Colding said. “We have to get you out of here now.”
“Come on, guys,” Sara said. “It’s not like anyone is going to land here in this weather. Just wait for the main part of the storm to blow over. We’ll fly out while it’s shit weather, but still doable.”
“I’m done with this,” Magnus said, his voice suddenly so loud even the docile cows turned to look. “You fly out of here right now.”
Colding mentally begged her to stop complaining, to just play ball.
“I refuse,” Sara said. “Flights are my call, we’re waiting. I just don’t like it.”
“Shut up,” Colding snapped. “Nobody said you had to fucking like it. Just do your goddamn job and fly the plane!”
She stared at him, her eyes showing more than a bit of betrayal. Colding instantly hated himself, but he had to get her off the island before her complaints made Magnus change his mind.
Magnus smiled, looking from Sara, to Colding, back to Sara again. “And remember, princess—total radio silence. If Fischer is out there, we can’t tip our hand. No radio until you’re thirty miles out from Manitoba, got it?”
Sara nodded.
“Good,” Magnus said. “You’re flying southwest to get out of the storm as quickly as possible. From there you’ll circle around the storm, then northeast to avoid the radar at Thunder Bay International. After that you’ll head for the home office. Jian, Gunther, Colding, Andy and I are staying here for now. Colding, let’s go.”
Sara looked uncomfortable at the mention of Jian’s name, but she said nothing.
Colding followed Magnus out of the cage and down the ramp. Sara’s safety, and the safety of the others, now rested squarely on her piloting skills.
NOVEMBER 30: 8:46 P.M.
A BRUTAL DOWNDRAFT swatted the half-million-pound C-5 Galaxy, dropping the plane a rattling two hundred feet in the blink of an eye. Sara wondered—for the seventh time in the last fifteen minutes, by her count—if this was it. She pulled back on the yoke, fighting the hurricane-class winds. The gust abated as suddenly as it appeared, and she dragged the C-5 back to five thousand feet.
Alonzo looked white as a sheet, an impressive barometer of his nervous state considering his dark complexion. His head moved with sharp, birdlike movements as his eyes flitted from instrument to instrument.
“This is nuts,” he said. “We’ve got to put her down.”
“Where exactly would you like to do that? We’re over the middle of Lake Superior.”