‘Sure it was from Reggie?’ said Gallen.
‘Sure as shit,’ said Durville, his breath smelling of booze. ‘What’s this about?’
‘We were under surveillance at the airport,’ said Gallen. ‘Not Reggie’s people — another car, mile away from the terminal.’
‘That a bad thing?’
‘You glass me when I’m packing a plane and readying for takeoff,’ said Gallen, ‘then, yeah, that can be a bad thing. Can mean you want to see what I’ve found in the bags, where I’m searching, see what I’m worried about.’
‘Shit,’ said Durville. ‘I didn’t think, I—’
‘Don’t matter now, sir,’ said Winter. ‘Please tell me: have you used this phone?’
‘No, I just found it in my jeans when I took a shower,’ said Durville. ‘Forgot all about it.’
Winter carried the device back to his seat, handing it to Ford.
‘What’s goin’ on?’ demanded Durville. ‘What’s he doin’?’
Gallen put a hand on the overhead racks, leaned over his employer. ‘Kenny’s got a detector. We’ll see if there’s any explosive.’
‘Explosive?’ said the oil man, mouth hanging open. ‘Holy shit.’
‘Let’s wait for Kenny,’ said Gallen, trying to quell the man’s nerves. ‘It could be nothing.’
Looking to the front of the cabin, Gallen saw Winter and Ford hunched together, the beeps of the detector quite obvious above the roar of the engines.
‘What’s that?’ said Durville, sitting up. ‘What’s that sound?’
Gallen moved towards Winter. ‘Can we turn down the sound?’
Winter hit a button on the wand. ‘Okay, boss. Mike says it’s RDX.’
‘Fuck,’ said Gallen, rubbing his chin as he looked at the sparkling BlackBerry sitting on the fold-down table between the Canadian and the Aussie.
Winter took his voice lower. ‘We’ve also got a live circuit.’
‘But it’s a phone. Of course there’s a circuit.’
‘The circuit’s live,’ said Ford, ‘but the phone is switched off.’
‘So?’
The Aussie took a quick look over his shoulder. ‘So, there’s explosive and it’s wired. It’s live.’
Kneeling, Gallen looked at the BlackBerry. ‘What have we got, and what do we do?’
‘We used to see these in the Gulf,’ said Ford. ‘We’d cuff the tangos, collect the collateral — the phones, laptops, files, maps, address books.’
Gallen nodded. He’d loaded a lot of that collateral in the field. ‘Were they wired for the phone’s switch?’
‘I asked you a question, Gerry,’ said the oil man, coming down the aisle, glass of Scotch in his hand. ‘What the fuck is going on?’
Standing, Gallen tried to get Durville back to his seat, but the man stood his ground, fronting Gallen with his chest.
‘‘Less I missed something, Gerry,’ said Durville, ‘I employ you, not the other ways around.’
Gallen stayed friendly. ‘I understand how the money flows, but right now my job is to secure everyone on this aircraft. I need you to sit down, sir.’
‘The fuck you telling me to do on my own fucking plane?’
‘Sit down!’ said Gallen, eyeballing his employer. ‘You wanna sack me in Edmonton, you go right ahead. Right now, let us do our job.’
Durville didn’t back away one inch and Gallen waited for a punch or at least a poke in the chest, but it didn’t come.
‘Okay, Gerry,’ said Durville, his jaw clenched. ‘You do your stuff, then you come report to me. I’m sitting right here.’
Gallen kneeled beside Ford and Winter. ‘So, a bomb is triggered if we switch on the phone?’
‘No, boss,’ said Ford, his blue eyes sparkling with adrenaline. ‘The tangos realised we were on to that by the end of oh-three.’
‘And?’ said Gallen.
‘They started installing timer switches,’ said Winter. ‘Cheap circuitry from a digital watch will do it. Small, reliable, don’t need much battery.’
‘They can go off any time?’ said Gallen, hissing with stress.
‘Once put a hole in a Navy IRB,’ said Ford, talking about the rigid-inflatable craft that Navy commandos used to board ships. ‘It was an IED sitting in the spine of a ring-binder file. They’re simple systems but this’ll put a hole in the cabin.’
‘Can we open it? See what the timer says?’
‘I wouldn’t do that,’ said Winter as Ford shook his head.
‘Booby-trapped?’ asked Gallen.
‘About ninety per cent likely,’ said Ford. ‘All you need is one extra wire, that pulls across the detonator terminals when you open the case.’
McCann leaned over Gallen’s shoulder, whispering, ‘I vote we get the thing out the motherfucking door, tout fucking suite.’
Gallen looked at Winter for guidance. ‘Kenny?’
‘Get the captain to take her down,’ said Winter. ‘Everyone get strapped in and I’ll throw the thing out the door.’
‘How much time we got? ‘
‘No idea, boss. Mike’s right. These things are simple timers. Could go off any minute.’
‘Okay,’ said Gallen. ‘I want Durville and Florita in the washroom, door locked. Kenny, that’s your job, and if he argues, drop him.’
‘Okay, boss.’
‘Mike, I want you in the cockpit with the pilots, keeping them calm, talking them through it, okay?’
‘Got it,’ said Ford.
‘Break out the parkas and thermals,’ said Gallen, pointing to Ford and Winter. ‘Get your people in every layer you can find.’ Turning to McCann, he smiled. ‘Donny, you’re gonna help me throw a bomb out the door.’
The Challenger jet had dropped low enough that Gallen could see the crests and valleys of snow and ice as they screamed past at a relatively slow four hundred mph.
After talking it over with the captain, Gallen had decided to throw the BlackBerry out through the forward cabin door just behind the cockpit and on the left of the aircraft. It would have been safer to dispose of it through the cargo door under the left turbo-fan engine, but the cargo door was a ‘plug’ type — once it was pushed from inside, it was gone and the plane would be depressurised all the way to Edmonton. They might save themselves from a bomb, but they wouldn’t have enough oxygen and the sub-zero temperatures would turn the plane into a freezer inside of one minute. By using the forward cabin door, they could at least reseal the plane.
Gallen needed to have enough freedom to open the main hatch, but he didn’t want to be sucked out of the plane. So they fixed a cargo strap around his waist which connected to the lap-belt of a forward-facing seat behind him. McCann would be belted into the same seat and he’d control the tension on the cargo strap, but if he couldn’t hold on, the lap-belt should hold.
Gallen stood in front of the hatch, thinking about the directions from Captain Martin: the lever had to be extended fully upwards to open the cabin door. The pilot had completed his instructions with a small stutter. ‘Then you have to push, which will be hard at this speed. While the inside and outside pressure equalise, the door will fly open and try to suck you out.’
Gallen focused on the arming lever but could see only Martin’s eyes — eyes that revealed the captain thought the whole idea was madness.
Martin’s voice crackled over Gallen’s radio earpiece. ‘We’re flying at two hundred feet. Now’s as good a time as any.’
Turning, his arctic gear cumbersome in the warmth of the cabin, Gallen gave McCann the thumbs-up.
‘I gotcha,’ said McCann, giving Gallen a wink. ‘Let’s get it done.’
Taking a deep breath, Gallen put his hands on the down-facing lever, feeling McCann put some tension on the cargo strap.