“No!” Lin shook her head, horrified at the thought of putting little Mattie near the bomb. “We will talk more when we land,” she lied. “Too many bumps for now.”
“Okay,” Mattie said, reaching to give her one last hug. “I hope you can cheer up.”
Lin watched the precious child run toward the stairs that would take her to the lower level and back to her father, a man who surely would do anything to protect her. The journey would take her past Tang and the others. She groaned within herself, hoping he would be too focused on his task to notice a child.
Lin wracked her brain for a way out. If she spoke up, they would still detonate the bomb. That was far too dangerous. Her husband would return any moment. He was a good man. She knew that. Perhaps she could talk to him, explain the way she felt and buy this child some more time. Lin cared little for the other faces on the airplane, and nothing for her own life. Her sorrow was a stone against her soul that could not simply be removed by a hug or a piece of paper with a childish symbol — but she would not stand by and watch this sweet little girl die.
Gao was still in the lavatory when the plane began to pitch violently. Waiting outside by the bulkhead, the bucking knocked Tang sideways, shoving him into a wide-eyed blonde as she stumbled out of the adjacent lavatory. The woman gave him a cold glare and muttered some invective oath in Russian. The rumbling continued, as if the pilot had decided to drive over a field of large stones. Hu and Ma had to lean against the wall to keep their feet.
“This will pass,” Tang said. “Go back to your seats before someone sees us loitering together.”
A bony man wearing the red vest of a flight attendant made his way toward them, eyebrows raised, chiding them for disregarding the seat belt sign.
“Go now,” Tang whispered.
Ma checked his watch. His face was pinched into an angry wedge, but he turned to go before the attendant could tell him to. Hu ducked down the front stairs, back to his seat on the lower deck.
Tang wasn’t sure what Gao would do if everyone left him alone. He waited as long as he could, smiling politely to the advancing flight attendant. Behind the lavatory door, Gao banged around as if he was in a fight, letting loose a string of vehement curses.
The seat belt sign chimed again as if to emphasize the need to be seated. The plane continued to rattle and shake. The flight attendant hustled up the aisle.
“Sir, the captain has ordered everyone back to their seats.” The attendant looked at him with raised eyebrows and the half smirk of a little man who thought he had unfettered power over another.
Tang gave a polite nod toward the lavatory. “My friend is sick.” He spoke in halting English, acting as if he’d not fully understood.
Gao’s cursing was easy to hear, even over the rattling airplane.
“We’ll look after your friend,” the flight attendant said. “But you have to return to your seat.”
The restroom door levered open and Gao poked his head out like a camel nosing its way into a tent. His face was pale and slack as if he might actually be ill.
“Your seats, gentlemen.” The attendant shooed them both on their way, then turned his attention to other passengers now that they were moving in the direction he wanted them to go.
“I dropped it,” Gao groaned, grabbing seat backs to steady himself as he shuffled down the aisle.
Tang stopped dead in the aisle, blocking his way. His voice was deadpan, deflated. “What do you mean, dropped it?”
“The powder,” Gao said. The squat man was on the verge of tears. “It was very cramped in there. I removed the lid carefully, just like you showed me, but the plane began to jump around. It’s cramped in there…. Anyway, I dropped it.”
“Wait.” Tang’s chest tightened. The walls of the plane seemed to close in around him. “You lost the powder?”
Gao nodded, hanging his head. “Most of it spilled out when the batteries hit the floor.”
Tang found it difficult to see. He could hardly think. “Could we sweep it up?”
“I tried,” Gao said, stricken by guilt. Nervous blotches mottled his skin from his neck to the top of his head, visible under the short stubble of his haircut. “The rubber tile on the floor is porous, made with tiny lines and cracks for drainage. The powder sifted away before I could retrieve it.”
Tang could do nothing but shake his head. Gao, who barely understood the gravity of what had happened, was already beside himself with guilt.
Another flight attendant in a red sweater stalked up the aisle from the galley, herding them back to their seats.
Tang nodded meekly, belying the turmoil in his gut. He shuffled forward like a condemned man, not even trying to dodge the knees and elbows that blocked his path, ignoring the protesting grunts of other passengers.
His brain was racing by the time he made it back to his seat. “Let me think,” he said to Gao. “We will speak with Ma Zhen when this stops. There is always a way.”
Gao gave a somber nod. “I am sorry, my friend,” he said. “Truly.”
Tang shooed him away with a tight smile, the best he could muster under the circumstances. “We will speak to Ma,” he said again, because he did not know what else to say.
Back in his seat, Tang buried his face in his hands. He pressed against his eyes until he saw shooting lights and felt the welcome, calming pain.
Could it all be lost so easily? They had all left letters implicating the Chinese government in the attack. If left alive, they would all look like fools, until they were hunted down and killed for their parts in the useless conspiracy. He sighed, resigning himself to living his remaining days in shame. It made sense. This was the fickle Allah who had taken his daughter.
Lin glanced at him from her seat next to the window, perfectly silhouetted against the beam of light pouring in from the thin air outside. She’d become animated again — like she was on some kind of happiness drug. She tilted her head, and then reached to touch his arm. Her tray table was open and on it was a card drawn in the hand of a child — it said “double happiness.”
Tang almost screamed when he saw it.
“What is this?” he said in rapid Mandarin. It didn’t matter if they could understand him or not, the other passengers recognized a man chiding his wife in any language. They looked away in embarrassment.
The stupid little guizi had come to bother Lin once again, stirring up old thoughts and pain. Double Happiness, indeed. Tang ground his teeth with the anger of a helpless man. If he could not bring down the plane, he would strap what was left of the explosive to the little girl’s back. That would punish her for the pain her antics were causing his wife.
Lin sat quietly, waiting for him to calm down.
He decided to keep Gao’s clumsiness to himself. In her present condition, Lin would see it as a sign. Instead, he ignored his wife’s new mood and stared forward, toward the stairs. There had to be another way.
The cockpit doors lay on the level below, at the bottom of the stairwell. Surely the PETN alone would be enough explosive by itself to breach the flight deck. But even if they were to get through the reinforced door, there was the strong possibility that at least one of the crew had a pistol.
Tang was not afraid to die. He was, in fact, resigned to it. But he did not want to waste his life by giving it prematurely — without bringing down the aircraft.
By the time the turbulence settled to a low rumble, Tang felt as if a bleeding ulcer might kill him. He was just about to resign himself to failure when the two business-class flight attendants began move back and forth in the galley two rows ahead. The smell of beef and pasta began to drift down the aisle. Dressed in bright red aprons, one woman prepared silver and glassware, while the other pulled tray after tray out of the warming oven. Machinelike, she removed the aluminum foil cover from each meal and threw it in a plastic recycle bag before passing the tray to her partner.