As the Nigerian Princess crossed the Atlantic, the tests from the labs around the world began arriving back at the hospital. Tens of thousands of parasitic species had been ruled out, specifically parasitic species with the potential of killing a healthy man. But, in the end, the exact parasite that had killed a person the rest of the world considered a parasite was never found.
Above Southern Egypt
Aboard the Air Cress Antonov An-26 Cargo Plane
Kara Ramey pretended to have fallen asleep. Her chair on the plane was fully reclined, and her head sagged to one side. She breathed heavily as if she was in deep REM. She even considered eliciting a light snore, but she hated the sound of snoring. She hated listening to people who snored, although she didn’t know if she snored when she slept. Over the years, she had few lovers, but they had not mentioned if she did or didn’t snore. If they had provided such feedback, she would have been offended and ended the relationship. What woman wanted to be told that she snored? That was stuff you told your wife, not your girlfriend. By then it was too late, and either party would just have to live with it. When her parents were alive and she had lived at the mansion, she had a massive bedroom, and thus her parents had no idea if she snored. The cacophony of sound the old cargo plane was making would have covered up just about any nocturnal sound known to man.
Gratefully, Kornev had left her alone. He no longer attempted to make agonizingly obnoxious small talk, which she understood was difficult for him. Normally those bad at small talk were also very poor listeners. Kara found that type of person developed a distinct I don’t care what you’re saying look in their eyes, and may even resort to reading a text during a conversation. Kara figured that pretending to sleep was less stressful for them.
“What in the hell is that?!” she heard Kornev ask in Russian. Initially, Kara decided to pretend not to awaken. But there was a sound of fear and urgency in his voice she hadn’t heard before. Then he repeated the words, but this time louder and even more agitated.
“What the hell is that?” Kornev asked, maybe to his pilots or maybe to himself.
This time her curiosity got the best of her, and she blinked open her eyes and sat up in her chair.
She looked toward the cockpit and saw it.
Just outside the cockpit’s windshield, a drone about as long as a limousine and narrow like a fifty-gallon drum was flying just yards in front of their plane. Kornev’s pilot reactively began descending to dodge the drone. The drone mirrored the action and dropped as well, staying right in front of them.
Kornev got up from his chair, and he went to the front of the plane. He stood behind his pilots, hunched over to prevent hitting his head on the low ceiling of the cockpit. The copilot looked up from his controls, expectantly, awaiting Kornev’s instructions.
Kornev studied the aircraft, initially thinking it was a United States Predator drone. Even though he was looking at the back of the aircraft, he could tell it was not a Predator because it didn’t have the peculiar front that dropped down as if the aircraft had a bad nose job. This drone was much more streamlined — almost in the shape of an aerodynamic rocket. But this rocket had large, swept back wings. And under those large wings were two missiles, which Kornev had heard about but had never seen this close. He could tell, without reading the stenciled markings on the missiles, that it was the new Joint Air-to-Ground Missile called LOCO.
He had read about them. They were rumored to be horribly destructive. But what bothered him more than the damage caused by the LOCOs was the potential that someone with enough clout could get their hands on a pair. They could mount them to the aircraft flying just in front of him. But not just anyone could get their hands on them. He concluded it was obvious this person had the backing of a superpower nation that was majorly pissed off at him, enough to send this drone to intercept his plane.
Just as Kornev was about to tell his pilots to make some sort of evasive maneuver, his cellphone rang. Kornev reached for his phone in his pocket, which was not in a lead-lined bag as he had told Tonya. There was no lead-lined bag, but it was a stress-free lie to tell her to prevent her from pouting and begging for her cellphone. Kornev pressed the icon on his phone and answered the call.
No one was on the other end, but a phone continued ringing.
He then realized it was not his but Tonya’s phone that was ringing. He reached into his other pocket and took out Tonya’s phone. Both phones shared the same default ringtone.
He swiped his finger against the screen and said, “Hello?”
“I guess you didn’t take me seriously when I told you that you were no longer allowed to sell big arms to bad people.”
The voice on the other end was familiar to Kornev. The man on the other end of the call did not introduce himself. It was the arrogant cowboy that had humiliated him in the desert.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kornev said, shifting his weight nervously from one foot to the other. His neck hurt from hunching behind the pilots.
“Surface-to-air missiles is what I am talking about — two of them,” the voice said.
Kornev was stunned into silence. How in the hell did they know that he had two surface-to-air missiles on board?
The cowboy said, “Now, this is what you’re going to do. You are going to descend right now and land on an old airfield located at the coordinates that are being texted to this phone right now.”
“This phone—” the words bounced around in Kornev’s head, not initially making sense of the words. This phone — this phone — this phone that belonged to Tonya. Why would they be calling him on this phone? How could they be calling him on this phone, unless this phone belonged to an intelligence agency that—”
Kornev felt the bulge that had been pressing in the small of his back disappear. A coolness where the metal had once been taking its place.
The Russian turned around slowly and saw Tonya holding his gun that had been in his back waistband. The muzzle of the Glock was an inch from the bridge of his nose. The woman wasn’t smiling, but she seemed quite smug in some respect, as if she had checkmated him in a game that he hadn’t known they were playing.
She aimed the gun to Kornev’s heart.
“Put the plane on the ground,” she told him. “And I’ll take my phone back, thank you,” Kara added, holding out her free hand.
Kornev looked mad. And when he handed the phone over to her, Kara backed up a few steps to put distance between them. She raised the gun toward Kornev’s head and very carefully took her phone from his open hand.
“Now, sit back down in your chair and put on your seat belt,” she told him.
Walking backwards, Kara kept the gun trained on the Russian until they had returned to their seats. She motioned with the gun towards Victor’s chair. The Russian sat, and Kara kept the gun on him until she heard Kornev’s five-point seat belt snap into place.
She then put her phone to her ear and addressed Marshall Hail, “Why did you call him on my phone? Why did you give me up?” Kara’s voice was seasoned with rage. However, she was whispering instead of yelling, not wanting Kornev to hear the conversation.
“I didn’t have Kornev’s phone number,” Hail said defensively.
“You could have gotten it from Pepper,” Kara shot back.
There was a hesitation on Hail’s end. Then he said in a tone of contrition, “I didn’t want you to have to—” Hail let the sentence hang in the air. Hail struggled to find the right words before speaking again.