Kristin Stewart.
Passenger 19.
“Jen, listen to me! If you want to get out of this alive do exactly as I say!”
There was a pause, and he imagined Jen staring at her seatmate, a look of consternation fused with dread: the man in the seat next to her was bleeding out, and multiple assailants stood brandishing weapons. But Jen had always been good under pressure, and in that silent gap Davis could almost sense her bucking up. He envisioned her making eye contact with Kristin Stewart, perhaps giving a deft nod.
Then another whispered command from Passenger 19. “Get rid of your passport and any other ID!” A hesitation. “Do it, for God’s sake!”
He visualized both girls retrieving their passports discreetly and slipping them into the seatback pockets. Exactly where he’d found them.
“Whatever you do,” Kristin implores, “give them my name. Tell them you are Kristin Marie Stewart from Raleigh, North Carolina. That’s what we both say and nothing else! Do you understand?”
Next he heard a new male voice that was stunningly familiar. The words came in English, rumbling as if churned from a rock crusher. The same voice that had asked him what he was doing under a wing. Black boots with a crescent-shaped scar. “Out of my way! Anyone who moves will be shot!” Then closer to the microphone. “Hands on your heads, everyone!”
A last desperate whisper from Kristin Stewart, “Say nothing else, Jen! Nothing! It’s your only chance!”
“Quiet!” the male voice ordered. His next words blasted full volume from the iPod’s tiny speaker. “Kristin Stewart! Which of you is Kristin Stewart?”
There was no audible response, and the question was shouted again. Then Davis heard a sound that caused him to nearly crush the iPod in his hand — the sound of skin slapping skin, followed by the yelp of a young girl. He didn’t know which, but it hardly mattered. Shuffling and grunting was followed by more commands in Spanish. Finally, he heard Jen’s voice one last time. Her tone was matter of fact and cool. She could have been signing off from their daily dorm-room chat.
“Help us, Dad, we’re—”
The last word cut off abruptly.
For three more minutes Davis sat still as the pictureless video ran, capturing the occasional distant shout, but little else. There were no muted conversations among the nearby passengers, which Davis took as evidence that at least one assailant had remained in the cabin to stand guard. The recording ended abruptly. He looked at the time bar and saw six minutes and ten seconds. That was when the iPod had given in. Davis didn’t know why. Perhaps the battery had gotten low, or someone had nudged the off button.
He looked closely at the device to make sure there was nothing else. He saw no other videos or pictures. Further invading Jen’s privacy, he checked her contacts, notepad, and calendar. Nothing held promise. He sat motionless on the edge of the bed, like a statue of carved marble. Jen had been pulled off the aircraft that night, abducted after an unscheduled landing by men who had come for Kristin Stewart. Lawless men who’d shot a Secret Service agent in cold blood. Here Davis paused. Had an unarmed Mulligan resisted? Had he tried to put up a fight against insurmountable force? No, he decided. There had been no sounds of a scuffle, no shouted warnings from Mulligan to Kristin. The bandits had burst aboard and shot him straight out. Shot him because they knew who he was, where he was sitting, and why he was there.
Davis imagined the rest. Two college girls getting pushed and shoved, possibly beaten. An image of pure conjecture, to be sure, and one that made him simmer with rage. As distressing as the recording was, however, it also came as a gift. He now knew with certainty that Jen had survived the crash. He knew she and Kristin Stewart were likely still alive. Somewhere.
All he had to do was find them.
TWENTY-SIX
Through the course of that night a reenergized Davis played back the recording fourteen times. In each run-through he registered fresh nuances, and he paused regularly to take notes. The only way to keep his emotions in check, he knew, was to be absolutely methodical.
On the second playback he isolated the sound of Flight 223’s entry door being opened — the same door he and Delacorte had discussed earlier, and that was now missing — evidenced by the sudden introduction of white noise from the aircraft’s auxiliary power unit, the small tail-mounted engine that provided power and conditioned air on the ground. He logged three male voices, including the distinctive gravel-edged baritone. Most of the words were in subdued Spanish, which Davis took for conversation between the assailants. It crossed his mind that one voice could also be that of Captain Reyna. With enough time, and in a proper lab, he could have the APU noise acoustically filtered out, the Spanish translated, and the voices analyzed. But those luxuries he didn’t have. Jen needed him now.
On the tenth playback Davis drew a paper-and-pencil diagram of the airplane, sketching from memory where each passenger had been sitting. He traced the path the invaders must have taken: entry at the forward door, down the aisle, and ending at the back of the jet where the girls sat. He stopped and started the recording repeatedly, trying to place sounds one by one, and slotting each new fragment into his existing bank of knowledge. He listened closely to Jen’s words. “They said the copilot is sick — maybe that’s why we landed here.”
The copilot had not been taken ill, that much Davis knew, allowing that a bullet to the brain is not a common malady. All the same, Jen’s comment meant an announcement had been made to justify what was happening. Most likely it came from Reyna, although it could have been relayed through the flight attendant. Either way, the intent was evident — the captain wanted to keep everyone calm during their unscheduled landing, compliant until his supporting cast of armed associates took control. Calm and unknowing was always the best mindset for prisoners, which was what the passengers of Flight 223 had become.
Davis wondered if anyone besides the two girls had been taken off the jet, even temporarily. He heard nothing on the recording to support the idea, and the fact that they were the only passengers not found in the wreckage cemented things. Minute by minute, his theory coalesced and gained definition: Flight 223 had diverted to a remote airfield, guided by a captain who was conspiring with individuals on the ground. The copilot had been executed, likely by his skipper during the first flight behind the protection of a hardened door. After landing, the two young girls were taken away. It also explained the unidentified body in the cockpit, a man who hadn’t boarded in Bogotá, but who had materialized in the aftermath of the crash. He’d been installed as a surrogate for Reyna, a faceless crash-test corpse whose fingerprints had recently been inserted into the captain’s files. It all made sense to a point.
But there the fall of dominos was interrupted.
Where had they landed? When the aircraft took off a second time, how were the passengers kept in check? And the most important questions of alclass="underline" where had Jen and Kristin Stewart been taken, and why?
Davis could think of only one credible answer. Kristin Stewart had been the victim of a kidnapping, an elaborate scheme that was planned from the outset to sacrifice over twenty innocent lives. He knew kidnapping and extortion were rampant in this part of the world. Even so, in terms of scale and intricacy, this plot was in a league of its own, which meant the payday would have to be extraordinary. Was Kristin Stewart the daughter of a billionaire? Possibly, but the fact that she warranted Secret Service protection seemed doubly ominous.