“Thanks, Captain. By the way, I never got your full name.”
“It’s Roy. Roy Montgomery.”
The men exchanged stiff salutes. Montgomery began herding passengers farther back in the plane, while Storm put his head back down in his task. He wasn’t going to tell Montgomery this, but he was only about 50 percent certain his jury-rigged gadget was going to work. The variable frequency dial only operated within a certain range. If the lock was set to a frequency outside that range — which was always possible — it wouldn’t respond to the pulse.
Storm finished around the time Montgomery had succeeded in emptying the first class cabin. The captain was slightly out of breath as he approached Storm.
“Okay. That’s done. Do you mind if I ask: What’s your plan once you get the lock to release?”
“Pretty simple: I open the door and shoot the guy flying the plane.”
“How’s your aim?” Montgomery asked.
“Pretty good. Why? Is there anything on the instrument panel that can’t be shot?”
“Yeah, pretty much all of it.”
“Then I guess I better not miss,” Storm said.
“Okay. Just remember, these babies all have cameras throughout the front part of the cabin,” Montgomery said. “It’s another thing we owe to 9/11. It lets the captain know that it’s safe to open the door.”
“In other words, he’s going to know I’m coming.”
“Yeah.”
“Great. Wish me luck.”
“Good luck,” Montgomery said. But Storm thought he noticed a small head shake as Montgomery retreated back to business class.
Storm put it out of his mind, concentrating on the tiny dial on the side of the wristwatch. He had reengineered the device so it now had several extra wires coming out of it. Two of them led to the nine-volt battery. He connected the final wire — thus turning the contraption on — switched the dial to the lowest frequency, and focused on the door.
Nothing happened. He began turning up the dial, moving steadily through the multichannel communicator’s range of frequencies. He had to go slowly. The connections in his device were far from perfect. He didn’t want to risk going too fast past the proper frequency and not delivering a strong enough pulse to trip the lock.
He was midway through the dial, not allowing himself to feel pessimistic, and still wasn’t hearing anything.
Then, three-quarters of the way up, he heard a click and a whir.
The magnets holding the lock had been released.
Storm drew Dirty Harry and depressed the handle. The door opened inward, and he pushed against it, using its bulletproof bulk as a shield. The 747 cockpit is one of the largest in the sky, and it has a short, narrow hallway leading to the two front pilot’s seats. At first, all Storm could see was the right side of that hallway.
He shoved the door farther in. His vision now extended to the end of the hallway. If they hadn’t been in an airplane, he could simply have stuck his gun hand around the crevice and started firing blindly. But, given Captain Montgomery’s warnings about the instrument panel, that seemed like a bad idea.
Volkov, on the other hand, would have no such worries. Any bullets he shot from his wooden gun — and Storm was assuming he had plenty of ammunition left — would hit less sensitive parts of the airplane. Storm was expecting to be greeted by gunfire at any moment.
But none came. He opened the door farther. He could now see half of the first officer’s seat and part of the corpse that was slumped there.
He kept pushing the door, ready to fire the moment he saw any piece of Volkov. Slowly, steadily, inch by painstaking inch, he pushed until the door was fully open.
There was no one sitting in the pilot seat.
But that didn’t mean Volkov wasn’t hiding somewhere. Storm crept in, not fully committing himself to entry in a narrow hallway — where he’d be an easy target if Volkov suddenly came at him from around the corner — but giving himself a better view. Still no Volkov.
He allowed himself a baby step. Nothing.
Another step. Still nothing.
After another step, he could now see the entirety of the space: the instrument panel, both pilots’ seats, the booster seat for a third pilot, the console, the avionics compartment — all of it.
Storm blinked, unable to believe what he was seeing.
The cockpit was empty.
Storm stayed perfectly still for a moment, almost as if he only needed to look hard enough to make Volkov appear. His mind was clicking through possibilities, but none of them made any sense. There was no door in the cockpit other than the one he’d entered through. There was no cubbyhole or space large enough to hide any man, much less one of Volkov’s width. There was no way out of the cockpit other than perhaps through the windshield, but that was intact.
Storm watched transfixed the eerie, ghostlike sight of the plane flying itself. The yoke budged itself slightly to the left, making a tiny adjustment in course per the order of the automatic pilot computer.
Storm’s reflexes were set on a hair trigger. His gun was still drawn. He reminded himself to relax his grip — holding too tightly actually slowed reaction time — but he didn’t dare move anything else.
He was starting to consider other options. Maybe Captain Montgomery had been mistaken. Maybe Volkov hadn’t really gone into the cockpit. Storm had been in the belly of the plane when that transaction occurred. Was it possible that Montgomery — who had just watched his first officer get killed and sustained a wicked blow to the head — had missed something?
Storm was working out a new scenario — one involving Volkov somehow loading automatic pilot coordinates into the computer then retreating into the plane — when his peripheral vision registered movement from above him.
It was a human arm.
Storm leaped forward. Some fraction of a second later, Volkov fired.
Had these events happened in reverse order, Storm would have been dead and the world would have been put on a course toward incredible turmoil.
Instead, the bullet, which was aimed for the top of his head, continued traveling in the space where the top of his head should have been. In rapid succession, it passed near his neck, shoulders, back and butt, all body parts that had been removed from harm’s way during the course of Storm’s lunge. Then it struck one of the body parts that hadn’t quite cleared: his left calf.
Storm roared in pain just as Volkov dropped from the ceiling, where he had been splayed ever since Storm started working the dial on the transmitter. Volkov landed square on Storm’s back, pinning him to the floor of the cockpit. Storm was aware that his gun, already loose in his hand, had gone flying; and, out of the corner of his eye, he saw it land in the well under the yoke, where the pilot’s feet normally go.
Volkov had dropped his own gun like it was of no further use to him — like it was out of wooden bullets? Storm guessed — and wrapped a tree trunk of a right arm around Storm’s neck. Then he clasped his right hand with his left and began squeezing with more than enough force to restrict most of the blood flow to Storm’s brain.
Storm knew he was in danger. He had perhaps forty-five seconds’ worth of consciousness left. He had to make the most of them.
There was no point trying to loosen Volkov’s grip. He’d have a better chance of prying open the jaws of a hungry shark. Storm’s only advantage was height. Volkov was ten inches shorter.
Storm struggled to his feet, lifting not only his 230 pounds but Volkov’s denser 220 — and doing it with little help from his damaged left leg. Volkov was now draped on his back like a cape, the extra weight strengthening the chokehold.
Storm started taking backward steps out of the cockpit. He needed some room to maneuver, some runway to get up some speed. Soon, he was backpedaling as fast he could, given his encumbrance, and had cleared into the first class cabin. He finished his back-stagger with a mighty back-dive toward the first row of seats. His aim was to get a hard part of the armrest to connect with the soft part where Volkov’s neck connected to his skull.