Groans
and a low clamor arose as passengers, already aggravated by the earlier delay, debated how to spend the next two hours.
Gray
also groaned. He rose to his feet and asked, “Anna, did you have dinner?”
“No, I was told
Emirates was offering us something special after takeoff so I did not eat.”
“
Care to join me? I’m not going to wait another two or three hours. With the earlier delay and this one they may never get off.”
“Yes, thank you for asking,” she said and came to her feet. “
Look, do you recognize those two?” she asked, pointing with only her finger close to her body so it was not obvious.
Gray glanced at the young man and woman to wh
om Anna was pointing and chuckled. “I do, but not their names. No, I do remember her first name. Melanie something… Bronsi, that’s it.” The young woman had starred more than a decade ago in a SiFi television series that Gray thought unwatchable due to a moronic script but it had developed something of a cult following, probably because she was so unbearably cute and curvaceous. Later she had appeared in a couple of very good movies and others that were definite B-grade. The lanky young man with Melanie had a mop of hair over his forehead and looked in character for the slacker roles he played. Melanie was wearing a linen jacket and white slacks that showed off her lovely shape. The young man had on rumpled khakis and a rock band T-shirt and was carrying a Hoodie. Anna said his name was Lex Ashton.
Melanie Bronsi was also among those that groaned when they heard the announcement of the second delay. She stood and grabbed Lex by the sleeve of his T-shirt. “Come on, I’ve got to get something to eat.” She noticed the tall, striking young woman in the form fitting navy top and slacks a few rows away rise from her seat, presumably at the invitation from the very attractive older man. They looked like they might know some place good to eat. She motioned Lex to follow as she headed to cut them off before they got away. As they approached she said, “Pardon me. Do you guys know a decent place to eat in here beside the fast food?”
The tall young woman’s eyes widened, probably
at the surprise of being asked advice by a movie star. “Um, the main terminal has a Café Marche that some of my friends say is very good. We are eating at the Asian Café which has a wonderfully varied menu. I have eaten there and liked it.”
Before Melanie could respond, the young woman continued. “We recognized you and Lex. I’m
Anna Kurtz and this is Grayden Fitzgerald.”
The four had a short, awkward conversation before
Melanie said she and Lex would take the aero train to the main terminal. At that not so subtle cue Grayden and Anna went on their way.
“What do you guess is the relationship of those two?” Lex asked as he watched the leggy young woman walking away.
“I haven’t a clue. They could be lovers or recent acquaintances.”
“Maybe they are royalty. She is regal hot,” Lex said.
Melanie rolled her eyes. “They are definitely in the beautiful people category. Come on we need to find the aero train.”
Bayani Isagani’s stomach churned with acid and there was little doubt the pilot and the observer who sat behind him in the cockpit smelled his sweat. This tragic disaster was his worthless brother’s doing. How else could Abu Sayyaf have known anything about him, anything about the inaugural flight, about its schedule, its destination? His brother had converted to Islam two years ago and since had caused strife in his family, criticizing his cousins, his brother and sister, his father, and his own mother, calling them godless infidels. What did he know about godless, associating with the criminals who had subverted him?
Bayani regretted bragging to his family about being
given the honor to fly second seat on the maiden flight of Emirates new 797. But how could he have imagined his own brother betraying him and his entire family? Only his wife and brother knew he could carry a firearm on board, having passed a course prescribed by Emirates. His wife was not one to share such information so it could only be his brother. That was the only explanation for the call he received from a man in Manila claiming to belong to Abu Sayyaf and holding Bayani’s family hostage. The man had put his wife on the phone for a brief time and she had said they had his mother and two children. The man claimed to have his sister Alania and had killed her husband as evidence of their willingness to carry out their threats. The man’s demands were simple; shoot the pilot, fly the aircraft on a path designed to disguise its destination and then fly to the coordinates he was given and land. The instructions had come in three phone calls, the last one telling him arrangements had been made to delay the flight’s departure so it would arrive at the island sometime just before sunrise as they wished the aircraft to fly an absolute minimum of time in daylight before landing.
The man
had told him they only knew the approximate details and timing of the route so he had to make the calculations himself to determine when he was to take over the aircraft. If he failed to arrive at the coordinates, they would kill his entire family. If he arrived more than ten minutes after sunrise, his mother and one child would be killed. Any longer than fifteen minutes was like not arriving. The Abu Sayyaf man said if Bayani delivered the aircraft successfully but an aircraft or ship approached the island within 10 days, Bayani had obviously informed the authorities and sentenced his family to death.
When Bayani loaded the coordinates into his flight software,
no airport was identified as nearby. He loaded the coordinates into Google Earth on his laptop and discovered it was an island in the northern part of the Timor Sea. It did appear to have a landing strip at least a mile and a half long which was ample for the lightly loaded aircraft, the loading a result of Emirates management’s plan to occupy only the first class section. The island was unnamed, mostly flat and covered with jungle. He could not tell much more about the island because the map became blurry at the eye height of twenty five kilometers.
Bayani called a cousin
in Manila and learned that the Abu Sayyaf man had told the truth about killing his sister’s husband. With a feeling of total helplessness, Bayani hand wrote a letter giving the location of the island and the circumstances forcing him to comply with the Abu Sayyaf man’s demands. He addressed it to the trusted cousin in Manila and mailed it from his hotel in Kuala Lumpur the morning before the scheduled flight. Experience told him the letter would take at least a week to reach his cousin. In the letter Bayani requested that his cousin wait another week after receiving the letter to contact his family and the authorities or Abu Sayyaf would surely kill the rest of his family. At least his friends and colleagues would know he had performed this heinous act under duress.
Before leaving his hotel for the airport,
Bayani loaded the flight’s data into the software on his laptop. He added four hours delay to the current departure time which was roughly what the Abu Sayyaf man had promised and made the calculations for arriving at the island at sunrise using about three quarters of the aircraft’s maximum speed which gave him some slack if needed that he could use by varying the speed of the aircraft while en route. Once in the cockpit and until he had killed the pilot and the observer he could not access his laptop nor use the aircraft’s computer to recalculate the flight parameters so he had to memorize the times and checkpoints. The second delay at the gate put him near the midpoint of his calculations but now a third and legitimate delay had occurred and was eating into the slack.
Gray and Anna lingered over their Malaysian seafood dishes and cold beer. Gray found himself enjoying the young woman’s company as he had expected from the brief times spent with her, usually at meals with Alyson. She could be blunt, and her dry sense of humor caused him to pause at times but he considered asking if they could sit together on the flight since there would be so many vacant seats. At 11:30 Gray paid for dinner and they left for their flight’s gate only to learn there was a further delay but thankfully it was less than an hour.
T
wenty minutes after midnight passengers began boarding and each was given an impressive gift basket. Gray’s and Anna’s seats were in first class but she was four rows back in the center section and he at a right hand window. Lex and Melanie were last to board and both stumbled in, obviously intoxicated, and took seats in the left hand row. The visible cabin crew, four women in very smart beige, gold and red uniforms that included sheer half veils, went through a welcoming ceremony after the door was closed but before push back. Two of them spoke in English about the many glorious aspects of the Boeing 797. The aircraft featured the latest technology to provide a quiet flight, stability in turbulence, unmatched fuel efficiency, a range of 18000 kilometers and in Emirate’s configuration a seating capacity of 280.
Gray believed the flight attendants had been
carefully screened for this flight. Each possessed an exotic beauty and each a distinct ethnicity. Despite their beauty and lovely voices, their performance appeared forced, perhaps due to lack of enthusiasm from the tired passengers or simply from their own exhaustion after a long day. Gray scanned the cabin and counted twenty one passengers not counting the attendants. Out of those twenty one, he spotted two more that he recognized; both were tennis players from Australia. Beside Anna, Lex, Melanie, the two tennis players, a polished Latin looking man, and a wide eyed, athletic looking young man, the rest of the passengers were his age or older and included a very old Japanese man and woman dressed formally and three well dressed middle eastern looking men seated together that were likely airline management.
The
acceleration at take off was impressive but remarkably quiet and the climb out very smooth. When they were at altitude the captain welcomed them aboard in a British accent and then a flight attendant gave a safety briefing. Another attendant explained the operation of the first class seats. When the seat back was reclined horizontally into a privacy niche and a footrest swung up, the seats became comfortable beds. Before most of the passengers were done experimenting with their seats the attendant announced they were free to tour the aircraft and change seats if they wished.
Gray swiveled to glance back at
Anna and saw that Lex had just taken a seat beside her. He turned back, feeling a tinge of disappointment. He dropped his seat back a few degrees and opened the gift basket, curious as to what a Muslim owned airline would bestow its passengers. The basket held a number of tasty appearing food items, fruit, cheeses, nuts, crackers, candy, tea bags, a compact toothbrush with toothpaste and some high end toiletries and lotions along with a very fine leather zippered pouch embossed with the Emirates logo. He set the basket aside and picked up the flight magazine to see if it showed the route the aircraft would take from Kuala Lumpur to Brisbane. He had been disappointed that the majority of the flight would be during night hours as he enjoyed studying the marvelous variations of the earth’s surface as it slid beneath a plane in flight. He was a commercial pilot and instrument rated but flying using maps and visual landmarks or VFR was still one of his greatest pleasures. He had only cracked the flight magazine when a voice asked, “May I join you?”
“
Melanie! Of course. How was your dinner?”
“
Thanks. This empty plane kind of gives me the creeps.” Her pronunciation hinted at intoxication and her eyes seemed to go a little out of focus. She did not respond to his question about dinner, instead she hunted for the button to let her seat back. When the seat dropped nearly flat before it stopped she let out a whoops. She grabbed Gray’s arm and pulled herself up and then brought the seat up about even with his. Still holding his arm she snuggled against his shoulder and closed her dark eyes. “Grayden, was that your name?”
“Yes, or you may call me Gray.”
“Okay, Gray.”
Her eyes remained closed and in a few minutes her breathing was slow and regular. After a few more minutes, Gray signaled a
flight attendant and asked for pillows and blankets. When the attendant brought pre-warmed blankets, he disengaged his arm from Melanie’s grasp, lowered her seat to horizontal, pulled the leg rest out, placed a pillow under her head and spread a blanket over her. He picked up the flight magazine and found the route map he had expected but it was not long before he lowered his seat flat and spread a blanket over himself. The aircraft’s flight was hypnotically smooth and quiet and the cabin lights had been lowered. Fatigue from the long day washed over him and sleep came in seconds.
Alan Devanwood, a fit 45 year old Brit and left seat on the flight, glanced over the readings of only the important items displayed on the five LED screens of the 797 before taking a bathroom break and getting a cup of coffee. All the readings were perfect or in the middle of their tolerance spread but something was far from right with Bayani the co-pilot. Even the observer sensed something amiss with the co-pilot, twice catching Alan’s attention and rolling his eyes in the co-pilot’s direction. Bayani was jittery and sweating like a pig but when Alan asked him if he was feeling all right the man had dismissed it as perhaps a fast acting case of flu and apologized profusely for possibly infecting Alan and the observer. Alan noticed Bayani was obsessively checking the progress of the flight on one of the screens that depicted their route. If he had not flown routes with Bayani before and found him very competent, he would have considered requesting him to leave the cockpit.