Sabotage (14 page)

Dazed, he tried to make sense of his environment. He sat by a window. Not one, but many windows, and there were seats. A bus? No …

He combated dizziness, struggling for control, bringing his world from its violent spin to a slow, carousel-like motion. Something told him he wasn't supposed to be conscious. I've been drugged, he thought, fighting a wave of nausea.

He tried to stand, but couldn't. Again a burning pain shot through his left arm. He could hardly move his wrists and realized they were tied down by rope. What were they tied to? The armrest felt familiar.

A sluggish transition to consciousness challenged him to distinguish reality from the last remnants of sleep. Wherever he was, the place was loud, full of white noise, and oppressive. The sound was not shrill, not distinct, but full and rounded, as if his ears were at the mercy not of a needle, but a hammer. He felt immersed in the noise, drowning under its pressure. It was a sound he recognized.

He looked out the window. Outside, colors shifted between blues and patchy grays. He searched for the ground but didn't find it, more aware of his location with each passing second. He was moving, fast.

A minibar with an assortment of wine bottles and liquors faced his seat. Leaning closer, he detected the sweet fragrance of maraschino cherries. Embossed on the crystal glasses beside the wine bottles was a familiar slogan: “Justice from a Forge.”

He was riding in one of his own private jets, used by his own company.
How?
The last he remembered, he'd been walking along Serra Mall toward the Stanford quad.

His questions would have to be answered later. Right now, he needed a way out. He checked the cabin but found no sign of anyone else onboard. He was alone, as far as he knew, and strapped to the seat.

He kicked at the top of the minibar, and the bottles and glasses came crashing down on the floor. He caught a crystal glass between his knees, pinched the edges with enough force to break it, and used the rough surface to cut himself free. Banging on the cockpit door, he wielded the jagged edge like a weapon. No answer. He tried the hatch. It was locked. Then he remembered. At the back of every plane he had stored a crowbar in case of emergency. He searched through every compartment and found it behind the bulkhead along with other supplies—a first-aid kit, a flashlight, life vests, and an inflatable raft.

He jammed the crowbar into the cockpit door. Still dizzy from sedation, he lost his footing.…

When he woke again, he was on the floor, the pain in his head worse than before. The crowbar had landed on his body and knocked him back to sleep. He controlled his breaths, counting them, and listened to his own voice say: “I'm awake.” Taking a moment to regain his balance, he stood and said it again: “I'm awake.”

He wedged the tool into the door frame and pried it open.

A single pilot sat there, unperturbed. Malcolm Clare held the crowbar over his shoulder.

“Step away from the controls, or I'll hit a home run.”

The pilot stared serenely into the clouds.

“What's the matter with you?” Clare said. “Step away.
Now
.”

The pilot didn't move and didn't say a word. The professor prodded him in the neck, not to provoke but to elicit some sort of reaction. Still no response. Was this a product of his own delirium? Finally he brought the crowbar down on the pilot's ribs. The pilot slid off to the side and landed with his head in the flight controls, colliding against knobs, dials, and switches.

It was then that Clare noticed the pilot's ashen skin tones. He lowered the crowbar and put a hand to the man's neck. It was cold. No pulse.

Thinking fast, he shoved the body out of the seat and assumed control. The needle on the altimeter was dropping. He yanked the throttle, expecting a harsh ascension from the abruptness of his pull. The plane surprised him by continuing on its trajectory. He flipped three switches and tried again, certain he had disabled the autopilot. Still, he had no control of the jet.

“Boot voice command,” he enunciated clearly. The jet was designed to offer multiple solutions to a problem. He hoped his captors were unfamiliar with the intricacies of its programming.

A female voice responded through the jet's speakers. “Voice recognized: Doctor Malcolm Ian Clare.”

“Computer, where are we going?”

“Destination unknown.”

“Why is it unknown?”

“Our destination has not been programmed into the database of known locations. Would you like coordinates?”

“No. How long until we arrive?”

“Expected arrival at destination in three minutes.”

“
Three
minutes?” Through the window, he scoped wide stretches of blue with no sign of land. The altimeter continued to drop at a frightening rate. The jet had passed below the cloud line. “Computer, change destination.”

“Where would you like to go?”

“Calculate approximate distance to nearest landmass.”

“Nearest land is 92.4 nautical miles away.”

“How much fuel do we have?”

“Thirty pounds of fuel remain.”

“Disregard change of destination command. Computer, why don't I have manual control of the plane?”

“Unable to process command. Please rephrase.”

“Diagnose problem with throttle.”

“Throttle is a part of the manual control system. Manual control was disabled in preflight specifications.”

“Who made preflight specifications?”

“You do not have access to that information.”

“I programmed this jet! Tell me, who tampered with the plane?”

“You do not have access to that information.”

Clare slammed a fist into a wall of switches. “Computer, send out a Mayday signal immediately.”

“Unable to issue distress call.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Unable to process command. Please rephrase.”

“Diagnose problem issuing distress call.”

“You do not have permission to issue a distress call.”

The altimeter dropped to one thousand feet. “Computer, where are we now?”

“Our current location has not been programmed into the database of known locations.”

“So we're just going to crash somewhere over open water, in the middle of nowhere, with no ability to send out a distress call?”

The computer bleeped. “Unable to process command. Please rephrase.”

“A scrap of information, that's all I'm looking for … just a scrap! Computer, state pilot's name.”

“Pilot identity unknown. Pilot's name was not entered with preflight specifications.”

“I programmed you never to allow takeoff without knowing the pilot or the destination.…”

“Unable to process command. Please rephrase.”

The world began to recede under his heavy eyelids. He grappled for control, refusing to succumb to the darkness edging back into his vision. His thoughts were running along new channels. Who had knowledge deep enough to tinker with the jet's programming? He pulled the pilot upright and searched through the man's pockets. He found a wallet but no license or identification. There was an Air Force pin on the pilot's shirt. Clare noticed a mark on the man's wrist. He yanked up the sleeve to reveal a crude picture of a helmet and two protruding horns, drawn with a black marker. Clare shuddered; the hands were white, the knuckles cold.

“Computer, how long have we been flying?”

“Fourteen hours, thirty-six minutes.”

The altimeter now hovered at the 800-foot mark.

“From which airport did we depart?”

“San Francisco International Airport.”

“How long have we been on autopilot?”

“Autopilot has been active for twelve hours, thirty minutes.”

“List the passengers onboard.”

“There is currently one passenger onboard. Doctor Malcolm Ian Clare. There is currently one pilot onboard. Pilot identity unknown. Pilot's name was not entered with preflight specifications.” The altimeter needle began to accelerate. “Warning. Low on fuel. Time to destination: two minutes.”

A rosy estimate, Clare thought. He knew all evidence of his disaster would rot with him on the ocean floor unless he acted before the altimeter hit zero. He toggled switches and pushed buttons methodically. Nothing worked.

Another bolt of pain assailed his left arm. He looked down and saw a large gash in his bicep. How had he not noticed it before? Someone must have administered an analgesic that was beginning to wear off. The evenness of the cut suggested it was intentional. Bleeding had stopped, but the wound was big enough to open up again later. He tore off the pilot's shirt and wrapped the fabric around his wound in a tourniquet, then left the cockpit to see what he could scavenge in the cabin. He checked for parachutes, but they had been removed. He found a backpack, which he stuffed with water bottles and a knife from the kitchenette. He grabbed the inflatable raft from the emergency bulkhead.

Heading back to the cockpit he noticed three words written on the white carpet of his plane, not more than a yard from the seat he'd been strapped to. The words were spotty, written in blood from his gash. The sight of them triggered a buried memory.

They read,
Remember the Firecat.

“What in the world…”

Denying the urge to linger and ponder the message, he returned to the cockpit, where he learned the altimeter had dropped below three hundred feet. If I'm in for a crash landing, he thought, I'll at least try to control it.

“Computer,” he said. “Reduce speed by forty percent. Stall plane.”

The droning engine seemed to sputter as the plane decelerated. Hitting an air pocket, the jet wavered and encountered a period of turbulence before smoothing out again.

“Reduce speed by another twenty percent. Prepare for emergency aquatic landing.”

Using a piece of the rope that had been used to tie him down, he fastened a knot around the cockpit's door and held on to the end while inching toward the exit hatch. Wind blasted through his ears, pulling him outward, but he held tight, smelling a salty breeze.

“Computer, what's our current altitude?”

“One hundred feet.”

He felt as though he could reach out and touch the water. It was odd, he thought, to perceive so intimately what was to become his grave. Sun reflected from the ocean's surface in countless shimmers. If this was his death, he was at peace knowing it would be at the ocean's gallows. But he had no intention of resigning from life until it was wrenched away from him.

The rope began slipping through his fingers. He held on as the descent steepened.

“Altitude!”

“Seventy-five feet.”

“Reduce speed to forty knots! Stall plane!”

The aircraft could no longer fly. Plummeting toward the water, the jet was seconds from impact. Holding the backpack and inflatable raft under his arm, he curled into a ball and let go of the rope, letting wind sweep him from the cabin. Before surrendering to the waves, he experienced a few seconds of peace. The noise of the jet engines faded to silence, and the plane became no more than a passing shadow.

Water rushed in around Clare, invading his every sense, the pressure nearly rupturing his eardrums as he plunged headfirst. He fell instantly blind, deaf, and cold.

 

TWELVE

Days had passed since his tour of the bridge, and Rove had settled into a routine. He awoke early on sea days to jog the upper decks, after which he would refuel at the Century Oasis buffet and dine alfresco. He would lift weights for two hours before eating again. After his morning workout, he'd visit the library to continue reading a collection of history books he had started on day three. He'd nap, then spend quiet evenings strolling the lido deck. Occasionally Fawkes would invite him to play poker in the card lounge.

His favorite locale so far had been the Cayman Islands. He'd rented a boat and dived along colorful reefs, exploring a metropolis of undersea activity in waters clear enough for him to read a newspaper at eighty-foot depths. The fearless gliders of Stingray City had engulfed him, stroking his wetsuit with their smooth underbellies. Rove looked forward to an eventual first dive along the Great Barrier Reef when the ship reached Australia, and in Bonaire when the ship would return to the Caribbean at the end of the cruise.

When night fell, Rove would suit up and enjoy a full-course dinner with unlimited entrees. He'd have a drink on the veranda before retiring. The routine grew on him.

*   *   *

On the bridge, Trevor Kent stared at the computer monitor.

“Captain, you'd better have a look at this.”

Selvaggio sauntered over to the console, a cup of coffee in hand. “What is it, Trev?”

“It's the auto identification system.”

“What about it?”

“We seem to have lost actionable intelligence from Maritime Domain Awareness. Look at these ships here.” He pointed to three dots on the screen. “Number one, a freighter headed for Aruba, ETA in sixteen days. Number two, a logging craft bound for the Baltic Sea. Number three, a research vessel looking for an endangered marine mammal. Any of those ring a bell?”

“Those were the ships that appeared during the bridge tour. At the time, I found it strange a ship would take sixteen days to reach Aruba from anywhere in the West Indies.”

“That's right, Captain. Now click around on the other ships.”

Selvaggio did as told. His brows furrowed.

“Impossible,” he said. “The specs are the same. Each ship is one of three, either Aruba-bound merchants, Baltic-bound loggers, or surveyors for endangered marine life. The auto ID must be malfunctioning.”

“Every ship appearing on-screen is a carbon copy of one in the trio,” said Kent. “And if that ruined your day, this will make it worse. At three this afternoon, the radar showed us coming within ten nautical miles of one of the ships. From the bridge, we can see thirteen nautical miles. There was nothing off the port side but leagues of empty sea.”