Breaking Point (2 page)

Tommy checked his watch: 11:15
P.M.
mountain.

Pilot-in-Charge Miguel Cervantes adjusted the voice wand, keeping it clear of his mustache. In his ear, he could hear air traffic control in Helena describe the QNH, or the barometric settings on the ground that can cause an altimeter to read incorrectly.

“Roger, QNH,” Cervantes replied. “We are on descent. Over.”

“Confirm, Flight Seven-Eight.” It was a woman's voice. Unusual. The great majority of air traffic controllers were guys. “You are thirteen miles from the outer marker, over.”

“Thank you. We have the localizer. Over.” He nodded to Jed Holley. “Speed good. Flaps one selected.”

Holley hit the switch. “Flaps to one. You want extra light in here?”

Miguel said, “I think we're good.” He toggled the internal PA system. “Ah, flight attendants, cross-check and prepare for landing, please.”

To Holley he said, “Extend the slats.”

“Slats are good.”

“Okay. Slowing down a bit. Flaps eleven, please.”

“You got flaps at eleven, boss.”

Cervantes smiled at that
boss.

“Altimeter.”

“Checked.”

“Speed brakes.”

“Armed green,” Holley chanted back. “Good to—”

Thump.

Jed Holley said, “What in hell…?”

Both turboprop engines died, simultaneously. Every light on every monitor on the flight deck shut off as well. The sound of air whooshing around the airframe grew loud.

Miguel Cervantes said, “Hey, hey, hey. What's this … C'mon!”

Glow-in-the-dark decals on many of the flight deck's surfaces infused them with a sickish green glow.

Cervantes began walking through the emergency ignition system.

Nothing happened.

He did it again.

Holley said, “Jesus…”

*   *   *

Tommy brought his head up sharply. He'd heard something go
thump.
He turned back to the notes on the e-reader, just as the device died.

Zip. Nada. Totally blank screen.

Tommy whacked it. “Piece a shit…” he whispered.

And only then did it dawn on him: the engines had died, too.

Both flight attendants turned and dashed for the flight deck. Tommy glanced out the window. Trees were close. Very close.

“Fuck!” He grabbed Kiki by the shoulders, pulled her forward and down, and climbed on top of her.

*   *   *

Kiki woke with a shock. Someone was on top of her, pushing her down, her chest against her legs.

Her first thought was:
If this is an assault, the bastard is going to be more sorry than he could ever imagine.

Her second thought:
I'm still on the plane. Oh, dear God …

Tommy shouted,
“Isaiah! Get down get down get down!”

*   *   *

The former fighter pilot snapped awake. Isaiah blinked, taking the scene. In a second, he realized they were powerless. He craned his neck, sweeping away his reading glasses and looking out at the slowing propellers.

He turned back and saw Tommy piling onto Kiki, pushing her down between their row and the seat backs ahead of them: rows 10 and 11.

One of the flight attendants rushed down the aisle but lost her footing. Her head panged off one of the aisle-seat arms. Isaiah reacted quickly, grabbing her and rolling to the floor, he on the bottom, covering her head with his arms.

*   *   *

Flight attendant Jolene Solomon looked back and didn't see Andi. At that moment, a dark-haired man with a hawk nose leaped from his seat, grabbed two cases from an overhead bin, and sprinted down the aisle toward the empennage, or tail cone. One of his friends stood, too.

Jolene shouted, “Sir! Sit down! Now!”

*   *   *

Jed Holley shouted into the dead radio, “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! Polestar Seven-Eight declaring an emergency! Repeat: emergency!”

Miguel Cervantes tried the ignition sequence three times. It obviously wasn't going to work. He switched to hauling on the yoke for all he was worth, fighting desperately to keep the nose of his powerless aircraft up.

The Claremont VLE began slicing through the fir and pine trees, the tallest trees ripped savagely by the once-powerful Bembenek engines that hung beneath the eighty-five-foot wingspan of the plane. Cervantes and Holley both struggled with their yokes in the bizarrely quiet, green-tinted flight deck.

Through gritted teeth, Miguel Cervantes said, “Jed?”

Jed Holley said, “I know, man,” as a towering Douglas fir caught on the port wing and tore it loose from the airframe.

As the port wing sheared free, the Claremont yawed madly, the starboard wing dipping, hitting more trees, thicker branches. Most snapped and splintered away. A massive pine caught the starboard turboprop, breaking the downward-facing propeller like a toothpick, before ripping away the entire wing.

The Claremont rolled over, starboard windows facing the ground, port windows the moon. The great ship slid lower into the trees, momentum tanking, ablating bits of aluminum and glass and losing altitude but still not nosing over.

A lone lodgepole pine shattered the flight deck windshield, tearing the copilot's chair out of its floor restraints, sending the chair and Jed Holley into the back of the flight deck.

*   *   *

Tommy, his head near the floor, saw a man's legs flash by, struggling to negotiate the off-axis aisle toward the empennage.

Beneath him, Kiki hissed, “Oh God!” He felt her tense up.

With her ear to the industrial carpet, she was the first to hear the
snap! snap! snap!
of treetops hitting the underside of the airliner.

Most of the screaming passengers in the left-hand seats dangled to their right, hanging by their seat belts. Passengers in the right-hand seats pressed against the wall of the fuselage. Some sobbed. Some prayed. Others swore. Overhead bins opened; coats and laptops rained on passengers' heads. The three crash investigators, wedged near the floor, stayed in place.

*   *   *

Still reeling over on its right side, Polestar Flight 78 hit the ground almost horizontally and slid, screaming, another hundred yards, snapping trees and sloughing off bits of both aircraft and bits of passengers.

HELENA REGIONAL AIRPORT (HLN)

Air Traffic Controller Jennifer Westphalia frowned at her radar monitor in the darkened air traffic control tower. “Hey. Where'd my Polestar go?”

The swing-shift supervisor popped a Nicorette out of its blister pack, walked over to Jennifer's station, and slid on the half-glasses that hung from a lanyard around his neck. “What?”

Jennifer pointed to her screen. “Polestar Seven-Eight. TRACOM gave me the plane about ten minutes ago. It was seven minutes out. It just fell off my screen and I can't raise them.”

The supervisor wore a headset, unplugged. He plugged it into the jack beneath Jennifer's terminal. “Polestar Seven-Eight, this is Helena Regional. Please state your status. Over.”

They waited. “Polestar Seven-Eight, please say your status. Over.”

They waited three beats.

Jennifer said, “Uh-oh.”

*   *   *

Kiki was crushed to the floor under Tommy's weight. Doubled over, her face and knees to the floor as she was wedged tightly between rows 10 and 11, Kiki feared her ribs would cave in under Tommy's weight.

She squeezed her eyes shut, listened to the hellish shriek of aluminum being rent asunder. She felt the insane vibrations under her cheek and knees. Part of the seat undercarriage dug viciously into her thigh.

She suddenly smelled fresh air and pine trees. She got a face full of dirt, bitter and foul. She had it in her mouth, up her nose. She coughed, relieved not to have Tommy's weight crushing her anymore—then suddenly realizing he wasn't there. Still wedged between the seats, Kiki screamed,
“Tommy! Tommmmmmeeeeeee!”

BOOK ONE

THE DEVICE

1

SIX DAYS EARLIER

Renee Malatesta's mobile thrummed. She ignored it.

She snugged the starched, white sheets around her and burrowed into the warm depression made by the German tourist she'd allowed to seduce her. He'd come to Segovia via bicycle. He had iron thighs and funny little ears and he smelled delicious. He slept the sleep of the just as Renee's mobile thrummed again on the white-painted, faux-Victorian side table.

Renee's nut-brown arm emerged from the eggshell-white sheet. She turned the phone so she could see the LED.

Andrew.

She glanced at the German biker, easily a dozen years her junior. He smiled in his sleep. She glanced around the havoc of the apartment, looking for her clothes. She found his bike jersey, decided it would do. She sat up, pulled it over her head, and freed her shoulder-length hair. She grabbed the phone and stepped out onto the ornate, wrought-iron balcony overlooking the plaza, thinking to herself
, You could take the call in the apartment. It's not a videophone.

Although, with Andrew, one never knew.

Four stories below, the nightlife of Segovia, Spain, was just getting started. It was 10:00
P.M.
on a Friday, and everyone was in the plaza. Renee figured she was high enough that no one could really tell what she was wearing, and the big man's jersey covered all the important bits.

She flipped open the phone. “Hello?”

“Hi.” He sounded chipper, but Andrew Malatesta always sounded chipper. “Sorry to bother you on vacation. I wanted to warn you.”

Renee stared down at the canopy of trees that dominated the center of the plaza. From the sounds of it, hundreds of people were out for the warm evening. “Warn me?”

“I'm at the AVE station in Madrid.” He pronounced it “abbey,” Castilian-style. “I'll be there in thirty minutes or so.”

She blinked. “You're in Spain?”

“I didn't know if you had company. See you in a half hour.”

He hung up.

Renee tugged at the hem of the thin, blue shirt. Andrew was on his way. And he was in a mood to talk.

*   *   *

The German biker was agreeable about the rush. He dressed quickly, pecked her on the lips, and didn't ask questions.

Renee took a long shower, washing all his cologne out of her hair and her skin.

She and Andrew weren't living together, true, but they were still husband and wife. And they were business partners. She didn't mind his suspecting that she'd taken an occasional lover but there was no point being cruel.

She'd carefully dried her wavy, shoulder-length hair with a diffuser. She pulled a white sundress out of her closet that would show off her tanned skin. Naked, she checked out her reflection in the full-length mirror, pronounced herself satisfied.
Not bad for thirty-eight,
she thought. Her eyes changed focus in the mirror, took in the rough, white-painted walls, the oak bedroom furniture, the five hundred-thread-count sheets, the spectacular view outside the open double doors to the balcony, and she smiled.

As Renee Noel, she had grown up in abject poverty in Haiti. She hadn't owned shoes until she was twelve. Looking around, she fired off a quick prayer of thanks to God. As she did most mornings.

She pulled the sundress over her head, tied the string behind her neck, and padded barefoot into the apartment's living room. Andrew was just setting down his ever-present saddlebag in the attached kitchen. He smiled up at her, his black hair askew.

“Care for a cava?”

She said, “Why not?”

*   *   *

They went down to the Plaza Mayor de Segovia and joined the revelry. Andrew went to the Bar Juan Bravo for two flutes of the good Spanish brut while Renee sat on the ornate, nineteenth-century bandstand, watching the city come to life. Everyone was out on this Friday night. Children chased one another. Young couples flirting. Senior citizens telling stories they'd told a thousand times before. The night was clear and the moon almost full.

Andrew returned with the sparkling white wine, handed one flute to her, and stepped up onto the octagonal bandstand, leaning against the ornate iron railing. With his Sicilian roots, jet-black hair, and aquiline nose, he looked like a local.

“Cheers.”

“Cheers.” They sipped. The wine was good; not sweet. They couldn't see the fourteenth-century wall or the much-older Roman
acueducto
from here but knew that a younger crowd would be gathering beneath its shadow tonight, to drink and laugh and skateboard. To the west, the great
catedral
glowed rose-colored at night, throwing ruby-tinted shadows across the revelers.

“I assume you weren't just passing through.”

He gave her that brilliant Andrew Malatesta smile. The one that raised the ambient temperature in any given room a couple of degrees. He had deep-set eyes. That smile still made Renee's heart flutter, even though she realized that everyone got the same one. A handsome man at forty, his hair remained untouched by gray and more than a little wild. He had a clean-shaven face and the body of an avid runner and soccer player.

“Darling”—he sipped his wine—“is someone, somewhere, working on the device?”

Fuck!
she thought.

Children raced by, screaming laughter and dodging the young couples necking. Renee said, “Creating or even testing that device is prohibited by the Bruges Accord.” She smiled back over her shoulder at him. “Why do you ask?” Although she knew. She knew.

A
futbol
descended onto the bandstand from out of nowhere. Andrew shifted position, caught the ball with his raised left knee to bleed off its momentum. He glanced around, found the players. He dribbled the ball with his loafer, then side kicked it straight back to one of them. The boys howled with laughter and applauded. He didn't spill a drop of his wine.