Endgame: The Calling (31 page)

“All right, but do I have to take off my head scarf? It is haram.”

Singh isn’t moved. “I am sorry, but I must insist.”

Slowly, reluctantly, Kala pulls the scarf from her head and lets it fall into her lap. “I’m telling you, this is a mistake.”

“If it is, then you will have my sincerest apologies.”

She holds out a wrist for the cuffs. This, she knows, is what a reasonable innocent person would do. Protest and then comply. With her other hand, under the scarf, she pulls a thin hairpin from a slit in the hem. The cop doesn’t notice. She slips the cuffs over her left wrist and then her right.

“Tighter, please.”

“But I haven’t done anything!”

“Just a little tighter. Please.”

She does as she’s told. He puts the scarf over her joined wrists.

“Thank you,” he says.

Singh slides out of the seat and into the aisle, careful to keep his weapon concealed.

Kala stands and works her way toward him.

People are looking at her and mumbling. A large, dark-skinned African man is taking her picture with his phone. A woman in a black hijab is wrapping her arm around her daughter protectively. A Western boy a year or two older than she is peering intently at her over the back of his seat. He looks familiar. More familiar than he should.

Who is he?

She steps in front of Singh and turns to the rear of the plane and starts to walk slowly. There are nine rows between her and the aft galley.

She immediately starts working one of the cuffs’ locks with the hairpin.

She’s done this hundreds of times before in training, and picked thousands of locks, so she knows she’ll be free by the time they reach the back of the plane.

Seven rows left and the plane hits some bad turbulence. She has to steady herself against the seats with the side of her arm. A few of the passengers gasp. She runs her finger along the pin. It is still in the lock.

Five rows left and the plane passes through some more chop, but this time lighter. The overhead compartments creak.

She almost has it.

Three rows left and the plane drops 40 or 50 feet. Kala momentarily lifts off the floor, as does Officer Singh. The whole plane comes down with a thump, but Kala and her captor remain standing. They hear more gasping; a couple screams.

“Keep going,” he says, not a tinge of nervousness in his voice. Flying is Singh’s job, and he’s dealt with turbulence before.

A cabin chime informs them that the seat-belt light has been turned on.

Click, click, click,
in every seat.

They pass the lavatory doors and she has it. The left cuff comes free. She brings out her wrist and recloses the cuff, leaves the scarf in place. There are two flight attendants in the rear of the plane. One is strapping herself into a jump seat. The other, a tall, thin man, is bracing himself between the wall and the counter. When he sees Kala—very young and very pretty and not at all what one would think of when one thinks of a criminal or terrorist—his eyes light up. Evidently, he thinks that it’s funny this is the person the crew is abuzz over, the person who has been deemed a profound security risk.

Kala hears something outside, something just barely perceptible. A hitch in the engine.

She braces herself.

The plane jumps again. The male flight attendant is thrown over the counter. Singh falls forward and Kala can feel the muzzle of his gun press into her back. Realizing that under these conditions he could accidentally shoot her, and that she needs to act, Kala spins around and raises her left hand like she is going to attack. Singh is not expecting it and his eyes follow her hand. As the plane continues to bounce, and he gets ready to fight her off, she loops the empty cuff ring around the gun and pulls back hard with her right arm. The cuff tightens around the pistol and whips it out of his grasp.

Singh is shocked.

The plane bounces again.

Again.

Kala struggles for a second to free the pistol from the cuff. Singh is pulling out his Taser. The male attendant sees what’s happening and, believing he can be a hero, moves on Kala. The female attendant screams and closes her eyes. They are all separated by less than five feet.

Kala raises the pistol. By the weight of the Glock she can tell that her initial thought was right—it’s loaded with rubber rounds. The real bullets are in that extra clip. A kill shot will have to be perfectly placed.

Singh moves forward. The plane rises again and they all leave their feet. Kala sees everything unfold as if in slow motion. As they are in the air she reaches out for Singh’s left hand, which is holding the Taser. She pulls him close, pushes the barrel of the Glock into his right eyeball, fires. The pop is muted, unnoticeable above the turbulence and the fear and the cabin hum and the engines. There is no exit wound, and he dies immediately, slumping forward across Kala’s shoulder. The Taser is still in his hand. She lifts it and fires at the male attendant. He walks right into it and goes stiff, and his eyes roll into the back of his head.

The plane lurches again, and Kala knows they just lost an engine. The attendant in the jump seat screams.

“Shut up!” Kala yells as she extracts herself from the dead officer.

But the attendant doesn’t listen. She keeps screaming.

“Pull yourself together and shut up!” Kala yells again.

She doesn’t listen.

Kala trains the gun on her. The attendant raises her hands and Kala fires three quick rounds. The screaming stops.

Kala steps into the middle of the galley as the plane starts to fall. She puts both hands on the lavatory doors, the flat slide of the Glock in her right hand pressing against the plastic panel, and looks into the cabin. No one has noticed what has happened. Everyone is too frightened, too concentrated on the imminent end of their own lives. Even the familiar boy is not looking in her direction. All she can see is the top of his head, his face slightly raised as if he is talking to God, pleading, praying. Everyone is praying.

The captain comes on the PA.

“Ladies and gentlemen, do not worry. We have lost one engine, but the A340 is designed to fly on as few as two. We are two hundred forty-eight nautical miles from the coast of Oman and have been cleared for an emergency landing at the nearest military base. I repeat, do not—”

He is cut off by a very loud grinding noise followed by a slow
whomp whomp whomp
that reverberates through the fuselage and everyone’s chest. The PA is still on, and the sounds of multiple warning alarms from the flight deck spill from the speakers.

“Oh God, please help us,” the pilot says, and he’s cut off.

The plane’s nose points down, and the aircraft starts to fall hard and fast. Kala struggles to open a lavatory door, goes in and shuts it, locks it. She sits on the closed toilet and gets ready, breathes, thinks, tries to stay calm. She will not lose Endgame this way. She is in the rear of the plane. She can hear the airflow change as the flaps are lowered. They’ll ditch. They’ll be in the water. The rear of the plane is the best place to be in a crash. It takes every ounce of her training to calm her nerves, but she manages to do it.

She looks at herself in the mirror. She will live. She will win. She prays for luck and thanks her mentors for all that they have given her, especially the ability to calm herself in the face of disaster.

The plane is going down.

They will hit the water in less than 60 seconds.

Blessings.

Blessings to the stars and to life and to death.

Blessings.

Grub Street Bar, Darwin, Australia

Alice sits in a bar in Darwin. She was at her auntie’s, visiting down in Coffin Bay, when the meteors rained down, but now she’s home. The place is mostly empty, like it usually is, just the bartender and a guy bellied up to the bar who must be a tourist. He doesn’t know what kind of place he’s wandered into, the sort of clientele it serves. Alice doesn’t mind the company, and her people don’t discriminate against visitors. As she sips a beer from a frosted glass, she scrawls on a napkin.

The same words, letters, numbers, over and over again:

How he likes other almonds scarcely serves Caesar’s actions.

HHLOASSCA.

8 8 12 15 1 19 19 3 1.

She draws lines and pictographs, but nothing adds up. Eventually she sketches a rabbit. She makes a little gunshot noise with her mouth. Alice is imagining hunting rabbits in the Great Sandy Desert, which is where she would rather be, walking, sleeping under stars, skinning snakes. Not doing maths problems.

“What a jackass. Yabber and more yabber. If the stakes weren’t so high, I’d toss the lot.”

“Beer cold enough for you?” the barman asks her. His name is Tim, and Alice knows him from around, meaning Tim’s one of her privileged line members who knows all about Endgame. She showed him the nonsense sentence when she first showed up at the bar, but like her, Tim isn’t much for puzzles.

She looks at him. “Beer’s great.”

Tim nods, smiles. “Cold beer helps me think, usually.”

“Me too,” says Alice, taking a swig from her mug. “This one’s a right quiddler, though.”

“What is?” asks the tourist, taking his eyes off the match playing on the bar’s single television. He has an American accent. He cranes his neck at Alice’s napkin.

“Puzzle I gotta solve,” Alice answers.

“Puzzle? What, like a crossword?” He slides off his stool and steps closer. He is white as rice, his hair is red, his eyes are green, and he wears glasses.

“Nah, but it is a word problem.” Alice exchanges a look with Tim, who shrugs. “Here. Have a look.”

She pushes the napkin across the bar top. The tourist studies her scribbling.

He picks it up. “Which is it?”

“The sentence at the top there.”

“‘How he likes other almonds scarcely serves Caesar’s actions’?”

“Yeah. Driving me bonkers. I tell ya, mate, I can kick every arse on a whole team of footballers, but I can’t beat that one.”

The tourist chuckles and looks at her. “You certainly look the part.”

“I am the part.” She downs the beer. “Killed two guys in China a couple days ago, saved a little Indian girl.”

“That right?”

She smiles, makes it sound like a joke. “Damn right that’s right.”

“She’s a big talker, mate,” Tim explains to the tourist, though he knows Alice is telling the truth.

“Well, you won’t get no trouble from me.”

Tim refills their glasses. The tourist reaches for his wallet, but Tim shakes his head.

“On the house.”

“Thanks,” says the tourist. He rests the napkin on the bar. Afternoon sunlight filters through tinted windows. A neon Foster’s sign buzzes, but only Alice is attuned enough to hear it.

“What’s the prize?” the tourist asks.

“What?”

“The prize. What do you win if you solve it?”

“Ah. Fate of the world. Save the human race. Make sure my people and everyone I know and love survives and goes to heaven. That lot.”

“Big prize then, huh?”

“Yeah, big, big prize.”

She takes a swig.

The tourist lifts the napkin. “Well, I may be able to help, if, you know, you can cut me in on the action.”

Alice lets loose a surprised guffaw. Even Tim laughs. The tourist looks between then, smiling uncertainly.

“You got any Koori blood, yank?” Tim asks him.

“Koori? What’s that?”

Alice snorts again. “Never mind him, mate. I’ll cut ya in.”

Alice fishes in a pocket and pulls out a large wad of cash, all big bills. She slams it on the bar top. “How’s that?”

The tourist’s eyes widen at the sight of the money. “You’re serious?”

“Ain’t quite eternal salvation, mate, but it’ll have to do. You can take it or leave it. I’ll be the judge if you earn it, though.”

“And don’t be messing about,” Tim adds, eyeballing the tourist with no small amount of menace.

“Yeah,” says the tourist. “I thought we were just joking around.”

“We’re not,” Alice replies, motioning impatiently. “Let’s have it. I meant what I said about scrapping a team of footballers.”

“And the two in China?” the tourist asks, swallowing hard.

Alice winks. “Yeah. That too.”

The tourist relaxes a bit. The wink put him at ease, though he still eyes the money. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Alice the Hundred and Twelfth.”

“Tim the Eighty-Sixth,” adds the bartender.

“Dave, uh, the First, I guess,” says the tourist.

“I doubt that,” Tim says, knowing that this tourist Dave couldn’t be the first of whatever line it is he belongs to. Alice isn’t interested in all that. She wants to get on with it.

“Let’s go, Dave,” she says.

Dave takes the napkin up and points at the sentence. “Well, clearly it’s a code for something. And the first letters don’t seem to mean anything. But the first
two
letters—here and here, and then the rest of the way down—do mean something.”

Alice takes the napkin from him. He watches her. The TV flashes a special report.

“So—
h
, yeah, but then
h-e
, and
l-i
, then
o
, and then
a-l
,
s-c
,
s-e
,
c-a
,
a-c
.”