The Hunt for Atlantis (39 page)

He managed to grab the stick and nudged it to one side. To his enormous relief, the plane’s tilt began to level out.

Then it struck him—he had no clue what to do next. He’d jumped out of plenty of planes, but he didn’t know how to fly any kind of plane, much less a five-hundred-ton behemoth.

“Shit!” He looked desperately at the control panels. The only thing he could identify at a glance was the artificial horizon, which showed the plane still in a climb, and banking more steeply than he liked.

Where the hell was the autopilot?

There! “Autopilot Engage,” near the top of the control panel. He jabbed at the prominent switch, tentatively releasing the control stick. A synthetic female voice announced that the autopilot was active, the plane smoothly bringing itself to a level attitude. He searched for the altimeter. The A380 was at just over twelve thousand feet, well short of cruising height.

He hoped that whatever system was being used to release the virus wasn’t activated by a timer.

Kari pulled herself upright as the A380 leveled out. The two booming shots from the direction of the cockpit suggested that both pilots were dead—and that Chase was responsible.

Chase! How the hell had he gotten aboard?

Not that it mattered. He was here, and he posed a threat.

More so than Nina? She weighed the dangers. The virus canisters were inside a container at the very rear of the middle deck, plumbed into pipes that would disperse the deadly solution into the jetstream from the A380’s tail. If Nina could get the container open, she might be able to interfere with the release mechanism.

But she had to find the container first, and then break into it.

Chase, on the other hand, was in the cockpit. He was the greater danger.

With one last look after the retreating Nina, Kari turned back.

Nina reached the rear of the upper hold. None of the containers showed any signs of being connected to the plane’s exterior.

Which meant the virus was on one of the other decks.

She feared she would have to return to the front of the hold and somehow make it past her pursuers, but then spotted a hatch in the rear bulkhead. It opened into a small compartment. She poked her head into the low-ceilinged space. It was an access area, with what looked like large fuseboxes connected to fat skeins of wires on the walls.

And another hatch set into the floor.

She clambered into the cabin and turned the catches on the hatch, pulling it open. Below she saw another metal container, in front of it a pallet onto which was strapped a large, sleek blue-and-silver motorbike. She recognized it as Kari’s, the racing bike she was so proud of.

She dropped down into the middle hold.

The plane now on autopilot, Chase stepped back from the controls. He hoped that would buy some time. How exactly he would get back down to the ground with both pilots dead was another matter …

Running footsteps sounded behind him, and he threw himself against the port wall as shots cracked past him, slamming into the instrument panel. Through the cockpit door he saw a man duck behind the bulkhead, waiting for his companion to give him cover so he could whip around and shoot.

Chase fired first. A single Magnum bullet from his Wildey blew a hole through the bulkhead, and the man standing behind it. Blood sprayed over the cabin, the guard slumping face-first to the floor.

One down. But there was still another man outside.

More bullets slammed into the cockpit, splinters of plastic and fiberboard flying everywhere. The other guard was using the same trick, shooting through the bulkhead. Chase threw himself flat on the deck as shots smacked into the cockpit wall and side panels above him.

He could see the dead man’s pistol on the cabin floor, a SIG-Sauer P226. Presumably the other guard had the same weapon, which meant he had fifteen bullets in his clip, thirteen of which had now been fired, fourteen—

Fifteen!

If his count was wrong, it would get him killed.

Chase rolled, arms stretched out in front of him as he threw himself at the open cockpit door. He saw the second of Frost’s guards frantically loading a new clip into his pistol—

The Wildey boomed. The guard flew off his feet, collapsing at the rear of the compartment.

Chase jumped up and hurried aft, kicking the guns away from the two men in case they weren’t dead. A moment’s experienced examination told him that they were.

Unless there were other crew members he didn’t know about, that just left Kari aboard.

And Nina.

Nina heard the gunshots and ducked down next to the motorbike in case any of them found their way into the hold.

The last shot was from Chase’s Wildey. Which she hoped meant he was the last man standing …

“Eddie?” she called. “Eddie!”

Chase heard the female voice coming from the hold.

Was it Nina—or Kari? It was hard to tell over the engine noise. He went to the door, seeing nothing but metal containers under the cold lights. “Nina! Is that you?”

A head popped up towards the rear of the hold. Chase recognized the auburn hair instantly. “Nina!”

He ran into the hold.

Kari heard Chase shout from below as she went back into the executive cabin. She paused, peering down the stairs to make sure he wasn’t lurking in ambush, then descended silently.

Gun at the ready, she entered the crew room. No sign of Chase, but her two men were dead on the floor. The cockpit door was open. One look told her that both pilots were also dead.

She could lock herself in the cockpit and regain control of the plane. However, the holes in the bulkhead told her that would be a risky option. Chase could shoot her right through the door.

And if she were locked in the cockpit, that would leave Chase and Nina free to locate and sabotage the virus canisters …

She hurried into the cockpit anyway, to check the plane’s status. Several panels had been damaged by bullets, but she was able to find the information she most urgently needed. The autopilot was engaged, the A380 at 12,000 feet and 320 knots. The fact that it was off-course and hadn’t reached its cruising altitude would already have alerted air traffic control that something was wrong, as would the lack of communication. If the plane failed to respond for more than a few minutes, the air force would be sent to intercept. Damn it!

The plane had to be brought back to the ground before the military got involved. If she returned to Ravnsfjord, a private airport, then the events aboard could be covered up, blamed upon human error. A second attempt to release the Trident virus could be made with little delay.

She examined the autopilot controls, which luckily were undamaged. The A380’s computers were state of the art, and the runway at Ravnsfjord had been upgraded with the latest navigation aids; in an emergency, the plane could literally fly itself to a safe landing without any human intervention.

Which was fortunate, because there was no longer anybody aboard capable of piloting the enormous aircraft.

Suddenly sweating, Kari activated the emergency landing sequence.

Chase squeezed past containers until he reached Nina, who was waiting by Kari’s racing bike. He hugged her. “Jesus, you’re okay!”

“I thought you’d died!” Nina cried.

“Not me, love, I’m indestructible.” She kissed him. “Oh, hello! Where did that come from?”

“Just happy to see you!” The smile fell from her face. “Eddie, listen—somewhere on the plane there’s—”

“A virus, I know. Any idea where?”

“No, but it must be hooked to the outside of the plane. There’s nothing in the upper hold.”

“There wasn’t anything like that forward of here,” said Chase, “and I didn’t see anything in the lower hold.”

“Then there’s not much left to check! Come on!” Nina pulled him with her towards the rear of the hold. “You check the ones on the left side, I’ll go right.”

There were fewer containers on Chase’s side of the plane, and none were out of the ordinary. He reached the huge aft cargo door, stopping to check the controls. Maybe if he opened the door—or even ejected it entirely, as closer inspection revealed a warning notice and instructions about firing its explosive bolts—he could force the plane down …

“Eddie!” He looked around, the door already forgotten as he saw Nina waving frantically from the rear of the plane. “Over here, I’ve found it!”

Chase hurried to the back of the hold. Nina stood by a pair of steel hoses leading from the rearmost container to fittings in the aft bulkhead. “Here!” she said. “Any idea how to stop the virus from being released?”

He shook his head. “Normally when I deal with WMDs, I just blow up the whole fucking building!” There was a padlock on the container’s front panel, but a couple of blows with the butt of his Wildey took care of it.

“Oh my God,” Nina exclaimed as she looked inside. What Frost had shown her in the biolab had led her to expect small flasks of the virus; the three containers she saw here were more like oil drums. “Now what do we do?”

“Put this out of action,” said Chase, pointing at an electric pump at the base of one of the drums. There was a simple control panel beside it. One button would open the valves, and the other would pump the virus through the pipes and out into the open air.

“What if it’s booby-trapped?”

“Why would it be? They didn’t expect anyone else to be aboard!” He aimed his gun at the panel.

“Whoa, wait!” Nina yelled. “You can’t just shoot it! What if it causes a short circuit and sets the thing off?”

Chase gave her a look. “I could dismantle it, but we’re kind of running out of time!” He took aim again—

The A380 banked, throwing them both off balance. “Shit!” said Chase. “What was that?”

Nina looked towards the front of the hold. “Kari. She must be in the cockpit! What’s she doing?”

“Turning us around,” Chase said grimly. “Taking us back to Ravnsfjord so they can have fifty guys surround us.”

“But—but she can’t fly this thing!”

“She doesn’t have to, the computer’ll do it all for her. Here.” He took out his Swiss Army knife and handed it to her. “There’s a screwdriver and some scissors in it. Take the front panel off, and then cut every wire you can find.”

“I’m an archaeologist, not an electrician! What are you going to do?”

“Take care of Kari.” He hefted the Wildey and pushed past Nina, heading forward.

Nina fumbled with the knife, trying to pry open the stiff blades. All she succeeded in doing was painfully snapping her thumbnail. “Shit!” She tried again, with no more luck. “Eddie, wait!” He didn’t hear her. Frustrated, she ran after him.

Chase reached the crew room, looking cautiously inside. The cockpit door was still open. No sign of Kari.

He raised his gun and entered the room. The two bodies still lay where they had fallen.

Where was she?

She hadn’t gotten past him in the hold, so she was still in the forward section. That meant she’d gone up the stairs to the upper deck, was hiding in the cockpit, or was in the utility room.

Watching the cockpit door, he advanced on the utility room, paused—then yanked the door open and aimed the Wildey inside.

Empty.

He closed the door and pressed his back against it, ready to whip around the corner and aim up the stairs.

Go!

Nobody there.

He relaxed … and Kari swung down from where she’d been hiding directly above, both her feet slamming into his face.

Chase staggered back, eyes watering from the resurgent pain in his broken nose. With the A380 still banking, he had to fight to keep his balance.

Another kick flew at him, Kari pivoting on one foot in a roundhouse move. Her boot heel crashed into his chest like a pickaxe blow. He gasped for breath.

Her foot snapped up again, smashing into his gun hand. Agony shot through him as his little finger broke. The Wildey spun away and hit the rear bulkhead.

He lashed out with his left fist, and Kari’s head snapped back as his punch caught her cheek. She yelled, as much in surprise as in pain, and dropped back a step with a poisonous expression.

Chase realized she had a gun tucked into the waistband of her leather jeans. Kari saw his eyes flick down to the gun. As she grabbed it, he plowed into her shoulder-first, smashing her against the door of the utility room and driving the breath from her lungs—

The gun went off.

Searing pain exploded in Chase’s left thigh. His leg immediately gave way, pitching him on to his side. He clutched the wound. The bullet had gone right through his thigh, missing the bone, but his clothing was wet with blood.

The A380 leveled off, the autopilot now on course for Ravnsfjord.

Kari gasped for breath. “Damn you, Eddie,” she choked out. The smoking gun came up, pointing at his face…

And held there.

A second passed, two, Kari’s finger tight on the trigger—

“Kari!”

Nina stood in the door to the hold, Chase’s Wildey held in both hands. Aimed at Kari.

“Drop it,” Nina said.

“Nina?” Kari looked at her in surprise, but didn’t move the gun away from Chase.

“Kari, put the gun down. Put it down!”

“Nina, there’s still time for you to change your mind.” Kari’s tone became almost pleading. “You can still come with me!”

Nina set her jaw. “I’m not going to let you kill Eddie.”

“I can’t let him threaten the plan.” Kari looked back down at Chase. Eyes narrowed in pain, he clutched his wounded leg, unable to respond. He turned his head towards Nina, willing her to shoot. Only amateurs talk, he wanted to tell her, but the words refused to emerge.

“The plan’s insane!” Nina snapped. “Your father’s insane!”

Kari’s face twisted with a flash of anger. “Don’t say that!”

“You know he is, Kari! You know what he’s doing is wrong! For God’s sake, you’ve been working for years to save lives all over the world! Think of all the people you’ve helped! Doesn’t any of that mean anything to you?”

“I have to do it,” said Kari, though her expression was conflicted. “I can’t disobey my father.”

“You already did!” Nina reminded her. “When you wouldn’t let him kill me! And I saw you in here just now: you could have killed Eddie, but you didn’t. Because you care about him too! He saved your life!”

“But he’s not one of us …”

“Kari, there’s no ‘us’ and ‘them,’” insisted Nina. “We’re all still people, human beings. So the world’s got some problems—big deal, it always has!”

Kari looked back at her, uncertain. “But we can solve them…”

“By killing billions of people? That’s your idea of solving problems?” Still keeping the heavy gun pointed at Kari, Nina stepped closer. “Kari, I know you. You’re not Hitler, or Stalin or anybody like that. And you can stop your father from becoming one of them. Just put the gun down.”

Kari’s gun didn’t move. “I… I can’t.”

“I won’t let you kill him. Or anyone else.”

Now the gun moved, Kari aiming it at Nina. “I don’t want to kill you,” said Kari. “Please don’t make me.”

“Nina, shoot her,” Chase managed to groan.

“I don’t want to kill you either, but I will if I have to,” Nina said. The huge gun wavered in her shaking hands.

“I’ll count to three, Nina. Please drop it.” Kari was almost pleading. “One …”

“Shoot her!” rasped Chase.

“Two …”

“Kari, put it down!”

“Three!”

Kari fired.

At such short range, it should have been impossible to miss, but she did, twisting her wrist at the last instant to fire wide. The bullet flew past Nina to smack harmlessly into the rear wall of the cabin.

Nina instinctively flinched.

And fired.

The Wildey kicked in her hands with such force that the recoil almost tore the weapon from her grip.

Kari slammed against the door. A bright rose of blood burst over the metal behind her as the .45-caliber bullet tore through her body. She slid down the door and slumped onto the deck next to Chase.

Nina stared at her in horror. The Wildey dropped to the floor. “Oh my God …” she breathed, unable to accept what she’d just done.

“Nina …” whispered Kari, a tear trickling down one cheek. Then her eyes closed.

“Oh my God!” Nina repeated. “I didn’t mean to …”

“She just tried to kill us,” Chase growled, clutching his injured leg again and trying to sit up. “Come on, I need your help.” After a moment of hesitation, unable to take her eyes off Kari, Nina raised him into a sitting position. “Thanks.”

She examined his leg, seeing his trousers were soaked with blood. “Jesus! We’ve got to find some bandages—”

“No time. Get me to the cockpit, I’ve got to switch off the autopilot.”

Nina hauled him upright. A groan escaped Chase’s lips as new pain shot through his leg. “And then what?” she demanded.

“We’ve got to stop the virus from being released, then contact the authorities, warn them what Frost’s doing.”

“But what about the virus at the biolab?” she asked as she helped him limp towards the cockpit. “By the time you convince anyone that he’s trying to kill billions of people, he could already have another plane in the air!”

Chase paused midstep. “The biolab …”

“What about it?”

“I blew up the buildings, but the containment area’s still intact. We’ve got to destroy it.”

“How?” Chase looked away from her, at the aircraft around them. “Oh no …” She remembered the horrors of 9/11 all too vividly. Ground Zero was less than two miles from her apartment.

“Five hundred tons of plane and a full load of jet fuel’ll blow that place right open and incinerate everything inside,” Chase said grimly.

“But we’ll die! Except if—Are there any parachutes aboard?”

He shook his head. “There’s no way off. Unless …” His expression changed, and he twisted around to look behind him. “Forget the cockpit—help me into the hold, quick!”

Frost stood at his office window, surveying the still-smoking ruins of the biolab below. Beyond it lay the fjord, and the broken stubs of the bridge. Chase and his companions had caused a massive amount of damage to his property. He had already had calls from the local authorities demanding to know what was going on.

But none of that mattered. The containment area was intact, and despite somehow managing to board the A380 as it took off, Chase had failed to destroy it.

“Sir, the control tower just informed us that the plane is on its way back to Ravnsfjord on automatic,” said a man through his speakerphone.

“Any word from my daughter?”

“Not yet. Sir, air traffic control wants to know what’s going on.”

“Just tell them there’s been a minor malfunction and the Airbus is returning as a precaution.” Frost looked across the fjord at the airport. “When will it land?”

“About six minutes.”

“Keep me informed.” He closed the line, gazing into the distance for the first sign of the massive freighter. The lack of communication was a concern, as was the aircraft’s use of its emergency automatic systems—but the fact that the A380 was returning home told him his people were still in control. Chase would have tried to fly it elsewhere and alert the Norwegian authorities.

Once it landed, the situation could be contained.

The plan was still viable.

“These three, undo all the straps holding them down,” Chase ordered, pointing at the rearmost containers on the port side of the main hold.

“But then they’ll come loose when the plane moves,” said Nina, confused.

“They’ll do more than that. Go on, quick.” As Nina pulled the release levers on the securing straps, Chase limped to the controls for the cargo door.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to blow the door.”

Nina froze. “You’re gonna do what?”

“We need to get these containers out of the way. See that bike?”

Nina looked back at the motorbike on its pallet. “Yes?” It suddenly struck her what Chase was thinking. “No! No way, you’re insane!”

“It’s the only way off! If we just jump out, we’ll still be doing over a hundred miles an hour—there’s no way we’d survive the impact!”

“As opposed to what’ll happen if we ride a motorbike out of the back of a flying plane?”

“So it’s not a perfect plan! But it’s better than being shot when we land!”

“I think the blood you’ve lost came straight from your brain,” Nina complained unhappily, but she continued to release the containers from the lugs in the deck.

Chase read the warning sign. “Okay,” he yelled when Nina had unfastened the last strap, “get back to the bike and hold tight!” She hurried up the hold as Chase let go of his injured leg to grip a fuselage spar with one hand. With the other, he turned the first of the two red-painted levers that fired the explosive bolts.

Then the second …

The cracks as the bolts detonated, severing the heavy hinges of the cargo door, were nothing compared to the ferocious roar of wind and engine noise as the door blew out. A hurricane-force gale screamed into the hold. The A380 was descending, so the aircraft didn’t depressurize, but it was still traveling at over three hundred knots.

The plane lurched. The computers were already trying to counteract the unexpected movement, but the first container shifted, moving backwards over the rollers set into the deck with a banshee shriek of metal against metal. It crashed against the container holding the virus, then plunged through the gaping hatch to be whipped away by the slipstream.

Chase watched it fall. They were still over the sea, but it would only be a few minutes before they made landfall.

The A380 swayed again as the autopilot compensated for the shift in its balance caused by the loss of the container. Another metal crate screeched over the rollers, slewing sideways—coming right for him!

He had nowhere to go, no way to dodge the container—

He let go of the spar and flung himself backwards. The blasting wind caught him, snatching him off his feet.

The rear frame of the cargo door bisected his vision like a knife blade. To its left was the narrow gap between the side of the virus container and the hold wall; to the right, open sky and certain death.

He hit the frame, pinned for a moment by the wind…

And was blown left.

He grabbed a strap and clung on as the loose container juddered over the rollers and fell through the door. The third container was right behind it like a train carriage, the A380’s sudden upwards lurch as it shed more weight sending it hurtling at him. It smashed into the container holding the virus and jolted to a stop less than an inch from Chase’s face. Then the wind hammering against its flat front flung it out of the hold into empty space.

The freezing gale hit him again. Eyes forced almost shut, he squinted up the hold. Nina clung to the container next to the bike. Through the door, he could see a dark line on the horizon ahead. The Norwegian coast.

Chase pulled himself around the mangled corner of the virus container. Each step on his wounded leg was like a spike being driven through his flesh. He continued forwards, using the straps on the starboard line of containers to drag himself towards Nina.

Once past the door, the wind lessened slightly. He reached Nina and the Suzuki, yelling over the roar, “Unfasten the bike and start it up!”

“What if there’s no gas in it?” she shouted back.

“Then we’re fucked! Get it ready—I’ve got to get back to the cockpit!”

“What for?”

“To switch off the autopilot!” Using the containers for support, Chase hobbled up the hold, emerging in the crew area. The bodies of the two guards had been thrown to the side of the cabin by the plane’s maneuvers, and Kari was now lying facedown at the foot of the stairs. He spotted his Wildey and tried to bend down to pick it up, but a fireball of pain in his leg deterred him. Get it on the way back, he decided.

He entered the cockpit and checked the autopilot display. As he’d thought, Kari had engaged all the plane’s automatic emergency systems. The A380 was following a course back to Ravnsfjord’s main runway, using signals from the ground to guide it in for a landing.

Even from several miles away, he could see the runway lights through the cockpit windows. The Airbus was still over the North Sea, but the coastline was only a few miles distant, the airport three miles inland. He checked the other controls. The plane was losing speed, the engines slowing as the computers brought it down in a shallow descent, trying to make the landing as simple as possible.

Chase looked back through the windows. There was the fjord, a dark indentation in the coastline. A line of black smoke marked the location of the biolab …

His target.

The central pillar of the windscreen acted as his guide to the A380’s course. Right now it was aimed directly at the runway lights. He had to bring the plane around a few degrees to the right…

He checked the altimeter. Eight thousand feet and descending. He needed to be lower. A lot lower.

Leaning painfully over the dead pilot, Chase took hold of the joystick with one hand as he deactivated the autopilot with the other.

A warning buzzer shrilled, but he ignored it. Instead, he gently tipped the stick to the right, banking the plane. Slowly the runway lights drifted to the left of the pillar. He held the stick in position until the column of smoke was dead ahead, then pushed it upright. The A380 swayed queasily before leveling.

So far, so good. Now for the tricky part…

He pushed the stick forward. The nose dipped, the altimeter’s countdown suddenly accelerating. He would have to judge everything entirely by eye: too high and the A380 would fly right over his target; too low and it would plow into the rocky side of the fjord …