Riders (Riders, #1)(53)

“Is that it?” Daryn asked. She leaned close to me and looked at the dot on the small screen in my hands. It indicated a position 146 meters dead ahead.

“That’s it.” I looked at the row of planes in front of us, eyeballing distances. “Third one’s ours,” I guessed, but the GPS would guide me right in. I slid the radio into my pocket and pulled wire cutters out of my pack, using them to create a small opening in the fence for us to climb through. Sebastian got tangled and ripped his sleeve, but we survived and made it inside. We were physically in the airport. Second breach down.

Now came the riskiest part: moving to the plane. I knew there’d be cameras everywhere, and there was plenty of activity around, so we’d have to stick close to the shadows—without looking suspicious.

We moved in bursts, with me on point and Marcus at the rear, everyone moving quietly except Sebastian, who was about as stealthy as a giraffe.

“Get quiet and low,” I whispered to him.

He ducked his head, taking him to an almost invisible six-foot-two.

We’d closed to within thirty meters of the plane when I saw two men in blue mechanic’s coveralls approaching. Quickly, I got everyone down behind a fuel truck.

The men came closer, strolling like they were on a break. They came to a stop around the front of the truck, close enough that I could hear one of them scratch his stubble. They were heckling each other over some bet on a football game.

This wasn’t good. Our plane had to be taking off soon. I could see its loading ramp from where I crouched. We were so close. Sweat rolled down my chest and my back. We’d be arrested if we got caught. I’d have a record. That would make getting my old life back virtually impossible. I couldn’t screw this up.

The fuel-truck guys wouldn’t leave. They couldn’t decide what the wager had been, twenty bucks or a case of beer. Bastian kept shifting around, his shoes scraping the asphalt. I knew he was still jacked up on the rage shot I’d given him.

Turning, I sent him a shut up glare.

He tapped his cuff like it was a watch. “Let me take them!” he whispered.

But I couldn’t let him do that. One passed-out security person at LAX wouldn’t raise suspicion. But three? I didn’t want to bring that kind of heat on us. There was already too much outside of my control.

“Gideon,” Bas started in again.

Daryn moved to his side and mouthed, Bas, quiet.

The men went silent. I locked eyes with Marcus, who I knew could fight. A fight would be better than an arrest, but neither were good. I shook my head, telling him no. I imagined for an instant telling Cory this story, what was happening right now, and how he’d howl. I hoped I’d get the chance to do that someday.

The men picked up their conversation and walked away.

I rechecked the GPS. Last burst. We hustled to the 757 I’d spotted earlier. As we closed, I heard the engines running. That meant the plane was leaving soon—a good thing. I took everyone right up the ramp, then scanned the hold—pallets, boxes, no people—clear.

Or maybe not.

I heard whimpering, coming from deeper inside the plane.

“Get behind this and wait here,” I said, indicating one of the containers. Then I took out my knife and moved toward the sound. The cargo was stashed in steel pallets to either side of a central corridor. It grew darker as I went, and the whimpering became louder. I followed the sound to a metal cage and knelt.

Silence.

Gold eyes stared from the darkness. I pulled my penlight from my pocket and clicked it on. A shepherd. I recognized the breed—Belgian Malinois. They were used a lot as combat dogs. “Hey, buddy. Just hang tight, I’ll be back.”

I checked a few labels on the boxes around me and confirmed we were on the right plane. FIUMICINO, ROMA IT. Marcus, Bastian, and Daryn hustled up.

“People were coming,” Daryn said.

I heard them. The ground crew at the rear of the plane, going through the preflight checklist.

I motioned them to stay put and continued down the length of the cargo hold, moving toward the cockpit. I had three main objectives now. First, make sure the dog was the only other living cargo aboard—confirmed. Second, I didn’t think the pilots would come back into the cargo hold but I had to secure the door from our side—I did that with some nylon rope from my pack. Third, find a place we could hide during the flight—located.

The floor had electric tracks—a kind of pulley system for loading the pallets—but about halfway into the hold, the tracks stopped. There, the plane had steel girders as big as railroad ties across the floor, a reinforcing belt right down the center that created a clear corridor about three feet wide. In front of this space were more pallets, which must have been loaded through the nose of the plane. I noticed a candy-bar wrapper and a cigarette butt on the floor. It looked like we weren’t the only ones to have traveled this way.

I found the others and brought them over. “It’s tight, but it should work.”

The whine of the rear doors closing made Bastian jump. The bright overhead lights shut off, leaving only the weaker emergency lights on, plunging us into near darkness. We scattered around the narrow space and hunkered down. In ten minutes, we were in the air, the engines roaring loud and steady.

Sebastian shoved me in the shoulder. “That was sick! I didn’t realize that was going to be so fun!”