The Espionage Effect(98)
“Handheld missile launcher…theoretically, hotwiring a plane is possible.”
“Well, make it realistically possible.”
My command held a biting edge. Not one fiber of my being wanted to soften the harshness.
His penetrating gaze held mine, like he searched for unspoken answers somewhere in the depths of my eyes. Would they look wild, crazy? I didn’t care. He would either cooperate, or I’d initiate an on-the-fly Plan B.
Thankfully, he honored my commanded request with a curt nod, and he opened the case. In a matter of seconds, he disassembled the launcher’s housing and pulled out a small circuit board, its short wires dangling.
“Got a plan?” He climbed back into the pilot’s seat, resting the circuit board on the console between the seats, then reached around the control wheel and rapidly removed a few screws. Then he yanked the wheel off the top of the control column, pulled out a knife, and began slicing into the plastic coating covering the wires.
“Formulating one,” I said. “Will you be able to program coordinates?”
“In a way. Since the tech sunglasses sync up with the weapon, we should be able to rig it so the glasses sync up to the plane. Will your target be by sight?”
“Yes.” I almost smiled. My target. As if he was my agent and his actions were at my command. I didn’t delude myself, however. His loyalty had been clear: to EtherSphere. His cooperation would only remain as long as his and their objectives aligned with mine.
A ribbon of greenery came into view to our starboard, and the plane gently turned on its autopilot course to fly parallel to the shoreline while he twisted the last set of wires together.
“No,” I corrected. I leaned a supportive arm on the back of the copilot’s seat. “Can you find coordinates that are stored in the glasses?”
“The target is something we’ve seen?”
Closing my eyes, I remembered when the longitude and latitude first populated my field of vision. “Back on the catamaran.” It was when we’d first spied from afar, when I’d noticed the light pattern in Escobar’s windows. “Escobar’s house.”
He stared at me a beat longer before his eyes widened infinitesimally. “You want to blow the house.” The corners of his mouth twitched. “I love the way your mind works, Pink.”
Pink. The endearing nickname jarred an aching pang into my chest.
His gaze held mine, like he realized his faux pas and my stunned reaction to it.
We treaded on thin ice, he and I. And still, we took tentative steps forward, feeling our way to safety, to solid ground.
Before either of us broke the silence, the plane course-corrected again, swaying us both.
He broke the intense gaze between us, maneuvered into a seated position, and grabbed his glasses from his front shirt pocket, then slid them onto his face. “This will take a minute. I’m assuming you wish to not be on board when this happens.”
I pushed off the seatback, returned to the back of the cabin, and reopened the large cabinet. “Preferably,” I muttered as I tried to remove the top parachute from the stack, but it seemed to be secured in some way. I growled in frustration, tugging on a belligerent strap that refused to release.
Pain flared in my hip again, and I groaned, hand instinctively gripping the site, as if pressure would alleviate the fiery nerve endings. It didn’t.
“What happened to me?” I huffed out between controlled breaths as I focused on mitigating the pain through sheer will. Logic had a funny way of funneling the order of what I worried about. My parents, Anna, Escobar, Alec, then me, dead last, as per usual. After this plane ride, I intended to seriously reprogram my brain about priorities.
“You were shot with a .30 caliber round.” He depressed a button on the upper right of the glasses while simultaneously flicking the autopilot switch off, then back on. A faint beep sounded from both units. “Clean through muscle, in and out. Miracle, really. Only millimeters from shattering your pelvis. Had I not injected you with EtherSphere’s Hail Mary Field Cocktail, you wouldn’t be standing here.”
He let out a heavy sigh. “I sold him those rounds. Thankfully, they weren’t hollow point.”
I nodded absently, grateful to be breathing, then frowned as I continued to wrestle with the parachute.
Angry at the injury that evil man had caused me, at his kidnapping innocent kids, at hybridizing a deadly virus, conviction fired through me. “Everything of Escobar’s needs to burn. Dungeons. Labs. All of it.”
Sudden movement caught my attention. I turned to see him climbing into the copilot’s seat before putting on a headset. When I furrowed my brow, he pressed a vertical index finger to his lips, asking for my silence.
“Hold on,” he said, still holding up his finger, gaze locked to mine. “Strap yourself in. I’m losing control.”
Even though I sensed a charade being played, I obeyed and dropped into the nearest seat and quickly fastened the seatbelt.
The plane suddenly lurched, its movements erratic as Alec wrenched the copilot’s wheel in one direction, then another. We began to wobble, losing altitude.
“Cancun Tower,” he said, loud and clear. “Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. N511EE. Loss of pitch control. Attempting water ditch.” He repeated the distress call in Spanish. Then he yanked his headset off and depressed the sunglasses still attached to the pilot’s hotwired control column.