Darkness(18)

Thumping the metal panel hard with his fist to let them know he was out there, he pressed the button on the intercom system that connected the cabin to the cockpit, one unit of which was set into the wall right beside the door.

“Ezra? Hendricks?” His voice was sharp. He could feel tension coiling inside him, feel the strong kick of his heart.

No answer.

He tried once more. “You guys alive in there?”

No answer.

Shit. Adrenaline spiked through his system. He pounded the door harder. “Ezra? Hendricks?”

“What’s going on?” Rudy was behind him.

“I told you to stay put,” Cal flung over his shoulder, looking around for some kind of tool he could use to break the handle off the door, which should, he hoped, at least weaken the lock. In his pocket, attached to his key ring, was a small but effective Leatherman tool. With the handle out of the way and the lock accessible, he thought he could use the tool’s screwdriver to jimmy the locking mechanism. Since 9/11, cockpit doors were practically impregnable. He would have hit this one with everything he had if he’d thought it would do any good. It wouldn’t. The lock was his only chance.

“There’s a problem. Oh, jeez, I knew there was a problem,” Rudy moaned, wringing his hands. Thunder boomed. Lightning flashed. The plane shook and dropped. Rudy staggered and caught hold of a seat back to keep from going down.

Grabbing a fire extinguisher from its mount on the wall, Cal barked at him, “Stay out of my way. Sit down.”

The cabin rang with the crash of metal on metal as Cal slammed the case of the fire extinguisher into the handle multiple times in quick succession. By the time the handle popped off, Rudy, collapsed in a seat right behind him, was jabbering what sounded like a prayer, the plane was bouncing and yawing like a boat in high seas, and Cal was drenched in sweat.

His worst fear was that they were going to run out of time. The plane was heading down, and the clock stopped ticking when it ran into something other than air.

Steadying himself against the plane’s gyrations with a shoulder propped against the wall, he probed the lock with his small screwdriver.

It slid into the opening, found what he hoped and prayed was the latch—

“Damn it, Cal, stand down!” Ezra’s voice boomed at him through the intercom.

Cal’s shoulders sagged with relief. Whatever the hell had gone down, it was over. Straightening, he braced a hand against the wall for balance and depressed the speaker button.

“What the hell, man?” he said. He was breathing hard. His heart was hitting about three times its normal rate.

“Stand down,” Ezra repeated. “Leave the lock alone.”

Cal frowned. The plane was still bucking, still descending through what felt like the mother of all storms.

“You want to tell me what’s going on?” he said into the intercom. He had a bad feeling. A gut-tightening, breath-stealing bad feeling.

“We’re landing. Sit down, buckle up.”

“We’re in the middle of the f*cking ocean!”

“We got a better offer for Delgado. Thirty million. You’ll get your cut.”

It took Cal a moment to process. His finger still on the button, he leaned right up close to the intercom to say, “No. Hell no. Motherf*cking hell no.” With each variation of “no” his voice increased in volume until at the end he was shouting at the top of his lungs.

“It’s a done deal,” Ezra replied. “We got people waiting for him on the ground.”

Cal heard a click. He knew what that meant: the cockpit side of the intercom had been turned off.

Curses exploding from his mouth, Cal kicked the door, hammered on it, yelled through it, “You f*cking idiots, we’re on a job. What do you think is going to happen if we turn up without Delgado? What are you going to say, you lost him? You think there won’t be hell to pay?”

Behind him, Rudy whimpered with fear. He babbled, “You can’t do this, you can’t let them do this, jeez, I trusted you. Oh, man, oh, man—”

“Shut the f*ck up,” Cal snapped over his shoulder at him, and turned his attention back to the door.

Feet planted wide apart to try to counteract the plane’s jolting, Cal inserted the tiny screwdriver back inside the broken handle. Bracing a shoulder against the door in an effort to keep himself reasonably steady, he probed the lock.

“Damn it, Cal, leave it the hell alone,” Ezra boomed at him. Not over the intercom. From the sound of his voice, Cal could tell that he was standing just on the other side of the door.

“If you think there won’t be blowback for this, you’re a goddamned moron,” Cal roared, manipulating the screwdriver. The blade connected with what he was almost sure was the latch—

“Get away from the f*cking door,” Ezra roared back.

Cal turned his wrist, jiggled the screwdriver, heard a click, knew he had it.

Bang!

Something hit him in the gut with the force of a lightning bolt. Pain blasted through his system, blowtorching his insides, obliterating everything except mushrooming agony. Clapping both hands to its source, which was low on his left side, Cal staggered backward, past Rudy, who was rising to his feet, shrieking as he watched. Flickering lightning cast weird shadows over everything. The plane bounced over the rough air currents like a rock on a pond. Gasping, Cal fell heavily against the wall. As he started sliding down it, as he felt the warm stickiness of his blood bubbling up between his fingers, Ezra yanked the door open and stepped through it. Behind him, Cal could see into the cockpit, see Hendricks at the controls.