Out of Control (17 page)

Hakeem stood, and I steeled myself.

But he went toward the cockpit, followed by Tim, and I realized what they intended.
I shouted, “Hank!
Look out
.”

It didn’t matter. Hank and Ted never had a chance. The plane began to dive and I grabbed
hold of my seat to keep from being thrown to the floor. Then it leveled out and Tim
reappeared, dragging Hank toward the cargo hold. I looked away and closed my eyes,
swallowing my fear and grief. Hank’s eyes were bulging, his throat raw and purple
from the ligature mark. My body jumped when I heard his body thump against the floor
of the hold.

I began to pray. Beg, actually.

A few minutes later, I heard Ted’s body as it moved across the floor of the plane,
followed by another thump.

Then I didn’t just pray to be saved. I prayed for justice.

I kept my eyes closed tight until Tim grabbed my arm, jerked me around, and shoved
my face down into the seat. He dug his knee into my back and my ribs exploded with
pain. I clenched my teeth to keep from screaming, determined not to make a sound.
Not one. No way would I give him the satisfaction of knowing how hurt and terrified
I was.

He unzipped his pants and bent low across my back, bringing his mouth close to my
ear. “I’m going to finish what I started, and then you’re going to fly.”

Surely to God he didn’t think I’d
enjoy
it? The man was mental.

Hakeem’s voice came over the PA. “Where are you? I need navigation to find the drop.”

Tim huffed, then zipped his pants again, and I sent a thousand thank-yous to God.

“I’ll be back.”

When he was gone, I slowly righted myself and assessed the situation. Where were they
going? Why had they hijacked the plane? What did they intend to drop? I glanced out
the window and thought we were flying kind of low. The desert stretched out as far
as I could see.

That’s when I realized what he’d meant about flying, what Hakeem meant about a drop.

Oh, God
. He was going to throw me out of the plane. Probably the bodies as well. No wonder
the altitude was so low.

I started to shake. Oh God, it was my worst fear, falling from a great height, hurtling
toward the ground, and—

No
.

My thoughts tumbled over one another, trying to think of any way to save myself. There
was nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to go except out and down. I glanced
out at the desert and was suddenly hit with a thought.

I can jump
.

There must be parachutes in the cargo hold. Every Lacrouix and Book plane has ’chutes.
I could jump and take my chances in the desert. The thought of jumping was horrifying,
but when I considered certain death versus a chance of survival—however small—it was
no contest. I’d stare down my fear of heights and jump.

Surging with hope, I stood and turned toward the cargo hold, but spied something on
the floor, a small square of paper. Tim must have lost it from his pocket when he
was taking Hank and Ted to the hold. Desperate for any kind of leverage, I picked
it up and unfolded the paper, scanning the print quickly. It was a schedule from the
Saudi Ports Authority website, listing the incoming tankers expected at the facilities
at Yanbu.

I almost tossed it aside. Then halted in my tracks.

Wait. Hadn’t Conaway said Tim bought a large lot of oil futures with an exercise date
of August 8
th
? That was six days away. Why would he do that, unless…

The fuckers were going to blow the port at Yanbu.

I looked down at my dead cell phone on the table, then shot a look out the window
at the Empty Quarter. We had to be well over a hundred miles from a cell tower, so
a dead battery was the least of my problem.

Actually, impending death was my biggest problem, but I was working on that.

I went to the cargo hold and closed the door, looking around for something to jam
it shut. I saw a huge suitcase and grabbed for it, surprised by how heavy it was,
but glad of its weight when I slid it beneath the door handle and shoved it as hard
as I could, effectively blocking the door.

Turning, I searched for Robichaud. He was lying close to the rear hatch, right next
to what looked like a crate of provisions and a large mass of green plastic. I hurried
toward him, knelt to feel for a pulse, praying madly, and nearly laughed with hysterical
joy when I found one. And altered my plan slightly.

Nick wasn’t dead, but he was unconscious, and I had no idea if he’d survive what I
was about to do to him but it beat the hell out of leaving him here to die. I went
to the forward wall and fetched two chutes and two sets of goggles, then moved past
the bodies of Ted and Hank, trying not to look because I couldn’t lose my shit at
that point. I prayed yet again, asking God to have mercy on their souls, and to damn
the men who killed them to eternal Hell.

Robichaud’s pack had been stowed as luggage and I grabbed it, dumped out the contents,
and stuffed it full of water bottles from the crate of provisions, along with some
jerky. I wondered why Ted had brought provisions, and decided he was being cautious,
because Ted was always cautious.

Lot of good it did him.

I couldn’t think about Ted. Or Hank. I had to focus, had to do everything possible
to save Robichaud and myself.

Before I closed the pack, I picked up his first aid kit and the extra bandages he’d
brought for the long cut on his arm, and shoved them in alongside the water and the
jerky.

After I slid a chute on Nick, I put on mine, and attached our chest straps to each
other with a length of pulley rope. I tied the backpack to the rope and hoped the
weight wouldn’t sever the connection and cut Robichaud loose from me on the descent.
I had to keep him close enough to pull his ripcord. I hoped to God our two chutes
wouldn’t tangle when they inflated.

I’d never actually done this before, but I’d heard enough stories from the guys on
the crews to have a vague clue when to open the chutes.

Tim had discovered my absence. He banged on the door, demanding I open it, shouting
and cursing me to Hell.

Yeah, I’ll see you there, you sorry son of a bitch.

I slipped a pair of goggles onto Robichaud’s face, tightened the strap, then did the
same for myself. I sent up a quick prayer, then reached for the release lever on the
outer door.

The instant the hatch opened we were sucked out of the cargo hold, along with the
clothes that had been in Robichaud’s pack and everything else that was loose. I’d
worried about gutting it up to jump, but guts weren’t an issue because we were already
falling through the air. Robichaud was jerked around crazily as the pulley rope went
taut, then slack.

I grabbed it and hauled him close to me, shouting at him as we plummeted through the
sky. “Nicholas! Wake up! Dear God,
please
, wake up!”

He didn’t wake up. But then, I hadn’t really expected him to. I looked down at the
ground, wondering at the distance, and the unreality of flying toward it. How fast
were we falling? My cheeks felt weird, and I knew from looking at Nick’s that my skin
was rippling in tiny waves. I was thankful I remembered goggles. Otherwise, I think
our eyeballs would have either dried to twin crisps, or been sucked right out of our
heads.

I couldn’t comprehend why anyone would consider this fun. It was a nightmare. My stomach
wouldn’t stop doing somersaults. What if I didn’t open the chutes at the right time?
If I opened them too soon, what would happen? I already knew what would happen if
I opened them too late.

Still holding on to Nick, I figured I’d need to pull our cords at the same time so
we’d descend together. But how could they open so close to each other? I was terrified
the lines would get tangled.

My gaze moved across the horizon, all the way to the ground below us, trying to get
a feel for where we could best land. I had a sinking feeling it didn’t matter. We
were miles from anything, in the middle of one of the harshest environments on earth.

So maybe we’d die out there in the desert. At least we wouldn’t be raped and murdered.

I looked at Nick’s pale face and willed him to survive.

To the west, I saw mountains. Probably more than a hundred miles away.

Was it time to open the chutes?

Maybe I should only open one? If Nick was closer to me, it could work. Maybe? I began
to pull the rope taut, tying a knot through the straps of the backpack, tightening
it until it was smashed between us. Holding my breath, asking God for just one more
favor, I wrapped an arm around Robichaud and pulled the cord of my chute.

My body jerked violently when the fabric billowed above us. And then all went still.

We floated for what seemed like ages, and I finally understood why people jump out
of airplanes. Well, sort of. No way I’d ever do it again. But it was like an out-of-body
experience—sailing across the sky, looking over the Empty Quarter at the undulating
dunes. From up here the desert looked beautiful.

Up close, not so much. Landing was tough, the jarring experience of hitting the ground
made me sick with pain. Yeah, my rib, or ribs, were definitely broken. I laid there
next to Robichaud, tears of agony seeping down my cheeks, and fought for breath. More
than anything, I wished he’d wake up.

When the pain ebbed and I could breathe relatively normally again, I reached between
us and untied the pulley rope, dislodging the backpack, which I tossed aside while
I loosened the straps of our chutes and removed our goggles. Doing so, I felt a solid
bump on the back of his head and realized they’d hit him with something. He had a
concussion. He’d been unconscious for almost an hour, and that spelled bad news. The
longer he was out, the more likely he’d suffered some kind of brain damage.

I wanted to cry again, this time for real. But that would only make things worse.
So I got to my feet and looked around, seeing nothing but sand dunes, blinding in
the broiling sun.

It took a while, but I undressed Robichaud down to his boxers, redressed the wound
on his arm that had started to bleed again, then wrapped him in his chute so no skin
was exposed, tying off the lines and fashioning them into a semblance of a harness
I could put over my shoulders. I took off my jeans, then rolled all of our clothes
into a bundle which I tied with the pulley rope and attached to the backpack. I fashioned
my own chute into a robe of sorts, covering myself from my head to my feet and belting
it on with the lines. Sliding the pack onto my back, I grimaced at the weight. How
was I going to trudge through shifting sand with all that weight on my back,
and
hauling Robichaud?

The real question was, how could I not? The only alternative was to stay put and wait
to die.

I wished I had an inkling of where we were. If we were in the western part of the
Empty Quarter, we might run across a Bedouin camp, or an oasis. If we were anywhere
near the southern edge, we’d be close to the Yemen border. I knew there was a pipeline
down there, and it might be possible to find an alarm box I could trip, which would
bring a technician out to check the line and reset the alarm.

What I really feared was that we might not be anywhere near the western or the southern
edges of the desert. We might be smack in the middle. I replayed our flight in my
mind, trying to determine just how long we’d been gone from Riyadh, and calculating
how many miles we’d flown. That wasn’t much help, however, because in the beginning,
we’d flown west, toward the Red Sea and northern Africa. We hadn’t turned south until
Hakeem took over the controls, and I didn’t have any real sense of how long ago that
had been. I’d been too busy freaking out about the totally horrific turn of events.

So, which way should I go? West or south?

I split the difference and took off in a southwesterly direction.

After about an hour, I decided it was stupid to walk during the day. It had to be
at least a hundred-twenty degrees. Maybe more. I could feel the intense heat from
the sand through the rubber soles of my tennis shoes. How hot must Robichaud be, his
entire body stretched across the sand that ran just beneath the thin silk of the chute?

It was also entirely possible that I was walking in circles. The dunes blocked my
view of the horizon, and unless I could see the western mountains in the distance,
I couldn’t be sure I was heading in the right direction. Night would bring a map of
stars, and I could make certain I wasn’t going in circles.

I stopped then and sat beside Nick, taking out one of the water bottles and dribbling
a bit of it across his face. He needed to drink, but I was afraid if I poured water
down his gullet, he’d choke. I drank some, and patted my face with a few drops, afraid
to use much more than that. If I ran out of water, we were goners for sure.

Unwrapping myself, I laid the chute fabric out, rolled Robichaud on top of it, then
tried again to revive him. It was no use. I lay down next to him and drew the loose
fabric over us, turning us into a human taco. The fabric was breathable, but opaque,
keeping us from roasting in the sun like one of Kenny Rogers’ chickens.

Lying there in the middle of nowhere, I stared at Nick and prayed for him until I
drifted off to sleep.

When I woke up, it was dusk and he was mumbling. I threw the chute off and sat up,
reaching for the backpack and a bottle of water. When I looked again, his eyes were
open.

“Thank God!”

I reached behind his neck and lifted his head so he could drink. “Nick, do you know
who I am?”

He gave me a weak smile. “Mine.”

“What’s my name?”

“Sugar.”

I held up three fingers. “How many?”

“Three.”

“Who do you work for?”

His brow wrinkled in confusion. “Jamie?”

“What company do we both work for?”