Panic Button (21 page)

“Don’t move you sick fuck. Stay exactly where you are,” Max growled.

Jo felt the man’s eyes on her, still. She felt naked - felt the blood drying on her hands and arms. Anger and guilt and fear combined into a need to be armed so she could protect herself. Her eyes searched the cabin and she saw the crash axe’s blade glinting under the overhead lights. She grabbed it and brandished it at the stranger, who shifted uncomfortably on the floor.

“You heard what he said! Don’t move! Who are you?”

The man brushed a shard of broken glass from the
Deppart
Airlines epaulet affixed to the shoulder of his shirt, and then peered up at her. The look on his face was disarming. He looked just as freaked out as Jo felt. She couldn’t risk letting her guard down, for fear that this was yet another of Alligator’s mind games.

 

“Who the
fuck are
you?” Her speech was clearer and calmer this time. The weapon in her hand was giving her power, and purpose.

“Callahan... George Callahan. I own this plane. I’m just a pilot...”

Jo lunged forward with the axe, Max training the
taser
gun right between Callahan’s eyes. The man recoiled, holding his palms up in surrender. Sweat had stained the armpits of his shirt.

“I swear to God.”

Max grimaced, cold sweat gathering around his bloodshot eyes.

“Yeah? Then why did you smash up my bloody laptop?”

“I’m... just doing what I’m told.”

“By who?”

Jo and Max both guessed the answer before Callahan opened his mouth to speak.

“Alligator.”

“Who is the Alligator?” Jo snapped.

Callahan just shook his head. “I don’t know. I haven’t even seen his face - his real face.”

Jo glanced at Max. Could Callahan be telling the truth?

“He’s lying,” Max said.

“So, why shouldn’t we kill you right now?”

Callahan snorted.
A pained laugh.
“Fly this plane can you?”

“Jesus.” Max looked away, coughing.

“So why are you here? Why are we on your plane?”

The man sighed. He looked deflated, glancing around at the dead bodies and smashed monitors. He looked distant, like he was thinking of someone, somewhere else.

Jo watched him, curious, seeing something of her own predicament in his eyes. Her thoughts returned to Sophie. She had to get to the bottom of this, had to find a way out. Jo turned to Max, but he was leaning on his seat back looking worse for wear.
Just hang on in there Max
, she thought,
we’re almost there...

She looked back at Callahan and caught him watching them cautiously. Clutching the axe, she moved closer to him.

“Alligator - what do you know about him?”

“He’s got my family. My wife and...” Callahan’s eyes welled up with tears. “My son. When I came home day before yesterday, they were gone. The house...
Jesus what a mess.
They ransacked the place, tore it apart. Then I got the message...”

“Message? What message?”

Jo pictured herself reading the All2gethr winner’s email. Sophie’s excitement when she’d told her she was going to New York. Then she smelled the bodies in the luggage hold, recalled the blank fear in Dawn’s eyes. She blinked away the terrible images invading her thoughts. Tried to focus on Callahan’s voice.

“The bastard left a recording.” Tears were trickling down his face now. “He killed my son, Jacob... he... To show me he meant business. He said he’d kill them all if I didn’t do what he said.”

Jo had no words left in her dry mouth. She could easily imagine Alligator saying those words, and knew how Callahan must have felt. Had Alligator shown this poor wretch the footage of his son being murdered? She felt a pang of guilt at the memory of the execution viral she had forwarded to her friends.

, she told herself,
that’s what Alligator wants you to think, that you’re as bad as him. That’s how he keeps you on your toes, fighting for your loved ones.

 

She stared down at Callahan bitterly. Wasn’t that what he was trying to do? Fight for his loved ones? She glanced at the suitcases, spilling their human cargo out through the bathroom door. Poor fool.

“I can’t let that happen,” Callahan continued, echoing Jo’s thoughts, “I won’t let that happen. I’m only doing what I have to do, to save them.”

His self-pity was beginning to have a negative effect on Jo. Didn’t he care about what they’d been through while he was locked away in that cockpit?

“We’ve all lost people,” Jo said. “My Mother is dead. Everybody he showed us is dead!”

Callahan’s eyes hardened. He glanced around the cabin as if he was reminding himself of some dread
ed
purpose.

He cleared his throat. “You going to tell me what you did out here?”

Jo felt the look of guilt flash across her face before she could quell it. She glanced at Max, who lurched back toward Callahan.

“We did what we had to, mate.”

The plane dropped suddenly, losing altitude.

Jo cried out and Max fell backwards onto his seat. They steadied themselves as the plane
levelled
out. Jo thought of the map, the little red line showing their flight path into the All2gethr.com headquarters.

“You have to land this plane. If you crash into All2gethr, you’ll kill hundreds of innocent people.”

“Innocent people I don’t know,” Callahan said. “People die every day... but not my family, not today. He already took my youngest, my Jacob, from me. You don’t have any idea what that’s like.”

“Oh, believe me, I do know. He killed my mother. He has my daughter.”

 

Jo knelt down next to Callahan. Behind her, Max was doubled over his seat, coughing hard.

“Please,” Jo’s voice was as calm as she could make it. “God knows what he’s going to do with her. She’s only eight years old...”

Her words looked to be hitting home.

Callahan’s eyes softened. But Max’s coughing grew louder still, distracting him. Jo looked over her shoulder at Max, who looked to be on the verge of collapse.

He was in the throes of an unstoppable torrent of
agonised
hacking coughs. As the coughing grew more intense, he started to gag and splutter. Horribly, specks of blood and bile sprayed from his mouth as he fell to his knees. He dropped the
taser
gun and clutched at his throat. His eyes looked like bursting plums as he slumped back onto the floor, rasping.

“What’s the hell’s wrong with him?” Callahan asked, afraid.

Still clutching the axe, Jo dashed over to Max. She kneeled over him and placed her hand on his forehead.

“Oh no. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”

She looked mortified, tears leaking from her eyes as Max tugged desperately at her clothing.

“What-did-you-do-to-me?” he rasped.

“It was... I thought it was the only way...”

Bloody spittle coated Max’s lips in a noxious foam as he tried to draw painful breaths, each intake of oxygen like a knife blade to his chest.

Jo was desperately trying to cradle him, but he used the last of his strength to fight her off, shoving at her like she was attacking him.

She heard Callahan’s outraged voice from over her shoulder.

“What did you do to him?”

Max uttered two sharp, final, breaths. He fell silent, eyes fixed in silent horror at Jo’s guilty face.

thought Jo,
to save my baby girl.

 

Callahan snatched the
taser
from the floor. He was standing over Jo now.

She looked down at Max, the boy she’d felt so drawn to when they’d first met at the airport. The boy who was now dead from the poison she had poured into the champagne under Alligator’s instruction. Max had downed all the glasses. She’d meant for the others to partake too. Jo gripped the crash axe. Alligator had made a murderess of her. That’s how far she’d go to save her little Sophie.

“Oh Bravo, Jo.” Alligator’s voice, razor sharp, cut through the tension in the cabin. “Beautiful work. You’re the only one who has actually managed to complete their assignment.”

Jo stood up and locked eyes with Callahan. He was pointing the
taser
gun right at her.

She was ready for the fight.

“Time for the final round,” Alligator sneered.

The claustrophobic emergency lighting clicked on, painting the jet interior a carnal red. Jo’s monitor screen flickered with digital noise, which cleared to reveal a camera-eye view of a shadowy room. On-screen, a terrified middle-aged woman and teenage boy were tied up, back-to-back, on chairs in the centre of the room, their mouths gagged with thick black duct tape.

“Ten minutes to impact, Mr. Callahan. So, the question is, are you going to listen to Jo the
poisoner
here, or are you going to get back on schedule and save your wife and firstborn?”

Callahan looked at the screen, distraught. The cameraman held a gleaming hunter’s knife blade up to his captives’ eyes. His wife and son’s fear was palpable through their muffled cries for help - help that wasn’t going to come unless he acted.

“Don’t listen to him,” Jo pleaded, “they’re already dead... they’re all here, all of them!”

She gestured at the piles of body parts.

Callahan glanced at her, then back at the screen.

“Which one goes first?
Wifey
? Or the boy?” Alligator said.

Jo fixed Callahan with imploring eyes. “Don’t listen to him!”

Callahan hesitated, hearing Jo’s urgency but unable to tear his eyes away from the sight of his wife and child on the monitor screen.

They twitched and struggled against their bonds as the camera-killer drew closer to them, knife blade gleaming.

“It’s all pre-recorded. Those suitcases back there... all the people he told us were still alive on the ground. They’re all fucking dead! All of them!”

She grabbed Callahan’s shoulder, forcing him to look toward the suitcases, at the blood and severed limbs.

He looked at her, numb at the sight of so much death and the muffled cries of his family.

“You said he has your daughter.”

“What? I...”

“If your daughter is alive then there’s a chance my family is too.”

“I looked through the suitcases, my Mum’s body was there but not my daughter’s. But all the other people were killed before we even took off - that video he’s showing you...”