Chapter 2 - Behind The Reinforced Door
As I stepped out into the narrow aisle, the entire front half of the economy cabin went dead quiet. Douglas Martinez glared up at me, his face twisting into a mocking smirk despite the dread thick in the air.
"You?" Douglas scoffed under his breath. "Are you out of your mind? Attendant, look at this guy! He looks like an unemployed mechanic sleeping off a bender. You're going to let a vagrant walk into the cockpit of a two-hundred-million-dollar widebody jet?"
I paused, turning my head just enough to look Douglas dead in the eyes. I didn't raise my voice. I didn't make a fist. But the cold, predatory stillness that had kept the Midwest underworld under my absolute dominion settled over my frame.
"Douglas," I said evenly, reading the monogrammed initials on his leather briefcase. "If you open your mouth again while I am trying to keep your pathetic life intact, I will personally ensure you spend the rest of this flight duct-taped to the lavatory door. Sit down and shut up."
Douglas shrank back into his seat cushion, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly. The color drained completely from his cheeks. He knew—with the raw, primal instinct that prey animals possess—that beneath the cheap gray cotton beat the heart of a monster far more dangerous than anything he had ever encountered in a boardroom.
Jillian hurried ahead, punching a six-digit emergency access code into the armored cockpit door keypad. The red light blinked amber, and with a heavy mechanical clunk, the reinforced door swung inward.
The smell hit me first.
It wasn't electrical smoke, and it wasn't jet fuel. It was the sharp, bitter stench of synthetic almond and metallic dust—a telltale chemical signature I had smelled only once before, during an assassination attempt orchestrated by a rival syndicate in Detroit three years ago.
"Hold your breath," I commanded, grabbing Jillian's shoulder and pulling her back into the galley. "Don't step inside."
The cockpit was bathed in the eerie amber and red glow of multiple warning indicators. The primary flight display showed Flight 804 cruising at Mach 0.82, but the altitude tape was already beginning a subtle, sickly oscillation.
Captain Thomas Miller was slumped forward over the yoke, his headset dangling off his ear. His lips were a pale, bruised purple, and thick white foam was drying at the corners of his mouth. In the right seat, First Officer Marcus Cole was convulsing faintly, clawing blindly at his own collar, gasping for air that his lungs refused to process. Two empty ceramic mugs sat in the center console holders, coated with a greasy film.
"Oh sweet Jesus..." Jillian choked, covering her mouth with her palms. "Did they have heart attacks? Was it food poisoning?"
"Organophosphates," I said, my voice hardening like cast iron as my military training and mafia paranoia collided into instant clarity. "Nerve agent derivative. Tasteless, odorless in liquid. Someone dosed their pre-flight coffee thermos."
Jillian backed away against the bulkhead, her pupils dilated with absolute terror. "A-a poisoning? On this flight? Who would do that?!"
"Someone who wanted this plane to turn into a ghost ship over the freezing ocean," I answered grimly.
I reached up, ripped two emergency oxygen drop-masks from the overhead ceiling panel inside the galley, clamped one tightly over my own nose and mouth, and shoved the other into Jillian's trembling hands. "Stay outside this door. Guard this entrance. If anyone approaches this threshold who isn't wearing a crew uniform, yell."
I stepped inside the cockpit and pulled the armored door shut behind me, engaging the interior lock.
First Officer Cole weakly turned his head toward me, his bloodshot eyes unfocused. "C-can't... breathe... hydraulic pressure... bleed air dropped..." he whispered, his fingernails scraping uselessly against the throttles.
"Easy, Marcus. I have you," I muttered. I grabbed the captain by his epaulets, hauling his deadweight backward out of the left seat. Captain Miller was unconscious, his pulse thready and erratic, but he was still breathing. I dragged him into the observer jumpseat behind the pedestal and secured him with the five-point harness, snapping an oxygen mask over his mouth.
Next, I unbuckled Marcus Cole, easing his trembling limbs down to the carpeted floor where he could lie flat, his oxygen mask firmly in place.
I slid into the captain’s seat.
The familiar tactile sensation of cold aluminum, rubberized switches, and heavy foot pedals sent a jolt of pure adrenaline straight through my veins. It had been seven years since I walked away from the black-ops flight squadron to take over my father’s syndicate after his murder. But muscle memory is an indelible curse.
I strapped myself in, adjusted the rudder pedals until my combat-boot soles rested firmly against the steel treads, and strapped on the captain's heavy headset.
The master caution alarm was chiming an insistent, electronic rhythm: BEEP-BEEP-BEEP.
On the navigation display, a massive, swirling wall of red and magenta precipitation was marching across the radar sweep sixty miles ahead. A supercell storm over the North Atlantic, pushing seventy-knot crosswinds.
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And right in the middle of that radar screen, our altitude indicator flickered from 35,000 feet to 34,200.
The autopilot had just kicked off.
