If I simply cut the wires with the axe, the circuit would break dirty. In modern fly-by-wire transports, a severed digital bus doesn't revert to manual control; it locks the control surfaces in their last commanded trim position to prevent structural flutter. If the elevators were currently trimmed for a three-degree descent, severing the link without grounding the bus would freeze the trim wheels forever. We would glide straight into the Atlantic at three hundred knots, unable to pull the nose up even if both pilots woke up. I needed the bridge schematic. And the only complete set of electrical wire books was stored in the maintenance locker behind the lower crew bunk—inside compartment 4B.
The cockpit curtain parted. Mara returned, her face slick with cold sweat. Behind her stood the purser, a tall, gaunt man in his fifties whose gold name tag read DAVID. His tie was loosened, his fingers clutching a green metal oxygen cylinder and a heavy brass ring holding twenty commercial service keys. "David," I said, stepping into the galley space to meet him. "The floor hatch outside the forward lavatory. The carpet flap is velcroed down. Pull it back." David didn't ask questions. The sight of Captain Thomas slumped against the cold glare shield had stripped away any corporate hesitation. He dropped to his knees on the gray galley carpet, caught the seam of the heavy nylon runner, and ripped it backward.
Beneath the carpet lay a rectangular hatch of ribbed titanium, flush with the deck, fastened with a quarter-turn latch and a heavy barrel keyhole. I inserted the brass key labeled 4B into the cylinder. It turned sixty degrees to the right with a clean, heavy metallic click. The latch sprang up an inch. Then it stopped. From beneath the hatch came the unmistakable sound of a steel crossbar sliding home. A deadbolt, thrown from the inside of the lower compartment. Through the narrow one-inch ventilation slit cut into the edge of the hatch frame, a voice rose above the low roar of the air-conditioning packs. It was flat, calm, and muffled by heavy engine noise from the cargo deck below.
"Don't turn the latch again, Bennett," the voice said. I froze, my hand hovering two inches above the cold brass key. "You know my name," I said down through the vent. "The manifest notes are clear enough," Covington replied from the dark below. "Air Force. Two tours in the desert. You know what happens to high-tensile control cables when an explosive charge shears the tension pulleys, Captain." Beside me, Mara pulled air through her teeth in a sharp gasp. "You don't have an explosive charge," I said, keeping my voice level, calculating the distance between the hatch frame and the lower deck floor. "If you had ordnance, you wouldn't have wasted twenty minutes poisoning the cockpit air with agricultural solvent. You’re running a soft hijack. You want this plane intact until it hits radar shadow."
A brief, raspy chuckle scraped through the slit. "Look at the trim wheel in the cockpit, Captain," Covington said. "You have twelve minutes before the descent profile crosses ten thousand feet. At ten thousand, the cabin pressure relief valves cycle automatically. When they do, I dump the rest of the tank into the main recirculation manifold. Your passengers go to sleep. Quietly. No screaming. No fighting." "Why?" I asked, leaning closer to the floor, my eyes searching the darkness through the metal slats for a silhouette, a reflection, anything tangible. "Who paid you to dump an airliner into the trench?"
"Nobody paid me to dump it," Covington said. The sound of metal scraping against metal echoed through the deck plates—a socket wrench engaging a threaded bolt. "They paid me to ensure the five crates in the forward cargo hold never reach the customs shed in Barajas. What happens to the hull afterward is just salvage rights." I stood up slowly, looking back through the open doorway toward the flight deck. On the center pedestal, the trim wheel spun another three revolutions forward with a dry, rhythmic clatter. The nose pitched down again. Through the cabin curtain, from row eight, came the thin, rising cry of Sophie Vargas, calling for her mother in the dark.
CHAPTER 6
I looked at David. "Give me the oxygen mask." "What are you going to do?" David asked, his hands shaking as he held out the green bottle. "I’m not trying the hatch," I said, picking up the heavy steel fire axe from the galley counter. "The cargo bay has an emergency blowout decompression panel built into the wall behind the forward lavatory mirror. It’s held by six aluminum rivets designed to yield under fifteen pounds of differential pressure." "That wall backs into the avionics rack," David stammered. "If you breach it at cruise, you could blow the whole electrical corridor." "We aren't at cruise anymore," I told him, strapping the portable oxygen mask over my nose and mouth. "We’re going down. And if I don't break that wall in three minutes, nobody on this plane is ever going to land."
The forward lavatory measured less than four feet across, smelling of cheap citrus disinfectant and the faint, chemical tang of leaking hydraulic line. David squeezed in behind me, his shoulder wedging against the plastic molded sink basin, holding the portable oxygen bottle upright against his ribs. Outside the folding door, Mara stood guard in the galley with her back pressed flat against the runner curtain, keeping the three passengers in the first row of business class from seeing the fire axe in my hands. The deck hummed beneath our soles, that sickening downward glide steepening as the barometric pressure in the hull began its slow, programmed descent toward the ten-thousand-foot tripwire.