Yesterday's Hero (28 page)

“Nicky should be here.” Malcolm doesn’t look at me when he replies, just keeps scanning the crowd. “He’s reliable.”

“It should be noted,” Aiko says, “that Malcolm’s definition of reliable is a little looser than most people’s.”

“Still alive, aren’t you?” Malcolm says without looking around.

Aiko shrugs and doesn’t elaborate further. Still I am not reassured. This is the man we’re relying on for transport and weaponry. It’s tricky to wear a shoulder holster while traveling coach on a false passport. Plus, personally, I like to leave talk of our drastically shortened lifespans until after the first day of a new mission.

“I don’t, you know,” Devon starts, “want to be a Debbie Downer on everything. Or a Devon Downer. That’d be more appropriate in this case. And I’ve no desire to malign all the Deborahs of the world. I’ve known two Deborahs and both were very cheerful women. Except one of them when I ran over her cat. But that was very much a one off. For both of us. Don’t make a habit of vehicular pet maiming. That’d be a terrible thing. But what I meant to say is, do we have a plan B should this chap, Nicky, decide he’d rather not turn up and help us?”

“He’s reliable,” Malcolm repeats.

Devon looks at me. “No then,” she mouths at me. I nod.

I’m not sure MI37 missions ever went smoother than this. Still, Felicity valiantly tried to give the impression that they did.

But I’m trying not to think about Felicity. What she’s doing. What she’s thinking.

I mean, I know the relationship is over. You don’t throw your badge at someone, and quit on them, and expect to then go home with them and enjoy a cup of tea while you both watch the sitcoms. I get that.

I just wish we could. When this is all over.

Assuming, of course, that when this is all over the world still exists.

“There he is.” Malcolm interrupts my mental muddling. His meaty finger points to a hunched figure in the crowd. The figure has a grease-stained New York Yankees cap pulled down over his eyes and he’s wearing enormous aviator sunglasses that almost entirely cover his pockmarked cheeks. He sees Malcolm pointing at him, and ducks back into the crowd, head low.

“Not,” Devon says, “exactly how I’d define reliable-looking.”

“Reliable,” Malcolm rumbles. “Not respectable.”

Which is about as much as I suppose we can hope for. We cross over the room, tailing Nicky’s greasy wake through the crowd. His appearance doesn’t seem to have affected Jasmine in the slightest. She is practically skipping.

Nicky is waiting outside standing next to… well, I suppose it’s a minivan, but it looks closer to a pile of sculpted scrap metal painted lime green by a lackluster monkey. The sort of thing Fred Flintstone would have had to upgrade to if he and Wilma had decided to have more kids.

“You come now,” Nicky says. “Nikolai take you to private airport now. Very hush-hush. Very good. You like it there. Very nice.”

He smiles and I kind of wish he hadn’t. I haven’t seen that shade of yellow since I helped my dad take up the linoleum in my grandmother’s basement.

Nikolai opens the minivan door. “Very good ride,” he tells us. “You like very much. Like Cadillac.”

I’m reasonably sure Cadillac could sue for slander over that one, but someone has to bite the bullet. “Shotgun,” I say.

Vnukovo Airport, Moscow, one hellish hour later

I spill out of Nikolai’s car about two seconds before the contents of my stomach do.

“You like very much!” His smile is very wide. Like a shark’s, I imagine.

Aiko clambers shakily out of the back seat and helps me to my feet.

“Not exactly a TV-style secret agent, are you?” she says.

“I’m better when my stunt man stands in for me.” I almost manage a smile, but I can still taste my airplane food and I decide against it.

“Plane this way!” Nikolai shouts with far more enthusiasm than seems required. “You like very much! Cadillac of planes!”

My stomach lurches again.

We’ve parked a fair distance from the terminal and Nikolai leads us away. Mist makes everything seem loose and unreal. I still lean on Aiko for support. Devon stays close, unsteady on her feet. Jasmine and Malcolm weave after us. Parked planes hulk to our left and right. They all look far too heavy to ever lift off the ground.

All except one.

“Tell me,” I say to Aiko, “please, that that’s not our plane.”

“Oh no.” Jasmine shakes her head. “That’s so not cool.”

It is as if rust has accreted over the years, flaked off some great iron behemoth in the sky and happened to collect, through a freak geological event, into the shape of a plane. Seeing it, I can kind of see why Nikolai called his minivan a Cadillac. It’s all about frames of reference.

“Come on!” Nikolai shouts. “All fuel and ready to go. Like Icarus we go!”

“No.” Aiko shakes her head. “He did not say that.”

Jasmine turns to Malcolm. “M,” she says, “I love you, but I’m going to kill you.”

“No,” Devon says, “this flight is going to kill us all.”

“Very nice,” Nikolai purrs. “You like very much.”

Several thousand feet too far off the ground

I
’ve always been a big public transport fan. Buses and trains make a great deal of sense to me. The maximum number of people in the minimum number of vehicles. Reduced emissions, a protected planet. Everyone’s happy.

Planes and I have always had a more tenuous relationship. It’s the whole turbulence thing. If there were trains that thrashed up and down like moshers at a Metallica concert there would be a public outcry. But apparently when you’re thousands of feet up in the air with nothing below you but a fatal landing, we as a society are OK with it.

And, in my defense, when the turbulence is causing the plane wings to flex up and down like a bird’s, I think the terror might be justified.

It doesn’t really help that every time we survive a particularly bad bout, Nikolai releases the flight stick to give us a thumbs-up while the nose of the plane dips towards oblivion.

At least Aiko, Jasmine, and Devon all seem equally disconcerted so I don’t feel like a total coward. Devon is being particularly vocal about it, with her usual eloquence and volume. It turns out that when it comes to epithets, she is more creative than Shakespeare. “Invertebrate, neck-breathing, fecal-festering, bile-soaked, intestinal parasite,” is not an insult one forgets quickly, even if you are fearing for your life. Malcolm watches us with something between bemusement and disdain. There again, he’s been overly cheerful since we got on board and Nikolai showed him a giant sack of budget-priced Russian firearms.

Nikolai’s enthusiasm continues unabated. “We enter Ukraine now,” he tells us after a few hours, conveniently tipping the plane on its side so we all tumble towards the windows and get a great look at the earth coming up to meet us.

I put my head down between my knees and breathe slowly.
This is worth it.
I repeat the mantra in my head.
This is the right thing to do.

Except, even if the world would have ended if I’d stayed with MI37, at least I’d have been standing on it when it did.

I have to believe I couldn’t have convinced them. If I don’t believe that then I’m the stupidest man on earth.

“We enter restricted airspace now,” Nikolai tells us with an exuberance usually only displayed by men discovering they’re about to receive unexpected sexual favors. “Very nice!”

“Wait,” I say. “Restricted by whom?”

“Nice syntax,” Aiko says, which seems to be missing the point.

“Ukraine military,” Malcolm says without batting an eyelid.

“Restricted like they’ll send us an angrily worded letter about it?”

Malcolm doesn’t seem to want to answer that one.

“They’re going to shoot us down, aren’t they?” I say to Malcolm.

Nothing from Malcolm.

“Aren’t they?”

Still nothing.

“They’re going to send up planes to shoot big holes in us. Aren’t they?”

He has the decency to at least shrug.

“MiGs incoming now!” Nikolai seems on the edge of clapping. “Very nice!”

“Oh my God,” I say. “We’re going to die. Jesus. MI37 may have fucked pretty much everything else up, but even they could arrange a basic bloody flight.”

“Hey!” Aiko seems genuinely offended. I am too busy fearing for my life to really worry about that right now.

“You be calm, shouty man,” Nikolai says. “You no worry. I am…” He contemplates the instrument panel and the plane veers wildly to the left. “How you say?” he asks. “I no be harmed.”

“Invincible?” I say. “You’re invincible?” It’s a testament to the weirdness of my day job that I have to weigh up the likelihood of that statement being true.

“Doesn’t seem totally likely does it?” says Aiko, seeing my expression.

Devon appears to be praying.

“You see now!” Nikolai shouts gleefully.

There is a noise like a weaponized coffee-grinder suddenly blaring into life. Then the windows fill with fiery streaks and Nikolai yanks on the flight stick like he’s trying to snap it in two.

The plane reacts as if struck by a fist. People and possessions fly through the air and we spiral away through the air. I land upside down in a seat staring at my feet.

“You see now!” Nikolai bellows. “Ukraine pilots very bad.”

Thunder roars around us. Nikolai cranks on the stick. Then the whole plane shudders. There is a terrible metal grinding. Our defensive spiral becomes a shuddering half spin through the air.

“Lucky hit!” Nikolai shouts, dripping derision. “Hit me now eater of shit!” And with that he puts us into a plunging dive. I’m relatively sure the only reason I don’t shriek like a six-year-old girl is because my stomach collides with the back of my throat and shuts off my air.

Devon screams, and then her body slams into mine. Together we tumble, head over heel for the cockpit, for the far-too-thin sheet of glass separating us from empty, parachute-less space. Only the back of Malcolm’s head stops our descent.

Behind us, another crackle of thunder, and suddenly wind roars. Two neat holes, one on either side of the fuselage, gape as a massive round punches through the plane.

“He not bad, this guy,” Nikolai muses.

I try to clamber over Malcolm, try to make sure that I get a chance to end Nikolai’s life before the Ukrainian bastard shooting at us does it for me.

Nikolai counters my murderous impulse by pulling more Gs than I can overcome. I slam back, mash my spine against the far wall. I am pinned there, Devon half on top of me, Aiko splayed next to me, her body at a ninety degree angle to mine.

And then, suddenly, level. Suddenly sagging to the floor. The only sound the rattle of our wings and the howling of the wind against our plane’s new perforations.

“See, I lose him now,” Nikolai says. “Nothing to… Oh shit.”

I don’t even have time to form a suitable expletive before a plane seat drives the air from my lungs. I sag over it like a child’s toy—deflated and discarded.

“This…” Nikolai suddenly doesn’t sound quite so confident. “This may not be so good actually.”

And then the tail of the plane disappears. A great ripping tear crashes through the body of the plane, and then all that is between us and a Ukrainian MiG fighter jet bristling with missiles, machine guns, and other assorted instruments of death is air.

A
ll I can think, and this is probably unfair, but if I somehow get out of this, once I have murdered Nikolai, I am going to murder Malcolm as well. “Reliable,” my left arse cheek.

“Hold on! Hold on!” Nikolai is screaming at the top of his lungs, but it sounds like a whisper against the roar of the wind that claws and chomps at the ragged tail of our aircraft.

Down we go. Down and down. I watch suitcases, holdalls, and light reading material fly out into the desolate European sky.

A cloud swallows us. Nothing but screeching white behind us, lapping at us. I cling to a chair roughly bolted to the rusted floor. My feet fly up above me, flapping in the screaming turbulence. And how long will these bolts hold? Will any of this hold?

“Hold on!” Nikolai keeps screaming it. And I don’t know if he’s yelling at us, or the plane, or at the world itself. One more second. Just one more to live, to try and rectify this absolute fucking disaster.

Blackness laps at the corner of my vision. If I pass out I’ll let go. I can feel my fingers slipping. I want to look, to see if everyone else is safe, to see who we’ve lost. But I don’t dare move my head. I need to concentrate on this seat. I need to make it my world. My anchor. I need to pour my will into it. Hold on. Hold on.

Down.

Down.

Out of the cloud. And the ground below us is so close. It’s right there.

And then it’s flung away. And my feet slam against the floor of the plane. And my teeth rattle. And I slam my head against the floor. And everything seems to be spinning, but maybe that’s just me. And Nikolai is cheering, shouting wildly. And the wind is still howling, still trying to drown him out. But somehow it all feels a little bit less like I’m going to die.

Not enough less. But a little.

“Ok,” Nikolai screams. “We land now. No more in the air time. Party over.”

And the plane lurches like the hand of God swatted it, and we plummet down and I release the last of my breath in what has to be my worst attempt at my last words yet. One long drawn-out syllable.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA—”

The ground comes up like a fist. Nikolai lets out a grunt like he’s been headbutted by a warthog. The plane bucks, tilts up, remembers half of itself is missing, and slams down to earth. I fly up. Everything flies up. A nanosecond of weightlessness, and then the plane leaps up to meet us, to carry us down to dead, dry dirt once more. Up, down, up, down. The back of the plane rips over the ground, over dirt and chunks of tarmac, vomiting up sparks, screaming at the universe. A seat breaks free from the fuselage, rolls down and away. It strikes the ground, spins, splays open, spills its stuffing in a messy tangle. Another chair scatters away. And the bolts on the one I’m still clutching, still have seized in a death grip, they rattle and shake as the floor of the plane quakes and bucks.