“Crap,” Jones said. “Crap crap crap.” He thought about it for a while. “Can we somehow divert around Russian airspace?”
“I can tell you right now that if we try to get to the U.S. from Islamabad without passing over Russia, we will have to go by an indirect route, and we will not have enough fuel,” Pavel said.
“Then we should fly from Islamabad to somewhere else,” Jones suggested, “such as Hong Kong, and refuel there, and then proceed along the usual corridor.”
“What is so important about Islamabad?” Pavel asked.
“That,” Jones said, “is none of your concern. You just need to fly the plane.”
Pavel corrected him: “You need us to fly the plane.” And he exchanged a look with Sergei, who nodded. During the discussion, the two pilots had occasionally broken into Russian for short private conversations, and it now seemed as though they had been talking about other things than just great circle routes. “It is fun to think about Islamabad and flying here, flying there, all over the world, but right now you are stuck in Xiamen FOB and we are the only ones who can get you out.”
Jones sighed. “I had hoped that I could avoid being so blunt,” he said, “but the deal is that, if you don’t file the new flight plan and get us to Islamabad, we will kill you.”
“In Islamabad,” Pavel continued, perfectly unruffled by the threat, “you have protection from officials that you can bribe, and you have connection to your friends who live in Waziristan, Afghanistan, Yemen. Surely you can find one or two comrades who know how to fly a plane. You intend to kill us there and then use your own pilots afterward.”
Jones looked as if he were about to deny this, but Pavel held up a hand to stop him. “Don’t,” he said. “Is ridiculous. You have got something very bad that you want to pick up in Islamabad. It’s totally obvious. You have a nuclear bomb, or some germs, or something. And your plan is to place this on the jet and then deliver this to some American city. You will crash the plane into a building or something and blow up the city, or poison it, or spread some plague. And everyone on that plane will die, one way or the other. It is ridiculous. You must think that Sergei and I are stupid. We are not. We understand. Obviously we are dead men no matter what. And so we have agreed that you should kill us now. Go ahead. Kill us now, and then figure out some way to get your asses out of China.”
Jones actually considered it for a while. Either that, or he was simply waiting until his temper was under control.
Finally he said, “Surely you have some counterproposal? Other than immediate, summary execution?”
“We can fly you out of here,” Pavel said, “as soon as we can make a plan that guarantees to keep us alive.” He exchanged a look with Sergei and then nodded at Zula. “Us, and the girl.”
It was the first time that Zula’s presence had been acknowledged at all, and she was strangely grateful for it. Jones’s reaction was a little bit odd: ashamed and defensive. Similar to the way he had looked at the conclusion of that phone conversation in the door of the airplane.
Why would he be reacting that way?
Probably, she realized, because he had intended to kill her. Or at least had not really been caring whether she lived or died. Which was apparently just fine with Jones as long as it was a private matter. But when people drew it to his attention, he didn’t like it.
“All right,” Jones said, “since this is all about you lot now, and what you want, have you considered what is going to happen to you if you get arrested in China? Because you are responsible for having flown some rather bad chaps into the country, aren’t you?”
“Obviously we would like to get out of China,” Pavel allowed.
“And soon, I should think, since before long they’ll be pulling Ivanov’s corpse out of that basement and figuring out who he is, and then they’ll connect him to this plane, which is just sitting here, with us in it.”
“Agreed.”
“We can’t get out on an international flight plan because the immigration officials will want to come on board and check our documents,” Jones said.
“Yes.”
“So we have no choice but to file a domestic flight plan, wait for six hours, and then, for lack of a better word, cheat,” Jones said. “In the sense that we can’t actually land the plane at another airport in China or we’re dead. So we have to divert from that plan, don’t we, and get to some place where we have some chance of surviving.”
“Something like that, yes,” Pavel said.
Jones spread his hands out wide. “Enlighten me, then,” he said. “How can we do that?”