Silent Night

FIFTY

Archer watched as Kruger stepped across the cabin towards him. He grabbed one of the canisters full of the liquidised virus, rolling it towards the tank. He attached the tubing and pushed the pumping mechanism; the big tank started sucking in all the liquid.

Archer watched him work. ‘So where are we going?’

‘Take a guess.’

Archer thought of their flight path and the veer they’d taken.

‘DC?’

Kruger didn’t respond.

‘Are you nuts?’

Kruger shook his head. ‘No. I’m not. I’m going to do something that the Third Reich only ever dreamt of. They fought an entire war with the Americans but never got anywhere near their homeland. By the time the rest of the country wakes up this morning, thousands upon thousands of people in their capital city will be dead. My virus will cleanse that place like a Biblical plague.’

‘Keep dreaming. They’ll shoot you down before you get anywhere near the city.’

‘Doesn’t matter. This stuff will still be in the air. Rourke will go down as the man who killed a city. I’ll be just an innocent passenger.’

Archer looked at the thickly-built doctor with the hate tattooed on his chest.

Kruger flicked his gaze to Archer. His eyes were gleaming.

‘Why the hell are you doing this?’

‘What?’

‘You’re a doctor, for Christ’s sake.’

‘So?’

He paused.

‘You know the history. Apartheid, Mandela, black and white. But you don’t know that four black men broke into my house when I was a boy. You don’t know that they raped my mother in front of me, then shot her in the head. That they put a shotgun in my father’s mouth and pulled the trigger. I would have been next but a neighbour heard the shots and arrived just in time. He killed them and saved me.’

He spat on the floor.

‘I was orphaned at eleven years old by those bastards,’ he said. ‘These men worked for my father. He took them in when they had nothing. Gave them a home, food, water, a job. A purpose. And that’s how they repay him.’ He sneered. ‘And over there, American culture is everywhere. All those guys worshipped it. The rappers, the baseball caps, the pants around their asses. All that shit started here. It’s spread, like a disease. Liberal, democratic bullshit. So now, this is payback.’

He looked down at the canisters, then at Archer.

‘I’m no different from Peter. He created this virus because he lost someone he loved. Now I’m going to use it for the exact same reason.’

‘You won’t even make the city,’ Archer said again. ‘They’ll shoot you down.’

‘Like I said, it doesn’t matter. Hell of a wind blowing today. Headed south.’

He smiled.

‘I’ve thought of everything, Detective. It makes no difference whether I spray this stuff or we take a hit. Either way the virus will be in the air and will be spread for hundreds of miles, floating down onto the city.’

‘And you’ll be a martyr for the cause, right?’ Archer said.

‘Correct.’

Silence.

Beside him, the tank sucked up the liquidised virus, the piping sealed tight so none of it escaped into the air.

‘Bleeker was a fool. But he was the only one with any balls to use this virus.’ Kruger nodded at Rourke’s corpse, slumped across the cabin. ‘All he wanted was money.’

He paused.

‘But not me. Not tonight.’

With that, Kruger moved off and headed up the cabin. He moved into the cockpit, jabbing the pistol into Drexler’s neck who nodded and said something to him. Watching him go, Archer felt helpless.

Kruger was right. The gas would be airborne whatever happened, if it was sprayed, they were shot down or they crashed. Hundreds of thousands of people would die.

Archer felt the tight handcuffs around his wrists.

In desperation, he looked over at Maddy who was motionless on the floor.

Suddenly, her eyes flared open.



Maddy had regained consciousness whilst Kruger was talking. She’d heard everything he said, but had played possum, staying still. She looked straight at Archer, who was sitting across from her in the rear of the plane and saw the cuffs holding him to the bar. With Kruger’s back to them, assuming his hostages were restrained or out cold and therefore no threat, she quietly raised herself to her hands and knees and crept forward, never taking her eyes off Kruger who was still focused on Drexler and where they were going. She crawled towards Archer, who tilted his hips, mouthing this pocket. She reached inside and found the key to his cuffs.

She quickly undid them.

Now free, he went to rise, but Kruger suddenly stood upright. Maddy froze then frantically scrambled back to the rear of the plane and resumed her previous position trying not to breathe too heavily.

Archer put his hands behind his back as if they were still bound.

Kruger moved back into the cabin. He walked up to Archer and stared down at him, a mad light in his eyes.

‘Not long now. But you’re pissing me off. I think it’s time you and the bitch went for a skydive.’

He laughed.

‘Just like her old man.’

He placed his Beretta to one side, then moved towards the door. He grabbed a support rail and reached for the handle. As he did so, Archer shouted something to him, but given the noise the whistling wind made from the bullet holes in the cabin, Kruger couldn’t hear.

Instinctively, he turned towards Archer, stepping closer.

‘What?’

Launching forward, Archer suddenly took Kruger off his feet.