Even as he had the thought, the plane shimmied like a belly dancer, then dropped some more.
“Put your seat belt on and stay put,” Cal ordered, and got up to go investigate. As soon as he opened the private room’s door and stepped into the main cabin, the plane dropped so abruptly that he was almost thrown off his feet.
Grabbing hold of the nearest seat back, he made his way toward the cockpit. The interior was all plush beige leather and polished teak, with four additional passenger seats facing each other and a couch on the left side. Although it was the middle of the afternoon, Cal looked out the windows to see darkness encroaching on all sides. He frowned. The plane’s rocking and pitching gave him his answer: what he was seeing were storm clouds. The plane was flying through a storm.
As if in confirmation, a clap of thunder reverberated through the plane. Lightning flashed. Clearly they were right in the middle of a violent weather system. From the way the plane was being buffeted, the wind had to be blowing at least a hundred knots. His ears popped suddenly, giving him incontrovertible evidence that they were descending.
What the hell?
The cockpit door was shut. Cal tried the handle: locked. Quickly keying in the code meant to unlock the door, Cal tried the handle again.
Still locked.
He tried once more. Same result.
Christ, had something gone wrong in the cockpit? Were they unconscious in there? Dead? Visions of a cockpit fire, a decompression accident, electrical trouble resulting in some kind of freak electrocution—the gamut of possibilities ran through his head in the space of seconds. He even spared a passing thought for the scenario Rudy had described—a remote takeover of the plane’s controls—only to dismiss it. No entertainment system. No means of access. A remote takeover of the plane wouldn’t have disabled Ezra and Hendricks.
Thumping the metal panel hard with his fist to let them know he was out there, he pressed the button on the intercom system that connected the cabin to the cockpit, one unit of which was set into the wall right beside the door.
“Ezra? Hendricks?” His voice was sharp. He could feel tension coiling inside him, feel the strong kick of his heart.
No answer.
He tried once more. “You guys alive in there?”
No answer.
Shit. Adrenaline spiked through his system. He pounded the door harder. “Ezra? Hendricks?”
“What’s going on?” Rudy was behind him.
“I told you to stay put,” Cal flung over his shoulder, looking around for some kind of tool he could use to break the handle off the door, which should, he hoped, at least weaken the lock. In his pocket, attached to his key ring, was a small but effective Leatherman tool. With the handle out of the way and the lock accessible, he thought he could use the tool’s screwdriver to jimmy the locking mechanism. Since 9/11, cockpit doors were practically impregnable. He would have hit this one with everything he had if he’d thought it would do any good. It wouldn’t. The lock was his only chance.
“There’s a problem. Oh, jeez, I knew there was a problem,” Rudy moaned, wringing his hands. Thunder boomed. Lightning flashed. The plane shook and dropped. Rudy staggered and caught hold of a seat back to keep from going down.
Grabbing a fire extinguisher from its mount on the wall, Cal barked at him, “Stay out of my way. Sit down.”
The cabin rang with the crash of metal on metal as Cal slammed the case of the fire extinguisher into the handle multiple times in quick succession. By the time the handle popped off, Rudy, collapsed in a seat right behind him, was jabbering what sounded like a prayer, the plane was bouncing and yawing like a boat in high seas, and Cal was drenched in sweat.
His worst fear was that they were going to run out of time. The plane was heading down, and the clock stopped ticking when it ran into something other than air.
Steadying himself against the plane’s gyrations with a shoulder propped against the wall, he probed the lock with his small screwdriver.
It slid into the opening, found what he hoped and prayed was the latch—
“Damn it, Cal, stand down!” Ezra’s voice boomed at him through the intercom.
Cal’s shoulders sagged with relief. Whatever the hell had gone down, it was over. Straightening, he braced a hand against the wall for balance and depressed the speaker button.
“What the hell, man?” he said. He was breathing hard. His heart was hitting about three times its normal rate.
“Stand down,” Ezra repeated. “Leave the lock alone.”
Cal frowned. The plane was still bucking, still descending through what felt like the mother of all storms.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?” he said into the intercom. He had a bad feeling. A gut-tightening, breath-stealing bad feeling.
“We’re landing. Sit down, buckle up.”
“We’re in the middle of the fucking ocean!”