“I’ll kill you, you bastard.”
März laughed. “Come along, little boy. We have things to do, a short trip to take, then we’ll have a nice long chat.” He nodded to Leyland’s body.
Adam watched the two men carry his godfather up to the second landing, turn and simply toss him over the railing. März laughed. “There, that should ensure the old man is dead.”
Adam couldn’t bear it, he yelled and charged März again.
Adam felt a sharp sting in his neck. His heart speeded up, his breathing came fast, too fast. Then he couldn’t breathe, he was drowning. As everything went black, he heard März say, “You shouldn’t have done that, little boy.”
He fell to his knees, dizzy, knowing he was going to die. The last thing he saw was the blood on the floor from his godfather’s body seeping toward him. Everything went dark.
58
Over the Atlantic
Penderley answered Nicholas’s call immediately. “Drummond. Finally. Are you on the ground?”
“No, sir, we’re still about an hour out. First, let me thank you for the official invite. Now let me fill you in on what we’ve learned. I may need some of the lads to help us out.” He told Penderley everything they’d discovered on the flight over.
Penderley listened without interruption. When Nicholas was finished, he said, “You can have all the people you need. I will station a team at Oliver Leyland’s house straightaway, see if we can’t snatch young Adam before Havelock’s men get to him. Also, the inquest on Stanford confirms he was murdered—injected with a large dose of ketamine, enough to stop his heart very quickly. We’re trying to keep it quiet until we have this well in hand. So tell your pilot to hurry.”
“I will. Thank you, and sir, we—”
The plane jerked hard to the left, throwing Mike out of her seat, sending Nicholas’s laptop crashing to the floor. Pages flew through the air, their coffee cups, half full of liquid, sprayed across the windows. The plane pulled back left, banked hard, and they heard yells from the cockpit.
Nicholas tried to get to his feet, tried to reach Mike, but the plane was jerking and twisting in the air like it had hit a patch of ice. It spun right, then started to nose down.
Mike yelled, “What’s happening?”
Nicholas stumbled up the short aisle to the cockpit, threw open the door. Dan Breaker was half out of his chair, unconscious. Copilot Tom Strauss had a hand over his eyes, moaning. Nicholas righted him and saw a slash of red across the man’s eyes. A burn.
He shook Strauss. “What in bloody hell happened?”
Strauss managed a strangled whisper, “Green. Flash,” and passed out.
Nicholas pulled him out of the seat, took the copilot chair. He had to get the plane under control.
He saw Mike was holding the edges of the cockpit doorway for dear life. “The pilots are injured, they’re both unconscious. I’m going to have to land the plane.”
Nicholas was trying to get the plane stable on the horizon, but the navigation display was off. There were four large flat-panel displays across the front of the cockpit, and the HUD—the heads-up display—was blank.
Something had destroyed the electronics in the plane.
Nicholas hit the elevator too hard and the plane whipped to the right, throwing Mike into the cockpit and against the instrument panel.
“Engage the autopilot,” she yelled.
“I have. It seems to be damaged. I’ll have to fly it myself.”
He saw her face was perfectly white, but she was there, with him, ready to act. She said, “Tell me you know how to fly a plane.”
“I know enough. Best get your parachute on, just in case.”
“Parachute?” She tried to sound calm, but her mind was screaming, Oh, please, no. I don’t want to jump out of this plane into the ocean.
She felt the captain’s pulse. Thready, but he was alive. The skin across his face was horribly burned, red and blistered. She unbuckled his seat belt and began pulling him from the seat.
“What happened? How did he get this burn?”