Chaucer smiled. He did, in fact, have two more paperweights.

  Twenty minutes later, Chaucer and Tempest sat in plush leather seats as the Citation V taxied for imminent takeoff.

  The cabin crew comprised three people : Murphy, his copilot Phil, and a Chinese flight attendant named Lin.

  Murphy left the cockpit door wide open. “Hold on to your asses. We've got a strong crosswind and I’ll be climbing fast to get over it.”

  He shoved the throttles forward, engines screaming, brakes releasing.

  The plane launched as if it had been shot from a catapult, lifting smoothly into the sky.

  As they banked, Chaucer saw several vehicles racing toward the airport.

  Murphy keyed the intercom. “We wanna thank y’all for choosing Clandestine Air. We know you got options when choosing an illicit flight, and we appreciate you choosing us. Enjoy the complimentary cookies.”

  Click.

  Chaucer liked Murphy.

  He was a card.

  CHAPTER 23

  Anya stood over Carl’s body, his face a gruesome purple-black. In her hands, she held surveillance stills of the two intruders. She felt as though she had seen their faces somewhere before. It was not a welcome feeling. “I want a report from the teams at the port and the airport this second.”

  On cue, her phone rang. She picked it up, and one of her men spoke quickly. “They’re on a plane. I can see it taking off.”

  Anya replied, “That is unfortunate.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. It’s Murphy’s plane.”

  Anya’s phone showed a video of a work crew dousing the entire private island of Olana in kerosene, preparing to destroy all evidence. For the first time in this endless night, she smiled. They might just get out of this debacle unscathed after all. “Head to the tower and send him a message.”

  Murphy got on the intercom. “We’re gonna be touching down in less than half an hour, but you bought this flight. If you want some champagne, wine, anything we got, you’re welcome to it. Just don’t use the shitter. Don’t make Lin clean that out.”

  Tempest and Chaucer shared an amusing glance. Tempest raised an eyebrow. “A little champagne to close out our honeymoon?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  Lin overheard them and pulled a bottle out of the fridge.

  Up in the cockpit, Murphy was working on contacting Jaluit Tower when his comms lit up. “Bravo Charlie One Niner Niner, this is Two-Vat-Two Ground.”

  Murphy took a deep breath. Two-Vat-Two was the airport he had just left, not Jaluit. He was hoping it was early enough that an impromptu flight plan wouldn’t be a problem, but if ground was calling, odds were they noticed a few things left off the plan. “This is Bravo Charlie One Niner Niner.”

  The next voice on his radio was not the Two-Vat-Two Ground controller.

  It was a different voice altogether, and yet one that was somehow familiar to Murphy. “Olana calls you. Betty Botter bought some butter, but said the butter’s bitter.”

  It was the oddest thing. Anton Kirov blinked, and suddenly he was in a cockpit. He didn’t remember where he was before, but the cockpit was somehow familiar to him. This was a plane he was in charge of. He knew that. But he neither remembered getting into the cockpit nor flying it to wherever it was they were.

  This had happened before.

  But he remembered his training. Don’t worry about where you came from. Don’t worry about how you got here. Finish the mission. But what was the mission?

  The voice on the radio spoke again, “Kill your passengers. Spread the word.”

  The mission was clear.

  He was to kill his two passengers.

  He reached into the chart holder beside his seat. He found the false bottom, moved it aside, and saw the Glock. He knew that it would be loaded with subsonic rounds, which reduced the chance of explosive decompression by sixty percent.

  Then he remembered he had a partner on this mission.

  He keyed the cabin intercom and said, “Svetlana Kirov, Betty Botter bought some butter, but said the butter’s bitter. Your mission is clear. Kill the passengers.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Phil, his copilot, looked at him as if he were crazy. “Haha. Very funny.”

  Phil’s smile fell when Murphy pulled out the Glock. He stood up, aiming downward at Phil. The subsonic round would likely not pierce the hull, but the wrong angle very well might destroy the windscreen.

  Phil had just enough time to yell, “No!”

  Bang went the Glock.

  It hit Phil center mass. At the angle at which he was seated, the bullet likely passed through both his heart and at least one lung. He didn’t die instantly, but death was just moments away.

  Lin was pouring the champagne when Chaucer and Tempest heard the announcement. “…kill the passengers.”

  Chaucer shook his head. Murphy was definitely a card.

  But Tempest caught something—a twitch in Lin’s eyes—so when she grasped the neck of the bottle and swung it down at Tempest, the woman was ready.

  She blocked it with one hand while releasing her seatbelt with the other.

  Svetlana Kirov was surprised at her target’s speed, but the bottle wasn’t her only means of attack. She reached into her apron and drew a stiletto, flicking it into being.

  Her target had her seatbelt off, but she was still in the seated position, and Svetlana was still above her—altogether an advantageous position.

  She stabbed down at the woman, who grabbed her knife hand with both of her own and twisted, attempting to disarm her.

  It took Chaucer a long moment to process what was happening. It was only when he saw the stiletto that he fully realized the situation and how woefully unprepared he was for it.

  Bang! The sound came from the cockpit. Chaucer didn’t worry about Lin. Tempest fought off squads of soldiers single-handedly. He thought she could handle a flight attendant.

  Chaucer popped his seatbelt off and focused his attention on the cockpit.

  Something bad was coming.

  Unfortunately, Chaucer had the window seat, and there was a fight for a knife going on beside him. He leapt over the seat in front of him, narrowly avoiding a knife wound in the process, and collapsed onto the floor of the row ahead.

  From that vantage point, he saw two feet enter the cabin.

  They were wearing flip-flops.

  Murphy.

  Chaucer stayed low, watching Murphy’s feet. He didn’t move like Murphy. He moved like a trained operative.

  He was taking a firing stance, Chaucer realized. He was waiting for a clear shot at Tempest.

  Gone was Chaucer’s first plan of waiting for the pilot to come to his row. He had to do something now.

  He turned around, looking for any kind of weapon.

  All he saw were two flotation vests between the two seats above him. He pulled them out. At least they were a distraction.

  He pulled the cord on both of them and threw them. They expanded in midair as they frisbeed toward the homicidal pilot.

  Kirov counted his third glimpse of his target, but his fellow operative Svetlana was in the way. After the third glimpse, he realized it was no accident. It was by design.

  Tempest was fighting in such a way as to keep Svetlana as a human shield.

  Kirov glanced around the cabin, searching for the second target. His first thought was that he must be in the lavatory, but then two objects flew at him.

  He reacted instantly, squeezing off a round at the first object before realizing they were life vests.

  The bullet smashed through the cabin window, which exploded outward, creating a torrent of wind in the cabin.

  The plane was only at ten thousand feet, so the air was plenty breathable, but the wind sent a whirlwind of objects flying around the room, obscuring Kirov’s vision.

  Tempest stared into a stranger’s eyes. She never knew Lin, but whoever she was fighting right now, it was a different person than the flight attendant who did the safety briefing.

  She caught glimpses of the pilot, Glock in hand, slowly approaching them. She controlled the scene: a hand on the flight attendant’s throat, the other on her weapon.

  This gave the flight attendant a free hand, which she used to punch at Tempest. But even seated, Tempest was good at dodging.

  Her hand on the woman’s throat was having its desired effect. The punches were losing velocity and force. But she didn’t want her to go limp—not quite yet—so she relaxed her grip just slightly, keeping the woman standing but weakened.

  As she did so, she turned the woman’s own stiletto around, facing her.

  Tempest saw the life vests fly, heard the gunshot. She felt her ears pop as the cabin pressure suddenly changed because of the broken window.

  Champagne, magazines, and hundreds of other pieces of detritus filled the cabin. It was a tornado of wind spinning around them.

  It was time.

  She plunged the woman’s own stiletto into her gut, and the woman folded on top of her.

  Tempest rose out of her seat, using the woman’s inert body as a literal shield.

  She ran three steps down the aisle, bracing for the shots she knew had to come.

  Bang. Bang.

  Two shots rang out, but neither impacted her, nor did she feel their impact on the flight attendant.

  Chaucer saw the maelstrom erupt. He felt his eardrums pop violently.

  He caught motion in his periphery and realized what Tempest was about to do.

  She was about to rush the shooter.

  That’s when Chaucer noticed something in the seat next to him.

  A seatbelt and buckle. But this wasn’t one of the ones attached to the seats. This was the one the flight attendant used to demonstrate proper procedure. A ridiculous affectation, but still mandatory for any flight that wanted FAA certification.

  Chaucer leapt up, grabbing the end of the belt.

  Murphy was aiming down the aisle at Tempest, who seemed to carry the flight attendant and rush him. Until Chaucer appeared. He switched aim, turning to Chaucer.

  Chaucer swung the belt as hard as he could, and the metal buckle impacted the gun just as it went off.

  Bang. Bang.

  Two shots fired, and they went harmlessly into the seat cushion next to him.

  Tempest continued her attack, and Chaucer swung the belt around a second time, this time impacting Murphy’s head.

  It wasn’t enough to do much, but it cost him half a second of preparation.

  Tempest threw the flight attendant off her, stiletto ready, and lunged the last four feet to plunge the weapon into Murphy’s gut.

  The Glock never got off another round.

  The pilot went down hard.

  CHAPTER 25

  “What the fuck was that?”

  Chaucer stared at the two bodies before him. “What we saw on the island? This is the end result. Sleepers who don’t know they’re sleepers.”

  “You—you know what this is? And you don’t think you could have warned me?”

  “I had no idea they were this sophisticated. Murphy wasn’t some zombie waiting to be activated. Murphy was a full person. Alive. Funny, even.”

  “What?”

  “What we saw at Olana? It didn’t look at all familiar to you?”

  Tempest thought hard about it. “I got nothing, Chaucer.”

  “That rack Betsy Clark was on. It’s called the Cradle. It’s what Po used on me.”

  Chaucer saw Tempest’s face drop. “Oh, shit, Chaucer—I didn’t know. That’s why you took this mission⁠—”

  “Somebody is using Po’s techniques, at least in part, to create sleeper agents that don’t have any conscious knowledge of their dual lives. I thought there would be trauma from the procedure. I thought they could seem like their former selves, but they couldn’t be their former selves. I didn’t think the procedure could ever leave them intact.”

  Just then they felt a shift in the cabin. Chaucer stumbled backward toward the cockpit as the realization dawned. “The copilot!”

  Chaucer rushed up to the cockpit.

  The copilot was dead. He bled out in his seat.

  Murphy had never engaged the autopilot.

  Through the windscreen they could see the deep blue of the Pacific racing up at them. Chaucer hopped into the captain’s chair and grabbed the yoke. He pushed down on the throttle controls and pulled back hard on the stick. They felt the Gs hit their bodies as he tried to pull the plane out of its steep dive.

  At first the plane didn’t seem to respond, the velocity was too much for the maneuver he was attempting, but the added power to the engines gradually overcame their momentum and pulled the plane out of its dive, wings missing the water by less than fifty feet.

  Tempest took a deep breath. “Whew. I never knew you could fly.”

  “Yeah. Me neither.”

  Chaucer and Tempest checked the controls. Tempest found a towel in the back, moved the copilot’s body into the cabin, and dried her seat enough to sit.

  By that point, Chaucer had identified the fuel gauge. It was quite simple: an electronic readout with all the crucial data right there in front of them.

  At their current rate of burn, it looked like they had about six hours of fuel, and they were headed roughly due north. “Six hours of fuel. We’re gonna need some maps.”

  Tempest looked around the cockpit. “All right, big boy. Looks like you’ve got six hours to learn how to fly a plane.”

  The better part of the first half-hour was spent figuring out the radio. It took them another half hour to find a way to contact Jefferson and alert him to their situation.

  The second hour was an aviation crash course led by one of Jefferson’s flunkies at the Praxis.

  At the end of the third hour, they were given a heading to fly and an airspeed to hit, one that seemed rather slow to Chaucer. “Wait, where are you taking us?”

  There was a long pause before Jefferson got back on the radio. “We can’t trust any of the landing fields in Tongata’s vicinity. We’re directing you to an—alternate landing site.”

  The way Jefferson said that told Chaucer everything. “You want us to ditch in the Pacific?”

  Another long pause. “It’s sometimes frustrating talking to you, Chaucer. Yes. That’ll be the plan. It’s the only way we can be sure to keep you out of the Venture’s hands.”

  “So it is the Venture?!” Tempest yelled. “Alright, fuckers! Somebody had better start talking, and now!”

  The next few hours were spent going over three main topics: telling Tempest about Praxis, telling Praxis what they witnessed at Olana, and instructions on how to ditch a jet in the Pacific.

  After they got off the radio, Tempest said, “I don’t like this.”

  “Why?”

  “If I had agents who messed up, and I wanted to kill them, this is exactly what I’d tell them, so they wouldn’t get on the radio and call a mayday or whatever the hell it’s called. I’d give them hope. I’d give them specific instructions about how to ditch a plane where no one’s gonna find it.”

  Chaucer thought about it. She wasn’t wrong. He said, “I trust Jefferson.”

  “Trust? Is that the word I heard you say? Trust? This is espionage. There is no one to trust.”

  “You know me, Tempest. You know how hard it is to lie to me.”

  “In person, maybe. But over the radio? You’re not Superman.”

  “Superman had no mind-reading ability.”

  Tempest shot him a glare that forced him to change the subject. “What I’m saying is I was with Jefferson. He said he was white hat.”

  “And you’re telling me that’s true?”

  “No. I’m telling you he believed it. There is a difference.”

  Tempest said what Chaucer was thinking. “The difference being a guy who thinks he’s a white hat still might send two of his agents to a watery grave.”

  “Only if he had to. And I don’t think he has to.”

  There wasn’t a lot of talk between Chaucer and Tempest for the last couple of hours. The die had been cast.

  Chaucer spent this time flying the plane, and Tempest gathered all the emergency gear she could.

  The water wouldn’t exactly be cold where they splashed down, but it wouldn’t be warm either.

  She knew all too well that you would die of hypothermia in seventy-five-degree water, given enough time.

  A red light on the display ignited, showing the plane was running out of reserve fuel.

  Chaucer had the plane reaching the exact spot Jefferson’s man was directing him to. He lowered the plane to one hundred feet above the water and reduced speed to stall.

  Alarms blared, as if the plane were begging them to rethink this.

  Chaucer gently let the nose dip, raising it only at the last second, and the plane skipped like a stone across a lake.

  The first splash was the hardest, throwing them both forward. Chaucer braced his arm against the console so his body wouldn’t push the yoke down.

  The second and third skips were gentler, but the last—the one the plane wouldn’t rise out of—was another fierce deceleration.

  The plane came to rest, floating upright.

  In the absolute middle of nowhere.

  Tempest went aft and activated the explosive bolts, throwing the cabin door out to sea. Then she and Chaucer boarded her makeshift raft of life vests tied together.

  They entered the water. It wasn’t quite bathwater, but it wasn’t bad. Tempest shrugged. “I think we can do this.”

  Chaucer had been in the navy. He had been through a hypothermia drill. He knew exactly how quickly this would change.

  Water filled the main compartment of the plane, and it went down fast.

  In less than five minutes, Chaucer and Tempest were the smallest dot in the middle of the world’s largest ocean. Tempest scanned the horizon in every direction. “How far do you think those horizons are?”

  “At sea level? Maybe ten miles.”

  Tempest craned her neck to make sure she got a 360 view. Nothing. There was definitely nothing within ten miles of them.