Sirens and lights were shooting toward them at an alarming speed, perhaps a quarter mile away. They took off in the opposite direction, into the deepest darkness they could find, through sand and grass, along the cyclone fence surrounding the airport and finally diving behind some brush. Looking back at the runway, they saw emergency vehicles gathering around the wreck of the Cessna. There was also a dark Humvee pulling up, its spotlight sweeping the surrounding darkness, darkness already dissipating in the light of dawn cracking from the east. Ducking lower, they ran again.
And then Peter fell.
It was as though someone had struck him with an iron bar. He hit the dirt clutching his head, fiery pain shooting up the back of his neck and over the crown of his skull, blinding him and driving all thought and reflex from his brain. Terrified, Elizabeth shook his shoulders, urging him up. “Peter? Hans? Oh, God, are you shot?” He barely heard her voice. Ml was agony. He tore at his head like a madman. Then, just as quickly as it had come, it was gone, lifting off him like some medieval torture device snatched away by a sadistic inquisitor. Breathless and stunned, he sat up.
“Peter?”
“I’m all right.” You deserve everything you get, he thought miserably. “What happened?” She touched his arm.
He struggled to rise, analyzing his own fall. “I think the arteries of my brain are too brittle. Seventy-six years old. They can’t keep up with the force of this heart.” “Seventy-six-what on earth are you tailing about?” “Not my body,” he said, too sick to dissemble any longer. “My body is a hale and hearty thirty-five.” She stared at him as though he were speaking in tongues. He looked away, her gaze was too intense. Beyond the nearest taxi lane was the terminal, lots of people and what looked like an empty shipping container. The odds were that they would at least hesitate to kill them in public. He grabbed Elizabeth by the hand and they ran for it. They made it. Looking back, he didn’t see any headlights swerving around, heading for them. He ducked back under cover and looked at the woman next to him. She looked so young and so frightened: it struck him full-force how innocent of all this she was. “I’m not Hans,” he said gently. “I never was. Hans is really dead, Elizabeth. His mind, his brain and all of its memories of you and him-all that’s gone. Incinerated on the base at Vieques.” Her hand in his went limp. “What are you saying?” she asked. “Hans was a clone. My clone, to be specific.” “That’s not funny,” she said after registering a millisecond of shock. But from the way her lip was trembling, he knew she was beginning to understand the enormity of this insane situation. “No, you’re right, it’s not,” Peter said, his heart swelling with a drunken mixture of guilt and love. Elizabeth tried to pull her hand away, but he wouldn’t let her. “Before you walk out of my life for good, there’s one more thing I have to say. We have a plane to catch.”
American Flight 99 had been ten minutes away from closing its door and taxiing for takeoff when it was discovered that the crew had been shorted ten meals by the local vendor, Caribbean Food Services. A truck had been sent back to its kitchens, five miles away. Impatient passengers were given free drinks and treated to an NBA highlight tape. While they waited for the dinners to be brought in, flight attendant Mary Blanchard stood with colleague Heather Zuckerbrod in the open service hatch, enjoying the balmy tropical air. For the first time in months, Mary was taking pleasure in her job, chiefly because she knew she was about to leave it. She was pregnant. Her boyfriend, a first officer for the airline who flew the L.A.-to-New York route, was now willing to marry her. She was getting out and it felt good. No more drunk conventioneers; no more victims of air rage, sneaking cigarettes in the lavatory; no more celebrity parents letting their brats and dogs run wild in first-class. She took a deep, calming breath, trying to picture weekends at home with Charlie instead of being in the air at thirty-five thousand feet. Out on the runway in the humid dawn, she saw movement. A ground patrol broadcast had warned them to be on the watch for unauthorized civilians on the taxi lanes, and she had flashed on Elizabeth and her gorgeous friend. If they were the targets of this alert, she was bound and determined to help. What could American do, fire her? Blackball her from the airline industry? She couldn’t have cared less. She looked and she stared, and by God there they were, slipping between two shipping containers. And now a series of moving lights pierced through the lingering darkness, airport police vehicles and Humvees moving down the line of planes waiting for takeoff, training their searchlights on every inch of tarmac. Mary Blanchard of Waltham, Massachusetts, hurried down the jet-way’s service stairs, and as swiftly and as inconspicuously as she could, she made her way to the shipping containers. Leaning against one, she took out a cigarette and tried to look like someone catching a quick smoke before departure. “So” she said casually, shielding her mouth with her cigarette hand, “what have you kids been up to?” “Mary?” she heard Elizabeth say from between the containers. “It’s me, all right. Just tell me this. If I help you out, do I end up in jail?” There was a brief pause, not entirely reassuring, and then came the voice of the boyfriend. “She hasn’t broken any laws.” “But you have?” Mary asked gamely
“None that those Humvee guys haven’t broken, too.” “All right, shut up,” said Mary. She turned as the catering truck drew up beside the plane; its driver hopped out. He saw her and stopped, full of apologies. “Sorry, we got the meals now.”
Mary gave him her sternest look. “Tito, you owe me one.” The driver looked sheepish. “You forget ten meals and then delay the flight. Now what you have to do for me is just look out there.” Baffled but dutiful, Tito stared where she was pointing, toward the runway and away from the containers. Mary gave a wave and Elizabeth and Peter emerged. “Keep looking,” she ordered Tito, and gesturing for them to follow, she led the two into the back of the meal truck. As soon as they were safely out of sight, Mary stuck her head back out. “What are you waiting for, Tito? Gimme my meals!” He sprang into action, activating the truck’s scissor-lift. Hydraulics whined and the entire cargo section of the truck lifted straight up, stopping level with the plane’s open service hatch. Mary ducked out first, checking her perimeter, then signaled Elizabeth and Peter out of the truck and into the plane’s galley. About that time Heather Zuckerbrod rounded the corner and stopped short, gaping at Mary’s two companions. “Special VIPs,” Mary said.
“Rr. . . right,” Heather said carefully.
Outside the aircraft, a pair of Humvees pulled up. Within seconds, the jetway stairs were clanging with the sound of heavy footsteps. “Elevator,” said Mary to Heather.
Heather, wide-eyed, pulled open a narrow aluminum door. Mary motioned Elizabeth and Peter inside and both of them squeezed in. It was a space designed for one, but somehow they made it in and, somehow, Mary managed to get the door closed. She pressed a button and the elevator started down. Seconds after the stowaways’ heads dropped from view, a pair of armed troopers entered the galley from the cabin. “Did you receive our transmission?” one of them asked. He was young and was looking more than a little annoyed with this exercise. “Yup, we did,” replied Mary. “So, who’s supposed to be running around out there?” “Not for you to know.”
“Do you know?”
“No,” he admitted. “Man and a woman. Hijackers, maybe, I don’t know.” He showed her a fax sheet with two photographs, one a driver’s license shot of Elizabeth, the other what looked to be a still from a video frame of Peter at a blackboard with an array of numbers and symbols behind him. “You seen em?” “Yeah,” Mary said flatly. “Sure, that’s them, all right. We gave them an upgrade. As we speak, they’re drinking champagne and eating caviar right now in first class.” “Really?”
“Duh,” Mary said. The soldier gave her a hurt look and headed down the aisle with another armed man. The first officer came out of the cockpit, empty plastic cup in his hand. “What’s up?”
“Bullshit,” said Mary.
“Figures. Once they clear us, we’re next out.” “Thank Cod for small favors,” said Mary, filling his cup with fresh coffee. Two minutes later, having checked the faces of the passengers against the photographs they were carrying, the two troopers took a last look in the washrooms and cockpit, then left the aircraft. Finally shutting the hatches and doors, Mary Blanchard dropped down in her jump seat and grabbed the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for the delay, but we are now cleared for takeoff. Please make sure your seat belts are fastened and your trays and seats are in the upright position. Our captain assures us he will make every effort to see that we reach Miami on schedule.”