Ted Bell - Tsar

Someone called out, “‘Ave Maria’!”

She began to sing the beautiful aria, feeling the power of her instrument, waiting for the violinist to catch up.

Then the lights came back on.

And someone screamed.

The terrorists, for that’s what they were, had entered under the cover of darkness, but many were still pouring into the room from every doorway. They were all dressed in heavy boots and black combat fatigues, but it was the guns everybody was looking at. They all carried big, complicated-looking assault rifles, cradled in their arms like babies, but they had multiple layers of weapons, sashes of bullets, flashy knives, all kinds of smaller guns holstered to thighs or sticking up from belts.

The thing that really spooked her was the gas masks. They all wore black insectlike gas masks pushed back on top of their heads.

Gas? Then she saw the fat man come in with the two canisters on his back. The baker. The one from the birthday party. The one who’d brought the bomb inside the cake. The baker stood beside the muscular blond guy, another face she thought she recognized from the party, the security guy. He seemed to be the leader. He was shouting orders and threats at the frightened, terrified passengers. People were too shocked to panic yet, but husbands were searching for wives, people were speaking rapidly to each other, considering what to do and abandoning strategies instantly, paralyzed with fear, realizing the utter uselessness of their plans.

“Attention!” the blond man yelled, raising his rifle above his head and waving it about. “You are now all hostages of the Chechen Liberation Front. Do exactly as you’re told, and no one will die. Disobey my orders, and you all will be killed. We are now flying at five thousand feet. For any one person who disobeys orders or causes trouble, five passengers, chosen at random, will be thrown out of the airship.”

Oh, Stokely, she thought, feeling her whole body tremble. Oh, baby, where are you now?

The blond guy, the leader, kept shouting orders, making threats. She remembered his name suddenly. Yuri.

There was a commotion on the dance floor, where people were moving and sliding against each other, everybody knowing that at worst they were dead, at best they were at the beginning of a long ordeal. A husband and wife were arguing now in the middle of the crowd, and she heard the woman scream at her husband, “Do something, God damn you! Do something!”

Fancha heard herself saying into the microphone, “Everybody try to stay calm. Do what they say, and we’ll be okay.”

But the woman who wanted action slapped her husband hard across the face and turned from him, pushing through the panic-stricken crowd on the dance floor, shoving people, trying to move toward the leader. People were slipping and falling, scrambling to get out of her way.

“Stop right there,” Yuri said, seeing that she was headed for him. He pulled a large.45 automatic and aimed it at her head.

“Kill me!” she said, shouting at the top of her lungs. “Go ahead and kill me, you fucking bastard!”

“Stop now, I warn you!”

“Remember United Flight Ninety-three, asshole? That’s me! That’s who I am!” She looked around at the crowd behind her, her eyes wild, and said, “Let’s roll!”

She kept pushing forward, ignoring the gun pointed directly at her. When she broke through the perimeter of the crowd and was maybe six feet from the blond guy, one of the nearby terrorists, who couldn’t have been more than twenty, stepped forward with his knife and slashed her throat, almost severing her head, the blood gushing out onto her white evening gown.

She collapsed to the floor in a heap. The crowd was stunned for a moment but then started screaming in renewed panic, pushing one another out of the way, thinking there had to be some kind of escape, still some way out of this nightmare.

As Fancha desperately looked around for a way out, shots were fired. She didn’t see who was shot, because right then the lights went out again.

The leader was screaming at them to get on the floor, now , or they would all be killed. This time, people listened, and she could sense them diving to the floor. In the darkness and pandemonium, her eyes began to adjust. And Fancha saw her escape.

There was a small backstage area behind the velvet curtains. A door back there led to the kitchen, and from the kitchen she knew she could find her way to the main staircase and down one deck to her cabin. She silently stepped around the musicians, who seemed rooted to their chairs, and slipped through the tiny gap in the heavy velvet curtains. It was totally dark and deserted backstage, but she could see a thin strip of light beneath the door to the kitchen.

The kitchen, too, was deserted. Maybe the staff had all been gotten rid of, or maybe they’d just fled in panic. She raced down the center aisle, sidestepping pots and pans on the floor where people had dropped them, and came to the swinging door to the corridor. She pushed through it, bracing herself for more armed men beyond, but the hallway was empty, too. Right, left? Which way? She was breathing hard, and her heart was pounding. Disoriented now, she took a deep breath and placed one hand on the wall, willing herself to calm down.

Think, Fancha.

Left. The stairs were to her left, at the very end.

She ran all the way, took the steps three at a time down to the promenade deck. Her cabin was number 22, five or six doors down on the left. Her luck was holding. The corridor to her room was empty. Usually, there were one or two of the beautiful Slavic housekeepers pushing their trolleys up and down the hall.

Key, where’s the key? It was a card key, and it was still where she put it, in the inside pocket of her black velvet bolero jacket. She pulled it out and slipped it into the slot, praying for green, because sometimes the damn thing flashed red and she’d have to go looking for the steward or a housekeeper to let her in.

Green.

She pushed inside, just the sight of her turned-down bed and the lamp glowing softly on the bedside table doing wonders for her. She turned and double-locked the door, falling against it, her forehead against the cool wood, and then just let the tears come. She didn’t make any noise; she couldn’t allow herself that satisfaction, someone might be passing outside, so she just stood there crying silently, her shoulders shaking involuntarily.

Sweet baby Jesus, she whispered to herself, wiping her eyes, finally done with the tears.

She sat on the edge of the bed, looking at herself in the mirror over the dresser. And that’s when she remembered the phone, the sat phone Stoke had unpacked and placed on the dresser. He’d left without it, and she’d put it in the top drawer. He’d shown her how to work it once. It was pretty easy.

She pulled the drawer open, grabbed it, and lay down on the bed, her head propped up on two pillows.

She could hear it ringing in Miami, once, twice, three times.

Pick it up! Pick it up!

“Hello?” It was Stokely.

“Baby, it’s me,” she said, her voice breaking.

“Honey? You okay? Talk to me, baby…”

“Not so okay, Stoke. Not okay at all.”

“What is it? Tell me what’s happening.”

“I was singing, you know, and the lights went out. When th-they, when they came back on, the room was full of terrorists. Guns, knives, wearing g-gas masks and-shooting.”

“Who are they? They identify themselves?”

“Chechen Liberation, some damn thing like that.”

“Where are you? I mean now? How are you calling?”

“I’m in our stateroom. On the sat phone you left.”

“Oh, God, baby. I’m so sorry.”