Douglas Preston: The Obsidian Chamber

“One seventy-five.”

“Any cargo?”

Proctor pointed a thumb at his laptop and bag.

“Can’t bring anything else. We’ll need a full load of avgas for that kind of hop as it is.” Shapely scratched his head, clearly doing a mental calculation. Then he leaned over in his seat, gazing out the window of the bar toward the airport’s wind sock, just visible from their vantage point. “Look’s like the wind’s in our favor. Now it’s just a question of money.”

“I’ll also need you to keep the flight off the books. Just in case Ireland’s not our final stop.”

“Round the world in eighty days, is it? Then it’s not a question of money. It’s a question of more money.”

“Eight dollars a mile. Round-trip fare. If we leave right away.”

Shapely paused, considering. “If you’re some kind of cop, this is entrapment. You know that, don’t you? You couldn’t charge me with shit.”

“No cop. Just somebody in need of a ride. And a pilot who doesn’t ask questions.”

Shapely drained his drink. “Twenty thousand, up front. Ten more when we get there.”

Proctor saw that the bartender’s back was turned. He opened his bag, removed several stacks of hundred-dollar bills, and passed them to the pilot. “Here’s thirty.”

The man fanned them quickly, then shoved them into the pocket of his coat. “I’m assuming you’d rather avoid customs, luggage or no luggage.”

“Right.”

Shapely nodded. Then he patted the pocket that contained the money. “Let me stow this somewhere, make a call or two to set things up on the far end. Meet me at North Gander Aviation in fifteen minutes. It’s beside hangar four.”

Then he stood up, gave Proctor a thumbs-up, and quickly exited the empty bar.

Shapely hadn’t been exaggerating about the weight. All fixtures save for the two pilot’s seats had been removed, and the entire passenger cabin retrofitted with additional avgas tanks. Flying without such niceties as FAA regulations made this charter somewhat less expensive than DebonAir had been, but it made it a lot less comfortable, too.

They took off a few minutes after five, Shapely logging the trip as a VFR sightseeing jaunt up to Twillingate so he wouldn’t need to file a flight plan. Once out of sight of the airport, however, he turned the plane eastward, and within fifteen minutes they were over the Atlantic. Here, Shapely descended, flying low, only a few hundred feet above the waves. Despite the alarming altitude, he was clearly a skilled pilot, and one — apparently — with very few scruples about their ultimate destination, so long as the money was good. Proctor could not even begin to guess what kind of unusual business ventures would have required Shapely to make such interesting modifications to his plane. It was small and relatively old, one of the earlier turbofan business jets, and the cockpit was tight and uncomfortable. As they headed east over the ocean, moving out of local radar range, Shapely increased altitude to thirty-three thousand feet: to “save gas,” he explained, with a hurried half a dozen words about atmospheric pressure. The sky turned indigo and then black as the sun set and they flew into the shadow of the turning earth.

Proctor made some calculations in his head. Their plane had a cruising speed just shy of 450 miles per hour; as Shapely had pointed out, Diogenes’s Bombardier was capable of 500. The only thing they were evenly matched in, thanks to Shapely’s modifications, was range. Given his plane’s speed advantage, Proctor estimated Diogenes would reach Shannon Airport in seven hours of flying. It would take them eight and a half to reach the Irish coast. Shapely hadn’t said why they couldn’t land at Shannon; Proctor assumed it had to do with the near-guerrilla nature of their flight and the need to avoid customs. It didn’t matter; given his head start, Diogenes would arrive in Ireland at least two and a half hours before them.

Proctor used his computer to check on the Bombardier’s flight path again, then he shut the laptop, made himself as comfortable as possible, closed his eyes, and — with military discipline — tuned out the Celtic music that Shapely played incessantly over the aircraft’s sound system. He tried not to think of the stormy Atlantic skimming by below him; tried not to think of that final image of Constance being forced into the waiting jet. Most of all, he tried not to speculate on what Diogenes had in store for her — because he knew with conviction that, whatever it was, it could not be good.

It was just after 5 AM local time when their plane once again reached land. Mere minutes later, they were landing at Connasheer Aerodrome, a private airport in the Aran Islands with a runway just long enough to accommodate the Citation. While Proctor consulted his laptop one more time, Shapely got out of the plane and went over to the FBO — the aerodrome’s lone building — where he was met by the airport operator, apparently manning the facility alone. The two embraced, and from their warm chatter it appeared Shapely made this particular run with some frequency. The pilot returned to the plane a few minutes later, smiling broadly.

“My friend’s brother runs a taxi service out of Inishmore,” he said. “If you catch the Rossaveal ferry, you could be at Shannon in—”

“I’m not going to Shannon,” Proctor said. “Not anymore.”

Shapely went silent.

Proctor indicated his laptop. “The Bombardier refueled at Shannon and took off again.”

“Headed where?”

Proctor hesitated a moment. “Mauritania. Allegedly.”

Shapely frowned, standing motionless, the door to the pilot’s cabin half-open. “Mauritania? Christ, mate, that’s… what, West Africa?”

“West Central Africa. Two thousand two hundred miles.”

Shapely passed a hand through his pompadour. “And you want me to…?” He raised his bushy eyebrows.

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. Bloody Africa… I’ve had a couple of run-ins there I’m in no hurry to repeat.”

“We’ll just be refueling and taking off again. I’m pretty sure Mauritania may be just another waypoint for refueling the Challenger.”

Shapely was still frowning. “Which airport?”

“Akjoujt. Tiny. Far from normal commercial lanes. The kind of place where they don’t ask a lot of questions. Look — just another five and a half flying hours, give or take.”

When Shapely said nothing further, Proctor reached into his bag, took out a handful of stacked bills. “I gave you thirty thousand for the flight from Gander.” He waved the stack at Shapely. “Here’s another thirty-five thousand. That will more than cover the Mauritania leg. And there’s even more if we have to keep going.”

Shapely stared at the money. Sixty-five thousand dollars — more, Proctor guessed, than the man would make in a year of whatever specialized kind of smuggling he dabbled in.

After a minute, the pilot sighed. “Bollocks,” he muttered, holding out his hand for the second stack. “All right. All right. Let me gas up, check the engines, and eyeball my charts.”

Within twenty minutes they were airborne once again and headed due south, over international waters, just skirting the west coast of Ireland. Shapely had taken a couple of small white pills from a plastic bottle, popped them into his mouth, and washed them down with a giant mug of coffee.

Now Proctor was once again examining his laptop. Despite the odds, he reflected, they were lucky in at least two ways. First, landing at Shannon had cost Diogenes time: time in customs; the refueling delays common at a large airport; probably a crew rotation. All this had shaved half an hour from his lead, cutting it back to just two hours. Second, the route to Mauritania was almost entirely over water. A straight shot to Akjoujt meant they would barely graze the westernmost tip of Portugal, avoiding Europe and all its potential in-flight complications. The only body of land they would pass over was Western Sahara, a disputed territory too preoccupied with its own troubles to pay any attention to their plane — so long, that is, as no engine problems or other mechanical trouble forced them to make an unscheduled landing.