Jamie Freveletti - Running from the Devil

When she was finished she made her way back to the cart and fished through the plates. Out of fifty or sixty packets, she found ten still intact. She grabbed them and carried them to her backpack.

She sat at the end of the runway and stacked the few precious food plates next to her pack along with a small parcel of airline napkins. She’d brought the pack, a compass, compact tent, bedroll, and a portable Coleman stove. Only the pack went with her as a carry-on. The other items she had checked into cargo.

She assessed the backpack’s contents. It contained a paperback book, her passport, wallet, a reflective sheet that collected heat, a pillow that could be blown up to act as a neck rest on the long flight, her telephone, notepad with attached pen, and tester tubes of the new Engine Red lipstick that she’d created for a cosmetic customer’s elite makeup line. Their development was shrouded in secrecy. She tossed the book, the pillow, and stared at the lipstick testers. There were two. Their cases were different, but the color was the same. She shoved them into a side pocket with the useless cell phone.

She continued rooting through the discarded remnants of the passengers’ things. She found a traveler’s first-aid kit, several airline bottles of scotch, and one small bottle of wine. She also found a beautiful silver lighter with the initials AEG engraved on the side.

She reached the area where Wary Man had hidden his luggage and the briefcase. A brass bag tag on the luggage held a business card that read Cameron Sumner, Southern Hemisphere Drug Defense Agency and listed an address in Key West, Florida.

Emma sat back on her heels. So Wary Man has a name and a job fighting drugs, she thought. She opened the suitcase. It contained nothing of interest. Just all the normal items packed by any business traveler.

She turned her attention to the metal briefcase. The words UNITED STATES ARMY were stenciled on the top in black script. Emma pried it open. It contained two handguns and some spare ammunition. She nearly wept when she saw them, partly from joy and partly because she didn’t know how to fire them.

Emma’s bags weren’t among the looted luggage that lay all around. She didn’t care much about the clothes she’d brought, what she really wanted was the bag that held all her hiking material and the separate duffel that contained her compass and the special hiking tent. The compass was crucial to her survival. Without it she could wander in circles until the food ran out or the guerrillas captured her.

The tent was far less important. Designed to be worn on a hiker’s back, it weighed only four pounds but opened to accommodate two people. The manufacturer claimed that it was rugged enough for an expedition to Everest. When collapsed, it didn’t look like much, and she hoped the guerrillas hadn’t recognized it for what it was.

Half an hour later she found the duffel. It was ripped in half, and empty. Emma rifled through it before tossing it down. She searched in a circular pattern but didn’t find any pieces. Her precious compass was gone. She tried to ignore the sudden rush of panic that accompanied this realization.

“Get a grip, Emma. It’s not like it was food or anything.” She spoke out loud. Her voice sounded strained, but surprisingly normal. Just hearing herself helped. It confirmed that she was alive, and not a wraith wandering among the dead.

She found her luggage twenty-five yards into the trees, blackened, but otherwise in perfect condition.

“Louis Vuitton, god of luggage design,” Emma said. “Why the hell didn’t I put the compass in here?” She started laughing like a hyena. She sank to her knees. The laughter morphed into tears and then panic.

Emma forced herself to take deep breaths to halt the riot of emotion that overwhelmed her. She dragged herself upright, took an extra pair of socks from her luggage, and halfheartedly resumed her search. She found the tent under a heap of discarded clothing. The black outer nylon carry bag had melted at the corners, but the tent itself was undamaged. Her joy at finding it far outstripped its value to her, she knew, but she felt as though fate had thrown her a bone. She attached the tent to the flat side of the backpack. It acted as a frame, and made the load a bit more bearable. She finished rummaging through the luggage but found nothing useful.

She went back to her pack and filled it with the food and alcohol. She shoved one pistol into the pack and put the other on top. She took out the notepad, dated the first sheet, and hesitated. While Emma itched to leave the airstrip, she knew she should stay with the wreckage. The authorities would search for the plane first. Staying near it would give her the best chance for rescue. Her only other options would be to run down the dirt road Smoking Man used, or follow the passengers into the forest. Emma wanted to avoid Smoking Man and his soldiers at any cost, and the guerrillas holding the passengers were no less frightening.

She wrote, I’m still alive. The guerrillas took passengers into the jungle. About seventy. Cameron Sumner is one of them. The others I don’t know by name. I will stay near this crash site unless forced to leave.

She signed the note, ripped it out of the pad, and placed it in her bags on top of the clothes. She stashed Sumner’s luggage under a palm and shoved her own next to it.

The sky clouded over and an afternoon rainstorm began. Emma moved into the tree line. She sat with her back against a tree and watched the fat raindrops hit the dirt, making little puffs of smoke with each hit. The airplane sides sizzled. The charred bodies simply smoked.

Emma sank into a torpor. She watched the rain pummel the earth in a hypnotic trance. She gazed at nothing, letting her mind wander. Once she was in the trees, the air felt thick with humidity and smelled like warm earth and green leaves. After the stench on the runway, Emma thought it was one of the sweetest smells she could imagine. She didn’t want to go back near the jet’s wreckage. She shrugged off her pack and lay down, using it as a pillow.

8

BANNER’S MEETING ENTERED ITS FIFTH HOUR. MIGUEL AND THE members of the military were gone, and Whitter was slumped in his chair and had untied his tie completely. On the wall a flat-screen television, set to CNN and muted, flashed a map of Colombia and some photos of people that Banner assumed were Colombian. It was the tenth time they’d seen the stock footage.

Dispatching Miguel solved the immediate problem of search and rescue, and the meeting turned to intelligence gathering. The remaining attendees aired the information they knew about the flight, and now it was Stromeyer’s turn.

“I’ve analyzed the data from the manifest. There are two or three interesting characters among the passengers.” Stromeyer handed around a copy of the plane’s manifest. Four names were highlighted.

“First. Manuel Cordova Sanchez is listed as the copilot. He is a Colombian-trained pilot, his license is up-to-date, and his credentials more than adequate.”

“So what’s the problem?” Banner said.

“He is not, and never has been, an employee of British Airlines. He boarded the plane in Miami, using false identification and claiming that the real copilot was ill. He was ill all right. The police found him in his hotel room, dead.”

“So he gets into the cockpit, threatens the pilot, and flies the plane into the mountains.”

Stromeyer nodded. “That’s the current theory.”

“Wouldn’t the pilot resist? He’s got a whole plane to assist him,” Whitter said.

Stromeyer shrugged. “Depends on what was used to threaten him. He’s in charge of the plane, and perhaps he felt that the passengers stood a better chance to live if he didn’t resist.”