Chapter 42 - Airspace Zero
Three hours into the flight, three thousand feet over the freezing waters of the North Atlantic, the cabin lights abruptly flashed amber.
The primary avionics display in the main lounge blinked, and the satellite connection dropped completely. David let out a choked gasp as the Connecticut surveillance feed froze on a freeze-frame of masked men hauling industrial cutting torches through our front hallway.
"We lost telemetry," the pilot's voice crackled through the intercom, strained and tight. "Mrs. Miller, we’ve got an anomalous radar ping closing fast from the northeast. Unregistered transponder. They aren't responding to international hailing frequencies."
"Can they force us down?" David asked, his hands digging into the armrests so hard his knuckles turned white. "Are they going to shoot us down over the ocean?"
"They won't shoot," I said calmly, unbuckling my harness and walking steadily up to the cockpit door. "If they vaporize this plane, the master ledger vaporizes with it. The Senior Trustee needs the physical cipher to unlock the failsafe in Connecticut. If we die in mid-air, the terminal beneath our basement bricks permanently deadlocks, bricking seventy billion dollars of transatlantic accounts."
I leaned over the copilot’s shoulder and looked at the radar screen. A sleek interceptor jet was shadowing our starboard wing, less than two nautical miles away, pacing our supersonic speed.
"Open an emergency short-band radio link to that aircraft," I instructed.
The copilot hesitated, glanced at my steely expression, and flipped the switch. Static hissed through the cockpit speakers before settling into a crisp carrier wave.
"This is Evelyn Miller," I said clearly into the microphone. "I know you're listening, Trustee. You're five minutes away from forcing an evasive descent. If you attempt to disable our engines, I will open the emergency baggage hatch and jettison the Saint Jude Master Ledger into the Atlantic Ocean. You will have a pile of charred ash in my basement and an empty vault in London."
There was a long, agonizing pause of thirty seconds. The only sound was the roar of our slipstream.
Then, the calm, aristocratic British voice purred back over the radio frequency: *"You have your husband's theatrical flair, Evelyn. But bravado won't rebuild your house. You have two hours and fourteen minutes remaining. Land at Hartford. Come home alone. If you bring federal escorts, the thermite charges in your basement will trigger simultaneously with your landing gear."*
The phantom interceptor banked hard to the right, peeling off into the storm clouds, disappearing from our radar screen.
May you like
I turned back to David, whose face was pale as chalk. "We aren't going to Bradley International," I told the pilot. "Divert to the private airstrip in Danbury. We’re coming into our town through the back door."
***
