Chapter 5 - the flight that officially never happened
The black aircraft accelerated while the hangar doors were still closing.
Cross ran toward the emergency cutoff panel.
Mara reached it first.
She entered an override code from memory and struck the red control switch. The doors stopped with only six feet remaining between them.
The aircraft could not pass through.
Its engines screamed against the walls.
The mechanics who had escaped through the side exit were nowhere in sight. Gabriel remained inside the cockpit, his hands visible against the glass.
Elias approached the nose of the aircraft.
“Shut down the engines.”
Gabriel stared through him.
Either he could not hear or he had been ordered not to respond.
Mara searched the aircraft’s exterior.
“There,” she said.
A small receiver had been attached near the front landing gear.
Cross understood.
“Remote control.”
The distorted voice returned through the hangar speakers.
“Commander, step away from the aircraft.”
Elias did not move.
The engines increased in power.
The landing gear pushed against its restraints.
Cross aimed at the receiver, but Elias stopped her.
“If you damage the control unit while the engines are active, we may lose every manual system.”
Mara looked toward the service equipment.
“Fuel isolation.”
“What?”
“The aircraft is connected to the hangar’s ground supply. If we cut the auxiliary feed, it will force an internal restart.”
“That will not stop the main engines,” Cross said.
“No, but it will interrupt the remote receiver for four seconds.”
Elias looked at the cockpit.
“Four seconds is enough if Gabriel is still a pilot.”
Mara ran to the ground service panel.
The screen required executive authorization.
She used Adrian’s employee number.
Access denied.
She tried the forged contract number from her personnel file.
The panel unlocked.
Adrian had given the false document higher access privileges than her legitimate employment record.
Mara almost laughed at the arrogance of it.
She selected emergency isolation.
“Ready.”
Elias moved directly into Gabriel’s line of sight and raised four fingers.
Gabriel watched him.
Elias lowered one finger at a time.
When the last finger dropped, Mara cut the auxiliary supply.
The hangar lights flickered.
The receiver went dark.
Gabriel moved instantly.
His hands disappeared beneath the cockpit controls. The left engine shut down, followed by the right. The aircraft rolled several feet before the emergency brake caught it.
Silence crashed over the hangar.
Cross’s officers entered through the reopened service tunnel. They surrounded the aircraft.
The cockpit door remained locked.
Elias climbed the boarding stairs and struck the outer release.
Nothing happened.
“Gabriel, open the door.”
His brother looked toward him.
A warning light flashed inside the cockpit.
Mara saw it through the window.
“The cabin is sealed from the cargo compartment.”
Cross checked the fuselage.
“Why?”
A heavy impact sounded from inside the aircraft.
Then another.
Someone was in the rear section.
Elias found a manual hatch beneath the wing. The lock had been welded shut.
Mara examined the aircraft’s maintenance plate.
It did not list a manufacturer or serial number.
“This plane was constructed from parts belonging to three different aircraft,” she said.
“How can you tell?”
“The engine model doesn’t match the landing gear. The emergency systems were installed later.”
Cross approached the cargo door.
“What was it built to carry?”
Mara studied the manifest codes on her incomplete page.
“Not what.”
Elias looked at her.
“Who?”
The cargo door opened from inside.
A woman in a torn flight uniform fell forward into Cross’s arms. She was conscious but weak. Behind her stood four other crew members who had been reported missing during separate international flights.
Elias recognized one of them.
Lieutenant Owen Pierce had disappeared with Gabriel five years earlier.
Pierce stared at Elias as though seeing a ghost.
“Commander?”
“Where have you been?”
Pierce looked toward Gabriel in the cockpit.
“Keeping him alive.”
The cockpit door finally unlocked.
Gabriel stepped into the cabin.
Elias entered, stopping several feet from his brother.
Gabriel’s eyes were clearer now, but confusion remained.
“You came,” he said.
Elias’s voice became unsteady.
“I thought you were dead.”
“They needed you to think that.”
“Who?”
Gabriel looked toward the hangar cameras.
“Turn everything off.”
Cross ordered the electrical system disconnected. The red recording lights above the doors disappeared.
Only then did Gabriel continue.
“Flight 714 is not one aircraft. It is an identity transferred between planes. Every time someone discovers one of their routes, they move the number.”
“Whose routes?” Mara asked.
Gabriel saw her for the first time.
His expression changed.
“You are Daniel Ellison’s daughter.”
Mara froze.
Her father had disappeared when she was sixteen. Vale Meridian had told the family his aircraft went down over the ocean during a test flight.
“You knew my father?”
Gabriel stepped closer.
“He created the Orion Ledger.”
Mara could not speak.
Gabriel looked at the incomplete paper in her hand.
“If Adrian knows you accessed it, he will never stop following you.”
“Why?”
“Because the ledger was designed to reveal every person involved in the program.”
Cross glanced at the rescued crew members.
“What program?”
Gabriel turned toward the black aircraft’s open cargo compartment.
“The one that turned missing pilots into prisoners and legitimate flights into invisible transportation.”
A phone began ringing inside one of the unloaded boxes.
Cross opened it.
There was no phone.
Only a small speaker and a printed passenger tag.
The tag carried Mara’s name.
May you like
A departure time had been written beneath it.
Midnight.
