The Lost Key (25 page)

Over the Atlantic

Penderley answered Nicholas's call immediately. “Drummond. Finally. Are you on the ground?”

“No, sir, we're still about an hour out. First, let me thank you for the official invite. Now let me fill you in on what we've learned. I may need some of the lads to help us out.” He told Penderley everything they'd discovered on the flight over.

Penderley listened without interruption. When Nicholas was finished, he said, “You can have all the people you need. I will station a team at Oliver Leyland's house straightaway, see if we can't snatch young Adam before Havelock's men get to him. Also, the inquest on Stanford confirms he was murdered—injected with a large dose of ketamine, enough to stop his heart very quickly. We're trying to keep it quiet until we have this well in hand. So tell your pilot to hurry.”

“I will. Thank you, and sir, we—”

The plane jerked hard to the left, throwing Mike out of her seat, sending Nicholas's laptop crashing to the floor. Pages flew through the air, their coffee cups, half full of liquid, sprayed across the windows. The plane pulled back left, banked hard, and they heard yells from the cockpit.

Nicholas tried to get to his feet, tried to reach Mike, but the plane was jerking and twisting in the air like it had hit a patch of ice. It spun right, then started to nose down.

Mike yelled, “What's happening?”

Nicholas stumbled up the short aisle to the cockpit, threw open the door. Dan Breaker was half out of his chair, unconscious. Copilot Tom Strauss had a hand over his eyes, moaning. Nicholas righted him and saw a slash of red across the man's eyes. A burn.

He shook Strauss. “What in bloody hell happened?”

Strauss managed a strangled whisper, “Green. Flash,” and passed out.

Nicholas pulled him out of the seat, took the copilot chair. He had to get the plane under control.

He saw Mike was holding the edges of the cockpit doorway for dear life. “The pilots are injured, they're both unconscious. I'm going to have to land the plane.”

Nicholas was trying to get the plane stable on the horizon, but the navigation display was off. There were four large flat-panel displays across the front of the cockpit, and the HUD—the heads-up display—was blank.

Something had destroyed the electronics in the plane.

Nicholas hit the elevator too hard and the plane whipped to the right, throwing Mike into the cockpit and against the instrument panel.

“Engage the autopilot,” she yelled.

“I have. It seems to be damaged. I'll have to fly it myself.”

He saw her face was perfectly white, but she was there, with him, ready to act. She said, “Tell me you know how to fly a plane.”

“I know enough. Best get your parachute on, just in case.”

“Parachute?” She tried to sound calm, but her mind was
screaming,
Oh, please, no. I don't want to jump out of this plane into the ocean.

She felt the captain's pulse. Thready, but he was alive. The skin across his face was horribly burned, red and blistered. She unbuckled his seat belt and began pulling him from the seat.

“What happened? How did he get this burn?”

Nicholas was adjusting instruments, turning knobs, one hand on the yoke. The plane seemed to soften. The mad shimmying and spinning lessened, and finally, finally, after a lifetime, the plane began to even out. Nicholas said, “The copilot said ‘green flash' before he passed out. The only thing I can imagine is he was hit with a green laser. There's nothing commercial grade that can cause this kind of burn. It has to be military. Or private sector.”

“Are you saying another plane hit us with a laser, or were we hit from the ground?”

“I don't know.” He took a deep breath. “I think we're okay now. I need to get in touch with the tower at London City Airport, let them know they have a guest flying the plane. And then—”

There was a second loud boom, and the plane began to shake and shimmy, harder this time, like it was breaking apart. The instrument panel turned red. “Son of a bitch.”

Mike watched the engine light begin to flash on the control panel.

Nicholas shut the engine down and grabbed the radio. “Mayday. Mayday. This is FBI Gulfstream Five. We've been attacked, repeat, we've been hit. Our pilots are down and we've sustained damage to engine one. We need to land immediately.”

Mike fought panic. All she could see ahead and to the left and right was blue. A wide expanse of blue. They were over water. There was no land in sight.

“Parachutes, Mike. Now. If we have to jump, we can't go out the door, we'll be sucked into the engines or hit the wings, even at a low speed. We'll have to go out the baggage hatch. So keep that in mind. When the time comes, don't open the cabin door.”

She stumbled to the back of the plane, above the galley, where she knew the chutes were stashed. She pulled out four. After fighting her way back to the cockpit, she managed to get both pilots into chutes.

She'd done an emergency egress once before, during the Academy, out of a plain old Cessna with a jump instructor strapped to her. Not something she ever wanted to do again. She prayed harder than she ever had in her life—
Get the plane on the ground, Nicholas, in one piece, you can do it.

The plane was shuddering, flinging itself about, as if it was fighting the air itself.

“What's happening?”

“We've been hit again. The laser is coming from the air, not the ground. There's a plane up here shooting at us, but I haven't a clue with what. It whipped past a few moments ago. It looks like a retrofitted private jet of some sort—it's definitely not a military jet. Whatever it hit us with damaged the fuselage.”

She handed him a parachute, saw her hands were shaking. “You need one, too.”

He looked up at her, gave her a smile and nodded toward the yoke. “Hold it steady. It's going to take a bit of strength, since we have no instrument help.”

She took the empty pilot's seat, clutched the yoke in a death grip while Nicholas threw his arms through the pack, tightened it down.

“Trade.” They switched seats. He did a quick check of the
instruments. “All right. We're hanging in, but the stress on the other engine is beginning to show. There's a backup for the engines, so keep the faith, Mike. While you were getting the parachutes, I spoke to the nice gentlemen at the RAF base in Cardiff, Wales. That's where we're going to land, only about a hundred miles to go. Listen, if something goes wrong, and I say jump, we jump. They're with us, they know we're in distress. We'll be rescued before the sharks nibble our legs.”

“Happy thought. Nicholas, honestly, can we land? Can you get us to Cardiff?”

“We'll soon have an RAF escort, and they'll see us into the air base. With any luck, they'll identify the plane that's shooting the lasers at us. I can fly us in a straight line, but I can't run us through a dogfight.”

She realized he hadn't answered her question.

N
icholas wasn't at all sure he could land the plane, but he wasn't about to tell Mike that. He'd done flight simulators before, flown with instructors, but he'd never done a solo landing.

The radio squawked in his ear, and the tinny voice of a British NATS air traffic controller spoke calmly. “We're going to begin your talk down now, Mr. Drummond. Come round to heading two-four-zero.”

“Coming about to two-four-zero.” As the plane turned, Nicholas squinted out the glass. Land ahead.

Mike saw it, too. “Land ho, Nicholas,” and she gave him a shaky smile.

“Very good, Mr. Drummond. Keep to this heading and slow your airspeed to three hundred knots.”

He was throttling down when a flash of white burst into his field of vision. “It's that bloody plane again.”

It whipped past them, and he saw a bright green light begin to flash.

“Mike, shut your eyes and duck!”

They both ducked, hitting their heads together over the throttle with a sickening crunch. The plane began to shudder again, the
fuselage beginning to give way under the pressure of the laser beam.

“What are they doing?”

“Trying to blind us and cut through the metal to create an even bigger problem. Stay down.” He keyed the mike to the radio. “We are under attack, repeat, we are under attack. The plane has a laser, that's what incapacitated our pilots to begin with. Burned their skin, blinded them. The laser seems to be able to penetrate the fuselage of the plane.”

The NATS controller said, “Hang tight, Gulfstream Five. Keep on this heading. Help is on the way.”

Nicholas risked a look. The sky in front of him was clear. He sat up, and Mike followed. The plane came back into their sights, whipping around in the sky in front of them, trying to disrupt the second engine by making them fly through its jet wash. Nicholas saw the plane bank hard, coming around until it was aimed straight for them.

The NATS controller said, “Stay the course, don't move your flight path. Keep your speed. You're going to see a Tornado on your port side. They will eliminate the threat. When they signal, you'll need to bank hard. Make your heading four-four-seven, and hold on tight.”

Sure enough, a moment later they saw the gray metal Tornado fly up beside them. The pilot gave them a salute. They watched an ASRAAM missile drop from the underside of the wing, a white tail streaming out behind it. Nicholas heard the Tornado pilot's transmission, “Fox three away.”

There was a large explosion that rocked the air around them. Nicholas twisted the knob to move the plane out of the blast radius and away from the falling debris.

“Nicholas, look! They shot him down. Did you see that? They shot him down!”

There were few things more deadly than a short-range air-to-air missile off a Tornado. Nicholas said, “Good. That plane was attacking federal agents in British airspace.”

“But who? Who in the world would attack our plane? They tried to kill us.”

He said grimly, “When they fish the pieces of the plane out of the Bristol Channel, we'll find out. But I think we know who might want us dead and gone.”

“Havelock.”

“Oh, yes.”

“You do know what you're doing, right?”

He gave her a cocky grin. “We'll see, won't we?”

Nicholas kept his hands steady on the yoke, and the radio spoke to him again. “You're clear, Gulfstream V. Follow the Tornadoes home, sir. Come to heading two-two-zero, drop your speed to one hundred fifty knots. I'm handing you off to Cardiff Tower, they're going to talk you down. Good luck.”

Mike had headphones on now, heard the exchange. “Where are we going, exactly?”

“I would expect we're heading to Ministry of Defense—MoD—Saint Athan. It's a Royal Air Force base in southern Wales. It's where the Tornadoes scrambled from.”

“I wonder if Prince William will be there to greet us.”

Nicholas laughed. “I'm glad you can still joke at a time like this.”

She started to say it was better than hysterics, but she didn't. She stared straight ahead and prayed for all she was worth.

The tower at MoD St. Athan hailed them. “Hello, Special
Agent Drummond. I'm Daniel Healy, the National Air Traffic Services general manager here at Cardiff Tower. We work both landing strips because of the proximity of the base to our airport. I understand you're hand-flying the plane; you have no autopilot and your ILS has been knocked out?”

The man's voice was wonderfully calm and Mike felt some tension ease.

“Correct. Our electronics are damaged. And engine one is out as well.”

“That
is
vexing. Have flying experience, do you?”

“Some. In a Tornado simulator. A few years ago.”

Healy laughed a bit. “Roger that. You'll be fine. Now, the airport should be at your ten o'clock. Do you see us?”

“I do.”

“Set your flaps to twenty, and make your speed one hundred twenty-five knots. Be prepared, we have some low-level wind shear, you'll want to flare as you're landing, then do an idle reverse to slow yourself down.”

“Easy for you to say.”

They lined up, and the landing strip at MoD St. Athan appeared on their horizon a few moments later, a long snake running straightaway from them. The runway was lined with emergency vehicles, their lights flashing.

“Looks like they're throwing us quite the party, Nicholas. Champagne and caviar, I hope.”

“I'll take most anything you put in my hand at the moment. Okay, focus. This is the fun part.”

Mike did what Nicholas told her, twisted the knobs to new headings, dropped the landing gear. Healy talked them down, making adjustments here and there. The ground rose up. The
plane skidded as Nicholas reversed their single engine and applied the brakes, setting it into a sickening sideways spin, but finally it groaned to a stop half on and half off the runway.

They were alive, on the ground safely. Mike jumped up from her seat and hugged Nicholas tight. She said against his cheek, “You did it! And we're even in one piece. The plane is still in one piece, too.” She gave him a whopping big kiss on the mouth. “What's best? No sharks. You're not going to be a lamebrain for at least a month.” And she gave him another kiss.

He said against her ear, “Twice? That's good. I'll take what I can get.”

MoD St. Athan

Wales

3:00 p.m.

The emergency personnel attended the pilots, both still unconscious, their burns deep and purpled. They'd both been staring at the laser when it had struck. Mike and Nicholas watched them carried away on stretchers to the waiting ambulances, and heard some cheers from the men below.

It was a pity about the beautiful Gulfstream, Nicholas thought. The laser had bit directly through the metal, leaving deep gouges in its sides, and blackening the glossy white paint around the left engine. A few more hits and they'd have broken up midair.

Mike came up to stand beside him. “The director's not going to be too happy about what we did to his baby.” But she was grinning like mad. It felt great to be alive.

He hugged her, this time kissed her. “We made it.”

They were escorted into the RAF Headquarters, and given hot tea while they were debriefed. Once everyone was satisfied, the base commander told them the plane that attacked them, the one the Tornado shot down, was being recovered. They'd know soon enough who it belonged to, though Nicholas had no doubts as to
who was behind the attempts on their lives. And he thought,
So you're really that scared of me, are you, Havelock? You've a good reason to be. I'm going to bury you, you sodding bastard.

The commander told them the pilots were being treated for burns and flash blindness by the base medics and were both expected to recover fully, though both would be scarred.

The commander also confirmed the laser wasn't commercial grade, it was even beyond military grade. It was a very powerful weapon, and no one had ever seen one used in the civilian or military theaters. They would start a full-scale investigation immediately.

The base commander's XO told them they were to be choppered to London on the double, on orders of one very irritated man named Hamish Penderley.

Nicholas pictured his former stiff-necked boss in his mind—this little kerfuffle was guaranteed to get the old buzzard's blood pumping.

Their gear was retrieved from the Gulfstream, and when they walked back out onto the tarmac, Nicholas saw Mike eying the green Chinook helicopter with something like dread.

“What's this? I thought you loved a good chopper ride.”

“Right now, all I'm thinking about is how nice it is to be on terra firma, but no, back we go bounding back up into the air.” But she hopped into the seat, put on her headset, and pulled her seat belt very tight.

The British Royal Air Force was true to their word, and thirty-five minutes later, they were buzzing the Thames, ready to set down at RAF Northolt.

As they watched the copter lift off back to its base in Wales,
Nicholas said to Mike, “Remind me to send a thank-you note to our friends at the National Air Traffic Services.”

“Let's send flowers, too. And chocolates. Maybe my firstborn—and yours, too.”

A black eyebrow went up.

She gave him a manic grin. “I didn't mean it to come out quite like that, sorry.”

“Whatever, interesting idea.”

There was a modified black 5 Series BMW waiting for them on the tarmac. Against it leaned Hamish Penderley, detective chief superintendent of the Metropolitan Police's Operational Command Unit. Since there'd been distance and time between them, looking at him now Nicholas would swear Penderley could billboard the benign grandfather. Penderley even smiled at them, a warm smile, something Nicholas couldn't remember ever seeing, but then boom—“The prodigal returns. Did you have to do it with such a splash, Drummond?”

“Not a splash, sir, we managed to make it to land.”

Penderley shook his head. “What a cock-up.”

“No, sir, it wasn't my fault.”

Penderley gave a bark of laughter, shook Nicholas's hand.

“Of course you remember Special Agent Michaela Caine.”

“Yes, of course.” Penderley shook her hand. “I still remember that hat you wore the day of Elaine's funeral. Welcome back, Agent Caine. I see you're still walking and talking, quite a feat in this chap's company.”

Mike said, “Good thing I come from hardy stock. But you know, sir, around Nicholas, you're certainly never bored.”

A grizzled eyebrow flew up. “I'm still recovering. I still can't get
my head around the fact that he's now an American FBI agent. And he thought
I
was strict.”

She'd liked Penderley when she'd met him at Elaine York's funeral back in January. “We're lucky to have him, sir. His mind would be a terrible thing to waste.”

Penderley laughed heartily. “Right. You're welcome to it, all it ever did was cause me trouble. Come along.”

Once the BMW moved into traffic, Penderley got down to business. “We've blanketed Leyland's house in Notting Hill. It appears no one's there, and we've had eyes on the house for the past two hours. No one's heard from Leyland, either. His people said he had a meeting at noon today and hasn't been seen since.

“I'm beginning to worry. Special Branch is making all sorts of noise, wanting in on this. We won't be able to put them off much longer, especially now that they know about this phantom submarine and Loch Eriboll, is it? Near the North Sea?”

“That's right. Loch Eriboll. I have the exact coordinates for the sub.”

“Bringing up a sub isn't something just anyone can do. The planning has begun, but they won't be able to be in place to raise it until tomorrow at the earliest.”

“A problem with that plan, sir. Havelock is surely making his own preparations to raise this sub, if he hasn't managed it already. He needs Adam Pearce for the final coordinates, so we need to find this kid before Havelock gets his hands on him.

“It's scary stuff. With Havelock's assembling polonium, going off the grid, and this unknown weapon, there's no time to waste. Adam Pearce told us to meet him at Leyland's. Hopefully he's there now staying out of sight. Then we'll head to Loch Eriboll, locate the sub and find this mythical key everyone's searching for.”

“What's the key to?”

“Possibly to something created by Madame Curie way back in the early part of the twentieth century. Something that can go with the polonium Havelock's been gathering. Putting together the two supposedly will make a very powerful weapon. We need Adam Pearce and Sophie. They're the only ones who know the whole story.”

Well, also all the members of the Order knew, but his father's request, no, more a plea, sounded in his head.
Protect the Order, keep the police away from them.
Very well, he would remain quiet for the time being. But if everything went arse up, he himself would arrest every last member he could find, and be damned what happened to the Order.

Mike was watching him. He had the odd sensation that she knew what he was thinking.

Nicholas said, “Any sign of Havelock?”

“His plane landed in London, then departed again. We have no idea where he is.”

His mobile rang. He glanced at the screen. “Who's this, 01856? That's the Oxford code, isn't it?”

Mike said, “Answer it. Maybe we'll get lucky, and it's Adam Pearce, calling to say he's saved the day.”

“Perhaps.” Nicholas put it on speaker and answered. “Hullo?”

A woman's voice, low, frantic. “Agent Drummond? It's Sophie Pearce. You have to help me.”