Hostage by Clare Mackintosh

THIRTY-SIX

4 HOURS FROM SYDNEY | MINA

As Cesca and I move around the galley, filling jugs with water, I glance at the door to the flight deck. What’s happening in there? There’s been no indication that we’re not still in the hands of an experienced pilot, and I wonder whether that’s because the man they called Amazon knows what he’s doing or because we’re still on autopilot.

Could Mike still be alive?

I’m clutching at straws, I know, but if he is alive—knocked out, tied up, but alive—then I owe it to him to put this right. I have to find a way of turning this around. I can’t see Missouri, but the blond woman—Zambezi—is watching me, dividing her gaze between Cesca and me and the passengers in the cabin. She can’t be more than five foot five and slim with it, but she stands like a boxer, and there’s not a flicker of nervousness about her face. Rather, she sports a small smile, as though she’s saying, Come on, then. Show me what you’re made of.

The long-legged man from 2D gets up and stretches, as though he’s just going for a stroll instead of hijacking a plane. He walks into the galley and leans against the flight-deck door, taking in the scene. He nods at the blond woman.

“Yangtze.” The corners of his mouth twitch as he looks her up and down. “A woman, huh?”

“No shit.”

The reply is terse, and I glance at Cesca, trying to make sense of their conversation, but she’s as confused as I am. I try to see whether the tall man has explosives. He’s wearing a T-shirt, and there are no wires, no bulges around his chest. He sees me looking and raises a suggestive eyebrow. I turn away before he can see the revulsion on my face.

“No glass.” Zambezi gestures to where Cesca is filling a tray with the goblets we use for business-class passengers. Wordlessly, Cesca replaces them in the locker and finds a stack of paper cups. I open cupboards with deliberate slowness, my hands pulling out water bottles and bags of pretzels while I mentally go through every area of the galley to find something we could use as a weapon. Food and drink, an oven, a coffee maker, the chiller cupboards…nothing I can easily take and use.

If I could break a glass, I might secrete a shard somewhere, but how can I do that with the pair of them watching us? There are port glasses in the cupboard—narrow stems that would snap easily and quietly. Would it be obvious if I dropped one in the pocket of my jacket? I slip a hand in to remove the pair of cotton gloves Dindar likes us to wear when we’re serving food.

“Get a move on.”

My fingers are still sticky with Carmel’s blood. They close around the note I found with Sophia’s flapjack. I want to take it out, but I can’t bear the thought of the hijackers snatching it from me, this fragile link between me and my daughter.

For my mummy.

In my pocket, I press the note between my hand and my hip, remembering the weight of her as a toddler as I carried her from the car, half asleep. Legs dangling either side, her head flopping on my chest. I let out a slow breath.

I’m coming back for you, Sophia.

I repeat it to myself as I walk with Cesca through the cabin, pouring water under the watchful eyes of the hijackers. I’m coming back for you. Every iteration makes me feel more like it’s possible, more like I’m strong enough to survive this.

“Are you okay?” It’s Rowan, the passenger who helped with Carmel. He’s taken off his blood-soaked sweatshirt and put on a near-identical one in a slightly darker shade of gray. “They let me get it out of my hand luggage.” He looks at my spattered uniform. “Would you like something? I always have a few spare bits in case my luggage goes AWOL.”

“Thanks. I’m okay.” Having Carmel’s blood on my clothes feels like a penance I deserve and a reminder of what’s already been lost.

“I don’t think the others have explosives.” Cesca speaks in a low voice, her eyes fixed on the cabin. “I can’t see anything in their hands.”

The hijackers are roaming up and down the aisles, shouting at passengers to keep their hands where they can be seen. I scan each of them in turn, watching the way they throw their arms about. Impossible to say if they’re wearing anything under their clothes, but she’s right: they’re not holding detonators.

Could we overpower Missouri and get it out of her hand before she has the chance to set it off? My pulse quickens, sweat breaking out across my forehead. The chances of success are tiny, and if we fail… I think about all the times Adam has tackled violent criminals, telling me about it afterward as though it were nothing. Just fists, just needles, just knives. Quietly courageous.

I’m coming back for you. I repeat my silent mantra, and this time, it’s not only Sophia I’m thinking of.

When Missouri reappears in the aisle, we snap to attention, the sight of the plastic and wires in her hand enough to make us comply.

“I want you in economy. Get rid of that water.” She turns toward the cabin, claps her hands again in that disconcertingly prim way before shouting the order again. “Everyone at the back of the plane. Move!” She shouts the last word, provoking a panicked scramble to get from business class across the bar to economy.

“Change of plan,” I hear Missouri say to Zambezi as we pass. “I want them farther from the action.”

In the bar area, they divide us roughly into two groups, herding us into either side of economy. I’m pushed toward the right-hand aisle, along with Cesca and Rowan and the two journalists. The Middle Eastern man from seat 6J is in front of us, but he isn’t moving. Every muscle is tense, and as we file past, I catch the acrid scent of stale sweat. At the back of the plane, I can see the remaining on-duty crew, huddled together on the floor. The door leading to the relief bunks is still closed. Have they realized what’s happening and stayed hidden?

“Sit down. Now!”

We drop down between the rows of economy passengers, and the sudden lack of space makes me feel as if I can’t breathe. I’m at the front of the aisle, Cesca behind me, then Rowan, Derek Trespass, and finally Alice Davanti.

“Hands on your heads.”

Hundreds of pairs of elbows snap to attention. Lachlan is screaming again, the loud wails of a hungry baby. Elsewhere in the cabin, muted sobbing spreads like fire.

The long-legged Yangtze is still in the bar area. He gives a mock bow as Missouri approaches, his heels clicking together. “Yangtze, reporting for duty.”

She doesn’t miss a beat. “You took your time.”

“I figured you had it all under control.”

Missouri’s face twitches, as though she’s trying to decide whether to be flattered or annoyed, and the odd exchange between the two hijackers in the front galley suddenly makes sense.

A woman, huh?

No shit.

“They don’t know each other,” I say to Cesca. “They’re meeting for the first time.”

The Middle Eastern man is still standing, his eyes darting around the cabin. I’m trying to make eye contact with him, trying to convey that he’s putting us all in danger, when Missouri hisses at him.

“For fuck’s sake, Ganges, pull yourself together.”

Ganges?

The man nods, planting himself firmly in the center of the space, his eyes fixed on the far end of the cabin. A chill runs through me as I think of how I ignored my suspicions, how I felt guilty for them.

Missouri repeats her instruction to a man standing on the opposite side of the cabin. “Niger, hold the aisle.”

Ganges. Niger.

Rivers, I realize, finally making the connection. Missouri is the ringleader, standing in the bar with the blond Zambezi and the long-legged Yangtze. Ganges is the young man whose feet are inches from my knees. Average height and slightly built, Ganges has the soft, unhealthy skin of someone unaccustomed to exercise. He wears gray, wire-framed glasses, and his black hair stands on end, as though he has just run his fingers through it. He shifts from one position to another, his hands fiddling with his pockets, his buttons, his collar. He scratches his neck, chews his lip, glances across the aisle and back toward the two hijackers at the rear of the cabin. Perhaps feeling my eyes on him, he looks down. I try a smile, and he flushes, snapping his eyes away and resuming his nervous fidgeting. Across the aisle is the man Missouri referred to as Niger. I only caught a glimpse of him before we were made to sit on the floor.

I turn and whisper to the others, “I’ve counted six of them, including the one flying the plane.”

“Do you think there are more?” Derek says. He’s younger than I thought, I realize, his hair prematurely thin and worry lines scoring his brow.

“Everyone else has their hands on their heads.” Rowan kneels up, looking back along the aisle. All the passengers are sitting down, either in their seats or on the floor, and there’s an eerie quiet. He looks back toward the hijackers and shudders. “To think that they were sitting among us for all that time, and we never knew.”

Some of us knew…” Alice Davanti glances in my direction, but no one takes up the baton. We have to come up with a plan.

Soon after I started work, World Airlines rolled out a training package designed to equip us with the skills required to handle a hijacking situation. Run by a former pilot and martial arts expert, the setup took place in a hangar on a private airfield in Gloucestershire, using the front half of a decommissioned B747. We shivered away the morning in our coats, sitting on plastic chairs next to the plane, while the instructor took us through pop psychology and negotiation skills. After lunch, we were split into two groups—cabin crew and passengers—and introduced to a troupe of actors who would be playing the other passengers and the terrorists. I recognized a man from Hollyoaks and the woman from the previous year’s John Lewis advert.

“The scenario you’re about to experience is as close to a real-life situation as we can get,” said the instructor. “You won’t be physically hurt, but you may find the experience psychologically distressing. If you need to leave, blow your whistle, and we will stop the scenario.” We exchanged nervous smiles, all privately hoping we wouldn’t be the ones to put a stop to the fun.

I thought we’d feel silly. Self-conscious. I thought the acting would be hammy, the responses scripted, and perhaps it was a little, at first. Those of us playing cabin crew boarded first, greeting our passengers and checking their boarding passes, which had been faithfully reproduced for maximum authenticity. We carried out the safety briefing, moved to the jump seats, and then we “took off.” Sound effects and a low vibration hummed throughout the plane.

The seat belt sign went off with a ping, and suddenly we were starting a mock drinks service, and the buzz of conversation across the aisles made it feel so real and all the more shocking when there was a loud bang and a scream, and I looked up to see a man in a balaclava holding a gun. A second man had a knife to the throat of a woman, dragging her to the flight-deck door, and a third threw something into the aisle in front of me. I screamed and ducked down behind the trolley I was pushing as a cloud of smoke mushroomed out across the seats. There was more shouting, more screaming, and at no point did I have space to think, It’s just pretend.

I wish I could blow a whistle now.

Lachlan’s cries increase in intensity, and a man at the back, crouched like us in the aisle, shouts for someone to shut that fucking baby up!

“Shut up yourself,” Paul Talbot shouts back.

“It’s been screaming for hours. It’s so fucking inconsiderate.” It’s Doug, more sober now but just as vociferous, his fiancée leaning toward him, pleading with him to be quiet, not to draw attention to himself.

“Inconsiderate? We’re about to die, and you’re talking about etiquette?” Paul gives a hollow laugh.

“I can’t do this.” Doug stands, looking wildly around, as if he’d throw himself out if only he could get to a door.

“Hands on your head!” the hijacker at the back of the aisle yells at him, but he takes no heed.

Ginny pulls at her fiancé. “Baby, sit down! It’s the only way we’re going to get through this.”

“Get through this? We’re not getting through anything. We’re going to die, Ginny.”

Sobs echo around us as hysteria spreads through the cabin. Those who aren’t crying are watching Doug and Ginny, and I wonder if this might be our chance to get past Missouri and into the flight deck. But when I look for her, she’s still holding her position, not remotely distracted by the sideshow.

“No.” Ginny lifts her chin, determined to stay positive. “We’re not going to die. We’re going to get to Sydney, and we’re going to get married and—”

“I can’t marry you.”

There’s a horrible silence, and even with everything that’s happening, my heart breaks to see Ginny’s face crumple.

“What do you mean?”

Doug hangs his head. “I got carried away. It all happened so fast, and you were so excited. I didn’t want to hurt you, but…”

He stops, and Ginny’s voice hardens. “But what?”

“I’m already married.” He sounds as though he might cry, but there’s no sympathy on any of the faces around him.

“You bastard,” someone says from a few rows behind.

“Talk about timing,” Derek mutters.

Ginny bursts into tears, and a woman next to her puts her arms around her. I wait for one of the hijackers to shout at her to put her hands back on her head, but they either don’t care or haven’t noticed.

I look up at the hijacker guarding the front of our aisle. He looks almost as shaken by Doug’s revelation as poor Ginny, and I wonder if it’s served to show him that we’re people, not just hostages. I manage a smile. “What’s your name?”

“Ganges.”

“Your real name.”

“You don’t need to know that.”

“I’m Mina. Short for Amina, but everyone’s always called me Mina.” I remember that much from the scenario debrief: Use your name as much as possible. Tell them details about your life; make them think of you as a real person. I try to hold Ganges’s gaze, but his eyes slide away. “Can you tell us what’s happening?”

He glances at the opposite aisle. I’m too low to the ground to see who he’s looking at, but it’s clear Ganges feels out of his depth. “Cooperate, and you won’t be hurt.” He has the faintest of accents—the barely there intonation of someone who’s lived in their second country far longer than their first.

“Where are you from?”

“You don’t need to know that either.”

“How come you’ve never met one another before?” I’m met with stony silence, but I persevere. “She knows you, though, right? Missouri? That doesn’t seem fair. She knows you, but you’re not allowed to know—”

“She knows our positions, that’s all.” His response is muttered, a dart of his eyes checking to make sure Missouri isn’t listening. “She knows our names from where we’re standing.”

“I see. So you guys have only chatted online, right?”

Cesca shuffles forward, into the gap to my right. “It isn’t too late to back out, you know,” she says quickly. Too soon, I think, turning to her, trying to convey through my eyes alone that she needs to be quiet, that I was sure I could get somewhere. “If you’re having second thoughts, you could help us instead, and I’m sure the police would—”

“Quiet!” He raises a clenched fist, bringing it down swiftly, then stopping a hair’s breadth from Cesca’s face.

Too soon.

“Consider that a warning.”

Cesca retreats, the others clustering around her. But I’m watching Ganges’s face and the flicker of alarm that crossed it, not when Cesca spoke but when he raised his fist. He didn’t stop because he only wanted to warn her; he stopped because he couldn’t bring himself to carry on. He doesn’t want to hurt us.

We’re too close to Ganges to talk about him. I indicate as much to Cesca and the others, and we begin to make some space. Derek kneels up and stretches, his hands still dutifully on his head. When he returns to a seated position, he is a full row behind his original spot. Alice waits until Ganges is looking away—something he does every few seconds, as though he’s searching for answers elsewhere in the cabin—then slides swiftly back into the space Derek has left. Slowly, we all move backward, and Ganges either doesn’t notice or is relieved not to be at such close quarters.

Next to me, in the central aisle seat of the third row, a pregnant woman is sobbing quietly to herself.

“Are you okay?” I ask, even though she clearly isn’t. None of us are okay.

“My husband didn’t want me to fly. But he’s working over Christmas, and the baby’s not due for six weeks, and I figured it would be nice to be home and let Mum take care of me for a bit, you know? And now—”

She doesn’t finish. She doesn’t need to. I wonder if her husband knows—if any of our families know. Unless Missouri’s pilot is proficient enough to maintain comms with air traffic control, it would only have taken around half an hour for someone to notice that we were out of contact. Maybe it’s on the news already. I picture Adam in the sitting room, glued to the television; I imagine the journalists standing at the airport, the sea of holidaymakers incongruous with the solemnity of the report.

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. It’s theirs.” She directs this last to the bar, where Missouri can be seen talking to the other hijackers. “They’re insane. And climate change, for God’s sake! Of all the stupid, stupid reasons…”

“There is no climate change, you know.” The man in the next seat leans forward. “They’ve disproved it. It’s just a natural cycle. Give it another hundred years, and they’ll be moaning that we’re heading for another ice age.”

“What is this—debating society? This is real!”

“Try to stay calm,” the man says. “Increased blood pressure isn’t good for the baby.”

The pregnant woman stares at him. “How many times have you been pregnant?”

“Well, none personally, obviously, but—”

“Then fuck off.” She stands up and shuffles into the aisle. I half stand, too, as she approaches Ganges, unsure if she’s likely to help or hinder.

“I need to pee.”

“You’ll have to hold it. Sit down.”

“There’s six pounds of baby pressing on my bladder. My pelvic floor isn’t holding anything.”

Ganges turns a deep shade of red. He backs into the bar, keeping his eyes on the pregnant woman as he mutters something to Missouri. She rolls her eyes and comes forward, grabbing the woman’s sleeve and propelling her into the loo. She stands in the doorway, and I see a man in the front row turn away to give the poor woman some privacy.

I turn around, the distraction giving us a brief chance to talk. “We have to do something.”

“Like what?” Rowan says.

“Force our way through.”

“What?” Derek laughs. “The five of us against six terrorists, at least one of whom is wearing explosives? And God knows how many more of them there are on board!”

“Derek’s right.” Alice looks at me despairingly. “Even if we got past Missouri and the others, what would that achieve? The door to the cockpit’s locked, isn’t it?”

“There’s an emergency access code,” Cesca says. “It overrides everything.”

We all look toward the flight deck, and I push up onto my knees to get a better view. There’s ten feet between us and Ganges, and behind him the bar in which Missouri stands, surveying her team. Behind them, the length of a tennis court stretches out before the flight-deck door. How far would we get before Missouri pushed the button?

Ganges glances again at his conspirator on the other side of the cabin. I follow his gaze. Slowly, I rise up, so I can see over the central seats, careful to stay lower than the passengers next to me. My arms are aching, and I lock my fingers together on top of my head to relieve the strain.

“And you know the code?” Rowan asks Cesca.

“Of course. I just don’t see how we’d get close enough without her detonating that bomb.”

“Sit down!” Ganges snaps. I sink dutifully to the floor. But I’ve already seen the man Missouri called Niger. And I recognize him. I recognize the baggy combat trousers with the heavy boots and the tight T-shirt that strains across his biceps, and I’m almost completely certain I know something about him Missouri doesn’t.

Now I just have to figure out how it could help us.