Hostage by Clare Mackintosh

FORTY-ONE

2 HOURS 30 MINUTES FROM SYDNEY | MINA

When Missouri finishes speaking and the PA goes silent, there’s a beat like an indrawn breath. Then somebody screams.

The first scream triggers a second and a third, and now the plane shakes with the panic of 353 passengers faced with the certainty of death. Next to me, a man draws himself into a ball in his seat, his voice a high-pitched wail of fear. I turn around, see Cesca’s horrified face. Rowan slumps against the seats, one hand gripping Derek’s arm as the older man tries to shake him off.

Alice is tugging at the seat belt of a woman in an aisle seat, wild with desperation. “Get out! Get out!”

The woman grips her seat belt clasp, fending off Alice with wild swipes of her hand.

“My newspaper paid six thousand pounds for a seat!”

The woman’s elbow finds its target, and Alice reels back, blood pouring from her nose. Cesca pulls Alice away, and I move to help, but she collapses against Cesca.

“I paid for a seat,” she sobs.

“Everyone did.” Cesca lets go of Alice, who falls onto the floor of the aisle, clutching the base of the seat as though her fingertips alone will stop her from being flung from the plane.

There is nothing we can do.

Had we been faced with a controlled landing in water or on unsuitable ground, I could have handled it. This is our bread and butter after all, even if we hope never to face it. Life jackets, emergency exits, slides… I could do it with my eyes shut.

But when Missouri flies us into the Sydney Opera House, there will be nothing I can do to protect the passengers on this flight from the impact of a 350-ton Boeing 777 hitting Australia’s most celebrated building.

The pregnant woman has her hands over her bump, tears flowing from her closed eyes. Beyond her, in the other aisle, I see the Talbots in a tight embrace around their baby boy. I’m suddenly aware of how many children are on this flight, from barely walking toddlers to terrified teens. Missouri is ending lives that have barely begun.

“I was going to kill myself in Australia,” Derek says suddenly.

The rest of us exchange glances. He carries on talking, fast, as if he’s worried he won’t have time, as if he just has to spill whatever’s been eating away at him. “I don’t have a commission for this gig, you know. I paid for my own ticket. My brother lives in Sydney, and I thought I’d book on the flight, then try to place a feature in one of the travel supplements. But they all said no, one after the other.” His voice cracks, and Cesca squeezes his shoulder.

I know I should be offering similar comfort, but I can’t work him out—can’t reconcile this broken facade with the man I thought I caught a glimpse of. I take Finley’s headphones from my pocket and start unpicking the knots, my fingers working out the tension in my head. Alice has stopped texting and is staring at Derek in horror, as though whatever he’s got might be catching.

“I lost my job, last year. The editor said I’d lost my edge. Said my reporter’s instinct wasn’t sharp enough to keep up with the younger crowd. I tried to go freelance, but when I sent in ideas, everyone was already doing them in-house, or they didn’t have a budget but did I want to write it up for the website? Someone suggested I start a blog.” His laugh is hollow.

Rowan lands a fist bump of camaraderie on Derek’s upper arm, but Derek ignores the gesture, pointedly turning away. Experience has made him bitter and untrusting, I realize, and I feel a sharp tug of solidarity toward him. Our reactions are shaped by the people around us, by the way they behave toward us. I think of Adam and of all the bitterness I’ve felt, and I feel it begin to peel away. I don’t know if I can forgive, but I think I can forget.

If I’m given the chance.

“Tough times,” Rowan says, a little uncertainly. He glances at me, and I give a tiny nod, trying to convey that I understand—that he’s simply trying to help. I don’t think anyone can help Derek now: he’s determined to get out his story, to catalogue his descent to a place where life was no longer worth living.

Derek looks at Cesca. “I just felt…useless—you know? No, not just useless. Pointless.”

Alice has gone back to her phone, bored by the story.

“I decided I’d take the flight anyway and visit my brother in Sydney, and then I’d lock myself in a hotel room with as much booze and pills as I could take, and that would be that. I was looking forward to it, in a funny sort of way.”

“And now…” I don’t finish, but he nods, a bitter smile at the corners of his mouth.

“Ironic, isn’t it? I suppose it focuses the mind rather, being faced with death. Turns out I’m not so keen on the idea after all.”

“None of us is,” I say grimly. I stand, looking toward Ganges and Zambezi, raising my voice to make sure they hear. “You didn’t know, did you? You didn’t know she was planning this.”

Ganges looks over his shoulder toward the flight deck, then across to Niger, who puts up his hands to fend off a passenger who has clambered out of his seat and down the aisle, still doing his job, despite this turn of events. They’ve been radicalized, I realize—so effectively that even now, they’re reluctant to stop doing Missouri’s bidding.

I see Paul Talbot put baby Lachlan in his wife’s arms and urge her toward the vacant seat, but before she can move, Jason Poke leaps into it, belting himself in and assuming the brace position.

“We have to do something,” I say, as much to myself as anyone else.

“Do what?” A passenger in the front row screams the question at me, his mouth twisted in fear. “There’s nothing we can do!”

Ganges takes a step back, then forward again. He’s not sure what to do, where to go now that his leader has gone. This is our chance, surely? I turn to Cesca and the others. “We need to get into the flight deck.”

“But the explosives…” Rowan starts. “The second we get close, she’ll…” He clenches his fingers into a ball, then opens his fist in a sudden starburst.

“And if we don’t,” Derek says, “she’ll crash into the Opera House.”

The pregnant woman is listening. “Either way, we’re fucked.”

“If she triggers the bomb now…” I swallow, hardly able to put words to what I’m thinking “…it’s just us. The plane will break up, and okay, there might be casualties on the ground, but there might not be. Whereas if we let this happen, we know people are going to die.”

“She’s right.” Cesca stands up. “There are thousands of innocent people heading for the Opera House right now. We can’t let—”

“What about the innocent people on this plane?” comes the voice from across the cabin. There’s a clamor of agreement, angry voices shouting across one another. Rowan looks at me, two lines deepening at the bridge of his nose.

“You think we should give up,” I say.

He closes his eyes for a second, as though seeking strength from within. When he opens them, they’re dark with despair. “No. I think we’ve already lost.”

Farther back in the cabin, a woman in a pink top stands up, as though she’s about to offer her seat to someone. I steel myself for more shouting, more arguing, but when I look more closely, I feel calmer: it’s the doctor who responded to our call for assistance. She puts her hands on the back of the seat in front of her, like a preacher in the pulpit. I wonder how it feels to be unable to save someone’s life. If it haunts her, or if she’s seen enough death to be numb to it.

“All the talking!” Her face is creased in irritation, and the cabin falls silent. I remember how reluctant she was to speak to me, the flush on my face as I apologized for disturbing her. “Should we storm the flight deck; should we stay here…” The doctor’s voice is whiny, a cruel mimic of our machinations. Unease darts through me. “Just do it. She’s going to take us down anyway.”

“Easy for you to say,” Jamie Crawford shouts across the seats. “You didn’t see the suicide vest she’s wearing. It’s rammed with explosives.”

The doctor throws back her head and laughs. The sound is manic, and slowly the truth dawns on me. I’ve been reassured by the presence of a doctor on the plane. I thought how she’ll help us save people, how she’ll protect the injured and do her best with the dying.

“Have you any idea how hard it is to get explosives on to an aircraft?” she continues.

I look at my watch. Two hours until our scheduled arrival in Sydney. In the cabin, everyone’s looking at the doctor, hoping for a plan, for something that will save us.

“It’s fake, you idiots,” she says. “We don’t have explosives—it’s just wire and plastic bags. There is no bomb.”

We don’t have explosives.

She’s one of them.

There’s no time to think about what that means—about who else might still be sitting among us, hiding the truth.

Missouri’s bomb is a fake.

If we can get into the flight deck, we can overpower her, and Cesca can take us safely down.

We still have a chance.

I can still keep my promise to Sophia.