The Chameleon Factor. Don Pendleton

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      CHAPTER FOUR

      Flight 18, above the North Pacific

      The recessed ceiling lights in the 747 flickered for a moment.

      “Hey,” a man said, taking the cell phone away from his ear. “What the hell is going on?”

      “What’s the matter?” his wife asked, lowering her magazine.

      “This damn thing is dead!” he raged, hitting the device.

      Gwenneth started forward to talk to the upset passenger, when she noticed that across the plane, a woman was shaking her airphone and also muttering annoyances. Two phones died at the same time? How odd.

      “Hu, Yuki,” Gwenneth said to the other flight attendants. “Go calm down the passengers. I’ll report this to the captain.”

      Yuki nodded vigorously and started down the aisle, beaming a pleasant smile.

      “It’s nothing,” Hu scoffed, sliding another packaged meal into a microwave to be warmed. “Just a coincidence.”

      “Maybe,” Gwenneth said, biting a lip. “Or maybe it’s a freak magnetic storm that’ll throw off the navigation and make us hours late. Either way, regulations say that the captain must be informed at once.”

      Hu shrugged in a noncommittal manner, and Gwenneth pushed past the man to start for the cockpit. Moving through first class, she stopped as the door to the lavatory opened, almost hitting her in the face. It was Mrs. Coleson, the pregnant American woman from coach.

      “You really shouldn’t be here, dear,” Gwenneth started to say, when the woman grabbed her forcibly by the arm and shoved something hard into her stomach.

      “I have a weapon,” Davis Harrison growled in his real voice. “Stay calm and you may get to live.”

      Her eyes went wide at the realization that it was a man wearing a disguise. Quickly, Gwenneth started to pull air into her lungs for a full-throated scream, but Harrison rammed the gun into her stomach, almost knocking her out. Gasping for breath, Gwenneth felt her eyes well with tears as she fought to draw in a ragged breath.

      “Oh, dear,” Harrison said, sounding like a woman again. “You’ve go the flu, too, eh? Here, let me help you sit down.”

      Gwenneth tried to fight free from the other person, but his grip was like iron, and every move only earned her another jab in the belly. Her vision was starting to go red from the lack of air, and a wave of weakness swept over her. This had to be a hijacking…terrorists! But how to warn…

      Something slammed into her face, and Gwenneth had a brief flash of the steel-plated door to the cockpit before the universe turned black and she tumbled into a warm darkness.

      “Yes?” a voice said from the other side.

      Dropping the unconscious woman to the deck, Harrison pushed the door open, its electronic lock disabled from the humming Chameleon strapped to his belly. Stepping inside, he swung the deadly Tech-9 about, marking his targets. The crew was three, pilot, copilot and navigator, exactly as there should be. No surprises here. Excellent.

      “Hey, that door was locked!” the navigator cried out in confusion, spinning from his console. Then he raised an eyebrow at the pregnant woman holding an automatic weapon of some kind. Shit! A hijacking!

      “Nobody move,” Harrison ordered.

      The copilot fumbled under his seat, while the navigator snatched a small black box from the wall and lunged forward to thrust the Talon stun gun at the intruder, the silvery prongs crackling with electricity. The Chinese man got only halfway before Harrison fired from the hip.

      Hardly any flame or smoke erupted from the muzzle, and only a subdued click was heard, as if the weapon had misfired. But the navigator dropped the Talon as he was slammed backward against his console, blood spurting from his throat.

      Harrison fired twice more, only clicks sounding. The navigator writhed under the sledgehammer blows, his chest seeming to explode and a radar screen behind the man noisily cracked as a slug drilled through. Exhaling life itself, the shuddering man fell to the cold deck, blood pouring from the gaping holes in his body.

      “Alert, Anchorage!” the pilot said quickly into her throat mike. “Code four, repeat, we have a code four in progress!”

      But there was no reply from the airport; not even the soft crackle of static came over her earphones. The radio was completely dead.

      That was when she noticed that most of the control board was dead, many of the instruments giving wildly impossible readings. Shit and fire, her ship was in some sort of a jamming field! There was no other possible explanation.

      Reaching under the chair, she thumbed a hidden button. Then something hit her shoe, and the pilot glanced down to see a misshapen lead slug on the deck. From the pistol? But there had been no noise. What was going on here?

      “That emergency signal will never be heard.” Harrison chuckled, enjoying their confusion. On impulse, he reached up and pulled off his annoying wig.

      The pilot scowled at the sight of the hijacker’s bald head, the skin stubbled with hair. Not bald, shaved, details she would need to remember to help convict him in court before the Red Army firing squad blew off his face.

      “Don’t hurt anybody else,” the copilot said in Chinese, raising both hands. “We will obey. What do you want?”

      The hijacker frowned at the copilot, and the pilot realized he didn’t speak Chinese. That could be useful in the future.

      “This is foolish,” the pilot began in English. “Once we move off course—”

      “Shut up! Do you need the copilot to fly this plane?”

      Not really, no, she admitted to herself. Then the end result of such honesty became horrifying obvious.

      “Yes!” she lied, darting a glance at her friend. “Of course. This aircraft is huge!”

      Harrison smiled. “You lie,” he whispered, and the strange gun clicked twice more. The copilot jerked backward against the hull, then slumped over in his chair, supported only by the safety harness around his chest. Blood began to dribble from his slack mouth, and a second Talon fell to the deck with a clatter.

      “Toy, stupid, useless toy,” Harrison growled in annoyance.

      Then the Tech-9 swung to point at the captain. To her, the muzzle seemed larger than the Beijing Tunnel, and she felt the world shrink to a view of its black interior. A drop of sweat suddenly trickled down her face, and a thousand images and feelings flashed through her mind in a single heartbeat: childhood, family, friends, becoming captain.

      “Obey me, or die,” Harrison said from somewhere in the distance.

      Her attention split in two, the yoke of the jumbo jetliner felt hot in her grip, the elaborate control board СКАЧАТЬ