Reamde

map of the world, and he now used it to shape possible courses from Islamabad to various cities in the United States.

The jet’s maximum range was 10,700 kilometers. The pilots wanted Jones to understand that some distance had to be subtracted from that figure to allow for unexpected headwinds and for maneuvering in the vicinity of the airports at either end of the flight plan.

The picture that emerged was that Islamabad was basically located on the opposite side of the world from Denver, and so a great circle route plotted directly over the North Pole would take the jet to the Mile High City, if it had that much range, which it didn’t. In fact, if they were to fly the jet on that heading, it would be lucky to reach as far south as Regina, Saskatchewan. More likely, they’d have to set down in Saskatoon for refueling.

This kind of talk seemed to put Abdallah Jones into a foul mood. After some angry pacing up and down the aisle, he appeared to calm himself down and then divulged something to the pilots. Or at least he acted as if he were divulging something. Zula had seen enough of the man and his wiles, by this point, to doubt that he ever sincerely divulged anything.

All he wanted, he claimed, was to get the jet across the forty-ninth parallel and land it on U.S. soil. It didn’t have to be a big airport. As a matter of fact, he much preferred a smaller, more rural destination. The ideal landing site would be an unmanned dirt strip out in the middle of nowhere. His only goal was to smuggle a few of his brethren into the United States where they could disappear into the general population and then await future orders. But if the jet could only make it as far as Saskatoon, this wouldn’t work.

There followed a lot more screwing around with maps and detailed calculations. The gist of it was that the middle of the United States was actually the worst part to aim for. Because of the mathematics of the great circle calculations, it turned out that the northeastern and northwestern corners of the Lower Forty-Eight were significantly closer to Islamabad—close enough that the jet might be able to reach them without the need to refuel.

They then began to plot and examine great circle routes from Islamabad to various New England and Northwest destinations. Jones was fascinated by the differences between these. The route from Islamabad to Boston, for example, passed over the western Russian heartland, Finland, Sweden, Norway, threaded between Iceland and Greenland, then passed over the Canadian maritime provinces and Maine. Each of these places seemed to give rise to its own set of misgivings in Jones’s mind. The route to Seattle, on the other hand, cut across the least populated swath of Siberia, traversed the Arctic Ocean, made landfall again in Canada’s extreme northwest, and followed the mountainous wilderness of the Yukon and western British Columbia before crossing the U.S. border only a few miles from its destination. The trajectory was an unbroken swath of the most desolate and unpopulated places on the globe. A small diversion to one side or the other would bring the jet down in the wilderness of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, or the mountains or deserts of eastern Washington State.

Once this was understood, there was no question in Jones’s mind as to how they would proceed.

“When we get to Islamabad,” he said, “we’ll file a flight plan from there to Boeing Field in Seattle. We can reach it without the need to refuel. I like this idea because it’s not going to arouse any suspicion in the minds of the authorities; Boeing Field is where you departed from the last time you left the United States.”

“But if you land there—” Pavel began.

“—we’ll be arrested, obviously, by Homeland Security,” Jones said. “But we’re not actually going to land there. We’re going to divert at the last minute and land out in the middle of nowhere and scatter. So you’ll need to reserve enough fuel for that.”

“You want to get from Islamabad to Seattle without refueling?” Pavel asked.

“Is that not the entire point of this exercise?”

“We have been plotting great circle routes,” Pavel told him. “This is not the same thing as a flight plan.”

“I understand that,” Jones said.

“You cannot simply fly on a great circle trajectory across Russia,” Pavel said, astonished that Jones would not already know this. He directed their attention at the red arc that his software had plotted northward from Islamabad, bisecting Siberia on its way to the high Arctic. “There is no such air traffic corridor. The Russian Air Force would shoot us down as soon as we crossed the border. This cannot be done.”

“Crap,” Jones said. “Crap crap crap.” He thought about it for a while. “Can we somehow divert around Russian airspace?”

“I can tell you right now that if we try to get to the U.S. from Islamabad without passing over Russia, we will have to go by an indirect route, and we will not have enough fuel,” Pavel said.

“Then we should fly from Islamabad to somewhere else,” Jones suggested, “such as Hong Kong, and refuel there, and then proceed along the usual corridor.”

“What is so important about Islamabad?” Pavel asked.

“That,” Jones said, “is none of your concern. You just need to fly the plane.”

Pavel corrected him: “You need us to fly the plane.” And he exchanged a look with Sergei, who nodded. During the discussion, the two pilots had occasionally broken into Russian for short private conversations, and it now seemed as though they had been talking about other things than just great circle routes. “It is fun to think about Islamabad and flying here, flying there, all over the world, but right now you are stuck in Xiamen FOB and we are the only ones who can get you out.”

Jones sighed. “I had hoped that I could avoid being so blunt,” he said, “but the deal is that, if you don’t file the new flight plan and get us to Islamabad, we will kill you.”

“In Islamabad,” Pavel continued, perfectly unruffled by the threat, “you have protection from officials that you can bribe, and you have connection to your friends who live in Waziristan, Afghanistan, Yemen. Surely you can find one or two comrades who know how to fly a plane. You intend to kill us there and then use your own pilots afterward.”

Jones looked as if he were about to deny this, but Pavel held up a hand to stop him. “Don’t,” he said. “Is ridiculous. You have got something very bad that you want to pick up in Islamabad. It’s totally obvious. You have a nuclear bomb, or some germs, or something. And your plan is to place this on the jet and then deliver this to some American city. You will crash the plane into a building or something and blow up the city, or poison it, or spread some plague. And everyone on that plane will die, one way or the other. It is ridiculous. You must think that Sergei and I are stupid. We are not. We understand. Obviously we are dead men no matter what. And so we have agreed that you should kill us now. Go ahead. Kill us now, and then figure out some way to get your asses out of China.”

Jones actually considered it for a while. Either that, or he was simply waiting until his temper was under control.

Finally he said, “Surely you have some counterproposal? Other than immediate, summary execution?”

“We can fly you out of here,” Pavel said, “as soon as we can make a plan that guarantees to keep us alive.” He exchanged a look with Sergei and then nodded at Zula. “Us, and the girl.”

It was the first time that Zula’s presence had been acknowledged at all, and she was strangely grateful for it. Jones’s reaction was a little bit odd: ashamed and defensive. Similar to the way he had looked at the conclusion of that phone conversation in the door of the airplane.

Why would he be reacting that way?

Probably, she realized, because he had intended to kill her. Or at least had not really been caring whether she lived or died. Which was apparently just fine with Jones as long as it was a private matter. But when people drew it to his attention, he didn’t like it.

“All right,” Jones said, “since this is all about you lot now, and what you want, have you considered what is going to happen to you if you get arrested in China? Because you are responsible for having flown some rather bad chaps into the country, aren’t you?”

“Obviously we would like to get out of China,” Pavel allowed.

“And soon, I should think, since before long they’ll be pulling Ivanov’s corpse out of that basement and figuring out who he is, and then they’ll connect him to this plane, which is just sitting here, with us in it.”

“Agreed.”

“We can’t get out on an international flight plan because the immigration officials will want to come on board and check our documents,” Jones said.