Tsar

“Attention!” the blond man yelled, raising his rifle above his head and waving it about. “You are now all hostages of the Chechen Liberation Front. Do exactly as you’re told, and no one will die. Disobey my orders, and you all will be killed. We are now flying at five thousand feet. For any one person who disobeys orders or causes trouble, five passengers, chosen at random, will be thrown out of the airship.”

Oh, Stokely, she thought, feeling her whole body tremble. Oh, baby, where are you now?

The blond guy, the leader, kept shouting orders, making threats. She remembered his name suddenly. Yuri.

There was a commotion on the dance floor, where people were moving and sliding against each other, everybody knowing that at worst they were dead, at best they were at the beginning of a long ordeal. A husband and wife were arguing now in the middle of the crowd, and she heard the woman scream at her husband, “Do something, God damn you! Do something!”

Fancha heard herself saying into the microphone, “Everybody try to stay calm. Do what they say, and we’ll be okay.”

But the woman who wanted action slapped her husband hard across the face and turned from him, pushing through the panic-stricken crowd on the dance floor, shoving people, trying to move toward the leader. People were slipping and falling, scrambling to get out of her way.

“Stop right there,” Yuri said, seeing that she was headed for him. He pulled a large.45 automatic and aimed it at her head.

“Kill me!” she said, shouting at the top of her lungs. “Go ahead and kill me, you fucking bastard!”

“Stop now, I warn you!”

“Remember United Flight Ninety-three, asshole? That’s me! That’s who I am!” She looked around at the crowd behind her, her eyes wild, and said, “Let’s roll!”

She kept pushing forward, ignoring the gun pointed directly at her. When she broke through the perimeter of the crowd and was maybe six feet from the blond guy, one of the nearby terrorists, who couldn’t have been more than twenty, stepped forward with his knife and slashed her throat, almost severing her head, the blood gushing out onto her white evening gown.

She collapsed to the floor in a heap. The crowd was stunned for a moment but then started screaming in renewed panic, pushing one another out of the way, thinking there had to be some kind of escape, still some way out of this nightmare.

As Fancha desperately looked around for a way out, shots were fired. She didn’t see who was shot, because right then the lights went out again.

The leader was screaming at them to get on the floor, now, or they would all be killed. This time, people listened, and she could sense them diving to the floor. In the darkness and pandemonium, her eyes began to adjust. And Fancha saw her escape.

There was a small backstage area behind the velvet curtains. A door back there led to the kitchen, and from the kitchen she knew she could find her way to the main staircase and down one deck to her cabin. She silently stepped around the musicians, who seemed rooted to their chairs, and slipped through the tiny gap in the heavy velvet curtains. It was totally dark and deserted backstage, but she could see a thin strip of light beneath the door to the kitchen.

The kitchen, too, was deserted. Maybe the staff had all been gotten rid of, or maybe they’d just fled in panic. She raced down the center aisle, sidestepping pots and pans on the floor where people had dropped them, and came to the swinging door to the corridor. She pushed through it, bracing herself for more armed men beyond, but the hallway was empty, too. Right, left? Which way? She was breathing hard, and her heart was pounding. Disoriented now, she took a deep breath and placed one hand on the wall, willing herself to calm down.

Think, Fancha.

Left. The stairs were to her left, at the very end.

She ran all the way, took the steps three at a time down to the promenade deck. Her cabin was number 22, five or six doors down on the left. Her luck was holding. The corridor to her room was empty. Usually, there were one or two of the beautiful Slavic housekeepers pushing their trolleys up and down the hall.

Key, where’s the key? It was a card key, and it was still where she put it, in the inside pocket of her black velvet bolero jacket. She pulled it out and slipped it into the slot, praying for green, because sometimes the damn thing flashed red and she’d have to go looking for the steward or a housekeeper to let her in.

Green.

She pushed inside, just the sight of her turned-down bed and the lamp glowing softly on the bedside table doing wonders for her. She turned and double-locked the door, falling against it, her forehead against the cool wood, and then just let the tears come. She didn’t make any noise; she couldn’t allow herself that satisfaction, someone might be passing outside, so she just stood there crying silently, her shoulders shaking involuntarily.

Sweet baby Jesus, she whispered to herself, wiping her eyes, finally done with the tears.

She sat on the edge of the bed, looking at herself in the mirror over the dresser. And that’s when she remembered the phone, the sat phone Stoke had unpacked and placed on the dresser. He’d left without it, and she’d put it in the top drawer. He’d shown her how to work it once. It was pretty easy.

She pulled the drawer open, grabbed it, and lay down on the bed, her head propped up on two pillows.

She could hear it ringing in Miami, once, twice, three times.

Pick it up! Pick it up!

“Hello?” It was Stokely.

“Baby, it’s me,” she said, her voice breaking.

“Honey? You okay? Talk to me, baby…”

“Not so okay, Stoke. Not okay at all.”

“What is it? Tell me what’s happening.”

“I was singing, you know, and the lights went out. When th-they, when they came back on, the room was full of terrorists. Guns, knives, wearing g-gas masks and-shooting.”

“Who are they? They identify themselves?”

“Chechen Liberation, some damn thing like that.”

“Where are you? I mean now? How are you calling?”

“I’m in our stateroom. On the sat phone you left.”

“Oh, God, baby. I’m so sorry.”

“What do I do? I don’t know what to do, Stokely!”

“You got the door locked?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And nobody knows you’re in there?”

“I don’t think so…”

“Listen, baby. In the closet. On the top shelf. My canvas carry-on bag is up there. I forgot it.”

“Yeah.”

“My gun is in the bag, baby. The one we took out to the range together. The Heckler and Koch nine-millimeter. The one I showed you how to shoot at the range, remember?”

“I do.”

“I want you to get it down. It’s loaded. All you have to do is chamber a round, just like I showed you. There are two extra clips in the bag with fourteen rounds each. You get a chair facing the door, and you don’t let anyone inside, okay? Somebody comes through that door, you shoot, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Tell me what happened, best you can.”

She gave him the short answer. Her heart was pounding again.

“They already killed one hostage?”

“One that I saw. With a knife. But I heard shots just as I was leaving the stage. Maybe more are dead now…”

“Tell me about the leader again.”