Chapter 230

Sarah POV

I waited until things on the plane were settled. I was going to need peace around me for this.

First, they needed to refuel the plane, which I thought meant landing at one of the smaller airports, but Travis nixed that idea immediately, and Zane agreed. There was too great a possibility the terrorists would anticipate that and have some sort of ambush ready. Zane didn’t want to pull security from the airport, and both of them simply didn’t want to take on such a vulnerable position.

Travis again showed his worth in that the place had been fitted with special equipment for mid-air fueling. The pilot asked us to take our seats, and when Chloe asked just what was going to happen, Zane set the TV to show the pilot’s own feed, which showed us the fueling plane as it got uncomfortably close to our right wing.

Then the other plane deployed a “flying boom” to connect to our gas tank. I knew almost nothing about flying, but I could tell incredible piloting skill was being used to keep the two planes so steady in the air. The fueling itself didn’t take long, and then the boom was retracted and we were good to go.

After the pilot said we could move around again, Alicia and Kanaan raided the cargo hold looking for more food. Turned out that Alicia loved a variety of Orleans junk food and had loaded up her case. Moreover, Whitfield suffered from a variety of food allergies and so always traveled with a few cans of beans.

Soon, we were all eating a somewhat eclectic meal. The children treated their snacks with each other and basically kept the rest of us entertained.

Ted, meanwhile, had cracked the terrorists’ phones, so we and those on the ground listened as they gave each other terse orders and yelled at the hostages to be quiet. Zane again let everyone know the accents were all foreign.

Most of the humans had evidently been zip-tied, and they had been sorted into groups of about twenty-five each. Some of the children had been grouped on their own, probably to make them easier to find when a dramatic execution was on call.

Then Ted intercepted a text that changed the game. The terrorists knew about thermal imaging and had muddied reconnaissance considerably by setting up little “heat zones” with electric heating units that were indistinct from actual groups of bodies.

Ted was also able to close down some of the terrorists’ own surveillance abilities, making it look like equipment malfunctions. Then she brought up a schematic of the main terminal on my laptop and handed it to me.

And then it was all done, and everyone looked at me.

I kissed and hugged Chloe and Grace and told them not to worry. I smiled at everyone else, but I couldn’t help lingering just a moment on Zane’s eyes, dark as they were with concern.

I went back to my seat and centered myself before I started my breathing. I ignored the people looking at me, and I closed my eyes.

This time, rather than walking out of the plane, I just thought of myself at the airport. It took no time, and I was disoriented at first, standing there in the main terminal in front of the ticket counters. I looked from left to right: Southwest, American, Jet Blue, Frontier, United, and Delta. I noticed immediately they were on emergency lighting and had the vague impression it was cold, though I thought the people I saw were shivering from stress, not a chill.

There were three groups of humans, one in front of American, one right up against the Frontier counter, and one between United and Delta. There were also three clusters of little electric heaters. I took note of their locations. Then I counted the twelve terrorists and saw where they were standing.

I was puzzled they weren’t walking around, but then I realized that would make them obvious on the thermal imaging. Indeed, they had two humans walking back and forth together near the east entrance.

I noticed little piles of cell phones everywhere, no doubt confiscated from the humans. I also saw blood smears and puddles of urine. I was intensely glad my sense of smell didn’t work on the astral plane.

I opened my eyes and looked at the laptop. I pointed out what I had seen. The positions were marked and “painted” by the tactical unit outside the airport, who would track the heat signatures as I continued. Zane told me I was doing great work, I nodded encouragingly to everyone again, and then I closed my eyes and went back to the airport to scout out the explosives.

That done, I moved from the ticketing area. The escalators weren’t working, but I just floated up. I saw more explosives and more heaters, but I didn’t find hostages again until I reached Hudson News, where about twelve of them were sitting on the floor together under the watch of two terrorists.

I reported them and moved on past Pizza Hut, The Body Shop, and three clusters of heaters before I was in the first section of gates. Again, I marked out the hostages, the heaters, the terrorists, and the explosives. Again, I reported them.

Covering the entire terminal took well over an hour, and I confess my mouth tried to water when I passed by a steak place. When I opened my eyes to report I was done, I was both exhausted and starving. Zane handed me some juice they’d found somewhere and a bag of ketchup potato chips I basically just shoved into my mouth.

“Can you continue?” Travis asked when I was finished slurping and crunching.

“I went through the whole terminal,” I told him.

He made an apologetic grimace. “You missed the bathrooms and the luggage sorting areas.”

“OK, but it will cost you overtime,” I grumbled, closing my eyes.

The first bathroom, male and female, was empty, but in the second I found a small boy curled up under the counter and crying quietly. Thank you, Travis, I thought, and reported back.

The fourth set of bathrooms had a pet relief area, in which I found a double-pack of explosives. Among the luggage ramps and motionless conveyer belts I found more explosives and an unexpected group of humans all zip-tied together and watched over by two terrorists, one of whom was eyeing a teenaged girl in a way I feared wasn’t going to end well.

I returned to the gate area, and there, finally, I found the leader. I had seen him before, walking from the (nonworking) elevators to the ticket area while he was talking on his phone, and I had reported him. But now he was standing in the center of the gates surrounded by alphas and betas who looked at him with clear respect and nodded at his words.

He held that same phone in one hand in addition to the microphone coming from his helmet, and I maneuvered around to see it was showing its home screen.

I saw two beta pups, a boy and a girl, smiling at the camera. I looked into the leader’s face and wondered if they were home waiting for him or, more likely, dead.

“Everyone’s in position,” the leader told the others. “Now we wait.”

It was hardly the first time I’d heard the orders the terrorists were barking at each other or the prayers they were sending to Luna to help them in their righteous quest. But the way everyone else reacted to the statement let me know this was key.

“And if we don’t get the signal before sunrise?” a beta woman asked.

The leader shook his head. “Then it all ends.”