Page 35 of Radar (Iniquus Certified Cerberus Tactical K9 #2)

Xander

Sunday

Washington, D.C.

A buzz in his jacket pocket woke Xander.

He lifted his head and wrapped a hand around the back of his neck, feeling how even that minor shift tugged at his knotted muscles.

He hated to admit it to himself, but as he edged closer to forty, as he'd been warned by his fellow travelers down the military path, the hits felt harder and the recovery trail was longer.

It was difficult to admit that he didn’t have the same body as when he’d joined up. But, too, Xander reminded himself, he didn’t have the same mind either.

He’d learned valuable lessons.

He made fewer mistakes.

He developed a keen intuition from his days of walking around primed and ready.

Take Bratislava, Xander had felt danger riding the wind well before he was jumped.

And at the same time, he’d inexplicably labeled that sensation “Anna.”

It wasn’t inexplicable. He’d been betrayed a time or two.

Xander glanced down at Radar, who had shoved himself between the seats on the floor, belly up, paws tucked toward his chest, T-Rex-style, zonked out by the low rubble of the plane.

Xander reached into his pocket to pull out his phone and check the text message that had woken him. It was Hiro.

Hiro – If we had the airline deplane you and Elyssa first, how complicated would that be given your seating?

Xander – We need to be first off or last off.

Hiro - This is how it’s going down. We have White with her CIA badge. She pulled Steve Finley in with his FBI badge. We have conference rooms set aside. We’ll introduce ourselves and invite Elyssa for a chat.

Xander – Radar and I need to be there for the entirety.

Hiro – Not entirety. I need to catch you up on the case, then you can go in.

Xander – She has POTS, and this is a highly stressful situation.

Let me show her my badge, walk her to the room, and leave Radar with her for comfort.

I’ll get my update, and she’ll know that’s what’s happening.

Her health and well-being are paramount.

PARAMOUNT. You all will let her chill. I want salty food in there, electrolyte drinks, and a medic on hand but out of view.

Hiro – That we can do. I’m watching your approach on my screen, just a few more minutes until they prepare the cabin for descent. I’d go ahead and arrange your things for a quick exit when an airline staffer comes to get you.

Xander – Wilco

He slid his phone into his thigh pocket, thinking there was more to text to prep the team, more that he could do to shield Elyssa.

With a sudden jolt, Xander dumped to the side.

Radar, suddenly awake, was scrambling and confused.

Xander reached across to grab the tactical handle on Radar’s vest as he scooped and lifted his dog up. Thrusting his boot out, he caught the leg of the seat in the middle and pushed into it, bracing, as the pilot banked harder right.

While Radar tried to get his legs onto the seat, the elderly woman on the end was tipping into the aisle. As she grasped at the seat in front of her with one hand, she reached for Xander with her other hand, trying to keep herself upright.

Xander’s right hand shot out as he grabbed the elder around the top of her arm and braced his abs to keep Radar and her in place.

An attendant stumbled for the empty seat on the aisle, one row forward of Xander. There, she buckled herself in. The person who had been in that seat was probably in the bathroom. A hell of a place to be.

This went on and on. It wasn’t a jolt from rogue turbulence.

Xander was a trained pilot, flying himself into deserted mission areas. The only way this maneuver made any sense was that their pilot was attempting to avoid a sudden collision.

They were, after all, in D.C., where the military took taxi-like helicopter rides declaring mission secrecy and national security.

While those regulations were stretched until they had the flexibility of a circus act, it meant that more and more frequently helicopters were in the air without proper authorization or adherence to procedures.

There had been crashes. And deaths.

Hadn’t Hiro taken advantage of that system to get NASA information about Paca? Maybe this was a comeuppance for exploiting a self-serving system.

And with a bounce, the plane sharpened the tilt to an even more drastic incline.

Debris flew, overheads popped open, people screamed, and covered their heads as bags tumbled.

The plane continued its steep bank to the right as the nose lifted. Anything that wasn’t secured was getting tossed around the cabin. A baby bottle rolled past.

What was happening to Elyssa? Was she buckled in tight?

The mother sitting at the far window, one row up, now lay against the wall, clutching her child as the dad did a kind of crazy plank over top of them, trying to both keep his weight off his family and serve as the shield, taking the assault of items as they came loose.

When Radar started pedaling his feet, Xander said in a calm voice.

“I’ve got you, buddy. Come on now, you’ve been through stranger things in your training evolutions, jumping out of planes and fast-roping from helicopter platforms dangling from the clasps on my pack. This is a nothing burger for you.”

His grasp on both Radar and the woman was suboptimal.

Xander didn’t have proper body mechanics; his levers weren’t in proper alignment.

As he twisted, his grip wasn’t as solid as he wanted it to be.

But his boot was in a pretty good position as long as that tilt didn’t keep going and tip them upside down.

Then, all bets were off.

From the way the passengers’ clothing dangled, Xander guessed they were approaching a fifty-degree angle far surpassing the thirty degrees allowed.

Xander knew a thing or two about that, and the most frightening piece was that when the plane angles that sharply, the wings stop generating the lift to keep the plane from crashing to the ground.

Maybe that was why the pilots were also angling upward to rev the engines in order to maintain loft and possibly give themselves a little recovery room.

Xander was at the emergency door. He’d taken the verbal oath that he was ready, willing, and able to pop that door open and help people get out.

When the flight attendant looked at Radar with purse-lipped distaste, Xander said that he’d open the door and send Radar down the slide, then stay and help the others, as Radar was trained for that.

His tactical vest with working dog patches helped flesh out the story.

Though Xander knew that someone with authority had said to let it pass, she had not been down with that decision.

Never in a million years did Xander think he’d really have to help in an emergency landing.

As Xander fought both gravity and centrifugal force, he turned his head to look things over and make a mental map that he could perform without sight if they crashed and the cabin filled with smoke.

Xander realized he was expecting that eventuality.

He’d been through explosions before. He’d pulled through.

Xander’s muscles were locking up along his back as he held the weight from a twisted position.

If he did paralyze his muscles into this configuration, he thought wryly, at least he could get the door open and maybe toss himself sideways down the slide out of everyone’s way.

He sniffed, trying to detect smoke. Was the belly of the plane on fire from one of those damned Russian incendiary devices?

From this angle, all Xander could see out his window was blue. The passengers’ bodies covered the windows below him.

No flames licked into view. No one was screaming fire. Oheň if he were in Slovakia .

Was this another communications dead zone, like Newark, where the towers couldn’t tell the flight crew anything at all? At any minute, another jetliner could fly into their side. Was that what they were avoiding? A mid-air collision?

Xander wrestled his mind away from the possibilities. He could do zilch against any of them. All he could control was the three feet around him that included his dedication to the safety of the elder and his dog.

“Ma’am, I know this is uncomfortable. Are you doing okay?”

She lifted her head. “Okay,” she panted.

Xander turned back to the door. If we crash, pull Radar onto my lap, let go of the woman, reach with my right hand to grab the bar, and with my left hand, run it along my knee to grab the release handle.

He kept that series of actions looping in his head—a survival mantra. If he were injured, he’d need to act anyway. When someone’s injured, pragmatic steps are hard to reach for; clear thinking is gone.

Have a mantra, work that mantra.

Pull Radar onto my lap. Let go of the woman. Right hand to grab bar. Left hand release handle.

The husband across the way had dropped an elbow. And his wife was screaming for him to get off of her, that she couldn’t breathe, and he was smothering their kid.

What the actual hell? Straighten it up, man .

Though Xander got it. His biceps and quads shook from exertion. He figured he had about a hundred-plus pounds per hand.

If you start something. You finish something. Xander was committed to keeping his row safe. But it would be nice if the pilot righted them soon.

Xander knew that the concept of time was useless in these situations. Absolutely f’ing useless. He had no idea, except for the fatigue in his muscles, how long the plane passengers had been dangling and screaming.

There was a roar of engine noise that freaked the passengers out. They shrilled their horror, not knowing what that sound could mean. The pilots were probably pulling out all their tricks to keep the plane from falling from the sky.

The fall would be shitty, but death would come quickly. And that’s really the way Xander wanted to go. He wasn’t big into suffering without a cause.

Whatever the hell was happening, the pilots in the cockpit were getting screamed at. The equipment alerted them to problems, sure, but it also breaks concentration and ups anxiety. Shaky hands on the control wheel, that was no bueno.

Xander was back to thinking about the loss of communication in Newark. Was Orest up to his tricks here? The thing that had created the communications blackout in Newark went through security with Orest Kalinsky. What if Orest put something in Elyssa’s backpack?

But that would be putting his great-niece in harm’s way. And the Zoric family was nothing if not deeply loyal to family.

None of this made sense. None of it did. And Xander would rather not leave this world in a state of confusion.

The old lady’s armpit was sweating enough now that Xander’s grip was getting slick.