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I had no clue how to make that happen. For a few seconds, I just sat there, staring at the console.
“I’m not kidding, Doctor,” said Kira. “Doit.”
I reached out and put my fingers on the screen. Suddenly, the whole navigation protocol popped into my head. Every single step.
I must have learned it in my sleep.
CHAPTER 74
“KAMCHATKA,” I SAID. “Never heard of it.” That was the destination readout that popped up on the screen as we got closer. “That’s where we’re going?”
We’d already been flying for five hours.
Kira nodded. “It’s a tiny piece of Russia, like a finger poking down along the Bering Sea.” I looked at the map on the screen. That’s exactly what it looked like.
“Why would anybody put a school there?” I asked.
“My great-grandfather was Russian,” said Kira, “orsaidhe was. Nobody really knows. But that’s where he built his little empire. Up where he knew nobody would ever find it.”
“What happens when we get there?” I asked.
Kira stared out through the windshield. “We save the world,” she said, “starting with a few hundred kids.”
Okay, I thought to myself. One step at a time. First step—land in one piece. I looked out my side again. We’d crossed over western Canada and the lower edge of Alaska. Now we were cruising over open water.
“Are you sure we’ve got enough fuel?” I asked. The gauges looked low to me.
“We’re cutting it close,” said Kira. “But we’re not stopping at a Shell station.”
I stared out through the windshield. At this point, there was nowhere to land anyway. There was nothing outside but dark sky and even darker water.
Suddenly, a bright orange streak shot past my window like a comet. Before I could even register what I was seeing, I heard Kira shout.
“Damnit! Missile! Air-to-air!”
I whipped around in my seat.
“Are youshittingme??” I yelled. I’d actually started to feel cozy in our luxury ride. Now somebody was trying to blast us out of the sky.
“Who the hell is shooting at us??” I yelled.
“Does it matter??” Kira yelled back.
She banked hard to the left. My head banged against the side of the cockpit. A second streak passed by her side, close enough to shake the whole body of the jet.
I felt trapped, terrified, helpless. My mind flashed to ejection seats and parachutes. But I knew better. We were in a cushy executive jet, not an F-16.
I heard a loud bang and felt a huge jolt on my side. The fuselage rocked. I saw another orange flame going by, but this one was fragmented into separate flares. The nose started to drop, and the horizon disappeared.
“Sonavabitch!”Kira shouted. “It clipped the wing!” The jet wobbled and started doing crazy corkscrews. Kira kept punching controls and pushing forward on the throttle handles. The engines whined and rattled behind us. Everything through the windshield was black. I felt a sick drop in my belly. I was losing all sense of direction.
Down was up. Up was down. I braced my arms against the top of the console. I looked over at Kira. I couldn’t believe this was happening.
“Is this another one of your goddamtests??” I shouted. The sound of the engines was so loud I could barely hear myself.
“This time you might be on your own,” Kira shouted back. She was doing everything she could to regain control. But none of it was working. I stared at the altimeter. 1,000 feet. 500 feet. Blood rushed to my head. My vision clouded over. Then another woman’s voice filled the cockpit, sounding like a very stern Siri.
“Pull up!” she kept saying, “Pull up!”
