Chapter 5 - Betrayal at 30,000 Feet
The impact threw Vance against the galley wall, his suppressed pistol slipping from his fingers and clattering across the floor.
Nathan didn't give the operative a chance to recover. Driven by ninety-two days of unbearable grief and desperate hope, Nathan landed a heavy right hook against Vance’s jaw, following up with a brutal knee to his midsection. Vance gasped, collapsing onto the carpeted aisle.
Behind them, the broad-shouldered man fought through the neural feedback, pulling a tactical stun baton from his coat.
"Nathan, watch out!" Sarah screamed.
Sarah acted on instinct. She grabbed a heavy, metal coffee carafe from the flight attendant’s service cart and swung it with all her strength, striking the second man across the back of the head. He staggered forward, and Nathan finished him with a brutal elbow strike to the temple, dropping him unconscious beside Vance.
Breathing heavily, Nathan snatched Vance’s dropped pistol, removing the magazine to clear the weapon before tucking it into his belt. He looked at Sarah, whose eyes were wide with adrenaline.
"Nice swing," Nathan panted.
"I used to play softball in college," Sarah breathed, leaning against the galley counter.
Lily stood near the doorway, holding Emma and Ethan, who had fallen completely silent again the moment Lily stopped singing the acoustic trigger sequence.
Nathan rushed to the flight deck door at the front of the aircraft. He pounded on the reinforced titanium door. "Captain! Open this door!"
There was no answer. Through the small, bulletproof observation glass, Nathan saw the cockpit was empty—the controls were locked on autopilot, guiding the aircraft down into a steep descent toward a desolate strip of forest in rural Minnesota.
"They set the autopilot," Nathan said grimly, looking at the flight instruments visible through the glass. "We have less than ten minutes before we land at an abandoned airstrip."
He turned back to Sarah and Lily. "We can't stay on this plane when it lands. Vanguard will have a tactical team waiting on the tarmac."
"What do we do?" Sarah asked, terror creeping back into her voice.
Nathan pulled out his encrypted Neurosoft sat-comm device—a custom smartphone designed to bypass commercial jamming frequencies using low-orbit private satellites. He typed in a thirty-digit override code that only three people in the world possessed.
The screen flickered, connecting directly to a private hangar in Minneapolis.
"Mr. Wells?" a gravelly, familiar voice answered through the speaker. It was Marcus, Nathan’s head of private security and a former Special Forces commander. "We lost your commercial telemetry ten minutes ago! What's your status?"
"Marcus, Flight AA273 has been hijacked via autopilot," Nathan spoke fast and clear. "We are descending toward a decommissioned strip near Lake Vermilion. Vanguard operatives are on board. I have Lily—Catherine’s key—and the twins."
"Lake Vermilion?" Marcus gasped over the static. "Nathan... Catherine’s private estate is on Lake Vermilion! The old glass observatory!"
Nathan froze. Lake Vermilion.
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Catherine hadn't hidden herself across the globe. She was right where her journey had begun—at their private summer sanctuary, deep in the Minnesota wilderness.
"Marcus, assemble the strike team," Nathan ordered, his voice hardening into steel. "Intercept us at the airstrip. We’re taking my family home."
