Polar Vortex by Matthew Mather

Author:Matthew Mather [Mather, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Matthew Mather ULC
Published: 2019-01-20T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 22

“JOSH!”

His eyes rolled back up into his head again. I grabbed him to stop him from keeling over onto the floor.

“What were they looking for? Diamonds? We heard on the radio that there was a shipment of diamonds.” I shook him. “How many were there? Only the two pilots? There were three people in the flight deck with you.”

His face went flaccid. His cheeks drooped.

Someone was panting. Was that Josh? No, it was me. Breathing in and out, in and out, in quick gasps.

“I told you,” said a disembodied voice in the darkness.

I turned my head. Howard’s face loomed a few feet away in the next pod.

“I told you this was no simple accident,” he said.

“I forgot you were here.” I said it as much to him as myself.

“Hmmm…maybe. Maybe not. Very few things are really coincidences. Especially here. Especially now.” His face contorted. “Untie me.”

I lowered Josh back into his pod-bed and put an ear to his chest. Still breathing. His heart hammering away in his chest, faint but quick, trilling and missing every few beats. The boat engines roared. Ever closer.

Should I hit him again? With the other syringe? I had no idea about adrenaline other than fight or flight, but if I was a betting man—which I wasn’t—I’d bet another dose right now would kill him. His heart was already going like a staccato jackhammer.

Give him a minute, maybe he’d wake up again. I gently let go of Josh and picked up the med kit again, fished out a bottle and dumped a few pills into my hand.

“Swallow these,” I said as I stood. Two Haldol. “Then we can talk.”

“She already gave me some.”

“I’m giving you more.” Liz hadn’t come back in yet. Usually she kept close to Josh and hovered around him.

“I told you this wasn’t an accident. I know things.”

“You said a lot of things.”

“But I knew. I knew.” Howard’s voice gained pitch. “Who is outside? Who are they? You can’t leave me tied up like this.”

“You tried to shoot us.”

“I tried to save you.”

“From who?”

“Otto.” He spat the second syllable out like phlegm.

“I have your disk.”

“That’s what they really want. What they need from First Class. You know how many times I’ve stolen a billion dollars?”

“Come again…?”

“I made a living doing penetration tests. I’m a hacker, but a white hat. Good guys. I’d break into banks and steal a billion dollars. I gave it back. I even broke into nuclear reactors.”

A ballooning sense of unreality gripped my mind. How much should I believe from this guy? But there seemed to be kernels of truth in the chaff of his mind. “Howard, we don’t have much time. Tell me what you know.” I moved closer and proffered the pills again.

He nodded. I put them into his mouth. He swallowed and opened wide enough for me to inspect.

Outside, the engines cut off—or one of them did. The other sounded more distant. Were they circling us? Or was that another boat?

Howard said, “You said you haven’t

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