al HQ in Austria - and had promptly disappeared.
"Heads up, kids," John called from the front, and David looked away from Rebecca's unsmiling face,
looked out to see they were already at the airfield.
Whatever had happened to their friends, they'd find
out soon enough.
TWO
REBECCA STRAPPED HERSELF INTO THE TINY
seat of the tiny plane and looked out the window,
wishing that David had chartered a jet. A giant, solid,
can't-possibly-be-unsafe-'cause-it's-so-damned-big jet.
From where she sat, she could see the propellers on the
wing of the aircraft - propellers, like on a kid's toy. Bet this puppy will sink like a rock, though, once it
falls out of the sky at a few hundred miles an hour and
slams into the ocean. . .
"Just so you know, this is the kind of plane that's
always killing rock stars and the like. Just as they
make it off the ground, a big gust of wind knocks them
right back down."
Rebecca looked up to see John's grinning face; he
was hanging over the seats in front of her, his massive
arms folded across the headrests. He probably needed
two seats to himself; John wasn't just big, he was
body-builder huge, two hundred forty pounds of mus-
cle packed into his six-foot-six frame.
"We'll be lucky to get off at all, dragging your fat ass
up there," Rebecca shot back, and was rewarded with a flash of concern in John's dark eyes. He'd broken a
couple of ribs and punctured a lung on his last mission, less than three months before, and still
wasn't up to pumping iron. For as burly and macho as
John was, she knew he was vain about his looks, and
had absolutely hated not being able to work out.
John grinned wider, the deep brown of his skin
crinkling. "Yeah, you're probably right; a few hun- dred feet off the ground and wham, that's all she
wrote."
She never should have told him that this was only
the second flight she'd ever been on (the first was
when she accompanied David to Exeter for the mis-
sion to Caliban Cove). It was exactly the kind of thing
on which John got off cracking jokes...
The plane started to rumble all around them, the
engine whining up into a deep hum that made
Rebecca grit her teeth. Damned if she was going to let
John see how nervous she was; she looked back out
the window and saw Leon and Claire walking toward
the metal steps. Apparently, the weapons were all
loaded up.
"Where's David?" Rebecca asked, and John
shrugged.
"Talking to the pilot. We've only got the one, you
know, some friend of a friend of some guy in Arkan-
sas. Not many pilots willing to smuggle people into
Europe, I guess..."
John leaned closer, dropping his voice to a fake
whisper, his grin fading. "I hear he drinks. We got him cheap 'cause he crashed some soccer team into the
side of a mountain."
Rebecca laughed, shaking her head. "You win. I'm terrified, okay?"
"Okay. That's all I wanted," John said mildly, and turned around as Leon and Claire walked into the
small cabin. They moved back to the middle of the
plane, taking the two seats across the aisle from where
Rebecca was sitting. David had mentioned that the
area over the wings was the most stable, although it
wasn't like there was that much of a choice - there
were only twenty seats.
"Ever flown before?" Claire asked, leaning out into the aisle, looking a little nervous herself.
Rebecca shrugged. "Once. You?"
"Couple of times, but always on big airliners, DC
747s or -27s, I forgot. I don't even know what this
thing is."
"It's a DHC 8 Turbo," Leon said. "I think. David mentioned it at some point..."
"It's a killer, is what it is." John's deep voice floated over the seats. "A rock with wings."
"John, sweetie ... shut up," Claire said amiably. John cackled, obviously pleased to have somebody
new to play with.
David appeared at the front of the cabin, stepping
through the curtained area that led to the cockpit, and
John broke off, their collective attention turning to-
ward him.
"It seems that we're ready to go," David said. "Our pilot, Captain Evans, has assured me that all systems
are fully functional and we'll be taking off in just a
moment. He's asked that we remain seated until he's
given us leave to do otherwise. Um - the restroom is
just back of the cockpit, and there's a small refrigera-
tor at the rear of the plane with sandwiches and
drinks. . ."
His voice trailed off, and he looked as if there was
something else he wanted to say but wasn't sure what
it was. It was a look that Rebecca had seen often
enough in the past few weeks, a kind of uneasy
uncertainty. Since the day that Raccoon had been
blown to shit, she supposed they'd all had that look at
one time or another...
... because they shouldn't have been able to do it. That should have been the end, and it wasn 't, and now
we're all more freaked out than any of us wants to
admit.
When news of the disaster first hit the papers, they
had all been so certain that this time Umbrella
wouldn't be able to cover its tracks. The spill at the
Spencer estate had been small, easy enough to write
off after fire gutted the mansion and surrounding
buildings; the facility at Caliban Cove had been on
private land and was too isolated for anyone to know
about - again, Umbrella had swept up the broken
pieces and kept it quiet.
Raccoon City, though. Thousands of people
dead and Umbrella had walked away from it smell
ing like a rose, after planting false evidence and
getting their scientists to lie for them. It should have
been impossible; it had disheartened them all. What
chance did a handful of fugitives have against a multi
billion-dollar conglomerate that could kill an entire
city and get away with it?
David had decided not to say anything at all. He
nodded briskly and then walked back to join them,
pausing next to Rebecca's seat.
"Do you need some company?"
She could see that he was trying to be supportive
and she could also see that he was tired. He'd been up
late the night before, doublechecking every detail of
their trip.
"Nah, I'm okay," she said, smiling up at him, "and I've always got John to talk me through it."
"You know it, baby," John called loudly, and David nodded, giving her shoulder a light squeeze before
moving to the seats behind her.
He needs the rest. We all do, and it's a long flight - - so why do I have the feeling that we're not going to get any?
Nerves, that was all.
The engine sound got louder, higher, and with a
stuttering jerk, the plane started to move forward.
Rebecca clutched the arm rests on either side and
closed her eyes, thinking that if she had the guts to go
up against Umbrella, she could certainly survive a
plane ride.
Even if she couldn't, it was too late to change her
mind; they were on their way, no turning back.
They'd been in the air for only twenty minutes, and
already Claire was nodding off, half-leaning against
Leon's shoulder. Leon was tired, too, but knew he
wasn't going to get to sleep so easily. He was hungry,
for one thing - and then there was the fact that he still
wasn't sure if he was doing the right thing.
Great time to think about it, now that you're pretty
much committed, his mind whispered sarcastically. Maybe you could just ask them to drop you off in
London or something, you could hang out in a pub
until they're all finished... or dead.
Leon told himself to shut up, sighing a little. He was
committed; what Umbrella had been doing wasn't
just criminal, it was evil - or at least as close to evil as
some money-grubbing corporate dickheads could get.
They'd murdered thousands, created bioweapons ca-
pable of murdering billions, wiped out his carefully
planned future and been responsible for the death of
Ada Wong, a woman he'd respected and liked. They'd
helped each other through some rough spots on that
terrible night in Raccoon; without her, he never
would have gotten out alive.
He believed in what David and his people were
doing, and it wasn't that he was afraid, that wasn't it
at all...
Leon sighed again. He'd given the matter a hell of a
lot of thought since he and Claire and Sherry had
stumbled away from the burning city, and the only
real reason he could come up with was so stupid that
he didn't want to credit it. Standing against Umbrella
was the right thing to do - it was that he didn't feel
qualified to be there.
Yep, that's pretty stupid.
Maybe it was, but it was holding him back, mak-
ing him feel uncertain, and he needed to examine it. David Trapp had made a career of the S.T.A.R.S.,
only to watch the organization fall under the control
of Umbrella; he'd lost two close friends on a mission
to infiltrate a bioweapons testing facility, as had John
Andrews. Rebecca Chambers had just been starting
out in the S.T.A.R.S., but she was some kind of scientific child prodigy with a deep interest in Um-
brella's work; that and the fact that she'd been
through more than anyone else made her continued
dedication understandable. Claire wanted to find her
brother, the only family she had; their parents were
dead, and the two of them were close. Chris, Jill, and
Barry he'd never met, but he was sure they had
compelling reasons of their own; he knew Barry
Burton's wife and children had been threatened,
Rebecca had mentioned it...
And what about Leon Kennedy? He'd stumbled into the fight without a clue, a cop fresh out of the
academy on his way to his first day at work - which
just happened to be with the Raccoon PD. There was
Ada, true - but he'd known her less than half a day,
and she had been killed just after admitting to him
that she was some kind of an agent, sent to steal a
sample of an Umbrella virus.
So I lost a job, and a possible relationship with a
woman I barely knew and couldn't trust. Of course
Umbrella should be stopped ... but do I belong here?
He'd decided to become a cop because he wanted
to help people, but he'd always figured that meant
keeping the peace - busting drunk drivers, breaking
up bar fights, catching crooks. Never in his wild-
est dreams would he have figured on being caught
up in an international conspiracy, cloak-and-dagger
infiltration-type stuff against a giant company that
made war monsters. It was crime on a much bigger
scale than he felt he was ready for ...
... and is that the real reason, Officer Kennedy? At exactly that moment, Claire mumbled some-
thing from her light doze, nuzzling her head against
his arm before falling silent and still again - and
making Leon uncomfortably aware of another facet to
his involvement with the ex-S.T.A.R.S. Claire. Claire
was ... she was an incredible woman. In the days
after their escape from Raccoon City, they'd talked a
lot about what had happened, the experiences they'd
had both separately and together. At the time, it had
felt like an exchange of information, filling in
0 Comments