Page 1 of Last Chance

CHAPTER 1

JANIE MORAN WOKE, unsure what yanked her from an exhausted sleep on board the plane. The jet wasn’t moving. They had landed already?

She frowned. Surely not. Janie knew she hadn’t been asleep long enough to have already reached the United States. Her body felt as though she’d just closed her eyes.

She sat up and looked at the man seated next to her. His expression was grim, his gaze fixed on the front of the plane.

Across the aisle, two older women occupying the seats across the aisle were pale, eyes wide and filled with fear.

Janie twisted in her seat to look around the cabin. Everyone’s expressions were grim and filled with fear.

“Turn around,” a man shouted in Spanish from the front of the plane.

She jerked around and discovered two men stood by the cockpit door brandishing multiple weapons each. Both of them glared at her with contempt and arrogance.

“No one may speak or leave their seats.”

The second man spoke. “If you disobey, everyone on the plane will suffer.”

Disbelief settled like a rock in her gut. These two men had hijacked the plane?

Another male voice from the back of the plane chimed in next. “If you cooperate, we will release you unharmed.” Left unsaid was what would happen if they didn’t cooperate.

Janie gripped the arms of her seat. Holy smoke. Her plane had been hijacked. Why? What did these men want?

This plane was loaded with people. Three armed men controlling over 200 people was a recipe for disaster. Eventually, someone would try something heroic, challenging the hijackers for control of the plane.

Her brother and his wife would be horrified that her flight from Talca, Chile to Nashville, Tennessee had been hijacked. Her brother’s wife, Maria, had begged Janie to take a vacation from Natural Bliss, her natural soap shop, and come to Chile for a visit.

Watching the men sporting guns, she wished she’d delayed her departure. Janie had enjoyed meeting David’s wife of three months in person, and now they were making Janie an aunt. Weighing the danger she faced, Janie wished she’d opted for a different flight or just stayed home altogether.

Janie sighed. She’d longed for a little excitement in her life. This definitely wasn’t what she had in mind. An attractive man with an interesting job was more in line with her dreams.

She looked out the window to see if she could figure out where they were. Nothing identified their location. Across the tarmac, other planes moved away from the hijacked plane. Police vehicles waited a distance away. She saw the tower but no name on the building. This place reminded her of Talca’s airport and countryside. The hijackers had probably taken over the plane and forced the pilot to land somewhere in Central America or Mexico.

Two armed men strode up the aisle to the front to confer with the other two hijackers. So, the hijackers totaled four, all heavily armed with guns and knives. Their voices were too low for Janie to hear the words. Something had upset the four men. Their plans didn’t appear to be working out. When did they ever?

She tried to concentrate on the words spoken between the men, but it was impossible with crying women scattered around the cabin.

After several minutes of heated discussion, the kidnappers faced the crowd. “Listen carefully. If you have small kids on this plane, you and your kids go to the back to leave the plane. If you’re over 50, leave. Everyone else stays.”

A surge of movement from people in the designated categories led to a crowded aisle. By the time the exodus ended, the number of passengers remaining had dwindled to about 50. Definitely more manageable for the hijackers.

A quick glance told Janie that she was one of only five women left on the plane. That made her uneasy.

The man with a scar running from the corner of his eye to the corner of his mouth surveyed the people left in the cabin. Dissatisfaction filled his expression. He barked out orders to his compatriots in Spanish too fast for Janie to understand. She grimaced, wishing she’d paid more attention to her Spanish language lessons from Maria.

The other three, however, had no problems understanding the orders. Two of them hustled to the back of the plane.

Scar Face said, “No one move.”

Right. Like she and the rest of the hostages had anywhere to go. If they made a run for it, Scar Face and his buddies would shoot them down in cold blood.

Fifteen minutes later, the other two hijackers returned to the front and had another whispered conversation with Scar Face. He gave a curt nod and turned his attention to the remaining passengers. “Stand up. Empty your pockets and leave everything behind. You will follow orders in silence. If you fight or try to run, you will be shot.” He gave an evil grin. “It’s pointless to try. No one is coming to your rescue. If you want to live, you will obey.”

Janie stood along with the rest of the hostages, looking with longing at her cell phone and purse still in her seat, and moved into the aisle. They shuffled their way to the back of the plane. At the back exit, she noticed movable stairs had been positioned for them to exit the plane.

“Are we being released?” one man dared to ask.

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