Page 16 of Gryphon

The two pilots had been in a locked cockpit together. Which meant that the copilot had to be the one who killed the pilot. By…

Holly pulled on Nitrile gloves and gingerly tested the pilot’s neck.

Mike put on gloves and shifted the man’s head for her.

She felt the bones grating together. Snapped.

She’d bet it wasn’t with the forward wrench of the crash, but instead from a sharp twist. He’d probably been dead from the moment the cockpit door closed and locked—with no one the wiser.

They were less than fifteen minutes by air from Stockholm.

“Copilot as a terrorist?” Tad asked. “Like some kinda 9/11 scenario?”

“Why would he try to kill a ski slope?” Miranda, of course, asked the key question.

“They weren’t,” Mike answered. “Klara said the crash killed the Swedish Minister of Defense who was a passenger.”

Klara! He said the name of that woman from the conference like he’d been practicing it in his head. Oh, Klara! Ooo, Klara! Holly was going to murder both of them.

Holly looked around. She’d wait to kill Mike Munroe until she wasn’t surrounded by dead people.

10

Rolm Lindgren didn’t know whether to feel better or worse when Kurt came to get him. At least he was taking him across the security line before the first of the newsies had identified him. It was a long trudge up the slope toward the American team squatting around a pair of opened body bags. His leather office shoes were full of snow by the third step.

He did not want to see this.

“Sorry, Rolm,” Kurt’s kind voice did little to steady him. “I don’t know your flight crews. I’m hoping you can offer positive IDs.”

The gallows. That’s where he was headed. The Poma lift’s poles dangled from the high tow wire, held aloft by the built-in spring to keep the empty ones out of harm’s way. High enough to hang him by, but it wouldn’t work because the integral spring would let his feet reach the ground. A pity.

He understood the layout of the body bags immediately. How many hours had he studied cabin configurations against profit-and-loss statements? He’d opted for quality and comfort, the famed LuftSvenska experience that had been the final keystone of his leadership: top crew on the line and in the air, unified aircraft platform, and high care for the passengers. The 737-700 had the hundred-and-forty-one-seat layout at the more generous thirty-two-inch spacing, rather than the far more typical one-forty-eight at thirty.

Rather than the three cabin crew required by law, one for every fifty passengers, he’d mandated one-to-forty, which put four aboard this flight. Now it meant one more of his people lay dead on this frozen slope.

Two body bags lay all the way at the rear where only the cabin crew would be found. He’d studied the flight manifest for an hour before he decided he had to come here: Chanda, the utterly charming woman who’d left Air India to come to Sweden, and Erik, the rather vivacious local boy from Uppsala—at least he was relatively certain that boy would still be the politically correct term.

Row upon row he climbed the slope. Looking aside didn’t help, the lines of corpses to his left and the shattered aircraft to his right.

He spotted the bag in the aisle a third of the way from the nose. Rolm had no doubt who he’d find there if he dared look. The lovely Alva wouldn’t be strapped into her seat, not if there was a chance to save even one more passenger. After eight years, their affair had ended two months ago; she’d met the Right Man, but he’d never forget her generous body and her bountiful laugh.

He walked up to the group of Americans standing around a pair of partially unzipped body bags.

Rolm looked down, and there was the Right Man, Kapten Olaf Olsson—known as Double O, like a secret agent who stole Alva’s heart. Of course Rolm had granted Alva’s request to fly with her fiancé. Little knowing he’d be condemning her to an untimely death on their first flight together.

“That’s Olaf,” he managed a steady voice by pretending he was his suit, not himself. “You’ll find his future bride in the aisle by Row Seven.” He waved a hand behind him, careful not to turn and look.

“And this one?” The blonde American asked softly but with a hint of an Australian accent.

Rolm looked over… Only their faces showed. Olaf had looked like he was simply asleep in a black plastic cocoon. Marco looked like he’d been through the wrong end of a prize fight, battered and bloody. “Marco Marino. New hire six months ago, immigrant, from Italy. Exceptional credentials.”

The woman zipped up the two body bags before standing. “We’re thinking that one,” she pointed at Marco’s bag, “snapped that one’s neck.” Like the Grim Reaper, she aimed a blue-clad finger at Olaf. “Probably before they were off the ground.”

Rolm didn’t recall sitting down until he’d been there long enough for his body heat to melt the snow and soak him through the seat of his thin suit pants.

Kurt squatted beside him, not saying a word. His hand rested on Rolm’s shoulder.

Rolm shook his head to clear it. Then stood to avoid freezing himself to the ski slope and having to wait for the spring thaw to escape this nightmare. He closed his eyes for a long moment, but when he opened them, no one had gone away. No path to freedom.

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