Chapter 4 - The Lower Deck
The first-class cabin was dead silent, bathed in the eerie blue glow of overhead night-lights. The aisle was empty, the passengers in rows one through four fast asleep, unaware that a tactical hostage situation was unfolding twenty feet away.
Maya moved with the silent, fluid grace of someone who had spent years training in close-quarters combat. She crouched low, keeping her footsteps light as she approached the galley partition separating the flight deck from the main service area.
True to her suspicion, the floor-access panel leading down to the lower avionics electronics bay had been unlatched. A heavy steel padlock lay broken on the linoleum floor, and a black tactical harness sat discarded beside the open rectangular opening.
A cool, rushing draft of outside air whistled up from the dark cavity below, carrying the mechanical hum of electrical relays and the smell of ozone.
Maya knelt by the open hatch. Below her, descending into the belly of the commercial jet, was a narrow vertical ladder attached to the aluminum ribbing of the fuselage.
She took a deep breath, listening intently. From the darkness below came the low murmur of a satellite phone conversation.
“...affirmative, the primary flight control loop is locked to our waypoint. We’ll have her at the Moroccan strip within three hours. Make sure the extraction team is waiting on the tarmac.”
It was Agent Vance’s voice, echoing up through the metallic resonance of the cargo deck.
Maya slipped her legs into the hatch opening, grabbed the rungs of the vertical ladder, and began to descend into the dark abyss beneath the cabin floor. Every muscle in her body coiled, adrenaline surging through her veins with the familiar, terrible clarity of combat.
She dropped silently onto the aluminum floor plates of the avionics bay. The space was cramped, lined on both sides with racks of blinking servers, black-box flight recorders, and heavy electrical wiring harnesses that vibrated with the roar of the engines outside.
Ten feet away, standing in front of an open maintenance terminal with a satellite uplink device strapped to his chest, was a man in a dark tactical suit. A suppressed pistol was holstered at his hip.
He was so focused on the glowing screen of the terminal that he hadn't heard her drop from the ladder.
Maya stepped out from the shadow of a server rack.
“Looking for a flight plan update?” she asked quietly.
Agent Vance whipped around, his hand instinctively dropping toward his holster. But before his fingers could wrap around the grip of the pistol, Maya moved with explosive speed.
She closed the distance in two strides, swept his legs out from under him with a textbook martial arts low kick, and slammed him hard against the aluminum hull of the aircraft. Vance grunted as the air rushed from his lungs, his hand flying wide as Maya pinned his wrist against the deck with her knee, her palm pressing firmly against his throat.
“Who gave you the clearance code for my personal encryption profile?” Maya demanded, her voice dropping to a low, lethal snarl inches from his face.
Vance coughed, a thin, ironic smile spreading across his pale lips even as he choked for air.
“You think... you think this is about your old squadron, Major Lin?” Vance wheezed, his eyes darting toward the satellite uplink device glowing green on the rack beside them. “Look at the data stream... you didn't just download a flight log ten years ago. You downloaded the manifest for the entire network.”
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Before Maya could press him further, the satellite uplink terminal beeped sharply. The screen flashed a high-priority warning message from an external military ground station: REMOTE TERMINATION SEQUENCE INITIATED.
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