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Wake up!
"Ahhh!"
"Calm down. Calm down," Orroye said, trying to keep Nashida in his seat.
Agent Nashida quickly jerked his head around like he'd forgotten where he was. He patted himself, checking to make sure he was back in reality and out of that hideous dream. Or was it a memory? The way his heart pounded out of his chest, he wasn't really sure anymore.
When Nashida finally got this breath under control, he remembered the crash and the incident with Riggler, whose body lay at his feet. The cold air whizzed in from the hole where a door should have been.
"What happened, Tunde?"
"Riggler lost his damn mind."
Nashida looked down where Riggler's body laid on top of his feet. The details started to fill in his memory. Nashida shot him when he opened fire on the plane.
Then he remembered, "Where's Jericho?"
"Gone."
"What about Cassata?"
"Him too."
“Shit." Nashida unlatched his belt and tumbled onto Orroye, who caught him. "Who else is up?"
"No one."
"Well, let's try to get them somewhere safe," Nashida said.
"No, you don't understand, man. It's just us."
"What do you mean?"
"Look," Orroye motioned to the pile of bodies gathered in the front of the cockpit. "Before you woke up, I thought it was just me."
"Jesus. They're dead?"
Orroye didn't answer. Denial can take a minute to settle in. Nashida bent down to touch the bodies of his fallen brothers. Someone had to pay for this.
"I'm gonna find that son of a bitch."
Oryoe raised an eyebrow, unsure of what he meant.
"I don't think Cassata could have gotten too far—"
"I'm not talking about Cassata. I'm talking about Jericho."
Orroye scratched the back of his head. Was Nashida serious?
"Andrew, this had nothing to do with Jericho. Riggler did all of this."
Nashida surveyed the carnage around the demolished plane. Sure, the bullets that caused the crash and killed their co-workers came from Riggler's gun, but none of this would have happened if they weren't out here looking for the two-bit mercenary.
"Details. We need to find him."
"Wait a second,” Orroye said. “First thing we need to do is call for help."
Orroye was right. Who knew where the plane crashed down? For that matter, everything happened so quick, who even knew they crashed at all?
Nashida stepped into the cockpit and found Trace Hamilton, a pilot who spent twenty years working with the Bureau, laid out on the controls. Nashida moved his head. The bullet entered at the base of Hamilton's skull. Poor bastard probably never even felt it. The co-pilot, Chris Garner, a youngster who had only been with them for three years, was on the floor. It looked like he hit his head after the plane dropped and was knocked out cold. He never woke up.
Orroye grabbed the radio controls.
"SOS. Repeat. SOS."
Nothing. Not even the scratchy sound of static.
"Repeat. This is Special Agent Babatunde Orroye with the FBI. Our plane crashed somewhere in northwestern Canada. Possibly Northern British Columbia or Alberta."
Still nothing.
"It's dead too," Orroye said.
Dead like everything else in that plane.
"What about cellphones?"
"Check yours, but I got no service out here."
Nashida pulled out his iPhone XS Max and saw no bars. They were stuck in the middle of nowhere.
"We gotta get outta here," Nashida said.
"And go where? Plane's gotta have a GPS. It won't be long till they figure out we didn't land. They'll find us."
"Jericho and Cassata are alive out there, and a bunch of our brothers are dead in here. I'm not letting their deaths mean nothing. We need to finish the job."
"Are you nuts? Have you taken a look at where we are? This a mountain range that backs up into the boreal forest. We aren't really trained for this kind of a situation."
"We'll manage. We'll pack supplies off the plane. Just enough to make it through a quick trip. Like you said, they couldn't have gotten far. We'll find him, bring him back here and set up a pick-up."
"How?" Orroye asked.
"We got flares. That'll get the attention of anyone who flies overhead."
Orroye shook his head. He didn't like the idea. "We should stay here. We don't know what's out there. We're out of our element."
"We know exactly what's out there. A killer."
"There's two of them."
"What?"
Orroye shook his head. "You keep referring to a singular 'a and him'. Two guys escaped this crash. I know you're focused on the one, but there's another one out there running around too. He's just as much a murderer."
"Right!" Nashida said, slapping Orroye on the shoulder. "We've gotta find them."
"This is a terrible idea."
"We have plenty of supplies. Extra parkas, blankets, tools, food, we can survive."
Orroye didn't like any of it, but letting his partner go out alone wasn't an option either. "Fine. Twenty-four hours. If we don't find them, we head back and focus on getting out of here."
"Absolutely. Now, let's get some supplies."