Skeleton Key Read Free

eager to be away.
    Back in the air.
    I hope you enjoy the flight.
    There had been no emotion whatsoever in the general‟s voice. He could have meant what he was saying. But Carlo guessed he would have spoken exactly the same way if he had been passing a sentence of death.
    Next to him, Marc was already counting the money, running his hands through the piles of notes.
    He looked back at the ruined buildings, at the waiting jeep. Would Sarov try something? What sort of resources did he have on the island? But as the plane turned in a tight circle, nothing moved. The general stayed where he was. There was nobody else in sight.
    The runway lights went out.
    “What the…?” The pilot swore viciously.
    Marc stopped his counting. Carlo understood at once what was happening. “He‟s turned the lights off,” he said. “He wants to keep us here. Can you take off without them?”
    The plane had turned a half-circle so that it was facing the way it had come. The pilot stared out through the cockpit window, straining to see into the night. It was very dark now, but there was an ugly, unnatural light pulsating in the sky. He nodded. “It won‟t be easy, but…”
    The lights came back on again.
    There they were, stretching into the distance, an arrow that pointed to freedom and an extra profit of a quarter of a million dollars. The pilot relaxed. “It must have been the storm,” he said. “It disrupted the electricity supply.”
    “Just get us out of here,” Carlo muttered. “The sooner we‟re in the air, the happier I‟ll be.”
    The pilot nodded. “Whatever you say.” He pressed down on the controls and the Cessna lumbered forward, picking up speed quickly. The runway lights blurred, guiding him forward.
    Carlo settled back into his seat. Marc was watching out of the window.
    And then, seconds before the wheels left the ground, the plane suddenly lurched. The whole world twisted as a giant, invisible hand seized hold of it and wrenched it sideways. The Cessna had been travelling at one hundred and fifty kilometres per hour. It came to a grinding halt in a matter of seconds, the deceleration throwing all three men forward in their seats. If they hadn‟t been belted in, they would have been hurled out of the front window—or what was left of the shattered glass. At the same time there was a series of ear-shattering crashes as something whipped into the fuselage. One of the wings had dipped down and the propeller was torn off, spinning into the night. Suddenly the plane was still, resting tilted on one side.
    For a moment, nobody moved inside the cabin. The plane‟s engines rattled and stopped. Then Marc pulled himself up in his seat. “What happened?” he screamed. “What happened?” He had bitten his tongue. Blood trickled down his chin. The bag was still open and money had spilled into his lap.
    “I don‟t understand…” The pilot was too dazed to speak.
    “You left the runway!” Carlo‟s face was twisted with shock and anger.
    “I didn‟t!”
    “There!” Marc was pointing at something and Carlo followed his quivering finger. The door on the underside of the plane had buckled. Black water was seeping in underneath, forming a pool around their feet.
    There was another rumble of thunder, closer this time.
    “He did this!” the pilot said.
    “What did he do?” Carlo demanded.
    “He moved the runway!”
    It had been a simple trick. As the plane had turned, Sarov had switched off the lights on the runway using the radio transmitter in his pocket. For a moment, the pilot had been disoriented, lost in the darkness. Then the plane had finished its turn and the lights had come back on. But what he hadn‟t known, what he wouldn‟t have been able to see, was that it was a second set of lights that had been activated—and that these ran off at an angle, leaving the safety of the runway and continuing over the surface of the swamp.
    “He led us into the mangroves,” the pilot said.
    Now Carlo understood