Skybound horses
Kubishime, “choke”. DREADFUL PENNY, Ep. 10
From Episode 9: Penny commandeers a chopper but when the pilot’s shot, she crash lands somewhere over Dubai.
Penny scampered away from the chopper on a diagonal, keeping to the dark. The ground was hard. She forced a jog as the first fire truck drove up, its beaming lights casting the shadow of the helicopter’s carcass across the desert.
She made her way toward the biggest building among the cluster. It was six stories tall. To one side, atop a concrete apron, rested a trio of commercial jetliners. Crews of men and forklifts were hauling cargo between the planes, piles on the tarmac, and the broad, open mouth of the building.
At the sharp line between darkness and illumination, she observed the comings and goings of the workers and the stream of cargo containers. Of the three jets, two seemed to be disgorging cargo, while the other one was accepting it. And the logo on its tail was exactly what she wanted: a green cedar tree between red banners. Middle East Airlines, the Lebanese carrier.
She glanced back at the crashed chopper, now pierced by more emergency lights.
Penny didn’t have much time. She edged around the darkness toward the MEA plane. It was a cargo jet, probably bound for Beirut. If it were carrying perishables, it would be controlled for air pressure and temperature.
She saw ground crew riding a bulky car that looked like an overblown golf cart, pulling a tall, wheeled container. The vehicle paused near the ramp leading into the MEA plane’s belly. Three men in white and blue uniforms climbed out of the car and walked around to the container. When they opened it, Penny knew this was her only chance. The three handlers escorted out of the container a pair of beautiful chestnut-colored racehorses and walked them up the plane’s ramp.
Penny strode into the wide mouth of the building, away from the knots of men hauling big icy packs of frozen lobster out from another airplane.
The outer wall of the cargo terminal was a honeycomb of capsules, filled with cargo containers carried around a network of rails by men and robots. Clusters of men in jeans, T-shirts and yellow hardhats heaved bulky containers between the planes and the cargo hall’s web of rails and platforms.
Nowhere to hide.
Bearing a confident posture, pretending the filth caking her skin didn’t exist, she walked a straight line across the mouth of the apron toward the MEA plane. The workers, men hauling boxes in and out of planes, were Indians or other South Asians, migrant laborers who weren’t paid enough to care about her.
The ones minding the horses were Arabs. They wore uniforms, blue overalls pulled over white shirts. They were probably employed by the owner of the horses.
If the horses were important enough to warrant special attention, then, she guessed, the attendants would be along for the flight.
She walked up to one of the uniformed Arabs. He was leaning against a wall, concentrating on reading something off a clipboard. He raised his eyes and gulped.
She smiled. “Can you help me?” she asked in shaky Arabic. “Bathroom?”
Before the man could think of a response she had moved to his side. She needed to take him out of view. Penny cocked her head. “Girl’s room? Toilet?”
The amazed man gestured toward a glass-encased office.
“Show me?” She knew it might be dangerous for a woman to touch him, so she pointed at the door and tried to look confused. The man nodded, still too surprised to think.
He walked her past the office and pointed at a pair of heavy steel doors. They were unmarked so if they were indeed toilets they were unisex, or no women worked here.
She pushed one door open and turned to the man. “Thank you.”
He was too far out of reach. He was starting to realize she didn’t belong there. The man held up a laminated ID card dangling from a lanyard around his neck. He wanted to see hers.
“Oh, my pass,” she said, pretending to check her pockets, resisting the urge to aim either of her pistols at him. Instead she shrugged and smiled stupidly. The man released a low stream of unfriendly Arabic. His eyes noticed her dirt and blood.
She grimaced and touched dried blood on her bad arm. She went weak-kneed. The man moved forward to try to catch her.
Ushiro, the term used in aikido for an attack from behind. She clasped the man’s wrist and turned him into the door. With the man in front, she used her own weight and flow to guide him into the bathroom: toilet, urinal, steel sink beneath a mirror. Aringinate, “lift and project”. She spun him around the room, leaning forward, not letting him go. Kubishime, “choke”.
It all happened in seconds. He squirmed in her armlock. Her wound bled. But he had no leverage. His hands flailed at her grip until he slumped over, and she eased him onto the toilet.
Five minutes later she emerged from the bathroom in the white shirt and blue overalls. Guns, cash, passport and pistols bulged from her pockets. She had replaced the tampon covering the wound with a clean one and retied the silk thong tourniquet. Penny walked past the office with the clipboard in hand. She hung back as the final pair of horses was led up the ramp into the Lebanese airplane.
The last of the uniformed handlers went up with the horses. She waited as cargo strongmen followed with mundane containers and boxes, but the horse handlers all remained on board.
A few cargo workers jogged down the ramp. One of them exchanged words in what she guessed was Hindi as he passed her. He looked at her quizzically, but her uniform protected her.
The man was headed for the toilet. He was about to be surprised.
Penny made for the ramp, trying to keep the clipboard from shaking.
Airport ground crewmen wearing bright pink nylon vests jogged past her carrying glowing sticks. The plane’s engines whirred and then whined.
She reached the ramp as it was ascending. Someone waved a glowstick at her. The plane engines drowned out the shouting, but as she reached the entrance, she dared to glance back and saw an animated crowd by the bathrooms.
Penny hurried into the long tube. It was dark here, but ahead there were lights and she could see shadows moving around six horses standing in specially designed paddocks. Their smell was intense, six huge living things amid the rest of the inanimate cargo, snorting amicably as they sniffed at their luxurious bedding of hay.
The plane started to move, but the presence of the horses ensured the pilots maneuvered with maximum grace. She found a niche in the shadows where she hoped no one would come wandering.
How soon would it take for the authorities to request the pilots to turn around?
The Emerati police weren’t the real problem.
How had Viktor found out about what she and Stack had done to him? And how had he known they were in Dubai? The only other people who knew were the Chamouns. Her bosses, her mentors. It didn’t make sense.
The one thing she could count on, though, was that her escape from Viktor was temporary.
He had called her Penelope.
He knew her name.