Kennedy Stern Christian Suspense Complete Box Set (Books 1-9)

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The hand that held the gun was shaking. Kennedy wondered if one of the passengers close by him could tackle him while he was focused on his speech. Tackle him without getting killed in the process.

“The site of the new school building, they used to have a pharmacy company on it. Know what the workers dug up? Two underground storage tanks.” He wiped his forehead with his fist. “Charles Weston dumped them in secret before anyone could test what was in them. He says it’s old ground water, but why’s water got to be buried ten feet under? And why’d he order the tanks moved in the middle of the night before anyone could test what was in them?” His voice was as impassioned as Kennedy imagined old-time evangelists like Charles Spurgeon’s and Dwight Moody’s must have been.

“Now, let me ask you something,” General continued. Kennedy couldn’t tell if he was talking more to the passengers or to their video cameras. “If you were told that your kids’ school was going to be built onto a hazardous waste site, that they’d be exposed to contaminants from the air, the soil, and the water there, what would you do?”

He looked around, and Kennedy watched several passengers shift uncomfortably in their seats under his gaze. Did he really want an answer?

“What would you do?” he demanded again.

“Take it to the district office.” Ray’s voice beside Kennedy made her jump. She crouched down, hoping General wouldn’t focus any of his attention on her.

“Take it to the district office,” he repeated with a menacing grin. “And guess what? That’s just what we did. We got a petition, demanded a public meeting. Well, Charles Weston and his stooges set up a meeting all right. At four in the flipping afternoon. Know why? ’Cause he knew the parents would still be at work and wouldn’t be able to attend. Do you know how bad things have to be to get eighty parents to show up at four in the afternoon on a work day? And we handed Superintendent Weston our proposal. Merge Brown Elementary with Golden Heights just five miles over. Why not? The building’s there. The teachers are there. They even have old trailer classrooms that nobody’s used in a decade.”

He cleared his throat loudly.

“You know what Weston said to our proposal?” He waited again for an answer before supplying one himself. “Absolutely nothing. Know why? Because he didn’t show up. He sent his secretary to read a four-word speech Weston penned himself. Shut up. Go home. Of course, he put it more eloquently than that. I’m summarizing.”

Kennedy’s brain was in full-fledged cognitive dissonance mode. This man who cared about justice for his children couldn’t be the same man who’d murdered a crabby Seahawks fan minutes earlier. This father who refused to risk his children’s health couldn’t be the same terrorist who helped Lieutenant kidnap a girl, disabled an air marshal, and hijacked their plane. A familiar constricting of her lungs. A suffocating, choking feeling she’d worked so hard to avoid all semester.

At least her body understood this was a perfect time to panic.

She bit the inside of her cheek, hoping the pressure might give her something to focus on other than her terror. Her mouth still tasted like vomit. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to push back the darkness and paralyzing dread that threatened to envelop her. How many times could anxiety take control of you before you lost yourself completely in the fight? How many times could she try to overcome her PTSD only to find herself thrown into a new scenario more terrifying and dangerous than the last? How many times could she pray for healing and fail to find it before her spirit succumbed to depression and despair?

No. She couldn’t give in to dark thoughts.

But where else was there to turn?

Her breathing came in shallow spurts. She felt each restrictive inhale like the stinging of killer bees swarming inside her lungs.

God help me, she whispered and wondered why she even bothered. How many times had she prayed before in a crisis? How many times had God left her to flounder, left her to fend for herself in a helpless, hopeless situation? How many injustices had she prayed against, only to find her prayers powerless to confront the degree of evil and devastation that swarmed unchecked around the globe?

Her soul begged God to help her, but her mind knew she was completely alone. God had no reason to listen to her. She was nothing. A college student. She’d never led a single soul to Christ, never gone on a single mission trip. Even as a teenager in China, she’d spent more time reading or shopping for clothes than praying and studying with the North Korean refugees her parents took in as part of their Secret Seminary training.

Her last year and a half at Harvard had been a huge waste of time. What did God care about her GPA? What did he care about her lab results? She’d made academic success her idol, couldn’t even get into the habit of attending church every week, and refused to share the gospel with the one person on campus she talked to on a regular basis.

She was a failure as a Christian, especially when she compared herself to her parents’ Secret Seminary students or the heroes of faith she’d been reading about in her biographies. God had no reason to save her, no reason to spare her life, no reason to listen to her prayers at all.

Please, God ...

She remembered what Pastor Carl had said during the last sermon of his she’d heard. He talked about God’s love for everyone, his unconditional, limitless love. Where was that love when he allowed Hawaiian Shirt to kidnap a helpless girl? Where was that love when he stood by while BO Dude got shot? Where was that love now when every single breath Kennedy took was shallower and more forced than the last?

Kennedy had grown up learning about God’s love, but what good had it done her? It hadn’t stopped her from getting kidnapped her freshman year. Hadn’t shielded her from the horror of police brutality last spring. Hadn’t kept her lab partner from contracting an incurable disease. It hadn’t even healed her PTSD.

Maybe she should stop fearing the inevitable and be glad she ended up on a doomed plane. Maybe this was God’s way of putting her out of her misery so she would stop embarrassing him as she stumbled through her so-called Christian existence.

Please, God. She wanted to barter. Wanted to beg. But she knew it was pointless. God’s mind was already made up, wasn’t it? Either she would die on this plane or she wouldn’t. No degree of pleading or whining would change that. She just wished she could talk to her parents one last time ...

General was still lecturing about the toxic land Weston and the school district had purchased for the new elementary building. Funny. Kennedy thought she’d care more. If she was about to die, it made sense that she’d be curious about her murderer’s intentions. But now that she was resigned to her fate, what did it matter? Was getting blown up by a Muslim extremist any different than getting shot point-blank by an angry father from Detroit?

You died either way, right?

A heaviness settled over her, not like the peace she’d sometimes experienced in the midst of a crisis where she knew God was ministering to her, but a joyless acceptance of whatever fate would throw her way. Maybe if she’d been a better believer, God would have more reason to save her. For now, she’d just have to sit tight and wonder if the end would come from a bullet, a bomb, or a forty-thousand-foot drop with a fiery finale. Which would be less painful? And if you ended up dead no matter what, did it matter?

“Before I sign out,” General concluded, “I have a message for the district superintendent, good old Charles Weston. If I don’t hear from you in five minutes, I’m taking out another hostage. You can find my phone number as well as a full description of the crimes you’ve committed against the children of Detroit on my personal webpage.”

After a longer-than-necessary dramatic pause, General growled to the passengers, “Now turn those cameras off. Countdown’s started.”

CHAPTER 12The only thing Kennedy could think about was getting back to her seat. Get to Willow no matter what was about to happen to them. Grab her phone and find a way to call her parents. Was it day or night now in Yanji? Adjusting from one time zone to another had become second-nature to her, but now she couldn’t focus on anything.

Did her parents already know what was happening? Had the whole country watched General’s tirade? What if none of the cell phones could stream from this altitude? What if he’d given the superintendent an ultimatum that nobody heard? What if this Weston guy never responded? Would General just keep shooting people until he ran out of ammunition?

“How many bullets do you think he has?” she asked Ray.

“Not enough for all of us.” His answer was hardly comforting.

She glanced back and tried to spot Willow. General was pacing the aisle and seemed distracted, but his Hawaiian-shirted lieutenant who stood vigil over the dead body kept his eyes fixed on the passengers, scowling at each individual in turn.

It wasn’t right. She should be with her roommate. With her backpack and her phone. Several of the other passengers were whispering into their cells, probably calling loved ones on the ground.

Kennedy looked at Ray. “At least everyone must know what’s happening by now, right?”

Ray frowned. “That’s just what he wants.”

She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know a thing about politics, about hostage negotiations. In her mind, it made sense that the more people who knew about the situation the better. It meant that many more people were working together to find a way to protect everybody on board.

She thought about the family that had gotten off the plane, and she was thankful those children didn’t have to experience this kind of terror.

“So you don’t think anybody’s going to call?” Kennedy asked.

Ray sighed. “All I know is if everyone on this plane refused to play into his little act, he’d have no leverage. That’s all these terrorists want. Sensationalism. His only goal’s to drive media attention to this school issue, and he’ll try anything to do it.”

Kennedy didn’t answer. She was thinking about Grandma Lucy’s grandson and how his story had been replaced with something more noteworthy. Ray was probably right.

“Get a plane full of civilians,” he went on, “and you’re guaranteed media updates every minute. Everyone’s talking about the passengers, the skyjacker, the issues involved, and bam. The story’s viral.”

He tapped onto his phone’s newsfeed and showed her the screen. “See?” He read the headline out loud. “Home-Grown Terrorism: Flight 219.” He scrolled a little farther down. “Or here. Detroit School District’s Dirty Soil Secret. All he had to do was take over one plane, and Brown Elementary School’s a household name. If he hadn’t already shot a man, half of these news outlets would be hailing him a hero right now.”

Kennedy didn’t care about the hijacker’s cause. Callous as it sounded, she didn’t even care about the school kids in Detroit as much as she cared about getting off this plane. Why hadn’t the captain said anything in so long? Was he even with them anymore, or had the plane switched to autopilot? Had something horrible happened to him in the cockpit?

“I want to go back to my seat,” she said. “I really should stay with Willow.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Ray shook his head. “You don’t want to draw attention to yourself ...”

“But Willow ...”

“... would rather have a living friend than a dead one,” he finished for her.

Kennedy bit her lip. Maybe he was right. What would happen if General didn’t get his call by the time his five minutes ran out? He’d already proven how easily he could kill. There was absolutely nothing to stop him from doing it again.

A hundred and sixteen passengers. It wasn’t terrible odds. Earlier on the flight, she’d been feeling sorry for herself that she wasn’t the kind of girl to stand out in a crowd. Maybe that would work out in her favor. What threat did a nineteen-year-old college sophomore pose? As long as she crouched low in her seat, didn’t try anything stupid, General would never notice her.

For a fleeting moment, she pictured herself standing up in the cabin, telling all the passengers, including General and Lieutenant, about Jesus. It was crazy. Maybe she was having dark thoughts, but she wasn’t suicidal. No, she just had to get through these next couple of hours alive. That’s all it would be. A couple hours max. They were already close to Detroit. The plane couldn’t stay in the air indefinitely. It would have to come down one way or another. This too shall pass ...