1
A Doomed Flight
That whole day was strange. On the morning of my Russia flight, my wife and I lingered till the last minute because something in me kept whispering, Don’t go. “Babe, we gotta get out of here,” Relle finally said around 8:30 a.m. Oh snap. Two hours till takeoff. Relle was planning to ride with me to the airport and then go to brunch with a friend. She threw on a sundress as I dragged myself out of bed. From then on, everything went sideways.
Relle usually packs for me. I hold the WNBA record for most dunks, and I can practically block a shot in my sleep, but please don’t ask me to organize anything. Not a closet. Not a pantry. Not a schedule. And definitely not a suitcase. That’s my wife’s territory and also her talent. I do the hooping, she does the planning. I do the driving, she does the shopping. I open doors, she walks through them. Our skills are complementary, which is what makes us a perfect team. Also, we’re both Southerners, old-school traditional. Several months before this trip, however, we’d switched things up. She was in her third year of law school, juggling two jobs and running on fumes. “Our support has to look different,” she said. Of course. “Babe, don’t worry,” I told her. “I got this.” In principle, that was true. In practice, I was a mess.
Even with our new plan in place, my baby had my back ahead of this trip. Every time I’d fly home on break, she’d do a Target run to stock up on the American foods and seasonings I couldn’t get in Russia: candy, cookies, brown sugar, pancake mix, Worcestershire sauce, Sweet Baby Ray’s barbecue sauce, and of course my Tony Chachere’s Original Creole Seasoning. My mom’s from Louisiana, Cajun country, so I don’t play when it comes to my spices. I love to eat, always have, and my food needs to taste right. Before our Valentine’s Day celebration, Relle had organized all those items into hard-shell roller suitcases, my two checked bags. That left me with my carry-ons to pack: a small roller bag and my Louis Vuitton backpack, the NBA edition. I carry that backpack everywhere.
Soon as I got up, I pulled out my roller. I shoved in my Nintendo Switch, my headphones, all my electronics, a jumble of cables and cords. I then grabbed my backpack, unzipped the large compartment, and slid in my huge MacBook Pro. I didn’t pack many clothes. Just a few pairs of underwear and sweats. I had an apartment in Russia, provided by my team, and most of my stuff was already there. If my wife had packed my carry-ons, she would’ve started by making sure they were empty. She would’ve unzipped the pockets, one at a time, and turned the bags over to dump them out. She then would’ve rolled and zip-tied every cord and stacked them neatly inside the case. I did none of that. No time. My stuff was all over the place, just randomly scattered in the bag. The one thing I was careful about was my passport. If someone stole that, I was in trouble. That was why I always kept mine in my hoodie pocket. In ten minutes flat, I finished packing and pulled on my Cross Colours hoodie, the Black Lives Matter edition. “You’re done that quick?” Relle asked. “Yep,” I said, “I’m ready to roll.”
My iPhone wasn’t. As we were leaving, I couldn’t find it anywhere. We tore up the house in search of that phone, kept calling it to see if we’d spot it. Nothing, plus I had it on Silent mode. I’m known to lose things—wallet, keys, headphones—and since I always have on gym clothes, stuff falls out of my pockets when I sit down. Not my fault. Something goes missing, but it’s usually not lost lost, because a minute later I’ll be like, “Oh, I’m sitting on it.” I wasn’t so fortunate on this day, and I couldn’t go to Russia without my phone. At 8:45, I was worried. By 9:00, I was panicked and sweating. Finally, at 9:20, an hour before my flight, we found it behind the headboard. It takes twenty minutes to get to the Phoenix airport from our place, and I drove our white Audi like I’d stolen it. Relle gripped the seat the whole way. At 9:45 I screeched up to the curb. We said our “I love yous” with the car still running, and she sped off.
The curb agent waved me toward him. Normally, I couldn’t have checked bags so close to flight time, but there was nothing normal about that Tuesday. Even my route was different. I usually flew Phoenix to LA and then on to Moscow, with a final connection into Ekaterinburg, aka Ekat, the city where my team was based. But this time I’d go from Phoenix to New York’s JFK before going on to Russia, and if I missed this first flight, I’d throw off my whole itinerary. Lucky for me, the agent rushed my bags through to Ekat. He also escorted me through security and to my gate just so I’d make the flight. That was how late I was.
After the agent had walked off, I felt something in my pocket. Shoot. I called Relle, who was halfway to brunch. “Do not turn off the car,” I told her. “Turn around and come back because I still have the keys.” Relle chuckled. She knew who she married, and this was right on brand for me. With my flight already boarding, I couldn’t run out to the curb. So I spotted an airport worker walking by and said, “Bro, I need your help. I’m going overseas and I messed up.” I held up the key fob. “Can you please take these out to my wife?” He quickly agreed. I’m sure it helped that he recognized me and that I handed him all the cash I had on me, about $250. I snapped a pic of the dude and sent it to Relle so she’d know who to look for. Minutes later she had the keys and I was headed to New York.
Things went sideways again at JFK. My carry-ons were screened, zero issues, but when I presented my Covid test, the agent said, “This is no good.” What? For my results to be considered valid, she explained, the test had to be taken within forty-eight hours of my scheduled arrival in Russia. I’d miss that cutoff by twenty minutes based on my time stamp. I was hot. I rushed to a site at the airport to take the dumb test, the one where they shove a swab up your nose and scratch out your skull. I waited for the results by email, refreshing every second and finally calling Relle to say, “Babe, I’m probably gonna miss this flight.” I did. big-time. So I checked myself into an airport hotel and rang my team with the news. I may lose things, but I’m never late. I’m usually the nerd who’s at the airport four hours before my flight. So they understood, no big deal, and rebooked me for the next day on Aeroflot Russian Airlines.
On Wednesday evening I returned to the international terminal, no hassles, no hiccups, no bags flagged. I texted Relle. “Hey, honey, about to take off,” I wrote. “I’ll call you when I get there. I love you.” My plane departed as scheduled, at 7:25 p.m. New York time. I settled in for the nine-hour flight, ate some dinner, listened to music. Later I pulled out my laptop and booted up Grey’s Anatomy. I nodded off after four episodes, and when I woke up, we were starting our descent. It was noon in Moscow when we landed. My Ekat flight was at three. One last layover, I thought as I put away my computer. One short sprint to the end of my final season.
*
The air felt different. I’d traveled to Russia dozens of times in eight years and never had this eerie feeling. I went through passport control, got my stamp, and took an escalator down to security for my transfer to the domestic terminal. Two large glass doors slid open. The scene on the other side proved something was off.
The place was crawling with workers. It was usually pretty empty, maybe a couple of screeners, and then you’d sail right through to your connecting flight. This checkpoint was fully staffed: five, six workers near the metal detectors, another bunch huddled by the trays, a screener guy seated behind the X-ray machine. Everyone was in uniform, and a few had on blue military camos. What is going on? A blond policewoman walked alongside the passengers, her dog sniffing every bag. The canine smelled the luggage of the person in front of me. All clear. Same thing when the dog sniffed my bags. No reaction. He immediately moved on to the next passenger, but the woman tapped me on the shoulder. She said something in Russian, God knows what, and motioned for me to step aside.
I wasn’t the only one pulled from the line. Most of the Russians flew through the metal detectors, but us foreigners were being flagged for additional search. I glanced around at the passports. There was a guy from Pakistan, several from Ukraine, a few from Uzbekistan. I don’t know what that dog did when he sniffed their bags, but I was one hundred percent sure how he reacted to mine: totally chill, a day at the beach, absolutely nothing to see here, folks. My father was a cop, a Vietnam veteran, and I grew up with police-trained Rottweilers, Malinois, all of them. I know what dog signals look like. When they sniff something suspicious, they normally sit, bark, make weird movements. This dog didn’t even whimper. I wasn’t nervous when I got yanked from the line, just annoyed at the hassle. I had no reason to be scared. My carry-ons were clean.
I placed my bags on the conveyor and watched them roll away. Before they were even inside the scanner, the screener got up and leaned all the way into the machine. Strange. I stepped through the metal detectors, no alarm, then came around to retrieve my bags. There stood the screener’s teammate, a customs agent. Bald, early forties, hard-nosed, in a tight-knit sweater and chinos. If you’re standing in a customer service line, he’s the guy you don’t want to go to. No smile, no emotion, no nothing. He gestured for me to unzip my bags. I studied his face to be sure I understood, since in America you don’t touch your bags. You stand way back while the agent rummages through them. That clearly wasn’t the case in Russia, because he signaled again for me to open them. I started pulling stuff out left and right, showing him every item, unzipping small compartments he didn’t even know existed. I wanted to get this search over with and move on to my last flight.
I’d worked my way through the backpack when I opened one last zip. I slid in my hand and felt something inside. The agent stared as I slowly lifted out a vape pen cartridge filled with cannabis oil. No. I’m a licensed cannabis user in the United States, with a medical marijuana card issued by my doctor. He prescribed cannabis years ago, to help me cope with my debilitating sports injuries. In Arizona cannabis is legal. In Russia it’s forbidden. I knew that. Honest to God, I just totally forgot the pen was in my bag. The moment I felt it in that pocket, my stomach sank.
The agent took the cartridge and held it up. “What this substance?” he said in broken English. My tongue was frozen, but my brain was scrambling, trying to find a way out of this. “Um, it’s CBD,” I finally said. Although cannabis was prohibited, I’d heard CBD was a lesser offense because the drug has fewer sedative effects. Not true, I already knew in that moment, but I tried. “What this?” the agent asked again in even choppier English. This dude doesn’t know what I’m saying. I pulled out my phone, typed CBD into Google Translate, and showed him my screen. He looked at the phone and then back at me. Silence. A moment later he reopened my roller as I stood by, stone-faced. First he pulled out my Nintendo Switch. Next he pulled out the heap of cords, as tangled as my insides. And last he lifted a pair of sweats. A cartridge fell from the pocket and tumbled onto the tabletop. No. No. No.
Fear takes many forms. There’s the kind you feel when life sneaks up from behind and frightens you half to death. Some people freeze. Others run. I’m usually the one who fights. When I saw those cartridges, not one but two, a different type of fear shuddered through me. There was no instinct to fight, flee, or freeze. Instead, my body went into a major free fall, as if I’d stumbled off a cliff and plunged into the ocean. Down and down I spiraled, through the depths, in the dark, sinking further and further but never reaching the floor. Whoosh. As I dropped I felt empty, disconnected, alone. I was there but not there, alive but numb, lost in a watery underworld.
The agent picked up the cartridge and glared at me. I couldn’t speak, think, breathe. I was still falling, still flailing, desperate to slow the spiral. Even after the second cartridge was discovered, I was hoping he’d let it slide, give me a strong warning, allow me to just throw it away. Both of the vape pens were practically empty, with not even enough cannabis oil to get you high. Clearly I wasn’t a smuggler. If I was truly trying to sneak in drugs, I wouldn’t have them in the front zip of a backpack. Come on, bro. I’d seen too many episodes of Locked Up Abroad to be that foolish. Also, I definitely wouldn’t have helped the agent search my bag. I was literally pulling stuff out like, “You want to see this?” I cleared pockets, unscrewed bottles. Meanwhile, others were breezing through security, all of them appearing to be Russian. Especially since that dog hadn’t whimpered at my luggage, I began wondering if I’d been singled out.
Copyright © 2026 by Brittney Griner. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
