Decision made, Liam charged up the deck to the communications sergeant. “Get me a patch to NORTHCOM. I need to get clearance for a change of plans.”
Chapter 19
For the millionth time, Rachel looked around the cockpit and toward the back of the plane for a way out. Although that seemed an unlikely occurrence.
Even if she knocked the general unconscious, grabbed his gun, or clawed his face until he bled to death, she was stuck in an airplane she couldn’t land. The back ramp was still open, but it was a long, long way down into the darkening sky. Panic had shifted into a dull numbness.
Bump. The cargo plane bounced, then settled.
Hell, the general could barely even fly this aircraft. Every few minutes he pulled his attention from the early-night sky to the instrument panel. The plane would lurch, drawing him back to the yoke. The general would curse the airplane again.
Bump.
Right on time.
“This airplane blows,” he shouted over the roar of wind through the back. “I don’t think they rigged it right.”
Sullivan looked down again, searching for something. The airplane jolted.
Bump.
He gripped the yoke tighter. “Autopilot? How’s the damn autopilot work?”
Like she would actually answer? Shivering, Rachel turned her head and looked out the window at the dim shadow of a fighter jet that had been trailing them just off the wing for the last thirty minutes. It stayed on her side of the plane, where the general couldn’t see. She wasn’t ready to surrender. She was willing to fight. But she feared the decision might be out of her hands.
How much longer until the fighter shot them down? The jet was there to shoot them down. She accepted that and wondered why Sullivan hadn’t considered it. Granted, he didn’t seem to be thinking all that clearly.
Bump. “Fuck!”
Hysterical laughter bubbled inside her. She clapped a hand over her mouth, but she couldn’t hold it back. It just flowed and flowed out of her until tears ran down her face, blurring the stars winking to life outside the windscreen. Starlight, star bright, first star I see tonight… She gasped for air. Okay, she was on her way to a major panic attack.
But what did that matter? She was about to die anyway. All her great intentions to fight her way out of this were just that. Intentions. She needed something with a lot more firepower.
It wasn’t as though Liam would come swooping in to save her. She couldn’t even leave him a message about how much she loved him and how deeply sorry she was for fighting with him earlier. How she wished she could go back and treasure up every minute they’d had together. How she wished she hadn’t wasted the past six months they could have spent together. He wouldn’t know any of that even if she could write it down, since paper and the rest of this plane would be at the bottom of the ocean very shortly.
Bump.
She considered just jumping out of her seat and making a mad dash toward the back after all. Maybe she could grab a parachute. She knew how to jump from a plane. Well, not with a parachute, but she’d been lowered on a cable with her dog countless times on search and rescue missions.
God, she’d had an amazing life, but she could have had more. She wanted more. The waste, the futility, clanked inside her again and again until the sound became an almost tangible part of the roaring wind.
Was her subconscious trying to tell her to go for the parachute anyway? Even if she wasn’t sure she could put it on right? If the general couldn’t find autopilot, he couldn’t chase her down in back. He might try to shoot her, but at least she would go down fighting.
Maybe he planned to parachute out before they shot him down? If there was any justice in the world, he would suck at parachuting as much as he sucked at flying planes.
And if he planned that escape route, she needed to beat him to the punch before she was left in a plane she most definitely couldn’t fly. She glanced over her shoulder to assess the possibility of—
In the gaping back hatch of the cargo plane, another plane flew higher and just behind. Not a fighter jet, either. It was larger, much like the one she was in, so she didn’t think a final shot was pointed their way. Images shifted in the shadowy haze between day and night. The other plane coasted so close, she couldn’t fathom how the pilot maneuvered. Or why. She squinted at something off kilter, something strange about the whole vision.
Oh my God. She jerked back reflexively.
A man dangled from a cable harnessed to his body. She inched to look again, careful not to draw attention from the swearing general. The cable swung closer to the back ramp. The helmeted man came closer.
Toward the open back ramp.
A man was—no kidding—being lowered into the plane. And not just any man. Somehow she knew it could only be Liam.
Bump.