Kheda screamed and launched himself at Avery, wrapping his arms around Avery and taking them both to the deck. They tumbled and rolled over a couple times as Kheda tried to throw Avery’s weight over to the ramp, but Avery wrapped his legs around Kheda, locking them together, and they both slid halfway down the declined slope of the ramp.
Avery ended up on top, and he head butted the bloody gap in Kheda’s face.
With Kheda looking sufficiently dazed and no longer putting up a fight, Avery started to get back up. Along the way, he positioned his knee over Kheda’s abdomen and dropped his weight on it. Kheda’s shoulders and head heaved off the ramp and bounced back down. Saliva, mucus, and blood spattered Avery’s face.
Avery stood up. Keeping his eyes on Kheda, not wanting to look past the airframe into the vast open space, he began to back away.
But Kheda was determined and wasn’t going to stay still. He moved slower now, less coordinated, somehow managing to look even worse than Avery. His face and shirt were drenched in blood, and his eyes looked glossy and dilated.
Avery risked getting closer again and delivered a kick to Kheda’s face. The Chechen’s head rolled back, but his reflexes were still sharp. He grabbed hold of Avery’s foot with both hands and twisted the ankle hard to the left.
Acting fast, to avoid having his ankle cracked, Avery dropped, driving the sole of his opposite foot into Kheda’s chest. Still clinging to Avery, determined to never let go, Kheda took Avery with him as he slipped further down the ramp.
The interior of the cargo hold behind him, Avery saw nothing but open sky, white clouds, and the shimmering surface of the Caspian Sea far below. He felt the vice-like grip clamped around his foot. The endless wind blasted his face, forcing him to tilt his head away to breathe.
Nearly half off the right side of the ramp, with one leg dangling in space, Kheda continued pulling on Avery’s right foot, determined to drag him off the plane. As he slid down the ramp on his back, Avery kicked out and planted his opposite foot against the long, vertical support strut that extended from the ramp into the airframe above, stopping his fall. If he took that foot away, Kheda’s two hundred plus pounds would easily take them both over the edge.
But Kheda didn’t seem to mind too much. In fact, this realization only fuelled him further. He stared into Avery’s eyes as he continued heaving on Avery’s leg, exerting the same brute strength he used to row 150lb dumbbells.
Avery felt his leg budging against the pylon, nearly giving out, bending further at the knee, and his ass slid another couple inches down the ramp. He couldn’t hold this position much longer and, with his hands locked behind his back, he had no means of fighting off Kheda or grabbing onto anything.
But then the ramp jerked abruptly into an upward motion. As it lifted back up, the force pulling Avery toward the end of the ramp gave way, and the ramp quickly became level. Avery removed his foot from the support pylon and smashed the sole of his right boot into Kheda’s face.
Reeling from the blow, the Chechen lost his grip on Avery’s left foot. To no avail, he frantically tried to grab onto something, anything, and his hands slid over the smooth metal surface as he dropped off the ramp, into the sky, and out of sight.
The ramp continued rising, inclined steeply now, and Avery fell clumsily over onto the cargo hold’s deck. The compartment became darker and calmer as the jet’s tail end sealed shut, blotting out the sun and cutting off the blasting torrent of air.
Aleksa stood near the control module.
The Russian lay several feet away. His head was twisted around, with a deep, bloody red gouge implanted around his throat in a chain-link pattern. Aleksa had his gun. She bent over near Avery appraising his injuries, but he indicated that he was okay, even though he didn’t feel it. He was unable to suppress the urge to vomit, and he threw up the contents of his stomach onto the deck. Even after his stomach had nothing left, his body continuing retching hard for several seconds.
Aleksa began shaking. Avery knew that the effects of the adrenaline were wearing off now, and she was likely becoming conscious of her own injuries and the realization that she’d just taken a human being’s life.
And they still weren’t out of this yet.
She helped Avery get his hands under his legs and in front of his body, and he took the gun from her. She was only too grateful to be relieved of it. It was a GSh-18, a 9mm commonly used by Russian cops. Avery checked the magazine. It had a full clip, seventeen rounds, and he found another magazine on the dead Russian. No handcuff keys, though.
Avery recalled Cramer telling Kheda to dump the bodies in the Caspian. He supposed that meant they were about three hours out from Tajikistan, if they were flying non-stop. That would place them somewhere over Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan soon.
He wondered how much time needed to pass before the other Russians in the passenger compartment wondered why Kheda hadn’t returned yet and came back here to check up on him. Probably not much longer, and Avery felt in no shape to take on another handful of mafiya thugs.
Aleksa helped Avery onto his feet and followed him down the length of the cargo hold to the bulkhead separating the forward cabin. He held the pistol two handed in front of him and stood slightly to the side of the closed hatch.
Opposite him, Aleksa positioned herself likewise, and Avery motioned for her to open the door. Ready to immediately step out of the way, she gave the latch a pull, but it didn’t budge, locked from the other side and leaving them no choice but to sit and wait it out until someone up front got worried about his friends and decided to poke his head back here. They wouldn’t be able to hear anyone coming from the other side, so Avery remained positioned exactly where he was, GSh-18 held ready. He directed Aleksa to lie down on the deck, so that she would immediately catch the attention of anyone stepping through the hatchway.
It took almost thirty minutes for someone to become curious enough to take a peak.
Without warning, the hatch slid open, and a Russian in a leather jacket with a buzz cut and glasses stood in the open space in the bulkhead and stuck his head into the cargo hold. He carried a Makarov at his side, finger indexed over the trigger guard. His eyes immediately locked onto Aleksa on the deck. Seeing no one else in sight, he frowned and entered the cargo hold. Then, abruptly aware of a nearby presence through his peripherals, his eyes shifted right, widening in an oh-shit look when he set his eyes on Avery.
From two feet away, Avery tapped the trigger and put a single searing hot round through the Russian’s cheek. The body collapsed straight to the deck, and blood drained rapidly from the face wound. Avery kicked the Makarov out of the dead man’s hand, held the GSh-18 in front of him, and pivoted around to face the open hatchway and to stare down another Russian standing ten feet away in the passenger cabin. Seeing his comrade go down, the Russian was already reaching for his own weapon and screaming frantically to warn the others.
As he exploded through the hatchway into the cabin, Avery fired twice, counting his own rounds, and dropped the shocked Russian.
The passenger area had been converted into a first class compartment, with high-backed, plush leather seats positioned in fours around oak tables — two chairs facing each other across a table — new carpeting, and a kitchenette area behind the cockpit bulkhead.
Two Russians were seated, facing Avery, with laptop computers in front of them. One was already on his feet and going for a pistol holstered at his side, while yelling out commands in his native tongue. Avery drilled him between the eyes, and then shifted his aim and double-tapped the man seated next to him.
Avery kept moving, advancing down the narrow aisle of the compartment. Recalling the CQB exercises aboard the Boeing fuselage at the Point, he moved swiftly, taking wide deliberate steps, to cover as much ground as possible while he tracked for targets, his eyes sweeping up and down, left to right, looking over chairs and under tables, looking for movement or shapes of a human body. He was slightly bent at the back, with shoulders and head leaning forward. With the adrenaline coursing through his veins, he was suddenly oblivious to the pain in his head and ribs.