I took an uppercut to my own chin for my troubles, but he put too much force behind the punch and lost his footing for a moment.
Stepping forward, I stamped my left boot into Munro’s right knee. As he tipped forward I threw a piledriver into the back of his neck, which sent him sprawling to the ground.
I leapt onto him, straddling his torso, pummeling his head with punches from both sides, but the bastard wouldn’t stay down. He lashed out with his knee and caught me full in the back. Right where Navarro’s man had caught me with the metal pipe. I grunted loudly with agony. Munro clearly liked the sound of that, and channeled all his remaining energy into driving his knee into the same spot, again and again, seemingly oblivious to the punches I was landing on his face, even though his nose was split right open and blood was gushing down his face.
I felt a spasm rip through my lower back. For a second I thought I was going to black out from the pain. One more knee directly on that bruise and I would have to throw myself off him, and at this point that was going to give the fight to Munro, with no chance of a rematch.
He swung out his right leg as far as it would go, in preparation to land the killer blow to my back, but before he could drive his knee back in again, I grabbed his head with both hands, wrenched it up, and crashed it back against the ground.
I slammed Munro’s head against the soil, and again, battering him to submission—
Then I heard the chopper’s turbine grind up deafeningly before it lurched off the ground.
And in that instant, all I could think was, I’m not about to lose my son forever.
Not a chance.
And like in all of life’s most important decisions, my brain had already relayed its decision to my central nervous system before deigning to let me in on which way it had voted. By the time I realized what I was doing, I had scooped up my Glock and stuffed it in my pants, and I was sprinting at the rising bird and launching myself into the air and onto one of its runners.
My left hand hit the metal tube and slipped right off again, but my right hand held firm. With the chopper banking away and air rushing against me, I swung my right leg up over the runner and hooked it around.
My mind was leaping from I can ’t believe I fucking made it to What now? when a hail of bullets slammed into the helicopter. I spun around to see Munro, standing again, blood all over his face, MP4 in hand. He’d obviously decided that dead was better than not at all.
Another volley strafed the chopper, punching a streak of ominous holes through its fuselage and sending the engine into a high-pitched wail. I hoisted myself up around the runner, hooked my left leg over my right, pulled my Glock, and emptied the entire clip at the rapidly diminishing figure who was intent on bringing us down.
Somewhere before the clip ran out, Munro jerked backward, staggered, then toppled to the ground, saving whichever cartel he was working for the trouble of severing his limbs one by one with a machete.
Navarro and his pilot were now well aware they had a stowaway, but they didn’t seem too keen to credit me with saving their asses. And in that brief instant of calm, Alex peered through the window, and his face lit up with surprise when he saw me. Our eyes met, and I saw them flare up with an elation that recharged me to no end.
The pilot began to execute a series of side-to-side rolls in a concerted attempt to dislodge me—then after a handful of those, the engine gave a piercing squeal, cut out for a heart-stopping second, then coughed back to life.
I knew we weren’t going to be aloft for long.
I pulled myself up and peered into the cockpit, wondering why the pilot wasn’t attempting to land. Navarro had leaned right forward and was clearly shouting instructions at him, obviously telling him that landing was not an option. At least they’d stopped trying to shake me from the runner. Then Navarro spotted me, pulled his gun, swung it around to me, and fired through the chopper’s window.
I ducked away from his sight line, squeezing myself as far under the fuselage as I could, hoping Navarro wasn’t suicidal enough to try to fire at me through the chopper’s floor.
We sped across the jungle, low over the tree cover, gathering speed, the engine seemingly having decided that we were all going to live. Less than a minute later, the ocean came into view. Even from my precarious vantage point, it was stunningly beautiful, the kind of shot I always assumed was airbrushed to perfection, only it was right there in real, living color. If it was the last thing I saw, it would certainly be miles better than looking at the business end of a force-feeding tube.
The ocean had heard me. As we sped toward it, the engine emitted a series of whining sputters, then cut out completely.
We were going down.
69
I squeezed out from my cover and caught sight of Alex again, and I was thankful to have another moment with him. And with death getting closer by the yard as we plummeted toward the sea, I could see the appeal of reincarnation—although I wasn’t ready to give up on this life just yet.
My thoughts were cut short as the water rose to meet us and we belly-flopped into the ocean. I hung on as, almost immediately, the big chopper started to sink. The mere fact that I could tell we were sinking also told me that I was still alive, and that meant Alex may be alive, too.
He had to be.
I kept my legs wrapped tightly around the runner as we went under, the chopper listing to its side from the momentum in its blades. After a few seconds, I glimpsed the ocean floor, white and sandy, through the swarm of air bubbles. It wasn’t deep. I let go of the runner with my legs, but held on with both hands as we hit the bottom.
The chopper landed in a billowing cloud of sand and an eerie groan from the runner that took most of the impact.
I pulled myself close to the window and looked in.
The pilot was already dead, his side of the cockpit having taken the full brunt of the collision between machine and ocean. Dark ribbons of blood spiraled upward from his head and chest before thinning out into crimson clouds.
I looked in the rear cabin, looking for Alex, and I saw him, his arms stretched out to beckon me, but he seemed trapped—then I understood why as Navarro’s face lurched into view from behind him. I flinched back, ready to pull away from any gunfire, only he didn’t seem to have his gun anymore. He was pinned in place by a piece of cabin frame that had bent in under the impact and seemed to have his right foot trapped against the frame of his seat, and he was holding firmly onto Alex while trying to wrest his leg loose.
Alex was thrashing, desperately looking for a way to wriggle free, his little features imploring me to save him.
I needed to reassure him quickly and gestured to him that I was on my way, then I slithered around the craft and made my way to the smashed cockpit window. I wedged my boot up against it and started pulling at it with everything I had. Pain lit up in the small of my back, but I kept going, and after what seemed like an eternity, it bent out and pulled free.
I pulled myself inside and snaked through as fast as I could, past the empty co-pilot seat, until I was face to face with Alex. He thrust his hand out to me and I took it, pulling myself closer until I had my right hand clamped around his wrist and the big Omnitrix wristband he never seemed to take off.
Navarro still had both arms wrapped around Alex’s legs, and I had only a few seconds left before I involuntarily gulped a lungful of sea water.