A decisive moment. Would he abort the takeoff with two gunmen still on board and remaining runway disappearing before him? Renee hoped he would, but even she was fearful of the repercussions.
Her hopes were dashed seconds later when they became airborne, gliding up and banking slightly to the right, the air now rushing through cracked and broken windows on the right side of the cabin. Renee let out a breath of defeat. Out her window were thousands of planes parked next to each other in the grass. Rows of tents and the massive static display of jumbo jets and military aircraft in the center of the air show.
And Max.
He was down there. She hoped she would see him again.
Then she turned around and did.
Impossibly, Max was now locked in a wrestling match with the assassin who had just fallen backward from the cockpit. They were fighting for control of a gun.
She reached down and unlatched her seat belt. Taking a quick breath, she forced herself out of the seat, ready to vault down the aisle, past the bloody bodies on the floor, and pummel the man who dared hurt her beloved Max.
Then Ian Williams rose up from his seat. One of his eyes was a mass of crimson. His face was smeared with wet blood. His other eye was wide and crazed. Mouth open with white teeth clenched down in a mad rage.
Williams raised a black pistol towards Renee and fired.
Max heard a gunshot and involuntarily snapped his gaze towards the shooter. Ian Williams had fired up near the front of the aircraft. Renee had been up there, but Max couldn’t see her now. A single shot rang out. Max kept trying to spot Renee but then felt a fist pounding him in the kidney.
He forced himself to fight one problem at a time.
The man was wrapped around him, off balance but trying to gain leverage. Max elbowed his opponent in the face twice and felt him go limp. Then Max got to his feet and brought his knee up hard under the man’s chin, breaking his jaw and sending him to the floor, motionless. Unconscious.
Renee.
Max turned back towards Williams. The Englishman had dropped his pistol and was searching around on the floor for another weapon. Max sprinted towards him and tackled him from his blind side, putting all his force into his right shoulder and wrapping up the way he’d been taught to tackle playing football as a boy.
Williams slammed forward with a grimace, landing on his chest and already-bloodied face.
“Max!”
Max looked up from the floor and saw Renee standing at the front of the plane. Then she began to have trouble balancing herself as the aircraft tilted sideways.
Max looked beyond her. The pilot was hanging lifeless from his seat.
Renee watched a squirming Ian Williams as he tried reaching for a weapon on the floor. Renee had sent her forearm into Williams’s shooting hand moments ago as he was trying to fire his weapon. He was half-blind from a vicious eye wound, and in his disorientation, she had managed to throw off his aim.
But while she was unharmed, it appeared that Williams had shot the pilot.
“Help the pilots!” Max shouted, pointing with one hand.
Renee frowned and turned around, still holding on to the edges of the aisle seats so she wouldn’t fall over, the aircraft now in a sharp turn and an unusually steep climb.
The pilot was dead. Ian Williams’s gunshot had hit him in the back of the head. Renee panicked as she realized the copilot was the ninety-something-year-old Tuskegee Airman. She climbed up the stairs as fast as she could, fighting the pull of the earth’s gravity that seemed to want her to lie on the wall.
Renee heaved herself up to the pilot’s seat and grimaced as she unstrapped the dead man and pulled his body into the center aisle. Then she got in the seat, strapped in, put on his headset and grabbed the… steering wheel?
The plane had a steering wheel.
She said over the headset, “Can you hear me?” Then she tried to do what she thought Max would tell her to do during one of her flight lessons.
“Yes, I can hear you,” said the Tuskegee Airman. “I’m afraid I’m having a hard time seeing everything. I don’t have my glasses.” His hands were on his steering wheel.
“It’s alright. I’m going to try and level us out. I think I should just turn the wheel left. What do you think?”
“Yes, I think you’re right.”
Renee turned the wheel to the left, feeling a good amount of resistance. But sure enough, the wings banked over to the left and now they were only in a climb, not a turn.
The Tuskegee Airman said, “Now I think you need to push the stick forward.”
“Okay.”
Renee pushed forward on the steering wheel and the nose tilted down until they were flying almost straight and level.
She looked at the Tuskegee Airman and smiled. “We did it!”
A series of gunshots rang out from the rear of the plane.
Max had seen it coming. The man in the back, whom Max had thought was unconscious, rose up on his elbows and reached for a submachine gun that had been resting underneath one of the dead sicarios. Max released Ian Williams from his wrestling hold, reached out for the handgun four feet down the aisle, turned, and fired, single-handed.
Both shots missed, but they helped him gain the advantage over his opponent.
The man was now hunkered down behind useless cushioned seats. The only thing they did was put him out of sight. But Max knew exactly where he was. This was a thinking man’s game. The one who solved the problem the fastest won.
Max drew himself up from the floor and balanced his weight between his left foot and his right knee, holding the pistol firmly with both hands, steadying his aim as much as possible in the maneuvering aircraft…
And pulled the trigger.
He saw a quick jerk in the shadows beneath the seat. Then the man’s body collapsed into a heap on the floor.
Now it was just Ian Williams. Max saw Williams rise up in the middle of the aisle, standing defiant and unarmed. He started to turn and walk aft.
“Don’t move!” Max yelled above the howling wind.
Williams turned and stared at Max with one eye, his other just a swollen slit now. “Shoot me, then.” He slowly stepped backwards, holding on to the tops of the seats for balance. Looking Max in the face, daring him to fire on an unarmed man. And getting closer to the other weapons on the floor that had slid to the aft part of the aircraft.
Fine, Max thought. He wants to go this way? He deserves it.
Before Max pulled the trigger, he did a double take, looking down at the weapon in his hands. In the excitement of the moment he had missed it. The slide of his pistol was all the way back, the chamber empty.
He was out of bullets.
Renee had her head on a swivel. Just like playing defense on Princeton’s field hockey team. Except now she was trying to fly an ancient plane and make sure that the love of her life wasn’t being shot at.
“What is he doing back there?”
“What do you see?” said the Tuskegee pilot. He was holding the airplane’s controls with her. She could feel his inputs every few seconds. Flying by sight, judging the horizon. Unable to read any of the dials, but his decades-old aviation instinct helping nonetheless.
“Max isn’t shooting. I think the man who hijacked the plane is going for a gun. We need to do something.”
Renee looked forward again, making sure that they weren’t aiming towards the ground. They were probably thousands of feet off the altitude they had started at. Indeed, the air seemed cooler and hazier than a few moments ago. But her only real goal was to make sure they didn’t crash until Max could come help.