“Turn around,” he shouted to Leilani. “Feet forward.”
As Leilani turned, the plane began to shudder like it was encountering heavy turbulence, Kurt guessing the hydraulics were going and the autopilot was struggling to compensate.
He released the straps that held the boat to the floor and clambered in, landing on top of Leilani and, to his surprise, the guard he’d knocked cold an hour ago.
“Hold on!” he yelled, wrapping his arms around Leilani and latching onto a handhold in the transom with a death grip that left his knuckles white. With a flick of the wrist, he released the drogue chute.
A small “leader” chute was sucked out first. It yanked the others from their packs. The boat shot backward and then slammed to a stop a few inches from the edge of the ramp.
Kurt looked up. A third strap he hadn’t seen led from the nose of the boat to a tie-down in the center of the cargo hold. It was stretched taut like the leash on an angry pit bull and it showed no signs of breaking.
BY THE TIME JINN’S AIRCRAFT touched down on the water, Jinn was already in the cargo bay, hoisting a rocket launcher onto his shoulder and aiming it at the small dot that was Kurt’s aircraft.
He activated the sight. The system locked onto the heat coming from Austin’s fleeing aircraft. A green light and a high-pitched tone confirmed that the target had been acquired.
“No!” the pilot warned.
Jinn pulled the trigger. The missile leapt from its case and shot out over the water. The propellant ignited and a streak of orange fire raced away from them. Jinn watched as the brilliant flare from the tail of the missile closed in on Austin’s fleeing aircraft. He counted the seconds.
KURT’S PLANE WAS BURNING and coming apart around them. The renegade strap held them in place. A two-thousand-foot drop awaited, but the parachutes that might lower them down safely would be shredded in seconds if he didn’t act.
He rose up, pulled the pistol from his belt and wedged his foot under the thug who was tied down. Holding tight to one of the boat’s grab handles with his left hand, he fired the gun with his right.
The bullet pierced the nylon. The belt snapped in two and the boat was yanked backward again as if pulled from the plane by a giant hand.
For an instant they were in daylight, but the smoke that trailed the plane engulfed them, and then the flash and concussion wave of an explosion shook the sky. A billowing cloud of burning kerosene mushroomed in all directions ahead of them, filling the air with thick black smoke.
The boat—fortunately, still attached to the chutes—plunged into the smoke, traveling forward and down like an arrow.
JINN SAW THE MISSILE hit Austin’s aircraft. The initial flare of impact was followed by two other explosions, each bigger than the last. Black clouds of smoke expanded in all directions. Flaming debris arced through it, curving downward like a series of falling comets, drawing smoke trails across the dark morning of the western sky.
The explosion was at least five miles off. Jinn’s only regret was that he hadn’t been able to see Austin burn up close where he could have watched his skin peel and blacken as the fire engulfed him. Still, it was a satisfying display, and one he was quite certain even Kurt Austin could not live through.
DESPITE JINN’S BELIEF, Kurt was alive. He’d felt the heat of the detonation and knew instantly that the plane had exploded, though he knew nothing about Jinn’s missile. Nor did he care. His only concern was holding on as he, Leilani and their prisoner dropped through the air in the inflatable boat.
When first yanked out of the cargo hold, the small boat flew almost flat on its keel like a dart flung at its board. But the parachutes were attached at the back of the boat, designed to slow it as it launched from a few feet off the deck, not to drop it safely from a great height. As the speed and momentum of the boat slowed, the nose began to pitch down.
By the time they entered the cloud of smoke, they were pointed downward about fifteen degrees, with the chutes trailing out behind them like feathers on a dart. It felt nothing like the smooth drop of a normal skydive. It was more like riding a toboggan down a black-diamond ski slope.
The boat shook and shuddered and the angle grew steeper. Out behind them, one of the chutes seemed to have been hit with debris and was fraying in the middle. Up ahead Kurt saw only smoke and darkness.
Suddenly, the surface of the ocean appeared. The nose of the boat hit the water, submarined for a second and then burst free. Kurt was actually flung up into the air, but he gripped the handle like a bull rider in the rodeo and managed to land in the boat.
They skidded forward forty yards or more before slowing to a stop and the chutes settled on the water behind them.
They’d landed amid the debris field from the shattered aircraft. Smoke surrounded them. Flames flitted across the water, making pools of burning kerosene, while tiny flakes of debris and insulation from the plane fluttered down like confetti.
For several seconds neither he nor Leilani spoke. They just sat in the boat, still gripping the handholds. The prisoner, who could not possibly know what had just happened, was staring at them with eyes like saucers.
Finally Kurt let go and began to look around.
“I can’t believe we’re still alive,” Leilani managed.
Kurt could hardly believe it either. He had the distinct sense of their luck changing for the better.
“Not only are we alive,” he said, “but we’re in a boat with an outboard motor on the back.”
He moved toward it, checking for fuel. He thought of releasing the chutes but realized that once something was gone they couldn’t retrieve it, and he considered the fact that the open boat offered no shade. He grabbed the lines and reeled them in hand over hand.
“Let’s store these,” he said to Leilani, “we might need them later. And see if you can find something to bail some of this water.”
A good twenty gallons were sloshing around in the boat’s interior.
As Leilani wrapped the nylon chutes in their cords and tucked them into a space near the front of the boat, Kurt primed the outboard. It started on the third try and was soon running smoothly.
He twisted the throttle and pointed the boat west, guiding it between the fires and through the smoke.
They came out on the other side of the smoke field, and the clear air felt glorious.
“Where are we going?” Leilani asked.
“Away from them,” Kurt said. With the smoke and the burning wreckage between them and Aqua-Terra, he hoped they’d be invisible for a while.
“But we can’t make it to Seychelles in this.”
“No. But we might reach the shipping lanes and be able to flag down some help.”
Kurt’s check of the fuel level showed half a tank. By the smell of things, the rest had poured out on the way down. How far they could go was anybody’s guess. Once they’d made some distance, he would ease back on the throttle to conserve fuel, but for now he held it wide open and the little boat ran like the wind on the flat gray sea.
All seemed well for about forty minutes until Kurt noticed Leilani squeezing the inflated sidewall like one might squeeze a melon at the supermarket.
“What’s wrong?”
Her eyes remained on the inflated chamber. “We seem to have sprung a leak,” she said.
“A leak?”
She nodded. “Not water coming in. Air … going out.”
CHAPTER 38
KURT HELD THE BOAT ON A WESTERLY HEADING WHILE Leilani looked for the source of the leak and any way to fix it.
“What do you see?”
“Half a dozen little pinpricks,” she said. “I can feel the air leaking through them.”