Steyl watched the airspeed drop to the target level.
It got to a hundred.
They were ready.
“Open the door,” he called out to Zahed. “I’ll join you as soon as it’s fully open.” He had to stay in his seat while both sections of the door were being opened, to make sure he could deal with any unexpected complications during the unorthodox maneuver.
He turned around and watched as Zahed, still straddling Reilly, reached up and twisted the latch to unlock the upper section of the door.
The Iranian nudged it out.
The wind caught it instantly and flung it open.
A gale of cold air blasted into the cabin with a deafening howl.
Then came the frenzy.
Chapter 64
Reilly felt the seconds ticking away inside him like he’d swallowed a time bomb. His face was pressed down against the rough nylon carpet, jamming his right eye shut and making it hard to breathe.
He couldn’t move. The Iranian had him locked down solid. But at least the man was now alone. If Reilly was going to do something, he had to do it before the pilot came back. Tied up as he was, he’d be pretty helpless against the two of them.
Which meant he had to make his move real soon.
Then he heard the pilot give the Iranian the go-ahead, felt the Iranian lift up slightly off him, heard the latch click open.
He knew the Iranian’s good hand was busy working the door. Knew the man couldn’t use his other hand to counter Reilly’s move.
Decided it was now or never.
Coiled his strength, concentrating it where he needed it most.
Heard the door whip open, felt the air roar in, felt the bracing cold slap the urgency into him.
Banished never to oblivion and went for now.
He lashed out, twisting sideways against his left shoulder and lifting off the ground with as much force as he could muster, turning his back away from the rear of the cabin and from the Iranian. At the same time, he threaded his fingers together and swung his right elbow back as hard as he could while bending his knees right back and unleashing a furious back-kick. Elbow and feet connected with flesh and bone and generated faceless pained grunts, but they weren’t game changers in and of themselves. Reilly knew he wouldn’t really hurt the Iranian with the moves. He just needed to destabilize him and get him off his back—literally—for a couple of seconds.
Which he did.
The Iranian lost his balance and faltered off him for not much more than a couple of precious seconds, but it was long enough to allow Reilly to complete his move.
With ice-cold air whipping around him like a tornado, Reilly followed through with his flip until he was fully on his back and did two things in quick succession. He pulled his legs in and let loose with a massive, two-footed kick that caught the Iranian right in the chest and shoved him back against the bulkhead. Then Reilly rocked back and brought his knees right up into a fetal position and arced his back to shorten the distance from his shoulders to his hips and allow his hands to slip out from under him in one fluid swing.
They were still tied together. But at least they weren’t behind him anymore.
Zahed straightened up just as Reilly rose to his feet. The Iranian was in front of the half-opened cabin door and sidestepped away from it, toward the middle of the cabin. They squared off for a beat under the five-foot clearance, hunched over under the cabin’s low ceiling, eyeing each other, gauging their next moves. Then Reilly caught a slight twitch in the Iranian’s eye and realized he was about to get ambushed.
He spun around as swiftly as he could, given that his ankles were tied together, and lunged at the South African through the narrow space between the two rear-facing seats, with his arms extended forward. He couldn’t use them to land any decent strike, not with them tied together and not with his precarious footing. Instead, he used them to grab the pilot by the neck and just pulled him in toward him, while angling his forehead slightly down a nanosecond before it struck the bridge of the pilot’s nose. It was as savage a head butt as Reilly had ever delivered, its crack audible despite the gale force wind spinning around the cabin. The South African staggered back through the tight space between the two seats, bounced against their sides like a pinball before cracking his head against the wood-paneled vertical partition that separated the cockpit from the cabin and crashing through its narrow opening.
Reilly knew Zahed would be moving on him, but he still didn’t manage to turn in time to fully deflect the strike. The Iranian had his gun out and brought it down on Reilly with a vicious right-handed swing, catching him on the edge of his jaw. It wasn’t a clean hit, but it still caused serious damage, shooting pain across Reilly’s face and blacking out his vision for an instant.
Reilly flew sideways, to his right, in the direction of the swing, slamming into the left rear-facing club seat, the one that backed up against the pilot’s seat. He turned his head in time to glimpse Zahed moving in for another blow, arm raised, anthracite metal glinting under the cabin’s down lighters, and he managed a desperate lunge off his seat in time to slam into Zahed and send him reeling back a few feet.
Reilly bounced back into the chair, his head spinning, his feet wobbly, pain searing every inch of his body. In his daze, he saw Zahed recover and come at him again, saw him raise his handgun like a hammer, felt his strength ebbing away and his arms unwilling to rise again to deflect another blow. He darted his eyes around unconsciously, looking for a weapon, something, anything to use to block the attack. The only thing his eyes snagged was a fluorescent yellow nylon case with two black handles. It was about two feet long, a foot high, and half a foot wide, sitting innocuously behind the right-hand club seat, glinting at Reilly.
He reached out and grabbed it. It was heavy—twenty-five pounds, maybe thirty. Which felt like a hundred, given Reilly’s state.
He didn’t have time to think. Didn’t even know what he was doing. He was just flying on instinct, his limbic system running the show while his consciousness rebooted. He just yanked the case out and swung it at Zahed, battering him in the chest and sending him flying back against the left, forward-facing club seat, the one directly behind the half-open cabin door. Reilly lost his grip on one of the handles at the end of the swing and the case’s Velcro fittings flew open under the momentum of its heavy load, which was another fluorescent yellow nylon boxlike bundle, only this one had a couple of differently shaped handles sticking out of it.
A bolt of understanding rocked Reilly.
It was the plane’s life raft. Stowed within easy reach and clearly visible in case of an emergency.
Which, as far as he was concerned, this sure as hell was.
He saw Zahed rise out of the seat and reached for the bundle’s handles. Reilly’s fingers clamped around them, and he pulled, hard, and ducked away, toward the opposite side of the cabin, away from Zahed and the cabin door.
The life raft started inflating instantly, unfolding itself with a loud, violent hiss and spreading out with startling speed. Given that it was seven feet wide, the cabin’s five-foot diameter blocked it from fully inflating upward, downward, or sideways. The only place for it to go was along the axis of the cabin, squashed into an upright oval ring. The tight space was also making it expand much more violently than it would under normal, unconstrained conditions. After four seconds, it was already big enough to act as a barrier between Reilly and Zahed. After eight seconds, it was fully inflated, its underside facing Reilly, its topside facing Zahed, its leading edge bursting through the partition behind the front row of seats. As it crowded into the cockpit, the engine whine rose noticeably, turning it into a higher pitched scream. The plane accelerated noticeably, its propeller blades now spinning even faster. Not only that, but the cabin also pitched forward by about ten degrees. The life raft had pushed forward the power levers, prop levers, and autopilot pitch control wheel, all of which sat side by side in the cockpit’s central console.