"Are you crazy?" I shouted back. "I can barely hold on!" The wind and the roar of the jets obliterated my words the second they left my mouth. I tightened my grip on the rung and yanked on the door handle again. If I could have braced my legs, I might have had a chance. The Templar, however, had other plans. He reached for my other calf.
I alternated between kicking at his hand and playing keep away but he was too fast for my tired legs and snagged the other one. This put the full weight of both our bodies on my right arm, the only thing holding us onto the plane. Agony lanced through tendons, muscles, and flesh. My shoulder felt like it might separate from the socket. Using the rung gripped in my right hand as a brace, I pushed against it while jerking on the handle. Metal groaned. Popped. The handle swung up with more force than I'd intended and the hatch popped open. My hand on the door lost purchase, and the wind slammed the Templar and me against the nacelle, pounding us like rag dolls. Someone screamed. An armed man flew out of the hatch, his gun firing wildly as he spun away into the darkness below. A bullet pinged off the metal. The Templar jerked, sending a fresh wave of agony into my arm but I couldn't look back. It was all I could do to reach forward and grab the open hatch as it bobbed up and down with each jolt of the plane.
I noticed with alarm, the jet was straining to stay aloft. Trees loomed close below as the engines screamed with effort. I gripped the doorsill with my left hand. Switched my right hand from the open hatch to join it. I craned my neck back, glancing at my unwelcome hitchhiker.
I looked toward the hatch just in time to see the glint of a gun muzzle poking around the edge. A man in a harness leaned out and fired. The only thing saving me from a bullet in the brain was the air turbulence. It bounced the man like a frog on a trampoline. Searing pain blazed into my thigh, followed shortly by the sensation of a hammer pounding into the calf on my other leg. The Templar's grip on my legs loosened, and I felt his hands slide until my feet were the only things between him and a future as fertilizer puree for the rain forest.
Another bout of turbulence jolted the plane. The gunman bounced up, slammed his head on the doorframe. His gun spun away. I gripped his harness and, using the rest of my strength, pulled myself through the raging wind toward the cabin, one agonizing inch at a time while the man pounded on my hands with his fists. The Templar lost hold of one of my feet. I briefly considered letting the idiot fall.
But I didn't need another guilt-ridden nightmare to keep me up at night. I knew I'd regret it, but my conscience would gnaw my insides to raw bits if I didn't try to rescue him. With a secure grip on the harness, I pounded the gunman in the face and sent him to la-la land. My torso rested on the edge of the cabin and the hatch, giving me a little extra leverage. I reached my hand back, groping for the Templar's wrist since his other hand hung uselessly behind him but I couldn't reach low enough.
There was only one way this would work. Mustering a last surge of strength, I pulled up my leg. It was like doing a leg-lift with a boulder. A roar of pain tore from my throat as I gave it everything I had. Five inches more. Three. Two. Somehow, I found the energy to grip his wrist. As I squeezed, his grip on my ankle tightened. He probably thought I was going to tear him loose and drop him into the engine. He probably deserved it. But not today. Nope, not with tenderhearted Justin at the wheel.
I'd make a terrible bad guy.
I kneed him in the face with my free leg. His head snapped back, bounced off the nacelle. The hand on my ankle went slack. I pulled his body alongside mine until his hand reached the harness. I almost burst into tears of joy when he gripped it and the agonizing pressure on my joints subsided. Using the harness, I pulled myself into the cabin and dragged the Templar in after me. He rolled aside and lay in a motionless heap.
Wind tore through the narrow space, flinging paper and empty cups around like a miniature tornado. Four cushy chairs rotated aimlessly in the chaos. The unconscious gunman hung limp in the orange safety harness. I unbuckled him and left him on the floor before hauling in the harness so I could close the hatch. But one of the hinges had warped. I tried to force it shut, but the weld holding the hinge to the nacelle broke loose. When I tried to force the handle into a locking position, the stupid thing popped loose, falling open again. The remaining hinge couldn't take the strain and snapped. Wind snatched the door and it shot back like a rocket, glancing off the side of the engine. The plane shuddered. Miraculously, the engine didn't explode and kept right on going.
Someone screamed what was probably the mother lode of Spanish obscenities from behind the curtain separating the cockpit from the cabin. I added a few of my own as white-hot fear twisted my bowels. I hoped whoever was flying this thing could hold it together. I wasn't too worried about him looking back here, not with him barely keeping this bucking bronco under control.
I noticed blood seeping from wounds along the Templar's body and realized that the bullets must have hit him. Supposedly, Templar outfits protected against mundane stuff like that. This uniform had failed miserably. I counted five punctures in the material and shuddered.
My own legs felt like knives were burrowing into them, one in my thigh muscle, and the other in my calf. Since I was more or less safe from a jet engine turning me into lobster bisque, my body turned its full attention to the pain. The sensations of torn muscles and tendons joined forces with the bullet wounds and turned my body into a theatre of agony. I reached a hand to my injured thigh and pulled back bloody fingers.Movement flashed in the corner of my eye. The formerly unconscious gunman swung the barrel of an orange pistol at me. I lashed out lightning-quick with a foot and caught his hand. His arm snapped back at an awkward angle just as the gun went off. Brilliant light flooded the compartment as a flare exploded like a fireball through the cockpit curtain and burst into cheerful flames. The pilot screamed like a man falling into a tub of molten lava. The jet rolled hard to the left, sending us tumbling. The gunman's screams as he rolled out of the hatch joined the pilot's.
His fingers caught the orange harness an instant before gravity claimed him. The nylon fabric snapped tight. The cockpit curtain burst into orange flames and the plane rocked back to the right, sending the Templar and me bouncing off the chairs in the cabin. The smoldering pilot burst through the burning curtain, squealing like a pig, arms flailing. Stop, drop, and roll apparently hadn't been taught in his elementary school. He ran headlong into the bulkhead, bounced off, and tumbled out the door with a fading shriek. Gagging at the awful odor of burnt flesh and hair, I pushed myself up and staggered as the wind rocked the jet back and forth.
The gunman, who'd miraculously held on to the harness lost his grip for an instant and slid farther outside. His body thudded against the nacelle, cracking three windows. The harness clip, already weakened, snapped loose. The gunman's scream lasted a nanosecond before the engine on that side made a horrific grinding noise and, with a thunderous boom, sent more cracks racing across the windows on the left. The jet frame groaned. Lurched sickeningly to the right. I raced into the cockpit. The flight stick jerked this way and that, wobbling up and down before deciding gravity had won. Below us stretched an endless canopy of forest.
I flung myself into the copilot's seat. Pulled on the control stick. It responded easily—too easily. I wiggled it and met absolutely no resistance. I tested the stick on the pilot's side. Same thing.
"Seriously?" I shouted, slamming the stick back and forth. Hurtling at hundreds of miles per hour into a forest while a jet exploded around me did not seem survivable, even with my remarkable healing ability. I considered jumping. The tree canopy might slow me down, break a few bones—or more likely every bone in my body—and then, with a lot of luck, I might heal. With that many broken bones I'd end up looking like a lopsided ostrich in a yoga class. An exploding jet, on the other hand, would probably burn my body to crispy bacon.
The floor shifted beneath me. Metal groaned. The remaining glass cracked and shattered. A pocket of turbulence slammed the aircraft so hard my head hit the ceiling and I bounced around like a pinball, biting my tongue hard enough to draw the metallic taste of blood. I couldn't waste another second. Pushing my exhausted body to the limit, I dragged the Templar to the door and prepared to hurl us out into the void.
Chapter 20
Instead of black night, a long fall, and the promise of brutal pain, Lina's brown eyes greeted me across a span of empty air. Bella stood beside her, staff extended and glowing with blue radiance. Alejandro, for his part, seemed to be piloting an aircraft of some sort. And it was no ordinary aircraft they stood on. It was a flying carpet. A big one.
I could hardly believe my eyes.
"Hurry, child!" Bella shouted. "I can't hold this craft upright much longer."
The carpet slid close enough for me to step across. I braced myself for the onslaught of wind, hoping it wouldn't fling me right off the carpet. Instead, I found nothing but calm, as though I were inside a car, sheltered from the elements. I dragged the Templar along with me, out of the jet and onto the carpet. Alejandro held his hand atop what looked like a sphere of polished black stone veined with green and gold, hovering almost stomach level above the carpet as he rotated it. The carpet banked gently to the left, away from the jet.
I looked at the fatally crippled aircraft and gawked at the blackened ruins of the engine the gunman had fallen into. As we cleared the wings, Bella gave a mighty grunt and the glow from her staff winked out. The jet plummeted like a rock, plowing into the trees with horrible screeches, groans, and the crack of wood. She dropped onto her backside and set the staff aside to wipe beaded sweat from her forehead. Her violet eyes regarded me for a moment. They reminded me so much of Elyssa's, I had to swallow a lump lodged like broken glass in my throat.
I succumbed to my own weariness and slumped to the carpet between the injured Templar and Old Bella. Lina dropped in front of me.
"Oh, Justin! You are so hurt." She pulled a first-aid kit from a satchel and, after looking from it to me a couple of times, shrugged and winced. "I don't think this will help much."