“I’m going to ram Colchev. It’s our only hope.”
According to the online literature, the Skyward had tiny gas thrusters for attitude control in zero gravity so that the pilot could orient the spaceplane for optimal passenger viewing, important when they were spending the price of a condo on the trip.
With no airflow over the wings, the control stick wouldn’t be able to affect the orientation of the spaceplane. Tyler searched the panel and saw a dual-joystick control. That had to be it.
He toggled the left joystick and the nose slewed around. Tyler had put too much into it, so he compensated in the other direction. The sticks had been modeled on a video game controller. It took Tyler only a few seconds to understand how they functioned. They couldn’t move the vehicle sideways, so he would need to line himself up precisely to hit his target.
A quarter-mile ahead, Colchev made his own course corrections using the fire extinguisher as a crude thruster. He was closing on the Killswitch.
It was now or never.
“Hang on!”
With one hand on the thrusters, Tyler hit the button for the rocket.
The Skyward blasted forward. Tyler kept his fingers on the sticks, making tiny adjustments as the spaceplane shot at Colchev.
The one advantage he had was that the roar of the engine wouldn’t be heard by Colchev in the vacuum of space.
But something tipped him off that he was being pursued. Perhaps the light of the flame reflected on the inside of his helmet. Whatever it was, he twisted around and raised the fire extinguisher to blast out of the way just as the spaceplane reached him.
Time seemed to slow. As he passed, Tyler saw Colchev’s horrified expression glaring at him. He knew his own face was obscured by his darkened ExAtmo helmet, so Colchev couldn’t see the look of satisfaction as the leading edge of the Skyward’s wing clipped the fire extinguisher, sending it tumbling away. He hadn’t killed Colchev, but the spy wouldn’t reach the Killswitch either.
Tyler switched off the rocket. At this point, even if he thought a second pass would be needed, the engine didn’t have enough fuel for it.
“Did you get him?” Jess said. “Please tell me you got him.”
“I think so. We’ll know in a few minutes.”
Tyler stretched his torso to look behind him, but he couldn’t see anything. The freefalling weapon and the thief who’d brought it to this desolate location had already faded into the indigo blue.
SIXTY
The Killswitch taunted Colchev. Only a few meters away, it might as well have been a thousand. Without the fire extinguisher to fine-tune his path, he couldn’t get close enough to push the arming button.
Even if he could reach it, he might not have been able to press the button anyway. When the extinguisher had been ripped from his hands, the wrist seals on his gloves had been damaged to the point that they were bleeding air. The leak wasn’t fast enough for him to lose consciousness, but the cold seeping in chilled his hands to the point of numbness. At least he’d been able to deploy his drogue chute before they were completely frozen.
As they fell together, Colchev could only glower at the impotent Killswitch. He’d come so far to be denied his success by a few arm’s lengths. When he landed, he could guarantee one thing. He’d follow through on his promise to Fay. If Tyler and Jess somehow survived their landing, he would find them and erase them from this earth.
The air resistance gradually began to increase, and the Killswitch, which lacked the stabilization of the drogue, started to spin as it plummeted toward Lake Michigan at over six hundred miles an hour. The thickening air would diminish its velocity, and the eventual impact wouldn’t be strong enough to detonate the unarmed weapon before it sank. The sturdy casing would likely even keep the xenobium from irradiating the water. Colchev, who was slowed by the small parachute, could only watch as the Killswitch disappeared from view.
The agony from his frozen hands was excruciating, forcing tears of pain to dribble down his face. But he would not cry out. That was for the weak. The defeated. He held his rock-hard hands to his body.
For seven minutes the ground rushed toward him, and he used the increasing air resistance to angle away from Lake Michigan toward the Wisconsin shoreline. During that time he realized that he would still be hailed as a hero of the Motherland. He would survive the longest freefall in history. He would bring back crucial evidence of a top-secret American weapon. And he would boast of the success of destroying a threat to his country’s national security.
Despite the torture of his immobile hands, Colchev greeted the howling air rushing past his helmet as a sign that he was nearly through the worst of it. Tyler Locke had won the battle, but Colchev would come out of the situation unbowed.
He checked the wrist altimeter, which read eight thousand meters. At five thousand meters the parachute would automatically deploy. He was now over green pastureland, and upon landing he would have to formulate a plan for exiting the country.
But five thousand meters came and went without the sudden jerk of the chute opening. Colchev realized in horror that in the mayhem of his fight with Tyler, he hadn’t switched on the automated chute deployment mechanism.
He scrabbled at the manual ripcord, but his rigid hands would not grasp the metal ring. In a panic he pummeled his chest. No matter what he did, the rung stubbornly stayed in place.
As Colchev stared at the verdant countryside, he could make out the shape of cows grazing. Though it looked lush and soft, the approaching meadow would be as lethal as concrete. His destiny was no longer to be a hero. Instead of devastating America, he would be nothing more than a stain on it.
The thought of such a humiliating fate was too much for Colchev. Terror finally seized him. His last ninety seconds were an eternity of fear, and the sound of screams echoed through his helmet until he slammed into the grassy field.
While the Skyward plummeted during its freefall descent, Tyler was able to make contact with flight control and get a crash course on guiding the unpowered spaceplane in for a landing. He just hoped the term wasn’t literal in this case.
They had been far over Lake Michigan, so once the Skyward reached enough air resistance for the wings to have some lift, Tyler had to steer the craft back toward Wisconsin, aiming for Oshkosh thirty miles to the west.
It wasn’t until the Skyward was halfway from the shore to the airfield that the controller informed Tyler he didn’t have enough altitude to make it. Ditching in Lake Winnebago seemed like a bad idea, so he asked them for the closest runway and was told that, if he turned, he might make it to the Sheboygan County Memorial Airport. They had cleared a runway for his landing.
He made the turn and realized he’d bled too much altitude.
“Damn it!”
“How are you doing up there?” Jess said nervously.
“Why don’t you help me look for a nice straight piece of highway to land on.”
“Are you serious?”
“Time’s a-wasting.”
“Can’t you use the rocket motor?”
“Only if you want to crash more quickly.” Tyler thumbed the switch for the fuel-dump valve.
“This is the last time I go up in a spaceship with you.”
They looked for a landing spot. Tyler could try setting the spaceplane down in a field, but that was a tricky proposition. The Skyward could snag on a rock or depression and roll, potentially igniting the remaining rocket fuel vapors.
“There!” Jess cried out. He looked where she was pointing and saw a road curving away from a small town
