on one side, throwing blood through her yellow hair. Her blue eyes were groggy and dim.
Up front, Lang chattered in Mandarin again as his hands danced over the consoles. The Osprey was climbing now and Bornmann hollered back, “Missiles! Two fighters on our tail! We’re going to ditch this bitch if we can just —”
The wall exploded. Fire and heat burst through the rear of the plane in a hundred tiny holes. Metal fragments clattered through the fuselage. Then the fire was replaced by smoke and sunlight. Air whistled through the holes at a deafening pitch. Most of the swirling black fog was stripped away, but it was replaced by the red mist streaming from Foshtomi’s chest.
“Sarah!” Cam yelled, fumbling past Deborah to help her.
The explosion must have been a near miss, he realized. Otherwise they’d be gone. But the damage was bad enough. Wind and sunlight howled through the aircraft as he tried to catch the meaty organs spilling fromFoshtomi’s side. Herintes tines were hot. Her face was white and dead. Cam screamed and tried to apply pressure anyway, his arm trembling against the wild force of their descent.
The Osprey was in a tailspin.
No, Cam thought. No! He glanced forward again, looking for the sky — for God — for anything other than this horror. Beyond the pilots, he saw a patch of blue. Then the horizon tilted into view.
The hard orange color of the desert filled the windshield. The ground was very close.
It’s not supposed to end like this! he thought, but the Osprey caught its starboard wing against the earth and whipsawed into an uneven leaping cartwheel as the fuselage disintegrated.
23
In the cyclone of bodies and metal, Deborah felt a snapping pain through her left shoulder. She breathed hot dust and smoke. Then it was done. The tornado stopped, but the pain stayed with her, crippling that arm.
She was outside the plane. The ground beneath her was tough and dry, and she felt a breeze and daylight. Despite the curtains of dust, she saw most of the fuselage nearby. Then the hazy sun disappeared. When she lifted her head, she’d moved into the shadows beneath the high, broken line of one wing.
There must be other survivors.
“Bornmann!” she shouted, rasping for air. “Cam? Hey!”
Why didn’t they answer?
Somehow she staggered up, twisted nearly in half by the dislocated shoulder. Her ribs on that side were hurt, too, and she was covered with grit and blood. Most of it wasn’t her own.
Gnarled oak trees and scrub brush covered the hillside. The brown plants were peppered with gray and white debris. Fire licked at the brush in several places. The Osprey had flung jagged chunks of aluminum and steel into the hillside along with wiring, glass, and plastic. The wind stank of jet fuel.
Deborah didn’t think to run away, not even faced with the rising flames. She was nothing without her squadmates. She barely remembered the self-doubt she’d felt before Walls led them out of Complex 3. Deborah had come a very long way just to find herself back where she’d begun, as a reliable cog in the machine, but she was pleased to be that woman again. It was all she’d ever wanted. Her suffering had reinforced everything that was best in her — her willingness to give of herself. The team needed her, not only as another gun but as a doctor, especially now.
She turned into the wreckage. There was a man crumpled beneath a flat chunk of a propeller blade. She hurried toward him but Sweeney was dead, his neck wrenched backward. His legs were broken, too, and maybe his spine. Looking away, Deborah noticed one of the engines behind her. In one sense, she was still inside the plane. The main bulk of the aircraft surrounded her, forming an uneven barricade.
The sky reverberated with the distant roar of jets. That seemed unimportant. Within two steps, she spotted two more human shapes. Deborah heard someone groan and lurched closer. “Bornmann?” she said. “Hey—”
The first man was Lang. A small area on the left side of his face was unharmed. Otherwise she might not have recognized him. Impact had rubbed most of the skin and muscles from the side of his skull.
Translator, copilot, commando — Lang might have been the most versatile element of their team and Deborah paused over his corpse, feeling demoralized and lost. Then she banished her grief with a bit of gallows humor she’d learned from Derek Mills, the pilot of the shuttle Endeavour. “Pilots are always the first to the scene of a crash,” he’d said when they were planning their descent from the ISS. She had to honor Lang. Her sense was that their pilots had pulled the Osprey out of a death spiral, bringing the aircraft up at the last minute. If they hadn‘t, she would have been killed, too, so she moved past him with a firm sense of gratitude.
The next man was Captain Medrano. He groaned again. “It’s me,” Deborah said meaninglessly. He was barely conscious. His arm was broken and his face was cut. His pulse was steady, though, and her cursory examination detected no other bleeding or major injuries.
In the short time they’d known each other, Medrano seemed like a badger to her. He was short and roundish and skeptical. Deborah wasn’t sure if she liked him, but he was her brother nevertheless. There weren’t enough of them left to pick and choose.
As she applied pressure to his face wound, she glanced through the wreckage again. She felt as if she’d failed Ruth for being unable to find Cam. Had Cam and Ruth become a couple at last? What if he was dead like Sweeney and Lang?
Deborah had never approved of Cam. He was dangerous, untrained, and seemed to bring out all the worst in Ruth. He made her so emotional. He was also fiercely loyal. Deborah couldn’t help but respect that level of commitment, and, like Medrano, she was also bound to Cam.
“Get up,” Medrano said as if to himself.
“Easy,” Deborah warned him, but he spoke again, clearly, trying to focus his dazed eyes on her.
“Get up. Run. The fighters—”
The Chinese fighters were coming back.
Deborah had been listening to the distant engines change in volume and pitch without realizing what it meant. The sound galvanized her. “You’re coming with me,” she said, flush with new strength.
“Can’t walk,” Medrano said. “My ankle—”
“My shoulder—” she retorted.
A long section of the fuselage rocked toward them. The metal shrieked against smaller chunks of debris. Deborah dragged at Medrano’s uniform with her good hand, gaining a few inches as the wreckage teetered overhead.
Someone walked out of the plane like a miracle.
He was filthy, maybe burned. He was also bent much like Deborah, protecting his ribs, and she recognized the shoulder-length black hair. Cam. His luck seemed like something learned — a trait she envied for herself.
“Help me!” she yelled, but Cam stopped and looked up.
The noise in the sky was increasing. It echoed from the hills. Deborah pulled Medrano upright as Cam raced closer. He grabbed Medrano’s other side and the three of them ran downhill into the widely spaced trees. Medrano screamed as his wrist banged against Deborah’s back. Her shoulder was agony. Their ragged forward motion carried them past the wreckage and an orange, snarling clump of poison oak.
Cam leaned in front of Medrano, his lips drawn back from his teeth. Two of his incisors were gone. The rest looked like misplaced fangs. “This way!” he yelled, hauling everyone to his side like a human chain.
We’re not going to make it, Deborah thought, glancing back as the Chinese fighters screamed overhead. She wanted to face her own death.
Their turbulence washed through the oak trees and her short, dirty hair. In the same heartbeat, one missile slammed into the Osprey’s remains. Ordnance was precious. If those pilots knew there were survivors, they must have believed a single missile was enough. The explosion threw the Osprey’s belly and starboard wing into the air. There were secondary blasts from the fuel tanks in the wing. Ribbons of fire sprayed over the hillside.
