She watched for a second and then pressed the switch again. “Look out!” she shouted. “They’re on your —”
She never finished the sentence because Zarrina knocked her from the chair. She tumbled into the wall, got up ready to throw a punch and took a kick to the stomach that knocked the wind out of her and dropped her to the ground.
Outside, she saw the two planes almost collide. They crossed paths, separated and then crossed paths again. A trail of dark smoke began to stream from one of them.
KURT REACTED TO GAMAY’S warning as fast as he could. He banked left and almost slammed into Jinn’s plane. He shoved the yoke to the right, rolled the plane over and heard the sound of shells tearing into the fuselage.
Jinn’s craft was matching his turn. Men were firing .50 caliber machine guns through an open cargo door.
Kurt cut back toward them. The two planes crossed paths and almost collided a third time. As Kurt peeled off and began to make a run for it, a bank of warning lights came on in the cockpit. He pointed the nose down to pick up speed, kept the throttles to the wall and retracted the flaps he’d never pulled in.
The plane accelerated, and Kurt turned to the southwest. Various warning lights continued to blink, but nothing seemed disastrous.
He juked to the left and then back to the right, remembering the rule he’d heard an old fighter pilot tell him once:
After several sets of these maneuvers, he still hadn’t seen Jinn’s plane.
He kept the jet on the deck and at full speed. He made a slight turn to the west. So far, so good. But still no sign of Jinn.
“Do you see him?”
Leilani was swinging her head around, doing everything she could to spot the other craft. Kurt turned to the right, hoping to give her a wider view.
“No,” she said. “Wait … yes. He’s behind us,” she said excitedly. “He seems to be falling back. He’s heading lower.”
That didn’t sound right. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, we’re leaving him behind. I think he’s landing.”
Kurt couldn’t believe their luck. He wondered why Jinn would be letting him go.
Zarrina’s voice came over the radio. “Kurt Austin, you will land and surrender or I will kill your friends.”
The line stayed open, and the sound of someone grunting in pain and then screaming reached his ears.
“You harm them and you’re a dead woman, Zarrina,” he said, returning a threat with a threat.
Kurt had no choice but to run. Surrendering wouldn’t stop them from murdering his friends. It would just mean there were no witnesses around to report it. But if he could escape, that turned the tables. It meant Zarrina and Jinn had to worry about being discovered and facing retribution. Sometimes those thoughts protected prisoners who were otherwise considered expendable.
“You harm them and there won’t be anyplace in this world where I won’t hunt you down.”
Above him, more warning lights came on. Static and feedback came through the headphones.
“I look forward to it,” Zarrina replied. A shot rang out, the transmission ended and the COM panel went dark. Kurt flipped the switch a few times and got nothing.
“Radio’s down,” he said.
“What are we going to do?” Leilani demanded.
“Head southwest and follow the original plan.”
He hoped he hadn’t just sacrificed the Trouts, but he had no choice. They had to make it to the Seychelles or at least to a vessel in the shipping lanes. They could signal a ship and ditch nearby, but either way they had to get away from Aqua-Terra.
THE FURY IN JINN AL-KHALIF’S eyes burned hot enough to melt steel. The distance between his aircraft and Austin’s continued to grow. Austin was escaping, and carrying with him both a woman Jinn desired to have and, more important, the secret of his whereabouts, a secret he needed to maintain.
“Why are they faster than us?” Jinn demanded to know.
“He dumped the cargo,” the pilot replied. “They’re six tons lighter than us. Thirty knots faster at least. If you want to catch them, we have to jettison our cargo as well. Otherwise we lose a mile every two minutes.”
Jinn considered this. He’d suffered a major defeat already. One plane down, another in the hands of an enemy he wanted to see dead. Two cargos gone, there was no telling what percentage of the microbots had survived either impact.
“Even if we dump the cargo,” the pilot said, “we’ll only be able to match his speed. We’ll never catch him.”
Jinn had a better idea. He unlatched his seat belt. “Land,” he said. “Immediately.”
CHAPTER 37
KURT HELD THE JET ON A COURSE DUE WEST FROM AQUA-Terra. He pulled back on the stick slightly, bringing the aircraft into a shallow climb, nursing every bit of speed he could from it. He was bitter, angry and oblivious to any thought beyond escape and informing the authorities of Jinn’s actions. A stinging sensation in his eyes snapped him out of it.
“Smoke,” Leilani said.
Kurt glanced around. The cockpit was filling with it. Banks of new warnings lit up. The plane began to shake, the controls got heavy. Kurt fought it for a while but it felt like the hydraulics were going out.
Kurt leveled off and the stall warning ceased, but the problems did not end there.
In a moment it seemed like every device in the cockpit was either flashing or beeping or chirping an alarm. Kurt had no idea what any of it meant aside from the obvious.
“Time to go,” he said.
He stabbed at the autopilot button and jumped from the seat. In a blink he and Leilani were down the ladder and racing through the cargo hold.
“Get in the boat!” Kurt yelled, pointing to the rigid inflatable near the tail end of the plane. With the plane shaking, he found a lever for the cargo hatch and threw it over. The ramp began to drop, the wind whistled in and around them. Smoke and kerosene fumes swirled in.
“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
