“I’m going to kill you, your friend, and that damn pilot outside for what you did,” he said, sounding more beast than man.
In my weakened state, I struggled to fend him off. My hands grabbed his wrists and pulled, but his fingers refused to leave my throat.
He squeezed tighter.
I stared at the faint outline of his face from the inside of the hood of his coat. The world grew darker. I struggled for air. My eyes bulged, soaking in the blackness within the hood.
Strings of spit dripped from his mouth and splattered on my face. The stench looming from his mouth smelled of bad breath mixed with chewing tobacco.
A shadowy figure materialized from behind the enraged man, towering over him and stalking closer. Another sharp report hammered the cabin of the jet followed by a spat of fire that flashed from behind the hood.
The bullet punched through his forehead, and a fine mist sprayed me in the face.
Jim’s fingers slipped from around my neck. He crumbled to his side, and hit the floor of the jet with a dense thud. His body lay next to me—dead.
I gasped for air, coughing and massaging my throat. The shadowy figure retrieved the flashlight from the floor, then trained the light at my face.
“You all right?” Jackal asked, weak and breathless. He braced himself against the wall of the cabin while looking down at me. I nodded, then coughed some more. The ringing in my ears lingered, but waned with each second that ticked by.
“I’m glad to see–you’re not–dead,” I replied with a raspy, hoarse voice.
“That makes two of us.” Jackal extended his hand to me.
I grabbed his cold palm with a firm grip. He leaned back and peeled me off the floor, and I groaned in discomfort.
“Who are these two?” Jackal asked, shining the light over their dead bodies.
“No clue.” I stood still, allowing my equilibrium to balance out and to keep the world from spinning. “When I came to, they were inside the plane, rummaging around. They dragged Grizzly outside and were coming for us next. I took out his partner over there before this dick bag came in.” I kicked Jim’s dead body while nursing my sore throat.
“Are there anymore outside?” Jackal shivered and pulled his arms tight across his chest. “Crap, it’s cold.”
Heat radiated from my body, the surge of adrenaline still coursing through me, keeping the bite of the cool air at bay.
I looked to the opening in the fuselage, then shrugged. “I don’t know if there are any more of them out there or not. I only heard these two. We could have another roaming outside of the plane, so keep your eyes and ears open. We need to see if we can find Grizzly, and see what he did with the coordinates.”
Jackal peered through the gaping fissure next to him. The light washed over the sharp edges of the fuselage to the broken wing. Gray snow fell in large clumps that gathered on the remnants of the wing and blew into the cabin of the jet.
“That’s not snow, is it?” He looked at me with his brow raised.
“No. I think it’s ash or something,” I answered.
Lightning crackled over the jet. A blinding light illuminated the trees across the way. Jackal flinched, his body tightening. Thunder followed, shaking the ground.
“Sounds like that storm we encountered isn’t done yet,” Jackal said. “We need to get moving. Speaking of, do you know where we are?”
“I don’t. We’ll have to figure that out later.” I pointed at the dead men. “Probably need to peel these coats off of them. What we have on isn’t going to keep us warm enough.”
Jackal nodded.
We each took a body and removed their coats. Both had blood stains and holes in the dense fabric, but they would do the trick in keeping us warm.
Jackal stuck his finger through one of the many tears in the front of Frank’s jacket. “How many times did you stab this guy?”
“Enough to make sure he died,” I replied, pulling the last remaining sleeve from Jim’s arm.
I slipped the coat on and zipped it up to the bottom of my neck, trapping the heat.
Jackal put his jacket on and flipped the hood over his head. “Minus the blood stains and tears, this isn’t half bad.”
“Let’s see if we can scrounge up our rifles and anything else we may need and get on the move before anyone else decides to drop in on us.”
“Copy that.”
We both moved in laborious fashion, searching the aircraft for our weapons and anything else of use. The flashlights washed over the messy cabin as the wind howled and gusted through the windshield and breached fuselage.
I discovered my travel bag among the wreckage, smooshed under my seat that had been torn from the floor. I shoved it out of the way and grabbed the straps, yanking it from the ground.
It looked in decent shape—nothing more than a rip or two on the sides. I slung it over my shoulder and hunted for the rifle.
“Did you lose something?” Jackal asked from the rear of the plane near the opening Jim had come in through.
The flashlight moved over the wall of the cabin to the floor, then toward the cockpit. The buttstock of the rifle came into view.
“You’re going to have to be more specific than that,” I replied, retrieving the rifle from the darkness.
“Your dagger. It’s over here on the ground,” Jackal said.
“Yeah. I dropped it earlier when old boy came into the jet. Lost my grip on it.” I secured the strap of the rifle over my shoulder, then turned to face him. I shone the light in his direction, finding my dagger clutched in his hand.
Jackal walked toward
