He grabbed the copilot’s neck and snapped it with a lethal twist.
Daiyu launched herself at him, aiming the knife for his spine. Even at his size, a severed spine would render him useless. She missed to the right, hitting his fleshy back and plunging the blade as deep as it would go. She twisted it quickly and pulled it out.
Hot blood poured from the wound, but the mountain of a man barely responded.
He turned, backhanded her across the face and went for a choke hold. She threw one arm up beside her neck as a bar. It prevented him from crushing her windpipe or choking the life out of her, but he now had control.
With the power of a hydraulic press, he squeezed her neck and arm until she felt her elbow crack and separate. Excruciating pain shot through her body. She ignored it and brought a knee into his midsection. She might as well have been thumping a rock wall.
He barely reacted, held her tight and reached for her fallen knife. She twisted around in a desperate attempt to break free, came face-to-face with Lieutenant Wu’s lifeless eyes and remembered his o
ffer of the sidearm. She thrust her free hand into his jacket, wrapped her fingers around the weapon’s carbon fiber grip and—
The knife went into her back.
Daiyu went stiff from the impact, felt the blade being pulled free and then being plunged into her a second time. The second puncture was far less painful than the first. A third was barely felt, as she shuddered and slumped to the floor.
Vargas stood awkwardly; he was bleeding badly from a wound he could not reach. It didn’t matter. He knew his own end was near—he’d known it since the moment he’d left the lake. It was well accepted, he thought. At least he would die in the clouds that his ancestors had always aspired to reach.
He pulled the knife from Daiyu’s back, went to the wounded pilot and pressed the bloody blade to his face.
“Call them,” Vargas said. “Tell them she did as she was told and then resume course to Shanghai.”
“But?”
“Do as I say!”
With Vargas holding the knife to his eye, the pilot got on the radio and made the call. He said everything Vargas had ordered him to say. The Chinese General said some brisk words and then ordered them back on course without emotion.
Vargas watched the pilot turn the aircraft. Urco had shown him on the computer what to look for on the computer screens.
When the plane leveled off again, Vargas smiled and then he cut the pilot’s throat.
Lying in a pool of blood, Daiyu understood completely. Vargas was on a suicide mission. And now he’d overcome the only two obstacles he faced: her and Zhang. She was as good as dead, and with Zhang believing the explosives and the detonator had been removed, the Chinese authorities would welcome the aircraft to Shanghai with open arms.
The bomb would detonate as they descended and the matter and antimatter would mix instantly.
Deadly opposites, she thought. Yin and yang destroying each other, as she’d always believed they would.
She was the barrier, the only thing preventing the destructive mix. But she would be dead in minutes from the loss of blood. Even if she could somehow kill Vargas, she couldn’t crawl ten feet, let alone take the fuel cell apart and disarm the explosives.
Her eyes started to dim, but her other senses remained for the moment and she realized there was something in her hand. It was Wu’s pistol.
She knew what she had to do. She couldn’t stop the explosion, but she could choose where it happened. And out over the sea was preferable to the destruction happening above her homeland.
Vargas was standing there, his hands on the back of the pilot’s chair. She aimed at his head and pulled the trigger.
The shot hit home, splattering blood across the windshield.
Killed instantly, Vargas fell forward. His heavy body landed on the control column. The impact disconnected the autopilot as the computer wrongly assumed that the captain was reasserting human control.
The HL-190 nosed down and began to descend.
Daiyu could just make out the altimeter. They quickly passed below fifty thousand feet. The dials continued to unwind. Forty-nine thousand . . . Forty-eight . . . Forty-seven . . .
64
Kurt saw through the peephole as Davidov made a sudden move toward the control panel. He’d overheard every word and knew what Davidov was planning.