Tanner grabbed Kathleen's arm and shoved her behind him. "You're not leaving here alone with her, Quinn."
"Touching. A real Days of Our Lives episode in the making." Quinn steadied the gun. "Nice try, Doc, but I can handle the big guy here. Two hostages are better than one. Gives me a spare to dispose of. Now move."
Tanner's rage mushroomed within him like an A-bomb as he walked across the tarmac toward a row of C-17s. Not a damned SP in sight on the mammoth runway that sprawled for miles into the desert. No visible activity due to the holiday.
Fears for Kathleen swirled with his grief over what had happened to his sister. He would make the son of a bitch pay for threatening even one strand on Kathleen's head.
Flight line badges flapping as they walked, Quinn urged Tanner across the hundred feet to the nearest C-17. The runway lights did little to brighten the overcast night.
There was nothing to stop them from stealing a plane. The aircraft was even gassed up and ready to go since planes always refueled immediately after landing.
Wind whipped at Kathleen's hair as it had only two weeks ago when they'd stood together on the flight line in Germany. But the fire in her eyes had dimmed. The shooting had rocked her. And while the fear for him lingering in her eyes thumped him right in the chest, it also scared him a helluva lot more than any bullet.
She would toe the line now, and Quinn had to know it. How far would Quinn push her?
Tanner thumbed aside the slow trickle of blood on his pounding temple. If he'd kept his mouth shut back in Germany, listened to her diagnosis and parked his own butt in the infirmary, she would have been safely dispensing diagnoses and prescriptions.
Way to go, hotshot.
A couple of military cops eased into sight in their blue Ford Bronco—too damned far across the shadowy tarmac to be of any help as they drove away.
Tanner kicked aside the chalks and cleared the engine covers. Quinn trailed them inside the plane, up the stairwell, Tanner into the left seat, Kathleen into the copilot's seat.
Quinn chose the instructor's seat behind her. "Make it fast. No more stall tactics."
Tanner snagged the emergency checklist from a hook beside him, a five-step start-up, the fastest way to move the aircraft if an emergency arose. This certainly qualified.
The stars and runway lights illuminated miles of concrete, stretches of empty desert and a dried-up lake bed. He flipped switches before he gripped the throttle, dumping gas into the engines.
How damned ironic. He sat in the aircraft commander's seat, a wide-open runway and endless sky outside his windscreen. Two weeks ago he would have given anything for that crew position, to hold the stick in his hand and fly his plane again.
Now he would sell his soul to be anywhere else.
He increased the throttle until the engines caught. The C-17 roared to life, rolled down the tarmac toward the runway. He wasn't going down without a fight. With a flick of the hand, Tanner turned the wing flaps to signal to the security police the plane was being hijacked, not just stolen.
Then the standoff would begin.
Tanner taxied as slowly as he dared until the SPs screamed across the runway, squealing to a stop and blocking the plane. Not out of the woods yet, but he would find a way to get himself between Kathleen and that gun again when the time came. He eased up on the throttle.
"Go!" Quinn shouted.
"I can't drive over them."
"Don't play dumb with me, Bennett. Take off on the lake bed."
"Can't do it." A weak lie, but he was playing for time. The plane could do that and a lot more. He had before, when taking off on a Sentavo field far rougher than the lake bed beside them.
Apparently Quinn knew, too. "Don't mess with me. Remember that disposable hostage. Now turn!"
Tanner accepted the inevitable for now and guided the plane into a turn. The engines roared, louder, vibrating through the plane. He would get Kathleen out of this, no matter what the cost.
A slight dip of the nose, and they sped off the runway. Tanner winced. Would another bump twitch Quinn's finger on that trigger?>He wore BDUs—a battle dress uniform of camo with a blue beret perched on his head. An M-16 slung over his shoulder. A 9 mm strapped to his hip.
And he looked all of twenty years old.
Quinn lowered his gun out of sight. "Take it slow and easy. Flash your ID and drive on through. I've got my jacket slung over this gun, pointed right at Captain O'Connell's pretty back. Don't even think about signaling Airman DuPree."
Three guns within reach and she couldn't do a thing. A hail of bullets could tear through all of them. She wouldn't even think about Tanner dying, his mother losing another child.