He had the satisfaction of seeing a flash of panic in Ayers’s cold eyes. “Vega, Jeffries, get the prisoner inside and lock him up! Park, sound the alarm! Kritsick, get me an RPG! I’ll shoot that thing out of the sky!”
Two of the guards yanked Ethan up. He fought as hard as he could, kicking, head-butting, foot-stomping. Another two guards were forced to join the fray just to hold him in place.
The plane was a black silhouette against the brilliant desert sky, but he could see now that it had a single pilot. Ayers drew a pistol and took careful aim. With a burst of strength, Ethan got one arm loose and lashed out, knocking the gun from Ayers’s hand. The shot went wild.
Another gunshot sounded, and one of the guards holding Ethan collapsed. As the grip of the other guards loosened in shock, Ethan broke free, snatched the gun from the downed guard’s holster, and fired at Ayers. Kritsick lunged for him as he did so, grabbing for his gun. Ethan knocked the man aside, but his hand was jostled and he missed the shot. The bullet ricocheted off the concrete.
The plane was coming in for a landing. Ethan bolted toward it.
“Ethan! Hurry!” The pilot’s voice was hard to hear over the roar of the engine, but he recognized it nonetheless.
It can’t be…
But it was. As Ethan reached the plane, he looked up, incredulous, into Destiny’s warm brown eyes.
Chapter 7
Destiny
Destiny had followed that strange inner conviction all the way to India, where it had become a directional pull. Ethan’s in trouble, it told her. That way.
If she was losing her mind anyway, she might as well be crazy in style. She’d rented a small private plane and started flying that way. She’d worried about crossing the border into Pakistan, but that wasn’t where her directional sense led her. Instead, it sent her farther into India, and away from cities, towns, and villages. The terrain got wilder and wilder, shifting from scrubby hills to forest to jungle. And then the pull shifted as well, from forward to downward.
Here, that inner sense told her. Ethan’s here.
And he was.
He was battered, bruised, and bloody. His uniform was torn and muddy, and he looked pale and exhausted. But he was alive.
She threw open the door and helped him scramble into the passenger seat. He slammed the door and turned around, firing his gun in rapid succession.
They were taking fire, too. What in the world was going on?
Well, she wasn’t going to waste time wondering. Destiny accelerated for a take-off. “Buckle up!”
Ethan fumbled to do so. When she took a quick glance at him, she saw that he wasn’t just distracted by providing covering fire; his left hand was bleeding. She snapped the restraint into place.
“Thanks, mudpuppy.”
“Any time, jar
head.”
The plane lifted off and began rapidly gaining altitude. Just a few seconds more, and they’d be out of range of gunfire…
“Evasive maneuvers!” Ethan yelled. “They’ve got an RPG!”
Adrenaline flooded her system as she swung the plane sharply around. Even a glancing strike from a rocket-propelled grenade would take down this little civilian aircraft. It was intended for fun, not for war.
A black streak of a missile barely missed the wing. She veered away. An instant later, the grenade exploded in midair in a burst of flame. The shockwave buffeted the tiny plane, knocking it off-course. She struggled to regain control.
“Veer left!” Ethan shouted.
Destiny tried, but the plane responded just a hair too slowly. The second grenade clipped the right wingtip, sending the plane into a spiral dive.
She couldn’t pull it up. Nothing seemed to be responding. Her heart pounding, she began to pray aloud as she wrestled with the controls.
A warm, strong palm pressed into her back. Calmly, Ethan said, “You’ve got this, Destiny. We’re out of range now. Just fly the plane.”