36.
Reed
“Oh, hell,” I muttered as I mentally assessed the situation.
Veronika and Chase were captured.
Colin was out in York.
A plethora of gunmen were creeping up to our airplane.
And Sienna, who we’d come here to rescue, was nowhere in sight.
“Uhh, Reed?” Scott asked, nudging me out of my short mental break from reality. I wasn’t quite screaming in my own head, but close. This was a real damnation of a situation.
“Augustus,” I said, “blow up the tarmac at their feet. Non-lethally. They look like cops to me.”
“I can do that,” Augustus said, stirring out of his own open-mouthed surprise at our situation, “but then we’re not going to be able to roll to the runway.”
“One massive problem at a time, okay?” I turned my attention to Jamal. “I need eyes on Veronika and Chase.”
“Got ‘em,” Jamal said, and his screen flipped to an interior view of an office. There was a firing squad vibe to what we were seeing, Veronika and Chase standing there with their hands over their heads, guys with lots of guns pointing at the two of them. The only other things in frame were a desk next to the window and a potted plant.
Veronika was staring right at the camera, probably because she could hear me and knew we were watching. “Anytime, boss.” She didn’t even say “boss” sarcastically.
“Let me—” I started to say.
“I got this,” a soft voice said from behind me, and I glanced back to see Kat, her sleep mask up on her forehead.
“You—how?” Augustus asked.
Kat just pointed at the plant.
“That’s like a baby ficus,” Augustus said.
“You worry about your concrete and let me deal with this, okay?” Kat said, patting him on the shoulder. Then she closed her eyes.
There was no sound on the camera, but I could hear a loud CRACK! in my earpiece, corresponding to what was going on in the room where Veronika and Chase were being held. On the screen, we had a grainy view of the potted plant just shattering as every gunman in the room turned to look.
“Did you just—” Augustus said.
“Tarmac,” Kat said, concentrating. “Also—I ammmm GROOOOOT!”
The damned plant leapt out of the wreckage of the pot and attacked the nearest black-garbed tactical guy. It caught him full in the face and he ripped off a few rounds in the air out of sheer surprise. The plant seemed to stretch, limbs reaching out and grabbing the next nearest team member, dragging the two of them closer and smashing their heads together with a THUNK! so loud I heard it over the headset.
Veronika and Chase sprang into action on the screen, and I buried my instinct to say, “NON-LETHAL!” because what the hell was the point? Chase shot her lightsaber power out of her sleeve and cut the guns out of three of the twelve SWAT guys’ hands while Veronika fired plasma bursts at three more, rendering their weapons inoperable.
That still left four more, counting the two that Kat had, uh…treed? Bushed? I wasn’t sure what to call it.
Two of the remaining team members were all over the shrub-related incident that was afflicting their team members. The damned plant grabbed the guns out of their hands with vine extensions, and then whipped at them with the gun butts. Here they were, SWAT-looking guys in full black tactical gear, and a potted plant was strangling two of their number, had disarmed two more and was now smacking them in the helmets with their own weapons.
I could hear the chaos in the office. It was a hell of a thing.
“Augustus, you standing by?” I asked, trying to make sure the next thing I needed done was going to get done in time.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Augustus said, eyes closed. I guessed he was gripping at the tiny pieces of stone and rock in the tarmac, which—I was just guessing based on how my control of the winds went—was not the easiest of things.
“Colin,” I said, “I need you to find Sienna and get her the hell back here.” I waited a second. “Colin.” Scott looked right at me, concern rolling down his face like a falling curtain. “Fannon, report in.”
“That’s worrying,” Scott said.
“J.J.—” I started.
“Way ahead of you,” J.J. said, clipped. “I’m tapping into Jamal’s feed and putting it on my screen. I have nothing on Fannon, though.” He looked up at me. “He’s gone dark on comms. Signal lost.”
I swore under my breath, then looked back at Jamal’s screen. “Find him.” The gunmen were edging closer to the plane. Another few seconds and they’d be close enough that any attempt to blow up the tarmac under their feet might cause damage to the plane. “Augustus, take these guys now.”
“Yep,” Augustus said, and there was a moment of quiet.
Then it sounded a little like an earthquake outside. The plane shook lightly—and only lightly, thankfully—and then a whole lot of screams started flooding in through the hatchway.
“Tangos down,” Jamal said. He wasn’t exaggerating. The camera view of the tarmac had shown what looked like a swarm of mosquitoes launching out of the ground for a second, then every single guy with a gun hit the dirt. The tarmac seemed to be alive, ripping their weapons out of their hands and swallowing them. I even saw the asphalt reach into their holsters and take their sidearms, the weapons disappearing into the black tar and gravel like they’d been eaten whole.
He flipped the screen back to Chase and Veronika, who were just wrapping up with the last couple of guys. Veronika had guns in hand and was slinging a couple more over her shoulders. “You bringing us presents?” Augustus asked.
“I didn’t have time to stop off at Harrods,” she quipped, “and I’m guessing after this trip, I won’t be welcome there anymore. Thanks for that, by the way,” she said acidly. “This is all the tourist memorabilia you get from this trip.”
“We visited York, UK, and all I got was this lousy submachine gun,” Scott said.
Veronika popped out of the office, Chase hot on her tail, and a few seconds later they appeared in frame on the airstrip. “I appreciate the chaos you’ve created here,” Chase said, tightly, as they emerged, heading back for us, “but I gotta believe this is going to attract the wrong kind of attention.”
“They were here waiting for us,” I said. “We’ve already attracted the wrong kind of attention.”
“You think this was a setup?” Veronika asked, huffing as she ran. She and Chase were picking their way over the fallen, writhing SWAT guys.
“How else did they know we were coming?” I asked.
“If this is a trap, you’d think they’d have laid it better,” Augustus said.
“Yeah, like with coverage from snip—” Kat started to say.
A booming crack echoed outside so loudly that it seemed enter the plane like a man kicking a door down. Veronika staggered in her run, and Chase caught her right before she stumbled. A hazy energy field appeared on Chase’s right-hand side, like a shield between her and Veronika and the harm that was coming their way from the sniper. She picked up Veronika with her left arm and flat-out ran for the plane. Another crack echoed, and Chase faltered. She tossed Veronika unceremoniously up the ramp, and then backed up it double-time herself, another boom lashing our ears as she came inside and hit the button to raise the stairs and door.
“You okay?” I asked, rushing to pull down the shades on the plane. J.J. and Abby were doing the same on the opposite side, and Kat and Scott joined in, trying to hide our bodies from clear view while doing so. It went quickly thanks to meta speed, but I didn’t draw a breath until it was over.
“Fine-ish,” Chase said, breathing heavily when she saw I was done. A bloody streak was cut down the side of her head, a slice that looked like someone had knifed her. She saw me looking and said, “One of the sniper rounds. My refraction shield isn’t strong enough to stop something like that. It just pushed it a little off course.”
“If it hadn’t, your brains would be all over the pavement right now,” I said, and then turned my attention to Veronika, who was clutching her side and bleeding all over the carpet.
“Yeah, no, it’s cool,” she said, wincing, as we stood there. “You worry about Chase and her little cut to the head. I’m fine.” She pulled her hand back from clutching at the wound, which was squarely in the middle of her chest. “Looks like they missed the heart by maybe a quarter inch, based on the bleed pattern.” She grimaced. “A little to the left and this would be a lot worse.”
“Kat,” I said, but she was already there, hands on Veronika and working to heal her. A muffled shot rang out from outside, and there was a crack in the cockpit.
“The pilot,” Veronika said, pain turning to panic. “Reed, our escape—”
I was on it. I vaulted forward, lurching toward the front of the plane. I opened the door and—
The pilot was dead, his brains sprayed all over the place, a spiderweb of cracks in the center of the windshield. The co-pilot was just sitting there, mouth agape, like he might die of shock—
His head exploded a second later, spraying me with red and opening another massive hole in the cockpit window.
I slammed the cockpit door and hit the deck, barely breathing.
“What’s the word from the front of the plane?” Abby called. She had a strain to her voice.
I swallowed heavily. “The pilot and co-pilot are dead,” I said, the realization I’d just led two innocent men into their deaths not quite hitting me fully yet. Colin was missing. Veronika and Chase had been shot.
And we were trapped on a runway, still surrounded by enemies…with no sign of Sienna.