He could picture Finn at the back of the little plane, looking up sharply at what the pilots were saying. Putting it together, just like that.
For the longest time nothing happened. The pilots were still talking, looking from each other to the vehicles. If Finn was asking them to take off again, it was in vain. No way could the jet get up to speed in the distance available. Even the taxilane was blocked now.
Travis guessed that a minute had passed since the plane had stopped turning. Maybe it’d been longer.
Then both pilots looked behind them into the cabin and flinched at something. They tore their headsets off and came up out of their seats. In almost the same instant, Travis saw smoke begin to curl into the cockpit along the ceiling.
“What the hell?” Garner said. “Is he committing suicide?”
And then Travis understood. “Oh shit.”
Half a second later the plane’s door opened. It started to ease down on its friction-hinges, and then the pilots pushed it violently from the inside, and climbed out past it.
Travis was already running. He’d shoved open the door of the mechanical room. He was sprinting as hard as he could over the tarmac, MP7 in hand. The pilots saw him coming and froze for a second, their eyes on the gun. Then they broke to the left, getting the hell away from both Travis and the plane.
The smoke was rolling out from under the top of the doorway, thick and black. The door had fallen fully open by now, its stair steps resting level. Travis could see the light of flames playing over the aircraft’s interior.
He covered the last few yards and vaulted up and over the stairs. Tucked in his arms, ducked and landed on his feet inside the plane, his shoulder slamming against the opposite sidewall.
Everything aft of the cockpit was burning. Travis saw broken liquor bottles everywhere. The fire had spread from their spilled contents up the sides of the leather seats, igniting the foam within. The smoke was thickening by the second.
Finn wasn’t inside. Travis hadn’t expected him to be. All that was there was what Travis had expected.
The iris. Hovering by itself, detached, just shy of the cabin’s back wall ten or twelve feet away. Through the smoke, Travis could see nothing beyond the iris but harsh sunlight, exactly the way it shone in the present Arica. Finn had already gone through.
How long had the iris been open?
If Finn had detached it right after the plane stopped its turn, the thing could contract shut any second now.
What would happen if a person were halfway through the opening when it closed? Something told Travis the iris didn’t have the kind of safety features found in elevator doors.
He lunged forward. Into the smoke. Past the flames. Threw his arms ahead of him, the MP7 still in his right hand, and dived.
He passed through the open circle into bright light. He felt the iris’s edges draw sharply inward and slam against one of his shins, and then he was through, both feet clearing the margin. He saw the ground coming up beneath him—not the runway blacktop that’d been there in the present, but a gridwork of paver stones. He kept hold of the gun with one hand, and threw the other downward to break his fall. He hit hard, took half the impact with his hand, then tucked and rolled to let his shoulder take the rest. The move wasn’t graceful, but it worked. He ended up on his back, the MP7 slamming hard onto the pavers but not discharging. Still gripping it, he pitched himself sideways and got up into a crouch, eyes everywhere for any sign of Finn.
But he couldn’t see anything. The air was thick with black smoke from the just-closed iris. He could make out low, boxy shapes here and there, ten to twenty feet away in several directions. Waist high, they caught the wind and made it swirl, trapping and churning the smoke.
Travis took a step and heard his foot kick something tiny and metallic. It skipped away over the pavers before he could get a look at it, but he knew by the sound what it was: a bullet cartridge. He glanced down and saw two more beneath him. He stooped and picked one up. Thirty-eight caliber. He pictured Finn, sometime in the last ninety seconds, fumbling rounds into a revolver on this very spot.
He scanned his surroundings again. Still no sign of Finn, but the smoke was already thinner. The box shapes were resolving. He could see now that they were made of concrete, and were open on top. They were half filled with dirt—planter boxes of some kind, but there was nothing growing in them.