He dropped it, but there was no chink. Carpeting even here. The glass bubble of the Silex rolled up at him, a winking, bloodshot eyeball. The glossy eight-by-ten of Cathy in her crib appeared unbidden and Richards shuddered.
He lifted Donahue's dead weight by the hair and rummaged inside his blue flight jacket. The gun was there. He was about to drop Donahue's head back to the map table, but paused, and yanked it up even further. Donahue's mouth hung unhinged, an idiot leer. Blood dripped into it.
Richards wiped blood from one nostril and stared in.
There it was-tiny, very tiny. A glitter of mesh.
"Acknowledge E.T.A. C-one-niner-eight-four," the radio said.
"Hey, that's you!" Friedman called from across the hall. "Donahue-"
Richards limped into the passage. He felt very weak. Friedman looked up. "Will you tell Donahue to get off his butt and acknowledge-"
CHAPTER TWENTY
Richards shot him just above the upper lip. Teeth flew like a broken, savage necklace. Hair, blood, and brains splashed a Rorschach on the wall behind the chair, where a 3-D foldout girl was spreading eternal legs over a varnished mahogany bedpost.
There was a muffled exclamation from the pilot's compartment, and Holloway made a desperate, doomed lunge to shut the door. Richards noticed that he had a very small scar on his forehead, shaped like a question mark. It was the kind of scar a small, adventurous boy might get if he fell from a low branch while playing pilot.
He shot Holloway in the belly and Holloway made a great shocked noise: "Whoooo-OOO!" His feet flipped out from under him and he fell on his face.
Duninger was turned around in his chair, his face a slack moon. "Don't shoot me, huh?" he said. There was not enough wind in him to make it a statement.
"Here," Richards said kindly, and pulled the trigger. Something popped and flared with brief violence behind Duninger as he fell over.
Silence.
"Acknowledge E.T.A., C-one-niner-eight-four," the radio said.
Richards suddenly whooped and threw up a great glut of coffee and bile. The muscular contraction ripped his wound open further, implanting a great, throbbing pain in his side.
He limped to the controls, still dipping and sliding in endless, complex tandem. So many dials and controls.
Wouldn't they have a communications link constantly open on such an important flight? Surely.
"Acknowledge," Richards said conversationally.
"You got the Free-Vee on up there, C-one-niner-eight-four? We've been getting some garbled transmission. Everything okay?"
"Five-by," Richards said.
"Tell Duninger he owes me a beer," the voice said cryptically, and then there was only background static.
Otto was driving the bus.
Richards went back to finish his business.
MINUS 007 AND COUNTING
"Oh dear God," Amelia Williams moaned.
Richards looked down at himself casually. His entire right side, from ribc; to calf, was a bright and sparkling red.
"Who would have thought the old man had so much blood in him?" Richards
McCone suddenly dashed through into first class. He took in Richards at a glance. McCone's gun was out. He and Richards fired at the same time.
McCone disappeared through the canvas between first and second class. Richards sat down hard. He felt very tired. There was a large hole in his belly. He could see his intestines.
Amelia was screaming endlessly, her hands pulling her cheeks down into a plastic witch-face.
McCone came staggering back into first class. He was grinning. Half of his head appeared to be blown away, but he was grinning all the same.
He fired twice. The first bullet went over Richards's head. The second struck him just below the collarbone.
Richards fired again. McCone staggered around twice in an aimless kind of dipsy-doodle. The gun fell from his fingers. McCone appeared to be observing the heavy white styrofoam ceiling of the first class compartment, perhaps comparing it to his own in second class. He fell over. The smell of burned powder and burned flesh was clear and crisp, as distinctive as apples in a cider press.
Amelia continued to scream. Richards thought how remarkably healthy she sounded.
MINUS 006 AND COUNTING
Richards got up very slowly, holding his intestines in. It felt as if someone was lighting matches in his stomach.
He went slowly up the aisle, bent over, one hand to his midriff, as if bowing. He picked up the parachute with one hand and dragged it behind him. A loop of gray sausage escaped his fingers and he pushed it back in. It hurt to push it in. It vaguely felt as if he might be shitting himself.
"Guh," Amelia Williams was groaning. "Guh-Guh-Guh-God. Oh God. Oh dear God."
"Put this on," Richards said.
She continued to rock and moan, not hearing him. He dropped the parachute and slapped her. He could get no force into it. He balled his fist and punched her. She shut up. Her eyes stared at him dazedly.
"Put this on," he said again. "Like a packsack. You see how?"
She nodded. "I. Can't. Jump. Scared."
"We're going down. You have to jump."
"Can't."
"All right. Shoot you then."