The guards push them quickly up the plane steps and panic rises, barbed and scalding on my skin.
“Sam, we need to go right now,” I say and grab her strong bicep. “Torres’s guys are going to get away!”
“No, we have to wait,” Sam replies, ignoring my firming grip and watching as Mom and Dad are forced farther up the plane steps. “Shit. Gavin, where are you?”
“I’m here. I’m pulling into the airport right now,” the voice answers back. My eyes are no longer locked on my parents. They are fixed on the armed kidnappers at the bottom of the plane’s steps. No, no, no, my mind is screaming as I wait for the inevitable to happen. Every muscle in my body ignites as I watch the guards’ heads whip around, turning toward the sound of the approaching SUV. I open my mouth to warn Sam but before I can formulate a single word, they open fire.
Bang. Bang. Bang. The sound of squealing tires is drowned out by a steady stream of gunfire.
The Black Angels on the ground immediately pop up from their hiding spots. “Baje al suelo,” they scream in Spanish. Get down on the ground. The video bounces violently as they sprint toward the jet.
The staccato hammer from the kidnappers’ automatic machine guns answers their commands.
“Shit, where are they? Where are they?” Sam yells, standing up from her chair and searching for my parents on the monitors. The view of the plane, my parents, and the kidnappers wildly rises and falls as the Black Angels on the ground duck for cover. Sam grabs the microphone and with a shaking voice demands, “Where’s my god damn eye in the sky, Todd?”
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.
“Man down, man down,” a voice cries out from somewhere in Kentucky. My eyes dart from one monitor to the next. Who’s down? Who’s down? One of the helmet cameras is pointed sideways on the ground; its only view is of a few stands of grass rising defiantly out of the cracked asphalt. I wait for the camera, for his body to move. It doesn’t.
“I told you!” I scream, taking a step toward the monitors, but Sam pushes me away.
“Shit,” Sam says, raising her outstretched fingers to her forehead. She regains control and turns on the microphone. “Gavin, where are you?”
“I’m chasing them but the plane is already on the runway,” the voice answers back.
“Well, STOP them!” Sam roars into the microphone before throwing it down onto the steel table, the clash of metal on metal shattering my spine.
Oh God, please no, my mind whispers, my head inflamed, as I watch the SUV race past the two injured Black Angels and toward the tarmac. It turns wildly onto the runway and speeds after the Gulfstream.
“Go, Gavin, go,” Thomas’s voice breaks in over our monitors. “Shoot out the wheels.”
Bang. Bang. Bang.
The Black Angel in the passenger seat of the speeding SUV opens fire, trying to hit the wheels of the Gulfstream. But the plane is unmoved.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
The Black Angel shoots again but the jet only picks up speed, its lights growing more distant.
“Come on, Gavin. Go. Cut him off!” Sam screams into the microphone but it’s too late. There’s no way he can match the Gulfstream’s speed.
“Shit,” Cooper says under his breath. My knees begin to buckle and a million pins prick my skin. We watch in helpless silence as the Gulfstream gains speed and momentum. The monitor with our faltering eye-in-the-sky visual finally flickers on in time to see the Gulfstream’s nose lift into the air and escape into a starless sky.
TWENTY-ONE
My muscles are sore from leaning against the gun range’s cold, concrete walls, and the adrenaline that kept me going over the last few hours is slowly seeping from my chilling blood. But I don’t move. I physically can’t get off this floor. I stare straight ahead, each breath more shallow and excruciating than the last. A shiver pricks at the lower part of my back. My sore arm reaches in what feels like slow motion for the sweatshirt in front of me. I pull it over my head, using it as a buffer between my back and this seemingly impenetrable steel-and-concrete fortress. Much better.
I can hear Sam and Cooper in the situation room on the phone with CORE. They won’t let me talk to anyone. They don’t want to hear any of my ideas. They didn’t listen to me the first time and now a Black Angel is dead and my parents are handcuffed at thirty thousand feet somewhere over Middle America. After my tenth strategically sound recommendation, Sam reminded me that I’m not a Black Angel agent yet and as much as I love her, I kind of wanted to punch her in her cute little button nose. So I’ve shut down. I’ve sat with my legs pulled to my chest for the last half hour and haven’t spoken a word.
Luke walks through the open doorway and into the dimly lit gun range, steam rising from the cup in his hand. He offers it to me.
“Tea,” he says as I accept it and stare into the hot caramel liquid. “Splash of cream. Four Splendas.”