Page 70 of Mile High Ruin

Now men are shooting at us.

Vadim pushes me behind the thick support beneath the aircraft door and turns his body toward the gunfire.

“What are you doing?” I grab his sleeve. “Get down.”

“Stay here.” He reaches beneath his jacket.

Of course he has a gun.

I should be shocked, but I’m rapidly running out of capacity for shock.

He checks the weapon with a smooth movement that tells me he has done this far too many times, then leans out just enough to look toward the perimeter.

Another shot rings out.

Vadim fires back. The sound is deafening at this distance.

I clamp one hand over my ear. “What the fuck is happening?”

He doesn’t answer.

“Vadim.”

“Later.”

A man comes stumbling out of the aircraft behind us.

Captain Hale.

For a moment I can’t understand why he’s loose. Then I realize someone must have removed the restraints during the evacuation or when security came aboard. His face is swollen from Vadim’s beating, blood dried beneath his nose, and he’s moving with the frantic desperation of an animal that has spotted an open cage.

He looks at the gunfire.

Then at Vadim.

Then at the terminal.

And he runs.

“Stop!” somebody shouts.

Hale doesn’t stop. He sprints across the open tarmac with his head down, apparently deciding that anywhere is safer than remaining near Vadim.

He makes it perhaps fifteen yards.

The first bullet catches him in the side. His body twists. For one terrible instant he remains upright, as though momentum is carrying him despite what has happened.

Then another shot hits him, and he goes down hard.

I stare.

Everything inside me goes silent.

The man who had his hand over my mouth less than an hour ago lies motionless beneath the white floodlights.

I expect relief, but I don’t feel it.

I don’t know what I feel.