Part 36 (1/2)

But there had to be a way.

Something sparked in her brain.

The micro-jet engines!

Groping with her right hand, she ran her finger over the electronic starter and pressed the b.u.t.ton.

An instant later she felt the surge of power from the four kerosene engines at her feet. The flying wing zoomed forward, then flipped, rolling, buffeted by the wind. She fought the controls. In her ears she could hear Flinders' m.u.f.fled screams coming through the helmet. With a great lurch, the wingpack seemed to stall in the air, then it wallowed, trying to stabilize its fall.

April regained control. She zoomed toward Skarda, using the hand controls to throttle up her speed, plunging down beneath his tumbling body.

But now he had his arms and legs outthrust, flattening out his profile against the wind to slow his descent. She saw him move his arm up and down, signaling that he'd seen her.

Manipulating the jets, she soared up alongside him, slowly maneuvering the wingpack closer to his position, matching his speed, until they were flying in tandem.

With a lunge, Skarda reached out and grabbed the top side of the port wing. Then he dragged himself toward the center above April, throwing his arms around her neck and hooking his feet under the trailing edge of the wing.

Feeding fuel into the engines, April grinned and headed for the ground.

___.

When the whirling blade buzzsawed through the cabin Tomilin leapt from his seat, diving for the protection of the built-in bar. The sound of tearing aluminum shrieked in his ears, drowning out Charbonnet's frantic yells.

Wind blasted through the cabin, the blasts snapping like gunshots, s.n.a.t.c.hing up papers and gla.s.sware and hurling them out the open wounds in the jet's skin.

Then the tail a.s.sembly cracked, splitting apart, and suddenly the aft of the plane was an open hole, screaming with wind. Tomilin knew the cabin wasn't pressurized at this height, so he wouldn't be sucked out into open air, but the fierce gale still dragged at him with the force of a tornado.

Hauling himself to his feet, he clutched at anything that was left intact, making his way to the c.o.c.kpit. With a lurch, he dumped himself into the copilot's chair and strapped himself in.

”We have to go back!” Charbonnet yelled over the wind.

”No!” Tomilin's face was set grim and hard.

”I can't control this plane! It's either we turn around or we die!”

For a few harsh seconds, Tomilin let his eyes close.

Then slowly he nodded. ”Do it.”

”The rudder's out,” Charbonnet explained, ”so I'm going to have to try to thrust vector the engine and force it to yaw around.”

But Tomilin wasn't listening.

His mind was already planning out his next move.

___.

Gulf of Mexico Candy Man glowered at the monitor, silently commanding it to submit to his will. He'd shut down three of the satellites, but now he needed the firing codes for the bird over the Black Sea.

And the cracking program was still running through billions of possibilities.

___.

Mount Tavrida Wrenching his head around, Skarda watched the big jet bank eastward in an erratic circle, its nose tilted earthward as it fought to overcome to pull of gravity, its anti-collision strobe light flas.h.i.+ng in pulsing white blinks. The wreckage of the Chinook still maintained its death grip on the aft of the jet.

The landing gear lowered as the s.p.a.ce between the Challenger and the landing strip narrowed.

He thought about the Stealth wedged in the porthole, sending out its message to Candy Man over and over.

Was it even still there after the crash?

___.

Gulf of Mexico Candy Man swore at the screen. In his left hand he had two Hershey bars sandwiched together.

Then a new window popped up: ”KEY FOUND.”

With a whoop he bit off a mouth-sized chunk of chocolate and typed in the code.

Mount Tavrida Skarda turned his head skyward. The high clouds had an odd look to them, suffused with an unnatural pinkish glow- Then a shaft of searingly bright red light lanced down from the sky.

Skarda grinned. His message had gotten through to Candy Man!

With an audible popping noise the hundred-thousand-watt laser beam found its target, slicing through the Chinook. Cut in half, the fuselage broke free of the aircraft, tumbling away into the darkness.

The beam bored through the clouds again, tracing a path along the starboard curve of the jet's flank.

___.

Trapped in his seat, Tomilin jerked his head around, staring in horror as a two-foot-in-diameter beam of red light carved an inexorable path toward the c.o.c.kpit with the sound of frying metal.

He barely had enough time to scream before a lightning bolt of pain shot through his nervous system and the beam sliced his left leg off at the hip, ripping through the control panel and the nose of the plane.

___.

Skarda watched in horrible fascination as the jet separated into two halves as if dissected by a giant scalpel, each section plummeting away toward the mountainside where they crashed and exploded in twin gouts of flame.

Again the huge beam lanced down, this time carving across the mountaintop and the fortress, splitting open a huge fissure that sliced through the ma.s.sive limestone walls like a knife.

Time seemed to stop.

Then, in the blink of an eye, the top of the mountain erupted in a roaring volcano of white heat, a t.i.tanic sheet of flame that instantly melted millions of tons of stone into liquid slag and sent it fountaining hundreds of feet straight up into the night sky, as if the gates of h.e.l.l itself had burst wide open. An eerie light flashed across the clouds, the eye-searing explosion turning night into day as the entire mountain vaporized in a matter of seconds until only a smoking crater was left on the plain far below.

A thought raced through Skarda's brain. The Atlanteans must have brought Thoth's Pillars to the fortress from Siwa! And the laser beam had set off their cores of orichalc.u.m!