Under Fire (Elite Force #3)(75)
Author: Catherine Mann

“What are their orders?”

“They are going to intercept and attempt to turn them back toward the United States, forcing them down into water. Air traffic controllers tell us he’s having a helluva time flying the plane. He’s all over the place.”

“And if they don’t turn back?” he asked, even though he already knew. Hope was a crazy bastard that ignored reason.

“They were told to be prepared to shoot them down, but they are weapons tight right now.”

Weapons tight, not allowed to shoot yet. He didn’t like the notion “yet.” And he wasn’t feeling as good about the plan of an erratic pilot’s ability to crash-land in the ocean.

McCabe patted the sergeant on the back and headed aft to the team waiting in the cargo bay.

Barely contained fury welled inside him for coming back to the base. Anger at himself. Had he been so eager to push her away with both hands—so cry-ass scared of taking a chance with her—that he’d missed a warning sign that they were walking into a trap? He would not accept, could not accept, that anything would happen to her on his watch.

He paced the metal deck, then stopped and stared at a winch fixed to the aircraft. An alternate plan formed in his mind. An even crazier plan than the one he’d proposed first, and a plan he would never assign to anyone on his team.

But then he wasn’t asking them to carry it out.

This was his mission. His woman. No room for failure, because a world without Rachel…

Facing his team, Liam cleared his throat and his thoughts. Lining up his plan. Becoming one with the uniform as he’d intended since he was eleven years old, patting his mother’s hand while they watched old war movies. He would win this battle or die trying.

“Hey, did you ever see that movie where a special-ops guy is lowered from one airplane to another to save the president?”

Rocha stared at the winch and shook his head. “Yeah, and I thought it was bullshit Hollywood glitz. Besides, that was a different kind of plane than this. I don’t think that would have a chance of working unless the back ramp was down. You can’t just open the doors from the outside, and the props are way too close anyway.”

“Valid points”—which was why he had a team, to think through all angles—“but if the ramp is still down… If Sullivan didn’t close it after takeoff because he’s a fighter pilot, unfamiliar with the cargo plane… If we flew at just the right altitude above him so he can’t get a visual on us…”

Cuervo asked, “What makes you think that he just won’t crash the plane once the PJ boards?”

That part was easy. He’d had a wealth of training on getting inside a person’s head after all his time in therapy. And from the start, he’d had the general’s number—an intense narcissist. Once he was face-to-face with the guy, he knew just how to play the bastard. “I don’t believe that anything is more important to General Sullivan than General Sullivan. He won’t risk a crash landing. If he was on a suicide mission, he would have shot himself back in his office.”

Decision made, Liam charged up the deck to the communications sergeant. “Get me a patch to NORTHCOM. I need to get clearance for a change of plans.”

Chapter 19

For the millionth time, Rachel looked around the cockpit and toward the back of the plane for a way out. Although that seemed an unlikely occurrence.

Even if she knocked the general unconscious, grabbed his gun, or clawed his face until he bled to death, she was stuck in an airplane she couldn’t land. The back ramp was still open, but it was a long, long way down into the darkening sky. Panic had shifted into a dull numbness.

Bump. The cargo plane bounced, then settled.

Hell, the general could barely even fly this aircraft. Every few minutes he pulled his attention from the early-night sky to the instrument panel. The plane would lurch, drawing him back to the yoke. The general would curse the airplane again.

Bump.

Right on time.

“This airplane blows,” he shouted over the roar of wind through the back. “I don’t think they rigged it right.”

Sullivan looked down again, searching for something. The airplane jolted.

Bump.

He gripped the yoke tighter. “Autopilot? How’s the damn autopilot work?”

Like she would actually answer? Shivering, Rachel turned her head and looked out the window at the dim shadow of a fighter jet that had been trailing them just off the wing for the last thirty minutes. It stayed on her side of the plane, where the general couldn’t see. She wasn’t ready to surrender. She was willing to fight. But she feared the decision might be out of her hands.

How much longer until the fighter shot them down? The jet was there to shoot them down. She accepted that and wondered why Sullivan hadn’t considered it. Granted, he didn’t seem to be thinking all that clearly.

Bump. “Fuck!”

Hysterical laughter bubbled inside her. She clapped a hand over her mouth, but she couldn’t hold it back. It just flowed and flowed out of her until tears ran down her face, blurring the stars winking to life outside the windscreen. Starlight, star bright, first star I see tonight… She gasped for air. Okay, she was on her way to a major panic attack.

But what did that matter? She was about to die anyway. All her great intentions to fight her way out of this were just that. Intentions. She needed something with a lot more firepower.

It wasn’t as though Liam would come swooping in to save her. She couldn’t even leave him a message about how much she loved him and how deeply sorry she was for fighting with him earlier. How she wished she could go back and treasure up every minute they’d had together. How she wished she hadn’t wasted the past six months they could have spent together. He wouldn’t know any of that even if she could write it down, since paper and the rest of this plane would be at the bottom of the ocean very shortly.

Bump.

She considered just jumping out of her seat and making a mad dash toward the back after all. Maybe she could grab a parachute. She knew how to jump from a plane. Well, not with a parachute, but she’d been lowered on a cable with her dog countless times on search and rescue missions.

God, she’d had an amazing life, but she could have had more. She wanted more. The waste, the futility, clanked inside her again and again until the sound became an almost tangible part of the roaring wind.

Was her subconscious trying to tell her to go for the parachute anyway? Even if she wasn’t sure she could put it on right? If the general couldn’t find autopilot, he couldn’t chase her down in back. He might try to shoot her, but at least she would go down fighting.