“Tower to S-2-Lone Star, permission to take off granted.”
I push forward on the throttle and lift into the air. I take a deep breath, because, again, I’m free. I follow behind, in the direction we’re supposed to go, but I don’t see them. The hair on the back of my neck stands on end, and I feel a sense of foreboding skitter up my skin.
“Lone Star, where did you go?” Hoots asks.
“I should be right behind you,” I answer, but I still don’t see them. In fact, I don’t see any sign of them.
A warning light flashes on my dash. Something’s wrong with the engine. Because we’re not birds, we’ve only invented technology that lets us pretend to be birds. Only that technology can’t work when the engine fails, and this engine is failing catastrophically.
“This is S-2-Lone Star requesting permission to return to base immediately. I have catastrophic engine failure,” I say into my coms as I do my best to steer my baby back toward the base.
I’m not going to make it. I’m too far away.
Fuck fuck fuck!
“Mayday! Mayday!” I call out into my coms. “I repeat, this is S-2-Lone Star. I have catastrophic engine failure. I’m going down. I repeat, mayday. Mayday!”
Can no one hear me? What is happening? The only thing I know is that if I can’t right this bird, I’m headed for a crash.
“Mayday! Mayday!” I repeat, and finally the radio crackles to life, and I think, Thank God. Help is coming.
“No one can hear you,” a familiar voice says over the radio.
“What?” I ask as a cold chill skids over every inch of my skin. I’m frozen to the core. No no no. This can’t be happening. I trusted him. He was supposed to be my friend.
“I’m sorry, Mack. It has to be this way,” Woody says, and it sounds like he really is sorry, but still. This can’t be happening.
“What way?” I ask. “I don’t understand, Wood. What’s happening?”
“They need you to get to the president,” he explains, and I know then I’m not coming back. My life was forfeit when I climbed in my plane today. I just didn’t know it. The decision had been taken out of my hands. No matter how well I fly, I’m going down.
“Why?” I demand. “Why are you doing this?”
“They have my wife and daughter,” he answers sadly. “I had to.”
And then the coms cut out again.
The thing about these new planes is there’s no pull switch or lever. Once the aircraft recognizes it can’t be salvaged, it will eject the pilot automatically. Fancy technology to save the life of the pilot, even if the eighty-million-dollar plane gets smashed to bits.
I realize about two seconds before it happens that we’ve reached that level of the game; there’s no coming back. The canopy flies off just before my seat hurtles me through the opening. The seat falls away, and my parachute opens. I watch my baby crumple into the mountainside and catch fire. A strangled sob erupting from my chest. I couldn’t hold it back if I wanted to.
By now, I’m so far out past enemy lines that it’s scary. Anyone with working knowledge of the F-35 Lightning and its operation systems could tamper with the aircraft and time it just right based on the flight plan I was given—the wrong flight plan—because if I had been on the right one, Cinco and Hoots would have seen my bird crash. They still might have, but who knows? At this point, I have no idea how far off my flight plan is from theirs. I only know now that I was given a different one.
I stumble as I come down on the rocky hillside that’s made up of dry brush and sheer rock. I lose my balance and come down hard on my side, the air is knocked out from my lungs, and I slide down the rocky terrain as I try to grab onto anything to slow down my momentum. All I do is slice up my hands as it cuts through my gloves.
I flip and tumble and then finally land, clipping my head on a rock face. I feel the blood from the cuts on my hands drip down the sleeve of my flight suit, and my head feels like it’s still bouncing around in my helmet like a pinball. My chest is tight, and it hurts to breathe. I’m sure I cracked some ribs on the way down the mountainside.
I look up and blink away the overly brightness of the sun, when the figure of a man steps into my view, blocking out the light like a solar eclipse. If I had any breath left in my lungs after the fall, it would have whooshed back out again, because I can’t help but feel like this man knows exactly who I am.
What am I thinking? He obviously does. This man was working with Woody to have me taken. I can’t believe he purposely sabotaged my airplane. The man opens his mouth and speaks, and my vision starts to go fuzzy and fade in and out.
“We’ve been waiting for you.”
And then it’s lights out.
Chapter Seventeen
Kyle
