Yeah. That’s not happening.
I don’t know how I’m supposed to get onto this plane with a six-foot-plus assassin and a sidecar’s worth of baggage, but I know one thing for sure. I’m not leaving him on the tarmac.
A bike surges up alongside us, too close, the rider grinning like this is the highlight of his week. He lunges and grabs the edge of the sidecar, hauling himself halfway in.
Great.
Now we’re doing this.
Alejandro snarls something in Spanish and they grapple, all elbows and knees and absolutely zero grace. The sidecar wobbles. I keep us straight by sheer spite.
“Can you not?” I yell. “I’m driving!”
“I’m trying,” Alejandro grunts, shoving the man’s face away as a fist swings wildly between them.
The biker lands a punch. Alejandro answers with two, then three, efficient and brutal.
“Incoming.” I warn, as casual as if warning we’re about to run a red light.
He grabs the man by the vest, hauls him up, and for one ridiculous second they lock eyes.
“Tu madre es una perra,” ?*Alejandro says growls, and dumps him out.
The biker hits the runway and rolls, tumbling directly into the path of another plane already accelerating for takeoff. There is no dramatic impact. No heroic sacrifice. Just physics doing whatphysics does.
Bodies lose. Planes win.
The Emirates jet finishes its turn and lines up, engines whining higher, angrier. It’s about to go.
“Saint,” Alejandro says, urgency cutting through the sarcasm, “we are running out of runway.”
“I know,” I snap, gunning the engine harder. “I can see the plane.”
Another bike surges up on my left. I lean into it without hesitation, shoulder, and steel meeting in a violent shriek as I ram him sideways. He loses balance, curses lost to the wind, and disappears in a tumble of chrome and bad decisions.
Then I do something insane.
I cut across the runway.
Hard turn. Full lean. The Harley fishtails, tires screaming as I bring us around in a brutal arc until the plane is no longer ahead of us.
It’s behind us.
Lined up. Engines spooling. A wall of sound and intent.
Alejandro goes very still in the sidecar.
The Emirates jet roars louder, deeper, the kind of noise you feel in your bones. It’s about to take the runway, and when it does, it will not care that we exist. In thirty seconds, it will be moving at a hundred and fifty miles an hour, and we will be a rounding error.
I roll the throttle and launch us forward.
We’re on the takeoff runway now, racing away from the plane that is absolutely going to catch us.
Alejandro looks back once, then forward again. “Saint,” he says carefully, like he’s trying not to spook a wild animal, “I would love to know what the plan is.”
“Get ready to jump.”
A look of disbelief makes his pause a beat.
