“You killed your own men?”
Technically, yes, Henri did kill
“No,” he said, staring the soldier in the eyes, “Tobias Krause killed them.”
Zahra squeezed her armrests as hard as she could. The B-29 shook violently as they zoomed down the underground runway. Zahra still couldn’t believe it! They had originally thought it was just an oversized loading ramp.
“What’s that up ahead?” Hammet asked.
“What do you mean, ‘what?’” Zahra asked, unable to see from her rear-facing seat. She tried to look over her shoulder, but all she saw was the back of Hammet’s shoulders and head.
“I don’t know,” Yana replied. “I can’t tell.”
“What is it?” Zahra asked, shouting as loud as she could.
“We don’t know!” Yana yelled back.
“Do we have headlights?” Hammet asked.
Yana snorted. “Again, another thing I don’t know!”
Zahra had no idea what the two of them were arguing about, so she focused on something else she was curious about.
“How fast are we going?” she asked.
“Around one hundred and — shit!” Yana shouted, screaming at the top of her lungs. “Hang on!”
They slammed into something hard, not that the B-29 felt any of it. Its girth handled it just fine. What it didn’t handle was having both its wings shorn off at the shoulders. The B-29 was now just a massive, metallic, frozen hotdog. It sailed into the air and dropped as gravity pulled them back down to ground level.
They hit the icy surface at full speed and skimmed across it like Olympic lugers for a considerably long distance. It didn’t last, though. Soon, it turned into a carnival ride from hell. The tail slid right, but the rest of the plane didn’t.
It rolled.
Zahra screamed until she couldn’t breathe, not that she could hear her own voice. The crunching and tearing of metal were loud enough to drown out everything else. She nearly blacked out from the excessive motion.
Then she blacked out from a blow to the head.
“Hello? Anyone?”
“Uh,” was all Zahra could reply with. “Uh…”
The other voice spoke again. “Zahra?” It was Hammet.
“Uh…” Zahra opened her eyes but quickly closed them. “My head.” Everything above her shoulders was killing her, and she felt blood seeping from a wound on her temple. Something had smacked her skull during their “landing.”
She was also upside down and wasn’t sure how long she’d been unconscious.
“Yana?” Hammet asked.
But there was no reply.
“Ya-na?” Zahra asked. She had to work hard just to get the syllables out.
Still no reply.
The next noises she heard were a series of grunts, followed by a bang. Hammet appeared in front of Zahra, carefully standing on what was once the ceiling of the cockpit. He was also bleeding from a cut on his chin.
She grinned. “You kinda look like a young, upside-down Harrison Ford with that.”
She reached out and gently touched his chin.
He rolled his eyes and helped her down from her inverted chair. He held her close, which was wonderful. It wasn’t that it was Hammet holding her closely; Zahra would have accepted the embrace from anyone right about now.
“Here. Help me with her.”
That reawakened Zahra’s sluggish brain a little. The prospect of Yana being seriously injured was like a sobering kick to the face. She blinked hard a few times and shook her head. Her vision cleared enough to see two of Yana. Both women sported blood in their blonde hair.
And she was out cold.
“Dammit,” Zahra said, sliding in next to her.
Hammet took Yana’s weight while Zahra worked the harness holding her aloft. Once the Russian was free, he repositioned her ragdoll form in his arms and laid her down. They knelt on either side of her. Zahra checked her head, and Hammet checked for a pulse.
“She’s alive,” he announced, relieved. “Took a nasty hit to the head.” Zahra looked up at him. He looked at her. Then his eyes darted up to her own head injury. “Yes, well, you know…”
The ground rumbled… again.
“What was that?” Zahra asked.
Hammet didn’t know either. He looked up as if staring through the cockpit floor. “Is that the mountain?”
Yana sat bolt upright, startling both her partners.
“Gah!” Zahra yelped, falling back on her ass. “Dammit, Yana. What the hell!”
The Russian’s eyes floated. She was still half out of it. She blinked and nearly vomited again. Once Yana was semi-coherent, it looked like her body realized how injured she was. She grabbed her head and winced.
“You probably have a concussion,” Hammet suggested.
“I do,” she replied. “A bad one. I will be useless for a few hours, maybe even the rest of the day.”
Zahra pushed herself back up onto her knees. “You sound okay, though.”
Yana shrugged. “I’ve had my share of head injuries. I know what to expect.”
