Blackjack Dead or Alive (The Blackjack Series Book 3)

by Ben Bequer

  That’s when the screeching started. It was the definitive grinding of metal on metal, and it got louder in an oscillating pattern that seemed to encompass the fuselage. I waited for an explosion, fire, even electricity, but what I didn’t expect was a line of orange to form along the sides of the fuselage, turning an angry red, graduating to bright white as the harsh grinding became a smooth whirring.

  Without warning, the Globemaster split amidships a howling gust of wind blasting into our faces. Commander Hendley, Obliterate and several of the guards flew out of the gaping maw, screaming for their lives. The four guards in formation around me fell backward, two of them jumped away from certain death and into the to the rear of the C-17 as the nose dipped and the forward part of the plane was lost to us forever. Without the aft section, the nose, wings and engines would spiral out of control, foundering and falling apart. Not like we were going to fare much better. Freed of the rest of the plane, the tail caught the wind and began rolling back.

  Restrained in the chair, I had an amazing view of the sky as the new opening tilted upwards, and that’s when I saw him. He was flying something that looked like a cross between a Harley and an F-22, winged and fast, but with handlebars and a leather seat. This guy was letting the flying bike soar without him at the handlebars, because he was spraying the nose section of the plane with explosive arrows, drawing and firing them with a motion that was almost exactly like mine. He fired by feel, not aim, never bothering to look down “the sights.” His hair was black and short, with a long, hooded cape that fluttered back from his shoulders. He had my old facemask and goggles, exactly as I had worn them before joining the Impossibles. He used an English longbow, and while I couldn’t tell if he had put the time and energy into making it by hand, I would bet it was. Even his quiver was a replica of mine. Everything, his clothing, musculature, hell, even his boots were a perfect match.

  He was Blackjack.

  I didn’t see the explosions that rocked the other section of the plane, because the tail twisted suddenly and went into a spin. The four guards were clinging to the tail section in various places; one of them had fallen almost all the way to the rear doors. Their screams echoed against the inside, even as air whipped in through metal tube and drowned it out. I was still seated facing forward and as the spinning grew faster, I felt my organs start to float inside my body.

  “Get me out of here,” I shouted, straining against the chair and the manacles. I was expecting nothing, and was surprised when I felt a little give. Nothing close to being free, but as I pondered it, I realized I didn’t feel nearly as foggy.

  It was the damage to the plane. Whatever powered the chair had been hooked up to the plane. Who’d have thought there’d be a benefit to it being sawed in half? I looked back to the guards, hoping they were coming to free me but they had their own problems. At this altitude, the air was too lightly oxygenated, and only one of them had managed to put on a helmet. The others were in varying stages of apoxia, and the nearest to me looked like he would pass out soon.

  I looked down at the metal chair between my legs and had an idea. Reaching back to gain as much momentum as possible, I banged the manacle down between my thighs as hard as I could. The metal bent and scraped. I screamed and did it again, channeling all my remaining power into the blow and noticed a huge ding indented on the manacles.

  One of the guards looked at me, suddenly more scared at the prospect of Blackjack freeing himself than of the tumbling fall to our inevitable deaths. He drew an energy pistol and fired at me, his shot flying wide.

  I banged the manacles again and again, fighting the nausea and disorientation. The wild spinning of the tail section and the waning effects of the transcranial magnetic stimulator made it difficult to put what little strength I could muster into each blow. Either I was too weak, or the manacles were made of some sort of God-metal, because I was only scratching the surface and leaving a few dents in the hard material. The chair, though, was about to fall apart.

  The guard fired again, this time belting me across the face, the energy bolt hitting me with such force that it almost tore me from the chair. I swung down once more, splitting the underlying structure of the chair, and freeing it from the rest of the plane. I was still strapped to it, but the chair was now like a vestigial tail of mangled metal trailing behind me. The plane was level enough for me to stand, and I saw the guards had taken my escape as impetus to move into a loose formation, though only the lone hero had his weapon drawn.

  Another energy blast flew past and I charged the guard, slapping the weapon out of his hands. He screamed, reaching for his partner’s weapon. The other guard was in shock, paralyzed, and did nothing as the pistol was torn from its holster.

  I grabbed the guard’s arm and squeezed through the armor, crushing the ulna and radius, and twisting his lower arm into a new joint that I invented halfway between the wrist and elbow. He screamed and dropped the weapon. I reached for it, letting go of the guard, but a sudden lurch in the tail section sent me flying off into the backside of the airframe. The pistol was carried by the same forces, but it bounced off the metal walls, careening farther toward the closed ramp.

  I was pinned against what had been the interior roof of the plane, held by the wild centrifugal forces of the spinning tail. I looked up and realized the tail had dropped butt towards the ground, rotating as it went, pushing me against the sides. Next to me was another guard, also paralyzed in fear.

  “Get me off of here,” I shouted, but I could barely hear myself within my head, much less hope that the guard could hear me above the howling winds. I was going to add, had I been able to get the guard to hear me, “And I can get us all out of this,” but the truth was that I had no idea what to do. I could always rip the tail rudders off the frame and flap them all the way down.

  It struck me at that moment that all my struggling, all my attempts to escape were without purpose. I was going to crash into the ground from high altitude, which at terminal velocity meant impacting at almost a hundred-fifty miles an hour. Even if I had been in peak condition, even if I wasn’t a walking surgical experiment threatening to fall apart at any moment, that kind of blow would probably be too much for me. For all my super powers and abilities, my brain would slam into the inside of my skull and turn to jelly.

  I wasn’t going to make it.

  There was no point fighting it, to try to save the others or myself. The ground was fast rising to meet us, and end all arguments. No one would care how many times I had saved the world, or whether Apogee had any feelings for me. The issue of what to do with Blackjack would be settled once and for all, sparing everyone the dirty business. Maybe that was better for everyone. Apogee cared for me, sure, but she had loved Pulsewave. She was torn by the idea of being with a sonofabitch of my caliber, when she was so loved around the world. The woman had her reputation to think about, after all.

  Superdynamic had saved my life, shown some care in it as well, devising new technologies to do the unthinkable, but he was a paragon of goodness. He would mourn my death, but he’d also see it as a blessing in disguise, ridding himself of me so he could keep his hands clean.

  Few others would care. Moe would be devastated, he would feel responsible. Serpentis would laugh, knowing what I had ahead of me the whole time, warning me of it repeatedly, yet knowing I was too stupid to wander off the obvious path towards my destruction. Delphi might shrug at my passing. He might not even register an emotion. Black Razor would confuse me with someone else, his emotions hard and fast, but always skewed by his insanity.

  That was it. Nobody else would mourn my passing, or even mind that I was gone. Part of me wondered if this weren’t the part of the plan, if Warspite wasn’t out there with my doppelganger catching the fallen crew midair while the poor saps trapped in here with me sacrificed themselves to make sure the boogeyman met his end. It made sense. In the end, I was too unpredictable, a misshapen cog that didn’t fit into the machine.

  The guard that shot me ca
ught my eye. He was past panic, cradling his broken arm, the shock of impending death draining his face of color, his mouth open in a soundless scream. We locked eyes, and all of my conspiracy theories emptied into nothing. If the government wanted me dead, they would have remotely flown the plane into a volcano or shot me into space and nuked me, something straightforward. There was only one being I knew of who would do something this insanely intricate.

  Mr. Haha.

  He was still out there, with his schemes and machinations. He fetishized the idea of me being a spokesperson for his stupid plan, his end-goal to show the world how useless supers were, how we were ultimately the real enemy, whether hero or villain. I had never been on board with his vision, because it’s insane, and Haha lacked a sense of morality or remorse to ground him. He couldn’t get me, so the sonofabitch found some patsy with a passing similarity, pumped him full of steroids, taught him my moves and sent him to kill me. That was Haha, the more superficial, the better.

  One of the other guards was reaching for something, fighting the forces pressing us against the airframe to grab at a bunch of backpacks that lay in a row just a dozen paces from him. It was an impossible feat, considering the physics of our fall and the heavy winds, but he was still trying, locked in a struggle that he was never going to win. And what the hell for? What could he possibly have in-?

  They weren’t backpacks – they were parachutes.

  There were only four of them. The rack on the opposite side of the plane, which had held more, had broken. Those other parachutes were nowhere to be found, probably falling unopened into whatever lay below us. I had a way out. I could grab one of those chutes and land safely. I only had to cross the width of the plane, about fifteen feet, using the gratings on the deck flooring to guide my way, to keep me from bouncing about. But I had to want it, I had to want to live, more than that cold feeling that was climbing up my spine, a desire to sit here and let the ground swallow me whole and end everything once and for all.

  Because surviving didn’t mean escaping, did it? It meant going back to the same lot that was only interested in ridding themselves of me. They would probably blame the whole thing on me, tacking the deaths of the crew, the supers, and the other guards onto my long list of crimes.

  The manacles added to my apathy. Not the crushing wave of exhausted despair I had felt sitting in the chair, but still there nagging me. The transcranial magnetic stimulation kept my strength at bay by eroding my will to fight, to survive.

  I had to want it, more than anything in the world, because sitting down and letting the end come, was looking more and more inviting. I had to want to live, and for that I needed a reason. Something to crystalize my mind upon that would give me the will to live.

  At first I thought of Apogee, the shape of her face, the fall of her hair, the soft touch of her lips, but it wasn’t enough. She had let me go down, when I had been tried for the events of the battle of Hashima, and once again, she had let them take me. The woman had feelings for me, but there were boundaries that she created, a box that she put me in, and nothing I could do would change that. Returning my affections wasn’t enough, it wasn’t nearly enough, and neither was stopping Haha. But there was one thing that gnawed at the back of my mind.

  Ironically enough, I was tired. Tired of being treated like an inconvenience, tired of the looks and the whispers, and most of all, I was sick to death of people acting like the only thing that mattered were the crimes I had committed. I had to set the record straight. I wanted them know that I had saved everything, twice, that without me the world would have fallen to ruin. I wanted them to say it, to acknowledge it.

  I wanted a reckoning.

  Twisting my arms away from each other with all my might, I screamed and tugged, tears streaming down my face, hot air rushing into my roaring mouth, blood seeping down my wrists, and the manacles snapped, the pieces falling away to be swept out of the plane.

  The guard that had been reaching for the chute stared at me, bewildered by my feat. I reached down and dug my fingers into the metal of the flooring, pulling myself toward him slowly. My fingers tore into the superstructure, keeping me relatively steady despite my legs flailing behind me. I grabbed the metal, feeling it give under my grasp like soft mud, and in a few brief moments, I was up to the parachutes. I tore one out of the straps that held it and looped an arm through the first strap.

  I intended to hurl myself out of the open end of the flailing tail and open the chute as low to the ground as possible, hoping Blackjack 2.0 would miss me. Superdynamic said my new bones were better and I guess it was time to test the theory. Once I landed, I would figure the rest out. I always did, but for now, survival was the name of the game.

  One of the guards reached for me, gesturing for the chute and I smiled, wondering if he was for real. He was talking to me from behind his mask, but the high-pitched wind that soared inside the structure of the plane made it impossible for me to hear anything he was saying, even though we were only a few feet from each other.

  I couldn’t turn away from the terror in his expression. He was a black guy; maybe in his early thirties, probably married and with a few kids, and when I looked at him, I saw Pulsewave. I had killed him on the US Bank Tower in Los Angeles, some two years ago, firing an explosive arrow that had sent him reeling off the side and eighty stories to his death. He had left a widow and children, and without even realizing it, I was helping the guard don the parachute. He was pinned to the side, so that I had to manhandle it on to him, but without the manacles it was nothing for me to stand him up as he worked his arms through the straps and clipped the buckles. I was about to pick him up when he put a hand on my shoulder. I looked at him and he smiled, mouthing, “Thank you.”

  I threw him out of the plane and he was gone.

  The guard next to him, the one that shot me, was gaping desperately my way, still cradling his broken arm. There was little mercy in my heart for him, and the searing pain in my face was a convincing reminder of what this young, apparently stupid man felt for me. Besides, I still needed a chute.

  Looking across the deck, I saw the other two guards also gazing at me. I tore two parachutes from their restraints and made my way towards them. I was halfway across when I realized one of them was making furious hand gestures to me, pointing at the other guard, the one with the broken arm that had shot at me. I reached them and handed them their chutes. One guard took it, and started pulling it on, but the other refused, pushing it back at me and pointing at the man with the broken arm.

  “You’re kidding,” I yelled, but I knew he couldn’t hear me. I didn’t have time to argue with him, didn’t have time for any kind of delay, but Jeff’s words hit me, “Did you, or did you not kill Pulsewave?” I sneered, wanting to punch the chute through the guard’s armored chest, but instead I pressed it hard into him and put my face up against his clear plastic mask.

  “I will, okay,” I said. “I will.”

  I let go and moved back to the last guard. Behind me, the other guy climbed toward the open end of the plane using the chair well for handholds. He had only a dozen feet to go before he could throw himself out of the open end. The gestures guy was watching me, making sure I complied. I grabbed the last chute and went to the guy with the broken arm.

  “I’m sorry,” he mouthed, and I just stared at him, trying to avoid looking past him at the gaping maw in the C-17’s midsection that led to safety. Finally, I nodded and handed him the chute. I helped him thread his broken arm into the arm strap and threw him out the plane.

  I looked back at the last guard, expecting him to be well on his way out of the plane, and caught him smiling at me. Instead of leaving, he motioned me closer. I wasn't sure what he meant. He waggled a finger between us; thumb and pinky finger extended like a surfer, and gestured to the parachute in his arms. Then he held two fingers. He meant for both of us to use it.

  I didn’t know how much longer we had, so I used my strength to throw myself across the gap between us, crash
ing into the metal frame next to him. I helped steady him as I had his companions, but instead of putting the parachute on himself, he put it on me. We wrapped our arms around each other, my fingers digging into his armor for grip, and I powered us out of the falling tail section with my legs.

  The wind ripped at us like nothing we had experienced inside the plane. That was a mild gust compared to the roaring that howled at my ears, a whine so loud I thought I would never be free of it. I made the mistake of opening my mouth a crack, which sent my lips fluttering back against my face as we spun down to the ground. I could finally see where we were, and how high, though it was hard to estimate without an altimeter.

  I struggled to stabilize our fall as the blue waters raced to meet us. I was the guy with the chute, so in theory, I had to face the ground, my hands and legs spread wide with the guard holding on to me, but I was afraid to lose my hold on the guy. I was his only lifeline.

  We rotated several times, starting to lose control. He tried opening his arms, but he was neither big enough, nor strong enough to halt our turning. In one of our spins, I saw a series of three small explosions above us. These were too far from the original split of the plane to be secondary explosions, and the tail section was only a few hundred feet from us, falling a bit slower than we were.

  Tearing out of the nearest of the explosions was Blackjack 2.0 on his skybike, diving as he nocked an arrow and readied to take us out. He was thorough, this guy, trailing the falling wreckage to ensure nobody survived. I don’t know if he recognized me, or if I was another target to be executed as it left the plane.

  My guard saw it as well, drawing his pistol and trying to aim a shot, but we were totally out of control. Blackjack 2.0 was angled above us, so I rotated us in midair, my chest towards the ground, the guard beneath me and facing our enemy. I spread my arms and legs wide to steady us, and given a stable platform, he opened fire.