At first I’m confused. My brain is still foggy from my ten minute nap.
Then realization slams into me like an out-of-control freight train. My heart starts beating like crazy, so much so that I can hear my blood rushing through my ears.
“Lance? Alex?? Grenade???”
I scurry out from beneath the couch and look over at Lance and the gang. They’re still at the table, arguing animatedly. Something about Lance cheating. I roll over to the couch on the other side of the cabin and peer underneath it. A similar looking rectangular device is attached to the bottom of it, with the same flashing numbers. 3:48… 3:47… 3:46…
I dash over to Lance and the gang and frantically shout, “Guys, I think we have a problem!”
Grenade blows more smoke rings into the air and grunts, “Yeah, we know. Lance is a no-good, lousy cheater.”
Lance bangs his ungloved fist on the table. “I told you, I don’t know how that ace of spades fell out of my sleeve!”
Alex, Lance, and Grenade suddenly start hollering at one another. River simply watches them in disbelief, like she can’t believe they would get this agitated over a silly game.
I throw my hands up and shout, “Will you all shut the hell up?! This is serious!”
Alex jumps out of his seat and rushes over to me.
“What is it, babe?” he asks, putting his arm around my waist. (Lance gives him the look of death.)
I take a deep breath and blurt out, “I think there’s a bomb on the plane.”
Everyone stares at me for a second or two before Grenade incredulously hollers, “A bomb?”
“Well, bombs. As in plural,” I clarify, doing my best not to freak the fuck out.
“What the hell are you talking about, Firecracker?” Lance says, throwing down his cards and standing up, nearly knocking over his chair in the process. “Where is this ‘bomb’?”
I run back over to the couch and get down on my knees. “It’s under here. Look!”
Lance, River, Alex, and Grenade all get down on the dusty floor with me and peek underneath the couch. The five of us stare at the blinking rectangular box for several tense seconds, at a loss for words.
Grenade finally breaks the silence by shouting, “Well holy shit, there’s a fucking bomb on the plane!”
“Bombs,” I say again, pointing to the other couch.
Grenade crawls over to the that couch and peers underneath it. He then staggers to his feet and shouts, “Fuck, fuck, FUCK!!!”
Krystal hollers from the cockpit, “What’s going on back there? Why you all keep hollering?!”
I thrust half my body into the cockpit and shout into her ear, “Well Krystal, we’re hollering because we have a BOMB ON THE PLANE!!!”
Krystal shoves me out of the way and bursts into the cabin. “There’s a motherfucking bomb on the motherfucking plane?! RUN FOR THE HILLS!!”
Krystal runs back and forth in the cabin, screaming her head off like a fucking lunatic.
“Everyone needs to fucking relax,” Grenade growls, bringing some semblance of order back to the plane. At least, it gets Krystal to stop running around. Although that could be because she ran out of breath. And she does keep whispering to herself, “A bomb… holy fucking shit, there’s a motherfucking bomb….”
Lance shocks everyone by chuckling. “You know, Grenade’s right. We shouldn’t be panicking. All we gotta do is remove the bombs and toss them out the hatch door. We’re flying over the jungle, it’s not like they’re going to land on someone’s house.”
Lance gets back down on his knees and reaches under the couch. Before Lance can grab the flashing explosive, though, Grenade seizes the back of his Kevlar vest and yanks him to his feet.
“Hey, what are you…” Lance starts to say, but Grenade cuts him off.
“Don’t touch the damn explosives! They’re probably rigged to detonate if you touch ‘em. They look just like the bombs we used to use in my black-ops days. Besides, I’ll bet you my bionic arm there are more bombs hidden throughout the plane.”
Grenade slowly rotates in a complete circle, his robotic eyeballs glowing ominously. When he makes a full rotation, he growls, “Damn, I was right. My infra-red vision just detected ten more bombs.”
“Ten more bombs?” Krystal cries frantically. “Where the fuck are they?!”
“Hidden in closets, under chairs, attached to the propellers and jet engine… they’re all over the goddamn place,” Grenade says, unable to hide the fear in his voice. When Grenade is unnerved, you know you’re screwed.
Krystal starts fanning herself. “Oh God, oh God, we are so dead…”
“No we’re not!” I shout, grabbing Krystal by her arm and dragging her back into the cockpit. “Just land the plane. We need to get off this flying death-trap and run as far as we can before it explodes.”
“Good idea,” Krystal huffs, plopping down in her seat and grabbing the controls. She jerks the controls forward, but nothing happens. We continue flying in a straight line.
I lean over Krystal’s shoulder and ask, “Uh, why aren’t we going down?”
“I don’t know!” Krystal cries, frantically jiggling the controls.
“Is the autopilot still on?” Lance asks, hovering behind me.
“Yes, but it should automatically kick off when I take over,” Krystal says in a panicked voice.
“Maybe it’s stuck,” Grenade grunts, barging into the crowded cockpit and inadvertently shoving Lance into the wall. “Try to turn it off manually.”
Krystal presses a few buttons, but nothing happens. We continue flying in a straight line, two miles above the Earth.
“Move out of the way,” Grenade snarls, pushing his way through to the control panel.
Krystal gets up out of her seat and Grenade plops down. We all watch as he pulls up a holographic image of the plane’s computer and waves his hands around, flipping through various screens.
“What are you doing?” Lance asks.
“Running a diagnostic test,” Grenade mumbles, continuing to flip through holographic computer screens. “I’ve never had problems with this plane before. Maybe there’s a wiring issue or…”
Grenade suddenly growls and pounds the control panel with his bionic fist, creating an indentation. “Damn it! The plane’s been hacked!”
“What the hell do you mean it’s been hacked?” Krystal asks.
“I mean it’s been fucking hacked,” Grenade growls, standing up. “Someone loaded a virus onto the plane’s computer. The plane has been programmed to continue flying in a straight line. We can’t land, we can’t fly lower, we can’t do jack shit! We’re stuck!”
We all suddenly delve into full-blown panic mode.
“Well what are we going to do?” I holler, backing into the cabin.
“Guys, we have less than two minutes before this plane explodes!” Lance cries, peeking under one of the couches.
“Wait, you mean we’re trapped?” River shouts. “I thought you guys had a plan! I would have been better off taking my chances with the cyborg freak!”
“Don’t be ridiculous. If you had stayed at the compound, you would be dead right now,” Alex says. “At least now you have a chance to…”
Alex trails off when he sees the rest of us freaking out.
“Well at least this way your death will be quick and painless,” he finally says.
“You’re not helping, Alex!” I snap.
“Everyone calm down, there’s still a way to get out of this alive,” Grenade says, storming his way to the rear of the plane. We all watch anxiously as he kneels down and props open a concealed trap door that is virtually undetectable with the naked eye. Grenade thrusts his hand into the trap door and pulls out a parachute. He tosses it over to me and growls, “Put that on. Now.”
I do as Grenade says and strap the pack on to my back. Grenade tosses a parachute to Lance, Krystal, and pulls one out for himself.
“You only have four?” Alex asks in a high-pitched voice.
“Relax, kid, we’re not gonna leave you up here to die,” Grenade says, buckling his parachute.
“Bummer,” Lance mutters. If I wasn’t in the midst of fearing for my life, I would punch him in the face.
“The parachutes should be strong enough to hold two people,” Grenade explains as he grabs some duct tape out of a steel cabinet.
“Should??” Alex says nervously. “You don’t sound too confident about that!”
“Boom Boom, wrap your arms around Alex,” Grenade barks, cutting him off. “I’m going to wrap some tape around the two of you so he doesn’t fly out of your arms.”
Alex turns around so the back of his head is up against my face. I wrap my arms around his waist and Grenade goes to work wrapping the duct tape around both of our bodies.
“Thankfully whoever booby-trapped my plane didn’t spend too much time looking for my parachutes,” Grenade says as rips the tape with his teeth. “They probably didn’t have time to look for them. They would have only had a narrow window of time to set up all these bombs and hack into the computer without any of us noticing. Must have happened while we were eating dinner earlier, or while we were down in the dungeon rescuing River.”
“Do you think Pitbull did this?” I ask.
“It’s possible, but that doesn’t make a whole helluva lot of sense,” Grenade says. “Think about it; if he knew our plane was packed with explosives, why not just detonate the bombs while we were flying away? The only reasonable answer is he didn’t know about the bombs. Someone did this to make it seem like an accident. They timed the bombs to explode shortly after take-off. That way our plane would go down in the middle of the jungle. It would look like nothing more than a tragic plane crash. Someone knew what we were up to… they knew we were going to sneak off in the middle of the night.”
“But how is that possible?” I ask. “We didn’t even know what we were going to do until just a few hours ago!”
“Guys, we can talk about this later!” Lance cries, peeking under the couch again. “We have 50 seconds!”
“Lance, grab River, I’m going to tape you two together,” Grenade growls.
Lance ignores Grenade and instead starts frantically looking around. “Wait, where’s my suitcase? I need to grab my suitcase. I left it on the plane in case I needed to…”
Lance trails off as he heads into the back of the cabin, pulling open cabinet drawers and opening closets.
“Who gives a crap about your fucking suitcase?!” Grenade explodes, the veins on his neck pulsating like crazy. “This plane is a ticking time bomb! Get your ass back over here!”
Lance rushes over with his suitcase in hand. “Okay, chill out. I just needed to grab this.”
Grenade yanks the suitcase out of Lance’s hands and pops it open. A bunch of needles and bags of drugs spill onto the floor.
“You brought your fucking drugs with you?!” I explode, shoving Lance in the chest.
Lance staggers back and stammers, “I… well… you see…”
He then does something that shocks me to no end. He actually starts to tear up.
“You guys don’t understand, I need them in order to function!” he says in a half-sob. “I won’t be any good to you without something to calm my nerves. I… what the fuck?!”
In one fluid motion, Grenade grabs Lance and lifts him up over his head. He then marches over to the hatch door and shouts, “Someone open this door… NOW!!”
River gulps and pulls it open. A frigid gust of wind blows inside, nearly knocking us all off our feet.
“Grenade, what are you doing?!!” I scream.
“I’m not about to drag Lance’s cracked-out ass around the goddamn jungle,” he snarls, stepping right up to the edge of the open door. He then pulls back his arms and hurls Lance out into the abyss.
“LANCE!!! NOOO!!” I scream, stumbling toward the door. Alex doesn’t move his feet, causing us both to fall over.
“Relax, he’s wearing a parachute,” Grenade grumbles. He then peeks out the door and says, “I hope it works, though. These are kind of old. Haven’t tried em out in a while.”
“WHAT?!” Krystal, River, Alex and I shout simultaneously.
“Don’t worry, it works,” Grenade says with a dismissive wave of his bionic hand. “His chute just opened up.”
I glance out the hatch door. Sure enough, a parachute just exploded out of Lance’s backpack. Lance sways back and forth in the gusting wind as he floats down toward the jungle canopy, like a leaf caught in the wind.
Grenade points outside and barks, “You all see that river down there?”
We all glance outside. A blue river snakes its way through the expanse of green, looking like a tiny serpent.
“Try to land there, so we can find each other.”
Grenade grabs River and shoves her up against Krystal.
“I want my own parachute,” Krystal says with her hands on her husky hips.
“Shut your fucking mouth and wrap your goddamn arms around River!” Grenade shrieks in Krystal’s face.
Krystal knows better than to talk back to Grenade when he’s super pissed. She bites her tongue and does exactly what he asks her to do. Grenade runs the tape around them three times before scooting them toward the door.
“Now jump!!”
“Alright, you ain’t gotta be all bossy,” Krystal says, shaking her head like the sassy black woman she is. “I know you’re stressed out and all, but… AHHHHH!!”
Grenade shoves Krystal in the back, sending her and River toppling out of the plane. Krystal’s piercing screams grew fainter and fainter with each passing second.
Greande glares at me and snarls, “Do you need a push, too?”
“No, we’re good,” I say as Alex and I awkwardly stumble over way to the hatch door. The wind is blowing so fiercely that it nearly rips my visor off my face.
“Here, hold on to these, Alex. We’re probably gonna need em.”
Grenade thrusts two machine guns into Alex’s hands. He then glances under the couch and shouts, “Fuck! Six seconds!! JUMP!!”
Alex and I take a deep breath and walk off the side of the plane. I immediately start screaming as we begin our freefalling descent toward Earth. Usually I’m calm and collected during traumatic, horrifying experiences, but I’ve never been a fan of leaping from high distances. The bitter cold wind slams into my body with such vicious force that it knocks all the air out of my lungs and nearly rips Alex from my arms. If it wasn’t for the tape holding us together, he probably would have flown away.
I gaze down to find the green canopy of the rainforest zooming toward us at an unfathomable speed. I glance back up to find Grenade in freefall, about 100 yards above us. Our plane continues zooming toward the horizon before suddenly erupting in a blinding fireball. A split-second later, the concussive force of the blast washes over us, knocking Alex and me onto our sides. Flaming shrapnel from the explosion whizzes past our heads.
I look up to see if Grenade survived the blast, as he was much closer to the explosion than we were. Thankfully he appears relatively unscathed as he continues his freefalling descent. I glance back down to find the treetops of the Amazon zooming toward us at an unsettling pace.
“Boom Boom, pull the ripcord!” Alex shouts. I barely hear him over the roaring wind.
“Good idea!” I shout as I yank the cord. A bright red parachute explodes out of my backpack and spirals into the sky. For a minute I’m afraid the parachute will float away, but then the cord grows taut and Alex and I are yanked upwards. The parachute eventually stops floating up and finally starts floating down.
“Shit, that was intense,” I gasp, gazing down at the gorgeous green scenery. Now that Alex and I are floating peacefully down to Earth without fear of being burned alive, I can enjoy the view.
“Looks like Grenade’s parachute is working, too,” Alex says.
I look up to find Grenade swaying in the wind as his orange parachute billows above him. I’m just about to look away when I
notice flames flickering across the top of our parachute.
“Oh fuck.”
“What’s wrong?” Alex says, glancing up. His face immediately turns pale and his mouth drops open in horror.
“Oh fuck!!”
“That’s what I said!” I shout hysterically.
World War Forever (Highway To Armageddon Book 2) Page 32
