Virginia let Brandon switch control of the plane to his side. The moment he received the power, she was out of her seat, moving towards the fuselage.

Before she left the cockpit, Brandon called out, “Something on radar.”

Virginia returned.

“Must be a plane,” said Brandon.

Gunshots started up mid-plane.

“Shake them up,” said Virginia, putting an arm on each wall.

Brandon jerked the plane side to side for a moment. A crosswind almost took them sideways, but Brandon caught it. He was better than her at flying, she noted.

Brandon’s eyes checked the radar, which Virginia saw had sprinkles of Chad’s blood on it. It also made her pulse rise. Not because Chad was dead, but because she realized she could have been. She could have died. The fact that a bullet caught Chad through the head was pure luck. Nothing to do with her position in the cockpit. She’d been closer to the door.

Lightheaded, she considered.

This was the most fear she’d ever experienced on a mission. She shook her head, taking a breath. She didn’t need this.

“It’s a plane,” said Brandon.

“I didn’t think it was a dragon,” said Virginia.

Gunshots from the fuselage.

“Might as well be,” said Brandon. “Its flight path is frenetic.”

She squatted beside Brandon, smaller target for a stray bullet that might pass through the bar area. She watched the dot on the radar.

“Coming in fast,” said Brandon.

She heard his breathing quicken.

She intentionally slowed hers, slowed her heart.

She had to be ready for whoever this was.

“When did you last call the other terrorist group?”

“Texted them coordinates just before you came in the cockpit.”

A few beats.

Virginia was thinking.

“That couldn’t be them,” Brandon said, nodding to the radar. “They’re going to be at the airport.”

A few beats.

“Right?” asked Brandon.

Virginia didn’t know.

Reynolds’ was the means to get onto this plane.

This plane was means to get to the meeting with the other terrorist group. The other group had the man she was looking for. The man who had a link to Calvert. She’d thought, up until she learned from Brandon that he was texting coordinates and arrival time, that it was going to be a peaceful meeting.

Then she’d assumed, after Brandon’s information update, that the second group was planning on attacking this first group at the airport, or on the way to the meeting or at the meeting.

But now it seemed…

“Could it be?” she muttered.

This incoming plane could be the second group.

Or the CIA, but she knew there wasn’t any way CIA or USI could have gotten an aircraft to this location this fast. The second plane had to be a 747 or a 737—or something as big—because it was coming in hot.

She could hear its engines now, though she couldn’t see it, on their left side. Even over the rain and thunder.

“It’s them,” Virginia said. “It’s your group.”

“What do we do? What are they going to do?”

Virginia didn’t know what to do.

But she knew what they were going to do.

Jake heard the jet engines on their flank—felt them.

The exchange of gunfire ceased. Drug lords and bodyguards alike were looking out the small windows, through the dense rain. Silence among the residents of the fuselage pervaded as the mammoth plane came into view, into detail. Only rain, only lightning and thunder, only the engines beside them.

Breath was evaporated.

The men knew what was happening.

And then they went berserk.

Pulling out parachutes from the overhead bins, stumbling over themselves, engrossed in this new revelation, knowing their demise was near.

Jake stood, raised his gun.

Shot three of the bodyguards in the center aisle.

The others ducked behind seats.

“What’s going on?” Jake yelled, though he had an idea.

“Jake,” Virginia yelled, coming up behind him. “Parachutes!”

That’s when an RPG launcher sounded off from the plane across from them. A hole bored into the side of the plane. Immediately following, the tail end of the plane—the last thirty feet of it, tore away.

Surreal.

Jake and Virginia stood here, as an entire section of the plane ripped away, clean. Gone. Lightning flashed as the airship’s wreckage disappeared into the void of the dark night.