Blackjack Dead or Alive (The Blackjack Series Book 3) (4 page)

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, crashing 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.

The guy was a marksman, hitting the bike with his first volley of shots, despite falling with his back to the ground, the speed of our descent, and the distance between us. I had my head rocked back, watching this all unfold, as the guard continued firing, emptying the entire energy pack. The metal frame of the bike erupted with each shot, until the fuel reservoir caught a shot and the whole thing exploded.

But not before Blackjack fired a special tipped arrow.

I tried to use my arms to maneuver out of the way, my eyes wide in fear as the missile arched toward us. My thoughts were filled with wonder, at the strength he must’ve had to power an arrow through these currents with the velocity to reach us. The arrow was wide, but it was never meant to hit us. I wrapped the guard up as the arrow closed within a foot of us, and just before it exploded, I recognized the incendiary tipped arrowhead as my own design. Gouts of flame engulfed us, tearing into my clothing and into the guard’s armor, and while we fell through it, flaring laces of the propellant clung to us.

We were on fire and the guard had caught the worst of it by virtue of being beneath me. I patted at his burning armor, but the flames did their damage, his screams audible despite the howling wind. I looked back to see if my new namesake was following us, whether he had salvaged his bike, or if he had rocket boots, but he was nowhere in sight.

I looked down and saw the ocean was an expansive, churning slab. I had to deploy the chute and hope it hadn’t burned too badly. The guard seized in my grasp, his body twitching from the pain of the burns, the smell of burnt meat was faint in my nose despite the rushing winds clawing at every breath. He jerked again, violently enough that he almost shook my grip, tensed once more and was still.

I reached for my shoulder strap, keeping the dead guard held tight with my left hand, and pulled the chute. Nothing happened at first, and I realized that it must’ve burned up. Yet I felt the bulk on my back, something had to be there. If the flames had burned through the backpack that contained the chute, then some of it would have trailed out, burned as well, but the pack felt the same. I dug over my shoulder, ripping at the polyester top cover, feeling some charring of the fabric under my fingers. Once I had ripped enough of the pack open, its contents deployed, spilling out into an open parachute.

The gut-churning pull as the chute caught air was a relief, despite a sudden jerk that felt like my head was travelling through my hips. The guard’s body almost flew out of my grasp, but I strained to keep him tight as I looked up and took measure of the parachute. It was on fire, part of it near one of the straps, and there were a few small charred gaps that ripped wider as the wind raced through.

Where below had been the sea, we had wandered wide in our fall, and now the guard and I were headed closer and closer to a small island, sister to a dozen or more that lay in a long stream from a larger island. I was still over water, but our track was taking us in the mainland.

I looked around for Blackjack 2.0 again, almost hoping to see him again, for a chance to grab him and tear the mask off, show him who I was and who he wasn’t, but the guy was gone.

The guard and I were falling much faster than I thought was possible with a chute. It was his added weight that was pulling me down, straining the chute. He was a big guy, maybe two hundred pounds, and the armor had to be heavy as well. I let him go, hoping his body would fall in the ocean. I followed him until he was a pinprick against the rolling waves.

Another glance at the chute showed the tearing had subsided, the few wide holes having reached their maximum size against a sewn edge. But I was falling fast, the impact would be substantial and I didn’t know if my new skeleton would be able to withstand it. It was too fast, too hard. Even if my bones didn’t break, and my skin didn’t shred, my organs would liquefy from the force. The parachute was an afterthought, half-lit by flame, torn edges fluttering in mocking laughter.

The small island was growing larger, by the moment, much faster than I had expected. I tried controlling the fall with the hand guards, but the chute was too damaged, I was a passenger on this ride, heading towards a rocky shoreline at breakneck speed. I was screaming, in the last few moments, crying and praying, as I barreled into the ground, crunching through the rock and soil, as everything went to black.

Something was picking at my ear.

I swept my arm out, and heard flapping wings coupled with a surprised squawk. That's how I knew I was alive. I felt little else, which scared me. Feeling nothing meant damage to my body. Damage, which I could scarcely afford in my weakened state.

But I was alive.

I'd been taken apart before, as a play toy for Lord Mighty's frustrations. He had punched me across town and back as we had tried to stop him and his boss, Dr. Zundergrub, from killing the U.S. President. I was still in the afterglow of that experience, my bones still "drying", as it were. Mighty had some fun at my expense. Then again, I ripped his jawbone off his fucking face and slammed the jagged edge into his neck.

He was dead, and I was alive.

The pain started as small pinpricks, my body realizing it was not dead and bringing systems back online. It grew more intense, a mix of dull throbbing and rusty blades tearing at me. It was excruciating, and I embraced it. My right shoulder felt like it had collapsed into my chest, wrapped in a cold blanket. I rolled away, realizing all of my weight was on it, the thrum of my pulse playing against the joint. My deltoid felt like it was stuck on something and I was afraid that I had broken my shoulder when I heard a crunching sound, but it was rock grinding off as I pulled away. Blood returned to my fingers and I wiggled to make sure nothing was broken. If the farthest extremities were working, it meant that my arms and shoulders had to be fine, despite the pain. I lay on my back for a moment before daring to open my eyes, but there was nothing to see, and I was sure I had died. I'd been to that dark pit before; only this time there would be no Apogee to save me.

The world slowly came into focus, and I saw the night sky, beset with clouds and a million stars peering through the cover. It was the clearest night I had seen in ages, though the twinkle of the stars made it seem as if they were in on some joke I wasn't privy to.

Something was digging into my back, a sharp pain amongst the chorus of small aches that came from my crash landing. It was a grinding pressure that seemed focused right on my vertebrae and no amount of shifting made it comfortable. I dug behind me, my fingers scraping across a jagged surface, and I could tell it was porous rock, limestone, maybe coral.

I brought my right hand close to my face, and the web work of scars stood out in the moonless starlight. I looked past my hand and saw her face in the stars, and even there, in my waking dreams, she was disapproving. Regardless of what we might feel or be to each other, she would default to the party line when it came to me. She hadn’t even showed up when I was taken. Jeff had at least told me what was happening face to face.

I already knew I would be blamed for the plane’s destruction. It drove me crazy, but it was a teardrop in the ocean. What really got me is that she would probably just go with it. I flexed my right hand, the scars pulling against each other with the motion, my knuckles popping like firecrackers. My arm protested even this simple action, and I suddenly realized how tired I was. I leaned my head back, my hand feeling like it weighed tons more than I could lift, so I used it to cover my eyes. I had been chucked into the event horizon of a black hole and it was crushing me, I had no defense against it. My breath came in ragged gasps, and I felt warmth behind my eyes. All of it had been for nothing. I had accomplished nothing, there was nothing I could point to that wasn’t tarnished. The people I counted as friends had tossed me aside like garbage. I couldn’t even get arrested right.

The thoughts swept in, implacable as the tide, certain as death. What I hadn’t done, the people I hadn’t saved, the life I didn’t have. The weight of my choices running through my mind, eroding my will more effectively than a thousand sets of manacles. I wanted to let it overtake me. It would have been easy, but something picked at the edges. I lifted my hand again, staring at the scars, seeing them as ridged shadows as my eyes had adjusted to the dark.

When I looked at the scars, I usually thought of how they had been earned. Me versus the unbreakable door, and that was true. I was desperate. I would have extinguished the sun to save Apogee that day. The sound of my bones snapping echoed in my ears and I shuddered. As I turned my hand over, marveling that it still existed at all, I realized that had also been the first time I had used my gifts for something good. Until that point, everything I had applied my powers to had been an effort to feed my greed, narcissism, and of course, the giant chip on my shoulder.

I couldn’t forget that, nor could I forget that Apogee saved me. More than just pressing her friends into treating my injuries, she had called me back from the abyss. Without her I would have died on a patch of sooty earth in Washington D.C. We had saved each other. That meant something, and the only person who could drain it of significance was me. I could use it as a beacon or a noose, and no matter what happened from this moment going forward, the choice would be mine.

Feeling empowered, I tried to sit up and was rewarded with bone-rending pain. A laugh burbled forth, sounding dry and brittle and terrifying, my body quivering with pain. I found the pain hilarious, more laughter erupting from deep within me. I lay back on my stone bed, the rock digging into my back and surrendered to it, laughing at the insanity. It tapered off eventually, and when my lids felt heavy, I didn’t fight it. I was alive.

*              *              *              *

My hand shot out, and I felt something crunch under it, followed by a squelch and warm stickiness exploded around my open palm, oozing between my fingers, splashing across my thigh and butt, where whatever unfortunate thing had just died was picking. I opened my eyes and sunlight blinded me. I brought the sticky hand up to block the light, and saw bits of cracked shell mixed in with grey guts and decided that it had been a crab. My stomach groaned as I imagined a different scenario where I got a fire going and cooked the sucker.

My ears decided to join me at that moment, a chorus of waves crashing into the shoreline resounded around me. I looked around and saw that I was embedded in a rock wall, almost a dozen paces from the beach. Something tugged at me, and at first I feared it would be him, my doppelganger, coming to finish the job. I tried to stand, but the motion was too quick, my muscles and bones didn’t comply, and instead I twitched in place, struggling against the pulling forces. Sweat formed as adrenaline shot through my bloodstream, I smelled a tinge of salt on the air, and the world became vivid as my eyes panned around, trying to make up for my body’s lack of action. I looked at my chest and saw the straps of the parachute dancing away, the body of the damaged chute straining against the wind even though it was partially enveloped in the rock line.

Taking slow, deep breaths, inhaling through my nose, exhaling through my mouth, I carefully extended my hands to my sides, the crab guts accumulating clumps of dirt and rock dust as I slowly turned onto my stomach and pushed myself to my knees, more crabs scurrying away from me. Pulling free of the straps and wriggling out of the harness took longer than I wanted, but once clear, I forced myself to stand.

The water was nearer than I had thought, water that was probably the Mediterranean Sea, on the north coast of Africa. It made sense for them to fly me north to Germany which housed one of the largest military bases in the world, Brandenburg Air Force Base. From there, they could use a more serious transport to put me away in Florence Supermax, until they invented Utopia’s replacement. But we had barely made it past the north coast of Africa when Blackjack 2.0 had hit us.

I was marooned on some small useless island, injured and alone.

I screamed in jubilation.

*              *              *              *

I buried the parachute, for all the good it would do. It wouldn’t take advanced detection equipment or even a particularly observant person to see that something man sized had crashed into the rock face. The lack of destruction leading up to the crash site was the only thing I had going for me. I dug further into the rock face to sleep, half expecting a squadron of choppers to descend upon me. I didn’t have the energy to sleep with one eye open. Let them come.

When I woke, the sun was high in the sky. It was at least noon, and still nothing overhead. Nothing at all, except a brave cast of crabs inching towards me, heedless of their fallen mate. The sounds of ambient life filled my ears, the ripple of air through thick fronds, bird calls, along with the sound of the tide meeting the shore. It was easier to move, I stood in one smooth motion, no handholds necessary, walking out to the beach. The water was clear and empty, except for a fishing boat close to the island. Two men stood at the bow, watching me for almost an hour before they dropped anchor and started to lift crab traps, emptying their contents on the deck. They kept busy with crab traps, never bothering me with anything more than a sideways glance. I started waving at some point, and one of the guys, tired and dirty, gave me a wave back.

*              *              *              *

I made my way toward the rocky shore of the small island, waving at them, but the fishermen grew active and pulled anchor. At first I thought they might brave the rocky shoals, but the boat did a quick turn and sped off, the fishermen not even bothering to look back.

The nearest large landmass was a few miles swim, but there really was no choice. I had crashed into a tiny rocklet, without fresh water or food, and apparently, the locals weren’t friendly. I ripped off the top of my burned scrubs and tied the remains around my waist, diving into the water.

The water was warm and salty, my eyes burning from the sting. I was lucky winter was a distant memory, or the water would have been freezing, maybe too cold to swim. It came up to my waist, and I had to wade another hundred feet from my crash site before it was deep enough to avoid kicking up sand with my swim strokes. I thought of Apogee then, of how useful the woman would be. She had swum us from the edges of Russian coast to the waters off South California in only a few hours, a trip of thousands of miles. She could cross this small gap in seconds.

I wasn’t a powerful swimmer, despite my strength. I was also massive; my muscle tissue was denser than a normal person. I was more like a gorilla in that I tended to sink. I had some experience surfing, but that was easier than fighting heavy currents, washing me out to open sea. I pushed harder, taxing my feeble swimming technique, but the current was steady and relentless taking me farther and farther from my goal. In the end, I had to settle for a near island about the same size as the original one.

I rested, figuring I had been in the water for a couple of hours. The hot afternoon sun was starting to wane, beginning its dip into the horizon. I was afraid to swim at night. If I lost my way, exhaustion would set in and I would drown, but I did have a few more hours. There was another cluster of islands in the rough direction of the current, each closer to the main land. Maybe I could island hop my way there.

The water was warm and clean, a fresh feeling on my singed body, the rolling waves crashing across my chest and back. All day I had expected the welcoming committee, whether Haha’s backup plan, or the military coming to salvage their plane, but apart from a couple of small civilian planes, and a couple of fishing boats, wandering after their crab traps, nothing appeared. Nothing came close enough to bother with, one way or the other, so I slipped into the water and made my swim.

Night fell as I reached the last islet of the small archipelago, and gazing across the gap to main land, I figured it was worth the risk. The landform was long, casting far beyond my vision and the current swept across it, meaning I wouldn’t be fighting against the tides in my effort to reach the far shore.

I dove in and chanced it.

Darkness came crashing down on me rather suddenly. At first, the sun seemed well over the water, but as I rolled up and down with the waves, I saw a spectacle, as the sun seemed to speed up and dive into the distant waters. It died in a corona of purples and oranges, and I turned onto my back, pointing my arms out, watching as last color drained from the day. The current had grown gentler and though I felt it tugging at me, I couldn’t look away from the burgeoning night sky.

I floated along like the world’s smallest boat for a few more minutes, letting the sea dangle me according to her primal whim, before turning onto my stomach and churning through the water. The moon was starting to rise, but the naked starlight was enough for me to keep the shore in sight. It was well into the night by the time I reached the shoreline and safety. I rolled up past the craggy breaks onto the sandy beach and lay on the cool sand, exhausted, letting sleep settle over me.

*              *              *              *

I woke with a start, water pooling around me, the tide licking across my body as the ocean tried to reclaim me. I felt a rock in the pit of my stomach, and I sat up frantically, afraid that I had ended up on another barren island, devoid of life. It was cool despite the early sunrise, and my skin tingled with the light ocean breeze. My skin was dry, but patches of sand still clung to my bare chest, calves and feet. My scrub pants were still mostly intact, but frayed around my lower legs. I took a moment to roll them up, then scooted away from the incoming waves. I was parched, having swallowed far too much salt water, my tongue was swollen and the sides of my mouth were thick as cotton. I looked back at the Med’s salt water and was tempted to get a mouthful, but I knew the momentary satisfaction would only make things worse in the long run. I needed civilization.