flesh had been cauterized.
It looked like someone had put his thigh on the fucking broiler and forgotten about it for an hour or two.
Goddamn fucking hell it hurt so shitting much!
Then he saw it.
Part of the laser assembly looked smashed. No. Broken off and dangling aside.
No wonder he’d been cooked, he’d just walked into an invisible laser beam.
A master alarm began beeping up in the cockpit.
That was never good.
For half a second he figured Gutz could handle it…except he was dead and couldn’t even handle his own dick.
He’d deal with the laser later.
First, get to the cockpit and—
God, standing up hurt worse than anything ever in his life!
He was drenched in sweat by the time he made it to the cockpit, hopping one-footed up the ladder, and collapsed in his seat.
Gutz’s blood was everywhere.
Shit!
He should have shot the guy in the balls.
Tango tried to look out the window, but all he could see was star-cracks. Gutz’s shot hadn’t gone through; instead the bullet had lodged exactly where he needed to be looking as if Gutz was giving him the finger from the afterlife.
He almost smiled at that, but then went to put his feet on the rudder pedals and screamed instead.
Smashing a finger against the Master Alarm stopped the damned beeping.
Red lights all in a clump. A wide variety of systems, but all in the tail.
He twisted around to look behind him.
The back wall of the cargo bay was glowing red.
He should have dealt with the laser. Without whatever was broken off, it was firing at the back of his plane. The beam wasn’t narrow, maybe because of the missing part, but it was still heating the shit out of everything. A hundred and fifty thousand watts was a hella big lightbulb.
In addition to the back of the plane, which he needed, it would also be toasting the racks of gliding Viper Strike bombs still perched in their drop tubes.
The laser took too much power for there to be a breaker in the cockpit, it had to be shut down at the weapon itself.
Tango was gritting his teeth in preparation for getting up and going back down that goddamn ladder, when the yoke went lax in his hand.
He gave it a wiggle.
He still had side-to-side control, but up and down? Gone. The laser had burned through something critical in the empennage control system. Several somethings for there to be a total loss of control despite all the backups.
The big-bellied plane eased down, skipped on the waves like a red-hot puck on an ice rink.
Ahead was…invisible through the shattered windshield.
To the right, Gutz’s blood was drying across the windows.
To the left…
A cruise ship towered above him—a ten-story wall of white.
The plane skipped on the water again, slamming his leg hard against the side of the chair.
He was past screaming.
There was only one thing left to do.
He pulled out his sidearm and shot Gutz Gutierrez in the balls.
“No fucking Rosa in the afterlife, you bastard. That’s Tango’s poontang.”
He holstered his sidearm and then did his best to keep the wings level.
23
After two decades at his side, Taz remained as still as the general, no matter how loudly her instincts said to run.
The AC-130J Super Hercules Ghostrider grew bigger alarmingly quickly. It must still be at full cruise speed of four hundred miles an hour—a mile every nine seconds.
Moving at over half the speed of sound, the roar of the propellers still hadn’t reached the waterfront. All around her, she could hear the merry laughter of people on holiday. The whining child who wanted another ice cream. The two girls with the massive boob jobs and too tight bikinis being so perfectly casual as they strolled along.
The Ghostrider passed between two parked cruise ships that were moored out beyond the breakwater. The massive ships towered several times its height.
It skipped. Planes were supposed to hit the water and die. Out there. Beyond the breakwater.
It skipped again.
For a moment it wavered and dipped the starboard wing toward the water.
Maybe it would hit the north breakwater…
But no. It lifted a wing just enough to clear that outer barrier.
From behind her sunglasses, she kept an eye on the general.
The man was made of stone. She’d served him for nineteen years. Had been the first to swear allegiance when he asked, because from eighteen she’d known no other life.
The general didn’t dismiss her due to her small size like so many others in the Air Force. Instead he’d listened when she spoke and trusted her at every