Their carefully constructed plan had just gone to hell.
Trigger’s head swung back toward the hijacked plane when he heard the sound of one of the escape slides inflating.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Trigger muttered, motioning for his team to move out.
Before they could get to the plane, people started exiting. Two at a time. A man and a woman. The second the first pair made it to the bottom of the slide, they began running toward the small Beechcraft.
They had no idea what the hijackers looked like, so he didn’t know if the people running were their targets or not.
Two-by-two, more and more people slid down the escape slide and ran toward the smaller plane now idling nearby.
The first couple swerved around the plane and headed for the terminal behind it.
Parking the plane right in the middle of the path the hostages would take to get to safety was fucking brilliant. It made distinguishing the bad guys from the good guys that much harder.
It was clear the hijackers never had any intention of flying the large plane out of there. They were going to catch a ride on the smaller, more maneuverable aircraft, one that could fly under radar and disappear without a trace into Central America.
Trigger ran next to Lefty as the team headed for the panicked passengers focused on escaping the hell they’d lived through for the last three days.
“They’re using the passengers as cover,” Trigger told his team. He knew they were already aware, but it still needed to be said. “Shoot to kill, but make sure the person you’re shooting is actually a hijacker!”
They had a lot of open ground to cover before they could get to either airplane, and Trigger had never felt more like a sitting duck than in that moment.
A loud gunshot sounded and as one, all seven Deltas hit the deck and rolled. They had no cover, but they wouldn’t just stand around waiting to be shot either. Within seconds, they were back up and running for the plane. No one knew who was firing or from where, but they couldn’t stop the mission now.
It seemed like it took an hour, but they finally reached the front wheels of the hijacked aircraft. They lined up, using the wheels and each other as cover. Trigger was in front, and he frantically searched for whoever was shooting at them.
The scene was complete chaos. Women were crying, men were shouting, and Trigger knew they needed to figure out who was a hijacker and who was an innocent civilian immediately.
“Grover, take out the pilot in the Beechcraft,” Trigger ordered. “Doc, cover him. Lefty, you and Brain need to find a way to reroute the civilians…separate them from our targets. Oz and Lucky, you’re on the hijackers with me.”
Without a word, the men on his team fanned out. Trigger heard Lefty whistle as loud as he could as Brain began yelling for the hostages to run in the opposite direction from the Beechcraft.
As if the terrified men and women had merely been waiting for someone to tell them what to do, they immediately made a hard right turn and headed for the two men frantically gesturing at them to run toward them.
With the change in the tide of humanity, Trigger could easily make out who was a bad guy and who wasn’t. But now there was a new problem—the hijackers were using the women and children as shields.
One man had a small child in his arms. He held a knife at her throat as he bolted for the small plane.
Another had the barrel of a rifle jammed into a woman’s side as he forced her to jog toward the Beechcraft.
Then Trigger saw Gillian.
Her blonde hair stood out, even in the low light of the rising sun. A man had an arm around her neck and was attempting to walk backward toward their escape plane while randomly shooting at the retreating hostages and Trigger’s team.
Something inside Trigger shifted, and a feeling he’d never experienced while on the job swept over him.
Fear.
Suddenly, he was terrified the man would get on the small plane with Gillian, and he’d never see her again. Never hear her voice.
Not. Happening.
His eyes narrowed and he focused on the man. Tunnel vision. Trigger knew what it was, but he didn’t try to snap himself out of it. He had faith in his team. They’d cover him and take care of the other hijackers. The asshole who was hurting Gillian was going to die.
Gillian’s head was reeling. When the hijackers had suddenly rounded up all the women and forced them to the back of the plane with the men, she’d thought they were going to let them all go. That the plane had finally been refueled and they were getting ready to take off. When they’d opened a hatch, her conclusions had been confirmed. She couldn’t help but smile.
But then Luis had spoken into a handheld radio she hadn’t seen before and started pairing up the hostages. One man with one woman. He shoved the first couple out of the door and down a slide, without giving them any warning. Then he did the same with the next. And the next. Then Henry grabbed Alice and jumped out behind one of the pairs of hostages.
What in the world was happening?
She looked out the hatch and saw a small plane coming toward them—fast.
And it clicked.
The hijackers weren’t going to leave in the larger aircraft. They had a buddy who was picking them up and taking them away in the twin-engine plane.
Gillian was so stunned, she’d stopped paying attention to what was going on around her, so she wasn’t prepared when Alberto grabbed her arm and hauled her against his body. He squeezed her arm so tightly, Gillian couldn’t help but cry out in pain.
“You’re coming with me,” Alberto hissed. “And if you run, I’ll shoot you. Understand?”
Gillian could only nod.
He pushed between some of the other hostages waiting anxiously for their chance to escape the plane and hauled her up behind Luis and Andrea. The other hijacker had a small pistol against Andrea’s temple and was saying something to her in Spanish. When she and Alberto appeared behind them, Luis straightened but didn’t remove the gun from Andrea’s head.
“We’re having fun, no?” he asked with a malicious smile. Then he leaned into Andrea and licked up the side of her face. “I’m taking this one with me. She sucked my cock so good, how could I not? Me and her are gonna have a lot more fun, aren’t we?”
Gillian shuddered as Andrea closed her eyes.
“Come on,” Luis ordered. “We don’t have much time. Is everyone out?”
“Si, Isaac is behind me,” Alberto said.
Gillian turned to look and saw Isaac was indeed standing behind them. Next to him was Leyton, the Hispanic man who’d helped with the boxes earlier.
“I’ll go with her,” he said when their gazes met.
She frowned in confusion.
Leyton reached for her arm. “I’ll take her,” he repeated.
Gillian had no idea why Leyton offered to go with her when it seemed obvious Alberto planned to use her as a shield. Then she saw Wade, Alice’s husband, who’d been sitting in the same row as Gillian when everything had started.
“No, I’ll jump with her,” Wade said.
Gillian finally realized the men were doing what they could to try to help her. To get her away from the hijacker.
Leyton even reached forward and grabbed hold of her arm. For a short second, he and Alberto had a kind of tug-of-war with Gillian between them.
“You want to come with us too?” Alberto sneered, then put a hand on Leyton’s chest and shoved. Hard. The young man fell back, but he didn’t take his eyes off the hijacker. “Back off,” Alberto said sternly. “And that goes for the rest of you,” he continued, talking to the others who were gathered around them. “Do what we tell you, when we tell you, and you might live through this. Grow a brain, and I’ll kill you right here and now!”