ABANDONED SOVIET BONEYARD
BLACK SEA COAST, UKRAINE
EDDIE WATCHED THE STORM over the Black Sea grow into a churning gray mass, filling the windscreen of the van. His shackles were gone. Darcy had removed them the moment Ivanov had shown his true colors.
The two had heard every word spoken on Gryphon through the comms. Now the airship was falling out of the sky, straight into the storm, with Eddie’s best friend trapped on board in a pressure-sealed polycarbonate booth. To keep her company in this dire hour, she had the assassin who had murdered her father, the new world record holder for high-altitude jumps, and a marginally loyal Scotsman. Life had become far more surreal than Eddie had ever imagined, and that was saying a lot for a kid that grew up in Bombay, New Jersey.
“Mac is pushing her close to shore with the RCS,” Tyler said through the comms. “He’s aiming for your position. But the hydrogen is gone. Our fall is accelerating. How bad will it get?”
“Stand by.” Eddie switched off the microphone and looked up at Darcy, whose fingers rapidly worked the screen of a tablet. “Anything?”
“Hold on. These equations are not so simple, yes?” She stopped tapping, shook her head, and swiped something away as if crumpling a sheet of paper. “We must be precise. Call up Gryphon’s aerodynamic data.”
Eddie dug the numbers out of the files they had stolen from Avantec and put them up on the screen.
Darcy set to work on the tablet again, then pushed out her bottom lip. “So . . . the news is not fantastic. They will decelerate in the lower atmosphere, but not enough. They will hit the water at thirty-five meters per second, give or take.”
“That’s almost eighty miles per hour.”
She shrugged. “I said it was not fantastic, no?”
Eddie switched on the microphone. “Um . . . Yeah . . . Mr. Tyler, by our calculations you might hit the water a little fast.”
“How fast?”
Eddie gave Darcy his Should I tell him? shrug, and she answered with a Not on your life shake of her head. He winced. “Uh . . . you know . . . pretty fast. But we’re developing a solution.”
“That’s good to hear. Get back to us soon.”
Darcy reached over him and switched off the mic, scrunching up her nose. “What solution? You did not tell me you had a solution.”
“I don’t.”
Their assets were not promising. Eddie removed his glasses and rubbed his temples. “With the computing power on this vehicle, I can retask satellites, divert airliners, or launch rescue missions from a dozen nations. But I can’t stop Gryphon from crashing into the sea.” He swiveled his chair toward the open panel door, putting his glasses back on, and Darcy’s duffel bags came into focus. “Um . . . Exactly how much explosive did you bring?”
“Hard to say. A little of this, a little of that.” Darcy made her pbbt sound. “One must come prepared for anything, yes?”
“Yes.” Eddie glanced from the bags to a line of derelict boats lying upside down on the tarmac outside. “Anything.”
ACCORDING TO MAC, the airship’s free fall had topped out at over two hundred miles per hour. That’s when Talia’s feet had left the deck, and she had hung there for the last several minutes, hovering in her booth. “It’s like zero gravity,” she said, watching Finn zoom across the cabin.
“On the contrary.” Tyler held on to a server rack, keeping himself firmly planted on the rubber floor. “Too much gravity is our biggest problem.”
Finn slowly tumbled back and forth. Mac’s feet rose behind him while he worked the RCS to drive them closer to Eddie and Darcy. The rush of air was like white noise from a sleep app. It felt strange. Peaceful.
Tyler closed his eyes and Talia could see he was praying. A big part of her wanted to pray with him, but how could she kneel beside a man she hated and pray to a God she had despised for most of her life? The words appeared in her mind, just the same. Dear God, don’t let Ivanov hurt all those people. Please protect Jenni and the rest of those families who took me in.
Her families. Talia had not thought of any of her foster parents in that way for years.
Peace and prayer did not last long enough. Once the airship fell into the storm clouds, mayhem took over.
Dense air and updrafts slowed the ship’s fall, dropping them all to the deck. Gryphon rocked and pitched like a raft in a typhoon. The smooth rush of wind became a terrifying racket as hail pelted the cabin. A chunk flew up through the hole in the floor and ricocheted off the ceiling. Finn shielded his face to fend it off, shouting at the top of his lungs. “Gryphon’s special hull will protect us from the lightning, right?”
“It should!” Tyler knelt beside Talia’s door, using the butt of his machine gun to chip away the ice that had formed along the seal. “Too bad it won’t protect us from the crash waiting at the—”
Tyler stopped working and furrowed his brow, as if listening to the comms through his earpiece. A moment later, he glanced at Finn, who was shaking his head.
“What is it?” Talia shouted.
“That was Eddie!” Tyler started chipping the ice again. “He and Darcy are going to blow up a boat!”
“Wait! I’ve heard this one!” Using the bulkhead and server stacks for balance, Finn crossed the deck so they could hear him better. “It’s like that guy who fell out of a B-17 in World War II! The blast of his own bombs cushioned his fall!”
The turbulence worsened as they fell, but the racket of the hail stopped. Talia wedged her hands into the corners of her booth to keep from getting tossed around. “That’s just a myth.”
“For a human, yes,” Tyler said, “but this airship is wider than a football stadium and made of ultralight materials. Darcy’s blast will catch it like an airbag.”
“That’s fifteen thousand.” Mac was still furiously working the joystick. “The air is breathable.”
Talia jammed a shoulder against her door, cracking through the remainder of the ice. With help from Tyler, she stepped out onto the deck. She was free, for all the good it did her.
“Ninety seconds!” Mac called. “Brace yerselves!”
Finn laid his body flat on the deck. When Talia and Tyler gave him incredulous looks, he motioned for them to do the same. “Trust me!”
What did they have to lose? Talia lay down.
Tyler lay down beside her. “I’m sorry.”
She met his eyes for a long time, feeling the rumble of the ship beneath them. “I know.”
EDDIE MOTORED a sputtering old Russian gunboat back toward the boneyard. By Gryphon’s GPS signal, the airship would soon be coming down right on top of them. He and Darcy needed to get out of the way.
Rain pattered down from the dying storm. The waves brimmed at the rails of a leaky skiff they had loaded up with Darcy’s explosives and anchored offshore.
“She’s sinking.” Eddie coasted the gunboat in beside the abandoned helipad. “Will the C4 work wet?”
“Oh yes. Not a problem.” Darcy helped him up onto the platform and pointed at the sky. “There they are!”
A massive black form broke through the hanging mists of a dissolving rain cloud, catching a fresh ray of sunlight. Eddie knew Gryphon’s dimensions by heart, but he was not prepared for the sight. It looked like the Death Star falling into the sea. “Now?”
“Not yet. We must be exact!” Darcy held her tablet, tracking the airship’s fall with its camera and reading real-time data from the screen. “Too early and they will have time to speed up again. Too late and they will not slow down enough.”
The heart of Gryphon’s shadow engulfed the sinking skiff so Eddie could no longer see it. The sheer size of the airship made it seem closer to the water than it was. He couldn’t bear it. “Now?”
“Not yet.”
“Darcy, they’re going to hit!”
“A little more . . .”
“Darcy!”
“Now!” She mashed down on a remote trigger, and both ducked at the sight of the explosion. The boom and the blast wave passed over them first, followed by a drenching shower.
Eddie wiped his eyes and blinked to find the Black Sea had reached up like a giant hand to catch their friends. Gryphon splashed down, banged up and broken by the storm and the explosion. “Come on, Talia.” Eddie watched the surrounding waves. He felt a hand in his and glanced down.
Darcy squeezed his fingers and repeated the plea. “Come on. All of you.”
A hand appeared above the froth, holding a helmet high. Then a head appeared, and another. Finn and Mac bobbed side by side as the thief helped the wounded pilot swim.
But Tyler and Talia were not with them.
“Please, Talia. Where are you?” Eddie heard a shout—maybe. His ears were still ringing from the blast. He shielded his eyes and looked farther north. At first he thought they might be a mirage, a trick of the sunlight reflected on the water. But then Talia and Tyler both waved. He waved back, jumping up and down. “We did it!”
Darcy jumped beside him, still holding his hand. When the two of them stopped, they stared into each other’s widened eyes, and then crashed together in a passionate kiss.
OUT IN THE WATER, with Gryphon sinking behind him, Finn watched the pair embrace. “The geek and the psychopath. That’s not gonna end well.”
“Yeah.” Mac held on to Finn’s shoulder and kicked with his one good leg to keep his head above the waves. “That’s quite a kiss, though. Ya think they’ll simmer down long enough ta get in that boat o’ theirs and come get us?”