Mercy and Mayhem Men of Mercy(10)

The shriek of a warning alarm blasted through the cabin. Marley jerked her head up and stared in shock at her copilot. He had on his oxygen mask and was staring at her with regret. The flashing red light on the dashboard drew her attention, she heard the loud whoosh of air, and the pressure reading went to zero.

Her lungs locked.

He'd turned off the automatic pressure control.

The loud hiss of leaking air filled the cabin.

"You bastard." She reached for his mask, and then the world went black.





3





Marley came back to consciousness. Her eyes felt heavy. Her brain sluggish. There was a loud roar in her ears. She reached up to cover them with her hands, but that simple action seemed to take three times longer than normal. Then she remembered. Ramsey had disengaged the pressure control. They'd been cruising at 30,000 feet and she'd lost consciousness within seconds. It would explain the sluggishness, but not the roaring.

She struggled to sit up from her slumped-over position and was met with the fast blur of white clouds zinging past her windshield. Her stomach lifted like she was in a freefall.

Shit. They were in a freefall.

She'd regained consciousness, which meant they had to be below 10,000 feet. The plane continued to descend and bore into a flat spin-down, down, down. In seconds they would all be dead. Her vision tunneled, narrowing in on the edges of the clouds as they whizzed past. Alarms filled the cockpit. She could see the tiny droplets of dew collecting on the glass.

The loud roaring seemed to fade.

"Come on, baby; come on, baby." Marley grabbed the black-padded handles of the yoke, shoved her feet into the floorboard and pulled as hard as she could, using her body as a lever. The plane's nose edged up. She gritted her teeth, every muscle in her body drawn tight as a damn bow as she fought gravity and physics and tried to pull the C-130 out of its uncontrolled dive.

She gained some traction and the yoke eased incrementally. Sweat dripped down her face and her muscles shook from the effort to keep the nose up. The plane had already left the safety of the clouds.

The altimeter read 7,000 feet.

Oh, shit.

Her heart whacked her sternum in a steadily increasing jackhammer. Another couple of thousand feet and there'd be no recovery.

The plane shook and she locked her knees, every fiber of her being straining to hold the yoke back. Fatigue fought with adrenaline; adrenaline won.

With renewed determination, Marley yanked with all her might and the plane nosed up-6,500. 6,800. 7,000.

As soon as she leveled off, she peeled her stiff fingers from the yoke to hit autopilot.

Her copilot's words came back to her: Do you have enough coverage to support Maddie if something happens to you? Had he asked her that to lessen the guilt of his betrayal? The thought sent a shiver down her back.



       
         
       
        

She had to check on the crew. Hypoxia at that altitude could be deadly. She hit the clasp on her harness and leaned back, taking in a long deep breath.

The adrenaline rush had cleared her brain fog, but now that the immediate danger had passed, shock fought its way into her body, making her shake all over. Marley fought the natural response and worked on getting herself back under control.

A flashing red light that did not belong in the cockpit caught her attention. Cautiously, she shifted over to Ramsey's abandoned chair. An open bag sat almost completely hidden on the floorboard in between his seat and the side of the aircraft. The red light blinked up from it, steady and slow. A digital clock. Bold, bright green numbers flashed right beside it, counting down the seconds. Two minutes.

Marley froze, her legs and arms going numb. Mother of God.

"Captain Mitchell, are you okay?"

Marley flinched and spun around to face the sexy colonel. "Bomb," was all her voice managed.

"What?"

"There."

She leaned back so he could see. To his credit, he didn't panic in the least. He went back to the entry of the cockpit and yelled, "Merc!"

Pounding footsteps echoed in the plane and then one of the men, the giant one with black hair and black eyes, poked his head into the cockpit. "Sir?"

"We're going to need your explosives ordinance training."

"The bastard got to us again, didn't he?"

The bomb's clock read one minute and forty-five seconds.

"You're wasting time."

Marley watched the exchange from her pilot's chair, feeling about as comfortable as she'd be watching two junkyard dogs circle each other.

She still couldn't feel her hands and feet, or her face for that matter.

The colonel glared at her and she forced her tight fists to unwind; stretched her fingers to their full length, concentrating on the feeling of the blood rushing back into her fingertips. Of course, for all he knew she was the one jeopardizing their mission. These men deserved the truth, even if they didn't believe her. "Ramsey depressurized the plane. He must've armed the bomb and jumped. I don't know why, so don't ask. When I woke up we were in an uncontrolled dive. I leveled us off at 7,000 feet. We're right in the heart of the Congo, not the best place in the world to do an unplanned landing-but I can make it work."