The Amulet of Power - Mike Resnick [91]
She noticed a number of men sitting at the bar, most of them wearing leather jackets despite the heat. “I assume those guys are all pilots?” she said.
He nodded. “Yeah, that’s the uniform, all right. This is their hangout. If our guy doesn’t show up soon I’ll see if we can hire one of them.”
He didn’t have to worry. A tall, slender man approached them a few minutes later and introduced himself as Milo Jacobi. They could tell from his accent that he was American.
“Pleased to meet you,” he said. “I just brought a couple back from the Ngorongoro Crater over in Tanzania. I’ve got more than enough fuel to reach Mombasa, so we can leave whenever you’re ready. Once we refuel on the coast, it’s a straight shot to the islands. The Seychelles are about a thousand miles east of the coast, and we’ll make about two hundred miles an hour, so figure on a five-hour flight from Mombasa—and we’ll get to Mombasa in about an hour and a half. I’ve stashed some sandwiches in the plane for you in case you get hungry, and a few soft drinks.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Lara. “Let’s go.”
He led them out to the airfield, and soon was standing beside his plane.
“It’s a five-seater,” he said, “so you can both sit in back, or one of you can sit up front with me.”
“I’ll take the back,” said Lara.
“Me, too,” said Oliver. “I don’t mind flying, but I hate looking out the front window—when you see clouds zigzagging right and left you suddenly realize just how much the wind knocks you around.”
Jacobi laughed in amusement. “All right, the backseat it is. Do you have any luggage?”
“Just my shoulder bag,” answered Lara. “We’ll buy whatever we need when we get there.”
If Jacobi found that curious he didn’t say so, and a couple of minutes later they raced down the runway and were soon aloft and heading east.
Lara leaned back, relaxed, and looked out the window at the clear blue African sky.
They touched down in Mombasa, refueled, and headed off to the Seychelles.
It was when they had traveled perhaps one hundred miles over the Indian Ocean and were cruising at about 7,500 feet that Jacobi lowered his head and began whispering to himself.
“What are you doing?” asked Lara curiously.
“Praying,” he said. Suddenly he reached over to the control panel and killed the engines.
“What the hell have you done?” demanded Oliver, leaning forward.
“I have done what so many others have failed to do,” he answered. “I have killed Lara Croft.”
“You’ve killed us all!” shouted Oliver.
“Better death than a world ruled by the Mahdi,” said Jacobi serenely.
Lara flung herself over the top of the copilot’s seat and tried to restart the engines. Jacobi took a swing at her, catching her a glancing blow on the jaw.
She pulled the Scalpel of Isis from her boot and slashed him across the throat. His scream turned into a moist gurgle. She didn’t even look at him as she worked the controls.
“Jettison him!” she ordered Oliver.
“The door’s on the far side.”
“Then lower his window and shove him out. We’re losing altitude! We’ve got to make the plane lighter and buy some time, even a few seconds, while I try to restart the engines!”
Oliver spent about thirty seconds getting the window open, and the plane almost flipped over with the change of pressure, but Lara got the wings level again and Oliver managed to slide the dead pilot’s body through the window, where it plunged some 3,800 feet into the ocean.
“Can I help?” asked Oliver.
“Do you know how to fly a plane?”
“No.”
“Then you can’t help,” she said.
“How soon before we crash?”
“If this was a 747, we’d have about five seconds . . . but it’s a small plane, relatively light. Even with the motor off and losing altitude, I can probably glide for about three more minutes before we hit the water.”
Oliver sat perfectly still and kept quiet, not wanting to distract her. The altimeter showed them dropping to 2,800 feet, then 2,500, then 2,000. At 1,500 he thought he heard the engines trying to catch, but the plane continued to fall. At 800 feet he heard the sound