Contracts, Matt Rogers [phonics reading books TXT] 📗

bays, capable of carrying no more than twenty passengers in total, and a thin queue bleeding out of the three-storey building that passed for a terminal. The trekkers had been lining up to board, but the gunshots rippling through the village froze them in their tracks. Now they were staring up the hill, mouths agape, whispering nervously to one another.

A handful of them saw Slater’s outline through the fence, gun in hand, and pandemonium erupted.

Everyone scattered — passengers and workers alike.

Slater saw the small plane’s propellers powering down.

‘Shit,’ he yelled.

King skidded to a halt beside him. ‘What?’

‘Over the fence. Now.’

King clearly had enough experience in trying times to need no further prompting. He heard the urgency in Slater’s tone and moved immediately. He dropped his duffel bag and hauled himself over the wire fence, nearly falling head over heels down the other side in his haste. He landed hard on the thin ledge, narrowly avoiding a two-storey drop to the tarmac. The fence had been erected at the top of a sheer rock wall, and they’d need to traverse it with caution if they wanted to keep their bones intact on the descent.

Slater tossed King’s bag over, followed by his own. Then he vaulted over the fence, landed in a similar heap, and picked himself up to observe the scene.

The passengers were scattering in a dozen different directions — some racing back into the safety of the terminal, others opting to flee at breakneck speed across the three empty loading bays. It was understandable — they thought they were under attack.

Then a couple of security guards stuck their heads out of the terminal, far across the tarmac.

Slater thought he saw the glint of gunmetal.

He raised the Sig Sauer and fired three shots over the roof of the building, making sure the bullets sailed harmlessly out of Lukla.

But the security didn’t know that.

They disappeared, lurching back behind cover, opting not to get into a firefight with what they assumed were trained combatants.

‘Now,’ Slater said.

Together, he and King tossed their duffels over the lip of the ledge, where each bag thudded to the tarmac after a second’s freefall. If either of them followed that trajectory, they’d probably break both their legs. Instead they used their non-dominant hands to guide them down the rock wall, keeping their guns firmly clenched in their right hands. They probed with the toes of their boots and dropped steadily, foot by foot, down the wall. When Slater deemed he was close enough to the tarmac to avoid serious injury, he let go and plummeted to the runway. Landed, rolled to his feet, and dusted himself off.

King opted not to risk the plunge, given his barely-recovered ankle, and took a few seconds longer to finish the descent.

When he touched down on the runway, Slater handed his duffel over, and together they took off at a run for the plane.

They caught the pilot and co-pilot halfway out of the exit door, racing to get away from what had quickly become an active war zone.

King intercepted them at the bottom of the stairs and held them at gunpoint. They froze, shaking.

He turned to Slater. ‘Do we need them?’

Slater studied the plane. It was a Dornier Do 228 — a twin-turboprop with an odd rectangular fuselage. He said, ‘No. I can fly it.’

King jerked his gun in the direction of the terminal and stepped aside to let the two men past. ‘Go.’

They didn’t need any further prompting. The moment they found a gap they both took off at a mad sprint, practically shouldering past King in their desperation to get away. They were halfway to the terminal before either King or Slater had mounted the stairs.

Slater took both bags and hustled up into the fuselage. There were maybe a couple of dozen seats in total for passengers — one on either side of the aisle, running the entire length of the plane. They were a sickly brown colour, made of cheap sticky leather. Slater dumped the duffels on the nearest empty seat and ran for the cockpit. He levered himself into the pilot’s seat, soaked in the myriad of controls, and started deciphering what seemed like an impossibly complex puzzle to the untrained eye. But a couple of years in the Air Force during the pre-black-ops days of his career had taught him everything he needed to know, and he figured a twin-turboprop plane shouldn’t be too much to handle.

He familiarised himself with the controls, and assumed the aircraft was STOL-capable.

Short Takeoff and Landing.

It had to be.

The runway was the shortest Slater had ever laid eyes on.

He gulped back apprehension, fired both turboprop engines to life, and started backing out of the loading bay.

From the open fuselage door, King screamed, ‘Faster!’

Slater’s heart skipped a beat, and he urged the aircraft to speed up.

It groaned in protest, but responded.

Then the first of the gunshots rang out across the tarmac.

81

King was crouched low in the open doorway when he noticed the jeeps roaring around the side of the terminal.

He counted four in total, all open-topped, all packed tight with insurgents brandishing assault rifles and handguns. There was a paramilitary army headed their way, and seemingly no one around to stop it. The floor underneath King shifted, and he realised Slater had spurred the plane into motion. The wheels rumbled on the tarmac, backing out of the loading bay…

…right into the path of the first jeep.

‘Faster!’ he roared, and Slater seemed to get the message.

The plane jerked violently as it reversed, and King snatched at the door frame so he didn’t go tumbling out onto the runway.

He steadied himself, then took careful aim and squeezed off a flurry of rounds — six consecutive pumps of the trigger and the driver and passenger died amidst an explosion of shattered glass as the windshield gave out. The jeep veered to the right as the dead driver slumped forward over the steering wheel, and within seconds it had crashed nose-first into the rock wall bordering the